Dying to Sin

15

Saturday

Cooper knew it wasn’t going to be a good day as soon as he entered the CID room and set eyes on Gavin Murfin. Somehow, Murfin was able to arrange his features into a picture of abject misery. Martyrdom and gloom were written all over him this morning. It was enough to shrivel the tinsel.

‘What’s the matter, Gavin?’

‘I’ve been put down for duty over Christmas. All thanks to this job at Rakedale. I’m really going to be in the dog house, I can tell you.’

Cooper took off his jacket and sat down at his desk. ‘I’ll swap with you.’

Murfin looked up. ‘What?’

‘I’ll swap duties with you, Gavin. No one will mind. As long as someone’s around to deal with anything that crops up. Then you can have Christmas at home with your family, and everyone’s happy, right?’

‘But what about you?’

Cooper shrugged. ‘It’s not so important for me. I don’t have kids.’

‘Even so. They’ll be expecting you at Bridge End on Christmas Day. Your lot always have a big family get-together, don’t they? You’ve told me about it often enough. Brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, and hordes of little nephews and nieces.’

‘There aren’t that many, Gavin. Besides, it’ll be different this year. It’s the first year Mum won’t be there.’

‘Oh, right. Yeah, that could be a bit tough, I suppose. So you’d rather come into the office than be at the farm, would you? Sure?’

‘I’ll be all right. I won’t mind being busy.’

Murfin studied him for a moment. ‘Hang on, though. What about Liz?’

‘She’s going home to her own family in Stoke.’

‘And you’re not invited?’

Cooper felt himself starting to get a bit irritated by Murfin’s selflessness. ‘It’s OK, Gavin, really. I want to swap. I’ll do Christmas duty.’

‘Well, all right. Will you tell Miss, or shall I?’

‘I’d better do it, I think. By the way, what are you buying your kids for Christmas, Gavin?’

‘The eldest is really into computer games.’

‘I like The Sims,’ said Cooper.

‘I’m a bit worried about that one, in case the wife gets hold of it.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, they say there’s the thing about women who play The Sims. They use it to exercise their cruel streak, and have fun tormenting small, helpless creatures. They make them live in houses with no toilets. They lock them in rooms with no doors and windows and see how long it takes them to go mad.’

‘Is that so?’

‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was designed by our DS.’

No matter how long the morning briefing had been allowed to run on, it would not have been capable of providing a satisfactory conclusion. There was no lucid narrative to the deaths of the two victims at Pity Wood Farm, no story of their lives to give them an identity. Apart from confirmation that they were both female, they still had no humanity.

Every officer present in the room was conscious of the lack of information, the gaping hole in their enquiry, the blockage that was stalling it before it had even got going. No IDs.

Cooper always felt a particular sense of despair at these cases. Of course, there were many people who lived transient lives. They put down their roots in shallow soil. Unnoticed when they arrived, and unmissed when they left.

‘First of all, there’s no evidence of major trauma, no broken bones,’ said Hitchens, getting straight to the main issue. ‘Some poisons might show up in the hair mat that had sloughed off the first victim. But if death was due to injury to the soft tissues, we’re right out of luck.’

‘Parts of the first body looked almost … mummified,’ said someone.

‘That’s adipocere. We don’t see mummified body parts very often in this part of the world — you need a dry, arid climate for that.’

The list of potential evidence dug out by the forensic anthropology team was impressive. During the excavation, they’d packaged up forty-four bones, two dirt samples, twenty-nine bags labelled ‘unknown debris’, fifteen bags of clothing fragments, and seventeen teeth.

‘Yes, they’ve been dead for about a year and four years respectively, we’re told, but neither of them was necessarily killed where they were found,’ said Hitchens. ‘Or even buried there when they first died. Apparently, the scene is right on a geological boundary — the clay on the south side of Pity Wood Farm doesn’t extend into the fields to the north or east. It’s probably why the place was built there in the first place. Historically, I imagine there was a brickworks, or a clay pit.’

‘It’s almost certainly how the farm got its name,’ said Cooper. ‘Pity Wood, because there were several clay pits here, in the woods. Obviously, most of the trees have gone now, too. They would have needed the wood for firing kilns.’

‘What about dental records, sir?’ asked Fry.

‘OK, we have good dentition remaining on the more recent of the two bodies. Enough to confirm an identity from dental records. If we had a potential identity to confirm, of course. But at the moment we haven’t a clue who she is.’

