grinding and the decreased production of acid-fighting saliva. Together, they caused the symptoms of rapid tooth decay. Sometimes known as ‘meth mouth’.
One way or another, methamphetamine had killed Nadezda Halak.
Without her phone for about an hour and a half, Fry felt lost. She stared out of the window of the plane at the Irish Sea passing below. It looked grey, and very wet. She hoped that Ireland itself would be more welcoming. Break out the Guinness and the shamrock, we’ve got a visitor. Oh, yes, that’s how it would be.
Well, it couldn’t be worse than Rakedale. If she’d been forced to spend another day in that place, she would probably have gone mad, even without the effects of the toxic chemicals on her body.
For a moment, Fry wondered whether she could sue Derbyshire Constabulary for not providing her with proper protective equipment to do her job. Yes, probably. Health and Safety regulations called for a risk assessment, which hadn’t been carried out, so far as she was aware.
But all she had was this damn cold to show for it. And no doubt she’d discover that the officer who ought to have carried out the risk assessment was her.
But Rakedale was definitely her idea of one of the outer circles of Hell. The people who lived there were slightly less than human, dead to normal standards of civilized behaviour.
Fry had once heard of a rare medical condition that destroyed the sense of touch. When you had the condition, it became impossible to tell sandpaper from silk, leather from stone, or water from oil. Impossible to feel anything at all.
They said that touch was already present as a sense in the foetus. At eight weeks after conception, it started in the lips and spread to the rest of the body. So how was it possible to lose this sense, of all the senses? A man who talked about his condition described wanting to stroke the family dog, but not being able to feel it, unless the dog had been out in the sun and was warm, or had been caught in the rain and was cold. Beyond that, there seemed to be nothing for him to touch.
She felt like that when she was in Rakedale. As a police officer, she’d learned to be sensitive to the smallest signals that people unconsciously gave out, the gestures and facial expressions that revealed their real thoughts, the body language and lack of eye contact that gave away a lie.
But there, she was unable to detect any normal responses. Those people were recognizable only at the extremes of emotion. They were either hot or cold, but in between there was a gap where human emotions seemed to cease to exist. In that state, they were out of reach of her senses, beyond her ability to touch.
As the plane began its descent towards Dublin Airport, Fry recalled David Palfreyman asking her whether she was able to tell when someone was a liar. Palfreyman’s mockery of modern techniques was in itself a classic distraction tactic. She decided to focus her techniques on Palfreyman next time she met him. She felt sure he would fail the body language test.
Oh, don’t worry, Mr Palfreyman — DS Fry certainly had the training to spot a liar. There were ten major signs that someone was lying. And Fry had seen every one of them during her time in Rakedale.
DCI Kessen was being interviewed on TV for the news bulletin. Cooper wondered if he would still have that job when Superintendent Branagh had settled in. It was high profile, and it didn’t suit everyone. Would Branagh be better in front of a TV camera than she was in the photographer’s studio?
‘The chemicals used in the production of this drug are volatile and dangerous if inhaled, so officers have to be extremely cautious during their examination of the premises at Rakedale,’ Kessen was saying. ‘We were initially concerned that some of the toxic chemicals used in the production of methamphetamine might have been dumped in the local woods, but we have checked the area and we believe it is safe.
‘This is likely to be a long investigation,’ he warned, ‘as we’re having to take great care not to put our officers or the public at unnecessary risk from these toxic chemicals. The production of methamphetamine can be very dangerous for anyone involved.’
Terrific. A long investigation. If that was true, Christmas was starting to look very unlikely. Perhaps they should cancel it altogether, and celebrate it in February instead.
Kessen finished by deflecting the question that everyone was bound to be asking.
‘We’re not able to say at this stage whether the death of Mr Thomas Farnham in a shooting incident is related. But all possible lines of enquiry are being followed up.’
Thinking of Christmas, Cooper remembered that Jack Elder was still in custody, and he would have to be either charged or released soon. Fry had left him her interview notes and her copy of the tape. Cooper went through to familiarize himself with Elder’s answers, then he called down to ask the custody sergeant to put Elder in an interview room.
Elder’s long grey beard did make him look a little bit like Santa Claus, though a Santa who’d been down too many chimneys and drunk too much of the sherry.
‘I’m sure we’ll have this sorted out soon, sir,’ said Cooper, sitting across the interview-room table. ‘There are just a couple more questions I’d like to ask you. One or two things that we’re not clear about.’
‘What’s that, then?’ said Elder.
‘Well, for example, you said in your previous interview with DS Fry that you had never been to Pity Wood Farm. Is that correct?’
‘Yes. I was never at the place. I saw the Suttons in the pub, and that was all. I stayed away from their old farm.’
‘And my colleague put to you a statement from a witness who claims to have seen you going in and out of the farm many times with your lorry.’
Elder shook his head. ‘Not me. They were wrong.’
‘You see,’ said Cooper, in his best kindly manner, ‘since we had to arrest you, Mr Elder, we took your fingerprints and a sample of your DNA when you arrived in custody, as you know. That’s standard procedure, and it’s not significant in itself. But it does mean that we can compare your prints, and your DNA profile, with any that we have on file. Those will include samples that have been collected from crime scenes over several decades.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s amazing what technology can do now. We’re clearing up an awful lot of old crimes, just by comparing DNA samples to the database.’
‘What has that got to do with me?’
‘Well, it’s like this,’ said Cooper. ‘How shall I explain it? If you told us you’d been at Pity Wood Farm, then there would be no problem. But since you’ve insisted twice now that you’ve never been there, it means that, should we happen to find your fingerprints, or some DNA evidence that does put you at the scene, then … well, we know you’ve been lying to us. And that looks very suspicious, doesn’t it?’
Elder licked his lips and twisted a finger in his beard. ‘Suspicious?’
‘We’d have to draw certain conclusions from the fact that you were lying. Especially since we’re engaged in a murder enquiry here. Probably a double murder, Mr Elder.’
‘Even if I
‘Surely it would have to be something as serious as a murder to make you sit here and lie about whether you’d visited Pity Wood,’ said Cooper reasonably. ‘I mean, what other reason would you have to do that?’
He could see Elder was starting to get anxious. His fingers twisted tighter and tighter until they must have hurt. Cooper let him think about it for a few moments longer before he asked again.
‘So, what do you say? Shall we put your previous answers behind us, and I’ll give you a chance to answer again? Have you ever been to Pity Wood Farm, Mr Elder?’
‘’Course I bloody have,’ blurted Elder. ‘You know damn well I have, loads of times. You and your fingerprints and your DNA, trying to catch me out. If you find my blood at Pity Wood Farm, it’ll be because of that bastard Derek Sutton. Mad as a weasel, he was. He would have killed me, if his brother hadn’t pulled him off. And just because I had a bit of a joke with him.’
‘A joke?’
‘I used to do some vermin control when I was in farming. I still turn my hand to it now and again. That day, I’d been clearing some Larsen traps. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes, they’re used to catch carrion crows.’
‘Aye. Well, I kept one bird in a trap, and I had it with me when I went up to Pity Wood. I slipped it into the cab of Derek’s Land Rover when he wasn’t looking. By God, he went berserk when he found it flapping around inside there, shitting on his seats.’
