‘It’s why they’re usually covered,’ Jim said. ‘Slurry pits, I mean. They’re dangerous things.’
‘So why wasn’t it covered?’ Sowerby asked.
‘The farmer seemed to be asking the same question,’ Harry said, staring at the body. ‘He’s got kids so he said it was covered all the time and I got the impression that he was pretty hot on safety. The house, the whole place, it was immaculate. Can’t see him being lax about covering up a slurry pit. So, someone else uncovered it before throwing old Barry here into it and to his death.’
There were terrible ways to die, Harry thought, but drowning in cow slurry, drinking the stuff down, sucking it into your lungs, well that was right up there with some of the worst he’d ever had to investigate.
‘What about the feather?’ Jim asked.
‘Oh, that,’ Sowerby said, checking her notes again. ‘Eagle feather. Like yesterday’s, the one found in that one there.’ She pointed with her pen at the other body.
‘Was it in his mouth?’ Harry asked.
Sowerby gave a nod.
‘So how did he drown and not spit it out?’
‘Well, for a start, that’s a pretty good sign he was unconscious,’ Sowerby said. ‘And second, it was jammed in there, stuck between his teeth, so that it wouldn’t just float on out.’
Harry suddenly felt as though something very heavy had been placed on his back.
‘You alright?’ Jim asked.
Harry rubbed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s just that, well, you know, these are linked now, aren’t they? I knew they were when another feather was found. But the fact that it’s the same kind of feather? Well, that’s it for certain. Confirmation. Barry and John here, they were killed by the same person. And we need to find out why and who sharpish.’
‘We also found this,’ Sowerby said, and hoisted into view a plastic bag inside which was a mobile phone.
Harry immediately thought back to the text Nick had received. ‘Is that Capstick’s?’
‘His are the only fingerprints we found on it, so yes, it must be,’ she said. ‘Other than that, we can’t get anything from it. Lying in cow shit is clearly not very good for your average, everyday smart phone.’
‘And it was on this body?’
‘Stuffed in his pocket,’ Sowerby said, covering up Hutchison’s body, before moving onto the next. ‘Look, I know you’ve seen this one before,’ she began, ‘but it’s a real mess. That first one, well he still looks normal, because he’s intact. But this one? Not so much.’
‘Before you ask, I’m fine,’ Jim said. ‘I was the one who was at the scene first, remember?’
Harry nodded to the pathologist to get on with it and she quickly pulled the sheet back. ‘Bloody hell . . .’ he hissed.
Jim was silent, though Harry watched the colour drain from his face like sand in an egg timer.
‘It’s a bit of a mess isn’t it?’ Sowerby said. ‘But you can just make out the bruising on the neck. Other than that, there’s nothing else to add. You know about the feather, and we know how long he was out there in the open.’
‘And you found nothing else?’
‘No,’ Sowerby replied. ‘For crime scenes that are so messy, they’re both very clean.’
‘How do you mean?’ Jim asked.
‘There’s nothing other than the feather that tells us much about the person who did this,’ Sowerby said. ‘We’ve got no hairs, no trace DNA, nothing. Not even footprints. Whoever did this was really bloody careful. You’d swear they’d shaved themselves all over then hosed themselves down in bleach.’
‘That’s not what I need to hear.’
‘It’s all that I can tell you.’
Harry stepped back from Capstick’s body. ‘Thanks again,’ he said, looking over at the pathologist.
‘If I find anything or learn anything else, I’ll let you know,’ she replied. ‘Now, if you don’t mind? I’ve got lots of other things to be getting on with and this has already taken up time that I didn’t have.’
Harry gestured to Jim to follow him and they were soon back outside breathing air which, though perhaps not as fresh as the stuff blown from off the hills in the dales, was still a hell of a lot more pleasant than what they had just emerged from. ‘You okay?’ Harry asked.
‘Yes and no,’ Jim replied. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’
‘You and me both,’ Harry said. ‘So let’s just hope that the others have got something more to go on when we get back to the office.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Of all the things Harry wanted to find waiting for him when he got back to Hawes, the absolute very bottom of the list was journalists. In fact, they were so far down the list that they weren’t even on it. He never wanted to find journalists anywhere. He was pretty sure good ones, honest ones, existed, but as yet he hadn’t met any of them. And the ones who swooped in at the first sniff of a murder were, he believed, the very worst of the bunch. Vultures after meat on the bones of the dead, the stories behind the stories, relevant or not, interviews with relatives, little tasty bits of history from the victim’s lives so beloved by the tabloids, anything to feed the unthinking masses a news story that promised just enough darkness to have them wanting more.
Harry knew it was a cliché, a cop hating the press, but that was just the way it was. One day, perhaps, he’d meet one he could trust, a journalist who wasn’t just in it for the blood money and the shock-horror headline, but until then he’d just stick with showing them the same amount of love as he would a cockroach.
‘Drive around again,’ Harry said to Jim, as they came up to the end of the cobbles on The Hill and saw the crowd milling around in the marketplace. ‘Need time to think.’
Jim, without a word said, took a right and swung them back down The Holme and
