Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

It wasn’t quite what Ben had expected. But he could see that Matt had found an example of diversification that he’d be using for years to come, as a warning to others. Best to change the subject a bit.

‘Can you see a future for the girls?’ he asked. ‘They’ll want to go off and do their own thing when they grow up, won’t they?’

‘Well, I’d like at least one of them to be involved in farming. Our family have been farmers since the year dot.’

‘I know, Matt.’

‘I should think it’s ever since farming has existed. All right, the younger brothers and sisters have always had other jobs, like you. But if they haven’t had a farm themselves they’ve always been involved in some way. There’s got to be a couple of cows or a few sheep — it’s just a way of life. But young people need to believe they can make a living from farming, and they want to get some respect. Farmers feel like they’re regarded as the dregs. We can’t do anything right.’ He paused to take a long swig of beer. ‘And there are the marts.’

‘You mean Ashbourne?’

Ben knew the closure of Ashbourne cattle mart had been a blow for local farmers, though there was still Bakewell, and even Uttoxeter over the border in Staffordshire.

‘That’s just the latest,’ said Matt. ‘Those farmers in isolated locations look forward to market as a chance for a trip out, to meet people with similar problems. The only other person we talk to much is the bank manager. When the rest of the local marts go, that’ll be it, Ben. That’ll be it for livestock farming in this county.’

‘Oh, come on, Matt.’

‘No, I’m telling you the truth. In ten years’ time, I’ll either still be farming, or drawing the social, and that’s a fact. There was an article in the Farmers Guardian a while ago that said we’d see the end of small farms by 2010.’

‘There are still a few left, though.’

‘Aye, a few.’

Cooper was silent for a moment, savouring his Towns, letting its flavour wash away the strange chemical taste that seemed to have settled at the back of his throat since he’d first visited Pity Wood Farm.

‘Do you really think it will happen, Matt?’ he asked.

‘I’m damn certain it will. I think it’s all planned out somewhere. In London or in Brussels, I don’t know. But I reckon there’s a dossier sitting in some bureaucrat’s desk drawer right now, showing the target date for the closure of the last small hill farm. They’ve got our fate worked out, and there’ll be nothing we can do about it.’

‘Nothing? You could start planning for it now, couldn’t you?’

‘Oh, yes? You try coming in exhausted after a long day and sitting down to do the government’s bloody paperwork. Then see how much time you have to start planning your future. Not to mention trying to spend a bit of time with your family. You see, that’s the trouble with us farmers. We’ve got this suicidal urge to farm. If we were sane, we’d have said “sod it” by now.’

Cooper felt a familiar niggle of worry about his brother surface at the back of his mind. He’d suffered severe spells of despondency himself, and he knew what it was like when things looked really black and the future held no hope. There was such a temptation to consider the easy way out, the one that would take all those burdens off your shoulders in an instant.

He could only hope and pray that the tendency wasn’t present in his brother, at least not to any greater degree. Matt had seen this happen to people he knew — too many of them, over the years. The highest rates of suicide in the UK were among farmers. They became very attached to their patch of land and could find it hard to cope, particularly when a problem such as foot-and-mouth occurred.

It was one of the saving factors about farming that you were always looking to the future — anticipating the next harvest, or the next lambing season. The work you did today would bear fruit in five months’ time. It was quite different from living on a day-today basis, when every week was the same and nothing was likely to change.

But if that optimism about the future was taken away, then farmers like Matt would have nothing to keep them going.

‘Are we going to have another drink?’

Matt thumped his empty glass down. ‘Why not?’

Ben drained his Towns and got up to go to the bar. After a day like this, he did start to wonder who the sane ones were. Maybe, in the end, it was the likes of Diane Fry who could see the future most clearly, and had it all worked out. Fry’s attitude was the real sanity. Well, perhaps.

With mounting, irrational rage, Fry stared at the contents of the box she’d lifted from beneath the loose floorboard. Diamorphine hydrochloride. Pharmaceutically prepared heroin, freeze dried in glass ampoules for injection into the wrist.

She’d heard about this use of diamorphine. Low-profile trial schemes had been taking place around the country for some time. Because it came in measured doses, you knew exactly how much you were taking, and you could function perfectly well. That was the theory, anyway. It was heroin on the NHS. And at a cost to the taxpayer, she’d heard, of about ten thousand pounds a year per addict.

Fry knew there were very few pure, one-drug addicts. Heroin users took crack, and vice versa. No one had suggested prescribing crack on the NHS yet, but she supposed it could happen. On the street, women could earn between a hundred and two hundred pounds a night. And in many cases, it all went on gear. A heroin habit took a lot of feeding.

She sat down suddenly on the bed, feeling a powerful surge of guilt at having invaded her sister’s privacy. She wanted to weep at the destructiveness of the emotions that had driven her to do it. Jealousy, bitterness, and fear. Their relationship couldn’t be founded solely on a shared set of genes, could it? There had to be more to family than this endless anger and suspicion.

But Fry looked at the boxes on the floor. And immediately the fury swept over her again in a stomach-churning tide, too powerful to resist.

To her certain knowledge, there was no diamorphine trial taking place in Edendale for local addicts. So where had her sister been going? Where was Angie obtaining her supplies?

Saturday

Cooper knew it wasn’t going to be a good day as soon as he entered the CID room and set eyes on Gavin Murfin. Somehow, Murfin was able to arrange his features into a picture of abject misery. Martyrdom and gloom were written all over him this morning. It was enough to shrivel the tinsel.

‘What’s the matter, Gavin?’

‘I’ve been put down for duty over Christmas. All thanks to this job at Rakedale. I’m really going to be in the dog house, I can tell you.’

Cooper took off his jacket and sat down at his desk. ‘I’ll swap with you.’

Murfin looked up. ‘What?’

‘I’ll swap duties with you, Gavin. No one will mind. As long as someone’s around to deal with anything that crops up. Then you can have Christmas at home with your family, and everyone’s happy, right?’

‘But what about you?’

Cooper shrugged. ‘It’s not so important for me. I don’t have kids.’

‘Even so. They’ll be expecting you at Bridge End on Christmas Day. Your lot always have a big family get-together, don’t they? You’ve told me about it often enough. Brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, and hordes of little nephews and nieces.’

‘There aren’t that many, Gavin. Besides, it’ll be different this year. It’s the first year Mum won’t be there.’

‘Oh, right. Yeah, that could be a bit tough, I suppose. So you’d rather come into the office than be at the farm, would you? Sure?’