Dying to Sin bcadf-8

by Stephen Booth

  It was from beneath the heap of clothes that the noise came, monotonous and inhuman, a low, desperate wailing. When he moved towards the bed, the mound stirred and the keening turned to a fearful whimper. Cooper knew that the crisis was over, for now. But this had been the worst so far, no doubt about it. The evidence was all around him.

  He leaned closer to a coat with an imitation fur collar, but was careful not to touch the bed, for fear of sparking off a violent reaction. The coat was drenched in a familiar scent that brought a painful lump to his throat. A white hand was visible briefly as it clutched for a sleeve and the edge of a skirt to pull them closer for concealment. The fingers withdrew again into the darkness like a crab retreating into its shell. The whimpering stopped.

  ‘It was the Devil,’ said a small voice from deep in the pile of clothes. ‘The Devil made me do it.’

  The mingled odours of stale scent, sweat and excrement and urine made Cooper feel he was aboutto be sick. He swallowed and forced himself to keep his voice steady.

  ‘The Devil’s gone away. You can come out now, Mum. The Devil’s gone away.’

  When Fry went back in to interview Martin Rourke for a second time, he’d been allowed to consult a lawyer. She was expecting a string of ‘no comments’, and a frustrating end to her trip to Dublin. But maybe things were different here.

  ‘Of course I remember her,’ said Rourke straight away. ‘I want to be honest with you.’

  ‘Remember who?’

  ‘Nadezda, the Slovak. She couldn’t resist trying out the crank herself. Stupid bitch. It made her careless. She was bound to kill herself sooner or later.’

  ‘Kill herself? You’re suggesting that Nadezda Halak died in an accident?’

  ‘That’s exactly what happened. It was accidental death, brought on by her own carelessness. That would be a factor, all right.’

  Fry glanced at Lenaghan, who gave her a nod to go ahead.

  ‘Mr Rourke, tell us exactly what happened, in your own words.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing much to tell. There was an explosion in the shed one day. None of us knew the chemicals were so dangerous. Nada had been standing closest to the equipment when it blew up.’

  ‘Nada is …?’

  ‘The woman you said. Halak. Nada is what we called her, for short.’

  ‘And she was killed by the explosion?’

  ‘Dead as you like. It was lucky she was the only one so near. There were other folk about, but they only got a few cuts, one or two acid burns. Nothing serious.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Some of the workers started to panic, but Tom Farnham quietened them down. He said there was plenty of room on the farm to dispose of a body where no one would ever find it. And who would come looking for her? Like I said, those people move on all the time. They want to be untraceable.’

  ‘So you buried her on the farm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the Sutton brothers didn’t object to this?’

  Rourke snorted. ‘How could they? They’d done exactly the same thing themselves, three years before.’

  Cooper had never felt so bad about questioning a witness. Though they’d achieved what they set out to do, there was no sense of satisfaction in getting Raymond Sutton to confirm what he suspected. It had been a knowledge that he didn’t really want to have to share, but now he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer.

  In a way, he supposed he’d been hoping, deep down, that Sutton would deny it, that he’d be able to prove somehow that it had never happened. Well, it might have been better if he’d never asked. But then he would have had to live with the doubt. Cooper knew there had been no way of winning in this situation.

  And there was certainly no way of achieving justice — not justice in the terms of the law, nor justice in any subjective sense. Even if Derek Sutton had still been alive, what would have been the point of punishing him? His brother was an accessory to the crime, of course. After the fact, if not before. No matter how contemptuous he’d been, no matter how many disapproving silences he’d indulged in over the kitchen table, Raymond had gone along with his brother’s superstitions, and had told no one about the skull.

  Well, of course he hadn’t. Sharing a house with a crazy brother was one thing. Watching that brother get carted off to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution while you were left to cope entirely on your own — that was a different thing altogether. The decision wouldn’t have been an easy one for most families, let alone the Suttons of Pity Wood Farm. In fact, there was no decision involved. Blood was blood, and you stood by your own. End of story.

