LITMIR.BIZ

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kitchen window and saw DI Hitchens standing in the yard with the crime scene manager, Wayne Abbott. Right now, Abbott was doing the talking, and the DI was nodding wisely. He did that pretty well, the nodding bit. From a distance, he looked intelligent and in control, a man who knew exactly what the plan was. Cooper knew he could never look that way himself, whether from a distance or close up. He’d always just look like a confused DC who was having uneasy feelings that he couldn’t explain. Fry had told him that often enough. Keep your mouth firmly shut, Ben – that’s the best way. Don’t give them an excuse to laugh at you.

      He heard a noise behind him, a faint crunch of cement dust underfoot. He turned to find Diane Fry standing in the doorway, her usual silent approach thwarted by a layer of builders’ debris. Her gaze roamed around the room, taking in the furniture and the yellowed walls. Cooper tried to think of something intelligent he could say to her, a few words that would make it look as though he’d been gathering useful evidence, rather than dwelling on eerie atmospheres.

      ‘Jesus,’ said Fry, before he could speak. ‘Don’t you feel as though something horrible happened in here?’

      * * *

      In the more distant outbuildings, there had been that powerful smell of cat urine. Yet Cooper had seen no sign of any cats as he walked round the property. He wondered what had happened to them when the Suttons left. Dispersed, like everything else, he supposed.

      But everything hadn’t been dispersed, had it? Far from it, in fact. There was all that machinery and equipment in the big shed, the silage bags, the hay, and the vehicles parked in the yard.

      ‘You know, it would be normal practice to have a farm sale in these circumstances,’ said Cooper as they went back outside.

      ‘A what?’ asked Fry.

      ‘A farm sale. I don’t mean the sale of the buildings themselves. Before it got to that stage, they would usually sell off all the equipment – the tractors and trailers, tools, field gates, spare fencing posts. There are buyers for most things. They could probably sell the silage and the tyres, too, maybe even this shed itself. But they should have done that before the house and land were put on the market, so there was a tidy site for buyers to look at. I can’t understand why all this stuff is still standing here. It doesn’t make sense.’

      Fry shrugged. ‘Perhaps they’re planning to do it later. There’s no law against it.’

      ‘I’ll enquire at the local auctioneers, Pilkington’s – they’d almost certainly be the people called in for a job like that.’ Cooper shook his head. ‘But it’s really bad planning to do it this way round. They should have cleared everything out first.’

      Murfin stuck his head round a corner. ‘Oh, there you are. Mr Hitchens wants everyone out front for a confab.’

      ‘We’re coming.’

      DI Hitchens was Fry’s immediate boss, the man whose job she might have to get if she planned to stay in Derbyshire E Division. But the thought of staying here wasn’t part of her future plans, and places like Pity Wood Farm only confirmed her view. There were times when she longed for the city, or even for the peculiar urban fusion that was the Black Country where she’d grown up.

      Hitchens looked calm and unruffled, allowing the rain to fall on his head without flinching. As he waited for the officers to gather round him at the RV point, he wiped some moisture from his face, flashing the white scar that crawled across the middle knuckles of his fingers.

      ‘Well, as some of you already know,’ he said, ‘this body has been in the ground for a year or more.’

      ‘So there’s no point in us rushing around if the case is so old, sir?’ asked someone.

      ‘Well … that’s not something I want to hear anyone saying publicly. But it does mean we can let the anthropologist and forensics team do their thing for a while yet, and the mince pies might not have to go cold.’

      There were a scattering of half-hearted cheers, but the relief was palpable.

      Hitchens acknowledged the reaction with a slight smile. ‘Meanwhile, a few basic procedures are in order, to make sure we’ve covered the ground. If we do have to open a murder enquiry later on, I don’t want to hear that we missed vital evidence in the early stages because someone was in too much of a hurry to do their Christmas shopping. Understood?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘For a start, we need information on all these workmen – anyone who’s been on site. Names and addresses, dates of birth – you know the drill. Then we can run them through the PNC if necessary.’

      ‘What about their status?’ asked Fry.

      ‘Status?’

      ‘I was thinking that some of them might have residency or immigration issues. You know how difficult it is to get information when they’re worried about being arrested or deported.’

      ‘I thought someone told me they were all Polish?’ said Hitchens. ‘Poles don’t have residency or immigration issues – they’re members of the EU, so they can come and go when they like, and they don’t need work permits either.’

      Murfin raised a hand, enjoying being the man with the answers for once. ‘Apparently, most of these blokes work for an agency, which sends them wherever the work is. It means they don’t have a settled address, sir. They live in digs, bed and breakfasts, caravans, whatever is available. They say it’s worth their while – they get about twice the minimum wage, enough to send money home, if their families aren’t in this country.’

      Fry glanced across at the little huddle of builders in their safety boots and yellow hard hats. ‘We’re only assuming they’re all Polish. The foreman is, but we haven’t checked the rest out yet, so we might get some surprises.’

      ‘Don’t tell me we’re going to have to find translators,’ said Hitchens. ‘At Christmas? Their statements alone could take weeks to process.’

      ‘Well, maybe we don’t need them.’

      ‘No. You’re right, DS Fry. Let’s prioritize, shall we? We’re dealing with the foreman and the lad who actually found the body. What’s his name?’

      ‘Jamie Ward.’

      ‘Jamie Ward, right. The rest can wait, as long as we know where to find them. Meanwhile, we need everything we can get on the family who lived here. Two brothers, Raymond and Derek Sutton, and anyone associated with them. I’ll be speaking to the surviving brother myself this afternoon, when we establish which care home he’s in. There’s a village over that way somewhere, called Rakedale. We’ll be starting house-to-house there tomorrow morning. Everyone OK with that?’

      There were murmurs of agreement and a general shuffling. Everyone was now anxious to get finished and go home.

      Cooper fell into step with Fry as the impromptu meeting broke up. Their feet squelched as they walked back towards their vehicles from the outer cordon.

      ‘What do you think, Diane? Are we going to have to interview all the builders?’

      ‘I hope not.’

      The crew working on the conversion of Pity Wood Farm had created their own access, widening an old field entrance and laying down a gravel roadway to reach the back of the farm. The area they’d been working in was getting very muddy, and Scenes of Crime had managed to lay a series of duckboards to reach the site of the grave, which would protect evidence better than their temporary bridge. Anyone who stepped off those duckboards was getting splattered with mud. One or two of the more carelessly parked vehicles might have to be towed out at the end of the day.

      Cooper could see Liz Petty talking to two of her SOCO colleagues. They were probably awaiting the arrival of the Northern Area Scientific Support Officer, who was based at C Division headquarters in Chesterfield.

      He badly wanted to acknowledge Liz, but they’d agreed to keep their relationship low profile when they

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