Post-Mortem Examination Report

Deceased: Desmond Arthur Farrow, male, aged 47 years Date of Examination: 17th October 1976 Place of Examination: Huddersfield Royal Infirmary mortuary Pathologist: Dr M. E. Stroud, MB BS FRCPath, Consultant Pathologist Coroner: Mr J. T. Broadbent, HM Coroner for the West Riding (Huddersfield District)

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External Examination

The body is that of a well-built man of stated age, 5 feet 10 inches in height, weighing approximately 14 stone 2 pounds. Rigor mortis is present and consistent with death occurring approximately six to eight hours prior to examination.

The deceased is wearing a blue cotton shirt (untucked, sleeves rolled to the elbows), brown corduroy trousers, and no footwear or socks. The feet are bare. The soles of both feet show a greyish discolouration and are damp to the touch.

A discrete electrical burn mark is present on the palmar surface of the right hand, centred on the thenar eminence (base of the thumb), measuring approximately 12mm in diameter. The burn is oval, with a pale centre and darkened margin, consistent with the point of electrical contact. A corresponding exit burn is present on the sole of the right foot, 8mm in diameter, located on the ball of the foot. Both burns show the charring pattern characteristic of sustained contact with a current source rather than a brief arc.

The hair on the right forearm is singed. Petechial haemorrhages are present in the conjunctivae of both eyes.

No other external injuries. No bruising consistent with a struggle. No defensive wounds on the hands or forearms. The fingernails are clean and unbroken.

A faint odour of ozone is noted about the body, together with the smell of singed hair.

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Internal Examination

The heart shows ventricular fibrillation arrest. The myocardium is congested with scattered petechial haemorrhages on the epicardial surface. No pre-existing coronary disease. No valvular abnormality. The heart weighs 380g, within normal limits.

The lungs are oedematous and congested. The brain is mildly oedematous. No haemorrhage or infarction.

The liver shows moderate fatty change consistent with habitual heavy alcohol consumption. The stomach contains approximately 200ml of partially digested food and a quantity of fluid consistent with tea. Blood alcohol concentration: 145 milligrammes per 100 millilitres. The deceased was significantly intoxicated at the time of death.

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Toxicology

Blood and urine samples were submitted to the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory at Wetherby. No drugs or toxic substances were detected other than ethanol at the concentration stated above.

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Electrical Injury Assessment

The pattern of burns is consistent with the passage of electrical current entering through the right hand and exiting through the right foot. The sustained contact pattern of the entry burn suggests the deceased gripped the source object and was unable to release it, as is typical when muscular tetanus is induced by alternating current at mains voltage (240V, 50Hz). The bare feet on a damp stone surface would have provided an effective earth path.

Death resulted from ventricular fibrillation induced by electrical current passing through the thorax. The current path from right hand to right foot would cross the heart.

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Opinion

The cause of death is electrocution. The current entered through the right hand and exited through the right foot. The entry burn is consistent with the deceased having gripped a cylindrical metal object, such as a microphone housing, at the moment of contact. The bare feet on a damp surface provided a low-resistance path to earth.

The blood alcohol level indicates significant intoxication, which would have impaired the deceased's ability to react to the initial shock and may have contributed to the speed of cardiac arrest.

The manner of death cannot be determined from the post-mortem findings alone. The electrical injury is consistent with contact with faulty equipment, but I am unable to state from the pathological evidence whether the fault was accidental or deliberate. This determination requires examination of the equipment by a qualified electrical engineer.

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M. E. Stroud, MB BS FRCPath 17th October 1976

Case Notes: Death of Desmond Farrow

Detective Sergeant Raymond Lister, Huddersfield CID Notes compiled 17th-19th October 1976

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Called out to Greystone House at half past midnight on a Sunday. One mile up an unpaved track above Marsden in pitch darkness, no street lighting, rain horizontal, and the car bottoming out on every rut. The things people will do to avoid paying rent on a proper studio.

Greystone House is a converted Georgian farmhouse on the moors. The attached barn has been turned into a recording studio. Desmond Farrow, 47, the owner and operator, found dead on the floor of the live room at 11:45 p.m. by Neil Calder, one of his own musicians. Amplifier still humming. Smell of singed hair and ozone. The man was barefoot on a wet stone floor, one hand near the microphone.

