Dying to Sin. Stephen Booth
traipsing all over the shop. A load of rammel in the sheds, I don’t know what …
Words and phrases repeated in his head, meaningless yet desperately important, the only thing that mattered.
For he that is dead. For he that is dead.
Aye, it were silin’ down again. That morning, he was fast on, so I didn’t waken him. He’d only be lorping around the house, the old dosser. Yammering about his mad ideas. Sacrilege and superstition, damnation and desecration.
The night before, they’d all been popped-up again. I thought I’d go scranny if they didn’t stop. Look, he’s a wick ’un, I said. I told you he was a wick ’un.
The old man opened his eyes for a moment, aware of movement and light, but sank back into sleep before his brain could focus.
But he was sickly, and always was. Weak in the head, and sick in the body. Sound, me. I’m sound, I always said. But him, he was badly. I never cottoned on how badly. But it makes no odds now, does it? It’s all for the best, in the end.
For he that is dead.
For he that is dead.
For he that is dead is freed from sin.
A single hair follicle was enough to make a DNA match. Polymerase chain reaction and short tandem repeats could get a result from one head hair, or even an eyelash. Invisible stains would work, too. Stains of saliva. Tears and blood.
Watching the activity at Pity Wood Farm, Diane Fry despaired of being able to rely on modern scientific techniques. Even the fingerprints Jamie Ward had left on his spade a few hours ago would have bloomed in the damp atmosphere and become useless.
Yet more vehicles had arrived at the scene, jockeying for parking places on the drier patches of ground. They were wasting their time, because there wouldn’t be a dry inch left by the end of the day. Even now, the sound of spinning wheels whined in the air as a driver churned another rut into the mud.
‘Well, I see the builders have trampled all over the job long before we got here.’
Fry turned to see Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens approaching the inner cordon, casually clad in jeans and green wellington boots, as if he’d only popped out to walk the dog on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Morning, sir.’
‘Morning, Diane.’ He looked down at the sea of mud. ‘That’s just great. What a start. But I suppose it makes a change from our own plods doing the trampling.’
‘Does it? I can’t see any difference from where I’m standing. All size-twelve boots look the same to me. I’m not bothered what type of helmets they were wearing when they were doing the trampling. It’s not as if they were bouncing around on their heads, is it?’
‘True.’
‘If we found an imprint of a Derbyshire Constabulary cap badge in the mud, that would be a different matter,’ said Fry. ‘Then we’d be looking for some uniformed idiot who’d tripped over his own feet. And we’d have a list of potential suspects right under our noses.’
Hitchens laughed. ‘Shall we have a look at the centre of all this attention?’
With DC Murfin trailing reluctantly behind, they followed a line of wooden planks borrowed from the builders to create a temporary bridge. Their feet thumped on the planks as if they were walking out on to a pier at the seaside. Blackpool, with mud.
And here was the end-of-the-pier show – a sort of gipsy fortune teller lurking in her shadowy tent, consulting the bones.
The Home Office pathologist, Mrs van Doon, straightened up as they approached. She brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead, leaving a smear of dirt from her glove across her temple.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much about contamination of your crime scene,’ she said. ‘This body has been here long enough for half the population of Derbyshire to have passed through the area on their way to the pub and back again.’
Murfin looked suddenly interested. ‘There’s a pub?’
‘In the village,’ said the pathologist, gesturing with a trowel. ‘About a mile in that direction.’
Hitchens grunted impatiently. ‘How long has it been here exactly?’
‘Exactly? Is that a joke, Inspector?’
‘Make an estimate, then. We won’t hold you to it.’
‘On that understanding …’ Mrs van Doon gave an apologetic shrug. ‘A year or so? I assume you’ll be getting the forensic anthropologist in to examine the remains. Dr Jamieson might be able to give you a better estimate.’
‘At first glance, the body looks pretty well preserved to me,’ said Hitchens.
‘Oh, you’re looking at the hand. Well, the hand isn’t too badly decomposed, that’s true. But it had been well covered up and protected from the air – at least, before some individual stuck the edge of a spade through the plastic sheeting. There are some old rips in the covering at the head end, though. So the condition of that area of the body is a bit different.’
‘At the head end? That sounds like bad news. What are our chances of an ID going to be?’
Mrs van Doon shrugged in her scene suit, rustling faintly. ‘It’s too early to say. But I can tell you the victim has lost quite a bit of flesh on the left side. Down to the bone in places. I’ll know more when I can get her back to the mortuary. That might take a bit of time, though.’
‘Why?’
‘We need to be careful digging her out. Some of the skin is sloughing off, and the less of her we lose at this stage, the better. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘It is a “her”, though,’ said Fry. ‘You did say “her”.’
‘Yes, I’m pretty sure of that, Sergeant,’ said the pathologist, her boots squelching as she squatted to peer into the hole. ‘Unless you’ve got a cross-dresser with a penchant for tights and blue skirts on your missing persons list.’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘I’ll pass the remains into Dr Jamieson’s care when he arrives. We can consult later, when she’s safely in the lab.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
As they re-crossed the plank bridge, Hitchens cast an eye over the farm buildings.
‘What do we know about the occupants?’
‘Apparently, the farm was owned by two elderly brothers,’ said Murfin, producing a notebook and demonstrating that he’d actually been doing some work while everyone else was standing around gassing. ‘One of them died quite recently, and the other is in a care home in Edendale.’
‘Was owned?’
‘Well, the place has been bought for development – hence the presence of all these builders in their hard hats. Development, or conversion. I’m not quite clear what they’re telling me.’
‘So who’s the present owner?’
‘A Mr Goodwin. He’s a lawyer, lives in Manchester. Mr Goodwin is the man employing the builders. I’ve got his contact details from the site foreman. But that seems to be all the bloke knows.’
‘Get on the phone, Gavin, and find out everything you can about the previous owners,’ said Fry. ‘We need names, dates, relationships. We need to know who else was in the household. Dig out anything that’s on record about them. Get some help, if you need it.’
‘If?’