BLOOD ON THE TONGUE
by
Stephen Booth


It wasn't the easiest way to commit suicide. Marie Tenncnt
seemed to have just curled up in the snow on Irontongue Hill and
stayed there as her body slowly and agonizingly froze. And hers
wasn't the only corpse lying hidden beneath the Peak District
snow that January.


With the body count mounting and her team depleted by
winter ailments, DS Diane Fry is short of clues and the resources
to pursue a murder inquiry. It's no time to become obsessed
with a 57-year-old mystery, but that's precisely what DC Ben
Cooper does when the attractive granddaughter of an RAF
bomber pilot arrives in Edendale. Her grandfather was last
seen in the winter of 1945, walking away from the crash that
had claimed the lives of all but one of his crew. Now she wants
to clear his name, but is met with a wall of silence from surviving
witnesses.

To DS Fry, Ben's interest in the case seems a waste of police
time -- until a vicious attack in the dark Edendale backstreets
suggests that the past could provide a motive for the present
violence.


By the same author


BLACK DOG
DANCING WITH THE VIRGINS


Blood on the Tongue

stephen booth



HarperCollinsPublishers

Collins Crime

First published in Great Britain

in 2002 by Collins Crime

Copyright Stephen Booth 2002

ISBN 0 00 713628 5

For Eric Jefferson

Lines from 'Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise?', a
rock'n'roll classic recorded by Frankie Ford, reproduced by
permission of Sea Cruise Productions, Inc.

For their help in the writing of this novel, I am grateful
to: Mr F. G. Cejer, Secretary of the Derbyshire branch of the
Federation of Poles in Great Britain, for information on Polish
language and customs; and the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage

o &	' o

Centre, for a ride on a Lancaster bomber. Any errors are
my own.

1


It was an hour before dawn when Detective Constable Ben
Cooper first began to get the news. An hour before dawn should
be the dead hour. But in the bedrooms of third-floor flats on the
council estates, or in stone-built semis in the hillside crescents,
there were people blinking in bewilderment at an alien world
of deadened sounds and inverted patterns of dark and light.
Cooper knew all about the hour before dawn, and it was no
time of day to be on the streets. But this was January, and dawn
came late in Edendale. And snow had turned the morning into
shuddering chaos.


Cooper pulled up the collar of his waxed coat to meet the rim
of his cap and brushed away the flecks of snow that had caught
in the stubble on his jawline where he had rushed shaving that
morning. He had walked down one of the alleyways from the
market square, crunching through fresh snow, slithering on the
frozen cobbles, passing from light to dark as he moved out of
the range of the street lamps. But he had stepped out of the
alley into a noisy snarl of traffic that had choked the heart of
Edendale and brought its snow-covered streets to a halt.

On Hollowgate, lines of frustrated motorists sat in their cars,
boot to bonnet in clouds of exhaust fumes. Many of them had



been driving almost blind, their windscreens covered in halfscraped
snow or streaks of brown grit that their frozen wipers
couldn't clear. The throbbing of engines filled the street, echoing
from shop facades and the upper storeys of nineteenth-century
buildings. Headlights pinned drivers and their passengers in cruel
shadows, like silhouettes on a shooting range.

'We have a serious double assault, believed to be racially
motivated. Approximately zero two hundred hours. Underbank
area.'

The voice from his radio sounded alien and remote. It was
the crackly voice of a tired operator in a control room with
no windows, where they would never know if it was still
snowing or the sun had risen. Not unless somebody called in
and gave them a weather report. We have sporadic outbreaks
of violence. Occasional blood on the streets. It's an hour to go
before dawn.

Cooper stepped off the edge of the pavement and straight into
six inches of wet slush. It went over the top of his shoe and turned
his foot into a frozen sponge. Since it was only seven o'clock and
still completely dark, it was going to be a long, uncomfortable
shift unless he got to his locker at E Division headquarters in
West Street pretty soon for a change of socks.

'Two male victims received multiple injuries and are described
as being in a serious condition.'

Cooper worked his way between the gridlocked cars to reach
the far side of Hollowgate. Around him, fumes rose from the
shadows and hung under the lamps, trapped in the street by the
freezing temperature and the stillness of the air. They created a
grey blanket that absorbed the light and swirled slowly in front
of black Georgian windows sparkling with frost.

'Four suspects are currently being sought. All are white males,
aged between twenty-five and forty-five. Local accents. One
suspect has been identified as Edward Kemp, 6 Beeley Street,
Edendale. Thirty-five years of age. Hair short and dark brown,
approximately six feet tall.'

The weather changed so quickly in the Peak District that
snowfall always seemed to take motorists in the town by surprise.
Yet within a few miles of Edendale all the minor roads and passes
would still be closed and outlying villages would be cut off until
the snowploughs reached them. They might be isolated until
tomorrow, or the next day.

Cooper had set off early because of the weather. On his way
in from Bridge End Farm, as he steered his Toyota into the
tracks left by the first snowplough, the hills around him had been
glittering and pristine, like huge wedding cakes covered in sugar
icing, lurking in the darkness. But it meant he had missed his
breakfast. Now what he needed was a couple of cheese toasties
and a black coffee. He was tempted by the lights of the Starlight
Cafe, reflecting off the banks of untouched snow.

'Edward Kemp is described as powerfully built, with a
distinctive body odour. Last seen wearing a dark overcoat and
a hat. No further description available at this time.'

Cooper peered into the cafe. Behind the condensation on the
plate-glass window there were figures wrapped in coats and
anoraks, scarves and gloves, and a variety of hats made of fur,
leather and wool. They looked like models posing for an Arctic
explorers' clothing catalogue.

'All suspects could be in possession of baseball bats or similar
weapons. Approach with caution.'

Now he could almost taste the coffee; he could feel the crunch
of the toasted teacake and the clinging softness of the melted
cheese. Saliva began to seep on to his tongue. Cooper pulled
back his glove to look at his watch. Plenty of time.

While his nose was pressed close to the window, a hand came
up and wiped away some of the condensation. A woman's face
appeared, her eyes wide with outrage. She mouthed an obscenity
and raised two fingers that poked from a blue woollen mitten.
Cooper pulled away. There would be no toasties this morning,
and no coffee.

'Control, I need a car outside the Starlight Cafe in Hollowgate.'

'With you in two minutes, DC Cooper ... Is it still dark
out there?'

'It's an hour before dawn,' said Cooper. 'What do you
think?'




It was the ice and the scouring wind that created the worst of
Marie Tennent's delusions. They were like daggers thrust into
her brain, plunged in so deeply that their edges scraped together
in the middle of her skull, filling her head with noise.

For the last hour before she died, Marie believed she could
hear music wailing in the wind, the hissing of wheels on an
icy road, and the muttering of voices deep in the snow. Her
mind struggled to interpret the sounds, to make sense of what
was happening to her. But the music was meaningless and the
voices distorted, like the babbling of a badly tuned radio when
its batteries were almost dead.

Marie lay amid the smells of bruised snow and damp air,
with the taste of her own blood in her mouth and her body

a bewildering pattern of cold spots and numbness and pain.
Her arms and legs were burning where the snow had melted
into her clothes and frozen again. And the ache in her head had
flowered into a savage, unbearable agony.

It was because of the pain that Marie knew, in a lucid spell,
that the sounds she could hear were caused by the tiny bones
of her inner ear shrinking and twisting as they froze. They were
grating against each other as they contracted, creating an internal
whisper and mumble, a parody of sound that mocked her slow
withdrawal from the boundaries of reality. It was a disturbing
and inarticulate farewell, a last baffling message from the world.
It was the only accompaniment to her dying.

The sun had dropped over the edge of Iron tongue Hill, so that
the snow-covered moor was in shadow, and the temperature was
dropping fast. Marie felt the faint, cold kiss of snowflakes on her
face. Yet the top of the hill was still touched by the last of the
sun, and the snow on the rocks was turned blue by the light.
Irontongue itself was hidden from her, its fissured shaft of dark
gritstone poking southwards over the valley. But she caught a
glint of water to the north, where Blackbrook Reservoir lay in
a hollow of the moors.

The last thing Marie saw before her eyelids closed was a thin,
dark shape that sliced the skyline on the hill. It seemed to cut
into the grey belly of cloud like the blade of a razor. Her mind
clutched at the thought of it as she drew together the dregs
of her willpower to fight the pain. In the end, that crumbling
memorial in the middle of the snowfield had not been the place
she was destined to die. It was for men who had lived and died
together. It was quite a different thing to die alone.

A series of out-of-focus slides seemed to flicker across a screen
in her mind. They were gone too quickly for her to puzzle out
their significance, though she knew they were connected to her
life. Each one had vague figures that swung and jerked against
a dark background. Each brought with it a momentary burst of
smells and tastes and sounds, a kaleidoscope of sensations that
dragged all the emotions out of her and ripped them away before
she could recognize what they were.

There was a voice, too — the voice of a real, remembered

person, not a phantom of the snow. 'We'll be together,' it said.
'Are you happy?' it said.

And then there were just three final words. They came amid
an eruption of intolerable pain, the smell of dirty sheets and the
sound of scuttling feet above her head. The same voice, but not
the same.

'It's too late,' it said.

And Marie Tennent would never see the dawn.


Ben Cooper entered the cafe. It was full of customers, who sat
half-asleep over their mugs of tea, their brains kept barely alert
by the tendrils of steam they breathed in through their noses.
As Cooper stamped his feet to shake off the snow, a few faces
turned away from him, as usual.


One man sat alone near the counter. He was wearing a
dark overcoat and a Manchester United hat. Cooper moved up
behind him until he was close enough to recognize the smell.
The man had an odour about him that identified him against the
background of bacon and fried eggs, even among the wet-dog
smells from sodden coats and muddy floor tiles.

Cooper moved slightly so that he could see the man's face.

'Morning, Eddie,' he said.

The customer nodded cautiously. It was the best that Cooper
could expect, in the circumstances. Eddie Kemp was well known
to most of the officers at E Division headquarters. He had visited
the custody suite and interview rooms there many times in the
past. These days, though, he visited other parts of the West
Street station, too, if only from the outside. Eddie Kemp had
started a window-cleaning business.

'Bad weather for business, isn't it?' said Cooper.

'Bloody awful. My chamois leathers are frozen solid. Like
dried-up cow pats, they are.'

Kemp didn't look too good today. His eyes were red and tired,
as if he'd been up all night. The Starlight opened at five o'clock
for the postal workers starting their shift at the sorting office, for
the bus drivers and railway staff, and even a few police officers.
Kemp looked as though he had been here since the doors opened
that morning.

'Put your hands on the table, please,' said Cooper.

Kemp stared at him sourly. 'I suppose you're going to spoil
my breakfast,' he said.

'I'm afraid you're under arrest.'

The other man sighed and held out his wrists. 'They only got
what they deserved,' he said.


Yes, it was the sound of feet. Feet creaking around her in
the snow. Marie Tennent's heart lurched painfully against her
diaphragm, and a spurt of adrenalin ran through her muscles
like acid. She was sure she could hear the footsteps of human
rescuers, as well as those of something quicker and lighter that
skittered across the surface of the snow. She became convinced
that a search dog had sniffed her out, and that arms were about
to pull her from the snow and wrap her in a thermal blanket,
that friendly hands would bring warmth to her skin with their
touch and reassuring voices would ease the agony in her ears.


o	o J

But the footsteps passed her by. She couldn't cry out for
help, because her reflexes failed and her body had no strength
left to react. Her lips and tongue refused to obey the screaming
in her head.

Then Marie knew7 she was wrong. The feet she heard were

o

those of wolves or some other wild predators that lived on the
moors. She could sense them creeping towards her and scuttling
away, dragging their hairy bellies through the wet snow, eager
to claim a share of her body. She pictured them drooling in
desperation to tear off chunks of her cooling flesh with their
teeth, yet afraid of her lingering smell of humanity. The faint
tingling on her cheeks and in the folds of her eyes told her the
predators were close enough for her to feel their breath on her
face. If she had opened her eyes, she knew she would have found
herself staring into their jaws, into the drip of their saliva and
the whiteness of their teeth. But she could no longer open her
eyes; the tears had frozen her eyelids shut.

The fear passed, as Marie's brain lost its grasp on the thought
and it went slipping away. The pictures were still in her mind,
but the cold had drained all the colours from them. The dyes
had melted and run, leaving washed-out greys and dark corners,

bleeding the meaning from her memories. She could no longer
capture the sounds and scents and tastes, no longer even keep
hold of that one overwhelming emotion which had swollen so
large that it filled her mind, but which now wriggled away from
her grasp. Was it grief, anger, fear, shame? Or was it just the
same unnameable longing that had haunted her all her life?

Marie had forgotten how she came to be lying in the snow,
with the pain in her head and the blood in her mouth. But she
knew there was a reason she ought to get up and go home. And
she knew it had something to do with Sugar Uncle Victor. But
the fingers of ice were squeezing out her consciousness, so that
she would soon know nothing at all.

Marie was unaware of her bladder failing and releasing a

O	o

warm stream that thawed a ragged patch in the snow. Soon,
the physical sensations stopped altogether. As Marie's skin froze
and her blood thickened to an ooze, even the illusory sounds
retreated beyond the reach of her senses. The footsteps faded and
the voices fell silent, because there was no one left to hear them.
Her heart slowed until its valves were left fluttering uselessly,
pumping no blood through her body.

Finally, Marie Tennent existed only as a speck like a grain
of sand floating in an oily residue of memories. Then they,
too, swirled away into a hole in the back of her brain, and
were gone.


For the fifth time, Ben Cooper turned to peer towards the corner
of Hollowgate and High Street. The traffic lights had changed to
green, but a queue of traffic was stuck in the middle of the
junction.


'Where's the car?' said Cooper, feeling for the radio in his
pocket, wondering whether it was worth worsening the mood
of the control-room operators at West Street with a complaint
about somebody else's slow response. 'It should have been here
by now.'

Eddie Kemp was wearing black wellies, with woollen socks
rolled over the top of them, and his overcoat was long enough
to have come back into fashion two or three times since he first
bought it from the army surplus store, probably around 1975.

Cooper thought he looked warm and comfortable. And no doubt
his feet were dry.

'We eould Hag down a taxi, I suppose,' said Kernp. 'Or we
could catch a bus. Have you got the right fare on you?'

'Shut up,' said Cooper.

Down the road, traffic was still moving on High Street.
Cars crawled through white Hurries that drifted across their
headlights. An old lady in fur-lined boots picked her way over
the snow in the gutter. For a moment, Cooper thought of his
own mother. He had promised himself he would talk to her
tonight, and make sure that she understood he was serious
about moving out of Bridge End Farm. Fie would call in to
see her when he finally went off duty.

'I'm not walking all the way up that hill,' said Kcmp. 'It's
not sate in these conditions. I might slip and injure mvself.
Then I could sue you. I could take the police for thousands
of pounds.'

Cooper wished he could distance himself from Kemp's powerful
smell, but he daren't loosen his grip or shift from his
eight-o'clock escort position at his prisoner's left elbow.

'Shut up,' he said. 'We're waiting for the car.'

He was aware of customers coming out of the cafe now and
then, the doorbell clanging behind them. No doubt each one

o o

stopped tor a moment in the doorway, staring at the two men
on the kerb. Cooper shifted his weight to maintain his grip. He
felt the slush in his left shoe squelch as he put his foot down.

'Maybe the car's broken down,' said Kcmp. 'Maybe it
wouldn't start. Ihese cold mornings play hell with cheap
batteries, you know.'

'They'll be here soon.'

On the far side of Flollowgate, shopkeepers were clearing the
snow from the pavement in front of their shops, shovelling it
into ugly heaps in the gutter. The beauty of snow vanished as
soon as it was touched by the first footstep or the first spray of
grit from a highways wagon. By daylight, it would be tarnished
beyond recognition.

'I have to tell you I've got a delicate respiratory system,' said
Kemp. 'Very susceptible to the cold and damp, it is. I might


S



need medical attention if I'm kept outside in these conditions

too long.'

'II you don't keep quiet, I'm going to get annoyed.'
'Bloody hell, what are you going to do? Shove a snowball

*	' > o o

down my neck?'

A pair of flashing blue lights lit up the front of the town hall
in the market square, just past the High Street junction. Cooper
and Keinp both looked towards the lights. It was an ambulance.
The driver was struggling to make his way through the lines of
crawling cars.

'That's clover,' said Kemp. 'Sending tor the ambulance first,
before you beat me up.'

j	1

'Shut up,' said Cooper.

'If you took the cuffs off lor a bit, I could use my mobile to phone
the missus. She could get the sledge out and hitch up the dogs.
They're only corgis, but it'd be quicker than this performance.'

Behind them, somebody laughed. Cooper looked over his
shoulder. Three men were standing in front of the window of
the cafe, leaning on the plate glass, with their hands in the pockets
of their anoraks and combat jackets. They wore heavv boots, a
couple of them with steel toecaps, like the safety boots worn
by builders in case they dropped bricks or scaffolding on their

,11	O

feet. Three pairs of eyes met Cooper's, with challenging stares.
Four white males, aged between twenty-jive and forty-jive. Could be in
possession of baseball bats or similar weapons. Approach with caution.

Finally, Cooper's radio crackled.

'Sorry, DC Cooper,' said the voice of the controller. 'Your
response unit has been delayed by a gridlock situation on Hulley
Road. They'll be with you as soon as possible, but they say it
could be five minutes yet.'

One of the men leaning against the window began to form a
snowball between his gloved fists, squeezing it into the shape
of a hand grenade \vith short, hard slaps.

'Damn,' said Cooper.

Kemp turned his head and smiled. 'Do you reckon we could
go back inside and have another cup of tea?' he said. 'Only I think
it's starting to snow again. We could freex.e to death out here.'


*	* *



By morning, Marie Tcnnent's body had stiffened into a Ibetal
position and was covered in Irost, like a supermarket chicken.
Ice crystals had formed in the valves of her heart and in her
blood vessels; her finders and toes and the exposed parts of her
lace had turned white and brittle from frostbite.

Nothing had disturbed Marie's body during the night not
even the mountain hare that had pattered across her legs and
squatted on her shoulder to scratch at patches of its fur. The hare
was still brown and ragged, instead of in its winter camouflage
white. It defecated on Marie's neck and left a scattering of fur,
dead skin cells and clving fleas for the pathologist to find. For

y	O 1 O

a long while afterwards, Marie lav waiting, just as she had
waited in life.

Later in the morning, a patrolling Peak Park Ranger almost
found Marie, but he stopped short of the summit when he saw
more snow coming towards him in the blue-grey clouds rolling
across Blcaklow Moor. lie turned back to the shelter of the
briefing centre in the valley, retracing his own footsteps, tailing
to notice the smaller tracks that ended suddenly a few vards
up the hill.

When the fresh snowfall came, it quickly covered Marie's
bodv, gently smoothing her out and softening her outline. By
the end of the afternoon, she was no more than a minor bump
in the miles of unending whiteness that lav on the moors above
the Helen Valley.

I hat night, the temperature dropped to minus sixteen on the
exposed sno\\ fields. Now there was no hurry for Marie to be
found. She would keep.


10



.Detective Sergeant Diane itv knew she was going to die

O	. O O

buried under an avalanche one day an avalanche of pointless
paperwork. It would be a tragic accident, resulting from the
collapse of a single unstable box Hie under the weight of witness
statements piled on top of it. The landslide would carrv away her
desk and swivel chair and smash them against the wall of the CID
room like matchsticks. It would take days for the rescue teams to
locate her body. When they did, she would be crushed bevond
recognition, her bones flattened in the same way that the reports
on her desk were even now pressing down on her brain.

The piles of paper reminded her of something. She turned
her head and looked out of the window, squinting to see
past the condensation that had streaked the panes. Oh ves.
Snow. Outside, the stuff was piled as high and as white as the
paperwork. She couldn't decide which was worse.

Then she felt the touch of warm air. It came from the
noisv fan heater that she had stolen from the scenes of crime
department that morning before the SOCOs arrived tor work.
The paperwork was just about preferable. At least it meant
she could stay in the warmth for a while. Only masochists and
obsessivcs chose to wander the streets of Edendale on a morning
like this. Ben Cooper, tor example. No doubt Cooper was
somewhere out there even now, conducting a one-man crusade
to clean up crime, despite the icicles hanging off his ears.

Soon, scenes of crime officers would be scouring the building
lor their missing heater. Eventually, she would have to
give it up, unless she could find somewhere to hide it when
she heard them coming. You could always tell when the
SOCOs were coming by the sound of their grumbling. Rut
the heater was the only source of warmth in the room,
fry put a hand to the radiator on the wall. It was warm,
but only faintly. It felt like a body that hadn't quite cooled
but had already gone into rigor mortis. No need to call

in the pathologist for a verdict on that one. Dead (or two
hours, at least.

She sniffed. A whiff of sausages and tomato sauce trickled

o

down the room and settled on a burglary hie that lay open
on her desk. It was the sort of smell that was responsible for
turning the walls that strange shade of green and for killing the
Hies whose bodies had lain grilling lor months inside the covers
of the fluorescent lights.

'Gavin,' she said.

'Mmm?'

'Where are you?'

' Mmmmmph-mm.'

'I know you're there somewhere -- 1 can smell you.'

A head appeared above a desk. It had sandy hair, a pink face,
and dabs of tomato sauce on its lower lip. DC Gavin Murhn was
the current bane of Diane Fry's life less temperamental than
Ben Cooper, but far more prone to dripping curry sauce on
the floor of her car. Murhn was overweight, too, and a man
in his forties reallv outfit to think about what he was doing to
his heart.

'I was having some breakfast, like,' he said.

'Can't you do it in the canteen, Gavin?'

'No.'

Fry sighed. 'Oh, I forgot --'

'We don't have a canteen any more. We have to make
our own arrangements. It says so on all the noticeboards.
Twenty-two years I've been stationed here, and now they take
the canteen awav.'

'So where did You get the sausage bap.''

'The baker's on West Street,' said Murhn. 'You should have
said if you wanted one.'

'Not likelv. Do you realize how much cholesterol there is in
that thing? Enough to turn your arteries solid. In another live
minutes, you'll be dead.'

'Aye, with a bit of luck.'

The smell of fried meat was doing strange things to Frv's

O	O O

stomach. It was clenching and twitching in revulsion, as it food
were something alien and disgusting to it.


i;



'There's garlic in that sausage, too,' she said.

'Yes, it's their special.'

Detective Inspector Paul Hitchens opened the door and
seemed to he ahout to speak to Pry. He paused, came in,
and looked around. He sniffed.

'Tomato sauce? Garlic sausage?'

'Mmm,' said Murfin, wiping his mouth with a sheet from a
message pad. 'Breakfast, sir.'

'Mind you don't drop any on those files, that's all, Gavin.
Last time you did that, the GPS thought we were sending them
real hloodstains, just to make a point that we had sweated hlood
over the case.'

Fry looked at Murfin. He was smiling. He was happy. She
had noticed that food did that for some people. Also DI Hitchens
was looking a little less smartly dressed these days, a little heavier
around the waist. It was four or five months since Hitchens had
set up home with his girlfriend, the nurse. It was depressingly
predictable how soon a man let himself go once he got a whiff
of domestic life.

'I only wanted to tell you Ben Cooper has called in,'
said the DI.

'Oh, don't tell me,' said Fry. 'He's joining the sick hrigade.'
She looked at the empty desks in front of her. With leave,
courses, abstractions and sickness, the CID office was starting
to look like the home stand at Edendale Football Club. 'What
is it with Ben? Foot and mouth? Bubonic plague?'

'No. To be honest, I don't remember Ben ever having a day
off sick in his life.'

'He can't get into work because of the snow, then. Well, it's
his own fault for living in the hack of beyond.'

'That's \vhv he bought that four-wheel drive jeep thing,' said
Hitchens. 'It gets him through where other people get stuck,
he says.'

v

'So what's the problem?' said Fry impatiently.
'No problem. He's made an arrest on the way in.'
'What?'

'He collared one of the double assault suspects. Apparently,
Cooper came into town early and called in lor the morning


13



bulletins on the way. He was intending to stop for a coffee
and found Kemp in the Starlight Cafe, so he made the arrest.
Good work, eh? That's the way to start the day.'

'That's Ben, all right,' said Murfin. 'Never off duty, that
lad. He can't even forget the job when he's having breakfast.
Personally, it'd give me indigestion.'

'It isn't being conscientious that gives jou indigestion, Gavin,'
said Pry.

'Watch it. You'll upset Oliver.'

Oliver was the rubber lobster that sat on Murhn's desk. At
a push of a button, it sang extracts from old pop songs with a
vaguely nautical theme. 'Sailing', 'Octopus's Garden', 'Sittin'

O	j O 1

on the Dock of the Bay'. One dav, Fry was going to make it
into lobster paste and feed it to Murtin in a sandwich.

'Look at that weather,' said Kitchens. 'Just what we need.'
Fry stared out of the window again. I he wind was blowing

*	O O

little flurries of snow off the neighbouring roofs. They hit the
panes with wet splatters, then slid down the glass, smearing the
grime on the outside. She couldn't remember it ever snowing

O	O

back home in Birmingham, not reallv. At least, it never seemed
to have stuck when it landed; it certainly hadn't built up in
knee-high drifts. Maybe it had been something to do with the

O	O

heat rising from the great sprawl of dual carriageways and
high-rise flats she had worked in, the comforting warmth of
civilisation. Her previous service in the West Midlands was a
memory that she almost cherished now, whenever she looked
out at the primitive arctic waste she had condemned herself to.
She had left Birmingham without a farewell to her colleagues.
She might as well have said: 'I'm going out now. I may be
some time.'

'Well, there's one thing to be said in its favour,' said DI
Kitchens. 'At least the snow will keep the crime rate down.'

And somewhere under the mountains of paper, Diane Fry's
telephone rang.


Inside Grace Fukasx.'s bungalow on the outskirts of Edendale, the
central heating was turned up full in every room. Ever since the
accident, Grace had been unable to bear the cold. Now, even in



14



summer, she insisted on keeping the windows and doors closed,
in case there was a draught. These days, her immobility meant
that she felt the chill more than most, and she could not tolerate
discomfort. She saw no reason why she should.

This morning Grace had been up and about early, as usual.
She had gone immediately to adjust the thermostat in the
cupboard in the hallway, and had spent her time ga/ing with
some satisfaction at the outside world beyond her windows,
where her neighbours in Woodland Crescent were turning
white with cold as they scraped the ice from their cars or slid
and stumbled on the slippery pavements. Once, a woman from
across the road had fallen Hat on her back on her drivewav, her
handbag and her shopping flying everywhere. It had made Grace
laugh, lor a while.

But now the stuffy heat in the bungalow caused her husband
to frown and turn pink in the face the moment he arrived home
from his night duty at the hospital, and it had spoiled Grace's
mood. Peter stamped his feet on the mat and threw his overcoat
on the stand. Grace wanted to ask him her question straight
away, right there by the door, but he wouldn't meet her eve,

- ' o	. ' ./ '

and he brushed past her chair to get to the lounge door. With
sharp tugs of her wrists, she backed and turned in the hallway,
her left-hand wheel leaving one more scuff mark on the skirting
board. Peter had left the door open for her from habit and she
followed right behind him, glaring at his back, angry yvith him
for walking away from her. He should know, after all this time,
how much it infuriated her.

'Did you phone the police?' she said, more sharply now than
she had intended to speak to him.

'No, I didn't.'

Grace glowered at her husband. But she said nothing, making
the effort to keep her thoughts to herself. She knew him well
enough to see that no purpose would be served by pressing him
too hard. He would only say she was nagging him, and he would
set his face in the opposite direction, just to demonstrate that
he was his own man, that he could not be bullied by his wife.
Sometimes he could be so stubborn, lie was like an obstinate
old dog that had to be coaxed with a bone.

'Well, I don't suppose it would make any difference,' she
said.

'No.'

Grace, watched him wander off towards the sofa, tugging his
tie loose. Within a few minutes he would have the TV remote
control in his hand and his mind would be distracted by some
inane qtiix, show. Peter always claimed that he needed to turn
off his mind when he got home from a night at the hospital, that
his brain was exhausted hv the stress of his work. But it was
never acknowledged that she might need to turn off from the
things that had plagued her mind all dav. No matter what she
did, there was far too much time for brooding. She had been

O

used to looking forward to Peter's return home as something
to occupy her mind, but these days it never seemed to work.

Peter had brought with him an odour of cold and damp from
outside. The smell was on his coat and in his hair, and there had
been snow on the shoes that he had left on the wet doormat.
For the past few hours, the only thing Grace had been able to
smell was the scorching of dust on the radiators, the invisible
dust that gathered behind them where she couldn't reach to
clean. A few minutes before he came home, she had sprayed
the rooms with air freshener. But still he had brought in this
unpleasant cold smell, and the world outside had entered the
bungalow with him.

'You know it wouldn't make any difference,' he said. 'You're
expecting too much, Grace. You're getting things all out of
proportion again.'

'Oh, of course.'

She swung the wheelchair towards the centre of the room
and lowered her head to rub at her limp legs. She watched
him out of the corner of her eve, waiting for a sign that he
was weakening. Although he was stubborn, he was susceptible
to the right tactics, like any man.

Peter threw himself on the sola and dug the remote from
under a cushion. The set came on with a sizzle of static,
['here was news on -- leading with a report on the effects
of the bad weather across the country. Shots of children
sledging and making snowmen were interspersed with clips


16



showing lines of stranded cars, airport lounges packed with
frustrated holiday makers, railway travellers staring morosely at
information hoards, and snowploughs piling up snow twelve feet
high by the side of a road in Scotland.

'Where's Dad?' asked Peter.

'He's with his photographs again,' she said.

'It s been a bad night, Grace. We had two young men brought
in who'd taken a terrible beating with baseball bats.'

'I'm sorry.'

They sat for a few moments in silence. Grace could tell from

v

the angle of her husband's head that he wasn't taking in the news
on the TV any more than she was herself. Shr waited, aware
of the power of silence, calming her breathing until she could
hear the ticking of the radiators and the sound of a car engine
on the crescent. There was a faint rustling of feathers from the
far corner, where their blue and green parrot stirred in its cage,
perhaps sensing the atmosphere in the room. It turned a black
eye on the couple, then snapped at its bars with a sudden, angry
click of its beak.

'If you must know,' said Peter, 'I think he's gone back.'
Grace felt her shoulders go rigid. 'Gone back where?' she

o	o

said, though she knew perfectly well what he meant.

'Where do you think? To London.'

'To Tier?'

'Yes, to his wife. She has a name.'

'Andrew said she's in America, at a cousin's funeral.' Grace
slapped one of her knees as if it had offended her by its inactivity.
'I've tried to phone him again, Peter. He's not answering.

'We'll just have to wait until we hear from him, Grace. What
else can we do?'

Grace manoeuvred alongside one of the armchairs, feeling the
wheels slip into well-used grooves in the pile of the carpet. Peter
made no move to help her, and he didn't even look to see how
she was coping. She was glad he didn't do that any more. Once,
she had lost her temper at his clumsiness and had pushed him
roughly away. He had said nothing, but she knew he had been
shocked and hurt by her violence. Her legs might be useless,
but her hands and wrists were strong.


17



'It doesn't make any sense,' she said. 'Why should he arrive
out of the blue like that and then disappear asjain so suddenly,
without a word?'

'There are a lot of things Andrew never got round to telling
us about his life.'

'In a dav? He didn't have time. A day isn't enough to make
up for five missing; years.'

'Grace, he has an entirely separate life of his own. You ean't
dwell on the past tor ever.'

She had heard this too often. It had become his mantra, as
if it might become true if he repeated it often enough. Grace
knew it wasn't true. li you had no present and no future, where
was there to live but the past?

'Hut he's our son,' she said. 'My baby.'

'I know, I know.'

Grace knew she was reaching him. She lowered her voice to
a whisper. 'My dear Piotr ..."

Rut she heard Peter sigh and watched him finger a button
on the remote. A weather forecast was on the other channel.
An attractive young woman stood in front of a map scattered
with fluffy white clouds that seemed to be dropping white blobs
all over northern England. In a moment, Grace would have to
go back to the kitchen to make her husband a pot of tea, or
his routine would be upset and he would sulk for the rest of
the day.

'There's a lot more snow on the way,' he said.

The moment had passed. Grace lifted her hands to her face
and sniffed the faint coating of oil on her fingers. The oil and

o	o

the dark smudges on her hands were the constant signs of
her reliance on machinery, of her enforced seclusion from
the rest of humanity. She was a great believer in turning
your disadvantages into something positive. But sometimes the
positive was hard to find.

'Oh, wonderful,' she said. 'That's just what we want. More
snow. More excuses for not finding him. Everyone will say
they're too busy with other problems. Then they'll say it's too
late, that we'll have to accept the fact he's gone.'

Grace stared at the icon of the Madonna in the alcove above


18



the TV set. Tonight, she would pray again for their son. And
she would force Peter to pray too.

'It causes a lot of problems, does snow,' said Peter. 'More
than people think.'

But on the TV sereen, the weather girl smiled out at them
cheertullv, as if she thought snow was absolutely the best thirw

^ '	O -> o

she- could imagine in the whole world.


The Derbyshire Count}' Council snow plough was brand new.


It was a vellow Seddon Atkinson, with a bright steel blade,

1	^ '

and its automatic hoppers could spray grit at passing cars like
machine-gun fire. That morning, its crew was working to clear
the main Snake Pass route to Glossop and the borders of Greater
Manchester, battling through ever deeper drifts of snow as they
climbed away from Ladvbower Reservoir, with the River Ashop
below them and the Roman road aboye them, skirting the lower
slopes of Bleaklovv and Irontongue Hill.

Trevor Bradley was the driver's mate this morning. He didn't
like snowplough work, and he certainly didn't like getting up in
the middle of the night to do it. Even worse, they had been sent
to the Snake Pass, which was as desolate a spot as you could find
yourself in, when every other bugger was still at home in his
bed. They had left the last houses far behind already, and on
these long, unlit stretches of road there was nothing to be seen
but their own headlights and endless banks of snow in front and
on both sides. Bradley was glad when the driver had stopped for
a few minutes at the isolated Snake Inn, where the owners had
filled their vacuum llasks with coffee and gixen them hot pork
pies from the microwave. The snowplough men were popular at
the Snake, because on days like this they made all the difference
between customers getting through to the inn and no one getting
in or out at all.

A few minutes after re-starting, the snowplough had reached
the stretch of road through Lady Clough and the Snake Plantations.
Here, the hill became steeper and the headlights fell on
even deeper drifts, where the wind had brought the snow down
from the moors and blown it round the edge of the woods,
sculpting it into strange and unlikely shapes.

e

Just past the last car park, before the end of the woods,
Bradley thought he felt the impact of something solid that
dragged along the road surface for a few yards under th<

oo	o

blade of the plough. Then he saw a dark shape that was briefly
revealed in a shower of snow as the blade lifted it and pushed
it into the banking. It was followed by the impression of a man's
face hovering near his window for a second, then (ailing away
again. It had been a very white face, quite unreal, and could
only have been a trick of the snow and the poor light.

'We hit something, Jack,' he said, sucking the last of the
warm jelly from the pork pic off his fingers.

'No kidding?'

Jack stopped the engine, and they both got down. The driver
seemed to be more worried about damage to the equipment
than anything else. He'd told Trevor that people dumped loads
of builder's rubbish in the lay-bys, and stuff like breexe-block
and broken bricks could easily chip the blade. The plough was
the latest investment by the highways department, and he was
conscious of his responsibility (or its pristine condition.

Meanwhile, Bradley poked around a bit by the side of the road,
scraped some snow away with his gloved hands, and finally lifted
a blue overnight bag out of the drift. The bag was empty. He
could tell by the weight of it.

' That's careless,' he said.

He pushed a bit more snow aside. It looked as though the
clothes had spilled out of the bag on to the roadside, because

1	O

there was a shoe lying in the snow. It had a smart black leather
toe, with a pattern printed on the upper. It wasn't a shoe anybody
would have been walking in, of course, so it must have come
from the luggage. Probably it had been some of the clothes that
he had seen in the headlights a white shirt, perhaps, crumpled
into the illusion of a human face as it was tossed out of the bag
by the impact of the plough blade.

Bradley bent down and tried to pick the shoe up, but felt
some resistance, as if it were heavier than it ought to be. Maybe
it was frozen to the ground. He brushed a bit more snow clear,
and then he noticed the sock. It had a green and blue Argyll
design, the sort of sock he had seen some of the bosses wearing


20



hack at the council offices. He touched it as he wiped away the
frozen snow. It was definitely a sock lor an office worker, not
for wearing with a work hoot. Your feet would he frozen solid
out here in the snow, if you wore fancy socks like that.

He realized his mind was wandering a hit. It was a long
minute helore he finally accepted what his fingers were telling
him. There was an ankle in that Argyll sock, and a foot in the
shoe. A man lay under the snowdrift.

Bradley straightened up and looked hack at his driver, who
was still inspecting the plough. The hlade was bright and sharp
and shiny, and it weighed half a ton. Last winter, with one much
like it, they had removed the entire Iront wing of a Volkswagen

*	v O O

Beetle before they had even noticed it abandoned in a snowdrift.
Bradley remembered how the hlade had ripped the metal of the
car clean away, like a carving knife going through a well-cooked
chicken. In fact, the Beetle had been a trendy bright yellow,
not unlike a supermarket chicken. For a few moments they had
both stared at the lump of metal caught on the blade without
recognizing what it was, until the wind had caught it and the
wing had flapped off down the road, trailing its headlight cables
like severed tendons.

Now, Trevor Bradley recalled his impression of the thing that
had bumped and dragged along the road under the plough blade a
couple of minutes ago. I Ic remembered the glimpse of something
that had waved momentarily from the midst of a spray of snow.
It was an object which his brain hadn't registered at the time,
and which he only now identified as having been a human arm.
Then there had been the face. The arm and the face had been
all that he had seen of the body as they flailed over the edge of
the blade and were jerked back into the darkness.

He gulped suddenly, and decided that he didn't even want
to imagine the damage the snowplough could have done to the
rest of the bodv.

Bradley opened his mouth to call to his driver.

'Jack!''

But his voice came out too faintly on the cold air, and it
was drowned by the noise of a jet airliner that passed low in
the cloud as it manoeuvred for the approach to Manchester


21



Airport. The rumble of the aircraft vibrated the windscreen
on the snowplough and set Trevor Bradley's limbs trembling,
too. His stomach decided that, as long as his mouth was open,
he might as well be sick.

The noise of the airliner gradually receded as it descended
behind the shoulder of Irontonguc Hill. It was an Air Canada
Boeing 767, and it was at the end oi a seven-hour ilight from
1 oronto.


22



J\. pair of shoes stood outside each door in the hare corridor.
There were a set of trainers with thick rubber soles, some
brown brogues split down the side, and a pair of high-sided
Doc Martens. Right at the end were Eddie Kemp's wellies, with
melted snow running ott them to torm puddles on the floor. In

O	I

the background, Nigcl Kennedy was playing The Four Seasons.

'Has he asked for a doctor?' asked Ben Cooper.

'A doctor?' 1 he custody sergeant frowned as he checked over
the paperwork carefully. 'No. All he said was that he takes two
sugars in his tea, when I'm ready.'

'Giye him the chance to ask, just in case, Sarge.'

The sergeant was well over six feet tall. lie had the weariness
about him that Cooper had seen all custody officers develop after
a tew months processing prisoners. They saw tar too much of the
wrong end of life. they saw tar too many of the same prisoners
coming in and out, over and over again.

'Why, what does he reckon is wrong with him?' said the

- '	o

sergeant. 'Apart from having his sense of smell amputated?'

'He is a bit ripe, isn't he?'

'Ripe? Putrcscent is the word that springs to mind.'

There was a strange, rancid odour about Eddie Kemp - not his
breath, but the smell of his body, a sourness that oo/cd directly
from his pores. It seemed to eddy in the air around him when he
moved, restrained only by his clothes from overpowering anyone
within twenty varcls. When his old overcoat and body warmer
came off, the paint on the walls had almost begun to peel.

They had bagged up Kemp's outer clothes as quickly as they
could and sent a PC around the custody suite with disinfectant.
There were three prisoners on the women's side, and they'd
soon be complaining again. Cooper thought the smell would
stay with him all clav, like his fro/en foot.

'I hope they're not going to be too long coming to interview
him,' .said the sergeant. 'One of our prostitutes down the


23



corridor there has been reading up on the Human Rights Act.
There might be a clause about infringement of a prisoner's right
to fresh air, tor all I know.'

'I don't know who's going to interview Eddie Kemp, but
rather them than me/ said Cooper. 'Resides, I think he might
have some popular support out on the streets. I'm sure three
of his mates were at the cafe. Hut he s the only one we had a
witness ID for.'

'Members of the public can't be allowed to take the law into
their own hands,' said the sergeant, sounding like a man reading
from a script.

Late the previous night, the two seriously injured young men
had been found wandering by the road in Edendale's Underbank
area, a compact warren of streets that ran up the hillside yards
from one of the main tourist areas of the town. Although they
had been badly beaten, it had been impossible to get a reason
From them for the attack.
This morning, the police had been having difficulty identifying
the assailants. Most of the people in the area had seen nothing,
they said. Hut a couple who had looked out of their bedroom
window when they heard the noise of the assault had said
they recognized Eddie Kemp, who was their window cleaner.
Everyone knew Eddie. Cooper had felt the disadvantages of local
tame himself, so he sympathized with Kemp a little.

'By the way, I checked the names of the assault victims,' he
said. 'They're both regulars of yours, Sarge. Heroin dealers off
the Devonshire Estate.'

Along the corridors, it was approaching the end of Spring,
according to Nigel Kennedy.

'I can't understand why the radio briefing said the incident
was suspected to be racially motivated,' said Cooper. 'One of
the victims is Asian, but the other is white.'

'Default position,' said the sergeant. 'We cover our backs,
just in case. Talk about the inmates of the asylum . . .'

Recently, a number of asylum seekers had been dispersed to
Derbyshire, and some were housed in Edendale's vacant holiday
accommodation. Until now, many residents had rarely seen
anvone of a different ethnic origin in their town unless they


24



ran restaurants and calcs, like Sonny Patel, or were tourists and
didn't count. The sudden appearance oflranians, Kurds, Somalis
and Albanians queuing at the bus stops that winter had been like
someone dropping a drum of herbicide into a pond and watching
it seethe and bubble. For the first time, a National Front logo had
been scrawled on the window of an empty shop in Fargate, and
the British National Party were, said to be holding recruitment
meetings at a pub near Chesterfield.

'Your prisoner's a bit of a joker,' said the sergeant. 'He gave
his name as Homer Simpson.'

'Sorry about that.'

'Oh, think nothing of it. You'd be surprised how many Homer
Simpsons we get in here. Some days, I think there must be a
convention of them in town. In the old days, it used to be Mickey
Mouse, of course. But that name went out of fashion among the
custody suite intelligentsia. Anvway, I told him I had to register
him in the guest book, otherwise he wouldn t get his breakfast
in the morning.'

'I suppose it gets a bit much.'

'Water off a duck's back, my son. You've seen the guidelines,
haven't you? "All idle and foolish remarks will be disregarded".
It helps no end when some inspector in nappies tries to tell me
what to do. You can ignore them and say, "It's in the guidelines,
ma'am.'"

'What's the point of the music, by the way?' said Cooper.

'It relaxes the customers,' said the sergeant. But Cooper
thought he sounded a bit defensive.

'Does it?'

'So they tell me.'

The sergeant paused. They both listened to the Vivaldi for a
moment. Kennedy had just reached Summer.

'It's the inspector's idea,' said the sergeant.

'Ah,' said Cooper. 'She's been on a course, has she?'

'Been on a course? I'll say she's been on a bloody course!
Show me the week she's not on a course. This one was called
"Conducting a Resources Audit of Your Public Interface". What
the hell does that mean? Mark my words, she'll have us putting
mirrors and potted palms in here next. Moving the doors


25



and the desk to make the energy (low better or some such
rubbish.'

'Feng shui,' said Cooper.

'Sorry.''

'Fcng shui.'

"I think you've caught a cold standing out in the snow,' said
the sergeant.

'Making the energy flow,' said Cooper. 'It's Japanese.'

The sergeant stared at him. ''Course it is,' he said. 'I must
be stupid.'

lie was much too tall lor the counter he worked at, and heleaned
awkwardly to write in the custody record. Unless Health
and Safety had conducted a proper workplace assessment in here,
there would be more compensation to pay out in a year or two,
when the sergeant was walking like Quasimodo. But by then,
he'd be haunted by the sound of Nigel Kennedy rather than the
bells of Notre Dame.

Cooper felt his pager vibrating in his pocket. It was the fifth
call tor him in the last half-hour. They had started plaguing him
about other enquiries while he was still escorting his prisoner
through the snowbound streets of Edendale.

'All these new ideas, that's the point?' said the sergeant. 'I
can't get my breath sometimes. A bloodv madhouse it is round
here. And I don't mean the customers, either.

A PC came out of the office behind the sergeant and handed
Cooper a note. It said: DC Cooper report to DS Fry ASAP. Urgent.
Cooper reluctantly gave up the plan he had been nursing for the
last few minutes. He had been hoping to call by his locker for
some dry socks, then carry out a raid on Gavin Murfin's desk
to see if he had any spare food.

'Mind you, you didn't hear me say any of that,' said the
sergeant. 'I'm very happy in my work, I am.'


When passengers reached the arrivals gate at Terminal One of
Manchester Airport from Air Canada flight 840, a tall, fair man
with a beard was waiting. He greeted the woman by shaking
her hand, but they both looked for a moment as though they
regretted there were so many people around them on the airport



26



concourse. Alison Morrissey smiled when she heard his strong
local accent, as if it made her trip to England .seem real.

'So you came,' she said.

'I couldn't think of you arriving on your our and knowing
no one.

'That's kind.'

There was a moment's silence between them. As the crowd
of passengers passed her on either side, the woman looked at
the unfamiliar names on the airport shops VV. H. Smith,
Virgin, Boots the Chemist. For a moment, she looked no
older than a schoolgirl as she cocked her head to listen to
the announcements.

'We've got a bit of a walk to the car park,' he said, watching
her. 'Will you be all right? You look pale.'

'Yes, I'm hue.'

He found a baggage trollev and pushed it tor her towards

OO O	. 1

the exit. Alison Morrissey paused to rub her legs, though she
had performed her exercises religiously all the way across the
Atlantic from Toronto Fearson.

'The weather's not too good outside,' he said. 'But I suppose
you're used to snow in Canada.'

'Frank, I live in a suburb of loronto. No gri/./lv bears or
lumberjacks lor miles.'

She looked di/xv and disorientated, but when she shook herself
hard, she reverted to a confident woman in her mid-twenties.

'I he meeting is set up -with the local police, isn't it?'
she said.

'Of course. Don't worry about that. It's all organi/ed.'

'I'm sorrv, Frank. It just hit me suddenly. This is more
than travelling to a foreign country - it's like venturing into
the past.'

'I understand that.'

'And it's a dangerous past. I really feel as though I'm on the
borders of hostile territory.'

'Don't expect hostility from every quarter,' he said. 'Not
necessarily.'

Outside, Alison Morrissev looked at the grey sky and ran a
hand across her lore-head.


27



'You're right,' she said. 'Transatlantic: flights knock hell out
me. I suppose it's past breakfast time here?'

'Nearly lunchtime, in fact. We can find somewhere to eat
here at the airport, if you like.'

'Mav we drive1 out to Derbyshire first, Frank? How long will
that take?'

'It depends whether they've got the A57 clear vet,' he said. "I
had to come here by the motorwav. The last I heard on the radio
traffic bulletins, the Snake Pass was still blocked. I don't know
why they're usually pretty good at getting the snowploughs
out to clear the main roads. Perhaps there's been an accident
or something.'


Grace Lukas/ peered cautiously round the door into the back
room of the bungalow, clinging on to the wheels of her chair to


o	' o o

suppress the noise. Zygmunt was in his armchair by the table. He
looked as though he might be asleep. His hands lav on the table,
the blue veins standing up prominently, as if he really did suffer
from the high blood pressure that he had always complained
about, but which the doctors said didn't exist. His head was
tipped against the back of the chair, and he had taken off his
spectacles. Grace could see the red marks on the sides of his
nose and the small wings of white hair pushed up over his ears.
There were tufts of hair inside his ears, too, and more hair on
his neck where he never thought to shave.

o

The old man's eyes were closed, but Grace wasn't sure that he
was really sleeping. Often he sat like this while awake. Zvgmunt
always said he was thinking, when he took the trouble to explain
at all. Grace supposed he was going back over his life in his mind,
dwelling on his past. It was all he seemed to do mm , to dwell on
the past. But maybe she was misjudging him. Perhaps the old man
was thinking of his wife, Roberta. She doubted it, though. It was
more likely that he was thinking of Klemens Wach. These days,
he thought mostly about Klemens.

Next Sunday was the day for the Edendale oplatek dinner.
Almost the whole of the Polish community would gather for the

o

event in the ex-servicemen's club, the Dom Kombatanta. Grace
knew that for Zvgmunt this would be the emotional high point


28



of the year, more important even than Wigilia, the Christmas
Eve celebration. This was the time when everyone began the
year anew, but it was also a chance to reflect on their history
and their plaee in the world. Most of the folk who would come
to the dinner had not been born in Poland, of course. But since
Solidarity and democracy, and the possibility of FU membership,
some of those people had begun to talk more and more about
their culture, their roots, their place in Europe. Not Zygmunt,
though. Zygmunt didn't talk much at all these da vs. When he
did, it was about the past.

But still, there would be the dinner. Though the community
celebration had drifted back into January, it was no less of an
occasion and everything had to be done just right. Grace could
taste already the beetroot soup, the poached pike, the carp with
horseradish sauce, the mushroom-stuffed tomatoes. The ladies
who organi/ed the dinner clung tenaciously to the traditions, no
matter how much trouble the}- had to go to.

The stops had been pulled out for the family H'igilia, too,
when all of them had sat down to the- traditional twelve
meatless dishes, with the extra place set for an unexpected
guest. First they had shared the oplatki wafers. The symbols
of reconciliation and forgiveness meant more this year than
ever. Of course, forgiveness wasn't easy. Grace knew Peter was
thinking of their eldest son in London, with no family around
him to celebrate U'igilia, except some skinny bottle-blonde.
They had sent an oplatck to Andrew as always. But whether
Andrew had shared it with his blonde was doubtful. As far
as Grace could gather, the apartment they rented in Pimlico
contained nothing of relevance to oplatck, precious little that
spoke of forgiveness.

The younger members of the family would change the
traditions, if they had their way. Richard and Alice were
embarrassed by the whole business. They would have made a
meaningless ritual of oplatck just to get it over with quickly, so
they could move on to the food and watch some American Him
on television. But they knew better than to upset Zygmunt, not
at this time of year, and particularly not in these last few months.
It was the time for reconciliation, when they could forgive each


29



other their faults and their mistakes over the previous year. It
was not a time for arguments.

So Zygmunt, as the oldest, had taken the first oplatek and
offered it to his sister Krystyna, blessing her and wishing her
health and a good year ahead. She had then broken off a pieee of
his wafer and offered her own oplatck in turn. And she had ga/.ed

I	O

into his face as she carefully wished him health and happiness in
the vear ahead, repeating the words as she was supposed to; but
then her voice had broken and the old woman had begun to cry.
Grace had edged her \\heelchair nearer and put her arm round
Krystvna's shoulders. But the old woman had looked as though
she would go on weeping for ever, (or the whole twelve days of
Christmas maybe, right through to the Feast of the Three Kings.
The front of her best dress had got stained with her tears.

Zygmunt had simply frowned and waited for her to continue
with the ceremony, until evervone had shared their waters with

each other, biting into the nativitv scenes moulded into the

1	t1

unleavened bread. And then, and only then, had they sat down
to dinner, to the twelve meatless courses, one for each apostle.
The family had visibly sighed with relief. Some of them had
expected Zvgmunt to make a speech, to talk about the mistakes
and the sins of the last year, as he said his lather and grandfather
had always done, listing all the things the young people had done
wrong before forgiving them and wiping the slate clean lor a
new year.

If Zvgmunt had done that, it would have made things difficult.
It was easier to pretend things hadn't happened when they
weren't spoken out loud.

Grace took one last look at Zvgmunt, to assure herself that he
was still breathing, and backed across the passage. Peter was in
the conservatory, among his cacti and the pelargoniums. There
remained a thin covering of snow on the glass panels of the
roof, and the light beneath it was pale blue.

'Is Dad all right?' he said, without turning from his inspection
of a spiky monstrosity on a high shell. His hearing was attuned to
the sound of her chair. Even Zygmunt had acute hearing; Grace
wouldn't have been surprised if the old man had known she was
there-, in the doorway of the room, all the time she had been


30



looking at him. It would have been just like him to pretend hewas
unaware of her. It was like Peter, too. She could imagine
him being exactly the same when he was a decade or two older.
They were stubborn and hot-headed in turns, immovable or
living into tempers. His unpredictability had been one of thethings
that had attracted her to Peter. But recently his temper
had been kept firmly in check, corked up inside.

'lie's fine,' she said. 'lie's been looking at the photo albums.'

It hardly seemed necessary for Grace to say it. The photographs
had been in front of Zy^munt on the table where
they stayed almost permanently. They were photographs of
the family, the bits of the Lukas/ history pieced together as
best they could be, given the gaps, the' sudden ends to so many
lives. There was nothing that could be said to explain the pageon
vvhic'h a young man of eighteen stood smiling and full of life
in one photo, while below it the rest of the page was blank but
for an almost indecipherable shot of a metal plaque.

At tt'icjilia, there had been many quiet prayers as the Lukas/
family had tried to connect with their relatives overseas. They
had been thinking mostly of Zvgmunt and Krvstyna's cousins in
Poland, but now also of Andrew . Everybody had spoken of him
as Andr/ej in the presence of the old people.

Krvstyna said she always tried to conjure the memory of her
dead parents back in Poland to strengthen the connection. Grace
wanted to ask her if the prayers actually worked. But a glimpse
of Krvstyna's face in an unguarded moment told her what she
wanted to know.

As always, there had been midnight Mass at the Church of
Our Lady of C/estochowa on Harrington Street, under the
images of the Black Madonna. Alongside the church was thePolish
Saturday School, where a handful of pupils still kept
the language alive, studying for their Polish GCSL exams,
learning the history of Poland and the Catholic faith. It was
the children of the Saturday school who would stage the nativity
play at the oplatck dinner next Sunday.

In church they had all joined in the singing. Some of the men
smelled of vodka, and even some of the women were flushed
too. But they all tried to sing, nevertheless. The Poles never


31



seemed to have good singing voices, hut they made up for
it with enthusiasm. Even Zygmunt, in his croaky voice, had
joined in with his favourite Kolcdy, the Christmas carols that
(bllovved Mass.
There had, oi course, been the conversation -- the catching
up on the latest news. All their Polish acquaintances loved a
hit of gossip. It was futile to try to keep the intrusion out of
their lives. Grace was glad of the snow as an excuse for keeping
to the house, because she didn't know what to say when their
friends asked after Andrew.

She watched Peter stroke the firm leaves of the cactus and
touch the tip of his finger to the points of the three-inch long
spikes. He pressed on them until the spikes looked as though
they would pierce his skin like nails.

'There was a phone call earlier,' he said.

'Yes?'

'ft was that man, Frank Baine.'

Grace froze. Irrationally, she wanted to reach out and grah
the pot the cactus was in, to hurl it against the wall and smash
it. She wanted to fling it through the glass on to the flags in the
back garden. She wanted to crush its ugly, vicious spikes and
watch the fluid spurt from its swollen body. But she couldn't
even reach that high.

'She's arrived then, has she?' said Grace.

'She flew into Manchester this morning.'

'Are you going to tell himf'

..	c? C"

Peter shook his head. 'Let him rest a while longer,' he said.
'He needs his rest.'

Grace recalled the extra place that had been set at the H^j/ia
dinner. For an unexpected guest, Krystyna had said. The old
lady never tired of explaining that it was the tradition, that
it meant they could provide hospitality for any wanderer \\ ho
might be travelling along the road that night, for any stranger
who might knock at the door, whoever that person might seem
to be. For at U'i^iVid, the stranger could be Jesus himself. Grace
wanted to laugh out loud at the idea of Jesus wandering along
Woodland Crescent, Edendale, on Christmas Eve and deciding
to ring the bell at number 87. Surelv he had better things


32



to do, just as her parents had told her Santa Claus had at
Christmas.

But Grace had said nothing. It had been Zygmunt who had
shaken his head and smiled at his sister's words. Then, in his
quiet, barely audible voice, speaking in Polish, he had insisted
the extra place was set for those who were absent, lor members
of the family who had died. What he meant, of course, was that
this place was for his cousin Klcmens. It had been set at IVigilia
when Zygmunt had first become the head of his own household,
and every vear since.

But Grace knew this year had been the last time. Next ll'igilia,
the extra place would no longer be for the absent Klemens. It
would be tor Zvgmunt.


It might have been more than the cold that made Alison
Morrissey shiver and pull her coat closer around her shoulders.
In fact, the sun was already rising over Stanage Edge and Bamford
Moor. In another hour it would have eased some of the chill from
the air and melted away the mist that clung to the black rampart
of Irontongue Hill. Morrissey looked as though the sun would
bring her no warmth, as though it would take much more than
a dose of winter sunlight to do that.


She was looking across a few yards of rough grass to a
snow-covered peat moor and an eruption of bare rock. The wind
was scraping across the moor from a more distant mountain to
the north.

'The rock there is Irontongue,' said Frank Baine. 'In the
distance is Bleaklow.'

' This place certainly looks bleak in the snow.'

1	j

'F.ven without the snow, it's still bleak.'

It was Irontongue Hill that took her attention. Baine had
already told her that it got its name from the eruption of black
rock on its summit, an uncompromising slab of millstone grit
thrown up by ancient volcanic activity.

Morrissey turned away. The valley below them looked vast
and mysterious in the darkness. It lay like a rumpled sheet
tugged into peaks and valleys by a restless sleeper. But gradually

oo	1 j j I o j

the lights of scattered villages and farms were vanishing into the


33



grew wash of dawn. The shadows of the- hills deepened and began
to spread dark lingers across a patchwork oi lields, groping and
fumbling among the yards of stone farmhouses and the gardens
of invisible hamlets.

'I didn't anticipate it would be so cold in Filmland,' she said.
'I didn't bring the right clothes.'

O	O

'None of your clothes would have been the right ones,' said
Haine. 'The weather changes by the minute in these parts. This
snow could be gone completely tomorrow.'

'Let's hope so. I've got to see the site. That's very important
to me.'

'I understand that,' said Baine.

'The l.ukas/ family,' she said, 'will they agree to talk to
me?'

'No,' said Baine.

'[ could persuade them,' she said. 'It only I could get a chance

I	O

to meet them, lace to face, they would see I was human, like
them. We all want the same thing.'

'I'm not sure about that.'

'But we do. We all want the truth. Don't we?'

T hev both stared ahead through the windscreen as they waited
for it to clear. The hills in front of them were white and
completely smooth, like marble slabs. Morrissey shivered.

'The Poles think they know what the truth is,' said Baine.
'I'm sorry.'

He used his sidelights as he drove on down the A57. Haltwav
clown, Morrissey looked back. Her hand lelt in her coat pocket
lor the little autotocus camera that she had not used. Postcards
with photographs taken from this spot always seemed to face
the other way, to frame a view of the valley bathed in sunlight.
I hev never pictured Irontonguc.

Shortly before the Snake Inn, they had to stop behind a line
of cars that were waiting for a policeman in a fluorescent vellow
jacket to wave them on. The other side of the road was blocked
by two patrol cars with their lights flashing, and a snowplough
was standing idle, with more cars pulled in close behind it.

O	1

'There, you see,' said Baine. 'I told you there must have been
an accident. Somebody's run into the snowplough.'


34



Morrissey stared at the scene as they went by. She couldn't see
any damage, or even figure out what the snowplough had collided
with. Maybe they had already towed the other vehicle away. Yet
there were people standing by the side of the road, and a woman
in a sort of white boiler suit crouching in a snowdrift.

'Downhill all the way now,' said Baine. 'We'll soon be in
Ldendale.'

Me turned on the radio. The sound of the eight o'clock
news filled the car, speaking clearlv of families going about
their ordinary domestic routines, arguing over the use of the
bathroom and the last cup of coffee in the pot, rushing to find
the right shoes and cursing as they remembered, one by one, all
the things they had to do that day. Morrissev closed her eves.

'Have a clo/e, if you like,' said Baine.

'Frank,' she said, 'whenever I close my eyes, that's when the
pictures come. The pictures of dead men.'

Baine nodded. 'Someone once said that memories are photographs
on the wrong side of your eyes.'

'All my life, I've never been quite sure where memorv ends
and imagination begins. These davs, I can't always saw which
side of my eves the dead men are.'

She opened her eyes again. A black, unmarked van with
tinted rear windows was passing them slowly, going up the
hill. Morrissev twisted in her seat to watch the policeman direct
it into the side of the road. A blonde woman wearing a black
coat and a red scarf stared at her until she turned awav, and
they drove on into Edcndale.


35



JJiane Fry hated these spells of standing around doing nothing.
There were plenty of people who were better at that sort oi
thing than she was. It had been marginally better back at West
Street, where at least she might have been able to hang on to

'	O O

the SOCOs' tan heater tor a little while longer. But out here
there was nothing to keep her warm, apart from the long, red
scarf she had bought from Gap at Meadovvhall for the winter.
There was no shelter, nor even any physical activity to prevent
her body from sei/ing up. She would rather have been the officer
directing the traffic at least he got to wave his arms a bit. But
it wasn't the thing for a new detective sergeant to be doing.

Instead, she spent her time going through some discreet exercises,
rising up on her toes, stretching her tendons, practising her
breathing, feeling tor the centres of energy in her bodv, keeping

O '	O O- J ' Jo

her circulation moving in her extremities to combat the cold.
She became so absorbed in what she was doing that she almost

O

forgot she wasn't alone. Almost.

'No blood,' said DI Paul Hitchens. He folded his arms
across his chest as he leaned casually on the wheel arch of
the snowplough, whose blade had been hastily covered by a
sheet oi blue plastic. Hitchens looked relaxed, and he spoke as
it he were commenting on the weather. No blood today then,
just snow. How boring. But Fry knew the comment wasn't
addressed to her. Hitchens had a more appreciative audience.

DC Gavin Murfin had been talking to the county council
driver and his mate, who were now sitting in the back of a
patrol car. Murfin was wearing a pair of unsuitable fur-covered
boots that came up to his knees, like the bottom half of a yeti
costume. He stamped his feet on an area of compacted snow
as he came round the back of the plough and whee/ed faintly
in the cold air.

'Blood? Not a drop,' he said cheerfully.

Fry frowned at Murfin as he fumbled among his clothes for


36



a pocket to put his notebook away in. He was wearing; so many
sweaters that he looked like the original Michelin Man, with
layers of rubber wobbling around his middle. Yet his face was
Hushed with cold. Somewhere in his pockets, she suspected,
there might be a secret supply of food something to keep
him going for an hour or two, until he could find the nearest
Indian takeaway for a beef buryani to stink her car out again.

'You know, I really hate it when there's no blood,' said
I litchens.

The pathologist, Juliana Van Doon, was suited up and working
in the area cleared of snow, while an officer video'd the scene.
Mrs Van Doon had the dead man's clothes open across his
abdomen to examine a gaping wound. In her white suit, she
looked like a badly designed snowman. Fry sighed. A snowman
and the Michelin Man. There must be something wrong with her
brain today. The cold weather was giving her hallucinations.

'Blood really makes a body, I always think,' said Hitchens.
'It gives it that bit of excitement. A certain ye ne sais ^uoi. A
subtle edge of implied violence, perhaps. The bitter-sweet taste
of mortality. Do you know what 1 mean, Gavin?'

'Oh, sure,' said Murfin. 'It means you know the bloke's a
definite stiff 'un, like.'

Fry thought Murfin's voice sounded slightly muffled, as if he
had smuggled something into his mouth without her noticing.
She thought she heard the rustle of a chocolate wrapper in
his pocket. She looked longingly towards her car. There were
things for her to be doing back at West Street. There were
d/nuy.9 things for her to be doing at the moment. Life went
on in all its predictable messy ways in Edendale, as it did in
e\erv town in Derbyshire, as it no doubt did in every town
and city in the country. There were plenty of crimes that

v	^ 1 .

went by without being investigated, let alone cleared up. The
paperwork was everywhere to prove it cases that had been
allocated crime numbers for insurance claims, and then filed.
Hveryonc was crying out for more police time to be spent on
solving crime, as if the world depended on it.

But here, at the foot of the Snake Pass, Fry felt as though
she were standing on the edge of the world. On either side of


n



the A57 there was a white wall a couple oi feet deep where the
snow lay untouched and unnaturally smooth, so that the edges of
the road merged seamlessly into the surrounding moorland. The
tarmacked surface of the A57 was normally the only sign of civili/ation
this far out of Edendale, and Fry found its disappearance
unsettling. It seemed to he telling her she might never get out.

Mrs Van Doon turned tor a second to stare at the police
officers standing in the road. Their voices carried loud and clear
to where she was working. She shook her head and concentrated
again on her job.

'You'd think if someone had been cut almost in hall by a
snowplough. they would bleed a bit.' said Hitchens.

I	o ' '

'Yes, you'd think so,' said Murfm. 'A bit.'

'If only out of a desire to be artistically satisfying in their final
moments.'

Hitchens caught Fry's eve and nodded at her, as if she had
said something intelligent. She knew he sensed her antipathy
to Murfin and her irritation at the way the DI was encouraging
him. But Hitchens smiled, like a man who had all the time in
the world at his disposal and had chosen to spend part of it
right here, in this isolated, snow-covered spot, with a handful
of fellow police officers, two distraught council workmen, and
a body with no blood.

'Mind you, it's probably a clue,' he said.

Fry watched the pathologist taking a temperature and examining
the corpse's skin for lividity. The dead man was dressed in a
dark suit that bore the marks of the snowplough blade where
it had gouged into him and tossed him on to the roadside verge
like a sack of rubbish. The blue overnight bag that had been

o	o

found with him stood a few feet awav. He could almost have
been a passenger stranded at a snowbound airport, sleeping
uncomfortably on the floor of the terminal as he waited for a
flight that would never leave.

Murfin surreptitiously chewed something and swallowed.
When he opened his mouth, Fry imagined she could see tiny
particles of chocolate hanging in the cloud of his breath, perhaps
a sweet-flavoured mist that drifted and dissipated in the sharp
air. 'I think I've got it, sir,' he said.


38



'Yes, Gavin?'

'The snowplough driver is a vampire. He sucked all the blood
out of the body, and he never left a drop/

Fry turned away so that they wouldn't see her expression.
She felt the irritation turning to exasperation, and she had to
take a few deep breaths of the ice-cold air to control it. She
\\ anted to slap DC Murtin round the head a few times, but she
couldn't do it with the DI present. Worst of all, she knew that
Murfin would be hers for the duration of the enquiry.

'Well, well,' said Hitchens. 'Our first vampire killer in E
Division. That's going to be a tricky one to do the paperwork
on, Gavin. I don t think we've even got a form (or it.'

'	c*

Murfin grinned. His lips began to move, and he patted his
pockets, seeking something else to eat -- a Snickers bar, a packet
of sweets, there would be something there. Fry could see that he
was thinking. His brain was occupied with a difficult challenge,
and it wasn't the detection of a crime.

'Evcryhodv has their cross to bear, sir, he said.

Mrs Van Doon turned, distracted by the chatter. 'If you reallv

*	V V y

want to know, this man's heart had long since stopped,' she said.
'No heart pumping means no blood. Your corpse was already
quite dead when the snowplough hit him.'

The pathologist began packing her bag. Fry wanted to help
her. In fact, she wanted to go with her, to get out of the
atmosphere here and into a nice warm mortuary, among peaceful
company that didn't crack stupid jokes or leave prawn crackers
trampled into the carpet of her car. Mrs Van Doon looked tired.
Like all of them, she was overworked at the moment.

Fry did one more stretch, inhaled and exhaled deeply, and
felt her bodv tingle with the extra oxvgcn.

v	o v O

'I dunno about that,' said Murfin. 'I still like the vampire
theorv mvself.'

v	v

'Excuse me,' said the pathologist. 'I think I'm finished here
for now.'

Frv had to stand back out of the way to allow her past. She
wanted to exchange a look, to share a little sympathy. Rut the
woman's head was down, and she didn't look up. There were
tired lines around her eyes and blue patches under them. Fry


39



recalled that, according to the gossip at divisional headquarters,
their old DC1, Stewart Tailby, had once had a personal interest
in Juliana Van Doon, but nothing had come of it. 1 ailbv was
soon to make the move to an admin job in Ripley. Now Mrs Van
Doon looked as though she had seen too many dead bodies.

'You see, 1 reckon I know that bloke who was driving the
snowplough,' said Murfin. 'And I've never seen him out in the
sunlight.'

The pathologist walked back to her car and began stripping
off her suit. Fry picked up Mrs Van Doon's case and held on to
it for a moment as the woman reached out to take it from her.
Their eyes met, but neither of them spoke.

'What do you think, Doc? Should we take a blood sample
from him?' called Murfin. 'I don't mean the dead man, I mean
the undead one, so to speak. We might get a oms-match.'

Murfin barked with laughter. It was a very realistic bark,
like the 'arf-arf of a fat King Charles spaniel. It echoed off
the banks of snow on either side and caused little avalanches
on to the roadway. Mrs Van Doon took off her overshoes, piled
her gear into the back of her car and drove off without another
word, spraying a gallon of slush on to Murhn's fur boots as she
accelerated away.

'Was it something I said?' asked Murfin.

'Oh no,' said Ilitchens. 'You've been eating garlic for breakfast
again.'


Ben Cooper found the CID room icy cold and deserted.
Obviously, the central heating radiators on this floor weren't
working again. He could smell food. Tomato sauce and garlic.
So Gavin Murfm hadn't been gone all that long. At any other
time, Cooper would have opened a window to let in some fresh
air, but his fingers were already starting to go so numb that he
could barely hold a pen.


There were files piled on his desk, with yellow notes stuck
all over them. It looked like a crop of daffodils had suddenly
bloomed, despite the chilly air. He saw that one of the notes
was much bigger than the others and was written in black marker

oo

pen of the kind used for exhibit labels. He didn't know what to


40



do with it, or whether he should even touch it. For all he knew,
it might be vital evidence in a forthcoming prosecution. All it
said was: 'We've got our heater back, you bastards!'
Cooper rang down to the control room.
'DC Cooper here. Can you tell me what's going on?
'DC Cooper? We've been trying to contact you since seven
fortv-two.'

'Well, I'm here now. What's going on?'
'You were supposed to be on duty at seven.'
'Yes, I know. You must have a record of the way I was lelt
stranded with a prisoner on Hollowgate tor hall an hour waiting
for a pick-up that never came? I had to walk up Spital Hill and
meet a PC who couldn't even stay on his feet for thirtv seconds.

v	^

He looked like a reject from the Northern Ballet Company. Since
I got here, I've been processing the prisoner through custody.'

There was a pause as the operator consulted somebody in
the control room. 'We're a bit stretched at the moment,'
she said.

'Tell me about it.'

'There are several messages from DS Fry,' said the operator
accusingly. 'Three o( them are marked urgent.'

Cooper sighed. 'So where am I supposed to be, apart from
three places at once?'

'The body of an unidentified white male was found on the
A57 Snake Pass, two hundred yards west of the Snake Inn,' said
the operator.

'Is the road clear?'

'According to our latest information, it's passable with care.'

'OK, I'm on my way.

'Er, we do have some later messages,' said the operator.

'Yeah?'

'I could probably just skip to the last one. It says: "Don't
bother."'

'What does that mean?'

'I suppose it means they've managed without you, dear.'

Cooper blinked. Suddenly, the control-room operator sounded
like his mother. Or at least, like his mother used to belore she
became ill.


41



'Thanks a lot,' he said, and put the phone down. lie looked
again at the files on his desk. It seemed he was muggins again,

the sucker landed with the work that nobodv else wanted, not

j	*

when there was something more interesting to do. And it was all
because he had set off for work early and found Eddie Kemp in
that cafe. Next time, he would know better. Next time, he would
pretend he hadn't recogni/ed the suspect, as ninety per cent of
his colleagues would have done when they weren't officially on
duty. That's exactly what he would do next time. Maybe.

Cooper slouched across the room to see if he could dredge
any warmth out of the radiator. As he moved, his left foot
squelched.


Frank Baine banged the bell for a third time. There was no
response.


'Well, if you're sure you'll be all right,' he said.

'I'll be fine,' said Alison Morrisscv.

She stood in front of the deserted reception desk with her
bags, i he lobby was like no other hotel she had ever seen. It
was dark, and it seemed to be full of ancient potted plants
and stuffed fish in glass cases. It was also deserted. Baine had
already put his head round all the visible doors to try to find
a member of staff.

'Someone will appear in a second,' said Morrissey.

'We've got the meeting with the police at nine o'clock

o	o I

tomorrow morning,' said Baine. 'I'll pick you up here about
eight-thirty, shall I? It isn't far.'

'That will be great. And thank you, Frank.'

Finally, he left. Morrissey ga/ed at a trout the size of a small
dog. It stared back at her glassily, its mouth hanging open as if
it might say something to her in a minute.

'Can I help you?'

A receptionist.

'A room,' said Alison. 'I have a room reserved. And I'm about
ready to die unless I get to it soon.'

After she had showered and rested, she got out the files again.
There w ere files on every member of the crew of Sugar Uncle
Victor. Some, of course, were slimmer than others. The thickest


42



was that on her grandfather, Pilot Officer Danny McTcague. But
at the top of the pile, the one Alison Morrissey would look at first
and read again tonight, was the file marked 'Zygmunt Lukasz'.

Later in the morning, Ben Cooper discovered who was going
to have to interview Eddie Kemp in connection with the
double assault.


'There isn't anvbodv else,' he was told. 'Thev're all out.'
Kemp looked almost pleased to see him. He seemed to
feel they had struck up a close friendship waiting at the side
of Hollowgate, as if a fiond had been forged between them
hy performing a hit of early-morning street theatre for the
customers of the Starlight Cafe. Cooper wasn't sure how long
the theatre would have lasted, without turning into a tragedy,

<?	C) ^

if it hadn't been for the appearance of Sonnv Patel and his two
oldest sons, brandishing brushes and shovels. They had made
a great ceremony of sweeping the pavement clear of snow,
until the three men leaning against their plate-glass window
had shuffled their feet and moved on.

'The tea's not bad here,' said Kemp. 'But they're going to
have to turn the blecdin' music off. It's doing my head in.'

Cooper and the PC accompanying him tried to keep their
distance from the table, so they could breathe more easily.
With the triple tape deck running and the duty solicitor sitting
alongside Kemp, they took him through the events that had led
to the injuries to the two young men at Underbank in the earlv
hours of that morning. Kemp made no attempt to denv that he
had been involved, but insisted that he had been assaulted first
and had acted in self-defence.

'That old one,' said Cooper.

'They're known villains,' said Kemp. 'They're dealers off
the estates.'

'And you say they attacked you first?'

'Yes.''

'When you arrived here, you were given the opportunity to
see a doctor. You didn't report any injuries.'

'Well, t know how to handle mvself,' said Kemp.

Now that Eddie Kemp wasn't wearing his Manchester United


43



hat, Cooper could see that his hair was dark and wiry. lie had
the beginnings of a moustache, something more than a case of
not having shaved this morning.

'Who were the other men who took part in this incident?'
asked Cooper.

'No idea.'

'Complete strangers?'

'I reckon they were just passing and came to help,' said Kemp.
'Good Samaritans, if you like.'

'Who had the baseball bat?'

'Baseball bat? I didn't see that.'

'A snooker cue, maybe.'

'Dunno. Perhaps those lads that came to help me had been
playing snooker at the club.'

Eddie Kcmp looked at the solicitor and smiled happily. Kemp
was experienced enough to know that witness identification was
rarely sufficient in itself for a prosecution to go forward. Among
a group of six men, it would have been impossible to say who
had done what. And it had been at night, too. He was quite
safe, for now.

'The victims were seriously injured, you know.'

'They deserved it,' said Kemp. 'They're scum. We don't
want them coming around Underbank. We don't want them
getting our kids involved in hard drugs. If a beating keeps them
away, that's a good thing. Your lot can't seem to do anything
about them, anyway.'

'Assault is still a crime, Eddie, no matter who the victims
are.'

'There's a crime, and then there's justice.'

'Which one is this, in your view?'

'I reckon it could be both at once.'

'Well, aren't you the philosopher then?' said Cooper impatiently.
'Two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.'

Kemp nodded. 'You're right. Only I don't think they're
contradictory. Not always.'


Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin finally blew in through the door
of the CID room like Santa Claus and one of his elves. Their



44



clothes were plastered with patches of snow and their (aces were
bright pink.

'Ah, Ben, at last,' said Fry, heating her hands together.

'I've been here all morning.'

'Got much done?'

'I've worked my way through most of the daffodils.'

'Sorry?'

'Yes, I've done quite a hit of work.'

'Oh well, whatever. I've got some jobs for you.'

'Fine.'

But Ben Cooper got that sinking feeling again. No job that
Diane Fry had tor him would ever be something he could get
excited about. He suspected he would be spending the rest
of the afternoon chasing phone calls and shifting vet more

O 1	C" v

paperwork.

'We need to put a name to the Snowman,' said Fry.

'The Snowman?'

'One white male, unidentified.'

'Right.'

'And dead,' said Murfm.

Cooper listened as Fry explained the details they knew, which
weren't many. Iherc had been no obvious identification on the
man, though they would have his clothes to work on when
the body was dealt with in the mortuary. There was also the
overnight bag that had been lying nearby. Like the body itself,
the bag had been scraped along the ground by the blade of the
snowplough. It was scuffed and ripped, and it was soaking wet
from the time it had spent underneath the snow. Worst of all, it
was empty. Even a toothbrush and a can of anti-pcrspirant could
have helped them to build up a picture that would identify the
Snowman.

'What we need are some mispers,' said Fry.

Cooper had only that afternoon been dealing with some
reports relating to a missing person. It was easy to refer to
them as 'mispers' when they were merely a set of details
in a computer database. Rut when you started to look into
an individual case, they suddenly turned into people. They
sprang out of the screen and became unhappy teenagers or


45



abused wives, confused old women or businessmen who had
hit fifty and decided to recover their youth with the girl from
the marketing department.

'What age are we talking?' he said.

'Early thirties. Good physical condition. Well dressed.

'Mmm. Right profile anyway.'

'For what?'

'Well, tor going missing.'

'You need to be a particular type of person?'

'Apart from youngsters, the people most likely to go missing
arc men aged between twenty-seven and thirty-four.'

'That puts you right in the frame, then, Ben.

'Are we talking death by misadventure? Or suicide, or
what?'

Fry hesitated. 'Don't know,' she said.

'If it's murder,' said Cooper, 'you don't need a profile for
that. Anybody will do for a victim these days. Have we got am
evidence? I thought he was hit by the sno\\ plough?'

O	.' I O

'He was already dead before then.'

The Snowman's priority rating depended on the pathologist.
If he had merely suffered a heart attack by the roadside, then
he would be likely to stay on ice for some time before he was
claimed. But Fry wasn't taking that line.

'An instinct, Diane?' he said.

But Fry ignored the question. 'So you and Gavin have got
work to do. Let's have a list of possibles, soon as you can.
Neighbouring forces, obviously. Don't forget he was found on
the AS7. Greater Manchester must have a whole book lull of
missing persons.'

'No doubt.'

'Get on to the Missing Persons Helpline. And don't forget the
national forces Transport Police, Ministry of Defence. Oh, and
the Northern Ireland Police Service.'

'Oh, great. Terrorist execution by snowplough.'

'You never know.'


E Division's commander, Chief Superintendent Colin Jcpson,
had agreed to see Alison Morrissey himself. But of course he



46



demanded support from his junior officers. There was strength
in numbers, he said as if the visitor were the advance party for
an enemy horde about to invade E Division. But numbers were
something they didn't have at the moment. The duty inspector
had said she was too busy, and nobody (from the community
safety department was available, either. Ben Cooper's name had
been mentioned.

There are the Ides the Local Intelligence Officer has put
together tor the Chief,' said DI Paul Hitchens after telling
Cooper the news, just before be went off duty that night.

'If the LIO produced the files, why can't he go to the meeting?'
asked Cooper.

'He's got flu. So it'll have to be you, Ben.'

'Why?'

'The Chief is afraid he'll be asked questions that need a bit of
local knowledge. You know he's never quite managed to work
out which county he's in since he transferred from Lancashire.
He has you marked down as the local lad who can answer all
the difficult questions the rest of us can't you know, like ho\\
to spell "Derbyshire".'

'No, I meant why?' said Cooper. 'It sounds as though this
Alison Morrissev is on some kind of holy mission to clear her
grandfather's name. All ancient history, isn't it?'

'That's about right,' said Hitchens.

'So why are we doing this at all?'

'Ah. Political reasons.'

'Political? What's political about it?'

'We owe favours,' said Hitchens.

'We do?'

'When I say "we", I mean the Chief, of course. Maybe
you don't remember the big fraud case a few years back,
Ben. The main suspect got out of the country and ended up
in Canada, masquerading as a lumberjack or whatever. The
Mounties weren't too co-operative at first, but the Chief talked
to the consul in Sheffield. They'd played golf together once or
twice, and the consul pulled some strings. Anyway, the net
result was that our Chief Superintendent made some new bosom
buddies over there in Ottawa. They discovered they had similar


47



handshakes, if you know what I mean. And one of them turns
out to be this Morrisscy woman's uncle. That's what I mean by
politics.'

'So we're putting on a show.'

'Up to a point. We're not actually going to Jo anything.'

'How do you know that, sir, if we haven't even talked to
her yet?'

'Oh, you'll see,' said Hitchens. 'Even political influence can't
produce resources out of nowhere.'


Finally, Cooper went off duty and made his way directly across
town to the Old School Nursing Home. In one of the lounges,
he found his mother waiting. She was sitting up in an armchair,
tense, staring at the wall, her thoughts far away in some world
of her own making.


'Do you remember what I said, Mum?' he asked. 'About
moving out of the farm?' He tried to saw it casually, to make

o	.' ^ '

it sound as though he were only planning to pop out to the shop
to buy some tea bags.

Isabel Cooper didn't say anything, though her eyes shifted
from the wall to his face. Cooper took her hand. It felt limp
and lifeless.

'I've decided I've got to live in my own place for a bit,' he
said. 'It'll only be in Edendale. I'll still come and see you every
day, don't worry.'

Her eves remained distant, not focused on him at all. But a
momentary shadow seemed to pass across her face, a faint echo
of the expression she had always used when she thought she had
caught him out in a lie.

'You'll never know any difference, Mum,' he said. 'You'll sec
as much of me as you always have. Too much, as usual. That's
what you always used to say, whenever I got under your feet.'

He wished that she would smile at him, just once. But her
face didn't move. Part of that was the drugs. The drugs were
doinsj their job, controlling the involuntary spasms, suppressing
the facial twitches that had so often turned her into someone
else, nothing like the mother he had known.

He patted the back of her hand, leaned forward and kissed


48



her. Her cheek was cold, like the face of a statue. He heard
her release her breath in a long sigh, and felt her relax a little.
It was the only response he was likely to get.

For a moment, Cooper thought of going back on his decision.
But it didn't matter to his mother now, did it? It didn't make
any difference to her where he lived, now that she was in the
nursing home and not likely to return to Bridge End Farm. It
was his own reluctance that he was having to deal with, his own
sense of leaving a large part of himself behind.

He had promised to call at the nursing home to see his mother
every day, and so far he had done it. It meant he could keep
telling her every day about his decision to move out, until they
both believed it.


Cooper had left the farm too early that morning to collect his
mail when the postman came. It was usually approaching nine
o'clock by the time the post van made it out as far as Bridge
End. So the estate agent's details were waiting for him when
he arrived home that evening. Everyone could tell what the
envelope contained. He had told his family that he planned to
move out, but he could see that they hadn't really believed it
until now. One of his nieces, Josie, handed him the envelope
without saying a word, but with a reproachful look. She almost
seemed to be about to burst into tears.


'Anything interesting?' said Matt, watching his brother open
the envelope from the estate agent.

Cooper could see straight away that there was nothing
suitable. All the agents had available were a couple of threebedroom
semis in Buxton and a furnished first-floor apartment
in Chapel-cn-le-Frith. Apart from the fact that they were too
far a\vay, the rent for each of them was well outside the limit of
his resources. But it seemed like an admission of failure to tell
his family there was nothing. Worse, it might raise expectations
that he would never find anything and that he would be forced to
stav on at the farm. Once that idea became accepted, it would be
all too easy to fall in with it himself. And that would be that. He
would be here until he retired, or until Matt decided to sell the
farm, which would be a disaster in itself.


49



lie looked at Matt. He wasn't altogether sure how his brother
felt about the prospect of him moving out. It was a big step, to be
sure. But wouldn't it leave more room for Matt and Kate and the
girls to live their own life? Hvcn inside the estate agent's, though,
he had felt embarrassed to explain what he was doing. He was
nearly thirty years old, and it wasn't an age where you could
comfortably announce that you were thinking of leaving home

^	o o

s

for the first time. I le imagined the sideways glances at him, the
speculation about his relationship with his mother.

'I might have a look at one or two of these places tomorrow,'
he said.

He could only hope. Things might look completely different
tomorrow.


Diane Fry stayed behind in the office lor a while after everyone
else had gone. The night shift was practically non-existent, and
the station became like a morgue. It was the time she liked
most, when there were no distractions anil she could think out
problems without being interrupted by singing lobsters or, even
worse, her colleagues. People always had their own demands to


O	1 j

make on her.

From a locked drawer in her desk, she took out a manila
folder, which had Ben Cooper's name on it. It contained
copies of his personnel files. She knew when he had been
recruited into Derbyshire Constabulary, what grades he had
got in his training and where his first posting had been. She
had the date of his transfer from uniform to CID, a couple of
commendations from senior officers, and a special note from the
Divisional Commander referring to the death in service of his
lather, Sergeant Joe Cooper. Ben had been given compassionate
leave and counselling. A note said 'no long-term problems'.

There were also the results of his examinations for the rank
of sergeant, all good. Then the outcome of his interview board,
when he had withdrawn his application. That had been when Fry
got the sergeant's job herself. Did the change in Cooper stem
from that time? It would be understandable. But she didn't think
it was quite that although the disappointment of missing out
on the promotion he had banked on could have been the cause


50



of what she suspected he had done later. She was almost sure he
had concealed evidence, or at least not reported his suspicions,
all out of misguided lovaltv.

O	v ^

Fry touched the scar on her face, which had healed hut not yet
laded. She had no evidence against him - that was the problem.
There was no proof. Unfounded allegations against a colleague
would blight her own career as surely as anything else she could
do. Especially when they were against Mr Popular, the man who
had lived in the Eden Valley all his life and knew everyone. She
would get no benefit from stirring up trouble against fellow
officers, unless she was absolutely sure of her ground. And that
was particularly true when one of them had died in the course
of his duty.

Try knew nothing could do more damage to her relationship
with her colleagues. She could imagine even now the officers
drawing away from her in the corridor, the cooling of attitudes
from senior staff, gradually freezing her out. Finally she would
get the message and either transfer back to where she had come
from, the West Midlands, or leave the police service altogether,
knowing no one would care which she chose.

She frowned at the memory of the way Ben Cooper had
looked today as he went off duty. He had been wearing that
ridiculous waxed coat with the long skirts and the vast inside
pocket he called his poacher's pocket. The coat was dark green,
as if he were trying for a camouflage effect. It wasn't much use in

./ «_?	c»

the snow - he would be a sitting duck for an angry gamekeeper
with a twelve-bore shotgun. But somehow it made him look as

c?

if he belonged where he was, like a man who was at case with
himself and his own place in the world. And then there was
the tweed cap. In the shadow of its peak, you could barely see
his eyes.

