‘There’s Jim,’ Matt said, waving back.
‘I can see that for myself,’ Harry muttered. ‘So who called it in?’
‘A friend of the deceased,’ Matt said. ‘Jim was over this way anyway so came over to see what had happened, call the ambulance out, the usual.’
‘And now?’
‘Let’s ask him,’ Matt said.
Jim, a Police Community Support Officer, or PCSO, was in his mid-twenties and as local as you could get, having been born and bred on a farm in Burtersett, a hamlet just a mile or so the other side of Hawes, and just off the main road, which ran like an artery through the dale.
‘So, what have we got?’ Harry asked as Jim came to a stop in front of him. He could see concern in the young man’s face, his jaw clenched firm, eyes dark.
Jim opened his rucksack and handed out some PPE: gloves and facemasks. Jim was already wearing his. Harry and Matt pulled on the gloves, the latex pinging against Harry’s wrists as he made sure they were not only tight but that he could still use his hands okay, then slipped the facemasks on over their mouths.
‘Got a call about twenty minutes ago,’ Jim said, reading from the little notebook in his hand, which all police carried with them. ‘Report of an accident. The body was found by an acquaintance of the deceased.’
‘Body?’ Harry said, then glanced at Matt. ‘You said this was an accident. You never mentioned that we’d be dealing with a body. A little bit remiss, wouldn’t you say?’
Matt did his best to not look sheepish.
‘Who’s the deceased?’ Harry asked, making a mental note to give Matt a bit of a bollocking for not passing on relevant details about what was now clearly a potential crime scene. ‘Why were they here?’
‘John Capstick,’ Jim said. ‘He farms out this way. If you can call what he does farming.’
‘And where are we exactly?’ Harry asked, having never ventured into this part of the dales before.
‘Oughtershaw,’ Matt said, and pointed back down the field to a small collection of buildings just down the road. ‘Can’t say it’s a place I’d like to live. No pub for a start.’
‘There’s the chapel,’ Jim offered.
‘Methodist,’ Matt said. ‘Can’t even go there for a tipple, what with the wine being non-alcoholic. They actually use Ribena, you know? Ribena! Can you imagine?’
Harry ignored Matt’s clearly deeply held issues with what the local church goers used instead of communion wine and asked, ‘Next of kin?’
‘Father died over a decade ago,’ Matt said. ‘Not exactly a loss either. Right old bastard he was. And his son followed suit.’
‘Mother?’
Jim shook his head. ‘And no one else, neither. Or if there are, they’re not up for admitting to it.’
Harry took a mental note of Matt’s judgments on someone long dead and asked, ‘Who’s the acquaintance?’
Jim’s eyes fell back into his notebook.
‘Nicholas Ellis,’ he said.
‘La’ll Nick?’ Matt said, rolling his eyes. ‘Can’t imagine he’s been exactly helpful.’
‘No, not really,’ Jim said. ‘All panic and screeching if I’m honest. Wasn’t really making much sense.’
Harry raised an eyebrow at both men in front of him. ‘La’ll Nick?’
‘Little Nick,’ Matt explained. ‘Not the nicest of blokes.’
‘I’m not nice either,’ Harry said. ‘In fact, there’s a few people I’m sure who think my middle names are utter and bastard.’
‘No, not like that,’ Matt said, then started to stumble on his words. ‘I mean, it’s not that you’re not nice, it’s just that you can be a bit, well . . .’
Harry let Matt sweat just long enough before he turned to Jim and said, ‘Look, best we get eyes on first, right? If this is a Category One, then this is a crime scene and we need to get moving on it fast, sort out a Scene Guard and a Scene Log, the usual. If it’s Category Two, then we’ll just deal with it accordingly, okay?’
Jim led the way up to the gate in the wall and through to the field on the other side. Here Harry was at last able to get a good look at what had happened.
The tractor he had seen when they had arrived was a write-off, that much was clear to Harry. The vehicle hadn’t so much crashed into the wall as barged through it, spreading shattered stone and bits of itself all around. The front wheels were hanging off, the axle joining them twisted nastily. The engine was leaking oil and diesel, the acrid stink of it polluting the fresh air gusting around them. Behind the engine, the cab was a mangled shell, with glass from the windows dusting the grass like snow. The two huge rear wheels of the tractor were neither of them touching the ground, thanks to the fact that the vehicle was stuck fast on the rubble of a centuries’ old wall. The twin-axle trailer was still hooked into the couplings at its rear, but was on its side and lying to the right of the tractor, after jack-knifed at the moment of impact, Harry assumed.
Having taken in the full extent of what had happened, Harry noticed something was missing.
‘The body,’ Harry said. ‘Where is it?’
Jim pointed up the field.
Harry followed Jim’s line of sight and was able to make out the scars in the field caused by the out of control tractor and trailer, but nothing else.
‘Can’t see anything,’ he said, then saw a thick grey cloud hovering just above the ground. It was about the size of a children’s paddling pool, Harry thought, and knew that the sound of it would be the sickening buzz and hum of blowflies, feasting themselves silly on the corpse which was still hidden from view.
‘I’m not sure you’ll want to either,’ Jim said. ‘Come on, it’s up this way a bit.’
Harry held back for a second, his eyes still on the flies, his experience giving him a pretty good idea of what awaited them.
‘Where’s this Little Nick
