She shook her head.
‘So what did you find, then?’ Harry asked. ‘DNA? Footprints at the scene? Fingerprints? Anything?’
‘No DNA, no hair,’ Sowerby said.
‘What about the feather?’ Matt asked, interjecting suddenly.
The pathologist, Harry was sure, pretty much growled at Matt’s interruption.
‘We found bruising on the deceased’s neck,’ Sowerby said.
‘Strangled?’ Harry asked.
Sowerby shook her head. ‘Windpipe wasn’t crushed. More like a sleeper hold, you know, arm around the neck, squeeze, cut off the blood supply, instant rag doll.’
Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Instant rag doll? That’s a new one on me.’
‘The deceased was probably grabbed from behind, choked, knocked out. Not easy to do.’
‘You sure about that?’ Jim asked. ‘I’ve seen it often enough.’
‘Yeah, you’ve seen it in the movies,’ Harry said. ‘Doing it for real is a little different. You need to know what you’re doing and to be strong enough to do it. Pretty dangerous, too, seeing as you can easily kill someone doing it. And John was a big dude so not an easy task to get done by any means.’
‘As for the feather,’ Sowerby said, staring at Matt, ‘all we know is that it’s an eagle feather. What breed of eagle I don’t know, but I’ll get the results to you when we have them in. No DNA on it other than that of the deceased.’
Harry stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. ‘So, someone put a sleeper hold on him, took him out to the field, stuffed him under the trailer, then ran him over, and as a final touch shoved an eagle feather in his mouth. Well, it’s certainly creative if nothing else, I’ll give them that.’
‘Seems that way, yes,’ Sowerby said. ‘And before you ask, the time of death is pretty difficult to nail down at the best of times, so with that one? Almost impossible! Best I can say is that the body had been there for at least two days.’
‘How do you know?’ Jim asked, and Harry took note of it, happy to see that he was always trying to learn. There was a lot to be said for it, he thought, and a lot numerous detectives could learn from it as well, some of them being proper know-it-alls.
‘It’s not just the state of the body,’ Sowerby explained, clearly sparking at Jim’s show of interest. ‘Nature’s been having its wicked way with it, so the flies, the maggots and their size, that kind of thing, all gives us a good indication. His body was basically a massive sex fest for all the creepy crawlies.’
‘And we know that he was alive on Friday anyway,’ Harry added.
There was a groan from one of the two PPE-clad figures.
‘How you going to approach this one, then?’ he asked.
‘With a hose,’ Sowerby said. ‘We’ll have to search as best we can through whatever’s on the body as we clean it off, then get it back to have a proper look.’
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘Doesn’t it just?’
Harry realised then that the conversation with the pathologist hadn’t just been informative but almost civil. Not friendly as such but neither of them had taken a bite at the other. He was as relieved as he was confused.
‘What about footprints?’ Harry asked. ‘If someone did drive John out there in his own tractor to crush him under the wheels of the trailer, then they had to walk out.’
‘Footprints, yes,’ Sowerby said, ‘but no treads. Looks like whoever was there with him had bags strapped around their shoes.’
‘Clever,’ Harry said. ‘And annoying.’
‘We’ve taken moulds, measurements, the usual, see if we can get some idea of weight, a guess on height from the length of stride, that kind of thing. What use all that’ll be, who knows?’
‘Well, we’ll leave you to it,’ Harry said. ‘If you can get that report to me that would be great.’
‘I said I would, didn’t I?’ Sowerby said, her voice sharp again. ‘Christ alive! You really do think the world revolves around you, don’t you?’
‘That’s not what I meant . . .’
But the pathologist wasn’t listening and had gone back to join her colleagues.
‘Back to the office, then?’ Matt asked.
Harry thought for a moment and then pointed towards the farmhouse. ‘You said the farmer found the body, yes?’
‘Yep,’ Matt said. ‘Just doing his morning check of his stock and there it was, bobbing about.’
‘I’d like to speak to him now if that’s possible? And we’ll want him to come down to the station to give an official statement, but a chat now would be good, while it’s all still fresh in his mind.’
Matt quickly walked off towards the house to get the farmer.
‘You don’t think this is connected to yesterday’s thing, do you?’ Jim asked. ‘John’s death and now this?’
‘Do you?’ Harry replied.
Jim was quiet for a moment before he said anything more.
‘Accidents happen on farms all the time,’ Jim said. ‘They’re dangerous places. I’ve not known two to happen so closely together though. But yesterday’s wasn’t an accident, was it? And now this? Doesn’t smell right.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Harry said, and he didn’t just mean the body being pulled out of the slurry either. There was something about it all that gave him the horrible feeling that things would only get worse before they got better.
Chapter Nineteen
‘This won’t take long,’ Harry said to the man now standing with him, Matt and Jim. ‘Sorry to take you away from your family. This must be hard for you all.’
‘Hard? It’s bloody horrible is what it is,’ the man said. ‘Not every day you wake up to find a body on your land, you know. You’re not all going to ask me lots of questions, are you? I don’t do well with questions.’
Harry attempted a smile, despite the fact that he knew it generally made his face look worse. ‘PCSO Metcalf will
