Healers by Ann Cleeves Page A

“I suppose it’s better than nowt. Just.”
    It had been some sort of storeroom and a line of men in shirt sleeves were carrying out boxes, piles of rubbish. In time it would be transformed into a modern incident room with computer terminals and phone lines. Now it was dusty and depressing. Hunter was perched on the windowsill, supervising. He was in his element.
    “I’ve sent Sal Wedderburn to check the hippies’ alibi for Sunday,” Hunter said. “The Abbots both work at the Alternative Therapy
    Centre at the Old Chapel. She’s gone to talk to them there. It’s not really relevant now, though. The pathologist’s just phoned with his first impressions. Bowles was killed between 8 p.m. Saturday evening and 8 a.m. Sunday morning. He’ll try to narrow it down but he’s quite certain that the old man was dead by the time Jackman and Slater went off for their Sunday lunch.”
    “Yes,” Ramsay said absentmindedly. “Thanks.” So Bowles had had a visitor on Saturday night. He’d either brought a companion back with him in the Land-Rover at ten o’clock or someone had called to the farm later. Surely not on foot at that time. He should have asked Lily if she’d heard another vehicle. It was a blow that the farmyard wasn’t visible from the road. They’d have been able to ask passing motorists if they’d seen a strange car parked there.
    “We’ll need to find somewhere to stay,” he said. “Somewhere big enough to take the whole team.”
    “I’ve phoned around,” Hunter said. “The pub seems the best bet. The Blue Bell.”
    In Hunter’s opinion the pub usually was the best bet.
    “Isn’t that where Bowles had his scrap with the Richardson lad?” Ramsay asked. “We’ll need to find witnesses of that.”
    “How did you get on with the Richardsons?”
    Ramsay shrugged. “No love lost between them and Bowles,” he said. “Apparently Ernie was threatening to have a New Age festival on his land. Richardson takes in well-heeled paying guests and wasn’t best pleased.”
    “Can’t bloody blame him either,” Hunter said. “Strange that Jackman and Slater didn’t mention it …”
    “Perhaps they didn’t know. I had the impression that Bowles only dreamed up the idea to annoy his neighbours.”
    In a corner a telephone rang. The middle-aged constable they had met at the farm was staggering under the weight of a manual typewriter which might have been there before the war. He rested the typewriter against a scratched filing cabinet to take the call.
    “There’s been a message for you from Otterbridge,” he said. “Can you call them back? As soon as you can?”
    He took the strain of the typewriter again, swore under his breath and went on down the corridor without a word.
    “By, he’s a happy soul, isn’t he?” Hunter said. “You’d think he’d be glad of the excitement. Make a change from sheep rustling and incest.”
    “I don’t suppose he joined the force to be a removal man,” Ramsay said mildly.
    “I’ll make that phone call then, shall I?” Hunter said. “Find out what the panic is. I’ll try and find a phone away from all this bloody noise.”
    He wandered off. Ramsay stared in at the chaos and wondered if all this effort would be unnecessary in the end. Perhaps the forensic team would find fingerprints of some local villains, kids perhaps, misled by the rumours of Cissie Bowles’s money. A robbery that had gone wrong and turned into murder when Ernie got home early and disturbed them. But he didn’t think it would work out like that. There’d been no sign of a breakin and kids wouldn’t strangle. They’d lash out with a knife or a heavy object, might even have got hold of a gun. Plenty of shotguns out here in the wilds. But they wouldn’t get close enough to strangle.
    No, Ramsay thought, this wouldn’t be over quickly. There’d be time enough for his team to make themselves at home here. They’d bring a kettle and jars of coffee and powdered milk. Someone would