Dying to Sin

38

That afternoon, Pity Wood Farm looked more desolate than ever, surrounded by abandoned excavations and the partially dismantled buildings, tape fluttering at a safe distance from the contaminated areas.

Cooper made his way round the back of the house, through the overgrown garden. The stone steps that led up to the garden were worn away, depressions in each step full of muddy water.

Worn away. It was an apt phrase. Not just for the steps, but for the farm itself. Pity Wood was worn down, exhausted from centuries of desperately clinging to existence. If it had been an animal, someone would have called a vet to put it out of its misery.

And what of the Sutton brothers? Well, Raymond Sutton hardly seemed to have any purpose left in life, now that his brother had gone. Even if their roles had been to torment and annoy each other, at least that had been a role. But their relationship had been ground down by decades of mutual chafing, the long, weary scouring of continuous friction.

It was possible to read in the newspapers every day about immigration, illegal workers, drugs, murder, bankruptcy, mental illness, the shift of the economy away from traditional industries. It was quite a different thing to see it all summed up in the crumbling walls of Pity Wood Farm. Raymond and Derek Sutton weren’t exactly the stereotypes he had in mind when he read the Daily Mail.

Cooper stopped to peer through a dusty window into the farmhouse. He’d come to think of the rooms at Pity Wood in terms of colours, almost like the apartments of a stately home — the Blue Room, the Yellow Room, the Brown Striped Room. Whatever their colours, it had seemed that some of those rooms contained more light than others. And it had nothing to do with the number of cracks in the boarded-up windows, or the depth of the shadows thrown by that giant shed on the walls of the house. The play of light had been an internal one, a flickering kaleidoscope of ignorance and radiance. No amount of cement and breeze block would counteract that spiritual darkness.

And he remembered another thing — it had been impossible to tell from the bedrooms at Pity Wood which had been Raymond’s room, and which had belonged to Derek. There had been too much clutter to see the truth.

The words of the baptism service still echoed in his head. God calls us out of darkness into his marvellous light. To follow Christ means dying to sin. Had there been an equal contrast of darkness and light in the church that day — a clash of beliefs, an uneasy pact between rationality and blind faith? Cooper couldn’t be sure. He would never be sure. He lacked the ability to make that leap of faith.

Now the characters walking into the darkness were acting out parts in a private DVD that was showing in his head. He couldn’t prevent them moving out of the safety of the light, no matter how hard he tried. If only he knew how to find the rewind button.

It reminded him of a line from a book, something about the nature of time. If time was all one, past and present indistinguishable, then perhaps even Derek Sutton was still here somewhere. Still here, burning in an everlasting fire.

Diane Fry watched Cooper circling the farmhouse, like a dog hunting for a scent. She was trying to suppress the feeling of dissatisfaction that still niggled at the back of her mind.

Word had come in that human remains had been discovered at Magpie Mine, scooped into a depression among the spoil heaps, close to where Cooper had stumbled that night. An identity had yet to be confirmed, but who doubted that it was Alan Sutton? The clinching detail was the fact that the remains were missing a skull. Of course they were. That had been in a cupboard in Tom Farnham’s workshop, waiting to find a buyer on eBay.

So the case was solved, in a way. But it was hardly a triumph of investigative skills, not one to highlight on her PDR when the time came in a few weeks. Who knew how long the bodies at Pity Wood would have lain undiscovered, if it weren’t for the fact that Raymond Sutton had given up the farm and sold it for re-development?

Fry looked around the landscape, with its homesteads scattered across the hills, their lights just starting to glint in the dusk. How many more horrors were waiting for someone to discover on farms that were still unsold and undeveloped? It was impossible to tell. Did they all harbour dark histories that would one day have to be explored, a grim bequest for generations to come? Were farmers and their families even now wrapping their Christmas presents in the knowledge of some terrible secret buried a few yards away?

God knew what might have happened in some of these farms in the past. They were isolated and cut off from the world, with far too much space to bury their sins unobserved, with no risk of strangers nosing around.

All of that was falling apart now, of course, the modern world intruding in all kinds of ways, the farming families disintegrating, the farms themselves toppling like dominoes into dereliction or re-development. And not before time, in Fry’s view. It was the advance of the twenty-first century, modern ideas of justice cracking open the Pandora’s box, tearing apart the dusty web of old beliefs and superstitions, like the steel nozzle of a hose thrust into a crusted cesspit. Decontaminating minds, the way the clean-up crews would decontaminate Pity Wood. And that would be the end of the story.

Fry shuddered at a sudden chill. Someone walking over her grave. Wasn’t that the saying?

‘Diane, did you ever read a Sherlock Holmes tale called “The Copper Beeches”?’ called Cooper from the back of the house.

‘No. Was that the one with the giant dog?’

