Dying to Sin (12 page)

‘We should try to find these farm records,’ said Cooper. ‘I think Farnham was right about that, at least. If the records are anywhere, they’ll be inside the house.’

‘Well, I’ll help you later. At least it’s dry inside the house, if none too clean.’

But Cooper wasn’t paying attention now. He was looking at his feet.

‘You know, I don’t remember ever seeing mud this red before – not in this area. The real clay soils are further south.’

Murfin came trudging through the mud to hand Fry a list of the items that the forensics team had recovered from the skip. It was a very long list, but most of the material she could discount. She was only interested in what had come out of the hole, and the SOCOs had helpfully grouped some items together. These had been tipped on top of the skip in one corner, where a couple of planks had been laid as a runway to get a wheelbarrow up to the right height. There were stones here, some unidentifiable bits of rusty metal, a broken bucket, a packet of coffee filters, and some brown mason jars.

She read through the list again, more carefully, then turned to the rest of the material that had been felt less significant. The SOCOs had been right – they’d picked out the relevant items. They couldn’t list what wasn’t there.

Fry stared across the site at the body tent, where a forensic botanist was using a teaspoon to tease out plant fragments. She had a clear picture of Jamie Ward, squatting in the wet mud, staring in shock at the object he’d found in the trench. When he shouted, someone had run up to him, thinking he’d hurt himself, while Nikolai, the foreman, had been cursing in the background. All perfectly clear, but for one thing.

‘Gavin, have you got the list of builders’ names and addresses?’

‘I hope you don’t want them in English.’

Fry flicked through the list she was given. She could see what Gavin meant – most of the names sounded East European. She wasn’t familiar enough with the different nationalities in that part of the world to tell where exactly they might be from, but the officers taking details had helpfully filled in the nationalities, too. Polish, Czech, Slovakian. Apart from two, who were Irish nationals, none of the construction crew would have English as a first language.

Then Fry corrected herself. Gaelic was being restored to Ireland these days. The two Irishmen might not consider English their first language, either. It was advisable to tread carefully on these issues. She didn’t want to be sent on diversity training.

‘Several of these men give the same address in Macclesfield,’ she said.

‘Yes, it’s some kind of workmen’s hostel or B&B,’ said Murfin. ‘According to the foreman, most of them are employed by an agency and they move around the country, wherever the work happens to be. Just at the moment, they’re living in Macclesfield. Tomorrow, the moon.’

‘Gavin, round up a couple of uniforms and speak to all these men again. I want to know which of them was working near Jamie Ward when he uncovered that body. Jamie says that one of them ran up to him when he shouted, but he can’t remember who. I’d like to find out.’

‘OK, I can do that.’

Murfin trudged away again, looking miserable. Fry seemed not to notice.

‘This woman is worrying me,’ she said to Cooper. ‘Not knowing anything about her is very frustrating. It means we can’t piece together any relationships she had, or formulate any theories about how she died. It’s possible she committed suicide, or died accidentally. And then somebody buried her.’

‘Deliberately?’ asked Cooper.

Fry laughed. ‘Is it possible to bury a person accidentally?’

‘On a farm? Well, yes. Somebody might be standing in the wrong spot and get in the way of a trailer load of silage, or the slurry hose. People get killed on farms all the time. But you’d generally know you’d done it. Even if you were looking the wrong way, or you didn’t hear them scream over the noise of your tractor engine, you’d soon notice they were missing. Well, wouldn’t you?’

Fry stared at the ground. ‘It might depend on who it was that got buried. Nobody seems to have noticed
this
woman missing, did they?’

Cooper nodded. ‘You know, despite what they say, I think everyone in Rakedale knows everyone else.’

‘Yes, I agree. At least it means there’s no need to spend our time looking for connections with the Suttons. An individual who
didn’t
have a connection would be the one to stand out.’

‘Which means they all have a potential connection to the victim, too. All of the people we’ve talked to could have visited Pity Wood Farm at some time.’

‘But we have a whole different set of people, too,’ said Fry. ‘These itinerant workers have been in and out of Pity Wood Farm for years, apparently. No one seems to know who
they
were.’

‘How do we go about tracing itinerant farmworkers?’

‘It depends on the quality of the records, Ben.’

‘Poor to non-existent, I would guess.’

‘They could have been illegals, then,’ said Fry. ‘Derbyshire has had its share of refugees over the last few years. Mostly from Bosnia, Croatia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia … There was a reception centre for Kosovans at Alfreton, wasn’t there?’

‘Yes, but the numbers are quite small. At least this isn’t East Anglia. We don’t have seventy thousand casual workers coming through every year to work in the horticultural industries. There’s nothing in this area that’s labour intensive enough to create a demand for large amounts of cheap labour at short notice.’

