Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

‘What in God’s name happened here, Ben? Did somebody drive a herd of buffalo through, or what?’

‘Not the front door, Diane. Don’t you know that yet?’

Like many houses in these parts, the occupants of Pity Wood Farm must have come and gone mostly through the back door. Neighbours would know never to call at the front of the house, and the postman had his own routine. Only strangers and DEFRA officials would try to approach the front door. When you realized that, the obstacle course of foul-smelling rubbish might start to look like a message.

For a moment, Fry seemed determined to get in anyway, as if she couldn’t accept that things weren’t done in a logical way.

‘Hold your noses. It’s like entering a kind of hell,’ said Wayne Abbott as he passed a few yards away.

‘Why is he always around?’ said Fry.

‘It’s his job,’ pointed out Cooper.

‘It’s not his job to annoy me.’

They walked round the house and Cooper led her inside through the back door, passing the cleared rooms and entering the hallway.

‘They left everything. Look, they even left the family Bible on the hall table,’ said Cooper.

‘So one of them found God, do you think?’

‘It happens.’

‘It must have been Raymond. He sounds the type.’

‘Do you think there’s a type, Diane?’

‘Yes — those who show some signs of having a conscience in the first place. No, wait. There’s another type — the ones who’re already disturbed, hovering close to the edge. We see it all the time among convicted criminals. They get hold of some delusion that they interpret as a spiritual revelation, and suddenly they’re born again. They think they’re one of God’s chosen representatives on earth, redeemed from their sins for some special purpose that He has in mind for them. And, hey presto, they don’t have to feel guilty about their crimes any more.’

Cooper nodded, but reluctantly. He no longer went to church regularly himself, but he did at least feel guilty about not going. The way Fry talked about other people’s religious beliefs made him uncomfortable. The worst thing was that he couldn’t tell her how he felt, because he knew she’d take it as a sign of weakness.

‘Actually, there’s a third type, isn’t there?’ he said.

‘Oh, is there?’ Fry watched him expectantly.

‘There are those who pretend to have found religion, because they think it will help them get parole.’

‘Yes, it’s common enough. But it’s a tough act to keep up, especially when you get on the outside.’

‘I suppose so.’

Fry looked at the Bible, prominently displayed on the hall table. ‘I mean, if someone is genuinely religious, you’d expect to find some sign of it in their house, in private — not just for public show.’

She began to walk back towards the next room, and Cooper followed her. They moved cautiously about the house, looking for anything that resembled an office where the farm records might have been kept. But they ended up in the kitchen.

‘We might as well start here,’ said Cooper.

There were still no cats. Not even the signs of their food bowls or a litter tray. Wasn’t a cat the Celtic equivalent of the dog Cerberus, the guardian at the entrance to the Underworld? If this was a kind of hell, where were the guardians?

Cooper hoped the farm cats had taken themselves off into the woods and fields to find their own food. He didn’t like to think of them becoming roadkill. Their deaths would never be reported, if that was the case. Like the body in the excavated grave, they would never be missed, or even become a statistic.

He saw a Daily Express that lay folded on the kitchen table, gathering dust.

‘This newspaper is nearly nine months old.’

‘Is Winston Churchill still Prime Minister?’ asked Fry.

‘No, but someone’s landed on the Moon.’

They went through all the drawers they could find in the kitchen, the sitting room, and a small parlour. Eventually, their search turned up a large, leather-bound book like a ledger, and sheaves of paperwork left loose or stuffed into boxfiles. Cooper lifted out the book and freed it from the papers.

‘Farm accounts?’ asked Fry.

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Bag everything, Ben, and make sure it’s all logged as evidence. We’ll look at it when we get back to the office.’

‘Fair enough.’

Cooper did as he was told, then continued to poke around in the kitchen cupboards, curious about what the Suttons might have left behind that gave an insight into their lives.

‘This is interesting, Diane.’

‘What have you found?’

‘A Sani Bag.’

‘A what?’

‘A sanitary-towel disposal bag. This one is from a Novotel. They provide them in their bathrooms for guests.’

Cooper turned the bag over in his hand. He’d never looked at one closely before. It was made of a strong, shiny white plastic, overprinted with blue text in four languages, and it could be sealed by peeling off an adhesive strip and folding down the flap, the way some envelopes were sealed. A set of symbols on the back made it clear that the bag should be disposed of in the bin, not in the toilet bowl. For some reason, these instructions were given in six languages, rather than four.

‘There’s a Novotel in Sheffield,’ he said. ‘On Arundel Gate, near Hallam University. That’s the nearest one I can think of.’

‘There’s another at Long Eaton, near Junction 25 of the M1.’

‘The M1? Well, that would be convenient, too. I suppose it’s the sort of thing you might take away with you from a hotel, like those little bars of soap, and hand towels.’

‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘But only if you’re female.’

‘So we’ve found evidence to suggest that at least one female was living at Pity Wood Farm. One of our victims, Diane?’

‘Impossible to say, until we have an ID.’

‘We need to get SOCOs into this kitchen,’ said Cooper. ‘If violence was committed, this is a likely place for it to have happened.’

‘Yes, I suppose we might hit lucky — old bloodstains on one of those knives, or in between the tiles of the floor.’

‘Or poisons in the fridge.’

Cooper opened the door of the Electrolux and let her have a glimpse of the jars with their unidentifiable crystallized residues.

‘Jesus. Did people really live in this house?’ said Fry. ‘Or did they just turn it over to the animals?’

‘If we can establish a primary crime scene, Diane, it would change everything.’

‘Yes, you’re right. I’ll suggest it as a priority.’

Fry stood in the middle of the room and turned slowly on the spot, examining the kitchen — its stained walls, its old armchairs, its cast-iron range, and even the still dripping tap in the sink.

‘What do you think, Diane?’ asked Cooper.

‘To be honest, I think you must be Doctor Who, and you’ve just zipped us off to another place and time in your Tardis.’

‘I do know where there’s a police box,’ he said helpfully. ‘But it hasn’t moved for years, to my knowledge.’

‘Ben, I don’t recognize this world. These people are an alien species to me. I feel like an anthropologist examining the remains of a vanished civilization.’

‘I know what you mean.’

Fry stepped over a heap of muddy straw on the kitchen floor. ‘Actually, “civilization” is putting it a bit strong.’

She was trying to make a joke of it, but Fry really did feel out of her own place and time. The sensation was very disturbing, as if the time machine had left her travel sick and nauseous.

And she had the suspicion that it wasn’t the Suttons who were the aliens around here.

Just as she was thinking about aliens, Wayne Abbott put his head round the door. His shaved head bristled aggressively.