Dying to Sin (4 page)

‘I’ll be OK.’

He didn’t sound very sure, but Fry let it pass. The sooner she finished with him, the better it would be. If he went into shock, he’d be useless.

Murfin had been right about Jamie Ward. He was younger than any of the other men she’d seen standing around the site, and he had an entirely different look about him. His hair was streaked blond, and was gelled up at the front – hardly the typical builder’s style. But he was a well-built lad, six feet tall at least, a good build for a rugby player. His hands were powerful and broad, just as suitable for hard physical work as for playing rugby.

‘I’m studying Microbiology at Sheffield University,’ said Jamie when she asked him. ‘But I need to find work whenever I can, you know – to get some dosh.’

‘You work as a builder’s labourer? That’s a bit of an unusual vacation job for a student,’ suggested Fry.

Jamie shrugged. ‘It suits me. It beats working in McDonald’s, anyway. I like to be outside in the open air, doing a bit of physical work. I’d go mad otherwise. I don’t have any skills or training, but I can use a spade and push a wheelbarrow about.’

‘And carry a hod full of bricks?’

‘We’re not allowed to use hods any more,’ said Jamie. ‘Health and Safety – you could do your back in, or drop bricks on someone’s head.’

‘Really?’

He nodded. ‘Besides, we’re not using bricks on this site. It’s going to be entirely stone on the outside, to match the original walls. Breeze block on the inside, of course.’ Jamie wiped off a few inches of condensation and looked at the figures moving about in the rain. ‘Funny, really, when there’s all this clay lying about. But stone is much more fashionable. That’s what the owner wants.’

Fry saw him relaxing a little, now that he had managed to get off the painful subject of the body he’d found.

‘So you like to be outside in the open air?’ she asked, thinking that Jamie Ward reminded her a little of Ben Cooper. ‘Are you from a farming family, by any chance?’

‘Well, I used to help my grandfather around his place when I was a teenager. Just at weekends and during the school holidays. He doesn’t have the farm any more, though – Granddad sold up when it stopped making money.’

‘Sensible man.’

‘Right. Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend my life doing the job that Granddad did. He was at it twenty-four seven. There was no let-up from looking after the animals. Livestock farming is for losers, don’t you think? Anyone with any sense is getting out as fast as they can.’

They both sat for a moment peering through the patch of cleared glass at the buildings of Pity Wood Farm, like divers examining a deep sea wreck.

‘I mean,’ said Jamie, ‘look at this place, for example.’

‘You’re right there.’

Ward glanced sideways at her. ‘But you want me to tell you what happened, don’t you? How I came to find the … well …’

‘I know you’ll have gone through it before, but it would help me if you could describe the incident in your own words, Jamie.’

‘The incident, yes. I suppose that’s what it was.’

‘Take your time. I’m not going anywhere for a while.’

‘Nik had me digging this trench, see. To put in some footings for a new wall, he said.’

‘And Nik is …?’

‘Nikolai. He’s the gaffer, the foreman. Polish, of course, but he’s OK. He leaves me pretty much to myself most of the time. I don’t get the best jobs, obviously – I’m just a labourer. In fact, they sometimes send me up to the village for cigarettes, if they run out. Anyway… I’d been digging this trench for a couple of days. It was hard work – that soil is so heavy, especially when it’s wet. You can see how wet it is.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen how wet it is,’ said Fry, becoming aware of the dampness soaking into her feet where the mud had overflowed her shoes.

‘And there’s all kinds of stuff in the ground here. You wouldn’t believe the rubbish I’ve turned up. Nothing that’d interest an archaeologist, but I’ve thought once or twice of asking the Time Team to come and give me a hand.’

There was silence for a moment as the full deadliness of his joke drifted through the van like a bad smell. Fry saw him go pale, and thought she was going to lose him.

‘Are you all right, Jamie?’

He gulped. ‘Yeah. Thanks. It was mentioning the hand. Not that I meant that hand, but … Shit, I’m not making any sense. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re doing just fine. You were telling me about the rubbish you had to dig out for the trench. What kind of thing do you mean?’

‘A lot of it was rusty lumps of metal, half-bricks, nails, broken buckets. It looked as though the farmers had used that area for a tip. I cursed Nik a few times, I can tell you. There were even some of those glass jars that people use for making pickles, with lids that have an airtight seal. Do you know what I mean?’

Jamie was making gestures with his hands to indicate the size of the containers he’d found.

‘Mason jars?’ said Fry.

‘That’s it. Oh, and an old, broken cross on a chain, some Coke bottles, and a packet of coffee filters. The things people chuck out. Why don’t they use their wheelie bins – some of that stuff ought to be recycled.’