Dr Stroud says electrocution. Current through the right hand, out through the foot. Could be an accident. These studio conversions are wired by whoever happens to be handy with a soldering iron, and the regulations around earthing are largely decorative.

But the forensic electrician, Mr Jessop, says otherwise. Two separate modifications: the earth wire deliberately cut in the microphone cable, and a copper bridge soldered inside the amplifier to make the whole chassis live. Clean, competent work. The tools in the workshop have been wiped. Not the calling card of a faulty fuse.

Someone who knew what they were doing did this on purpose. And nobody left Greystone House between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

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Persons of Interest

The house was occupied by six people on Saturday night. One of them is dead. One is the roadie, Pete Sugden, who was asleep at the kitchen table from a quarter to eleven and woke up when the shouting started. That leaves four.

Neil Calder, 29. Guitarist.

Found the body. That is the first thing.

Calder is the lead guitarist of The Rowanberry, a folk-rock band from Bradford recording their third album at Greystone House. He and Farrow have been at each other's throats all week. The cause: Farrow secretly recorded one of Calder's telephone calls, a conversation with his London manager about a solo deal behind the band's back. Farrow played the tape at dinner on Thursday night. In front of the whole table. Calder punched him. Then said, and I am quoting three witnesses: "Touch my career again and I will end yours."

I have met many men who punch people at dinner tables. Very few of them go on to solder copper bridges inside amplifiers the following afternoon. But I note it.

Calder builds his own guitar effects pedals. He knows electronics. He knows the equipment. His fingerprints are on the Vox AC30 amplifier that killed Farrow. He has a Bradford address, a London manager, and a solo contract apparently waiting for him. With Farrow dead, the tape disappears as a threat.

He says he was in his bedroom from half past ten. Playing acoustic guitar. Nobody heard him. Nobody saw him. He came downstairs at 11:45 for a guitar lead and found Farrow.

I want to know what Calder was really doing in that bedroom for over an hour. A man does not walk down to a dark studio at midnight for a guitar lead unless he has a reason, and "I needed it for the morning" is the sort of explanation that sounds reasonable until you think about it for thirty seconds.

Malcolm Rigg, 34. Bass player.

The serious one. Co-founded the band. An ex-engineering student: two years at Bradford Tech, electrical engineering, before he dropped out to play music. Which means he knows wiring. He knows amplifiers. He can solder.

Rigg discovered that Farrow was billing the record label at double the actual studio rate and pocketing the difference. A thousand pounds or more across three albums. He confronted Farrow on Friday morning. Farrow's response, as Rigg tells it: "Prove it. Your word against mine, and I am the one the label returns calls to." The confidence of a man who has been stealing for years without consequence. It has a particular flavour.

Rigg claims he was in the kitchen with the roadie, Pete Sugden, from ten o'clock. But Sugden is a man who drinks with purpose and he fell asleep at about a quarter to eleven. Nobody can confirm where Rigg was between then and a quarter to midnight. Christine Oldfield says she saw Rigg near the studio barn door at about five past eleven. Why was he there?

He has the knowledge. He has the motive. He was unaccounted for during the window that matters.

Christine Oldfield, 26. Session vocalist.

Hired for the album. First week at Greystone House. Something happened between her and Farrow. She will not say what, but she has been avoiding him all week and she flinches when his name comes up. I have been doing this job long enough to recognise the shape of what she is not saying.

Her diary was recovered from her bedroom. One entry, dated Wednesday 13th October, reads: "I wish he were dead. I mean it." Strong language for a hired musician who could simply leave.

She says she was in the sitting room reading. The sitting room is on the far side of the house from the studio barn. Two doors and the length of a hallway between them. But she was seen in the hallway near the barn door at approximately 11:05 p.m. by Rigg. She says she was going to the bathroom. Maybe. People do use bathrooms. But she went upstairs for it, which is a long way to walk when there is a lavatory on the ground floor.

No obvious technical knowledge. But the diary is troubling.

Janet Farrow, 43. Wife.

Married to Desmond for fourteen years. Runs the house. Cooks for the musicians, cleans, does the accounts, drives to Huddersfield for groceries. By all accounts a patient woman married to a man who tested patience as a vocation.

