Dying to Sin

‘What have you got there, Ben?’

‘The estate agent’s details for the sale of Pity Wood Farm. The photographs make it look quite attractive. Somebody managed to find a sunny day. And they used a camera with a wide-angle lens. But not so wide that it showed the mud.’

‘“A rare opportunity to purchase a farm holding with superb potential in a most sought-after area,”’ read Cooper. ‘“Traditional farmhouse and adjoiningbarns with further buildings and grassland extending to ninety-five acres. Pity Wood Farm comprises a delightfully situated south-facing property in an unrivalled position. A range of stone outbuildings provide scope to extend to convert into holiday lets, subject to obtaining planning consent. The farmhouse requires some refurbishment, modernization and general upgrading …”’

‘You can say that again.’

‘“… but once complete will create a truly enviable residence in an idyllic rural location.”’

‘Funny how people use that word “idyllic” to mean “primitive”.’

Cooper didn’t reply. He was concentrating on trying to make all the buildings listed by the estate agent fit the map on the old conveyance and his memory of Pity Wood Farm. To the front of the property is a walled garden area and patio. That must be the overgrown patch where the old caravan was parked.

He made a quick note. Had Scenes of Crime got round to the caravan yet? Who had been living in there? He bet it had been overlooked, amid all the other excitement and conflicting priorities.

Three-bay general-purpose building of block construction, two corrugated-tin-sheet sheds, timber-framed slatted house with feed barriers and a slurry store, monopitch block-built shed, timber-framed cowshed, implement sheds, useful six-bay general-purpose building … The list seemed endless, yet some of those buildings must be in ruins. Well, the estate agent did mention renovation.

‘“A mains water supply is available,”’ said Cooper out loud.

‘A mains water supply,’ said Fry. ‘That’s a selling point, is it?’

‘In this area, yes.’

‘So what have you got from the farm records, Ben? What exactly were they doing at Pity Wood Farm to earn money — I mean, enough to make it profitable? And was Raymond relying on the sale of the farm to meet the cost of his residential care for the rest of his life?’

‘Apparently not. They brought Tom Farnham in to introduce some new enterprises. They could see that Pity Wood would never survive as a livestock farm alone. That was quite perceptive of them, you know. I mean, it’s obvious to everyone now, but in those days a lot of the old farmers were just crossing their fingers and hoping things would pick up. Most of them couldn’t face the idea of changing their way of life. A farm like Pity Wood, that’s been in the same family for generations — well, it would take someone very forward-looking to see what was necessary at such an early stage. From what I’ve heard of Raymond Sutton, he doesn’t seem that sort of person. He’s very traditional.’

‘It would have to be Derek, then. He was the younger brother, after all.’

‘Maybe,’ said Cooper. ‘How old would Derek have been at the time?’

Fry did a quick calculation. ‘Fifty-six when Tom Farnham came into the business.’

‘Mmm. I think we should ask Farnham how he met the Suttons. Did they invite him into the business, or did he do a sales pitch on them?’

‘You think he might be some kind of con man?’ asked Fry.

‘I think the Sutton brothers might have been an easy target for a clever talker.’

‘Would that fit your assessment of him?’

‘Possibly,’ said Cooper.

‘By the way, did you get anything from the IND?’

‘Hold on, let me check my notes.’ Cooper flicked back through his notebook. ‘OK, Section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act. The law makes it a criminal offence to employ a person who is subject to immigration controls and has no permission to work in the UK. The only statutory defence is if the employer can show that they carried out checks on the documents of potential employees. The confusing area seems to be the A8 countries, Diane.’

‘The accession states.’

‘Yes. The Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Latvia and Slovenia. Individuals from those countries are entitled to come to the UK and work, but they have to register with the Home Office. Once you’ve been working legally in the UK for twelve months you have full rights of free movement and you no longer need to be on the Worker Registration Scheme.’

‘Twelve months?’

‘It’s a critical time period, isn’t it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘The thing is, some employees don’t bother. It works well for the larger firms, but not for the smaller ones who employ a couple of people. And this isn’t exactly Bernard Matthews.’

‘The turkey man?’

‘My contact says Bernard Matthews employs a thousand Portuguese workers in Great Yarmouth. But that’s a different kettle of fish. There are translators, bi-lingual trainers, everything done right. Small-scale employers are the problem. The paperwork is too much trouble for them, not to mention the cost. I imagine a lot of small farmers might think they can get away without paying seventy pounds to apply for a certificate. Besides, there’s the forgery issue. A worker brings along a standard letter from the Immigration Service and a forged passport, and a small employer doesn’t look twice. I was told to watch out for Ernest Xavier Ample.’

‘Who on earth is Ernest Xavier Ample?’

‘E.X. Ample,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s the made-up name the forgers take off sample work permits. No imagination, some people. Or perhaps they think it’s a normal English name.’

‘For heaven’s sake. So we could be looking at a procession of Slovaks, Lithuanians and Latvians passing through Pity Wood?’

‘Something like that,’ said Cooper. ‘Many of them might have gone on to be legit later, though, if they changed employers.’

‘Are there any gaps in the farm records? Periods that aren’t accounted for?’

‘No, but the accounts don’t come right up to date, of course. They end nine months ago. There was a period of time after Raymond Sutton gave up the farm and before the builders moved in. Only a few months, but it might just be in our time frame.’

‘And the farm was empty for that time?’ asked Fry.

‘Yes, and I bet there were plenty of people around Rakedale who knew it.’

‘Damn it, that doesn’t help us at all. Unless forensics can give us some evidence to narrow down the time of death, we’re going to have to concentrate on identifying the victims and establishing a link between them.’

‘Anyway, the most recent enterprise at Pity Wood seems to have been a poultry business,’ said Cooper. ‘That can be quite viable, I believe. But it’s no wonder the Suttons’ enterprise failed. They weren’t producing enough birds to make a realistic profit. It was hardly worth their while running the sheds.’

‘Is there much expense involved in raising poultry?’

‘A lot of overheads when the birds are housed indoors — heating, bedding, all their feed and antibiotics. But the main cost here seems to have been the wage bill. The way the Suttons ran the enterprise must have been pretty labour intensive. No capital to invest in machinery, I suppose.’

‘Or the way Tom Farnham ran it.’

‘Yes.’

‘So what about the wages? There must be a list of employees’ names?’

‘No, damn it,’ said Cooper. ‘Just initials. No indication of who they were, what they did, whether they were male or female. The only fact I can work out is that they seem to have employed a dozen people at any one time. But the initials change quite often, so the turnover of staff must have been quite high. It was unpleasant work, I suppose — killing, plucking and gutting.’

Cooper gazed out of the window, trying to make the facts fit. How did the number of workers represented by these wage bills correlate with the output from the poultry production units? Well, the answer was that it didn’t. Those workers must either have been sitting around doing nothing for a large part of their time — or they must