‘Mrs van Doon said there was an unusual amount of decay to the victim’s teeth.’

‘Yes. When I said “good dentition”, I didn’t mean to suggest her teeth were in good condition. I mean we have a good profile of her teeth, and any dental work, plus the unusual condition. This gives us a better chance of making a positive identification.’

‘Understood.’

‘As for the second victim, this individual is also female. What more can I tell you?’

‘There was a shoe,’ said Cooper. ‘That could give us a lead, at least.’

‘But the shoe wasn’t found on the victim, it was lying in the soil about five yards away from the body. Without a direct connection to the victim, it isn’t a known piece of evidence. It could have landed up there some other way.’

Hitchens looked around the group. ‘Now I’m going to hand over to our consultant forensic anthropologist, Dr Pat Jamieson, who is going to fill us in on some of the details.’

Murfin groaned dramatically, as if he’d been shot. Despite himself, Cooper couldn’t help laughing.

‘Superintendent Branagh has expressed a firm view on this,’ said Hitchens, as if he’d anticipated resistance. ‘She thinks we should be fully briefed by the forensic specialists. We ought to make full use of their expertise while we have them on the payroll, so to speak. The superintendent believes we’ll all benefit from the insight.’

Murfin was making noises as though he was going to be sick. Hitchens looked at him.

‘And she emphasized that it should be the whole team.’

When Dr Jamieson entered, he looked as surprised as anyone to be sitting in a meeting room with a bunch of DCs who thought they had better things to do. Cooper wondered who had twisted his arm. The mysterious Superintendent Branagh, perhaps?

Jamieson rallied bravely, despite the chilly atmosphere. He became professional after he’d set up his laptop and screen, and began his presentation.

‘Well, there are four things we might hope to establish from decomposed or skeletalized remains,’ he said. ‘Sex, race, age and stature.’

‘And cause of death?’ suggested someone hopefully.

Jamieson turned to Hitchens. ‘Inspector, you know I can’t address — ’

‘Yes, I know. Carry on, Doctor.’

The anthropologist hesitated. ‘I see. Well, let’s press on. First comes sex.’

He seemed to notice Gavin Murfin’s expression out of the corner of his eye and hastily amended his words.

‘Ah … first comes gender. As a rule, it’s easy to determine gender in adults if the remains include the pelvic bones. The pelvis of a woman is generally broader than that of a man. It has to be wider in females because it surrounds the birth canal, and a baby’s head has to pass between the bones of the pubis. Without the pubis, the probability of making a correct identification of gender declines. Generally it comes down to size differences, but there’s a certain amount of overlap in the middle. There are approximately ten per cent of individuals who confuse the middle ground.’

‘We do have some very large young women walking around Edendale.’

‘It’s not a question of obesity,’ said Jamieson, ‘but of height, the width of the shoulders, the density of the bone …’

‘And in this case …’

‘In both cases, the pelvis was clearly female. It was obvious even in the field. For both Victim A and Victim B, the pelvis is broader at the hips, with a raised sacro-iliac joint, a wide sciatic notch, a greater sub-pubic angle. All part of the geometry of birth. The skull can also be a help, but of course …’

‘We don’t have two skulls.’

‘Not for Victim B. No, we don’t.’

Jamieson paused, allowing for more questions. ‘Now, race is a question we’re often asked to pronounce on. But it’s getting more difficult. Some characteristics of particular populations are evident in the skeleton, but there’s a lot of variation, even within groups that are historically pure. In the case of Victim A, we have the hair mat, which had sloughed off the skull. As you can see from the first picture, it’s very dark brown and slightly wavy. That, plus the shape of the teeth, mark the victim as white, where the discoloured skin might have been misleading.’

‘And Victim … I mean, the second woman?’ said Fry.

‘We can’t be sure, Sergeant. Completely skeletalized remains, and the absence of a skull — well, I’m sorry, but …’

‘OK.’

‘Now, age. By the time a person reaches the age of twenty, most bone growth is complete, the epiphyses are united and most teeth are fully calcified. So we look at several different structures: skull sutures, clavicles, pelvis.’

Jamieson presented another series of photographs on the screen.

