Read A Death to Record for Free Online

at the house in a little while.’
    He glanced at his watch: nearly seven o’clock already. He turned back to Deirdre. ‘You can go home now. Leave your name and address on here—’ he tapped a piece of paper on the table, ‘and somebody will call and interview you tomorrow. Phone number as well, of course.’
    ‘But I have to be here again tomorrow morning,’ she said with a distracted air. ‘For therecording. Can I fetch my pots? I’m nowhere near finished up yet.’
    Gordon coughed. ‘You’d better be here,’ he said. ‘God knows what’ll happen now. We might need this month’s recording figures.’
    Deirdre’s vehement reaction took Den by surprise. ‘Gordon!’ she said. ‘It won’t come to anything like that.’
    ‘You’ve lost me,’ Den interrupted.
    ‘He’s thinking he might have to sell the herd,’ she explained swiftly.
    Den shook his head. You had to hand it to farmers, they certainly kept their minds on the job at all times.
    For a few minutes the yard was a jumble of manoeuvring vehicles. Deirdre left and more police personnel arrived. Den wondered again if he should keep an eye on Hillcock; after all, the man was out in the dark somewhere with any number of unpleasant implements available to him. He could go berserk and attack the police officers, or even turn a scythe on himself. Until this moment, Den had successfully suppressed all thoughts of Lilah and this man together. He had kept his mind firmly and professionally on the matter in hand. But no longer. By some incomprehensible trick, Gordon Hillcock had stolen his – Den’s – fiancée from under his very nose, and Den hated him for it. He wanted to goout and grab the man and throw him into the smallest, smelliest prison he could find.
    But common sense prevailed and reminded him that he was going to have to tread very carefully. He went back to the barn, now filling rapidly. ‘Any idea of the time of death?’ he asked the doctor, who was peeling off rubber gloves and showing every sign of having completed his examination for the time being.
    ‘Not more than six and not less than three, three and a half, hours ago,’ he said. ‘As far as I can tell for now.’ He consulted a thermometer which had been on the floor beside the body. ‘It’s relatively warm in here, compared to outside. That’ll have to be factored in. I’d say it must have been between two and three-thirty this afternoon.’ Den made a careful note. Deirdre had already told him that the milking had started just after three, at which point she had been on the farm for an hour. The body had been found at five-thirty.
    The police doctor rubbed his nose with a stubby thumb. ‘Interesting scene for a killing,’ he remarked. ‘My granddad had a farm. Funny how the smells can be so evocative – that silage! Takes me right back to being ten again. And by the way, I think you can exclude any thought of firearm injuries. Something sharp, is my first impression. But you know the routine, Cooper. Wait for the PM, okay?’
    ‘Looks like he took a while to die,’ Den persisted.
    The doctor shook his head. ‘Writhed about a bit, is all we can say for sure. And that can happen in two or three seconds. Muscular spasms and so forth. The damage is mainly to the abdominal region – that tends to be fairly painful. Well, I’ve done all I can for now. Has someone been on to the undertaker’s? They’ll have to open the mortuary at Exeter for us.’
    ‘PM tomorrow?’ asked Den, knowing there was little chance of the pathologist turning out for a post-mortem in the evening, murder or not.
    ‘It’ll keep till then,’ the doctor shrugged.
     
    Den found his way down to the O’Farrells’ cottage by car, not from any lazy reluctance to walk but because he needed his headlights to illuminate the way. It was a distance of perhaps four hundred yards from the main farm buildings. The track was rutted and curved round in a tight bend; he rattled over a cattle grid just