Stephen Booth: Dying to Sin

They stopped by a costume display. The rough trousers and leather knee-pads of a lead miner, the gowns and bonnets of an elegant lady.

‘So how are you liking school, Amy?’ he said, aware of an unfamiliar silence developing.

‘It’s so cliquey. They’re all goths or emos. Or chavs.’

‘Chavs, eh?’

‘They’re so stupid. There aren’t any real people, Uncle Ben.’

‘Would you rather be at home, or at school?’

‘Well, home is all right. I like being around the farm and the animals. But Mum and Dad are so immature sometimes.’

‘Oh, are they?’

‘They only think about money and possessions — they’re very materialistic. I can’t believe they never stop and think about serious subjects now and then.’

Cooper found himself trailing after his niece, as if he was the child demanding attention. It was supposed to be the other way round, but it never seemed to work like that in reality.

‘Well, they’re very busy looking after you and Josie,’ he said. ‘And they have to try to make sure the farm makes enough money to support the whole family. It’s very hard work, you know.’

Amy didn’t seem to hear. He could see that she was thinking about something again. It was very unnerving the way she did that, switched to auto pilot while her brain concentrated on some totally different subject. Perhaps she was already learning to multi-task, practising that skill all women claimed to have.

‘It’s just like Draco Malfoy, in that shop in Knockturn Alley,’ she said.

Cooper frowned, stumped again by the turn of the conversation. ‘Is it?’

His brain turned over, trying to pin down the reference. It was humiliating to find that his brain worked so much more slowly than Amy’s but he was finding it more and more difficult to keep up with his nieces’ interests these days. Their lives seemed to change so quickly, the pop stars they liked being different from one week to the next. Even the language they used evolved so rapidly that it left him behind.

‘Wait a minute — Draco Malfoy, did you say? That’s Harry Potter .’

‘Of course it’s Harry Potter .’ Amy could barely conceal the contempt in her voice. ‘It’s in The Chamber of Secrets . Draco Malfoy finds a hand of glory when he’s in the shop with his father. “ Best friend of thieves and plunderers ,” that’s what the shopkeeper says.’

‘“ Best friend of thieves and plunderers .” OK, that would make sense.’

‘So it’s magic,’ said Amy.

‘Yes, of course. What did you think it was?’

‘I thought it was for real. Well, it’s in the museum, isn’t it? All this other stuff is for real — the costumes and the tools, and the old furniture.’

‘Yes.’

‘But the hand of glory isn’t real — it’s magic.’

‘It’s a genuine hand,’ said Cooper defensively. ‘A hand that belonged to a real person once.’

‘But it’s still magic. Magic is make-believe. Harry Potter is made up. It’s fiction, Uncle Ben.’

‘The fact is,’ said Cooper, treading cautiously, ‘people in the past believed those things were for real. They didn’t know that magic was just something out of stories like Harry Potter . They actually thought it worked, in real life. The hand of glory, all kinds of stuff.’

They got to the door of the museum and looked out on to the street. There were fewer umbrellas being carried by the pedestrians now, so the rain must be easing.

‘People can be really weird, can’t they?’ said Amy. ‘They believe in such stupid things.’

The old man’s dreams were worse during the day. He drifted in and out of consciousness, hardly aware of his surroundings, pressed down into the darkness of sleep by a great weight. At times, he wasn’t even sure he was still alive, it felt so impossible to wake up. It was so difficult, so far beyond his strength.

Our dawns and dusks are numbered. They’ll steal our land next, and our hills. I always thought the place would last for ever, but now I don’t care. I wouldn’t pass on the curse. It’ll die with me, and none too soon. It will an’ all .

Dark filth, cruel brutes. Coming to my home for their evil purposes, stealing away my life. Our life. They turned up in their white vans, and they went away again. Dark, some of them. Speaking in tongues. They might as well have had the number stamped on their foreheads. Them and their minions, traipsing all over the shop. A load of rammel in the sheds, I don’t know what …

Words and phrases repeated in his head, meaningless yet desperately important, the only thing that mattered.

For he that is dead. For he that is dead .

Aye, it were silin’ down again. That morning, he was fast on, so I didn’t waken him. He’d only be lorping around the house, the old dosser. Yammeringabout his mad ideas. Sacrilege and superstition, damnation and desecration .

The night before, they’d all been popped-up again. I thought I’d go scranny if they didn’t stop. Look, he’s a wick ’un, I said. I told you he was a wick ’un .

The old man opened his eyes for a moment, aware of movement and light, but sank back into sleep before his brain could focus.

But he was sickly, and always was. Weak in the head, and sick in the body. Sound, me. I’m sound, I always said. But him, he was badly. I never cottoned on how badly. But it makes no odds now, does it? It’s all for the best, in the end .

For he that is dead .

For he that is dead .

For he that is dead is freed from sin .

A single hair follicle was enough to make a DNA match. Polymerase chain reaction and short tandem repeats could get a result from one head hair, or even an eyelash. Invisible stains would work, too. Stains of saliva. Tears and blood.

Watching the activity at Pity Wood Farm, Diane Fry despaired of being able to rely on modern scientific techniques. Even the fingerprints Jamie Ward had left on his spade a few hours ago would have bloomed in the damp atmosphere and become useless.

Yet more vehicles had arrived at the scene, jockeying for parking places on the drier patches of ground. They were wasting their time, because there wouldn’t be a dry inch left by the end of the day. Even now, the sound of spinning wheels whined in the air as a driver churned another rut into the mud.

‘Well, I see the builders have trampled all over the job long before we got here.’

Fry turned to see Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens approaching the inner cordon, casually clad in jeans and green wellington boots, as if he’d only popped out to walk the dog on a Sunday afternoon.

‘Morning, sir.’

‘Morning, Diane.’ He looked down at the sea of mud. ‘That’s just great. What a start. But I suppose it makes a change from our own plods doing the trampling.’

‘Does it? I can’t see any difference from where I’m standing. All size-twelve boots look the same to me. I’m not bothered what type of helmets they were wearing when they were doing the trampling. It’s not as if they were bouncing around on their heads, is it?’

‘True.’

‘If we found an imprint of a Derbyshire Constabulary cap badge in the mud, that would be a different matter,’ said Fry. ‘Then we’d be looking for some uniformed idiot who’d tripped over his own feet. And we’d have a list of potential suspects right under our noses.’

Hitchens laughed. ‘Shall we have a look at the centre of all this attention?’

With DC Murfin trailing reluctantly behind, they followed a line of wooden planks borrowed from the builders to create a temporary bridge. Their feet thumped on the planks as if they were walking out on to a pier at the seaside. Blackpool, with mud.