Fry shook herself. There was no one she could ask about
Ben Cooper. Perhaps her view of him was somehow distorted.
Maybe her antennae were deadened by her preoccupations with
her own problems. One thing was certain, Cooper was a man
orbiting somewhere bcvond the reach of her detection systems.

O	. V

But he wouldn't need to put a foot too far wrong before his orbit
brought him right back into her sights. Maybe tomorrow.


51



15y the next day, the skies had cleared. Overnight irost had
sprayed glitter on the snow that lay on the moors, and the air
crackled like static electricity.

Ben Cooper sighed as he stumbled around his room, determined
not to miss hreakiast today. First thing this morning he had
to attend the Chief Superintendent's meeting with the Canadian
woman. He hoped it was something that could be got out of the
way as soon as possible. It was an irrelevance, and a waste of
time. From what he had read of the files produced by the Local
Intelligence Officer, it was more than a cold case she was asking
Derbyshire Constabulary to take up it was no case at all.

Cooper was sure it was just another fuss being kicked up by
somebody with an obsession about the past and the history of
their family. The Canadian would be sent packing by Chief
Superintendent Jepson pretty quickly.

She was unimportant, anyway. At the moment, until he
was fullv awake, Cooper couldn't even remember the woman's
name.


Alison Morrissey had brought Frank Baine with her to West
Street for support. Baine described himself as a freelance journalist
who had researched local RAF history and the background
to the aircraft wrecks that littered the Peak District. He hinted
at a book yet to appear. He was also the man who had liaised for
weeks now on behalf of the Canadian, pestering for information
and a confirmed date and time for the meeting. Though the
Chief Superintendent had at no stage spoken to Baine himself,
he had already managed to become irritated by his persistence,
communicated to him by his staff. That Canadian Consul must
really be a valuable contact.


The four of them met in the Chief Superintendent's office
amid a flurry of cappuccino served by the Chief's secretary,
and an offer of the Bakewell tarts that Jepson kept for the


52



purpose of demonstrating his Derbyshire street crcd to visitors.
Cooper couldn't remember when he had tasted real coffee at
West Street before. He had heard they actually served it to
customers in reception at the new B Division headquarters, but
he wouldn't believe it until he saw it for himself.

The meeting opened with some half-hearted pleasantries
about the health and welfare of Miss Morrissev's uncle, his

V	*

family, his dog and his golf handicap. The Chief Superintendent
eventually ran out of small talk and sat looking at his
visitors in silence. It was an interrogation technique that he
fell back on from force of habit, from his long-past days in the
CID. It worked, though. Alison Morrissey began talking almost
immediately.
V

'As you know, gentlemen, I asked for this meeting because
I am attempting to clear the dishonour on the name of my
grandfather, Daniel McTeague, who was an officer serving in
the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was reported missing while
on attachment to the RAF in January 1945.'

'All of fifty-seven years ago,' said Chief Superintendent
Jepson. He was smiling amicably, but he was putting down
his marker from the start.

'I happen to know that your neighbours the Greater Manchester
Police re-opened a case last year that was exactly fifty-seven years
old,' said Morrissey, looking him straight in the eye. 'The length
of time that has passed seems to me to be irrelevant, if there's
been a miscarriage of justice.'
Cooper sneaked a look at her over the files he was pretending
to study. He hadn't expected her to be so young. If he had
bothered to think about it, he would have been able to work
out her possible age range, of course, since he knew it was her
grandfather that she was here to talk about. It was mentioned
in the files that Pilot Officer McTeague had been twenty-three
when he went missing. His daughter, Alison Morrisscy's mother,
had been born only days before he disappeared, which would
make her fifty-seven now. She must have been one of those
women who waited until her thirties before having children,
because Morrissey could barely have been more than twenty-five
or twenty-six. Cooper liked the way she had answered the Chief


53



Superintendent. She had plenty of determination. And she knew
her stuff, too.

'There was never a court case,' pointed out Jepson. 'Justice
was not involved.'

'Natural justice,' said Morrissey.

The Chief Superintendent sighed a little. 'Go on.'

'My grandfather was the pilot of a Lancaster bomber based
at RAF Leadenhall in Nottinghamshire, part of 223 Squadron of
Bomber Command. He had been Hvinp with the RAF tor two

J O

years, and he had an excellent service record. He was awarded
a Distinguished Flying Cross alter bringing home a damaged
Wellington from a successful raid on German U-boat bases
near Rotterdam. He ordered his crew to bail out once they
were over England and landed the aircraft single-handedly. And
that was despite the fact that he had himself been wounded by
shrapnel from enemy anti-aircraft tire. As soon as he recovered
from his injuries, he retrained on Lancasters and was posted to
RAF Feadenhall.'

'Very interesting,' said Jepson. 'But can we move forward to
January 1945?'

'You need to know what sort of a man my grandfather was,'
said Morrissev.

Cooper watched her eyes harden with a momentary anger
as she spoke. Her age might have taken him by surprise, but
he certainly hadn't expected her to be so attractive. She had
that style and confidence that made a woman stand out from
the crowd. He was enjoying her display of assurance and pride.
He was surprised that Jepson hadn't softened to her more In
now he usually had a weakness for an attractive young woman
himself. But the Chief must have hardened his heart, and once
he did that, there was no way he would back down. This

J

meeting could have only one possible outcome. Cooper was
already beginning to feel sympathy for the Canadian woman.
Jepson would let her go through her paces, but in the end, she
was going to be disappointed.

'This is a photograph of my grandfather,' said Morrissey. She
slid a picture across the table to the Chief Superintendent, then
one to Ben Cooper. She had hardly looked at him so far, except


54



for a quick glance of appraisal when they had been introduced.
He had the impression that she was a woman who knew' exactly
what she aimed to achieve, and who was most likely to he able
to help her. Now, she fixed her gaxc on Chief Superintendent
Jepson again.

'That photograph was taken when he was promoted to the
rank of Pilot Officer on joining 223 Squadron,' she said. 'Because
of his service, he was a year or two older than most of his crew.
That's why they called him "Granddad".'

The photo was something that the LIU hadn't been able to
produce for the files. Yet surely it must have been readily
available, if it was an official RAF shot. Morrissey had been
better organized, or had better help. Cooper glanced at Frank
Baine. He had heard of Bainc vaguely. He recollected having seen
a television programme the journalist had featured in, which had
been commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Battle of
Britain. The only thing Cooper remembered clearly from the
programme was the fact that some of the Lancaster bombers
used by the RAF during the Second World War had been built
at a factory in Bamford, only a few miles from Cdcndale. Of
course, the factory was long since gone, as were all the Lancasters
it had produced. A woman who appeared on the programme had
spoken of working on the aircraft as a girl, and of being told
by an officious foreman in a bowler hat that if she made any
mistakes she would be responsible for allowing the Germans to
win the war.

'I want you to look at the photograph/ said Morrissey,
'because you will be able to see how proud my grandfather
was of his uniform.'

Pilot Officer McTcague was immaculate in his RAF uniform,
with his peaked cap, brand new hoops on his sleeve, and a medal
on a ribbon pinned to his breast pocket. He stood almost to
attention, with his arms at his side. His tic was perfectly straight,
and there were sharp creases in his trouser legs. The uniform
would have been blue, of course, though the photo was black and
white. Probably the original print had been sepia -- this looked
like a computer-enhanced copy. It had brought out the features
of McTcague's face a small, dark moustache, a proud smile,


SS



and a direct ga/.c at the camera from a pair of clear eyes. He
was a good-looking man, who must have turned the heads of a
few girls in uniform. And, yes, there was a definite resemblance
in his eyes to the granddaughter who sat across the table from
Cooper now.

'He's wearing his Distinguished Flying Cross, as you can see,'
said Morrisscy.

Jepson put his copy of the photograph down on his file.
'January 1945,' he said.

Morrissey nodded. 'On 7th January 194-S, my grandfather was
at the controls of Lancaster bomber SU-V,' she said. 'The crew
called their aircraft Sugar Uncle Victor.'

It was Frank Raine who took up the story. This was his
expertise, his specialist field of knowledge. Raine had shaved
his head, a fashion that had ousted the comb-over as a means of
hiding the beginnings of baldness. As soon as he began to talk.

&	o c? o

Cooper saw w hy Alison Morrissey had brought Baine along. He
hardly needed to refer to any notes to deliver the facts of what
had happened on 7th January 194 S. The facts as far as they w ere
known, anyway.

'Lancaster SU-V had suffered damage to the outer starboard

o

engine from an attack by a German night-fighter during a
bombing raid on Rcrlin,' he said. 'The engine had been replaced
with a new one, and the crew were on a flight to test the
new engine. It was routine they were due to flv from their

C*	v ^

base at RAF Leadenhall in Nottinghamshire to RAF Renson in
Lancashire. It was a distance of no more than a hundred miles.
This crew had flown several operations over Germany and had
returned safely. Rut something went wrong over Derbyshire.

^	o & <

SU-V crashed on Irontongue Hill, ten miles from here. There
were seven people on board. Five of them died in the impact.'
Cooper found the crew list in front of him. Seven names.
Only one of them w as familiar so far -- that of the pilot, Daniel
McTeague. 'Hang on a moment,' he said. 'Which crew members

O	O '

were killed?'

'First of all, the wireless operator, Sergeant Harry Gregory,'
said Raine.

'Yes.' Cooper put a small cross next to his name on the list.


56



'The bomb aimer, Rill Mcc, the mid-upper gunner. Alec
Hamilton, and the rear gunner, Dick Abbott, who were all
British RAF sergeant^.'

'And one more?'

'One of the Poles,' said Raine. 'The navigator. Pilot Officer
Klemens Wach.'

'Apart From McTcague, that leaves just one who survived,'
said Cooper.

'Correct.

'The last one then is the Might engineer. I'm not quite sure
how to pronounce it . . .'

'It's Lukasz,' said Raine. 'Like^ou/mVi. The other survivor was
Pilot Officer Zygmunt Lukasz.'


Grace Lukasy. noticed that Zygmunt showed no interest now in
attending Dom Kombatanta, the Polish ex-servicemen's club.
She was glad about that. These days, the old soldiers and
airmen seemed to talk of nothing else but war and death, as
if the lives they had lived over nearly six decades since 194-5
had been telescoped into a fortnight's leave from operational
duties. She had heard one former paratrooper who had drunk
too much vodka in the club one night saw that he had never


O	V

been so alive as when he was facing death. And that's what they
were doing now, too - the old servicemen were standing by to
climb on board for their last journey, their final venture into
the unknown. This time, their transport would be a hearse.

At one time, Zygmunt and his friends had taken an interest in
British politics. They had discussed endlessly what they thought
was an amazing apathy on the part of the British themselves, who
hardly seemed to want to bother voting, let alone listening to
what the politicians had to say.

'They haven't been the same since Winston Churchill,'
Zygmunt had said one day.

'Dad, that was nearly sixty years ago,' said Peter.

'That's what I mean!' said Zygmunt. 'It's been downhill
ever since.'

Rut that had been in the days when he would still speak
English.


57



The old man had a knack of making Grace feel foreign. It was
an uncomfortable feeling, which she had never quite got used to
since marrying Peter. Before, her name had keen Woodward,
and she had never even considered her national identity. She had
been British, and that meant you didn't have to think about it. But
suddenly one day, her name was Lukasz, and people treated her
differently, as it she had been re-horn as a foreigner. Even people
she had known all her life and had been to school with seemed to
imagine that she might have forgotten how to speak English.

And then, after the accident six years ago, Grace had found
herself heing glad to feel foreign. Now, when she went into a
shop and people fell suddenly silent, she was able to believe
that it was because they had heard only her name and mentallv

V	^ v

labelled her as some kind of East European asylum seeker.
There were plenty of asylum seekers now, in the guest houses
in Buxton Road.

Grace had read stories in the newspapers recently about
groups of East European women and children visiting shops in
local villages supposedly asking (or directions and distracting the
shopkeepers while their children stole from the shelves. She had
no doubt it was true. Most of these people were gypsies anywav,
and Cdendale had suffered its share of gypsy problems for many
years. One year, a tribe of them had parked their lorries and
caravans in a field next to Queen's Park. From the corner of
the Crescent, she had been able to see their washing lines and
their children playing in the hedge bottoms; she had watched
their dogs running wild and their rubbish piling up day by day in
the corner of the held. It had been like watching the coming of
winter and the dying of the landscape, like waiting and waiting
lor the first day of spring, when the sun eventually came out
and it seemed possible to make things look neat and respectable
again. She had experienced the same sense of impotence, the
same impatience, as she waited for an irritation to be gone
from her life.

But finally, one morning, the gypsies had departed before
dawn, leaving a sea of mud in the field and litter of all kinds
strewn down the banking towards the road. What did it matter
to her where the gypsies went when they moved on? What did


58



it matter to her where the snow went.' 1 he snow was absorbed
back into the earth somehow, that was all that mattered. There
was a cleansing rhythm to nature that she tound comforting.

Grace turned back to the room. Her eye immediately tell on
the Lukasx family photograph in the alcove near the door. Herself
and Peter, Zvgmunt and Krystvna, with the grandchildren at

j O	j' . O

their knees. She had once, before they were married, tried to
persuade Peter to change their surname. She thought it would
be best for their future children. A good alternative would have
been Lucas, she had said. It would only have been a change in
spelling really; the pronunciation was almost the same. Peter had
sail! no. I le had said it in a tone of voice she had not heard from
him until then, a tone that made her hesitate, then decide not to
argue. He had never given her a reason, and she had not asked,
in the end.

She looked at the face of the old man, Zvgmunt, at the proud
tilt of his head and the direct stare. Peter was becoming more
and more- like his father with age. Sometimes, if she watched
him carefullv, she saw a different look in her husband's eves
when the old man called him 'Piotr'. It was a look that she
had never been able to bring to his eves, even in their most
intimate moments. No matter how many times she whispered
his name, she could never bring the same look of pride. The
meaning wasn't there for him in 'Peter' in the way it was when
lie heard his Polish name. For a moment, she wished she could
do it by calling him 'Piotr' herself. But she knew it was loo late
to change a habit now.

Grace went quickly to the window when she heard the sound
of a car. A Ford had pulled up at her kerb beyond their hedge.
She could see a man with fair hair in the driver's seat. It wasn't
Andrew. A woman got out on the passenger side. She met

O	I O

Grace's eves tor a moment. Then she turned awav and walked
to a house two doors down, while the driver waved and drove
oil. Grace let go of the breath she had been holding. It wasn't
her either. Not yet.


Frank Baine waited to be sure he still had their attention. Alison
Morrissey had her gaze (ixed on Chief Superintendent Jepson.



59



She seemed to he trying to will the Chief to listen, though
Ben Cooper knew Jepson well enough to see that his brain
had switched off already. Probably he had decided in advance
the amount of time he was prepared to give. Cooper wondered
how fast the clock was ticking down.

'Former Pilot Officer Zygmunt Lukasz is the sole surviving
crew member of Sugar Uncle Victor/ said Bainc. 'Lukasz was
one of the youngest of the crew, but even he is seventy-eight
now. As it happens, he lives here, in Edcndalc.'

'No doubt you'll be visiting him,' said Jepson, as if suggesting
there was no time like the present.

'We have been in contact with the Lukasz family,' said Bainc.
'It would be (air to say that they're not keen to cooperate.'

'Pity/ said Jepson.

'On the day of the crash, the skipper had filed a visual flight
record with flight control, as was normal practice/ said Bainc.
'He'd been briefed on broken clouds at two thousand feet and
poor visibility. But somehow he went off course and found
himself over the Peak District. He discovered the fact too
late, when he nosed the aircraft down through the overcast
to establish his position. Directly in front of him was Irontonguc
Hill. He never stood a chance of avoiding it.'

'Five men died in the crash. There were two who survived.

'Yes, the seventh was the pilot, my grandfather/ said Alison
Morrisscy. 'After the crash, he was never found.'

Cooper was ready for this. It was the whole point of the
meeting, after all. The rest was just preamble. 'He was listed
as having deserted/ he said. 'In the air accident enquiry, he was
also blamed for the crash.'

Morrisscy turned on him suddenly. 'He was the pilot. He was
in command of the aircraft. Since there was no evidence given
of enemy action or mechanical fault, he was bound to take the
blame. He was branded guilty by default. And there's absolutely
no evidence that my grandfather deserted. Absolutely none.'

'But he was seen leaving the area/ said Cooper.

'No -- he was not/

Chief Superintendent Jepson stirred slightly, his interest
piqued by the suddenly raised voices. He studied the report


60



that had keen prepared for him by the Local Intelligence Officer.
'According to my information, two young hoys were spoken to,
who said they had seen an airman walking down the Rlackbrook
Reservoir road, from Irontongue Hill towards Glossop. That
seems (airly conclusive.'

v

'Their statement was crucial. I'd like to find them now to talk
to them, hut the hoys aren't named in the reports I have.'

'That might he unfortunate from your point of view, Miss
Morrissev, hut they were only children, after all. Twelve
years old, and eight. Why should they lie ahout something
like that?'

'I have no idea.'

'Also, it appears that a man in uniform was reported to have
been seen heading away from the area later that day. In fact, he
was picked up by a lorry driver on the A6 near Chinley. That
was a perfectly normal thing for a driver to do hack then.'

'The man was never positively identified as Pilot Officer
McTcague,' said Morrissey.

'We used to do it until quite recently, in fact. But not for a
few wears.'

'Do what?'

'Give lifts to servicemen. They would stand at the roadside
with their kithags and a sign saying where they were going, and
motorists would stop for them. You could see what they were
hy their haircuts, hecause all the other young men of their age
had long hair then. I can rcmemhcr picking a few soldiers up
myself on the M6 roundabout near Preston, in the days when I
was serving with the Lancashire force. These days, though, you
can't trust anybody. You never know who might have got hold
of an army uniform or a hit of equipment. Let them into your
car and you could be mugged in a minute, or worse. I would
advise members of the public against it, for their own safety.'

Alison Morrissey stared at the Chief Superintendent, and
Cooper saw her redden slightly. The extra colour made her
look even more attractive, hut Jcpson didn't seem to have
noticed. He had gone into public-meeting mode, as if he were
addressing members of the Chamber of Commerce or a police
liaison committee.


61



'That man was never positively identified as my grandfather/
repeated Morrissey.

'Yes, I see that/ said Jepson, looking at his report.

'And how did he get to the A6? Let's consider that for a
moment. I've studied the maps of the area, and the place this
man was picked up was over ten miles from the scene of the
crash. Is my grandfather supposed to have walked all that way?
And why didn't anvhodv else sec him earlier?'

v	y v

'It was dark/ pointed out Cooper.

The Canadian woman caught his eye. He had the feeling that,
in different circumstances, she might have smiled.

Jepson nodded at Cooper gratefully. 'Of course it was. It was
seven o'clock in the morning when the lorry driver picked him
up. It's still dark at that time in January round these parts. Ren
knows, you see. He's a local lad. There s nothing like a bit of
local knowledge. It's better than any number of bits of paper
you can produce, Miss Morrissev.'

The Chief Superintendent pushed the report aside, as if he
didn't need it any more, and beamed at Morrissev. Cooper
recognized it as his politician's smile, the one he normally only
used for visiting members of the Police Authority when he was

o	^

hoping they would go away and leave him in peace.

'The lorry driver couldn't even say that it was an airman's
uniform this person was wearing/ said Morrissey, starting to
sound a little desperate.

Jepson pulled the report back towards him. He glanced at
the first page, then at Cooper, who mouthed three words at
him silently.

'It was dark/ said Jepson hesitantly. 'Yes, of course it was it
was dark, as we've already established. Miss Morrissey, we can't
expect a lorry driver to have noticed details of a serviceman's
uniform in the dark. There were no street lights at that time,
you know. There was --'

a war on/ said Morrissey. 'Yes, I know.

Jepson steepled his fingers and looked round the meeting with
some satisfaction, as if the point were proved. 'Did you have any
more information you wished to produce, Miss Morrissey? Any
nw information?'


62



'My grandfather didn't desert,' said Morrissey quietly.

'With respect,' said Jepson, getting into his stride as he saw
the home stretch appear, "I don't think there's anything vou've
told us that could be considered new. There is no reason to
hc-licve that anything happened to your grandfather other than
that he left the scene of the crash before the rescue teams arrived,
he hitched a lilt from a lorrv driver on the A6 and . . .'

'And what?' said Morrissev.

Jepson flicked the report over uncertainly. 'Well, presumably
he somehow managed to pet out of the country and back to his

c*	t
home
in Canada.'

'And how easy would that be for a deserter?' said Morrissey.
'Especially as there was a war on?'

The Chief Superintendent looked to be about to shrug his
shoulders, then changed his mind at the last minute. He had
been told in senior management training sessions that it was a
gesture that gave out the wrong message.

'Please. My problem is that, without being able to trace the
two boys who saw my grandfather, my only possible sources of
information in the area are Zvgmunt Lukasx, and a man called
Walter Rowland, who was a member of the RAF mountain
rescue team called out to the crash. Frank has contacted them,
but both are refusing to speak to me.'

'Miss Morrissey, I'm sorry, but 1 really can't do anything for
you,' he said.

'It's not that you can't you won't,' said Morrissey.

'If you wish. But the tact is, 1 don't have resources to spare
even to advise you on your mission.'

Ben Cooper could see that Alison Morrissey didn't like the
word 'mission'. Her jaw tensed, and her expression became
obstinate. But she began to fiddle with the catch of her briefcase,
as if she were about to put her papers away.

Cooper took the opportunity to ask a question. 'Miss
Morrissey, what exactly dojou think happened to your grandfather?'

Morrissey met his eye, surprised for a moment, and pushed
her hair behind her ear with a quick flick of the hand. 'I think
he was injured,' she said. 'Probably da/ed or concussed, so that


63



he didn't know what he was doing or where he was. Possibly he
couldn't even remember the crash. I think he took off his Hying
gear and left it by the side of the road because it was too heavy
for him to carry. I think he reached a house somewhere nearby,
perhaps a farmhouse, and the people took him in/
'Took him in?'

'Looked after him and gave him somewhere to stay.'
'Knowing who he was? They must have heard later that there
had been an air crash. Why would they keep him? Why not hand
him over to the authorities? If he was injured, they would at least
pet medical treatment for him.'

c*

'I don't know why,' said Morrissey stubbornly. 'I do knowthat
the man who hitched a lift on the A6 was not my grandfather.
1 believe that man was an army deserter who had gone absent
without leave from the transport depot at Stockport. He was a
man named Fuller. The police arrested him later at his parents'
house in Stoke-onTrent.'

'But your grandfather?' asked Cooper. 'What makes you think
he stayed in this area? It seems very unlikely.'

'TViis is what makes me think so,' said Morrissey. She pulled
a plastic wallet from her briefcase. Cooper could see that it
contained a medal on a red-and-gold ribbon. The medal was

o

perfectly polished, and it gleamed in the fluorescent lights, flashing
in their eyes as if sending a message across the decades.

'What is it?'

'It's a Royal Canadian Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross,'
said Morrissey. She turned the medal over in her hands. 'It
arrived at my grandmother's old home in Ottawa one day during
the summer. There was a note with it, too. It was addressed
to my mother, and it just said: "Remember your father, Pilot
Officer Danny McTeaguc."'

Cooper leaned closer to look at the medal. 'This is your
grandfather's medal? Rut where did it come from?'

'All we know,' said Morrissey, 'is that it was posted here, in
Edendale.'


64



1 he body from the Snake Pass had arrived in the mortuary
at ndendale General Hospital, where it would be kept on ice,
at least until it could be identified and somebody claimed it.
When Diane Fry had driven up to the mortuary, she had left
DC Murfm in the car, where he was no doubt adding to the
pile of toffee WTappcrs on her floor.

Inside the mortuary, it was warmer than out on the street.
V *

The air smelled better, too -- it was full of disinfectants and
scented aerosols to suppress the odours of body fluids and
abdominal organs.

o

'We don't get many of these now,' said Mrs Van Doon.
'People carry all sorts of identification with them these days,
don't they? But if not, we can usually match up their fingerprints
or dentition, or their DNA. No luck your end so far, I take it?
Nothing we can match him to?'

'Nothing,' said Fry. 'We're putting appeals out, of course.
But at present his description doesn't match the details of any
missing person we know of/

'So maybe no one's noticed he's missing yet.'

'There seem to be a lot of people who go around not noticing
things,' said Fry.

The pathologist gave her a brief, quizzical look. 'He doesn't
look like the average missing person to me/ she said. 'He's too
clean and well dressed, for a start. Those shoes he was wearing
are expensive/

'I know. His shoes and the rest of his belongings are our best

o o

hope. They're distinctive.

'He wasn't a hiker, not wearing those on his feet. The snow
has ruined them/

'No, he wasn't a hiker/

'A stranded motorist, perhaps? Trying to walk back to
civilization from an abandoned car?'

'That's possible. All the cars found so far have been matched


65



up with lixinsJ owners, hut there are a lew side roads the
snow ploughs haven't reached yet.'

'You don't sound convinced of that, either.'

'\o, I'm not.'

'Any particular reason?'

'Look at him. Look at his clothes. You pointed out vourselt
how expensive they are. Would he rcallv set oft walking in
the snow dressed like that? With no coat? Why didn't he stay
where he was until he was found? It's not exactly the Antarctic
somebody would have come across him within twenty-four hours
at the most. And why didn't he phone lor help? Lor God's sake,
every schoolkid has a mobile phone these davs. I can't believe
a man like this didn't have one.'

'You're right, I suppose. I should restrict myself to the
physical evidence and let you deal with the psychology.'

'I didn't mean that,' said itv, noting the pathologist's defeated
air.

'It's all right.'

'And another thing. Are we supposing that he set off walking
down the road and that the first people who came along were
some opportunist muggers who just happened to be driving over
the Snake Pass in a bli/zard?'

'I couldn't possibly say.'

'I'll take that as a no.'

Fry glanced at the body. It had been cleaned and covered
up. But the face of the man was still visible. He was aged about
thirty, she supposed, a little thick about the neck but otherwise
in reasonable shape. His hair was dark, cut short and tidy, with
a tew flecks of grey at the temples. The stubble growing on his
cheeks looked wrong; he was a man who would normally have
been close-shaved. She looked at his hands. They were strong,
but free of callouses, and the nails were trimmed.

'What about the injuries?' she said.

'There is one major ventral wound to the abdomen, which
opened up the abdominal cavity and the lateral muscles and
almost severed his left arm above the elbow.'

'That was the blade of the snowplough, presumably?'

'All I know is that it was a sharp metal object about ten


66



feet wide and weighing approximately half a tun/ said Mrs
Van Doon.

'Right.'

'There arc a number of abrasions on the head, face, back and
legs, probably caused by the body being dragged along the road
surface (or a short distance. There's plenty of bruising, and
he also has two cracked ribs on the right side of his chest
from a fall.'

'A fall?'

'All right, look. From the position in which he was found,
I'd say that particular damage might have been caused by him
being dropped by the snowplough on to some small rocks by
the side of the road. He was found lying half on the rocks, and
half off. A few inches to either side and he would have had a
much easier landing on snow or soft ground.'

'[ don't suppose it made much difference to him by then.'

'Not a bit. All the injuries I have mentioned were suffered
postmortem.'

'After he was dead.'

'That's usually what post-mortem means. Otherwise, it would
come as a bit of a shock to my customers when I remove their
internal organs.'

'The one million pound question, then . . .' said Fry.

'What JiJ kill him, you mean?'

'Of course.'

I'll need to do some more tests,' said the pathologist.
'Contrary to your inspector's impression, I do actually have
the services of a modern laboratory to call on.'
'But . . . ?'

'I need to study the configuration of the major wound more
closely before I can be certain of anything.'

'I'm not sure what you mean by that.'

y	v

'Circumstantial evidence,' said Mrs Van Doon. She pointed
at one of the plastic bags containing the victim's clothes. 'Your
inspector was also wrong when he said there was no blood.
There wtn blood. Not much, but some. It wasn't noticeable
at the scene because it had been absorbed by his clothing. He
was wearing a thermal vest, a shirt and cotton sweater. A small


67



amount of blood had penetrated the layers of clothing to stain
the inner lining of his suit jacket, which is why it wasn't visible.
It was luckv that he had been dead for some time when the

j

snowplough hit him. If there had been a lot of bleeding from
the major wound, I might not have noticed anything.'

fry was listening carefully, trying to work out the direction
of the pathologist's thinking. 'Do you mean you think there is

I	o O J '

an earlier wound which has been masked by the later one?'

e

'Hxactly. At least, that is one theory I'll be exploring. Th
edge of the snowplough blade is regular in shape. I'm told it's a
new one, which is useful. But there's an irregularity in the shape
of the wound which matches the position of the bloodstain on
the clothing. We need to do some matching. And I need to go
deeper into the tissues to tell you more.'
'Deeper? A knife?'

'Possibly. my conclusions will be in my report.'
'So he was stabbed, then dumped from a vehicle.'
'If that's the case, then it helps your time frame, too,
doesn't it?'

'But he was already dead some time before he was found . . .'
'Yes, but if he was dumped from a vehicle, when was he
dumped? My impression from the scene was that the body
would have been in full view of passing traffic, it it hadn't been
tor the snow. But then, I suppose there was no traffic on that
road after the snow had fallen.'

Fry thought carefully about what she was saying. 'If somebody
dumped him, it has to have been when it was already snowing
heavily enough to have discouraged drivers from attempting
the Snake Pass, so that there was no one passing to
be a witness. Probably the snow-warning lights at the bottom
of the road were, already on, so drivers were turning
back. We can check what time they were switched on.
But it also has to have been before the road became completely
impassable. In a heavy fall of snow, that can't have
been more than a half-hour window oi opportunity. And
we have to be looking for a four-wheel drive vehicle of

o

some kind. No one in his right mind would have risked
it otherwise. They could have found themselves stranded up


68



there with a dead body in the boot. That narrows it down a
lot. Thank you.'

Mrs Van Doon brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead
and smiled tircdly. 'You can deduce so much from a small
amount of blood/ she said. 'I agree with your inspector on that,
at least. Blood Jo« make a body rather more satisfactory.'


Ben Cooper escorted the visitors back down the stairs and
along the corridor towards reception. Alison Morrissev walked


O	I v

quickly, looking straight ahead, but Frank Bainc tended to
linger, glancing curiously into the offices they passed. Cooper
was eyeing the slim black briefcase that Morrissey carried. He
would have loved to get hold of all the files that he had glimpsed
in there, and to immerse himself in the details of the story whose
surface they had barely scratched during the meeting. The LIO's
briefing had been good, but it didn't tell him anything about the

o	o ' y o

human dimensions of the tragedy, which he could see were what
drove Alison Morrissey.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind that Morrissey might
let him read the Ales if he asked her, Cooper dismissed the notion
as mere escapism. There was more than enough for him to do
right now. Just because something interested him, it didn't mean
it was his job to look into it.

As Cooper held open the security door for the visitors to
leave, Morrissey turned to look at him. Her gaze was direct
and disconcerting. He felt as though she were seeing him
fullv, reading everything about him from his face and his

./ '	O V O

manner, in a way that people rarely did. Cooper self-consciously
straightened his shoulders and felt the beginnings of a flush rising
in his neck.

'And what did ^ou think?' she said. 'Wouldn't ^ou want to
know what happened?'

'It's not my job to take a view on the subject,' said Cooper.
'I just do what I'm told.'

She stared at him, with a small, sceptical smile. He hadn't
been sure before, but now he could see that her eyes were
pale grey. Cooper felt uncomfortable, unable to move from his
position until Morrissey and Baine had passed through the door.


69



But Baine was hanging back, watching them patiently. Morrissey
held her ga/e for a moment longer.

'That's a shame,' she said.

Cooper felt as though he had been summed up and found
wanting. He watched Morrissey walk briskly across the reception
area, looking like a smart business executive with her black suit
and briefcase. Frank Baine stopped in the doorway.

'Take my business card,' he said. 'In case I can help.'

Cooper took the card almost absent-mindedly. "I hanks.

Then Baine leaned towards him, nodding slvly towards the
disappearing (igure.

'And remember there's no stopping a woman when her
passion is roused,' he said.


Eden Valley Books was in Nick i' th' Tor, one of the cobbled
passages rvmning between Edendale market square and the Evre
Street area. The bookshop was a high, narrow building that
looked as though it had been jammed between two much wider
ones as an afterthought, or a mere space-filler something to
use up all the leftover oddments of stone when the builders had
finished work on the Yorkshire Bank next door. But it was three
storeys high, with books on the first two floors, and from the
tiny windows set into the gabled roof, it looked as though there
were attic rooms, too. Ben Cooper recalled there was even a
cellar that ran under the street, full of more books.


There were bookshops in Edendale that were more modern,
but Cooper had browsed in Eden Vallev Books many times, and
he was hopeful he would find what he wanted here, even during
the half-hour he could spare during his lunch break. The owner,
Lawrence Daley, seemed to speciali/.e in gathering together
obscure books on esoteric subjects.

The concept of a window display hadn't reached Eden Valley
Books yet. All Cooper could see through the streaked glass
were the ends of some wooden bookshelves plastered with
fliers advertising local events which had taken place several
months ajjo. A concert by a folk group, a psychic evening
at the community centre, an autumn fair in aid of the Cats
Protection Eeague.


70



The snow in Nick i' th' Tor was rapidly turning to slush, and
water ran down the cobbles into the square. The front door of
the bookshop was narrow, and it stuck in the frame when he
tried to open it, so that he had to lean his weight against it before
it gave way. It reminded him more of a defensive bastion than of
an entrance especially when a warning bell jangled above his
head, causing a nervous stirring somewhere inside the shop.

Immediately, Cooper was surrounded by books. They were
crammed on to shelves right in the doorway, so that he couldn't
get past without brushing against them. Further in, the tiny
rooms had been stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. They
were piled on the floor and on the bare wooden stairs, and
no doubt they filled the upper rooms as well. On a table,
Cooper saw a set of Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories and a
1935 almanac with board covers mottled with mould. There
was an overwhelmingly musty smell of old paper paper that
had soaked up the damp from many decades spent in unhcated
stone houses on wet hillsides.

'Hello?' called Cooper.

Lawrence Daley wore a silk waistcoat with a fancy pattern
that was none too clean, and his brown cordurov trousers had
become baggv at the knees from hours of crouching to reach
the lower shelves. On occasions, Cooper had seen Lawrence
wearing a bow tie. But today he had an open-necked check
shirt, with his sleeves rolled back over pale forearms. His hair
was uncombed, and he looked dusty and sweaty, as if it were the
height of summer outside with the temperature in the eighties,
rather than creeping up from xero towards another snowfall.

Tve been trying to sort out the Natural History section,'
said Lawrence when he saw Cooper appear round the stacks.
'Some of these books have been here since Granny's day. They're
still priced in shillings, look. A customer brought one to me
yesterdav and insisted on paying fifteen pence for it. I couldn't
argue, because that was what the price on the label converted
at in new money.'

'Are you throwing them out?' asked Cooper, wrinkling his
nose at the musty smell and the cloud of dust that hung
in the air.


71



i

!j


'Throwing them out? Arc you kidding? I can't throw them
out. They just need re-pricing.'


'But if they've been here since your grandmother ran the	I

,	fi
shop ... |


'I know. I know. They're not exactly fast sellers. But if that	I


'	- j f

were all I was interested in, I'd stack the place to the ceiling with	!|

1	O .Sj :

Harry Potters, like everyone else does. It's Detective Constable	|
Cooper, isn't it?' J

'Ben Cooper, yes. 1 wondered it you had any books on aircraft	J
wrecks. There are so many wrecks around this area there must jj
be something published about them.'

'It you go right to the back and through the curtain on the	:
left, then down a tew steps, you might find something halfway
up the shelves,' said Lawrence.

'Thanks.'

Cooper made his way through the aisles of books. He passed

i	.' O ' ,

Poetry and Literature, Biography and Philosophy, until he	;

reached a dead end at Geography. He turned left at Art and

found Music lurking in a curtained-off alcove at the head of

a tlight of stairs leading down into a cellar. The sides of the

stairwell had been filled with more bookshelves. A lew creaky

steps down, Cooper came across Air Transport. It seemed

a curiously modern subject tor Eden Valley Books, and he

wasn't surprised that it was hidden away. He looked down	ji

i	j v\

into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs and wondered	f
what Lawrence had chosen to confine to the cellar. Probably j
something like Computers and Information Technology. f
But there, sure enough, were two slim volumes on Peak ::
District aircraft relics, exactly what he wanted. He wondered ,
if this place was really some kind of Aladdin's Cave where you
could find anything you truly wanted, if you wished hard enough.

J	O . J ~ * O

Lawrence Dalev made a strange genie, though.

'Just the thing, Lawrence,' he said, when he had made his
way back to the counter. 'I lound two.'

'Amazing,' said Lawrence. 'And is there a price on them?'

'Well, no actually.'

Lawrence sighed. 'Then I can't charge you anything at
all, can I?'


72



'Of course you can.'

'Not if there's no label. It's against the Trade Descriptions
Act.'

'I'm not sure that's how it works,' said Cooper. 'Anyway, I
can't take them without paying you lor them.'

'Well, fifty pence then.'

'II you say so.'

Cooper began to go through his pockets. He found the estate
agent's leaflets and pulled them out of the way while he felt at
the bottom for some change. His pager was vibrating again, but
it could wait.

'Hello,' said Lawrence, 'have you fallen into the company of
conmen and thieves?'

'Sorry?'

'Estate agents,' he said, pointing at the leaflets. 'Are you
buying a house/'

"I can't afford that,' said Cooper. 'I'm just looking for a place
to rent for a while.'

'Ah. Striking out on your own? Or is there a live-in partner
involved somewhere?'

'On my own.'

v

'Oh. And have you not found anywhere yet?'

'No.'

Cooper handed over his fifty pence, and Lawrence rattled
it into the drawer of his till, then found a striped paper bag
from somewhere under the counter. Cooper stood looking at
some postcards and fliers stuck to a board near the counter.
Most of them were advertising the services of typing agencies,
clairvoyants and aromatherapy specialists, but there was one that
caught his eye.

'There's a furnished flat advertised here,' he said. 'It's in
Welbeck Street, by the river/

'Oh yes,' said Lawrence.

'That's handv for town. I could walk to work from there.
And it sounds quite a reasonable rent, too. Do you know who
this person is? Mrs Shelley?'

'I'm afraid so. It's my aunt.'

'Really?'


73



'She lives in Welbcck Street herself, but she owns the house
next door as well,' said Lawrence. 'My uncle had dreams of
knocking the two places together and creating some kind of
palatial town house to swan around in. Cod knows why there
were only ever the two of them, with no children.'

'I have an uncle like that, too he loves unfinished projects.
It seems to give him a sense of immortality. He doesn't think

O	J

he can possibly die until all the jobs are finished.'

'It didn't work with Uncle Gerald he died before he could
even get round to knocking any walls down.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Aunt Dorothy wasn't. She was over the moon to be rid
of him. She had the house next door split into two flats. She
had a proper job done of it. I think, she wanted the workmen
to pound the memories of Uncle Gerald into dust with their
sledgehammers and cover him over with a nice layer of plaster
and some magnolia wallpaper.'

'And one of the Hats is empty, is it?'

'It was, when she asked me to put the card up,' said Lawrence.
'It might have gone by now, she hasn't said. I've told her to
make sure she lets it to the right sort of person. Reliable and
trustworthy professional people only, you know. I do worry
sometimes about who she might take in, if she's left entirely to
her own devices.'

'I think I'd be interested, if it's still vacant,' said Cooper.

'It might not be up to your standards, you know. Aunt
Dorothy is getting a hit vague in her old age. Not quite barmv or

j	O O O O i J

anything, you understand. But vague about life's little details.'

J	O J O

Cooper looked at the card again. 'Reliable and trustworthy?
Do you think I would qualify, Lawrence?'

'No, but you could lie.' The bookseller laughed. He reached
out a hand anil patted the corduroy collar of Cooper's waxed
coat. 'I love the cold weather gear, by the way,' he said.
'Policemen usually dress so boringly, don't they? But the cap
really suits you. It shows off your eyes.'

Cooper edged away a few inches. "I might give the flat a try,'
he said. 'Mrs Shelley, 6 Welbeck Street? I'll mention that you
recommended me, shall I?'


74



Lawrence chuckled. 'Believe me,' he said, 'vou'd he hotter
off lying.'

On the way out, Cooper noticed a morocco-hound volume
of .1 Talc of Tiro Cities, which lav in the dust on the top of a
set of shelves. It looked almost as if Mr Dickens himself had
wandered into the shop one dav and put the hook down on the
shell, where it had staved ever since.

Outside, in High Street, Cooper watched a Hulley's hus splash
slo\\ Iv hv like a dark hlue ship. It threw a how wave of slush
to either side, which threatened to sweep awav the pedestrians
walking on the pavement.

As he walked back past the Clappergate shopping precinct
towards West Street, Cooper patted his pockets thoughtfully.
In the huge poacher's pocket inside his coat were the hooks on
Peak District aircraft wrecks, including the crash of Lancaster
SU-V, which had brought Alison Morrissey to Hdendale. In
another pocket he had the estate agent's leaflets for unsuitable

I	O

properties. Cooper knew he didn't really want to live on his
own. He was moving out of Bridge End Farm because he felt so
strongly it was time for a change in his life -- and that was all.
Lie wondered whether Alison Morrissev lived on her own.
Frobablv not. And she was nothing to do with him, anvwav.
She was in Ldendale only as a passing visitor. Soon, she would
be fixing back to Canada, to an entirely different world, and he
would never see her again after today. But perhaps he could hope
that there was a person a bit like Alison Morrissey. waiting for
him somewhere.


75



JJiane Fry was waiting for Ben Cooper when he arrived back
at divisional headquarters in West Street. She glared at him as
he came into the CID room.

'You didn't answer your phone,' she said.

'I was in the middle of something,' protested Cooper. 'I
was going to call you back. How's the double assault case
shaping up?'

'Oh, you can forget about that for now.'

'Forget it? There were a couple of serious assaults, wounding
with intent, possession of offensive weapons. Not to mention
being potentially racially motivated.'

'Yeah, yeah, and somebody probably dropped some litter
on the pavement as well when you weren't looking. Forget
it.'

'But, Diane --'

'Add it to your pending file, Ben. We've got more important
things to do.'

'What's so important? Have we got another body or something?'

'What's so important,' said Fry, 'is that we've got a meeting
on the Snowman case. It just became a murder enquiry.'


Without really thinking about it, Ben Cooper had expected E
Division's new Detective Chief Inspector to be female. If not,
then a member of an ethnic minority. Or at least gay. It was
almost inconceivable that a senior appointment had been made
without an attempt to address the balance of gender, ethnicity
or sexual persuasion.


But. no matter how carefully Cooper studied DC I Oliver
Kessen, he still seemed to be a middle-aged white man with
receding hair and bad teeth, an ill-fitting suit and a paunch.
Seated next to their old DCI, Stewart Tailby, Kessen was the
centre of attention for the entire room. It was the first time


76



anybody there had set eyes on him, though he had only come
from D Division, which wasn't exactly Australia.

'Good afternoon, everybody,' said Kessen. 'Glad to meet you
all. Is everything under control?'
Several people opened their mouths to reply, hut didn't
manage to get a word out when they saw the expression on
DCI Tailbv's lace. He looked like a headmaster who had warned
his pupils not to talk to strangers.

'Yes, I'm sure it is,' said Tailby.

'Well, I've just arrived and I've got to settle in here, so I
rely on you people to bring me up to date. But 1 dare say
everything is going smoothly. I can see Mr Tailbv has been

/	o c* o ^ ^

running a good team.'

The new man nodded round the room, trying to make eye
contact with as many officers as possible. Cooper saw several of
his colleagues freeze like rabbits caught in car headlights, their
social skills failing them disastrously when faced with suddenly
conflicting demands from two equal-ranking senior officers.
Kessen must have thought he had walked into a waxworks

o

from the amount of response he got. With the right lighting,
it would have made a tableau for the chamber of horrors.

It was always a bit awkward when new bosses came. But it
had been Stewart Tailby's own decision to move on, to take up
a desk job at headquarters. So he could hardly object to the new
man's arrival, and he could hardly resist having his successor
sitting next to him and addressing his staff. Kessen was too
inexperienced to be Senior Investigating Officer on a major
enquiry. So until 1% Division got a Detective Superintendent to
be its new CID chief, Tailby was trapped. There were others
here who had expected to get Tailby's job when he moved, but
that was a different matter. It was no use telling (Arm not to be
resentful.

'As some of you know, we have the preliminary results from
the postmortem examination of the unidentified body of an
adult male found on the A57 Snake Pass,' said Tailby. 'As
a consequence of those results, we have opened a murder
enquiry. I appreciate that all of you here have other enquiries
on which you're engaged, and I don't need telling that we're


77



short of manpower. We're hoping to get some help from other
divisions, and the Chief is on the phone right now. But I have to

'	1 o

tell you that everybody seems to be in the same boat as regards

J	J J O

resources.'

It was true that the room seemed more sparsely occupied than
for any major enquirv Cooper could remember. It was ironic
that the crisis in manpower should coincide with an unidentified
murder victim and a serious assault with multiple suspects. There
was a lot of routine slog involved in those cases, and not many
people to do it.

'DI Hitchens and DS Fry will fill you in with what information
we have so far,' said Tailbv.

1 he Snowman's blue bag was on the table at the front of the
conference room, wrapped in latex to preserve it as evidence.
Everyone kept glancing at the bag, as if somehow it might tell
them everything they needed to know. Paul Hitchens stood up
and prodded it with a finger.

'The bag was found with the body by the snowplough crew,'

O	,' ; I O

said Hitchens. 'It's a common make, though not cheap. One of
the first jobs will be to trace shops in the area that sell this
type of luggage. Unfortunately, there arc no labels on it, and
no contents to help us identify the owner.'

'The bag was completely empty?' asked Cooper.

'There was so much empty space inside this bag, you'd
think it was a Derbyshire CID room,' said Hitchens. 'Except
it smelled better.'

Cooper saw DCI Kesscn's eves open a little bit wider. He
stared at Hitchens, then turned to Tailbv, who ignored him.
For the first time that morning, a small smile had crept on to
Tailbv's lace.

'Somebody went to great lengths to remove evidence of his
identity, then,' said Cooper.

'Yes and no,' said Hitchens. 'They removed the clothes from
the bag, but left him with what he was wearing. They took his
wallet and maybe his mobile phone, if he had one, but left the
contents of his pockets. In fact, why did they leave the bag itself ?
If the perpetrators handled it, they were taking a risk. Why not
dispose of it with the clothes? It doesn't really make sense.'


78



'What about missing persons?' suggested DCI Kessen.
'I'm sure that's under control, too,' said Tailhy.
'Oi course. Who's dealing with it. I wonder?'

o

Gavin Murfin tentatively raised a hand. His mouth was full of
chocolate, and he began to chew a little bit laster as both chief
inspectors turned their attention on him.

'This is Detective Constable Murfin,' said Tailby.

'Good afternoon, Murfin,' said Kessen. 'DC i/c mispers,
eh?'

Murfin's mouth opened. But all that came out was the sound of
masticated food and a faint choking at the back of his throat.

'Anything worthwhile, Murfin?' said Tailby.

'No, sir. There's a list on file, but nothing that jumps out at
you, like.'

'National forces?'

'They've all been circulated,' said Murfin. ' [here's some we
haven't had a response from yet.'

'Keep on to it, Murfin.'

'Yes, sir.' Murfin seemed to reali/e that his hand was still
in the air. He lowered it, looking round at his colleagues in
embarrassment.

'And who's the lady?' said DCI Kessen suddenly, tvervone
looked round at the door, wondering who had walked into
the room. But there was no one there. Cooper kept his eyes
straight ahead and saw DCI Tailbv's jaw tense. 1 here was only
one woman in the room this afternoon, and she was no lady --
she was Diane Pry. Eventually, a few officers managed to follow
Kessen's gaze and realized who he was looking at. He was

o	o

smiling, and he had raised one eyebrow at a jaunty angle,
a mannerism he must have practised while watching Scan
Connery videos.

It was Fry herself who answered him. She got out of her
chair and stood up to speak. Nobody else ever bothered doing
that during a meeting.

'Detective Sergeant Diane Fry, sir.'

'Good afternoon, Diane. And what are you working on?'

'DS Fry is one of my best officers,' said Tailby, his expression
tightening ominously.


79



'I'm sure she is. She looks it. But I rather think she's one of
my officers now, Stewart.'

'We've circulated a description of the man to all the media
and have appealed for information,' said Fry coolly. 'We've also
had officers out at checkpoints on the A57, stopping motorists in
the vicinity who might have seen something. We are also seeking
sighting of a four-wheel drive vehicle in the area around the time
that the body was dumped. And, naturally, we're following up
leads from the man's physical appearance, his clothing and his
possessions. His clothing seems to offer us the best chance at
the moment.'

DCI Kessen nodded and smiled approvingly.

'We also have a small tattoo on the left forearm of the body,'
said Fry. 'A dagger and a snake. It's a common motif, but it
might help identification/

'I'm sure you'll do an excellent job, Detective Sergeant Fry,'
said Kessen. 'An excellent job.'

'Shall we move on?' said Tailby. 'There's a lot to do today.'

Fry turned round so that she could see Cooper and Murfin.
They were careful not to smile.

'Explain the timing for us again,' said Tailby.

Frv set out the time line the narrow window in which the

V

killer or killers had the opportunity to dump the body on the
Snake Pass without being seen.

'So we're looking for a four-wheel drive vehicle, almost
certainly,' she said.

'There arc lots of those around.'

'Eddie Kemp has one, for a start,' said Murhn.

'Who?' said Tailby.

'The bloke that we had in on suspicion for the double
assault.'

'Really?'

'Do we have a suspect in custody?' asked Kessen. 'I didn't
know this. Whose arrest was it?'

'Mine,' said Cooper. 'But it was a completely different
incident.'

'Are we sure of that?'

'It happened the same night,' said Murfin.


80



Cooper hesitated. 'There's no obvious link. Except (or the
timing/

'He has an Lsu/.u Trooper. I've seen it parked outside when
he's been doing the windows.'

'Doing what?'

'He's a window cleaner,' said Murfin. 'Gut anyway, he isn't
in custody any more -- he's been sent home. He's had his
twenty-four hours.'

v

Tailby pulled a face. Too often it had been known for the
police to have a suspect in their custody, only to release him
before the crucial evidence turned up to justify a charge. 'We'd
better be absolutely sure there's no link,' he said. 'Someone
check that out.'

Cooper realized he was the one the DCI was looking at. 'Yes,
sir,' he said.

DI Hitchens interrupted. 'We're currently tracking down
some CCTV footage. In view of the location of the assault,
we're hoping either the suspects or the victims might have been
caught by one of the town centre cameras.'

'That's good,' said Tailbv. 'Now let's have some attention on

O	' V

identifying the Snowman. It's going to be a long haul. Without
an ID, we're in difficulties. We need to get assistance from the
public, of course. But since he's probably not from this area,
that's going to take some time. That means there are plenty
of jobs to do. Mr Kcssen thinks everything is under control, so
let's not disappoint him.'


Diane Fry looked distracted. Ren Cooper leaned over towards
her as the meeting broke up.


'Whoever killed the Snowman, it sounds as though we're
looking for amateurs anyway,' he said. 'They weren't thinking
things through properly. There's no logic to what they did. No
system, no planning. That's good, isn't it? It means they'll be
worrying now about what traces they left behind.'

Fry shrugged. ' That's not quite true. The timing of it looks
planned. Somebody thought that through, all right.'

'Unless they were just luckv.

'There's not much we can do about luck, Ben.'


81



'Yes, there is,' said Cooper.

'What?'

'We ran get lucky ourselves.'

'Yeah, right.'

But Ben Cooper believed in lurk. lie believed that, if you
worked hard enough and long enough at something, then
eventually luck would start to operate in your favour.

What Cooper failed to reali/e was that he had already
been given the most important piece of luck he would get
that week.


Alter the enquiry teams had been hastily assembled, Cooper
walked back from the incident room with Diane Fry and Gavin
Murlm. The only sound between them was Murfin humming to
himself. Cooper listened, trying to identify the tune. It sounded
like an old Eagles song, 'New Kid in Town'.


'Well, a new broom sweeps clean,' said Murfin as he reached
his desk and began to hunt through his drawers. 'So my old mum
used to say, like.'

Cooper saw that Pry couldn't bring herself to say anything.
She was pale and held herself rigidly, as if she were free/ing cold.
And it n-flv cold in the incident room, too. You could have broken
up the air with an ice axe.

'Always the optimist, aren't you, Ben?' she said. 'You talked
about getting lucky. Well, take a look around you. We're at
rock bottom for resources and we have an unidentified body on
top of all our other enquiries. We have a new DCI, the Chief
Super is cracking up, and Gavin here is our number one asset.
Even the weather is against us. Does it look as though we're
likelv to get lucky?'

'Well, you never know.'

'Do you think we could persuade Mr I ailbv to stay on?'
said Murfin.

"I don't think it would take much to persuade him,' said
Cooper. 'lie's not really all that keen on the HQ job.'

'He's even less keen on the new DCI.'

'Mr Kessen will settle down, Gavin.'

'It could take time, I reckon. I don't know, Ben they call


82



sonic of us old coppers dinosaurs. But it's like a proper JurassicPark
on the lop corridor sometimes.'

'So why did you bring up Eddie Kemp? Trying to score some
points with the new DCI? Kemp has nothing to do with it, has
he? What have you got against him?'

'Maybe he didn't clean my windows properly,' said Murfin.
'Well, I don't know. Kemp and his mates might have been
cruising for victims. Got the taste for it with the other two, then
nicked some poor bugger up at the roadside out of town.'

I	I OO I

'I talked to Kemp's wife,' said Cooper. 'According to her,
he didn't come home at all that night,' said Cooper, 'lie went
to the pub at eight o'clock and she knew nothing until she got
a call next morning to tell her he was in custody. She also says
the Isu/u was gone all night. According to her story, somebody
brought it back earlv next morning and put the keys through
the door.'

'One of Kemp's associates, presumably, since he was in
custody at the time,' said Fry.

'Presumably. But we ought to check.'

'Does Mrs Kemp know her husband's friends?'

'Knows them, but doesn't want to, I'd saw.'

'No names supplied?'

'No. She's not happy, but she's not giving evidence against
her husband. The two victims might be more help when \ve can
get full statements from them, but I doubt it. They're part of
the Devonshire Estate gang -- they think talking to the police is

O	O C1 i

like committing suicide. So all we have against Eddie Kemp is the
identification of the old couple who looked out of the window
and say they recogni/ed him as part of the group. You know how
reliable witness identifications are in those circumstances. Eddie
himself savs it he hit anybody, he was acting in self-defence.'
'I don't suppose1 he's identified the other three?'
'Are you kidding? Somebody is going to have to enquire into
his associates.'

'God knows who,' said Fry. 'And God knows when.'
'I bet it'll be me,' said Cooper. 'I seem to have got Kcmp's
car on my list.'

'Hey,' said Murfin, 'did you realize that the new DCT's


83



name is Oliver?' He held up the rubber lobster of the same
name.

'Are you telling us it's a coincidence, Gavin?'

Diane Fry had been tapping her finders on her desk. Now she
seemed to make a decision, shake her head and \vas suddenly
her proper self.

'You'd better go and take a look at his car, then, Hen,' she
said. 'And take Gavin with you.

'I'm on missing persons,' said Murfin.

'Let the allocator know where you're up to, then you'll have
to leave it for an hour or two. Ben can't go to see Kcmp on his
own. He's doing enough solos as it is.'

Murfin left, grumbling all the way. With a spasm of concern,
Cooper watched Fry as she stared out of the window for a
while, the muscles at the side of her mouth tight with tension.
She fiddled at a strand of her fair hair in an uncharacteristically
uncertain gesture. Her hand was pale and slender, with tendons
that he could have traced with his finger.

'A new broom sweeps clean?' she said. 'I'll stick a broom up
his arse.'

Cooper nodded. He didn't think she was talking about
Gavin Murfin.


84



8


1 he Buttcrcross area of Old Edcnclalc had its own personality,
its own picturesque gloss, which had been carefully polished and
maintained over the years for the benefit of visitors. It was here
that the town's antique shops clustered, some of them stuffed
with gleaming mahogany furniture and brassware, but others
dim and dusty, with nothing in their windows but a few coloured
bottles and a Queen Victoria diamond jubilee biscuit tin.


There were shops here that Ben Cooper had never seen open,
not in all his life spent in and around Edcndale. Today, as usual,
the 'closed' signs hung on their doors, with no indication of
when their owners would be available to do business. Maybe
they only appeared on special occasions, such as bank holiday
weekends, when tourists thronged the Buttcrcross with money
to spend. Maybe the dealers sold enough bottles and biscuit
tins on those davs to see them through the rest of the vcar. On

v	6 ./

the other hand, maybe they all had proper jobs to do.

The Buttcrcross certainly lived up to the tourist brochure
image this afternoon. The lying snow and the weathered stone
and mullioned windows of the buildings hit just the right
Dickensian note to set off the antique furniture. Sadly, there
were no tourists in January to appreciate it.

Between two of the shops, a narrow street lurched suddenly
uphill. There were steel handrails set into high limestone walls
on either side for pedestrians, but no pavements to separate them
from any cars that might scrape their way round the corner. The
walls had been the traditional dry stone when they were first
built. But now they were held together by mortar, and they had
periwinkles growing out of their cracks - forlorn green strands
encased in frozen snow.

Gavin Murfin swayed against the side of Cooper's Toyota as
they bumped over the cobbles, took a sharp turn and then made
another steep climb to emerge into the Underbank area. The
streets here were even narrower, and the doors of the houses


85



had tiny knockers shaped like owls or loxes, with their numbers
pieked out in coloured tiles set into the stonework. Further up
the hill, a set of three-storey Regency houses stood near a vouth
hostel. Several of the houses had been converted into (lats, hut
one at the tar end looked empty and uncared for. A broken
window on the first floor had been left unrepaired.

Beelev Street was hardly more than an alley, with an unmade
surface just wide enough for one vehicle to pass. Cooper

*	O 11

and Murfin walked up the- street and crossed a patch of
snow-covered grass.

'Well, that's Fddie Kemp's car,' said Murfin. 'I've seen it
many a time at West Street.'

It was a silver Isu/u Trooper with a set of ladders clipped to
its roof rack, and it was parked on a raised concrete platform
in front of Kemp's house, with its headlights looking down the
street towards the Buttercross. The- council binmcn had left a
new plastic refuse sack wedged behind a downspout near the
front door. They wouldn't be coming up here again with their
wagon soon, though, unless the snow cleared.

Fddie Kemp himself emerged from the house when they
knocked.

'Oh, it's you,' he said. 'I've answered all the questions I'm
going to.'

'Is this your car, sir?' said Cooper.

'Are you deaf? I just said I've answered all the questions I'm
going to.'

fr- pounds

'It won't take a minute to check with the DVFC if you're
the registered owner.'

'Why, what's wrong with it?' said Kemp.

'I don't know, sir. Is there something wrong with it? Would
you like us to have a look while we're here?'

'No.'

'It's a nice motor,' said Murtin cheerfully. 'It looks really
useful, like.'

'Well, you know damn well it's mine anyway,' said Kemp.
'All you coppers know. I park it up at your place regularly when
I'm doing the windows.'

'Four-wheel drive, isn't it?' said Cooper.


86



'Of course it is.'

'Good in snow?'

'It has to he.'

'Were you driving this car on Monday night, sir?'

'It was parked here.'

'From what time?'

'Has somebody said they saw me in it?'

'That isn't an answer.'

Murfin leaned against the concrete platform. 'You ought to
answer DC Cooper/ he said. 'If he gets annoyed, he stops calling
you "sir". That can he very nasty.'
Cooper stepped up on to the platform and looked at the tyres
of the Isuzu. They wouldn't tell him anything at all, hut Kemp
didn't know that.

'What time do you finish work, sir?' he said.

'When it starts going dark.'

'About quarter past four, then, at the moment. Did you come
straight home from work on Monday night/

'I've got a wife and a kid,' said Kemp. 'They expect to see
me occasionally.'

I'll take that as a "yes", shall I?'

'You can take it as what the hell you like. What are you

y	^

looking for?'

Murfin pointed down the street towards the Ruttercross.
'I had a girlfriend who lived around here once. I seem to

o

recall there was a little Indian takeaway on the corner, near
the hairdresser's. Is it still there?'

'Yes, it is,' said Kemp.

'What time does it open?'

'Ho\v the hell should I know?'

There was mud on the tyres of the Isuxu and small stones
embedded in the tread. Streaks of brown grit ran along the sides
of the vehicle. Cooper worked round the back and looked in
through the tailgate.

'What time did you go out again on Monday, sir?' said
Cooper.

'I went to the pub for a bit,' said Kemp. 'What are you
looking for?'


87



'Which pub?'

'The Vine. I told them all this yesterday.'

'Is that where you met your mates?'

'I've got a lot of mates/ said Kemp.

'Really?'

'And some of them drink at the Vine.'

'Do they serve food at this pub?' said Murrin.

Kemp came up on to the platform and stood next to Cooper,
though it was more in an effort to get away from Murfin than a
desire for companionship. Kemp was an inch or two shorter than
Cooper, hut he was powerlullv huilt. They both looked through
the tailgate at the contents of the Isuzu. There were buckets,
sponges, plastic trays of cloths and wash leathers. There were
also two rolls of stiff blue plastic sheeting, each about four feet
long, with mud stains on their outer surfaces.

'What do you use the plastic sheets (or?' said Cooper.

'Standing the ladders on, so they don't make marks on
anvbody s fancy paving, and such.'

'What time did you get home from the pub on Mondav?'

'When it shut. I said all this.'

'Did you go out in the car again?'

Kemp said nothing. Cooper could see fresh grazes on his
knuckles when he leaned on the car. He was also standing quite
close now, and the freezing cold air did wonders for clearing the
sinuses and sharpening the sense of smell. Cooper thought of the
people who claimed to be able to see auras. Was it possible to
5mc/7 auras, as well as to see them? If he could see Eddie Kemp's
aura, it would be a sort of bilious green, shot through with yellow
streaks, like pea soup flavoured with cinnamon.

'Did you decide to drive up the A57 with your mates?' said
Cooper.

Kemp still said nothing.

'Which of your mates were with you? The same ones you met
in the Vine? Did you find more than two victims that night? Did

^	o

something go wrong?'

Kemp began to walk back to his house.

'Can you recommend a good chippie then?' said Murfin as
he passed.


88



'We're jjoing to have to take your car away to have a look
at it, sir,' Cooper called after him.

Kemp put a hand in his pocket, turned and threw a set of
keys on to the concrete platform.

'Give it a wash, then, while you're at it,' he said, and slammed
the front door.


Ben Cooper and Gavin Murfin sat in Cooper's Toyota to wait
for the vehicle recovery team to arrive. It was cold, and it was
starting to get dark already. Cooper kept the engine running so
that they could have the heater on, and wondered what he could
do with his time while he waited. He looked at Murfin, hut as
soon as he'd felt the warmth from the heater, Murfin had put
his head hack on his scat and closed his eyes. His mouth hung
open slightly. Not much hope of conversation, then.


Cooper tried the radio. There was a sociological discussion
programme on Radio Four, a phone-in on Radio Sheffield, and
pop hits of the 1980s on Peak 107. He poked around among his
cassettes and found nothing he hadn't listened to already in the
last tew days. Then he remembered the books he had bought
From Lawrence Dalcy, which were still somewhere deep in his
poacher's pocket.

He switched on the courtesy light and flicked through the
contents pages of the two books. He quickly found the chapter
about the crash of Lancaster SU-V, Sugar Uncle Victor. It was
one of many aircraft that had fallen victim to primitive navigation
equipment and treacherous weather conditions over the Peak
District. Some of them were aircraft the Germans hadn't been
able to shoot down, but which the hills of the Dark Peak had
claimed.

Ironically, Mk III Avro Lancaster W5013 had been built
locally, by Metropolitan Vickers at their factory in Bamford.
So it had started life only a few miles from where it had finished
its days. From a recent photograph of the wreckage, he could
see there were still several of the larger pieces left part of the
tail, a wing section, and engine casings minus their propellers.

Like Frank Baine, the author of these books had done plenty
of research, and the details of SU-V's crew were comprehen

89



sivc. As Bainc had said, there had been seven men on board the
Lancaster four British RAF men, two Poles and the Canadian pilot,
Danny McTeague.

Of the British crew, the bomb aimer and rear gunner,
Sergeants Bill Mee and Dick Abbott, had been found dead

o

P'

some distance from the aircraft. The text described them as
'severely mutilated', but Cooper rccogni/ed the euphemism.
The phrase was still used today, in official statements to the
press on the victims of serious road accidents or suicides on the
railway line. It meant their bodies had been dismembered. The
wireless operator, Sergeant I farry Gregory, and the mid-upper
unner, Sergeant Alec Hamilton, had been trapped inside the
wreckage and had died in the fire that consumed the central
section of the fuselage. Burned beyond recognition, they had

O	J O J

been identified by the uniforms under their flying suits, and by
the contents of their pockets, after their bodies had been taken
to the RAF mortuary at Buxton.

Cooper put the book down tor a moment. Fie wondered
whether Alison Morrissey had considered the possibility that
one of the bodies had been wrongly identified. Perhaps, after
all, her grandfather had died in the crash. All this time, it
might have been some other member of the crew they should
have been looking for. And he wondered about Pilot Officer
Zygmunt Fukas/, the flight engineer, who had survived and was
now seventy-eight years old.

Gavin Murfin stirred and grunted in his seat. His eyes
opened.

'Where are we?' he said.

'Underbank,' said Cooper. 'We're waiting for the recovery
crew.'

'There's a good Indian takeaway around here somewhere,'
said Murfin. Then he snorted, and his head fell back again.

Weather conditions and primitive equipment Cooper supposed
that was the standard explanation for many of these
incidents. Otherwise, the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor seemed
inexplicable -- the aircraft was flying much too low, and it was
off course. But it was hinted in the book that the reason it
was off course was that the skipper had apparently ignored


90



the navigator's instructions. So was it another example of a

o	1

pilot caught in the trap between high ground and low cloud,
finding mountains suddenly in front of him when he thought he
was approaching his home airfield in Nottinghamshire? Or had
something else gone wrong?

One of the eye witnesses quoted in the account of the fate
of Sugar Uncle Victor was the former RAF mountain rescue
man, Walter Rowland, who had also keen mentioned by Alison
Morrissev. Like Zygmunt Lukasz, he had been unwilling to talk

/	' O ' O

to her. Unwilling, or unable? Rowland was described as being
eighteen years old at the time of the crash. After all that time,
memories faded. But sometimes there were memories which
were too clear for anyone to want them reviving.
'}^o sign vet?' mumbled Murrin.

O	V

'Not yet.'

'It's no good, Ren. I'm having curry-flavoured dreams. I'm
going to have to go and see if that Indian is open.'

boo	1

'Fair enough. I'll still be here when you get back.'
'Do you want anything?'

^	V O

'Some naan bread.'

'Is that all? You can't live on that.'

"I wasn't intending to,' said Cooper.

Murfin slipped out of the car, and Cooper watched him
stumble down the street, clinging precariously to the steel
handrail to stay on his feet. If he made it back up with a
set of foil trays and a bag of naan bread intact, it would be
a miracle.

Cooper looked at his mobile phone. He was trying to
remember whether Frank Bainc had said where Alison Morrissev
was staying, but he couldn't recall. There weren't all that manyhotels
in Edendalc, and he could easily give Baine a call in the
morning to find out. He might also ask the journalist for Walter
Rowland's address.

I hen Cooper laughed to himself. He was thinking all these
things as if he were intending to investigate the fifty-sevenyear-old
mystery, which was ridiculous. The Chief had alreadysent
the Canadian woman packing, and quite rightly. There
was certainly no time to be spared on pointless sidelines, by


91



himself or anyone else. He had more than enough to do. So
what use would it be for him to know where Morrissev was

j

staying? Why should he need to visit Walter Rowland? No
reason at all.

Thinking he had finished the chapter on Sugar Uncle Victor,
Cooper turned the page. He found himself looking at
photographs of the wreckage taken shortly alter the crash.
Sections of broken fuselage lay in the snow, being examined by
policemen and servicemen in long overcoats. I he letters SUV
were clearly visible on the airframe in one shot. There was no
sign of Irontonguc Hill in the background, but the photographer
had provided a distant glimpse over the moors to a glitter of
water on Blackbrook Reservoir, which established the location
beyond doubt.

Then, with the next series of photos, the story suddenly took
on a human dimension. The first picture was a 'team line-up' of
the Lancaster crew -- seven young men dressed in Irving suits
and flying boots, with their fur collars turned up and the wires
from their headsets dangling round their shoulders. They were
standing in front of the fuselage of an aircraft, which was probably
Uncle Victor himself. The sun was low and falling directly on
the men, making their eyes narrow and their faces pale, like
miners who had just emerged from underground into the light.
They were managing smiles for the camera, though they looked
exhausted.

Cooper thought the comparison to miners wasn't a bad one,
because working in dangerous conditions forged a bond between
men that was hard to break. These young airmen had flown
thousands of miles in cramped and difficult conditions night after
night, heading into hostile tcrritorv, with no idea whether they

O >	fo . ' ;

would make it back to base. And not one of them looked older
than his early twenties.

There was a picture of the ground crew and armourers
getting the aircraft ready for its mission. This was definitely
Uncle Victor, judging from the pawnbroker's sign painted on the
nose of the Lancaster 'Uncle' being the common euphemism in

O	1

those days for a pawnbroker. He noticed that the ground crew
barely seemed to have a standard uniform -- they wore leather


92



jerkins, sea-hoot socks, gumboots, battleclrcss, oilskins, tunics,
scarves, mittens, gloves, balaclavas.

On the lacing page was the most atmospheric picture of all. It
had been taken inside the aircraft, and it was grainy and spattered
with white specks where there had been dust on the negative.
The curved interior structure of the aircraft could be seen, and
the lettering on an Clsan chemical toilet, in the foreground, a
voung airman was half-turned towards the camera. I lis sergeant's
stripes were clearly visible on his arm, and he wore a leather
Hying helmet and the straps of a parachute harness over his
uniform, so he must have been preparing for takeoff.

But the airman was surely no more than a boy. There was no
caption to say who he was, and it was difficult to identify him as
one of the men on the lacing page. The photographs must have
been taken at a different time, because this young man had a faint
moustache, while the only airman in the group photograph with
a moustache was identified as the pilot, Danny McTcague. This
wasn't McTcague. This young man had a prominent nose and a
narrow face, and a small lock of dark hair that had escaped from
under his flying helmet on to his forehead. Cooper decided he
must be Sergeant Dick Abbott, the rear gunner. He had been

o	' c?

eighteen years old, and the crew had called him Lofty because
he was only five foot six inches tall.

Cooper stared at the photo for a long time, forgetting to
read about the many other aircraft that had come to grief in
the Dark Peak. He felt as if the young airman were somehow
communicating with him across the distance of more than five

b

decades. It didn't seem all that long ago that he too had been the

o o

same age as this airman. Cooper could sense himself slipping into
the young man's place in the aircraft. He could feel the straps of
the parachute over his shoulders and the rough uniform against
his skin, hear the roaring of the four Merlin engines and feel the
vibration of the primitive machine that would hurtle him into
the air. He was eighteen years old, and he was frightened.

Hen Cooper was hardly aware of the vehicle recovery crew
negotiating their truck into Rceley Street with lights flashing and
diesel engine throbbing. His attention was taken up by trying to

O	O I V v O

analyse his feelings about the photograph, so that he was hardly


93



aware, even, of Gavin Murfin tapping on the window, unable to
open the door because of the leaking trays he was balancing.
When Murfin was back in the car, it immediately beran to fill

J	O

with smells of curry and boiled rice. The steam from the travs
logged the windows, so that Beeley Street and Eddie Kemp's
Isuzu gradually yanished in a fog.

'Here's your naan bread,' said Murfin. 'Dip in, if you want.'
But the naan bread sat in his lap unopened, the grease
gradually soaking through the paper on to his coat.

Cooper finally realized that it was the look in the young man's
eyes that was completely different from the group picture; it
was a look which made him unrecognizable from the lineup
of smiling heroes. It was the blank, empty stare of a man who
had no idea whether he would be coming back to his home base
that night. The young man's stare spoke of resignation at the
prospect of sudden death as a German night-fighter raked Uncle
Victor with machine-gun fire, or the Lancaster's engines tailed

o	o

and they were forced to ditch in the icv North Sea. According
to the text, Lancasters were notoriously difficult to escape from
when they were in the water.

In fact, that haunted look and the grey, grainy quality of the
photograph made the airman appear almost as though he wasn't
there at all. He might have been no more than a faded image
superimposed on the interior of the aircraft, the result of an
accidental double exposure on the him.

To Ben Cooper, it seemed that the photographer had captured
a moment of presentiment and foreboding, a glimpse into the
darkness of the near future. Sergeant Dick Abbott, only eighteen
years old, looked as if he were already a ghost.


94



IJack at West Street, Ben Cooper dug through the paper that
had been collecting on his desk until he found the file produced
by the Local Intelligence Officer for the meeting with Alison
Morrissey. It didn't have anything like the amount of detail about
the crash and the Lancaster's crew that was in the book from
Lawrence's shop. But the I.IO's hie did have one advantage
it had the names of the two boys who had reported seeing the
missing airman walking down the Blackbrook Reservoir road
that night.

Cooper had remembered that point, because Morrissey had
complained during the meeting that she was unable to track
them clown since their names weren't given in the reports. It
hadn't seemed wise to admit that he had the information in
front of him; the Chief Superintendent would certainly not have
approved of too apparent a willingness to assist. But it meant
the LIO had done a good job collecting the information. Either
that, or Alison Morrissey's research was badly flawed.

'Do you know Harrop, Gavin?' he said.

Murfin sniffed. 'Godawful place. Back of the moon that is,
Ben. That's not where you're thinking of moving to, is it?'

'No. I don't think I've ever been there.'

'It's up the top of the Snake Pass somewhere, on the way to
Glossop.'

'It must be over the other side of Irontonmje Hill.'

'That's it. I bet they were cut oil' up there today all
right. There's no bus service in Harrop. No bus route, so
no priority for the snowplough. Somebody will dig them out
tomorrow, maybe.'

I he names of the boys were Edward and George Malkin, aged
twelve and eight, of Hollow Shaw Farm, Harrop. From what
Gavin said, Harrop sounded the sort of village where families
might stay in one place, generation after generation of them
sometimes. Cooper found a telephone directory. Sure enough,


95



there was a G. Malkin still listed at. Hollow Shaw Farm. There
seemed a good chance that this was the same George Malkin,
then aged eight, now sixty-five.

'Knocking off, Ben?' said Muriin. 'Fancy a pint?'

'I'd love to. Gavin,' said Cooper. 'But I've pot things to do.

'	' 1 O o

Places to look at.'

'Ah, the pleasures of house-hunting. It kind of ruins your
social life, like.'


Cooper drove eastwards out of Edcndalc. He climbed the Snake
Pass and descended again almost into Glossop before he turned
north and skirted the outlying expanses of peat moor around
Irontongue Hill. The buttress of rock on top of the hill was a
familiar sight to him, as it was prominently visible on a good
day from the AS7. The rock was certainly tongue-shaped when
you looked at it from this direction, with ridges and crevices

J	' O

furrowing its dark surface. It wasn't a human tongue, though.
There was something reptilian about its length and the suggestion
of a curl at the tip. And it was colder and harder than iron, too --
it was the dark rock that millstones had been made out of, the
sort of rock that the weather barelv seemed to touch, even over
centuries. The wind and rain had mere.lv smoothed its edges,
where the tongue lay on the broken teeth of volcanic debris.

Tonight, Irontongue was visible even in the dark. It uncoiled
from the snow-covered slopes to poke at the sky, with dribbles
of white lying in its cracks.


Cooper found that Harrop was barely big enough to be called a
village, yet the roads were clear enough of snow for the Toyota
to have no problems. Above Harrop there was a scatter of farms
and homesteads with those austere Dark Peak names -- Slack
Flouse, Whiterakes, Red Mires, Mount Famine and Stubbins.
They clung to the edges of the mountain like burrs on the fur
of a sleeping dog.


The lane up to Hollow Shaw Farm passed a single modern
bungalow and an isolated row of stone cottages. Past the
bungalow, the lane was no longer tarmacked. After the cottages,
it ceased to have any surface at all. Cooper hadn't seen any street


96



lights for the last few miles. He had to slow the Toyota to a crawl
and swing the steering wheel from side to side to avoid the
worst of the potholes, hut in the total darkness he couldn't see
some of the holes until he was almost in them. It was sudden
death (or suspension systems up here. This was the sort of lane
that delivery drivers and salesmen would avoid like the plague,
the kind of track that people needed a good reason to live at
the end of. As he climbed to Hollow Shaw, Cooper wondered
what George Malkin's reason might he.

He parked in front of the old farmhouse and got out. A few
yards away, a man was leaning on a wall. It was so quiet here
that Cooper could hear rustling from the field on the other
side of the wall, and the faint snorting of a flock of sheep.
Somewhere in that direction must be Blackbrook Reservoir.
He knew it wasn't a large reservoir like those in the flooded
valleys, where the vast stretches of Ladybower and Derwent
attracted the tourists. Blackbrook was small and self-contained,
just enough at one time to supply drinking water for the eastern
fringes of Manchester.

'Mr Malkin?' said Cooper.

'Aye. That'll be me.'

Cooper made his way across the garden to where the man
stood. Malkin was wearing a pair of blue overalls and a black
anorak, and a cap like a lumberjack's, with woollen earflaps.
Cooper thought at first that he was bundled up with sweaters
round his waist, but when Malkin moved he saw that the man was
actually pear-shaped, with wide hips like someone who hadn't
ever got enough exercise. Cooper introduced himself.

'I wonder if you could spare a few minutes, Mr Malkin?
Nothing to worry about.'

'You'd better come in the house.'

This was one farmhouse that had never been converted to the
standards of modem living. There was no double glazing and no
central heating -- a spiral of smoke from the chimney testified that
there was still at least one coal fire inside. The last modernization
had been in the 1960s by the look of the front door panelled with
frosted glass and the blue linoleum visible in the hallway.

Malkin took off his anorak and cap. His skin was weathered


97



and he looked like someone old before his time. George Malkin
had been eight years old when the Lancaster crashed, so he could
only recently have started drawing his pension.

'Excuse the mess,' said Malkin. 'I don't get a lot of visitors.'

Cooper shivered. There was an unrelenting coldness in the
house. Partly, it was the sort of chill that came from years of
inadequate heating and a Pennine dampness that had soaked
into the stone walls. And now the winds that spiralled down
oft Kinder and moaned through the empty fields had found their
way into Malkin's house tor the winter. The draught had crept
under the back door and slithered through gaps in the frames
of the sash windows, wrapping itself round the furniture and
draping the walls in invisible (olds. The chill seemed to Cooper
like a solid thing; it moved of its own accord, butting against
his neck as he walked across the room, and hanging in front of
him in every doorway, like a wet curtain.

'It's none too warm today,' said Malkin, watching Cooper
turning himself slowly in front of the fire in an effort to absorb
some warmth from the flames.

'No, it isn't.'

'This old house takes a bit of heating in the winter. But I
suppose I've got used to it. I grew up here, you see, and lived
here all my life. I've never known any different. They reckon
your blood gets thinner -- to compensate, like.'

There was no escape from the chill anywhere. Even when
Cooper stood directly in front of the coal fire, there was only
warmth on one side; the cold still fastened to his back like a
parasite, draining his body heat and sucking at his kidneys. Its
presence was part of the house, an icy phantom that would
need exorcizing with central heating, double glazing and a good
damp-proof course.

'You certainly get a bit of weather up here. Do you get
snowed in much?'

'Oh, aye. It's the first place that gets filled in when it snows.
It comes down the valley there, you see, and the hills funnel it
right into Harrop. When there's a bit of wind behind it, there

O	1 '

are some grand drifts to be seen down here. You should have
been here in the winter of 78. That was a winter and a half, if you


98



like. We lost our car for days on end. A Ford Escort it was, as I
recall. When we finally dug it out, the engine compartment was
solid with frozen snow. Aye, there were people walking along
the toppings of the stone walls out the tront here, because the

lane was so deep in snow the walls were the only solid surface

r	j

you could see for miles.'

'Actually, I do remember it,' said Cooper. He had, after all,
been six years old at the time, and he had missed school for a
few davs. Probably he hadn't been let out in the snow at all,
but had watched it from his bedroom window with his nose
pressed to the cold glass, drawing patterns on the frost on
the inside. Perhaps his parents had finally allowed him to go
out when most of the snow had gone. Me remembered being
pelted by his brother Matt with snowballs that felt as hard as
mahogany when they hit him, but which melted into cold, wet
slush inside the hood of his anorak and ran clown the back of
his neck. There hadn't been snow like that since then, as far as
he could remember. Not real snow.

'Come on through to the room,' said Malkin. 'Get yourself
warm.'

What Malkin called 'the room' was a kind of sitting room,
dominated by a large oak table. Its legs only stood on a carpet
at one end. At the other, the carpet had been rolled back to
expose the bare floorboards, which looked as though they were
still drying out from recent damp. Because the boards were old,
there were large gaps between them. Where Cooper stood, he
could feel icy draughts rising around him as if he were standing on
top of an open chest iree/er. A bottle of milk and an unsliced loaf
of bread stood on the window ledge alongside some steel cutlery,
and several weeks' worth of old newspapers were stacked near an
old armchair under a standard lamp. An oil painting on the wall
showed a herd of brown cattle against a sombre winter landscape.
The mountains behind the cows looked more Switzerland than
Derbyshire. Real peaks.

'Fancy anybody remembering the Lancaster crash,' said
Malkin. 'A long time ago, that was.'

'Fifty-seven years,' said Cooper, trying to (md a patch of
carpet to stand on.


99



'I was only eight years old then.'

'You haven't forgotten, though, have you?'

'No, of course I haven't forgotten. It made a big impression
on me. Those things do, when you're that age. I'm getting so as
I can't remember what I did five minutes ago, but I remember
that plane crash as clearly as if I was there now.'

'You're not all that old,' said Cooper. 'Sixty-five? It's nothing
these days. Retirement age, that's all.'

'Retirement? They retired rne a few years back. These days,
vou're useless long before you get to sixty-five.'

A mantelpiece supported ornaments, knick-knacks and assorted
junk, and there was a television set standing on what might have
been a Victorian aspidistra stand. In an alcove, an electric socket
had been pulled out of the skirting board and the wires had been
left hanging.

'You were a farmer, weren't you?' said Cooper.

Malkin laughed. He had a rattling laugh, with phlegm shifting
noisily in his throat. 'Farmworker. Hired labour, that's all.
Shepherd I was, and a good 'un, too. But it doesn't matter
how good you are at your trade when it comes down to cutting
costs. It's the hired labour that goes first. Sixty-five? Maybe. But
it's not a matter of how many years you've lived. It's carrying
on doing something useful that stops you being old. The minute
you stop being useful, you might as well be dead.'

Malkin's middle-aged spread and the roundness of his belly
were emphasi/cd by the tightness of a hand-knitted green sweater
that must have been a si/c too small even when it was made. Of
course, farmers weren't as physically active as they used to be.
They could spend days sitting in the heated cab of a tractor or
combine harvester, hours punching buttons on feed mixers or
filling in endless paperwork. Just like coppers, in fact. A modern
farmer didn't toss bales of hay or carry stranded sheep on his back
any more than a bobby was expected to pound the beat or pursue
a suspect on foot. Modern methods made for a different shape of
man a man with a body moulded to the shape of padded seats
and computer workstations.

'I wondered if you had kept any souvenirs from the crash,'
said Cooper.


100



'Souvenirs?' said Malkin.

'From the aircraft itself?'

'We picked up a tew hits and pieces, me and Ted. There's
not much left now, though.'

'Ted's your brother, is that right?'

'Aye. He was four years older than me. 1 followed him round
like a dog, the way kids do. I must have been a right nuisance
to him sometimes.'

'Where is he now?'

'Long gone/ said Malkin.

Near the hrc, a wooden rack was draped with washing left
to dry. There was presumably no spin drier in the house, and
if left outside on the line, any garment would soon freeze to
the consistency of cardboard.

'Let me get the box,' said Malkin. 'Stay by the fire and keep
yourself warm.'

v

'Thanks.'

While Cooper waited, he worried about the drying clothes.
They seemed to be a little too near to the fire. Wisps of steam
and a warm, foetid smell rose from the lines of damp socks and
white Y-fronts. Cooper thought that in another few minutes
there would be singe marks on the cotton. Across the room, he
could see a short passage into what might have been a kitchen or
an old-fashioned scullery. There was an earthenware sink with an
enamel drainer and a cold tap, a geyser on the wall for hot water,
a cupboard with a flap that let down to create a work surface.

When George Malkin came back with a little wooden box,
the first item he produced from it was a photograph. They were
always the most treasured items among anyone's collections of
mementoes, those little snapshots taken on box brownies.

This photo a tiny black-and-white snap with a wide
border dated from 1945. One corner was turned over,
and when Cooper straightened it out he discovered a cobweb

o( lines formed by dust ingrained into the creases in the

^	&

paper. The photo showed a section of the crashed Lancaster
shortly after the accident, when it had become a focus of
attention for sightseers. The wreckage was almost unrecognizable:
bits of ripped and crumpled metal, trailing strands of


101



wire, scattered with dark soil thrown up from the peat moor
by the impact.

In the background, two men in trilbys could be seen peering
into a section of fuselage through holes torn in its side. But in
the foreground was another figure -- a small boy. He was only
about ten years old, but with that curious look about his face of
far greater age and knowingncss, a look that seemed a peculiarity
of old photographs, as if children in those days had grown up long
before they should have done. People often said that modern
youngsters grew up too soon. But their knowledge these days
was mostly about sex and drugs, a streetwise awareness that
set them apart from their parents and the older generations.
Children growing up in the war years were wise about other
things. For a start, they knew all about death.

o	' *

The boy was dressed in knee-length shorts and a pullover
with a white V-neck collar and elasticated cuffs. His socks had
crumpled around his ankles, and his heavy boots were laced up
tight. A lock of hair fell over his forehead, but at the sides it
was cut short and his ears stood out from his head. He was
staring directly at the camera with an intense look, striking a
self-conscious pose, his left hand raised to rest on one of the
huge engines that protruded from the debris. The engine was
still intact, and each of the curved propeller blades was taller
than the bov. It seemed incredible that souvenir hunters would
later cut away those propellers from the engine and remove all
trace of them from the moor. It must have taken at least two
men to carry one blade, and they would have struggled over the
rough ground and the steep slopes to get it back to the road.
What motivated them to go to such trouble? And where were
the propeller blades and the other aircraft parts now?

'Who is this boy?' asked Cooper.

'Who do you think?' said Malkin.

Cooper looked from the photograph to the man across the
table. Though the hair was grew now, and no longer fell over his

O	O j ' O

forehead, the style was much the same as it had been in 1945,
and so were the protruding ears. And the direct stare was the
same, too - then, as now, it was the stare of someone who had
grown too old too soon.


102



'So you walked up to Irontongue to look at the crash?'
'It was a great hit of excitement in those Jays. There was
no telly, of course. These days they wouldn't shift themselves
away from the goggle hox or their computers, would they? My
dad was too busy to hother with us, hut we went up with our
Uncle Norman, who lived just outside Glossop. I talked ahout it
at school tor months afterwards. I was a real centre of attention
for a while.'

'Did you come awav with any souvenirs yourself?'

/	^ ^

'Well, of course. Everybody did. Only a few mementoes, you
know. We used to swap them with other lads; the American
stuff was what we wanted most, unless we could get hold
of something from a German plane. There were plenty of
hits and pieces lying around then. But 1 got rid of nearly
everything.'

'Did you happen to find any medals?'

'Medals?' Malkin looked surprised. 'Medals would have been
worth something. I reckon. Rut they would have been on the

O'	V

bodies, probably, wouldn't they?'