‘In Victim A, the bones of the pelvis were dense and smooth, with a marked absence of grain; the bones of a mature but young woman. Her clavicles had not fully matured, and the basilar structure in the skull was only partly fused, an indicator that she was not yet twenty-five. Factoring all the indicators together, I’m confident that Victim A was somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. Victim B is a little older, fully matured. Without the skull, it’s difficult, but I’d say between twenty-five and thirty.’

‘Height, Doctor?’

‘To estimate height, we turn to bone measurements and regression equations.’ He seemed to sense the shuffling and muttering. ‘Yes, I know it sounds like scientific jargon. What it means is that we can predict stature from the length of the femur, for example. Multiply by one number, add another, and bingo. For Victim A, length of the left femur is forty-four centimetres. Using the stature calculation formulas, we estimate she stood between five feet one and a half inches and five feet four and a half.’

A few officers were at least making notes, having detected some facts in the doctor’s presentation.

‘And the skeleton?’ someone asked.

‘Yes, Victim B. You’d think we could just lay a skeleton out and measure it to get the victim’s height. But cartilage decays and shrinks after death, sometimes by several inches. In Victim B’s case, the femur is forty-eight centimetres, giving a height of between five feet six and a half inches and five feet nine and a half inches.’

‘How accurate are these ages and measurements, Doctor?’

‘I’m confident the estimates are accurate, within the parameters I’ve given you. But I’d like to urge the police officers present to be careful with their missing person reports when trying to make a match. Don’t assume any degree of accuracy there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, a lot of people don’t actually know how tall they are. Or they lie about it. Some would like to be a few inches taller, others a bit less tall. And of course, they don’t realize that their height changes when they age, so they can be giving the wrong height for themselves for years without knowing it. Besides, if you’re looking at a missing person report, ask yourself who provided the information? A spouse, a friend? Some of those figures could just be a wild guess.’

Jamieson took advantage of the silence he’d created to press on hurriedly with his final point.

‘And how long have the remains been buried, you’ll ask me. Well, an unembalmed adult body buried unprotected in ordinary soil will normally take ten to twelve years to decompose down to a skeleton. Burial depth and soil temperature might vary the decomposition rate. A body in air decomposes eight times faster than when buried.’ He looked up from his laptop. ‘Like Detective Constable Cooper’s dead sheep.’

Gavin Murfin laughed, but no one else seemed to understand the joke. The anthropologist moved on rapidly.

‘When bodies are exposed to cool, moist soil, the soft tissues can decay quite slowly and turn into adipocere. Adipocere is a soapy, greasy substance that forms when body fat decomposes in a damp environment. It’s sometimes called grave wax. Adipocere is the cheesy greyish-white mass you can see in this photograph.’

Yes, they could see it quite clearly on the photographs. Some of the officers looked away for a moment, but forced themselves to turn back. Jamieson left the most revolting photograph on screen while he finished off.

‘Adipocere inhibits putrefying bacteria, so when a body reaches this state of decomposition it might stay that way for several years before it decomposes any further. There was a large quantity of adipocere beneath the chest and abdominal regions in the case of Victim A. So I would say you have the cold, wet soil of Rakedale to thank for the relatively intact condition of this body. If I might offer a very non-scientific comment, it’s almost as though Victim A has been waiting in her half-decomposed state for someone to find her.’

Jamieson smiled as he diverged from his professional approach for a moment. He waited for comments, but none came.

‘Finally, then,’ he said. ‘There was no sign of trauma on either victim — no fractures, cut marks, or signs of perimortem damage on any of the bones we’ve recovered. But we don’t have every bone for Victim B. As we’ve already mentioned, there is no skull. And, before any of us run away with assumptions, I should mention that it’s very common for the head to come off when a body disarticulates. With the skull, we have one of the heaviest parts of the skeletal structure, supported by one of the most fragile.’

The anthropologist finished with a flourish, closing his laptop and waving his arms in a graphic gesture.

‘To put it plainly, ladies and gentlemen, if you left a body out on a slope to decompose — the head might just roll away.’

Cooper had been considering the anthropologist’s presentation as the rest of the team dispersed and went about their tasks for the day.

‘Diane, do you think we could analyse the chemical content of the bones to get an angle on her origins?’ he said. ‘I’ve heard that it’s possible.’

‘You know we don’t have facilities for anything like that, Ben.’

‘But the FSS might. Or a university somewhere.’

‘It would take months and months. And besides — ’

‘- it would cost a lot of money. I know.’

‘Think budgets, Ben. The fact is, this will probably remain an unsolved case.’

