Dying to Sin. Stephen Booth
‘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.
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