'Probably. What did you take, then?'

Malkin pulled the box towards him and poked through its
contents. 'There arc some newspaper cuttings here, if you want
to see them.'

'I've seen most of them already, I think.'

'Fair enough.' He continued to fumble. 'I think it's here
somewhere. Ah yes. This is the only thing I've kept.' He produced
a round metal object with a blackened casing. Cooper had
expected some unidentifiable part of the aircraft superstructure,
but this seemed more familiar.

'It looks like a watch,' he said.

'Yes, it is.' Malkin slid the cover away. The blackened
lace wasn't metal after all, but glass fused by intense heat.
Underneath, the lace of the timepiece was pretty well intact,
though the metal frame had buckled slightly and there was a
scorch mark below the figure twelve. The hands had stopped
a fraction short of ten to eleven.

'Ten forty-nine,' he said. 'That was the exact time the
Lancaster crashed.'


103



'You mean one of the crew was wearing this watch when the
aircraft crashed?'

'I expect so. I found it lying in the peat, half-buried. I didn't
show it to my uncle or anyone, just shoved it in my pocket and
took it avvav with me. I only ever showed it to led and to my
pals at school. Do you think it would he worth much?'

'It was from the body of a dead man,' said Cooper.

'That was what gave it a bit of excitement,' he said. 'Don't
you see? The most exciting things are the ones you know
are wrong.'

Cooper looked back at the photograph of the eight-year-old
boy, while Malkin continued to finger the broken watch. The
knowing expression on the boy's face as he leaned against the
wrecked propeller gave him an uncomfortable feeling.

Malkin noticed his expression as he stared at the photo. 'Oh,
yes,' he said. 'I already had it in my pocket when my uncle took
that snap.'

Cooper put the picture back carefully in the box. 'It was you
and your brother who saw the airman?' he said. 'The one who
disappeared?'

'Yes, you're right. Who told you that?'

'It's in the reports. Did the police interview you?'

'Aye, a bobby came here the day after the crash. We'd told
our dad about seejng the airman, and he reported it to the
local police station. Everybody round here was talking about
it by then.'

'Tell me where you saw the airman, Mr Malkin. What did
he look like?'

'Nay, I can't tell you that it was dark. He was in a Hying
suit, that's all 1 know, with his leather helmet and all. He had
a torch, and we saw him going along the road that runs round
the reservoir and off down the hill. It comes out near the old
toll cottage on the Crowden road.'

'Can you show me?'

'I'll point you to it,' said Malkin.

They went back outside and walked back along the wall
towards Cooper's car. The sheep munched and snorted quietly
in the field.


104



'Look at that,' said Malkin, waving a hand at the Held as if
it had keen bright daylight rather than the true darkness of
the countryside. 'Good, rich land, that is. The best grazing
(or miles. It used to he a quarry years ago, hut they hlled it
in. 7\low these Swaledales are prized tor miles around lor their
meat. They produce the tastiest lamh chops in Derbyshire, my
mate Rod says. If you like, I'll get you a couple.'

'Thanks. This reservoir road . . .'

Malkin pointed into the darkness. 'Over yonder. Can you see
the line of the wall, with a hi! of a gate and a hawthorn bush?'

'just about,' said Cooper, though all he could distinguish was
the general direction the other man was pointing in.

'That's where the water board road runs. It has a locked gate
on it now, but it was only a bit of a dirt track in those days, just
made tor the maintenance men to get up to the reservoir. I bet
that airman was glad to find it, though. He would have had to
hike across the snow from Irontongue, and it must have taken
him an hour in the dark, I bet. Ted and me, we went along the
reservoir wall to get up near the crash we could see the fire
burning from the house. I suppose we wouldn't ever have seen
the airman if he hadn't been waving a torch around all over the

o

place. Aye, but we heard him.'
'Heard him? Was he shouting?'

o

'Singing,' said Malkin.

Cooper stared at him. He couldn't sec anything of Malkin's
face at all under the cap and the ear-flaps, but from his voice
he didn't sound as though he were joking.

'Sin^m^? Singing what, Mr Malkin?'

'As I recall, it was "Show Me the Way to Go Home".'


105



10




INext morning, Ben Cooper was on duty early again. As soon
as he arrived, he went to check out the morning's action iorms
for the Snowman enquiry. With no one in yet to allocate the
jobs, he might get ?,\vay with picking out something interesting.
He could say he thought he ought to get on with it, since he was
in early. That was something the snow could be thanked lor --
everybody was arriving at work after him these days. The only
people in the station were those on the late shift, who would
be going home soon, and the deskbound personnel didn't start
until nine.


'Keen, Ben?'

Diane Fry was unwinding her red scarf from her neck, pulling
her hair out from under a high collar and shaking it like a dog
emerging from water. When she took her coat off, she looked

o o

half the six.e. Cooper's mother would have said she was too thin,
that she needed a layer of fat to keep out the winter cold.

'I thought 1 might as well make a start,' he said. 'There's no
time to lose, is there? Considering the shortage of manpower
we keep hearing about.'

'Take a gold star. But actually, you're not alone. Even the
Chief Super is in. And I just saw DI Hitchens on his way up to
the top floor.'

There wasn't really much among the actions to be done.
Not surprising, really, since the Snowman had still not been
identified. But one form stood out. It related to a woman who
had phoned in last night when she had heard about the body on
the news. Most of the phone calls had been discounted, or the
details filed for later reference. But this one had sounded to the
operator as if it might be worth following up and it had been
passed on to the incident room. The woman claimed to have
seen a man who answered the description of the Snowman, right
down to the smart clothes and polished shoes, though minus the
blue overnight bag.

a


106


Cooper also thought the woman sounded worth talking to.
Her name was Luka.s/,.

Cooper showed the form to Diane Try.

'Look at this,' he said. 'This call came from a woman called
Mrs Grace I.ukas/, Woodland Crescent, Edendale.'

'So?'

'Lukas/ . . .'he said. Then he remembered that Fry knew
nothing about Alison Morrissev, Pilot Officer Dannv McTeague,
or the crew of Sugar Uncle Victor. 'Well, it was a name
mentioned in the meeting with the Chief yesterday.'

'What? Oh, the Canadian woman. What on earth was all that
about, then? Some old wartime story, people have been saving.
Why does she think she has the right to waste our time?'

'Somebody in Edendale sent her a medal belonging to her
grandfather, who went missing in 1945. He was a bomber
pilot, and he was supposed to have deserted after his aircraft
was wrecked near here.'

'Yeah?'

He could tell Fry had lost interest already. And why should
she be interested? There was nothing in the story to concern
the police. Not unless Morrissev produced some evidence of a
crime. A lost medal that turned up after fifty-seven years was
far from that.

'It's a bit of a coincidence, that's all. It's an unusual name.'

'You know what it's like,' said Fry. 'You notice an unfamiliar
word or name for the first time, then you seem to keep hearing
it again lor days afterwards. It's just that you never noticed
it before.'

'If it was a common name in Hdendale, I think I would have
noticed it before now.'

'Oh, I forgot -- you're Mr Local Knowledge. You probably
have the phone book memorized.'

She took the action form from him and studied it. The name
of Lukas/ meant nothing to her she was assessing the action
purely on its merits. Cooper found himself silently willing her
to hand it back. But then she began to look through the rest of
the forms.

'OK, but take these others as well,' she said. 'Kill several


107



birds with one stone. Then I can justify you missing the morning
meeting. I dare say we'll cope without you, for once.'

'All right, then. You know I still have several enquiries
outstanding?'

'Haven't we all?'


Before he went out, Cooper checked the electoral register tor
the address given by Grace Lukasz. The entry for 37 Woodland
Crescent showed three registered voters living in that household
-- Piotr Janusz Lukasz, Grace Anne Lukasz and Zygmunt
Henrvk Lukasz. So he had tracked down the survivor of the
Lancaster crash without even trying. Maybe Diane was wrong
about their luck -- it looked as though it might be changing.


Not that he had any reason for wanting to find Zygmunt
Lukasz. Not that there was anything he could ask the old man.
Not officially. But on a personal level, he would be interested to
hear Lukasz's version of the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor and of
what happened to Pilot Officer Danny McTeague. It might put
his mind at rest, settle down the uneasiness that had been aroused
by seeing the photographs of the crew, particularly the young
airman who seemed to have had death written on his face.

Besides, he personally thought that Alison Morrissey was justified
in searching for answers about the fate of her grandfather.
I le could sec she was hoping beyond reason that the medal
sent to Canada had come from Canny McTeague himself and
therefore meant he was still alive somewhere in the area. It
almost certainly meant someone knew more about McTeague
than had ever been told. Cooper knew he would have wanted
to do the same in her position. It was a little hard that he wasn't
able to help her when he was ideally placed to do so. If only he
didn't have so much else to do.

Cooper wrote the names of the Lukasz family in his notebook.
He would leave them until after he had visited the other
addresses. He liked to save the best until last.


Chief Superintendent Jepson was standing at the window of his
office on the top floor of divisional headquarters, looking down
on to the car park at the back of the building. Some of the snow



108



had been swept to the sides to clear a hit of space, hut cars and
vans were parked at all sorts of angles, making the place look
untidy. He watched a figure cross the car park. It was dressed
in a long waxed coat and a peaked cap.

'Hen Cooper is a good lad,' said Jepson. 'I don't want him
left out in the cold for long.'

1)1 Paul Hitchcns was in early because he had hecn told to
he. He was standing in the middle of the room waiting for the
Chief Super to get round to saying whatever it was that he had
on his mind. So far, they had touched only on the weather.

"I must admit, there's been some muttering in the ranks,

'	o '

said Hitchcns.

'Muttering? What do you mean?'

'Cooper is popular here. A lot of people think he's been
hadly treated, promotion-wise. Another one passed over for a
newcomer from outside, they're saying.'

'Yes. Well, perhaps they're right, said Jepson. 'I'd like to he

sure that now DC! Kessen has arrived he's made iullv aware of

/

Cooper's strengths and potential. It doesn't do to start off with
the wrong impression. And, Paul . . .'

'Yes, Chief?'

'Thai applies more generally.'

'I'm not sure what you mean.'

'I mean starting oH with the right impression. The first

O	O I

impression someone has of you can last a long time.'

'I understand.'

'So let's have a hit more of a positive attitude, shall we? Less
of the cheap humour.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Hitchens. 'I'll make sure my humour is
more expensive in future.'


Of course, Diane Fry was right. It was the wrong time to expect
a hit of luck. Two of the people on his list had hccn far too vague
ahout the man they had seen to he any help at all in identifying
the Snowman. Predictably, their descriptions had fallen apart
and become useless when they were questioned closely. And,
even if they AaJ seen the Snowman, they could not say who he
was, where he had been going, or where he had come from.



109



The first witness had been an old lady with bifocals arid

>

thinning hair, who had seen a strange man walking down her
street, stopping to look at the numbers on houses. She hadn't
seen him call at any particular address. And, unfortunately, she
hadn't noticed a car that might have belonged to him, which
would have helped a lot.

The second woman was younger, a divorcee with two young
children at primary school. This witness had a more detailed eye,
and her encounter had been at closer quarters. She had observed
a person very like the Snowman doing his shopping in Boots the
Chemists on Clappergatc, where he had bought ra/or blades and
a bottle of Grecian 2000 in a dark brown shade. She had noticed
that he was well dressed, with nicely polished shoes, and that
he had paid for his purchases with a brand new £20 note. She
had been standing right behind him in the queue at the till, and
she thought his aftershave was Obsession. Afterwards, she had

o

watched him walk off towards the market square, but had lost
him when he crossed the road near the High Street junction.
That was the way she had put it she had 'lost him'. Cooper
had been impressed. With a bit more training, she might have

I	O' o

made a useful surveillance operative.

As it happened, the third woman had been out. Cooper had
put his card through her door with a note asking her to contact
him. This witness lived in one of the crescents that clustered on
the hillside above Edendale. Most of the addresses here were
bungalows dating from the 1960s or 1970s, some of them quite
large, with well-established gardens or dormer windows built
into their roofs.

That left the address he had saved until last. Cooper consulted
the street map in the glove compartment of his car. Woodland
Crescent was only two blocks down the hill from the street he
was in, a few hundred yards away. He left the Toyota by the
kerb and walked downhill towards Edendale, carefully sticking
to the middle of the pavement to avoid sinking his shoes into
more snow.

He came across a little grocer's shop and a corner post office
that had billboards outside advertising the Derbyshire Times and

o	J

Daily Mail. A small flatbed lorry with the name of a local builder


10



on its cab door stood in a driveway next to an outdoor aviary
lull of fluttering zebra finches. Two hundred yards away, on
the main road, was a Case tractor dealership, directly opposite
Queen's Park, the town's largest open space.

Woodland Crescent was much like the other streets: more
bungalows, and a few newer homes at the top, with open-plan
lawns separating their drives. A man of about sixty, dressed in
vellow waterproofs like a fisherman, was slowing pushing snow
off the pavement with a brush. He stopped as Cooper passed
and gave him a nod. He was Hushed and breathing hard. The
clouds of his breath reminded Cooper of the early-morning cars
standing in exhaust fumes pumped from cold engines.

There was a woman sitting in the window of number B7, the
Lukasz home. It was a large bungalow with a built-in garage and
a sizeable conservatory, which he could see down the passageway
separating it from the bungalow next door. Cooper guessed the
woman must be Grace Lukasz. Was she the wife of Piotr?

Cooper walked up the driveway to the bungalow, conscious
of the woman's eyes on him. She was watching him suspiciously,
as if he might be somebody undesirable a Jehovah's Witness
or an insurance salesman. Near the front door, he stopped and
looked at her. The woman was still staring at him. And her
expression was more than suspicion it was fear.

Ky the time he rang the bell, the face of the woman had
disappeared from the window, though he hadn't seen her stand
up. He saw movement through the glass panels of the door,
and then realized why the woman hadn't stood up. She was in
a wheelchair.

Cooper introduced himself, and showed his identification,

interested by the woman's nervous manner. She relaxed, though.

& *

when she discovered who he was and why he had come. She

y

almost pulled him into the hallway of the bungalow and closed
the door behind him. Then she leaned forward in her chair
to fiddle with a draught excluder shaped like an elongated
sausage dog.

'If you wouldn t mind taking your shoes off,' she said. 'There
are some spare slippers in the cupboard.'

The heat in the bungalow was already bringing Cooper out


111



in prickles of sweat under his coat. The difference between this
and Hollow Shaw Farm was like getting on a plane in Iceland
and stepping off in tropical Africa. Grace Lukasz was wearing
a cream sweater and slacks, managing to look both comfortable
and smart. While he put on the slippers, Cooper looked at the
passages going off the hallway in two directions. It was certainly
a large bungalow. Four bedrooms, at least. He wondered what
Piotr Lukasz did lor a living.

O

'I'm not at all sure,' said Mrs Lukasx,. 'It's just that the
description sounded similar. And since the police were appealing
tor help . . .'

'Quite right. We always welcome the public's help.'
She tilted her head slightly to one side to look at him, an
amused smile on her face. She wasn't one to be easily fooled.
Cooper could see that she had been an attractive woman,
too. Still was, for anybody who saw past the wheelchair. She
had no trace of an accent. That didn't necessarily mean she
wasn't of Polish origin herself, but he was working on the
assumption that she was English and that she was Zvgmunt

I	O JO

Lukasz's daughter-in-law.

'Have you found out who he is yet?' she said.

Cooper was taken aback to find that Mrs Lukasz had seized
the initiative in asking the questions. He was forgetting what he
was here for, speculating too much about the old airman who
had flown on Sugar Uncle Victor. He knew himself well enough
to understand that a thing like this could become an obsession,
if he wasn't careful. But he very much wanted to sec Zygmunt
Lukasz, to compare him to the photographs in the book, to see
whether he was the young man who had seemed to communicate
with him across those hftv-scven years.

'No, we haven't, Mrs Lukas/. That's what I was hoping you
might be able to help us with.'

'I see.'

She seemed irrationally disappointed. 'But he didn't tell me his
name, I'm afraid. He came to the house, but I sent him awav.'

'When was this again?'

'Monday morning. I rang yesterday, after I heard it on the
news. You've taken a long time coming, haven't you?'


112



'We have a lot of people to speak to,' said Cooper.

He suddenly got the feeling he was being watched from
another part of the room. He looked round and met the sceptical
eye of a blue and green parrot. It had its head cocked at him in
almost the same way as its owner.

"I thought he was selling insurance or replacement windows/
said Mrs Lukasz. 'We get so many of them here. I knew he
wasn't a Jehovah, of course.'

'Oh?'

'They stopped coming when they found out we were Catholics.
It's a shame. I always hoped I might have been able to
convert one of them.'

'The man who came to the house on Monday,' said Cooper,
'he didn't say what he wanted?'

"I didn't give him a chance,' said Mrs Lukasz. 'I don't want to
be sitting on the doorstep in the cold, arguing with salesmen. I
nearly sent you packing, too, but I could sec you weren't selling
anything. Not in that coat.'
Cooper fumbled with his pen, embarrassed by the double stare

from the woman and the parrot. 'Could you give me a descrip-

i	v o r

tion of him, please? As much detail as you can remember.'

Grace Lukasz gave him the description succinctly. It fitted
the Snowman exactly, down to the shoes. She was an observant
woman, for somebody who hadn't even given the man a chance
to speak.

'Did he have a car?'

'Not that I saw/

'Did you notice which way he came from, or which way he
went when he left?'

'Not particularly.'

'Is there anybody else in the household I might ask, Mrs
Lukasz?'

She hesitated and began to look suspicious again. Cooper
almost brought out his ID tor a second time, just tor its
reassurance value.

'His car might have been parked somewhere else in the
Crescent,' she said. Try our neighbours. I expect he went
down the whole street if he was selling something.'


113



I'll certainly do that.'

'Will you let me know who he was when you find out?'

Again, Grace Lukas/ had taken him by surprise. But she was
waiting expectantly lor his answer, as if the information should
be part of their deal. It was understandable, he supposed, that
she should want to know who the man was who had been on
her doorstep and had died shortly afterwards.

'I'll see what I can do,' he said. 'In the meantime, we like to
get as much corroboration as possible. So while I'm here . . .'

'Well, my husband is home at the moment,' she said. 'And
there's my father-in-law. But neither of them saw him.'

'Perhaps we could check with them, to be sure. It would be
very helpful.'

Mrs Lukas/ seemed almost to be laughing. 'Come this way.'

She led him down a passage to the back of the bungalow,

I	o o '

where, she knocked on a door and called a name. Cooper noticed
that she called 'Peter', not Piotr, as her husband was listed in
the electoral register. A man came out, and Cooper caught a
glimpse of a bright conservatory full of plants. Lukas/ had dark
hair and long, slim fingers, which he wiped on a cloth. His eyes
looked rather tired.

'No, I didn't see him,' said Lukas/ stiffly when he was asked.
But Cooper was getting the same feeling that he'd had from
the man's wile. With each of them, there was that brief
moment when they might have answered differently, but held
something back.

'Are you quite sure, sir?'

'Yes, I'm certain,' said Lukas/.. 'I wasn't even at home by then.
I'm a consultant in the Accident and Emergency Department at
the hospital, and I'd stayed late that morning because we had
a crisis.'

'I believe your father lives here also.'
'I don't think he would be able to help you.'
Cooper was considering how hard he could risk pushing his
luck, when the doorbell rang. He heard Grace Lukas/ go back
into the hall to answer it. Automatically, Cooper turned towards
the front door. So he was standing in plain view next to Peter
Lukas/ when Grace opened it.


114



And then he wished he had been standing somewhere else at

o

that moment, anywhere else at all. Waiting on the doorstep of
the Lukasz bungalow were Frank Baine and Alison Morrissey.


'We need some clothes/ said DI Paul Kitchens. 'Otherwise, all
we have are the hare tacts.'


There were photos of the Snowman pinned to a board behind
the two DCIs. There was no hope of an identification yet.
One idea being considered was the production of an artist's
impression of the dead man, to be reproduced in the papers
and on the local television news, and for officers to show to
drivers at checkpoints on the A57. Motorists had already been
stopped, but nobody could recall seeing a man walking along
the roadside with a blue bag, or a vehicle parked in the lay-by
where the Snowman's body had been found. A picture might
make all the difference to their memories.

Dianc Fry thought DCI Kcssen looked as though he hadn't yet
adjusted to the sense of humour in E Division. According to the
grapevine, he had not been popular in D Division. The theory was
that when the new Detective Superintendent arrived, it would be
someone who could keep him from causing too much trouble.

'So our task for today is to find some clothes,' said Hitchens.
'And I'm in charge of the shopping expedition.'

DI I litchcns looked in his element when he was the centre
of attention. He stepped up to a map pinned to the wall and
tapped it with a ruler. He was pointing to an area to the west
o! the lay-by on the A57 where the Snowman had been found.
A search of the lay-by itself had recovered plenty of assorted
debris from under the snow, but nothing that might have been
the contents of the blue bag -- unless the Snowman had been in
the habit of wearing hub caps and cushion covers.

'Here's the place to start,' said Hitchens. 'Right below the
road here is an abandoned quarry. It's well within reach of the
lay-by and a favourite spot for fly-tippers. This is what you might
call the Knightsbridge boutique of our shopping trip. It could
have exactly what we want - but it's difficult to get into.'

Fry didn't see many officers laughing at the joke. Even DCI
Tailby frowned. Since Hitchens had moved in with his new


115



girlfriend to a modern house in Dronficld, he had definitely
gone upmarket. It sounded as though he had been dragged
off to London at some point to learn what shopping was all
about. An inspector's salary was a nice step up from a mere
sergeant's.

o

'If the bag was emptied in situ, chances are the contents will
be somewhere down here, in the quarry,' said Hitchens. 'Unfortunately,
when the quarry was abandoned, the owners spared
no effort in blocking it off to stop people getting in. I hey piled
rocks up in the entrance like they were building the pyramids
of Gi/a, and the sides are sheer. I suppose they must have been
worried about somebody stealing their leftover millstones.'

Hitchens twirled his ruler happily, as though he were conducting
a tune. The two DCIs sat stony-faced at their table.

o	^

refusing to sing.

b	o

'The net result is that there's no \vav we can get into that
quarry without the use of heavy machinery,' said Hitchens.
'And that would take time not to mention money. Since we
have neither, we're falling back on a bit of good old-fashioned
improvisation. To put it bluntly, we've decided to use a man
with a long rope and a careless disregard for his personal safety.'
Hitchens smiled. 'Now all we need is a volunteer. Don't all shout
at once.'

Nobody moved. Nobody so much as let his chair creak.

T have some photographs to encourage you,' said Hitchens.

He picked up a large print of a photo taken from the fence at
the edge of the lay-by, looking down into the quarry. The sides
were almost smooth, except for patches where the stone was
crumbling away. There was snow at the bottom, but it looked a
long way otf. It covered large, uneven shapes, like a white dust
sheet thrown over a room lull of modern furniture. They all
knew there were rocks littering the floor of the quarry under
that snow, guaranteed to break a few ankles.

'No one?' said Hitchens. 'Then I suppose I'll have to nominate
a volunteer.'


Peter Lukas/ had reacted so angrily to the presence of the two
people on his doorstep that Ben Cooper had begun to think he



116



would have to intervene to prevent a breach of the peace, or
an outright assault. Until that moment, Lukasz had seemed an
ordinary, reasonable man -- but he had changed into a snarling
guard dog. He had pursued Alison Morrisscy and Frank Baine
from his propertv, seen them right down the driveway, then
had come back in and slammed the door after them.

Breathing hard, Lukasz had answered Cooper's questions with
a distracted air, and terse replies. He knew nothing, and he
hadn't seen the man that his wife was talking about, he said.

Cooper got ready to move on. He would have to call on
the neighbours, to sec if they, too, had been visited by the
Snowman but had not noticed a resemblance to the description
given out on the local news. Maybe one of the neighbours had
bought some double glazing from him, which would be a stroke
of luck indeed. There was also the third witness, who hadn't
been home when he called. And no doubt there would be other
jobs waiting for him back at West Street.

But Cooper was reluctant to leave too quickly. He tried to
stretch out the process of changing back into his shoes, while
squinting through the glass door to sec if anyone was hanging
around outside.

Then he noticed that Lukasz hadn't disappeared back into
the conservatory but had turned towards another room next
to it. As he opened the door, Cooper caught sight of a third
person, seated at a table. It was an old man, with thin, white
hair receding from his forehead and brushed back over his ears.

o

He had \vire-rimmed glasses worn on the bridge of a Roman

o	o

nose, and he was wearing a heavy brown sweater that made
his shoulders look out of proportion to his body. The old man
looked up as Peter entered, and Cooper saw his eyes. They
were pale blue and distant, like glimpses of the sky through
broken cloud.

It was only a second or two before the door closed again.
But Ben Cooper had been given his first glimpse of Zygmunt
I.ukasz.


DI Hitchens folded his arms and looked around the room, which
had gone horribly quiet. No volunteers came forward for the



117



privilege of being lowered into the quarry. There were officers
here who were likely to have a panic attack if they thought
the stairs were too steep. There were others whose technical
capabilities fell short of inadequate. There was Gavin Murtin,
for a start. Give him a rope, and he would try to eat it.

DI Hitchens ga/cd at Murfin briefly, and passed on. Then he
stopped, and looked round the room again with a frown.

'Hold on,' he said. 'There's somebody missing.'


18



11


Den Cooper had never quite got used to the sensation of
stepping backwards into space. That second before his boot
connected with the rock face was like no other experience. It
went through his mind every time that he might never touch
around again or rather, that he would hit it only once more,
down at the bottom.


But the soles of his boots landed gentlv on the gritstone
surface. The rope in his hands vibrated, and the harness tightened
round his body. He let out more rope until he was leaning well
back, gaining stability by pressing his weight into the rock. Then
he adjusted his grip and bent his torso forward. The angle had to
be just right. Too narrow an angle and his feet would slide off the

'	o O

smooth surface and he would smack into the wall face-first.

Cooper looked up at the edge of the quarry, and saw two
members of the Buxton Mountain Rescue Team peering down
at him, their faces already too small and out of proportion
against the sky.
" 'OK, Ben?''

'Fine.'

To his right, one of the scenes of crime officers, Li/, Petty,
back-pedalled to the edge and took her first step backwards. She
was bundled up in her blue overalls and a yellow waterproof
jacket, with a red helmet pulled low over her eyes.

Cooper had been initiated in the pleasures of abseiling by his
Iriends in the MRT, and he knew it was a lot easier than it
seemed to a spectator up top. For one thing^ you didn't have to
look all the way down as they did. Your eyes were on your rope,
on where your feet were going, and on the rock face in front of
you. Once you had turned your back on that di/'/ying drop and
braced yourself for the first step into nothing, it was easy.

,	I O' J

He paused to manoeuvre around a gritstone outcrop. Li/, came
alongside him, and she turned to smile. It was the conspiratorial
smile shared by rock climbers. Li/'s face was flushed with cold


119



and excitement, and her eyes shone with pleasure from under
her helmet.

'Going clown?' she said.

Cooper felt his foot slip off the rock. He put out his lelt hand
to steady himself and stop his weight making the rope swing.
He twisted his torso slightly to look down at his brake hand as
he fed the rope through the figure eight of the descender. The
gristone was hard and bruising to the fingers; yet in some places
it was crumblv and unsafe, its stability undermined by decades
of quarrying.

They moved on a bit further. The officers at the top kept
calling down to ask if they were OK, as if somehow they
might get lost on the way down. Cooper promised he would
be sure to let them know if the rope broke. They laughed, but
not much.

A few yards from the bottom, Li/ paused. Cooper watched
her wrap the rope round her thigh with three loops. This freed
her brake hand, and she reached into the pocket of her jacket
for her digital camera to take an establishing shot of the quarry
floor. They didn't know what to expect down there. Probably it
was a futile effort. But there had been too many instances when
small items of forensic evidence had been overlooked until it was
too late.

Li/ was lighter than Cooper, and had perfected that effortless
rhythm that allowed her to float down in easy steps. She had
already undipped her belay and removed her harness by the
time he touched bottom. She shouted up to a colleague at thetop,
and her case was lowered down to her.

'Right,' said Liz, as Cooper undipped his straps. 'Let's see
what we've got.'

The floor of the quarry was littered with lumps of gritstone
blasted away from the walls. To the cast, a vast stack had been
heaped up to block access to the site. Li/. Petty took some shots
of the quarry floor. Then she crouched by a large rock, opening
her case and unfolding a tight stack of evidence bags.

'We're looking for clothes, right? Well dressed? Casual,
or what?'

'Yes, well dressed.'


120



'We can discount the donkey jacket, then.'

Cooper leaned over her shoulder. She was pointing to a dark,
sodden mass on the ground. It reeked of mould, and patches of
the fabric were turning green with mildew. There were rips in
the leather patches on the shoulders.

'It's been there too long, anyway.'

'Pity. It could probably have told you a lot about the owner.
What he had for breakfast, for a start. Those encrusted stains
have survived well.'

Much of the debris and rubble from the quarrying operations
had simply been left in place, and there were still lethal shards
of buried metal and invisible holes to fall into. Cautiously,
they picked their way among the stones, glad of the boots
that protected their feet from the sharp edges and the sudden
shifting of the ground that could turn an ankle.

Cooper pointed up to the edge of the quarry. 'If the clothes
were thrown over the side oi the quarry, it would have been
from up there somewhere.'

Liz tried to push her helmet back from her eyes, but it soon
slipped forward again as she bent to clamber over a boulder that
must have weighed a couple of tons. Now and then, she stopped
to examine something more closely. Cooper waited patiently
each time, holding out little hope that the grubby-coloured
scraps of material lying among the debris had belonged to the
Snowman.

'This is more like it.'

She was taking photographs again, maneuvering for different
angles to identify the exact spot, then going for a close-up.

'What have you got?'

Li/, held up a blue garment, her tweezers gripping a corner
of fabric. 'Knickers. They're quite recent. A bit damp, but no
more lhan lyin^ in the snow would cause.'

Cooper considered the scrap of material. 'If those are out of
the Snowman's bag, it casts a new light on the enquiry.'

'It tells you something about his sexual inclinations, perhaps.'

'I was thinking more of a woman accompanying him. We had
assumed we were looking for male clothing.'


121



Li/ chose a paper bag as a temporary container for her rind.
The blue pants would have to be allowed to dry out naturally in
the air, rather than sealed in airtight plastic that would encourage
the proliferation of microorganisms.

There were shouts from on top of the cliff again. Cooper
turned, gave them a thumbs-up and pointed at the bag.

'DI Hitchens says this quarry is a Knightsbridge boutique,' he
said.

Liz held up the bag and studied the underwear critically. 'It
you ask me,' she said. 'We're in an Age Concern charity shop.'


Diane Frv found herself feeling a little guilty about Ben Cooper's


j	O O J 1

allocation in his absence to the quarry job. But she reassured
herself by reflecting that, if he had actually been at the meeting,
he would certainly have volunteered anvwav. He was that sort
of man. No sense at all.

But to help him out she went to have a look at what he had
on his desk, in case there was anything urgent that needed to be
dealt with. The first file she1 noticed was the one on Eddie Kemp,
the window cleaner. Since Kemp had been arrested, there had
been a positive snowstorm of calls, accusing him of every offence
in the book. According to the callers, he had been getting up to
everything from flashing to stalking, from social security fraud
to child abuse. And there were at least three calls naming him
as the killer of the man found on the Snake Pass.

The information had been copied to the incident room, but
the reports were lacking in convincing details like names, places
and times. An absence of detail was usually the giveaway for
malicious calls. Eddie Kemp wasn't top of the popularity stakes
among his neighbours, by the look of it. So it might come as
a shock to some of them to find out that he had already been
bailed and was back at home. What the police really needed was
reliable intelligence on his associates, and witnesses to the assault
or the events just before it.

But there was one useful piece of information that had come
through. One of the rolls of blue plastic sheeting from Kcmp's
car had revealed the impression of two objects shaped like
baseball bats, and traces of both human blood and sweat had


122



been obtained (rum the plastic. DNA analysis could provide a
match it the division was willing to pay (or samples to he sent
to the Forensic Science Service laboratory. So progress on that
had become a budgetary decision.

Fry wrote a note tor Ben Cooper to read when he eventually
returned to his desk. There were other enquiries piling up tor
him, too, and most of the Hies had messages attached to them phone
calls from the Crown Prosecution Service, officers in
other departments or other sections, and even the victims of
crimes themselves, wondering what was happening to their case,
desperate to contact the person they naively thought was busy
investigating it. But they would all have to wait. She just hoped
that Cooper was wearing a safety harness. The last thing they
needed was another casualty.

Fry's phone rang again. It had that tone which usually meant
a call she didn't want to answer. This time it was the control
room informing her that the search of the quarry had been
abandoned. The mountain rescue team had pulled out to respond
to an emergency call, and had since located a body on nearby
Irontongue Hill. Police officers at the quarry had been diverted
to attend. Control were letting her know as a courtesy, because
DC Cooper was one of the officers at the scene.

Fry rested her head in her hands and stared across the room
at her remaining staff.

'OoA-wcc, 6a6y . . . oon-wr/ M/bn't you Vet me (ai% you on a
jea cruiie.'

'Gavin,' she said. 'Shut that bloody lobster up, or I'll throw
it out of the window.'


Marie Tcnncnt was barely recognizable as human at first. By the
time Ben Cooper arrived at the scene, someone had scraped
some of the ice from her, so that now she at least looked like a
pile of wet clothes abandoned on the hillside. The frozen snow
clung to her in small lumps. Cooper had tried to brush a patch
clear near her pocket, but the crystals were attached firmly to
the fibres of her coat.


He stood around with the other police officers and members
uf the mountain rescue team, who were stamping their feet


123



as they waited for the doctor to come and certify that the
woman was indeed dead, rather than cryogenically frozen and
in a state of suspended animation. One of the rescue team was
a middle-aged Peak Park Ranger, who had seen his fair share
of bodies. He made a joke about the doctor needing to borrow
an ice pick before he could use his rectal thermometer, and
everyone laughed uneasily.

Liz Petty had walked to the site with him, though she wouldn't
be of any use just yet. She was still wearing her helmet, and her
eyes were bright with speculation as she looked up at Cooper.

'Mrs Snowman, by any chance?'

'Who knows?'

'Give me a shout it I can help, when you're sure she's
dead.'

That morning, the pilot of a small plane had finally seen Marie
Tennent's outline against the peat as the snow had begun to slip
from her shoulders. It was none too soon -- the snow had come
again since then, and Marie might have stayed undiscovered for
another few days by the look of the sky in the north.

Cooper found Liz was still standing next to him, watching
him deep in thought.

'It could be suicide, I suppose,' she said.

'The assumption will be death by misadventure.'

'Tried to climb a mountain in bad weather, then fell, and died
of exposure before she could be found? It sounds reasonable.'

'It's the sort of thing people do all the time around here.
It's as if they think bad weather isn't real, just a bit of gloss
added by the National Park Authority to make the scenery more
picturesque.'

Cooper turned and looked over the surrounding moorland.
Today the Peak District really did look like a scene from one
of those old-fashioned winters that people always talked about.
The snow that had fallen earlier in the week had smoothed out
the familiar features of the landscape, until the hills and valleys
had become unrecognizable.

Everyone who had lived in the area before the mid-1980s had
their own tales of deep snows that brought everything to a halt,
of chest-high snowdrifts and people skating on iced-over rivers.


124



It was said that Burbagc Edge had once been covered in drifts
thirty feet deep, that it had taken years for its birch trees to
recover from the damage after the weight of snow had snapped
their boughs like matchsticks and ripped them limb from limb
where they stood. On days like that, it was foolhardy to venture
on to the moors.

Cooper turned over the plastic bag containing the woman's
purse, which he had found in the left-hand pocket of her coat,
the first part of her to emerge from the snow. A cash card
and bank statement revealed her name to be Marie Tennent,
of 10 Dam Street, Edendale. Why had no one reported Marie
Tennent missing? He knew without checking that she wasn't on
the missing persons list he had been through it only yesterday
with Gavin Murfin, and she had been lying here longer than
that. So where were Marie's family? What about her friends
and neighbours?

The postmortem would tell them whether Marie Tennent had
been injured or had collapsed through the cold, or had simply
lain down and frozen to death. The physical circumstances could
be established in the mortuary; but no amount of examination
of the brain would prove her state of mind.

'I can see some animal traces,' said Lix. 'They might help
with time of death.'

'Yes. [hanks.'

Rut Cooper was looking at the dead woman's face. She lay
curled on her side, and her head was towards him, with her
hands at her temples, as if she had been covering her ears to
shut out the sound of approaching death. Her eyes were closed,
and the skin of her face was white and rimed with a thin layer
of frost. Her nose and lips were already starting to turn black.

Cooper knew his colleagues sometimes accused him of being
over-imaginative. And he wasn't supposing that he could read
the expression of a corpse. But he did know one thing, which a
quick glance over his shoulder confirmed. When she died, Marie

I	O '

Tennent had been facing towards Irontongue Hill, not away from
it. The remains of the tail fin of the wrecked Lancaster bomber
SU-V were plainly visible from here. The last thing Marie would
have seen in life was a rustv fragment of Sugar Uncle Victor.

v	O O


12S



Cooper recalled what Dianc Fry had said about a name you
heard for the first time, which then seemed to crop up again
and again. He had been vaguely aware since: his childhood of

O	O J

the wreckage of the Lancaster bomber on Irontongue Hill. It
was a story that would have appealed to him as a boy, when
war had seemed exciting and glamorous, probably because it
was something so distant that it was never likclv to touch him

O	J

personally. He had missed the height of the Cold War, when
people had believed they were in daily danger of being wiped
out in a nuclear holocaust; he had been too young to remember
Vietnam. It was all history, as remote as World War Two, not
affecting real people that he knew. Yet the wreck had always
been there, at the back of his mind.

Cooper didn't think he had heard the name of the aircraft
before yesterday. Lancaster SU-V. Sugar Uncle Victor. He was
sure it would have stuck in his mind. It sounded so innocuous for
a machine designed to kill and destroy. Lie didn't think he could

O

have missed the irony. Now the (light engineer of Sugar Uncle
Victor had been drawn to his attention twice in two days. And
here was a woman who might have been heading either towards
or away from the wreck when she died.

There were too many assumptions that could be made in a
case like this. The first assumption would be that Marie I ennent
had been responsible for her own death, in one way or another.
Suicide or misadventure. Did it matter? Perhaps only to the High
Peak coroner, who liked his records to be neat.

'Ben?' called Li/. 'I think you're wanted over here.'

'Coming.'

The doctor had been lowered on to the hill by the RAL
rescue helicopter, which still hovered overhead, waiting to take
the body up on the winch.

Cooper took a last look at the tattered tail hn barely visible
above the rocks on Irontongue Hill. He would have to get up
there one day soon and take a closer look at what was left
of the aircraft that Pilot Officer Danny McTeague had walked
away from. He couldn't imagine what connection there might bebetween
the wreck and two sudden deaths. But he had a strong
feeling that they were rapidly going to become intertwined.


126



It was as if the phantom shape of Sugar Uncle Victor was
circling the Eden Valley again, its Merlin engines rumbling
beneath the cloud cover, its slaughtered crew returning for
a final mission. It was as if the ancient Lancaster had flown in
under the slipstream of Alison Morrissey's Air Canada Boeing
767 from Toronto.


127



12


.Frank Bainc leaned against the wall of the post office next to
the Buttcrcross. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the
snow, where it fi//Jed briefly. He drew hard on the smoke and
held the cigarette cupped in his hand as he watched two teenage
boys lean their bikes against the window of the post office and
run inside.


A DAF articulated lorry came down Buxton Road towards
the roundabout. Instead of turning on to the relief road, it came
straight on towards the Buttercross. Baine let out a lungful of
smoke, noting the lorry's registration number automatically as
its driver applied the air brakes and pulled up a few yards short
of the traffic lights. A line of cars immediately began to build
up behind the lorry as it blocked the carriageway.

A man climbed down from the passenger side of the cab.
Baine couldn't sec him until the lorry indicated and pulled
away again towards the lights. Then he watched George Malkin
cross the road. Malkin didn't look at him until he was within a
few feet.

'Frank Bainc?'

'That's me. I love the transport.'

Malkin didn't answer.

Baine smiled and drew on his cigarette. 'OK,' he said. 'Let's
talk about money.'


The lower eastern slopes of Irontongue Flill were a favourite
area tor motorcycle scramblers, bikers who liked to get off-road
with their machines and spray a bit of dirt.


Only last Sunday, before the snow came, there had been a

J	j '

confrontation here between a party of hikers and a group of
scramblers. For some time, there had been complaints that the
motorcyclists had been churning up the pathways, turning the
surface into mud impossible for walkers to cross without sinking

1	O

up to their knees.


128



This morning, someone had stolen a scramble hike from a
trailer parked in a farmyard outside Edendale. A patrol car
driving up the AS7 saw a rider in a lay-by next to the woods
above the inn and stopped to question him. But he rode off as
soon as he saw them, and they gave chase. The police crew were
in a Range Rover, but they knew they wouldn't have much hope
of catching the biker if he went off-road. A hundred yards away
was an open gateway leading on to one of the paths favoured by
scramblers.

The motorbike slid across the gateway and ploughed through
a snowdrift, scattering a white spray against the stone wall. The
Range Rover skidded as the driver braked, but he kept control
and turned into the gateway to follow the bike up the track.

The track rose steeply and started to get narrower.

'We'd better call it off/ said the passenger.

'just round this next bend, we'll he able to see where he
goes,' said the driver. 'Anvwav, he'll be struggling if the snow

O	' v V ' OO O

gets any deeper.'

'Watch out!' shouted the passenger.

The bend had been too sharp and too sudden for the Range
Rover. The driver skidded again, but this time failed to control
the vehicle. It went off the track and slid a couple of yards into
a streambcd, ending up with its bumper and front wheels in
the water.

The driver turned off the engine. 'Damn and blast,' he
said.

'The garage won't be pleased,' said his passenger. 'It had a
new radiator only last week.'

'Call in,' said the driver.

He opened his door and stepped into a couple of inches of
freezing cold water. The strcambed was full of uneven stones,
and he had difficulty keeping his balance as he tried to get to
the side against the force of the water. He reached out a hand to
grasp the branch of a birch sapling grow ing out of the bank and
found himself clutching something else an item of clothing. It

o	O O

was a shirt -- a blue shirt, with a thin white stripe and white
cuffs. He could see the label inside the collar and recognized that
it was from a well-known manufacturer, not one of the cheap


129



Portuguese things that he bought himself from the bargain shops
in Eclendale.

The driver looked up, and saw that the streambed was full of
clothes. There were shirts and trousers draped across the stones,
and socks and jockey shorts with water bubbling over them as if
somebody had decided to do their washing the primitive way. A
blue and red striped tic hung from a clump of dead heather. A
shoe had Oiled with water and sunk to the bottom, where its
laces waved in the current like strands of seaweed.

Then the driver remembered the unidentified body found near
here, the man who had been hit by the snowplough. There had
been an overnight bag with the bodv, but it had been empty

O	o ^ ' IV

of clothes.

'Have you called in yet?' he shouted to his partner.

'Yes.' '

'Do it again, then.'


Ben Cooper had decided to walk to Dam Street. The house
where Marie Tennent had lived was no more than half a
mile from divisional headquarters, just across town in the
tangle of backstreets near one of the old silk mills. It hardly
seemed worth getting a car out, not when the streets were
still clogged with crawling vehicles and pedestrians slithering


OO	& 1 O

around in the roadway because the pavements hadn't been
cleared yet. Besides, there were few enough places to park in
the Dam Street area, even without the snow. The millworkers'
houses had been built long before anybody needed either garages
or streets wide enough to park cars on.

The silk mill itself had recently been converted into a heritage
centre. The old three-storey stone building had become derelict
and for wears had been in danger of demolition, but now a new

/	o *

cafe and shop had been built. Cooper wondered what on earth
had possessed the designers to build the extension out of red
brick when the old mill and all the other buildings around it
were stone. The Peak District was stone country. Brick felt like
an alien substance.
On the corner of Dam Street, a man in a hooded parka was
walking a Doberman tightlv held on a chain. He eved Cooper

O	O v VI


HO



suspiciously, hauling hack on the Jog's lead as if trying to give
the impression it would attack at the slightest provocation.

Cooper let him pass and walked on until he located Marie
Tcnncnt's house. It was at the end of a terrace, with a tiny
front garden and a view to the side over the millpond at the

hack of the heritage centre. Between the house and the one

o

next door was a high stone wall that effectively prevented any
communication with the neighbours. It seemed peculiarly quiet
at this end of the street. Part of the effect was perhaps caused
hv the stretch of water, which was covered hv a thin skin of ice.
Cooper looked at the houses on the opposite side of the street.
Their windows and doors were hoarded up. They were either
awaiting renovation or demolition.

First he knocked on the neighbour's door, but got no reply.
He had decided to try again after he checked out number 10

v	O

when there was a voice behind him.

'Yeah?'

It was the man with the Doberman, and he was fiddling with
the chain as if he were about to let the dog loose. The dog didn't
look particularly interested, but Cooper didn't feel like taking a
chance. He showed his ID.

'Do you live here, sir?'

'I suppose so. What do you want?'

'I'm making some enquiries about your next-door neighbour,
Marie Tennent.'

'Scottish lass?'

'I don't know.'

'I think she's Scottish.'

'Her name's Tennent.

'Ihat's it. Like the lager. What s she done, then? Sit!'

I he Doberman sat with a sigh of relief. On closer inspection,
the dog looked worn out, as if it had been pounding the streets
for too long. In fact, it looked like some of the Edcndale coppers
used to when they had done a quick shift changeover and had
been on duty eighteen hours out of twenty-four.

'I'm afraid she's had an accident,' said Cooper.

'That's copper's talk, isn't it? You don't know how to say
what you mean, you lot. Dead, is she?'


I'll



'Yes. Did you know her well?'

'Hardly at all. Kept herself to herself, she did.'

'Perhaps she was frightened of dogs.'

The man watched Cooper walk to the door of number 10 and
open it with the key he had been given by the agents. Cooper
glanced back for a second. Two strings of saliva had run out of
the Dobcrman's mouth and were dripping on to the pavement.
The muscles in its shoulders and haunches had tensed. He was
glad when the door opened at the hrst attempt, letting him into
the cold interior of Marie Tenncnt's home.

The first thing he saw in the hallway was the green message
light Hashing on an answering machine. He pressed the button
and got a Scots voice. Not Highland, more urban Scots maybe
Glasgow or Edinburgh, he was never sure of the difference.
It was a woman, middle-aged, who didn't bother to identify
herself. There was no phone number given either for the
return call.

'Marie, give me a ring when you can. Let me know how
vou're going on, so 1 don't worry about you.'

*	O O ' , J

There were bills piled up on a table and yellow Post-it notes
stuck to the bottom of the mirror. There was a red coat hanging
on a hook behind the door, a pair of shoes under the table, and a
box of books on the floor that had been delivered by the postman
but not opened.

Cooper paused, trying to assimilate the immediate impressions
of the house. There was something in the atmosphere that didn't
seem quite right. In an apparently empty house, an unexplained
noise was immediately noticeable. But it wasn't a noise that he
had heard. He moved his head from side to side, sniffing carefully
for gas or the smell of burning, or for the odour of something
dead and decomposing. But there were none of the smells that
would normally have set his alarm bells ringing. There was a
faint, elusive scent in the hallway, but it evaded his senses after
the first whiff, before he could identify it. lie wasn't sure which
direction it was coming from. It could simply be a lingering squirt
of air freshener or a suggestion of recently used disinfectant.

The hallway was cold, but no colder than any other house
that had been standing empty for a couple of days. He supposed


132



there was no central heating in these cottages. Or, if there was,
it would be on a timer, to save gas. If that was the case, then this
was a time of day when Marie would not have expected to he at
home, and that might have meant she had a job to go to.

Cooper stood completely still and listened. Somewhere, a
clock was ticking. It was one of the worst sounds you could
ever hear -- the ticking of a clock in an empty house after its
owner had died. It was a reminder that the world would carry on
just the same after you had gone, that the second hand wouldn't
even hesitate in its movement as you passed from living to dying.

v	1 O V O

Tick, you were there. Tick, you were gone. As if you had never
mattered. It was a sound that struck straight to some primal fear
in the guts the knowledge that time was steadily counting you
down to your own death.

Your clock ought to stop when you died. Cooper knew it
was one of those irrational things, something that welled up
from a deep superstition. But he wanted to climb up on a
kitchen chair and take the battery out of the clock or remove
its counterweight, to bring its hands to a halt. He wanted to
demand silent respect in the presence of death. But he didn't
do it. Instead, he allowed the ticking to follow him around
the house as he moved from room to room; he permitted it
to mock him with its sound, like the chuckle of a malevolent
mechanical toy.

The first door off the hallway opened on to a sitting
room. Cooper walked straight to the fireplace and checked
the items on the mantelpiece. A recent gas bill had been
shoved behind a cracked Chinese willow-pattern bowl, and
there was a Somerfield's checkout receipt with it. He turned
to the fold-out mahogany dining table in the corner. There was
a glass vase containing a dried-flower arrangement standing on
a raffia mat. But there was no suicide note.

The room also contained a desk, which was packed with bank
and credit-card statements, letters and old photographs. Cooper
carefully separated some of the more recent letters to study them
for the names of Marie Tennent's closest contacts. He took a few
moments to make a note of some names and addresses. None of
them was local, and none sounded like a boyfriend. One was

133


called John and seemed to be a relative oi some kind who was
at university in Glasgow.

V	O

Then he saw that some paper had been burnt in an otherwise
unused grate behind the gas hre. He crouched to look at it,
already beginning to speculate why Marie would have written
a suicide note, then burned it or whether somebody else
might have burned it for her. But when he got a closer look,
he could see that it wasn't a suicide note at all. It was a letter
which said Marie Tennent, of 10 Dam Street, Edendale, was a
confirmed finalist for a 1250,000 cash prize. She was invited to
state how she would like to receive the money, and the letter
gave suggestions as to how she might spend it - a brand new
car, a Caribbean holiday, a dream home in the country. Cooper
poked the letter, and the blackened parts crumbled into dust.
H you were already feeling desperate enough, the cynical irony
of that bit of junk mail might be the thing to push you over
the edge.

Cooper lifted all the cushions on the sofa and the two
armchairs. He found three ballpoint pens, a handful of small
coins and a dog's squeaky toy in the shape of a bone. Did Marie
have a dog somewhere? But she had been living in the cottage
for only eighteen months, according to the agent. The dog could
have belonged to a previous tenant. There were no dog hairs on
the furniture or the carpet that he could see. There was a small
damp patch on the wallpaper on the outside wall, but that looked
more like poor maintenance. The windows hadn't been cleaned
for some time, either. The view of the boarded-up houses across
the street was grey and smeared, spattered with small gobbets
of dirty snow and dry streaks of bird droppings.

Cooper worked his way hack through the hallway and checked
the cupboard under the stairs, where he found the controls for
the central heating system. The heating was set to go off at 9
a.m. and come back on at 3 p.m. The more meticulous suicides
would have turned the central heating off to save unnecessary
gas, knowing that nobody would be home that afternoon to need
it. For others, the more impulsive or self-absorbed, it would
never have crossed their minds. He didn't know enough about
Marie Tennent yet to be able to say which type she was.


134



When he reached the kitchen, he finally rccogni/.cd the
smell. It was so distinctive that he couldn't believe that it
hadn't registered with him immediately. It was composed of
wet nappies and plastic bottles, warm milk and sterilix.ing fluid,
washing powder and soiled liners. It was the smell of a baby in
the house.


135



13


Ken Cooper hanged on the door of number 8, then tried the
next house, and the one beyond that. He got no answer at any
of them. riven the man with the Doberman seemed to have
disappeared, or was refusing to answer his door.


After he had called in for assistance, Cooper went back into
Marie Tennent's home and walked quickly through all the
rooms again. He was sweating now from a surge of panic
at the thought that there might be a baby lying somewhere
in the house. How long could a baby survive if it was left
on its own? He had no idea. He had a vague feeling that a
baby's demands for food and attention were pretty constant,
but it was only an impression gained at a safe distance from
watching his sister-in-law Kate when his two nieces had been

o

very voung. losie and Amy had cried when they were hungry,

- ^	O J - . O ^

or when their nappies needed changing. If there had been a baby
left alone in this house, it would surely be crying by now. Long
before now. The neighbours would have heard it, wouldn't they?
Of course they would. And they would have reported that, even
if they hadn't bothered to report the fact that they hadn't seen
the baby's mother for a while.

The thought made Cooper feel a little better as he opened
cupboards and wardrobes. But then he looked at the walls of
the house and reali/ed how thick they were. These were stonecottages,
a hundred and fifty years old, built for millworkers
at a time when houses were intended to last several lifetimes.
They had solid walls, not those timber and plasterboard things
you could put your list through. Without the door or a window
open, he could hear nothing from outside the house. He knew
it was possible that a baby could have cried and cried in here,
and not have been heard. It was possible that it could have cried
itself to death.

He pulled aside some clutter at the back of the cupboard under
the stairs a vacuum cleaner, a roll of carpet, cardboard boxes,


136



an abandoned glass-tupped coffee table. Each time he moved
something out of the way, he expected to see a small bundle
in a corner. But there was nothing.

'Ben?'

For once, he was glad to hear Diane Fry's voice. 'Through
here,' he said. 'I'm glad you came.'

fry paused in the doorway, gazing round the room, but
without seeming to look at Cooper at all. She walked round
the sofa, stopped at the window and rubbed her finger through
the grime on one of the panes. 'Do people never clean their own
windows round here?

'It depends whether you want to see out,' said Cooper.

'You're being enigmatic again, Ben. It doesn't suit you. Where
have you looked?'

'Everywhere, but not properly.'

'You take down here then, and I'll do upstairs. Take it steady,
be thorough. There's no need to panic.'

'Yes, OK.'

Fry headed (or the stairs. Cooper felt some of the weight lift
from him.

'Diane?' he said.

'What?'

'Thanks for coming.'

'I had to I'm paid to look after you now.'

Back in Marie Tennent's kitchen, Cooper decided to look in
the automatic washer. Like everybody, he had read newspaper
stories of children getting trapped in washing machines. But this
one was half-full of underwear. Nearby, several nappies were
drying on a rack near a radiator.

Then there was the refrigerator, ft contained fruit juice and
voghurt, grated carrot and froxen oven chips, some of them
well past their best-before dates. A mouldy piece of cheese and
a half-used tin of marrowfat peas occupied the top shelf. In the
cupboards, there were lots of pans and cooking utensils, but
little food. What there was seemed to consist mostly of pasta
and lentils, baked beans and cheap white wine. There was no
sign of any dog food, or of feeding bowls, so it looked as though
the odds were against a dog. There were more notes stuck to


137



a cork board phone numbers and shopping reminders. No
suicide note.

He opened the back door and found himself looking into a
small garden, with a washing line draped across a paved area. The
line was encased in frozen snow, like insulation round an electric
cable. Cooper couldn't see what else there was in the garden,
because of the unswcpt snow, but he imagined a few bare flower
borders around a patch of grass. Birds had been scratching at the
snow, and in one corner there was a little brown heap where a
neighbourhood cat had thought it was burving its faeces, only
to find the heat melting the snow around them. Similar gardens

o	o

ran off to the left, separated by low walls and fences. None of
the houses overlooked Marie's garden. The view straight ahead
was of the rear wall of the mill, where the windows were few
and tiny, dark squares in the snow plastered to the stone. There
was a coal bunker against the wall of Marie's house. As Cooper
lifted the lid, a layer of snow slid back and piled against the
wall. Nothing inside.

O

That left only one place to hide something the green wheelie
bin pushed against the wall near a gate that must lead on to a
tiny back alley under the shadow of the mill. To reach it, he had
to cross the garden, unsure where the path might be under the
snow. There was a padlock on the gate, and it was secure. From
here, the mill wall seemed to tower above him like a fortress,
blank and forbidding. Of course, this was the northern side. All
the windows were on the southern wall, to provide light for the
millworkers who had overseen the looms. It was interesting to
note that they would have had light for their work, but none
on their homes the shadow of the mill saw to that.

As soon as he touched the wheelie bin, Cooper could tell
there was something inside. An empty bin was so light on its
wheels and so tall that it could be lilted with one finger when
it came time for it to be retrieved from wherever the binmen
had left it. This one had weight in the bottom. It bumped
against the sides a little as he pulled the bin away from the
wall to allow room to open the lid. He pushed the snow aside
from the lid, staring for a moment at the High Peak Borough
Council label that had been stuck to the green plastic. It gave


138



dates tor refuse collection arrangements over the Christmas and
New Year holidays.

When the lid came open, Cooper winced at the smell that rose
towards him. Something wrapped in a Somerfield's supermarket
carrier bag rolled around in the bottom as he tipped the kin. Half
an inch of dark liquid moved with it, gathering into a corner and
revealing all sorts of dried debris stuck to the bottom. Cooper
looked back at the house, wondering whether to call Fry down
from upstairs. But instead he removed his woollen gloves and
put them in his right pocket. From the left, he took a packet
which contained a different pair of gloves. Latex and sterile.
With a stretch, he managed to reach down into the whcelie
bin and hooked a couple of ringers through the handles of the
carrier bag. The handles had been tied together to seal the bag,
tightly enough for it to take him more than a few seconds to
get them open.

Despite the smell, he was smiling by the time he could sec
what was inside the bag.


Cooper re-entered the house and went upstairs to rind Uianc
Fry. There was only one bedroom and a bathroom on the first
floor. Although Marie had a double bed, there were pillows on
only one side.


'Anything?' said Frv.

y	6 y

'A few days ago, Marie Tennent roasted a leg of lamb, but
never ate any of it,' he said. 'I'd say she left it in the fridge
until it started going off, then chucked it in the bin. It could
mean something/

'Like what?' said Fry.

'You don't normally cook an entire leg of lamb for yourself
when you live on your own. Or so I imagine.

'Right. You think she might have been expecting a visitor
who never came?'

'It seems the bins are emptied here on a Monday normally.
The collections were out of routine at the New Year, but they
should have been back to normal this week. The lamb was the
only thing in the bin. That means she threw it out after the
binmen came on Monday at the earliest/


139



'How on earth have you found out when the binmcn come?'

'They left a note.'

Cooper stood on the tiny landing, watching Fry move around
the bedroom. He felt a slight draught, and looked up.

'There's a trap door over the landing,' he said. 'There must
be a loft.'

'Can you reach it with this chair?'

Cooper managed to get the trap door open by standing on the
chair. Fry handed him a small torch, and he was able to heave
himself up on his elbows enough to sec that the loft was tiny --

&

barely more than a crawl space beneath the rafters, with a layer
of ancient insulation nibbled into holes by burrowing mice. He
shone the torch into all the corners. Nothing.

o

He climbed down and took the chair back into the bedroom.
Fry had just pulled out a picture that had been stored under the
bed. It was wrapped in an old sheet and covered in dust.

'There's no babv in this house anyway,' she said.

'Thank God for that. Now all we need to do is find out who
she left it with.'

'Yeah.'

Cooper watched her unwrap the picture she had found.

'It's a print of Chatsworth House,' he said, recognizing the
distant view over parkland to a vast, white Palladian facade. It
was the home of the Duke of Devonshire and one of the area's
biggest tourist attractions.

'Very picturesque. But she obviously didn't like it.'

Cooper took it and turned it over. 'It was bought at the
souvenir shop at Chatsworth itself,' he said.

'Not recently, though, by the looks of it.'

'No, but I wonder if she bought it herself, or whether it was
a gift. Chatsworth is only a few miles away. She might have
been there for a day out.'

'Ah. With the anonymous boyfriend, you mean.'

'It's the sort of thing you might buv someone as a gift, as a
memento of a day together.'

'Is it?'

'If you were that way inclined.'

'How much would it cost, do you think?'


140



'A print this si/.c? It could have been thirty or forty pounds,
I suppose.'

'We can soon check.'

'Interesting,' said Cooper. 'Apart from the usual household
items, that print must be one of her most valuable
possessions.'

The wardrobe had mostly trousers and jeans, sweaters and
long skirts. A pair of child's sandals was in the bottom, but they
surely wouldn't have fitted Marie's baby for a couple of years
vet. A black evening dress was still on a hanger from the dry
cleaners.

'Bathroom?' said Cooper.

The bathroom cabinet contained toothbrush and toothpaste,
floss, mouthwash, a bottle of migraine tablets and a foil sheet
of contraceptive pills, with half the blisters still full.

'The pills are an old prescription,' said Fry. 'Well past their
use-by date.'

'More than nine months past?'

'Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's her own baby she
was looking after.'

'Might she have wanted to keep it secret?'

'Why? She was an adult - and it's not a sin any more. You

v	v

don't get put away in a lunatic asylum for being an unmarried
mother these days. Not even in Edendale. They tell me you
even stopped burning witches last week.'

'Maybe there was one particular person she didn't want to
know about the baby.'

'One particular person? Who?'

'The boyfriend,' said Cooper.

'Him again. Mr Nobody. We know nothing about him at
all.'

Cooper placed a secondhand pair of baby shoes on the table.
'On the contrary,' he said. "I think I'm starting to get a feeling
for him.'

You were always one for empathy. You can check with her
GP, when we leave here. And the hospital and Social Services.
We need any clues they can give us about where to look for
the babv.'


Ml


Fry was staring at the bookshelves. She touched the spines of
the hooks gingerly, as if they were some inexplicable religious
ieon.s. Cooper joined her and examined the mixture of modern
novels, celebrity biographies, cookery books, diet books and
self-improvement programmes.

'She was a great reader, by the looks of it,' he said.

'Too much imagination, I suppose. It never does anybody
any good.'

Cooper picked up a copy of a Danielle Steel novel that was
lying face-up on the shelf. It had a well-worn cover, and it
looked as though it had been through more than one pair of
hands. 'Why not?' he said.

'Well, look at this stuff. Half of it is about other people's
miserable lives. Let's face it, life turns out shitty tor cvcrvbodv
in the end, no matter who you are. What's the point of reading
about how bad it i.s for somebody else?'

Cooper turned the book over in his hands and read the blurb
on the back. 'Maybe it helped her to feel she could connect to
other human beings in some way.'

Fry curled a glance at him from the corner of her eve.
'Oh, my Cod. Let's have less connecting and more detecting,
please, Ben.'

Cooper smiled. 'Eden Valley Books,' he said.

'What?'

He held up an imitation leather bookmark that had been
nestling between chapters 26 and 27 of Danielle Steel. 'I've
detected where Marie bought her books from.'

'Is it here in town?'

'Just off the market square. Never noticed it?'

'If I had, I wouldn't have to ask.'

'The bloke who owns it is called Lawrence Daley. I've been
in there a few times.'

'Oh? Get your Barbara Cartland fix there, do you?'

'He found me some old song books once. For the male voice
choir, you know.'

'Lovely.'

'Also he had a couple of burglaries at the shop, not long
after I transferred to CID. God knows why there's nothing


142



in the place worth nicking. We thought it was probably some
heroin-fuelled dork who'd been watching /fnti^ue.; AoaJjAow or
heard about antiquarian books being sold for big money at
Sotheby's, and thought he could lay his hands on some of
the same stuff. I don't suppose a set of old Agatha Christie
paperbacks fetched him much to feed his habit with/

'And your point is?'

'I know Lawrence Daley slightly. He's a bit of a character,
but he's OK.'

'Ben, I'm well aware that you know everybody round here.'

'I was thinking -- if Marie Tennent bought so many books,
Lawrence might know something about her. He's the sort who'd
want to chat to his customers and find out a bit about them.'

Fry nodded. 'Yeah, it's worth a try. 1 can't see that we're
going to turn up much else in here.'

'When I've finished with Social Services and the hospital, I'll
call at the bookshop and have a word with Lawrence.'

'I've got a meeting this afternoon. Let me know how

o	o

you get on.'

They cleared up the books and put Marie's junk mail back
on the hall table.

'What about this box?' said Fry, pushing at the carton near
the door with her foot.

'More books.'

'Have you had a look at it?'

'Not yet.' Cooper pulled out a penknife and cut the tape. 'I
think they call this Chick Lit, don't they?' he said, opening the
box to reveal books with bright pink and yellow covers, the sort
of book no man would ever willingly be seen reading. 'Looks

o v	o

like thev'rc from a book club.'

y

'Is there a delivery date on the box?' said Fry.

Cooper inspected the delivery company's label. 'Monday.'

The day she went walkabout.'

'She signed for the delivery herself. But she never opened
the box/

'No/

'If it were me/ said Cooper, 'I would have opened it straight
away, to see what I'd got/


143



'But if she wasn't intending to read them, why should she
bother?' said Frv.

'Good point. But she must have been intending to read them
when she ordered them.'

'Right. So something happened between her placing the order
for the books and getting the delivery. Something changed her
view of things. Her books had suddenly become an irrcl
&'
evance.'

Cooper
flicked through the pages of one of the books and
turned to the back cover. According to the blurb, it was a
hilarious, sexy account of a thirty-something woman's search
for Mr Right and her disastrous encounters with a series of
Mr Wrongs. The cover showed discarded underwear among a
scatter of wedding confetti and a bride's bouquet.

'There's always the possibility,' said Cooper, 'that they were
all too relevant.'

When they had finished, they locked Marie's front door on
the way out.

'If only she'd made it a bit easier lor us,' said Fry. 'If the
binmcn left a note, why couldn't she?'

Cooper looked at the boarded-up windows of the other
houses, at the high wall to the side of Marie's garden, and
finally at the dark expanse of stagnant water that shut off the

J	JO

end of the street like an icy wall.
'A note?' he said. 'Who to?'


After they had spoken to the staff at the estate agent's, Diane
Frv called in and reported their failure to locate the missing


J	I O

baby. While she was using the radio, Cooper irritated her by
standing outside the estate agent's office to look in their display
windows. It was on the corner, with one window looking on
to Fargate that was full of photographs of houses, with their
prices and details alongside. Fry could never understand what
it was about these windows that seemed to distract so many
people. Maybe it was the fascination of seeing the price of
properties that other people lived in, of weighing up the
unattainable and working out the mortgage that would be
involved if they were ever to achieve their dream. It was


144



another form of living out a fantasy, much like reading Danicllc
Steel novels.

She watched Cooper become absorbed in something towards
the bottom corner of the display.

'What arc you looking at?' she said, when she finished
her call.

'Mm? Oh, they've got some properties to rent, look.'

'So? Why are you interested?'

"I told you a while ago, didn't I? I'm going to move out of
Bridge End Farm. Tt's just a matter of finding somewhere to live
that 1 can afford.'

'You're really going to do it, then?'

'Of course.'

'I never thought you would, Ben.'

'Why not?'

Frv shrugged. 'You're too much of the home bov. Too much

V	OO v

of a man for having his family round him, all cosy and smug
at night.'

txr	» w '

You mean snug .

'Do I?'

Cooper bent to peer at the properties lower down, at the
cheaper end of the display. It was funny how estate agents'
windows were designed so that rich people didn't have to bother
bending to look at suitable houses.

'No, I didn't think you would ever move out,' said Frv. 'Not
until you had a wife of your own to settle down with and have
kids. Then you'd be looking for one of those little executive
semis over there. Something like that one --' She pointed to the
other side of the window. The houses displayed there were made
of stone, but were newly built. The one she was indicating was a
rectangular box with a garage door that seemed to dominate its
frontage. It had a bare patch of soil at the front, and no doubt
a barbecue patio at the back. The house to the left of it looked
identical. And the one to the right did, too. And so, she was
sure, would the one behind it, and the one across the road,
and all the others that spread across the hillsides in the new
residential developments south of the town. She had seen those
developments, and they had a comforting anonymity; they were


14S



a bit of the city dropped into the uneasy quirkiness of Edendale,
like the advance paratroopers of an urban invasion.

'It's conveniently close to schools, shops and other amenities,'
she said. 'And only a lew minutes' drive from the A6 tor those
wishing to commute to the cities of Manchester or Derby.'

'And nobody knows the name of their next-door neighbour,
I expect,' said Cooper.

'Maybe. Is that necessary in your world?'

'I suppose it is.'

'All right. So what's special about this flat, then?'

'Nothing special really. But it's right here in town. It isn't
too big. And the rent's reasonable.'

'You haven't got any money put aside to buy something,
then?'

'No way. It's what I can afford on a police salary or
nothing.'

Fry thought of her own flat in Grosvenor Avenue, in the land
of student bedsits and laundrettcs, Asian greengrocers and Irish
theme pubs. 'A cheap rent just means something really grotty
that nobody else wants,' she said.

Cooper sighed. 'I suppose so,' he said. 'The perfect place to
live seems very hard to find.'

'Impossible. Most people have the sense to give up trying.'

'Yes, you're right.'

Fry walked to the car. She had wasted enough time humouring
Ben Cooper. Her efforts to understand the members of her team
were over for the day, as far as Cooper was concerned. But when
she opened the driver's door, he still hadn't moved away from
the estate agent's window.

'For heaven's sake, are you coming?'

'Dianc?' he said.

'What now?'

'If it's so hard to find the perfect place to live -- how difficult
do you think it is to find the perfect place to die?'


146



14


.High above Irontonguc Hill, another Boeing 767 left its white
track across the lightening sky as it approached Manchester. It


was a few minutes late, and it was waiting lor clearance behind

*	o

a shuttle from Paris. Much lower in the sky, a small plane hanked
and turned and came in slowly, as if someone in the cabin might
he taking photographs.

On the hillside helow, four people turned to watch the smaller
aircraft as they heard its engine. They lifted their heads into
the wind, squinting their eyes against the brightness of the sky
and the hard flecks of snow driven into their faces from the
higher ground.

'It's a Piper Warrior. A Type 18,' said Corporal Sharon
Thompson. Her plump checks were bright pink from the cold,
and her hair was pulled back tight under her beret and the hood
of her cagoule. 'It's probably from Netherthorpe Airfield.'

Flight Sergeant Josh Mason glanced at the underside of the
aircraft as it drew away from them.

'Don't talk crap,' he said. 'Any idiot can see it isn't a Type
18. Haven't you done your aircraft recognition?'

Thompson went a shade pinker, but her expression became
stubborn. 'Come on, Flight. We've got a long way to go yet.
We don't want to be out here all day. It'll be dark before we
get back.'

'Well, as matter of fact, we're nearly there/

The cadets scrambled through a snow-filled gully and up the
slope on the other side. They slipped and slid until they were
near the top and were able to clutch at bits of dead grass to pull
themselves the last few inches.

'Ihere you go,' said Mason proudly. 'The trig point. The
Lancaster should be a hundred yards north north-west, just over
that next rise.'

The cadets groaned. 'Why do we have to do this, Flight?'
said Cadet Derron Peace. He brushed snow off the knees


147



of his fatigue trousers where he had slipped into a snowdrift.

'We're supposed to he on a navigation exercise/ said
Thompson. 'If the skipper finds out . . .'

'Well, he won't find out, will he?' said Mason.

'It's foolhardy to take people out on the moors in this weather.
We're not properly equipped.'

'All right, stay here then.' Mason hegan to walk away through
the snow towards the next rise.

'Gut you're the one with the map and compass,' said
Thompson.

The cadets looked at each other and began to follow him.

o

The cabin windows o( the Piper caught a flash of sunlight as
the aircraft banked and turned over the hill ahead of them, the
note of its engine dropping to an ominous grumble as the sound
bounced off the rocky outcrop called Irontongue.


Chief Superintendent Jepson closed his eyes in pain. For a
moment, he thought he might be having a heart attack. It
was a fear that crossed his mind often these days, ever since
his doctor had told him he had high blood pressure and needed
to lose weight. Every time he felt a spasm of discomfort or a
touch of cramp, he thought he was having a heart attack. He
would sit back in his chair and breathe slowly, and reach for
the aspirin to thin his blood, before it was too late. But it had
never been a proper heart attack, not yet. Usually it was just the
effects of one more bit of stress piled on to him by one of his
junior officers, eager to tell the Chief Superintendent about the
latest disaster in F Division, careless of the damage they might
be doing to his cardiovascular system.


And the news this morning was so typical. For fifty-one weeks
of the year his resources were stretched, but not so stretched that
they couldn't cope. In fact, they coped so well that Constabulary
HQ in Ripley used it as a reason to fend off his demands for more
officers. They always pointed out that F Division saw less major
crime than any of the other letters of the alphabet from A to D.
Rut they also said that he was managing the division brilliantly,
that he was an example to the other commanders of the way

148


intelligence-led policing should work, that his intelligence and
information were so good that the question of how many officers
he had on duty at any one time had become academic. It was
supposed to make him feel better.

And then came the one week in the year when the whole
system collapsed. The one week when traffic ground to a halt
in snowdrifts on every road out of town and his officers were
tied up trying to move abandoned vehicles. It was the week
when half his available manpower seemed to have fallen over
on the ice and broken their collarbones, or sprained their backs
shovelling snow from their driveways, while the other half had
phoned in sick with the 'flu. The same week when some idiot
rammed a patrol car into a stone wall on Harpur Hill, and
an even bigger idiot got his dog van nicked and burned out

oo	o o

by two teenage burglars he was supposed to be arresting.
Her Majesty's inspector of Constabulary was asking questions
about how the administration budget was being spent. And the
Police Complaints Authority had received yet another allegation
of racial abuse from one of those thieving gypsy bastards camped
on the council golf course.

o

And now the division had not just one body, not even two
bodies but maybe three, if the missing baby didn't turn up
soon. One bodv was bad, and two was unlucky. Three would
be a catastrophe. In tact, three was a whole mad rush of bodies.
Chief Superintendent Jepson felt he could see them toppling
towards him like a set of skittles, or like mummies tumbling out
of their coffins and landing at his feet, grinning up at him from
their wrappings. It seemed as though there were bodies littering
the landscape everywhere. They were worse than the abandoned
cars; worse than the police ofncers with sprained backs laid out
Hat on their settees at home, who ought to have been dead but
weren't.

Intelligence-led policing methods ought to enable him to
direct a solitary officer to the right addresses with a sheaf of
arrest warrants in his hand. But intelligence had grown tired
of doing all the leading and had trotted off in the opposite
direction, where it would no doubt get lost on the moors in
the dark and fall over a cliff.


149



'So who have we got available?' he said, opening; his eyes just
enough to examine the expression on DI Hitchens' face. The
Chief was seeking enough evidence of insolence from the DI to
justify losing his temper. But, as usual, Hitchens knew how to
tread the line.

'The underwater section is at full strength,' said the DI.
'Otherwise, we have three traffic wardens. After all, there's
not much else tor them to do -- the snow is covering up all
the yellow lines.'

Jcpson let out a sound more like a whimper than a sigh. 'That
isn't funny,' he said.

'Well, you know yourself, Chief, that we've keen talking
about putting the division on emergency-only response.'

'I never thought it would seriously come to this. But a double
assault, two bodies and a missing baby, on top of everything
else . . .'

'And there's the ambulance, of course,' said Hitchens.

'What ambulance?'

'I'm surprised the press boys haven't been on to this one yet.
It's the sort of story they love. They're bound to sec it as another
opportunity to bash the police -- I can sec the headlines now in
the EJen KaJ/ey Tjmes.'

'What ambulance?' said Jcpson.

'Maybe it's a bit too early for the reporters, though. I expect
we'll be inundated with them later on. Oh, and uniformed
section say a couple of photographers turned up at the scene,
so I suppose we can look forward to some pictures on the front
pages, too.

'PKfiat ambuAzncc?'

'Sorry, Chief. I mean the ambulance that ran into one of our
traffic cars on Buxton Road. There wasn't a lot of damage to the
vehicles, mind you. It was just a shunt, really. A buckled boot
on the Vauxhall and a cracked radiator on the ambulance.'

Jepson closed his eyes again. 'Tell me there wasn't a patient
in the back of the ambulance.'

'There wasn't a patient in the back of the ambulance, Chief.'

The Chief Superintendent's eyes popped open in amazement.
'There wasn't?'


ISO



'Actually, there was. I was lying.'

'Oh Jesus. But hold on a buckled boot? The ambulance went
into the back of our vehicle? So it wasn't our driver's fault. That's
some consolation. He had to brake a bit suddenly, perhaps?'

'You might say that,' said Hitchens. 'I suppose.'

Jepson ran a hand across his chest, feeling for movement
under his shirt. He held it over the spot where he thought his
heart ought to be. His fingers flickered, as if tapping out a beat.
It was an irregular beat, more syncopation than rhythm. There
was a taint answering flutter. He was still alive.

'What arc you saying?'

'Well, it's just that the driver of the damaged milk tanker
might tell a different story when it comes to court.'

'I think you can tell me the rest later.' The Chief Superintendent
looked at Diane Fry, who was standing by impatiently.
' J his woman they found, the suicide ra.se

But Hitchens hadn't finished. 'They haven't managed to get
the tanker out of the ditch yet,' he said. 'There's milk all over
the road. Fro/en solid it is, too, like a giant slab of vanilla ice
cream. I'm told it looks delicious.'

Fry stirred restlessly at the Dl's interruption. 'You mean
Marie Tennent, the woman on Irontongue Hill, sir.'

'Yes,' said Jepson. 'What can you tell us about that, Frv?'

'It's an unusual way to choose to commit suicide,' she said.
'But perfectly effective, if that's what she did. There was no way
she would have survived the night. She wasn't dressed for it, for
a start. And she seems to have made no attempt to save herself.
As far as we can tell, she simplv lay down and f'ro/e to death.'

'It wouldn't be my choice of a way to die,' said Jepson, as if he
had already spent some time weighing up his personal options.

'Marie Tennent was aged twentv-cight. She had been working

o	^ o o

as a shop assistant until the babv was near. Her GP confirms
she was in a nervous state about the baby, even before it was
born. Who knows what goes through the mind of a woman
in that state? Maybe she found the responsibility too much and
couldn't face it.'

'She didn't leave a note?'

'No.'


151



'That's a problem. The coroner won't bring in a suicide
verdict without a note, or at least some conclusive evidence
from her family or close friends about her state of mind. And
this Marie Ferment has no husband, I suppose?'

Fry didn't even bother to answer that question. 'The main
problem is the baby,' she said. 'I'm afraid we're going to find
it dead somewhere. The question then will be whether it died
before the mother or after.'

Jepson sighed. 'Oh, that's terrible.'

'No neighbours came forward to report Marie missing. She has
no family locally, but we've traced her mother in Scotland. She
says the baby's name is Chloe, and she's only six weeks old.'

The baby's fate would be causing concern everywhere. In
the morning the newspapers would be asking: 'Have you seen
Baby Chloe?' The publicity would be their best hope of an
earl}1 result.

'And there's no husband?' said Jepson. 'No fiance? A boyfriend
maybe?'

'Not that we can find so far.'

'There must be someone, Fry. I mean, nine months ago, there
must have been someone.'

Fry shrugged. 'It was probably another case of a Saturday
night out in Sheffield.'

T beg your pardon?'

'That's what some women tell the Child Support Agency
when they ask who the father was. They saw they don't know,
that it was just a night out in Sheffield.'

'Jesus. A Saturday night out in Sheffield? In my day, all that
meant was that you woke up next morning with a hangover.
Or a bit of vomit on your shoes, at worst.'

'With respect, sir, you were a man.'

Jepson smiled tiredly. 'So I was, Fry, so 1 was. You must
have been looking at my medical records. But don't they have
a "morning-after" pill these days?'

Fry laughed. 'Yes. And they've had condoms for decades,
and lots of other methods of contraception too. I suppose I
don't have to mention that the man could have exercised some
responsibility ..."


152



'All right, all right. Did Social Services have no reports of any
potential problems with this woman?'
'None/
'And we weren't involved anywhere along the line? There

v	O

was no information received (from neighbours worried about her
welfare? No anonymous tip-offs about babies that had suddenly
gone missing? Please tell me there weren't any reports that we
never got round to following up.'

'I haven't checked yet, sir.'

'Getter do it sooner rather than later, Fry, before someone
goes to the press with that as well. Two dead bodies are enough.
That's all we need right now.'

'The patient in the ambulance died, by the way,' said
Hitchens.

The Chief Superintendent was so still and pale for a few
moments that Diane Fry began to wonder whether she ought
to start cardiac massage. Then Jcpson stirred. When he spoke,
it was clear he had decided to ignore the ambulance.

'Thank God we got rid of the Canadian woman. The last

o

thing we need is that sort of distraction.'

o

'But Marie Tennent,' said Fry, 'we need to find out who she
left the baby with. And how do we know for certain she left it
with anyone?'

v

'We don't,' said Hitchens.

'And where's the damn father?' said Jepson.

'Marie's mother might give us some clues,' said Fry. 'She's
arriving tomorrow morning.'

'Diane, you've got another case here,' said Hitchens.

'Thank you. 1 was so hoping you'd say that.'

'Use available resources where they're needed most,' said
Jepson, like a man repeating a mantra.

'What does that mean exactly?' asked Fry. She looked
at the Dl.

'It means you get half a traffic warden,' said Hitchens.

Jepson tried breathing deeply through his nose, filling his
lungs with oxygen until his head became pleasantly light.

'You can tell me about the ambulance now,' he said.


153



On the television monitor, a street scene appeared. Ben Cooper
recogni/ed it as Fargate, with the antique shops in the Buttcrcross
area in the background. Two figures were visible, waiting to
cross the road. There was no snow on the ground. The display
gave the date as 8th January, and the time was 01:48.

One of the figures in the CCTV footage was a tall, slim, white
youth of about eighteen with a prominent nose and an aggressive
haircut. I le was followed across Fargate by an Asian of the same
age, less tall and wearing a heavily padded jacket that made it
impossible to judge his build. They walked with a kind of overly
casual swagger that suggested they had been fuelled by alcohol
to an artificially heightened bravado.

When they reached the antique shops in the Buttercross, one
of the youths tapped the other on the arm as they came up
behind a third figure, someone heavier and slower. The two
youths broke into a run over the last few vards and pounced
on their victim, fists flying. What they intended wasn't clear --

'	J O ^

whether it was an attempted mugging, or merely a moment of
casual violence. But their attack didn't last long. They were near
the corner of one of the shops, where Cooper knew there was an
allevwav leading up towards the Underbank area. And suddenly
there were more figures appearing from the alley, and the two
youths were in the middle of a melee.

Cooper cursed the lighting that threw too many shadows on
faces and washed out the colours of clothes. It was impossible
to be sure how many newcomers were involved in the attack,
but there were at least three. The white youth pulled something
from his coat that looked like a knife, and a weapon that might
have been a baseball bat was swung at him. Cooper saw one youth
go down, then the other, and a boot connected with someone's
ribs so hard you could almost hear the thud on the videotape.

The fracas was over quickly. It was going to be very difficult
to sort out who did what, even if anybody could be identified.
Cooper knew Eddie Kemp, but he could not have been sure that
he was among the group that had been lurking in the shadows.

He had almost stopped the tape when he saw a group appear
further up the road, walking away from the camera. There were
four of them, probably all male, and it was possible they had


154



cut through one of the alleyways to avoid passing in the direct
line of the CCTV surveillance. There were cars parked by the
roadside, but the group had disappeared from view before they
could be seen approaching a particular vehicle.

Cooper re-wound the tape. At accelerated speed, the group
backed down the street, and the two youths stood up and drew
back. When he ran the tape forward again, he connrmed what
he had glimpsed the hrst time. There was a second when one of
the men walking away turned to look back over his shoulder at
the youths, and his face was partially exposed to the light from
a street lamp. The picture would be grainy, but the frame was
good enough to be usable in court. Eddie Kemp would have a
lot of talking to do to get out of this one.


The air cadets found the wreckage easily. There was no mistaking


o	^ c*

it once it appeared out of the snow. For a while they poked
around the scattered pieces. There was probably more under
the snow, but the smaller fragments would not re-appear until
the thaw. The cadets were growing colder and more unhappy
as they watched Flight Sergeant Josh Mason clamber over the
undercarriage and sit astride an engine casing. He waved his arms

o	o o

like a rodeo cowboy.

'Watch me ride this bugger!'

'Can't we go back now?' said Sharon Thompson.

'Don't you want to look at it, now we're here? It's a Lancaster
bomber. You won't see one of these very often. Do you know
how many pounds of bombs these babies carried?'

Mason tugged at the wing section, lifting it an inch or two
from the ground, revealing a dark cavity between mounds of
peat, and a trickle of gritty sand. Then he stopped and braced
himself against the weight, his cagoule flapping suddenly in a
spiral of wind.

'Hey,' he shouted, "I think they missed one of the crew!'

'What?'

'There are bones under here. It's a skeleton! A dead body.'

'Don't talk daft.'

'It's a missing airman from 1945.'

o

The cadets laughed uneasily. They knew Mason had found


155



nothing more than the remains of a sick sheep or abandoned
lamb that had crawled under the wing section to die.

With a grunt, Mason heaved up the wing. Feat dribbled from
the underside of the metal in dark, wet gobbets. Reluctantly,
the others moved closer, prepared to humour him for a minute
or two longer as he play-acted over a dead sheep.

The bones lay in a hollow where the wing section had protected
them from the weather and the attention of scavengers.
They appeared to be almost intact the skull still attached to
a fragile neck, the thin bones of the limbs still jointed in the
proper places, and tatters of skin still hanging from the ribcagc
and the lower legs. But the cadets could see that the body was
too small to be a sheep. And it wasn't curly grey wool they could
see clinging to the decomposed skin of the skull but something
man-made and far more shocking. It was something that cried
out to them from the dark peat.

With a jerk, Mason let go of the wing. There was a thud and
a scatter of wet snow across their boots as it slammed back into
place, plunging the tiny skeleton again into darkness. The cadets
gasped in horror, shuffled backwards, and shook their heads to
clear the image. Then they stared up at Josh Mason, as if he
alone were responsible for putting the picture in their minds.

But they had all looked at the bones under the wing. And
they had all seen the white knitted jacket and the ridiculous
pink bonnet. They had seen quite enough to know that the
flaps of the bonnet were designed to cover the tiny ears of a
human baby.


[56



IS


1 oday there seemed to Ben Cooper to he even more hooks in
Lawrence Daicy's shop, if that were possible. Could they have
been secretly breeding overnight? Or was it only a different
arrangement that made the stacks look dangerously unstable?


'It seems to me these books are just taking up space/ said
Cooper when Lawrence emerged from the back of the shop.
'You said yourself you don't have enough room to get newstock
in/

'That's not the point at all/ Lawrence sighed and wiped his
forehead with a sleeve. He sat down on a wobblv pile of ageing

. J	o o

volumes. Near the top were 0/»ejvanonj in (Ae fie/J /mm fne
loner Derwen! ( a//gj' and /I Oomprenenjite RecorJ of EirJ Migration in
Mc.scern Der^y.s/iire 792J 79JO. Lawrence had a coating of brown
dust on the lenses of his glasses, which must have made the books
all around him look mustier than ever.

'So what A the point, then?' said Cooper.

'The point is that the old books arc the ones my customers
expect to see in the shop. They come for the character of the
place, don't you see? The ambience. They like to touch the
books and soak up the feel and the spirit of them. Do you
think that customer the other day would have come in here
at all if 1 were selling Harry Potters instead of this stuff?'

'No, but . . /

'It's all about targeting. Finding your niche. You've got to
identify the needs of your own unique marketplace and cater
for its specific requirements/

'You've been reading magazine articles/ said Cooper.

'Yes, there was a feature in last week's issue of The ^ooA;e//cr
about the survival of independents/ said lawrcncc. 'Basically,
it said I had to identify my niche market or die. Unfortunately,
it seems the people who constitute my niche market
don t actually want to buy books. They just want to browse
among dusty old tomes, with handwritten prices that say


157



"three shillings and sixpence". It's part of the visitor experience
.'

Cooper picked up one of the booklets published by the
Edendale Historical Society. It was called 'Folk Customs of
the Eden Valley'. 'Marketing strategies, eh? We get those sort
of articles in the Police Gazette, too,' he said.

'Oh? Ant) what arc customers in your niche market looking
for, pray?'

'Pretty much the same, 1 suppose - image and no substance.'
Lawrence laughed. 'Do you want a coffee? That's something
else I provide free, along with the ambience.