‘Where did you put all these items you dug out of the trench?’

‘In a barrow, then they went into the big skip round the back of the house.’ Jamie paused. ‘Why are you asking questions about the rubbish?’

‘Because some of the items you dug out might have belonged to the victim,’ said Fry as gently as she could.

‘Oh, God. I never thought of that.’

‘An old, broken cross, you said.’

‘It was nothing. Just a cheap crucifix on a chain, with part of the base chipped away. A bit of worthless tat.’

‘You didn’t notice any personal items, did you?’

‘Such as?’

‘A purse, jewellery, coins,’ said Fry. ‘Items of clothing.’

An entire handbag would be nice, she was thinking. A driving licence, credit cards, a letter from an embittered ex-lover?

‘No, nothing like that,’ said Jamie.

‘I don’t know if anyone has mentioned that the body is that of a female, fairly young?’

Jamie swallowed again. ‘Well, some of the blokes have been listening in, you know. Word got around.’

‘I mention it because there might have been items you were unfamiliar with.’

Jamie shook his head. ‘Only the – what do you call them? Mason jars.’

So she might have been making pickles when she was buried, thought Fry. That helps. But she knew she was being unfair on the young labourer. Why should he have taken any notice of what he was tossing away in his wheelbarrow? It would be up to the SOCOs to go through the contents of the skip. Who was going to tell them about that job? Mrs Popularity, she supposed.

‘All right. Let’s move on. How far down had you dug before you noticed anything wrong?’

‘Nearly three feet. I was shifting a big lump of stone out of the clay. It was heavy, and I was thinking of calling one of the other blokes over to give me … I mean, to help me lift it. But they laugh at me if I ask for help, so I tried to manage on my own. I’d climbed down into the trench, and I managed to get both hands round the stone and hoist it up. I remember it came out with a sort of sucking sound, and it left a big, round impression in the clay where it had been lying. I must have stood there like an idiot for I don’t know how long, watching the water slowly fill in the hole where the stone had been. And there it was – the hand.’

Fry kept quiet. She could see that he was in the moment now, living the experience. This was the time he might remember the little details best.

‘I shouted then, I think,’ said Jamie. ‘And I dropped the stone, too – I’ve just remembered that, I dropped the stone. Somebody came running over straight away, one of the other blokes working nearby. They thought I’d hurt myself, of course. I could already hear Nik swearing in Polish and calling me an English cretin.’

Jamie finished with a laugh. ‘And he’s right – that’s what I am. What an idiot for making all this fuss.’

‘Not at all,’ said Fry. ‘You did exactly the right thing.’

Jamie didn’t look convinced. He rubbed his own hands together, as if trying to remove the mud he’d seen on the thing he’d uncovered.

‘So you could hear Nik cursing. Was it him who came running over when you shouted?’

‘No, someone else. Nik turned up a bit later. I can’t remember who it was who came first. I didn’t take any notice at the time.’

‘But it must have been somebody working nearby.’

‘Yes. Well, it must have been.’ Jamie shrugged apologetically. ‘But I don’t know who. It was a bit of a blank by then.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ve done really well, Jamie.’

‘You know what I’m thinking now?’ he said. ‘Thank God that woman’s hand was under that stone. If I’d been digging and hit it with my spade, I’d have sliced right through it. Well, I would, wouldn’t I?’

‘Possibly.’

He looked pleadingly at Fry. ‘I need to go outside now,’ he said. ‘Right now. I’m sorry. Tell everyone I’m sorry.’

Strips of plastic sheeting that had been ripped from passing lorries were snagged on barbed-wire fences and hawthorn branches. They streamed and fluttered in the wind like tattered pennants. No need for windsocks here. It was always obvious which direction the wind was blowing from.

Cooper had Peak FM on in the car and was listening to a series of tracks from seventies bands. UB40 and Dire Straits. A bit of Duran Duran even. Well, it was that or BBC local radio, where the playlists seemed to be regressing to the sixties, with more and more artists that he’d never heard of. The Beatles maybe, but most of it was stuff his parents must have listened to when they were children.

Pity Wood Farm, according to Control. He’d never heard of it, but he knew where Rakedale was – the southern edge of the limestone plateau, maybe even beyond the limestone, somewhere down past Monyash and Hartington. Much further south, and this body would have been D Division’s problem.

The peat moors were the brownish yellow of winter. An oddly shaped cloud was rearing over the hill, as if there had been a nuclear explosion somewhere near Buxton. Bare, twisted branches stood outlined against the skyline, gesturing hopelessly, as if they thought the spring would never come.

