Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

He bet most of the country wouldn’t have believed how people lived their lives, here on the fringes of the Pennines. ‘It’s not as if we’re living in a Third World country,’ they’d say. ‘There are cities only a few miles away, for goodness’ sake. You can practically see Manchester over that hill. Hi-tech industries and cafe society, a huge airport sending jet liners all around the world. How can anyone be living without electricity?’

But these local communities were conscious of the changes taking place around them. More conscious than most, he guessed.

Fairies and elves, spells and charms had been an integral part of life of the countryman, who wouldn’t have understood the causes and effects of droughts and floods, crop failures, or sickness in his livestock. Witches were blamed for evil in the Middle Ages, Celts had worshipped the head.

Lost in his own thoughts, Cooper only became aware of the nature of the silence when they were halfway to Rakedale.

‘What’s wrong, Diane?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

He hated it when she said ‘nothing’ like that. Her tone of voice meant anything but ‘nothing’. It told him that he damn well ought to know what was wrong, without him having to ask her.

‘Come on, what’s the matter?’

‘I told you. Nothing.’

Well, at least that meant it wasn’t his fault. She’d never been shy about telling him when he’d done something wrong. Quite the opposite. So someone else had upset her.

‘This business with the skulls — is it what Mrs Dain meant about “the old religion”?’ asked Fry eventually.

‘That would be Old Religion — capital “O”, capital “R”.’

‘I doubt it’s in my dictionary, Ben, all the same.’

‘Actually, I think she might have been referring to a series of TV programmes that were made back in the seventies. The producers claimed to have found a community in the Dark Peak who still worshipped the old gods.’

‘Just a minute — I suppose that would be Old Gods, capital “O”, capital “G”? Are we talking Paganism here?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Cooper. ‘In fact, the people involved were mostly practising Christians, I think. No, it was said to be a sort of respect for traditional beliefs that didn’t conflict with their Christian practices. They believed in the old Celtic gods, but never mentioned them. The programme interviewed someone who called herself a “guardian”. She talked about a scattered community who still believed in the old ways. They didn’t name the small mill town she came from — but most local people could have a good guess.’ ‘That’s nearly thirty years ago. The world has changed a lot since then.’

‘Yes, even in … well, even in the Peak District.’

He turned on to the A515 towards Newhaven. Not far away from here was Arbor Low — a sort of flattened version of Stonehenge, a circle of megaliths laid out like a clock face. When he’d walked up there on a school trip once, Cooper had thought the stones looked as though they’d been blown down by the wind. But their teacher said it was more likely they’d been deliberately knocked over by Christian zealots who disapproved of the stones’ religious significance.

Religious significance? Arbor Low was built more than four thousand years ago, wasn’t it? Now, that was the real Old Religion.

‘Do you think Raymond Sutton knew about the bodies buried on his farm?’ asked Fry. ‘You’ve talked to him, Ben, what do you think?’

‘I think he might have had a suspicion,’ said Cooper. ‘But no more than that — just a suspicion that something bad had happened.’

‘Involving his brother?’

‘I don’t know. He talks about Hell a lot. Somebody is going to be damned.’

‘So here’s a scenario,’ said Fry. ‘One or both of the Sutton brothers killed these women, either during some barking mad pagan rituals in Derek’s case, or out of religious mania in Raymond’s case, because they were damned and needed to be punished and sent to Hell.’

‘Well …’

‘Whatever. I’m vague on the details yet. But word got out in the area — as it was bound to do round here. Rumour, rumour. Gossip, gossip.’

‘And then people just kept quiet?’

‘Well, in my scenario, Dixon of Dock Green turns up at the farm to see what’s what.’

‘PC Palfreyman?’

‘Yes, PC Bloody Palfreyman. “Evening, all,” he says. “What’s this I hear about you two lads committing a couple of nasty murders? We can’t be having that, you know. I might have to give you a clip round the ear for being naughty boys.”’

‘It could only have been one murder,’ said Cooper reasonably. ‘The second victim died three years after Mr Palfreyman retired.’

‘True. But the principle is the same.’

‘You really think he might have known all about what went on at Pity Wood Farm, and covered up for the Suttons?’

‘Why not? “I called and had a few words. It never happened again.”’

Cooper shook his head. ‘I can’t see it. Granted, Palfreyman has his own ideas about justice, like so many of the old coppers did. But he wouldn’t cover up a murder, let alone two. That couldn’t be considered justice, not in anyone’s book. Could it?’

‘Well, actually, it might depend,’ said Fry, ‘on who those women were.’

‘Might it?’

Cooper considered that idea, and gradually realized what she was hinting at. There was one category of women who were considered not only dispensable, but sometimes undesirable.

‘Do you mean street girls?’ he said.

‘“Street girls” isn’t really a suitable euphemism out here,’ pointed out Fry. ‘Shall we call them sex workers?’

‘Prostitutes, if you like. But where would they do business?’

‘Wherever there are numbers of men with nothing much else to do.’

Cooper pictured Pity Wood Farm. ‘Targeting itinerant farmworkers, for example?’

‘Who else?’

At first, he thought it was a rhetorical question. But the tone had been wrong, and Fry seemed to be waiting for an answer.

‘Yes, who else?’ said Cooper, regarding her curiously.

‘All right. I was thinking about old-fashioned police officers who operate under their own discretion and run their own patch, with no questions asked.’

‘That old thing?’ said Tom Farnham. ‘Who would want that? It’s just an old skull. Some damn superstition of Derek Sutton’s. Mad bugger, he was.’

Farnham fidgeted with the spray can he’d been using to touch up a dent on the lawnmower. Its repair was nearly complete now. Its working parts gleamed with oil, and its paintwork had been cleaned and polished.

‘But you do have it, sir?’

Farnham sighed. ‘Don’t you need a warrant or something?’

‘Only if you don’t agree to help us. But why would you want to prevent us seeing this skull if it’s worthless?’

‘Why indeed? Screaming Billy, that’s what the old fool called it. Supposed to protect the farm from bad luck, or something. Raymond didn’t see eye to eye with him on that, not at all. He wanted it out of the house when the place was sold. Said he wouldn’t curse the new owners with it. Raymond, he didn’t care about anything else — he was glad to get shut of the place in the end. It was just that skull he had a bee in his bonnet about. He rang and asked me to get rid of it before the new bloke took over the farm. So I did him a favour, see? For old times’ sake, and all that.’

‘Very loyal of you, sir. And it’s still here?’

‘Yes, it’s still here.’

Farnham moved across to his work bench and took a key from his pocket. He unlocked a cupboard under the bench and withdrew a cardboard box packed with old newspaper. In the middle of the newspaper, something smooth and yellow nestled.