“Of course. My God. And you’re saying someone put it there? This human body?”

“It looks very much that way. I can’t imagine it got there by accident.”

“But why?”

“We don’t know why. Right now we’re more concerned about how and who. Obviously, it was meant to be disposed of.” Winsome glanced out of the window. “It would have ended up in your incinerator, most likely, and nobody would have been any the wiser.”

“Except for the crash?”

“That’s right. So what we need to know is what farms Caleb Ross visited yesterday morning, where he might have stopped, say for a tea break, or lunch, and who might have had access to his schedule.”

“I can certainly supply you with a copy of Caleb’s pickup schedule, but surely you can’t think anyone here had anything to do with what happened?”

“We don’t think anything yet, sir. We’re still gathering facts and evidence. Can you help?”

“Certainly.” Vaughn riffled through the papers on his desk. “That’s easy. Our copies of yesterday’s pickup schedule are here somewhere. Caleb’s is . . . ah, here it is.” He brandished two sheets of paper stapled together. “Of course,” Vaughn added, “he didn’t finish his rounds, so he didn’t get to all these places. I think the last one was Alf Wythers, Garsley Farm, just outside Swainshead. He’d probably have had his lunch in the village, then set off over Belderfell Pass to where his next collection point was. But, of course, he never got there.”

Winsome took the list Vaughn handed her, looked it over and passed it to Gerry, who slipped it into her briefcase. “It seems like a long list,” Winsome said. “Was he always so busy?”

“It’s lambing season,” said Vaughn. “Sad to say, but it’s a time of high mortality on the dales farms.”

“Could someone have added to the load at any of the places Mr. Ross visited?”

“It wouldn’t have been that easy. At least not always. Sometimes the fallen animals are kept at some distance from the actual farm buildings, you understand, in which case it probably wouldn’t have been very difficult for some interloper to swap a bag.”

“Is there no record of the numbers? Bags, packages, you know?”

“Of course. Record keeping is essential when you’re dealing with fallen stock. Any carcasses sent off farm for disposal—­which is the only legal way to do it, most of the time—­must be recorded, and all carcasses must be accompanied by a commercial document while in transit. In triplicate.” Vaughn swallowed. “Of course, in this case, the documents would have . . . well . . .”

“I understand,” said Winsome. “But the farmers would have a record of what stock they had had taken away?”

“Yes. They should.” Vaughn scratched under his collar.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

“No, not really. I mean, ninety-­nine percent of the time everything’s shipshape and aboveboard, but sometimes, well, human error can creep in.”

“Even in something as important as fallen stock records?”

­“People don’t like to admit it, of course, no more than the police like to admit they make errors, I’m sure.” Vaughn smiled, but neither Winsome nor Gerry Masterson returned it. “But it happens sometimes,” he went on. “Records don’t always match the numbers.”

“Why would that be?”

“Oh, perhaps another animal has died after the list was made up and before pickup. Caleb and the other drivers would usually change it on their copies of the commercial documents, even though they’re not really supposed to.”

“There’s no black market in fallen animals, is there?” Gerry asked. “No profit to be made?”

Vaughn looked puzzled. “No. How could there be? I don’t understand.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps food produce? You know, like the horse meat in the burgers.”

Vaughn laughed. “No. That horse meat business was a direct result of the banning of DSM in meat products.”

“DSM?”

“Desinewed meat. It’s what left when all the good cuts have been taken. It’s used in processed meats.”

“The nostrils and eyelids?” Gerry said.

“It might include them, but that’s not the point. When its use was banned, producers had to find other sources of cheap meat products to make up the shortfall. Hence the horse meat business.”

“What about wild animals, game?”

“The law’s complicated on that subject. You can blame the EU for that, too, of course.”

“Why?” Gerry persisted.

“It’s a matter of disease, infection. Wild animals can carry disease, even though they haven’t been tended or fed by humans. Often it’s best to make sure. But in many cases, you can’t, and if it’s apparent the animal has died of natural causes, it’s permissible to bury it without calling us. On the other hand, there’s a requirement to carry out BSE/TSE tests on all fallen cattle over forty-­eight months. That’s mad cow disease to you. The rules are stringent on most matters.”

“Do you get many infected animals?”

“We’re not approved for over-­forty-­eight-­month-­cattle sampling and testing. Too much hassle. It was mostly stillborn lambs At least that’s what it would have said on the labels. But now we know different, of course. I’m still finding this hard to believe.”

“Getting back to how these human remains could have been added to the load,” said Winsome. “Would it have been possible for someone to add them to Mr. Ross’s van, say, while he was having his lunch?”

“Officially, there’s supposed to be someone with the van at all times.”

“Only officially?”

“Caleb usually took his own lunch, just a sandwich and a flask of tea, but he liked his giant Yorkshire puddings. He might have stopped off in Swainshead for a quick bite at the White Rose, if the disinfectant or dead animal smell didn’t clear out the whole pub. It depends on the kind of day he’d been having. But he wouldn’t have had anything to drink. He was strictly teetotaler, was Caleb.”

A tox screen on what was left of Caleb Ross would soon determine whether he had enjoyed a jar or two with his giant Yorkshire. “It sounds as if there’s a great deal of laxity with the ‘official’ requirements around here,” Winsome said.

Vaughn seemed unconcerned by the criticism. “It’s not much different from any other business in that respect, I should imagine. We accept that biosecurity is essential. We also have some very strict controls on the incinerator. But if you obeyed all the rules handed down by the EU, Trading Standards and Health and Safety to the letter you’d hardly be able to breathe, let alone run a profitable business.”

“So it could have happened that way? Someone could have added the body parts to his load while he was having his lunch?”

“It’s possible. If they could gain access to the van. But if his paperwork was in order, it could also easily have happened anywhere on the route. Even if we were obeying all the rules.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Caleb wouldn’t open any of the bags to check their contents, and they’d go straight into the incinerator here when he got back. Nobody would want to open . . . well, you can imagine. The idea is to dispose of fallen stock as quickly as is reasonably possible and, as I said, we don’t do any testing here. If the farmer wrote down ‘two dead lambs,’ then Caleb would assume that was what was in the bags and the commercial document would bear this out. He’s not going to open them and make sure that’s what’s in there.”

“Assuming they were already bagged.”

“Yes, of course. That is usually the case.”

“And that’s also assuming that one of the farmers Caleb visited must have known what was in the packages and passed them off as fallen stock?” Gerry added.

“Yes. Highly unlikely, wouldn’t you think? They’re all regular customers. All aboveboard.”

Winsome didn’t necessarily agree, but she nodded as she watched Gerry scribbling away. In fact, it seemed to her that the whole business was lax, and that it would have been unbelievably easy for someone to have slipped Morgan Spencer’s body parts in with the load. “Someone could have made an exchange at one of the farms, if the fallen stock had already been bagged and listed. Swapped a ­couple of bags and labels. Then no one would have been the wiser, would they?”