Dying to Sin. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘Terrified,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’d call him – a terrified kid.’

      Matt Cooper had loaded some sheep into a trailer and was doing the paperwork in the Land Rover when his brother arrived. Ben could see a sheaf of forms resting on a clipboard. Pink copy for the destination, blue for the haulier, yellow for the holding of departure.

      Matt opened the door, the usual frown caused by paperwork clearing from his face.

      ‘Hello, little brother. How was Amy? Did she have a good time?’

      ‘Oh, yes. She was fascinated by the recipe for preserving a severed hand.’

      ‘That sounds about right. She’s been in a funny mood recently.’

      Matt was still putting on weight. That was a new set of overalls he was wearing, and they were a size larger than the last ones. He was only in his mid-thirties, so he still had middle-aged spread to look forward to.

      ‘Amy talks in quite a grown-up way sometimes, doesn’t she?’ said Ben.

      ‘Oh, you noticed that. Yes, it’s a bit of a new thing. I think it’s some influence at school – she must have some new friends, or something.’

      ‘Or a new teacher she’s got a crush on?’

      ‘Do girls have crushes on teachers?’

      ‘Yes, I believe so, Matt.’

      ‘I mean … well, I think they’re mostly female teachers that she has at that school.’

      ‘Even so.’

      Matt was silent for a moment. ‘I’ll ask Kate to have a quiet word,’ he said.

      Ben turned to look at the farmhouse, conscious of its presence behind him, the old family home. Now that he no longer lived here, he noticed that Bridge End Farm was starting to look middle-aged, too. The house hadn’t been painted for a while, and he could see that some work needed doing on the roof of the barn. He supposed there wasn’t much money in the bank to spare for repairs these days.

      ‘It’ll just be a phase Amy is going through, won’t it?’ he said.

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘It could be a lot worse, Matt. She’s a sensible girl.’

      Matt put his paperwork aside. ‘Ben, how come you know so much more about pubescent girls than I do? I’m the dad around here.’

      ‘You see all sorts of things in the job.’

      ‘I suppose you do. And of course, you don’t always talk about it, do you, Ben? Especially these days. Whenever you come to the farm now, you seem to have changed a little bit more.’

      Ben watched Amy coming across the field, walking with exaggerated care, instead of running in an uninhibited way, as she once would have done.

      ‘Perhaps some of us are maturing faster than others,’ he said.

      Ben couldn’t deny that he was losing his sense of connection to Bridge End Farm. The ties were no longer quite so binding since he’d moved out and rented his own flat in Edendale. Memories of his childhood at the farm were objects in the far distance, unless he stopped to think about them. And then the details could spring at him with unexpected ferocity, like wild animals that hated to be stared at.

      ‘Nothing much happening, then?’ asked Matt. ‘No urgent crime on the streets of Edendale to take you away from us? If you’re at a loose end, you could help me batten down for the weather. It’s not looking too good.’

      Ben turned and looked at the hills in the east, where the bad weather came from. A bank of cloud was building up, dark and ominous. Those easterly winds had been a feature of his early years. At Bridge End, when the wind blew from the east it made all the shutters bang and the doors of the loose boxes rattle against their latches. The trees on the eastern ridge would be bent over at unnatural angles, their bare branches flailing helplessly against the power of the gale. At night, animals would stir uneasily in the barns as the young Ben lay listening to the banging and the moaning of the wind, jumping at the crash of a bucket hurled across the yard or a tile dislodged from the roof.

      Just when Cooper was thinking that nothing would ever make him jump with alarm like that any more, the phone in his pocket began to ring.

      Jamie Ward was shivering miserably in the front seat of the crew bus that had brought the builders to Pity Wood Farm. It was a converted Transit, smelling powerfully of cigarettes and muddy clothes. The seats were worn thin, the floor scuffed by dozens of work boots. Fry moved a hard hat aside, slid in next to him, and wound the window down to prevent the interior steaming up. Rain covered the windscreen, blocking out the view of the farm.

      ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

      ‘I’ll be OK.’

      He didn’t sound very sure, but Fry let it pass. The sooner she finished with him, the better it would be. If he went into shock, he’d be useless.

      Murfin had been right about Jamie Ward. He was younger than any of the other men she’d seen standing around the site, and he had an entirely different look about him. His hair was streaked blond, and was gelled up at the front – hardly the typical builder’s style. But he was a well-built lad, six feet tall at least, a good build for a rugby player. His hands were powerful and broad, just as suitable for hard physical work as for playing rugby.

      ‘I’m studying Microbiology at Sheffield University,’ said Jamie when she asked him. ‘But I need to find work whenever I can, you know – to get some dosh.’

      ‘You work as a builder’s labourer? That’s a bit of an unusual vacation job for a student,’ suggested Fry.

      Jamie shrugged. ‘It suits me. It beats working in McDonald’s, anyway. I like to be outside in the open air, doing a bit of physical work. I’d go mad otherwise. I don’t have any skills or training, but I can use a spade and push a wheelbarrow about.’

      ‘And carry a hod full of bricks?’

      ‘We’re not allowed to use hods any more,’ said Jamie. ‘Health and Safety – you could do your back in, or drop bricks on someone’s head.’

      ‘Really?’

      He nodded. ‘Besides, we’re not using bricks on this site. It’s going to be entirely stone on the outside, to match the original walls. Breeze block on the inside, of course.’ Jamie wiped off a few inches of condensation and looked at the figures moving about in the rain. ‘Funny, really, when there’s all this clay lying about. But stone is much more fashionable. That’s what the owner wants.’

      Fry saw him relaxing a little, now that he had managed to get off the painful subject of the body he’d found.

      ‘So you like to be outside in the open air?’ she asked, thinking that Jamie Ward reminded her a little of Ben Cooper. ‘Are you from a farming family, by any chance?’

      ‘Well, I used to help my grandfather around his place when I was a teenager. Just at weekends and during the school holidays. He doesn’t have the farm any more, though – Granddad sold up when it stopped making money.’

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