'Yes, as long as it comes with a bit of information on
the side.'

The bookseller rolled his eyes. 'Well, fancy that a policeman
wanting information. You're sure a chocolate digestive wouldn't
do instead?'

'No.'

'I could stretch to a jammy dodger, if you smile at me nicely,
young man.'

'White with no sugar, thanks,' said Cooper.

Lawrence passed him a roll of adhesive labels and a ballpoint
pen. 'Make yourself useful then, while 1 put the kettle on.'

'What do you mean?'

'You can price up some of these books.'

'Wait a minute, Lawrence ... I don't know the first thing
about the price of antiquarian books.'

'For heaven's sake, put what you like. It's bound to be more
accurate than three shillings and sixpence, isn't it?'

Lawrence trotted through into the back of the shop in a
sudden waft of body spray. Cooper caught a glimpse of a
tiny kitchen area. He looked at the labels and the nearest pile
of books. He shrugged. Then he began to stick labels on the
covers of the books, adding handwritten prices. He varied the
amount between if and 15, according to the size and thickness
of the volume. Cooper had a vague idea that the age and rarity
of the book ought to count towards the price, too, but it was
too complicated for him. He hoped that some poverty-stricken


1S8



book-lover might benefit one day by discovering a terrific bargain

o	J o &

in the Natural History section of Eden Valley Books. Perhaps he
could suggest to Lawrence that it would be a selling point. He
could put a sign in the window J!oo&s priceJ 6y Egn Cooper. Don V
mJM tnis ycn.safiona/ opportunity wni/g .s-foc^j Jajt/ On the other hand,
putting anything at all in the bare windows of Eden Valley Books
might spoii the ambience.

He priced a tattered copy of 77)e Natura/ History of 5e/6orne
at 12.50 and added 'Or Near Offer' for a bit of varietv. His
attention began to wander, and he looked around the shop.
On the floor, between two sets of shelves, he noticed a telltale
scattering of black mouse droppings. In a pigeonhole behind
the counter there was a half-drunk tumbler of whisky. So that
was how Lawrence kept himself from dying of boredom during
the day.

'How are we doing?' called Lawrence.

'We're doing fine,' said Cooper. 'With a bit more practice,
I could get a job filling shelves in Somerfield's supermarket.'

"I like a man with ambition.'

The bookseller manoeuvred a tray carefully along the passage,
swaying his hips to dodge some of the unsteady stacks of books.
He looked approvingly at the newly priced labels.

'There -- wasn't that worth coming in for? You've learned a
new skill.'

'I want to ask you about a woman called Marie Tenncnt,'
said Cooper, when he had his coffee in his hand.

'Do I know her?'

'That's the question, Lawrence.'

Lawrence had brought a plate of biscuits, too, but he didn't
seem to mind eating them all himself. In fact, he was stuffing
them into his mouth absent-mindedly, the automatic movement
of somebody used to snacking all day long.

'Oh, I sec,' he said. 'Marie . . . what was it?'

'Tenncnt. She'd be aged about twenty-eight, medium height,
dark hair, a little on the plump side maybe. She could have been
buying books by Danielle Steel.'

'Oh, a customer? That would be a novelty.'

In between biscuits, Lawrence began to fiddle with his glasses,


159



leaving crumbs on the frames and a large thumbprint on one of
the lenses.

'Do you remember her coming in here, Lawrence?'

'Would this have been recently?'

'I'm not sure. It could have been any time. She bought a few
modem novels, fitness books, autobiography.'

Cooper's phone rang. He found it in his pocket, looked at
the display, and sighed as he pushed the button to end the call.
There was always another job waiting for him.

'Daniclle Steel, did you say? I don't have many customers
who buy Daniclle Steel novels. They're a bit too popular, if
you know what I mean.'

Cooper was starting to get irritated by Lawrence's constant

i	O O v

fiddling with his glasses. He found it distracting not to be able
to sec someone's eyes when he was talking to them.

'You don't stock them, then?'

'I didn't say that, quite,' said Lawrence. 'Down at the end
there, I do have a few boxes of books that I've bought at auctions
and never bothered sorting out. People can have a rummage in
there, if they want to. Anything they find, they can have for
lOp. There might have been some Daniclle Steels. There was
a Jeffrey Archer found in there once.'

'You would remember Marie Tennent, if she'd been a
frequent customer, I suppose?'
Lawrence picked up the last biscuit and broke it in half, then
into quarters, scattering crumbs on the desk and on to the floor.
More food for the mice tonight.

b

'Yes, of course. I know my regular customers pretty well --
I can usually guess what they're looking for.'

'But you don't remember her?'

Lawrence shook his head, then clapped his hand over one
side of his glasses as if he were testing the eyesight in the other
eye. 'Sorry. Local, is she? Not a tourist?'

'Local. She had a baby recently. You might have noticed her
if she came in when she was pregnant?'

Finally, Lawrence took his hand away from his face. Cooper
noticed that one of the bookseller's eyes was looking rather
strange behind the lens of his glasses. It was slightly drooping


160



and lop-sided. He wondered if Lawrence had suffered a minor
stroke recently, which had left the muscles weak on that side
of his face. But then the lens of Lawrence's glasses dropped out
and landed on one of the books in front of him on the desk,
and his eye looked normal again. Cooper realized it had keen
working loose for the past few minutes.

'Damn and blast/ said Lawrence. 'They're a real bugger to
^et back in once they come out. Especially when you can't sec
what you're doing properly because your lens has fallen out.'

'Haven't you got a spare pair?'

'Somewhere,' said Lawrence vaguely. He peered around the
shop with his other eye, and Cooper began to worry that the
bookseller was going to ask him to look for his spare glasses
among the mountains of books. But Lawrence was prepared
he carried a tiny screwdriver on a little chain round his neck.

'What's the problem with this Tennent woman?' he said.
'What has she done?'

'She's dead,' said Cooper.

Lawrence laid his glasses on the counter and bent over them

o

short-sightedly as he tried to tighten the screws holding them
together. Watching him, Cooper thought the job might take
him a long time. His hands were too unsteady either to keep
the screw in position or to At the screwdriver on to it.

'Ah, well,' said Lawrence. 'So that's another customer ^one,
then.'

Cooper hadn't held out much hope of Lawrence. Even with
so few people visiting his shop, it was asking a lot to expect
him to remember a particular one. It was painful to watch him
struggling with the screw, and it meant talking to the top of his
head. But Cooper wasn't going to volunteer to help.

'I forgot to go and see your aunt about the flat,' he said.

'Not to worry,' said Lawrence. 'It probably isn't your sort
of place.'

'No, I'm sure it's fine. I meant to give her a call last night.

o	o '

but I was busy.'

' There will be somewhere a lot better waiting for you. Have
you tried the estate agent on Fargate? They've got some nice
properties.'


161



'I can't afford them.'

'Aunt Dorothy is getting a bit eccentric anyway.'

'No, I'll go.' Cooper looked at the board. 'I see you've taken
the postcard down.'

'Oh, yes. The Hat has probably been let by now.'

'Has ft?'

'I don't know.' Lawrence was mumbling over his counter,
so that Cooper could hardly hear what he was saying.

'Sorry?'

'I just thought the card was getting a bit faded.'

Jo	o o

'It's worth a try then. I'll call round at Welbeck Street
tonight.'

It was in that moment of saying it that Cooper knew he
had committed himself. If the flat was even half habitable, he
wouldn't be able to find a reason to get out of taking it not
without long and impossible explanations to make.

He left the bookseller still trying to fit the lens of his glasses
back in. Near the counter, he saw a set of illustrated Thomas
Hardy novels: faryrom (Ae /WaJjin^ Growj, [/nder taste Greenwood Tree,
/uJe f/?c O&ru/c. Cooper had loved Thomas Hardy as a teenager,
/uje had been one of his A-level set books, and he had read all the
rest one after another, drawn into the evocation of a remote yet
familiar world. These editions were in gold covers with coloured
panels, protected in a cardboard slipcasc, and they were priced at
^45. Cooper wondered what the profit on that was for Lawrence
Daley. Assuming that he ever sold them, of course.


It had already been dark for over an hour by the time Ben
Cooper got to the house in Welbeck Street. It was across the
river from the Dam Street area where Marie Tcnncnt lived. If
it hadn't been tor the houses behind, he might have been able
to see the roof of the heritage centre in the old silk mill.


Dorothy Shelley stood in the hallway of the ground-floor
flat at number 8 and looked him over. She was a slender
woman wearing a cashmere cardigan, with another slung over
her shoulders. The cardigans looked a bit frayed round the edges,
and they gave her an air of decayed gentility, which might have
been natural, but could just as easily have been the image she


162



was aiming to present. Cooper was initially pleased with the look
of the flat, which comprised the ground floor of a stone-built
semi-detached house, solid and sympathetically converted, with
the occasional incongruity of stud wall and plastic coving.

'If you could perhaps tell me what's included in the rent,'
he said. 'What about Council Tax and water rates?'

'Do you have any objections to cats?' said Mrs Shelley.

'None at all. We have several back home. Well, they're farm
cats really. They're supposed to be outside, but they spend as
much time in the house as they do in the outbuildings.'

V	o

'That's good,' said Mrs Shellev 'Only, there's a sort of a

O	' ^ v '

lodger, you see.'

'Oh?''

'She stays in the conservatory, except to go out in the garden
to do her duty. She's no trouble at all.'

'You mean there's a cat? That's all right, as long as the central

o *	o

heating works and there isn't too much damp. Who's responsible
for the maintenance work?'

"I call her Miranda,' said Mrs Shelley. 'She's a stray, but she
seems to have moved in for a while. I'm glad you don't mind,
because I couldn't throw her out. Not now.'

'Well, I'm sure it won't be a problem. Is the electricity supply
on a coin meter? Or would 1 get a separate bill? 1 could do with
an estimate of the running costs, so 1 can tell whether 1 can
afford it.'

'Actually, I'm worried about Miranda,' she said.

'Oh?'

I know she's only a stray moggie, but I took her in because
I could see she was pregnant. I couldn't bear the thought of her
having her babies out in the cold and the sno\v.'

Cooper opened a cupboard door, hoping to find the electricity
meter. But the cupboard was full of cleaning equipment and
empty boxes.

'So I brought her into the conservatory and made her a little
bed in there,' said Mrs Shelley.

Cooper sighed. 'And has she had the kittens?'

'No. That's what I'm worried about.'

'You wouldn't mind if I bought a few small pieces of furniture,


16?



vv

oulcl you? The odd chair, a writing desk. And I need somewhere
to set up a personal computer. Perhaps over here, near the power
points. I'd have to move the sideboard a bit.'

s

'She seems to be getting bigger and bigger, but nothing's
happening.'

'The sideboard would go nicelv in that corner, Mrs Shellev.

O	J J

II I moved the table over a loot or two . . .'

She wrung her gloves in her hands. 'In fact, since you're here,
would you mind having a look at her? At Miranda, I mean.'

'Mrs Shelley, if there's a problem with your cat, I really think
it would be a better idea to let a vet have a look at her.'

'I know, but vets are so expensive, aren't they? Won't you
please have a quick look? You said you live on a farm, so you
must know about animals. I'm sure you'll be able to tell whether
I'm panicking tor no reason.'

'I'm not sure I've got time. I only popped in from work. I
really should be getting back. If you could just let me know a lew
things. I was wondering about a parking space for my car.'

'If you tell me the poor thing needs a vet well, I suppose
I'll find the money somehow.'

Cooper sighed again. 'All right. I'll take a quick look.'

Mrs Shellev led the way through the kitchen into the little

'	- O

conservatory. Cooper followed, pausing to examine the electric
cooker and the fridge. They looked reasonably new and in
good condition, but there were hardly any work surfaces, and
the cupboards were old and starting to look chipped around
the edges.

'Is there a freezer, or enough space to put one in?' he said.

'She's in here,' said Mrs Shelley, 'the poor love.'

Miranda was jet black, with thick fur that looked as though
it had recently been groomed. The cat lay curled in a wicker
basket padded with cushions and part of an old blanket. The
basket was pulled up close to where the flue from the stove
passed through the wall, and it looked the warmest and most
comfortable spot in the entire house.

'What do you think, dear?'

'I think a free/cr would go better in the kitchen,' said
Cooper.


164



Mrs Shelley looked at him in complete bafflement. 'You
haven't even looked at her/ she said.

Obediently, Cooper bent down, and the black cat opened a
wary eye at him. It was a sharp, yellow eye set in a broad face
that was almost Persian. He could see that the cat's stomach was
pretty large. In fact, the animal had to lie sideways in the basket
to accommodate its bulk.

Cooper put a hand out cautiously, fighting memories of cats
that had taken exception to being touched by a stranger and had
left their claw marks on the back of his hand to reinforce the
message. But Miranda didn't move as he stroked her side and
felt the rounded swelling under the black fur. A faint, rumbling
purr started up, like the revving of a tiny motorbike, and Cooper
gently cased his hand underneath to where the cat's belly rested
on the blanket.

'How long has she been this big?' he asked.

o	O

'Well, she was quite large when I took her in,' said Mrs
Shellev. 'And she seems to have got bigger and bigger since

V	O OO OO

then. It must be six weeks now.'

'Six weeks? Arc you sure?'

'Oh, yes.'

Cooper moved his hand over the cat's belly, feeling carefully
for signs of engorged teats, then moved it backwards. Miranda
didn't protest as he raised one back leg and took a quick peck
at the rear end hidden under the fur. He lowered the leg and

o

looked at the floor to the side of the basket, where there were
several saucers, one containing fresh milk and the other three
with various tasty-looking delicacies -- one seemed to be tuna,
and there were some scraps of chicken, too.

'I hope you haven't been spoiling Miranda too much,' he
said.

'She has to cat properly,' said Mrs Shelley, following his gaze.
'It's very important in the later stages of pregnancy. I make sure
there is always plenty to tempt her appetite. I give her a few
little tidbits. Nothing wrong with that, is there?'

'Not within reason.'

Cooper let the cat settle back into its position. It eased
itselt over to allow space for its rounded belly and looked


16S


up at him. The cat's stare was faintly challenging, but full of
conspiratorial knowingncss. A message seemed to pass between
them, an acknowledgement by the cat that it had met someone
who understood these things. A warm basket, as much food as
you could want, a bit of affection and no demands made on you
at all. It sounded idyllic to Cooper, too.

'I don't think Miranda will be having kittens any time
soon,' he said.

'Oh dear, what's wrong?'

'There's nothing wrong really. Nothing that a little less rich
food and a bit more exercise wouldn't help.'

'Oh, but poor Miranda

'And you might think about changing his name as well,' said
Cooper.

The cat gave him that look again. It was a steady gaze, resigned
but with no hint of shame. 'Man to man/ it said, 'you'd have
done exactly the same.'

'Well, if you've <^uitc finished,' said Mrs Shelley. 'Are you
going to tell me what you think of the flat?'

Cooper hesitated. He looked at the side wall of the house next
door, at the cat hairs tangled on the floor of the conservatory,
and at a raffia chair with black specks of mould, which sat under
the boarded window. He still had no idea as to the whereabouts
of the electricity meter, the size of the Council Tax bills, or
who paid for the maintenance. In the pause before he answered,
Cooper could hear nothing in the house but the purring of the cat
and the ticking of the radiators, like a faint background heartbeat,
the sound of somebody sleeping.

'It'll do fine,' he said.


That night, at home at Bridge End Farm, Ben Cooper discovered
that the Canadian woman, Alison Morrissey, had taken her story
to the media. In fact, she must have contacted them in advance
of her arrival with information on the purpose of her visit. It
had been a clever move, and he wondered if someone had been
advising her on a public relations strategy.


The regional television stations had picked up her story and
there were items about her that night. Morrissey was a gift


166



to the screen her face played well for the cameras, being
striking as well as full of both passion and intelligence. There
was a particular scene in a Ga/enJar piece on YTV that showed
her against the backdrop of a snow-covered Irontonguc Hill,
where the wreckage of her grandfather's Lancaster bomber still
lay. Morrissey's face was flushed with the cold, and her dark
hair was in constant movement in the wind as she spoke to the
interviewer. Her voice came across calmlv and with absolute

v

clarity against the bluster of the wind on the microphone. She
was an articulate woman, too. There were no signs of the usual
stumblings and 'ers' and 'urns' that were so irritating in people
unused to being interviewed.

Cooper watched as the camera finally pulled awav and
lingered on a shot of Alison Morrissey ga/.ing at the hill,
her face in profile, her expression a picture of common sense
and determination, but with a hint of strong emotion held in
check. It wasn't quite clear how she achieved that effect -- it was
something about the way she tilted her head, or the angle of her

O	v ' O

neck. He didn't think it was entirely an act for the camera.

This woman wasn't some nutcase whose life had been taken
over by an irrational obsession. Determined and clever Morrissey
certainly was, but she seemed to be sincere too. Sincere people
could be the most trouble.

The sight of Morrissey on the screen had made him forget
for a while all the noise around him. The noises were the
sounds of his brother Matt's family going about their usual
evening activities, which seemed to consist mostly of shouting
and arguing, laughing and singing. But even these seemed to
retreat into the background as Cooper watched the piece shot on
the hillside. He could see it had been Rimed early that afternoon,
with clouds already starting to build up in the east, but shafts
of sunlight lit up the outcrops of rock on top of Irontonguc
Hill. The producer must have been delighted with the effect,
as well as with the performance in front of the camera by Alison
Morrissey herself.

She had certainly been a contrast to DC! Kcssen, who had
made an appearance in the main news bulletin, appealing to the
public for information about the whereabouts of Marie Tennent's


167



baby. 'We're very concerned for the safety of this child,' he said.
In fact, he said it three times, and still failed to get any sincerity
into his voice.

When the next item came on the TV -- a funny piece about
a quaint rural tradition in North Yorkshire Cooper continued
staring at the screen for a while without seeing it.

There was so much happening in his life at the moment that
it seemed inconceivable he should be developing an interest in
something fiftv-sevcn wears old. But the signs were there of the

o y	v o

beginnings of a fascination. They always included a desire to
find out everything there was to know about a subject, and a
tendency to he thinking about it even when he was supposed
to he on duty.

He was lucky that he had survived this long in the job when
his mind was so prone to (lights of imagination. Imagination was
a trait that didn't always fit with routine police work. Up to now,
his supervisors had given him plenty of leew ay on the strength of
his reputation. And, of course, because of who he was. He was
Sergeant Joe Cooper's son. Who wouldn't find it understandable
if he seemed to be a little distracted occasionally? But now, more
than ever, Cooper was aware that he ought to watch his step.

He turned off the TV and looked at his watch. The man he
most wanted to talk to at this moment was Walter Rowland,
the former member of the RAF rescue team who had been on
the scene of the Lancaster crash. Aside from Zvgmunt Lukasz.

v O	'

Rowland was the only surviving witness he knew of. But it had
been a long dav and he was exhausted. Maybe tomorrow he

O	j

would find a chance to contact Rowland. Probably it would be
a waste of time. It all happened a long lime ago, after all, and
Rowland was an old man by now -- no doubt he would have
forgotten the whole thing.

C)	O

Because he had turned off the TV, Cooper missed the news
bulletin later that night, when it was announced that human
remains had been found at the site of an old aircraft wreck on
Irontongue Hill.

o


Ever .since he had retired, Walter Rowland liked to listen to the
radio in his workshop. The sound of the voices soothed him as he



168



worked, helped him to forget the increasing pain that would knot
his hands into claws for days. The news readers' talk of events
going on in and around Derbyshire was somehow reassuring;
it made him feel that he was well off where he was, lucky
to be out of the constant mad whirl of car crashes and house
Hres and endless incomprehensible arguments about subjects he
would never have to understand. But tonight, what he heard on
the radio made him pause on his lathe. He stared at a curl of wood
as it hung from the chair leg, ready to fall. He had forgotten what
he was supposed to be doing.

Rowland had been just eighteen years old when the RAF
Lancaster crashed on Irontongue Hill. He had enlisted twelve
months before the war ended, and had never seen any action.
Instead, he had been recruited into the RAF mountain rescue
unit based at Harpur Hill. Then he had seen a bit of action all
right, and plenty of dead and injured men, too. Rut the bodies
had all been from his own side British and American airmen,
or Canadians, Australians and Poles. They had not been killed
by enemy action, but had died on the hills of the Peak District.
A lot of them had flown unwarily into the deadly embrace of
the Dark Peak, into that old trap that lay between low cloud
and high ground.

They didn't say much on the radio news late that evening.
But he heard the newsreader mention human remains and an
aircraft wreck on Irontongue Hill. The words were enough to
take Rowland back over half a century, to a scene of carnage and
a burning aircraft on a snow-covered hill. There had been human
remains then, all right. There had been pieces everywhere, and
men charred like burnt steaks in the wreckage.

He thought about the possibility that there might, after
all, have been another body the rescue team hadn't found,
a fatally injured crew member who had been overlooked.
But then Rowland remembered how thorough the search of

o

the wreckage had been, not only by the rescue teams and
the local police, but also later by the RAF recovery squad.
And he recalled how many of the fragments of the aircraft

v	C?

had disappeared over the years, scavenged by souvenir collectors
or tugged loose by curious walkers and left to be


169



scattered by the ferocious gales that blasted those moors in
winter.

Rowland brushed the wood shavings off his overalls with the
backs of his hands.

'No way,' he said to the chair leg sitting on his workbench.
'No way on this earth.'

He had lost interest in the chair. The smooth surface and delicate
turns seemed irrelevant now, an old man's preoccupation,
no more than a means of keeping himself occupied and away
from his memories. His hands weren't as good as they used to
be now, anyway. The arthritis had progressed too far, and the
pain was so great that it was impossible to keep his grip on the
wood. He knew he would suffer for the rest of the week now,
as a result of the short time he had spent working on the chair.
Some folk would tell him to stop, to give in and accept that he
was wasting his effort. Aye, and the clay that he gave in would
be the day that he died.

Rowland opened the back door of the workshop and coughed
out a mouthful of sawdust on to the side of the path, staining a
patch of snow. Then he lifted his head slowly and spoke to the
night sk\, as if the cold air might somehow carry his voice to
the place on Irontongue Hill where the wreckage of Lancaster
SU-V lay.

'All of them that died in that crash, we got out,' he said. 'And
the one that should have died that bastard walked away.'


170



16


1 he tiny bones looked pathetic on the slab. Dark peat had dried
and crumbled away from the skeleton, to be carefully swept into
an evidence bag. Some of the bones were crushed or were freshlv


O	y

broken where Flight Sergeant Josh Mason had dropped the wing
of Sugar Uncle Victor on them.

'If it weren't for the skull, you could be forgiven for thinking
you had found a dead lamb/ said the pathologist, Julian Van
Doon. 'At this age, they're barely formed.'

'What age?' said Dianc Fry.

'Mmm. Two weeks, perhaps. We'll ask a forensic anthropologist
to take a closer look. The only injuries I can see. are
definitely postmortem.'

'Blasted air cadets.'

'It's hardly their fault.' The pathologist used a small steel
instrument to remove a live insect that had been hibernating
in the corner of the jaw. It went into another bag. 'I sec from
the newspapers you've been searching for a small child. "Have
you seen Baby Chloc?"'

'That's right,' said Fry.

'Well, I don't know the sex of this child. But there's one
thing for sure -- it isn't Baby Chloe. This baby has been dead
(or years.'

Fry nodded. She looked at the evidence bags containing
the pink bonnet and the knitted white jacket found with
the bones.

'On the other hand,' she said, 'the clothes it was wearing are
brand new.'


By Friday morning, DC Gavin Murfin had still not come up with
a match for the Snowman on the missing persons databases and
was showing signs of giving up. There were the usual missing
husbands and sons on the list. There were the middle-aged
men who had succumbed to their midlife crises and walked



171



out on the boring wife, and the teenagers who had suffered
their midlife crisis early and walked out on the real world. And
plenty more besides.

The trouble was that none of them sounded like the owner of
the expensive suit and the brogues. Strangest of all, a house to
house in Woodland Crescent had established that the man Grace
Lukasz described had called at no other addresses except hers.

'We're going to get Mrs Lukasz in to make a formal statement/
said Diane Fry when she came back from talking to their
senior officers. 'There must be a clue there somewhere to who
this man was, and what he wanted in Woodland Crescent.'

The Snowman enquiry and the hunt for Eddie Kemp's
associates in the double assault were taking up most of the
resources that E Division had available. And they still had a
missing baby to find, and nothing was more important than
that. Meanwhile, undetected crimes and unresolved enquiries
were piling up. The Crown Prosecution Service was kicking up
a fuss about the delay in producing files for court cases, which
they had to postpone.

Ben Cooper had more actions on the Snowmnan enquiry that
morning. There were several more visits in Edendale, and a
drive out to the Snake Inn to talk to the staff once more.

'By the way, I think Eddie Kemp is going to find himself called
in for questioning again,' said Fry.

'Did Forensics get something from his car?' asked Cooper.

'Nothing definite yet. But we badly need to be questioning
somebody. Who's going to make the decision, I'm not sure. It
might be Mr Tailby, or it might be Mr Kessen. Talk about too
manv chiefs and not enough Indians.'

y	o

'Are we going to get any help, or what?'

'God, I hope so. But as for who's going to organize that . . .'

'I get the picture.'

Fry watched him sifting through the files on his desk. 'Have
you found anywhere to live yet, then, Ben?'

'As a matter of fact, yes. I went to see a place last night. A
flat on Welbcck Street, close to town. It belongs to Lawrence
Dalcy's aunt.'

'Whose aunt?'


172



'Lawrence Dalev. He owns Eden Valley Books. You remember,
where Marie Tennent bought her books?'

'Oh, yes. So you did some private business while you were
there, did you, Ben?'

'Well, not really.'

'And you bought some books as well, if I remember rightly.'

'It didn't take me two minutes.'

'Better make up tor it with some interviews. There are plenty
to be done.'

'You know there's still the Marie Tennent Hie outstanding?'
he said.

'Mrs Van Doon won't be getting round to her yet, so the
inquest won't open for a few days. It's a matter of priorities.
We have to move on with the Snowman. We have to get an
identification. The woman can wait.'

'That was a false alarm about the remains, then. Jt wasn't
Baby Chloc?'

'No, this one was long dead.'

'Poor beggar. What do you think? An unwanted child?
Teenage mum?'

'Never mind teenage they have them by the time they're
ten.'

The clothes, though . . .'

'Forensics will tell us more,' said Fry. 'But they were new. It
got out on the news bulletins last night, and we've been coping
with phone calls about missing babies ever since.'

'Nothing from the person who actually has Baby Chloe, I
suppose?

'No.'

'If the clothes turn out to belong to Marie's baby . . .'

'OK, we're still very concerned about Chloc. Officers visited
all the neighbours last night, when they got home. No one
knows anything about the baby. They're going to take another
look round the Tennent house today, just in case, and Marie's
mother is coming in this morning. She lives in Falkirk and says
she hasn't seen her daughter since not long after Chloc was
born. Marie was due to go up to Scotland to visit her in
the spring, but in the meantime they only communicated by


173



phone, says Mum. We might get some more out of her when
she arrives.'

'Marie did have a baby then?'

'Why, what did you think, Ben?'

'She might have been looking after somebody else's baby. She
might have been babysitting for a friend. She might have been
working as an unregistered childminder. She might have been one
of those women who are so desperate for a baby they take
somebody else's. There are lots of possibilities.'

'Not according to Grandma. Anyway, if you spent less time
in bookshops and more time reading the files, Ben, you'd know
that Marie's GP has removed any doubts on that score.'

But Gooper hadn't really been in any doubt. The impression
from Marie Tennent's house had been quite clear. Marie had
been a mother, and her baby was somewhere they hadn't
looked vet.

'What about the garden?' he said.

Fry sighed. Despite what she had said, Gooper knew she was
thinking the same as he was.

'The uniforms are being issued with spades,' she said.


Mrs Lorna Tennent was brought back to West Street after
identifying her daughter in the mortuary at the hospital. She
was made tea and settled in an interview room. She cried tor a
while until her eves were red and swollen, and then she talked
about her daughter and about the baby, little Ghloe.


'Of course, I came down to be with her when the baby was
born,' she said. 'I stayed with her for a week, but 1 had my job
to go back to in Falkirk.'

'Did she seem all right?' asked Fry. 'Able to cope with
the baby?'

'She was taken up with Chloe completely. But Marie wasn't
very practical. 1 wanted her to come back with me to Scotland,
so I could help her to look after the little thing. But she wouldn't
do it. She wanted to be on her own with her baby, and she didn't

want Grannv being in the way. She hardlv even seemed to want

j	& j j

the little jacket I knitted for her.'
'A jacket? What colour?'


174



'White.'

'Would you be able to identify it?'
'Of course. Have you found it?'
'We might have.'

o

Mrs Tennent nodded sadly. 'Marie didn't want Chloe wearing
it. She thought I was interfering. You're right, she wasn't really
up to coping properly, but she wouldn't take any help. Of
course, it's always a bit difficult with a first baby.'

Fry paused. 'But, Mrs Tennent, it wasn't Marie's first baby,
was it?'

The woman stared at her, then her tears began again as she
understood what Fry was saying. 'I always wondered/ she said.
'Marie told me nothing, but 1 could guess. She managed to make
excuses for not seeing me for months, and when I did sec her,
she looked ill.'

'When was this?'

'Over two years ago. She'd come to live down here because
she fell in love with the area. We used to visit Edcndale every
year when she was younger.' Mrs Tennent paused. 'I suppose she
had an abortion, did she? She wouldn't want to tell me, because
we're Catholics, you see. Marie was brought up a Catholic.'

'No, we don't think Marie had an abortion,' said Fry. 'She'd
given birth before.'

'But . . .'

Fry showed her a cutting from that morning's newspaper.
'We think this could have been Marie's first baby. This was also
where the jacket was found which I'll ask you to identify.'

Mrs Tennent read the article twice. 'Do you know how the
baby died?'

'Not yet. In fact, we may never know.'

'Marie told me she had a new job in a clothes shop and was
too busy to come to see me, or to let me come and see her.' Mrs
Tenncnt sighed unsteadily. 'I should have followed my instincts,
and I might have been able to do something. I suppose nobody
knew she'd had that baby at all?'

'It seems possible, I'm afraid.'

But, like Fry, Mrs Tennent was following a line of logic. 'Poor
little Chloe,' she said. 'It's terrible to think of all the things that


175



might have happened to her. Marie wouldn't have done anything
deliberately to hurt her, though. I'm sure of that.'

'Her doctor says she was suffering from some anxiety about
the baby, even before it was born.'

'I know, 1 know. But that's not the same as wanting to hurt
her. is it? I thought she would pet on better once she'd got

'	o o o

rid of the old boyfriend -- if you could call him a boyfriend.
He was married, of course. He went back to his wife after a
few months, but not until after he'd knocked our Marie about
a bit. She always had poor taste in men.'

Fry sat forward with more interest. 'Who was this boyfriend?'

Mrs Tenncnt had looked ready to start crying again, but she
scowled at the question.

'I told and told her she could do a lot better for herself.
Marie said he ran his owTi business. But after all, he was only
a window cleaner.'


The number of potential interviewees had been mounting
steadily, without a matching increase in the number of staff
for the enquiry teams, although a trickle of officers had been
seconded from other divisions. Ben Cooper had been knocking
on doors fruitlessly with a file full of interview forms in his hand,
when he had found himself within halt a mile of Underbank.
It occurred to him to wonder whether Eddie Kemp's car had
been returned. Kemp would find it impossible to do his work
without it.


Rather than attempt the steep, cobbled street from the
Buttcrcross itselt, which hadn't been cleared of snow, Cooper
chose to approach the Underbank area from the opposite
direction. He worked his way to Eddie Kemp's street, and
noted that the Isuzu wasn't on its concrete apron.

Now he was nearly half an hour ahead of schedule. Next on
his list of tasks was a visit to the Snake Inn, where he was
supposed to take statements from the staff and try to jog their
memories about vehicles that might have passed the inn after
the Pass had been closed because of the heavy snow on Monday
night. Half an hour in a cosy pub with a blazing fire and a pint


176



of beer sounded attractive. Then his mobile phone rang. It was
Diane Fry.

'Ben I know you're busy, but I need you to meet me at
Eddie Kemp's house in Bceley Street in half an hour.'

'Half an hour?'

'Can you make that?'

'Of course, but

'We've just had Marie Tennent's mother in,' said Fry.
'Guess who used to be Marie's boyfriend until he went back
to his wife?'

'Not Eddie?'

'Yes. That sounds like a desperate woman to me.'

'Maybe he's got hidden qualities.'

'Yeah, she probably liked him for the size of his squeegee.'

'Do you think he might have the baby? I hope so.'

'Do you? He wouldn't be my idea of the perfect father.'

'No,' said Cooper. 'But it's better than some of the alternatives.'
He looked at the street where he had parked. Eddie
Kemp's house was just round the corner. 'Half an hour you
said, Diane?'

'I've got to show my face at a meeting Arst, so I can't make
it any sooner. Is that OK?'

'No problem at all.'

When Cooper finished the call, he checked an address in his
notebook and turned the car round. The former RAF mountain
rescue man, Walter Rowland, lived only a couple of streets
down from Eddie Kcmp, in a terrace of houses that hung over
the antique shops in the Ruttercross like a line of birds perched
among the trees.

Rowland's front door was one of two narrow entrances which
shared a wooden portico carved with stylixcd flower designs. A

*	v O

stone mounting block found at one of the former coaching inns

o	&

in town now stood outside the cottages among the remains of
some frost-blackened petunias. On the end of the row stood a
modern Gospel Hall, and further up, on the corner of Harrington
Street, was another church that Cooper didn't recognize.

He looked up at Rowland's cottage. The first-floor windows
had tiny glass panes, so grubby and dark that it was obvious


177



neither Eddie Kcmp nor any of his window-cleaner colleagues
had called this way recently with their ladders and chamois
leathers. The putty was crumbling away from the window
frames, and the lintels were badly worn where the weather
had eaten deep chunks out of the soft golden sandstone. From
outside, it looked as though only the ground floor was occupied.
The lower windows were stuffed with cheaper versions of the
brass in the nearby antique shops, along with pot plants and
porcelain figurines in front of the net curtains. These objects
were the traditional barricades against the prying eyes of the
tourists who passed by in the street during the summer,
only inches from the private lives of those who lived here
all year round.


Walter Rowland was in his mid-seventies and looked like a
man who had been accustomed to doing things with his hands,
but no longer could. He had deformed fingers, in which the
tendons twitched occasionally, their movement clearly visible
under the skin, like the strings of a puppet. Ben Cooper found
the movement distracted his eye rrom Rowland's face and the
sound of his voice.


'Yes, you can come in,' said Rowland. "I don't know what
you want, but I don't get much company.'

The cottage was a traditional two up and two down, clean
and neat. On the ground floor there was a combined sitting- and
dining-room looking on to the street, and a kitchen at the
back. Rowland led Cooper through the front room, which
was dominated by a pine table and black iron fireplace with
an incongruous gas fire that pumped out enough heat to wipe
out memories of the cold outside.

In the kitchen, Cooper saw an open back door, which didn't
lead directly to the outside but into a small workshop that had
been built on to the house. He saw a wooden workbench, with
a gleaming lathe and tools hanging neatly in racks. There were
old wood shavings on the floor and several half-finished objects
on a table.

Rowland closed the door to the workshop. He did it awkwardly,
not using his hands, but leaning into it with his


178



dhow and shoulder. Then, without even bothering to ask
whether his visitor wanted a cup of tea, he switched on an
electric kettle that stood next to the sink under the hack
window. Cooper noticed that the skin of the old man's face
was translucent, like his hands. You could see the veins in
his temples and the light from the window shining through
his ears.

'Of course I remember the crashed Lancaster,' said Rowland.
'I rememhcr all the crashes I went to, every body or injured
airman I helped to carry off the mountains. That's not the
sort of thing you forget. And the Lancaster was the worst of
them all/

'Do you remember the fuss about the Canadian pilot who
went missing?'

'That one walked away,' said Rowland. 'The pilot. McTcague.
Murder, that was, pure and simple. That man left four of his crew
dead, and another one dying, and he walked away. He didn't care
about them, did he?'

'Maybe it was shock. People behave in strange ways in those
circumstances. He might not even have known where he was,
or what had happened.'

Rowland sniffed. 'I'll give you that. Sometimes we had men
that would wake up in hospital and not know why they were
there, let alone remember anything about a crash. Yes, it
happens. Rut I reckon this one was different.'

'Hut why?'

Rowland walked back into the front room and sat at the table.
Cooper followed, wincing at how slowly and painfully the old
man walked.

'He'll be dead by now, I expect,' said Rowland.

'I don't know.'

'there's no good comes of talking ill of the dead. 1 wouldn't
want people to talk ill of me, when I'm dead. It won't be long
now, so it's something I think of, I suppose.'

'Apart from McTeague, there was only one survivor from
that crash,' said Cooper.

'And has Ae said anything?'

'No.'


179



'Loyalty, that is. The skipper could do no wrong. That was
the way they were.'

'Yes/ said Cooper. 'You're right, they were like that/

'I always thought they would rind him pretty quick afterwards,'
said Rowland. 'But they reckon he made it down to
the road and hitched a lift. Dumped his flying gear somewhere
and legged it.'

'There was a lorry driver who said he picked a serviceman up
on the A6 a couple of hours later and took him to Derby,' said
Cooper. 'He never spoke much on the journey, he said. If it was
McTcague, they never established how he got from Harrop to
the A6.'

'Folk round here picked servicemen up all the time,' said
Rowland. 'That was how the lads got home when they were on
leave, and back to their bases again. Evervbodv did it. Nobodv

'	C* / V V

would think of asking any questions.'

'I realize that. And it was only because the lorry driver was
local that he heard about the missing airman when he pot back

o	o

home from his trip. But McTcague was a deserter. They would
have looked for him.'

'A deserter? Aye, maybe. But he was one among hundreds,'
said Rowland. 'Blokes went AWOL all the time, but they kept
that sort of thing as quiet as they could. It was bad for morale,
you know. They couldn't have the public thinking their brave
boys were too scared to fight.'

'It was a different time altogether, wasn't it?' said Cooper.
'A foreign country.'

Rowland nodded, recognizing the reference. 'The past is
always like that, even if you lived through it.'

Cooper stayed silent for a moment, letting the old man's
memories drift slowly into his head. He knew what distant
memories were like a vast sea that seemed to approach with
the tide, but then merely touched the shore and withdrew again,
leaving just a trace o( its passing, a damp boundary along the
shoreline.

'McTeague,' said Rowland thoughtfully. 'He told his crew he
was going for help, but saved his own skin. Now, if he had been
the one that died and the others had survived, then it would have


180



been justice. There was no excuse for what he did. None. I just
hope those four dead men were on his conscience for the rest
of his life.'

'Perhaps they were.'

Cooper controlled a smile, ft hadn't taken much for the old
man to break his own rule about not speaking ill of the dead.

'Two of the crew were Poles, weren't they?' said Rowland.

'Yes, that's right.'

'Brave lads, those. A bit clannish, maybe, but they fought
well. They hated the Germans with a venom. They hated the
Russians too, mind. Good haters all round, the Polish blokes.
They had their beliefs, and they stuck to them -- you couldn't
have convinced them to do anything else. You never heard of
any of (Aezn deserting.'

'They were fighting for something more immediate - they
wanted to get back to their homes and families in Poland. That
must concentrate the mind.'

'But they didn't go back to their homes, a lot of them,'
said Rowland. 'They stayed on here. That was because of the
Russians. They didn't fancy Communist Poland.'
'And because they married English ^irls and settled down.'

'Aye, that's right. Can't blame them, I suppose. I recall the
local girls seemed to like them. They were a bit glamorous,
mysterious -- romantic, too. Well, the lasses like that sort of
thing, don't they?'

'I suppose the British servicemen must have resented it
sometimes?'

'Maybe so. But the Poles were better than the bloody Yanks,
anyway. If I had to choose, give me the Polish lads any time. 1
was glad they were on our side, though. I wouldn't like to have
them against me.'

'No,' said Cooper. 'I doubt they'd soon forget a grudge.'

Rowland stared silently past his shoulder. The old man's
hands moved slowly towards each other on the table, as if
they could bring comfort to each other by touching. Cooper
heard the electric kettle steaming in the kitchen, then a click
as it switched oft. Rowland didn't move.

'You know nothing about it, do you?' he said. 'You weren't


181



there, like I was. You didn't have to pick up the hits. And there
were lots of hits, you know. The Polish chap - Zygmunt, they
called him. We managed to save him, hut there was his cousin
that died.'

'Klemens Wach,' said Cooper.

'Aye. Have you talked to old Zygmunt?'

'Not yet.'

'He won't tell you much. No, not him. He wouldn't tell you
that, when we found him, he was holding on to his cousin like a
mother holding a hahy. He won't tell you that his cousin's arm
had been cut off at the shoulder, and that Zygmunt was trying
to hold it on, with the blood spurting everywhere in the snow.
His Hying suit was covered in it. When we found them, we
thought for sure that we had two dead ones together, hut he
was alive, just. It was his cousin's blood that he was soaked in.
You might get the impression that I think badly of McTeague.
But imagine how old Zygmunt feels. And they say he's never
talked about it all these years. A thing like that eats at a man.
He won't have forgotten, or forgiven. Take my word for it --
the one wish of his life would have been to find McTeapnc. It

o

stands to reason. I would have done the same, too.'

Cooper nodded. 'Mr Rowland, has anybody else been to talk
to you about this?'

'Like who?'

'I was thinking of a Canadian woman called Alison Morrissey.'

'Ah,' said Rowland.

'Has she been?'

'No, but there was a bloke called Baine. A journalist. He's
been here, and he mentioned the Canadian. He said she's related
to Pilot Officer McTeague.'

'She's his granddaughter.'

'I don't know what he thinks I might tell her,' said Rowland.
'I couldn't tell her any more than I've told you. And I don't
suppose that's what she wants to hear, is it?'

'No, I don't think it is.'

'Well, then. I'm not going to lie to the woman. So what's
the point of her coming here? She won't like what I have to tell
her. I told that to Baine. And do you know what he said?'


182



'I can't imagine.'

'He said that perhaps my memory was faulty anyway. Can
you credit that? Perhaps my memory was faulty. I didn't reckon
much to that. Did he mean he wanted me to lie?'

'You can only remember what you saw and heard/ said
Cooper.

Rowland watched him, his mouth moving silently in the
automatic grimace of hahitual pain.

'Do you think I should talk to her?' he said. 'Is that what
you're here for?'

'It's entirely up to you,' said Cooper. 'It has nothing to do
with me at all.'

'Aye?'

Rowland tried to rest his hands in his lap, but didn't seem
to find the position any more comfortable. He moved restlessly
in his chair. He appeared to be saying it was almost time tor
Cooper to ^o.

'There must have been a lot of people up there after the crash,'
said Cooper. 'Members of the mountain rescue tea, local police,
RAF investigators . . .'

'All of those. And the Home Guard,' said Rowland. 'You
remember the Home Guard?'

'Mr Rowland, I don't remember any of it.'

'Ave too vounp, aren't you? Everybody's too young these

V	V O* . V, , O

days. The Home Guard were blokes who were too old or not

y

fit enough to join up. And there were some that were in the
reserved occupations farmers and miners and such. It was
Home Guard men who were set to watch over the wreck, but
they were none too keen on their task.'

'Would any of them still be around?' said Cooper.

'Nay, lon^ ^one. We're goin$? back fifty-seven years, you
know. There's only a few of us left, the ones like me, that were
only lads at the time. The rest arc pushing up daisies. There's
only me that remembers the crash, and the Pole, Zy^munt. And
George Malkin.'

'Do you know Malkin?'

'Oh yes, 1 remember both the Malkin boys. They were kids
back then lived on a farm the other side of Blackbrook


183



Reservoir, just across the moor. I remember seeing them
hanging about on Irontongue Hill we had to chase them
away from the wreck a time or two. Their dad came and
took them home eventually. Rut they were both that sort of
lad - inquisitive, adventurous.'

'An aircraft crash must have been quite an adventure if you
were a child.'

'Yes, the Malkin boys,' said Rowland, 'they used to get
everywhere. Their dad had taught them to be independent,
and it would never have occurred to them that they couldn't
look after themselves. It's something the kids don't learn these
days, independence.' Rowland shook his head. 'If you ask me,
they're ruining a whole generation.'

Cooper's questions seemed to have sparked Rowland's memories.
His eyes had developed a tamiliar distant stare, the look of a
man recalling a time when he had been needed by his country,
instead of being discarded.

'Those Poles,' he said. 'Do you know what they called Britain
when they came here? I mean the ones that came over from
France to carry on fighting when the Germans invaded?'

Cooper shook his head. 'No idea.'

'They knew there was nowhere else for them to move on to
after Britain,' said Rowland. 'There was nowhere left for them
to go to carry on fighting against I h'tler. So they called us "Last
Hope Island"/


184



17


iSome officers were starting to call Edendale's two Detective
Chief Inspectors 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee', because they
were rarely seen except when they were sitting alongside each
other at the head of a briefing. Everyone knew that a Senior
Investigating Officer was unlikely to get involved directly in
the day-to-day enquiries on a major case. Sometimes, as now,
the SIO seemed to he completely out of step with what was
happening on the ground.


'Which car is this?' DCI Kessen was saying as Fry slid into
the meeting and sat at the back. Being at the back gave her
very little protection, because most of the seats in front of her
were empty. Both Cooper and Murfin were among the missing
this morning.

'Edward Kemp's car/ explained DI Hitchens. 'The suspect for
the double assault. The Isuzu Trooper with the window-cleaning
pear in it.'

o

Fry noticed that the officers present had split into two groups,
one on either side of the room, like opposing teams, with the two
DCIs as the captains. She thought at first there was some kind
of team-building exercise going on. Then she realized that they
were all sitting up against the radiators on the walls. There was
no warmth in the centre of the room -- only an icy draught that
ran from the door straight down the middle to Tweedledum and
Tweedledee, who were prevented by their status from moving

'	1 v O

nearer to the warmth.

Fry took out her notebook and tapped her pen on it. With so
few officers doing interviews, the regular briefings were starting
to look like a waste of time, especially when there were two
bosses to be kept up to speed. She ought to be out on the streets
herself, keeping an eye on what was happening. She ought to be
conducting interviews of potential thugs. She ought to be finding
a missing baby. She had written two words at the top of her pad
for the meeting. It said: 'More staff?' and was underlined.


18S



'We're looking tor a four-wheel drive because of the time
line,' said Hitchens. 'We think the body was dumped in the lay
by
after the Pass had already been closed because of the snow.'

j	j

'Ah, yes.'

'Forensics are still going over the Isu/,u. According to Kemp's
wife, he was missing all night, as was the car. And DC Cooper
spotted some rolls of blue plastic, which are the sort of thing
we think might have been used to wrap the body in when it was
transported.'

'Right.'

'Cooper apprehended Edward Kemp on suspicion of the
double assault next morning. Kemp was identified by witnesses
as one of four men committing the assault. But he was released
on bail.'

'Released?'

'We can soon locate him again,' said Hitchens confidently.

'But we're still looking for the three other suspects in the
assault case, aren't we?' said Tailby.

'It you can call it looking,' said Hitchens. 'We've got a couple
of people sitting by telephones, hoping members of the public
will do the looking for us. 1 know DS Fry feels the same, but
we were hoping there might be news of some extra staff being
allocated.'

The comment seemed to go right over the heads of the two
DCIs, like a passing breeze that barely ruffled Tailby's hair.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum seemed to move a little closer
together.

'I'll take some convincing about this,' said DCI Tailby. 'It's
rather optimistic to imagine that Kemp is going to help us clear
up both enquiries. Not that I wouldn't be grateful to him, but
I don't believe in luck like this.'

Frv raised her hand.

'Ah, DS Frv,' said Kessen. 'What good news have you

'	* ' o j

brought us?'

She filled the meeting in quickly on her interview with Mrs
1 ennent.

I'll have to leave shortly,' she said. 'I'm going to visit Kemp's
house. Of course, there's no one else free to do it.'


186



'The missing baby?' said Tailby. 'That would be very convenient,
wouldn't it? Three enquiries at once. I think I'm
more interested in the clothes. They might constitute hard

^	o

evidence.'

The clothes found by the traffic officers in the streambed were

V

laid out in latex bags. There were several shirts, two pairs of
trousers, underwear, a dark blue sweater and three or Four
odd socks. They had been air-dried and closely examined for
traces of blood, sweat or other substances that might help an
identification.

'We thought at first there was a good chance they belonged
to the Snowman,' said Kitchens. 'The shirts are a similar quality
to the one he was wearing.'

'Rut . . . ?'

'They're the wrong si/.e.'

'Damn.' Tailby's face creased in annoyance. 'Do you mean
some idiot's been spreading clothes around the landscape just
for a bit of a joke? Do these people do it on purpose to waste
our time?'

'They may actually have come from the blue bag, for all we
know,' said Hitchcns.

'But if they're the wrong size

'It's only an assumption that the bag was the Snowman's.
There was other rubbish dumped in that lay-by.'

'Good point.'

'However, we do have this,' said Hitchcns. 'We found it in
the pocket of the coat he was wearing.'

He held up a smaller evidence bag. Whatever was in it was
so small that officers a few" feet away had to lean forward to be
sure there was anything there at all.

'It got a bit wet from the snow, but fortunately the printing
is good and hasn't washed away. Aside from the Snowman's
apparent visit to Woodland Crescent on Monday, this is the
best lead we've had to date, folks.'

'What is it?' said Fry.

'An admission ticket. It's for entry to an air museum at a
place called Lcadenhall.'


187



When Ben Cooper left Walter Rowland's house, he walked into
an awkward deja vu. Alison Morrissey was standing in the road,
with her hands shoved in the pockets of her coat. A few yards
away, Frank Baine stood by a black Ford estate.

Morrissey watched Cooper as he began to walk back towards
his car. For a futile moment, he thought he was going to get
away without speaking to her.

'Detective Cooper, isn't it?' she said. 'Can I have a word,
please?'

Cooper pulled his coat up round his ears. 'Is this a coincidence?'
he said.

'No,' said Morrissey. 'Frank lives near here and he saw you
arrive, so he phoned to tell me. I've been waiting for you to
come out of there.'

Cooper couldn't read her expression, but he didn't think shewas
happy. It might have been the cold making her face flushed,
but on the other hand, it could have been anger.

'I accepted that the local police aren't going to help me,' she
said. 'But I didn't realize they would set about interfering and
trying to stop me.'

'That's not what I'm trying to do,' said Cooper.

'No? It looks very much like it from where I'm standing. You
appear at the home of the Lukasz family, and you pop up here,
checking on people I want to talk to.'

'I have no intention of interfering.'

o

'I presume your superiors have given you instructions to keep
an eye on me, in case I cause trouble.'

'Nothing like that.'

'But you visited the Lukasz family. I suppose you talked to
the old man, Zygmunt. And I suppose it was you who warned M
them not to speak to me.'

'Why should I do that?'

'You've had your instructions, I expect. I was disappointed
that the police wouldn't give me any help. But I never expected
that they would set out to actively hinder me.'

J	J

Embarrassed, Cooper tried to edge towards his car, which
was parked on the steepest part of the street. But Morrissey
moved with him.


188



'Well, let me tell you something, Detective Cooper/ she
said. 'Your attempts to obstruct me will only make me more
determined to find out the truth. I guess I'm just that sort of
person. I've always been pretty awkward -- I tend to go the
opposite direction to the one I'm being pushed in.'

'I wasn't able to speak to Zygmunt Lukasz,' said Cooper.

'Oh, no?'

'No.'

She hesitated, as if not sure whether to believe him. 'You had
a long chat with his family, though, I bet.'

'I had to sec them about a few other things.'

o

But even as Cooper said it, he knew it sounded weak and
unconvincing. Morrissey gazed at him with something like
contempt.

'I don't know why you bother to lie to me about it. Not
when you were at Mr Rowland's house as well. Are you going
to tell me that you had to go and see him about a few other
things too? That really would be a coincidence, wouldn't it?'

'There doesn't seem to be much point in me telling you
anything, Miss Morrissey. I can sec you're not going to believe
me.'

Cooper had almost reached his car, but Morrissey moved too
quickly. She was light on her feet, and she managed to get in
front of him. She stood close to him -- too close for Cooper s
comfort.

'I have no reason to believe you,' she said. 'But I want you
to know that, whatever you do, you won't make me give up.
I'm in no hurry to go back to Toronto. No hurry at all.
I'll stay right here in Derbyshire for as long as it takes. I'll
keep trying until I wear down Zygmunt Lukasz and Walter
Rowland. And I wi// wear them down in the end. I'll certainly
wear jou down.'

Cooper began to button up his coat. This wasn't what he
wanted to hear, not from Alison Morrissey. He had enough
to cope with from Diane Fry. Fry was good at wearing him
down, too.

'I've spent enough time here. I've got other things to be
doing,' he said.


189



'Of course you have,' said Morrissey. 'You're short of
resources, aren't you?'

'Yes, we are. That's why the boss told you we couldn't help.
To be honest, 1 think he'll already have forgotten about you by
now. He has other things to worry about. You're not important
to him.'

'Well, thanks.' She looked at him searchinglv. Then the
dismissive comment finally seemed to make her accept that
he might be telling the truth. 'So what then?'

'Sorry?'

'So why do you keep popping up asking questions wherever
I go?'

Cooper didn't know how to answer her. He wasn't sure of the
reason himself. Maybe it was something to do with his fascination
tor family ties, the sense of loyalty that drove people's lives. He
sensed in himself a need to understand it when he saw it in
others. He saw it in the Lukasz familv, certainly. And he saw
it in Alison Morrissey, too.

Morrissev was still watching him. 'You're a strange cop, aren't
you? I can't make you out.'

Cooper inclined his head, accepting the judgment. 'You've
nothing to worry about from me,' he said.

'Walter Rowland has talked to you, hasn't he?' she said.

'Yes.'

'These people will talk to you when they won't give me the
time of day. They see me as a threat. But not you. There's
something strange about that. Why isn't a cop a threat?'

Cooper only shrugged.

'What did he tell you?'

'Who?'

'Rowland, of course. What did he say to you?'

'You don't know what 1 was asking him about.'

'No, but it's a pretty safe bet it was something to do with
the crash.'

'Not directly.'

Morrissey fixed him with her grey eyes. 'You could help me,'
she said.

'Could I?'


190



'I mean, if you're not here to hinder me, like you say, then
there's no reason why you shouldn't help me. These people
won't talk to me, but they'll talk to you. You could get them
to tell the truth.'

'My Chief Superintendent has already told you, Miss Morrissey --'

'Yeah, yeah. No resources to spare. His officers don't have
the time, blah, blah. But you're already putting in the time
here. For what reason, I don't know. But if you're already
putting in the time with Lukasz, and with Rowland, then I'm
not using up your Superintendent's precious resources, am I?'

'I'm sorry, I can't help you.'

'Your boss said he n-ou/Jhclp me, if he could,' said Morrissey.

'No. I'm sorry. You'll get me into trouble.'

'And I wouldn't want that, would I?' she said.

Cooper felt he ought to get in the car and drive away, but
something kept him. He knew she hadn't quite finished what
she wanted to say. After a second, she took a small step closer
and put her hand on his arm.

'At least give me a chance to tell you why it's so important
to me/ she said.

Cooper hesitated. He wanted to say 'yes'. He wanted to hear
her explain it, to know what was driving her, to share her passion
for finding the truth. Instead, he finished pulling on his gloves.

'I don't have the rime,' he said.


Diane Fry and Ga\in Murfin drove into the Buttercross area and
parked in front of one of the antique shops. A vanload of uniforms
\\as due to meet them at Eddie Kemp's house, which they would
be going over hoping for some sign of Baby Chloe.


Fry had chosen to stop by Decker and Miller Purveyor
of Antiques and Collectibles. From here, she could see Ben
Cooper's red Toyota halfway up a steep, cobbled street, which
was still covered in a sheet of compacted snow. Her Peugeot
would never make it up there. It had never occurred to her when
she bought it that she might have need of a four-wheel drive.

And there was Ben Cooper himself, standing at the top of the
street in his thick-soled boots and ridiculous poacher's coat. He
\vas talking to a woman Fry didn't recognize. She was wearing a


191



s

reel jacket and black jeans, and her dark hair was pushed behind
her ears. Fry could tell by Cooper's posture and manner that
the woman was nothing If) do with the enquiry he was supposed
to be on. She could see his ears glowing pink even from here.
The- woman was probably some old flame he had bumped into at
least, that was the most charitable assumption. If he had
arranged to meet her when he was supposed to be on duty,
he d crucify him. lie was wasting enough time as it was.

Fry slammed her door and set oil up the street. But the shoes
she was wearing weren't made for walking on frozen snow. She
felt herself slithering as soon as she set foot on the slope, and
she had to hang on to the iron rail fixed to the wall to pull
herself up. She was concentrating so hard on keeping her teet

I	o Jo

that, when she looked up again, the woman had gone. Cooper
was standing in front of his car, waiting tor her to reach him.

'Who was that you were talking to?' she said.

'Nobody in particular.'

'Well, you've no right to be talking to nobody in particular,
Ben. Damn it, you're supposed to be interviewing potential
witnesses.'

'Yes, I've clone that.'

'And? What did they say?'

'"We don't know nothing, and if we did, we wouldn't tell
you." If you want the expletives, they'll be in my report.'

Fry took her hand away from the rail to make a gesture at
him, but she didn't quite complete it. The movement shifted
her balance and she felt herself beginning to slip backwards.
She grabbed at the nearest object, which happened to be the
wing mirror of Cooper's Toyota. It folded in towards the car,
but was enough to save her from plummeting headlong down
the slope into the road. Cooper stepped forward as if to help
her, but she glowered at him, and he dropped his hand.

'You need to get yourself some shoes with a bit of grip in
the soles,' he said. 'If you're not careful, vou'll be joining the
bad back and twisted ankle brigade. We can't have that. How
would we cope?'

Fry bit her lip. 'Ben, if by any chance you've finished chatting

J	1 j j' J O

up every passing female, perhaps you could shift your snow shoes


192



and your four-wheel drive and get yourself up to Kemp's house.
Then I've ^ot another job.'

Fry tried to turn, slipped, and had to cling on to Cooper's
car even harder. She stared at the uneven slope ahead of her,
which ran down towards the antiques shop and her own car
parked on the road below. She felt as though she were facing
a two-thousand foot ski slope without any skis.

'Maybe you should just hang on to the car,' said Cooper,
'and I'll tow you down.'


Vicky Kemp looked like a woman who was never surprised to
see the police on her doorstep. She greeted the sight of the
detectives' IDs and the uniforms behind them with a weary
gesture of her hand across her face, followed by an invitation
to stand in her hallway so that she could shut the door and keep
out the cold.


'He's not here, of course,' she said.

'Your husband?' said Diane Fry.

'I haven't seen Eddie since yesterday morning.'

'Where has he gone?'

'All he said was that he was getting out of the way for a bit.
He said you lot would be coming back to make trouble for him

y	o

again. He was right, wasn't he?'

'We're not the ones causing trouble, Mrs Kemp,' said Fry.

'What? You've taken his car away. How is he supposed to
keep his business going? How is he supposed to earn a living
for us? It's bad enough as it is. He has me stuffing envelopes all
day tor one of those home-working things. I hate it. But there

o	o

wouldn't be much housekeeping if J didn't do it.'

'Do you have a family?'

'One boy, Lee. He's twelve years old.'

'He'll be at school, then.'

'Probably.'

Fry raised an eyebrow. 'You might have heard that we're
looking for a missing baby,' she said.

'It was on the local news last ni^ht,' said Mrs Kemp. 'Baby
Chloe. Only a few weeks old, isn't she? Poor thing. You never
know what's going to happen to your kids these days.'


193



'Do you have any idea of the whereabouts of that baby?' said
Cooper.

'Me? Why should 1?'

'The name of Chloc's mother is Marie Tenncnt. We understand
that your husband lived with her for a while.

'Oh.' Mrs Kemp's eyes flickered from side to side uncertainly,
as if she weren't quite sure how she was supposed to react. 'It's
her, is it? I thought it might be. It's a bit of an unusual name for
round here.'

'You know about your husband's affair with Miss Tcnnent?'

'We went through a bad patch about eighteen months ago
and Eddie left me for a bit. I know it was her he lived with.
People aren't slow to tell you things like that in this town. But
he came back to me, and we've been back together for nearly
six months. He knew it was best for Lee if he came back. Eddie
is very fond of his lad. So it's all sorted out now.'

'Nearly six months?'

'Last July.'

Fry and Cooper both watched Mrs Kemp. She stared at them
curiously, until a slow realization came over her face. 'You
reckon that Eddie is the baby's father? Is that what you mean?'

'It seems a possibility,' said Cooper.

'The bastard,' she said. 'He never told me anything like that.'

'Has he never mentioned a baby? Have you seen no signs
of a baby?'

'Not here,' said Mrs Kemp. 'He never brought it here. Eddie?
Why would he?'

'If the child was his . . .'

'Not here,' said Mrs Kemp firmly. 'I'd soon have shown him
the door again. Believe me on that.'

'We're going to have to take a look in the house/

'I suppose so.'

'And arc you sure you've no idea where your husband
has gone?'

'No, I haven't.'

'Is there anywhere you might expect him to go? To a friend's?
A relative's?'

'I don't know,' she said.


194



'And who did he go with?'

'It would be one of his friends,' she said, 'lie went down to
the pub to meet them. The Vine, that's where they all go. Kill
not telling you any more.'

'He's in breach of hail, Mrs Kemp. Are you sure you can't
give us the names of any of his friends?'

Mrs Kemp paused, maybe picturing Marie Tcnnent and the
missing Baby Chloe. I'll think about it,' she said.


Within a few minutes, Dianc Fry began to get restless as
she watched the uniformed officers examining the Kemps'
house and garden. Vicky Kemp showed no interest in the
proceedings, except to follow round straightening cushions and
rubbing invisible fingerprints off cupboard doors. Fry gestured
Hen Cooper outside the house, while she phoned in and reported
Kddic Kemp's breach of bail conditions. He was supposed to
reside at his home address so that they could find him easily
when they wanted him. Now, he would be arrested again when
he was found.


'Ren,' she said. 'Do you know of an aircraft museum at a
place called Leadenhall?'

Cooper was startled. 'Where did you say?'

'Leadenhall.'

'Leadenhall?' he said.

'Are you going deaf or something? Has the snow got in
your ears? Apparently, there was an old RAF station in
Nottinghamshire called Leadenhall, but now it's an aircraft
museum.'

'I only heard of it for the first time recently,' said Cooper.
'Not the museum, but the airfield.'

'Oh? Heard of it in connection with what?'

'It was where Sugar Uncle Victor was based. The aircraft
flown by Pilot Officer Danny McTeague and his crew.'

'Ah. You're talking about Miss Alison Morrissey again,'
said Fry.


*\7	)


Yes.

'I can't believe this. Why docs everything seem to come hack
to that in your mind?'


195



'I can't help it. You asked me about Leadenhall, and that's
where I heard of it, from Alison Morrissev and her journalist
friend, Frank Baine. McTeague's Lancaster bomber was flying
from Leadenhall to an airfield in Lancashire when it crashed on
Irontongue Hill.'

'Ben, I'm working on a line of enquiry which relates to
an aircraft museum. I'm talking about here and now, not
something that happened half a century ago. You're obsessed
with the past.'

'Surely that's what a museum is all about -- the past? Anyway,
don't forget the baby. The fact it was found at the crash site
makes a connection worth considering, doesn't it?'

She sighed. 'All right. Where is this Leadenhall place? I expect
you've located it precisely, with your usual attention to detail
when something interests you. You can probably give me the
exact map co-ordinates and the course directions your World
War Two pilot was supposed to be following.'

'It's near Newark, in the Trent Valley area of Nottinghamshire.'

'Think you can find it?'

'Of course. Why?'

'That's where we're going this afternoon.'

'What about Eddie Kemp and the baby?'

'Gavin and the search team can cope here. It's obvious they're
not going to find Baby Chloe being cared for by Vicky Kemp. Her
darling husband will be picked up somewhere in due course. You
know there's no point in us chasing our backsides over that.'

'I suppose not. But Leadenhall . . .'

Fry waved his protests aside. She wasn't going to be put off
her chance to go somewhere and do something at last.

'We're going to follow the footsteps of the Snowman,'
she said.


196



18


1 he Leadcnhall Aircraft Museum opened on some days during
the winter months, but it was obvious that hardly any visitors
came. Diane Fry and Ben Cooper found the gates open and a
few volunteers taking the opportunity of the lull to carry out
restoration and maintenance work on their aircraft.


The main hangar was gloomy and cavernous. Inside, a Spitfire
had been roped off and the armour plating round its nose had
been dismantled. A man in blue overalls was doing something
with a wrench deep inside the engine. The clink of metal against

1	O O

metal echoed in the hangar like a pebble rattling at the bottom
of a deep well.

A twin-engined Vickers Wellington seemed to be the central
exhibit. Cooper edged towards the information board under
its nose. This wartime bomber had been recovered from a
remote Norwegian fjord where it had crashed in 1941 after
bein^ damaged by a German fighter. Its canvas fuselage had
been torn away in large sections, exposing a metal grid-like
structure underneath and ottering glimpses of the flight cabin
and the navigator's table. The aircraft's upper surfaces were
painted a camouflage green, but underneath it was black, where
it would be seen only against the sky.

The Wellington had a powerful presence, even in this setting,
and it reminded Cooper of something. He learned from the
information board that Wellington bombers had been referred
to affectionately by their crews as 'Wimpcys' after a fat,
hamburger-eating character in the Popcye cartoons. But the
impression it made on him was far from cartoon-like. There
was nothing harmless and bumbling about this machine. The

o	o

comparison he was trying to grasp was more animal-like.

After they had crossed the concrete floor, Cooper turned
for another view of the Wellington. The Perspex panels of the
cockpit were like a pair of dark eyes staring down the long
nose and over the front gun turret towards the sky beyond the


197



hangar walls. For Cooper, there was nothing cosy or nostalgic
in the impression at all. The aircraft had a snout like a muz/led
hunting dog.

'How recent was the Snowman's visit here, Diane?' he said.

Fry paused by the sliding doors of the hangar, near a set of
display hoards filled with newspaper reports of Second World
War air battles, hightcr Command Spitfires destroy eight Messcrschmitts
over English Channel.

'Sunday 6th January.'

'The day before he was killed, probably.'

'Somebody might remember him it was only a week
ago. And look at this place it isn't exactly heaving with
crowds, is it?'

'No, you're right. But, Diane . ..'

'What?'

'I'm supposed to be interviewing the staff at the Snake Inn
this afternoon, trying to jog their memories about four-wheel
drive vehicles. You could have brought Gavin here with you.
They didn't need Aim at the Kemps either.'

'Yes, I could have brought Gavin.'

'So why am I here?'

'Perhaps 1 wanted to keep an eye on you.


Qutsidc, an elderly man in an ill-fitting dying suit with wing
insignia was washing the fuselage of an Avro Shackleton. He
had a stepladdcr, a bucket of water and a cloth, and he went
about his job lovingly, with complete absorption and wonder,
like a grandfather who had been asked to change the nappy of
a brand new grandchild.


'Perhaps we could ask him to do the windows at West Street,'
said Fry, 'now that Fddie Kcmp has gone on strike. He looks as
though he'd make a nice job of it.'

c?	^

'I think it's a labour of love,' said Cooper.
Frv snorted. 'Cleaning?'

v	O

'It's a question of wAaf he's cleaning.'

'It's a plane, said Fry.

'Yes, it is.'

She shook her head, exasperated. 'Well, he's obviously only


198



the hired hand. Let's find someone who knows what's what
around here.'

They asked at the shop, but the woman behind the counter
said that she didn't normally work on Sundays and directed them
hack to the Shacklcton and the man with the stepladder.

'Mr Illingworth?' said Fry.

'That's me.'

They introduced themselves. 'We're enquiring about this
man/ said Fry. 'We believe he visited last weekend. Sunday
6th January.'

Illingworth looked at the photograph. 'Is he dead, then?'

'I'm afraid so, sir.'

'Funny,' he said. T don't think the other lot knew that.'

'Other lot? What other lot?'

'The last lot of police that came.'

'Sorry?'

'It was only two days ago. I suppose you've found him since
then, have you?'

'Mr Illingworth, are you saying some police officers have been
here already asking about this man?'

'Yes, but they had a photograph of him when he was alive.'

'Where were these officers from?'

'Sorry, I can't remember. Weren't they your lot?'

'I don't think so,' said Fry. 'We're from Derbyshire.'

'Ah, out of your area, then. I assume they were Nottinghamshire
Police.'

'And they were trying to identify this man?'

'No, no, they seemed to know who he was. They had a
name, even.'

'Which was?'

'Sorry . . .'

'You can't remember. That's OK.'

Cooper looked at her. He knew what she was thinking:
a lack of communication somewhere had not only led to
duplication of effort, but a waste of several days of their
time in trying to identify the Snowman. Surely Gavin Murhn
had contacted Nottinghamshire for their missing persons they
were one of Derbyshire's neighbouring forces. Fry's jaw


199



clenched. Somebody was jroing to he in trouble. And for once,

it wasn't Ben Cooper.

'Wait here,' she said, 'while I make some calls.'

As she walked off, Illingworth shrugged. 'Sorrv 1 can't

>	& " OO J

remember any more,' he said. 'Sounds like a bit of a cock-up,
doesn't it?'

'You've got a Lancaster here, haven't you?' said Cooper.

'Ah, you're interested in the Lane, are you? Yes, one of the
few left, she is. Do you know we had to buy this one from
Canada? All but a couple of the RAF's Lanes were scrapped.
Or left to rot.'

'Where is it?'

'She's in a separate hangar of her own. We're still working
on her. There s a bit of restoration to do yet. In fact, I think
they're bringing her out now to turn over the engines.'

The doors of the next hangar stood wide open. Although the
displays were protected by wooden barriers, Cooper was able to
reach across and touch the side of the Lancaster. To his surprise,
it felt light and fragile. It was nothing more than a series of sheets
of thin alloy, held together by thousands of tiny rivets. That it
had ever travelled to Germany and back was a miracle.

A shaft of winter sun came through the Perspex panels in the
hangar roof. The weak light lit up tiny details here and there
on the Lancaster a patch of worn red paint on the fuselage
markings, a stencilled number on an escape hatch cover, and the
rust caked on the barrel of a Vickers machine gun that poked
from a shattered turret.

A small tractor attached to the undercarriage of the Lancaster

o

was slowly towing the big aircraft out on to the tarmac. It was
a very tight At the wing tips cleared the side of the hangar
entrance by only a foot or two on either side.

'Most of the people who work here are volunteers, I
suppose -- enthusiasts,' said Cooper.

'That's right. We couldn't do without them. They put their
own time and etiort in, and their own money, too. It's an
expensive hobby.'

There was a metal ladder leaning against the fuselage of
the Lancaster. Cooper couldn't resist a peep inside the open


200



door. He was ama/ed by the confined space inside the aircraft,
which looked so large from outside. Forward from the door,
the main spar half-blocked the passage, narrowing it to two tinv
compartments behind the cockpit.
Cooper glanced back at Illingworth. 'Which crew members
sat in these compartments?'

'The wireless operator and the navigator. Then there's the
flight engineer's position, right in the passage between the
navigator and the pilot. And down there, under the pilot's
feet, is the bubble where the bomb aimer lav. The best view
in the aircraft, he had.'

Some of the Perspex looked very new and clear to Cooper.
Hut inside the aircraft, the instruments and equipment were all
obviouslv original. To his left, towards the tail, the fuselage
narrowed even more. Down at the end of a dark tunnel was
a glimpse o( curved sliding doors, left partly open.

'That must be the rear gunner's turret.'

'Correct,' said Hlingworth. 'That's Tail-End Charlie's place.
The coldest, loneliest spot on a Lancaster, without doubt. It was
so cold back there that the rear gunner had to wrap himself up in
an electricallv heated suit, so that his arms and legs didn't seize

v	C"

up completely and leave him useless.'

Cooper could see that the rear turret was also the most
vulnerable position. And in fact, it was the one where you
would be unable to see anything of your own aircraft, as you
were flying backwards. The space in there was tiny, barely big
enough for a man to sit. The breech blocks of four machine guns
jutted through the Perspex, and it would be impossible to move
your feet more than a couple of inches either way because of
the ammunition feeds, rising like convevor belts from the base
of the turret.

Illingworth was warming to Cooper's interest in the aircraft.
'You'll notice that the only crewmen with a proper view
out of the aircraft were the pilot, the bomb aimer, and the
flight engineer, all up front. The navigator had to work in a
curtained-off area -- he wouldn't have any idea what was going
on outside, except for what he heard on his headphones. That
glass bubble above his position is the astrolabe, for making


201



sightings of the stars all very well, as long as there were
no clouds.

'Of course.'

Rut on the night Uncle Victor had crashed, there had been
plenty of cloud over the Peak District. Cooper's eyes were drawn
hack to the rear gunner's turret. Because of the cramped space,
the rear gunner couldn't have been a big man, or he wouldn't
have fitted. Of course, Sergeant Dick Abbott had been only Hvc
foot six inches tall. The doors would have slid shut behind Abbott
quite easily as he scaled himself up for his last journey.

Cooper shuddered. Noticing his expression, Illingworth smiled
grimly. 'The Lancaster was known to be the worst aircraft to
get out of in an emergency. And the quickest to sink, if it was
ditched into the sea. Makes you think, doesn't it?'

Surely this Lancaster would be haunted. Cooper could imagine
the aircraft standing at night in its darkened hangar, full of
spectral sounds - the quiet throwing of switches and levers,
the muttering of conversations on the intercom.

'We're going to have to ask you to stand clear now,'
said Illingworth. 'They're going to start her up in a minute.
You don't want to be turned into mincemeat by the
propellers.'

Cooper climbed down reluctantly. 'How much would this
aircraft be worth?' he asked.

'Worth?' The man looked astonished at the question, as if
someone had suggested selling the Queen Mother. 'How can
anyone say what she's worth? She's priceless.'

'Where on earth do you get the parts to restore it?'

'Wherever we can. Aviation scrapyards, dealers, other museums.
Some bits have lo be made new, of course. We need a new main
spar for the Lane if we're ever going to get her airworthy again.
You don't find many of those lying about, so we'll have to get
somebody to make one. That's a long way in the future, though,
for this aircraft.'

'Have you got a collection here, too? I mean memorabilia,
that sort of thing?'

'Yes, lots of stuff. There's a display over in the old control
tower building.'


202



'And I suppose some of your volunteers have their own
collections.'

'Of course they do. They're enthusiasts. Some of them get
into it in a big way. They spend all their money filling their
homes with stud. You wouldn't believe it. But I suppose it's
like anything else. It you get keen on it, you'll go to any lengths
to collect whatever you can get your hands on.'

'They're men usually, I imagine,' said Cooper.

'Well, as it happens, yes.'

'Who have you got here who's like that? Can you giye me a
few names, sir?'

'lllingworth began to reel off names until Cooper stopped him.

'Who was that last one?'

'Graham Kemp. Now, he's a complete nutcase (or collecting.
Graham travels all over the country if he hears of something that
might be interesting. I le even takes his holidays in places where
he can look at aircraft wrecks or scrapyards. His wife gets totally
nailed oil about it.' There was a burst of noise, and the propellers
of the lour Merlin engines began to turn. lllingworth had to raise

his voice against the noise. 'We haven't seen him around here

t*

tor a bit, but he's one of the keenest collectors I know. Is it

Kemp you're interested in?'

'Graham Kemp,' said Cooper thoughtfully. 'Perhaps it is.'
itv appeared at the corner of the hangar. She didn't look any

11	o

happier. 'Nottinghamshire don't know what the hell I'm talking
about,' she said. 'But they're going to ask around.'

'Great.'

'Great? Oh, it's absolutely bloody marvellous.'

Then the engines of the Lancaster caught with a roar. Cooper
could see the frame of the aircraft shaking so hard that it was a
surprise the rows ol'rivets didn't pop out. No wonder the crew
had come back deafened and wobbly when they set foot on the
ground again.

The noise of the engines was deafening, but exciting too. It
reminded Cooper of the sound of an orchestra tuning up before
a concert. There was nothing except roar and discord, but it
held out the promise of something entirely different to come.


*	* *



203



Dianc Fry listener! sceptically while Ben Cooper told her about
Graham Kemp.

'Some relation of your friend Eddie's?' she said.

'Quite possibly. I've an idea that he has a brother.'

'Maybe he knows where Eddie is, then.'

'I can soon track him down.'

'No, Ben. It'll have to wait/

Then Fry was silent for a while. For half an hour, Cooper
was left to his own thoughts as he drove towards a yellow sunset,
which dripped over the Dark Peak hills like honey running away
into the east. Everything he could see ahead of him was distorted
by long shadows lying flat on the landscape. In this light, snow
could be black, while the bleak gritstone tors could shine like
polished gold.

By the time they were approaching Edendale itself, though,
the sunset had gone. They were left with the street lamps
and the wet roads, and the stained heaps of snow lying in
the gutters. In every house they passed, curtains glowed and
flickered in the windows as people hugged their own little lives
to themselves. But the hills were lost in the darkness somewhere
above the town.

'You've still got a job left to do, haven't you, Ben?' said Fry
as they approached West Street.

'Have I?'

'Interviews with the staff at that place near where the
Snowman was found.'

'The Snake Inn,' said Cooper.

'You've got it.'

'It's quite a long drive from here.'

'You'd better get going, then.'

They saw Gavin Murfin in the car park chatting to members
of the task force. He shrugged when he saw Diane Fry.

OC?	V

'I take it there was no Baby Chloc at Eddie Kcmp's house,
Gavin?' she said.

'Not a sign. Not a single used nappy.'

'Why doesn't that surprise me? If anything goes right this
week, I'll buy you another singing lobster.'


204



The licensees oi the Snake Inn oujjht to have been the best
people to remember vehicles passing along the road after the
heavy snowfall had started early on Tuesday morning. There
were hardly any buildings for miles in either direction on the
A 57, and the inn relied on tourists or passing trade between
Derbyshire and Manchester. They would notice when no vehicles
were passing; and they were the first place to be cut off when the
snow came.

Yet when Ben Cooper went through their statements with
them carefully, they could remember nothing except the snowploughs
battling their way over the Pass from either direction.
The plough from the east they remembered particularly, because
its crew had stopped at the inn to fill up their flasks, shortly

belore they found the bodv. That was the sort of incident that

./	/

focused the memory wonderfully. Rut no matter how manytimes
Cooper went over their statements, the Snake Inn licensees
recalled no four-wheel drive cars struggling through the snow
that morning.

So had somebody been very lucky indeed? Or had the

V	V v

Snowman s body been in the lay-by during the night, in full
view of passing traffic? Cooper sighed. He was going to have to
tell Dianc Fry to re-draw her time line.


On the way back from the Snake Inn, it wasn't a long diversion
from Manchester Road into Woodland Crescent, Edcndale. In
fact, it could even be called a short-cut. Cooper drove down
the Crescent first, then reversed and came back again, checking
for signs of Alison Morrissey or Frank Raine hanging around the
L.ukasx bungalow. The blue BMW was parked in the drive again,
and its windscreen was clear of snow and frost, which suggested
it had been out and had returned quite recently. If Peter Lukasx.
had just finished a shift at the hospital, it might be a good time
to catch him.

'We're rather popular, aren't we?' said Lukasx when he
answered the door. 'Some people can't keep away.'

'I wondered if this was a better time to speak to your father,'
said Cooper.

'It's never a better time.'


20S



'Could \ve try? Just for a minute?'
'Very well. II that's what it takes to convince you.'
Zygjnunt Lukasz was sitting at a small table in the hack room,
with a pad of lined A4- paper open in front of him. He was writing
with a thick rollerball pen, which produced a convoluted black
script. There was line after line of it building up, creating a
dense scrawl on the page. Cooper noticed that the old man's
left hand had the two middle fingers missing. There were two

o	o

stumps where the hngers had been cut off below the bottom
knuckle.

'Can 1 talk to you, Mr Lukasz? I'd like to ask you a few
questions/

The old man didn't look up from the table. He spoke a few
words in a language Cooper took to be Polish. He looked at the

O O	1

younger Lukasz, who seemed a little embarrassed.

'My father says he has nothing to say to you.'

'Have you explained to him why I'm here?' asked Cooper.

'Yes, of course.'

Then the old man spoke again, more urgently.

'And that was?'

'He says the Canadian woman can go to hell,' said Peter.
'I'm sorry.'

'Did he say "sorry"?'

'No I did.'

The old man continued to write. The pen moved slowly but
steadily, filling in the lines of the page with solid, black letters
that flowed and overlapped until they had created an intricate
spider's web, each word entwined with the ones above and
below it. Cooper watched as Zygmunt reached the bottom of
the page, turned to a new sheet and continued writing in an
almost unbroken movement.

'Why does your father refuse to speak English to me?' said
Cooper.

Peter shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. There was
a silence for a moment, except for the faint scratching of the
pen. Then the old man placed a firm full stop and looked up
for the first time. The blue of his eyes was so pale that it
was almost ash grey. Even the sky was only ever that shade


206



of blue in the winter, seen on a bright, cold day From the top
of the moors.

'You don't understand,' said Peter.

'[ understand that Mr I.ukas/ speaks English perfectly well.
He knows what I'm saving to him. But he hasn't the courtesy
to answer me in a language I can comprehend.'

'It isn't a matter of courtesy. My father finds he isn't able any
longer to think in two languages at once. He's working in Polish,
therefore he's thinking in Polish. Of course, he understands what
we're saving, but his brain isn't able to translate his own thoughts
in reply.

'It's a pity he's forgotten how to communicate as well as he
did with his English-speaking comrades in Sugar Uncle Victor,'
said Cooper, holding the old man's stare. He was pleased to see
an expression of pain drift across the blue eves, like the gap in
the clouds closing for a moment.

'Please,' said Peter. 'I don't think this is helping.'

'The police can call on the services of an official interpreter,'
said Cooper. 'We have an entire list of them. But then it would
have to become a formal interview, at the police station.'

Cooper hoped they didn't reali/e how far he was fixing a
kite. There was no way he could get approval to pa}1 for an
interpreter. He shouldn't even be spending time here himself.
There was no official police enquiry that would justifv the use
of resources.

Zvmnunt spoke for the final time-. The last couple of words

^ O	1 I

were said with a jerk of the head and an explosive sound made
on the- lips, which sent a spray of saliva over the pages he was
writing on.

'What was that?' said Cooper.

'My lather says let the Canadian woman pay lor an interpreter
herself,' said Peter.

'And the last part of it?'

'And good luck to her.'

'Oh, yes?'

I he old man lowered his head and went back to his writing.
Cooper saw the black ink blur where his saliva had wet the page.
But the pen skated over it and continued to How until it was


207



approaching the loot of another page. Staring at it made his eves
cross. There didn't seem to be a single paragraph break in the
whole lot.

Cooper turned and walked out of the room. Peter Lukasz
followed him, closing the door carefully so that they were out
of earshot of the old man.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

'So you said.'

'It isn't you.' said Peter. 'He won't talk to us in English either.

'	o

Can't, I suppose I mean. His brain just doesn't seem to be able to
cope with it at the moment.'

'What is it he's writing?' asked Cooper when they were back
in the hallway.

'I thought you would have guessed that,' said Lukasz.

'No.'

'For some reason, he can only write it in Polish. I think it's
all been there in his mind lor years and years, waiting to come
out, waiting for him to pick up that pen. Finally, he's decided
to do it, before it's too late.'

'To do what?' said Cooper.

'To put the record straight. You see, my father is writing his
account of the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor.'


20819


L/CI Kessen buttonholed Diane Fry in the corridor on her way


back from the interview room. He put a hand on her shoulder

to delay her as Gavin Muriin walked ahead.

'Detective Sergeant Fry everything under control?'

Fry felt the muscles in her shoulder knotting where his

hand was touching her. She drew in her breath steadily to

O	V

control the reaction, which she knew was unreasonable. She
wondered whether DC! Kessen had been made aware of her
background, her reason for transferring to Derbyshire from the
West Midlands. Some men had no idea how to behave towards
a woman who had been a rape victim. On the other hand, maybe
he had too little interest in her even to have read her file. She
was afraid he was measuring up to be her worst nightmare
a large stumbling block in her progress up the promotional
ladder. A transfer from E Division was starting to look even
more attractive.

'Yes, sir/ she said.

'Good team that you have, I expect?' he said.

'Excellent.'

Kessen took his hand off her shoulder, but he was still standing
too close, several inches inside her personal space. Pry could see
that he was the sort of man who wasn't aware of the effect he had
on people. Probably he had been walking a fine line for a while,
waiting for someone to put their hand up and complain.

'DC Cooper now -- a very conscientious officer, isn't he? An
example to some of the others.'

'Sure,' said Fry. Well, compared to the ones who rang in sick
with bad backs, she thought. But where the hell was this paragon
of virtue right now? Just like yesterday, he had managed to make
a few simple enquiries last for hours.

Fry looked at her watch. If only she could g^et away from
meetings for a while, she would get out there and find that

o	' o

example to the others, and kick his arse.


209



'Gavin, has Ben Cooper called in yet?' she said as she caught
up with him in the C1D room.

'No. He's interviewing the staff at the Snake Inn, isn't he?'

'Let's hope so. He should have called by now.'

'He'll be having a pie and a couple of pints while he's there,'
said Murfin. "I would.

'Back to the phones, Gavin/

'Yes, ma'am.'

'And leave the lobster alone.'


Ben Cooper perched on the sofa in the sitting room of the
Lukasx. bungalow. It was much too warm for him. Even with
his heavy waxed coat hanging in the hallway, he still felt stifled
by the central heating.


'You don't sound as though you're interested in the past,' he
said. 'Doesn't your father's historv interest you?'

'Oh, it used to,' said Peter Lukasy. 'But time passes, and
people change. There comes a point when we have to move
on.'

'Perhaps your father doesn t feel al)le to move on yet.'

'Oh, 1 think that's exactly right,' said Eukasx.

Grace Lukasy. had disappeared somewhere to the hack of the
house to leave them alone. Her departure had left Peter looking
uncertain. He was reluctant to sit down, but instead stood on
the rug in front of the fireplace, swaving gently on the balls of
his feet, his ga/.e tending to drift past Cooper's shoulder to the
window that looked out on Woodland Crescent.

'We all treasure our Polish heritage, of course,' said Lukasx.
'But most of us have become as much British now as Polish. My
father is going the other way; he's going backwards, regressing
into his past, almost into a time when he knew no English. Being
two nationalities is a delicate enough balance as it is. I don't need
my father trying to push me the wrong way.'

'But you were born here, weren't you? Is it such a difficult
balance?'

'You'd be surprised,' said Lukasx. 'Of course, I'm half English.
But every time I'm asked to spell my name, I feel a bit foreign.
Some Poles came up with anglicised versions when they settled


210



here. My name, (or example, could so easily have been changed
to Lucas. Nobody would have questioned it then. Peter Lucas.
It sounds fine, doesn't it? You couldn't get much more English
than that. But there arc other people who believe it would be
a betrayal of some kind, a denial of our nationality, a sacrifice
of a vital part of ourselves.'

'Your father being one of those people?'

'Yes, my father. And his sister, my aunt Krystyna.'

'But what dojou think?'

'It has to be what seems right for the individual, doesn't it? It
has to be a question of how we sec ourselves, whether we think
of ourselves as English or Polish, or whatever. All that matters
is what each person thinks his own identity is, and whether he's
willing to sacrifice any part of it to be able to fit in. That's the
question we have to ask ourselves.'

'Not as easy a question as it sounds.'

'Did you notice my father's hand?' asked Lukasx.

'You mean the fingers he has missing?'

'Yes. He lost them as a result of frostbite and his injuries in
the crash. It was caused by the delay in rescuing them from the
moor afterwards. My father took his gloves off to try to staunch

V	O v

blood from the wounds that Klcmcns had suffered.'

Cooper nodded. But that hadn't been in the books he'd
read.