She says she went to bed at a quarter past ten. Took a nitrazepam sleeping tablet. The bedroom is upstairs on the opposite side of the house from the barn. She heard nothing until Calder started shouting.

Janet helped wire the studio when it was built in 1971. She knows the electrics. But she has no apparent motive. She runs the house. The studio is her livelihood too. And she was in bed, medicated, on the far side of the building.

Low priority. But completeness demands I note it.

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Key Questions

1. Was the sabotage done during the evening or earlier? The band were recording in the live room from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. using the same equipment. Nobody was electrocuted during the session. Why not?
2. The forensic electrician says the modifications affected the monitoring circuit of the Vox amplifier, not the guitar input circuit. Calder used the Vox for guitar during the session via the front input. The monitoring output was only used when Farrow was working alone with the vocal microphone. Does this narrow the field to someone who understood the difference between the two circuits?
3. The soldering was clean. The tools were wiped. This was careful work. Who had the time and the privacy?
4. Calder's fingerprints are on the Vox. But he uses it every day. His prints prove nothing.
5. Where was Rigg between 10:45 and 11:30? Sugden was asleep. Rigg was near the barn door at 11:05. What was he doing?
6. What happened between Oldfield and Farrow on Wednesday? The diary entry is too strong to ignore.

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Next Steps

• Press Calder on his movements. He says he was playing guitar. Who heard him? The walls at Greystone House are two feet of Yorkshire stone. Nobody hears anything unless they want to.
• Get Rigg to account for his time after Sugden fell asleep.
• Find out what Oldfield is hiding. The diary entry suggests something specific.
• Check whether Farrow had any financial pressures. Studio owners do not usually record their own musicians at a loss.
• Have Jessop examine the amplifier modifications in detail. Who had the skill and the opportunity?

Instinct says Calder. The violence, the threat, the electronics knowledge, the fingerprints, the body. Everything points his way.

But someone wiped the tools. Calder does not strike me as a man who wipes tools. He strikes me as a man who throws them.

Forensic Electrical Examination Report

Case Reference: Huddersfield CID 76/1842 Investigating Officer: Detective Sergeant R. Lister Reporting Officer: Mr A. P. Jessop, C.Eng MIEE, Consulting Electrical Engineer Date: 20th October 1976

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Items Examined

1. One Neumann U87 condenser microphone (serial no. 14738) with associated cable and stand, recovered from the live room floor
2. One Vox AC30 amplifier (serial no. TB 2241), recovered from the live room
3. One Quad 303 power amplifier and pair of Tannoy Lancaster monitor speakers, recovered from the control booth
4. Workshop tools: soldering iron (Weller TCP), pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, recovered from the studio workshop
5. The mains wiring and distribution board of the studio barn

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Findings

1. Neumann U87 Microphone and Cable

The microphone is connected to the control booth via a standard three-pin XLR cable, approximately 25 feet in length. The cable was found to be intact along its length, with no visible external damage.

On internal examination, the earth conductor (pin 1) has been severed cleanly at the microphone connector end, approximately 2 inches from the solder joint. The cut is sharp and perpendicular, consistent with the use of wire cutters. There is no fraying, corrosion, or wear that would suggest gradual failure. The live and neutral conductors are intact and correctly soldered.

Conclusion: The earth connection has been deliberately cut. Without the earth path, the microphone housing is no longer bonded to the safety earth of the studio's electrical system.

2. Vox AC30 Amplifier

The Vox AC30 is a valve guitar amplifier, serial number TB 2241, manufactured approximately 1964. The amplifier was recovered from the live room, positioned on a shelf approximately four feet above floor level. It was connected to the mains supply via a standard 13-amp plug.

The amplifier's back panel was removed for internal examination. The chassis wiring is largely original, with some modifications consistent with routine maintenance and valve replacement over the years.

One modification is not consistent with routine maintenance. A length of single-core copper wire, approximately 3 inches long, has been soldered between the amplifier chassis and the live terminal of the mains transformer. The soldering is neat, competent, and uses the same grade of solder (60/40 tin-lead) found in the workshop. The wire is standard equipment wire of a type present on the workshop bench in a spool.

