A Death to Record by Rebecca Tope Page A

office to number her pots, or whatever she does. Then he went back indoors where he did some paperwork. He says he made a phone call to a Mr Harold Spear, a neighbouring farmer who was concerned about a hole in their shared hedge. The call lasted five minutes max, and involved some disagreement about hunting. Mr Hillcock thinks the hole was made by the hunt, of which he disapproves. He would quite like to ban them from his land, but has not done so up to now. This has been confirmed by Mr Spear, who seems to be a very helpful gentleman.’ The Detective Inspector looked up from the notes he had been consulting. ‘On the face of it, Hillcock has to be the main suspect. But there is this Speedwell bloke as well. His clothes have gone to forensics, but Mike had a quick look at them and says they seem clean.’
    ‘I thought so, too,’ said Den. ‘And he’s quite a frail old chap.’
    ‘He’s still in the frame,’ Danny said sternly. ‘Never mind frail, the man’s a farmworker, chucking great hay bales about and turning grown sheep upside down.’
    Den suppressed a sarcastic snort at the image this conjured. Hemsley pressed on. ‘And there seems to be a number of women and youngsters about. Plus, we can’t rule out somebody visiting while Hillcock was in the house, and doing thedeed out in the yard. I’ll talk to him one more time, and then we’ll have to let him go.’
    Den pushed himself upright and cleared his throat. ‘There’s something I should tell you,’ he began. ‘I should have told you last night, but there wasn’t really a chance – and besides, I don’t honestly think it’s relevant. But … the thing is, Gordon Hillcock is my ex-girlfriend’s new bloke. I hardly know him. It’s just one of those horrible coincidences. Lilah’s going to be very upset, of course. She’s been around violent death before and this’ll bring it all back to her.’ He twisted his hands together, giving his worries full play. ‘I don’t really know what it’ll do to her.’
    ‘Obviously, this is relevant ,’ Danny interrupted, in the tone he’d come to adopt since his promotion. Briskly professional more or less described it, with a dash of impatience at other people’s slow-wittedness.
    Den looked up at him and chewed his lip. The DI’s mind was obviously working at full speed, his eyes darting restlessly from one point in the room to another.
    ‘It means we’ll be vulnerable to a defence argument that you lacked objectivity in the pursuit of O’Farrell’s killer. It means, Cooper, that I really ought to take you off the case, from this moment on.’
    Den opened his mouth to speak. Then herealised he didn’t actually care very much if Danny carried out his threat. Anyone else would come to exactly the same conclusions as he had done – and the case would assuredly arrive at the same eventual outcome, anyway. In some ways, it would be a relief to be free of it and let someone else get their hands covered in muck.
    ‘But I can’t really do that,’ Danny went on. ‘We need your statements from yesterday and I have a feeling it would cause more of a stink if you were taken off now than if you carried on with squeaky-clean integrity. It’d look as if we didn’t trust you. As it is, we’ll have to be completely upfront about it – try and make it work in our favour. No one else is going to have your background knowledge, for a start. You’ve always been the one we sent on the farm jobs – and it’d look funny if we changed our usual practice now.’ He tapped his teeth for a moment, before adding, ‘And anyway, there isn’t anybody of your rank to replace you, with Phil off sick. So that’s the way we’ll have to play it. You’ll listen to everything anybody has to say with a completely open mind. You’ll scour the countryside for mental patients let loose into the community; you’ll investigate O’Farrell’s life, in case there’s something in his past that would make him vulnerable to