08.Dying to Sin

by Stephen Booth

  ‘How does it kill tree stumps?’

  ‘It doesn’t really kill them. You have to kill the stump first – then the potassium nitrate makes it decompose faster.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Cooper. ‘Those compost heaps – did you say they were called “nitre beds”?’

  ‘That’s right. One of the common non-scientific names for potassium nitrate is –’

  ‘– saltpetre?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Cooper found that he wasn’t in the least surprised. It seemed to fit so naturally with what he’d learned already of the owners of Pity Wood Farm, and the other residents of Rakedale.

  ‘Potassium nitrate is used in Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado” as the lining of the crypt where Montresor buries Fortunato alive. It’s why he has so much trouble with his breathing in his last moments. “For the love of God, Montresor!”’

  ‘Didn’t the IRA use saltpetre in their bomb-making operations at one time?’ said Fry. ‘I had a feeling it had been put on a restricted list, not available for sale to the general public.’

  Hitchens laughed. ‘You can make bombs from sugar and fertilizer, so why would anyone worry about saltpetre?’

  ‘Also, it’s been implicated in having carcinogenic properties.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone was worrying about getting cancer or making bombs,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘This other stuff in the kitchen. Did it include sesame seeds, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, it did,’ said Hitchens. ‘How on earth did you know that, Ben?’

  He’d have to ask Amy for the exact wording, but Cooper thought he could remember the recipe pretty well.

  Squeeze out the blood. Embalm it in a shroud and steep it in a solution of saltpetre, salt and pepper for two weeks, then dry in the sun. The candles are made from a hanged man’s fat, wax and Lapland sesame.

  ‘I’d like to make a prediction,’ he said. ‘I predict that if we find another body at Pity Wood Farm, it will be missing a hand.’

  Within a few minutes, and thanks to the internet, Cooper knew how to make potassium nitrate himself. The practical part was simple. You could either dissolve solid fertilizer in boiling water, or boil down a liquid fertilizer until crystals started to form. When the solution had cooled to room temperature, it was placed in a fridge. The white crystalline precipitate was mainly KNO3. Garden products tended to contain ammonium nitrate, too, which contaminated the KNO3.

  ‘We should have picked this up earlier,’ said Hitchens. ‘Potassium nitrate can cause eye and skin irritations. Breathing it in can irritate the nose and throat, causing sneezing and coughing. High levels can interfere with the ability of the blood to carry oxygen, causing headaches, fatigue, dizziness and a blue colour to the skin and lips. Even higher levels can cause trouble breathing, collapse and death. Long term, potassium nitrate may affect the kidneys and cause anaemia. Chronic long-term health effects can occur some time after exposure and can last for months or years.’

  ‘Is this really something you ought to keep in your fridge?’ asked Murfin.

  ‘No, Gavin.’

  ‘And what was it that Derek Sutton died from, did you say?’

  ‘Heart failure.’

  ‘That appears on so many death certificates. It’s what doctors write in when they can’t see any other cause of death but don’t want to put the family through the ordeal of a postmortem.’

  ‘Obviously, no one would have suspected potassium nitrate poisoning at the time, so there wouldn’t have been any toxicology done, even if there had been a PM,’ said Fry.

  ‘Well, it’s academic, since there wasn’t a postmortem,’ said Hitchens. ‘Derek Sutton was signed off, certificated and cremated within a week.’

  ‘It would be cremation, of course. So no chance of getting an exhumation order.’

  ‘You say that no one would have suspected potassium nitrate poisoning,’ said Cooper. ‘But his brother Raymond might have suspected it, if he knew what Derek was up to.’

  Hitchens shook his head. ‘That old man? How would he have known the effects of potassium nitrate? Who knows what saltpetre is exactly? I didn’t, until just now.’

  ‘Even so, he must have wondered what was wrong. You don’t just drop suddenly without any other symptoms, do you?’

  Hitchens checked the report. ‘Eye and skin irritations, sneezing and coughing, headaches, fatigue, dizziness, a blue colour to the skin and lips, trouble breathing.’