This modification has the effect of energising the amplifier chassis at mains potential (240V AC). Under normal circumstances, the chassis earth would prevent this from being dangerous, as any fault current would trip the fuse. However, with the earth connection in the microphone cable severed, the only earth path available was through the body of any person who simultaneously touched the microphone housing (which is electrically connected to the amplifier chassis via the cable screen) and was in contact with earth.

The Vox AC30 has two separate circuits relevant to this case. The front panel input is used for guitar, connecting through the pre-amplifier stage. The monitoring output connects to external equipment via rear panel sockets and shares the chassis ground. During the evening recording session (5:00-9:00 p.m.), Mr Calder used the amplifier via the front panel input for his guitar. The sabotage affected the chassis and monitoring circuit, not the guitar input stage. The guitar input is capacitively coupled and would not have presented a lethal hazard through the guitar strings under these conditions.

Conclusion: The amplifier was deliberately modified to create a lethal electrical hazard. The modification would only become dangerous when someone touched the microphone housing while earthed through another path, such as bare feet on a damp stone floor.

3. Quad 303 Amplifier and Tannoy Monitors

The Quad 303 power amplifier and Tannoy Lancaster speakers constitute the studio's playback monitoring system, located in the control booth. These are used to listen back to recorded material during mixing and playback sessions.

Examination reveals no modifications, no faults, and no evidence of tampering. The earth connections are intact. The equipment is in good working order.

The Vox AC30 is not part of the playback system. It is a guitar amplifier that was moved to the live room on or about 12th October 1976 for use as a vocal monitoring amp during the producer's late-night sessions.

4. Workshop Tools

The soldering iron (Weller TCP) shows fresh solder residue on the tip, consistent with recent use. The pliers and wire cutters show no visible trace evidence. All tools have been wiped. No fingerprints were recovered from any item.

The workshop contains a spool of single-core copper equipment wire matching the wire used in the amplifier modification. The spool of 60/40 tin-lead solder on the workbench matches the solder used in the modification.

5. Studio Wiring

The studio barn's mains wiring was installed in 1971. It does not comply with current IEE regulations in several respects, including inadequate earthing of the stone floor area and the absence of a residual current device on the live room circuit. These deficiencies are common in converted agricultural buildings and did not cause the death, but they contributed to the lethal outcome by providing no secondary protection.

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Equipment Log

A handwritten equipment log is maintained in the control booth. The most recent entry relevant to the Vox AC30 is dated Tuesday 12th October 1976: "Vox to live room for vocal monitoring. DF."

The Vox AC30 was not part of the standard live room equipment. It was moved from the control booth to the live room four days before the death.

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Summary

1. The death of Mr Farrow was caused by electrocution through deliberate sabotage of the studio equipment.
2. Two modifications were made: the earth wire was cut in the microphone cable, and a copper bridge was soldered inside the Vox AC30 amplifier to energise the chassis at mains voltage.
3. The modifications required basic electrical knowledge, access to the workshop tools, and a period of unobserved access to the live room.
4. The tools were wiped clean of fingerprints.
5. The Vox AC30 is a guitar amplifier, not a playback monitoring amplifier. The playback system (Quad 303 and Tannoy monitors) is in the control booth and was not tampered with.
6. The sabotage affected the monitoring circuit, not the guitar input. This is why the amplifier was safe to use for guitar during the evening session but lethal when Mr Farrow used the microphone through the monitoring circuit later that night.

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A. P. Jessop, C.Eng MIEE 20th October 1976

Witness Statement: Neil Calder

Date: 17th October 1976 Location: Greystone House, kitchen Interviewing Officer: Detective Sergeant R. Lister

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Right. I will tell you what happened, but I want it on record that I did not kill anyone. And I would like a cup of tea if there is one going, because I have not slept.

I have been at Greystone House since Monday. The whole band has. We are recording our third album. Were recording it. Desmond Farrow was producing, same as the last two. The first two records went fine. This one has been a disaster from the start.

Des was drinking. Not social drinking. Drinking from breakfast. Whisky in his tea. He would sit in the control booth with his headphones on and a tumbler of Bell's and tell you your guitar part was wrong when he had not been listening for the last twenty minutes. Malcolm and I have been carrying the sessions. Christine came in on Tuesday for the vocal and flute tracks and she has been brilliant, but you could see her confidence draining day by day because Des kept pulling her takes apart for no reason. He told her on Wednesday that her phrasing sounded like "a church fete in Keighley." She went white. I wanted to say something but I did not and I wish I had.

