Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

The list of ingredients was totally horrifying. The chemicals used to make methamphetamine included iodine, drain cleaner, paint thinner, battery acid, anti-freeze, and cat litter. Some of those substances were akin to nerve agents. And not forgetting one of the vital elements in the recipe — pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient from several over-the-counter cold remedies.

Today, specialists were being sent in to Pity Wood Farm wearing protective clothing and breathing apparatus. Officers in white coveralls, green gloves and overshoes, carrying oxygen tanks had replaced the SOCOs and the anthropology team, not to mention the CID officers protected by nothing more than a pair of latex gloves. Warnings had been set up that the site was extremely hazardous. Exposure to some of the volatile toxic chemicals that had been found could have carcinogenic effects.

And DI Hitchens was right — like everything else, the instructions for methamphetamine production were readily available on the internet.

The meth factory at Pity Wood had already closed before the drug had been re-classified to a Class A substance. Not that the threat of a life sentence was much of a deterrent to the people who ran meth factories. They relied on not getting caught, and the amount of money they could make justified the risks — especially as the risk was mostly to other people, ignorant workers who just did as they were told. And, of course, they hadn’t been caught. Not yet.

Cooper looked up and saw Hitchens pacing the room. Instead of retreating to his own office, the DI was fretting about every member of his team who might have been exposed to risk.

‘The women buried at Pity Wood Farm, sir?’ said Cooper. ‘Nadezda Halak, and the other woman who died — how might they fit into the scenario?’

‘If their bodies had been found sooner, Ben, toxicology might have established whether they were crystal meth users. But at the moment, we can’t say one way or the other.’

‘They were most likely working there, don’t you think? Producing the methamphetamine.’

‘Slave labour of some kind, yes. The gangs who run these operations are ruthless.’

‘Are we talking about the same people who shot Tom Farnham, do you think, sir?’ asked Cooper.

‘Well, Ben, when these people have a dispute they don’t go to court. They have their own ways of sorting things out.’

Cooper turned to the last page of the intelligence bulletin, which was headed ‘Common Side Effects’. Again, his brain could hardly take them all in. Diarrhoea, nausea, loss of appetite, insomnia, tremors, irritability, weight loss, depression. The list was endless. Why would you risk doing all these different kinds of damage to your body? An overdose could cause brain damage, hallucinations, paranoia, kidney damage and something called formication, described as the sensation of your flesh crawling with insects.

But Cooper’s eyes were drawn to the most peculiar symptom of chronic methamphetamine use of them all. The report referred to a dry mouth, excessive thirst triggering frequent consumption of high-sugar drinks, tooth grinding and the decreased production of acid-fighting saliva. Together, they caused the symptoms of rapid tooth decay. Sometimes known as ‘meth mouth’.

One way or another, methamphetamine had killed Nadezda Halak.

Without her phone for about an hour and a half, Fry felt lost. She stared out of the window of the plane at the Irish Sea passing below. It looked grey, and very wet. She hoped that Ireland itself would be more welcoming. Break out the Guinness and the shamrock, we’ve got a visitor. Oh, yes, that’s how it would be.

Well, it couldn’t be worse than Rakedale. If she’d been forced to spend another day in that place, she would probably have gone mad, even without the effects of the toxic chemicals on her body.

For a moment, Fry wondered whether she could sue Derbyshire Constabulary for not providing her with proper protective equipment to do her job. Yes, probably. Health and Safety regulations called for a risk assessment, which hadn’t been carried out, so far as she was aware.

But all she had was this damn cold to show for it. And no doubt she’d discover that the officer who ought to have carried out the risk assessment was her.

But Rakedale was definitely her idea of one of the outer circles of Hell. The people who lived there were slightly less than human, dead to normal standards of civilized behaviour.

Fry had once heard of a rare medical condition that destroyed the sense of touch. When you had the condition, it became impossible to tell sandpaper from silk, leather from stone, or water from oil. Impossible to feel anything at all.

They said that touch was already present as a sense in the foetus. At eight weeks after conception, it started in the lips and spread to the rest of the body. So how was it possible to lose this sense, of all the senses? A man who talked about his condition described wanting to stroke the family dog, but not being able to feel it, unless the dog had been out in the sun and was warm, or had been caught in the rain and was cold. Beyond that, there seemed to be nothing for him to touch.

She felt like that when she was in Rakedale. As a police officer, she’d learned to be sensitive to the smallest signals that people unconsciously gave out, the gestures and facial expressions that revealed their real thoughts, the body language and lack of eye contact that gave away a lie.

But there, she was unable to detect any normal responses. Those people were recognizable only at the extremes of emotion. They were either hot or cold, but in between there was a gap where human emotions seemed to cease to exist. In that state, they were out of reach of her senses, beyond her ability to touch.

As the plane began its descent towards Dublin Airport, Fry recalled David Palfreyman asking her whether she was able to tell when someone was a liar. Palfreyman’s mockery of modern techniques was in itself a classic distraction tactic. She decided to focus her techniques on Palfreyman next time she met him. She felt sure he would fail the body language test.

Oh, don’t worry, Mr Palfreyman — DS Fry certainly had the training to spot a liar. There were ten major signs that someone was lying. And Fry had seen every one of them during her time in Rakedale.

DCI Kessen was being interviewed on TV for the news bulletin. Cooper wondered if he would still have that job when Superintendent Branagh had settled in. It was high profile, and it didn’t suit everyone. Would Branagh be better in front of a TV camera than she was in the photographer’s studio?

‘The chemicals used in the production of this drug are volatile and dangerous if inhaled, so officers have to be extremely cautious during their examination of the premises at Rakedale,’ Kessen was saying. ‘We were initially concerned that some of the toxic chemicals used in the production of methamphetamine might have been dumped in the local woods, but we have checked the area and we believe it is safe.

‘This is likely to be a long investigation,’ he warned, ‘as we’re having to take great care not to put our officers or the public at unnecessary risk from these toxic chemicals. The production of methamphetamine can be very dangerous for anyone involved.’

Terrific. A long investigation. If that was true, Christmas was starting to look very unlikely. Perhaps they should cancel it altogether, and celebrate it in February instead.

Kessen finished by deflecting the question that everyone was bound to be asking.

‘We’re not able to say at this stage whether the death of Mr Thomas Farnham in a shooting incident is related. But all possible lines of enquiry are being followed up.’

Thinking of Christmas, Cooper remembered that Jack Elder was still in custody, and he would have to be either charged or released soon. Fry had left him her interview notes and her copy of the tape. Cooper went through to familiarize himself with Elder’s answers, then he called down to ask the custody sergeant to put Elder in an interview room.