Dying to Sin (21 page)

‘It could only have been one murder,’ said Cooper reasonably. ‘The second victim died three years after Mr Palfreyman retired.’

‘True. But the principle is the same.’

‘You really think he might have known all about what went on at Pity Wood Farm, and covered up for the Suttons?’

‘Why not? “I called and had a few words. It never happened again.”’

Cooper shook his head. ‘I can’t see it. Granted, Palfreyman has his own ideas about justice, like so many of the old coppers did. But he wouldn’t cover up a murder, let alone two. That couldn’t be considered justice, not in anyone’s book. Could it?’

‘Well, actually, it might depend,’ said Fry, ‘on who those women were.’

‘Might it?’

Cooper considered that idea, and gradually realized what she was hinting at. There was one category of women who were considered not only dispensable, but sometimes undesirable.

‘Do you mean street girls?’ he said.

‘“Street girls” isn’t really a suitable euphemism out here,’ pointed out Fry. ‘Shall we call them sex workers?’

‘Prostitutes, if you like. But where would they do business?’

‘Wherever there are numbers of men with nothing much else to do.’

Cooper pictured Pity Wood Farm. ‘Targeting itinerant farmworkers, for example?’

‘Who else?’

At first, he thought it was a rhetorical question. But the tone had been wrong, and Fry seemed to be waiting for an answer.

‘Yes, who else?’ said Cooper, regarding her curiously.

‘All right. I was thinking about old-fashioned police officers who operate under their own discretion and run their own patch, with no questions asked.’

‘That old thing?’ said Tom Farnham. ‘Who would want that? It’s just an old skull. Some damn superstition of Derek Sutton’s. Mad bugger, he was.’

Farnham fidgeted with the spray can he’d been using to touch up a dent on the lawnmower. Its repair was nearly complete now. Its working parts gleamed with oil, and its paintwork had been cleaned and polished.

‘But you do have it, sir?’

Farnham sighed. ‘Don’t you need a warrant or something?’

‘Only if you don’t agree to help us. But why would you want to prevent us seeing this skull if it’s worthless?’

‘Why indeed? Screaming Billy, that’s what the old fool called it. Supposed to protect the farm from bad luck, or something. Raymond didn’t see eye to eye with him on that, not at all. He wanted it out of the house when the place was sold. Said he wouldn’t curse the new owners with it. Raymond, he didn’t care about anything else – he was glad to get shut of the place in the end. It was just that skull he had a bee in his bonnet about. He rang and asked me to get rid of it before the new bloke took over the farm. So I did him a favour, see? For old times’ sake, and all that.’

‘Very loyal of you, sir. And it’s still here?’

‘Yes, it’s still here.’

Farnham moved across to his work bench and took a key from his pocket. He unlocked a cupboard under the bench and withdrew a cardboard box packed with old newspaper. In the middle of the newspaper, something smooth and yellow nestled.

Cooper took the box from him and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He carefully lifted the skull free and placed it in a plastic evidence bag. The bone was faintly yellow, like paper that had been left in the sun.

‘You couldn’t sell it, then?’ said Fry.

‘What?’

‘That’s what you were hoping for, I imagine.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Raymond couldn’t have cared less. He just wanted it out of Pity Wood. He’s never mentioned it to me since, so why shouldn’t I sell it? I got nothing out of all the time I spent working with the Suttons, you know. Look at me, I’m broke. I try to make a living repairing other folks’ lawnmowers. A few quid would have helped me out a bit.’

‘But you had no luck?’

‘There were a few collectors interested. But it’s not good enough quality, they said. Too damaged.’

‘Damaged?’

‘A bit of bashing about. Look, at the back there. But that’s to be expected, when it’s so old. I mean, it had been in the farmhouse for, I don’t know – centuries, I suppose.’

‘Are you sure of that, sir?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Can you tell whether this is an old skull, or a more recent one?’

‘More recent one?’

Farnham stared at her, then snorted and began shaking his head vigorously. ‘Oh, no. You’re not going to pin something like that on me. You’re trying to tie me in with those bodies you found at the farm, aren’t you?’

Cooper tensed. The fact that the head had been removed from one of the bodies had not been released to the media, so Farnham shouldn’t know that. But had he really made an admission? Or was he just putting two and two together, and making a clever guess?