Thursday night was the worst. We were at dinner in the kitchen. All of us. Janet had made a shepherd's pie. Des stood up and put a cassette into the tape machine on the dresser and pressed play. It was my voice. My phone call to my manager, Tony Gilmore, from Tuesday night. I was on the upstairs phone. Des had wired a tap into the extension. I was talking to Tony about a solo project. Nothing definite, just possibilities. Des recorded it.

He played the whole thing at the table. Malcolm's face. Christine looked at the floor. Janet stood at the Aga with her back to the room and did not turn round.

I hit him. I am not proud of it but I hit him. I said something like "touch my career again and I will end yours." I meant I would go to the Musicians' Union. I did not mean I was going to kill the man with his own amplifier.

Saturday we all went to the Marsden show except Janet. She stayed to cook. We got back mid-afternoon and did a session from five till nine. Standard stuff. I was using the Vox, same as always, plugged into the front panel. Sounded fine. No problems.

After the session we packed it in. Janet brought sandwiches. I had a beer in the kitchen with Malcolm and Pete Sugden, then went up to my room about half ten. I was knackered.

I was in my room. I was on the phone to Tony. I do not particularly want to say that because it confirms what Des recorded, but there it is. I was on the upstairs phone for about an hour. Tony and I were talking about the solo deal. I did not play guitar. I said that earlier because I did not want to admit the phone call. I am sorry about that.

At quarter to twelve I went downstairs to get a guitar lead I had left in the live room. I needed it for the morning session. I opened the door and the Vox was humming. That big warm hum it makes when it is on but nothing is being played through it. Des was on the floor beside the microphone stand. His right hand was near the mic. The tea Janet brought him was still on the stool, half drunk.

I shouted. I did not touch him. I knew. You can tell. There is a stillness to a body that is not the same as someone who has fainted or fallen asleep. I shouted and Malcolm came running, then Pete, then Christine. Janet came down the stairs last. Malcolm unplugged the Vox. Pete drove to the phone box in the village.

Janet brought Des his tea at ten o'clock. I saw her go through to the barn with the mug. He was in there on his own doing his vocal experiments, sat on the stool with his shoes off. He always took his shoes off in the live room. Said the cool stone helped him think. Janet came back to the kitchen about five minutes later.

I did not sabotage anything. I use the Vox every day. If it had been faulty during the session, I would have been the one who got killed, not Des. Think about that.

Witness Statement: Janet Farrow

Date: 17th October 1976 Location: Greystone House, kitchen Interviewing Officer: Detective Sergeant R. Lister

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We built this place together. That is the thing people do not understand. When Desmond bought Greystone House in 1962 it was a ruin. No roof on the barn. Sheep in the kitchen. We spent nine years making it habitable and then another year converting the barn into a studio. I mixed the plaster. I laid the flagstones in the live room. I helped Desmond wire the electrics, run the cables, mount the acoustic panels. Every inch of this building has my hands in it.

The studio opened in 1971. Since then I have cooked for every band, every session, every engineer who has walked through the door. Three meals a day, clean sheets, hot water. I do the accounts. I order the supplies. I drive to Huddersfield for groceries because the Marsden shops do not stock what you need to feed six people properly for a week. None of that goes on the invoices. I am not staff. I am the wife.

This week was bad. Desmond has been drinking more than usual. I do not mean a glass of wine at dinner. I mean a bottle of whisky every two days. He was angry about something. I did not know what. He would not tell me. When Desmond is in a mood the house contracts around him. Everyone moves carefully. You learn where the edges are.

Thursday night was the worst. The business with the tape at dinner. I was at the Aga and I heard Neil's voice coming out of the cassette machine on the dresser. Desmond had recorded his phone call. I did not turn round. I could not look at anyone. Then the chair went over and Neil hit him and I went to the scullery and closed the door. I stood there with my hands on the edge of the sink and waited until it went quiet.

Saturday. The others went to the Marsden show. I stayed to cook. I was in the kitchen most of the afternoon. I baked a loaf and made a stew for the evening. The house was quiet. I like it when the house is quiet. It does not happen often during a session. I sat at the kitchen table for a bit and listened to nothing. Just the wind and the Aga ticking.

