Hail and Farewell (The Lakeland Murders) Read Online Free Page A

began, and he saw the DI and the DS on the bridge. And he knew, long before he saw it, that there’d be a body nearby somewhere too.
    ‘What do you need, boss?’ he shouted, not wanting to interfere with the crime scene, and happy not to get too close to the body.
    ‘Help uniform to get witness details. Anyone who was playing tonight. Try to get the names of all of them.’
    ‘I’m on with it.’
     
    There were only five uniformed officers on the ground, but that was all that was available, and it included the duty sergeant.
    ‘We’ve got more lads coming over from HQ, but they won’t be here for half an hour’ the sergeant told Iredale, ‘by which time most of this lot will have fucked off.’ He raised the loud hailer to his mouth, and asked again for anyone who’d been playing that night to stay in the car park until they’d been spoken to by an officer. Then he switched it off and turned back to Iredale. ‘Tell you what, Keith. Most of them will head back into town to get a few drinks in, so why don’t you get up there? Anyone who looks like they might have been playing tonight, and they’re not hard to spot what with the mud and the wet clothes, get their details. There’ll be a fair few who wouldn’t ever talk to us voluntarily, like.’
    ‘Got you, sarge. Will do.’

    Saturday, 19th April
     
     
    It was almost 6am when DI Smith called the team together in the CID room.
    ‘For those of you who don’t know the victim’s name is Chris Brown, aged 20, from an address in Workington. Next of kin have been informed. That wasn’t difficult mind you, because his dad was in the game earlier, and his mum and sister were watching, worse luck.’
    ‘Christ’ said someone.
    ‘Preliminary cause of death is drowning, but don’t be surprised if that changes. He was pulled out of the beck at about 10.55, only about five yards below the bridge. SOCO is on site, but as you’d expect the place looks like it’s been trampled over by a herd of rhino, which is pretty much how it felt, I can tell you. And that brings me to the next point. As most of you will know both myself and DS Hodgson were playing last night, because our information was that George Hayton had issued a kind of challenge to Jack Moffett. If you don’t know who those two are then you don’t deserve to be coppers, so don’t ask me about them. Look them up if you bloody have to. Anyway, this is what we know for sure. At about half ten some of Hayton’s lads arrived, and we have positive IDs on three of them, and they joined the game. Shortly after that it all really kicked off, and that’s when we had the casualties. Three or four, all Moffett’s boys, ended up with broken bones, ruptured kidneys, the works. At that time the game was here,’ Smith pointed at the map on the big screen, ‘just on the edge of the council office’s car park, only a few yards from Cloffocks Beck. The scrum then went back into the water, at about ten two, and soon after they moved away again, along the Cloffocks in the direction of the Reds’ ground. And that’s when the body was spotted by one of the spectators, in the water, like. A young lad he is. We’ve got his statement, and he’s not a suspect. Any questions so far?’
    ‘We’re sure that the deceased was a player, are we, sir?’ asked Iredale.
    ‘In which sense? Player of the game, or a player as in an active gang member? He was certainly a player of the game, and his mum has confirmed that he’d been in right from the start at half six. He’d been looking forward to it for weeks, apparently. As to whether or not Chris Brown was involved with either gang that’s hard to say. He didn’t have a record, not even a caution, which as you know is pretty unusual these days. He’s not showing up in intelligence reports, and the drugs team have no interest. However, we know exactly what was going on last night, don’t we? So I’d say it makes sense to assume that he might have been associated