'My father and Klemens were more than just cousins,' said
Lukasx. 'They were very close, like brothers -- and that's not an
exaggeration. Not for Poles. They had been brought up together
in their village in Polskie province. They escaped together when
the Germans came, and they went to France. They had to leave
when Trance was invaded too. Hitler called the Polish servicemen
"Sikorski's Tourists" after their commanding officer, and because
they moved from one country to another. He shouldn't have
been so contemptuous, because they were some of the best
fighters there were. They had passion, you sec. They had an
enemy to fight. Eventually, Zygmunt and Klemens arrived in
England to fight with the RAF. The British airmen used to called
them "The Terrible Twins" because they were always together
and they thought they looked alike.'


211



'Were they really very much alike?'

'Nut all that much.'

'Do you have a photograph?'

'My lather has some. They're very precious to him, hut I
suppose he won't mind you seeing them.'

Lukasz was gone only a moment. Hut when he reappeared
he looked almost furtive, as if he were carrying something
shamelul.

'This one was taken when my lather and Klemens Wach were
first based in Britain. They were hilleted in a hotel in Brighton. 1
think they prohahly had a good time there for a while.'

'Who were the girls?'

Tvc no idea. There were always plenty of girls, according
to my lather. Plenty of girls lor a good-looking young man in
a pilot's uniform. And the Polish airmen were a hit exotic too,
I suppose. Why do you ask?'

'I was thinking one of them might he your mother. A wartime

b	o ,

romance, was it?'

'Oh no. they didn't meet until after the war.'

' ./
* % '
1 sec.

As far as Cooper could tell, almost the only thing that made
Lukasz and Wach look like twins was the uniform. Almost the
only thing. But there was also something about the jaunty angle
of their caps, the way they held their shoulders, and a certain
Slavic set of the eves. Zvgmunt Lukasz was taller and more

V	^ O

heavily built and had a greater air of maturity. In the picture,
he had one arm round a girl with dark permed hair, and the
other across the shoulders of his slighter cousin, Klemens. He
looked not so much like a twin, more like an uncle, or at least
an older brother.

'According to the inquest report, Klemens Wach died of
serious multiple injuries. They weren't specific about what
caused them.'

Peter Lukasz shrugged. 'My father has never talked about
the details of the crash. It was pretty horrific, by all accounts.
Some of the British crew members were actually dismembered,
I gather. They were thrown through the framework of the
aircraft. Two others burned to death, trapped in the wreckage.


212



McTcaguc had a lot to answer for. He was lucky they never
tracked him down.'

'Do you think McTeague is dead, Mr Lukasz?'
'I don't know. My guess would he that he got back to Canada
as soon as he could. McTeague had a wife and a newborn child
over there, remember. Apparently, he talked about them all the
time, and said he was desperate to get back home and sec them.
You know, at one time, my father even talked about going to
Canada to look for him. But I think, in the end, he preferred to
carry the pain and the memories with him intact. His hatred of
Danny McTeague has been like a talisman to be cherished; it's
kept his memory of Klemens fresh and alive, if that makes sense.
If he knew McTeague had died peacefully in his sleep somewhere,
it would be like losing that talisman. Then there would be nobody
left to hate. And then, worst of all, there would be nothing more
that he could do for Klemens. His memories would begin to fade.

o

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?'
'Yes, I think so.'
Lukasz nodded. 'I've thought about it a lot over the vcars. My

C*	v V

father and I are alike, I think. That's the way I would feel, too,
in the same circumstances. Hatred and a desire (or vengeance
are things you can hold on to. They arc solid things. They give
you a focus.'

'A purpose in life?'

'If you like. But, as I say, it would have undermined all that
if my father had ever met McTeague again and discovered he

v	66

was only another human being. Of course, McTcaguc was just
a man who made a mistake, a man who was afraid and let down
his comrades. But it was better for my father to preserve his
picture of a monster. It was the only thing that made the death
oi Klemens more understandable. It was the only way to make
sense of something that was ultimately senseless.'

Cooper listened for a moment to the claws of the parrot
rattling on the bars of its cage in the corner of the room.

o	o

'It's ironic that it should come up now,' said Lukasz. 'It's
against the spirit of op/ateA.'
'Sorry?'
'Op/ate^ is our tradition of forgiveness and reconciliation. It's


213



symboli/ed by eating the oplatki waters. And this Sunday is the
oplatek dinner for the Edendale Polish community, down at the
ex-servicemen's club, the Dom Kombatanta. It's one of the high
points of our calendar. It certainly means a lot to my father.'

Cooper had never heard of such a thing, and he couldn't quite
picture how to spell the word that Lukasx. was pronouncing,
forgiveness and reconciliation? Well, there was certainly plentv
of scope lor that.

'Do you know somebody called George Malkin?' asked
Cooper.

l.ukas/ frowned. 'Malkin? Should 1? What's the connection?
Was he in the- RAF?'

'No. He's a local man. He lives near the place where the
Lancaster crashed.'

Tin sorry, it doesn't mean anything.'

Cooper handed the photograph back reluctantly. 'They were
all brave men.' lie said.

l.ukas/ laughed. "I hat's what everybody says. Everybody who
wasn't involved, anvwav. But it isn't what my father says. He savs
that none of them was brave; he says it wasn't about bravery at
all. In his view, they did what they could because they were
part of a crew, a team, and it was impossible to consider letting
your comrades down. They were \erv close, you know, and the
circumstances brought them even closer. It's impossible for us
to understand now how close they were.'

'Like a family, in fact. It's always worse when things go wrong

j	j O O O

within a family. It feels like a betrayal.'

'Yes. But these davs, even families aren't as close as that. Ask
my son.'

'Your son?'

'Andrew. He lives in London now, but he's been visiting us
recently.'

'Is he still here?'

'No. lie was only visiting.'

'When did you see him off?'

Lukas/ seemed to hesitate about answering. 'He hasn't been
here since Sunday,' he said.

'Was he going straight back to London?' said Cooper. 'Was


214



he travelling by train or did he have a car? It might have been
difficult in the snow.'

It was Grace Lukasz who answered. She had approached
quietly behind her husband's back to listen to the conversation,
as if drawn by the merest mention of her son's name.

'He arrived in a taxi. And we didn't see him off,' she said.

'Oh? Why?'

'I was on duty at the hospital on Sunday night,' said Lukas/,.
'As 1 told you, I work in the A&E department. By the time I
arrived home, Andrew was gone.'

'Was there a family row of some kind?' asked Cooper. The
Lukaszes both looked embarrassed at the question. 'It happens
in every family, 1 know.'

'Andrew went off without saying goodbye at all,' said Grace
Lukasz.

Cooper looked at the heaps of snow piled up outside on
Woodland Crescent. The snow was becoming stained with car

o

exhaust fumes and soot from central-heating flues. It didn't say
much for the air quality in the Crescent.

'Mrs Lukasz, do you mean that your son just disappeared?'

'Well, in a way.'

'Did he have any luggage with him?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Have you reported him missing?'

'He isn't missing/ said Peter Lukasz. 'He left a little suddenly,
that's all. I presume somebody came for him. A taxi, whatever.'

'He promised he would phone me,' said Grace. 'I've called
his home in London several times, but there's only an answering
machine. He said his wife is away in America, and we don't have
his mobile number.'

'He probably has some urgent business to deal with,' said
Peter. 'Andrew is regional sales manager for a medical supplies
company.'

Cooper began to get exasperated. People could sometimes be
so slow to accept that tragedy could intrude directly into their
own comfortable lives.

'Could you describe your son, please? How old is he? How
tall? Is he dark or fair? What was he wearing?'


21S



'Well, Andrew is dark, like me/ said Peter Lukasx. 'He's
thirty-two. I don't know what he was wearing. What's this
all about?'

Rut his wife's face was already growing pale. 'The man found
dead on the Snake Pass, she said. 'Rut that's the man who called
here at the bungalow on Monday, isn't it?'

'Jx if?' said Cooper.

They both stared at him wordlessly. A faint sheen of sweat
glistened on Peter Lukasx's forehead. He seemed to find it too
warm in his own bungalow.

'I'm aJraid I'll have to ask you to come in and have a look,'
said Cooper. 'In case you're able to help us identity him.'

Grace Lukasx. shook her head. 'Rut that wasn't Andrew,' she
said. 'Surelv that's not what you're saying?' She gave a short
laugh. 'I know my own son.'

Peter Lukasx seemed to understand better. 'It's ridiculous,'
he said. 'Quite ridiculous. Rut I'll do it, if it helps to get the
idea out of your head.'

'Thank you, sir. However, 1 think we'll need both of you.
Your wife was the only one who saw the man who came to
your door.'

Cooper got ready to leave the bungalow. The sky was looking
heavy again outside. Peter Lukasx saw him out, but paused on
the doorstep in his slippers. Lukasx seemed as though he might
have something else he wanted to say, but Cooper didn't know
what question he should be asking him.

'How long has your father been working on his story?' said
Cooper.

'About a week.'

'Is that all? What made him decide to start it now?'

'Oh, I think that's because he knows he's dying,' said Lukasx.
'He has advanced liver cancer, and all that can be done for him
now is to control the pain. We've been told that he'll be dead
within a few months.'


Ren Cooper stood in the C1U room as he stripped off his coat
and stared at his shoes, which were turning a strange grey where
they had once been black. He flicked through the messages and



216



memos on his desk, allocating them to three piles in order of
priority. He had learned the technique on a time-management
course. Important and urgent, important but not urgent, urgent
hut not important. In this case, only the first would get dealt
with. Towards the bottom, he stopped and read a telephone
message more carefully. There was no pile this one would fit
into. It didn't tit into his duties at all.

He put the message aside carefully on his desk while he dealt

ith the important and urgent tasks. A GPS lawyer needed a

port for an assault case that was due before the magistrates

first thing on Monday morning; a family in Eclendale whose

burglary he was supposed to be investigating had been burgled

o .'	r i o o o

again and needed calming clown; a superintendent had invited
him to volunteer for a farm security working group and wanted
an answer yesterday.


Diane Fry watched Cooper going through the ritual. She wasn't
sure why it was that she found him every bit as irritating as Gavin
Murfm. Murfin was stupid and la/y, but she could understand
that. Ben Cooper was neither of those things.


'Ben, you took a long time at the Snake Inn,' she said.

'Sorry.'

'Do you realize how stretched we arc here?'

'Of course,' he said.

'I'm not asking you to cut corners,' she said, 'but I need you
to be making the best use of your time. So let me know where
you are in future, it you're goin^J to be delayed.'

'Listen, Diane, I've asked Peter and Grace Lukasx. to try an
identification on the Snowman.'

She stared at him. 'Have you now? Ben, are you working this
enquiry on your own?'

'No, but '

'So how come you talked to the Lukasz family again? Was
that on your list of actions?'

'No. I used a bit of initiative.'

'Well, don't.'

'They don't know the whereabouts of their son. They haven't
seen him since Sunday.'


217



Fry stopped and stared at him. 'Have they reported it?'

'No.'

'Description?'

'It's a rough match with the Snowman. Besides, Grace Lukas/,
is the only one who saw this man who's supposed to have visited
Woodland Crescent on Monday.'

'.SuppojeJ to have?'

'I don't think she's telling the entire truth,' said Cooper. 'Her
husband wasn't home, and her father-in-law is in some world of
his own. As for the neighbours, it seems the man who called
at the Lukasz bungalow didn't visit anybody else in the street.
That doesn't sound like any salesman I ever heard of. It will be
interesting to see what she makes of the Snowman, anyway/

'All right,' said Fry. 'But for Cod's sake let me know what
you're doing in future, Ben.'

'There's another thing,' said Cooper.

She sighed. 'Co on.'

'The staff at the Snake Inn remember no four-wheel drives. Is
it possible the Snowman's body was left in that lay-by overnight,
before the snow started?'

'Not possible. There was snow underneath the body. And take
another look at the video of the scene. It's perfectly obvious that
the body would have been visible to traffic coming up the hill.
Even in the dark, you would see it in your headlights.'

'It wouldn't be the first time people had just driven on by.'

Fry tapped her fingers. 'That would mean we'd have to
do roadside checks on motorists. That's more time and more
staff.'

'Sorry.'

'I'll let the DI know. Anything else?'

'Not for now.'

'Clear up your messages, then.'

Frv watched him for a few minutes longer as he began to

y	o o

make phone calls. She listened to him placating people who were
becoming more and more anxious that nothing had been done on
their enquiries. He was good at that - people on the other end
of the line started off angry or upset and w ent away feeling that
they had his full attention and sympathy. Fry wondered how she


218



could get Cooper's lull attention. Maybe she ought to get angrier
herself, or more upset. Nothing else seemed to work.


Cooper picked up the message form he had put aside. Urgent
or important? Neither, of course. Yet, of all of them, this was
the call he most wanted to make. He put it into his pocket,
pulled on his coat and carried his cap as he followed Fry to the
car park.


He found the cold air outside refreshing. To get to his car, he
had to cross a treacherous rink of compacted ice where do/ens
of police vehicles had spun their wheels on their way in and out
of the compound. Someone would have to clear the ice soon,
or there would he members of the public falling and breaking
their legs, and the county court would be full of negligence
cases against the police. That would play hell with the budgets,
all right.

Cooper supposed he ought to make an effort not to get himself
into trouble- with Diane Frv. Not only was she his supervisor, but
she already had a hold over him, a suspicion that had never been
mentioned between them, only ever hinted at, so that it might

j	O

only have1 been his own delusion that she knew his secret. But one
thing was sure. One more wrong move could blight his career.
Me could end up one of those embittered old warhorses who
had given up hopes of promotion or recognition. He could end
up like Cavin Murhn, who no longer cared whether everyone
thought he was a joke.

But there was something about the way Fry approached it
that rankled. Every time she gave him the benefit of her advice,
it made him want to do entirely the opposite. It was exact!v what
lie heard married men saw about their nagging wives.

Cooper looked again at the message form he had put in his
pocket. Miss Alison Morrissey had called to speak to him and
would like him to phone her back. It was an Hclcndale number,
so he guessed she was still staying at the Cavendish Hotel. He
hadn't yet decided whether he was going to talk to her; he

wanted to be sure of his ground before he had the confidence

^

to lace her.

But Alison Morrissey needed his help. Fry didn't need him at


219



all -- in fact, she would he better off without him, because she
could get on and organize everybody the way she wanted them.
The contrast between the two women couldn't he clearer.


The Snowman looked as though his eyes might open at any
moment. The colour of his skin reminded Ben Cooper of the
real snowman that someone had built in the churchyard at All
Saints. It was close to the road, and over the last few days the
fumes from passing traffic had turned it grey and unhealthy.


He looked at Peter and Grace Lukasz. They had already looked
upset when they had arrived at the hospital mortuary.

'Are you sure you're all right?' he said. 'We can do this
tomorrow morning, if you prefer.'

'No, it's all right,' said Lukasz.

The mortuary assistant drew back the plastic sheet fully from
the face of the corpse. Cooper watched the couple carefully.
Lukasz actually seemed to become calmer when he saw the face.

v

Rut his wife was riveted by the sight. She edged her wheelchair a
little nearer to study the details of the Snowman's hair and skin.

'Well, it certainly isn't our son,' said Lukasz. 'I've never seen
this man before in my life.'

'Mrs Lukasz?' said Cooper.

'Of course it isn't Andrew.'

'But have you seen him before? Do you think this is the man
who called at your home on Monday?'

'It's difficult to tell,' she said. 'Seeing him like this . . . and,
well, I met him for only a moment or two. But I think it could
be him.'

'Have you thought of anything else that might help us to
identify him? Any little detail at all?'

'I don't think so.'

'Thank you.' Cooper nodded at the attendant and watched
him cover the Snowman's face. The Snowman had been travelling,
and he seemed to be unknown locally or in neighbouring
areas. He wondered whether Gavin Murhn had contacted
Europol yet.

'Mrs Lukasz, did you happen to notice whether this man had
an accent at all?'


220



Grace Lukas/. rubbed her hands on the wheels of her chair
and looked up at her husband. 'He didn't say much, so I
couldn't tell.'

'What did he say exactly?'

'He asked if Mr Lukasx was at home. That was all.' She turned
away, and they began to head tor the exit.

'Rut which Mr Lukasz did he want?' said Cooper.

Grace stopped. Her back was towards him, her shoulders
tense. Her husband stepped behind her to push the wheclchair.
'I don't know,' she said. 'Rut Peter wasn't home, and 1 couldn't
let him bother Zygmunt.'

Cooper frowned at their backs, irritated by their apparent
lack of imagination, their readiness to ignore the possibilities.

'It didn't occur to you that he might be looking for /InJrew
Lukasx? he said.

'But Andrew had already gone,' said Peter.

'Exactly.'


On her way home to her Hat in Grosvenor Avenue, Diane Fry
called at the shop on the corner of Castlcton Road. It was run by
a Pakistani family, who were unfailingly polite to her, whatever
mood she was in. Some days, she left the shop feeling guilty
that she had failed to respond to their kindness. But those were
the days when Edendalc was the last place she wanted to be,
anvwav.


^	v

Fry had bought a bottle of milk and a frozen pepperoni pizxa.
Near the counter, she picked up some newspapers, in case there
was nothing on TV tonight that she could bear to watch. She

o	o

had lived alone for a long time, but she was hardened to it. She
was able to hold back the tide of loneliness quite easily now, as
lon^ as there were no people around. The difficult times were
when she heard the students who lived in the other flats laughing
and calling to each other, coming back from the pub with their
Iriends and playing music as they sat around putting the world
right. That was when she needed all her strength. It was clear
to her that Ren Cooper would not be able to cope with living
alone. He had no idea what it was like.

When she reached the Hat, Fry glanced at the local papers


221



while she heated up the pi//a and boiled the kettle. The first thing
she realized was that the Canadian woman, Alison Morrissey, had
been to the newspapers.

The Eden Valley Times had done a full-page feature on her; so
had the Ruxton Advertiser. There had been items in the city papers,
too, the Sheffield Star and the Manchester Evening News. Each of
them carried pictures of the woman herself. Fry recognized her
immediately as the woman she had seen talking to Ben Cooper
at Underbank.


222



20


Den Cooper awoke on Saturday morning thinking of Marie
Tcnnent. Me had been dreaming that his limbs had fro/en
together, that frostbite had eaten through the membranes of
his ears and nose, and that his eyes would never open again.
But finally they did open, and he saw his bedroom. It was the
same bedroom he had slept in nearly all his life.


lie pulled back a corner of the curtain at his window. The
room looked out on to the yard at the back of the farmhouse,
and above it a steep hill that was covered in dark conifers until
the top hundred feet, where the moors burst through. In his
childhood, he had peopled those wooded slopes with all sorts
of imaginary beasts and adventures. He had followed his brother
Matt into many scrapes that had been terrifying and exciting in
equal measures. 1 he memory gave him only a small pang of
regret at the thought of leaving it behind.

Though the yard was pitch-dark, Cooper could see there
would be no more snow this morning. The black sky was full
of stars that were piercingly bright. Ihcre would be ice lying on

I	t- - c- £>

the1 moors, just as there was on the night Marie Tennent died.
Tor a moment, he tried to put himself inside Marie's mind,
struggling to grasp the compulsion that had driven her up to
the top of Irontongue Hill in the worst possible weather. Had
it really been a need to cover the bones of a long-dead bab\,
wrapping it against the cold that it would never feel?

Cooper shook his head. He knew it was one of those things
he would never be able to understand, even if Marie had been
here now to explain it to him in her own words. There was too
much emotion in it, and too little logic.

On Monday, Marie Tennent would not be his first priority,
though a copy of her file still sat on his desk. How much time
was he likely to get to spend on her? Maybe he would have
to shelve her altogether, until there was more time, or her
baby was found, or the pathologist got round to a postmortem


223



examination. He added Marie to a long list of frustrations, cases
where he was powerless to help. On Monday morning, the
Snowman would again be the main priority, because postmortem
results had identified him as a murder victim. He was urgent and
important.

Today, though, it was Saturday, and Cooper was off duty.
Today it was time for him to leave Bridge End Farm. It didn't
take him long to pack his possessions.

'I've got the pick-up ready/ said his brother Matt over
breakfast. 'I'll give you a hand to load up.'

'There isn't all that much to take,' said Cooper. 'The flat's
furnished, so I don't need much furniture. And it's surprising
how little stuff I've collected over the years, when I look.'

'What about your guns?'

'I'll have to leave them behind. They'll have to stay in the
cabinet here. I've got nowhere to keep them.'

'It'll be the competition again soon, Ben. You should be
practising.'

'I know.'

Matt sat and looked at him helplessly. Neither of them knew
what to say. Matt got up from the table so that he wouldn't
have to struggle to find the words.

'Give me a shout then, when you're ready.'

All Cooper needed were his clothes, his computer and stereo,
a few books, CDs and pictures. He felt like a student setting oil
for his first term at university, his anxious parents insisting on
ferrying him to his halls of residence to settle him in. There
were some things he could leave behind at Bridge End Farm.
So it would still, in a way, be his home.

The first picture he took down was the one that hung on
the wall opposite the foot of his bed. He realized he hadn't
looked at the picture for a while. But then, he didn't need to --
he knew every detail of it. He was familiar with every face on
each of the rows, even with the patterns and texture of the
wall behind them and the concrete yard beneath their boots.
Without looking, he could have described the way each one held
his arms, which of them was smiling, who looked suspicious of
the photographer, and who hadn't fastened his tie properly that


224



morning. He knew exactly the feel of the mahogany frame in his
hands, the smoothness of the edges, the slight ridge in the wood
near one corner that his Hnger always found, like a necessary
flaw. He remembered the slight scratch in the glass that was
almost hidden by the shadow of the chair one of the officers
sat in on the front row. If you turned the picture towards the
light, the scratch became obvious. He couldn't remember how
it had happened. Somehow, it had always been there.

He put the photograph in the box first, wrapping it up
carefully in tissue paper, then several layers of newspaper.
Several less important prints went in after it. Perhaps the
photograph would have been better protected if it had been
on top. But it felt right for it to be at the bottom, deep in
the accumulated objects of his life. It would have to take pride
of place in the sitting room of his new Hat, though. It would
give a sort of tacit approval to the place. Cooper already had
in mind the exact spot where it would go.


Soon after he and Matt arrived at Welbeck Street, the flat
became a whirlwind of activity. His sister-in-law Kate drove
down with the girls to have a look, and the three of them
insisted on hunting for cleaning equipment and wiping down
all the surfaces in the kitchen and bathroom until they shone.
Matt stood in the conservatory and looked at the tiny overgrown
garden and the backs of the houses that overlooked it. Then he
walked through to the sitting room and looked out of the front
window at the street. A row of cars stood directly in front of
the houses opposite, and melting snow dripped slowly from
the roofs.

'Rather you than me, Ben,' he said, after a while.

Cooper knew what his brother meant. Although Welbeck
Street was only a few miles from Bridge End, there was a world
of difference. But he believed he could adapt to it. It was Matt
who would have the most trouble adjusting to a different life,
if it ever came to selling the farm.

He had discovered that his new landlady had a Jack Russell
terrier called Jasper. He could hear it now, yapping in the
backyard next door.


22S



A little later, Mrs Shelley herself came in from next door to
see how he was getting on. Lawrence Daley was with her, and hewas
wearing his how tie. He went round and shook hands with

O

everybody, including Josie and Amy, which made them giggle
hysterically tor more than hall an hour atterwards. Mrs Shelley
watched Kate cleaning the kitchen, nodding approvingly.

Then Cooper's sister Claire appeared briefly. She always
complained of being too busv for anything. But she had managed
to spare him a tew minutes, to help him settle in, she said. She
brought him a card and a bottle of white wine, then vanished
again in a perfumed bree/,e, off back to her craft shop in Bold
Lane. In the conservatory, the girls were cooing over the cat,
who was enjoying the attention immensely. His purrs were
vibrating the windows.

Cooper sat on a suitcase and watched the activity. He lelt very
strange. Lie was surrounded by his lamilv, the people he had
known for many years, some of them all his life. He had lived
in the same house as Matt for twenty-nine years. But because
they were all in an unfamiliar place, he felt as though he were an
alien among them. In half an hour they would be gone; the tide
would go out again and they would ebb away, leaving him high
and dry, stranded like a bit of seaweed tossed on to the rocks
to drv out in the sun. When they all went home, he would stay
here on his own in this little house, where he didn't even know
how to find the electricity meter.

Even Uncle John and Aunt Margaret had stood in the
doorway and made remarks about the convenient location
until they felt able to make an excuse and leave. They had
all come out of curiosity, out of bafflement that a member
of the family was cutting hirnsell oil in this wa\. Lor that's
what he was doing, in their eyes. Coopers did not live on
their own. The family was there to provide support why
should he want to cast it aside? He sensed that Claire and his
aunt and uncle had suspected there was a woman involved,
someone he was living with on the quiet, but they had seen
no signs of one. He was sure there would be later surprise
visits to check.

Mrs Shelley had discovered that Matt was a farmer, and had


226



decider! he was the anti-christ. Rut she didn't say anything until
he was gone, and then she confided her views in Cooper.

'I can't abide people who ill-treat animals,' said Mrs Shelley.
'What respect have they got lor people if they treat animals like
that? It makes me sick.'

'Yes, you're right, Mrs Shelley.'

'Don't let Miranda out at the front, will you? The cars arc
too dangerous. They go hatting down this road like idiots. They
have their music turned up full blast and their windows open.
Music! It's a wonder their brains don't (all out.'

'Yes, you're right.'

'I see your brother has two children, though,' said Mrs
Shelley. 'That's nice.'

'Matt says they're getting to be a difficult age.'

'Oh, I know. Rut they're beautiful when they're babies, aren't
they? All that time I spent telling Lawrence he ought to become
a father . . .'

'Auntie, I think Ren might prefer to be left to settle in now,'
said Lawrence.

Mrs Shelley gave a little giggle. 'LawTcncc says I talk too
much. You n'i/7 look after Miranda, won't you? Only I can't
have her in my own house, you see.'

'Rccause of the dog, I suppose.'

Mrs Shelley glared at him. 'What's wrong with my dog?'

'Oh, nothing.'

'Jasper's a perfect guard dog he protects his home and his
little family. He lets me know if anyone's around.'

'I'm sure he does,' said Cooper, thinking of the bad-tempered
yapping he'd heard from the yard earlier. 'Do you keep him
outside or inside mostly?'

'It depends whether it's safe,' said Mrs Shelley.

'He barks when he's in the yard.'

'Oh, Jasper barks indoors as well these days, bless him. But
I'm a little deaf anyway. I turn the sound up on the TV, and it
doesn't bother me.'

Cooper was glad of the thick walls. He had heard neither the
TV, nor the dog barking indoors.

'Not that I have the TV on all that often, you understand,' said


227



Mrs Shelley. 'There's far too much news on it. I can't stand news
it's always lull of people heing cruel to other people, and to
animals as well. 1 turn it off straight away when the news comes
on, and I talk to Jasper instead, so he doesn't feel neglected.'

'Come on, Auntie,' said Lawrence. 'We said we'd only he a
few minutes, didn't we?'

'All right. Bye lor now, then,' she said. 'Duty calls.'

Then even Mrs Shelley was gone, hack to her house next
door. The dog, which had been yapping in her backyard, went
hack into the house, and everything was quiet again.

Cooper opened the kitchen window to let in some fresh air
to disperse the smell of the disinfectant splashed around hy Kate
and the girls. A tinge of aromatic wood smoke drifted in. One
of his new neighbours was having a garden bonfire. It smelled
like apple branches they were burning. From the window of his
Hat, Cooper couldn't see any trees. They must he in the gardens
between Welbeck Street and the shops on Meadow Road were
hidden from his view, except in the conservatory. He wondered
if Mrs Shelley would let him knock a small window out of the
back wall of the bedroom, so that he could see the apple blossom
in the spring. Probably not. Maybe he would get used to seeing
only tarmac and slate roofs.

He still had the telephone message in the pocket of his coat.
Probably she had given up expecting to hear back from him hy
now. He wondered what she \\as doing with herself while she
was in Fdendale, when the people she wanted to talk to were
refusing even to see her. Maybe Frank Baine had been showing
her the sights.

Now seemed to he the best time. He rang the number of
the hotel.

'Can I speak to Miss Alison Morrisscy, please? She's a guest
there.'

'One moment, please.'

There were still a couple of boxes of small items to unpack for
the flat. One was a wooden figure of a cat, not unlike Miranda,
black and overweight. Cooper had been given it many years ago,
hut couldn't remember now who the gift was from. It had stood
in his bedroom at Bridge End Farm for over a decade.


228



While he waited, he placed the wooden cat on the window
ledge overlooking the street. Carefully, he adjusted the cat's
position so that it was looking into the room, directly towards
the armchair where he would sit during the evening. He thought
that he might find its fat little smile comforting.

'Hello?' Morrissey sounded cautious when she came to the
phone. 'Who is that?'

'Ben Cooper. You left a message.'

'Oh, right. I didn't think you would call.'

'I almost didn't.'

"I wondered it you would he willing to meet with me. I don't
feel I've managed to explain myself properly to anybody. But
you at least seem interested. I hoped you might listen.'

'It would be entirely unofficial,' said Cooper.

'That's OK by me.'

'Tomorrow? I'm off duty then.'

'Great. Can you meet me in the lobby of the Cavendish Hotel?
About eleven thirty?'

'Fine.'

For a few minutes, Cooper stroked the wooden back of the cat
as he stared down into the street. He felt the need to familiarize
himself with the minute details of his surroundings - the colours
of the front doors on the houses opposite, the patterns on the
curtains in their windows, the makes and models of the cars
parked on the hard standings near the road. He noted which
gardens had flowers growing in them and which were abandoned
and weedy. He counted the wheclic bins standing at the entrance
to a ginncl, and he noticed the Jack Russell terrier peering into
the street from behind an iron gate. He wondered how long it
would take before the place began to look like home.


'So this is it, then? The new bolt hole?'


Cooper almost dropped the lamp. She was the last person he
expected to sec. One of his new neighbours maybe, or another
family member, coming to sec how he was getting on. But
Diane Fry? She hovered in the doorway like a bailiff, running
a critical eye over his possessions in case she had to value them
for a county court summons.


229



'I was just passing,' she said. 'And I saw your car outside-. I
figured this must be the place. It's not exactly huge, is it?'

'It'll do for me.'

Cooper put the lamp down carefully on the table, suddenly
conscious of the second-best crockery and the pile of his clothes
on the chairs in the sitting room. Fry always made him feel like

O	, .

this, as if he wasn't coming up to expectations.

The books he had bought from Fden Valley Books were on

o

top of the pile, only because they were the most recent. Of
course, Diane Fry spotted them. She didn't miss much.

'The Histor\ of Peak District Aircraft It'rccl'.v,' she read. "I wonder
why you've developed a sudden interest in this subject, Ben?'

Cooper didn't feel the need to reply. But that didn't stop
her.

'The war was a long time ago, Ben,' she said. 'In fact, I can't

<T*	o

understand why people call it the war. There have been plenty
of others since then.'

'Not wars that affected so many people,' said Cooper. 'Not
wars that changed the whole country.'

'It you say so. But it's not really old men you're interested
in, is it?'

'Sorry.''

'Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a bit of added
interest in this for you, isn't there? A bit of excitement on the
side? A Canadian by the name of Alison Morrissev?'

'What are you talking about?'

Fry smiled. 'Ben, make sure you keep your head. Keep your
(ocus on what's important. Just because vou're living on your
own, you shouldn't be tempted to seek out the first person who
pays you a bit of attention. It doesn't work.'

'It has nothing to do with you.'

'It has, if it affects the way you do your job, Ben. And at the
moment, I've got doubts about that. You're letting yourself
be distracted too easily. You're spending too much time on
someone else's pet project. That's not what you're paid for.
We can't afford to have you swanning oft interviewing old

.	o o

soldiers to satisfy that Canadian woman's obsession. Do you
understand what I'm saving?'


230



'I'll do it in my own time/ he said.

'Make sure that you do, Ben. Because I'll he keeping an eye
on what you're up to.'
'Right/

o

Cooper found himself breathing a hit too hard. He couldn't
hclieve that Dianc Fry had chosen to walk into his new Hat on
the day he moved in and try to humiliate him. He had to either
throw her out or iind something to help him to calm down.

'Would you like a coffee while you're here?' he said.

'There i; a kitchen, is there?'

'Of sorts.'

'Thanks, then.'

Cooper went to make the coffee. First he had to find the hox
that the kettle was in, then unpack the shopping for the instant
coffee and the milk, which he knew he should have put into the
fridge straight away. His ears were straining for sounds of Diane
Fry moving around in his new sitting room, hut he heard nothing.
Perhaps she had seen all she needed to sec from the doorway and
was reluctant to sit on the chairs, even if she could do so without
touching his clothes. He realized he hadn't thought to get any
sugar, and he turned to ask her if she took it in her coffee. But
he didn't hothcr. There was no douht in his mind that she took
it unsweetened.

But when he got hack to the sitting room, he found Frv

O	O ' V

unpacking a hox of pictures. She was arranging them on the
walls, lining them up neatly on some tacks left hy the previous
tenants. She had found a cloth, too, and was wiping the glass
covering a Richard Martin print of a squeeze stile with Win Hill
in the background.

'Have you got a hammer?' she said.

'Er, yes. Somewhere.'

'I think this one needs to go on the wall over there.'

'You're probably right.'

Cooper found the hammer for her and perched on the edge
of one of the armchairs with his coffee while he watched her fix
the picture in exactly the ri^ht spot. She did the job as she did
everything, with the correct procedure and no unnecessary fuss.
And the finished job was perfect, precisely aligned and level. He


231



had to admit that it was the ideal spot tor the print. If he had
been left to do it himself, it would probably have taken him
several attempts until he hit on the right arrangement.

'Don't forget your coffee, Diane,' he said.

'Yes, in a minute.'

She was absorbed now, poking through the box for more
pictures, peeling away layers of newspaper to see what she could
Hnd. She rejected some rather ordinary fox-hunting prints, then
found a bigger picture at the bottom oi the box, well wrapped
in tissue paper to protect it from damage.

Cooper knew which picture it was. He wanted to tell her
to cover it up and put it back in the box; he wanted to say
that he didn't want her handling it. Rut he held his breath
and said nothing, waiting to see her reaction. He expected a
comment, at least. Anyone else would have said something --
muttered some meaningless platitude, some embarrassed words
of sympathy while avoiding his eye.

Rut Fry said nothing at all. Her expression didn't change. She
took the picture by the frame and wiped it carefully with the
cloth, rubbing at the glass to get the smears from the surface.
And again she knew exactly where it had to go. This was one
instance where Cooper had his own idea of the right place,
but Fry didn't need telling. She hung it over the fireplace
and positioned it dead centre, making minute adjustments to
its angle until she was satisfied it was perfect. She stood back
and examined it, then took the cloth again and wiped off her
own faint fingermarks. He was astonished to see that she did it
gently, almost tcndcrlv. He had never seen her do anything in
that way before.

The picture was the one of his father in his police uniform,
lined up proudly with his colleagues -- the last photograph
taken of him before he was killed in the street. The way
Fry caressed it with the cloth meant more to Cooper than
any amount of words she could have used. Her instinctive

y

reverence made his throat spasm uncomfortably. He wished
she would stop now, and drink her damn coffee. He thrust
the mug at her, forcing her to put down the cloth and stop
what she was doing. He couldn't think of a thing to say for


232



a few moments, until he managed to get his vocal cords working
again.

'Where exactly were you passing on your way to?' he
said, Hnally.

The tone o( his voice made Fry look at him quizzically.

'I'm not always working, you know. I have my own private
life.'

'Right.'

There was a small noise from the direction of the kitchen, a
sort of tentative chirrup. Cooper turned and saw a broad, black
face and a yellow eye that peered at Fry, hoping for attention.

'What on earth is that?' she said.
'That's Randy,' said Cooper. 'He's sort of part of the
property.'

Fry stared at Cooper, then back at the cat, which had decided
not to come any closer, after all.

'It's so typical,' said Fry. 'Only you, Ben, would take on a
Hat that came complete with its own stray.'

After that, they both seemed to run out of things to say. Fry
looked at the window. Cooper could sec that she was thinking
oi where she had to go next. She had put in an appearance,
done her duty, and now she was ready to move on to more
important business. She began to move towards the door, then
stopped and pulled something from her pocket. It was a small
object wrapped in blue paper.

'I don't like you all that much, as you know,' she said. 'But
I brought you this.'

'Thank you.'

Cooper took it and weighed it in his hand. It was solid,
and heavy for its size. He began to tug at the tape scaling
the parcel.

'No need to open it now,' said Fry. She swung her scarf round
her neck. 'I can sec you've still got things to do.'

'I suppose so.'

'Sec you on Monday, then.'

Cooper watched her slither down Welbeck Street. Presumably,
she had been obliged to leave her car at the bottom of
the street because of the number of vehicles parked outside the


233



houses. Fry didn't look back, and she had soon disappeared. Hehad
noticed when she was in the Hat that she was wearing new
shoes. He wondered whether she had bought some that had a
bit of grip in the soles.

He went back to the sitting room and opened the little parcel.
She had bought him a clock.

c*


Cooper considered the advantages of living alone. He looked
forward to being able to listen to the omnibus edition of The
Xrc/ierj on Sunday morning, without competition from videos
or pop music or daytime children's TV. And, because he was
on his own, it would hardly seem necessary to get dressed or
have a shave on his days off. As long as he didn't have to go
out of the house, no one would sec him. He could slop around
in his dressing gown or a pair of jogging bottoms for as long as
he liked. He could sit at the kitchen table and drink coHee and
eat toast and read the Sunday papers all morning, if he really
wanted. If he had thought to put an order in to have any papers
delivered, that is. At the moment, all he would be able to do
while drinking his coffee and eating his toast was stare at the
cat. Maybe he would have to unpack the box oil books he had
brought.


o

Finally, he realized why his thoughts were running on so last.
He was babbling to himself to cover the silence in the house. He
had never known a silent house in his life. He had a foreboding of
how depressing, how desperate, even how frightening it would
be to come home every night to a dark and empty house. Every
evening, the post would still be lying on the doormat where it
had fallen in the morning; a single unwashed coffee mug would
be in the sink where he had left it after breakfast because he had
been in a rush to get to work again; the house would have that

o	o '

feel of having gone along in its own world without him all day,
that his presence in it was unnecessary, maybe even unwelcome.
That wasn't what you could call a home.

The Hrst taste of loneliness was sour and unexpected, a burst
of metallic bitterness on the back of his tongue. He remembered
once breaking a tooth playing rugby at school, when he had got
a boot in the face attempting a foolhardy tackle. The sudden


23+



gush of blood in his mouth had given him a moment of cold
panic and made him feel nauseous. He had felt the taste of
his own life trickling between his teeth and mingling with his
saliva. Loneliness was like that taste. Just like the bitterness of
the blood on his tongue.

o

The sound of every little movement made by the cat was
reassuring. The touch of its claws on the tiles in the conservatory,
the rustling as it changed position in its basket, even the faint
snore when it was sleeping. These were now the sounds he
listened for. Without them, the house would have been dead
and hostile. Like a narrow crack of light entering his brain, he
thought he had an inkling for the first time of why Diane Fry
spent so much time at work.

The cat had moved up on him silently and sat watching him
from the arm of a chair. When Cooper stroked its fur, he felt
the sharp sting of static electricity, and the animal flinched away
from his hand. The air was very dry. There would be another
frost tonight.


235



21


t very morning when Diane Fry opened the door of her car she
had to vacuum bits of polystyrene carton and fragments of greasy
paper off the floor. She also had to spray air freshener inside until
it was so thick she had to open the windows to prevent herself
from suffocating. Sunday morning was no exception. The traces
of Gavin Murnn lingered all weekend. She was sure MurAn used
food as a means of avoiding talking to her when they were in


O	O V

the car. Ben Cooper at least had some conversation. He didn't
have to buy a singing lobster to do his talking for him.

This Sunday morning, Fry finished cleaning out her car to find
that her mobile was ringing and ringing. It was DI Hitchens.

'Dianc, you'd better get into the office right away,' he said.
'Before the shit hits the fan.'


The Cavendish wasn't exactly the newest hotel in Edcndalc.
There was the Holiday Inn on the roundabout at the end of the
relief road, and the Travelodge in Eyre Street. And now there
was the recent conversion of the old Conservative Club, with its
portraits of Margaret Thatchcr and John Major still hanging on
the wall in the bar as historical souvenirs, like the heads of stags


'	o

that had been shot and stuffed. But the Cavendish was the hotel
that had 'character', according to the tourist brochures. It was
the one where a waiter would bring you a copy of TVie Time; as
you relaxed in a leather armchair in the residents' lounge; it was
the one where the Rotary Club held its charity dinners at i80
a head. In front of the hotel, there were iron railings painted
green and topped with spikes. In most towns such ironwork
had disappeared long ago, ripped up during the Second World
War to make weapons. Somehow they had escaped this fate in
Edendale.

Ben Cooper found Alison Morrissey waiting for him on
the steps of the Cavendish. The morning was cold, but not
unpleasant. It felt as though there could be rain at any time,


236



which would at least wash away the snow still lying in the gutters

and on the hillsides rising out of the town.

'Thanks for coming,' she said. 'I wasn't sure you would. I

didn't think they would let you.'

'I'm off duty today. I can do what I like.'

'You can probably guess what I'm going to say.'

'Yes. But the reason I came is that I don't want there to be

any misunderstanding.'

'Misunderstanding? I've had to accept that the Derbyshire

police weren't going to offer any assistance. I hadn't realized

you would actively try to interfere and obstruct me.'

V	v v

'That isn't the case,' said Cooper.

'No? You visited the Lukasx family before I could get to
them. And then you went to sec Mr Rowland. Don't try to
tell me it's a coincidence. You're trying to thwart me. Your
chiefs don't want me to talk to these people. They'd like me
to get so frustrated that I ^ivc up and go back home. They've
sent you to hinder me, to make sure that happens.'

Cooper felt himself shuffling his feet with embarrassment and
tried to pretend that he was stamping them against the cold.

'I've had no instructions to do anything like that/ he said.

'No?' Alison hesitated. 'But you're the man to do it, aren't
you? You talk the same language as these people. Every time
you get there before I do, you make me seem so much more
of an alien. They hear my accent and they shut up, like I'm a
foreign spy. You'd think it was still wartime as far as they're
concerned. Careless talk costs lives. They're still carrying the
motto with them. Don't they know we w^ere on their side?

'It isn't like that,' said Cooper. 'They're naturally reticent
people. You have to work a bit harder to get them to
talk to you.'

'Yeah? It seems to me they're still living in the war. Suspicious
isn't the word.'

Cooper shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'But you're the
one obsessed with the war. It's been over a very long time.
Long before you and I were born.'

'You're wrong,' said Alison. 'It isn't over for me. It won't
be over until I And out what happened to my grandfather.'


237



They looked at each other for a moment. Where they stood,
on the corner near the Cavendish Hotel, there was an icy wind
blowing round the stone walls. He saw Morrissey shiver. But
then her mood changed suddenly, and she smiled.

'Well, you have to let me buy you a drink, at least. No
argument,' she said. 'Where can we go - is there somewhere
near?'

They went into the Wheatshcaf, where, to Cooper's surprise,
Alison Morrissey asked tor a pint of cider. Cooper realized that
he didn't have to drive home any more when he was in town,
and he ordered a pint of Derbyshire Drop. It was one of the
strong local beers, its label a tribute to the original name for
the unique semi-precious mineral Blue John, which attracted so
many tourists to the Peak District.

'I've asked for the Sunday lunch menu, too,' said Morrissey.
'I hope you don't mind.'

'I can't let you pay for me,' he said.

'You're not going to be stuffy, arc you? Didn't you say you
were off duty today?'

'Even so, I have to be careful.'

'I sec. You sound like a man treading a line. Well, I can
relate to that. It's exactly what I'm doing myself.'

Morrissey chose a vegetable bake, while Cooper settled for a
lasagne. He felt ridiculously nervous. When the food was served,
he couldn't quite think what order he should do things where
to put his napkin, what part of his meal to load on to his fork
first, when to order coffee.

'What did you mean about "treading a line"?' said Cooper.

Morrissey raised an eyebrow. 'The line between two worlds,
the line between the right and the wrong thing to do, the line

o	o o '

between the past and present. Choose which you prefer. I'm

treading them all.'

'And the line between rationality and obsession, perhaps?'
She looked at him, nursing her cider. Her cheeks were already

turning pink from the alcohol and the warmth of the pub. Then,

gradually, she began to talk. Cooper could feel her relaxing as

the words trickled out.

'Yes, you're right -- it has become an obsession,' she said.


238



'ft became an obsession after I saw the report on the crash
of Lancaster SU-V, and the list of names of the dead. From
that moment, those men were no longer the crew of an RAF
bomber they were people. They had lives, they had wives and
children. It was the tact that Dick Abbott had also been father of
a young child that was the real trigger. Abbott was barely more
than a boy himself. It set off something inside me, some urge,

an instinct that has been driving me on to find out what exactly

Z3	^

happened.'

'An instinct? Not curiosity?'

'Maybe. 1 don't understand what else to call it. But 1 had

y

to know what happened. I had to know the truth, and in a
way it was on behalf of that other fatherless child, as much
as for myself. I wondered about Zygmunt Lukasz, too, and
the family he might have. I can't explain why those British

v	O 1 ^

and Polish children mean anything to me at all. 1 know, in
my logical moments, that the pictures of those children that
I've been carrying in my head are nothing like the reality. I
know they'll be well into middle age by now. But I found I
was starting to live in some kind of parallel universe, where
everyone was still as they were in 1945. So I made no attempt
to explain it to anyone, not even to my mother. 1 was aware
of the fact that I couldn't justify it, too afraid of the reasonable
arguments that could be put to me, which I couldn't counter,
but which would only make my determination stronger. Some
people already call me obsessed, like you; I didn't want to give
them an opportunity to call me mad.'

'I'll take the word back if it makes you feel better.'

'It doesn't matter. It helps if you understand how determined
I am.'

'It's so far in the past, though . . .'

'Yes, I know. It was such an alien time. It makes you
appreciate peace. Do you know, it took me a long time to
understand that an aircraft falling out of the sky was an everyday
occurrence in wartime Britain.'

And more than fifty aircraft have been wrecked in the

v

Dark Peak area alone since the start of the Second World
War.'


239



Morrisscy looked at him in surprise. 'How did you know
that?'

'I found a book/ said Cooper.

'Where?'

'In a second-hand bookshop we have here in town. Eden
Valley Books.'

'That's interesting. I'd like to see it some time. Yes, I could
hardly believe the figures when Frank Baine told me. I mean,
on the map, the Peak District looks so small. It's no more than
a few dozen miles across, locked in between the big cities. And
the hills aren't even all that high. I mean, these summits arc
three thousand feet at the highest. We're not exactly talking the

O	v O

Rockies here, arc we, Ben? Why was this area the graveyard for
so many aircraft and airmen?'

'Some were damaged by enemy action, some suffered
mechanical failure, or iced up and broke apart in mid-air. Other
crashes were the result of pilot error or faulty navigation. If they
found themselves over high ground in poor weather conditions,
they were in trouble.'

'You really have done your research. Don't let it become an
obsession.'

A group of men in their thirties came into the pub, let loose
by their wives for Sunday lunchtimc. They were talking noisily,
joking about someone who had lost money through his ignorance
when buying a second-hand car. They wore sweatshirts, and
denim jeans with the waistbands rolling over from the pressure
of their stomachs, and they made a fuss of choosing the specialist
guest beers as if they were ordering cases of vintage wine.

'Then I had another problem,' said Morrissey. 'I had to
consider whether to contact the relatives of the other airmen.
Would they want to know the information I had? I had to try
to put myself in their position. I was worried that I would
be opening up old wounds. Just because those wounds are
fifty-seven years old doesn't necessarily make them any less
painful. I know that.'

Cooper tried to keep his eyes on hers, to encourage her
to carry on talking. Often, that was all people needed, an
air of attcntiveness. But gazing into her eyes began to make


2+0



him feel too disorientated after a while, and he had to look
away.

'At first, it seemed an impossible task that I'd set myself,' she
said. 'My imagination failed at the hurdle of putting myself in
other people's shoes.'

'If you've never had that sort of experience yourself . . .'

'No. It wasn't that. It was because these were people who
blamed my grandfather for their relatives' deaths. In the end,
I decided that there was only one approach to take. I had to
assume that the relatives, like me, would be happy to know
what had really happened.'

She was talking constantly, barely pausing to eat, hardly
waiting for him to nod or shake his head in response. It was as
if she didn't want him to get a word in, as if she were afraid he
might try to change the subject before she had finished explaining
herself. Cooper began to feel he was unduly honoured by the fact
that she had chosen him to explain it to. He wondered if anybody
else had been given this privilege. Frank Baine, probably.

'You see. to me it felt as though I'd been reading a book but

o	o

had been forced to put it down before the final chapter, and had
never been able to finish it. It was a sense of frustration that
drove me, I think. I knew finishing the last page would be a

'	o f o

bitter-sweet experience. Gut it was an experience I had to go
through with. Do you understand, Ben?'

The fact that she had called him Ben so naturally seemed
to mark an important moment in their meeting. Cooper had
interviewed enough people to know that unburdening herself
of her thoughts had made Morrissey feel closer to him and
had put him in the role of a friend. He had no problem
with that.

'I think I understand.'

'Good. Did you know that last Monday was the anniversary
of the crash?'

'Yes, I realized that.'

'I don't know why, but it seemed important I should come
over here now.'

'Do you happen to have the medal with you?' asked Cooper.

'Yes. And the package it came in, too.' Morrissey placed the


241



modal on the table. 'My grandfather kept it on him all the time
when he was Hying. It was a kind of lucky charm.'

Cooper used a dessert spoon to tip the medal towards the
light from the pub window, so that he could sec the shine from
its metal surface.

Morrissey watched him with a smile, 'if you're looking for
fingerprints, I have to tell you that the first thing my mother
did was give it a good clean. She said it was dirty. Tarnished.
She used metal polish on it.'

'Great.' Cooper could smell the polish. But there were pitted
areas of corrosion on the metal, and damp stains on the faded
ribbon. There were darker stains, too small specks that could
have been blood. The medal had arrived in an ancient leather
pouch, which had crumbled and split until it was practically
useless. On the inside were the remains of decayed stitching,
where a label mi^ht once have been attached. The pouch had
been wrapped in brown paper folded over several times and
sealed with parcel tape, and the Canadian address was written
in capital letters with a black felt-tipped pen.

'No note?' he said.

'No.'

'And the address is correct?'

'Yes.'

"I wonder how the sender knew your mother's address.'

'Brilliant,' said Morrissey.

Cooper looked up (from the package. 'Sorry?'

'Don't you think that's what we've been wondering for
months, ever since the medal arrived?'

'Of course.'

'It has to be someone who either had access to my grandfather's
service records, or who was close enough to him for
my grandfather to have given them his home address. Perhaps
he wrote it down for them, so that they could stay in touch
after the war was over.'

'You mean one of the members of his crew^?'

'And since it was mailed from Edendale . . .'

'You concluded that it came from the surviving crew member,
Zygmunt Lukasz.'


242



'Who else? When Frank Bainc told us Lukas/ still lived in
Eclendale, it seemed a pretty logical conclusion. Who else could
my grandfather have known in this area?'

Cooper passed back the medal and the package. 'Families of
the other crew members would have received their possessions
from the RAF after the crash. Any one of them might have had
your grandfather's home address among their belongings.'

'None of them lives anywhere near here.'

'You're certain, then, that Zygmunt Lukasz is involved in
some way?'

'Either that,' said Morrisscy, 'or my grandfather is still alive
and living in Edendalc.'


The atmosphere in the CID room was icy. Gavin Murfin was
already there, and he looked green, as if he had finally eaten
too many chicken tikka masalas. He saw Dianc Fry come in and
looked away.


'What's up with Gavin?' she asked Hitchens. 'Why does he
look so sick?'

'He's been chasing down missing persons to match the
Snowman, hasn't he? And he finally got around to circulating
the description nationally.'

'Yes?'

'He did it properly, too. Sent details to all forces. /(//
forces.'

Murfin definitely looked to be in a state of shock. His hair
was standing on end, as if he had pushed greasy fingers through
it in his agitation.

'One of the forces had a match?' said Fry.

'Yes, and they're on their way right now.'

'That's, good.'

'Do you think so, Dianc?

'If somebody can spare the manpower to give us some
back-up, that's great, surely? Well done, Gavin.' Fry looked at
their faces, and saw how uneasy Hitchens was. 'It's not the RUC,
is it? Don't tell me it's the Ulster troubles after all this time?'

'Oh, no,' said Hitchens. 'It's nothing so straightforward as a
terrorist execution.'


243



'Who, then? Who'vc we stirred up? A neighbouring force?'
'No. A national force/
'National?' Fry frowned. 'Railway police, you mean, sir? No?
Not the National Crime Squad? Special Branch?'

'The military wing/ said Hitchens. 'Ministry of Defence

Police. We we got two officers from the MDP arriving here

&	&

today. They think they might know our Snowman. They think
he might he one of theirs.'

'One of theirs? A missing serviceman?'

'The name of their missing person is Nick Easton. And when
I say he's one of theirs, I mean one of theirs. He was an RAF
special investigator. They'll be here in about an hour's time, so
thev'rc not messing about on this one. You'll be working with

v	C» &

a Sergeant Jane Caudwcll.'


Ben Cooper and Alison Morrisscy split the bill between them
and left the pub. For a few minutes, they walked in silence,
until they found themselves on the river bank. In this one
short stretch of river there were hundreds of birds on the
water, calling and diving, splashing and arguing, cocking their


o	o' f c* & &' o

heads at a few people on the paths. An old couple were
discussing the difference between coots and moorhens. Two
children argued over the last bit of bread, and tried to throw
it to the furthest duck. Dogs became hysterical at the flapping
of wings.
Near the weir, the water became shallower, and you could
lean over and stare at the bottom, looking for Ash. Rafts of
dead willow leaves floated on the surface, swirling gently
in aimless circles, clinging together in a dark scum as they
touched the banks. Then, suddenly, a couple of feet away,
the water roared over the weir. The meltwater was pouring
off the hills, raising the level of the river. The water bounced
so hard off the rocky bottom that it rose up again in white
spurts inside the cascade. Then it foamed away towards the
bridge, splashing over an old tree trunk that had lodged on
the edge.

'It wasn't only my grandfather who was a hero,' said
Morrissey. 'Klemens Wach had an admirable service record, too.


244



When he arrived in Nottinghamshire, he was already one of the
heroes of Poland, the ones who aren't forgotten, even now.'

'What do you mean?'

'Wach was transferred to Lcadcnhall from 305 Squadron, the
famous Polish unit.'

'Was he?' said Cooper.

'Sure. It's in the file. They're a legendary squadron in Poland,
apparently.'

'Right.'

They passed two bikers, a couple in their thirties, who sat
on a bench sipping tea from paper cups, their helmets on the
wooden slats next to them and their boots outstretched as they
watched the ducks foraging for food. They sat without speaking,
lifting their heads only to stare with amazement at a white-haired
man in a black overcoat who attempted to hand them a religious
pamphlet.

'How long are you staying in the area?' said Cooper.

'As long as necessary.'

'Have you no job to go back to in Toronto?'

'I'm a high-school teacher. But I took a sabbatical,' she said,
with a small smile.

'Lucky you. And no family?'

'Only my mother and a brother a few years older than me. They
support what I'm doing all the way. My mother and I, we're very
alike. We think the same way on this. We have to know how the
final chapter ends. We just have to, Ben.'

'So your grandmother was left alone in 1945 with a small
baby she must have had to bring up on her own.'

'Not for long. She found another man. In fact, my mother's
maiden name was Rccs. She took the name of her stepfather,
Kenneth Rees.'

'Your grandmother remarried?'

'How could she? Her husband hadn't ever been declared dead.
She didn't actually consider him to be dead. But she needed a
man to support her, to help her raise my mother. That's the
way it was back then. And Kenneth Rees wras a good man. He

never questioned it, my mother savs. I remember him very well,

i	' j j j '

though he died fifteen years ago.'


245



Irritatingly, Cooper found himself longing for a way he could
ask Alison for a photograph of Kenneth Rces. He had an urge
to compare one to the photos of Danny McTcaguc.

'Where was Recs from?'

'Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a structural engineer who
came to Canada to build bridges.'

'Would he have been about the same age as your real
grandfather?'
'About.'
"I suppose your grandmother had known him for a while? Or
did she meet him after your grandfather went missing?'

Cooper found he was walking on his own. Alison Morrissey
was no longer alongside him. He turned and saw that she had
stopped a few feet behind him. Her lips were apart, and her
breath came in angry spurts. She had shoved her hands into
the pockets of her coat again in the way that he had last seen
outside Walter Rowland's house. Her posture was angry, but
defensive. Stubborn, vet awfullv vulnerable.

' V	^

'You think Kenneth Rees was my real grandfather using a

/	O C"

different name,' she said. 'Why should he have married my
grandmother -- they were alreadv married. He couldn't let

O	y ^

anybody know who he was, because he was a deserter. He
would have been sent to prison.'

'I didn't mean that.'

'Kenneth Rees was a Geordie engineer. He had red hair.
He was only five foot eight. His accent was impossible to
understand.'

'You say he's dead now?'

'Yes, but 1 can have his details faxed to you, if you want. A
photograph, too.'

Cooper desperately wanted to say it wouldn't be necessary,
but he knew he needed to see the evidence himself, for his own
peace of mind. Alison simply nodded, understanding his lack of
response. I'll phone my mother and get her to do it later today,'
she said. 'So you'll have them first thing Monday morning. Is that
soon enough for you?'

'Of course.'

'Do you have email?'


2+6



'A fax will be fine.'

Morrissey looked across the road at the hotel. She seemed
disappointed, but she had proved herself to be resilient so far,
and he knew it would pass. He certainly hoped it would pass.

'Thanks for the lunch,' she said.

'You paid for it yourself,' said Cooper. 'I didn't do anything.'

'So you didn't.'

Cooper watched Morrissey pass the iron railings and go back
into the hotel. He knew there was something wrong about what
she had told him. And it wasn't just his wild suspicion about
the Geordie, Kenneth Rccs. Alison Morrisscv's story wasn't the

J	J

whole truth.


247



22


JJiane Fry was waiting tor Ben Cooper outside his Oat in
Wclbeck Street, her arms folded as she leaned on her car
parked at the kerb. Mrs Shelley's curtain next door was twitching
anxiously.


'Dianc? Another visit?'

'Where have you been?' she said.

'It's my day off.'

'You haven't been answering my calls again,' she said. "I
need you.'

Cooper saw a blond head in the passenger seat of Pry's car.

'But you've got Gavin,' he said.

'Yes, I know I've got bloody Gavin. But I need jou.' She
hustled Cooper towards the car. 'Gavin, get in the back,'
she said.

Murtin stumbled out, and a shower of plastic wrappers fell
around his feet on to the snow. Cooper could have booked
him for a litter offence. 'Hi, Ben. Charged any window cleaners
recently?'

'Shut up,' said Fry. 'And get in the back.'

Cooper hesitated at the passenger door. 'There's some sort
of sticky mess on the scat,' he said.

'You two,' said Fry, losing patience. 'You two arc 6otA going
to be a sticky mess on the floor in a minute. Now, will you --'

'I know. Get in the car. What's so important? Have we got
another body or something?'


For a trained response driver, Diane Fry wasn't coping well
in the snow today. She accelerated too hard and braked too
suddenly. Now and then, Ben Cooper could feel the wheels
start to slide a little and braced himself for a collision with the
kerb or a car coming in the opposite direction. But she always
seemed to correct the steering just in time. At the top of the
High Street, she turned left at the lights into Clappergate, away



248



from the pedestrianized shopping area. They passed the front
of the railway station and the spire of All Saints parish church,
where someone had built a snowman in the churchyard. It had
been made to look like the vicar, with a black T-shirt and a
circle of white cardboard for a dog collar, and marbles to create
glittering eyes.

'Where arc we going?' said Cooper.

'Back to West Street first, said Fry.

'We're going the wrong way.'

'I'm avoiding the hill.'

'Yes - if you drive like this on the straight, you'd never make
it up the hill, would you?'

'There are three things you need to know,' said Fry, without
smiling. 'One, we have an identification on the Snowman, who
turns out to be an RAF investigator called Nick Easton.'

'Right.'

'Second, we've had a couple of goons from the Ministry of
Defence Police at West Street this morning. It was the MDP

o

who had been trying to trace Easton at the air museum.'

Cooper thought that was quite enough to take in at once. But
it sounded as though there was even more. 'And what's the third
thing I need to know?' he said.

'The third thing you need to know,' said Fry, 'is that, if you
don't like my driving, you can get out and walk.'

'Oh. Right.'

Fry turned up past the High Peak College campus. Though it
was uphill here, it was a gentle, winding incline, unlike the precipitous
approach to the West Street divisional headquarters.

'Your mate's still missing,' said Gavin Murfin from the back
seat, as if trying to cheer Cooper up.

'What mate?'

'Eddie Kemp. I checked his record. He's got quite a bit of
form, hasn't he?'

They reached the top of the hill and worked their way through
the back roads towards West Street. At least Fry had learned to
find her way around the town now. It was no longer foreign
territory to her, as it had seemed to be for a long time after
she had transferred from the West Midlands. Some officers at


2+9



West Street had called her 'the Bitch (rum the Black Country'
in the early days. Cooper hadn't heard that title tor a while. He
hoped Fry herself had never heard it.


Sergeant Jane Caudwell and PC Steve Nash had driven up from
the Ministry of Defence Police headquarters in Essex. Dianc Fry-
had taken an instant dislike to Caudwell. She couldn't explain
what it was about her whether it was the dimples in her
cheeks when she smiled, or the muscles that bulged in her broad
shoulders when she took off her coat. Her sidekick, Nash, Fry
managed to forget within moments. He sat in the background,
saying nothing, not even 'hello'. DCI Tailby had come in for
the meeting as well as DI Hitchens.


'Nick Raston was an investigator with the RAF Police,' said
Sergeant Caudwell. 'We're arranging for his wife to make a
formal identification, but we don't think there's any doubt.
He's very well known. They called him "Magic Nick" Easton,
because of his speciality.'

A photograph was passed round showing an RAF policeman
in a blue uniform. It was clear to Fry that he and the Snowman
were one and the same person. The attached personal details
included a description of his tattoo.

'A speciality?' said Tailby, who looked even more unhappy
today. But he always looked unhappy when his Sundays were
disturbed.

'He was a children's entertainer in his spare time,' said
Caudwell. 'His party tricks were very popular with the kiddies,
I'm told. The top brass loved him -- lots of opportunities for good
PR, establishing friendly relations with the local community and
all that.'

Paul Hitchens appeared to be on the verge of making a joke,
but he looked at Caudwell and Nash and changed his mind.

o

'What case had Easton been working on?' asked Tailby.

'I'm afraid I can't tell you that at the moment,' said Caudwell.

Tailby stiffened and drew himself up to a greater height. He
was several inches taller than Caudwell and two levels higher
in seniority, but it didn't seem to make much difference.

'I think we're going to have to know, don't you?' he said.


2SO



'I'm sorry, sir. Nut (or the time being.'

'That's ridiculous, Sergeant. We have to be able to share
information.'

Caudwcll shook her head. The two stared at each other for
a moment. Fry noticed that Caudwell hardly seemed to blink.
Maybe she'd had her eyes stitched open to make her more
frightening.

I'll have to have a word with your chief/ said Tailby.
'This needs sorting out at a higher level. We need access to
information.'

'Well, we'll see/ said Caudwcll. 'It may not be something
we want to share. But that's not my decision. In any case, we
don't know what Easton was doing in your area. We last heard

O	V

of him in Nottinghamshire/

'At the aircraft museum at Lcadcnhall, said Fry.

Caudwell looked at her (or the first time. She smiled, and
her dimples made white holes in her cheeks. In the background,
Nash was smiling, too. But he had no dimples, only a brutal
haircut and eyes that strayed a little too close together.

'Ah/ said Caudwcll. 'I see you know a little already/

'I presume it was your people who had been to Leadcnhall
before us/

'Since Nick Easton failed to keep in contact, we've been
trying to trace his movements/ Caudwcll turned back to the
senior officers. 'What progress have you made on the cause of
death?' she said.

'A small, sharp knife or scalpel, something of that kind/ said
Hitchens. 'And we don't know that he was actually killed in this
area. We think he was already dead when he was left by the side
oi the road, and we don't yet know where his body had been
brought from/

'Forensics?'

'Apart from the fatal wound, there were no traces on the
body that couldn't be accounted for at the scene. There were
some dirt stains on his suit that contained engine oil, and that's
our only hope of identifying the vehicle he was carried in. It
seems likely that his body was wrapped in something that left
no traces a plastic sheet, something of that nature. We found


2S1



a bag, but it had been emptied. The snowplough had obliterated
any traces of tyre marks.'

J	J

'Presumably Easton had a car?' said Tailby.

'A black Ford Focus.' Caudwcll gave the registration
number.

'We'll have all the car parks and usual dumping spots checked.
And we'll ask Nottinghamshire to do the same.'

'There is one other place we think he visited after Leaderihall,'
said Fry. 'We have a possible witness here in Edendale who
says a man answering Easton's description visited her house on
Monday.'

Caudwell leaned forward with interest. 'Name?'

'Mrs Grace Lukasz.'

The MDP sergeant smiled so broadly that even the dimples
disappeared into the creases under her eyes. 'You have no idea',
she said, 'howr much that helps.'

Caudwell produced a sheet of paper, which she handed to
DCI Tailby. He glanced at it and passed it to Hitchcns.

'You might like to check whether the other names on that list
mean anything, too,' said Caudwell. 'Then perhaps we can have
another meeting, and we'll talk about sharing information.'

Fry watched Caudwell and Nash leave to check themselves
into a local hotel.

'Can I see the list, please, sir?' she said.

Hitchens gave it to her, and Fry looked through the names.
The list felt like a direct challenge, and she had an overwhelming
desire to find out as much information as she could about all
the people on it before she met Caudwell again. She could see
the MDP were a problem, without a doubt. Anyone who was
allocated to work with them would be on difficult ground. It
would be like throwing someone to the wolves.

o


Ben Cooper had been trying to persuade Fry that Alison
Morrissey's story was connected to the Snowman enquiry,
and yet when the evidence wras presented to him, it came
as a surprise. Subconsciously, perhaps, he had been convinced
that the connections he was makinp were imaginary, that he had


O	O J '

been making them up because he wanted a reason to continue


252



the McTcague investigation. But Fry hat) no reason for making
these things up.

'So what do you say to that, Ben?' she asked.

'It was after Easton's visit that Zygmunt Lukasz started his
journal/

'Journal? What's this?'

'According to his son, Zygmunt is writing his account of the
crash of Sugar Uncle Victor,' said Cooper.

'Oh, that.'

'Dianc, don't you think it's time we conceded the possibility
that the two things arc connected?' he said.

Fry stared at him for a moment. 'What are you saying, Ben?
Do you think Alison Morrissey might have keen involved in the
death of Nick Easton?'

'That wasn't what I meant. She wasn't even in the country

y

at the time. She arrived after Easton was found.'

'Are you sure? Have you confirmed the time of her Might from
Canada? Have you checked she was on the passenger list?'

'No.'

'Perhaps it's about time you did, then.'

Cooper stayed silent.

'It shouldn't be a problem,' said Fry. 'As long as you don't
feel any personal involvement, that is. And I'm sure you don't feel
that, do you, Ben? It wouldn't be like you at all. Not a competent
and dedicated detective like yourself.'

Cooper felt himself flush. It was a habit he hated in himself,
a ridiculous thing for someone approaching thirty years of age.
Diane Fry had the uncanny knack of doing it to him. But, of
course, it was usually because she was right.

'The connection is there,' he said. 'The link is the Lukasz
family. Sergeant Caudwell knew the name -- and I bet it's on
the list she gave us.'

'Yes, it is.'

'I think Nick Easton was looking for Andrew Lukasz. though.

o	' o '

not Zygmunt.'

'Why?'

'I don't know,' said Cooper. 'But it seems more than a
coincidence that Andrew disappeared the day before Easton


2S3



arrived. Ant) something upset Zygmunt. His family have been
worried about him. They say he's stopped speaking English.
Personally, I think he's being damned awkward. But then, he
hasn't got long left to live, they say.'

'Is his son very close to him?'

'They're all close. Yes, very close.'

'Peter Lukasz -- what docs he do (or a living?'

'He's a doctor, works in the A&E department at the hospital.'

Fry opened a folder full of postmortem photographs of Nick
Easton. Cooper still thought of him as the Snowman, since Easton
had arrived in Derbyshire with the snow.

'According to Mrs Van Doon, the fatal wound on Easton was
caused by a small, very sharp instrument. It could have been
a scalpel.'
'OK, I can sec what you're thinking. But Peter Lukasz is
supposed to have been on duty at the hospital. We can easily
check if he was where he ought to have been at the time Easton
was killed.'

'Do it, then. What sort of car does Lukasz drive?'

'A blue BMW, three or four years old.'

'Good in snow?'

'I doubt it.'

'But there's a close little community there, you said.'

'It doesn't mean they'd conspire together to murder somebody.
That would take a serious shared motive.'

'Yes.' Fry thought about it for a while, looked at the lists in
front of her. and thought again.

'	o o

'Ben, where else have you been?' she said.

'What do you mean?'

'On this business of Alison Morrissey's. Who else have you
been to see? There was Zygmunt Lukasz, and the old RAF rescue
man, Rowland. Who else is there? Tell me.'

'Well, there's George Malkin.'

Fry's face was grim. She looked as though she wanted to grab
the lapels of his coat and shake him.

'Tell me who George Malkin is, Ben.'

'He was a farmworker, but he's been retired for years. The


254



place he lives in at Harrop was his father's farm in those days,
but there's only the old farmhouse left now. He was a child
at the time of the Lancaster crash, but he went up to the
site with his brother that night. Malkin is a lonely old man
solitary, going a bit strange, but he remembers the crash all
right.' Cooper paused, thinking of Zygmunt Lukasz and Walter
Rowland. 'Well, Malkin is not so old, reallv. Only in his sixties.
It just happens that he remembers the crash very well.'

Fry continued to stare at him. 'It just happens?' she said. 'It
just happens?'

'Well, yes.'

'This would be George Malkin, of Hollow Shaw Farm,
Harrop?'

'Yes. What's all this about?'

Fry waved the file at him. 'Ben, George Malkin is another
one of the names on Nick Easton's list. You've been wandering
backwards and forwards across their enquiry, without knowing
what the hell you were doing.'

Cooper felt a little surge of excitement, as if all his instincts
had been justified.

'What are we going to do?'

'Have you got anything on for the rest of today?'

'Not a thing.'

'And have you got a phone number for the Lukasz family?'

'Yes.'

'Try them. We'll go and see them.'

Cooper rang. There was no reply. 'They're not in.'

'Malkin, then.'

He tried another number. George Malkin was in. but said he

o	'

would be busv.

v

'We'd really like to come today, Mr Malkin,' said Cooper.

'If you must. But be warned you'll take me as you
find me.'

Cooper nodded at Fry. 'He'll see us.'

'Let's go, then,' she said. 'I'll let DI Hitchcns know the
situation, and we'll see how your friend Malkin comes into
this.'

But Cooper still wasn't sure where they stood. The arrival


255



of the Ministry of Defence Police had confused him, and so did
Diane Fry's sudden interest.

'Diane, do you think I'm right, then - that there might he
some connection with the Lancaster crash?'

'If it was just you, Ben, I'd say it was definitely your
imagination,' said Fry.

'But it isn't just me?'

'No. When the MDP phoned this morning, one of the first
things they asked for was to be shown the site of the wreck of
Lancaster SUV.'


Ben Cooper had never had any contact with the Ministry of
Defence Police before, except when he had met some members
of their surveillance unit on a training course. But he did have
an old acquaintance in the RAF Police. Carol Parry was a local
woman. Soon she would be finishing her time in the RAF, and
she had been talking about applying to Derbyshire Constabulary
for a job. Derbyshire would welcome her with open arms --
officers with experience would be vital to balance the number
of new recruits who were filtering into the ranks.


o

While he waited for Diane Fry, Cooper gave Carol Parry a
call.

'The MDP arc an entirely different animal to us,' said Parry.
'They have a much wider remit, and they deal with civilians.
All our customers are servicemen, and most of them end up
with the provosts in the Military Correctional Training Centre
at Colchester. If the Court Martial gives them more than eighteen
months, they transfer to a Home Office prison. So we're not
really concerned with punishing serious crimes.'

'Who is, these days?'

'Well, don't tell the MDP you've spoken to me. They
won't like it.'

'Why not?'

'There's no love lost between the services. It's like we take
the mickey out of the Royal Military Police, and the RMP call
us "snowdrops". But the MDP, they don't like either of us. Their
numbers arc being hacked all the time, because we're finding
other ways of doing the job. It's the way of the world.'


256



'But we work together with the RAF Police when it's needed.
We cooperate.'

'Ah, but that's because we need you. The RAF Police have
no powers of arrest. You have the constabulary powers. But so
does Sergeant Caudwell. By the way, are Caudwell and her
staff armed?'

'What? I have no idea.'

'Seventy-five per cent of MDP officers are permanentlyarmed.'

'In
Derbyshire we have to be specially trained before we're
approved to carry firearms,' protested Cooper. 'We have to pass
regular tests.'

O

'So do they,' said Parry. 'Every one of them is fully weapons
trained. It makes you remember what they're really there for.
Of course, the only time the general public is likely to notice
them is when they're escorting nuclear convoys up the Al. It's

a very British way -- if you don't make a fuss about it. nobody

j	j ^ ' j

notices.'

'That's been a help,' said Cooper. 'I suppose.'

'What's the weather like there, anywav, Ben?'

' j j ~

'Warming up a bit,' he said.


257



23


At least Diane Fry had the sense to let Cooper drive them to
Harrop in his Toyota. She had glanced at the road map and seen
the clustering of contour lines that indicated the steep descent
on the other side of the Snake Pass and the even steeper climh to
Harrop. There were still patches of snow and lurking corners of
black ice that would be worsening now as it grew dark again.


On the way to Harrop, they passed an empty patrol car
parked in a lay-by near Irontongue Hill. The car displayed
the force's website address on the side -- www.derbyshire.
police.uk. Members of the public were able to visit the site
and read the Chief Constable's report and news of the Bobby
of the Year Award. Cooper's favourite was the recruitment
section, which stated that candidates had to be proficient in
the use of 'everyday technical equipment', like telephones and
riot shields.

A few yards further up the road, two officers in fluorescent
jackets were walking up and down the road opening the yellow
grit bins placed on the verges by the council. They were still
looking for Baby Chloe.

'I was thinking about Marie Tcnnent yesterday,' said Cooper.

'Oh, yes?' said Fry.

'I was trying to understand why she did it. Why she went
up there, I mean, to leave the baby clothes.'

'And did you succeed in understanding, Ben?

'No,' he said. 'It didn't seem enough of a reason to me.'

'Nor me,' said Fry.

'I wish there were more time to spend on her. I'd like to be
able to understand.'

'Finding the baby is what's important, for now. We can leave
that to others.'

Despite Fry's words, Cooper didn't think she sounded entirely
convinced. She, too, wanted to know about Marie Tcnnent. But
there were procedures to be followed, priorities to be observed.


2S8



A need to understand why people behaved the way they did was
not enough to justify their time.

They drove on in silence for a while, following the twists and
turns of the Snake Pass.

'So how's the new place?' said Fry. 'Settled in OK?'

'Sure. It's very handy.'

'You won't have any (.rouble getting into work on time,
anyway.'

'I never did/ said Cooper.

'A lot of people don't think it's a good idea to live on your own
patch. The customers can get to know where your home address
is. It's been on my mind out at Grosvenor Avenue, but you're
really in the thick of it where you are. Right on the doorstep
for any tankcd-up hooligan who staggers out of a town-centre
pub and fancies throwing a brick through a copper's window. I
know you're everybody's favourite bobbv, but even you must
have a few enemies, Ben.'

'I don't mind that,' said Cooper. 'I'll put up with that risk.
I prefer to feel part of the community.'

'Oh/ said Fry. 'Community.'

'It's not a dirty word/

'It isn't something real, though, is it? It's a word that we
use in the titles of reports. Community liaison. Working with
the community. Understanding the ethnic community. It's a
word, Ben. It's not something you actually live in, not these
days. You're living in the past. You should have been born fifty
years earlier. You'd have loved that, wouldn't you? The days
when a bit of friendly advice or a clip round the ear would solve
most things.'

o

'Friendly advice still doesn't go amiss now and then.'

The Toyota crested the hill above Glossop, and the view over
Manchester opened up in front of them. From here, the road
wound down over western-facing moors to where the drystone
walls ended and it became a different kind of country.

'Ben, I'm concerned that your mind seems to be on other
things.'

'Like what?'

'I don't know. I wondered whether it was something to do


2S9



with moving nut of the farm. I know it's a big wrench for you.

O	O V

I know it's not easy living on your own (or the first time.'

Cooper looked at her in amazement. This sounded horribly
like a caring Diane Fry. Rut it wasn't really him she cared about.
It was a question of doing the job right. No doubt she had been
told to take an interest in the personal welfare of the officers
under her supervision. He was probably her first attempt, a bit
of practice.

'Ben? You were miles away again. What were you thinking
about?'

'Nothing/ he said.

'And that's the trouble,' she said. Her voice had changed
suddenly.

'What is?' asked Cooper, surprised.

'You never want to share what you're thinking. I don't know
what's going on in your head, Ben, but sometimes it's obviously
nothing to do with your job. There's a part of your life that you
won't let anybody into.'

It was difficult to know what to say to her. So Cooper just
kept quiet, and drove on.


Diane Fry was appalled by Harrop. It was like an outpost
of the Wild West, without the cowboys. For a start, there
didn't seem to be any roads, only potholcd tracks, some
of them barely wide enough for the car. There were no
street lamps and no facilities of any kind. Nothing. Not a
pub or a shop or a school, no village post office. Not even
a phone box, as far as she could see. Just a few clusters
of houses made of blackened stone, sheltering behind high
walls.


The back of Irontongue Hill loomed over the village like
the carcase of a dead whale, the outcrops of gritstone like
patches of barnacles encrusted on its sides. Around Harrop,
there was still deep snow lying in the fields, getting deeper
as the grazing land deteriorated into open stretches of heather
and dead bracken. The space between the houses and the rocky
hillside was crammed with sheds and outbuildings, barns and
derelict hen huts. In some cases, the supply of stone must have


260



run out, because their builders had improvised with breeze-block
and corrugated iron.

It was so desolate up here. Uninhabited and uninhabitable.
But at least Fry had been able to see Manchester from further
up the hill - a rare indication that civilization wasn't all that far
away, after all. Down in the city, there would be restaurants
and theatres and anonymous crowds, and concrete and tarmac
instead of the relentless cold wind snatching at her clothes in
this isolated moorland landscape. She had never felt so exposed
in her life.

'We have to turn right and go up the hill a bit,' said
Cooper.

'Up the hill? Aren't we high enough yet?'

'Hollow Shaw is the top farm, on the brow of the hill
there.'

'I see it.'

Amazingly, the road got even worse as they approached
Malkin's home. At one point, a ragged sheep stood in the
roadway, chewing at a branch of a tree growing in a gateway.
The animal turned and looked at the car as the headlights hit
it. The light reflected from its eyes as if they were mirrors.
Reluctantly, the sheep trotted away, its hooves slipping on the
compacted snow.

'Do you know, if you'd told me what it was like, this is the
last place 1 would have wanted to come in the dark,' said Fry.

"I expect it looks a bit better in the daylight,' said Cooper.

'You mean it Joe.s get light here sometimes?'


When George Malkin answered the door, he had his sleeves
rolled up to reveal strong forearms, the hair on them stained
with what looked like streaks of blood. He had taken his
boots off in the house, but was wearing thick socks, as well
as a brown sweater full of holes and plastic over-trousers
on top of his blue boiler suit. His clothes were wet and
sticky.


Cooper could sense Fry staring at Malkin's stained forearms,
ready to jump to some wild conclusion from the man's appearance.
But he could smell that unique odour of blood and birth


261



fluids, both fruity and metallic at the same time the scent of
new life.

'Have you got some early lambs?' he said.

'Aye, I'm helping out Rod Whittaker -- he's the lad who owns
the land here now. He's got fifty head of ewes indoors/

'We've a few routine questions, sir,' said Fry, who had learned
to ignore agricultural conversations that she didn't understand.

'Oh, ave?' said Malkin. 'You'll have to come to the lambing

* V	O

shed with me, then.'

'Where?'

'This way. I can't leave 'em for long/

They followed Malkin round the side of the house, through a
gate and past a large steel shed with sliding doors that had been
left open on their runners. Inside, there was a big articulated
DAP lorry, parked next to a powerful Renault tractor with a
snowplough blade attachment on the front.

"I take it that's your friend's truck/ said Cooper.

'Aye, he keeps the wagon here/

'And the tractor?'

'Rod has to get work where he can - when it snows like this,
he can't run the big wagon, but the council pays him to clear
the roads around here, so he doesn't lose out. He can't afford
not to have any money coming in -- he has a family to keep.
Contract haulage is almost as dodgy as farming, but he'll make

o	ov o?

a go of it/

Behind the shed, they walked across a farmyard towards
another building.

'Rod grazes his flock on these fields here. That grass comes
up in the spring like little green rockets. He can afford to lamb
the ewes early - he gets a good start with them/

'You've split up the farm and kept the farmhouse for yourself,'
said Cooper. 'So where does Mr Whittaker live?'

'Up the far end of the village,' said Malkin. 'It was my
dad who sold off the land, when he couldn't keep the farm
going any more. You could get a good price for land then,
and it was enough. Rod has the land and these buildings
here. Of course, he has the contract haulage business as
well. That's why he can't be here to see to the ewes all the


262



time. But he can't afford to pay for hired help, and he knows
I don't mind.'

'You'll have lambed a tew in your time, I bet,' said Cooper.

'Aye, a fair few.'

They entered the shed. It was much warmer than outside,
and it was half-full of steel pens containing black-faced ewes.
Cooper breathed in the warm smells of animals and straw. But
Fry looked at the sheep and drew away.

'This isn't a very suitable place. Can we go back to the house?'
she said.

'This lot arc in the middle of lambing -- you can sec that,'
said Malkin.
Fry gazed blankly at the sheep. Cooper knew she could see
nothing more than some mutton chops and several nice Sunday
roasts milling about in the shed.

'They look all right to me,' she said.

'They can't be left to their own devices. Ask me your
questions here.'

'All right. Do you recognize this man?' said Fry, producing
the photograph of Nick Easton.

'It's no use showing me that -- I haven't got my glasses on.'

'Well, where are they?'

'Back at the house, where I need them.'

'For goodness' sake!'

'I don't plan my day around you lot turning up, you know.

Fry took a deep breath. Cooper could see her face twist as
she drew in all the smells of sheep droppings and straw and
sour milk.

'We're enquiring about a man called Sergeant Nick Easton.
Docs the name mean anything to you?'

'Never heard of him.'

'He worked (or the Royal Air Force.'

'Oh,' said Malkin. 'Is it to do with the complaint?'

'What complaint?'

'About the low flying. There were some jet fighters came
over here so low they almost knocked the chimney tops off.
They frightened the sheep to death. Rod put in a complaint
about it. He says he might be able to get compensation.'


263



Fry stared at him. Then she looked at Cooper.

'I think you'd have to prove the aircraft caused some damage
or injury to the sheep/ he said. 'Did any of the ewes lose
their lambs?'

'It's nothing to do with that at all,' said Fry.

'He's in the RAF, though?' Malkin said. 'He looks like he's in
uniform in that photo. I can make out the blue, and the cap.'

'Yes, but you might have seen him in civilian clothes,'
said Fry.

Malkin shrugged. 'Like I said without my glasses . . .'

'Has anybody been here from the RAF recently? Or phoned
you, maybe?'

'Not that I know ol/ said Malkin. 'But I don't always answer
the phone.'

'Your name was on a list of people Sergeant Easton was
planning to visit. Can you think of any reason why that
should be?'

'No.'

'Does the name Lukasz mean anything to you?'

Malkin seemed to tense a little. Before he could answer, a ewe
in a nearby pen went down on its knees and began bellowing.
Malkin turned towards it.

'It's all right,' said Cooper. 'Carry on/ And Malkin nodded
at him, accepting his help without question as he handed over
a spare pair of overalls.

Fry watched in amazement as Cooper took off his waxed
coat and pulled the overalls over his clothes. She almost missed
Malkin's next sentence.

'Lukasz. It rings a bell, that name. Something to do with the
RAF, is it?'

'You tell me/ said Fry.

Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware that Cooper
had climbed into the pen with the noisy ewe. The bellowing
continued. It was the full-throated roar of childbirth. Fry
couldn't shut out the noise, but she was trying to ignore
what Cooper was doing as he bent down at the rear end of
the sheep. Whatever it was, it made the sheep's eyes roll and
its scream become even louder.


264



'Run. what the hell arc you doing?'

1	./ b

'There's a foot turned back,' said Cooper. 'Have you got a
hit of baler hand, sir?'

'Aye, on the. pen side/ said Malkin.

Fry watched Cooper take a length of what looked like bright
blue string, dip it in soapy water and fold it into a loop.

Cooper bent down again. Fry still didn't know exactly what
he was doing, but she was quite sure it wasn't a usual occupation
for a detective conducting an interview.

o

'Ah, here we come,' said Cooper, his voice strained with
exertion.

There was a squelching sound, the sudden splash of fluids
emptying into the straw, and the ewe fell silent. But then there
was another noise. It was only a faint coughing, like the sound of
a tiny child with something caught in its throat. It was followed
by a sneeze. And Fry suddenly found she was desperate to see
what was happening in there.

Malkin turned back towards her. 'The only thing I can think

V	C*

of is that he might have been an old airman. Polish, maybe, w'ith
that name? You should try old Walter Rowland. He used to be
in the RAF. Rut that's years and years ago.'

'Yes, yes,' said Fry impatiently.

'Here, don't you want to know this? I thought you had to
ask some questions.'

She could hear Cooper rustling in the straw, muttering to
the sheep, crooning like some demented goatherd.

'It's a ewe lamb,' he said.

'Aye, that's good,' said Malkin, without looking round.
'Single, is it?'

'I'll tell you in a minute.'

Fry couldn't see anything except for Ren Cooper's back in
the blue overalls. She tried to edge towards the pen, but Malkin
was in her way.

'Any road,' he said, 'I don t know what else I can tell you.
What else do you want to know? I don't understand what all
this business is about the RAF.'

'Oh, shush!' she said.

Now a distinct high-pitched squeak came from somewhere in


265



the wet straw. Fry leaned over to get a glimpse of something
Hark and wet, which hadn't keen there a few seconds before.
It was a creature with tiny, thin legs splayed in the straw and a
head that was too big for its body. She watched in amazement
as it began to struggle to its feet, wobbling dangerously, with its
cars folded on to its head as it tried to get its balance. Although
its eyes could hardly focus, its mouth was puckered and it was
trying to move forward towards its mother. It had been in the
world for only thirty seconds.

'Good, strong lamb,' said Cooper. 'We'll just get her
suckling.'

'Where?' said Fry.

'From her mother's teats, where else?'

'It's too small. It won't be able to reach,' she said. 'Will
it?'

'Don't you believe it.'

Within a few moments, the lamb had reached up and found
a teat and was butting strongly with its head at its mother's
belly. The ewe curved its neck and sniffed and licked at the
lamb, which wagged its tail like a puppy.

'Look at it,' said Fry.

'A new life coming into the world,' said Cooper. 'It's always
a bit of a special moment.'

'I can never sec it often enough,' said Malkin, and they
exchanger! a meaningful look that Fry couldn't interpret, but
which excluded her from its meaning.

'Have we hnishcd?' Cooper asked her, unbuttoning his overall.

'Er, yeah,' she said, though she barely felt able to drag herself
away from the lambing pen.

'If Mr Malkin remembers anything, I'm sure he'll contact
us.'

