Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue

The smell of the smoke was acrid and strong, like burning rubber. But it was nowhere near as strong as the other smell, which lay like an evil fog on the ramshackle buildings and overgrown paddocks of rough grass. It was the sweet, sickly stink of advanced decomposition, the odour of organic matter rotted to the point of putrefaction and the escape of fermenting gases.

Cooper had found the three old men by using his nose. They were building a vast compost heap, well out of sight of the track to the house at Thorpe Farm. From a seat on a bale of straw, Sam Beeley was supervising the operation, while Harry Dickinson and Wilford Cutts had their jackets off and their sleeves rolled up on their white arms as they wielded two forks. Two young men were mucking out a nearby breezeblock building, producing a constant trail of wheelbarrow loads of dark, wet, strawy manure. It arrived in the barrows steaming and black, like enormous Christmas puddings. A few yards away, a pile of dry bedding was smouldering viciously, creating a blanket of thick grey smoke that drifted away from the buildings and dispersed in the bracken on the hillside. Its smell couldn’t mask the stench of the fresh manure piling up in heaps on the ground. The smell was overpowering.

Wilford saw Cooper approaching and pointed at him with his fork, stabbing the air.

‘Look what’s coming! Here’s trouble, you lot.’

‘Nay, he’s a hero, that lad,’ said Sam. ‘He’s just come from arresting the number one suspect. Solved the case, he has.’

‘On his own?’

‘With one hand behind his back, probably.’

‘Happen he’s come to volunteer,’ said Harry, leaning on his fork. His shirt was open at the collar, and there was a distinct line where the tan of his neck met the bleached white skin of a throat and chest that hadn’t seen the sun for years. He looked like parts of two totally different men stuck together. Cooper thought stupidly of Frankenstein’s monster, the creature with a head sewn crudely on to someone else’s body.

‘Ah, grab a spare wheelbarrow then,’ said Sam. ‘Unless you know anything about making compost.’

‘All you do is pile it up and it rots down again,’ said Cooper, determined to stay on friendly terms. ‘Is that right?’

‘Oh no, not at all.’

‘Not at all,’ echoed Wilford. ‘There’s an art to compost. It needs nurturing, like a child.’

One of the young men came past with another load of manure. Cooper stepped back as a lump of evil-smelling muck slipped off the barrow. He could see it consisted of wet, soiled straw and partly decomposed animal droppings in indistinguishable clumps. As soon as the manure had landed, small brown flies appeared from nowhere and settled on it, probing into the mess with their noses.

‘This is good stuff,’ said Wilford. ‘Take a whiff of that lot.’

‘You use it on your vegetable patch, I suppose.’

‘Vegetables now, they need a particular sort of compost.’

‘Blood and bone. That’s what you want for vegetables,’ said Harry.

Sam cackled. ‘Blood and bone. Blood and bone,’ he said. ‘Oh aye.’

There were dogs barking from a shed in the background and hens clucking. But the smallholding was quieter than Cooper remembered it from his previous visit with Diane Fry. There was a strange stillness about the scene in front of him, as if the old men were posed around some bizarre work of art they had created for the National Gallery.

‘There’s plenty of nitrogen in blood,’ said Wilford. ‘Phosphorus in bone. Nowt like it for your brassicas.’

Another barrowload of manure was tipped on to the heap. Wilford and Harry forked it over, and Harry walked up the slope and trod up and down the heap in his black wellies.

‘I’d like to speak to you, Mr Dickinson, please,’ said Cooper, staring up at him.

The compost heap had reached a height of about four feet. Harry loomed high above Cooper, a strange scarecrow figure marching up and down on the compost like a sentry on guard duty. Cooper had to shade his eyes against the sun to look up at the old man.

‘In a minute,’ said Harry.

Wilford passed him up two thick wooden stakes about six feet long. Harry chose a spot carefully and drove the first stake deep into the compost. It plunged into the heap with a squelch and a burst of putrid odour. Then he heaved his weight on to the end of the stake until it stopped moving, with the last couple of feet still protruding.

‘You’ve got to give it a bit of air,’ explained Wilford as Harry drove in the second stake.

The youth with the barrow came past again and gave Cooper a sideways look and a conspiratorial grin. He had very short fair hair and a ring in his right ear. He was about the same height as the detective, and had well-developed muscles in his arms and shoulders. He was wearing torn jeans and was stripped to the waist. His torso was oily with sweat from the exertion and the steamy heat inside the building. A few yards away, the other youth was throwing some branches and armfuls of straw on to the fire to keep it going. The straw caught, and flames instantly leaped into the air.

Closer to, the vast compost heap was shimmering and steaming, with clouds of dung flies swirling through the haze seeking out the choicest, smelliest patches. Cooper covered his mouth and nose, feeling slightly sick. He was used to farmyard smells, but this was a special creation in itself.

‘Mr Dickinson, I really need to talk to you.’

‘It won’t smell when it’s ready, you know,’ said Sam.

‘Now, please,’ snapped Cooper, starting to lose his temper.

The three old men made an elaborate show of being impressed by his authoritative tone. Harry stood to attention in his wellies and saluted slowly. Wilford hoisted his fork over his shoulder like a rifle. Sam got up from his bucket and peered at Cooper over the top of the compost, grinning slyly.

‘You’ll get on all right, lad,’ he said. ‘You could be Chief Constable one day. All you have to do is get rid of all the other people ahead of you first.’

The old men laughed, and Cooper scowled. The heat was really starting to get to him. He felt drained of energy and irritable. He was relieved when Harry picked his way carefully down the side of the compost to join him.

‘I’m about finished here now,’ said Harry. ‘If you hang on while I fetch Jess, you can give me a lift home and talk all you like.’

‘Fine,’ said Cooper, pleased at the chance to get away from the smallholding.

‘Blood and bone,’ called Sam, as Cooper began to walk back across the field. But Wilford followed him and caught up with him by the gate.

‘You’ll be questioning Harry again,’ he said. ‘That’s what they call it, isn’t it? Questioning.’

The aroma of the compost clung to Wilford’s clothes and skin and hair, and small clumps of it dropped from his boots as he moved. He was breathing a bit too fast, with his chest heaving and his face strained.

‘I’m on the Laura Vernon enquiry, as you know, sir.’

‘Those Vernons. They’re not all they’re cracked up to be, you know.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘They’ve got a lot of money and they reckon to be posh, but they’re not. They’ve been bad for this village.’

‘People like that will always be resented.’

‘Oh aye, but everybody knows …’

‘Knows what?’

Wilford shrugged and lifted his cap, running his hand through his hair. The uneven white patch that had refused to catch the sun stood out on his freckled scalp.

‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose. You’ll be asking more questions about the girl.’

‘Of course we are. That’s what we’ve been doing all week. If you know anything –’

‘No, no. But it’s true, though, isn’t it?’ He looked at Cooper to seek reassurance. ‘A sin will always catch you out. Like we used to say in the mines, it’ll always come to day.’