‘You’ve confirmed that you were working at the farm during the relevant period,’ said Fry. ‘You must have known who else was working there. If you want to help us, you should suggest some names. That would be your most sensible move, Mr Farnham.’

He looked at the skull Cooper was holding in its new evidence bag. Several teeth were missing from the jaw, and the skull grinned horribly, as if at some private joke of its own.

‘You know, they were mostly workers who came for a few weeks or a few days, then moved on. You can’t expect me to remember their names. I hardly got the chance to know some of them to speak to.’

‘So where did these individuals come from?’

‘They were contracted in. See, that was the way it was at Pity Wood in those days. We didn’t employ any workers ourselves. We had a contract for labour, and when we asked for them, they turned up. Sometimes we wanted people on a regular basis, but other times we just needed a gang in for a few days. It depended on what we were doing. It changed every year at Pity Wood. Every season.’ He looked at Cooper. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

‘All your failed enterprises,’ said Cooper. ‘None of them lasted more than a year or two.’

‘Yes. Well, like I said, it wasn’t my fault they failed. Times were difficult. We had a lot of bad luck.’

‘We’ll need to know who sub-contracted your labour. Who was the gang master?’

‘Look, do I have to?’ said Farnham. ‘I want to help, really I do. But dumping on someone else is not good.’

‘Well, we could arrest you, Mr Farnham, and take you into custody in Edendale. And then we could search your house, as well as taking your fingerprints and your DNA. And we’ll see what that ties you to.’

Farnham groaned. ‘His name was Rourke.’

‘Rourke?’

‘Martin Rourke, yes. He was the man, you know – the fixer.’

‘Is he local?’

‘No, not him. I think he lived in Chesterfield at that time, but he was Irish. I haven’t seen him around for a year or so. I can give you the phone number we used for him, if it’s any help.’

‘Yes, please. And what about the women, sir?’

‘Women?’ said Farnham. ‘Which women do you mean?’

‘Which women? Were there a lot of them?’

Farnham began to look shifty again. For a few minutes, he’d been telling the truth, but now his eyes were roving around the workshop, his hand went to cover his mouth, as if to keep the words from escaping.

‘Well, there isn’t much entertainment out here, you know. Just the pub in Rakedale, which doesn’t satisfy all of a man’s needs, if you know what I mean. And a lot of the blokes didn’t want to go to the pub anyway. If they were dossing on the farm for a week or two, they needed something to keep them happy.’

‘So women came to the farm?’

‘Now and then.’

‘Now and then? What does that mean? Once a week, once a month? A special treat on someone’s birthday? What?’

‘Most weekends, I suppose. But only in those seasons, you know – when there were gangs on the farm to get the harvest in, or to get an order out. You want to talk to Rourke – he was the one who organized it all. He always seemed to have the right sort of contacts.’

‘Are you sure you don’t know where Mr Rourke is now?’

‘Nah. He could be anywhere. He might be working in agriculture, or the building trade. Rourke was the sort who could turn his hand to anything, I reckon. Always good at talking himself up, you know? He might have gone back to Ireland, of course. They say there’s a lot of jobs over there now. No need for the paddies to come to England for work any more.’

‘The Celtic Tiger.’

Farnham rallied enough to make a joke. ‘Yes, I suppose you might call him that.’

Fry never responded to interviewees who tried to be funny or make light of the subject. She regarded Farnham sourly until he stopped smiling.

‘We suspect that Pity Wood Farm was being used for some kind of illegal activity, Mr Farnham,’ she said. ‘We think this was happening during your period there as a partner or farm manager, whatever you want to call yourself.’

‘If anything was happening, you can’t prove I was involved.’

‘The circumstances look very suspicious.’

‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you to your speculation. I congratulate you on your imagination, Sergeant. But I don’t have much time for flights of fancy myself.’

‘The evidence is there at Pity Wood, Mr Farnham. Once we have a tight enough case against you, we’ll be back.’

‘Look, I’m not so stupid that I’d leave evidence lying around, if I’d committed a crime, now, am I? So if there
was
evidence left lying around, that proves that I didn’t do it, right? That is clearly the action of somebody with much less ability for planning ahead and foreseeing all eventualities than I am. So it’s psychologically wrong, don’t you see?’