Fry took the hint and presented Malkin with her Derbyshire
Constabulary business card. Malkin took it between his thumb
and forefinger, so as not to stain it. The card was white and shiny
and pristine, and it looked as out of place in the lambing shed as
if it had been an alien artefact from Mars.


266



Diane Fry walked back to the car while Ben Cooper asked to
wash his hands. Malkin tapped him on the shoulder before he
left. 'You're not a had lad/ he said. 'I reckon you live on your
own, am I right?'

'How on earth can you tell?'

Malkin gave him a sly wink. 'Like they say, it takes one to
spot one. Have you got a good-sized pocket inside that coat? I
het you have.'

'Yes.'

'Stick this in it then. It's very fresh - you'll just have to
clean it.'

He pushed a parcel wrapped in newspaper into Cooper's
hand. Cooper felt at it for long enough to he sure that it
wasn't a couple of kilos of crack cocaine or an illegal weapon
he was being handed.

"I don't think J can take it,' he .said.

'Don't be daft, lad. There's no harm in it. But don't tell your
sergeant, eh? She wouldn't understand.'

Malkin winked at him again. Cooper was aware of Uianc Fry
waiting for him outside, but he was also conscious of the need
to preserve this man's goodwill if he was going to get at his
memories.

'I can only take it if I pav you something for it, Mr

v	1 v » O '

Malkin,' he said.

'Well, if you must. Fifty pence will do.'

Cooper dug out a fifty-pence piece. Living was proving cheap,
so far. And he even knew how to prepare and cook rabbit. He
and Randy would have a good supper from it.

'Ihat's all open and above board then,' said Malkin, and
winked again.

o


When the two detectives had gone, George Malkin went straight
back to the sheep. He had to spread iodine on the navels of
the newest lambs to stop them getting infections through their
cords. And at the far end of the shed, there was another
job he had to do, which he had postponed when the police
arrived. The woman sergeant wouldn't have liked it much,
and he had been reluctant to let them see what was in his



267



pocket, the thing that he had gone to letch from the house
when they arrived.

Malkin enjoyed looking after the ewes. He was glad to be of
use, happy to be working at his old job again lor a short while.
He had lambed hundreds of sheep in his time, and there was
no need for anyone to tell him what to do. He could work
alone, with his own thoughts for company. His help during
the day meant that Rod Whittaker could go off to work on
his driving job and take over in the shed when he came home
in the evening.

He felt sorrv for Rod. struggling to make a go of it. Farming

J	' OO O O O

was in the lad's blood, but he had no monev to go into it
propcrlv, and little hope of making enough profit from his sheep
to earn a living. Trying to get into farming was no life for a man
now. Rod would be a lorry driver for the rest of his days, forced
into earning his living some other way. Every morning, when he
set off for work, he looked tired and bleary-eyed from a night
dozing uncomfortably in the lambing shed.

Shortly before the police had arrived, one lamb had been born
dead. Across the aisle, another ewe had produced two and was
rejecting the second, refusing to allow it to feed. The tiny lamb
was bleating, but its mother repeatedly butted it away in favour
of its larger, stronger sibling, which was sucking vigorously at
the teats.

Neither the dead lamb nor the rejected one was unusual, and
Malkin knew exactly what he had to do. The fleece had to be
skinned from the dead lamb and tied round the body of the
rejected one, to give it the right smell for the bereaved ewre to
accept it as her own. It was the old way, but the best one. The
sheep were stupid they never knew that they'd been fooled.


268


24


JJianc Fry sat rigid and silent in the passenger seat of the
Toyota on the way back from Harrop. Hen Cooper wanted
to tell her that she had some straw sticking to her hair,
hut he daren't say anything. They were almost in Edendale
before he felt her start to relax a little. It seemed to be the
street lamps that did it, and the appearance of houses and
petrol stations, with more light from their security systems
and lorecourts.


'We could try the Lukasxcs, Dianc,' said Cooper. 'Or do you
want to wait until morning?'

Fry shook herself. 'Let's do it now. It could be too late in
the morning.'

'OK.'

When they drove down Woodland Crescent, they found the
Lukasz bungalow in darkness, and the BMW missing from the
drive. Cooper rang the bell anyway.

'No luck,' he said.

'Damn. It'll have to be the morning then. I suppose we ought
to have known that some people have better things to do on a
Sunday evening.'

'Hold on, what time is it?' said Cooper. 'Five o'clock? I know
where they'll be.'

'You do?'

'Their op/afgA dinner was due to start an hour ago. They'll
all be down at the Dom Kombatanta.'


The Polish community seemed to be fond of their events. While
they waited, Ben Cooper read the notices inside the entrance
to the club. There was an Easter dinner in April, followed by
something called the Katyn Day of Remembrance, which was
celebrated by a Mass and wreath laying. Then 3rd May was Polish
Constitution Day, with another Mass and a parade of standards.
Cooper wondered if Zygmunt would be on parade for that day,



269



with other members of the ex-servicemen's organization, the
Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantow w W Brytanii.

They had found someone working in the kitchen and asked
them to take a message to Peter Lukasz, being reluctant to
interrupt the event they could hear taking place through some
double doors in the main hall.

'That's Peter Lukasz. Not Zygmunt Lukasz.'

Then Cooper noticed the final event on the spring calendar --
the annual general meeting of the SPK itself, to be held at Dom
Kombatanta. A poor turnout seemed almost to be accepted. The
time of the AGM was set for 4 p.m., but underneath it was
stated: T^tncre is no quorum, taste /IGAf wi/7 6e^in at 4. JO p.m. in
any caie. It gave Cooper a picture of the SPK -- former soldiers
and airmen, bent old warriors proud of the medals pinned to
the breast pockets of their suits, some of them wearing their
paratroopers' berets and their white eagle badges. But there were
so few of them that they could no longer guarantee a quorum
for a meeting once a year, acknowledging that death and illness
would have intervened during the past twelve months.

He had seen them before, or old men just like them, lining
up at the cenotaph every Remembrance Day. Rut their numbers
were dwindling each year, as if it were only the fading memories
of their sacrifice that had sustained them until now. Some of
those taking part in the parade last year had looked so fragile
and translucent that they could have been an illusion, anyway.
Perhaps they existed only because of the public's belief in them,
like Tinkcrbell or Santa Claus.

'Peter says why don't you go through,' said the woman from
the kitchen.

Diane Fry was still reluctant. 'Oh, but . . .'

'He says you're quite welcome tonight.'

Fry walked into the hall. Cooper hesitated in the doorway
before following her. It was a strange feeling that he experienced,
as if he were about to step into a foreign country. No - not a
foreign country, but some kind of parallel universe where it was
still England, but the people in it weren't English.

On the surface, the surroundings were familiar. It was a plain
hall with a wooden floor and a stage, with a small bar to one side.


270



The pumps and optics behind the bar looked like thousands of
others, but the lettering on the bottles didn't make any sense. In

*	O y

the middle of the room were tables covered in white tablecloths
and laden with cutlery and floral centrepieces. It could have been
the Rdendalc old folks' Christmas party. It could have been the
tennis club dinner, or a gathering of the Caledonian Society
for Burns Night. The people sitting at the tables looked and
sounded like any group of Derbyshire folk enjoying themselves
except that these people were speaking a language Cooper didn't
understand. Their voices were raised, yet he couldn't make out
the meaning of a single word. There were a lot of children here,
too. Their presence gave a different atmosphere.

Then there were the smells. Food \vas being served - but
it wasn't microwaved beef and Yorkshire puddings, nor even
boiled ham and baked potatoes. The smells were too spicy, a
combination of rich meats and strong herbs. Even the alcohol in
some of the glasses looked the wrong colour. Cooper wanted to
turn round and walk out, then come back in again, to see if the

'	o '

confusion cleared. The inconsistencies were too disorientating,
the noise and the smells too redolent of a strange land.

He could see Zvgmunt Lukasz and several other old men

v CS

at a table. He watched them drinking glasses of clear liquid.
Poles, like Russians, drank vodka, didn't they? The old men

*	' ' V

were knocking it back in one go, with a sharp flick of the wrist
to toss the vodka to the hack of the throat. And then they put
down their glasses and attacked their starters -- something that
was decorated with small pieces of potato and cucumber, but
smelled of fish.

Out of curiosity, Cooper picked up a copy of the menu from
the bar. The starter was j/eJxic M .smiefanie. A helpful translation
informed him that it was herrings in cream. His stomach gave a
small lurch. He was sure that wasn't what he had smelled being
prepared earlier. Maybe it had been the piero^i or the 6^0.'; that
were on the menu for later. It hardly mattered. It would still
be a frozen meal for one that awaited him when he got back
to Welbcck Street.

'We're probably one of the most traditional Polish communities
left in this country,' said Peter Lukasz, watching him read


271



the menu. 'How long that will last, I don't know. A lot of it is
down to the old people, of course. Like my father and my aunt
Krystyna. Will you have a drink?'

Fry shook her head. 'That's not what we re here for.'

Rut Cooper was starting to feel he deserved a little freedom.

'Is there hccr?' he asked Lukasz.

'Za^/o6a O&ocim.'

'I don't know what it is, but that'll be fine.'

The shelves behind the bar were full of vodka bottles, row
upon row of them. Some of them were alarming colours, like a
row of urine samples from people with virulent kidney diseases.
He studied the labels. They were flavoured vodkas. He saw
lemon, orange, pineapple, peach, cherry, melon and pepper.
There was a pale green one that appeared to have a blade of
grass floating in the bottle.

Lukasz was holding a tiny shot glass with a thick bottom
and an eagle engraved on its side. Cooper noticed he was
sinning his drink, not tossing it back in one go as the old

1 f o	o o

men had done.

'What are you drinking yourself?' he asked.

'Krupni^,' said Lukasz. 'Polish honey vodka. Do you know,
you have to pay nearly twenty pounds a bottle for it here, even
when you can find it at all. Back home, it would cost about
fifty pence.'

Cooper nodded. He was more interested in the fact that
Lukasz had said 'back home' than in the information about
honey vodka.

'Back home in Poland?' he said.

'Of course.'

Lukasz took another sip of his J?rupni&. Cooper knew perfectly
well that Peter Lukasz had been born in Edendalc and had lived
in the town all his life.

Lukasz led them through into a small lounge bar. Cooper
sat where he could watch Zygmunt and the other old men in
the main hall. Several of them wore blazers, with their medals
displayed on their breast pockets. It occurred to Cooper that
any one of them could have been an eighty-year-old Danny
McTeague. He could have changed his identity; he could have


272



been living a different life for fifty-seven years. But why would
he send his medal to his wife after all this time? Did he want
someone to come and find him? Was he seeking some kind of
closure, as Zygmunt Lukasz was?

The other old men seemed to look to Zygmunt whenever he
spoke. Women fussed around him, and children stood nearby
and smiled at him. His pale blue eyes responded to everything
with the same expression a kind of calm pride.

'We need to talk to you about a man called Easton, Mr
Lukasz,' said Cooper.

'Oh?' The name didn't seem to mean anything to him, but
it was difficult to tell. Some people were better at hiding their
reactions than others. They could be in turmoil inside, while
calm on the exterior. 'What did you want to ask me?'

'It's a pity you failed to identify him when you came to the
mortuary on Friday.'

'Ah, this is your dead person.'

'Exactly.'

'And why do you think I should have been able to identify
him? At that time, you had some idea that he might have been
my son.'

Cooper was conscious of the fact that he was a stranger here,
an outsider. He had the feeling that people were watching him
out of the corners of their eyes. He and Fry were guests here
at the moment, but it wouldn t take much to transform them
into the common enemy.

'We believe Nick Easton was the man who visited you on 7th
January,' said Fry. 'Last Monday.'

'Who exactly is this man?'

'Perhaps you'd like to tell me that, sir/

'I've told you -- I wasn't even at home at the time. I was on
duty at the hospital. My wife told me somebody had been, and
she reported it to the police when she heard the appeals on
the news. That's all I know, I'm afraid. Grace was the only
person who actually saw him. But you've interviewed her, so
you know that.'

'Mrs Lukasz didn't tell us everything, though. She didn't tell
us why Easton came. Did she tell you, sir?'


273



Lukas/ stared into his honey-flavoured vodka, and said
nothing.

'I suppose we should ask your wife again,' said Cooper.

Lukas/ sighed. 'Grace gets easily upset.

'Then perhaps you'd hotter tell us yourself.'
'Grace says he was asking for Mr Lukasx. She thought he
meant my father, because he was the only one home. He hecame
insistent, and Grace was frightened that he was going to force
his way into the house. So she sent him away. Grace tends to
feel rather vulnerable when there's just my father and herself at
home. And you have to reali/.e, my father is terminally ill we
can't have him being troubled by people asking him questions
all the time. Not this Easton, not the Canadian woman and
not you. We're trying to keep my father at home as long as
feasible, but I'm afraid he'll be going into the hospice soon. His
pain needs constant management/
'Was it Easton's visit that prompted your father to begin
writing his account of the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor?' said
Cooper.

Lukasx looked surprised. 'Why should you think that?'

'The timing. And the fact that Nick Easton was an RAF
investigator.'

c?

Lukasx put his glass down suddenly. The bottom of it hit
the table so hard that it almost shattered, and a splash of
honey-flavoured vodka flew over the rim.

'Royal Air Force?' he said.

'Yes, sir. Have you any idea why Easton should have been
asking to sec your father?'

'I have no idea. None at all.'

Lukasz's expression was hard to read. He was puzxlcd,
certainly. Rut also, Cooper thought, he was relieved.

'Have you heard from your son yet?' asked Fry.

'No?' '

'Have you any idea where he is?'

'No.' '

'Can you tell us what Andrew was doing during his time here
in Edcndalc?'

'He said he had business up here.'


274



'What sort of business?'

'He didn't tell us. To be honest, the conversation was more,
cr, family-orientated.'

'What do you mean?'

'He's got married since he's keen living in London. We
weren't invited to the wedding. We only met his future wile
once, and Grace took against her immediately, I'm afraid.'

'There was some bad feeling?' asked Fry.

'Yes.'

'So had your son come to make peace?' asked Cooper.

'I just told you, he was here on business.'

'It's opAzteJ; time,' said Cooper. 'Doesn't that mean forgiveness
and reconciliation?'

Lukasz smiled. 'You pick things up quickly. But Andrew
didn't stay for op/afeA. He disappeared again as suddenly as he
came. He walked out last Sunday and we haven't heard from
him since.'

'Had there been an argument?'

'He'd been talking to my father. I don't know what about, but
I know my father was angry. Grace heard him shouting in Polish.
I wasn't there at the time, because I was at the hospital. And
now my father won't tell me why he was arguing with Andrew.'
Lukasx turned and looked through the bar at the small group
of old men enjoying their op/ateA dinner. 'You see, Detective
Constable Cooper, it isn't only you he won't talk to.'

'Mr Lukasz,' said Fry. 'What sort of business is your son
Andrew in?'

'He works for a medical supplies company.'

'We'll need you to come in and make a statement first thing

V	o

in the morning, Mr Lukasz,' said Fry. 'Your wife, too. And I'm
afraid we're going to have to arrange for a translator so that we
can interview your father.'

'Is that really necessary?'

'It's beginning to look extremely necessary,' said Fry.

The noise level had risen in the main hall, as if in expectation of
forthcoming excitement. Sure enough, preparations were being
made on the little stage. Cooper was reminded again of the old
(oiks' parties the police choir sometimes sang at. Usually, half


27S



their audience had fallen asleep by the time they gut to the
third song food and a glass of sweet sherry saw to that. But
this audience was only warming up. He wondered what form
of entertainment was appropriate to the evening.

Lukasz followed his gaze. 'There's a nativity play, he said.
'A what?' said Cooper.

'A nativity play. Surely . . .'

'I know what a nativity play is. But it's the middle of
January.'

'This is our opAjfc^ dinner/ said Lukasz. 'It's the time for
the community. Not like (ji^i/m, which is for the family.
The nativity play will he performed by the children from the
Saturday school.'

'You mean Sunday school/ said Cooper, thinking he was
getting the hang of it. Many of the Poles were good Catholics,
and he had seen the Church of Our Lady with its little school
next door.

'Saturday/ said Lukasz. 'On Saturday mornings, the children
study Polish. This year, some of them will take their O-level. I
took it myself. I got a Grade 2, and Dad was very proud. He
said I spoke the language almost as well as they do hack home.
Now my youngest children, Richard and Alice, are learning at
the Saturday school, too.'

'We'd better be going/ said Frv.

O	O' v

'You could stay for the nativitv play, if you want/ said Lukasz.
'You're very welcome/

'No, thank you. Oh, one more thing we need Andrew's
address in London/

'Of course.

Cooper hesitated, finishing his beer. There was no detectable
peach or melon or pepper flavour, no blade of grass lurking in
the bottom of the glass. It was a bit disappointing really. Yet the
aftertaste had an indefinable strangeness that he knew would
stay with him for the rest of the night.

'Mr Lukasz/ he said, 'before Nick Easton's visit, had something
else happened to upset your father?'

Lukasz nodded. 'You re right. My father has been outraged
at the pillaging of the aircraft wrecks that has been going on for


276



years. The final straw was when his cousin Klcmens' cigarette
case turned up. It was an old silver case that Klemens had brought
with him to Britain from Poland, and it had his initials engraved
on it. My father was very angry ahout that. He wanted to know
where it had come from, and who had taken it from Klemens.
He thinks that taking things from the wrecks is desecration,
because they're war graves that are being robbed. All his old

V	O O

hatred welled up again over that cigarette case. It was directed

1C)	O

against the people he calls vultures.'

'Vultures?'

'Yes, vultures. Carrion feeders. My father says these people
are picking over the remains of the dead, like vultures.'

'Did your father see this cigarette case himself, or did someone
tell him about it?' asked Cooper.

'Oh, he saw it, and held it in his own hand. He identified it
beyond any doubt.'

'Who showed it to him, Mr Lukasz?'

'Well . . .'

'Let me guess. Was it your son Andrew, perhaps?' Cooper
waited for the slight nod. 'Do you think that might have been
what they argued about last Sunday?'

Lukasz drained the last of his honey-flavoured vodka. 'Yes,
I'm afraid it was.'


Ben Cooper felt the cold air hit him when they got outside
the Dom Kombatanta and he found himself back in Harrington
Street near Walter Rowland's house.

'We need to find Andrew Lukasz,' said Cooper.

'Put him on the list then,' said Fry. 'Baby Chloe, Eddie Kemp,
Andrew Lukasz. I wonder if they're all lurking in the same place
somewhere. That would certainly need your famous bit of luck,
wouldn't it, Ben?'

'It looks as though Nick Easton must have been asking
questions of the wrong people.'

'The vultures maybe? The ones the old man was so angry
about for pillaging the aircraft wrecks?'

'Maybe so,' said Cooper. 'The other person we need to talk to
is Graham Kemp, Eddie's brother. It sounds as if he's the number


277



one collector of aviation memorabilia. If anybody knows where
items like Klcmcns Wach's cigarette rase came from, he will.'

'Docs he live in Lclendale?'

'Yes, according to the guv at Lcadcnhall.'

They reached the Toyota and waited for the heater to clear
the beginnings of another frost from the windscreen. The sky
was completely clear and lull of stars. The gritting lorries would
be out on the roads again tonight.

'I wonder how close Graham Kemp is to his brother,' said
Frv. 'I wonder if he might have been involved with Eddie in the

V	O

double assault on Mondav night/

^ o

Cooper looked at her. 'That would be a link.'
Fry rubbed her hands. "I think we have a couple of promising
lines of enquiry to put to the meeting in the morning.'

'It does give us the initiative,' said Cooper. 'Sergeant Caudwell

O	I o

will be impressed/

'All right, Ben. I admit that might be a factor/

'On the other hand/ said Cooper, 'what if someone thought
Nick Easton himself was one of those vultures?'

'What?'

'If he was asking the wrong sort of questions, he could have
given the wrong impression to someone who cared enough to
be angry at the pillaging of the wreck sites/

'Like who?'

'Only someone with a personal interest. Someone who had
lost a close relative in a crashed aircraft. Someone who thought
it was a desecration, the robbing of a grave/

'Someone like Zygmunt Lukasz, you mean?'

'Peter Lukasz was very calm on the outside/ said Cooper.
'And he attributed the hatred of the vultures to his father. But
inside, 1 wonder if he shares the same feelings?'


Cooper put the Toyota in gear and drove down Harrington
Street. They passed the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa,
the Polish Saturday School, and the lighted windows of the Dom
Kombatanta.


He supposed it was inevitable the op/a(e6 traditions would
die out with the old people. In the Lukasz family, Zygmunt


278



and his sister Krystyna were- the only ones left who had been
horn in Poland. The others were more English in their ways,
even Peter Lukasz -- though when the old man was around he
seemed to take on the same set of the shoulders, the same look
about the eyes that Cooper had noticed in the photograph of the
young Zygmunt and Klemens. Determination, a fighting spirit.
A capacity for hatred.

Cooper felt himself on unfamiliar territory. Yet these people
weren't recent immigrants, like the asylum seekers from Iran
and Albania. The Poles had lived in Derbyshire for nearly sixty

J	J J

years. He had lived right alongside them all his life, and yet he
knew almost nothing about them.

As they drove back down into the town, he lifted his head
and looked at the barrier of hills to the west of Edcndalc. They
were bare and glittering in the starlight, ancient and unchanged
since the geological upheavals that had left them there millions
of years ago. But as he stared at the familiar hills, Cooper felt
his perception of them shift and blur, until they were no longer
merelv hills. For the first time in his life, they had begun to look

J	' - O

like the walls of a prison.


279



25


rVlison Morrissey stood in the cobbled alleyway of Nick i' th'
Tor outside Hden Vallev Books. She hanged on the door, ignoring


J	O ' O O

the sign in the window, and kept banging until Lawrence Dalev
appeared in the gloom inside and drew hack the bolts.

'The shop is closed,' he said. "I never open on Sunday.'

'Not lor anybody?' said Morrissey.

Lawrence peered at her carefully, wiping a finger over the
lenses of his glasses.

'I don't sell books on a Sunday,' he said. "I work six days a
week selling books. Sunday is my day off from selling books.'

'My name is Alison Morrissey. I'm the granddaughter of the
pilot of the crashed Lancaster on Irontonguc Hill.'

'I know who you arc,' said Lawrence. 'I saw you on the
television news. You were in the papers, too.'

'That's good,' said Morrissey. 'Can I come in?'

Lawrence still hesitated, as if a great deal depended on making
the right decision. Then, reluctantly, he pulled open the door of
the shop.

Morrissey stamped her (cet free of snow as she stood in the
narrow passage near the counter. There was no light in the shop
except from the open door to the stairs, and Lawrence made no
move to find the light switch.
'What is it you want?' he said.

Morrissey kept her hands in the pockets of her coat as she
looked around the shop, raising her eyebrows at the shelves
and piles of books that gradually became visible as her eyes
adjusted.
'If you know who I am, perhaps you know why I've come/
she said.

'I don't know anything about aircraft wrecks,' said Lawrence.
'I sell books on them sometimes, but I don't think I've got any
in at the moment. I sold my last copies a tew days ago. You're
wasting your time.'


280



'I don't think so.'

Morrissey took her hand out of her pocket. Carefully, she
unwrapped the package she had shown to Ben Cooper. The
medal caught the light from the stairs and glittered, so that
Lawrence could he in no doubt what it was.

'This is the reason I'm here,' she said.

Lawrence took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, whether
from tiredness or some sudden emotion, it was impossible to
tell in the darkness. 'It's nothing to do with me,' he said.

'Would the police agree with you, I wonder?'

'There's nothing illegal here.

'You wouldn't mind the police coming, then.'

'As it happens, 1 know one of the local detectives very
well.'

'Detective Cooper, perhaps? He mentioned your shop to me.
And he's very interested in this medal.'

Lawrence's shoulders seemed to slump a little. 'This is very
unfair,' he said.

Morrissey thrust the medal at him like an amulet that would
ward off evil. 'Do you think it's fair to me? Fair to my familv?

v	^ ..

Fair to the memory of my grandfather?'

Finally, Lawrence gave in.

'You'd better come upstairs,' he said.

Before he led Alison Morrisscy towards the stairs, Lawrence
took a last look outside, into the dark alley. He wondered who
else might be out there, waiting to disrupt his life.


Rack at West Street, Dianc Fry found the file on Marie Tennent
still lying on Ben Cooper's desk. It was only four days since
Marie had been found on Irontongue Hill, yet it might as well
have been weeks. Fry knew there had been search parties in Dam
Street, where Marie had lived. Posters and newspaper appeals
were everywhere, calling for information on the whereabouts
of Baby Chloc. But Fry had been so absorbed in other things
that she had lost touch with what had been going on today.


In the Tennent Ale, there was a report from a sergeant in the
uniformed section to say that they had gone over Marie's house
again, and had cleared the snow from the back garden, but there


281



was no indication of recent digging in the fro/en ground.
There was no sign of a baby. They had gradually keen extending
their search, and should by now have searched the millpond.
The area of hillside where Marie had been found had also been
painstakingly picked over.

And Fry saw that, as far as Marie herself was concerned, they
were still waiting for a postmortem result before the inquest
could be opened.

Then Fry saw the faxes on Ren Cooper's desk. They had
come on a machine that used the old fax rolls, and the sheets
were curling up into thick coils. It took only a glance to sec
that they had come from Canada and were connected with
Alison Morrissey. There was a yellow message form stuck to
the top sheet, too. 'Please phone Alison,' it said. Fry tried the
phone number it gave, and a voice said: 'Good evening, the
Cavendish Hotel.'

'Do you have a Miss Alison Morrissey staying there?' asked
Fry.

'Yes, we do. Would you like me to see if she's in the
hotel?'

'No, it doesn't matter/

She put the phone down. It seemed to Fry that there was no
doubt where Ben Cooper's attention was at the moment. He had
been told by the Chief Superintendent himself that there was
no possibility of helping Alison Morrissey in her hopeless quest.
But for Cooper, anything that was hopeless seemed to represent
a challenge. Fry recalled the woman she had seen on TV, the
same woman who had been chatting to Cooper at Undcrbank
the other day. 'Phone Alison', the message said. So there was
another attraction for Cooper, too.

Fry placed the message carefully back on the roll of faxes.
She would have to think seriously about what she was going to
do about it.

Turning her attention back to the Tennent Hie, she saw that
it had been kept up to date with the inclusion of copies of reports
on the baby's remains. She scanned through the SOCO's report,
then a statement from one of the officers who had attended the
scene after the air cadets' discovery of the remains. It was a


282



thorough and detailed account of the scene, written by a young
female officer who had put a lot of effort in, even when it might
seem there was no point. She had spent some time looking
for evidence of recent visitors to the aircraft wreck, despite
the fact that the remains were so old. Reading between the
lines, it seemed to Fry that the officer had been affected by
the sight of the bones and the new babv clothes and had sought

o	y &

for something else to concentrate on.

Curiously, one of her observations related to poppies. Not
real poppies, but the red plastic or paper ones sold during the
weeks before Remembrance Day every year to raise money for
ex-servicemen. During November, many people wore them
pinned to their coats; entire wreaths of them were laid at
war memorials up and down the country. And it seemed that
remembrance poppies \verc left at the site of the Lancaster crash,
too. Fry supposed the wreckage was itself a memorial, in a way.
According to the report, someone had left a poppy there very
recently, despite the fact that it was January and Remembrance
Day was long since past.

It seemed unimportant. But Fry knew that such details,
observed at the right time, could turn out to be surprisingly
valuable later on. She marked the line about the poppies with a
red pen and was finishing the report when her telephone rang.

She walked back to her own desk, carrying the Tenncnt file.
The switchboard operator apologized, saying that she had been
told that DS Frv was in the station and wondered if she could
deal with a call that had just come in.

'Who is it?' said Frv.

'Sergeant Caudwell, from the Ministry of Defence Police/

'OK, put her on.'

For a moment, Fry pictured Caudwell and Nash sharing a
hotel with Alison Morrissey, but recalled that the MDP officers
had been sent somewhere cheaper and more basic, probably the
Travelodge.

o

'Ah, still on duty, I sec,' said Caudwell when she got through
to Fry. 'That's lucky.'

'What can I do for you?' said Fry.

'Well, 1 soon got bored in this hotel we've found, and there


283



didn't seem to be anything else to do in Edcndalc, so I asked
them to send up the local newspapers. I found some interesting
reading.'

o

'They've covered the story of the unidentified body extensively,'
said Fry. 'A lot of speculation as usual, I'm afraid.'

'Oh, yes. But not only that. There was the woman who froze
to death.'

Fry looked down at the file still in her hand. 'Marie Tennent.
But '

'And a missing baby, and all that. Rather worrying for you,
1 imagine. And now there arc the remains of a child, found at
the site of an aircraft wreck. The papers don't say, but it seems
to me you might be linking the two incidents.'

'Yes, we're sure the dead baby was Marie Tennent's.'

'I see/ Caudwell paused for a moment. When she spoke again,
her voice had a different tone. Fry could picture her smiling. 'DS
Fry, I'm going to ask you a favour. I'd be very grateful if you
could send me over a copy of your Hie on Marie Tennent.'

'Why would you want that?'

'lust following a line of thought,' said Caudwell airilv. When

-*	o o *

Fry hesitated, she added: 'The aircraft wreck. You realize that's
Ministry of Defence property? We have an interest. We're
entitled to full consultation. Strictly speaking, we should have
been informed before any action was taken at the site. But I'm

v

sure we don't need to argue about that.'

'I'll send a copy over to your hotel as soon as I can,'

said Fry.

'Thank you very much. An hour would be fine.'

Fry replaced the phone and read carefully through the

Tennent Ale again. She frowned at the line she had marked

about poppies, then shrugged her shoulders. At least it should

keep Sergeant Caudwell quiet for a while.


It had only been a day since he had moved out of Bridge End
Farm, yet Ben Cooper found it was the most difficult time of
all. After he had dropped Diane Fry off at West Street, he had
walked through the town to the Old School Nursing Home. He


o	o

had promised that he would visit his mother nearly every day,


284



and that was what he was trying to do, even if she didn't know
that he had been.

At the end of the visit, it was hard to tear himself awav. He

'	V

had to remember that he had his own home to go back to now.
But all he actually had was an unfamiliar door in Welbeck Street
and a dark, empty Hat. Only the presence of a fat, idle cat in the
conservatory made the idea tolerable.

On his \\ay back through town from the nursing home,
Cooper found himself standing in Clappergate, on the pedestrianized
area near the corner of High Street. This was a spot
he normally tried to avoid. Usually, he walked further up the
hill and came into Clappergate from Rack Lane or through the
shopping precinct. That way he didn't have to sec the flowerbed
where council gardeners planted daffodils to grow in the spring.
It meant he didn't have to sec the plaque on the wooden bench
next to the flowerbed.

But today, he'd had other things on his mind, and the street
looked different in the snow. The flowerbed was partly hidden
by a layer of frozen snow into which passers-by had thrust empty
bottles and McDonald's cartons, spontaneously creating a piece
of modern art. That was how Cooper had found himself right by
the bench, staring at the memorial plaque as if it had dropped out
of the sky in front of him, like a fallen meteorite. He realized he
must be only a few yards from the door of the Vine Inn and the
place where the blood had settled and stained the stone setts.

The plaque looked shiny and clean today, but he had been told
it was sometimes vandalized and sprayed by graffiti artists with
red paint. The paint was as difficult to remove from the plaque
as the blood had been to clean from the setts. The inscription on
the plaque read: /n memory o/^er^canf/o.sepA Cooper of t/ic Der^yjAire
Con.stabu/ory, wVio JieJ m trie course of riij Juty near Aere. It was
followed by the date -- that day in November, a little over two
years ago, when Sergeant Cooper had been kicked to death by
a group of youths who had objected to him attempting to make
an arrest.

Cooper thought his father would actually have been satisfied
with this way of dying. He would not have wanted to be one of
those old men who faded slowly away in retirement, deprived


28S



of any role in life. Cooper was certain that his father must have
had a Jeep dread of retirement. He could not have tolerated
the prospect of ceasing to have any importance, of disappearing
and no one even noticing he had gone. This way, Sergeant Joe
Cooper would be remembered for ever as he was when he died,
because the plaque accorded him a place in posterity. His death
had given him immortality.

Ben turned away from the plaque and faced back towards High
Street. Four women were walking towards him on the pavement.
They moved slowly and straddle-legged like cowboys, their hats
pulled low over their eyes, their arms hanging by their thighs,
weighted down by shopping bags bursting with booty. On the
pavement in front of the women were long shadows thrown by
the light spilling out of the windows of Marks and Spencer. They
had been to the January sales at the stores on Clappergate that
opened on a Sunday. Now they were heading to the bus station
for their journey home to the Devonshire Estate or the stone
terraces of Underbank.


He didn't want to be among these people. Not because they
were strangers, but because they might actually recognize who
he was and feel sorry for him when they saw him standing
gazing at the plaque. He decided to cut through one of the
lanes that ran up to Hollowgatc and under the town hall clock
tower into the market square. He could walk across the square
and through the passages at Nick i' th' Tor to get to the traffic
lights at Fargatc.

o	o

The market square was almost deserted as Cooper crossed
it. A scatter of pigeons wandered around the square, forlornly
searching for any scraps still left from the previous day's market.
A man in a yellow cagoule stood staring at the war memorial
in the middle of the square, as if he had nowhere else to go.
Perhaps he didn't. Edcndalc had its share of the homeless, and
some of them would fail to survive this winter.

Cooper reached the entrance to Nimble John's Gate, where
a little footbridge crossed the river before dividing left and right
into Nick i' th' Tor and Rock Terrace. The setts had been re-laid
near the bridge, but the passages were tilted at uneasy angles


286



where they negotiated the steep slope across the river. The
snow lay deep against the walls on either side, and no one had
ever thought to provide street lighting for the passages, which
were in deep darkness between the tall buildings. Below him,
the River Eden was loud and roaring where it squeezed into
a narrow channel between the banks. Crossing the bridge, the
sound of the water was almost deafening.
He hesitated on the corner of Nick i' th' Tor, thinking he
had seen a movement ahead. Rut it was only the melted snow
turning to water and dripping from the guttering at the back of
the old cinema. The drips were creating ripples on the puddles
that already lay among the cobblestones. The only light in the
passage was from the street lamps behind him in the market
square, reflected in the puddles and on the grey pillows of dirty
snow. Cooper had never before worried about walking through
the streets of Hdendale, though he knew many a woman would
automatically run through a mental checklist before she went
anywhere at night was her handbag safe, was the street well
lit, would it be safer to take a taxi, could she run properly in
these shoes?

He turned at a sound. Down at the far end of the passage,
he saw a familiar figure pass in front of the lights in the market
square. It was a man wearing a long overcoat, like an army
greatcoat. Eddie Kemp? As if hearing his name, the figure
paused in the entrance of the alley and turned his head. For
a moment, Cooper almost caught his eye. He saw a woollen
cap outlined against the lights. He was so sure, he could almost
catch the smell.

As the figure moved on, Cooper took a step forward, then
stopped. He remembered the mistake he had made when he
arrested Eddie Kemp the first time, in Hollowgate. It was wrong
to assume that Kemp was on his own and would be an easy
arrest. He took out his radio and reported in to Control to ask
(or support. Then he walked carefully down to the end of the
alley and eased his way round the corner. There was no longer
any sign of Kemp.

Cooper looked at the doorways on either side of the
alley entrance. There weren't many shops here any more


287



Wool-worth's and W. H. Smiths had moved into the shopping
centre on Clappergatc. Now, the businesses in the market square
were mostly hanks and building societies, estate agents and pubs.
The butcher's shop, Fcrris's, was starting to look like a relic,
some kind of folk museum. He carefully checked the doorways of
Barclays Bank and the Nationwide Building Society. Nothing. He
jumped as the town hall clock began to strike seven. It sounded
far too loud in the empty square, its clangs reverberating off the
tall buildings. The pigeons took off and clattered together for a
few seconds as they circled the square before landing again and
resuming their search for food.

Cooper paused for a moment and waited for the clock
to finish striking. He listened for footsteps, but he heard
only the engine of a bus, which pulled into High Street and
stopped. He saw the three women clambering on with their
shopping bags.

Next to Barclays Bank was the Red Lion pub. The lights were
on, but it had only just opened and he could see no customers
inside. Nevertheless, he went in to have a look in the darker
corners. Large video screens were showing MTV. The barmaid
shook her head when he asked after a man in a greatcoat and a
cap with fur car-flaps.

So Kcmp must have walked on into High Street. From there,
he could have gone in several directions -- over the river into
Evre Street, down on to the relief road, or back along the river

V	' * O

walk towards the network of passages. Beyond them was Buxton
Road and then the Buttcrcross, which was Eddie Kemp's way
home. On his own, Cooper had to make a choice. It would
be quicker to return the way he had come, back up Nick i'
th" Tor.

But after the lights of the square, the passage seemed even
darker. The shops here didn't bother leaving their lights burning
at night, as the big stores did. The Italian restaurant didn't
open on Sundays in January, and it was in darkness. Halfway
up he passed Larkin's, the baker's, which was always
busy during the day. But now its windows were empty. The
coffee shops and the gift shop looked faintly ridiculous in
the snow. Icicles hanging from the guttering had started to


288



thaw, and drips of icy water landed on his shoulders and
splashed his neck when he walked too close to the buildings.

'	o

By the morning, the water would be frozen again if the sky
stayed clear.

Ahead of him, Cooper heard the noise of the river again.
It sounded almost as if a dam had burst up the hill, as
if thousands of gallons of water were roaring towards him

o	o

down the passage. The cobbles and the walls on either side
were wet enough to suggest that it had happened before, and
that any second he might get swept away and washed up in the
market square.

Further up, on the corner of Rock Terrace, he could see Eden
Valley Books, nestling into the tall buildings around it. Starlight
glittered faintly on the roof, and a light was visible in a window
on the second floor. Here was someone else who didn't bother
closing curtains. But up there were only the pigeons and a view
of the back of the town hall clock tower. Lawrence Daley must
have a good vantage point over the roofs of Edcndalc. He must be
able to look down into all the yards and closes, passages and alleys
between here and the market square. He must be able to look
down on the River Eden where it passed below the bridge.

As Cooper looked up at the lighted window, a shape passed
across it, then a second. The first, he was sure, was Lawrence
Daley himself. But the second figure was female. Cooper
couldn't quite believe who he thought it was. Then she turned
towards the window to look out, and he was certain.

Cooper heard a cough. Eddie Kemp? Did he really have a
delicate respiratory system?

Then his radio came to life. 'Ben, we're in Eyre Street. Which
way did he go?'

'Dianc? I think he's in one of the alleys between you and the
market square. Somewhere near the bookshop.'

'Which ways shall we cover?'

'He'll come out either on to Eyre Street or up Rock Terrace
on to Buxton Road. I'm at the market square end of Nick i'
th' Tor.'

'OK.'

Slowly, Cooper began to move forward again. It was steep


289



here, and the setts were slippery it he walked too near the walls.
He passed Larkin s and one of the coffee shops and was almost
at the bridge. Even if there had keen footsteps, he wouldn't
have heard them now because of the noise of the river under
the bridge.

Where a broken remnant of stone wall concealed a delivery
door to one of the shops, there was a sudden a movement, and
a dark shape on the edge of his vision. Before Cooper could turn
towards it, he felt himself pushed heavily, and he fell hard against
the door. Along with the sudden jolt of pain from the impact, he
heard a thud of something hitting the door alongside him. Then
there were feet clattering on the setts as someone ran off down
the alley.

Cooper tried to push himself away from the door to run alter
them, but found he was unable to move. There was a strange
tightness in his right side, and he couldn't force his body away

C'	O ' ^ V

from the door. It was as if he had lost all the strength down
his right side. There was no real pain, except from his shoulder
where it had collided with the door. He tried to raise his right
arm above his head. It wouldn't move all the way, but was held
back by the tightness in his side, so that his arm hung ridiculously
in mid-air. He felt like a man patting an invisible small boy on
the head.

Feeling ridiculously embarrassed, he lowered his arm again.
Then he concentrated on each part of his body in turn, wondering
if there was a serious, major pain somewhere that he
had missed. Perhaps his brain had suppressed it, and the agony
would hit him in a moment. Perhaps he was in a state of shock.
He had heard of badly injured people who carried on moving
for several minutes before their wounds overwhelmed them and
they collapsed.

Cooper clearly remembered an impact. And he knew, too,
that he had heard a faint crunching of flesh and bone. Now
his body refused to allow him to move to pursue his assailant.
Something was definitely wrong.

He bent his head to look down at his side. Blood was
soaking through the lining of his coat. A thick drop of it
trickled from the hem and landed in the snow, splashing on


290



the fro/en surface. The blood was very dark, so dark that it
was almost purple.

As the adrenalin drained away from his limbs and icy water
dripped on him from the guttering, Ben Cooper began to feel
very cold.


291



26


IJiane Fry had not seen Eddie Kemp before. But when the man
coming up the alley dodged back into the shadows as soon as he
saw the light of her torch and the uniform of the officer next to


o

her, she had no doubt who he was.

She used her radio as she ran. 'Ben he's headed back downhill
towards Eyre Street. We've got him boxed in. Ben?' She got no
reply, but assumed he was too busy closing in from the other
direction. Cooper was never a man to use more words than
necessary when communicating with other people.

Round the corner Fry ran headlong into the man she had been

/	o

chasing. He had stopped suddenly on the bridge when he saw the
other uniformed officer approaching from Eyre Street.

'Edward Kemp?'

The man stepped back and swung a punch at her. Fry deflected
it easily. He was far too heavy and slow, and she had kept her
roe Awon Jo skills sufficiently honed to make her responses good.
Within a few seconds, she had his arm behind his back and his
face against the stone wall.

o

'Edward Kemp or not, you're under arrest.'

The two uniforms got the cuffs on and took the man away. Fry
looked round. Still no Ben Cooper.

'Damn it, Cooper, arc you doing your shopping again, or
what?'

Her voice had risen on the last few words and echoed in the
alley. The only answer was the noise of the river running under
the bridge and the dripping of water from the roofs. Up on the
road, the door of the patrol car slammed.

He'd said he was at the market square end of Nick i' th' Tor.
Somewhere over the bridge then, past the bookshop and round
the corner.

'Ben?' she called.

'Here.'

His voice sounded strange. Fry began to run, slithering on the


292



cobbles as she crossed the bridge. Then she saw him. He was
standing against a garage door, with his back to her.

'Ben?'

'Hi, Dianc.'

'What are you doing?'

'Nothing much.'

'I think we got Kcmp.'

'Good.'

'You're sure it was him? I didn't get a good look at him. Have
they never heard of street lights at this end of town? Or did the
gas supply just run out?'

'Yeah, it's pretty dark all right.'

She looked at him, starting to get irritated. 'Why are you
leaning against that garage?'

'Well, the fact is, I don't think I'm able to move.'

Fry moved to touch him, then stopped.

'You think? Is this some kind of joke? Because if it is, I'm going
to make you drive round with DC Murfin for a week, and you can
pay for his onion bhajis yourself.'

'It's not a joke, Diane.'

'Jesus, you don't sound like somebody who's injured. Let's take
a look.' She pulled out the torch from her pocket and shone it at
his chest. 'Where's the problem?'

Cooper unbuttoned the front of his waxed coat with his left
hand and let it fall open. 'Round about here somewhere. I
felt this -'

'Don't touch it!'

'What?'

Gingerly, Fry used the head of the torch to pull open his coat.
She drew it back far enough to show him the protruding handle.

'It looks like the handle of a bayonet.'

'Thank God it missed me.'

'It didn't miss you,' said Fry. 'You're bleeding. I'm calling an
ambulance.'

'No, it missed me.'

Fry shone her torch on the blood trickling into the snowr. It
had pooled in the big inside pocket of his coat and there was a
greasy patch where it had soaked through.


293



'Believe me now, Ben? You're bleeding.'

'No, it's the rabbit,' said Cooper.

'What on earth are you talking about?' She looked at him as it
he were delirious.

'There's a rabbit in my poacher's pocket. George Malkin gave
it to me.'

'You are joking.'

'It's true.' Cooper laughed unsteadily with relief. 'The blade
of the bayonet has gone right through the rabbit. The point pinned
my coat to the door, but it passed through the entrails of the
rabbit. Malkin said it was fresh. He was right.'

c?

'You're sure vou're not hurt?'

Cooper studied the rip where the bayonet had penetrated
his waxed coat, gone through a few inches of skin and bone
and embedded itself in the garage door. 'This coat cost a

o &

fortune,' he said.

'As long as the only hole he made was in your credit card, and
not in your guts.'

'No, I'm fine.'

'Get the coat off, then, and we'll get the whole thing along to
Forcnsics. God knows how we're going to explain the rabbit/

'It would have been rude to refuse it, Diane. Besides, I paid
him, so it wasn't a gift.'

'You haven't got a couple of pheasant down your trousers as
well, have you?'

'No,' said Cooper. 'I'm just pleased to see you.'


As soon as Peter and Grace Lukasy. got into bed that night,
the argument began. It was about something trivial at first, a
disagreement that Grace couldn't even remember when it was all
over. It might have been about the colour of the new wallpaper,
or whether they could afford a holiday in Portugal this summer.


It had begun to change in character when Peter had told her
not to nag, that he had other things on his mind that were more
important.

Grace had looked at him lying next to her. His face was turned
towards her, but was in shadow because of the bedside lamp
behind his head. She had turned off her own lamp already, and had


294



taken off her reading glasses. Peter's face was too close to hers,
too blurred by the shadows, for her to read his expression. His
eyes were open, hut she could sense that his face was closed. She
touched his arm, and she could feel that his muscles were tense.

'What's the matter?' she said.

'Nothing.'

'There's something wrong.'

'Nothing at all. What do you mean?'

'Tell me, Peter.'

'Leave me alone -- I'm tired.'

He rolled over on to his back, thumping his pillow with the
back of his head as if to beat it into submission. Now Grace could
make out his profile, outlined by a halo of light from the bedside
lamp. His expression was set into a determined scowl. It was the
expression that reminded her most of his father, Zygmunt, the
one that made her think of the old man as a warrior still. The
same determination was there in Peter's face. And the implacable
hatred, too.

'The Canadian woman coming here has upset you, hasn't it?'
said Grace.

'She's not important.'

'She didn't want to go away, did she?'

'I think I made it plain,' said Peter.

'It was strange, though, about the policeman. I thought that
was strange, didn't you?'

Peter didn't reply. Watching him, Grace felt a sudden surge
of irritation.

'Why don't you talk to me?' she said.

He sighed. 'Yes, it was strange. I thought it was strange she had
already met him, strange that he knew what she'd come for. It
was very strange. But it was you that invited him into our house
in the Hrst place.'

'Oh, it's my fault, is it?'

'No, I didn't mean that.'

'Is that what it is? You're sulking because you blame me.'

'Not at all."

'But all I did was to ring the police because of the description
they gave of the man who died.'


29S



'I know. That's all you did/

j

Now it was Grace s turn to shift on to her hack. She stared at
the bedroom ceiling, not really seeing it at all, just more shadows.
She was silent, waiting for Peter to speak, wondering i( he would
hothcr, willing him to feel her hurt.

'You did it hecause of Andrew/ he said.

Grace was surprised to rind tears suddenly leaking down her
face and on to her pillow. She fumbled for a tissue in the pocket
of her nightdress.

'I couldn't hear to think of him lying dead somewhere,'
she said.

'Who? Andrew? Or some strange man you've never seen
hefore in your life?'

'You don't understand.'

'Andrew has gone hack to London. You have to accept that,'
said Peter.

'How can I, until 1 hear from him? Why isn't he answering his
phone? Why hasn't he hccn in touch to tell us where he is?'

'All right. But what did you think you were achieving hy
phoning the police and telling them you recognized the man they
found on the Snake Pass? That was stupid. More than stupid. You
hrought the police here, as well as that bloody woman.'

'Don't swear at me.'

'Well, it n^j hloody stupid. That was the last thing we needed.
What do you think it w ould have done to Dad it the policeman
had insisted on seeing him? I can't believe you didn't think about
that. But, no, you were only thinking of yourself. Somehow you
had to feed your ohscssion. It's always been Andrew, Andrew,
Andrew - it's turning your mind. Can t you see that?

Grace held the tissue to her face. She tried to control a small,
spasmodic sob that rose in her throat, not wanting to show Peter
her weakness.

'I want to protect Zygmunt as much as you do,' she said.

'You have a funny way of showing it.'

'But it's true I do.'

"I can't stand this, I really can't.' He turned over on to his other
side, crushing his pillow and dragging the bedclothes almost away
from her.


296



'Don't turn away from me, please/ said Grace.

Without even touching him, she knew his body was knotted
with tension. Peter was frightened, of course. Rut he would never
admit it. It was a diliicult time (or him, since he was so close to
his lather. She accepted that. The last thing she wanted to do was
make it worse for them hoth. She wiped her eyes and put her
hand on his shoulder. He felt cold and resisting. She tried to pull
him hack towards her so that she could see his face.

'Peter '

Then he rolled on to his hack again. 'Look, Grace, for God's
sake forget about Andrew for now. He's not worth it. There are
far more important things to worry ahout. Do you understand
what I'm saying?'

'Yes, Peter. I understand.'

Suddenly, the tension went out of them hoth. Peter rolled on
to his side. He sighed deeply, as if overwhelmed by tiredness,
and within a minute or two he was asleep. Grace smiled in the
darkness and patted his shoulder gently. Then she turned over
and pressed her body against his, for the sake of the warmth.


After Ben Cooper had been examined at West Street that night,
Diane Fry made him sit in the C1D room and do nothing for a
while. She even got somebody to make him a cup of tea, for the
shock. Cooper knew there would be activity going on down in
the town -- the passageway where he had been attacked would
be sealed off, witnesses would be sought with the usual futility.
Later, he would have to make a full statement. It was something
he wasn't looking forward to.


Cooper could see a pile of faxes waiting for him on his desk.
Curious, he picked them up. They had come from Toronto,
marked for his personal attention. There was a head-andshoulders
photograph of a man with wiry hair and a square
jaw, and another of him standing next to a woman slightly
taller than himself. The man was named as Kenneth Rees,
Alison's mother's stepfather. Despite the poor quality of the
reproduction on the fax machine, there was no doubt this man
wasn't Danny McTcaguc. Flcctingly, Cooper considered the idea
that there was no real proof it was Kenneth Rees either.


297



He put the faxes down to study in the morning. There had
been something else about his conversation with Alison Morrissey
earlier that day that had been nagging at him, and he needed to
check it. It had been a small thing, but it had undermined his faith
in the accuracy of her information.

Cooper found the file that the Local Intelligence Officer had
put together for the Chief. According to the information on
Klemens Wach, he had done his initial training with the RAF
at Blackpool at the same time as his cousin Zygmunt, and they
had both been posted to the Operational Training Unit at Lymm,
in Cheshire. At Lymm, they had gone through a very British
system of assembling air crews -- hundreds of men had simply
been put into a large room together and encouraged to mingle
until they formed their own crews with the right combination
of skills. It sounded a bit like the way football teams had been
chosen at school you always had to have a good goal-scorer
and a goalkeeper, and a couple of big lads in defence. But
inevitably, there would be somebody left till the end, the boy
who nobody really wanted. Cooper wondered who had been left
to the last among the airmen. Might it have been Zygmunt Lukasx
or Klemens Wach? It must have been even more difficult when
different nationalities were involved. There were fewer natural
bonds to bring them together.

But the crew had been formed, and had been sent to their first
operational posting a Lancaster squadron at RAF Leadcnhall,
where they remained until that fatal crash in January 1945.

According to the LIO's note, the information on the airmen's
service history came from the official RAF records. So Klemens
Wach had only one operational posting, which meant he could
never have served with the famous 305 Squadron, as Alison
Morrissey had claimed. Morrissey had got it wrong. Until then,
Cooper had been assuming that her research had been meticulous,
with the help of Frank Bainc. But now he was having doubts.
There was a weakness in her research. He wondered what other
information she had might be inaccurate.

But of course there was more than one inaccuracy; there had
been a major gap. Morrissey had not known the identity of the
Malkin brothers, even though the information had been readily


298



available. Walter Rowland, for one, would have keen able to tell
her. Thinking back to his conversation with the old man, Cooper
recollected that he hadn't seemed to have any great objection to
talking to Alison Morrisscy. He wondered who had persuaded
Rowland not to.


'Well, the bayonet isn't some old military memento, anyway,'
said Diane Fry. 'So the chances are it didn't come from one of
your old soldiers.'


Ben Cooper looked across the office at her. Fry was holding
up a latex evidence bag for him to see. There were still streaks
of skin, dried blood and organ tissue along the sides of the long
blade of the bayonet. The sight made Cooper wince and clench
his stomach, as she had surelv known it would.

'Airmen,' said Cooper. 'They're old airmen. They wouldn't
have had much use for bayonets.'

'Who knows what they might have collected? But this one's
quite new, the sort they sell openly in some shops, along with
air rifles and hunting knives. The handle is a good surface. We
might get some prints from it, or even enough traces of sweat
from his hands to get a DNA sample, if he ever handled it without
gloves. It could mean we've got Eddie Kemp tied up this time.'

'I don't think so,' said Cooper.

Fry lowered the bag. 'What do you mean?'

'I don't think it was him.'

'Ben, we arrested Kemp at the scene.'

'He was in the vicinitv. But I don't think it was him who

v

attacked me.'

Fry put down the bag and sat back in her chair. 'I hope
you're joking.'

'He was some distance away from me, I'm sure. I don't think
it was Kemp who barged into me. The person who did that ran
of! in the other direction, not towards Eyre Street. Besides, I
would have recognized the smell.'

'He was certainly ripe when we processed him. The custody
sergeant recognized him before we got him through the door. Fie
said to thank you for sending "Homer" back.'

'That's what I mean.'


299



Fry sighed. 'Prints or DNA will settle it one way or the other.'

'I expect so.'

'If it wasn't Kcmp, who else would have known you were
there? Could somebody have recognized you?'

'Well...'

'Yes, of course, how silly of me,' said Fry. 'Everybody
knows you round here, don't they? I don't suppose you've
ever considered doing undercover work, Ben?'

'I didn't sec him. Not clearly.'

'If we don't get a match from the bayonet, we're back to
square one with Kemp - even for the double assault. The GPS
think the witness evidence is insufficient.'

"I know.'

'It would have been nice, Ben, to have been able to charge
somebody.'

'Well. I'm sorrv I m only telling you the truth.'

'	V V O V

She sighed. 'I suppose it'll be in your statement.'

'Of course.'

Fry sat at her desk. The mountain of paper on it was rising
and becoming unstable. Cooper could sec that a couple of buff
files in the middle were sliding free under the weight of those
on top. It would be best to be out of the office when the
avalanche started.

'Well, I'm glad you're not injured, anyway,' said Fry.

'Thanks.'

'Because there's a special job for you tomorrow morning.'

'Oh?'

'You're to meet Sergeant Caudwell. You'll be going on a trip
together.'

'Franklv, I'd rather be attacked with a bayonet in a dark alley.'

'Tough. I hope your stomach's feeling strong in the moming,
Ben.'

'Why?' said Cooper suspiciously.

Fry smiled at him, though her expression lacked the confidence
she was trying to convey. 'I've just talked to Sergeant Caudwell
again,' she said. 'We've thought of a way of keeping you safe and
off the streets.'


300



In his Hat above the bookshop in Nick i' th' Tor, Lawrence Daley
had heard the sound of voices echoing in the alleyways outside. He
assumed it was a group of drunks leaving one of the pubs around
the market square, although it was a bit early in the evening for
them to be causing trouble. Usually, that happened later on, when
Edendale's two night clubs closed.

Lawrence went to one of the window s. But instead of looking
out of the front of the building on to Nick i' th' Tor, he went to
the back, where his bedroom overlooked a snow-covered yard
and gates that led out on to a back alley. There was frost forming
on the window, slowly covering the glass in delicate patterns.
The sky was clear tonight, and a crescent moon threw some
light on the shapes in the yard. Lawrence shuddered, picturing
human figures moving among the shapes, hearing the scuffling
of their feet in the snow and the sound of their muttered curses
in the darkness. But the yard was as secure as he could make
it. The gates were firmly closed, and there was broken glass
set into the concrete along the top of the back wall. For now,
the yard was too full of snow to open the gates. According to
the weather forecast, it would be the end of the week before it
thawed. He had been watching the forecasts every dav. Several

O	V V

times a dav.

Satisfied for now, Lawrence went back to the book that he had
been reading in front of the TV. On the floor above, he heard
the noise of scurrying feet on bare boards, the faint scratching
of claws on the wooden joists that ran across his ceiling. He
didn't think the feet were those of the mice that lived in the
shop downstairs, which sometimes darted out from among the
bookshelves and startled his customers. The feet that scratched
above his head belonged to something bigger and less quick,
something that dragged a tail behind it along the boards.

Lawrence supposed it was possible that squirrels had found
their way under the caves to live in his attic for the winter. But
he thought it much more likely that rats had moved into his life.
And now they were thriving.

v	O


301



27


-Den Cooper hung on to the hack oi a seat as his view of the
ground tilted and wreckage rushed past below him. Directly
underneath the helicopter, the scene looked like the aftermath
of a hurricane that had passed through a scrap-metal yard.
Fragments of aircraft fuselage glinted in the light reflected from
the snow. There should be part of a tail hn still protruding from
the peat and the snow somewhere up the slope to the west. But
Cooper had lost sight of where the horizon ought to he, and he
felt his stomach lurch as his sense of balance was disrupted.


During his five years in Derbyshire CID, he had never been
called on to take to the air in a helicopter before, and he
wasn't sure it was something he was cut out for. He was a
feet-on-the-ground man, no question. Half an hour this Monday
morning had convinced him of it.

The passengers braced themselves as the pilot pulled back on
the controls and banked to avoid the sudden upward rush of
bare, black gritstone that the maps called Irontonguc. The rocks
were jagged and unforgiving, full of crevices that held streaks of
frozen snow. Even rock climbers staved awav from the face of

v	v

Irontongue. Its surface was too treacherous for all but the most

o

experienced and best equipped.

The helicopter flew over the site again, banked, turned and
came back to allow its passengers a good view of the remnants
of the crashed aircraft. In the sharp morning light, the shadow
of the rotor blades swept across the hill and over the wreckage.

'No, that's not the one,' said Cooper. 'That was a US Air Force
Superfortress. Thirteen men died in that one.'

He looked back down at the ground. Broken scraps of the
aircraft seemed to have started dicing themselves into the peat,
like burrowing animals anxious to escape the wind and snow, but
never quite making it to safety below ground.

'There were so many during the war,' he said. 'The Peak
District is littered with them.'


302



In fact, there had keen so many that aircraft wrecks had entered
local folklore. Even today, there were tales of a ghostly plane that
had keen heard, and even seen, over parts of the Dark Peak.
Witnesses had keen convinced that the aircraft must surely have
crashed into the hillside because it was flying so low. No wreckage
could ever he found, but it didn't stop the stories.

There was also said to be a German bomber that lay somewhere
on the remote northern moors alter being shot down
during a raid on Manchester. German-made cartridge cases had
been picked up in the area, but no one had ever seen signs of
wreckage there, either. Cooper wondered it that was one animal
that had reached its burrow, ploughing through the peat at a
hundred miles an hour as it fell from the sky. A few years ago,
archaeologists digging in a peat bog in Cheshire had found the
bodv of an Iron Age man, petrified and almost complete. Would
the peat here have preserved the bodies of the Luftwaffe crew
too, with their skin drv and leathery and their eves hardened

v	^ ^

like bullets?

'Although I don't think this one crashed during the war. It
w as 1948 that Superfortress down there w as from an American
photographic unit. The crew had recorded the atom bomb tests
at Bikini Atoll and filmed the Russian positions in East Germanv
during the Berlin Airlift.'

'But Derbyshire finished them off.'

Cooper lifted an eyebrow at the grim pleasure in Sergeant
Caudwell's voice. He stared out of the helicopter window,
surprised at the extent of the debris strewn across the moorland.
On the way to the site, Cooper had found himself filling in the
time by telling Jane Caudwell the story of the crash of Sugar Uncle
Victor and the disappearance of Pilot Officer Danny McTeague.
Before he had finished, her eves had closed.

'I m surprised nobody clears the wrecks away, said Caudwell.
'Aren't they offensive to the tidy minds of our bureaucrats?'

'Not here. In the Peak District they let them stav. They're
memorials, after all. They're official war graves. I always think
it's funny how that can be, though. I mean - the bodies aren't
still down there, are they?'

'We hope not, dear.'


303



They levelled out again and flew northwards, passing over
acres of white, peat-flecked ground, rolling oceans of it that
swelled in waves towards the fringes of the Dark Peak. It was
barely more than a minute before they located another scatter of
wreckage.

'That's the one. Sugar Uncle Victor.'

Caudwell gave a chuckle. 'Sounds like a naughty relative,
doesn't it?'

As the helicopter banked, she hardly used her hands to brace
herself, preferring to let her weight roll and wallow in the scat,
at times pushing against Cooper's side like a heavy piece of loose
cargo. Her colleague PC Steve Nash had barely acknowledged
his presence since they had climbed aboard, and he wasn't sure
whether it was indifference or whether Nash was silently terrified
of the flight and dealing with it in his own way. Cooper was
determined not to take it personally, anyway.

Below them, the remains of the Lancaster bomber's wings
lay in tatters on the moor. Little of the fuselage was left, but
there was a ragged line of burnt-out engines and undercarriage
parts, and a single wheel still standing upright. Smaller fragments
were scattered for several hundred ieet through a series of
water channels and ^roughs. Around the wreckage, the wind
had scraped the dark peat bare. Against the snow, it looked
like a pool of dried blood in which the broken body of the
aircraft lay.

'They must have taken some of the parts away after the crash,'
said Caudwcll.

'It depends who you mean by "they",' said Cooper. 'There
was no official salvage team. But there have been unofficial
ones since. Apparently, there are two kinds of visitors to
these wrecks the aviation archaeologists, who want to preserve
the remains, and the others, who have their own interests.'

'The vultures?'

'Some people call them that.' Cooper thought he detected a
note of irony. 'The more valuable parts of the Lancaster have
been removed over the years. I suppose things like the radio
equipment would have been the first to go, followed by anything


304



that was movable, anything that could be sold as scrap or might
be considered a souvenir or collector's item.'

'Local people?'

'At first. For a long time, they would have been the only ones
who knew the location of these wrecks. The others have arrived
more recently.'

Who was it that had said the Home Guard men sent to watch
over the wrecked plane had not been too keen on their task?
Cooper couldn't blame them, not in the dead of winter on
the Dark Peak moors. Staying alive was enough for a man to
concentrate on if he found himself out here, particularly at night
and as ill-equipped as they would have been in those days, with
hob-nailed boots and heavy service greatcoats. He could picture
the Home Guard sneaking off to some sheltered spot to huddle
together around a camp fire made of salvaged spars from the
aircraft they were supposed to be guarding. They would have
stood no chance of preventing local people from liberating items
of value. It had been wartime, after all. It was every man for
himself when it came to survival. But Danny McTeague had taken
it further than that.

Caudwell was looking straight ahead, over the shoulder of the
pilot, unmoved by the snow-covered landscape passing below
them. She seemed to be watching for bad weather coming
from the north, or maybe for the next outcrop of high ground
appearing in front of them, just as the rocks of Irontongue Hill
had appeared in front of Pilot Officer Danny McTeague in the
linal seconds.

The low sun misted the valley and gleamed yellow on the icy
water of a small drinking hole made by a farmer for his livestock.
There were cattle huddled below a wall, nervous of stepping on
to the concrete lip of the drinking hole because they could feel
their hooves slipping on the frozen surface.

Now there was more snow coming. The air had been bitterly
cold, but now the chill had eased and there was a dampness
about it, an impending heaviness that came from the dark clouds
gathering over the Eastern Edges before they dropped their load
on the higher hills to the west.

o

Cooper found himself gazing up at Sergeant Caudwcll as the


305



helicopter banked. She yawned and stretched, almost pushing him
off his seat. Her dark hair was scraped up inside a fake fur hat
like a Russian commissar's. He felt unreasonably uncomfortable
with Caudwcll. Though on the surface she maintained the normal

o

courtesies, there was a restrained hostility about her. It wasn't the
overt edginess he had grown used to from others, but something
deeper that he felt he ought not to rouse.

'Have you seen what you wanted?' he asked.

'I want to get down there. I need to get a closer look at the

O	C7

Lancaster wreck.'

'There's nowhere to set down safely here, said the pilot.

'We're going to have to walk up then, I suppose,' said
Caudwell. 'Detective Constable Cooper, could you arrange for
a scenes of crime officer to accompany us, please?'

Cooper stared at her. 'I don't know what you're hoping to
rind. We carried out a forensic examination on Friday, after the
remains of the baby were found. Rut they were old bones.'

'Not as old as the crew of the Lancaster, eh?'

Every police officer knew that there was nothing worse than
going over cold ground, sifting through old bones. And there
weren't many bones much colder than these. Wouldn't it have
been better to let those fliers rest in peace, rather than raking
over their graves and stirring up their ghosts?

'I think it's crazy,' said Cooper.

Caudwell smiled at him again, and her cheeks dimpled. Every
time the MDP sergeant smiled, Cooper felt as though he was
about to be swallowed up and spat out by a giant rodent, an
enormous hamster in a fur hat.

'No doubt you're right, dear,' said Caudwcll. 'Sometimes it
seems the whole world's gone crazy, doesn't it?'

More hillsides and more miles of snow passed below them as
the helicopter made its turn to head back to base. At first, the
shape created by the spread of the wreckage had made Cooper
think of a crucifixion. Hut he knew he had it wrong. This had

o

nothing to do with Christianity there was no message of
death and resurrection, the forgiveness of sins. It was something
more pagan that he was thinking of. Not a resurrection, only a
celebration of death.


306



A few weeks ago, Cooper had keen reading about the Danish
invaders who had occupied Derbyshire and neighbouring counties
tor a white. Their army had made a point of executing defeated
Saxon kings in the most gruesome way. Their chests had been
cut open and their ribcages spread on either side like wings, to
expose their hearts. It was a symbolic act, a celebratory sacrince
to their Norse pods. The act was called a 'Blood Eagle'. It

o	o

was uncomfortably like the process involved in a postmortem
examination the cutting open of the sternum, the spreading
of the ribcage, the removal of heart and lungs and other internal
organs. Cooper had never been able to escape the notion that
every autopsy was a ritual sacrince, a ceremony dedicating the
victim to the new god of science.

o

Rut the memory had made the shape of the wreckage clear
to him. It wasn't shaped like a crucifixion at all -- it was a
blood eagle.


On the way up to the Snake Pass, Ben Cooper had to put on his
sunglasses as they climbed higher and the snow-covered slopes on
either side daxzlcd him with their reflected glare. In the valley,
the snow hadn't lingered so long on the banks of dead bracken,
though it still showed through the copses of bare trees, like
the exposed lining of a threadbare overcoat. The plantations of
conifers further up the valley were different. In the sunlight,
the lines of spruces glowed orange against the blue sheen of
the snow.


Then, on the higher slopes, there was no bracken, only coarse
grass with frozen snow clinging to its stems. Looking southwards,
into the sun, the moor looked like an ocean, all its waves and
swells solidifying as they reached the shore.

Today, there was no mistaking the flight path for Manchester
Airport. In the sky were the vapour trails of six or seven jet
airliners, each one white and distinct. One of the greatest fears
of the emergency services was that an airliner would one day fall
out of the sky as it was passing over the high ground of the Dark
Peak. There were enough wrecks lying on the remote moors
already for everyone to be aware of the difficulties involved in
a rescue plan.

307



They parked their vehicles in the lay-by nearest to Irontongue
Hill. It wasn't the one where Nick Eastern had keen found, but
further up, almost at the highest point of the Snake Pass. Cooper
pulled his Toyota in behind the MDP's Ford and the Scientific
Support van. He was pleased to see that the SO CO they had
sent was Liz Petty. She was conscientious, but she was also fitter
than some of the other scenes of crime staff and would have no
problem with the hike across the moor to the crash site.

'What a beautiful day for a brisk walk,' said Sergeant Caudwell
cheerfully. 'How long will it take us?'

'About three-quarters of an hour, if we keep up a steady
pace.'

'No slacking then, eh?'

'Will you be all right?'

'Don't worry about me. I'm like a camel. I may not look
pretty, but I can keep going for hours.'


In the cold, bright morning, the walk to the top of Irontongue
Hill was exhilarating. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the
moors looked unsullied, their tracts of untouched snow glittering
temptingly. The only patterns on the landscape were those caused
by the different textures of light falling on the northern slopes,
by the shadows in a sudden dip, or the bright highlights of a
rocky summit. Further south, in the limestone areas of the White
Peak, the dry-stone walls carved up the landscape into containable
sections, forcing the snow into some kind of order, with here and
there a line of trees breaking through. But on the empty Dark
Peak moorland, the snow had its own way. It had Ailed every
cranny, sculpting the world to a shape of its own creation.


These cold, bright days were good. But Cooper knew how
quickly the weather could change. If cloud descended on the
tops, they could be in the middle of a snowstorm before they
got halfway back across the moor.

They crunched over the frozen heather into an easterly wind
that picked up small swirls of powdery snow and blew them
around like miniature blizzards before dropping them again, as
if fussily rearranging the landscape to get the best reflection
from the sun. In the deeper areas, the snow had been formed


308



into whipped cream shapes or had keen left draped in midair
over a gully, like the scalloped edges of a tablecloth. Below it,
a stream ran under a thin skin of ice.

Cooper could sec that somebody had been this way already,
but not today. A fine dusting of snow had blown into their
footprints. There was a distant cackle of black grouse, and a
human voice somewhere far away, over the other side of the
summit.


They stopped for a breather when they reached the trig point
on Irontonguc Hill, where a cairn marked the summit. The bare
rock face dropped away from them on one side, back down to the
Snake. Across a narrow valley was the next outcrop of rock, High
Shelf, where the wreckage of the American Superfortress lay.


'What a job you've got/ said Caudwell. 'And you say you're
short-staffed!'

Liz Petty had hardly said a word all the way. But now she put
her case down and took in the view.

'Days like this make up for the poor wages,' she said. Cooper
smiled at her.

'Don't. You'll have me in tears,' said Caudwell.

Beyond High Shelf was a distant view down into Glossop. The
hills fell away from the edge of the Dark Peak to a hollow in
which the town sat, surrounded by the remains of the textile
mills that had once been its main industry. At least Glossop
seemed to have grown out of its landscape, like one of those
complex eco-systems that formed of their own accord in a pool
of stagnant water, (riven time.

But then, out past Glossop, Cooper could sec nothing but a
prcv wall where the world seemed to come to an end. It reminded

o ^

him of a scene from a horror novel he had once read, in which a
small American town had been cut off from the rest of the country
by an alien fog where vast monsters lurked. But he knew that,
beneath the grimy blanket he could see in the distance, there were
no monsters, only the city of Manchester.

On a warm summer's day, the white tower blocks of the city
centre could look like the battlements of a fairy-talc city or
a shimmering mirage lying in the plain. But not today. This


309



morning, the uncompromisingly clear winter light exposed every
atom of the pollution that hung over the city, every swirl of smoke
from a factory chimney, every wisp of exhaust from the traffic
choking the streets. With no warm thcrmals to lift it clear of the
city, the smog had gathered and thickened, and now it lay like
a huge grey rat coiled on its nest. Cooper shuddered. It would
he a salutary experience for many a city dweller to take a trip
up to High Shelf on a day like this and get a bird's-eye view of
their city. They would hardly dare to breathe again.

Liz Petty turned away from the view and looked up at him
thoughtfully.

'It's hard to imagine how they could have crashed here/ she
said. 'It's so ironic somehow.'

'At night, in low cloud, it would he a different place
altogether,' said Cooper. 'It would have been a far more
dangerous place.'

Cooper pictured Lancaster SU-V coming low across the valley
from the south, the rumble of its engines muffled by the blanket
of cloud, the crew peering hopelessly from the cockpit windows
or from their Perspex gun turrets. Hr imagined the bomb aimer,
Rill Mee, lying in his position in the nose turret, looking down
and catching a glimpse of the ground rising towards them.
Perhaps Mcc would have tapped urgently on the feet of the pilot
above him, gesturing upwards as he mouthed: 'Climb! Climb!'
And McTeague would surely then have heaved back on the
controls and Lancaster SU-V would have begun to gain height.

At the rear of the aircraft, young Dick Abbott wouldn't have
known what was happening, until he had suddenly been thrown
forward in his harness towards the Perspex bubble as the aircraft
climbed. He would have found himself hanging helplessly, almost
upside down, with his view tilted so that he could see the hillside
winking through a patch of cloud. And he might have heard the
frightened voices shouting in his headphones.

But by then it was already too late. The stark face of Irontongue
Hill would have been directly in front of them. Maybe the crew
had seen it coming towards them a second before the impact, a
huge black shape hurtling out of the cloud where there should
have been only sky. But it had been too late by then. Far too late.


310



28


1_)C1 Tailbv looked around the conference room. He frowned.


j

Dianc Fry had noticed that he was doing a lot of frowning these
days. He had never been a barrel of laughs, but his last tew weeks
at E Division were proving to be a burden on him.

'We don't seem to sec much of DC Cooper at these meetings/
said Tailby.

'Everybody is so busy/ said Hitchcns. 'There are so many
actions. So many interviews to do.'

'I know that. Is Cooper all right? He wasn't injured in the
incident last night?'

o

'No, he's fine. He reported for duty as normal this morning,
and hc'sgone out with Sergeant Caudwcll. The MDP asked to visit
the site of the aircraft wreck.'

'He's with Sergeant Caudwell? You've thrown him to the

«3

dogs then?'

o

'I wouldn't say that exactly, sir/ said Hitchens.

'When things get difficult, there's a temptation to look around
for a sacrifice/ said Tailby.

Fry blinked. She had never heard their old DCI ^ct so philosophical
before. Perhaps he wanted to put on a display of wisdom in
his final davs before he handed over to Kcssen. so that the contrast

V	'

would be all the greater.

o

'I'm told Sergeant Caudwell asked for a scenes of crime officer
as well. What is she hoping to find?'

'I've no idea/ said Hitchcns.

I ailby frowned. 'I'm happy that we're co-operating. But there
comes a point when co-operation has to be mutual.'

'V	'

Yes, sir.

'All right/ said Tailby. 'Well, here we are -- it's Monday
morning, and we've had some major developments in this enquiry
over the weekend. We have a confirmed identity for the victim:
our so-called Snowman is Sergeant Nick Easton, an investigator
with the Royal Air Force Police. And I gather we've managed to


311



piece together some of his movements, with the help of the MDP
officers who have keen sent to Edendale.'

'US Fry and her team came in yesterday to follow that line of
enquiry urgently,' said Hitchens.

'Excellent. I'm sure all the overtime will he fully justified,
Paul.'

'Yes, sir. I'll let DS Fry tell you what she managed to achieve

'	V V C"

for the money.'

Fry shuffled in her seat as the two DCls stared at her, one
smiling, one frowning. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They

O'	5 v

would never agree on anything.

'For a start,' said Fry, 'we know Sergeant Easton visited the
air museum at Lcadenhall on Sunday 6th lanuarv, hctween

V	J V '

twenty-four and thirty-six hours before he was killed. He was
enquiring about a volunteer there, Graham Kemp, who is well
known as an aviation memorabilia collector.'

'This is the brother of Edward Kemp, 1 gather,' said Tailby. 'A
gentleman we now have in custodv again.'

&	v O

'Yes, sir. We have his brother's address, and we're hoping
to pick him up this morning. Of course, we've already been
interviewing a number of Edward Kemp s associates in connection
with the double assault last Monday night. It's worth bearing
in mind that this incident happened within an hour or two of
Easton's death.'

'UK. And from the aircraft museum . . .'

'We know Nick Easton stayed at a hotel near Chesterfield that
night, then he visited Edendale the following dav, Monday. He
called at the home of a family called Lukasx in Woodland Crescent
and spoke briefly to Mrs Grace Lukasz. It's odd that Mr Andrew
Lukasz disappeared a matter of hours before Easton arrived.'

'Andrew?'

'Grace Lukasz's son. He lives in London, but had been visiting
his parents. You might recall that we got the father and mother in
to try to identify our Snowman because their son had disappeared
rather suddenly.'

'And he hasn't turned up since? He's not back home in
London?'

'Apparently not. The Metropolitan Police called at his home


312



early this morning and talked to his neighbours, and apparently
there's keen no sign of him (or about ten days, which would tie
in with his arrival in Edendale. His wife is American, and she's
been away at a family funeral in Wisconsin, but we're trying to
make contact with her. Even more interestingly, his employers
say Andrew Lukasz was on leave but that he should have been
back at work today. He didn't turn up.'

'What was Sergeant Easton's interest in the Lukasz family?' said
Tailby. 'Do we have any idea?'

'We don't really know. And nor does Peter Lukasx. But he says
that Andrew had argued with his grandfather. There was some

o	&

disagreement over a cigarette case that had belonged to Zygjnunt
Lukasz's cousin, Klemens Wach, who was killed in an aircraft
wreck during the Second World War. Apparently, Zygmunt
expressed outrage that this item might have been looted from
the wreck.'

'In other words, a piece of aviation memorabilia?'

'It looks like it. sir,' said Frv.

'	' V

'Go on.

'We don't know where Easton went after he left the Lukasx
home. According to the MDP, he was using a black Ford Focus,
but we haven't been able to locate it. And he wasn't booked into
accommodation in this area for that night, as far as we can tell.
DC Murfin checked everywhere yesterday, which meant a lot of
phone calls and visits. I have to say, sir, that we simply don't have
the staff for an enquiry as complex as this.'

'Point taken, Fry,' said Tailby. 'Have we made any progress on
the time line for the morning Easton's body was found?'

'We've narrowed it down to a window of about half an hour,
when his body could have been left at the side of the A 57. But we've
been unable to find any sighting^ of four-wheel drive vehicles on
the road after it was closed because of the snow. There arc so few
houses on that stretch of road. The Snake Inn was our best bet, but
the staff have been interviewed and it seems they saw and heard
nothing but the snowploughs.'

'What about Edward Kemp's vehicle? A four-wheel drive, isn't
it?'

'An Isuzu Trooper, yes. The rolls of plastic found in the back


313



did have traces of blond, hut the blood matched that of one of the
assault victims. We think the baseball bats or other weapons that
were used in the assault were hidden in the plastic rolls afterwards.
Unfortunately, the weapons arc now missing. However, we do
have some possible traces from the plastic, if we can get approval
for samples to go to the lab . . .'

'Yes, of course. Do it.'

'Also, the bayonet that was used in the assault on DC Cooper.
We might get a DNA trace from the handle/

'Obviously.'

'My main concern at the moment is that we've not yet been
given details of the enquiry that Sergeant Easton was working on,'
said Fry. 'We need that information urgently.'

'The Ministry of Defence Police have promised us a meeting
tomorrow morning, when full details will be shared as far as
possible,' said Tailby. 'Hut at this stage, it seems clear that there's
a connection involving aviation memorabilia. The Leadenhall
Aircraft Museum, this collector, Graham Kemp, and an item
that is known to have been in the possession of Andrew Lukasz.
That's a very positive line of enquiry you've developed, Try/

'The most interesting point is that Easton called at the Lukasx
home shortly after Andrew disappeared,' said Fry. 'Obviously,
we'll be interviewing both the Kemp brothers. But, if you asked
me at this moment, I'd say the person I'd be most interested in
talking to about the murder of Nick Easton was Andrew Lukasz.'

o

'And, in what has now become our traditional manner, the
person we most want to speak to is missing,' said Tailb\.

'Yes, sir.'

Tailby spoke stiffly to DC! Kessen, who nodded. He had said
nothing during the meeting. Fry feared that he was going to be
out of his depth once Tailby departed.

'You're right, Fry,' said Tailby. 'There's a lot of work involved
in this Easton enquiry, not to mention the assault on a police
officer. We'll have to try to pull in some more assistance. But,
Paul, do make sure you use the expertise of the MDP officers
while they're here, too.'

'May I remind you we also have a missing baby, sir?' said
Hitchens.


314



'Don't I know it? The papers say hope is fading for Baby Chloc.
Is that right? Arc our hopes fading?'

'If somebody has her, they're not coming forward/ said Fry.
'We're interviewing Eddie Kcmp again after this meeting, both
about the assault on DC Cooper and about the baby, since he was
Marie Tennent's last-known boyfriend. But we've already checked
his house and talked to his wife. I don't think he's been involved
with Marie tor some time, and it seems unlikelv he'll have any
information about the baby.'

'Bad news, then.'

'The bones of the other baby we found don't make the situation
look good. If we can get DNA from the remains, we can confirm
whether it was an earlier child of Marie Tennent's. But the clothes
found with the bones were almost certainly left by her Marie's
mother identified them. It seems Marie might have gone up to
the wreck to leave the clothes as some sort of memorial to the
dead child.'

Tailby looked at her, horrified. 'That's rather macabre, Fry.'

'It's speculation, of course,' said Fry. 'But why else should
Marie Tcnncnt have gone up to the aircraft wreck on Irontonguc
Hill that day?'


The wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor began a hundred yards below
the trig point, on the windward side of Irontonguc. Between the
larger sections, the ground was covered in molten (raiments o(
metal, slivers of glass and strands of torn rubber. A few tufts of
ragged wool clung to an undercarriage axle where sheep had
rubbed their itchy backs against it, glad to find something hard
and solid in the expanse of soft peat. There were shreds of tyre
still left, hanging from the huge hub of a wheel.


Close to the main wreckage, there were poppies on wreaths
or attached to small makeshift crosses. Some of the crosses were
wooden, but others seemed to have been made out of bits of
melted tubing from the aircraft itself, tied together with wire.
Parts of the metal on the undercarriage and fuselage were still
uncorroded, even after so long. On the other hand, the poppies
had faded completely to white, their original blood-red bleached
by the sun and rain.


315



'One survivor and five fatalities, not including the pilot,' said
Cooper, his eyes following the tail of a small aircraft as it headed
towards Glossop.

Jane Caudwcll seemed hardly to have heard him. The snow
had spattered her boots and the legs of her trousers where she
had stamped her feet in the snow. She was dressed in black - a
totally impractical colour on the snow-covered peat moors. Bright
colours were what you should be wearing, especially if the weather
turned bad and the mountain rescue teams turned out to try to
locate you. They could spot bright clothes. But black amounted
to camouflage.

Caudwell took off her right glove, exposing a pale, plump hand
with a gold ring on the middle finger. She held the hand up for
Cooper's inspection, splaying the fingers into something that
looked like an obscene gesture, multiplied several times over.

'Yes, five,' she said. 'But are you quite sure Pilot OfKcer
McTcaguc was aboard this aircraft?'

'MTiat?'

Caudwell smiled. 'Just a thought. By the way, I don't think it's
a good idea for Acr to be up here, whoever she is.'

'Who?'

'Up there.'

Cooper turned and saw Alison Morrissey standing among the
rocks near the trig point. She had a camera in her hand, though
at the moment she was making no effort to photograph the officers
working on the wTeck site. The hood of her cagoule was pulled
up to protect her ears from the wind that whipped the snow off
the surface of the Irontonguc rocks. But Cooper thought he could
sec the expression in her eyes, a dark mingling of satisfaction
and pain.

'I'd better go and speak to her,' he said.

'No,' said Caudwell. 'Let someone else do it.'

She gestured at PC Nash, who scowled as he lumbered up
the slope, kicking his feet in the snow. Morrissey watched him
approach her, as she might have observed the movements of a bit
of interesting wildlife. When Nash was within a few yards of her,
with his head down, struggling to keep his footing on a stretch of
wet scree, she raised the camera and took his picture. Nash heard


316



the click and looked up angrily. He charged the rest of the way,
thrusting against the rocks with his arms.

Cooper took a couple of steps towards them hut felt Caudwcll's
hand on his arm and stopped. Morrissey had stood her ground and
was listening w ith amused attentiveness to what Nash was saying.
She didn't seem to reply, and he began to wave his arms, indicating
that she should move back down the hill. Still she didn't move.

Then Nash tried to snatch her camera. Morrissey resisted. Nash
towered over her, but there was a stubbornness plain from her
body language that told him she wasn't going to be bullied.

'No.' Cooper pulled away from Caudwell and began to run up
the slope.

'For heaven's sake,' called Caudwell, 'what's the matter with
you?'

Cooper kicked up the snow as he scrambled across the scree,
using his hands against the rocks to push himself up. He looked
up. Nash had hold of the camera, but the strap was still tight round
Morrissey's shoulder and, when he tugged, it almost pulled her off
balance. She slipped and flung out her arms to keep her balance.
One of her hands hit the shoulder of his fluorescent jacket with a
loud slap. Nash grabbed her arm.

'Let her go!'

PC Nash turned and looked at him. He wasn't smiling, but
Cooper could sense that he was enjoying himself. Cooper felt at
a complete disadvantage. He was standing down the slope from
Nash, who loomed over him. For a moment, Cooper thought he
had engineered a situation that was impossible to get out of. Nash
looked past his shoulder and let go of Morrisscy's camera.

'Go back to the road, Alison,' said Cooper. 'Please.'

Finally, Morrissey turned and walked away from him, with one
backward glance. Cooper and Nash then scrambled down the slope
together.


Hen Cooper took a deep lungful of air as he tried to calm himself.
It was totally different from the air in the Lukasz bungalow
or at Walter Rowland's house, or even at George Malkin's.
This was clean and pure, straight off the top of the hill. It
had even seemed a shame to walk through the virgin snow


o	o


317



this morning. A single set of tracks was one thing they
were like a statement, emphasizing the untouched purity all
around. But when several pairs of feet had trampled backwards
and forwards and pressed the snow into slush, stained with dirt
from their hoots, it made the rest of the landscape look tarnished
and seedy.

'So, these poppies,' said Caudwell. 'Who leaves them here?'
'I don't know,' said Cooper. 'Perhaps members of exservicemen's
organizations who think the crew should be

o

remembered. Or perhaps the local air cadets do it.'

'You think they come up here on Remembrance Day every
year?'

'It's possible.'

'So what about this one?'

Cooper walked over to where she was standing. There was a
single poppy on a wooden cross, tucked under the edge of the
undercarriage. It was gradually emerging from a patch of thawing
snow, and it was bright red, like a splash of arterial blood from a
fresh wound.

'I think your officer was right. This doesn't look as though it's

V	O O

been here tor two months.'

'There's been too much rain,' said Cooper. 'The colour would
have been washed out of it, same as the others.'

'What was the date of the crash again?'

'January 7th, 1945.'

'The seventh was a week ago,' said Caudwell. 'The day Nick
Easton was killed.'

'So?'

Caudwell gave him an exasperated look. 'Men don't know this,'
she said. 'But anniversaries are very important to some people.
Anniversaries of births, anniversaries of deaths. The day you first
met the person you fell in love with. You know, dates that you
never forget.'

'Yes, I do know,' said Cooper, thinking of the yearly visit
with Matt to his father's gjave, which would be an annual ritual
until they became too old or infirm to make it to the cemetery.
'Relatives of one of the crew, then?'

Caudwell swapped her gloves for a pair of latex ones from a


318



packet in her coat. 'Somebody who felt they had to leave the cross
on the right day, whatever the weather.

Cooper turned and looked down across the expanse of snowcovered
moor to a spot which even now stood out from the rest
of the area. It looked hare and hrown, churned up by the hoots of
the men who had stood round a frozen body and made poor jokes
about ice axes and thermometers.

To Cooper's surprise, Sergeant Caudwell spoke exactly what
was in his thoughts.

'Marie Tennent,' she said.

Cooper stared at her. 'How do you know about Marie?'

'A combination of local know ledge, elementary detective work
and inter-agency co-operation. I've read the Hie. We need to take
the poppy.'

Liz Pcttv came over and took photographs of the poppy in
position on its cross. Then she carefully eased the cross out of the
ground. Cooper could see there was an inscription on the wood,
written in white, as if it had been done in correction fluid.

