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of which hadlifted the concrete in the yard. The house had a look of careless neglect, with peeling paintwork and moss smothered brickwork. It had not been touched for years – merely inhabited. Boards had been put over windows broken by a few young vandals from the town. The panels of reeded glass in the door had cracked, and it stood ajar. Yet it didn’t appear to be inviting entry, rather daring it. Challenging.
    Kathleen could see no animals, hear no sounds, spot no movement. Which was odd. The farmer had cows, two Tamworth pigs and a dog. So why were they all quiet? She knew they were not out in the fields. Only the sheep grazed in the far field. In fact, now she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any other animals on the farm for more than a week, which was in itself curious. The cows had not been in the fields, grazing as they should have been. The fields had been empty except for the sheep. Strangely so, she now thought. She shifted her weight uneasily, frowning at the oddity of the situation. She had not even heard the dog for some time.
    ‘Hello,’ she called.
    Silence met her. Not even an echo replied. She shouted louder. ‘Hello. Hello. Mr Grimshaw. Hello. Are you there? It’s Kathleen Weston, your neighbour. I wondered if you were…’
    The words ‘all right’ seemed suddenly fatuous.
    She looked straight down, beneath her, realised her foot was within inches.
    The wave of nausea washed over her almost before she had assimilated the cause.
    Sometimes our eyes see things seconds before our minds do.
    Then she retched and was sick, thus sullying the crime scene.
    She staggered back to the house, and dialled 999.
     
    In the moments immediately before the call, Korpanski had been feeling virtuous. He was catching up with the inevitable paper work, tidying up loose ends, when the telephone rang.
    Detective Constable Alan King took the call, his long arms reaching right across the desk, bony elbows projecting like old-fashioned traffic indicators. He listened. ‘Put her through,’ he said, without consulting Korpanski. King listened for a few more minutes before covering the mouthpiece. ‘Sounds like there’s a body, Sarge.’
    Korpanski felt the hairs start to prickle at the back of his neck. ‘Where?’
    ‘Prospect Farm.’
    Korpanski frowned. ‘On the estate?’
    ‘No, Sarge, on the farm.’
    ‘Natural causes?’
    King shrugged. ‘She didn’t get near enough.’ He spoke again into the mouthpiece. ‘Just you wait where you are, Mrs Weston. Someone’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
    He put the phone down, stood up, recalling the hysterical words. ‘I think rats… Something’s… He’s…’
    Korpanski saved all the data on the computer. ‘Who’s reported it?’
    ‘A neighbour. From number 1 on the estate. She says she thinks it’s the farmer.’ He looked almost apologetic, ‘and that he’s been lying there some time.’
    Korpanski stood up then, revealing his entire, bulky, six-foot-four frame. ‘Well, we’d better get out there then, hadn’t we, see what’s what.’
    He took Timmis and King with him, blue light flashing, siren screaming, racing along the Ashbourne road out of the town. A back-up car with a couple of WPCs and some uniformed officers kept up with them. As Korpanski drove he remembered. The odd thing was that he knew Prospect Farm quite well. When he was a kid, growing up in Leek, he had sometimes walked out to the place, just outside the town. He even remembered the farmer, a crusty old thing even then, and the daughter, who had been at the same school as him; a sly little girl who watched her classmates’ mischief without comment then whispered in the teacher’s ear. She had been a plain girl, insignificant, stick-thin, short on friends, always making a nuisance of herself wanting to play. He wondered what had happened to her and tried to remember her name but failed. The last he’d heard she was nursing somewhere in Stoke.
    There had been a wife too but he