‘No. You’re joking.’

‘If there were any leads at all, any sure indication of a cause of death that suggested murder, or even a confirmed ID that we could work with … But, as it is, we have nothing. We could faff around here for months and still have nothing.’

‘We can’t just leave it, with these two women unidentified.’

‘We might have to,’ said Fry.

‘No.’

‘Look, how many cases have you got on your desk at the moment, Ben?’

‘Well …’

‘Five, six? A dozen? Wouldn’t you stand more chance of getting results if you spent your time on some of those? I bet there are people shouting for statements and case files.’

‘Yes, there are. There always are. You know that.’

‘Well, then.’

Cooper was silent. He could see that Fry thought she’d won the argument by sheer, unassailable logic. Budgets, and case loads. Who could argue with those? It wouldn’t be prudent to say what he was thinking right now.

Half an hour later, Gavin Murfin was able to spring a surprise on his colleagues in the CID room.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I see Derek Sutton had a criminal record. I found him on the PNC.’

Fry sat up with sudden interest. ‘Oh?’

‘Illegal fuel. He was using laundered red diesel.’

‘A typical rural crime.’

Cooper walked over to Murfin’s desk and looked at the file.

‘A prosecution was brought against Derek Sutton by HM Customs and Excise, following a spot check at the cattle market in Ashbourne. A hefty fine. That was an expensive day out for him.’

Red diesel was normally used in farm machinery, and it was illegal to use it in road vehicles, because it wasn’t taxed. To evade detection, the more enterprising removed the red dye, producing what was called laundered diesel. The Customs and Excise checks would show that up. But Sutton had only been charged with use, not with laundering. He must have known of a source somewhere. Probably everyone did.

‘The Hydrocarbon Oil Duties Act,’ said Fry. ‘“Certain vehicles are exempt from normal fuel duties as they are primarily used off-road and normal road use is only incidental.”’

As always, Cooper was impressed by the efficiency of her mental filing cabinet. He’d almost heard the correct drawer clicking open.

‘Well remembered.’

‘It’s another subsidy for farmers,’ she said. ‘Enshrined in the law, no less. They pay less tax for their fuel than ordinary mortals.’

‘Well, not really. If their farm vehicles never go on the road, they don’t contribute to wear and tear, do they? And they don’t use other facilities on the roads. So why should they be taxed for their maintenance and repair?’

‘You won’t convince me that they don’t go on the roads. I’ve got trapped behind enough farm vehicles to know differently.’

Cooper shrugged. ‘If I recollect the intelligence, Customs have suspected that a diesel-laundering plant might be operating in this area. Do you remember the operation that was closed down in Northern Ireland? It was being run from a converted hay shed at a remote farm.’

‘Like I said, a typical rural crime. These people think they can get away with anything because nobody is watching over them.’

‘You’ve really got it in for farmers at the moment, haven’t you?’ said Cooper. ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Spending time in Rakedale,’ said Fry. ‘It’s enough to make anyone bitter and twisted.’

Cooper shook his head in despair. Fry was almost a lost cause. He would have to introduce her to Matt some time, and see what happened. The results would be interesting, if nothing else. Two jaundiced personalities clashing head-on. The thought was enough to make him shudder.

Tractors were the main agricultural vehicles to fall under the ‘exempted’ definition of the Act. The duty rate for rebated red diesel was about a tenth of the duty for normal road vehicles. In the Northern Ireland case, twelve large tanks had been used to take dye from red diesel and convert it into white diesel that could be used by motorists. The price difference was about two pounds per gallon, and forty thousand litres of fuel had been contained in storage tanks at that laundering unit on the farm in Northern Ireland. Good money to be made, then.

But it wasn’t advisable from the motorist’s point of view. Apart from the risk of prosecution, the acids used in the laundering process would wreck the fuel pumps in diesel engines, so buyers of cheap fuel ran the risk of causing long-term damage to their vehicles.

Much closer to home, Customs and Excise had dipped most of the tanks of people attending a horsey event at Chatsworth a while ago. They were looking for anyone ‘running red’. C amp;E were wise to dual tanks and every other trick. They would also sample the fuel at the injectors and relied on chemical tracers. The dye could be removed with absorbents, but the tracers couldn’t. And, if they caught you, the fines were big.

A few gallons in the four-by-four, or a few miles on the road to take some cattle to market in the pick-up now and then. They seemed like no big deal. But it would still mean a large fine if you were caught.

