Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

Inside the mobile incident unit, a cluster of bodies was building up a warm fug. Every time someone opened the door, they were met with a barrage of complaints about letting the draught in. The inner step was a mass of muddy footprints, and more mud had been tracked through the compartments.

‘Any progress towards an ID yet?’ called Hitchens from the office.

‘We’re hoping for some results from the forensics search team, sir.’

‘Oh, the forensics search team. That would be the blokes scavenging through the skip.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hitchens saw Fry, and shook his head. ‘As you can see, Diane, it’s organized chaos here, as usual. I’ve just had word on the pathologist’s preliminary examination of the body. No signs of major trauma.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yes, until Mrs van Doon gets a closer look. She’s doing the full PM this afternoon. You can chase her up on that, if you like.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘We’ve managed to pull in some more diggers, though,’ said Hitchens. ‘They’re on site now.’

‘That’s good news. Can they …?’

‘Yes, I’ve told them to make a start on the disturbed ground your young builder was bothered about.’

‘Excellent.’

Official-issue packed lunches had been delivered for the team at the scene, one of the few perks of an otherwise tedious and unrewarding job. But even that was causing grumbles inside the trailer.

‘Somebody’s had all the chocolate bars out of our packed lunches,’ said someone.

‘OK, where’s Gavin Murfin?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fry as she opened the door. ‘But he’s probably got several alibis lined up.’

Outside the trailer, Fry looked at the mud. Her shoes hadn’t recovered from the day before. The clay had caked dry by the time she got round to cleaning them. It was an unforgiving sort of dirt, and practically unmoveable, too.

‘Diane.’

‘Yes?’

One of the SOCOs, Liz Petty, was standing at her elbow, holding a pair of rubber boots.

‘I brought these from the van. Thought you might be able to use them.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

She took them automatically, and Petty walked away. Fry was left holding the boots uncertainly, looking at the mud and wondering how silly she looked.

As soon as Cooper arrived back at the farm, he searched out Fry to report the outcome of his interview.

‘So what was your assessment of Mr Farnham?’ she asked.

‘I think he’d sell his own grandmother, organ by organ.’

Fry laughed. ‘You didn’t believe what he was telling you?’

‘It sounded much too pat, too moulded to show himself in the best light. He’d done his best, put his own money into the farm, but it had gone wrong through no fault of his own, and regretfully he’d had to pull out. If you were inclined to believe him, he’s practically a saint. But he came across more like a used car salesman to me.’

‘An awkward customer?’

‘I’d say so.’

‘Stay on him,’ said Fry. ‘And let me know if you want to try a different approach.’

There were accepted strategies for dealing with awkward customers. They didn’t have to speak to the police, but different officers and different approaches could be tried. In some circumstances, they might decide to take an interest in another issue, such as whether his car was legally taxed and licensed. No undue pressure, obviously.

As a last resort, there was always the option of arresting someone so they could be questioned and searched. Without justification, they were open to the subject deciding to sue, and might have to pay a couple of grand out of court. But financially it was preferable to deploying expensive resources on long, fruitless enquiries when a line of investigation was blocked.

‘We should try to find these farm records,’ said Cooper. ‘I think Farnham was right about that, at least. If the records are anywhere, they’ll be inside the house.’

‘Well, I’ll help you later. At least it’s dry inside the house, if none too clean.’

But Cooper wasn’t paying attention now. He was looking at his feet.

‘You know, I don’t remember ever seeing mud this red before — not in this area. The real clay soils are further south.’

Murfin came trudging through the mud to hand Fry a list of the items that the forensics team had recovered from the skip. It was a very long list, but most of the material she could discount. She was only interested in what had come out of the hole, and the SOCOs had helpfully grouped some items together. These had been tipped on top of the skip in one corner, where a couple of planks had been laid as a runway to get a wheelbarrow up to the right height. There were stones here, some unidentifiable bits of rusty metal, a broken bucket, a packet of coffee filters, and some brown mason jars.

She read through the list again, more carefully, then turned to the rest of the material that had been felt less significant. The SOCOs had been right — they’d picked out the relevant items. They couldn’t list what wasn’t there.

Fry stared across the site at the body tent, where a forensic botanist was using a teaspoon to tease out plant fragments. She had a clear picture of Jamie Ward, squatting in the wet mud, staring in shock at the object he’d found in the trench. When he shouted, someone had run up to him, thinking he’d hurt himself, while Nikolai, the foreman, had been cursing in the background. All perfectly clear, but for one thing.

‘Gavin, have you got the list of builders’ names and addresses?’

‘I hope you don’t want them in English.’

Fry flicked through the list she was given. She could see what Gavin meant — most of the names sounded East European. She wasn’t familiar enough with the different nationalities in that part of the world to tell where exactly they might be from, but the officers taking details had helpfully filled in the nationalities, too. Polish, Czech, Slovakian. Apart from two, who were Irish nationals, none of the construction crew would have English as a first language.

Then Fry corrected herself. Gaelic was being restored to Ireland these days. The two Irishmen might not consider English their first language, either. It was advisable to tread carefully on these issues. She didn’t want to be sent on diversity training.

‘Several of these men give the same address in Macclesfield,’ she said.

‘Yes, it’s some kind of workmen’s hostel or B amp;B,’ said Murfin. ‘According to the foreman, most of them are employed by an agency and they move around the country, wherever the work happens to be. Just at the moment, they’re living in Macclesfield. Tomorrow, the moon.’

‘Gavin, round up a couple of uniforms and speak to all these men again. I want to know which of them was working near Jamie Ward when he uncovered that body. Jamie says that one of them ran up to him when he shouted, but he can’t remember who. I’d like to find out.’

‘OK, I can do that.’

Murfin trudged away again, looking miserable. Fry seemed not to notice.

‘This woman is worrying me,’ she said to Cooper. ‘Not knowing anything about her is very frustrating. It means we can’t piece together any relationships she had, or formulate any theories about how she died. It’s possible she committed suicide, or died accidentally. And then somebody buried her.’

‘Deliberately?’ asked Cooper.

Fry laughed. ‘Is it possible to bury a person accidentally?’

‘On a farm? Well, yes. Somebody might be standing in the wrong spot and get in the way of a trailer load of silage, or the slurry hose. People get killed on farms all the time. But you’d generally know you’d done it. Even if you were looking the wrong way, or you didn’t hear them scream over the noise of your tractor engine, you’d soon notice they were missing. Well, wouldn’t you?’