Dying to Sin

She’d heard about this use of diamorphine. Low-profile trial schemes had been taking place around the country for some time. Because it came in measured doses, you knew exactly how much you were taking, and you could function perfectly well. That was the theory, anyway. It was heroin on the NHS. And at a cost to the taxpayer, she’d heard, of about ten thousand pounds a year per addict.

Fry knew there were very few pure, one-drug addicts. Heroin users took crack, and vice versa. No one had suggested prescribing crack on the NHS yet, but she supposed it could happen. On the street, women could earn between a hundred and two hundred pounds a night. And in many cases, it all went on gear. A heroin habit took a lot of feeding.

She sat down suddenly on the bed, feeling a powerful surge of guilt at having invaded her sister’s privacy. She wanted to weep at the destructiveness of the emotions that had driven her to do it. Jealousy, bitterness, and fear. Their relationship couldn’t be founded solely on a shared set of genes, could it? There had to be more to family than this endless anger and suspicion.

But Fry looked at the boxes on the floor. And immediately the fury swept over her again in a stomach- churning tide, too powerful to resist.

To her certain knowledge, there was no diamorphine trial taking place in Edendale for local addicts. So where had her sister been going? Where was Angie obtaining her supplies?

15

Saturday

Cooper knew it wasn’t going to be a good day as soon as he entered the CID room and set eyes on Gavin Murfin. Somehow, Murfin was able to arrange his features into a picture of abject misery. Martyrdom and gloom were written all over him this morning. It was enough to shrivel the tinsel.

‘What’s the matter, Gavin?’

‘I’ve been put down for duty over Christmas. All thanks to this job at Rakedale. I’m really going to be in the dog house, I can tell you.’

Cooper took off his jacket and sat down at his desk. ‘I’ll swap with you.’

Murfin looked up. ‘What?’

‘I’ll swap duties with you, Gavin. No one will mind. As long as someone’s around to deal with anything that crops up. Then you can have Christmas at home with your family, and everyone’s happy, right?’

‘But what about you?’

Cooper shrugged. ‘It’s not so important for me. I don’t have kids.’

‘Even so. They’ll be expecting you at Bridge End on Christmas Day. Your lot always have a big family get- together, don’t they? You’ve told me about it often enough. Brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, and hordes of little nephews and nieces.’

‘There aren’t that many, Gavin. Besides, it’ll be different this year. It’s the first year Mum won’t be there.’

‘Oh, right. Yeah, that could be a bit tough, I suppose. So you’d rather come into the office than be at the farm, would you? Sure?’

‘I’ll be all right. I won’t mind being busy.’

Murfin studied him for a moment. ‘Hang on, though. What about Liz?’

‘She’s going home to her own family in Stoke.’

‘And you’re not invited?’

Cooper felt himself starting to get a bit irritated by Murfin’s selflessness. ‘It’s OK, Gavin, really. I want to swap. I’ll do Christmas duty.’

‘Well, all right. Will you tell Miss, or shall I?’

‘I’d better do it, I think. By the way, what are you buying your kids for Christmas, Gavin?’

‘The eldest is really into computer games.’

‘I like The Sims,’ said Cooper.

‘I’m a bit worried about that one, in case the wife gets hold of it.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, they say there’s the thing about women who play The Sims. They use it to exercise their cruel streak, and have fun tormenting small, helpless creatures. They make them live in houses with no toilets. They lock them in rooms with no doors and windows and see how long it takes them to go mad.’

‘Is that so?’

‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was designed by our DS.’

No matter how long the morning briefing had been allowed to run on, it would not have been capable of providing a satisfactory conclusion. There was no lucid narrative to the deaths of the two victims at Pity Wood Farm, no story of their lives to give them an identity. Apart from confirmation that they were both female, they still had no humanity.

Every officer present in the room was conscious of the lack of information, the gaping hole in their enquiry, the blockage that was stalling it before it had even got going. No IDs.

Cooper always felt a particular sense of despair at these cases. Of course, there were many people who lived transient lives. They put down their roots in shallow soil. Unnoticed when they arrived, and unmissed when they left.

‘First of all, there’s no evidence of major trauma, no broken bones,’ said Hitchens, getting straight to the main issue. ‘Some poisons might show up in the hair mat that had sloughed off the first victim. But if death was due to injury to the soft tissues, we’re right out of luck.’

‘Parts of the first body looked almost … mummified,’ said someone.

‘That’s adipocere. We don’t see mummified body parts very often in this part of the world — you need a dry, arid climate for that.’

The list of potential evidence dug out by the forensic anthropology team was impressive. During the excavation, they’d packaged up forty-four bones, two dirt samples, twenty-nine bags labelled ‘unknown debris’, fifteen bags of clothing fragments, and seventeen teeth.

‘Yes, they’ve been dead for about a year and four years respectively, we’re told, but neither of them was necessarily killed where they were found,’ said Hitchens. ‘Or even buried there when they first died. Apparently, the scene is right on a geological boundary — the clay on the south side of Pity Wood Farm doesn’t extend into the fields to the north or east. It’s probably why the place was built there in the first place. Historically, I imagine there was a brickworks, or a clay pit.’

‘It’s almost certainly how the farm got its name,’ said Cooper. ‘Pity Wood, because there were several clay pits here, in the woods. Obviously, most of the trees have gone now, too. They would have needed the wood for firing kilns.’

‘What about dental records, sir?’ asked Fry.

‘OK, we have good dentition remaining on the more recent of the two bodies. Enough to confirm an identity from dental records. If we had a potential identity to confirm, of course. But at the moment we haven’t a clue who she is.’

‘Mrs van Doon said there was an unusual amount of decay to the victim’s teeth.’

‘Yes. When I said “good dentition”, I didn’t mean to suggest her teeth were in good condition. I mean we have a good profile of her teeth, and any dental work, plus the unusual condition. This gives us a better chance of making a positive identification.’

‘Understood.’

‘As for the second victim, this individual is also female. What more can I tell you?’

‘There was a shoe,’ said Cooper. ‘That could give us a lead, at least.’

‘But the shoe wasn’t found on the victim, it was lying in the soil about five yards away from the body. Without a direct connection to the victim, it isn’t a known piece of evidence. It could have landed up there some other way.’

Hitchens looked around the group. ‘Now I’m going to hand over to our consultant forensic anthropologist, Dr