Dying to Sin. Stephen Booth

table and a battered dartboard. A man with a long, grey beard was rolling cigarettes from a battered tobacco tin and brushing the remains of his tobacco off the racing page of the Daily Mirror. A few other men sat at tables further down the bar, all in complete silence. She felt sure it hadn’t been quite so silent before she walked in.

      Fry was faced by a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign hanging from the beer pumps, and a row of Christmas figures over the bar counter – a few motley Santas and a snowman. She’d followed a trail of muddy paw prints into the bar that she guessed must belong to the collie dog lying on the floor.

      On the jukebox she could see Now That’s What I Call Music – 1964, a bit of Elvis Presley, and the Eagles’ Greatest Hits. The selections were numbered one to twelve down one side, and fourteen to twenty-five on the other. Twenty-eight choices of naff sixties and seventies pop hits. According to a sign, bed and breakfast at the Dog Inn was only twenty-five pounds a night. She didn’t feel tempted.

      For a few minutes, Fry thought it was strange that no one seemed to be looking at her, as if they’d accepted her without curiosity. But then she realized that they were watching her, after all. They were making an elaborate pretence of not noticing her, but they were observing out of the corners of their eyes, letting their gaze sweep casually across her as if she wasn’t there, but registering more and more details about her each time they turned their heads. Bystanders were notoriously poor at remembering descriptions, but these people would be able to draw her accurately from memory, each and every one of them. They were all watching her.

      As she waited, a desultory conversation started up about the weather. Wasn’t it wet and cold and windy, they said. Wetter and colder and windier than usual for this time of year. It would probably be even wetter and colder over Christmas, just their luck. Somebody must have stood on an ant.

      Fry finally got some attention when a middle-aged man emerged from a door behind the bar. He was wearing an old cardigan and carrying a mug of tea with ‘Number One Dad’ printed on it. He introduced himself as Ned Dain, the licensee.

      ‘The Suttons?’ he said. ‘I remember the two old men. They’re not still at the farm, surely?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I thought not. We haven’t seen them in here for ages. Died, did they?’

      ‘Only one of them did.’

      ‘Damn.’

      ‘What do you mean by that?’

      ‘Well, I bet that would be really hard on the other brother,’ said Dain. ‘They were so close they were almost like twins. Spoke the same, had a similar manner. Yet someone told me once they didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. They kept it hidden well, if that was the case.’ He took a sip of tea. ‘There were a few years between them in age, I think.’

      ‘We’ve been told Derek was the youngest by four years.’

      ‘Is he the one that died?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘Damn.’

      The men in the bar had moved on to discussing the Middle East problem, and whether anyone had seen the darts on the telly last night.

      ‘Can you tell me anything else about them?’

      ‘They always kept themselves pretty much to themselves,’ said Dain. ‘But there’s usually somebody who knows something around here. What did you want to know?’

      ‘Was either of them married, for example?’

      ‘Hold on. Hey, Jack!’

      The man with the long, grey beard looked up. ‘Aye?’

      ‘The Sutton brothers at Pity Wood – was one of them married?’

      Jack glanced slyly at Fry before answering. ‘I don’t rightly recall. Might have been. It was a long time ago, if so.’

      ‘You’re right,’ said Dain. ‘I don’t recollect they were married. A set of old bachelors, I’d reckon. We mostly saw the brothers together, if we saw them at all. If there was ever a wife, she must have died, too, or walked out – who knows?’

      ‘Well, who does?’

      Dain seemed not to be able to answer a direct question.

      ‘Derek,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And then there was, let’s see … Billy? No, of course not. That’s me getting mixed up. I’m getting a terrible memory for names.’

      ‘Billy?’ The man called Jack coughed and laughed into his beard. ‘There was never any Billy. You’ve got that wrong, Ned.’

      ‘Raymond,’ said Fry.

      ‘Raymond. That’s right. Derek, Raymond …?’

      ‘Yes, Derek and Raymond. Those are their names.’

      Dain gave her a quizzical look. ‘All right, if you say so. Well, Raymond, now – he played the organ at the chapel. You could ask the minister about him. He’s circuit, of course, based in Monyash. Or there’s Ellis Bland – he’s the caretaker.’

      Jack spoke up again. ‘Ned, they had a funeral at the chapel, didn’t they? The Suttons.’