Dying to Sin

Cooper thought about the interior of the house, the few items they’d recovered that might be of relevance. The farm records, some jars of crystallized saltpetre, a single Sani Bag. And he supposed the family Bible should be included. But might there be something important that was no longer present, so they just weren’t seeing it? The impression of a Marie Celeste, abandoned intact, could be quite misleading.

He looked at his phone. Fry had been called in to see the DI, and neither of them had looked too happy. Besides, she was supposed to be chasing mispers now, so he supposed he was a free agent for a while. Initiative was called for. He reached for the handset.

‘Mr Goodwin, did you ever meet the previous owners of Pity Wood Farm?’ asked Cooper, when he managed to get through to the Manchester solicitor.

‘Oh, no. It was all done through the estate agent. The farm was already unoccupied when we visited for a viewing. I know they were called Sutton, but we had no personal contact. Just the usual exchange of contracts.’

‘Mr Sutton didn’t take much away with him, did he?’ said Cooper.

‘Not much,’ said Goodwin. ‘Just a few personal things. There’s an awful lot of rubbish to clear out, as you’ve probably seen. It won’t be a quick job. But that was the deal — it was one of the reasons I got the property at a good price. It was sold “as is”. I understand the owner was in care, so everything had to be disposed of anyway.’

‘Can you recall anything that was removed, sir? Anything out of the ordinary? There must have been a few items that were present when you viewed the property, but which had gone when you took possession.’

The solicitor was silent for a moment, except for a thoughtful mumbling.

‘Nothing that seemed to be of any value,’ he said. ‘It’s not exactly the sort of place you’d expect to be stuffed with antique furniture, is it? Or, if it ever was, they sold anything of value years ago. I gathered the farm had been failing for some time.’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘Then there was nothing, really, Detective Constable. Nothing that I wouldn’t have wanted to get rid of, anyway.’

Then he began to laugh, and Cooper looked at the phone as if it had done something weird. ‘Would you like to share the joke, sir?’

‘Well, I’m sure this can’t be what you mean,’ said Goodwin, still chuckling. ‘But obviously, they took the severed head.’

19

Fry took a moment to steady her breathing, shocked by the unexpected surge of panic that had turned her stomach over for a few seconds. It was a totally irrational feeling. She’d thought the same herself many times, hadn’t she? She was like a fish out of water in E Division. In Derbyshire, come to that. Her home was back in the city, away from these people she would never understand and couldn’t tolerate.

It was just hearing the sentiment put into someone else’s words that had hit her like a blow to the solar plexus. It was a statement of the obvious. Yet she loathed the idea that Detective Superintendent Branagh had sat in a meeting this morning and expressed the thought to her managers. She hated the intrusion of someone like Branagh reading her file and summing her up so easily. It was illogical, of course. But no less hurtful for that.

‘Oh, no need to be sorry, sir,’ she said quietly. ‘No need for you to be sorry at all.’

That fear of being an outsider had haunted her all her life. At school, in her various homes in the Black Country, and even when she’d studied for her Criminal Justice and Policing course at UCE. As a child, she hadn’t realized that everyone dreaded finding themselves on the outside, not a part of the gang. She thought it was her own particular weakness of character that drove her to seek acceptance from her peers.

It made her wince now to think of her teenage self, hanging around in the corridors of her comprehensive school, trying to attach herself to a group. It was only as an adult that she’d learned it was the same for most kids of her age. Some were so desperate to belong that it became a question of any gang that would have them.

Being a member of the herd was a primal instinct — probably the deepest, most powerful instinct of them all.

‘If you do go, Diane,’ said Hitchens, ‘we’ll miss you.’

‘They called him Billy,’ said Cooper, the moment Fry entered the CID room. ‘Screaming Billy Sutton. But of course he probably wasn’t a Sutton. He could have been anybody. Anybody at all, Diane.’

Fry jumped as if she’d been shot. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Ben?’

‘The landlord of the Dog Inn said something about a Billy. At first, I thought he might have meant another brother, or a son. But there’s no indication of a William Sutton. So this must be him.’

She had never seen him so animated. He was running around the office like an excited puppy, yapping at anyone who would listen. But what was he yapping about?

‘Ben, slow down. Explain yourself properly.’

Cooper looked hot and breathless, as if he’d been running. ‘It’s like Dickie of Tunstead, you see. There’s a place called Tunstead Farm, up in the north of the county near Chapel-en-le-Frith. Now, that one is quite famous. There’s some doubt whether it’s male or female, but locally it’s always been known as Dickie. A previous owner of the farm was murdered in his bed in an ownership dispute — ’

He paused to take a breath, and Fry held up a hand like a traffic officer, speaking louder to drown him out.

‘Ben, stop.’

‘The Suttons must have managed to keep this one quiet, though,’ he said. ‘It was known about locally, but everyone seems to have been reluctant to discuss it. Superstition, of course. Careless talk, the Scottish play, all that sort of stuff.’

‘For God’s sake, will you just stop? Stop!’

‘Screaming Billy was supposed to …’ Cooper finally ground to a halt and looked at her in amazement. ‘Why are you shouting at me, Diane?’

Fry took his arm. ‘Ben, sit down and shut up for a minute. Take a few deep breaths.’

He opened his mouth to speak, but she snarled at him, and he closed it again quickly. He sat down.

‘All right, that’s better,’ she said.

‘Can I speak yet?’

‘Just collect your thoughts first. I’m getting the impression you have something to tell me that you think is important. But so far you haven’t managed a word of sense. Not a word.’

‘Oh. Are you sure?’

‘There was somebody called Billy, and somebody called Dickie, and one of them was screaming. That’s all I got. The rest of it was gibberish.’

Cooper wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘I’d better start again.’

‘I’ll fetch you some water. And I suggest when you do start again, you start from the beginning.’

When Fry came back from the cooler with a cup of water, Cooper was looking much calmer, but he was still fidgeting in his seat, impatient to pass on his information.

Fry found she couldn’t stay irritated with him, after witnessing his burst of enthusiasm. It took years off him, made him seem like that eager young DC she’d encountered when she first arrived in Edendale. That had been her initial impression of him. He’d changed a lot since then. The mark of what life had thrown at him, she supposed.

For just one second, a disorientating second, Fry felt the two of them might actually have something in common. But it was so little that they shared. Far too little.

Fry watched him take a drink of water. ‘All right, go ahead.’

‘I’d better explain Dickie of Tunstead first,’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose you’ve never heard of him.’

‘You suppose right.’ Fry pulled up her chair. ‘I’m sitting comfortably.’