  Cooper finished his report and stood up. Yes, it would have been the end of the story. If only Raymond Sutton had died himself before the farm was dug up. That had been his plan, Cooper was sure.

  But The Oaks had looked after him too well. Their care had prolonged his life longer than he’d expected. Physically, he was probably in better condition now than when he was looking after himself at home. So Raymond had sat in his room at The Oaks, watching the seasons change over the hills, while the sale of the farm went through, the paperwork was completed, and the builders moved in. From that moment, he must have been expecting every day to hear the news that something had been found. Each morning he must have looked for the newspapers to read the headlines, every evening he must have been the first in front of the TV for the start of East Midlands Today. And every day he must have lived in expectation of the footsteps in the hallway of his care home, the voices of strangers speaking his name.

  When Raymond Sutton abandoned the farm and sold up immediately after the death of his brother, he hadn’t expected to live very long. A matter of days or weeks, perhaps. But then he’d done a terrible thing. He’d survived.

  Raymond had thought he was tappy, just like his brother. Approaching his end, preparing to meet his maker. All those other euphemisms for dying. But in the end he’d lived too long to escape being called to account for his actions. How ironic that Raymond was also the only member of his family who expected to be punished for eternity.

  To follow Christ means dying to sin. Raymond Sutton would die twice over.

  Fry produced a series of evidence bags. They contained the items they’d found at the house in Bunratty Road, hidden behind the wardrobe in the bedroom of Martin Rourke’s daughter.

  ‘Was this the woman they buried four years ago?’ asked Fry. ‘Her name is Orla Doyle, an Irish national. Black hair. She would be thirty-two years old by now.’

  ‘I don’t know who she was,’ said Rourke.

  He was starting to sweat now, Fry could see. He hadn’t felt guilty for the death of Nadezda Halak, but Orla Doyle was a name a bit closer to home.

  ‘You were too greedy, Mr Rourke,’ said Fry. ‘This is Orla Doyle’s passport, found in your house this morning, so you can’t try to tell us you had no connection with her. I suppose you realized from dealing with illegal immigrants that there was a lucrative market for passports? And not forged ones, either, but genuine passports, taken from dead people. Is there a premium on them in the human import business, Mr Rourke?’

  ‘I’m not answering that.’

  ‘In fact, it must be even better if the person involved is not only dead, but has never been reported missing.’

  Rourke just shook his head. His face was closing up now, and she wouldn’t get much more from him. But she still had evidence to confront him with.

  Fry help up a second bag. ‘This is a Slovakian passport, sir. Discovered in the same hiding place, behind your daughter’s wardrobe. Not as much call for a Slovak identity in Ireland, I suppose, even now? This one is for Nadezda Halak, from the city of Ko. sice. Nadezda would be twenty-four by now, if she was still alive. Would you like to see what’s actually left of her, sir? I can arrange for that to happen.’

  Rourke shook his head, resorting to a silence that was no good for the tapes. Fry nodded at Lenaghan.

  ‘Interview suspended.’

>   Fry couldn’t wait to make the call to her DI and tell him that she’d not only established how Nadezda Halak died, but had also confirmed the identity of the second body at Pity Wood Farm. She was buzzing with satisfaction, and at the end of the conversation with Hitchens, she still felt she hadn’t talked enough, so she rang Ben Cooper and told her story all over again.

  ‘That’s brilliant, Diane,’ he said. ‘So the trip to Ireland was really worthwhile, after all.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  Then Fry remembered it was Tuesday, the day she’d been afraid of being away from Edendale, and her excitement began to ebb away.

  ‘So what’s going on back home?’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Oh, the new superintendent has arrived.’

  ‘Making an impression, is she?’

  ‘You might say that. There’s no doubt who’s in charge. She’s already taking the credit.’

  ‘But she hasn’t done anything,’ said Fry. ‘She can’t have. Not yet.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s hard to tell what’s been going on behind the scenes.’

