In the corner and along the back wall, Cooper unearthed a number of less identifiable objects. He counted a dozen cardboard boxes, some standing on top of each other, the bottom one crumpling slightly under the weight. There was a heap of clothes on a chair near the cooking range and more coats and overalls hung behind the outer door. It was a Marie Celeste of a kitchen, frozen in time, preserved in the moment that the owners had finally walked out one day.
Even the fridge was still here, an old Electrolux with a split rubber seal. But that wasn’t still working, surely? Cooper opened the door, and was surprised to see the interior light come on, and feel a draught of cold air on his face. But then he saw why it was switched on. The builders had been keeping their milk in it, ready for their tea breaks. Their carton of semi-skimmed sat among some less reassuring items — jars without labels, tins that had been opened and left to grow mould, as if someone had been trying to culture penicillin. The contents of the nearest jar had crystallized and lay on the bottom, defying him to figure out what they’d originally been.
The smell was disturbing, and Cooper shut the door again quickly. The fridge responded by breaking into an unsteady hum, rattling slightly on the tiled floor.
As he moved around the house, Cooper felt the skin on the back of his neck begin to crawl. The surroundings were innocuous enough, if depressing. But the atmosphere was really bad. His instincts were telling him that something awful had happened here at Pity Wood Farm. Painful memories had imprinted themselves into the walls, the aftershock of some traumatic event still shuddered in the air.
Cooper shivered, and tried to put the sensation aside. It was the sort of feeling that he couldn’t mention, particularly to Diane Fry. He’d been accused of being over-imaginative too often to risk the put-down. Evidence was all that anyone was interested in, and he had none of that.
He might describe his feeling to Liz when he saw her — she would understand what he meant. Cooper glanced at his watch. Hopefully that might be tonight, if he was lucky. The sense of urgency that pervaded most major crime scenes was missing from Pity Wood — presumably because the body was judged to be too old. The twenty-four-hour rule didn’t apply here. Vital evidence that could disappear in the first day or so after a murder was long gone in this case. Anything that was left would be preserved down there, in the mud with the body — or here, inside the house. Better to take it slow and carefully, so that nothing remaining was missed.
That’s what he’d be thinking if he was SIO, anyway. Not that he was ever likely to reach that position — you needed to be promoted at regular intervals to achieve it. He’d probably slipped too far behind already when he failed to get his promotion to DS. He was thirty, after all, and there would be eager young officers overtaking him before he knew it. Just the way it had happened to Gavin Murfin, and many others.
Cooper looked through the 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.’