Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

The phenomenon of general credulity on the subject baffled Fry. Fair enough, if there was something genuinely mysterious and unexplained, you might be forgiven for letting loose the imagination and coming up with your own interpretation. But when the scientific facts were staring them in the face, how could people ignore them and believe instead in something that flew in the face of the evidence? Some would believe that the world was flat, or that the Earth circled the Moon, just because they wanted to believe it. Others had faith in the magical powers of a pickled hand or a severed head.

Good luck to them. But if she found them putting their crazy ideas into practice, she’d be obliged to lock them up. Prison or high-security psychiatric hospital, she didn’t really mind. So long as colleagues like Ben Cooper didn’t get in her way with some well-meaning rubbish about cultural identity.

But here, in Edendale, was a genuine hand of glory.

‘The only other one that we know of is in the museum at Whitby,’ said the attendant.

‘Obtaining a human hand under the proper circumstances could prove to be quite difficult in this day and age,’ said Fry.

‘I expect so. But …’

‘What?’

‘Well, there are ways and means, aren’t there? You can find people willing to do anything, for the right price.’

DCI Kessen was standing near the back of the CID room when Fry returned. Before she could get her coat off, his voice stopped her.

‘Ah, DS Fry. Do we have any possibilities yet from the missing persons reports?’

Not knowing what else to do, Fry looked down at her desk. A misper report sat right there, left for her by someone while she was out.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let’s have it, DS Fry.’

Fry picked up the report and read it for the first time. ‘This is a local woman who was reported missing four years ago. She’s five foot seven, twenty-four years old, reddish hair.’

‘Red hair? Is that a match?’

‘The older body is missing a head.’

‘So it is.’

‘But it’s the closest we’ve got at the moment, sir.’

‘Who made the report?’ asked Kessen.

‘A sister.’

‘Is it possible she would still have some of the missing woman’s possessions?’

‘Something that would retain a print, you mean?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Fry.

‘Well, ask her.’

Fry sat down and picked up the phone.

‘Hold on, we have a miracle,’ said Hitchens. ‘The mobile unit in Rakedale has had success. A member of the public came in with some information. We’ve even got a name. Jack Elder.’

Fry put the phone down again. ‘Shall we go and pick him up?’ she said eagerly.

‘If you like. He lives in a bungalow on Field Lane, Rakedale. But word is that he’s been seen going into the village pub, and he hasn’t come out yet.’

‘Who’s the informant, sir?’

‘Mr Alex Brindley, of Shaw Farm.’

Cooper looked at Fry as they went out. ‘Mr Brindley? Is he a reliable witness?’

‘Yes. Well, I believed him — which is more than I can say for anyone else I’ve spoken to in Rakedale.’

The atmosphere in the Dog Inn had turned several degrees cooler, if that was possible. Nothing to do with the weather, but with the sudden ceasing of conversation and the hostile stares of the customers. Cooper looked around the bar, but saw only tense faces and deliberately turned backs. The sheepdog looked mournfully up at him from its place under the table, but didn’t make a move.

‘We’re looking for Mr Jack Elder,’ announced Fry into the silence. ‘Is he here?’

Watching the reactions of the customers carefully, Cooper worked out which person they were all avoiding looking at. A man with a long, grey beard and wearing a green sweater was sitting near the dartboard, pretending to straighten the flights on a set of darts. Even from here, Cooper could see that the flights were plastic ones, which didn’t need much straightening. He walked across the bar and stood in front of the table.

‘Mr Elder?’

The man pulled an irritated expression and placed a finger against the point of one of his darts.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Police. I’m Detective Constable Cooper. This is Detective Sergeant Fry.’

Cooper produced his warrant card, but the man didn’t look at it.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir.’

He felt the silence in the bar shifting somehow. A shuffle of feet, the tap of a glass being drunk from and replaced on a table. Then someone sniggered.

‘Go on, slap the cuffs on him. He’s the one that done it, Inspector.’

There were equal amounts of curses and laughter. Elder glared along the room, but he seemed to sense that the fleeting solidarity of his drinking companions had already started to dissipate.

‘Piss off!’ he snarled at someone Cooper couldn’t see.

‘Mr Elder, perhaps we could go somewhere else for a talk.’

Elder dropped the darts on the table with a clatter, and made a great show of standing up very slowly, putting as much bravado as he could into retrieving his coat and zipping it up.

‘Where’s my hat?’ he said. ‘Has one of you buggers pinched my hat?’

There were more sniggers. But Elder’s hat was clearly visible on the settle behind him. Cooper waited patiently, glad that Fry had had the sense to stay in the background for once. Since the Dog Inn’s toilets were reached only through a winding series of stone passages, Elder didn’t have much chance of making a bolt for it through the back door.

‘All right, I’m ready.’

Elder paused in the doorway, seeming to feel that he wasn’t making as good a show as he’d like to have done in front of the other regulars. He opened the door and let a squall of rain in from outside.

‘I’m going out now,’ he said. ‘And I may be some time.’

He tried a chuckle as he looked around at his friends. But the sound died in his throat as he saw that no one else was laughing. Not even the dog.

That night, Cooper drove out of Edendale until he’d left the streetlamps behind and there was only the reflection of the Toyota’s headlights from the cat’s eyes in the road and from the rain that drifted across the bonnet. He saw few cars on the road and passed even fewer houses — just the occasional farm wrapped in its own little bowl of light.

According to the weather forecast on the BBC, there was no chance of snow this year. It would be a traditional grey Christmas. Fog was the best that Edendale could hope for in the way of seasonal weather. There’d be a blanket of it filling the valley, smothering the sound of Christmas Day traffic, hiding the flickering lights of the council decorations. And killing a few more visitors on the roads, no doubt.

The old people sometimes described the Peak District climate as ‘six months of bad weather, followed by six months of winter’. But those times were past, the years when snow drifts had made the roads impassable and villages were cut off for weeks. Cooper felt a curious sense of loss.

Fry had taken on the task of interviewing Jack Elder herself, allowing Cooper to keep his date. He had no idea what had made her do that, because he didn’t normally expect favours from her. Still, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as his mother would have said.

Liz Petty lived in Bakewell, the touristy heart of the Peak District. Tonight, she felt like a change, so they opted to eat at the Australian Bar, close to the Bakewell section police station. Here, the Aussie theme had gone beyond the name and the boomerangs in the window, and had spread right through the menu.

While they shared some skinny dips, Liz got a few grumbles off her chest. Cooper had heard most of them before, around the station. Like the other SOCOs, she often complained how frustrating it was to hear police officers say there were ‘no forensics’.