They all came back around half four. Desmond first, then the others. I noted the times in the booking diary because I always do. It helps me plan meals. We had the stew at seven. Then the session ran from five till nine. I was in the kitchen throughout.

After the session I brought sandwiches to Christine in the sitting room at about half nine. She is a nice girl. She has been miserable all week and I have not been able to work out why. I wanted to ask but it felt like prying. Then at ten o'clock I made tea for Desmond. I took it through to the live room. He was sat on the stool with his shoes off, the way he always does in the live room. Said the stone kept his feet cool. He was working with the big microphone, the silver one he uses for vocal tests. I could hear the amplifier humming from the kitchen when I took the tea through, that big Vox he uses for playback. It makes a warm sort of hum when it is on. I put the mug on the stool beside him and he nodded without looking up. That was the last time I saw him alive.

I went to bed at quarter past ten. I have been taking sleeping tablets this week. Nitrazepam. My doctor prescribed them in September. I have not been sleeping well. I took one and got into bed. The bedroom is above the kitchen, the far end of the house from the barn. You cannot hear anything from the studio up there, especially with the windows shut.

I was woken by shouting. Neil's voice. I put on my dressing gown and came downstairs. Everyone was in the hallway, heading for the barn. I followed them. The live room door was open and Desmond was on the floor. Malcolm was pulling the plug out of the wall. The room smelled of something burnt.

I did not go in. I stood in the doorway. Pete said he would drive to the village to call an ambulance. I went to the kitchen and put the kettle on because I did not know what else to do. You fall back on the thing your hands know.

We had been married for fourteen years. He was not an easy man. But the house was ours. The studio was ours. We made it together and whatever happened between us, that was always true.

Witness Statement: Christine Oldfield

Date: 17th October 1976 Location: Greystone House, sitting room Interviewing Officer: Detective Sergeant R. Lister

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I arrived at Greystone House on Tuesday. I was hired for the vocal harmonies and flute parts on The Rowanberry's album. I have done session work before, in Manchester and Birmingham, but this was my first residential job. A week in a farmhouse on the moors. I thought it sounded lovely. My mother told me to take a warm coat and not to drink the water. She worries.

The house is beautiful in daylight. The moors go on forever and the air smells of peat and bracken. Inside it is all flagstone floors and low beams and a kitchen with an Aga that Janet keeps running from five in the morning. She made me feel welcome the moment I walked in. Showed me my room, put fresh flowers on the windowsill, asked if I had any food I could not eat. She is that kind of person. Attentive. Careful. She remembered that I take my tea without sugar after being told once, on the first morning.

The sessions were long. Twelve hours some days. Desmond was... he was not easy to work for. He had opinions about everything and he expressed them loudly. He told me my phrasing was "provincial" on the second day. I let it go. You learn to let things go in session work. But the atmosphere in the house was difficult. Neil and Desmond were barely speaking by Wednesday. Malcolm was keeping his head down, working through the bass parts with a concentration that felt like anger held in check.

I do not want to go into everything that happened during the week. Some things are private. What I will say is that by Friday I was considering leaving the session early. I spoke to Janet about it on Saturday afternoon at the Marsden show. I did not give her details. I said I was not comfortable and I might go home on Sunday. She looked at me for a long time and then she said: "I understand. More than you know." I did not ask what she meant.

Saturday evening. After the recording session finished at nine, I went to the sitting room with a book. A paperback I had brought from home. The sitting room is on the ground floor of the house, the far end from the studio barn. Two closed doors and the length of the hallway between them. You cannot hear the studio from the sitting room. You can barely hear the kitchen.

Janet brought me sandwiches at about half nine. Ham and pickle on brown bread. She asked me if I was all right. I said I was fine. She stood in the doorway for a moment as if she wanted to say something else, then went back to the kitchen. She had that look people get when they are carrying something they cannot put down.

I read until about eleven. Then I needed the bathroom. The downstairs lavatory was occupied, I think, or I did not try it. I went upstairs. On my way through the hallway I saw Malcolm near the door that leads to the studio barn. He was coming from that direction, pulling the door closed behind him. He saw me. We looked at each other. Neither of us said anything. I went upstairs. He went toward the kitchen.