'We found Marie Tennent's bodv a few hundred vards from
here,' he said. 'She'd been there for davs, in the snow. She's a
presumed suicide. I don't think we've even had the postmortem
results vet.'

'Don't tell me -- you're short-staffed in the pathology department?'

Caudwell was peering at the wooden cross that Liz had placed in
an evidence bag. 'What does the inscription say?' asked Cooper.

'It savs: "Sergeant Dick Abbott 24th August 1926 to 7th

V	O O

lanuarv 1945."'

-*	V

'Abbott? He was the rear gunner. Tail-end Charlie.'
'It says something else,' said Caudwell. 'I don't know what this
bit means . . .'

Cooper waited, thinking of Dick Abbott. The newspaper
reports had said the rear gunner's body was severely mutilated.
According to Walter Rowland, the rescue team had spent hours
on the moor picking up the pieces of human bodies. The only
consolation in Sergeant Abbott's case was that he might never
have known what happened to him. Prom his rear turret, he
would not have seen Irontongue Hill at all. There might have


319



been a second when he heard terrified voices on the intercom,
then he would have felt the impact as Sugar Uncle Victor collided
with the gritstone buttress and flipped over to shatter his turret
on the rocks.

'Is it Latin? It might be the squadron motto or something,' said
Cooper.

'Oh, no/ said Caudwcll. 'I can read the words. I just don't
know what they mean. It says: "Justice at last.*"


The manager of the Wise Buys shop in Clappcrgatc remembered
Marie Tennent perfectly well.


'She was a good girl. Hard working. Brighter than most of the
others,' she told Dianc Fry. 'I was sorry to lose her when she went.
But the best of the young ones never stay long.'

Fry looked round the shop. Judging from the window displays,
the main attraction of the stock was its price. The racks were
Hlled with warm coats and colourful sweaters, trouser suits and
matching scarf and hat sets. Spring fashions hadn't arrived yet.

'Did Marie tell you why she was leaving the job?' she asked.

'No. She just said she wanted to do something different. They
get fed up after a while, you see. Dealing with the public isn't
always easy.'

'I know,' said Fry.

'Oh, I expect you do.'

'But Marie didn't have another job to go to, as far as we
know.'

'No, I didn't think she did. Personally, I thought there was
probably a man. I expected to hear she was getting married
before long.'

o

'Did she mention a particular man?'

'Not as such. Some girls talk about their boyfriends all the time,
but Marie wasn't that type. She was more private. But I always
wondered . . .'

'Yes?'

'Well, was there a baby, do you know?'

'Did she hint at that?'

'Not really. But there arc little signs, aren't there? She became
more absorbed in herself, as it she had other things to think about


320



than joining in with the usual chat. She started to look a bit
different, too. Being pregnant suits some, hut Marie looked ill.
Not anything you could really put your finger on -- she was
paler, more tired sometimes. She held herself differently. I've
seen it before.'

'But you never asked her?' said Fry.

'It's not my place. She obviously didn't want to tell me, so I
didn't pry.'

Fry watched a woman poke through a rack of dresses, nnd
nothing that interested her and walk out of the shop.

'Did Marie ever mention her family?'

'Oh, yes, her mother in Scotland. She talked about her quite a
lot. And she had a younger brother, I think.'

'Anybody else? Anybody in this area?'

The manager hesitated. 'Funny you should say that. Marie

o	v v y

always said she was from Scotland. 1 mean, she spoke with a
Scottish accent and everything, and that's where her mum lived.
But I always thought she had some connection with Derbyshire.
She talked sometimes as if she knew a bit about the history of
this area.'

Fry turned to look at her. 'Anything in particular?'

'It's hard to remember. But I think it was something to do with
the war.'

'Could it have been the RAF? A crashed Second World War
bomber?'

The frown cleared from the manager's face. 'Yes, I believe
you're right. It was a funny thing for a girl like Marie to be
interested in. But she mentioned those aircraft wrecks often.'


There was a crack as a gunshot split the frigid air. Recognizing the
sound without even having to think, Ben Cooper dived to his left,
rolling into the snowdrift behind the undercarriage, scrambling
to take advantage of its cover. He looked around for Caudwell,
but saw that she hadn't moved. She was still standing in the
open, staring back over her shoulder at something beyond the
wreckage.


Then Cooper heard a cackling and a drumming of wings as
a brace of red pheasant panicked and burst up from the moor


321



a hundred yards away. He caught a glimpse of the sunlight
shimmering oil their red hacks like streams of blood in the air
as they heat away towards the reservoir. And Cooper saw PC Nash
laughing as he shoved what looked like a Glock pistol hack into a
holster under his jacket. So Carol Parry had keen right the MDP
considered it nccessarv to he armed.

The natural sounds of the moor hecamc audihle again the
constant muttering of the wind as it nosed through the drifting
snow, the harking of a dog and the clang of a hucket so muffled
and distant that the world seemed to have slipped hchind a
thick curtain.

Caudwell turned hack and watched Cooper picking himself
up and hrushing snow off his shoulders. She met his eye with a
sardonic smile.

'Nash!' she called. 'Behave yourself. You're frightening the
wildlife.'

Cooper sat in the snow for a few moments with his hands on
his knees and watched Caudwell and Nash. He had to control
his temper. He couldn't lose it that was exactly what they
wanted him to do. Prohahlv exactlv what Dianc Fry wanted him
to do, too.

Looking at the ground where he had fallen, Cooper noticed a
glint in the dark peat. Another piece of aluminium? He picked
it up and hrushcd the black fibres from it, revealing a peculiar
whiteness. He puzzled over the material it was made from. It
seemed to he a hroken section of a narrow shaft, surely too hrittle
to have hccn part of the airframe. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed
it, seeking the familiar smell of scorched metal. But instead he
got a scent that reminded him fleetingly of Sunday dinners - a
joint of beef with mashed potatoes and carrots round the dining
table with his parents on a damp November day. He shook his
head to clear the intrusive memory. Perhaps what he held in his
fingers was a fragment from the aircraft's radio apparatus. It was
almost like hakelite, its broken ends grainy and hollow. But it was
white . . .

He flung the object to the ground as if it had suddenly grown hot
and burned his fingers. It lay on the peat, gleaming unmistakably
now. He stared at it in horror. It was bone. Of course, it was


322



more than likely a kit of a dead sheep, part of the carcase of a
casualty from the flock across the hill that had been picked clean
and dropped here by some scavenger. It didn't look as though it
had been out in the weather for very long. But Cooper couldn't
help associating it with what he had just been thinking of; as he
held it in his hand, it had seemed like part of one of the shattered
bodies of the airmen who had died in Uncle Victor.

'Ren -- arc you all right?'

Liz Petty was standing over him looking concerned, puzzled by
his silence.

'Yes. Fine.'

But the truth was that Cooper had felt himself shift through
time for a moment. He had been picturing that young airman,
Sergeant Dick Abbott, hurtling through the torn and splintered
metal edges of the Lancaster's fuselage, his limbs ripping from his
body as the impact hurled him into the darkness, where he would
bleed to death in the snow.
Cooper had once seen a sheep that had been hit by a car on
an unfenced moorland road above the Eden Valley. One of the
animal's forelegs had been smashed so badly that bits of its femur
lay sprinkled on the tarmac like pieces of a jigsaw. This was far
worse than that. Men's bodies had been torn apart here, their
bones had been shattered and their blood had soaked into the peat.
People talked about men who had sacrificed their lives. But this was
more than a sacrifice. He was standing on the site of a massacre.

Everyone had blamed Pilot Officer Danny McTeague for the
crash of Lancaster SU-V, for the death of five men. Cooper
wondered what Marie Tennent, or anyone else, might consider
to be justice for such a crime.


Diane Fry found Eddie Kemp in a more amenable mood. He
looked like a man who was confident there was insufficient
evidence against him. It was the sort of confidence that came
to a man who had been questioned many times before without
being charged, or who had appeared in court and been acquitted.
Also, Fry couldn't detect the smell any more. Maybe the custody
suite staff had scrubbed him up specially.


'Of course, my Vicky knew all about the thing with Marie,' said


323



Kemp. 'Vicky had kicked me out at the time, so she couldn't really
complain about what I did, could she?'

'I suppose not.'

'We sorted it all out, anyway. I went hack to Vicky, and that
was that.'

'When was this?'

'Last July.'

'Ahout six months ago, then. Was the parting amicable?'

Kemp hesitated. 'Marie was a hit upset, and she said some
things she didn't mean. She told me I smelled. But it's a medical
condition I have, so that wasn't fair, was it?'

'And you haven't seen Marie Tennent since then?'

y

'No. There was no reason to.'

'Wasn't the baby a reason?'

Now Kemp looked a little less comfortable. Fry watched him
squirm. 'I didn't know anything about a baby,' he said.

'Are you sure?'

'Sure/

'Marie never contacted you to tell you about it? I would have
thought she would be expecting some maintenance. If you were
living with her until six months ago, we take it you're the father.'

'Is there any proof ?' said Kemp.

Fry stared at him. 'I'm sure you know that we haven't been able
to find the baby.'

'No, well. '. .'

'Did she tell you she'd had a baby previously?'

'No.'

In the absence of any evidence otherwise, Fry changed tack.
'Mr Kemp, why did you break your bail?'

'All I did was go to spend a bit of time with my brother,' he
said. 'Vicky was fed up with me for getting in trouble again. To
be honest, that's why she kicked me out the first time. So I cleared
out for a day or two to let things calm down. I was still in town,
though -- I was staying with our Graham.'

'All right. Now I need to ask you about an assault on a police
officer last night.'

o

Kemp shook his head. 'As for that/ he said, 'you definitely have
no proof.'


324



29


Den Cooper could see Alison Morrissey waiting for him by his
car. He could sec her from a long way off, as soon as the track
levelled out on the last quarter of a mile across the peat moor.
Her yellow coat stood out against his red Toyota like a splash of
mustard.


'Your friend doesn't deter easily, does she? said Jane Caudwcll.
She nudged Cooper and dimpled at him. 'Do you want me to set
Nash on her again?'

o

PC Nash sniggered behind them. Li/, Petty had keen very quiet
since they had set off hack from the crash site.

Cooper was embarrassed. He hoped his flush wasn't noticeable
in the cold. All the way across the moor, he alternately wished
Morrissey would go away, then hoped she wouldn't.

'Funny how she knows which is your car,' said Caudwell.

Cooper turned and glanced at Liz. She glowered at him. It
wasn't any better for her she had to walk with Nash. His stride
was twice the length of hers, but he was holding back deliberately
so that they were shoulder to shoulder on the narrow path.

When they reached the cars, he found Alison Morrissey pale
and shivering with the cold. She had her hands tucked under her

o

armpits and her chin shoved into the collar of her coat to minimize
the amount of exposed skin. Strands of her hair had escaped from
her hat and were hanging in her eyes.

'Are you mad? You'll freeze to death,' said Cooper. 'Where's
your car?'

'I haven't got one. Frank dropped me off.'

He noticed that she mumbled her words because her lips were
so numb. There was hardly any colour to her lips at all.

'That was stupid,' he said. 'When is he coming back (or you?'

'I told him not to. I thought you would give me a lift back to
Edcndale, Ben.'

'I can't do that.'

'Think of it as part of your service to the public, right?'


325



Liz Petty got into her van ant) drove away first, without looking
back. As Caudwe.ll and Nash changed out of their walking boots,
Caudwell said something over the bonnet of their car, and Nash
sniggered again.

'You're determined to get me in trouble, aren't you?' said
Cooper. 'You can see I'm on duty.'

'You re worried what your colleagues will say. But they don't
really care, do they? Not those two.'

It wasn't Caudwell and Nash that Cooper was worried about.
He knew they would take the first opportunity to tell Diane
Frv - if Li/ Petty didn't get there first.

'You're making it difficult for me to help you.'

'Oh, is that what you're trying to do?' said Morrissey.

She was so pale that she looked very vulnerable. But a thought
sneaked into Cooper's mind. He wondered whether her shivering
was a little overdone, for effect. Caudwell and Nash drove past
them. Nash played a little tune on the horn of their car, and
Caudwell waved from the passenger seat, smiling graciously,
like the Queen. They disappeared down the AS7 towards the
Snake Inn.

'They can't see us now,' said Morrissey. Her pale lips parted
slightly, so that he could see her perfect teeth and the tip of her
tongue. He felt her breath on his face and realized he was standing
much too close to her.

'Damn it, Alison,' he said. 'You'd better get in.'

'Thanks, Ben.'

He unlocked the Tovota to let her in and threw his boots and
cagoule in the back. He slammed the tailgate a little too hard, and
she looked at him reproachfully through the back window .

'Is there a heater in here?' she said, as he opened the driver's
door. 'I've lost all the feeling in my legs.'

'Why did you come?' he said. 'Did you know that we'd be up
here this morning?'

'Frank did.'

'How?'

'A lot of people know Frank. I think the pilot phoned him last
night to get the exact location of the crash site.'

'Damnation.'


326



'When he told me this morning. I asked him to bring me.' said

cv	o '

Morrissey. 'I wanted to know what you were doing.'

'I can't tell you that.'

Cooper wasn't sure what he was so angry about. He turned
the heater up full and revved the engine before he pulled out into
the road. He was determined he wasn't going to speak to Alison
on the way back into Edcndale. She was deliberately putting him
in a difficult position. Rut he knew she wouldn't be able to last
all the way into town without asking questions. They drove in
an uneasy silence for a few moments. When Morrissey spoke,
it wasn't the question he had expected.

'Don'tyou Hnd your job frustrating?' she said. 'AH this grubbing
around for evidence. A lot of it must be futile. A waste of time and
effort, I guess.'

Cooper was taken by surprise at how she had thrust straight to
what he had been thinking himself. It made it impossible for him
to refuse to respond.

'Yes, it's very frustrating at times,' he said.

'So why do you carry on with it?'

'Why not?'

'That's no answer, Ben. You're a man who has to have a reason
for doing things. You have to believe that it's the right thing to do.
So why do you carry on?'

Cooper frowned. He had never been able to explain it to
himself, but now the words started to come when someone else
asked him.

'Sometimes, just occasionally, I feel that I've done something
worthwhile,' he said.

'And is that enough? Just occasionally?'

'Oh, yes,' said Cooper.

They passed the Snake Inn, where the staff had neither heard
nor seen any cars on the night that Nick Easton had been killed,
only the snowploughs. They passed the lay-by where the plough
crew had found Easton's body. Rut Cooper wasn't thinking about
Easton, or even Marie Tennent. Alison Morrissey knew exactly
when to keep quiet. It was a skill that would make her useful as
a police interviewer.

'You see,' he said, 'when it happens, when I feel as though I've


327



done something worthwhile, it's like the world suddenly settles

o	' ^

into place and lool» as it ought to do lor once, the way it was
created, before we messed it up and made it cruel and dirty. It's
hard to explain. It's not that anything in particular happens to the
world, of course, not so that you would notice. It's something that
happens to me. But whatever it is, it feels . . . real.'

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her nodding. Still she
said nothing. They were on the long descent into the Derwent
Valley. Glittering ribbons of water stretched ahead and alongside
them as they drove into the long arms of Ladybowcr Reservoir.

'It's a sensation that isn't like anything else I've ever known. I
suppose it's like taking a powerful drug. It gives me a buzz, makes
me feel alive. It's good, for a while.'

She nodded again, and he felt her watching him. He was glad
that she said nothing. He needed another moment to Hnish the
thought, to get the words out that were suddenly jostling among
themselves somewhere in his subconscious, waiting to be let out.

'Butit'slikeany other drug,' he said. 'It does something to your
mind. It leaves you always craving more. It leaves you willing to
do anything, anything at all, to get that feeling again.'

They were soon through Bamford and approaching Edcndale.
Morrissey had left him alone with his thoughts. He was starting
to feel embarrassed again that she was able to get him to say such
things, vet he was glad he had articulated it to himself. It had made

& * V	O

a kind of sense of his own feelings that he had never been able to
grasp before.

'I'll drop you at your hotel,' said Cooper. 'Please don't do
anything like that again.'

'OK,' said Morrissey. 'I'm grateful for the lift.' She sounded
meek now, no longer provocative. 'I wanted the chance to say I'm
sorry for getting annoyed with you yesterday. You're right to be
sceptical about what people tell you. So I apologize.'

'That's all right. I've seen the faxes anyway.'

'Good. There's just one thing I'd like you to do for me, Ben.'

'No,'he said.

'Please/ she said. 'You know these people won't talk to me. I
want you to go and sec Walter Rowland again.'

'Why should I do that?'


328



'There's something that my grandmother told my mother, and
my mother passed on to me. It was one of the allegations that
were thrown at my grandfather at the time. But even Frank Baine

V O

doesn't seem to know anything about it. So I want you to ask
Walter Rowland.

'About what?' said Cooper.

'I want you to ask him what he knows about the missing
money.'


As Ben Cooper tried to warm himself up back at West Street, two
images stayed with him. One was the powerful impression he'd
had of the dead and dying airman. The other was an image of the


y O	O

bright red poppy on its w ooden cross, which remained imprinted
on his memory as if it had been burned there by the electric
brightness of the snow. Sergeant Dick Abbott, 24th August 1926
to 7th January 1945. Who would take the trouble to remember
Dick Abbott?

During that afternoon, Cooper tracked down the old inquest
reports for the five airmen in the county archives at Derby and
had them faxed to him. Of course, the verdicts on Klemens
Wach, Dick Abbott and the other airmen had all been recorded
as accidental deaths. There was some technical evidence given by
an RAF accident investigator, who had referred to the fact that the
Lancaster was well off course and over high ground in low cloud --

o o

that fatal combination. But there was also the suggestion of human
error. Either the navigator had given the pilot the wrong^ course, or
the pilot had ignored his instructions. Nobody could know, except
those who had been involved. The navigator had died in the crash,
and the pilot himself had gone missing.

The RAF's own investigation had placed the blame for the loss
of the aircraft on the pilot. The pilot was always in charge, no
matter what his rank. But no one seemed to have troubled to
ask what the flight engineer might have known about SU-V's last
few minutes. He was best placed to have noticed whether the
navigator had got his calculations wrong, or whether the pilot had
been incapable. But the flight engineer had been Zygmunt Lukasx,
and the navigator had been his cousin Klemens.

The archivist had also sent him a copy of a report from the


329



Accidents Investigation Branch of the Air Ministry. It had been
signed in black fountain pen by someone called C.I. (Accidents),
and it gave the results of a detailed examination of the main

o

parts of the aircraft. No structural cause had been discovered.
The report also covered weather conditions, the pilot's history
and the airframe's history. The documents were useless to him.
They told him nothing about the human lives involved.

But someone had known the background of Sergeant Dick

o	o

Abbott. Alison Morrissey had mentioned finding out that another
member of the crew of Sugar Uncle Victor had a young child, as
well as Danny McTcaguc. That had been Dick Abbott, hadn't it?
So where had Morrissey got her information from?

Cooper dialled a number in Edendale.

'Sergeant Dick Abbott, the rear gunner,' said Prank Baine. 'He
was from Glasgow. He worked in a steel foundry before he joined
up in the RAF.'
'He was married, with a child?'

'That's right, he was. Only two members of the crew of SUV
were fathers Abbott and McTeague. Abbott was very young
himself -- eighteen. Maybe he had to get married because of the
baby, I don't know.'

'Did you manage to trace his family?'

' Abbott's? Well, I went through the squadron historical society.
They tried to contact the wife for me, but it seems she remarried
and emigrated. I never took it any further than that.'

'f see. 1 suppose you know about these people who collect bits
of aircraft wrecks. I've heard them called vultures.'

'Yes, I know all about them. Some folk think it's desecration,
that the WTecks are memorials to the men who died.'

'I imagine relatives must feel strongly about that.'

'Naturally.'

'Alison Morrissey, for a start?'

'Alison? I'm not sure about her,' said Baine.

'What do you mean?'

Baine sighed. 'She always seems to be holding something back.
Do you know what I mean? She's told me the entire story, all about
her mother and her grandfather, Danny McTeague. I've had the
whole thing. Sometimes it seems she's telling me far more than

C"	C*


330



I need to know, and that makes me wonder . . . Well, I have the
impression she docs it so that I won't ask her questions. She doesn't
like questions, though God knows she asks enough herself.'

'Is she paying you?' asked Cooper.

For a moment, Baine hesitated. 'Well, expenses really. Why
do you ask?'

'You seem to be doing a lot for her, to say that she's a complete
stranger and you don't even trust her yourself. Dropping her of!
near Irontongue Hill this morning was a bit stupid. It caused me
a few problems.'

'I'm sorry, but she's very persuasive when there's something
she wants you to do.'

'I know. I've found that, too.'


Diane Fry had entered the office while Cooper was talking to
Baine. He wasn't sure whether she had heard him mention Alison
Morrisscy. But there was something about the way she toyed w ith
her scarf, stretching and twisting it tightly between her hands,
which made him think she had.


She walked up to his desk and lifted the pile of faxes. She held
them in the air and waited for him to finish the call.

'So what's with the faxes?' she said. 'Anything interesting?'

'Oh, nothing important.'

Before he could take them from her, she was reading the top
sheet. 'Who is Kenneth Rees? Should I know the name?'

'No.'


'He's not very attractive, is he? Also, it seems that he lives in

/	' *




Canada.'

Cooper gritted his teeth. 'He's Alison's mother's stepfather.'

'Ben, are you telling me that you're having details of her family
faxed to you at work?'

'It's to do with Pilot Officer Danny McTeague.'

'Is it? Are you sure?'

'I happened to suggest the possibility that he might have got
back to Canada and taken on a new identity.'

'Ah. Even you are sceptical, eh?'

'It s not impossible to change your identity. Deserters did
it often.'


331



'And I suppose you're thinking that this Rccs character is really
McTeague with a new identity, who re-married his wife after a
decent interval of mourning tor his old self. Where on earth did

o

you get that idea from, Ben?'

'He's nothing like McTeague anyway,' said Cooper. 'Kenneth
Rees was a mining engineer from Newcastle. He had red hair, and
was only five foot eight inches tall. You sec, I checked.'

'Don't tell me - you read the idea in a novel. I read a novel
myself once.'

'I didn't think you read novels, Dianc.'

'I was sick at the time. It didn't do anything to cure me.'

'Right. Anyway, it looks as though McTeague never went back
to his wife and baby. But the thing that worries me is that he
kept telling his crew about his family back in Canada, and how
he couldn't wait to get back to them. He wouldn't have deserted
them, no matter what. He would have got in touch with them
somehow and let them know he was alive, at least.'

Fry put down the fax. Cooper was surprised that she was still
listening to him. ft was the first time she had allowed him to talk

o

about McTeague for more than thirty seconds.

'So what then?' she said.

'I'm convinced now that he never made it back to Canada.
Maybe he suffered amnesia in the crash and forgot who he was.
f suppose he could have taken on a new identity here and settled
down in England.'

'Ben, I think the authorities were quite keen on knowing who
people were at that time. They were paranoid about German spies
landing and all that.'

'Right at the end of the war? I'm not so sure. We'd have to

o

ask somebody who was around at the time. But Hitler was beaten
by then. The war had turned. It was Bomber Command and the
American air force who were flattening German cities by then,
not the other way round. The most the Germans could do to
this part of the country was to fire of? a few V2 rockets and hope
they reached Sheffield. And here, in the Peak District . . . well,
I suspect there might have been people in this area who didn't
ask too many questions. Let's face it, they're still like that today.
During the war, they were short of men, short of labour for the


332



farms. A lot of the farmers had to rely on German and Italian
prisoners of war for their workforce. It's possible an airman with a
Canadian accent would have keen accepted on a farm somewhere,
without any questions asked. They were strange times/
He could see Fry was starting to get restless now.

V	OO

'It's all speculation/ she said. 'You could never find out one way
or the other, unless McTeague were to turn up somewhere/

'I suppose not/

'And, Ben? Reading that novel didn't do anything for me. It just
made me feel sicker/

Fry continued to tug at her scarf while Cooper told her about
the visit to the crash site. He was economical with the details, but
knew he had to tell her about Alison Morrisscy's appearance. No
doubt she would hear from Caudwell anyway. But it was the poppy
and the cross she was most interested in.

'What makes you think it might have been Marie Tennent who
placed the cross?' she said.

'January 7th was the anniversary of the crash. We've had
appeals out for anyone who was up on the moor that day and
might have seen Marie. But even the local ranger stayed away
from Irontongue because of the weather. You'd have needed a
pretty good reason to make it right to the top of the hill. But one
person did go, to leave the cross. And one person died on the way
back down -- Marie Tennent. I'm suggesting they might have been

OO	C" v O

one and the same person/

'OK. And she was remembering this dead airman . . /

o

'Sergeant Dick Abbott, the rear gunner. Apart from McTeague, he
was the only member of the crew who had a child at home. Also,
he was Scottish. We need to ask Mrs Tennent whether they were
related. I think Marie could have been like Alison Morrissey -- a
granddaughter of one of the crew. Except, in this case, she knew
exactly what had happened to Dick Abbott/

He expected Fry to mock him. He expected her to say that it was
a question of priorities, that there could be no possibility of sparing
any more resources on a likely suicide or death by misadventure.
But she didn't say any of those things. He knew it was the missing
baby that made the difference for them both.

Normally, a mother who abandoned a baby left it somewhere


333



that it would quickly be found, though she might make great efforts
to remain anonymous. But it Marie Tenncnt had hidden her baby,
she had chosen somewhere it couldn't he found. The remains of the
earlier child were too depressing a precedent. Although DNA tests
on the bones were awaited for confirmation, the circumstantial
evidence was all too clear that they had belonged to Marie's first
child. Surely Baby Chloe, too, must already be dead, succumbed
to a lack of care perhaps, because she had been born to a woman
who had no idea what to do with her.

'I hope something is obvious to you, Ben,' said Fry.

'What's that?'

She stood up. 'You're going to have big problems justifying how
you can spend so much time on this business of Alison Morrissey's.
Think about Sergeant Easton. Think about Marie Tennent and her

o

baby, instead of your Canadian woman. Think about the people
who really neeJ you.'

Cooper flushed. Why did Fry always have to be right? And why
did she always have to speak to him in a way that prevented him
from admitting that she was right?

<3	O

'Whatever I'm doing to help Alison Morrisscy, I m doing it in
my own time,' he said.

Fry smacked a hand on the faxes from Canada. 'Really? With
these on your desk? I'm seriously doubting whether I can trust
you to be out on your own, Ben. If we weren't so short-staffed,
I'd be considering asking to have you replaced with someone I
can trust.'

Cooper stood and began putting on his coat. His hand was
trembling, and he fumbled with the buttons. But he needed to
get out of the office. He didn't want to get into an argument.

o	o o

Fry watched him, her voice quietening. 'Ben, I'm saying this for
your own good. Forget about Alison Morrissey. Tell her to get
lost. Seeing her again won't do you any good at all.'

c?	O v ^ O

'It has nothing to do with you,' said Cooper.


Ben Cooper went out to his car and started the engine. He found
his mind was going round in circles, and he needed to calm down
before he began to drive. He w ould only put his foot down too hard
on the accelerator and break the speed limit on the relief road.



334



He picked up one of the hooks on Peak District aircraft wrecks.
There was a picture of those men in their Hying suits that was as
clear in his mind as if it had been an actual memory. He could have
been thcrr himself, standing with the group of smiling airmen --
perhaps feeling grateful, like them, for the hit of sun that lit their
tired faces, and breathing in the familiar .smell of aviation fuel and
rubber from the aircraft that were lined up behind them on the
edge of the runway.

Cooper could almost feel the wind that must have been blowing
across the exposed Yorkshire airfield. He knew there had been
a wind, because it had lifted Sergeant Dick Abbott's fringe of
dark hair from his forehead. He wanted to reach out and pat
the sergeant's hair back into place, because of the way it made
his face look so young and vulnerable.

Rut that reaction was partly due to the knowledge Cooper had
of what would happen to Sergeant Abbott a few weeks after
the photograph was taken. He could no longer look at the
photograph of the Lancaster crew without also seeing a phantom
image superimposed on it an image of splintered bones and
torn limbs, of charred bodies trapped in twisted metal. He was
seeing the ghosts of dead men, overlaid on the page by historical
hindsight.


Dianc Fry had watched Cooper go, noting the stubborn set of his
shoulders as he buttoned his coat and pulled on his cap before
stamping out of the room. Probably she had been wasting her
breath in speaking to him. He wasn't in a state to be talked sense
to. Rut she had meant what she had said. It was absolutely for his
own good.


Still Fry regretted that she couldn't say to him what she really
wanted to say. She couldn't tell him that she thought he was being

V	O C7

used by Alison Morrissey, that he was going to end up being hurt.
He would never take that from Acr.

In any case, the words would have stuck in her throat. Fry
could imagine the look of embarrassed disbelief on his face, the
first mocking laugh at the idea that she could possibly care.

Fry looked at the Marie Tenncnt Hie sitting on Cooper's desk.
Still waiting for postmortem results. She decided to ring Mrs Van


335



Doon there and then. If no one nagged, they might have to wait
for Jays to get a report.

'Just done it/ said the pathologist. 'Your timing is admirable/

'Preliminary results?'

'Cause of death was hypothermia and exposure. No surprise
there, surely?'

'Any contributory factors? Injuries?'

'Frostbite damage to the extremities - feet, hands, parts of the
face. And this is the bit you probably don't want to hear . . .'

'Go on. I can take it/

'There was bruising and a number of minor abrasions on parts
of the body.'

'Where?'

'Chest and abdomen, including two cracked ribs and some liver
lacerations. Bruising on upper and lower arms. And an extensive
bruise on the temple, near the left ear.'

'Arc these injuries consistent with a fall? Like the Snowman?'

'Oh, your other body? No, I'm afraid not. This is different. The
bruises and abrasions on the arms look like defensive injuries to me.
The blow to the head is quite severe, as arc some of the injuries
to the torso, hence the cracked ribs. I imagine that she must have
been in some considerable pain from her injuries.'

'Not in any condition to hike up Irontongue Hill in the
snow, then?'

'It wouldn't have done her much good at all/ said the pathologist.
'She was already in a weakened condition. As for her general
state of health, you'll have to wait for the results of all the tests.
But I can tell you she was well nourished, though she hadn't eaten
a meal for several hours. No immediate evidence of disease.
Parturition within the last two months. Probably not the first.
No surprises there either, eh?'

'Not really.

'I've seen the newspaper reports. Arc you still looking for
the baby?'

'Yes/

'Tragic. Another failure of the medical profession, I suppose. I
sec all their mistakes here, you know.'

'We're not jumping to any conclusions/ said Fry cautiously.


336



'No. I'm sorry. It's been a long day. A long week.'

'	J o - o

'Oh, tell me about it.'
'Is there anything else you want to know?'
'Yes, what about a time scale? When were the injuries caused?
How long before her death?'

o

'Right. Judging by the progress of the bruising, I would estimate
the injuries were inflicted at least thirty-six hours prior to death --
long enough to have become pretty painful. In fact, there was
some fresh internal bleeding, which I imagine was the result

o*	o

of putting too much stress on the liver and chest injuries. She
would have been in quite some pain at that stage.'

'She would have sat down to recover,' said Fry. 'Maybe even
passed out from the pain?'

'Possibly.' The pathologist paused. 'Of course, I'm estimating
the time of death, too. This person didn't die quickly, you know.
In fact, she would have taken a long time to die.'

Fry didn't want to think about that too closely. She had one
more thing to ask Mrs Van Doon.

'Could the injuries have been self-inflicted?'

'No way.'

v

Next, Fry rang Mrs Lorna Tennent, who had gone back to
Falkirk. Mrs Tennent was surprised at the question.

'Yes, of course,' she said. 'Dick Abbott was my first husband's
father. We used to come down to Derbyshire to leave a poppy
regularly every year when Marie was younger, but we stopped
when I got divorced. I had no idea Marie still felt she had to keep
it up. No idea.'

Fry put down the phone. She wanted to tell Cooper the
news immediately, but she didn't know where he had gone.
Probably he was off seeing Alison Morrisscy again, purely out
of bloody-mindcdness. He was going to have to wait, then. There
was no way Fry was going to interfere with his social life. At the
moment, Ben Cooper was thinking only of himself.


337



30


lonight, the Gospel Hall was in use. Through a side window,
Ben Cooper glimpsed members of the congregation sitting on
wooden chairs on a quarry-tiled floor. The sound of an electric
organ reached him, and then voices singing a hymn.


On his first visit to Walter Rowland, Cooper hadn't recognized
the other church, the one on the corner of Harrington
Street. Now he saw that it was Our Lady of Czestochowa, the
church attended by the Lukasz familv and other members of the
Polish community. It was distinguished by the representation of
the Black Madonna over the door. And there was the little school
alongside it, too the Saturday school where Richard and Alice
Lukasz studied for their Polish O-lcvcls. Halfway down the street
from here was the Dom Kombatanta, the club of the SPK, the
Polish ex-servicemen's organization.

Cooper knocked on Rowland's door, but found it off the
latch. He pushed it open a few inches.

'Mr Rowland?'

A tired voice answered him. A voice drowning in pain, barely
managing to stay above the surface of despair.

'Aye. Through here.'

Walter Rowland was in his front room, and at least he had
some heating in his house. The old man would long since have
been dead if he had lived in Hollow Shaw.

Rowland was sitting in a curious position. He had his hands
resting on the table in front of him, palms upward, as if he were
expecting coins to drop from the ceiling and it was important
that he should catch them. Cooper was reminded of a yogi sitting
in a lotus position, with his hands held on his knees. What was
it a yogi expected to receive when he meditated like that? Some
kind of inner peace? But inner peace surely wasn't what this
old man was expecting. Rowland's hands weren't relaxed at
all; his lingers were curled in towards the palms like claws,
and their flesh was dry and shrivelled, so that the joints of the


338



fingers stood out in bony ridges. Those hands spoke so clearly
of calmly accepted suffering and pain that Cooper revised his
religious image from the meditating yogi. All that was missing
from these hands were the nails pinning them to the wood.

I	O

Rowland noticed Cooper looking at his hands. 'It's not so
good today/ he said, apologetically. He looked pale, and his
eyes had sunk further into their sockets. 'If you want a cup of
tea, you'll have to put the kettle on yourself.'

'Have you got anybody to help you?' asked Cooper, as he
walked through into the kitchen.

'How do you mean?'

'If you're ill and can't look after yourself, you surely have

v	y ' v v

some kind of home help, don't you?'

Rowland said nothing. Cooper plugged in the electric kettle
and (bund two mugs with pictures of the Houses of Parliament
on them. He noticed that there was a dent a couple of inches wide
in the back door, and the wood was crushed. He wondered if the
old man had fallen while trying to do some job in the kitchen.

Cooper glanced through into the front room. Rowland was
staring at his hands. His Angers were as brown and as knotted
as the pine table they lay on.

'Have you tried Social Services? Or talked to your GP?' said
Cooper.

The old man shook his head.

'They could send you a home help,' said Cooper. 'At your
age, you must qualify. It would make things easier for you. I
mean, how do you manage to cook yourself a meal?'

Rowland just smiled. 'You'll find some tea in the top
cupboard,' he said.

While he was finding the tea, Cooper looked through the
kitchen cupboards, trying to slide the doors open as quietly
as he could. There were plenty of tins of all descriptions
steak puddings and hot dogs, new potatoes and mushy peas,
peaches and pineapple chunks. He wondered if Rowland were
capable of operating a tin opener. A small fridge stood in the
corner, and he could hear its coolant gurgling in the pipes at
the back. He found some milk in it and checked the use-by
date on the plastic bottle, remembering the sour taste of the


339



tea at George Malkin's house. That taste had stayed with him
fur Jays afterwards. But Rowland's milk was OK for a day or
so yet. Could that mean somebody did a bit of shopping for
the old man occasionally? That was something, at least. Cooper
wondered how he could ask Rowland the question, and whether
he would get an answer.

He carried the two mugs of tea back through from the
kitchen.

'What are the neighbours like? Will they fetch some shopping
for you?'

Rowland didn't answer. He looked at his mug on the table.
Cooper knew he was being told as clearly as he could be that
it was none of his business.

'Don't worry about me,' said Rowland. 'I've got a routine
to my day. Ivc got the telly, there. And when there s no more
sex and violence on, I know it's time to go to bed.'

Cooper sat down opposite him. The television muttered in the
corner, and he didn't bother asking Rowland to switch it off.

'We were talking about the Lancaster crash the other day,'
he said. 'Do you remember?'

'Of course I remember. Sugar Uncle Victor. There aren't all
that many things happen around here that 1 wouldn't remember.'

'You said then that Pilot Officer McTeague was different from
airmen who were sometimes in shock after a crash.'

'Yes, I did.'

'I want to ask you again why McTeague was different.'

Rowland breathed slowly for a while. But Cooper could sec
he had less resistance today.

'I smelled him,' said Rowland.

'What?'

'When we realized there was at least one crew member
missing, we looked in the wreckage as best we could. Some
of it was on fire, and our sergeant shouted at us to stay away.
But we couldn't have left someone in the burning plane, could
we? I went to look in the cockpit. It had broken away from the
fuselage, so the flames hadn't reached it. And when I stuck my
head in there -- well, I could smell the whisky. The fumes fair
knocked me out.'


340



'Do you mean Pilot Officer McTeaguc was drunk?'

'By the stink of the cockpit, he must have been pissed as a
snake. Other folks might have taken what he did for shock, like
you say. But I've never doubted that he was drunk when he Hew
that plane into Irontongue Hill.'

'If he was, his crew would have known.'

'No doubt. But only Zygmunt Lukasz survived, didn't he?
And he never said anything.'

'Not officially, anyway.'

'No.'

'Do you ever meet any of the Polish community in Edcndale?'

'Community?' said Rowland, confused by the use of the
word.

'They have their own church up the road,' said Cooper. 'And
an ex-servicemen's club, where Zygmunt Lukasz is a member.
They even have a school.'

'So they do,' said Rowland, faintly surprised. 'But I've never
thought much about it really. They keep up their own way of
life, do they, then? I'm not surprised -- like I said, they have
their own beliefs, and they stick to them.'

Rowland watched Cooper quizzically, until he began to fidget
uneasily.

'I can't blame them for that,' said the old man. 'If I had to
live in Poland for some reason, it wouldn't make me Polish,
would it? No, I reckon I'd still be a Derbyshire lad until the
end of my days.'

Rowland closed his eyes momentarily. A voice continued to
mumble from the TV. It was a different voice now - a woman
with a Scottish accent. Soothing and reassuring.

'Maybe I was wrong about McTeaguc,' said Rowland. 'But I
can only remember what I saw and heard.'

'But you didn't see Pilot Officer McTeaguc, did you? You
didn't hear him or smell him, either.'

'He'd already legged it by the time we got there.'

'Exactly.'

'I always thought they would find him sleeping it off,' said
Rowland. 'I had half a mind to try to find him myself and knock
the living daylights out of him. But I don't think anybody else


341



even noticed. The fire got to the cockpit, and that was that.
Nobody said a word.'

'Mr Rowland, why didn't you say anything ahout this at
the time?'

'What makes you think I didn't?'

'Because it isn't mentioned in the inquest report. It isn't
mentioned in the accident report, either.'

'Always believe everything you read in official reports, do
you?'

'Well . . .'

'I can't imagine you do. You probably write enough of them
yourself to know the drill. Some things you put in, some you
leave out. Now, don't you?'

'I suppose so.'

"I told the officers about it, but they left it out of the reports.
1 was only a young RAF squaddie. I did what I was told. We
didn't question things in those days.'

'There's one more thing 1 want to ask you about,' said
Cooper. 'The money.'

'Ah,' said Rowland. 'The money.'

'There isn't any money mentioned in the accident reports.'

'No, there wouldn't be.'

'As far as I understand it, Lancaster SU-V was on a routine
flight from its base at Leadenhall to RAF Benson in Lancashire.
The aircraft had recently been through major repairs, including
the replacement of an engine. Its crew were taking it on a test
flight before it returned to normal operations.'

'Yes,' said Rowland. 'But when they set off on that routine
flight, they were also asked to take the weekly wages to RAF
Benson and three other RAF stations in Lancashire. It was safer
than sending airmen armed with pickaxe handles to collect it
from local banks and some of those bases were in places
where the nearest bank was a long way off.'

'I sec. But the money never arrived. Because on the way
there, the Lancaster crashed on Irontongue Hill.'

'And some bugger disappeared with the loot,' said Rowland.
For a few seconds, there was a faint spark in his eyes. 'It was
funny really. The RAF were going daft about it, but they daren't


342



say anything publicly. Well, they didn't want crowds of Folk
wandering about on the mountain looking lor the money. It

c?	o .

was second nature with them anyway, to keep information to
themselves. It was second nature to us all at that time. We
never said anything, though some of us looked tor the money
ourselves when their hacks were turned, I expect. There'd be
one or two hoping to come across a few pound notes blowing
about the moor/

'It was never found?'

'Never. A couple of officers came out to the site. They
got angry with us, but of course the rescue teams were more

O	O V *

bothered about the human casualties. Some of us had been up
there for hours and hours in the freezing cold, trying to piece the
injured blokes together and get them off the mountain. We were
in no mood to be harangued by some RAF brass with their posh

O	v 1

accents and their Clark Gable moustaches. There were angrv

O y

words, by all accounts. Some said that blows \\erc struck, but
no charges were ever brought, civil or military.'

'What happened in the end?'

'Two members of the Home Guard were suspected.'

'What? Dad's Army?'

'They were given the job of guarding the wreckage overnight.
They were the only people who had the chance of removing the
money, so the theory went.'

'This wasn't in the crash report.'

'Of course not. It was nothing to do with the crash. Do you
think the RAF went round telling everybody there had been
thousands of pounds in cash on board the plane?'

'Who were the two Home Guard men?'

'I can tell you their names if you want, but remember that
they were men who were already too old for active service.
They're long dead. Of course, the police ought to have been
looking for somebody who suddenly got rich about that time.
That amount of money would be like finding King Solomon's
Mine for some poor bloody farmworker. They could hardly have
spent it without anybody noticing. Not in wartime think of
rationing, for a start. But it was the two Home Guard blokes
who took the blame. Walker and Sykes, they were called. They


343



were questioned for days, but they were never charged. Without
the money, they couldn't prove anything/

'Did you know these men?' asked Cooper.

'Oh, aye,' said Rowland. 'Walker and Sykcs were with the
West Edendale company. One of them was the water hoard
man that used to look after Blackhrook Reservoir. But his mate,
now, he made a living working in the kitchens at the Snake Inn,
as I recall. He didn't look quite English, you know. Too dark
of complexion. He was one of those who always came under
suspicion during the war. If you didn't fit in before the war,
then you turned into a Naxi spy once it started. Aye, you were
either one of us, or you were one of the enemy. That would he
why he joined the Home Guard, I reckon -- to show the local
folk which side he was on.'

'But then, when the money went missing . . . ?'

'He was the obvious one to blame. When they found out he
was on guard, everyone was convinced it was him that took the
money. Nobody thought too much about how he did it -- they
just knew it was Aim.'

Cooper frowned. 'But, Mr Rowland, if it wasn't the Home

Guard men who took the monev, then who was it?'

v'

'I don't know the answers to these questions,' said Rowland.
'Why arc you asking me?'

Cooper knew he should stop now. But he was sure that Walter
Rowland knew more. He felt he almost had the one fact that
would be the key to everything.

'Somebody local? Can you tell me who?'
Tve no idea,' said Rowland. 'It doesn't matter.'
There was a fatalism in the old man's voice that hadn't been
there before. Though he was trying to answer the questions,
it was difficult for him to rouse the interest. He was several
inches nearer to the brink of despair. Cooper knew there was
something wrong, and it was more, even, than the pain in the
old man's joints.

'Just a minute,' he said. 'Sit there and don't move.'
He went back into the kitchen and looked at the back door.
The lock was missing completely - there was only a round
hole where the barrel should have passed through, and there


344



was bare wood that had been recently exposed. He eased open
the door by its outer edge and found he was looking into a small
lean-to extension built on to the back of the house. There was
a workbench, surrounded by wood shavings on the floor. But
there were no tools -- the racks above the bench were empty.
There were marks on the bench where a lathe might have been
clamped, but there was no lathe. The door that led outside
had been forced, and fresh splinters of wood stuck out of it
at dangerous angles.

'You've had a break-in,' said Cooper. 'They've ransacked
your workshop.'

'Yes,' said Rowland.

'Have you reported it?'

'To the police? There didn't seem much point.'

'Why not?'

'Your lot would do sod-all. There's other folk that get more

o

done about things around here. So 1 told them.'

Cooper stared at the old man. 'Who are you talking about,

Mr Rowland?'

'Local folk, that don't like burglars and drug dealers. Folk

'	o o

that are prepared to do something about it.'

'You mean vigilantes?'

Rowland said nothing, avoiding his eye, and Cooper knew he
would get nothing more out of the old man. But he was thinking
of two youths who had ended up in hospital, and of a piece of
CCTV Him that would identify Eddie Kemp.

'I'll get somebody to come out to take the details of the
incident and get some fingerprints,' he said. 'If you can make
a list of what's been taken, we 11 get people to look out tor your
property.'

Rowland lowered his head. He hardly seemed interested. He
was still looking at his mug of tea, his twisted hands held in
front of him as he watched the steam rise and vanish. With a
shock, Cooper realized that the old man was probably unable to
pick up the mug. He remembered that Rowland hadn't actually
asked for the tea, just told him to ^et one (or himself.

Cooper flushed with embarrassment. Now he didn't know
what to do. There was no way he could help Walter Rowland,


345



no way that he could offer to lilt the mug to his lips to help
him drink. The old man would never accept that sort of help
from a stranger. Not from anyone, maybe. The only option was
to leave him to it, to save Rowland the humiliation of having
to sit there while the tea went cold, and to pretend that he
didn't want it.

Helplessly, Cooper looked out of the window at the net
curtains in the porch of the house next door. If he went to
knock on the neighbours' door when he left, Rowland would
see him. On the other side was the Gospel Hall, where the
singing had stopped now. Cooper recalled hearing the sound of
cars starting, and doors slamming. He could even imagine he had
heard the noise of a key turning firmly in the lock of the big oak
door before the hall fell into silence. He didn't know where else
to look for help. His training had never prepared him for this.


Of course, where large amounts of money \\cre involved, anything
could happen. It could bring out the worst in everybody,
whether it was wartime or not. Sitting in his car in Undcrbank,
Ben Cooper considered the people he had talked to. Had any
of them suddenly become rich in the past? Walter Row land or
George Malkin? It didn't seem likclv. And if Dannv McTeague


O	V V O

himself had walked off with the money from Lancaster SUV,
there was no way of finding out. That left only one man alive

v	CS V

who had been there at the time.

He looked at his watch. He might just be in time. The
Lukasxcs should be at West Street to make their statements
right now.


Diane Fry watched Grace Lukasz rub the palms of her hands on
the arms of her whcelchair, leaving noticeable sweat stains. On
her own, the woman was nervous.


'Mrs Lukasz,' said Fry, 'where did your son Andrew get the
cigarette case that upset your father-in-law so much?'

'I don't know. Andrew wouldn't tell us. In fact, he was
very secretive about it. You know, I'm not sure now what he

V	'

wanted when he came. I thought he wanted to be reconciled,
but something went wrong, and I don't know why he argued


346



with Zygmunt. Since he's lived in London, Andrew has become
like a stranger to us.'

'Did you have any idea who Nick Easton was, the man who
came to your home on Monday?'

'Not reallv,' said Mrs Lukasz.

'Not really? What docs that mean?'

'It means 1 only suspected. Nobody had told me anything, but
I can put two and two together when it comes to my family. 1
thought he must either be a policeman or something worse.'

'Worse?' Fry looked at Murrin and almost smiled. 'Is there
something worse?'

'Yes,' said Mrs Lukasz. 'I think there arc people who would
want to do Andrew harm.'

'Why?'

y

'I've been worried about Andrew for a long time. You know
we didn't see him for nearly have years after he left to go to
London?'

'There was some question of discord over his wedding.'
'Yes, but it was more than that. He was always evasive about

'	y

the details of his life and what he did. Nobody else would have
noticed, perhaps. Peter didn't notice it. Rut I'm Andrew's
mother I didn t need to work it out logically. I started to
feel sure that he'd become involved in something dangerous.

o	o

Peter said I was talking nonsense.' Grace Lukasz toyed with the
spokes of her wheels, while her eyes followed Fry's pen as she
made notes. 'Then Andrew turned up in Edendale a few days
alter New Year, and he was still evasive - evasive about why
he had come. He said he had business in the area, and I believed
him. But I was worried what sort of business it might be.'

'Do you think it was something to do with the cigarette case?'
asked Frv.

^

'Yes. It was what he argued with Zygmunt about that Sunday.
I've never heard either of them so angry. I was glad that Peter
wasn't there. Andrew said something about loyalty, and that
\vas when Zygmunt really got angry. I thought he was going
to have a heart attack. He shouted in Polish, and it was after
that Andrew walked out.'

'Do you know why your father-in-law was so angry?'


347



Grace Lukas/c nodded. 'You have to understand, this is oplatek
time, the time for forgiveness and reconciliation. It means a lot
to Zygmunt. We all know it will be his last oplatek, and he needs

to leave everything straight.'

' i '
I see.

"I don't think you do,' said Grace. She wiped her hands on
a tissue and crumpled it into a tight ball. 'In spite of oplatek, I
think Zygmunt found he couldn't forgive. I think he realized it
wasn't in his heart to forgive Andrew and that was what made

o

him so angry. I was frightened what Andrew meant to do when

o J	O

he left. He's in trouble, isn't he? I just know he's mixed up with
the wrong people.'


Ben Cooper found Peter Lukas/ waiting for his wiic to come
out from making her statement. He looked grey and worried,
but there was an air of resignation about him, too. He looked
as if he knew what Grace would be saying in her statement, and
there was nothing he could do about it.


'Mr Lukasz, could you answer a question for me?' said
Cooper.

'What is it?'

I wonder if you could tell me when the Dom Kombatanta
was built?'

Lukasz's mouth fell open a little. It wasn't what he had
expected. 'Well, the original building was put up a few years
after the war, when a Polish community first began to develop
in Edcndale.'

'So where did the money come from to build it?'

'The money?'

'It must have cost quite a few thousand pounds. Where did
it come from?'

'Donations,' said Lukasz. 'Donations from the Polish community.
Everybody put in a share, I suppose.'

'Some more than others, perhaps.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'I'm wondering whether there was a particular benefactor,
someone who was able to put a large amount of money in. It
could make all the difference.'


348



'You'd have to ask Stcfan Janicki. He's the treasurer. He
might still have the records.'

'I will.'

'What does it matter, anyway? There have been lots of Poles
who have made a success in business. Why shouldn't they put
monev into something that benefits their community?'

y	o V

'No reason at all, I expect.'

'My cousin Tadeusz Kulczyck has contributed quite a lot for
the recent improvements,' said Lukasz. 'He paid for the new
stage and the toilet block.'

'Is he here in Edcndalc?'

'He doesn't live locally, but he visits us when he can. Tadeusz
is an architect,' said Lukasz. 'He designed the Dom Kombatanta
in Ottawa.'
'As in Ottawa, Canada?'

'Of course.'

'Your cousin Tadeusz is Canadian?'

'And why not? There are plenty of Poles in Canada.'

Cooper thought he was telling the truth. There were probably
Polish communities everywhere, with long and indestructible
roots, like bindweed. He remembered the old men with their
closed faces, still oozing loyalty and determination. Hitler had
mocked these people, calling them Sikorski's Tourists. But
Walter Rowland said he preferred to have them on his side.
Cooper wondered how he could get the Poles on Au side, too.
Gut, of course, Hitler had taught him that lesson already -- what
they needed was a common enemy.

'I have one more thing to ask of you,' said Cooper. 'This is
more in the way of a favour.'

'Really?'

'Did your father ever mention a man called Walter Rowland?
He was a member of the RAF rescue team who attended the
Lancaster crash.'

'I think 1 know who you mean.'

v

'As it happens, he lives near to your church.'
'Yes? And what's this favour?'

"I wondered if you would visit him,' said Cooper. 'I just . . .
well, I wondered if you would visit him.'


349



Lukasx, kept a pu/./.lcd silence. Cooper thought he must have
put the request badly. In fact, he hadn't really explained anything
about Walter Rowland at all.

'He has no family,' said Cooper. 'But his history has links
to your father's. Why not think of him as part of your
community?'

Finally, Fry held open the door for Mrs Lukasx to leave. She
and her husband didn't look at each other as he fell in behind
her and steered her wheelchair down the ramp and out of the
police station.


The Old School Nursing Home looked to Ben Cooper like a
little haven of calm and security tonight. Its paths and drives
had all been swept clear of snow, and sand had been sprinkled
to avoid anyone slipping on the block paving. Nobody had
bothered to do that at West Street yet. Also, there were lights
on everywhere, and when he went inside, the rooms were warm
and welcoming.


Cooper sat in the waiting room, aware that the staff always
liked to have a few minutes to make sure his mother was ready to
see him. Or rather, that she was ready for him to see. It made him
smile a little to think that they were trying to protect him from
the ugly realities of her condition, when he had already spent
over a year dealing with its consequences at Bridge End Farm.

One of the care supervisors saw Cooper waiting and came to
speak to him. The name on her badge was Rachel, and Cooper
had met her several times.

'Isabel has had a good day again today,' she said.

'Thank you. I think she's settled here.'

'Oh, yes, it's much better tor her. She has complete care,
and her medication is monitored constantly. There's no need to
feel guilty.'

Cooper raised his eyebrows. 'What makes you think I do?'

'It's normal for family members to feel like that. It takes a
while to be reassured that you've done the right thing. But
you'll sec that Isabel is quite content. She's starting to make
some friends now.'

'I'd still like to keep coming every day, if that's all right.'


350



Rachel smiled. She wasn't very old, twenty-five or twenty-six.
He couldn't understand what made a woman like this want to
look after other people's elderly relatives.

'Of course, it's fine,' she said. 'Come as often as you like.'

Then Cooper saw a familiar figure walking along the corridor
on the way out. For a moment, he couldn't identify who it was.
It was one of those moments when he saw somebody he knew but
his mind failed to name them, because he was seeing them out of
context. Maybe this man was dressed differently, too, from when
he had last seen him. Cooper's brain floundered (or a moment.
Then the front door opened and a draught of icy air blew into
the waiting room. It was the chill that prompted his memory.

'That was George Malkin,' he said.

'Oh, do you know Mr Malkin?' said Rachel. 'His wife is one
of our residents, too. She's been here lor some time now.'

'Yes, it must have been a while.'

'Sorry?'

'I was just thinking. I've been to his house recently. It doesn't
show many signs of a woman's touch, you might saw.'

v	C) ' , O v

'Poor chap. Some men are completely lost when it comes to
living on their own. aren't they?'

O	* v

'So I believe,' said Cooper.

'Florence Malkin has dementia. She recognizes her husband
sometimes. Rut, funnily enough, those are the worst davs.
Florence has a bit of an obsession. She's convinced that George
is going to pay for her to get private treatment. She says he's
got the money to do it, and he's going to send her away to get
her cured. Some days it's a top doctor in Harley Street, other
days a famous specialist in America. She asks him about it every
time he comes, when she remembers. She asks him over and
over again, and he doesn't know how to answer her. Well,
however she thinks he s going to afford that, I don't know.
It's obvious neither of them ever had more than two pennies
to rub together.'
Rachel sighed. 'You can see he's absolutely devoted to her. I
don't know how he's managing to pay for her care here without
selling his house. Rut it won't be for much longer. Poor man.'

'Yes,' said Cooper. 'Poor man.'


351



31


Ken Cooper rang Diane Fry's mobile. He had never known
what she did with herself in the evenings when she went oft
duty, except that she sometimes drove into Sheffield. Fry had
told him once that she had been trying to trace her sister, but
she hadn't mentioned it to him for months. She was much too
secret and solitary a person for her own good.


'Ben? Funny you should call. I've got some news.'

'Yes?'

'You were right about Marie Tennent. She was Sergeant
Abbott's granddaughter. Strange, isn't it? Two granddaughters

o	o o ' o o

of the Lancaster's crew appearing at the same time. One dead
and one very much alive.'

'It was the anniversary of the crash,' said Cooper. 'Anniversaries
are important. They both felt they had to remember it.'

'That doesn't explain why one of them was dead.'

'No.'

'Ben, we've also had the preliminary results of the postmortem.'

'On Marie Tcnncnt?'

'Yes.'

'It's bad news, isn't it, Diane?'

'I'm afraid so. She suffered from more than just frostbite.
She'd been badly beaten. She had bruises to her face and the
upper part of her body, consistent with being struck by a fist
several times. It looks as though she had been in a violent struggle
not long before she died.'

'Damn.' The news made Cooper feel sick. Despite all the
work on the Snowman enquiry, and all the time that he had spent
on Danny McTeague and the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor, it had
been Marie Tennent he had woken thinking about each morning.

o	o

She had been there at the back of his mind - a sad, cold bundle
lying on the hillside, waiting for somebody to explain what had
happened to her.

'We've been neglecting her, Diane,' said Cooper. 'We


352



have to find out where she had been, who she'd been sec-

ing.'

'We'll interview Eddie Kcmp again tomorrow,' said Fry. 'But
if he moved back in with his wife six months ago, the chances
are there's been another boyfriend since then.'

'One who might not have been happy about the baby.'

'Exactly/

'There's his brother, too,' said Cooper. 'Graham, isn't it?
The guy at the aircraft museum mentioned him.'

'Yes, you're right. Graham Kcmp was one of the people
interviewed over the double assault. We have no evidence
against him, though the CCTV Aim could help get an ID. The
meeting with the MDP has been scheduled for tomorrow.'

o

'Hopefully Sergeant Caudwcll might explain why she was
interested in Marie Tennent and Sugar Uncle Victor.'

o

He heard Fry make a noise between a dismissive grunt
and a resigned sigh. 'We're promised they're going to share
intelligence,' she said. 'It's madness to keep details of this enquiry
from us. They're making us work in the dark.'

'It would help to have a little more information of your own
before that, wouldn't it?' said Cooper.

Fry was silent for a moment. 'What do you mean, Ben?'

'If you could have some evidence against the vultures.'

'('u/turg^?'

'It's what Zygmunt Lukasz calls them -- the people who take
things from the aircraft wrecks. Where are you, Diane?'

'Still at West Street.'

'More overtime? I think we could get some evidence. I think
between us we could do it.'

'What? Ben, arc you asking for my help?'

'A different approach might work. I thought we could tackle
George Malkin again.'

'On what pretext?'

'There's the money.'

'What money?'

'The wages for three RAF bases were being carried on

o	o

Lancaster SU-V the nig^ht it crashed. The money went missing
and was never found. I suspect that Malkin once had at least a


353



share in the money from the crashed Lancaster. Maybe his father
was involved with the two Home Guards who were suspected
of taking it. They could have got the money away and hidden
it at Hollow Shaw Farm, to share it out later. I don't know.
But Malkin has no moncv now. And he seems to have sold all
the souvenirs he ever had, except for an old watch. 1 wonder
who he sold them to, Diane. And I wonder what happened to
the money.'

'I hope you're not on some flight of fancy again,' said Fry.
'Pick me up at the front door.'


It was completely dark when they reached Harrop. As they
entered George Malkin's house, Ben Cooper was aware of Fry
taking off her coat, then changing her mind and putting it hack
on again as she shivered with cold. She pulled her collar closer
and tightened her scarf.


'Well, 1 am popular these days,' said Malkin. 'It's a proper
social whirl I live in.'

'We're sorry to bother you again, sir.'

'Aye, I'm sure.'

The sitting room looked no different from when Cooper had
been there a few days before. Malkin didn't bother to draw the
curtains at night. There was no point, since there were no other
houses to be seen, and no one ever passed on the track outside,
except Malkin's friend, Rod Whittaker, who ran his contract
haulage business from here and kept his sheep in the fields.

On one window ledge was a collection of empty jars. They
were the type that would once have contained strawberry jam
or marmalade, but they had been stripped of their labels and
washed clean for some long-forgotten purpose. Now they were
left to gather dust instead. The jar nearest to Cooper had
several small, dead spiders desiccating on the glass bottom.

'I	O c?

Their tiny, fragile legs, no thicker than a hair, had folded
into their bodies as they had curled up to accept death in their
incomprehensible prison.

'How long have you been living on your own?' asked
Cooper.

'It's nearly three years since Florence went into the home.'


354



'Long enough when you're on your own/

'Aye, if you're not used to it. It's thirty-eight years since
we were wed. When you And yourself alone, you start to get
into tunny little ways. You don't realize it after a while, unless
somebody points it out.'

'Like living without any heating, perhaps?' suggested Cooper.

Malkin laughed. The sound was like someone shovelling loose
gravel. A trickle of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth.

'I don't need it,' he said. 'Not for myself. And I'm not about
to start a blazing fire, just in case I get visitors the likes of you.
I suppose you live in a town, do you?'

Cooper was about to say 'no', then remembered that he did,
in fact, live in a town. He had lived in a town since Saturday. He
was touched by Malkin's concern for his comfort, but strangely
oHended by the man's assumption that his visitor was some kind
of soft townie.

'You don't get the weather the same, not in a town,' said
Malkin. 'If you're a bit ncsh, lad, you should put on an extra
sweater when you go out. That's what our mam always used
to tell us.'

Cooper had never thought of himself as 'nesh' - soft, too
sensitive to the cold. It was the sort of term normally reserved
for southerners in the ironic way that local people had of winding
them up. But he wasn't a southerner he was local himself. Being
nesh was for townies.

But Cooper could sec that his way of living was a couple of
steps away from that of George Malkin these days; his comfort
level was several notches up the central heating thermostat. He

1	O

had a low er degree of tolerance to discomfort and deprivation. So
perhaps he was ncsh, after all, in the eyes of the George Malkins
of the world. Perhaps he had lost the link with these people that
he once thought he had. In the end, the bond between them
wasn't genetic but a social link that could be broken if it was
stretched too far.

'I dare say Florence would be ashamed of how I live now, if
she knew,' said Malkin.

Cooper (elt a surge oi sympathy. He recognized a man cut
o(l from the support that had kept him on a normal course.


3SS



Alone, it was too easy to fall into a way of living that seemed
abnormal to everyone else.

'Detective Constable Cooper had a long talk to Mr Walter
Rowland yesterday,' said Fry. 'DC Cooper is very good at getting
information out of people. They seem to trust him/

Malkin looked from Fry to Cooper, and his stare lingered.
Cooper fidgeted uneasily.

'You and your family have always been known for collecting
aircraft souvenirs,' said Fry. 'Is that correct?'

'I suppose it might be. A lot of things came our way over
the years. My dad was a terror for it, I don't mind admitting.
Us lads learned it from him. I picked up my share of souvenirs
here and there.'

'More than just a broken watch, then.'

'I'm not saying 1 kept them. I'm not a collector - I can't
see the point. But some folk will pay cash for stuff like that,
you know/

'Yes, we know/

Cooper wondered if the souvenirs had brought a steady trickle
of cash in for Malkin over the years. It would hardly have been
enough to pay for private medical care for Florence. Perhaps she
had heard her husband talk about his sideline and got the wrong
idea about the value of the items. Poor woman -- her husband
had not lived up to her expectations.

'But we're enquiring into something more than just a few
souvenirs,' said Fry.

'There was the money,' said Cooper. 'The wages for RAF
Bcnson/

Malkin took off his cap for the first time. It was such a surprise
that it seemed to indicate better than anything his emotional
response. His hair was remarkably thick, though going grey.

'Poor old Walter Rowland,' he said. 'He must be in a bad
way now. He wasn't well last time I saw him/

'No, he isn't too good/

'If Walter knew about the money, he's kept quiet about
it for fifty-seven years. I wonder what made him say something
now/

'He didn't. Not exactly,' said Cooper.


356



'Oh?'

'So you admit that you took the money that was on board
the Lancaster?' said Fry.

Malkin turned his attention back to her. 'You've got good
timing, you folk. You know when to ask your questions, all
right. It doesn't matter to me now, you sec. Not at all. So you
might as well know everything.'

'Go on, sir.'

'Yes, it was me and my brother Ted who took the money.
We were only lads at the time. I was eight years old, so I didn't
really know what I was doing. But I don't suppose there's much
point in me saying that now.'

'I think it's unlikely there will be a prosecution after all this
time,' said Fry. 'Not for something you did when you were
eight years old.'

'Oh, well,' said Malkin. 'It doesn't matter.'

'There was a lot of money,' said Cooper. 'We'd like to know
what you did with it. What did you spend it on?'

Malkin smiled then, a sheepish, embarrassed smile. 'You
won't believe me.'

'Try us. We've heard all sorts of things that people waste
their money on. Foreign holidays? Women? Did you gamble
it away?'

'None oi those things.'

'What, then?'

'I didn't spend it at all. I've still got it.'

Cooper stared at him. 'You're kidding.'

'I said you wouldn't believe me.'

'You found yourself suddenly in possession of a fortune, and
you're telling me that you just put it in the bank and saved it
up for a rainy day? You didn't spend any of it?'

'No, I didn't. But I didn't put it in the bank either.'

'You're not making any sense.'

'I'm going to have to show you,' said Malkin.


George Malkin led Cooper and Fry up to the top of his garden,
through a gate and across a snow-covered paddock. They had
to lean into the wind and lift their feet high out of the snow



3S7



to make progress. But Malkin seemed almost unaware of it. He
ploughed across the field like a carthorse, with his head down
and his shoulders hunched forward inside his overcoat.

At the far side of the field was a stile huilt into the drystone
wall. They crossed it carefully, and found themselves floundering
waist-deep in a drift that had keen blown up against the other
side. When they had struggled out of it, they were panting with
the effort. In front of them was another field, hut this one sloped
gently up to the rocky base of the hill, and the snow became less
deep as they crossed the last few yards.

It was only when they were standing at the foot of the hill
that they saw they had reached the entrance to an old mine. It

V	v

was no more than a cleft in the rock face, about as wide as a
man's shoulders not wide enough, in fact, for George Malkin,
who had to slide through it sideways. A fine layer of snow had
blown a foot or two into the entrance, but beyond that the rock
floor was only damp, so that it gleamed in the light of an old
bicycle lamp that Malkin took from his pocket.

'We should have brought a Dragon light from the car,' said
Fry. 'I can hardlv see a thing.'

'We'll manage,' said Malkin. 'We'll not be doing much
reading or anything.'

Like all caves or mines, even the smallest and most insignificant,
there were unidentifiable noises and echoes in its darkest
corners, and angles of rock that made sudden black fists in the
edges of the shadows. The smell was of wet sand, and the
dampness was as heavy as a blanket, as if they had stepped
below the level of the water table.

George Malkin used the wavery beam of the bicycle lamp to
locate a deep crack in the wall. He lifted a foot-wide boulder
clear and fumbled inside with one hand until he drew out a length
of baling twine. The twine was bright blue, and it seemed to be
the only flicker of colour in the gloom. At first, there seemed to
be no weight on the end of it, but then a small rope appeared,
knotted to the twine.

'Maybe you could help me pull,' said Malkin.

Cooper took hold of the rope and they pulled on it together,
while Fry held the lamp over them. The light failed momentarily


358



and left them completely in the dark until she shook it, rattling
the battery inside the casing to restore the corroded connection.
Cooper could hear a dragging sound deep inside the rock. He
could feel the resistance on the rope of something heavy that
snagged on every bump. They seemed to he pulling at about a
forty-five degree angle.

'It's a leather bag of some kind,' said Fry, peering over the
shoulders of the two men into the hole. 'No, two bags - there's
another one tied behind it.

'Aye, there were two/ said Malkin as the bags appeared over
the lip of rock. 'We managed one each, just about. Of course,
in those days, I was only a little lad. 1 was small enough to slide
right down into that hole. It levels out at the bottom, like a shelf.
Ted sent me down there and passed the bags to me. I remember
they blocked the way at first, and they were so heavy I didn't
think I was ever going to be able to get out again. But Ted was
there. I knew he would rescue me if I got stuck.'

Malkin grabbed a leather strap as Cooper took the weight
on the rope. 'It was totally dark down there,' he said. 'I hated
the dark, always have. I've been scared of it since I was tiny.
Darkness and deep water -- those are the things that frighten
me. I always had nightmares of being trapped somewhere with
water coming in. You'd think you would grow out of that when
you're not a nipper any more. But it just got worse after Ted
was killed. I reckon it was because I knew he wouldn't be there
any more to rescue me.'

They set the bags on the floor. Fry crouched over them with
the lamp, rattling it every now and then to keep its beam alive.
'We really should have brought some more light, she said. 'This
is ridiculous.'

'Let's have a quick look, then we'll take them up to the
house,' said Cooper.

'It won't take you long to sec what it is,' said Malkin. He was
standing above them, and his voice sounded unnaturally distant
and echoey, as if he were back in the hole that his brother had
sent him into as a child.

Cooper's fingers were clumsy in his gloves, and the straps of
the first bag had stiffened and cracked, so that he had difficulty


359



pulling them through the buckles. Finally, the Hap Fell open, and
he saw it was a sort of saddlebag like those carried by Wells Fargo
riders in Westerns. Inside, it was packed with something solid
and white. Cooper couldn't believe what he was looking at.
'Bring the light closer.' he said.

c*	c* '

Fry crouched alongside him. He could hear her breathing in
his car, and he could sec a cloud of her breath drifting through
the beam of light from the lamp. He tugged at the contents
of the bag, and a lump of the white mass broke away into
his hand. It wasn't solid at all, but consisted of tightly packed
bundles which had stuck together in the damp that had seeped
into the leather bag.

Cooper tilted the bag more, and the heaps of paper slid out.
They were like wedges of frozen snow slipping on to the
ground and separating into dirty crystalline rectangles. They
were unfamiliar, yet he knew what they were.

'Bank notes,' he said.

'They can't be,' said Fry.

'I think you'll rind they are.'

'But they're white. Has the colour faded? Is it foreign
currency?'

'No,' said Cooper. 'They're British sterling.'

Cooper looked up. He could barely see George Malkin's face.
His expression was impassive. For a big man, it was surprising
how easily he had almost faded into the rock among the shadows
outside the light of the lamp. 'Mr Malkin?'

'Aye, you're right,' he said. 'But I'm not surprised you've
never seen them before. You're much too young, the pair of
you.'

'I've heard of them, though,' said Cooper. 'These are 15
notes, aren't they? White fivers. They haven't been in circulation
for nearly fifty years.'

'That's right. White fivers. They're part of the wages for RAF
Bcnson.'


Together, they carried the bags back to the house. On the


C*	^ ^ o

sitting room table, the bank notes looked almost at home, as
if they were back in their own time again. It was as if a part


360



of George Malkin's life had been frozen in 1945 and had never
changed since.

'We thought at first it was a German plane that had keen shot
down,' said Malkin. 'There had keen stories just before that of
a Junkers that had been downed near Manchester. So we didn't
think it was wrong to take the bags.'

'But you must have heard later that the aircraft was British/

^

'It was too late then. We knew we couldn't tell anybody
about the money. Ted threatened me not to say a word. Not
that I needed telling. I always thought Ted would know what
to do with the monev. I thought he had a plan. He never told

-	O 1

me what it was, but then I was only his annoying little brother,
and I didn't need to know. When he went oH (or his National
Service, I thought we'd do something with the money alter he
came back. I thought he would tell me what the plan was then,
because I'd be seventeen and grown up enough. But, of course,
Ted never came back.'

'What happened to him?'

'Ted was called up when he was eighteen vcars old, and

:	& v '

they sent him to Malaya. He was dead before he was nineteen
shot by a Chinese communist rebel when his troop train was
ambushed.'

'Did your mother and father never know about these bags?'
asked Cooper. He watched Malkin shake his head. 'How on
earth did you keep them secret all that time?'

'I left them in the old mine workings, where we'd put them.
Sometimes, as a lad, I would go up there with a torch, and I'd
get the bags out and look at the money. I didn't know what to do
with it, but I knew I'd do .wmetAin^ with it one day. It made me
feel different from the rest of the kids. I really believed I was a
secret millionaire. That helped a lot when I had bad times. I hey
were like friends waiting to help me out when I needed them.
Even after Mum and Dad died, I didn't bring the bags into the
house. They never knew about the money while they were alive,
and it seemed wrong to produce it when they were dead. As long
as their memories still hung around the house, 1 felt as though
I'd be giving away my secret to them. It's surprising how long
it takes people to leave a place after they're dead.'


361



Cooper nodded. 'So you never moved them?'

'Once. One day I saw some potholers coming into the mine.
They had ropes and helmets and lamps, all the proper tackle.
There was nothing I could do while they were in there, hut I
was terrified they would find the hags my hags; I pictured one
of them shining his lamp into the crack, and that w ould he that,
all those years of w aiting wasted. 1 thought of starting a rock fall
to hlock the mine entrance, so that they would all die in there.
It seemed like the only option. Then at least no6oJy would have
got the money.'

Malkin paused, momentarily shaken hy a desperate memory.
'But eventually they came out with their ropes, and they went
away. And the bags were still there, where I had put them.
I dragged them out and brought them up to the house. But
then I started worrying about Florence finding them, so I took
them back.'

Cooper stared at the bundles of notes. Those in the middle
looked as though they might be as clean and pristine as when
they were first issued.

'I don't know much about currency,' he said. 'But I've a
feeling . . .'

o

'Oh, I know,' said Malkin. 'They took those notes out of
circulation in 19S7. 1 should have spent them when I was twenty
years old, when I could have made proper use of them and set
myself up for life.' He began to toss the bundles back into the
bags. "I remember the day I read the news that white fivers
wouldn't be legal tender any more. It was like all my dreams
had been smashed. That money was my future, as I thought. It
felt as though I'd just lost a fortune. It was like thinking you'd
won the jackpot on the National Lottery, then finding you'd
lost the ticket. They're not even a secret any more, are they?'

'But why Jjjn't you spend it when you were thirty?' said Fry,
staring at him in bafflement.

Malkin shrugged. 'It might sound daft,' he said. 'Maybe it waj
daft. But I'd never been abroad or anything back then. I was too
young to have gone away in the war, too old to take foreign
holidays for granted like the young folks do today. I honestly
didn't know what to do with the money. I thought if I took


362



it to a hank they'd know straight away it was stolen and I'd
he arrested. I was frightened to do anything with it. It seemed
better to keep it as my secret. It was safer to sit here at home
and dream of what I might spend it on. There seemed to he no
risks that way.'

'Does your wife not know ahout the money?' said Cooper,
recalling Florence's constant questions ahout her private medical
treatment.

'I'd met Florence ahout three years before, and we'd started
saving to pet married. It was daft, hut I let her think I had some

o &	'

money saved up. Well, I had, in a way. Then I found out they
were scrapping the white fivers. Without Ted, I didn't know
what to do. It was a couple of days later that I got the chance
to go out to the old mine and check the hags one last time. I had
to make sure the money was what I thought. Yes, white fivers,
all of it. I knew I couldn't take it all to the bank to change it
it would look too suspicious, and the police would he round
here. I couldn't risk that, when I was planning to get wed. So
there was no monev, as I'd always let Florence think.'

Cooper picked up the hag. 'What happened to all the souvenirs
that you had, Mr Malkin? Who did you sell them to?'

'The only man who deals in that sort of thing around here the
bookseller in Edendale, Lawrence Dalcy. If you want to have
a look at some stuff, you have to ask to sec his upstairs room.'

Fry exchanged a glance with Cooper. 'We'll do that,' she
said.

Malkin looked at the hag in Cooper's hands. 'There's just one
thing,' he said. 'It's too late now, hut it's something I won't stop
thinking ahout until the day I pop my clogs.'

'What's that?'

'I wonder if I could have spent some o( that money on getting
treatment for Florence. Do you think it would have helped? Do
you think I could have used the money to save her life?'

V	V

'But, Mr Malkin,' said Cooper, 'your wife is in the Old School
Nursing Home.'

'Not any more, poor old lass. They phoned me just hefore
you arrived. She died ahout two hours ago.'


363



32


IJen Cooper spent a few minutes ringing around his contacts
before they set of? back from Harrop. Eventually, he managed
to track down a member of the antiques dealers association who
specialized in coins and bank notes.


Fry waited impatiently until he had finished, tapping her
fingers on the dashboard.

'So? Did he say why they would have sent all the money in
15 notes?'

'Counterfeiting,' said Cooper.

'Oh?'

'Apparently, the Germans were into it in a big way. They thought
they could destabilize the British economy and bring the country to
its knees. They were producing half a million counterfeit notes a
month at one stage of the war. The Bank of England .stopped issuing
denominations of over 15, so that it wasn't worthwhile making
counterfeits. Of course, there were ll and ten-shilling notes as
well then. The white fivers were the first to go, though.'

'So George Malkin's haul is worthless.'

'Not exactly,' said Cooper. 'Not now. If he had put them
on the market judiciously, he could have been coining it in
handsomely for a few years now.'

'How do you mean?'

'I'm told they're collector's items, those notes. According to
the expert, white fivers from 1944 in good condition would sell
for about 160 each.'
'Jesus/ said Fry. 'George Malkin had two thousand of them
stashed away.'

'Nice, eh?'

'And we've got to return them to the RAF. Not so nice.'

o

'Blasted collectors,' said Cooper. 'Why don't they live in the
real world? They distort the value of everything.'

'It's like anything else,' said Fry. 'Things arc worth whatever
somebody will pay for them.'


364



'It's cra/y.'

'It's called a free market economy, Ben. That's why a
footballer is paid millions of quid for kicking a hall ahout
once a week; and it's why you can't afford to huy somewhere
decent to live. Let's lace it, mate, what you have to offer just
isn't marketable.'

'Thanks.'

'Don't thank me. Thank the ungrateful public.'

But Cooper wasn't thinking of his own position. He had
learned never to expect thanks. He was thinking of Walter
Rowland sitting at his dining-room table, unable to lift a mug
of tea, unable to help himself, and too stubborn to ask for help
from anyone else. He was thinking of Rowland starving in a
house full of tinned food because he was too proud to tell
anyone he couldn't use a tin opener, of an old man frightened
to turn up the heating because he didn't know whether he could
afford the electricity bill. That was how much society had valued
what Walter had done for it. And George Malkin had sat and
watched his wife die because it had never occurred to him that
people would be willing to pay much, much more for a bagful of
outdated and useless bank notes than for the treatment to save a
woman's life.

'Where are we going next?' said Fry. 'Shall I guess?'


Lawrence Dalcy was alone in the bookshop as usual. He looked
over his glasses in outrage at Cooper and Fry when he Anally
answered their banging.


'Had any customers today, Lawrence?' said Cooper.

'I'm doing my best. A customer here, a customer there, you
know. I expect to reach double figures by the end of the year.
What do you want?'

'There are lots of other things in life apart from hooks,' said
Frv. 'Can we come in?'

v

'You can find everything you want to know in books. Life,
death, love, the specifications for a 1968 Ford Capri ignition
system.'

'And aircraft wrecks?' said Cooper.

'Sorrv?'


365



'You sell hooks on aircraft wrecks.'

'You know I do you bought a couple yourself.'

'I've heard there's quite a demand for that sort of thing. And
not only hooks. Other items. Souvenirs. Collectibles.'

Lawrence nodded. 'I believe you're right.'

'Fetch a good price, do they? There's more profit in aircraft
souvenirs than in books that never move oft the shelf, I guess.
A bit of diversification?'

Lawrence fidgeted with a set of keys, watching Cooper's
eyes.

'Will you show us the upstairs room, Lawrence?' said Cooper.

The bookseller took of! his glasses and fiddled inside his

c*

waistcoat for his tiny screwdriver. His eyes looked weary
without the glasses. There were blue patches underneath them,
and the tired creases that come with age.

'It's not illegal, you know.'

'Then there's nothing to worry about, is there?' said Fry.
'Lead the way.'


Lawrence Dalcy led the way to the foot of the bare wooden
stairs, past the sign that said 'Sfo^On/y'. The stairs were narrow
and unlit, and the boards creaked alarmingly underfoot. Their
footsteps echoed in the stairwell, and once they had turned
a corner halfway up, they lost the benefit of the light from
the shop. They could see their way only by a naked bulb
somewhere high above them, and its reflection in a series of
tiny stone-mullioned windows set into the back wall. The light
picked out thick strands of blackened cobwebs clinging to the
ceilings and the highest corners. The banister rail felt slightly
sticky under Cooper's fingers, but he was afraid to let go of
it, in case the stairs disappeared in front of him and he lost
his footing.


He could see that the building had once been a town
house for some wealthy family, a tall, rambling place that
the bookshop occupied only half of. The stairs they were
climbing were so narrow that they must once have been
designed only for the use of servants, who were expected to
be thin and undernourished. Probably they were expected to be


366



able to sec in the dark, too, and survive the winter without
any heating.

Along the skirting boards and on the window ledges, Cooper
saw more black mouse droppings. He wondered if Lawrence
would be interested in having a cat.

Lawrence stopped in front of them and jingled his keys.
Cooper could make out a dusty corridor ahead. Unsurprisingly,
it was piled high with books stacked against the walls. There were
two or three doors further down, but they were inaccessible
because of the number of books in front of them. To the right,
though, there was one clear doorway near the head of the stairs,
tucked under a sloping section of roof. They must be close to
the eaves of the building.

Fry stood behind him, just below one of the mullioned
windows. Cooper turned to exchange a look. He saw her lace
was lit by a strange mottled pattern from the light reflected off
the dust on the window.

'No wonder people like Rddie Kemp are never out of work,'
she said.

All the doors were narrow and low, as if they had been made
(or the use of midgets. The paint on them was old and peeling,
but must once have been dark green, and they had brown bakelite
handles that had got chipped over the years. There was no carpet
on the floor of the passage, and probably never had been. The
floorboards had been painted black, and that was the limit of
decoration. Cooper shivered. The passage was cold, as cold as
George Malkin's farmhouse, but with a different feel to the
coldness. Malkin's house had dripped with the chill of emptiness,
but this place felt full of phantoms. He could imagine a crowd
of pale, thin ghosts in ragged clothes who walked continuously
backwards and forwards, day and night, bearing bowls of hot
water and candles for their masters.

'Useful-looking attic,' said Fry. 'Have you ever thought of
converting it into student bedsits?'

A gleam came into Lawrence's eye for a moment at the
prospect of income from student rents. Hut he looked at the
stacks of books, and his face fell.

'I don't think it's practical.'


367



'Let's have a look at this room/ said Cooper. 'It's what we
came for, after all.'


The upstairs room at Eden Valley Books was full of aviation
memorabilia, much of it of Second World War vintage. One of
the most eye-catching items was an RAF pilot's Irving jacket,
which fitted Ben Cooper fine when he tried it on. There had
been a few repairs to the leather, but the y.ips and the belt still
worked, and the lining was very warm. He could have kept it
on and worn it all day.


'Two hundred pounds/ said Lawrence. 'It's still got the MoD
label and everything.'

'I'll not bother.'

A cockpit clock was dated 1940. The label said it was in
working condition, though it currently showed the time as four
twenty-eight. It was priced at 17S. A leather Hying helmet with
attached oxygen mask seemed to be one of the prime exhibits at
^450. Cooper could sec that Lawrence put more thought into the
prices for his collectibles than he did into pricing his books.

'It's all perfectly legitimate/ said Lawrence.

'That depends on the origin of the items, doesn't it? Where
do they come from?' asked Fry.

'People bring them to me.'

'Do they provide any evidence of their origin? What you
might call a provenance?'

'Hardly ever. But these people are collectors, or other dealers.
The things they bring have been changing hands for years.'

'If you have reason to believe that any of them are stolen or
dishonestly obtained '

'I don't.'

Fry nodded. 'In that case, you're right. It's legitimate.'

'Do you get any medals?' asked Cooper.

'Sometimes.'

'I was thinking of one particular medal. A Canadian Distinguished
Flying Cross.'

'I don't think I've ever had one of those here.'

'Have you ever been offered one?'

'Not as far as I'm aware. I get job lots sometimes. I don't


368



always sort them out. There might be a boxful of medals around
here now somewhere.'

'Are you saying that someone could have browsed through
your stock and found a medal like that? A Canadian DFC?'

Lawrence shrugged. 'It's possible.'

oo	I

Cooper reached the table at the far end of the room. 'And
what's this?'

He had picked up a bag. It was a leather bag with flaps, like
a large satchel or saddlebag. The label said: On^inaJ R/4F /eatAer
money 6a^, 7 94^.

'And where did this come from, Lawrence? How much have
you been paying George Malkin for his collection?'

'I'm in business,' said Lawrence. 'I pay Malkin what I pay
other people.'

There was a tiny window at the back of the room, so high
that Cooper could only just see out of it. He rubbed some dirt
from the pane, and found he was looking down from the back
of the shop into a small yard illuminated by a security light.
The backs of tall buildings were clustered all around it. There
must be access to the yard somehow, because there was a pair
of wooden gates facing him, set into a stone wall protected by
bits of broken glass cemented to the coping stones.

'What's in the yard?' asked Cooper.

Slowly, Lawrence selected another key and opened the door.
It let a burst of bright light into the room and a cold wind.
Cooper could see the top of an iron fire escape, which led
down the outer wall of the building. Down there, it was like
a junkyard. All sorts of objects lay around. There appeared to
be engines, propellers, wheels, and a section of cockpit, but
many of the items were unidentifiable. A lot of them were
covered in a layer of snow that had frozen on their horizontal
surfaces, giving them an enigmatic appearance, like objects in
a puzzle, seen from an unfamiliar angle. The snow on the
ground was covered in the clawed footprints of birds, which
seemed to have wandered aimlessly backwards and forwards,
frequently crossing their own path, perhaps looking for food.
The aircraft cockpit was one of the larger objects. In the snow
on its upper surface, there were bigger, neater footprints


369



prowling among the bird tracks. So there was a cat around,
after all.

'I can see the stock,' said Cooper. 'But where do the
customers come from? How do you advertise?

'Through the website mostly/ said I<awrence.

'A website. Of course. Everybody has a website these days.'

'Most of the business isn't done here, you see this is
small-scale stuff. What the website does is put people in touch
with each other, all over the world. We just have to maintain
the site.'

'Do you have no control over who uses it?'

'We don't check on anybody's 6ona ^Je.s. Even if they have
an entire aircraft to sell, we don't ask any questions.'

'Who's "we"?' said Cooper.

Lawrence fiddled with the keys. He pulled the door shut,
as if ashamed of the view. 'There's a terrible draught with the
door open,' he said.

'Who else is involved?' said Cooper.

"I have a bit of help sometimes,' said Lawrence. 'A few people
who are interested in the aviation archaeology business.'

'We'll need names.'

'I can't do that. Confidentiality

'Rubbish.'

'Who else has access to the yard, apart from you?' said
Cooper.

'No one,' said Lawrence.

'What about your business partners?'

Lawrence seemed to think for a moment. He turned to Fry,
but her expression was hard and unsympathetic.

'We need names,' she said.


When he finally got back to the flat in Welbeck Street that night,
Ben Cooper was in no mood to find that there were two cats in
the conservatory instead of one. The cat flap had been treated as
an invitation to take in guests. The new occupant was a mackerel
tabby with blue eyes, and it was another balloon on legs. He
wondered how it had managed to squecxe through the cat flap
dt all without getting stuck.



370



'Randy, who's your fat friend?' he said.

Randy brushed himself against Cooper's legs as if introducing
the other cat. Cooper put out his hand to stroke the newcomer,
and immediately saw the drooping belly and engorged teats.

'Oh no. I hope you belong to somebody. You're not having
your kittens in here.'

Rut Cooper looked out of the window at the frozen snow still
lying in the garden and the icicles hanging from the branches of
the trees, and knew he was just as soft as Mrs Shelley.

'Well, as soon as they're born, you go,' he said firmly. Both
cats ga/.ccl at him and purred. He could have sworn they were
laughing.

One thing that had been missing in his life was a physical
relationship, and animals provided it. But why were they so
like humans about some things? Why did animals never learn
that it was dangerous to give their trust so readily?


