Scared to Live. Stephen Booth

but Miss Shepherd definitely had internet access. It looks as though she used an ordinary modem dial-up connection, so she could have used the laptop right there in the bedroom, plugged into the socket for the bedside phone.’

      ‘Any interesting email correspondence?’

      ‘Nothing obvious, apart from some junk mail. God knows why she kept that. But it looks as though she might have joined some online groups, because there were different aliases and screen names. It seems Rose Shepherd did have a social life, of a kind. But it was all online.’

      ‘By the way, I’ve got the package that the postman was trying to deliver,’ said Cooper. ‘It isn’t all that big, but it’s heavy for its size.’

      ‘Open it up. But be careful.’

      When the cardboard packaging came off, they were looking at three books from an internet bookseller. Maeve Binchy, Danielle Steele, Josephine Cox.

      ‘Does that give us any clues?’ asked Hitchens.

      ‘I don’t think so,’ said Cooper. ‘I once saw a Muslim woman in full chador buying a Danielle Steele novel in a supermarket, so I don’t think we can make any assumptions.’

      ‘The only surprise to me is that she ordered three books at once, since it meant they wouldn’t go into her letter box,’ said Fry.

      ‘Maybe they were on special offer,’ said the DI, moving away to answer his phone.

      Fry waited for a quiet moment, then approached him between calls.

      ‘Sir, I’m going to need to review the house fire enquiry. You know, the triple death?’

      ‘Not now, Diane.’

      ‘But –’

      ‘Well, not unless you have firm evidence of malicious intent. Do you?’

      ‘No, sir. Not yet.’

      ‘Come back to me when you do, then.’

      Fry bit her lip. She obviously wasn’t going to get a look-in on the Rose Shepherd enquiry. She was too junior in this company. But she had an enquiry of her own that she could make a mark with – if she could find the time to work it properly. The Darwin Street fire was low priority until malicious intent was proved. But there were ways around that problem.

      She went outside and found Gavin Murfin. Ben Cooper would have been more useful, but his absence was likely to be noticed, so Murfin would have to do.

      ‘Ah, Gavin, you’re not doing very much,’ she said, taking hold of his arm and steering him towards her car.

      ‘Well, actually –’

      ‘Good. You’re with me.’

      Somehow, Murfin had obtained a pork pie, which he was eating out of a paper bag. He’d got into the habit of bringing food with him if he thought he was going to be away from civilization for a few hours.

      ‘But if you drop bits of that pie in my car, Gavin, you know what’ll happen. And it won’t be pretty.’

      Fry had to negotiate the lines of vehicles in Pinfold Lane to find somewhere to turn round. The only space was the entrance to the Birtlands’ driveway.

      As she reversed to do her three-point turn, she saw Ben Cooper standing in the gateway of Bain House. He’d stopped to speak to one of the SOCOs, Liz Petty. It wasn’t clear whether she was working the scene, because she was still wearing her navy blue sweater with the Derbyshire Constabulary logo rather than a protective scene suit. Fry watched them for a moment as she changed gear. She saw Petty push back her dark hair and confine it in a clip behind her head. Her cheeks looked slightly pink as she laughed at something Cooper was saying.

      ‘They make a grand couple, don’t they?’ said Murfin, picking crumbs off the seat. ‘Ben and Liz, I mean,’ he added, as if it needed explaining.

      ‘Are they sleeping together?’ asked Fry, as casually as she could manage.

      Murfin stopped hunting for crumbs. She could feel his eyes on her, wary and suspicious.

      ‘I dunno,’ he said.

      ‘You’re his friend, aren’t you, Gavin?’

      ‘Me and Ben? We go back years.’

      ‘You must know, then.’

      Murfin shook his head. ‘It would only be gossip.’

      He lowered his head between his knees, as if searching the floor for more debris.

      ‘I just wondered,’ said Fry.

      In reply, all she got was a mumble from somewhere under the seat.

      ‘What did you say, Gavin?’

      ‘I said I can’t hear you.’

      Fry let out the clutch suddenly. As the car jerked forward, Murfin’s head shot up from the footwell. His face was beetroot red from the blood rushing into it.

      ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘You really are trying to kill me.’

      Cooper went into the back garden of Bain House to look at the field where the SOCOs were still working under a white tent. Liz Petty had confirmed what he’d already guessed – the Foxlow shooting had put a lot of extra pressure on Scientific Support.

      One of the complications was obvious. In effect, there were four separate crime scenes to be examined. For a start, there was Rose Shepherd’s bedroom, and the other rooms of her house. Officers conducting the search might hope to learn something about the victim’s life that would lead to her killers, or at least suggest a motive for her murder. But if, as they suspected, the attacker hadn’t entered the victim’s home, or even made direct contact with her, there would be no traces of him in the house. No DNA or fingerprints; no fibres or evidence of any kind.

      Then there was the field. That at least had yielded some tyre marks. How clear they were would depend on how soft the ground had been, whether it had rained before the incident, and what the weather had been like since. Cooper looked at his watch, and pictured DCI Kessen doing the same thing, cursing the delay in the body being found. There wouldn’t be much else in the field, of course. If there were no shell casings or footwear impressions, then there wouldn’t be any dropped matches or cigarette ends either. But the suspect’s car had been driven close to the edge of the field. A tiny flake of paintwork left on a branch of the hawthorn hedge, maybe? A bumper scraped on the corner of a stone wall? But in a fifty-acre field? From dark paintwork? Needles and haystacks came to mind.

      The most useful scene might be the third one: the suspect’s vehicle. If they ever found it, of course. There should be fibres on the seats, fingerprints on the door handles, sweat stains on the gear stick.

      Cooper turned at a sound in the garden. A squirrel ran across the lawn and scuffled among the dead leaves on the flower beds. It was burying nuts before hibernation time came. Across the garden, another squirrel chattered with that strange cry they had, somewhere between the call of a bird and the mew of a cat.

      From what Diane Fry had said, Mr and Mrs Ridgeway would hate this, if they saw it. If they were breeding here, there’d be a continuous supply of them to raid her neighbours’ gardens.

      Cooper was approaching the end of his shift. His DI seemed to have forgotten him, Fry had already left Foxlow, and no one had mentioned overtime. Tomorrow would be hectic, though. By then some lines of enquiry would have emerged. Suddenly, there would be an insatiable demand for resources, and everyone would be rushed off their feet. He might as well take advantage of the lull.

      He walked back into the house. Downstairs, the rooms were full of people. He could hear them opening drawers, taking photographs, rustling papers, talking and laughing among themselves. There were probably more people inside Bain House at this moment than had been over the doorstep in the whole of the last year. If Rose Shepherd walked in now, she wouldn’t recognize the place. She’d be like a shocked parent who’d