  Fry sighed. ‘Has she done anything I need to know about?’

  ‘Put Gavin in his place with a firm hand.’

  ‘Oh, well …’

  ‘And Jack Elder is being released.’

  ‘Elder? He was my prisoner.’

  ‘Not after tomorrow,’ said Cooper. ‘He’ll be in court in the morning, then he’ll get bail and walk away.’

  ‘Damnation.’

  ‘The superintendent is right, though, Diane — we don’t have any evidence to connect Mr Elder with a serious offence. He’s not a credible murder suspect.’

  ‘No, but he’s a link,’ said Fry. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘It’s a pity you’re not here to put your case to Branagh.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  ‘It appears Orla Doyle is one of our missing persons,’ said Lenaghan when he’d escorted Rourke back to his cell. ‘What a result. You can come here again, Detective Sergeant Fry.’

  ‘Thank you. I think I can say it was a mutually satisfactory visit, Garda Lenaghan.’

  ‘Tony,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You ought to call me Tony.’

  Cooper got out the Toyota to drive into Sheffield, where he had an appointment with the forensic anthropologist, Dr Jamieson. A traffic officer he passed in the car park greeted him with a weather forecast.

  ‘Fog.’

  ‘That’s bad news.’

  ‘The roads are very busy, too. There’ll be fatalities before nightfall.’

  And Cooper thought it could be worse than that. If they cancelled flights at Robin Hood Airport, Fry might not be getting back from Dublin. Not today, anyway.

  As he drove to Sheffield, Cooper tried to get everything straight in his head. But whenever he thought about the story, it began to unravel, like a tapestry with a loose stitch. If he tugged at it in the wrong place, everything changed shape, the picture twisted and distorted, figures vanishing from the scene and others coming closer together.

  After a few minutes, the picture was becoming awfully grey and murky, just like the weather, like the landscape behind that belt of December rain.

  ‘Oh, you were hoping to tie this skull in with Victim B?’ said Dr Jamieson, when Cooper found him in his laboratory at the university.

  ‘Well … yes, that was the assumption.’

  ‘An assumption, eh? I don’t believe in them myself. Do you find they achieve anything?’

  ‘Well, Doctor, it does seem a logical conclusion that this skull belonged to the woman we’ve found with a missing head. Particularly when they both came from the same property.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jamieson. ‘So where does the male victim come in?’

  ‘Male victim?’

  ‘The person the skull belongs to. Because this is definitely male. Look at the distinctive shape of the jaw, the size of the occipital dome. Somewhere, there’s a male victim who’s missing a head.’

  ‘So this is the real Screaming Billy, after all,’ said Cooper. ‘Despite what Raymond Sutton said. This is the ancient skull that has been in the wall of the farmhouse.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘A local superstition, Doctor. A skull that protects the owners of the farm from bad luck. They call them screaming skulls.’

  ‘Interesting. And how long is the skull supposed to have been in the wall of the farmhouse?’

  ‘Centuries, according to local folklore.’

  Dr Jamieson shook his head. ‘Never trust folklore, then. If this came out of the wall of that farmhouse, it’s a much more recent addition to the decor.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Science doesn’t lie, DC Cooper. Not within living memory, anyway. This skull is ten years old, at most. What I mean is — I’d estimate ten years since it was parted from its unfortunate owner.’

  Cooper looked at the skull. ‘But Screaming Billy is supposed to go back to the eighteenth century, at least.’

  The anthropologist shrugged. ‘This isn’t Billy, then, I’m afraid. I suggest we refer to him as Victim C.’

  32

  A few minutes later, Cooper was getting back into his Toyota in the university car park. ‘Not within living memory.’ Where had he heard that phrase recently? Oh, yes. It had been used by PC Palfreyman, the first time that Cooper had visited him at Hollowbrook Cottage, as early as Friday morning.

  That seemed a long time ago now. Palfreyman had been answering a question about whether there had been an argument between the Sutton brothers. ‘Not within living memory.’ That was exactly what he’d said.

