days ago, two men wearing Santa Claus outfits had raided a building society in Chesterfield. They’d been carrying baseball bats inside their fur-fringed sleeves, and a customer had ended up in hospital with a fractured skull when he got in their way. The suicide and domestic violence rates jumped at this time of year, the number of road accident victims multiplied, and the streets of Edendale were full of brawling drunks. The cells at West Street were never fuller, the hospitals were over-stretched, and hosing out the divisional vans was a full-time job. Lots of ho, ho, ho.
But perhaps she was just a bit jaundiced in her view. Personally, she hadn’t celebrated Christmas for over a decade. Not in a paper hat and cracker, turkey and mistletoe sort of way. There had never been a decorated spruce tree standing in the corner of her damp little flat in Grosvenor Avenue, no tinsel over the mantelpiece, no Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio on Christmas morning. She was lucky if she had a present to unwrap – at least, one that she hadn’t sent to herself for appearance sake. What was there to celebrate?
DC Gavin Murfin appeared at her side, teetering dangerously on the edge of the mud. The bottom four inches of his trouser legs were rolled up to reveal a pair of green paisley socks and a strip of deathly white flesh. Fry looked away, feeling suddenly queasy. On balance, the sight of a partially decomposed corpse might be preferable.
‘Do you think there’ll be any overtime on this one, boss?’ asked Murfin as they approached a PVC body tent erected over the makeshift grave.
‘You’re already rostered for duty over Christmas anyway, aren’t you, Gavin?’
Murfin looked crestfallen.
‘Damn, you’re right. I’d forgotten.’
Fry heard the dismay in his voice, but felt no pity. ‘If it’s a historic burial, you could be the officer in charge for a while.’
‘Great. That’s just … great.’
‘Most DCs would appreciate that kind of opportunity,’ said Fry.
‘It makes a change from processing nominals, I suppose.’
Reluctantly, Fry smiled. Ah, nominals. The official name for the area’s most prolific criminals – the repeat offenders, all those individuals the law makers called ‘recidivists’. They came into custody at regular intervals, might even get a short prison sentence if they were unlucky. But, before long, they were back out there on the litter-ridden streets of the Cavendish Estate – or ‘the community’, as it was known in the criminal justice system. Edendale’s nominals would be celebrating Christmas, all right. No one wanted them cluttering up the custody suite.
Murfin was silent for a moment as they watched the medical examiner directing a SOCO where to uncover vital parts of the body. The exposed edge of a bone here, a bit of decomposed flesh there.
‘Diane, do you mean there are people who’d prefer to attend a postmortem than be at home carving the turkey?’ asked Murfin.
‘There isn’t much difference, is there?’
‘Now that you mention it. Not the way I do it, anyway. And the company might be better in the mortuary – especially since we have to visit the in-laws at Alfreton on Boxing Day.’
Fry peered over the tape into the grave. The hole was gradually getting bigger, even as she watched. The hand that had been exposed by the workman looked fairly fresh. But the torso that was now being painstakingly revealed seemed to be badly decayed.
A cold case, or a warm one? Fry was unashamedly ambitious – she wanted the next move up the promotion ladder, and for that she needed cases to her credit. Successful cases, airtight prosecutions that led to convictions. Clear-ups, not cock-ups. It would be PDR time in April, the annual round of dreaded staff appraisals. She had to file something away that she could point to as a recent triumph, evidence of her outstanding skill and expertise, proof of her ability to manage an enquiry to a successful outcome, blah, blah, blah. Senior management believed it if it was down on paper, typed on an official form. Would Pity Wood Farm give her that case?
‘OK, let’s move these people back behind the cordon. What are they all doing here anyway?’
‘They’re witnesses, Sergeant.’
‘All of them?’
‘So it seems.’
‘Well, get their names and addresses and put them somewhere out of the way, for God’s sake.’
‘They don’t seem to speak English.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’
Rain had begun to fall again – big, fat drops splattering on to the roof of her car and pitting the already treacherously soft ground. Around her, uniformed and paper-suited figures speeded up their actions, as if suddenly instilled with a newfound sense of urgency. Within a few minutes, they were all sheltering against the walls of the farmhouse or sitting in their vehicles.
And it was only then that Fry really noticed Pity Wood Farm for the first time. Until this moment, she’d been concentrating on the ground, trying to keep her footing in the slippery mud that was coating her shoes and trickling in between her toes. But she looked up, and she saw it in all its glory.
She was confronted by a collection of ancient outbuildings leaning at various angles, their roofs sagging, doors hanging loosely on their hinges. By some curious law of physics, the doors all seemed to tilt at the opposite angle to the walls, as if they were leaning to compensate for a bend. Some doorways had been blocked up, windows were filled in, steps had been left going nowhere. Mud ran right up to the walls of the outbuildings, and right up to the door of the farmhouse itself. From the evidence, Fry thought it probably continued inside the house, too. The exterior was grimy and flecked with dirt, a bird’s nest trailed from a broken gutter. Piles of rubbish were strewn across the dead grass of what might once have been garden. Was this really a farm?
‘Who else is here, Gavin?’ she asked, in despair.
‘The DI’s on his way,’ said Murfin. ‘But in the meantime, it’s you and me, boss.’
‘DC Cooper?’
‘Ben? He’s on a rest day. We don’t know where he is.’
‘Strange,’ said Fry. ‘This is exactly his sort of place.’
Crouching uncomfortably, Detective Constable Ben Cooper studied the withered object carefully. In all his years with Derbyshire Constabulary, including seven in CID, he’d never seen anything quite like this. There had been plenty of dead bodies – some of them long dead, others nice and fresh. And some of them perhaps not quite dead, after all. But this?
The flesh had shrivelled away from the fingers, leaving them thin but not quite skeletal. The fact that there was still a layer of leathery skin shrunk tight to the fingers somehow made it worse than if he was just looking at bones. The result was that the hand appeared to have been shrinkwrapped in a film of wrinkled, yellow plastic. The thumb was bent strangely out of shape, too, as though it had been broken and never re-set. The severed wrist was ragged, and the tattered skin looked as though it had been sealed with some kind of sticky substance.
He straightened up, easing the painful muscles in his back. He’d been playing squash this morning, and his opponent had smashed the ball into his kidneys when he was out of position recovering a drop-shot. You could never
