Scared to Live. Stephen Booth

passport photo. How old is that passport? When was it issued?’

      ‘Issued May 2000. Expires 2010.’

      ‘What about motive?’ asked Fry. ‘Do you think someone in the village might have had a grudge against her?’

      ‘If she didn’t have contact with anyone in the village, how could someone have a grudge against her?’

      ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why she didn’t have contact with anyone. We don’t know anything about her history, so we can’t guess. Where do we start?’

      ‘There’s one place we can start,’ said Kessen. ‘We need a list of individuals in the locality with firearms certificates. What about this farmer, what’s his name?’

      ‘Neville Cross?’

      ‘He’s a neighbour, isn’t he?’

      ‘He owns the land at the back of Bain House. But I think his farmhouse is way down there, two fields away.’

      ‘He’ll have a firearms certificate. Most farmers do – for a shotgun, at least. But maybe he has a serious rabbit problem and needs a rifle.’

      ‘Yes, and maybe he’s a retired SAS sniper,’ said Hitchens sceptically.

      Kessen spun sharply on his heel. ‘Well, maybe he is. We don’t know that he isn’t, do we, Paul? This is a man who had the opportunity – the shots were fired from his property. No one would question Mr Cross driving over his own land, even at night. Perhaps no one would question him taking his rifle with him either.’

      ‘We don’t know that he has a rifle,’ persisted the DI.

      ‘He’s also the man who reported the open window at the back of the house,’ said Kessen, as if Hitchens hadn’t spoken. ‘Thereby ensuring that he was involved in the investigation as a witness. You know the typical behaviour, Paul.’

      ‘He was alerted by the postman that something might be wrong. That’s why he took a look.’

      ‘That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have done it anyway, sooner or later. We don’t know, do we?’

      ‘We don’t know anything,’ said Hitchens.

      ‘That’s why we have to start by eliminating whoever we can get hold of locally. And we’ll see what that leads us to.’

      ‘What if he doesn’t admit to having a gun? We don’t have any justification for a search.’

      ‘We could ask him to co-operate with a gunshot residue test. At least we’d know if he’d fired a gun recently.’

      Listening to the discussion between the detectives, Wayne Abbott shook his head. ‘Sorry, it’s too long since the shots were fired. A GSR test has to be done within the first few hours to get meaningful results. After forty-eight hours, any suspect will have washed and wiped his hands enough to have removed all detectable traces.’

      ‘A trace metal test to determine whether he’s held a firearm?’

      ‘Has to be within twenty-four hours.’

      Kessen cursed quietly. ‘Twenty-four hours is useless to us. Useless.’

      The DI pointed at his two detectives. ‘We’ve done the initial house-to-house, but the immediate neighbours will have to be interviewed properly. They must know something about Rose Shepherd. Take one of them each, will you? Someone will give you the names.’

      ‘Right, sir.’

      ‘A woman with no family and no friends,’ said Hitchens bitterly. ‘How can we reconstruct the life of someone like that?’

      ‘She must have had at least one enemy,’ said Fry. ‘That’s a start.’

      ‘It’s some kind of relationship, anyway.’

      ‘Of course it is,’ said Kessen. ‘It means she had a close enough relationship with someone for that person to hate her. To hate her enough to kill her. That’s not some casual passer-by that she once said hello to in the street. There’s a history between them.’

      ‘But as far as this house is concerned, the victim seems to be a woman without a history. Without a life almost.’

      ‘Look, if there’s no evidence of Rose Shepherd’s past in this house, it means only one thing – that she had a past she was trying very hard to hide.’

      Fry touched Cooper’s arm.

      ‘Ben, have you got your car here?’

      ‘Sure.’

      ‘Give me a lift down the road, then. I had to leave mine miles away.’

      ‘No problem.’

      Fry brushed some cobwebs off her jacket. ‘This house is dirty, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes, I noticed that. Have you seen the décor in the sitting room, though?’

      ‘That charcoal grey? Yes, very minimalist.’

      Cooper stopped in the doorway to take a last look at Bain House before he left. Was the house dusty because Miss Shepherd couldn’t be bothered with housework, or because she’d never been used to doing her own cleaning? Or might there be another reason?

      On an impulse, he crouched towards the floor and looked into the sunlight flooding the pine boards. A layer of dust showed up clearly, glittering in the light from the windows. It would be possible to tell immediately if anyone had walked across this patch of floor. Their footprints would be visible in the dust. Perhaps that was why it had been left undisturbed.

      Abbott’s lamping theory was an interesting one. When a rabbit was caught in the lamper’s beam, it was mesmerized by the light and seemed to forget to run away. Yes, Cooper had seen it happen. He could picture the unnatural stillness of the animal, its eyes reflecting light like two glass beads, stunned by the sudden glare when it thought it was safe in the darkness.

      Fry was waiting outside for him, no doubt getting impatient. But for a moment, Cooper thought about Rose Shepherd, shot down at her bedroom window as she stood in her nightdress and slippers. She must have been an easy target in a sniper’s sights, silhouetted against the light. It was impossible not to picture her frozen to the spot, waiting for the bullet to strike.

       7

      ‘Nice barn conversion,’ said Cooper. ‘Somebody’s done a good job of it. Probably worth a bit of money, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘More than I’ll ever see.’

      Fry got out of the car and walked across the gravel as Cooper drove away. Actually, it was more than a barn conversion. She could see an entire range of farm buildings here. They formed three and a half sides of a square, facing on to a central courtyard. A two-storey stone barn, cleaned up and fitted with patio doors and casement windows. A tractor shed converted into twin garages and workshops. The door of one garage stood open, and the nose of a blue BMW was visible.

      According to information from the control room, the neighbours on this side were called Ridgeway, Martin and April. Fry took a small detour before crossing the courtyard to their house, and looked in through the windows of one of the outbuildings. Games room. A gym. And a sauna. Very nice.

      The Ridgeways themselves could have stepped straight out of Derbyshire Life. They had perfected the country look: corduroys and cashmere, tweed and waxed cotton. Fry wasn’t at all surprised when she heard their accents and discovered they both came from Luton.

      ‘We noticed all the activity, of course,’ said Martin Ridgeway, who wore the corduroy and waxed cotton over an Antartex shirt. ‘And a young constable called about an hour ago to ask us if we noticed anything suspicious in the early hours of Sunday morning.’

      ‘And did