Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

‘Raymond Sutton? Poor bloke. I suppose this is your fault, Ben.’

Cooper slumped in his chair, crushed into silence.

‘Me, I blame the scapegoats,’ said Murfin. ‘They’re always responsible for anything that goes wrong, I find.’

‘Shut up, Gavin.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘So who is this Victim C that everyone’s talking about?’ asked Fry. ‘Any theories?’

‘There were undoubtedly male workers at the farm,’ said Cooper.

‘Another migrant who met a sticky end?’

‘Well, who else?’

‘The mysterious Alan,’ said Fry. ‘Haven’t we been told that he disappeared seven or eight years ago? I know everyone tries to claim that he left home because he didn’t get on with his brothers, but we have no proof of that.’

‘You’re right,’ said Cooper.

‘You know I’m right, Ben. You’ve known from the moment that Alan was first mentioned that he didn’t just leave home. You understand these people better than me. But I remember you saying that they could be protecting someone.’

‘Yes, I did say that.’

‘Well, I’ll ask you again: protecting who?’

Cooper hung his head. ‘I don’t know, Diane. Perhaps the whole family. Perhaps the village. I really don’t know.’

‘We ought to have been making some effort to trace Alan Sutton, don’t you think?’

‘It didn’t seem a priority before.’

‘But things change, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘Around here, things change all the time.’

Cooper saw Murfin wink at him as he got up to attend his personal interview with the new superintendent. He was first man over the top, and he looked like a condemned criminal on his way to the scaffold, trying to stay cheerful but knowing he was doomed.

It was a bit like the family at Pity Wood Farm. Yes, Cooper felt sure the Suttons must have thought they were doomed. Cursed, anyway. Aside from the personal problems between the brothers, plague and pestilence had followed the changes in farming over the last couple of decades. BSE, foot and mouth, and now bird flu — each one like a dark cloud on the horizon that could break into a storm at any moment and wipe an entire industry away.

Already, the threat had come very close. The foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 hadn’t quite reached the Peak District. But there were farms a few miles south, on the border near Sudbury, where cattle and sheep had been slaughtered in the mass cull. And then along came H5N1, the strain of avian flu virus that could be carried by wild birds. Any day a poultry farmer might look up into the sky and see a flock of geese, or a skein of mallards, and wonder whether they were bringing the disease north.

Yes, there had been new enterprises at Pity Wood, but some of them were of a nature that the Suttons hadn’t understood. They had no idea that the world had changed so much around them that illegal drug manufacturing was the only way for their farm to make a profit. Ironically, it could be seen as the sort of thinking the government was trying to encourage — moving away from traditional farming to new and exciting ways of exploiting the assets of their property.

Of course, the Suttons’ big mistake had been inviting Tom Farnham in. He must have looked like a saviour at the time, promising all kinds of things, including a bright new future for Pity Wood Farm, new ways of earning income, enough money to put the farm back on its feet.

But Farnham had been the worm on the carcase of a dying animal. He’d exploited the still-warm flesh for his own short-term ends. The money had gone into his own pocket, not to the Suttons, or to safeguard the future of Pity Wood.

‘Those poor women,’ said Cooper when he heard the full story of Nadezda Halak and her coworkers from Fry. ‘They were following the instructions they’d been given, without any idea of the horrendous risks they were running.’

‘They certainly didn’t understand what the chemicals were, or how harmful their effects could be,’ said Fry. ‘And why would they suspect? They saw a collection of ordinary household products, bought over the counter, or from the supermarket shelf. Why would they think those products could be lethal?’

‘I bet they didn’t care, anyway. They just knew they were paid much better for that job than for picking carrots.’

‘You sound unusually cynical.’

‘Well, it’s another case of “Monkey See, Monkey Do”.’

‘What are you talking about, Ben?’

‘It’s a saying that refers to somebody learning a process without any understanding of how or why it works. You made me think of it before, with your thing about the Three Wise Monkeys. If something seems to work, we do it, and we don’t ask why it works. It’s the origin of most superstitious rituals, too.’

‘Oh, I think I see. The Joneses next door killed a cow last year, and they had a good harvest. So we’ll do the same.’

‘And, before you know it, sacrifice has become an annual ritual. But the thing is, to most people those beliefs are just superstition. We might go through certain rituals ourselves, but we don’t really believe in them. Touching wood, crossing our fingers, throwing salt over our shoulders …’

‘Counting magpies? Horseshoes nailed to the door?’

‘Exactly. It’s important to find ways of warding off evil in our lives. If you get it wrong, or upset the spirits, all kinds of bad things can happen. That’s what people believe.’

And screaming skulls, he thought. They could ward off evil, too — provided you treated them right. Cooper recalled touching the yellow sheath of bone at the back of the skull recovered from Tom Farnham’s garage. It had been cool and smooth, worn thin by age — and by reverent handling.

Most importantly, they were supposed to be left where they belonged. You should never move a skull.

‘None of these women seem to have stayed very long at Pity Wood,’ said Fry. ‘One minute they were there, the next they were gone. Perhaps they didn’t like sharing the house with preserved body parts. I can’t blame them.’

‘The Slovak, Nadezda Halak — have you got her photograph there?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s smiling, isn’t she?’ said Cooper.

‘Some people do. It means nothing. You have to look more closely.’

Cooper squinted and studied the picture again. ‘No. She still looks happy.’

He put the photo down on his desk, and he sat looking at it for a few minutes after Fry had left.

Yes, Nadezda Halak did look happy. So what? She’d been one of those people who managed to keep smiling through the worst times of their lives. It seemed extraordinary that someone could smile and smile, and yet be so desperate. But it happened. It was as if they feared a word of sympathy or concern would crack their world apart, and only a smile could hold it together. That smiling facade became a defence, a wall to keep out the world and prevent anyone intruding into their secret misery. But why had no one been close enough to Nadezda to see behind that smile?

Then Cooper thought of something he’d meant to ask. ‘By the way, Diane, you’re not leaving, are you?’

To his astonishment, she grabbed his sleeve roughly. He flinched at the sudden awareness of her potential for violence. He knew it was in her, but he saw it so rarely that he’d managed to forget.

‘What do you know?’ she hissed.

‘Nothing. It was just something Gavin said. Gossip probably.’

‘Was anything said about me while I was in Ireland?’

‘No, Diane. Well, not that I’m aware of. You know I’m the last person to find out anything.’

She let go of his sleeve. ‘That used to be true. I’m not sure any more.’

Cooper brushed his sleeve straight, staring at her in amazement. He had no idea what had provoked that outburst.