Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

That afternoon, the yellow skull recovered from Tom Farnham’s garage was packed up and sent off to Sheffield University for the anthropology team to examine. Dr Jamieson would report on its provenance, in due course. But this was Saturday, so Fry knew she couldn’t expect any results for a few days.

She looked across the CID room, where Cooper was at his desk.

‘You know, this is a case that has to be all about the victims,’ she said.

‘Isn’t every case about the victims, Diane?’

‘Of course,’ said Fry, waving a hand impatiently. ‘But, in this instance, the identity of the victims is crucial. We not only have to find out who they were, but how they were connected to each other — and we need to do both of those things before we can even begin to focus on any suspects. How did these women come to be at Pity Wood Farm? If we can start to build up a picture of them, Ben, we’re halfway there. Damn it, if we can do that, we’re almost all the way there.’

Cooper looked thoughtful. It was the one thing Fry could say about him — he always listened and considered what she said, even if he then went off and did something entirely different.

‘In a way, it feels as though there ought to be a third victim,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘A third victim. One who came in between these two, perhaps. I don’t know. But a victim that would fill in the gaps and make the connection. The ones we’ve found might not be Victims A and B at all, but A and C. It could be the absence of the real Victim B that’s making them look as though they’re not part of a sequence.’

‘Explain yourself, Ben.’

Cooper got up and began to pace in frustration, as if he was struggling to articulate in plain words some nagging but elusive idea that had been slithering at the back of his mind.

‘What I mean is, there might have been a third person who had connections to these other two. If there was a middle victim, the pieces could fall together. At the moment, it’s like there’s a black hole, a missing section where all the links have been broken.’

‘But there isn’t a third victim.’

‘Not that we’ve found, Diane.’

Fry thought of the excavated farmyard. ‘Well, not at Pity Wood. There isn’t a third victim there . We’d have found her by now, Ben.’

‘Has anyone checked that old caravan?’

‘The search team gave it an initial sweep. The SOCOs haven’t got round to it yet, but there’s certainly no body in it, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not even any personal possessions that might lead to an ID.’

‘No, but there might be some trace evidence,’ said Cooper. ‘It was almost certainly being used to house itinerant workers.’

‘I’ll suggest making it a higher priority. OK?’

But Cooper continued to pace, unsatisfied. ‘These victims didn’t go missing at the same time,’ he said. ‘There’d have been a major enquiry, if there had been three. We’d still be looking for them now. There must be a connection between them, though.’

‘I repeat, we haven’t found three bodies. It sounds ridiculous to say “only” two, but …’

‘But you’re right. We need to look more closely. Extend the area of search. You know, I was thinking about the Fred and Rosemary West case. Those girls who were offered cheap accommodation in the Wests’ house, and never left. If I remember right, not all the bodies were found at the house. There was a second burial site, at some property connected with the Wests.’

‘I remember. Any ideas, then?’

Cooper sat down, looking suddenly tired. ‘Well, I’ll need to go through the files again, Diane.’

‘Do that. If there is a third victim, she might be the one who makes the connection with all the others.’

‘It’s another Catch-22. We need to make the connections first to find her. And we need to find her to make the connections.’

Mentioning it to no one, least of all Ben Cooper, Fry took half an hour to visit Edendale Museum for herself. She had to show her warrant card to get admission, because the museum was closing for the night.

‘The hand of glory, Sergeant?’ said the attendant. ‘One of our most popular exhibits. The kids love it. Little ghouls, most of them.’

‘Is this a real human hand?’

‘Certainly, certainly. I’ll show you.’

Fry followed the attendant to the display case. So Cooper thought she would never have heard of such a thing as a hand of glory, did he? Well, there he was wrong, for once. She was from the Black Country, and the area had its own mummified hand of glory, so called. That one had been taken from inside the chimney of a pub when it was being renovated. The White Hart at Caldmore Green.

Everyone knew the White Hart in the Black Country. Back in the sixties, the A34 Murderer had been caught because he was overheard asking a victim the way to ‘Karma Green’. Until then, police had thought he was a Brummie, from the neighbouring city of Birmingham. But only Black Country folk pronounced Caldmore as ‘Karma’. A killer’s origins had given him away.

Once, Fry had seen the object itself in Walsall Museum, above the central library on Lichfield Street. It had been just one artefact among the scold’s bridles and Second World War gas masks, a historic collection of iron locks, and some gaucho spurs and stirrups. She’d heard that the museum had taken it off public display at one time because it was frightening the children too much, but you could still see it if you asked. It had become a sort of under-the-counter hand of glory.

‘This is one of Edendale Museum’s most popular exhibits,’ said the attendant. ‘Well, one of the most viewed, anyway. Not everyone approves of it.’

‘A bit controversial, is it?’

‘Let’s say the reactions to it vary considerably. There are many people who refuse to believe that it’s actually a real hand. Even when we explain the whole thing to them, they still don’t believe us. They go away thinking it’s a plastic reproduction, which it isn’t.’

Of course, the White Hart at Caldmore Green had a ghost or two of its own. There had allegedly been a death in the attic where the ‘hand’ was found, the suicide of a servant girl. A previous landlord had reported hearing sobs coming from the attic room, and an investigation found nothing but the mysterious handprint of a child in the dust.

Whether the White Hart hand of glory had ever belonged to the servant girl was doubtful, though. Fry had seen it just as she was beginning her training to join the police and had already started her course at UCE in Perry Barr. Even if she hadn’t already picked up a smattering of medical knowledge, it would have been obvious to her that the object in the museum was actually the severed arm of a small child, torn off right up to the scapula, then pickled in formalin.

Despite the story that had become attached to it, she was pretty sure that Walsall Museum’s hand of glory was more likely to be a medical specimen from the mid-nineteenth century. If that was supposed to be a magical item used to aid burglaries, there must have been some malefactors being badly misled by their hand-of-glory supplier. How or why a medical specimen had come to be concealed in the chimney of a pub, no one was saying. Everyone preferred the stories of ghosts and magic, obviously.

‘ By the mysteries of the deep, by the flames of Baal, by the power of the East and the silence of the night, by the Holy Rites of Hecate, I conjure and exorcise thee .’

‘Sorry?’

He pointed at a printed card inside the case. ‘It’s the spell you’re supposed to use with the hand of glory. If you do it right, it not only protects you, but provides light that only you can see. Naturally, it was used mostly for nefarious purposes. Anything useful always is, don’t you find?’