‘No, but they’ve been made to look like them, haven’t they? Capstick was run over by a trailer, now some poor sod’s been drowned in slurry. And the first one is surely more common than the second.’
‘We don’t know that they drowned,’ Harry corrected. ‘And how do you know one’s more common than the other?’
‘He’s got a point,’ Jim said, agreeing with Matt.
‘Has he now,’ Harry said. ‘And you can support that statement, can you?’
Jim gave a nod and explained further. ‘The three most common causes of fatal accidents on a farm are falling from a height, being hit by a vehicle, and being hit by a moving object. Those three alone account for around sixty percent of deaths.’
Harry was impressed. ‘But what about being shot, then?’ he asked. ‘I’ve met two farmers in two days, both with guns.’
‘People are careful with shotguns and rifles,’ Jim explained, ‘because they know they’re dangerous. Other stuff, well, they can get complacent, make a mistake, just forget what they’re doing because it’s so routine. That’s usually what happens, which is why the common accidents are what I said they are.’
‘You always read up on farming statistics?’ Harry asked.
‘There was an article on it in the Farmer’s Guardian a while back,’ Jim said. ‘Can’t recall a mention of death by slurry pit. They’re usually covered up these days, like Pat said, remember? So how had his cover been pulled back?’
Harry did remember and at the time hadn’t thought much of it, wondering if the farmer had forgotten to do it himself. But now, thinking about it, what if someone else had done it? Didn’t that make more sense?
‘So, we’ve got two farm deaths,’ Matt said, ‘and that’s a bit weird, however you look at it. Why do it like this? Go to all that trouble? What’s the point?’
‘There’s something else though,’ Harry said. ‘We’ve got two victims. The second one we don’t have an ID for yet. When we do, we will need to establish a link. Because there has to be one, doesn’t there? Unless it’s just some mad bastard out killing at random for shits and giggles, which I doubt.’
‘That’s a delightful phrase,’ Jenny said, then asked, ‘But why? I’ve met a few mad bastards in my time. We all have, right? Isn’t there a chance someone is just out doing this for the sheer hell of it?’
Harry wasn’t convinced at all. ‘None of this looks random. It looks planned. And planning takes effort. It also implies that there’s more to it than just the sheer hellish joy of murder. And trust me, that’s been given as the reason for a killing or two more often than any of us would care to imagine.’
‘Anything else?’ Jenny asked, pen poised. ‘And I don’t mean just from the crime scenes.’
‘Yes, what about that Reedy bloke?’ Harry asked. ‘He’s clearly a local dealer. What if John was tied up in something and it came back to bite him? And there’s the text that Nick got, which reminds me, have we got any location data on that phone, yet?’
Matt shook his head. ‘Reedy is Nick’s contact,’ he said, ‘Nick’s world. John wasn’t into anything like that. And Reedy’s all flash for sure, but that’s about all he is to be honest.’
‘And you’re sure John isn’t involved in whatever it is Reedy gets up to?’
‘You saw his house, how he lived,’ Matt said. ‘The bloke was sailing close to bankruptcy his whole life, like basically every farmer in the country. If he had extra money, he’d have spent it, for sure. Any cash he had that the tax man didn’t know about, well that went on drink, nowt else.’
‘And location data on the phone?’
‘Well, it wasn’t over in Oughtershaw,’ Jim said. ‘Best they could give us was that it came from somewhere in or around Hawes.’
Harry let his head fall back while he took that information in. It didn’t give them much except confirmation that this was all turning out to be worse by the hour. Harry raised his head and stared at the board beside Jenny. ‘One more thing,’ he said, ‘I want all of this keeping quiet. Now, I know that’s impossible, what with Nick being involved, and this being the Dales and the fact that every single one of you seems to know every sodding one else, but we don’t want anything leaking out, not without us being in control of it.’
‘Can’t help but think it’s already a bit late for that,’ Matt said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Harry said. ‘As soon as the media find out that we’ve got what looks like two killings in just a few days of each other, and only a few miles apart, they’ll be all over it. And the only information that I want them getting is what we give to them, when we want to give it. Nothing else. At all. Because once this goes public, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see that folk will start to panic. And that’s never good.’
‘You mean you want a media blackout?’
Harry went to speak but was interrupted by his phone buzzing in his pocket. ‘Yes?’ he snapped, slapping it against his ear.
When he put the phone back down, the rest of the team stared at him, waiting for him to speak.
‘That was the pathologist,’ Harry said. ‘They’ve identified the second body.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Harry stood in the mortuary with Rebecca Sowerby, the pathologist. Jim was with him as well, having driven them both over in the police Land Rover after deciding that it was best to leave Matt and Jenny back in Hawes with Liz. They were both detective constables and so their rank would serve better should people come around asking questions. And if the press turned up, they had strict instructions on what to say and what to keep to themselves. Harry had put it as succinctly as he could: ‘Give them
