Stephen Booth – Dying to Sin (страница 3)
‘Who else is here, Gavin?’ she asked, in despair.
‘The DI’s on his way,’ said Murfin. ‘But in the meantime, it’s you and me, boss.’
‘DC Cooper?’
‘Ben? He’s on a rest day. We don’t know where he is.’
‘Strange,’ said Fry. ‘This is
Crouching uncomfortably, Detective Constable Ben Cooper studied the withered object carefully. In all his years with Derbyshire Constabulary, including seven in CID, he’d never seen anything quite like this. There had been plenty of dead bodies – some of them long dead, others nice and fresh. And some of them perhaps not quite dead, after all. But this?
The flesh had shrivelled away from the fingers, leaving them thin but not quite skeletal. The fact that there was still a layer of leathery skin shrunk tight to the fingers somehow made it worse than if he was just looking at bones. The result was that the hand appeared to have been shrinkwrapped in a film of wrinkled, yellow plastic. The thumb was bent strangely out of shape, too, as though it had been broken and never re-set. The severed wrist was ragged, and the tattered skin looked as though it had been sealed with some kind of sticky substance.
He straightened up, easing the painful muscles in his back. He’d been playing squash this morning, and his opponent had smashed the ball into his kidneys when he was out of position recovering a drop-shot. You could never trust police officers not to get you in the back.
‘The hand of glory,’ he said. ‘They’re very rare these days.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Very rare. Not rare like steak, but rare as in
Cooper had the suspicion that he was babbling, spouting nonsense. He did it just because there was a silence that had to be filled. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Not even the first time today.
He looked at his companion, unsure of her reaction because of the silence. ‘What do you think of it, then?’
‘It’s gross.’
‘Gross?’
‘Like, totally yucky.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
It wasn’t exactly a technical assessment – but accurate, all the same. There were many occasions when a police officer in E Division might want to use it. A Saturday night on drunk patrol, for example. Another body lying in the gutter on the High Street?
But today was his rest day, and he’d volunteered to take his eldest niece out for the day, since the Christmas holidays had started. So he had an obligation to be interesting and informative. Volunteered? Was that really the right word? His recollection was that he’d happened to be hanging around at Bridge End Farm chatting to his brother Matt, when Amy had kidnapped him. But he’d never prove that in court. He had no evidence.
‘The “hand of glory” supposedly comes from an executed criminal and was cut off the body while the corpse was still hanging from the gibbet,’ said Cooper, reading from the guide book.
‘There’s a recipe here,’ said Amy, interrupting him. She was eleven now, and strangely adult in some ways. Cooper was starting to feel sorry for the teachers at Amy’s new school. She could be merciless if you were boring her.
‘A what, Amy?’
‘A recipe.’
‘Like Delia Smith? That sort of recipe?’
‘I suppose. “
Cooper looked down at his niece, surprised by the sudden change in her tone. Now she was interested. It was yucky just to stand and look at a preserved hand, but learning how to preserve one yourself – now that was cool. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.
‘“
‘Erm … I’m not sure.’
Amy snorted gently. ‘“
‘Erm …’
‘Sesame seeds from Lapland, obviously.’ She frowned. ‘Do sesame plants grow in Lapland?’
‘I, er …’
‘Never mind.’
‘I know how the hand of glory was used,’ said Cooper desperately. ‘You fixed candles between the fingers of the hand, and then you lit them when you broke into a house.’
‘When you did what?’
‘Well, it was used by burglars. According to the legends, it made them invisible. It was also supposed to prevent the owners of the house from waking up.’
There was a final bit on the little interpretative panel that he didn’t bother reading out. Wicks for the candles were made from locks of hair dipped in grease from the murderer’s body and the fat of an old tom cat, then consecrated by saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards. Ah, the old Lord’s Prayer backwards – that always worked, didn’t it?
They moved on through the museum. Cooper glanced out of the window, and saw that it was still raining. He didn’t mind Edendale in the rain, but Amy objected to getting wet. And since it was the start of her Christmas holidays, and only his rest day, she got to say what they did and where they went. And that didn’t involve going out in the rain, thanks.
In the centre of town, Victoria Park had been taken over for a Victorian Christmas Market. These things seemed to be very popular, judging by the crowds coming into town. There was a smell of roasting chestnuts in the air, and the sound of a fairground organ. And there was an innovation for Edendale this year – a Continental market, where stalls sold French bread and German sausages. Some of the stallholders spoke with foreign accents and might even be French or German. You never knew these days.
In the evenings, mime artists, stilt walkers and clowns would mingle with the crowds, and Santa would turn up on his sleigh at exactly the same time every night. A couple of weeks earlier, a local TV presenter had been brought in to switch on the lights, but the headline act on the main stage tomorrow would be an Abba tribute band.
They stopped by a costume display. The rough trousers and leather knee-pads of a lead miner, the gowns and bonnets of an elegant lady.
‘So how are you liking school, Amy?’ he said, aware of an unfamiliar silence developing.
‘It’s so cliquey. They’re all goths or emos. Or chavs.’
‘Chavs, eh?’
‘They’re so stupid. There aren’t any
‘Would you rather be at home, or at school?’
‘Well, home is all right. I like being around the farm and the animals. But Mum and Dad are so immature sometimes.’
‘Oh, are they?’
‘They only think about money and possessions – they’re very materialistic. I can’t believe they never stop and think about serious subjects now and then.’
Cooper found himself trailing after his niece, as if he was the child demanding attention. It was supposed to be the other way round, but it never seemed to work like that in reality.
‘Well, they’re very busy looking after you and Josie,’ he said. ‘And they have to try to make sure the farm makes enough money to support the whole family. It’s very hard work, you know.’
Amy didn’t seem to hear. He could see that she was thinking about something again. It was very unnerving the way she did that, switched to auto pilot while her brain concentrated on some totally different subject. Perhaps she was already learning to multi-task, practising that skill all women claimed to have.
‘It’s just like Draco Malfoy, in that shop in Knockturn Alley,’ she said.
Cooper frowned, stumped again by the turn of the conversation. ‘Is it?’
His brain turned over, trying to pin down the reference. It was humiliating to find that his brain worked so much more slowly than Amy’s but he was finding it more and more difficult to keep up with his nieces’ interests these days. Their lives seemed to change so quickly, the pop stars they liked being different from one week to the next. Even the language they used evolved so rapidly that it left him behind.
‘Wait a minute – Draco Malfoy, did you say? That’s
‘Of course it’s
‘“
‘So it’s magic,’ said Amy.
‘Yes, of course. What did you think it was?’
‘I thought it was for real. Well, it’s in the museum, isn’t it? All this other stuff is for real – the costumes and the tools, and the old furniture.’
‘Yes.’
‘But the hand of glory isn’t real – it’s magic.’
‘It’s a genuine hand,’ said Cooper defensively. ‘A hand that belonged to a real person once.’
‘But it’s still magic. Magic is make-believe.