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Back The Kill Call
Chapters (46)
  1. Dedication
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-one
  23. Chapter Twenty-two
  24. Chapter Twenty-three
  25. Chapter Twenty-four
  26. Chapter Twenty-five
  27. Chapter Twenty-six
  28. Chapter Twenty-seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-one
  33. Chapter Thirty-two
  34. Chapter Thirty-three
  35. Chapter Thirty-four
  36. Chapter Thirty-five
  37. Chapter Thirty-six
  38. Chapter Thirty-seven
  39. Chapter Thirty-eight
  40. Chapter Thirty-nine
  41. Chapter Forty
  42. Chapter Forty-one
  43. Chapter Forty-two
  44. About the Author
  45. Also by Stephen Booth
  46. About the Publisher
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‘Just as Patrick Rawson always did.’

‘I suppose so.’

Cooper thought back to the hunt saboteurs’ report of hearing the kill call on the morning of the hunt. Earlier, there had been the phone call from Naomi Widdowson to Patrick Rawson, the call that had brought him to his death. That was a kind of kill call in its own way. And there had been the call from Deborah Rawson to Adrian Tarrant, too.

‘The argument Mr Wakeley heard . . .’ said Cooper.

‘Yes?’

‘I was assuming he’d heard Naomi Widdowson shouting at Patrick Rawson, and perhaps Rawson arguing back. That doesn’t fit with the story, though, does it?’

‘Not quite,’ said Fry. ‘Naomi must certainly have shouted at him about Rosie. But Rawson didn’t stand there and argue with her. He ran.’

‘Yes. So the rest of the argument must have been between Naomi and Adrian, mustn’t it?’

Fry nodded. ‘Of course. She didn’t want Tarrant to go back to the hut, she was trying to make him come away with her. I think Naomi was telling the truth on this point – that she only wanted to give Patrick Rawson a scare. But Adrian had another job to do.’

‘He wasn’t much of a hit man, though. Too fond of unnecessary showiness – I mean, the business with the hunting horn and all that. The kill call.’

‘Well, he enjoyed the work too much,’ said Fry. ‘That was his problem. It doesn’t do to get emotionally involved.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

Then Cooper remembered David Headon’s almost casual reference to Attack Warning Red, the recognized alert to an imminent nuclear attack during the 1960s. Attack Warning Red? That would have been the kill call on a massive scale.

THEY HAD LUNCH at the Miners’ Arms, a pub boasting that it was old enough to be pre-plague. Fry ate bacon-wrapped chicken breast stuffed with leeks and mushrooms, while Cooper had the home-made venison and orange pie.

As they ate, Cooper tried to close his ears to the voice of a man at a nearby table, boasting to two women that he kept a loaded pistol on his bedside table, in case of burglars. ‘If I caught a burglar in my house, I’d shoot him. It’s the way I was trained.’

‘I heard your cat died,’ said Fry, draining half a glass of the house white.

As small talk, it wasn’t a brilliant opening. Cooper looked at the rapidly disappearing wine and wondered if Fry could really be as nervous as she seemed, so unaccustomed to a purely social situation.

‘How did you hear that?’ asked Cooper, genuinely curious about her sources of information.

‘Oh, it was mentioned around the office,’ said Fry vaguely. ‘Becky Hurst said something, I think.’

Office gossip, then? He didn’t think she ever noticed it, let alone paid any attention to it.

‘Yes, it’s true. Though I’m not entirely sure he was mine. He kind of came with the flat, and adopted me.’