  Well, Cooper supposed that living memory resided in the older generation, people like Raymond Sutton and Mrs Dain. But it wasn’t everything, not in an area like the Peak District. When living memory died, the landscape still retained an imprint of times that had passed. The lead miners might be long gone, but their workings still shaped the contours of the hills and valleys. Their shafts and soughs survived, directly under the feet of modern visitors. Their ghosts, perhaps, still lingered where those Red Soil men had died, choking in the blackness, their lungs full of sulphurous smoke.

  The flat at number eight Welbeck Street felt lonely that evening. Cooper was due to meet Liz later on, but the time he spent on his own was difficult to bear.

  Thinking of PC Palfreyman made him turn to the framed picture that hung on the wall over his mantelpiece. Not within living memory? This picture was a part of his life that would stay in his memory for ever, even if it disappeared now. He was familiar with the face of every man on each of the rows, even with the pattern and texture of the wall behind them and the concrete yard their boots rested on.

  Sergeant Joe Cooper, and the rest of Derbyshire Constabulary’s Edendale section, had been lined up for an official visit, back in the 1980s. Those were the days when the police dealt with criminals and victims. In twenty-first-century policing, there were only offenders and injured parties. Worse, victims had become infected with acronym disease, and were routinely referred to as IPs.

  Without looking, Cooper could have described the picture in detail, the way each officer held his arms, which of them was smiling, who looked suspicious of the photographer, and who hadn’t fastened his tie properly that morning. He knew the feel of the mahogany frame, the smoothness of the edges, the slight ridge in the wood, like a necessary flaw. He could remember the scratch in the glass that was only visible when you turned the picture towards the light.

  As he looked at the photograph of his father, Cooper was wondering whether, in a few years’ time, he would himself have turned into one of those police officers who wanted to go back to the old days. The officers who wanted to abandon PACE, delete the Human Rights Act from UK law, and bring in mandatory jail sentences for burglars. Wanted to, but daren’t say so.

  Cooper was due to meet Liz in the market square, but he was early when he left the flat. So he took his time and walked down to th
e river to reach the town centre. Just before the Eyre Street bridge, he stopped at the weir to watch the ducks, a crowd of mallards fussing about in the darkness, splashing under the trees.

  Above their noise, he thought he heard a familiar voice behind him.

  ‘Ben?’

  He turned in surprise. ‘I thought you were in — ?’

  And then he saw that he’d been mistaken. It was Angie Fry who stood in front of him, much as she’d once stood on his doorstep in Welbeck Street. She wore the same anorak and even carried the same battered rucksack over her shoulder.

  ‘Angie. Are you going somewhere?’

  She didn’t answer, perhaps thinking it a stupid question. She had never seemed to have much respect for his intelligence.

  ‘Always the ace boy detective, Constable Cooper.’

  Cooper swore at that moment that he wasn’t going to let Angie Fry use him again for her own purposes.

  ‘What do you want, Angie? I’m busy.’

  ‘Sure. Communing with the wildlife.’

  Anxiously, Cooper looked over his shoulder. The lights of the market square were just ahead, only a few yards away. He could see people passing under the illuminated Christmas trees and the flickering reindeer strung across Eyre Street.

  ‘I won’t keep you long from your date,’ said Angie with a smirk.

  ‘How did you know — ?’

  Angie pulled an envelope from a pocket of her anorak. ‘I need to give you this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Information. I promise you’ll find it interesting.’

  ‘You should give it to Diane.’

  ‘She’s away.’

  ‘Yes, in Dublin,’ said Cooper. ‘But she’ll be back tomorrow.’

  Angie just looked at him, holding out the envelope. She seemed so much like her sister as she stood with her back to the light, shadows hiding the difference in her features, the anorak concealing her narrow shoulders, and the almost skeletal thinness of her arms — all the things Cooper remembered being struck by when he’d first met her.