Cooper found Fry inside the outer cordon, shaking the rain from her jacket.

‘Diane – what do you want doing?’

‘We’re going to have to start on the house and outbuildings some time, but I don’t know where’s best to begin. Take a look around, will you? Give me your impressions. Perhaps you could start with that shed over there.’

‘Shed?’

‘That shed over there. The big one.’

‘No problem.’

Cooper watched her go. Impressions, was it? That wasn’t normally what she asked him for. Fry was usually hot on firm evidence. Maybe there was something about this place that bothered her. If so, she wasn’t likely to say it. She was putting that responsibility on to him – let DC Cooper come up with the impressions, the vague feelings, the gut instincts. Then she could always dismiss them, if necessary. Cooper’s contribution could be trampled underfoot, without any shadow on her own reputation.

Oh, well. Fair enough. It seemed to be his role in life since Diane Fry had become his DS. He either had to accept it, or find somewhere else.

When the police had finished with him, Jamie Ward looked around for a few minutes. There were a lot of cops here now, and some other people he took to be forensics. He could imagine the blokes in his crew blabbing to the police.
Yes, that’s
him over there. We call him the Professor
. But not all of them would be eager to talk to the authorities, he bet. A few of them would make out they didn’t speak any English at all.

Nikolai was standing over by the house, talking to a bunch of the men. He was speaking quietly in Polish, almost whispering, though it was unlikely anyone would understand him, except his own lads. Jamie frowned, and counted them again. Seven. He looked around, wondering if he could be mistaken. But no. There were seven, plus Nikolai. Two men short.

He sighed, foreseeing more complications, and more trouble. Jamie recalled that faint glint of metal, slick with the dampness of clay, reflecting a glimmer of light and the movement of his spade. He remembered the impression he’d had, the thing that had made him stop digging, his spade frozen in his hands as he stared down into the hole. For a second, that flicker of light had looked like an eye – an eye that had turned to watch him from its muddy grave. He thought he would probably still be able to see that eye in his dreams tonight.

3

It was more than just a shed. When you got right up to it, the building that Fry had pointed out was more like a vast, corrugated-iron tunnel. When Cooper walked into it, he felt as though he was entering a cathedral, with airy space all around him and light filtering down from the roof, shafts of it striking through cracks in the iron sheeting. Water dripped somewhere ahead of him, and the sides gleamed with patches of damp as he moved.

Many of the older farms in this area still used wartime Nissen huts for storage, relying on the fact that they were built to last a long time and took many years before they finally collapsed from age and neglect. But this thing was bigger than any Nissen hut Cooper had ever seen. A hundred feet long at least, with central posts holding up the ridge of the arc high above him. The structure was open to the elements at both ends, but the middle was dry and sheltered.

Inside, he found two tractors parked on a concrete base alongside a pick-up truck. More vehicles stood outside – a lorry fitted with a winch, an old Escort with a pig trailer attached to the tow bar. The equipment stored in here included an interesting yard scraper made from twenty-four-inch tractor tyre sections. Matt would love that. Cheap, but effective.

Heaps of old tyres lay around the yard, and the vehicles were overshadowed by a huge fortress of silage bags. At first glance, the bags looked like plastic boulders painted black, with strips of loose wrapping stirring in the breeze. Cooper pictured them in summer, with bumble bees buzzing around the stack, attracted by the sweet smell of the silage. But a shiver of cold air reminded him that it was December, and the silage shouldn’t still be standing here, untouched.

Outside, the sides and roof of the shed were starting to turn from their original yellow to rust red. The branches of a hawthorn tree scratched restlessly against the sides – the only sign of life in the abandoned farmyard.

Behind the farmhouse stood a typical skeleton of an open Dutch-style barn, its timbers supporting only a few tatters of roof. He could see that the ridge of the house sagged in a couple of places, and the windows at the back were hung with dusty curtains. A grimy caravan stood in what might once have been the garden. Ancient bales of hay were visible through a ragged hole in the wall of a stone byre.

Another range of old stone buildings was practically in ruins. Cooper found himself inhaling whiffs of a powerful smell here and there as he moved around. A hint of ammonia suggested the presence of a number of cats. Farm cats, that lived outside and prowled the barns and sheds for rodents, doing a job of work.

Beyond the Dutch barn, a few yards down the slope, he found a series of dilapidated poultry sheds. They weren’t all that old, but had never been maintained properly. He peered through a dusty window, expecting rows and rows of battery cages. But there were none to be seen. So the sheds must have been deep-littered with straw for the birds, unless the cages had been removed.

Cooper was already starting to find this place depressing. Parts of Bridge End Farm might be deteriorating because there was no money for maintenance and repairs. But Bridge End was a model of modernity, compared to Pity Wood.