  ‘I found several sites on the internet where I could order food-grade saltpetre. Lots more where it’s listed as an ingredient in garden chemicals.’

  ‘OK.’

  He’d also found a method for treating skin infections that had supposedly been passed from father to son over many generations in farming. If you got bitten or scratched and it looked as though the wound was getting infected, you should bathe the area in a solution of hot water and saltpetre. It inhibited the growth of organisms associated with skin infections. Clostridium, Streptococcus and Staphylococcus. It made sense. He was just surprised that he’d never heard of it in his own family. Father to son over generations? Maybe Matt used the treatment on the quiet.

  ‘Ben – this thing about a hand of glory,’ said Fry, interrupting his reading. ‘You don’t think you’re letting the superstition business get to you too much?’

  ‘Not me. I think it had got to Derek Sutton, though.’

  ‘You really think there’s a body without a hand somewhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Prepared to bet on it?’

  ‘I’m not really a betting man,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Ha-ha.’

  Potassium nitrate had a smell reminiscent of burnt gunpowder. That rang a bell with Cooper. For a while, supplies of fertilizer had been stored in a breeze-block extension to the main barn at Bridge End. The inside always had a heavy smell of potassium nitrate fertilizer. Burnt gunpowder was right – it had always made him think of Bonfire Night and firework displays.

  He would probably never be able to go to a garden centre without being reminded of it these days. Not without being reminded of poor Derek Sutton, preparing his saltpetre recipe in the kitchen at Pity Wood.

  Fry was seething quietly at her desk when Hitchens appeared at her side, his face creased with discomfort.

  ‘Diane, have you got a minute?’

  ‘Sir?’ said Fry, automatically responding to the tone of his voice. It was a management tone, the kind of voice people used when you were being summoned into their office for a reprimand. Or to get bad news. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Let’s just step into my office, shall we?’

  They moved out of earshot of the team in the CID room and Hitchens shut the door of his office with a deliberate slam.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ he said. ‘But we’ve worked together for a while now, and I think you ought to know as soon as possible. Sit down, won’t you?’

  Reluctantly, Fry sat. She preferred to stay on her feet when they were discussing an enquiry. Sitting in the chair across from his desk felt too much like a disciplinary interview, the recalcitrant pupil called to the headmaster’s room.

  ‘There was a meeting of the CID management team this morning,’ he said.

  Fry nodded. Of course, everyone knew that. Word had gone round the CID room like the wind. DIs and above were in a meeting with the new superintendent. Something was afoot, they said. Changes were going to be made. The End of the World was nigh.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Branagh has been studying the department carefully before she takes up her new role,’ said Hitchens. ‘She’s gone into everything very thoroughly – detection rates, targets, staff records. As Mr Jepson said, she’s very thorough. Very thorough indeed.’

  ‘A ferociously efficient administrator. That’s what he called her.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, that was accurate, too.’

  Hitchens seemed to be gathering his thoughts. A un
iformed PC knocked on the door and stuck his head in, but Hitchens waved him away with an abrupt gesture.

  ‘Superintendent Branagh asked for copies of all the PDRs for everyone. All of us. Me, too. She doesn’t believe in people getting stale and falling into a routine. She says an officer who gets into a rut is an officer going nowhere.’

  So perhaps the doom mongers were right. Fry pictured some of the older CID officers, such as Gavin Murfin or DS Rennie. A shake-up would come as a shock to some of them.

  ‘Has she got some changes in mind?’ she asked.

  Hitchens nodded. ‘She’s going to produce a set of proposals for the department. But it’s safe to say that some moves are on the cards.’

  ‘Moves?’

  ‘Transfers. A few shifts in areas of responsibility. Maybe a promotion or two, Diane.’

  He was trying hard to sound positive, but Fry could see through it. She wasn’t fooled by flannel, and her DI should know it by now.

  ‘I take it there was something specific about me?’ she said. ‘You were talking about me during this meeting?’