‘Mr Farnham, we only deal with the facts, not with psychological theories.’

‘OK, you do that. You won’t find any evidence that connects to me. It just isn’t possible.’

Fry was frowning as they left Farnham’s house. Within a mile or two, her frown had turned to an expression of outrage, and she turned on Cooper.

‘Imagination?’ she said. ‘Imagination?
Moi?
’

‘So how do we go about finding Martin Rourke?’ asked Cooper.

‘Check the PNC and pray for an accurate address?’

Cooper ran the check when they got back to the office. The PNC could give him convictions, distinguishing marks, place of birth. But that wasn’t enough. He logged into the criminal intelligence system and looked for aliases, changes of address or known associates. No sign of Martin Rourke.

That left only one option. He put a call in to liaison and got a contact for the Garda Síochána in Dublin. Oh, yes, said the officer. They’d do everything in their power to help their colleagues in Derbyshire locate Mr Martin Rourke.

Cooper thanked him, and rang off. Oh, yes? Well, it would take the luck of the Irish.

20

That afternoon, the yellow skull recovered from Tom Farnham’s garage was packed up and sent off to Sheffield University for the anthropology team to examine. Dr Jamieson would report on its provenance, in due course. But this was Saturday, so Fry knew she couldn’t expect any results for a few days.

She looked across the CID room, where Cooper was at his desk.

‘You know, this is a case that
has
to be all about the victims,’ she said.

‘Isn’t every case about the victims, Diane?’

‘Of course,’ said Fry, waving a hand impatiently. ‘But, in this instance, the identity of the victims is crucial. We not only have to find out who they were, but how they were connected to each other – and we need to do both of those things before we can even begin to focus on any suspects. How did these women come to be at Pity Wood Farm? If we can start to build up a picture of them, Ben, we’re halfway there. Damn it, if we can do that, we’re almost
all
the way there.’

Cooper looked thoughtful. It was the one thing Fry could say about him – he always listened and considered what she said, even if he then went off and did something entirely different.

‘In a way, it feels as though there ought to be a third victim,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘A third victim. One who came in between these two, perhaps. I don’t know. But a victim that would fill in the gaps and make the connection. The ones we’ve found might not be Victims A and B at all, but A and C. It could be the absence of the real Victim B that’s making them look as though they’re not part of a sequence.’

‘Explain yourself, Ben.’

Cooper got up and began to pace in frustration, as if he was struggling to articulate in plain words some nagging but elusive idea that had been slithering at the back of his mind.

‘What I mean is, there might have been a third person who had connections to these other two. If there was a middle victim, the pieces could fall together. At the moment, it’s like there’s a black hole, a missing section where all the links have been broken.’

‘But there isn’t a third victim.’

‘Not that we’ve found, Diane.’

Fry thought of the excavated farmyard. ‘Well, not at Pity Wood. There isn’t a third victim
there
. We’d have found her by now, Ben.’

‘Has anyone checked that old caravan?’

‘The search team gave it an initial sweep. The SOCOs haven’t got round to it yet, but there’s certainly no body in it, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not even any personal possessions that might lead to an ID.’

‘No, but there might be some trace evidence,’ said Cooper. ‘It was almost certainly being used to house itinerant workers.’

‘I’ll suggest making it a higher priority. OK?’

But Cooper continued to pace, unsatisfied. ‘These victims didn’t go missing at the same time,’ he said. ‘There’d have been a major enquiry, if there had been three. We’d still be looking for them now. There must be a connection between them, though.’

‘I repeat, we haven’t found three bodies. It sounds ridiculous to say “only” two, but …’

‘But you’re right. We need to look more closely. Extend the area of search. You know, I was thinking about the Fred and Rosemary West case. Those girls who were offered cheap accommodation in the Wests’ house, and never left. If I remember right, not all the bodies were found at the house. There was a second burial site, at some property connected with the Wests.’

‘I remember. Any ideas, then?’

Cooper sat down, looking suddenly tired. ‘Well, I’ll need to go through the files again, Diane.’

‘Do that. If there
is
a third victim, she might be the one who makes the connection with all the others.’

‘It’s another Catch-22. We need to make the connections first to find her. And we need to find her to make the connections.’

