Dying to Sin

‘No.’

Fry shook her head. ‘Don’t lie to me. I don’t like it.’

Jamie turned away. ‘I can’t tell you. I don’t want to get in trouble.’

‘You’re already in trouble.’ Fry turned to the mud-spattered officer. ‘Has he been searched?’

‘Yes, Sergeant. Nothing on him but a few personal items.’

Fry regarded Jamie Ward sadly. ‘We’d better search the caravan then, hadn’t we? It was going to be done anyway, before long. I’m sure you realized that, Jamie.’

The young man groaned. ‘Oh, look — it’s only a bit of pot. It’s no big deal. I used to sneak into the caravan for a quick smoke in my break, when the other blokes weren’t looking. It was the only thing that made working here tolerable.’

‘Jamie, you’re a silly boy if you left your drugs lying around for anyone to find.’

‘Christ, it’s only a bit of pot. I couldn’t take it home with me, in case my mum found it.’

‘So is that all we’ll find when we search the caravan?’

Jamie wriggled uncomfortably, but didn’t answer.

‘It would be better if you told me now,’ said Fry, ‘rather than having to answer questions under caution down at the station.’

He hung his head. ‘All the blokes did it,’ he said. ‘They all took things from the site. They said if things had been left lying around, it was because no one wanted them. Nikolai said it himself. He was right, wasn’t he? It’s not really stealing.’

‘What did you take, Jamie?’

‘It’s in the drawer under the sink. None of the others ever went into the caravan, so I thought it would be safe.’

At Fry’s nod, Cooper pulled on a pair of latex gloves and went into the caravan.

‘It smells bad in here. And it’s not just the scent of cannabis being smoked, either.’

‘The drawer, Ben.’

‘OK, got it.’

Fry waited patiently. She was trying not to anticipate what Cooper would find in the drawer. But she couldn’t help images coming into her mind — visions of Derek Sutton lurking in the kitchen of Pity Wood Farm, bending over the sink, cooking up saltpetre for the preservation of a grisly relic.

But the object that Cooper was holding when he emerged was the wrong shape to match her mental image. It was a box covered in felt. When he opened it, she could see that it contained a medal on a purple-and-green ribbon.

‘Awarded to Private Raymond Sutton, 1st Battalion Sherwood Foresters,’ said Cooper.

‘Mr Sutton served in the war?’

‘Not the Second World War, he’s a bit too young. This is a General Service Medal, and the bar says Malaya. He must have been fighting Communists in the 1950s.’

‘So he really did leave his past behind.’ Fry looked at Jamie Ward again. ‘Don’t tell me — eBay?’

‘I’ve seen them going for fifty or sixty quid,’ he said. ‘I need the money.’

‘To help your studies? Or to buy more pot?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Jamie looked so ashamed of himself that Fry sighed. ‘You can go. But if I see you round here, Jamie, I’ll make sure you’re locked up.’

27

Later that morning, Cooper looked up the word ‘fey’ in a copy of the Collins English Dictionary. He’d borrowed the book a few weeks ago from his landlady, Mrs Shelley. She loved loaning him her books — she thought she was helping with his education, her tenant being an ignorant but well-meaning police constable and all.

He’d brought the dictionary to the office one day, and it had stayed in his desk drawer ever since. He really must remember to return it. He hated it when people borrowed his own books or CDs and never gave them back.

Yes, there was another meaning to ‘fey’. Fated to die, or doomed. From the Old English faege, marked for death. Tappy, in fact. Cooper nodded. Old Mrs Sutton had been tappy. And so had Derek Sutton. But who else at Pity Wood had been tappy or fey? Two young women, at least. Victim A and Victim B. They had certainly been fated to die.

This morning, E Division headquarters was the focus of activity. HOLMES staff had been arriving from Ripley and equipment was being set up. Detectives had been drafted in from other divisions and were being assigned their actions. Some teams were already out, chasing down associates of Tom Farnham’s, pursuing sightings of vehicles in the area at the time of his shooting, checking on the whereabouts of suspects in previous shootings. It had the look of a professional job, after all.

All the activity was making Cooper feel a bit left out. Even the identification of one of the bodies at Pity Wood Farm no longer appeared quite such a breakthrough as it had at the time. They knew who she was, but not how she’d died. No signs of major trauma — that’s what the postmortem said. Establishing how she’d met her fate was going to need a much bigger stroke of luck.

And they were still no nearer identifying any of the other migrant workers who’d been employed at Pity Wood Farm. Enquiries with agencies had drawn a complete blank. Gavin Murfin had just crossed the last one off the list this morning. Tom Farnham wasn’t going to be any further use — which left Fry’s trip to Ireland to interview Martin Rourke as the last hope, reluctant though she was to go.

‘Well, your nose might have been accurate, Ben,’ said Fry, striding into the office with a file and perching on the edge of a desk between his and Gavin’s. ‘According to the initial report from the chemist’s lab at the Forensic Science Service, there were a number of chemical traces found in the soil at Pity Wood Farm — and inside some of the buildings, too. Nothing out of the ordinary for a farm, so far as I can see.’

‘You have no idea what’s normal on a farm,’ protested Cooper.

Fry raised an eyebrow, but took it well. ‘Fair point. I’ve got a copy of the report here, so let’s run through the results, then. Gavin, are you listening?’

‘All ears,’ said Murfin, though, as far as Cooper could see, he was concentrating on a chocolate bar he’d found somewhere. Not one that had disappeared from the packed lunches the other day, was it?

‘First of all, hydrogen peroxide,’ said Fry. ‘That’s basically plain water with an extra oxygen atom, according to the chemist. I didn’t know that.’

‘Hair bleach?’

‘I’m thinking peroxide blondes,’ said Murfin. ‘Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe.’

‘Yes, back in the fifties and sixties, that was the popular way to dye your hair at home.’

‘Do people still use it?’ asked Cooper. ‘I heard it turns your hair orange.’

Fry gave him a challenging look. ‘How would I know, Ben?’

‘I’ve no idea. Sorry.’

‘Isn’t it used as a fuel, too?’ suggested Murfin. ‘I think it was leaking hydrogen peroxide that blew up that Russian submarine a few years ago.’

‘The Kursk, yes. How did you know that, Gavin?’

‘I’ve got a teenage lad. He’s interested in things like that, so I get lectured about them at the dinner table.’

‘The chemist’s report says that about half of hydrogen peroxide produced is used to bleach wood pulp or paper, as an alternative to chlorine-based bleaches. He also suggests mouthwash, contact-lens cleaning solutions, and dental-bleaching gels.’

‘More to the point,’ said Cooper, ‘it’s added to animal feed sometimes, to help fibre digestion. And it’s in some fertilizers, too. I think you can even use hydrogen peroxide in septic tank systems. It oxidizes the slime.’

‘Lovely. So no surprise to find it on a farm, then?’