He turned his attention to the house itself. Limestone, with those distinctive gritstone corners called quoins. Some of the walls had been rendered with cement to combat the effects of the weather. But, judging from the scabrous patches where the render had flaked off, the weather was winning. In fact, it had been winning for some time. This farmhouse had thrown in the towel.

If there were any answers to how the body had ended up in that shallow grave a few yards away, they would most likely be found inside the house. Cooper enquired who’d taken possession of the keys, and he eased open the back door.

In the hallway, the first thing he saw was a huge, black family Bible, laid out on a table like a warning.

Fry knew she had to get control of the scene and protect any forensic evidence – though what kind of evidence might have survived the slow decay and partial demolition of Pity Wood Farm she couldn’t imagine.

These were the critical hours. If any evidence did turn up, she had to be able to demonstrate chain of custody. It was so important to look ahead to the possibility of a trial some time in the future. If the prosecution didn’t have chain of custody, it presented a gift to the defence. No matter what happened between now and that hypothetical date, her present actions could cast doubt on an entire investigation or provide it with a solid foundation.

The SOCOs had a rule of thumb. If an item of potential evidence was vulnerable, if everyone was going to walk over it on the way in and out of the scene, it should be removed or protected. If it was out of the way, it could be left in place. There could be evidence that had already been walked over several times on the way in and out.

So those builders had to be kept clear, to minimize any contamination to that they’d already caused. The digging operations had to be done in a controlled manner – someone would have to keep an eye on the diggers and stop them wandering around the farm.

And those vehicles parked up on the muddy track and in the entrance to the yard … well, it was already too late, probably. No matter what action she took now, there was no way she could turn back time.

‘Sutton,’ said Murfin breathlessly, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Sutton.’

‘What?’

‘The previous owners of the farm. Name of Sutton. Raymond is the brother now residing in a care home back in town – we don’t know which yet, but we’ll find out. He’s quite elderly, in his late seventies, we think. There was a younger brother, Derek, who died about a year ago.’

‘Not bad, Gavin.’

‘Thanks. Unfortunately, we can’t find any sign of anyone else in the household at that time, other than the two brothers. We’ve checked the electoral register, and they were the only two adults listed.’

‘So no women?’

‘No women,’ said Murfin. ‘Just peace and quiet.’

Inside the farmhouse, Cooper found the rooms to be a strange mixture of conversion and preservation. Passing from one room to another for the first time was an unpredictable experience. Some spaces were littered with building materials and tools left behind by Jamie Ward’s workmates. Sacks of sand and cement, piles of breeze block, buckets, a ladder, a couple of steel toolboxes. These rooms had been stripped of their original contents – all dumped in the yellow skip he’d seen outside the back door, presumably – and they’d been transformed into building sites instead.

Other rooms, though, had yet to be touched by anyone. Those still contained evidence of the farm’s occupants and their day-today existence – two pairs of wellington boots by the back door, a smelly overcoat still hanging in a cupboard under the stairs.

Upstairs, there were three bedrooms. It was difficult to tell which of them had been occupied most recently, since they were all equally full of junk and old clothes. The middle bedroom overlooked the yard, and it seemed darker and colder than the other two. If Cooper had been choosing a bedroom, it would have been any one but this.

The kitchen seemed to be the part of the house that was most intact. A black, cast-iron cooking range dominated one end of the room, and near it a tap still dripped in a Belfast sink, as if someone had only just failed to turn it off properly. All the furniture was still here, too – a large pine table with scarred and blackened legs, two ancient armchairs, a dresser filled with plates and cutlery.

In the corner and along the back wall, Cooper unearthed a number of less identifiable objects. He counted a dozen cardboard boxes, some standing on top of each other, the bottom one crumpling slightly under the weight. There was a heap of clothes on a chair near the cooking range and more coats and overalls hung behind the outer door. It was a
Marie Celeste
of a kitchen, frozen in time, preserved in the moment that the owners had finally walked out one day.

Even the fridge was still here, an old Electrolux with a split rubber seal. But that wasn’t still working, surely? Cooper opened the door, and was surprised to see the interior light come on, and feel a draught of cold air on his face. But then he saw why it was switched on. The builders had been keeping their milk in it, ready for their tea breaks. Their carton of semi-skimmed sat among some less reassuring items – jars without labels, tins that had been opened and left to grow mould, as if someone had been trying to culture penicillin. The contents of the nearest jar had crystallized and lay on the bottom, defying him to figure out what they’d originally been.

The smell was disturbing, and Cooper shut the door again quickly. The fridge responded by breaking into an unsteady hum, rattling slightly on the tiled floor.