Mentioning it to no one, least of all Ben Cooper, Fry took half an hour to visit Edendale Museum for herself. She had to show her warrant card to get admission, because the museum was closing for the night.

‘The hand of glory, Sergeant?’ said the attendant. ‘One of our most popular exhibits. The kids love it. Little ghouls, most of them.’

‘Is this a real human hand?’

‘Certainly, certainly. I’ll show you.’

Fry followed the attendant to the display case. So Cooper thought she would never have heard of such a thing as a hand of glory, did he? Well, there he was wrong, for once. She was from the Black Country, and the area had its own mummified hand of glory, so called. That one had been taken from inside the chimney of a pub when it was being renovated. The White Hart at Caldmore Green.

Everyone knew the White Hart in the Black Country. Back in the sixties, the A34 Murderer had been caught because he was overheard asking a victim the way to ‘Karma Green’. Until then, police had thought he was a Brummie, from the neighbouring city of Birmingham. But only Black Country folk pronounced Caldmore as ‘Karma’. A killer’s origins had given him away.

Once, Fry had seen the object itself in Walsall Museum, above the central library on Lichfield Street. It had been just one artefact among the scold’s bridles and Second World War gas masks, a historic collection of iron locks, and some gaucho spurs and stirrups. She’d heard that the museum had taken it off public display at one time because it was frightening the children too much, but you could still see it if you asked. It had become a sort of under-the-counter hand of glory.

‘This is one of Edendale Museum’s most popular exhibits,’ said the attendant. ‘Well, one of the most viewed, anyway. Not everyone approves of it.’

‘A bit controversial, is it?’

‘Let’s say the reactions to it vary considerably. There are many people who refuse to believe that it’s actually a real hand. Even when we explain the whole thing to them, they still don’t believe us. They go away thinking it’s a plastic reproduction, which it isn’t.’

Of course, the White Hart at Caldmore Green had a ghost or two of its own. There had allegedly been a death in the attic where the ‘hand’ was found, the suicide of a servant girl. A previous landlord had reported hearing sobs coming from the attic room, and an investigation found nothing but the mysterious handprint of a child in the dust.

Whether the White Hart hand of glory had ever belonged to the servant girl was doubtful, though. Fry had seen it just as she was beginning her training to join the police and had already started her course at UCE in Perry Barr. Even if she hadn’t already picked up a smattering of medical knowledge, it would have been obvious to her that the object in the museum was actually the severed arm of a small child, torn off right up to the scapula, then pickled in formalin.

Despite the story that had become attached to it, she was pretty sure that Walsall Museum’s hand of glory was more likely to be a medical specimen from the mid-nineteenth century. If that was supposed to be a magical item used to aid burglaries, there must have been some malefactors being badly misled by their hand-of-glory supplier. How or why a medical specimen had come to be concealed in the chimney of a pub, no one was saying. Everyone preferred the stories of ghosts and magic, obviously.

‘
By the mysteries of the deep, by the flames of
Baal, by the power of the East and the silence of
the night, by the Holy Rites of Hecate, I conjure
and exorcise thee
.’

‘Sorry?’

He pointed at a printed card inside the case. ‘It’s the spell you’re supposed to use with the hand of glory. If you do it right, it not only protects you, but provides light that only you can see. Naturally, it was used mostly for nefarious purposes. Anything useful always is, don’t you find?’

The phenomenon of general credulity on the subject baffled Fry. Fair enough, if there was something genuinely mysterious and unexplained, you might be forgiven for letting loose the imagination and coming up with your own interpretation. But when the scientific facts were staring them in the face, how could people ignore them and believe instead in something that flew in the face of the evidence? Some would believe that the world was flat, or that the Earth circled the Moon, just because they wanted to believe it. Others had faith in the magical powers of a pickled hand or a severed head.

Good luck to them. But if she found them putting their crazy ideas into practice, she’d be obliged to lock them up. Prison or high-security psychiatric hospital, she didn’t really mind. So long as colleagues like Ben Cooper didn’t get in her way with some well-meaning rubbish about cultural identity.

But here, in Edendale, was a genuine hand of glory.

‘The only other one that we know of is in the museum at Whitby,’ said the attendant.

