Dying to Sin

yourself are you, Ben?’

‘No, I’ve asked Gavin to do it.’

‘Gavin? You’ve asked Gavin to be Father Christmas?’

‘He’s about the right shape. He won’t need much padding to fit the costume.’

‘Yes, but won’t the kids be expecting a bit of jollity and a certain amount of ho-ho-ho-ing? Not someone who kicks them out of the way to get at the mince pies?’

‘Actually, Gavin is very good with children. You should see him at home — he makes a great dad. He just puts an act on at work for the sake of his image.’

‘His image? Now I’ve heard everything. DC Murfin has an image.’

Murfin looked unruffled. ‘Hey, Diane, the new choir is always on the look-out for new members. Isn’t that right, Ben?’

‘Well …’

‘You don’t need to have done any public singing before. There are about twenty performances a year, and practice sessions in a church hall at Allestree. You’d do that for a charitable cause, wouldn’t you, Diane?’

Fry looked at his smiling face suspiciously. ‘I thought this was a male voice choir? Surely a requirement for membership would be that you had testicles to drop?’

Murfin grinned more widely. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Spot on.’

Fry’s phone rang — the DI calling her into his office to hear the latest news from the forensics team.

‘It’s really quite odd,’ said Dr Jamieson when Fry joined them. ‘The evidence might almost be called contradictory. I didn’t mention it in the presentation earlier for that very reason. Because I can’t explain it, scientifically.’

‘What do you mean, Doctor?’ asked Hitchens. ‘We’ll need it in simple terms.’

‘Well, we can tell from the pattern of decomposition and the disarticulation of the body that Victim B was dug up and re-buried some time after death.’

‘So the victim was killed somewhere else, then moved to Pity Wood as a permanent place of concealment? That’s pretty much what we expected.’

‘Well, no — that’s not a legitimate conclusion, I’m afraid,’ said Jamieson.

‘No? But you just said — ’

‘I said the body was dug up and re-buried. But we found no samples of soil or vegetation that might be considered inconsistent with the site where the body was found. Normally, you see, we’d expect to sift out some clues about the original burial site — traces of a different soil type, for example. Variations in chemical composition, vegetable fibres that don’t belong.’

‘I understand,’ said Hitchens.

The anthropologist threw up his hands in frustration. ‘But there’s nothing in this case. Absolutely nothing. On the contrary, the remains of Victim B showed every sign of never having been moved, at least from a geological and botanical point of view.’

‘The builders unearthed the skeleton and covered it over again,’ pointed out Fry. ‘They were worried about delaying the building work.’

‘No, no. This didn’t happen recently.’

Hitchens frowned. ‘Doctor, I thought I was following you at first, but now you’ve lost me. What are you trying to say exactly?’

‘Inspector, I’m saying that some time ago your victim was dug up and re-interred, but never actually moved. On the second occasion, the body was re-buried in exactly the same spot.’

16

In Cooper’s copy of the forensic anthropologist’s report, the dead woman had been assigned a reference number. This was her biological identity, all that was officially known about the person she’d once been. A Caucasian female aged twenty to twenty-five years, about five feet three inches tall, with dark brown hair. The condition of her teeth was the only peculiarity. There might be useful dental records, if she’d ever called on a dentist in the UK.

‘Diane, we’re going to have to talk to the neighbours in Rakedale again, aren’t we?’

‘The Three Wise Monkeys, you mean? They not only heard, saw and spoke no evil, they couldn’t believe anyone else would either.’

‘That’s touching.’

‘Touching? I asked one woman whether she’d ever invited the Suttons round when she was having her garden parties and barbecues in the summer. Do you know what she said? “That lot? They never accepted invitations, except to funerals.”’

‘We really need to dig out their memories, Diane.’

‘Well, we’d better requisition an excavator. That place isn’t a village — just a series of stone walls. Literally and metaphorically. They clammed up like traps as soon as they knew we were from the police. And I mean every one of them, young and old. Mr Brindley was right. I don’t know how news of our arrival got around so fast — they must use thought transference. Does that come with in-breeding?’

Cooper didn’t answer. It was true that there was only a narrow range of names on the electoral register for Rakedale, the same ones cropping up several times over. Blands, Tinsleys and Dains seemed to be everywhere.

‘Anyway, they probably know each other inside out,’ said Fry. ‘But these people we’re asking about were itinerant workers. They were passing through, not planning to settle down and raise families. I don’t suppose there were any women for them to marry, anyway. Not in this place.’

Cooper nodded thoughtfully. ‘So they would probably never mix in, never visit anyone, and never join anything.’

‘Not if they were familiar with village life. These men would know only too well that they were incomers — and always would be, for as long as they were likely to stay here.’

‘Well, there’s one part of village life I can almost guarantee they took part in,’ said Cooper. ‘I bet they went to the pub.’

‘Do you mean the Dog Inn? The pub at the end of the universe?’

‘It’s the only place to go.’

‘All right,’ conceded Fry. ‘But you can try it this time. When I went in there, I felt as though I was in a scene from Deliverance.’

Following the minimal success of house-to-house on Friday morning, someone had decided to try parking the mobile police office in Rakedale for a few days, to encourage people to come forward with information. Intelligence-led policing at its finest.

When Cooper arrived, he waved to a couple of officers who sat in lonely isolation in a corner of the Dog Inn car park, watching customers come and go to the pub. They looked miserable and could hardly raise the enthusiasm to wave back. Rakedale did that to you.

Some of the pub’s exterior decorations had blown off in the wind, and the hanging baskets were definitely not at their best. Rendering was coming away where the down spouts met the wall. Here, too, the porch had been added later. Cooper wondered whether people in this area had become less tough over the years, less able to withstand the Pennine gales without those little stone extensions to deflect the weather. He didn’t think the weather had got worse over the centuries, but maybe these buildings let in the wind more as they grew ancient and their stones cracked and separated.

Yes, the Dog Inn was unprepossessing, even for a non-tourist village like Rakedale. Closed at lunchtimes during the week, of course — and not too sure whether it really wanted to be open at other times, either. Catering for the public was all a bit too much trouble, even for the front door, which scraped reluctantly against the raised edge of a flagstone when Cooper tried to push it open.

Strands of tinsel glittered over his head as he passed through the door into the bar, expecting one of those