Cooper searched for details of the Irish case. From the farm, the raid had also recovered a generator, pumps, and storage equipment. In addition, thirty-seven tonnes of toxic contaminated sludge, the hazardous chemical residue of the laundering process, were cleared from the site, which had livestock and an inhabited farm dwelling nearby. Subsequent warnings had been issued about the damage caused by contamination to arable land and our water and rivers.

For some reason, Cooper was reminded of Raymond Sutton. Hell burns. Hell burns with an agony like no other.

‘Diane,’ he said, ‘there was a Bible on the table in the farmhouse.’

‘Yes?’

‘Could it be released? Raymond Sutton was asking for it.’

‘I can’t see any problem with that. Make sure you record it.’

‘Of course.’

Fry looked at him quizzically. ‘So, are you starting to feel any kinship to these people at Rakedale yet?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know what you’re like, Ben. Before long, you’ll start feeling sorry for someone, and you’ll end up making promises you can’t keep. It’s a mistake to promise anything to a member of the public, you know. Don’t let them know your sympathies at all. Keep your feelings to yourself.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘You might know the theory, but it’s the practice you find difficult, isn’t it?’

Cooper bit his lip and moved back to his desk. Fry spotted the flier in his out tray, advertising the carol concert by the male voice choir, which would be followed by a children’s party. There were going to be mince pies and mulled wine, and even a visit by Santa.

‘Doing good work for the community again? Very commendable. You’re not going to play Father Christmas yourself are you, Ben?’

‘No, I’ve asked Gavin to do it.’

‘Gavin? You’ve asked Gavin to be Father Christmas?’

‘He’s about the right shape. He won’t need much padding to fit the costume.’

‘Yes, but won’t the kids be expecting a bit of jollity and a certain amount of ho-ho-ho-ing? Not someone who kicks them out of the way to get at the mince pies?’

‘Actually, Gavin is very good with children. You should see him at home — he makes a great dad. He just puts an act on at work for the sake of his image.’

‘His image? Now I’ve heard everything. DC Murfin has an image.’

Murfin looked unruffled. ‘Hey, Diane, the new choir is always on the look-out for new members. Isn’t that right, Ben?’

‘Well …’

‘You don’t need to have done any public singing before. There are about twenty performances a year, and practice sessions in a church hall at Allestree. You’d do that for a charitable cause, wouldn’t you, Diane?’

Fry looked at his smiling face suspiciously. ‘I thought this was a male voice choir? Surely a requirement for membership would be that you had testicles to drop?’

Murfin grinned more widely. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Spot on.’

Fry’s phone rang — the DI calling her into his office to hear the latest news from the forensics team.

‘It’s really quite odd,’ said Dr Jamieson when Fry joined them. ‘The evidence might almost be called contradictory. I didn’t mention it in the presentation earlier for that very reason. Because I can’t explain it, scientifically.’

‘What do you mean, Doctor?’ asked Hitchens. ‘We’ll need it in simple terms.’

‘Well, we can tell from the pattern of decomposition and the disarticulation of the body that Victim B was dug up and re-buried some time after death.’

‘So the victim was killed somewhere else, then moved to Pity Wood as a permanent place of concealment? That’s pretty much what we expected.’

‘Well, no — that’s not a legitimate conclusion, I’m afraid,’ said Jamieson.

‘No? But you just said — ’

‘I said the body was dug up and re-buried. But we found no samples of soil or vegetation that might be considered inconsistent with the site where the body was found. Normally, you see, we’d expect to sift out some clues about the original burial site — traces of a different soil type, for example. Variations in chemical composition, vegetable fibres that don’t belong.’

‘I understand,’ said Hitchens.

The anthropologist threw up his hands in frustration. ‘But there’s nothing in this case. Absolutely nothing. On the contrary, the remains of Victim B showed every sign of never having been moved, at least from a geological and botanical point of view.’

‘The builders unearthed the skeleton and covered it over again,’ pointed out Fry. ‘They were worried about delaying the building work.’

‘No, no. This didn’t happen recently.’

Hitchens frowned. ‘Doctor, I thought I was following you at first, but now you’ve lost me. What are you trying to say exactly?’

‘Inspector, I’m saying that some time ago your victim was dug up and re-interred, but never actually moved. On the second occasion, the body was re-buried in exactly the same spot.’