‘It sounds bad enough to me.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘Go to somewhere like King’s Lynn, and you’ll see the difference. According to a contact I have on the force there, their illegal immigrants run into thousands, sleeping in sheds and garages. They have to keep working to pay off the money they owe for a false passport and a trip to Britain. Organized crime is entrenched in the casual labour market. I don’t mean foreign students taking part in some seasonal agricultural workers scheme – those are pretty well regulated. I mean the poor bloody Chinese peasants trying to work to send money home to pay off their debts. It takes them years to work their way out of slavery.’

‘Slavery? That’s a bit strong.’

‘It’s exactly what it is, Diane. Gang masters are sometimes unscrupulous operators, but criminals have been moving in. Triad or Snakehead gangs. You see Chinese people standing outside a station with bundles of possessions. They’re very suspicious of police, too scared to report anything. Very few speak English, either – and while police are arranging an interpreter, they disappear.’

‘Can you talk to your friend and get some more information? It would be interesting to hear whether Norfolk have any intelligence about gangs operating in this area.’

‘Of course. I should have thought of that.’

‘It still gives us a lot of suspects,’ said Fry. ‘Too many.’

A weary voice broke in. Suddenly, DI Hitchens was standing behind them, mud ruining the casual look of his jeans.

‘Did I hear someone worrying about the potential number of suspects?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir. Why?’

Hitchens sighed. ‘Well, I don’t know if this makes it any better, or worse. But the digging teams have just found a second body.’

11

Another body tent was going up, right where Jamie Ward had pointed out the disturbed earth. Fry watched three PCs in high-vis jackets struggling with the fibreglass frame, giving each other conflicting instructions. A few yards away stood a yellow-and-white crime scene tent. It was twice the size, but it seemed to have gone up more easily – perhaps, she thought, because one woman had done it on her own.

‘This one is an older burial, I can tell you that,’ said Mrs van Doon, dusting off her gloves. ‘I bet you didn’t really need me for an opinion, did you? Complete skeletonization is evident. Dr Jamieson will have to watch out for disarticulation when he removes it from the soil. But his team know what they’re doing. This is not my pigeon, Inspector. I need some soft tissue. Preferably a few internal organs.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Hitchens.

‘Both of your victims were wrapped in heavy-duty plastic sheeting before they were buried,’ said Mrs van Doon. ‘It looks like the same material to me, despite the difference in the date of the burials. They were killed, bundled up in plastic, and buried.’

‘We can’t persuade you towards suicide then, Doctor?’ asked Hitchens.

The pathologist gave him a glacial look, but didn’t bother to reply.

Hitchens sighed. ‘Pity.’

The DI was beginning to look worn down. Fry suspected he was starting to reflect on whether his initial decisions had been the right ones. Maybe there should have been a bigger operation from the start, an assumption that they were dealing with murder.

Hitchens looked up and saw Wayne Abbott passing by with a Quickstep ladder over his shoulder and called him over.

‘We’re going to have to dig the rest of this place up,’ he said. ‘There might be more bodies.’

‘Dig it up? Do you know how long that would take?’

‘I think it will have to be done, Wayne.’

Abbott put his ladder down. ‘Ground-penetrating radar – that’s your answer. It’s not much use in woodland or on sloping ground, but we can try it here.’

‘Is it effective?’

‘All it does is use the electrical properties of the soil to identify disturbances in the ground. It’s a lot better than sticking a probe in. You need proper training to use those probes, really. If there
is
a body, and you go too deep, you can poke the end right in. It doesn’t please the pathologist, I can tell you. I heard of one probe injury that was identified at the PM as the entrance wound of a bullet.’

Fry looked around the farmyard – all those nooks and crannies, corners and gateways, paddocks and overgrown gardens.

‘Where would we start?’

Abbott consulted his watch, as if the time of day might make a difference, or perhaps he had something more important to do. Christmas presents to buy, the turkey to pick up.

‘We could mark out the site and look for depressions,’ he said.

‘Depressions,’ said Hitchens. ‘I think I might be getting one of those.’

‘You and me both,’ said Abbott. ‘Especially since you started talking about digging the whole place up. You do know it’s nearly Christmas?’

‘Why depressions, Wayne?’ asked Fry.

‘Look, a body takes up a major amount of space when it’s buried, so there’s nearly always surplus soil displaced around it. When the internal organs start to decompose, the soil above it sinks, creating a depression.’ He demonstrated with his hands. ‘Eventually, the entire area will sink as the soil settles. And here’s where the weather becomes an advantage. Depressions will collect water and form large pools when it rains.’

