Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(78)

She took it from him and read the instructions, then borrowed a lighter and walked back up the lane to the adjoining field. She hooked the string of bangers over a sturdy part of the hedge between the two fields and lit the rope. As she walked back down the lane she shouted over to Carter that he was about to hear a noise. When it came it boomed over the fields and scattered the birds as they flew squawking up and away.

‘Shit!’ Carter laughed and Leonard shook his head, smiling.

‘Willis – bit of an understatement.’

Leonard called back to the officer managing the forensic equipment. ‘We’ll need to take him down and get a tent up.’

They unloaded the tent from the trailer and brought it into the field. An officer was taking soil samples from around the base of the post.

Willis came back to stand at the gate.

‘It looks likely he was lured away from burying the horse,’ Leonard explained as he walked across to the corner of the field where a tractor stood sideways on to a pile of earth. ‘He hasn’t filled it in yet. Something got him down off his tractor, then there’s evidence of a scuffle and he was dragged from there to here. If the birds hadn’t opened up the wounds on his hands we might have been able to get someone else’s DNA on them. We might still get something from the postmortem. It was quite a big fight. We have shoe marks here, leather sole, but we can try for a match. The fact that someone killed him with an impromptu murder weapon speaks more of manslaughter.’

‘Yeah – they might have come up here just to talk to him and it turned into an argument.’

Carter looked at Stokes’ body.

‘Was he dead by the time he got to here?’

‘Probably.’

‘They did a good job tying him onto it,’ said Carter. ‘It may have been manslaughter but they didn’t run away straight after – they had time to gloat.’

Leonard was making a sketch of the body. ‘He’s secured with wire and there’s a spike driven into the base of his spine,’ he said as he drew the proportions of the stake in the ground. ‘Which I presume was meant to hold a real scarecrow in place. It had to be driven pretty hard into the base of his back to make sure he didn’t move.’

‘It’s not subtle, is it?’ Carter said as he moved to get a better view of the body without overstepping into Leonard’s zone. ‘Someone has really thought this through. Sort of a triumphant gesture, isn’t it? Bit like putting his head on a spike, but in a farming community way.’

‘Heads on spikes were a warning to transgressors – a deterrent,’ Leonard said as he wrote up his notes in the crime scene log.

‘Yeah – well, puts me off thinking of getting an allotment. Someone hates him – really hates him. Would it have to be a man to do it? Would he be too heavy for a woman to lift onto that spike, do you think? The killer has to ram it home.’

‘Someone used to lifting could do it, a man or a strong woman. I reckon he weighs about thirteen stone.’

Leonard was called back to oversee the erection of the tent.

Carter walked across to Willis: ‘Any luck?’

‘Robbo says he’s getting somewhere – he’s found one of the women who used to come to Cornwall. He’s talking to her today. She’s not happy to come to the police station but she’ll speak on the phone.’

‘While Kensa’s here at the farm recovering – use the time now to get down to that van of hers and have a really good look at the others too. Take Pascoe and five officers with you. You go into Kensa’s van on your own.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I don’t want it trampled over. Have you got your forensics case?’

‘It’s in the car.’

‘Take it and keep in touch. I can’t see me leaving here for a few hours.’

‘Yes, guv.’ Willis went across to talk to Pascoe and organize the search team.

Leonard walked back over to them. ‘Looks like we can cut the body down now. It can go to the mortuary ready for the postmortem. We’ll wait for your man from the MET to tell us what he wants done about that but we’ll get all the paperwork in order.’

‘Thanks. I’m going to talk to the family again,’ Carter said, as he took off back up towards the house. He stopped in at the cottage to see Marky, who’d been allowed back to get some more clothes.

‘You want to tell me what happened at the house?’ Carter asked, as he closed the door behind him. ‘The place looks like after one of the Arsenal and Tottenham games. There’s debris everywhere and a lot of people nursing their wounds.’

‘A few broken plates,’ Marky said, ‘that’s all. I didn’t see anything else.’

‘Sure, okay,’ Carter sighed, exasperated. ‘Tell me . . . what is it with this place? Supposed to be a great place to live – everyone knows everyone else and you all look after one another – what kind of bullshit is that? You’d think you’d want to help me discover who killed one of your friends, but instead you’re trying to be as difficult as you can with me. You’re trying to give me the run-around.’

‘I’d like to help, but I just don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you want me to say.’

Carter sighed heavily again. ‘I see it. I can see what your problem is. There’s so much going on that’s secret in this village, isn’t there? So many things that no one wants to speak about.’