As he moved around the house, Cooper felt the skin on the back of his neck begin to crawl. The surroundings were innocuous enough, if depressing. But the atmosphere was really bad. His instincts were telling him that something awful had happened here at Pity Wood Farm. Painful memories had imprinted themselves into the walls, the aftershock of some traumatic event still shuddered in the air.

Cooper shivered, and tried to put the sensation aside. It was the sort of feeling that he couldn’t mention, particularly to Diane Fry. He’d been accused of being over-imaginative too often to risk the put-down. Evidence was all that anyone was interested in, and he had none of that.

He might describe his feeling to Liz when he saw her – she would understand what he meant. Cooper glanced at his watch. Hopefully that might be tonight, if he was lucky. The sense of urgency that pervaded most major crime scenes was missing from Pity Wood – presumably because the body was judged to be too old. The twenty-four-hour rule didn’t apply here. Vital evidence that could disappear in the first day or so after a murder was long gone in this case. Anything that was left would be preserved down there, in the mud with the body – or here, inside the house. Better to take it slow and carefully, so that nothing remaining was missed.

That’s what he’d be thinking if he was SIO, anyway. Not that he was ever likely to reach that position – you needed to be promoted at regular intervals to achieve it. He’d probably slipped too far behind already when he failed to get his promotion to DS. He was thirty, after all, and there would be eager young officers overtaking him before he knew it. Just the way it had happened to Gavin Murfin, and many others.

Cooper looked through the kitchen window and saw DI Hitchens standing in the yard with the crime scene manager, Wayne Abbott. Right now, Abbott was doing the talking, and the DI was nodding wisely. He did that pretty well, the nodding bit. From a distance, he looked intelligent and in control, a man who knew exactly what the plan was. Cooper knew he could never look that way himself, whether from a distance or close up. He’d always just look like a confused DC who was having uneasy feelings that he couldn’t explain. Fry had told him that often enough.
Keep your mouth firmly shut, Ben – that’s
the best way. Don’t give them an excuse to laugh
at you
.

He heard a noise behind him, a faint crunch of cement dust underfoot. He turned to find Diane Fry standing in the doorway, her usual silent approach thwarted by a layer of builders’ debris. Her gaze roamed around the room, taking in the furniture and the yellowed walls. Cooper tried to think of something intelligent he could say to her, a few words that would make it look as though he’d been gathering useful evidence, rather than dwelling on eerie atmospheres.

‘Jesus,’ said Fry, before he could speak. ‘Don’t you feel as though something horrible happened in here?’

* * *

In the more distant outbuildings, there had been that powerful smell of cat urine. Yet Cooper had seen no sign of any cats as he walked round the property. He wondered what had happened to them when the Suttons left. Dispersed, like everything else, he supposed.

But everything hadn’t been dispersed, had it? Far from it, in fact. There was all that machinery and equipment in the big shed, the silage bags, the hay, and the vehicles parked in the yard.

‘You know, it would be normal practice to have a farm sale in these circumstances,’ said Cooper as they went back outside.

‘A what?’ asked Fry.

‘A farm sale. I don’t mean the sale of the buildings themselves. Before it got to that stage, they would usually sell off all the equipment – the tractors and trailers, tools, field gates, spare fencing posts. There are buyers for most things. They could probably sell the silage and the tyres, too, maybe even this shed itself. But they should have done that before the house and land were put on the market, so there was a tidy site for buyers to look at. I can’t understand why all this stuff is still standing here. It doesn’t make sense.’

Fry shrugged. ‘Perhaps they’re planning to do it later. There’s no law against it.’

‘I’ll enquire at the local auctioneers, Pilkington’s – they’d almost certainly be the people called in for a job like that.’ Cooper shook his head. ‘But it’s really bad planning to do it this way round. They should have cleared everything out first.’

Murfin stuck his head round a corner. ‘Oh, there you are. Mr Hitchens wants everyone out front for a confab.’

‘We’re coming.’

DI Hitchens was Fry’s immediate boss, the man whose job she might have to get if she planned to stay in Derbyshire E Division. But the thought of staying here wasn’t part of her future plans, and places like Pity Wood Farm only confirmed her view. There were times when she longed for the city, or even for the peculiar urban fusion that was the Black Country where she’d grown up.

Hitchens looked calm and unruffled, allowing the rain to fall on his head without flinching. As he waited for the officers to gather round him at the RV point, he wiped some moisture from his face, flashing the white scar that crawled across the middle knuckles of his fingers.

‘Well, as some of you already know,’ he said, ‘this body has been in the ground for a year or more.’