‘No, not the one with the giant dog. This story was set in the countryside, though. Kent or Sussex — somewhere like that.’

‘So?’

‘There’s a line in it that rang a bell with me. At one point, as they’re travelling out of London, Holmes says to Doctor Watson: “There’s more evil in the smiling and beautiful countryside than in the vilest alleys of London.” Something to that effect.’

‘Really?’

‘His explanation was that people are able to get away with things unobserved in the country that they never would in the city, where there are always other people close by.’

‘I see. Well, it was true in this case, Ben.’

‘These days, it’s the other way round,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s cities where people go around unobserved. No one takes any notice of what you’re doing. They don’t care if you’re abusing your children or making bombs in your front room. Here, though, people do actually care what their neighbours are up to.’

Fry looked at Pity Wood Farm, its diseased walls held up by scaffolding, its roof tiles slipping into holes that let in the rain, plastic sheeting rattling miserably.

‘The trouble is,’ she said, ‘it still doesn’t prevent the evil.’

She moved along the wall to keep Cooper in sight. The ground wasn’t so wet now, but her feet still slipped on the bare, churned earth. Fry came across some abandoned construction work, trenches and spoil heaps left by Nikolai Dudzik and his men.

‘Even after the buildings come down, it’ll be a long time before this land is decontaminated,’ she said.

‘If it ever will,’ said Cooper, as if he was referring to something else entirely.

She didn’t question what he meant. Sometimes it was better not to ask, because the answers only left her more baffled than ever.

‘The demolition teams can’t get on site until after Christmas, of course. But it won’t take them long to bring this lot down, once they get started. I’m amazed some of these walls haven’t fallen down already.’

‘What about the construction crew?’

‘They’ve all packed up and left. They’ve got an extended break over Christmas, then their agency is sending them off to another job in Stockport. Except for Jamie Ward. I think he’s lost his taste for building work.’

‘I suggested he give my brother a call,’ said Cooper. ‘Matt will be able to find him some work for a couple of weeks until he goes back to university. Jamie has worked on a farm before, so he’ll be OK with that.’

Fry checked the back door of the farmhouse to make sure it was locked. She wasn’t sure whether she was responding to a concern about vandals breaking in, or an inexplicable instinct to prevent anything getting out.

‘Has your brother ever thought about diversification?’ she asked.

Cooper laughed. ‘Yes, he’s thought about it. He thinks about it the way a turkey thinks about Christmas. It’s going to come, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it.’

A piece of glass crunched under Fry’s foot. She jumped, imagining the poisons that contaminated parts of Pity Wood. Battery acid and anti-freeze, iodine and drain cleaner. A toxic mix that had contaminated the farm beyond salvation.

‘Ben, we shouldn’t be here at all,’ she said. ‘It’s much too dangerous.’

‘There’s just one thing, Diane.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I think I saw it around here somewhere.’

‘You should be wearing gloves and a mask.’

‘I’ll be careful.’

‘Famous last words,’ she said, watching him anxiously, but trying not to sound like his mother.

Cooper was poking about in some of the rubbish that had been discarded when the skip had been searched. Finally, he dragged out a long pole, with a rusted metal plate attached to the top.

‘What now?’ asked Fry, as he scraped away at the metal. She could see the remains of some white enamel and black lettering, perhaps even a crude picture.

‘The old Pity Wood Farm sign. I wondered where it had gone,’ said Cooper.

Fry peered more closely. ‘What’s that animal? It has horns. Not more witchcraft?’

‘It was never witchcraft, Diane. Only superstition.’

‘What, then?’

‘This is the last remnant of the Suttons’ herd of pedigree Ayrshires, I believe. It must have been a very sad day when they took the sign down.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Not for the first time that week, Fry sensed she was in unknown territory. What significance could there be in an old sign? It was a bit of advertising, that was all. And it had served its purpose, so it had been thrown away. End of story, surely?

But she could tell from Cooper’s tone that there was some deeper meaning. She didn’t ask him to explain it, and of course he didn’t try. He’d given up hope on her, she supposed — and for a moment, she regretted that. There were times when she would have liked to be able to understand, to share the feelings suggested by the softness in his voice, by the way his fingers traced the rusty lettering, as if he was communicating with some other world that she just couldn’t see.

Fry knew she would forever be on the outside at these times, always the uncomprehending stranger who didn’t fit in. Her lack of understanding was deep and incurable, and it made her an unwelcome intruder into other people’s lives.

The truth was, she could walk away from Pity Wood Farm now, step across the muddy track and disappear into those dank woods. No one would come looking for her, the way Mikulas Halak had come looking for his sister. She wouldn’t be missed by the Ben Coopers of this world.

Fry drew her coat tighter round her shoulders and wiped the rain from her face. She didn’t belong here, and she never would. End of story.