Scared to Live. Stephen Booth

       Tuesday, 25 October

      An incident room had been opened up in Edendale for the Rose Shepherd enquiry. A fatal shooting was still rare enough in Derbyshire to make Miss Shepherd’s murder a high-profile case, even if she hadn’t been a respectable middle-class woman gunned down in her own home.

      Watching the staff arriving at E Division headquarters, Cooper deduced that the HOLMES system was being activated. He recognized an allocator he’d worked with on a previous enquiry. The others would be data inputters, a receiver, an analyst.

      With no obvious lines of enquiry that might lead to a quick conclusion, the HOLMES computer indexes would be vital in sniffing out correlations as information came in. One tiny detail could send the investigation in a new direction.

      Before the morning briefing started, Cooper joined a small crowd examining the display of crime-scene photographs from Bain House and the field behind it. Some of the interior shots showed the victim from different angles before her body was removed to the mortuary. On the lower part of her torso, where it was in contact with the floor, there was a large, bruise-like discoloration that he hadn’t noticed before. That was dependent lividity – the effect of gravity on blood that was no longer being pumped through the veins. At least it showed that no one had moved the victim after she was killed.

      ‘The victim was killed with a semi-automatic weapon, at least three shots fired in rapid succession,’ said DI Hitchens, opening the briefing. ‘We know it wasn’t a bolt-action rifle. Since even one of the shots would have put her down on the floor, the second shot has to have followed rapidly to strike the victim before she fell. Otherwise, she’d have been out of sight below the window sill, with no chance of a second shot hitting its target.’

      Officers around the room began to call out questions, their voices difficult to distinguish.

      ‘What about the third shot?’ asked someone.

      ‘If we follow a rough trajectory from the impact to a point in the field where the suspect’s vehicle was positioned, we see that the third shot passed through the window at about the same height and the same angle as the others. Exactly where the victim had been standing, in other words. So the third shot was probably fired after she’d already started to fall. That’s why it missed.’

      ‘Could that have been the first shot, rather than the third? I mean a miss, followed by two hits when the shooter got the range?’

      ‘Possibly. But the other two shots were very accurate. A head shot, and one near the heart. Besides, if you heard a shot and felt a high-velocity bullet whizz past your head, your first instinct would be to dive for cover.’

      They all looked at the photographs of Rose Shepherd with a dark hole in her chest and another near her left eye. Her right eye remained open, staring in amazement at the ceiling.

      ‘This lady did none of those things, so far as we can judge,’ said Hitchens. ‘It appears the bullets struck her before she could react. But we’ll get the opinion of the pathologist, of course.’

      The DI paused, but there were no questions, so he continued: ‘We’ve got preliminary reports from the teams on house-to-house. We’re looking for a blue Vauxhall Astra that was seen in Foxlow in the early hours of Sunday morning, about the time of the shooting.’

      ‘Just one sighting?’

      ‘No, two. The Astra was seen driving into the village about eleven thirty, and leaving at about three a.m. It’s possible some of the neighbours heard shots between two a.m. and four, but we can’t narrow down the time of the shooting any further than that right now. So I’ve asked for input from the intel unit. We need a list of pos sibles who fit the MO.’

      ‘What about prison releases?’

      ‘Yes. Any suggestions?’

      ‘You know our intelligence feed from HQ is never up to date, sir.’

      ‘We’ll have to use the informal mechanisms, then,’ said Hitchens.

      ‘You mean “phone a friend”?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      There were a few ironic laughs around the room. Yes, sometimes the old ways were still the best, they seemed to say.

      Another hand went up. ‘What about the gun, sir?’

      ‘Well, we don’t have the weapon yet,’ said Hitchens. ‘But we do have some bullets. Unfortunately, the heat generated by firing a gun destroys any DNA on the bullets. It’s sometimes worth having a look at the casings, though.’

      ‘But there aren’t any casings.’

      ‘Yes, there are. We just don’t know where.’

      At one time, Cooper would have tried to stay at the back of the room during these briefings. If you sat at the front, you might be expected to contribute, and he’d never really had the confidence to do it in front of a crowd of people, most of them more experienced than he was. When he did have ideas, he usually preferred to share them discreetly with his DS or the DI, in case he was scoffed at.

      But today, he found himself near the front, propped against the wall where Hitchens could see him. Cooper suspected the DI would pick him out at some point. He’d been a member of the force’s competition shooting team for several years, and he knew a bit about guns. Just as he did about lamping – though he’d only ever taken part in the legal kind. Well, probably. Even better, he knew a few people who were obsessed with guns, including some Territorial Army members, the weekend soldiers who trained in their spare time for reserve duty in Bosnia or Iraq.

      Hitchens cocked an eye towards him. ‘Anything you want to contribute at this stage, DC Cooper?’

      He straightened up, trying not to notice all the eyes suddenly turned towards him.

      ‘If we’re looking at the possibility of a professional hit, I can tell you that snipers are trained to pick up their brass,’ he said. ‘That would explain why there are no casings. They’re also told not to leave other clues to their identity or their shooting location. A trained person reconnoitres the site and selects a place that gives him cover and an escape route. Then he takes his shot. But normally only one – the sniper’s motto is “one shot, one kill”.’

      ‘But this suspect took three shots.’

      ‘To me, that doesn’t sound like a real professional.’ ‘There was no sign of any casings in the field, so we presume our suspect stayed long enough to pick them up.’

      ‘Well …’ began Cooper.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘At night, in a ploughed field, that would be quite tricky. You’d be lucky to find one, let alone all three.’

      ‘True,’ agreed Hitchens, looking at him with interest.

      Cooper leaned back for a moment and pictured the scene. He imagined himself sitting at the wheel of a car at night, in a ploughed field, with the driver’s window open and three bullet casings lying on the ground somewhere outside the vehicle.

      ‘Not just tricky,’ he said. ‘It would mean the suspect getting out of the car and leaving his footprints in the soil. He would pick up earth on his shoes and trail it back into the vehicle. That’s three possibilities for trace evidence. But the scenario doesn’t fit, does it? It’s not consistent with the planning before and after the hit.’