‘Look for the puddles, then?’

‘Essentially. I can’t promise you ground-penetrating radar until after Christmas, anyway.’ Abbott hefted the ladder back on his shoulder. ‘At least we can dig the place up without irate householders having fits about the damage to their garden. Do you remember that case we had in Dronfield? You’d think we’d just turned up to vandalize the woman’s property. And all she had was a few old rose bushes and a bit of lawn.’

‘Thanks for your help,’ said Hitchens.

‘I’d say it was a pleasure, but …’

Hitchens didn’t look any happier.

‘There’s no one here to object,’ he said to Fry. ‘That’s part of the problem.’

If Fry had thought it couldn’t get any worse, she’d have been wrong. What would normally have been the front door to the farmhouse was almost inaccessible through the muck and rubble in the yard. From a glance into the porch, Cooper thought it looked unlikely that the door would open, even if they could reach it. There was almost as much debris inside as there was outside.

‘What in God’s name happened here, Ben? Did somebody drive a herd of buffalo through, or what?’

‘Not the front door, Diane. Don’t you know that yet?’

Like many houses in these parts, the occupants of Pity Wood Farm must have come and gone mostly through the back door. Neighbours would know never to call at the front of the house, and the postman had his own routine. Only strangers and DEFRA officials would try to approach the front door. When you realized that, the obstacle course of foul-smelling rubbish might start to look like a message.

For a moment, Fry seemed determined to get in anyway, as if she couldn’t accept that things weren’t done in a logical way.

‘Hold your noses. It’s like entering a kind of hell,’ said Wayne Abbott as he passed a few yards away.

‘Why is he always around?’ said Fry.

‘It’s his job,’ pointed out Cooper.

‘It’s not his job to annoy me.’

They walked round the house and Cooper led her inside through the back door, passing the cleared rooms and entering the hallway.

‘They left everything. Look, they even left the family Bible on the hall table,’ said Cooper.

‘So one of them found God, do you think?’

‘It happens.’

‘It must have been Raymond. He sounds the type.’

‘Do you think there’s a type, Diane?’

‘Yes – those who show some signs of having a conscience in the first place. No, wait. There’s another type – the ones who’re already disturbed, hovering close to the edge. We see it all the time among convicted criminals. They get hold of some delusion that they interpret as a spiritual revelation, and suddenly they’re born again. They think they’re one of God’s chosen representatives on earth, redeemed from their sins for some special purpose that He has in mind for them. And, hey presto, they don’t have to feel guilty about their crimes any more.’

Cooper nodded, but reluctantly. He no longer went to church regularly himself, but he did at least feel guilty about not going. The way Fry talked about other people’s religious beliefs made him uncomfortable. The worst thing was that he couldn’t tell her how he felt, because he knew she’d take it as a sign of weakness.

‘Actually, there’s a third type, isn’t there?’ he said.

‘Oh, is there?’ Fry watched him expectantly.

‘There are those who
pretend
to have found religion, because they think it will help them get parole.’

‘Yes, it’s common enough. But it’s a tough act to keep up, especially when you get on the outside.’

‘I suppose so.’

Fry looked at the Bible, prominently displayed on the hall table. ‘I mean, if someone is genuinely religious, you’d expect to find some sign of it in their house, in private – not just for public show.’

She began to walk back towards the next room, and Cooper followed her. They moved cautiously about the house, looking for anything that resembled an office where the farm records might have been kept. But they ended up in the kitchen.

‘We might as well start here,’ said Cooper.

There were still no cats. Not even the signs of their food bowls or a litter tray. Wasn’t a cat the Celtic equivalent of the dog Cerberus, the guardian at the entrance to the Underworld? If this was a kind of hell, where were the guardians?

Cooper hoped the farm cats had taken themselves off into the woods and fields to find their own food. He didn’t like to think of them becoming roadkill. Their deaths would never be reported, if that was the case. Like the body in the excavated grave, they would never be missed, or even become a statistic.

He saw a
Daily Express
that lay folded on the kitchen table, gathering dust.

‘This newspaper is nearly nine months old.’

‘Is Winston Churchill still Prime Minister?’ asked Fry.

‘No, but someone’s landed on the Moon.’

They went through all the drawers they could find in the kitchen, the sitting room, and a small parlour. Eventually, their search turned up a large, leather-bound book like a ledger, and sheaves of paperwork left loose or stuffed into boxfiles. Cooper lifted out the book and freed it from the papers.

‘Farm accounts?’ asked Fry.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Bag everything, Ben, and make sure it’s all logged as evidence. We’ll look at it when we get back to the office.’