  ‘Well, you were mentioned,’ admitted Hitchens, his eyes flickering nervously like a guilty suspect in an interview room. He looked as though he was starting to regret sending the PC away, after all.

  ‘And what did Detective Superintendent Branagh make of my Personal Development Review? Has she got something in mind for my future? Will I actually be allowed to know what’s being said about me some time?’

  ‘There will be individual interviews, of course. Everything will be discussed with you fully. You’ll have an opportunity to have your say at that time.’

  ‘But …?’ said Fry.

  ‘It’s all still up in the air, Diane. There’s nothing absolutely definite …’

  ‘But …?’

  Hitchens sighed. ‘Superintendent Branagh was asking – did I really think you fitted in here? She wondered if you might be more suited to another division. I’m sorry, Diane.’

  Cooper consulted his notes, reminding himself of what he’d missed doing. Time seemed to be going by so fast, what with one thing and another.

  He saw that he hadn’t suggested a search of the old caravan at Pity Wood Farm yet, as he’d meant to do. Maybe that wasn’t too urgent, because the forensics team probably wouldn’t get round to it for days anyway. He added a note to fit in a visit to the heritage centre some time, to see if they had anything on Pity Wood. Old photos could reveal such a lot.

  Then Cooper noticed that he’d never spoken to anyone at the auctioneers, Pilkington’s, to ask them whether they’d been approached about a farm equipment sale. There must be something planned for the disposal of all that machinery and the other stuff at Pity Wood. It wouldn’t all fit into the skip.

  Cooper thought about the interior of the house, the few items they’d recovered that might be of relevance. The farm records, some jars of crystallized saltpetre, a single Sani Bag. And he supposed the family Bible should be included. But might there be something important that was no longer present, so they just weren’t seeing it? The impression of a Marie Celeste, abandoned intact, could be quite misleading.

  He looked at his phone. Fry had been called in to see the DI, and neither of them had looked too happy. Besides, she was supposed to be chasing mispers now, so he supposed he was a free agent for a while. Initiative was called for. He reached for the handset.

  ‘Mr Goodwin, did you ever meet the previous owners of Pity Wood Farm?’ asked Cooper, when he managed to get through to the Manchester solicitor.

  ‘Oh, no. It was all done through the estate agent. The farm was already unoccupied when we visited for a viewing. I know they were called Sutton, but we had no personal contact. Just the usual exchange of contracts.’

  ‘Mr Sutton didn’t take much away with him, did he?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Not much,’ said Goodwin. ‘Just a few personal things. There’s an awful lot of rubbish to clear out, as you’ve probably seen. It won’t be a quick job. But that was the deal – it was one of the reasons I got the property at a good price. It was sold “as is”. I understand the owner was in care, so everything had to be disposed of anyway.’

  ‘Can you recall anything that was removed, sir? Anything out of the ordinary? There must have been a few items that were present when you viewed the property, but which had gone when you took possession.’

  The solicitor was silent for a moment, except for a thoughtful mumbling.

  ‘Nothing that seemed to be of any value,’ he said. ‘It’s not exactly the sort of place you’d expect to be stuffed with antique furniture, is it? Or, if it ever was, they sold anything of value years ago. I gathered the farm had been failing for some time.’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Then there was nothing, really, Detective Constable. Nothing that I wouldn’t have wanted to get rid of, anyway.’

  Then he began to laugh, and Cooper looked at the phone as if it had done something weird. ‘Would you like to share the joke, sir?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure this can’t be what you mean,’ said Goodwin, still chuckling. ‘But obviously, they took the severed head.’

  19

  Fry took a moment to steady her breathing, shocked by the unexpected surge of panic that had turned her stomach over for a few seconds. It was a totally irrational feeling. She’d thought the same herself many times, hadn’t she? She was like a fish out of water in E Division. In Derbyshire, come to that. Her home was back in the city, away from these people she would never understand and couldn’t tolerate.