I came back down and returned to the sitting room. I was reading when I heard Neil shouting. It came faintly, from the direction of the barn. Then louder. I went to the hallway and Janet was coming down the stairs in her dressing gown, her hair loose. Malcolm and Pete were already heading through the barn door. I followed them.

Desmond was on the floor of the live room. The big amplifier was humming. Malcolm pulled the plug out of the wall. The room smelled of something sharp, like burning. Janet stood in the doorway and put her hand over her mouth and did not come in.

I did not go near the body. Pete drove to the village to telephone. We waited in the kitchen. Janet made tea. Her hands were steady.

One thing. On Saturday afternoon, at the show, Janet did not come. She said she had cooking to do. When we got back the house smelled of baking but there was no fresh bread or cake that I saw. The biscuit tin was the same as it had been in the morning. I noticed because I went looking for something sweet after the session and there was nothing new. It does not mean anything, probably. But you asked me to mention everything.

Witness Statement: Malcolm Rigg

Date: 17th October 1976 Location: Greystone House, sitting room Interviewing Officer: Detective Sergeant R. Lister

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I want to be precise about this because I know what it looks like. I know I was unaccounted for. I know about my background. Two years at Bradford Tech, electrical engineering, before I dropped out to play bass. I have heard the whispers already. Pete Sugden managed to look at me sideways while eating a bacon sandwich this morning, which takes a certain talent.

I co-founded The Rowanberry in 1971 with David Poynton, who left in '73. We have made two records with Desmond and both sold well enough to keep the label interested. This third record was supposed to be the one that broke us through. Desmond was supposed to make that happen. Instead he spent the week drinking, bullying Christine, and playing mind games with Neil.

On Friday morning I went to the control booth early, before the others were up. I pulled the session invoices from Desmond's filing cabinet. He charges the label forty pounds a day for studio time. The actual rate, which I confirmed with a studio in Leeds that quoted us last year, is twenty. Desmond has been pocketing the difference on every session he has ever run here. Three records with us alone, that is over a thousand pounds he has stolen from our budget. Money that should have gone into the mix, into mastering, into promotion.

I confronted him. He sat in his chair in the control booth, swirling his whisky, and said: "Prove it. Your word against mine, and I am the one the label returns calls to." Then he turned his back and put his headphones on. I stood there for a good thirty seconds, looking at the back of his head, thinking about all the ways that conversation could have gone differently. Then I went and played my bass, because that is what I do when I have no idea what else to do.

Saturday. We went to the Marsden show. All of us except Janet. Got back about half four. Did a session till nine. The equipment was fine. The Vox was fine. Neil was plugged into it all afternoon and evening without a problem.

After the session I was in the kitchen with Pete Sugden. Beers. Pete was on his fifth or sixth by ten o'clock and he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Neil went upstairs. Janet had already gone to bed. Christine was in the sitting room.

Pete fell asleep at the table. His head on his arms. Snoring.

I should have stayed in the kitchen. I did not. I went to the control booth. I wanted to hear the day's recordings. I had a suspicion that Desmond was burying my bass tracks in the mix, and I wanted to check. I put the headphones on and listened to three takes. He had done it. The bass was barely audible on two of the three tracks. My parts, mixed down to nothing. Five years of work with this band and the man was erasing me from the record one fader at a time.

I was in the control booth from about eleven until half eleven. I heard nothing from the live room. The door between the booth and the live room is soundproofed. The glass is double-glazed. You cannot hear what is happening on the other side unless the talkback is on, and it was not.

On my way to the booth, around five past eleven, I passed through the hallway and saw Christine coming out of the corridor that leads to the stairs. She said she was going to the bathroom. I nodded and kept walking.

I came back to the kitchen at half eleven and Pete was still asleep. Then Neil started shouting. I ran. Pete stumbled after me. Desmond was on the live room floor. I could see the Vox was still on. I unplugged it from the mains. I did not touch the body.

I know the wiring in that studio. I know how a Vox AC30 works. I know how to solder. But I did not do this. I was in the control booth listening to my own bass tracks and trying to work out how badly Desmond had cheated us. That is the truth of it, and I am not proud of any part of it.

The tools in the workshop. Anyone could use them. The workshop is off the live room, through a side door. It is never locked. Desmond kept a soldering iron, pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, all of it on a pegboard above the bench. Everyone in the house knew they were there.