‘Fair enough.’

Cooper did as he was told, then continued to poke around in the kitchen cupboards, curious about what the Suttons might have left behind that gave an insight into their lives.

‘This is interesting, Diane.’

‘What have you found?’

‘A Sani Bag.’

‘A what?’

‘A sanitary-towel disposal bag. This one is from a Novotel. They provide them in their bathrooms for guests.’

Cooper turned the bag over in his hand. He’d never looked at one closely before. It was made of a strong, shiny white plastic, overprinted with blue text in four languages, and it could be sealed by peeling off an adhesive strip and folding down the flap, the way some envelopes were sealed. A set of symbols on the back made it clear that the bag should be disposed of in the bin, not in the toilet bowl. For some reason, these instructions were given in six languages, rather than four.

‘There’s a Novotel in Sheffield,’ he said. ‘On Arundel Gate, near Hallam University. That’s the nearest one I can think of.’

‘There’s another at Long Eaton, near Junction 25 of the M1.’

‘The M1? Well, that would be convenient, too. I suppose it’s the sort of thing you might take away with you from a hotel, like those little bars of soap, and hand towels.’

‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘But only if you’re female.’

‘So we’ve found evidence to suggest that at least one female was living at Pity Wood Farm. One of our victims, Diane?’

‘Impossible to say, until we have an ID.’

‘We need to get SOCOs into this kitchen,’ said Cooper. ‘If violence was committed, this is a likely place for it to have happened.’

‘Yes, I suppose we might hit lucky – old bloodstains on one of those knives, or in between the tiles of the floor.’

‘Or poisons in the fridge.’

Cooper opened the door of the Electrolux and let her have a glimpse of the jars with their unidentifiable crystallized residues.

‘Jesus. Did people really live in this house?’ said Fry. ‘Or did they just turn it over to the animals?’

‘If we can establish a primary crime scene, Diane, it would change everything.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll suggest it as a priority.’

Fry stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly on the spot, examining the kitchen – its stained walls, its old armchairs, its cast-iron range, and even the still dripping tap in the sink.

‘What do you think, Diane?’ asked Cooper.

‘To be honest, I think you must be Doctor Who, and you’ve just zipped us off to another place and time in your Tardis.’

‘I do know where there’s a police box,’ he said helpfully. ‘But it hasn’t moved for years, to my knowledge.’

‘Ben, I don’t recognize this world. These people are an alien species to me. I feel like an anthropologist examining the remains of a vanished civilization.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Fry stepped over a heap of muddy straw on the kitchen floor. ‘Actually, “civilization” is putting it a bit strong.’

She was trying to make a joke of it, but Fry really did feel out of her own place and time. The sensation was very disturbing, as if the time machine had left her travel sick and nauseous.

And she had the suspicion that it wasn’t the Suttons who were the aliens around here.

Just as she was thinking about aliens, Wayne Abbott put his head round the door. His shaved head bristled aggressively.

‘Oh, there you are,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering whether you’d knocked off and gone home. I thought you might like to know – there’s an extensive burnt area behind the poultry sheds. Do you want us to start sifting through it?’

‘How large an area?’ asked Fry.

‘Like the size of several bonfires. It could have been an entire building that went up, if it was made of wood. But there’s no sign of a concrete or brick base. I’d guess someone was burning rubbish, and used accelerant to make a good job of it. The ash is several inches deep in places.’

‘I suppose you’ll need more resources for that job?’

‘You bet.’

‘Contain it for now, and we’ll let you know.’

‘No problem. Oh, and the builders’ foreman is here. The Polish bloke. He says you wanted him.’

Nikolai Dudzik nodded cautiously, sensing from Fry’s manner that he was in a difficult position. Instead of his yellow hard hat, he was wearing a shapeless woollen cap, indicating that he was off duty.

‘Bones,’ he said. ‘A few bones, that was all.’

‘Yes, bones, Mr Dudzik.’

‘The skeleton of an animal, yes? It’s a farm, after all. There must have been lots of animals buried here, I think.’

‘So you got the men to fill the hole in again and cover it up?’

‘Yes.’

‘For God’s sake, why?’

Dudzik raised his hands apologetically.

‘I knew there would be a lot of fuss if we reported it, Sergeant. It would have delayed the job too much. We’re already behind schedule, you see. Because of the weather.’

‘The skeleton of an animal wouldn’t have delayed anything,’ said Fry. ‘You knew it was human.’

‘History,’ he said. ‘They send in the scientists. They don’t let you build for weeks, for months.’

‘You’re saying you thought the discovery would involve archaeologists coming here to dig up an ancient graveyard?’