  It was just hearing the sentiment put into someone else’s words that had hit her like a blow to the solar plexus. It was a statement of the obvious. Yet she loathed the idea that Detective Superintendent Branagh had sat in a meeting this morning and expressed the thought to her managers. She hated the intrusion of someone like Branagh reading her file and summing her up so easily. It was illogical, of course. But no less hurtful for that.

  ‘Oh, no need to be sorry, sir,’ she said quietly. ‘No need for you to be sorry at all.’

  That fear of being an outsider had haunted her all her life. At school, in her various homes in the Black Country, and even when she’d studied for her Criminal Justice and Policing course at UCE. As a child, she hadn’t realized that everyone dreaded finding themselves on the outside, not a part of the gang. She thought it was her own particular weakness of character that drove her to seek acceptance from her peers.

  It made her wince now to think of her teenage self, hanging around in the corridors of her comprehensive school, trying to attach herself to a group. It was only as an adult that she’d learned it was the same for most kids of her age. Some were so desperate to belong that it became a question of any gang that would have them.

  Being a member of the herd was a primal instinct – probably the deepest, most powerful instinct of them all.

  ‘If you do go, Diane,’ said Hitchens, ‘we’ll miss you.’

  ‘They called him Billy,’ said Cooper, the moment Fry entered the CID room. ‘Screaming Billy Sutton. But of course he probably wasn’t a Sutton. He could have been anybody. Anybody at all, Diane.’

  Fry jumped as if she’d been shot. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Ben?’

  ‘The landlord of the Dog Inn said something about a Billy. At first, I thought he might have meant another brother, or a son. But there’s no indication of a William Sutton. So this must be him.’

  She had never seen him so animated. He was running around the office like an excited puppy, yapping at anyone who would listen. But what was he yapping about?

  ‘Ben, slow down. Explain yourself properly.’

  Cooper looked hot and breathless, as if he’d been running. ‘It’s like Dickie of Tunstead, you see. There’s a place called Tunstead Farm, up in the north of the county near Chapel-en-le-Frith. Now, that one is quite famous. There’s some doubt whether it’s male or female, but locally it’s always been known as Dickie. A previous owner of
the farm was murdered in his bed in an ownership dispute –’

  He paused to take a breath, and Fry held up a hand like a traffic officer, speaking louder to drown him out.

  ‘Ben, stop.’

  ‘The Suttons must have managed to keep this one quiet, though,’ he said. ‘It was known about locally, but everyone seems to have been reluctant to discuss it. Superstition, of course. Careless talk, the Scottish play, all that sort of stuff.’

  ‘For God’s sake, will you just stop? Stop!’

  ‘Screaming Billy was supposed to …’ Cooper finally ground to a halt and looked at her in amazement. ‘Why are you shouting at me, Diane?’

  Fry took his arm. ‘Ben, sit down and shut up for a minute. Take a few deep breaths.’

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she snarled at him, and he closed it again quickly. He sat down.

  ‘All right, that’s better,’ she said.

  ‘Can I speak yet?’

  ‘Just collect your thoughts first. I’m getting the impression you have something to tell me that you think is important. But so far you haven’t managed a word of sense. Not a word.’

  ‘Oh. Are you sure?’

  ‘There was somebody called Billy, and somebody called Dickie, and one of them was screaming. That’s all I got. The rest of it was gibberish.’

  Cooper wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘I’d better start again.’

  ‘I’ll fetch you some water. And I suggest when you do start again, you start from the beginning.’

  When Fry came back from the cooler with a cup of water, Cooper was looking much calmer, but he was still fidgeting in his seat, impatient to pass on his information.

  Fry found she couldn’t stay irritated with him, after witnessing his burst of enthusiasm. It took years off him, made him seem like that eager young DC she’d encountered when she first arrived in Edendale. That had been her initial impression of him. He’d changed a lot since then. The mark of what life had thrown at him, she supposed.

  For just one second, a disorientating second, Fry felt the two of them might actually have something in common. But it was so little that they shared. Far too little.

  Fry watched him take a drink of water. ‘All right, go ahead.’