‘Obtaining a human hand under the proper circumstances could prove to be quite difficult in this day and age,’ said Fry.

‘I expect so. But …’

‘What?’

‘Well, there are ways and means, aren’t there? You can find people willing to do anything, for the right price.’

DCI Kessen was standing near the back of the CID room when Fry returned. Before she could get her coat off, his voice stopped her.

‘Ah, DS Fry. Do we have any possibilities yet from the missing persons reports?’

Not knowing what else to do, Fry looked down at her desk. A misper report sat right there, left for her by someone while she was out.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let’s have it, DS Fry.’

Fry picked up the report and read it for the first time. ‘This is a local woman who was reported missing four years ago. She’s five foot seven, twenty-four years old, reddish hair.’

‘Red hair? Is that a match?’

‘The older body is missing a head.’

‘So it is.’

‘But it’s the closest we’ve got at the moment, sir.’

‘Who made the report?’ asked Kessen.

‘A sister.’

‘Is it possible she would still have some of the missing woman’s possessions?’

‘Something that would retain a print, you mean?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Fry.

‘Well, ask her.’

Fry sat down and picked up the phone.

‘Hold on, we have a miracle,’ said Hitchens. ‘The mobile unit in Rakedale has had success. A member of the public came in with some information. We’ve even got a name. Jack Elder.’

Fry put the phone down again. ‘Shall we go and pick him up?’ she said eagerly.

‘If you like. He lives in a bungalow on Field Lane, Rakedale. But word is that he’s been seen going into the village pub, and he hasn’t come out yet.’

‘Who’s the informant, sir?’

‘Mr Alex Brindley, of Shaw Farm.’

Cooper looked at Fry as they went out. ‘Mr Brindley? Is he a reliable witness?’

‘Yes. Well,
I
believed him – which is more than I can say for anyone else I’ve spoken to in Rakedale.’

The atmosphere in the Dog Inn had turned several degrees cooler, if that was possible. Nothing to do with the weather, but with the sudden ceasing of conversation and the hostile stares of the customers. Cooper looked around the bar, but saw only tense faces and deliberately turned backs. The sheepdog looked mournfully up at him from its place under the table, but didn’t make a move.

‘We’re looking for Mr Jack Elder,’ announced Fry into the silence. ‘Is he here?’

Watching the reactions of the customers carefully, Cooper worked out which person they were all avoiding looking at. A man with a long, grey beard and wearing a green sweater was sitting near the dartboard, pretending to straighten the flights on a set of darts. Even from here, Cooper could see that the flights were plastic ones, which didn’t need much straightening. He walked across the bar and stood in front of the table.

‘Mr Elder?’

The man pulled an irritated expression and placed a finger against the point of one of his darts.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Police. I’m Detective Constable Cooper. This is Detective Sergeant Fry.’

Cooper produced his warrant card, but the man didn’t look at it.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir.’

He felt the silence in the bar shifting somehow. A shuffle of feet, the tap of a glass being drunk from and replaced on a table. Then someone sniggered.

‘Go on, slap the cuffs on him. He’s the one that done it, Inspector.’

There were equal amounts of curses and laughter. Elder glared along the room, but he seemed to sense that the fleeting solidarity of his drinking companions had already started to dissipate.

‘Piss off!’ he snarled at someone Cooper couldn’t see.

‘Mr Elder, perhaps we could go somewhere else for a talk.’

Elder dropped the darts on the table with a clatter, and made a great show of standing up very slowly, putting as much bravado as he could into retrieving his coat and zipping it up.

‘Where’s my hat?’ he said. ‘Has one of you buggers pinched my hat?’

There were more sniggers. But Elder’s hat was clearly visible on the settle behind him. Cooper waited patiently, glad that Fry had had the sense to stay in the background for once. Since the Dog Inn’s toilets were reached only through a winding series of stone passages, Elder didn’t have much chance of making a bolt for it through the back door.

‘All right, I’m ready.’

Elder paused in the doorway, seeming to feel that he wasn’t making as good a show as he’d like to have done in front of the other regulars. He opened the door and let a squall of rain in from outside.

‘I’m going out now,’ he said. ‘And I may be some time.’

He tried a chuckle as he looked around at his friends. But the sound died in his throat as he saw that no one else was laughing. Not even the dog.