Free Innocent Blood by David Stuart Davies

whichever road you took, you hit the countryside. Wooded hills rose around you, along with purple, rock-strewn moorland. You soon left the urban for the rural. To him they were complementary environments and in many ways it was what kept him in Huddersfield.
    Marsdale was a charming community which, although close to Huddersfield, kept itself to itself. On his previous visits there, Snow has sensed that there was an air of insularity here borne out of self-preservation. They didn’t want to be contaminated with town folk and their ways. There were no supermarkets or the usual imprints of the national high streets here. It was all small individual shops, run by locals – the butcher, the baker and, probably up a side street somewhere, a candlestick maker. Here was a simpler, old-fashioned way of living. The inhabitants seemed to relish that they were a little behind the times. Snow sympathised with their philosophy.
    Snow made his way up the path, which cut its way through a neatly trimmed lawn, rang the door chimes and waited. A voice behind the frosted glass door called out: ‘Just a minute, I’m coming.’ Moments later, it opened to reveal a tall, thin man, stooped with age, with grey, lanky hair and a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose. He had a copy of the Daily Telegraph in his hand. Snow noted that it was folded at the crossword page. The man was dressed in cord trousers, a checked shirt and a fawn cardigan. He wore a pair of carpet slippers which looked too big for his feet.
    ‘Yes?’ he said, peering over the top of his glasses.
    Snow held up his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Snow. I was wondering if I could have a word, sir?’ He didn’t, as some officers did, just hold up the card and snap ‘Police’ in an officious manner. Not only did he regard that as rude, mildly offensive, but he knew that it put people either on edge or on the defensive – neither attitude being conducive to extracting the right kind of information from the interviewee.
    Mr Niven peered at the card. ‘A word? What about?’ He seemed confused.
    ‘The accident and the choir.’
    Niven groaned and ran his hand across the lower part of his face. ‘Oh, Lord, not that again. Haven’t I suffered enough? My wife was killed in that crash, you know.’
    Snow nodded. ‘I know, sir, but I think you might be able to help me with an investigation I’m involved in.’
    ‘Investigation? What investigation?’
    ‘Perhaps I could come in and talk to you, sir.’
    Niven sighed. ‘I suppose so.’
    The sitting room to which Niven led him was somewhat untidy. It was, the policeman supposed, lacking the woman’s touch. Snow was aware that when a man had been looked after all his life, he found it difficult to cope with the same precision on his own. And there didn’t seem to be much point any more anyway. There was no one to see, was there? It had been the same with his father.
    ‘Do move those magazines and sit down. You are an inspector, you say?’
    ‘Yes, Detective Inspector with the West Yorkshire Police, based in Huddersfield.’
    ‘I see. This must be serious then. Would you care for a cup of tea?’
    ‘No, that’s all right.’
    Niven dropped into his armchair with another sigh. Snow could see that he was relieved not to have to fuss about in the kitchen, preparing mugs of tea and no doubt searching for some errant digestive biscuits to accompany them.
    Snow assumed that Niven was in his late sixties, but he had the movement and demeanour of a much older man. He remembered the newspaper report which stated that he had been too ill to attend the memorial service for the crash victims. Maybe it wasn’t just grief that kept him away but something more physical.
    ‘Well, how do you think I can help you?’
    ‘First of all, can you tell me about the Marsdale Choir?’
    ‘Ah, that was my wife’s pigeon. She should be here to tell you all about that.’ He paused as though he had just realised what