371



33


iJCI Tailby turned his head to look at the whiteboard where DI
Paul Hitchcns was writing names with a big black marker pen,
occasionally switching to a red pen to draw lines connecting the
names. The board squeaked as he produced curves and little
circles, then completed the pattern by decorating his chart with
a series of red dots.


'Can you sec what it is yet?' said Hitchens.

'You propose to detain all these people?' said Tailby.

DI Hitchens was firing on all cylinders, ready to take over

&	v V

the morning meeting, given half a chance.

'We've liaised with our friends in the Ministry of Defence
Police,' he said. 'And together we've drawn up this list of
persons believed to be involved in the activities Sergeant Easton
was investigating. If we pull them all in now, we expect to be
able to start piecing together what happened.'

'As I understand the situation, the RAF Police have been
observing a number of servicemen who are suspected of the
illegal sale of aircraft parts. Easton was attempting to establish
who their contacts were on the outside.'

'Yes, sir. And these names are people involved in a circle of
aviation memorabilia collectors. They have a well-established
network, both by word of mouth and on the internet. DS Fry
has identified the location where the memorabilia trade is based
and where the wcbsite is run from. From what we're told, it
seems to be a lucrative trade in itself. The prices for some of the
items are extraordinary - but that's collectors for you. They II
v	v v

pay the earth for something they really want. Strictly speaking,
many of the items of memorabilia are probably illegally obtained,
but it might take a lot of work to gather the evidence.'

o	o

'It doesn't sound worthwhile,' said Tailby. 'The GPS would
say a prosecution wasn't in the public interest.'

'Yes. And it's insignificant compared to the trade that Nick
Easton was trying to uncover,' said Hitchens. 'We've looked


372



at the websitc this morning, and it's difficult to tell where the
legal business ends and the illegal begins. Not all the collectibles
are Second World War vintage by any means. There are items
for use in restoring more modern aircraft, and interspersed
among them there arc a number of contemporary and definitely
illegal items being traded. Some of the messages on the bulletin
boards are probably coded anyway. And the addresses given arc
international/

Tailby sighed. 'That's going to be out of our hands. But it's
just run from a bookshop, isn't it? Here in Edendalc.'

'That was what Easton was looking for, but we don't think
he ever found it. We think he was killed before he reached the
centre of the operation. We have no evidence to suggest he
ever visited the bookshop.'

'What about the owner?'

'Lawrence Daley,' said Fry. 'We think he was drawn in
because of the money involved in the aviation memorabilia
trade. We conducted an initial interview with him last night.

o

He genuinely doesn't seem to be aware of any other type of
business going on via the wcbsite or the bulletin board other
than the memorabilia. One of his partners runs the internet
side, which seems to be a mystery to him.'

'A gullible victim pulled into something illegal out of greed?'
said Tailby.

'Yes. Rut he finally confirmed these names for us, which DI
Hitchcns has listed. These arc the men principally involved. It
seems possible that they killed Easton when he ^ot too close to
them. Rut we have no evidence to support that idea.'

'It's disappointing that we haven't located Easton's car yet.
That would be very helpful.'

'It will turn up somewhere eventually/ said Hitchens. 'With
a bit of luck, we'll still be able to get some evidence from it/

DCI Tailby looked around the room. 'It's all circumstantial.
Do you think we have sufficient evidence to bring them in?'

'Yes, sir,' said Hitchens.

Tailby looked at the MDP officers. 'And you, Sergeant
Caudwcll?'

'We're in favour/


373



'Very well. I suppose you'll need more resources, Paul?'

'Whatever we can get, sir.'

'We'll call in the task force again. They've drawn a blank on
the missing baby, so at least we can give them a hit of action.'

As the meeting hroke up, Fry saw Sergeant Caudwell
approaching.

'You win,' she said, showing her dimples. 'Rut, if 1 could
make a suggestion, you might want to question what some of
your officers have been getting involved in recentlv.'

v	O C" v


Ben Cooper picked up Alison Morrissey from outside the
Cavendish Hotel and drove her as far as Bamford, to the big
puh at the crossroads. He didn't want to he seen in Edcndale,
not today.


Morrisscv had a hlue folder tucked under her arm. Not
another file, surely? There had been enough of those, and
some of the information had been misleading and wrong.

'What have you got there?' said Cooper.

'It's something Peter Lukasz sent to me. He savs his father
wrote it.'

'Ah. His account of the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor/

'So you knew.'

v

'I saw Zygmunt writing it. At least, that's what Peter told
me it was. I'm sure it will be very interesting if you can get
it translated. But I don't suppose it really matters now.'

'Perhaps not, said Alison. 'But Peter Lukasz has read it, and
he thought there was one thing in it I ought to know straight

c*	6 o &

away. Everyone said my grandfather was to blame for the crash
because he had ignored his navigator's instructions. But according
to Peter Lukasx, Zygmunt's account is different. He says that
Klemens Wach made a mistake. It was his fault that they were
so far off course. But everybody trusted Klemens, including my
grandfather.'

'Have you heard a rumour that Danny McTcague was drunk
when he crashed into Irontongue Hill?'

C*

Morrissey frowned. 'The old man, Walter Rowland, put that
rumour about, according to Frank. It was something Rowland
had heard Zygmunt Lukasz say, something to do with celebrating


374



the night before. Danny McTcaguc had keen celebrating the birth
of his first child - my mother.'

'There was certainly no reference at the inquest to the possibility
that your grandfather might have been drunk. That might
have been discretion, though, the withholding of allegations that
might cause distress to relatives. Perhaps it would have been a
different matter if McTeaguc had ever been found.'

'Perhaps.'

Cooper wondered if Rowland had mentioned the rumour
about McTcaguc to George Malkin's father. He gazed past
Morrisscy at the wall of the pub, where there was a print
of Chatsworth House, not unlike the one that Marie Tcnncnt
had kept under her bed. It was a favourite view for tourists. It
appeared on all the postcards and in every guide book.

'Alison, how did you come to meet Frank Bainc?' he said.

'Via the internet.'

'Really?'

'I found a bulletin board for aviation archaeology enthusiasts,
and I put up an appeal for anyone with knowledge of aircraft
wrecks in the Peak District. Prank saw the message and c-mailed
me. He was a godsend. He had so much knowledge, and he
was willing to research the details that I needed. At that time,
I barely knew where the Peak District was, though my mother
had mentioned it often enough. I'm doing all this for her you

O	O ' v

know, as much as for me.'

'Baine says he's a journalist.'

'Yes.'

'I phoned around a few editors this morning. None of them
had even heard of him.'

'Perhaps he just writes a few articles for magazines here
and there.'

'Perhaps. And is that a living?'

'I don't know.'

'I'm sorry, I haven't helped you,' said Cooper. 'We're no
nearer knowing who sent your grandfather's medal. George
Malkin had parted with everything except the money. Walter
Rowland has nothing. If it somehow ended up in Lawrence

o	f

Daley's shop, he didn't know about it - and from there, it could


375



have gone anywhere. So, unless Zygmunt Lukas/ has anything
to saw about it in his journal, I don't know where else to look.
And I can't see Zygmunt hanging on to something like that - he
believes people who collect souvenirs from the aircraft wrecks
are vultures. Even his own grandson, Andrew. They argued
about a cigarette case that had belonged to Klemens Wach.'

Morrisscy listened to him carefully.

'Where did Andrew Lukas/. get this cigarette case?'

'I expect he'd bought it from a collector in London. It must
be a widespread hobby, I suppose.'

'Yes, worldwide. I found that on the bulletin board. There
were a lot of US citi/ens and Canadians.'

Cooper watched her drink her cider for a while. She looked
up and met his eye, and smiled at him. Cooper smiled back.

'Did you rind out about the money?' said Morrisscy.

'Yes, George Malkin still had it. He's never done anything
with it.'

'Malkin?'

'At Hollow Shaw Larm. He was only a bov at the time,
of course.'

Cooper stopped talking abruptly. He realized that Morrissey
had never heard Malkin's name until now. Of course, she had said
at the Chief Superintendent's meeting that she'd been unable to
trace the boys who had seen her grandfather walk away from the
crash. He searched for something else to say, before she started
asking him questions.

'Do you want dropping at the Cavendish Hotel?' he said.

'Yes, please. Ren, this George Malkin --'

'How do you like it there? 1 don't suppose Edendale's hotels
are up to Toronto standards.'

'No, not really,' said Morrissey, with a small smile.

Cooper looked at his watch. Time was catching up on him.
If he stayed any longer here, Diane Fry would be paging him,
wondering where he was, ready to give him another warning.

'Don't you think Zygmunt Lukas/ could tell us so much about
the crash?' said Morrissey.

Cooper shrugged. 'I don't know. Perhaps he's already said
all he's going to.'

B76



He wanted to add that it was George Malkin who remembered
the crash best, hut he had already said enough.

'I really have no more time to help you now/ he said. 'There
was a meeting this morning. I don't know exactly what's going
on, hut 1 think there's going to he some action. The chiefs will
he wanting arrests for the death of the RAF policeman, and I
think the Ministry of Defence Police have come up with all the
iniormation that we were waiting for.'

'You'll he busy, then,' said Morrissey.

'I expect to get called away at any moment.'

'I want to say thank you (or what you've done.'

'I didn't do anything.'

'But you tried hard, Ben. That's more than anyone else did.
You must have thought you were doing something that was

o /	b o

worthwhile. That was what you said, wasn't it? That you needed
the feeling you'd done something worthwhile. That drug. You
said it was the only thing that could give you the buzz and make

y	o o v

you feel really alive.'

Cooper looked at her, watched her push the lock of hair
from her forehead, knowing he didn't want to say goodbye
to her, wanting to do something to keep the connection
between them.

'I didn't say it was the only thing,' he said.


Dianc Fry sat in her car with Gavin Murfm and watched the
front of the Cavendish Hotel. She felt no sense of surprise when
Ben Cooper's Toyota pulled up with Alison Morrissey in the
passenger seat.


'Ben's already talked to her, then,' said Murhn, puzzled.

'I don't imagine they were talking about what we want to
discuss,' said Frv.

They had a perfectly clear view as Alison Morrissey leaned
across the scats of the Toyota and kissed Cooper on the lips.
They saw her hand slip behind his head, and Cooper's arm
leave the steering wheel. The kiss seemed to Fry to last lor a
long time.

'I think Ben's a bit taken with her, like,' said Murfin.

Fry couldn't have said what else happened for a moment or


377



two. Her view was obscured by a kind of reel veil that rippled in
front of her eyes, blurring the shape of Cooper's Toyota and its
occupants. She took some deep breaths, and the veil gradually
fell away. She found she was gripping the ends of her scarf so
tightly that she was in danger of strangling herscli.

MurHn popped some chewing gum in his mouth and rustled
the wrapper as if he were in the cinema watching a
Hollywood film.

'He's never had much luck with women, hasn't Ben,' he said.
'Maybe I should give him some tips.'

Fry stared at him. 'It isn't a question of luck, Gavin. Some
people have a deeply ingrained stupidity.'

'Ben's not stupid,' protested MurHn. Then he thought about
it. 'A bit gullible, maybe. You can always tempt him with a
lost cause.'

'It comes of being a lost cause himself.'

Fry watched the Toyota drive away and Morrisscy go into
the hotel. She signalled to the car on the opposite side of the
road. 'OK, let's go.'


Alison Morrissey and Frank Baine were standing in the reception
area when Diane Fry and Gavin Murhn entered the hotel.
Morrissey looked at them in surprise, then seemed to recognize
what they were, if not who they were.


Fry showed them her ID. Morrissey stood her ground, then
turned to {jlare at Sergeant Caudwell and PC Nash, who came
in close behind. But Frank Baine looked as though he would try
to fade into the background o( oak panelling and potted plants
and disappear into the corridors of the hotel. It was PC Nash
who moved the quickest. He evaded Bainc's attempt to headbutt
him and snapped his handcuffs on to one wrist so that he could
control him by the pressure on his arm. Then it was Sergeant
Caudwell who read him his rights.


378



34


A. week after the snow had arrived, it was still piled on the verges
of the A57. Late that afternoon, as Ben Cooper drove towards
Harrop in the dusk, he could see the occasional side road that
had still not keen properly cleared. On the hillsides were farms
or hamlets that the council snowploughs never reached. Farmers
had to fight their way down to the road themselves with blades
mounted on their tractors. And there would he more snow
today -- he could feel it in the air.


When he was well ahove the vallcv. Cooper's headlights caught

./ * j	o o

a blue Vauxhall narked at the side of the road at an awkward angle.

*	o

As he got nearer, he could see it had skidded into a snowdrift that
had hidden a soft verge, now churned to mud. The driver was out
of his car, staring at the nearside wheels.

Cooper braked carefully and put his hazard lights on as he drew
up in front of the Vauxhall. If Dianc Try had been with him, she
would have told him they weren't a rescue service. If she had
recognized who the driver was, she would have said it was no
time to be stopping to buy a book. But Cooper turned off the
engine, pulled his waterproof from the back seat and climbed out,
his feet splashing in the slush. He opened the boot and took out his
snow shovel. Some people laughed, but it was essential equipment
in the winter. It ought to he standard on cverv police vehicle.

O	v 1

It was only when Cooper got out of the Toyota that Lawrence
Dalev recognized him. Lawrence didn't seem glad to see him. and

v	O O '

he wasn't dressed for the weather either. He was wearing the same

o

blue jacket he had been wearing in the bookshop, pulled over a thin
sweater and shirt. His denims were already wet and stiff below the
knee and would take days to dry out. The bookseller was shivering
with cold and misery.

'What's up then, Lawrence?'

'I braked a bit too hard,' he said. 'My wheels went off the road,
and now they just spin round when I rev the engine. I can't get
any grip.'


379



He had the resigned air of the motorist for whom a car was
a complete mystery once it stopped working. Cooper looked at
the mud that had been splattered for several feet over the snow
and into the road, and studied the deep ruts the car's wheels had
created for themselves.

'You've dug yourself in a kit,' he said. 'Let me get behind and
give you a push. But take it easy on the accelerator. Try not to
make the wheels spin any more.'

'I was going to wait for the RAC,' said Lawrence.

'Have you called them?'

V

'I don't have a mobile. I can't bear the thought of the radiation
frying my brain cells/

Cooper thought it was a bit late to be worrying about that.
There was not much more harm that could come to Lawrence's
brain cells than had already been caused by whisky and being
surrounded by too many books. Or maybe it was li\ing alone
that had done it. He had let himself be embroiled in something
that had been tempting for two reasons the money, of course;
but also the feeling that he had been accepted as part of a group,
a kind of family.

'Do you realize the nearest phone box is about tour miles back
down the road? You'd have to walk almost to the Snake Inn/

Lawrence shrugged hopelessly. 'I suppose I would have got
round to flagging somebody down/

'Not everybody stops these days, Lawrence. They've heard too
many stories of muggings and car-jackings to feel safe about picking
up hitchhikers/

Sometimes Cooper could understand Diane Fry's impatience
with people like Lawrence Dalcy. Lawrence had made no attempt
at all to flag the Toyota down when he heard it coming, if Cooper
hadn't recognised him, he might well have gone past. Would
Lawrence have waved down another vehicle later on? Or would
it have been too much of an indignity tor him? Quite possibly he
would have remained standing out here and frozen to death first,
and become another Marie Tennent.

'Where were you heading to, anyway?'

'Oh, just to Glossop. I have a friend there. A fellow bookseller.
Since you've closed my shop . . /


380



'That's OK. As long as you weren't thinking of leaving the
area.'

'No. Arc you interviewing Frank Baine today?'

'He's being interviewed this afternoon. And some of the others,
too. Eddie and Graham Kemp.'

'The Kemps?'

'Yes.'

'Eddie Kemp never tells the truth about anything.'

'We'll see,' said Cooper. 'Get in the car, and we'll give it a
try.'

He leaned his weight on the boot of the Vauxhall, bracing
himself to get a good grip on the road surface. Lawrence started
the car and let off the handbrake. At first, it seemed as though the
wheels weren't going to get any purchase, but then the offside
rear wheel found a bit of clear road surface, and a second later the
Vauxhall lurched forward out of the mud. Cooper lost his footing
and fell on to his knee behind the back bumper. Lawrence drove
the car a few feet on to the road and stopped.

'Thanks!'he called.

Cooper got up. Beating the snow off his gloves, he began to walk
past the Vauxhall towards his own car. He stopped at Lawrence's
open window. 'Before you go any further, I suggest you clear
your windscreen properly,' he said. 'And scrape the snow off
your headlights. Otherwise, if you run into my colleagues from
Traffic, they'll book you.'

'I'll do that,' said Lawrence.

Cooper nodded, brushed off some more snow, and got into the
Toyota. As he drove off, he looked into his rearvicw mirror. He
could see Lawrence Daley waving goodbye.


The Ministry of Defence Police had taken their turn at interviewing
Frank Baine on suspicion that he was the main contact for the
servicemen the RAF Police had been keeping under surveillance.
Diane Fry could see that Baine was certainly a man with a lot
of contacts, and very little evidence of income from journalism.
According to Lawrence Dalcy, Baine had also been running the
website and the internet bulletin board.


A case against him for the murder of Nick Easton was going to


381



be more difficult to construct. They had found no weapon, and
they had not keen able to show that Eddie Kcmp's car had been
used to convey Easton's body to the Snake Pass. Besides, there
was evidence that Eddie Kemp had been involved in the assault
on the two youths near Underbank on Monday night -- he was
recognizable on the CCTV footage.

Fry shook her head in exasperation. The two young drug dealers
were refusing to talk to the police on principle. But enquiries
around Underbank had established that residents were well aware
of vigilante groups who had taken it into their own hands to deter
the drug gangs from the Devonshire Estate from moving in. Even
the old man, Walter Rowland, had told an officer that there were
people far more likely to recover his stolen property than the
police. Sadly, he was almost certainly right.

The Kemp brothers seemed to have built themselves quite a
reputation around Underbank. They were unlucky that the old
couple who had identified Eddie that night had not been told whose
side he was on.

She looked at the bayonet that had been used to attack Ben
Cooper. She was anxious for her own opportunity to question
Frank Baine and she was hopeful the forensic laboratory would
give her a match from the bayonet to Baine's DNA. That would
clear up the assault on a police officer, at least. Meanwhile, she had
both the Kemp brothers. And Eddie Kemp had some questions to
answer about the death of Marie Tennent.

It proved to be a long afternoon before Frv got Eddie Kemp on
to the subject she most wanted to know about.

'The baby/ she said. 'Marie's baby.'

'It wasn't mine,' said Kemp. 'She told me the baby wasn't
mine.'

'How did you feel about that, Mr Kemp?'

'Feel?'

'Were you angry with her?'

Though they had given him the required breaks from questioning,
Kemp was starting to look tired. He was still trying to act
relaxed, completely unconcerned, like a man with nothing to fear.
But Fry thought she could see the weariness in his eyes, the first
sign that he was being worn down.


382



'Were you angry, Mr Kcmp?'

'It didn't matter to me.'

'No. Let's think about that. If I remember rightly, a pregnancy
takes nine months. If that baby wasn't yours, it meant Marie hat!
been seeing someone else while you were still living with her.'

'So?'

'So I think you might have been angry about that, said Fry. 'I
think you might have lost your temper.'

'Well, any bloke might have done, in that situation.'

'So you hit her, did you?'

Kemp grimaced with irritation. 'You seem to have me pegged
as the violent type. I don't know why.'

'How many times did you hit her?' asked Fry patiently.

'Look, it was a bit of a blur, to be honest.'

'Once? Twice? More than twice?'

"I don't recall.'

'Where did you hit her? On the face, on the body, or where?'

'On the body, I suppose.'

'Did you hit her in the face, too?'


'It I did, it was an accident.'
* * )
1 see.


"I didn't really hurt her,' said Kemp.

'Sorry?'

'I mean, if I hit her at all, I would just have slapped her a bit.
She wouldn't have more than a few little bruises. But she asked
for it. She was far too full of herself.'

Fry decided to change tack and come back to the assault later.
His story would change in the details until eventually they would
have the full account.

'Did Marie tell you who the father of the baby was?'

Kemp blinked a little, then leaned forward across the table.

'Oh, yeah. But she didn't need to it wasn't hard to guess.'

'And who did she say it was?'

Now Kemp wanted to talk. He wanted to be sure that
she understood. Like so many others, he was convinced that
everybody would think he had done the right thing, if only he
could explain it properly. Some of them talked for ever once they
had started, baffled by their failure to communicate.


383



'Look, you have to understand something about Marie/ said
Kemp. 'She thought she was cleverer than the rest of us, but she
never had the education. She got obsessed with books. That house
of hers was full of books before she'd finished.'

'Yes, I've seen them.'

'Well, she thought she was going to better herself by reading.
As if reading those novels she had was going to improve anybody's
education. What a load of crap! But she thought because she could
talk about novels she was an intellectual. She was easily influenced
like that, always wanting to please some bloke. So she was round
at the bookshop all the time. She thought she was moving in better
circles, just because he took an interest in her. But he was after one
thing from her, like everybody else.'

'The bookshop?'

'Eden Valley Books, of course. The ponce with the bow tic,
Lawrence Dalcy. It was my fault she met him. And he's no better
than the rest of us, is he?'

'Marie told you that Lawrence Daley was the father of her
child?' asked Fry.

'That's it. Daley. There's only two things he's interested in,
when it comes down to it. And they're the same things as the
rest of us sex and money. All the rest of the stuff is just airs
and graces. Books? Rubbish. Sex and money. Yes, I could tell you
a thing or two about that bookseller.'


Two miles down the road, Cooper was still trying to thaw out his
hands when he took the call on his mobile phone.
'Ben. where are you?'


'	V

'AS7, near the Snake Inn. I'm on my way to Harrop to get
a statement from George Malkin about the items he sold to
Lawrence Daley.'
'Perhaps you'd better pull in.'

Cooper tucked the Toyota into the first gateway that he came
to. The driver of a Transit van sounded his horn as he pulled out
to go past him.

'What is it?' he said.

'We've just interviewed Eddie Kemp again.'

'Yeah. Get anything out of him?'


384



'The name of the baby's father.'

'It wasn't his?'

'He says not. He says the father is Lawrence Daley.'

Cooper was glad he was no longer driving. He turned around in
his seat. Lawrence's blue Vauxhall should have passed him by now.
There was no road to turn off the Snake Pass until the Harrop road,
the other side of Irontonguc Hill.

o

'I've not long seen him,' said Cooper. 'A couple of miles back, I
helped to get his car back on to the road. He told me he was heading
this way, but I think he might have turned round.'

'I'm on my way. If you sec him again, just keep contact.'

Cooper manoeuvred the Toyota in the gateway with difficulty,
forcing more traffic to swerve round him. Finally, he got back on
the road heading east. He didn't have to go far to find Lawrence's
Vauxhall. Only two miles back up the A57, it was parked in
another lay-by, but on the opposite side of the road. This time,
it had been taken off the carriageway deliberately and was parked
neatly. There was no sign of Lawrence Daley.

Cooper got out and scanned the nearby landscape. There was
nothing but blank snow everywhere. It was about the remotest
spot on the A57, familiar only by the sight of Irontongue Hill
to the cast. He checked the doors of the Vauxhall and found
it locked. Then he looked in through the windows. He dialled

o

Fry's mobile.

'What is it, Ben?'

'Lawrence Daley's car is here at the roadside. There's a length
of plastic tubing and a roll of insulation tape on the passenger seat
of his car.'

'It's a pity you didn't notice that when you were giving him a
helping hand.'

'Do you think he drove out here to kill himself?'

'It sounds a bit like it. Can you sec him? He can't have got far.'

'He'll be getting further and further away. But I don't know in
which direction.'

Cooper turned to look to the north and cursed again. The
weather was changing rapidly. Fat, heavy clouds were bumping
over the flanks of Blcaklow and Kinder Scout. On the further
slopes he could see the snow already falling. He shivered as the


38S



first cold gusts of a northerly wind reached him and hit through
his clothes.

He cast about along the edge of the road, damning the slush and
the deep tyre marks of every vehicle that had stopped in the last
couple of days. Then he found the beginning of some footprints.
They were fresh ones, the snow newly broken on the edge of
the moor.

'I can see which way he went,' said Cooper. "I should have
guessed he's heading towards Irontongue. But he'll never make
it across that snowficld. It's treacherous under there. Groughs,
loose peat, froy.cn bogs you can't tell what you're walking on.'

The sky was darkening. The wind started to bluster around him,
alternately whistling and moaning like an animal. The first flakes

v	O O

of snow fell - big, soft flakes that settled on the slush and began to
freeze. Within minutes, they would be piling up, covering all the
surfaces. Soon, he would be able to sec nothing on the moor.

'Damn, damn and damn.'

'What are you doing?' said Fry.

/	O V

Cooper didn't answer. He was opening the tailgate of the
Tovota and taking off his shoes, balancing on one foot as he

y	C* ' O

replaced his shoes with walking boots. He pulled on his cagoule,
zipped up the hood.

'Ben, answer me. What the hell are you doing?

'	V C?

'I'll take the phone with me. I'll try to keep in touch, depending
what reception is like out there.'

He checked his rucksack for a compass, dry clothes, a torch.

'Ben, stay right where you are. I'm only a couple of minutes
away. We have to call out the mountain rescue team.'

'They'll take hours and it's nearly dark already.'

'We can get them to put a helicopter up.'

'In a blizzard? Because if you take a look to the north, you'll
see there's one on the way.'

'Ben, I can see you now. Stay with the car.'

'Diane, if we let him do this, we may never find Baby Chloe.'

Cooper shoved his phone into the front pocket of his rucksack.
He pulled on a pair of gloves. Finally, he began to walk up the
hillside, following Lawrence's footsteps. He had gone a hundred
yards when he heard a car pull up on the road.


386



'Ben!'

Cooper kept walking. Fry called after him again. But now there
was an entirely different tone to her voice. No longer was there
any anger, only tear and a strange appeal that made her sound like
somebody else entirely.

He turned and stared at her wordlessly. It was entirely the
wrong moment to try to think of words to say to her that could
mean anything. Trust Diane Fry always to be choosing the wrong
moment. For a second or two he looked at her, the snow landing
on her shoulders and on her face, melting into damp patches that
glistened on her cheeks. A remnant of common sense urged him

o	o

to walk back towards her, so that they could sit in the car together
and wait. He stared at her for so long that he thought he would see
her red scarf (or ever.

Then he carried on walking on to the moor. Just once, Cooper
looked back, and he could see Fry still watching him from the road
in the dusk, with the snow falling thicker and thicker through the
headlights of her car. Then his path led him over the top of a rise,
and he couldn't sec her any more.

V


Diane Fry made the necessary calls with a shaking hand. Once she
had done that, all she could do was wait. Ben Cooper would know
that she had more sense than to do anything else, that she had
enough self-discipline not to go Hying in the face of procedures and
the clear priorities of self-preservation and directing assistance.


Of course, Cooper would never in his life appreciate that she
felt the same instincts that he did, that her first impulse had been
to run after him into the snow. Not everybody could give way to
those impulses otherwise, where would the world be? What sort
of mess would they be in now?

And Cooper would never realize that waiting was the worst
thing. He would never know how hard it was to sit alone in
her car watching the sky darken and the snow fall heavier
and heavier until it filled his tracks and obliterated signs of
his presence.
Fry switched on her wipers to clear her windscreen and looked
at Cooper's Toyota. He said it always got him through the snow.
But now his car stood abandoned in the lay-by while he faced the


387



snow alone. Knowing Cooper, he had probably forgotten even to
lock it in his eagerness to be a hero.

Fry shivered despite the warm air from her car heater. Hor
some reason, she remembered the rile she had in a locked drawer
in her desk at West Street. She knew, in that moment, that she
would destroy the Hie without hesitation, if Ben Cooper came
back alive.


The distant moors looked entirely artificial in the twilight, like
mounds of polystyrene packaging, their white surfaces split
by cracks. Beyond Ben Cooper's immediate surroundings, the
landscape was almost featureless. There was no horizon, just a
vague softening where the low cloud lay on the tops, dropping
more snow silently on the moors. The only landmark ahead of
him was the outcrop of rock on Irontongue Hill, the blackest thing
against a dark background.


Cooper was able to follow Lawrence Dalcy's tracks easily.
There were traces of other walkers passing here, but they were
frozen into the snow, like footprints set in wet cement, and
Lawrence's were the only fresh tracks. Cooper tried to follow
a line that avoided the gullies, but now and then he sank up to his
knees in a drift and had to drag himself out. The snow was too cold
to make his clothes wet. Instead, it stuck to his trousers, boots and
gloves in small, frozen lumps. The depth of the drifts sapped the
strength from his legs, and his calf muscles were soon aching.

He knew he needed to find Lawrence Daley before it became
fully dark. The moor was a dangerous place to be at night in this
weather. Not only dangerous but lethal, lor anyone inadequately
equipped. The heavier the snow became, the more difficult it
would be to see Lawrence, unless he could close the distance.

He was climbing steadily higher towards the top of Irontonguc
Hill, where the wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor lay. In the gullies,
snow already lay uver a thin layer of ice that cracked and gave way
under his weight. In the deeper areas of snow, his feet plunged in.
But on the smoother areas he was aware only of the crackle and
squeak as the snow compressed under his boots. No other route
he chose would be a good one there were too many steep sided
gullies and groughs to cross, too many sudden hollows hidden


388



by waist deep drifts, too many icy streams and channels full of
drainage water to stumble into.

Finally, there was a splash of colour in the snow, barely visible
in the dusk. Cooper turned and headed towards it. Fifty yards
away, he could see it was Lawrence's blue jacket. He looked as
though he had simply lain down to rest at the foot of a rock, among
the first scattered fragments of aircraft wreckage. But from the
distress on Lawrence's face, Cooper could see he was exhausted
and in pain.

'I think I've broken my leg,' said Lawrence. 'And my chest
hurts. Badly.'

'Lie still. We have to wait until they come to find us.'

'You shouldn't have come after me, Ben.'

Cooper felt Lawrence's check. He was very cold. 'What on
earth made you come out dressed like that?' he said. 'You could
have died of exposure.'

'Oh, yes,' said Lawrence. 'So I could.' And he coughed into
the snow.

'I've just been told about Marie,' said Cooper. 'Her grandfather
was Sergeant Dick Abbott.'

'Yes, I know. When Marie was a girl, her parents used to bring
her down to Derbyshire every year to leave a poppy. Sometimes
they made a holiday out of it, staying in Edcndalc for a few days. It's
very quiet in the winter -- there isn't much to do, except browse in
bookshops. That's how I met her the first time.'

Lawrence s voice faded. Cooper looked at his face. The bookseller's
eyelids were drooping, and Cooper knew he had to stop
him falling asleep.

'But Eddie Kemp came along, didn't he?'

Lawrence didn't reply.

'Did you know you were the father of the baby, Lawrence?'
asked Cooper. 'If Marie told Eddie Kemp, then she must have told
jou, surely. Kemp was jealous. He beat her up when she told him
the baby was yours. The pathologist said she was weakened by her
injuries and too exhausted to make it back down the hill. That was
after she left the poppy. She kept up the ritual. But she must have
lain down to rest and gone to sleep. It's a mistake to go to sleep,
Lawrence. You can die of exposure out here.'


389



Rut Lawrence seemed to have something else he wanted to talk

o

about. 'It was nothing to (Jo with the baby. Kemp couldn't have
cared less about the baby.'

'What? Why then?'

'He wanted to frighten her. I don't think he meant to hurt her
so badly, but he always went too iar. He meant to warn her what
would happen if she told what she knew to the police. That was my
fault, of course. I let her find out what the business was. It never
occurred to me how she would (eel about it.'

'Because she was Dick Abbott's granddaughter, of course. She
must have felt about it the way Zygmunt Lukasx did. So when
she found out, she threatened to give you away. Is that what
happened, Lawrence? And Eddie Kemp had the job of frightening
her off. Didn't you do anything about it? For heaven's sake she
was badly injured!'

Lawrence sounded resigned. 'You don't understand. It was all
too complicated.'

'No, I don't understand. And I don't understand why Marie
didn't report that he had attacked her.'

'Because he threatened worse than that,' said Lawrence.

'Worse?'

Again, Lawrence seemed to go off at a tangent. 'Did you know

O	' O O v

Andrew Lukasz came to the shop?' he said.

'Did he?'

'He had a cigarette case he'd bought. He rang me and said he
wanted to know the names of people involved in the business.
He threatened he was going to speak to that RAF policeman
that night.'

o

'When was this, LawTencc?'

'Over a week ago. On the Sunday, the day before Marie - '

'And did you tell him anything?'

'No. He frightened me. I couldn't face him on my own, so
I phoned Frank Bainc, and he came to the shop with Kemp.'
Lawrence coughed again. 'I sent for the reinforcements.'

'But Easton was still looking for Andrew Lukasz next day. So
he didn't meet him on Sunday night.

'No.'

Cooper wondered where Andrew Lukasz was now. But time


390



was running out, and there was a more important question that
was preying on his mind.

'Lawrence, where's the baby?'

This time, Lawrence didn't answer. Then Cooper noticed the
approaching noise. It seemed to come from the east, creeping
round the sides of Irontonguc Hill and enveloping the outcrops
of rock. It moved down the slopes towards him, hut at the same
time was everywhere in the sky, spreading across the low clouds.
It was more than a sound - it was a deep droning that he felt as a
vibration in the air, a reverberation bouncing off the hillside and
filling the space all around him.

As the rumbling continued, Cooper looked up, expecting to
sec an aircraft. But nothing appeared in the sky. There was just the
same blanket of iron-grey cloud rolling away towards the horizon,
the same steady drift of snowflakes, thousands upon thousands of
them parachuting towards him. The sound came from within the
cloud; it was rumbling around inside it, spreading itself across the
sky, so that it was impossible to pin down the direction it was
coming (from.

' Where's the baby, Lawrence? Where's Baby Chloc?'

There was still no reply. After a few minutes, the noise
gradually began to recede. It didn't exactly move away; there
was no direction he could have said it had headed in. It simply
became more subdued, a little quieter and more muffled, until
eventually the cloud had swallowed it completely.

Cooper had the ridiculous idea that the clouds might have been
troubled by indigestion that had now grumbled its way out into the
open, perhaps in a sulphurous outbreak of gas into the atmosphere
somewhere over Glossop. But maybe the sound had been thunder,
after all. Or maybe it had been an airliner somewhere in the
overcast, flying blind towards Manchester Airport, its engines
booming inside the banks of cloud. Or then, maybe he had
imagined the whole thing.

'We need to find Chloe, Lawrence. We have to be sure
she's safe.'

Cooper moved to bring his other leg under his body. It was
icy cold and hardly felt part of him any more. Now there
was only the sound of the wind scraping its way across the


391



moors, and the faint settling of the snow as it drifted past his
ears.

He felt discouraged at the prospect of trying to get a response
from Lawrence. But he had to keep him from falling asleep. He
found himself casting around desperately for something to say.

'I know you wanted to keep the bookshop going, Lawrence. Did
anybody ever buy any o( those books that I priced up? No, I don't
suppose they did, though there must have been some bargains
among them. And coming to the shop helped me to find the flat.
I didn't think you were very keen on me taking it at first. By the
way, I suppose it's too much to ask -- but could you have a word
with your aunt about the noise of the dog? It barks too much when
it's out in the yard. It wakes me up in the mornings.'

Cooper blinked his eyes. The wind was making them water,
and the unending whiteness was playing havoc with his colour
perception.

' Diane Fry will get help to us soon,' he said. ' She' s good at things
like that, very efficient. That's why she made sergeant instead of

'	, V O

me, I expect. Who wants to be a sergeant, anyway? Who wants
a management job shoving paper and dealing with other people's
problems?'

He blinked again. Instead of Lawrence's blue jacket, he was
seeing red. Cooper had met colour blind people who were
unable to distinguish between blue and red. But he knew he
wasn't colour blind proper colour perception was one of the
physical requirements for joining the police force. Candidates
unable to distinguish principal colours and those who sutler from
pronounced squints arc unacceptable. It was in the recruitment
literature. Anybody could read it on the website.

'You could do with someone like Diane to run the shop,' he
said. 'Someone efficient, someone a bit ruthless who would throw
out all those old books no one will ever buy that are cluttering the

^	o

place up. You could turn the business round completely. We can
rely on Diane. She 11 have help here soon. Very soon.

Red, white and blue. Cooper used the back of his glove to rub
his eyes. The colours had to be imaginary. Rut he was seeing both
red and blue in the snow. Red, white and blue. Very patriotic. He
fumbled for his torch and switched it on. The blue was Lawrence's


392



jacket, the white was the snow. And the red was the Mood. As it
trickled from Lawrence's body, it was diluting itself from dark
arterial red and spreading for a few inches until it thickened and
froze, staining the snow pink, like strawberry ice cream.

'Lawrence, where are you injured? Did you say it was your
chest? Have you fallen on something?'

Carefully, with numh ringers, he tried to feel under Lawrence's
hody. He touched metal, a sharp splinter of torn steel.

Cooper stared at Lawrence's white face, remembering the Irving
flying jacket in that upstairs room at the bookshop. An Irving suit
was exactly what he needed now to stop the steady leaching away of
Lawrence's body heat as the blood seeped from his wounds. Without
their Irving suits, airmen would have died of exposure in a Lancaster
bomber on a winter bombing run over Germany. Rear gunners like

o	* o

Sergeant Dick Abbott had suffered frostbite despite their heated suits.
Zygrnunt Lukasz had lost two fingers trying to staunch the blood
pouring from his cousin's wounds as they lay in the snow waiting
lor rescue. Even now, Cooper could clearly picture the two Polish
airmen in their RAH uniforms, lying no more than a few feet from

' v o

where they were now. Red, white and blue.

In the far distance, he could see a single light. Its rectangular
shape blinked through the swirling snow like a beacon as it floated
in the blackness over the snowficld. He thought for a moment of
the bright star in the cast that the Wise Men had followed. Rut

o

this light was in the north, and it was not a star. Cooper realized
it was the uncurtained bedroom window of a retired farmworker,
where a man might even now be counting his regrets.

A little way to the west, there was a dark shape in the snow.
I hat was the stone wall of the dam and the cold expanse of
Blackbrook Reservoir. Cooper pictured Pilot Officer Danny
McTeaguc, staggering from the wreckage of his Lancaster bomber
and about to set off across the moor to find help. In another few
minutes, it would be completely dark, as it was when McTcague
walked away from Sugar Uncle Victor. And then he wouldn't be
able to see the reservoir only the light.

'At least you helped George Malkin, Lawrence,' said Cooper.
His souvenirs produced a bit of money for him, didn't they?'

Still Lawrence didn't answer. But Cooper stared at his face as


393



il he had spoken. It was as ii Lawrence had just said something
perceptive that Cooper hadn't thought of before.

'Yes,' said Cooper. 'You did help George Malkin - didn't you,
Lawrence?'

The wind was really getting up now. Cooper heard an answering
moan from the rocks behind him and felt a spatter of frozen snow on
the back of his neck where it was blowing off the top of the drifts.
There was a pain in his ears, but it was nothing to what Marie Tennent
must have felt as she lay out in the snow the night she died. Where
his hand had been plunged into the snow, it looked red and raw. He
rubbed it on a dry part of his trousers and thrust it back into his glove.
But the glove had got snow on the inside, too, and it didn't help.

'I know you weren't involved in Nick Easton's murder. And
Marie's death wasn't your fault. Rut you have to tell us where the
baby is, Lawrence.'

Was mat the noise of a helicopter, that dull thudding in his ears?
Or was it his own heart struggling to push the blood through his
veins? If he could convince Lawrence that rescue was on its way,
perhaps he would decide not to die. Perhaps he would rouse himself
and they could share their bodv heat to survive together.

Cooper held his breath in his hands to prevent it from drifting
awav, afraid it might take his life with it. But LawTence wasn't going
to rouse himself. There was no warmth left in his bodv to share.
Cooper lay over him, covering both their bodies with the cagoulc,
leaving only his head and his feet free. I le needed to be able to hear
the helicopter so that he could signal their position. He didn't know
whether he was going to be able to do that in the dark, but somehow
he would have to. AH he had was his torch, and the moor was a big
place. If anyone were thinking properly, they would have thermal
imaging equipment on board to locate their body heat. If there was
any body heat left by then.

^	V ^

That was definitely the sound of a helicopter.

'I think they're here, Lawrence,' he said.

Cooper put his hand to Lawrence's face to attract his attention. His
fingers touched something hard and cold, an incongruous blemish on
Lawrence's cheek. It was a single tear, slowly freezing to the skin.


394



35


JDiane Fry pulled out of the divisional headquarters car park
and fell in behind the lights of a patrol car on its way down
West Street. Dawn was creeping over the roofs of Rdendale.
Beside her, Ben Cooper looked pale and exhausted. He should
have keen at home in bed, hut had refused to stay away.


'We should have insisted on looking in all the rooms while
we were there,' he said.

'How could we? We had no search warrant. We had no
grounds (or making an arrest. Not then.'

'There were more rooms above that floor he showed us.
That's where he lives in the attic rooms. They would he the
old servants' bedrooms.'

'We'll soon find out.'

Fry could tell Cooper was uneasy. He fidgeted with his seat
belt like a restless child. But at least her car would stay clean.
She had left Gavin Murfin behind this morning.

'I should have known there was something wrong about Frank

c*	2?

Baine,' said Cooper. 'There were so many gaps in what he told
Alison Morrissey. He didn't mention George Malkin to her,
and he didn't let her see the books about the aircraft wrecks.
Walter Rowland might have been willing to talk to her, but
Baine discouraged him.'

'Yes, I suppose so,' said Fry.

'And of course, Baine told Alison that Sergeant Dick Abbott's
family had left the country. But Marie Tennent was right here in
Rdendale. They ought to have been able to meet. It would have
meant a lot to both of them.'

'I expect so.'

'There could have been some kind of reconciliation,' said
Cooper.

'Yes, Ben.'

Fry drove through the roundabout and up Hulley Road
towards the traffic lights. She was following the patrol car


395



because she wasn't sure how to get into Nick i' th' Tor to
reach Eden Valley Books.

'I should have known he was manipulating Alison. She was
determined enough that he couldn't have stopped her coming
over. But Baine was with her all the time, making sure he knew
what she was doing, pushing her in the direction he wanted her
to go, keeping her away from the truth. Of course, he'd keen
to see everyone himself before Alison ever arrived here, and
he'd alienated them all, scared them off talking to her. Bainc
only started getting worried when he realized I was talking to
the wrong people.'

Fry glanced at him. 'When he realized you weren't going to
do what you were told.'

v

But Cooper ignored her. 'He saw me at the Lukaszes',
then at Walter Rowland's. And he knew that I'd been to the
bookshop itself.'

'Several times,' said Fry. 'Little did he know that you were
just buying books.'

'Books on aircraft wrecks. Lawrence would have told him
that.' Cooper paused. 'It was Frank Bainc who tried to put me
out of action that night, wasn't it? Not Eddie Kcmp.'

'Yes, we think so. We're still waiting for DNA results.'

The patrol car turned into a narrow entrance off Eyre Street,
and Fry turned after it. They bumped over cobbles and had to
slow to a crawl as they entered the network of passages between
Eyre Street and the market square. They pulled up near the
bridge over the river, where a police officer was stopping people
from walking further up than Larkin's bakery.

'I'll have to explain it all to Alison later today,' said Cooper.

Frv switched off the engine and sat lor a moment looking at

V	O O

the bookshop, listening to the roar of the River Eden under the
bridge. She didn't know what to say to him.

Outside Eden Valley Books, two police motorcyclists were
unbuckling the straps of their crash helmets. When they were
bare headed, the officers hardly looked any different. They both
had bald domes as smooth and white as their helmets.


Ben Cooper pushed open the front door and walked among


396



the shelves of books. The shop seemed dead without Lawrence's
presence. Cooper felt as though he was walking through a set for
a TV costume drama. In the little kitchen area at the hack, he
found a window open. A few lumps of snow had dropped inside
and scattered on the draining hoard. A small heap of it lay on
the hase of an upturned coffee niug.

While Fry took a call on her radio, Cooper went upstairs and
walked slowly through the upper rooms. The shop was so quiet
that he was reluctant to open each door that he came to, tor
tear of what he might find behind it. On the second floor, the
biggest room was the one that he and Fry had seen, where the
aviation memorabilia was displayed. A second room had been
converted into a kind of study, where a couple of computers
sat humming quietly to themselves. No wonder so many books
had been piled on the landing and in the corridor they must

I	O v

once have occupied these rooms.

Between a couple of stacks of books, Cooper found what he
had expected -- a door that was a step up from the floor, a
door that opened to reveal not a room but another flight of
stairs, narrow and uncarpeted. The top floor of the building
was Lawrence's living quarters. There was an untidy sitting
room, a bathroom and a large bedroom with a vast iron
bedstead. Cooper was looking for signs of Marie Tennent's
presence when he heard a noise over his head. The sound
of rats in a house was distinctive. They made so much noise
on bare floorboards that they sounded as though they were

^	o /

wearing hobnailed boots. And there was that faint, dragging
scrape that went with the footsteps a sound that conjured
up a clear picture of a scaly tail slithering across the floor in
the dust.
Dianc Fry stood in the doorway of the bedroom watching him,
not speaking. He saw her shudder when she heard the scurrying
in the ceiling.

'We've just had a call from the hospital,' she said.

'Lawrence?'

'I'm afraid so.'

Cooper sat down suddenly on the bed, which sagged and gave
a protesting squeak.


397



'You did your best, Ben,' said Fry. 'Nobody could have done
any more.'

'I could have done it sooner. I found Lawrence's bookmark
in one of Marie's books almost a week ago. J knew she'd been
here. Marie read all sorts of books, not only Daniclle Steel. They
were there in her house, on her shelves. She spent money that
she couldn't afford, just to buy more books. Lawrence Daley
was her type really, not Eddie Kemp. She was following her
mother's advice and doing better for herself. When Marie told
her mother that the baby's father ran his own business, she didn't
mean he was a window cleaner, for God's sake.'

'There's nothing more we could have done, Ben.'

o	'

'No, there is,' said Cooper. 'We could have found the
baby.'

Fry had to stand aside as he brushed past her. He went
down the first flight of narrow stairs and into the big room
where Lawrence s aviation memorabilia was displayed. The
Irving suit and the flying helmets and the personal possessions
of long-dead airmen looked particularly ghoulish now that their
owner was himself dead. Cooper \vas starting to feel stifled by
the atmosphere. He pushed open the outside door and stood
at the top of the fire escape, allowing the cold air to blow
into the room and stir the cobwebs. Uclow him, the yard was
still untouched, its unidentifiable shapes covered by vesterday's
fresh snow.

The back alley was full of police vehicles with their engines
rumbling. There was a ripping sound and a loud snap as a
member of the task force levered the padlock off the yard gates
with a crowbar. Hut then the team found they had difficulty
pushing the gates open against the weight of the snow. The
more they cursed and heaved, the more the snow built up and
compacted, so that they might as well have been pushing against
a brick wall.

'Shovels,' called a sergeant. 'We'll have to dig a space
clear.'

Cooper went down the fire escape. The steps were treacherously
slippery, and his hands left imprints in the snow frozen
to the top of the rail. Under the snow was a layer of ice,


398



so that he Celt as though his knuckles were scraping against
sandpaper.

He stopped at the bottom and looked around the yard. Last
week's snow had lingered here because no sun ever reached the

o

yard, at any time of day. The backs of buildings were all around
it, and they were too high to allow any sun through at this time
of year. There was a pink glow behind the buildings in the east
as the sun rose, but it only made their outlines darker, their
shadows longer, so that they almost seemed to meet here in
this yard, like old men leaning towards each other to whisper
their secrets. They might have been saying: 'Have you seen
Baby Chloe?'

Black cast-iron drainpipes formed an intricate spider's web
on the back walls of the buildings, and a large part of Edendale's
starling population was clustered on the edges of the guttering,
chattering at the sunrise over the rooftops.

Cooper followed the paw prints of the cat that had walked
through the fresh snow in the yard. It had crossed the tracks of
the birds, but hadn't paused - presumably the birds were long
gone by the time it arrived. Starlings weren't very bright, but
they knew enough to make themselves scarce when there was
a cat around. The prints went almost the full width of the yard,
then veered awav towards one of the snow-covered mounds.
Cooper scraped some snow of! it. It was a wheel, and part of
an undercarriage leg. He caught a whiff of an acidic smell. There
was a yellow stain at the base of the wheel, and a spattering of
small, melted holes in the surface of the snow, where the cat
had marked its territory. Then the animal had walked towards
the next object and had circled it for a while, before leaping
to the top and from there on to the wall and away into the
adjoining yard.

It was easy to sec what the object was. The barrels of two
rusted Vickers machine guns poked through the snow from a
domed shape like a giant helmet. It was a gun turret. Cooper
touched the end of one of the barrels, and found it moved slightly
on its pivot, dislodging a few inches of snow that slid slowly from
the Pcrspcx hood. Through the hole he had made in the snow, he
could see the gunner's seat and something dark thrown over it.


399



Behind him, members of the task force were backing a Land
Rover through the gates and unloading shovels to clear the snow.
The vehicle's exhaust fumes began to Oil the yard, and the reek
of them overlaid the cool, clean smell of the snow.

Cooper couldn't wait for the orderly progression of the
search. He wanted to know what was inside the gun turret,
what items had been left behind in the confines of the same
kind of prison in which Sergeant Dick Abbott had died on board
Sugar Uncle Victor. Maybe there was another Irving jacket like
the one he had seen in the upstairs room; maybe there was a
parachute harness, a flying helmet, or some other personal piece
of equipment that he could hold in his hands, hoping it would tell
him the story of the man who had lived and fought, and perhaps
died, in this cramped space.

The area he had cleared wasn't quite wide enough for him to
see inside properly. Cooper wiped his hand across the Perspcx
of the turret, so that another patch of snow broke away and
landed on his boots, with a faint swish and a crunch. He had
trouble for a moment because of the water that streaked and
blurred on the Perspex. But soon it pooled and ran away down
the curved surface, and be^an to drip quietly into the snow.

The sound of the dripping water seemed to absorb Cooper's
concentration, so that the noise of the officers behind him and
the revving Land Rover engine retreated from him and became
no more than distant intrusions on the edge of his hearing. He
had to drag his attention away from the dripping sound and back
to the blurred window he had made in the Perspex.

It was only then that he saw the eyes.


Grace Lukasz took the wafer in her mouth and closed her eyes
as she sipped the wine. The body of Christ lay on her tongue, His
blood dampened her lips. Christ had given His life, a voluntary
sacrifice. But Grace also knew the Old Testament story of the
Scapegoat, which had been forced to take the sins of the tribe on
itself and had been driven into the wilderness. Not all sacrificial
victims were willing.


Andrew had always been hot-headed, stubborn, a chip off the
old block, the old people said. He was more like Zygmunt than


400



Peter. He had the same stubborn jaw, the same blue eyes, the
same capacity for singlc-mindedness. But Andrew was different
in one important matter his desire was for money. She'd
understood that, at least. She understood that it was Andrew
that Zygmunt meant when he talked about vultures. Peter had
been forced to choose between them -- and he had chosen
Zygmunt, choosing his origins rather than his future.

Grace would have to make herself feel glad. There was no
other way of facing it. It was the time of forgiveness, for
reconciliation. The sacrifice had been made, and now there
would be peace in the family. This morning, Peter had looked
content. Not happy, perhaps, but less haunted. She had always
been the one accused of living in the past. But there was no
one like these Polish families for that, no one like these old
men clinging to their wartime memories, their gnarled hands
grasping so tightly at remembrance of the time when they were
needed so badly, a time when they had a role in life. A time
when they had an enemy to fight.

Grace knew that Detective Constable Cooper was sitting at
the back of the church. He hadn't come forward to the altar
for Communion, but had stayed in his seat watching. He looked
like a boy who could be helped by faith, if he could only let
God into his life. He was about the same age as Andrew, too.
She felt the beginnings of a tear fill the corner of her eve. She

O	O V

felt for a tissue in the pocket of her skirt. The young people
these days knew nothing except their own concerns. They had
not learned the value of perspective. They cared only for their
own short-term personal interest. They did not know that a
small sacrifice could be for the greater good.

She eased her whcclchair away from the end of the pew
and turned it in the aisle. The squeak of the wheels on the
strip of carpet in the aisle sounded too loud. Members of the
congregation turned to watch her as she propelled herself to
the side door and wheeled down the ramp into the churchyard.


Ben Cooper was conscious of the faces turned in his direction as
people watched her leave. He waited until the attention of the
congregation had settled back on to the priest, then he slipped



401



out, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could. He was
glad to be out of the church and back in the cold air. It had

o

a purer, cleaner feel to it that was closer to his own idea of
something sacred. He saw that Grace Lukasx hadn't gone far.
Her wheelchair was on the path between the gravestones, close
to where the giant figure of the Black Madonna and child was
built into the outside wall of the church.

Mrs Lukasy. didn't look around, but had heard him approaching.
'Will you take me back to the bungalow? Peter was going
to come for me, but he'll be a while vet.

'Of course/

Cooper had handled a wheelchair before. He helped Grace
Lukasy. to position herself next to the passenger door of his car
and held the chair steady while she manoeuvred herself in. He
could see that her legs were almost useless. She had to lift them
in after her. When she was settled, he folded the wheelchair into
the back of the Tovota.

"I suppose you're wondering/ she said. 'It was a car accident.
Andrew was driving/

'Before he went to London?'

'Yes. We'd been very close until then. But after the accident,
he couldn't live with the guilt. He couldn't bear to look at me
in the wheelchair, day after day. So it was me who drove him
awav, you sec/

Cooper couldn't think what to say to that. Guilt, like other
emotions, was hardly ever logical.

'But you can't separate yourself from your family for ever,'
said Grace. 'He came back, in the end/

'Why did he come back?'

'Andrew was starting to feel isolated in London. Isolated from
his family, isolated from the community he grew up in. After a
year or two, he started to regret cutting himself off/

'Did he tell you this?'

'Yes, when he arrived. Do you know, he remembered all
the stories that Zygmunt used to tell about the RAF, about
the Lancaster crash. And of course, about his cousin Klemens,
who died/

Cooper got into the driving seat and fastened his scat belt.


402



'We think Andrew had started to collect Second World War
aircraft memorabilia/ he said.

'Yes, hut I het he was looking for things with a Polish
connection. The links are very strong, you know. The way
our children are raised, they can't hreak the links so easily.'

'That's how he came across the cigarette case, then. He bought
it from the wehsite that Frank Baine and Lawrence Daley ran. He
was a customer of theirs.'

'That's how it started,' said Grace. 'But it hecamc his means
of reconciliation.'

Cooper put the car into gear and drove towards Woodland
Crescent. 'I don't really understand.'

'I managed to get it out of Peter and Zygmunt in the end,'
said Grace. 'I think they're both ashamed. Peter certainly is.
Zygmunt -- well, I don't know about Zygmunt.'

'But reconciliation . . . ?'

'The way Andrew was feeling, I think that when he heard
Zygmunt didn't have long to live, he knew it was time to
be reconciled. He made his own enquiries into where these
souvenirs or memorabilia came from, and who was involved.
That's how he made contact with Lawrence Daley, here in
Edendale. Daley trusted him, and Andrew worked out that
there was tar more to the business than the memorabilia. He
contacted the RAK Police and told them the storv.

'He was getting on to dangerous ground,' said Cooper.
'Didn't he realize that?'

"I suppose so. But he's single-minded, you know. Stubborn,
like his father and his grandfather. He had his mind set on op/ufc^.
It was the time tor reconciliation. He had to come here and show
his grandfather that lie was doing something about the people
Zvgmunt called vultures. Andrew thought his grandfather would
be proud of him.'

They turned the corner into Woodland Crescent. Cooper had
slowed down, because he wanted to hear what Grace Lukasy. had

to say before she reached the bungalow.

&

'But it wasn't enough for Zygmunt, she said. "I think he
mocked Andrew for simply passing the inlormation to the
police, which was what he intended. I think Zygmunt said


403



he should have found out names. He asked Andrew where
his courage was.'

Cooper pulled up to the kerb and put the handbrake on.
He sat for a moment, saying nothing. As he had hoped, Grace
kept on talking. It was as il Communion had prompted her to
thoughts of confession. But surely it was somebody else's sins
she was talking about, somebody else's need for forgiveness.

'It was seeing the cigarette case that made Zygmunt so angry,'
she said. 'They argued terribly. I couldn't make it all out, but
I'm sure that's what it was. Then Andrew walked out.'

'Did you know where he'd gone?'

Grace shook her head. 'All I know is that he went off to
prove himself to his grandfather, to show that he was worthy of
forgiveness. He decided not to wait to speak to the policeman.

And that's all I know.'

* i )
1 see.

She turned her head wearily to look at Cooper. 'Andrew got
himself into trouble, didn't he?'

'Let's go inside.'

But still Grace didn't move. 'There was another thing that
Zygmunt always talked about too much,' she said. 'Sacrifice.'


At Grace's direction, Cooper opened the side gate and pushed
her wheelchair down the passage past the garage to the back of
the bungalow. He could see Zygmunt Lukasz in the conservatory.
The lighting was strange inside because of the covering of snow-
on the glass roof, which gave a blue cast to the sunlight. But it
seemed to Cooper that the old man was praying.


Zygmunt was seated in front of a tall candle that burned
strongly in the enclosed space. His white hair shone with an
unlikely purity in the snow-filtered light, as if it had recently
been washed with bleach. The rest of his familv were visible

V

behind him in the house. There was Peter, and Richard and
Krystyna, and even the youngest child, Alice. Cooper began to
feel embarrassed, and he wanted to slip back round the corner
before they saw him. But Grace Lukasz banged on the glass
without hesitation, and her husband came to the door, staring
at Cooper.


404



'I wasn't expecting you to be ready to come home so soon/
he said to Grace.

'I'd had enough. And Detective Constable Cooper wants to
speak to you.'

'I'm sorry to bother you. sir.'

V	V '

'You'd better come in.'

Krystyna was in the kitchen cutting carrots and parsnips with a
small knife. There was a chicken soaking in cold water. In the sitting
room, Peter Lukasz had automatically picked up the television
remote and was fingering the buttons. 'What is it you want?' he said.

'I wonder if you've heard from your son yet?'

'No. But we will soon.'

Cooper shook his head. It was strange standing here in the

I	C) O

Lukaszes' home again. Over a week ago, he had arrested Eddie
Kemp in the Starlight Cafe. He had never even heard of the
Lukasz family then, but Kemp had just been involved in killing
their son. There had been blood on the streets that dawn, in
the snow. Now there was blood on Irontongue Hill.

'Mr Lukasz,' he said, 'I need you to come to the mortuary
again to make an identification.'

Each of the Lukasz family stopped what they were doing.
Grace spun her wheelchair to face him, Peter put down the
television remote, Krystyna paused with her knife in midair.
Cooper turned and looked into the conservatory. Zygmunt had
fixed him with his pale blue, knowing eyes. The old man raised
his head, tensing his jaw as if facing a challenge. The dog was
beside his chair, with a thin, pink biscuit in its mouth that it
had been dragging around the floor. The biscuit w^as dirty, but
a design was visible on it - a picture of a nativity scene. Cooper
recognized it as a version of the opYate^ wafer.

'Forgiveness for the animals?' he asked.

o

Then Zygmunt Lukasz spoke in English for the first time in
Ben Cooper's hearing.

'Of course,' he said. 'There were animals in the stable when
Jesus was born.'

'So there were,' said Cooper. 'And animals arc much easier
to forgive.'


40S



Ben Cooper had never yet been next door, to the house that
Mrs Shelley lived in. He had only ever met her at number 8,
in his own Oat. Of course, number 6 looked identical from the
outside, apart from the fact there was only the one bell.

'She's a bit vague/ he said. 'She might not understand what
we're telling her at first.'

'It's luckv she knows who you are, then, said Diane Fry.

'I'm not sure about that. She might not associate me with
the police. She thinks of me as the young man who looks after
the cat.'

'Promotion at last, Ben.'

Cooper turned to look at her, irritated by the jibe. But he
saw from her face that she regretted having said it.

'If it's all right with you, I want to go to the Cavendish Hotel

O	^ C"

and see Alison Morrissev alter this,' he said.

Now Fry couldn't meet his eyes at all. 'She's gone,' she said.
'She caught a flight back to Toronto this morning.'

'What?'

'I'm sorrv, Ben. We agreed it was lor the best.'

'Who's we?'

'I talked to her vesterdav, after we arrested Frank Baine. I
watched you take her back to the hotel. And I think she's alreadv

y	V

said goodbve.'

o	^

Cooper felt his mouth hanging open and a surge of anger
flooding through him. But before he could demand an explanation,
the door of number 6 opened and Mrs Shelley stood
looking at them, a puzzled frown on her face.

'Can I help you?'

They could hear the Jack Russell terrier barking from the
back of the house. Even in the hallway, the noise was deafening.
Cooper was glad of the thick stone walls that stopped sound
travelling between the two houses. He was reminded of the
walls in the row of cottages where Marie Tcnnent lived.
They were just as thick as these walls -- thick enough, he
remembered thinking, that her neighbours would not have
heard a babv crving.

V	V O

Seeing Cooper speechless, Fry took the lead. 'Mrs Shelley,
we need to speak to you about Lawrence Daley.'


406



'Lawrence?' Mrs Shelley said, as if repeating the name might
bring some meaning to the sound of it. 'Lawrence?'

'Your nephew.'

'Has there been an accident? Has there been a lire at the shop?
I always warned him that he was working in a death trap. All
those books it only needed some thoughtless person to drop
a cigarette end or a match, and the whole lot would go up, I
told him.'

'Nothing like that, Mrs Shelley. Could we come in for a
moment? It would be better than standing on the doorstep.'

'Oh, yes. Would you like some tea?'

'It might be an idea to put the kettle on, but we'll do it.'

'Why on earth would you do that? I'm quite capable of putting
the kettle on.'

'I think this might be a bit of a shock for you.'

Mrs Shelley stared at them, her mouth moving slightly as she
tried to pu//le out what they was saving. In a moment, Cooper
expected her to ask him about the cat.

'He can't be dead,' she said. 'That isn't possible. Not both
of them.'

'Both of them?' said Fry. 'Both of who?'

'I'll make that tea,' said Cooper.

He was glad to find that the dog, Jasper, was outside the
back door rather than in the kitchen. His yapping sounded
peevish and demanding. Cooper was getting used to being
in other people's kitchens -- Marie Tennent's, full of nappies
and bottles of sterili/ing fluid; Walter Rowland's, sparse and
utilitarian; Lawrence's little cubbyhole at the bookshop; even
his own kitchen next door at number 8, which he had not yet
got used to.

And it ought really to have been the kitchen at number 8 that
Mrs Shelley's reminded him of they were the same lavout,
with a similar view out on to the overgrown gardens. But of
all the kitchens he had been in, it was Marie Tennent's he was
reminded of. It didn't take him long to find out why.

Down at the end of the room, in the alcove that was occupied
in his own flat by a new chest Irec/er, there was an incongruous
piece of furniture. It didn't belong in a kitchen at all. But it went


407



with the smells, which he now realized were what had put him in
mind of Marie Tennent's house in the first place. The smells had
transported him instantly to Dam Street, as if he had opened a
door and stepped hack into Marie's hallway on that day nearly a
week ago. It was a trick of the memory, a sense of <A^a *u. Except
that here he had in front of him the one item that had keen so
obviously missing from any room in Marie Tennent's home.

'What am I going to do with her?' said Mrs Shelley plaintively,
coming into the kitchen hehind him. 'Jasper is so jealous of the
attention she's getting -- that's why he never stops harking.
And if Lawrence is dead, he won't he coming back tor her,
will he?'

'No, Mrs Shelley. And I don't think her mother will he,
either.'

Cooper stood looking down into the cot. The baby's eyes
were open, hut she lay with her hands curled into fists and her

face flushed bright red. She was lying very still indeed. Then the

C*	y c* ^

pupils of her eves moved, as if she were trying to see something

I 1	v ' .10 6

a long way off, and her forehead creased in puzzlement.

Finally, she seemed to become aware of Cooper's face. And
Raby Chloe smiled.


408



36


lypically, the Peak District weather had changed completely
within forty-eight hours. Once the thaw had begun, it had
accelerated so last that the last traces of snow were almost
gone by Thursday, apart from a few frozen streaks in the deep
gullies on the moors. Water cascaded off the hills and the rivers
were swollen, threatening to hurst their hanks.


Ben Cooper drove out of Edendale on dark, wet roads,
remembering how different the Snake Pass had looked on the
day he had gone up to the wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor with
Sergeant Caudwell. The snow had still been pristine then, and the
reflection of the sun off the hillsides had been so bright it had hurt
his eyes.

Now, in the yard behind Eden Valley Books, there would
be water running off the gun turret and the engine casings in
rivulets, dripping and crackling as the snow melted. The body of
Andrew Lukasx had long since been removed, though not without

o	' o

difficulty. His limbs had been folded to get him into the turret,
and rigor mortis had made the pathologist wonder whether his
arms would have to be dislocated to pet him out. But they had

o	y

managed. And when they turned the bodv over, they had seen

O	v V ' ^

the blood that had soaked into the scat, and the injury to the back
of Andrew's head.

Cooper felt sorry for LawTence Daley. His partners had made
sure he was implicated in the death of Andrew Lukasz. With
no Lawrence to testify against them, it was going to be very
difficult proving whether it had been deliberate or an accident
when Andrew had ended up at the foot of the fire-escape stairs.
It might be true that they had simply opened the door to show him
the yard. There had been ice for days, and snow had fallen by then.
So did Andrew just lose his footing? Or had it been the only way
that Baine and his friends could prevent him from meeting Nick
Easton next day?

When he had visited the bookshop with Diane Fry to look at


409



the upstairs room, Cooper had even stood at the top of the lire
escape himself and looked down into the yard. Andrew Lukasz's
hody had already been there, waiting (or the snow to clear enough
so that it could he removed. Yes, poor Lawrence. He had never
really known what he was getting himself involved in.

Now, with all the interviews completed, the work was guing on
to huild a case against Frank Raine and the Kemps, and the MDP
were still pursuing their own enquiry. The one thing they were
still looking for was Sergeant Easton's black Ford Focus.

Alison Morrisscy was hack in Canada, and Baby Chloe had been
taken into care. The hahy had come to no harm while she was under
Mrs Shelley's protection, kept out of the way of Eddie Kcmp's
threats. And Marie Tennent had hcen wrongly judged from the
start. The only thing she had cared ahout was keeping the hahy
safe. No. there had been two things she cared ahout. She had also

'	o

rememhered the dead.

Rut it seemed to Ben Cooper there was one person left whose
late e\eryone had forgotten ahout. This whole husiness hadn't
started with Nick Easton or Marie Tennent, or any of them. It
had started with Pilot Officer Uanny McTcague.


On Irontongur Hill, water was scouring the moors in every
direction, carving channels through the hare peat, sculpting it
into castles and mounds, dragging small stones into heaps and
gathering in dark pools in the hollows. Further down the hill,
the streams had turned brown with peat, bursting with far more
meltwatcr than they could cope with. They were no longer
picturesque.


Yet George Malkin's house at Harrop still had snow on the roof.
Normally, that was a sign of good insulation, which prevented the
heat from rising. Rut in Malkin s case, Cooper knew there wasn't
enough warmth in Hollow Shaw Farm to melt the snow.

Malkin had been right about the grass in the Held near his
house. Even now, as the snow began to wear thin, the grass
looked a brighter green than any other grazing in Derbyshire.
The black-faced ewes lifted their heads and watched Cooper as
he parked the Toyota and walked up the path to the house. Some
of the animals nodded their heads, as if to saw they had known this


410



would happen. If they hadn't been sheep, they might have looked
wise. But their constantly rotating jaws and unblinking eves were
only derisive.

'How was the rabbit?' said Malkin, when Cooper entered
the house.

'It was a life saver.'

'Ah, grand.'

In Malkin's sitting room, a small drift of snow lay on the window
ledge where the blizzard had driven it through the twisted window
frame. The snow showed no sign of thawing, even now. The
crystals glittered against the stained wood. Cooper didn't want
to be inside this house today.

'Mr Malkin, would you come outside with me for a minute?'

'If you like.'

They walked a few yards up the slope of the hill, to where
Jrontongue was just visible in the distance, with the hump of
Blackbrook Reservoir in between, its dam wall emerging from
the snow.

'The night before last, I was up there in the dark,' said Cooper.
'I wouldn't normally go up on the mountain in the dark, but that
night I did.'

'I heard about that,' said Malkin.

'Well, when you're up there at night like that, in the snow,
you're desperate tor any signs of life, you know. For a long time,
there was only one thing I eould see anywhere a light. It was the
light from your window. I knew it was yours. You don't bother
drawing your curtains.'

'I didn't know you were up there,' said Malkin. 'What did you
expect me to do?'

'Nothing,' said Cooper. 'But if I'd been lost and didn't know
which way to go, I would certainly have headed for your house.
It was the one light for miles. It was like a symbol of safety.'

'It you say so.'

'I remember thinking that I would never have set off towards
the other side of the reservoir and down to the water board road,
which you can't even see from up there. You wouldn't even
know it existed. You'd have to be blind or stupid to set off in
that direction.'


411



Malkin seemed to catch on to the drift of what Cooper was
saying. 'Or drunk?' he said.

'Pilot Officer Mdeague was not drunk,' said Cooper.

The air felt damp, and Cooper could see that the cloud was
lowering rapidly. He pulled his collar up and shivered.

'I checked the Accident Investigator's report myself,' he said.
'The whisky on hoard Lancaster SU-V was a gift for the station
commander at RAF Renson. The Wing Commander at Leadenhall
had a black market supply, and he wanted to share it with his old
friend in Lancashire.'

'Is that right?'

o

'Mr Malkin, 1 don't think you can possibly have seen or heard
Pilot Officer McTcague walking down the road singing "Show Me
the Way to Go Home".'

'Well, I might have been mistaken,' said Malkin. 'The memory
plays tricks after all this time.'

'I think there are things you remember all too well.'

O v

Malkin stared across the moor for a moment or two. Banks
of mist were beginning to move across in front of Irontonguc
Hill, and soon they wouldn't be able to see it at all from
Hollow Shaw.

'Would you like to tell me about it?' said Cooper.

Malkin stood quite still and rigid. 'You have to understand
something,' he said. 'Ted and I had heard our mother and father
and some of their friends talking about counterfeit bank notes that

o

were supposed to have been printed by the Germans to upset our
economy.'

Cooper frowned. 'What has this got to do with anything?'

'Listen to me. When 1 first went up to the crash with Ted, we
heard two of the airmen talking to each other. They were talking
in a foreign language. So we knew they were German.'

'No, it would have been the two Poles you heard,' said
Cooper. 'It was Zygmunt Lukasz and Klcmens Wach. They were
speaking Polish.'

'I know that now.' said Malkin, alreadv starting to get irritated.

'	' v C* O

'That's why we stayed away from the crew, you see. Not that we
would have known what to do if we'd found anyone injured. We
were going to find a phone and call the police, but then we saw the


4-12



bags that had been thrown clear of the wreckage. Ted stopped to
take a look inside. And we found the money/

Malkin paused. He looked across the moor towards the side of
Rlackbrook Reservoir and opened a Held gate in the dry-stone wall
before he continued.

'Ted said there were millions of pounds. It took us days to
count the notes, but there wasn't that much. We could barely
carry the bags between us. I was only little, remember, and I soon
got tired. We planned to hide them before we called the police.
We reckoned everyone would think the bags had been thrown

V	O

into the reservoir in the crash, because there were plenty of other
bits of the aircraft lying all around the edge of the water.'

'I understand all that,' said Cooper. 'So what went wrong?'

Malkin still stared at the reservoir. 'We saw the light,' he said.
'Out on the ice.'

'A light?'

'It was way out in the darkness, and we knew it was in a place no
human being could possibly be. It was as if the light was floating in
mid-air. You get daft ideas at times like that, but the first thing we
thought of was the spirits that are supposed to be on the moor. We
thought of ghosts. Even Ted was a bit scared, I think.'

Malkin seemed almost to be reverting back to his childhood as
he spoke. Cooper could picture him as the excited, terrified little
boy, in awe of his older bother. It wasn't all that hard to imagine
how the young George Malkin must have felt. There had been
times in his own past when Cooper had become almost sick with
excitement at some adventure that Matt had got him into.

'And then we heard a voice calling for help,' said Malkin. 'It
was weak, and there was a funny echo to it. We stood and watched
the light moving, and we knew it must be one of the crew from the

o	o'

crashed plane. But we didn't think he could be alive at first. We
thought it was his ghost, just a light and a voice. He was calling for
help in English, but we weren't fooled. We'd heard them speaking
in their own language, so we knew they were German.'

Cooper closed his eyes. 'They were Polish,' he said.

But Malkin didn't hear him. He was far away, re-living a
moment that was permanently etched in his memory. Fiftyseven
years had done nothing to weaken his recollection. He


+ 13



was talking now as if it didn't matter whether Cooper were
there or not.

'Then Ted said the airman must he near the edge of the
reservoir. He said the dam wall was behind him, Because we
could hear the echo when he shouted. So we watched the light
lor a little while longer. I've never felt so cold in my life, hut part
of that was the fear. I knew if we waited much longer, 1 wouldn't
he ahle to carry the hag any further. 1 started to look round for
somewhere to hide it, hut there was nowhere near. There was
only snow. And then Ted said: "He's on the ice."'

'The reservoir was frozen over, wasn't it?' said Cooper.

'At that far side, it was. The airman was walking across the ice,
follow ing the dam wall.' Malkin paused. 'I was worrying ahout the
money. The man on the ice was the one thing that seemed to stand
hetwccn the money and us. He would know it was missing. I said
we should put the hags hack, hut Ted told me not to he stupid. I
said the airman would reach the water hoard road, that he would
he ahle to walk to the phone hox half a mile away. But led said:
"He won't reach the road."'

Cooper opened his mouth to ask a question, hut changed his
mind. It would he a mistake to interrupt now. The story was
approaching a conclusion. He could feel it in Malkin's increasing
tension, see it in the lines around his mouth, a tightening rictus
of (ear. Cooper could tell he had memorized every word that
had been spoken as the two brothers stood clutching the leather
hags, listening to a voice calling for help.

'And then \ve both heard it the cracking,' said Malkin. 'It was
clear in the night air, and it sounded so loud. It was like the sound
of two pieces of metal being tapped against each other, and a little
crunch of something breaking. Then the light disappeared. One
second it was there, then it was gone. There was no shout or cry
from him, not even a splash of water. Maybe a reflection of the
flames on a piece of ice as it tilted on the surface. But then the ice
fell back, and he was gone.'

Cooper shuddered, imagining the shock of icy water closing
over his head. McTeague would have been dressed in heavy flying
boots and a parachute harness. Trapped under a layer of ice, he
would have been dead within seconds.


414



Now Irontongue had disappeared in the mist, which was
rapidly approaching across the moor, racing towards Hollow
Shaw, turning the air heavy with the expectation of rain. Cooper
could feel the dampness on the back of his neck.

"I didn't understand what had happened,' said Malkin. 'Not
until later. When we went up and looked at the reservoir next
morning, I saw it was only on the east side that the water was
frozen enough to walk on. It had a covering of snow, so it wouldn't
have felt any different to a piece of level ground to a man in the
dark. It's bloody hard work walking across that moor at any time,
let alone in snow and in the dark. There arc doughs everywhere

c?

to get across.'

'He must already have keen exhausted by the time he got to the
reservoir,' said Cooper.

'Aye. He would never have suspected. But on the other side,
near the weir, the water was still moving and the ice was thin, not
enough to carry a man's weight. By the morning, there was barely
a crack on the surface where he had fallen in. You know, that bloke
had been over Germany, got back home and walked away from a
crashed plane. Then he put his life in the hands of two young bovs.
And we let him die.'

Cooper knew that his own imagination could not match what
Malkin was going through. The man had been over the events of
that night too manv times.

o	^

"I always thought he would come back and haunt us out here,
on the moor,' said Malkin. 'At nights, he does come back. But only
in my nightmares.'

Cooper stared towards the reservoir, where it lav in a hollow
between the snow-covered hills. He nodded, thinking not of
Malkin nor even of Danny McTeague, but of Zygmunt Lukasz.

'No forgiving. No forgetting,' he said.

And suddenly, Malkin snapped. His face reddened and the veins
stood out in his forehead, twisting his face into an unrecognizable
expression.

'Do you think I want to remember this?' he said. 'Don't you

y	v

think I've re-lived it often enough already since the night it
happened? How many times do you think I've had the nightmare
in that time? How many?'


415



'I don't know/ said Cooper.

'How many nights in fifty-seven years?' said Malkin. 'Work it
out for yourself, clever lad.'


George Malkin turned and began to walk back towards the farm.
Ben Cooper felt for his radio. Should he call in? But it was
ridiculous -- this was surely an accidental death, fifty-seven
years old. The witness had been an eight-year-old boy. After
all that had happened recently, everyone would think he had
finally gone mad if he made a drama out of it. Then he saw that
Malkin wasn't heading for the house, but towards the big shed
where Rod Whittaker kept his lorry. Malkin slid back the doors
and disappeared inside.


'Mr Malkin?' called Cooper. He began to feel foolish standing
in the Held. He started to run towards the shed as he heard a
dicscl engine rumble into life. Cooper peered inside. The DAP
wasn't there, but the big Renault tractor was, along with all its
implements lined up against the wall -- a hay baler, a harrow, a
snowplough blade. George Malkin was sitting high up in the cab
of the tractor.

'Mr Malkin!' shouted Cooper. 'Do you help Rod Whittaker
with his contracting business, too?'

'Nay, I don't have an HGV licence/ Malkin called back.

'You can drive this tractor, though.'

Cooper saw Malkin put the tractor into gear. He dodged round
to the side and pulled himself up on to the step to clamber through
the passenger door.

'You said Rod Whittaker is contracted by the council. His
contract includes clearing the snow sometimes, I bet. It's much
cheaper for the council to pay farmers and local contractors to do
it, rather than buy expensive snowploughs of their own.'

'Avc/ said Malkin, as the tractor began to move.

v '	' O

'So you could take this tractor out with the snowplough
attachment, when it's needed to clear the roads around here?'

'I suppose I could.'

The tractor bumped across the yard and headed for the open
gate on to the moor. Cooper remembered his visit to the Snake
Inn, where the staff had said that one of the snowplough crews


416



had stopped to fill their Masks on the morning Nick Easton's
body had been found. But only one crew. They said the crews that
came over the Pass from the north weren't council workers --
they were on contract, so it was in their own interests to get
the job done quicker. And one of them had been a big tractor
with a snowplough. Very early on the job, it was. It would have
come over from somewhere near Glossop, they said. It could
easily have come from Harrop.

'You could get as far as the Snake Inn, couldn't you?' said
Cooper over the roar of the engine. 'Nobody would think twice
about a snowplough on the road after it had been closed to traffic.
The staff at the inn didn't. They never saw or heard any other
vehicles just the snowploughs coming down the Pass, and then,
later on, another one coming up. The one that found Nick Easton's
body. And I think one of those that came down left him there.'

Blackbrook Reservoir appeared ahead of them in the mist.
Malkin swung the wheel and reversed through the wet peat
towards a padlocked gate.

'Stop,' said Cooper.

'Don't worry. I'm stopping.'

Malkin kept the engine running while he climbed down and
swung open the gate. Cooper stood clear of the tractor's wheels,
noticing that the padlock on the gate had been cut.

'You helped Frank Baine get rid of the body,' said Cooper. 'Did
Baine have some kind of hold over you?'

'No, that's not right/ said Malkin.

He backed the tractor tow ards the edge of the reservoir, where
a concrete slipway ran down into the water. Then Malkin riddled
with something at the back of the vehicle, and Cooper saw he had
hold of a thick chain with a massive hook on one end. He watched
in amazement as Malkin waded into the freezing water and was

o

soon up to his waist. He bent and attached the hook to something
under the surface. When he returned to the tractor, Malkin was
soaked and white with cold.

'Frank Baine came here a couple of weeks ago,' he said. 'He'd
worked out that I had the money. I sold a lot of other stuff to
Lawrence Daley, and Baine is no fool. Fie asked Daley where
it came from, and put two and two together.' Malkin climbed


417



hack into the tractor cab. 'Bainc said the white fivers were worth
a lot. He said they were collectors' items, that people would pay
good money for them, proper money. Hr offered to sell them for
me -- in exchange for a cut of the profits, of course. We worked
out there was over a hundred thousand pounds' worth. That was
enough to send Florence to America for treatment.'

'It must have seemed like a miracle,' said Cooper.

'Aye, after all that time, the miracle I'd been praying for. You
wouldn't reckon me to be a man that prayed, would you? But
that's what I'd been doing, and I thought Bainc had brought my
miracle.' Malkin shook his head. 'Then the RAF policeman came.
Of course, it was all too late by then. And everything 1 did after
that was pointless.'

He put the tractor into gear, and the chain tightened. Cooper
stood on the edge of the reservoir and looked down. The surface
was black and oily with the mud that had been churned up by all
the mcltwater running into it, full of dark brown peat. Anything
could have been lurking down there.

But as the tractor began to edge forward, it was something
metallic and shiny that began to emerge from the water. Bit by
bit, recognizable objects became visible. A bumper, a number
plate and aback window. Eventually, the car stood on the concrete
slipway, water streaming out of it, mud sliding slowly down its
windscreen.

'Get your fingerprint kit on that,' said Malkin.

'It's Nick Easton's Ford Focus.'

'Clever lad.'


This time, Ben Cooper called in. George Malkin waited while he
did it. He wasn't looking at Cooper, but gaxing at Hollow Shaw
Farm, as if he might be seeing it for the last time. It was the house
he had lived in all his life, the place that had held his secrets.


Cooper shook his head as he looked at the dripping car.

'So you thought Nick Easton had come to take the money

^	C? v

from you?'

'Of course he had,' said Malkin. 'Just when I thought I had that
fortune in my grasp again, he came to snatch it away. I couldn't
let him do that.'


418



'So you killed him.'

'It was blind panic. I don't think I really knew what I was
doing.' Malkin's voice became a little unsteady. 'Once he was
dead, I didn't seem to be able to think straight at all. I don't
have any idea what I did for the next few hours, until I realized
it was the middle of the night, and by then the snow had started.
Rod had already put the snovvplough blade on the tractor in case
he was needed for road clearing, so I got the body in the back and
took it down the Snake.'

'And there were no cars on the road,' said Cooper.

'You had that right. Nobody bothered about seeing a snowplough.
Rut do you know what? I emptied the bloke's pockets
before I tipped him out, and it was only when 1 found his keys
that it dawned on me he'd have a car. How's that tor stupid? I
found the car parked just past the farm. I didn't sec it on the way
out, or J might have thought of putting him into the reservoir with
it. At the time, all I \\anted was to get him as far away as possible.
Like I say, I wasn't thinking straight.'

Cooper frowned. 'Rut how did Nick Easton know you had the
money? Who told him?'

Then Malkin laughed his coarse, gravelly laugh. The noise
sounded alien in the damp stillness of the moor.

'I did,' he said. 'I told him myself.'

"I don't understand.'

'Years ago, it was. I'd known the bank notes were worthless for
a long time. Rut they were on my conscience and I couldn't rest
easy thinking that Florence might rind them one day. It seemed to
me that, il 1 owned up to the money, I might get the airman off my
conscience too that he wouldn't appear in my nightmares any
more. So 1 got the number for the RAF Police, and 1 rang them. I
gave them my name and address and told them I knew where the
monev from the crashed Lancaster was.'

'They would have had no idea what you were talking about.'

'()! course not,' said Malkin. 'Everyone had forgotten about it,
but (or me.'

'So what did they do?'

'Not a thing. They thanked me for the information and said
somebody might get in touch with me. Rut nobody ever did. Well,


419



they had better things to do, I suppose. They didn't care about
what had happened all those years ago, and why should they? I
suppose they just put a note in a file somewhere about this old
idiot at Harrop, and then they left me with my nightmares.'

'Until Andrew Lukasz told Sergeant Easton the story. And
Easton must have dug out the old files before he came to
Edendale.'

'Aye.'

For a few moments, Cooper watched the ripples that were still
disturbing the surface of the water, breaking sluggishly on the

C"	' C* OC* y

concrete slipway.

'You could hide anything in that reservoir,' he said. 'And
it might never come to the surface. Danny McTeague's bodynever
did.'

Malkin's face contorted again. 'Oh yes,' he said.

Cooper misunderstood him at first. He thought Malkin was
agreeing with him. But there was something about the tone of the
man's voice, an abruptness that choked the words in his throat.

'Mr Malkin?'

'He came to the surface when the ice began to melt,' said
Malkin. 'Pour davs later.'

'You saw him?'

'Not at first. The ice gradually began to get thinner so thin that
we could see through it when we stood at the top of the reservoir
wall. On the third day, we saw him. He was floating on his back,
staring up at us, with his face squashed up against the ice. It was
like he was pulling faces at us, sticking out his tongue to say that
he had got the better of us, after all.'

'So what did you do about the body? Didn't you tell your
father?'

Malkin laughed. 'Not bloody likely. He'd have beaten us black
and blue with his belt and locked us in the coal shed for telling lies.
And then he would have told the police. We thought we'd be put
in prison for murder. Because we believed we AaJ murdered him,
see. It was our fault he died.'

'But if the body had been left there, it would have been found
eventually.'

'Nobody found it, because we sent it back down to the bottom.


420



There was a little rowing boat that was kept by the reservoir. We
took it and tilled it with stones, and we took our dad's fishing net
from his shed. He noticed it was gone one day, hut he blamed
some gypsies who'd been hanging around.'

Cooper was starting to feel wet and uncomfortable. He almost
wished he could see Irontongue Hill. At least the black buttress of
rock would have been something solid and familiar. Yet together,
Irontonguc and the Malkin boys had been the end of Danny
McTcague.

'We tied the ends of the net to the airman's body,' said Malkin.
'We tied it to his flying suit, his parachute harness, wherever we
could. Then we filled it with stones and we threw it over the side.
We didn't think he was going to sink at first, then his face stopped
staring at us, and the stones pulled him down to the bottom, and
all that was left were some bubbles. 1 kept looking, in case he came
back up. I kept looking for months, even when the summer came.
I spent so much time sitting staring at this reservoir that my dad
thought 1 was turning peculiar. But the dead airman never came
back up.'

'We'll have to send divers into the reservoir to look for the
remains,' said Cooper. 'We might have to drain it.'

'Not much point in that,' said Malkin. 'They drained the
reservoir thirty-five years ago.'

'But. . .'

'It was old and leaking by then, so they emptied it to put a
concrete lining on the bottom. It's been drained twice more
since, for maintenance. You don't just let a reservoir alone for
sixty years, you know -- it'd be so full of holes it wouldn't hold
a drop of water. And what would be the good of that?'

Cooper wondered whether he had been spun a complete yarn.
But Malkin wasn't laughing. His face was almost grey, and he
made no attempt to wipe away the moisture that was settling on
his checks as the mist gathered around them.

'Mr Malkin, are you telling me the truth?' said Cooper. 'Orwas
that some childish fantasy you had at the time?'

'Every word I'm telling you is true. But time passes, and things
change. A body doesn't stay a body for ever, not in water, not
with fish and things nibbling away at it. By the time they drained


421



the reservoir, there would only have keen a few bits of hone and
some rags buried in the mud on the bottom. Have you ever seen
a reservoir when it's emptied? The mud is three teet deep on the
bottom. Disgusting the smell is, too.'

'Yes, I remember the year there was a drought and all the
reservoirs started to dry up. You could smell them for miles.'

'It was worse than that. It was foul enough to knock your head

O	V

off. They scooped the mud out and tipped it into lorries. Nobody
bothered to sift through it to rind any bodies they wanted to get
it away as quick as they could. It all got tipped into a landfill site,
over where Rents Quarry used to be. Later they put some top soil
over it, and levelled it off. It grassed over nicely in a year or two it
makes a decent bit of grazing now. In fact, it's the pasture Rod
Whittaker uses for his sheep.'

Malkin pointed back across the moor towards Hollow Shaw
Farm, where Cooper could make out a scatter of white shapes
among the remaining patches of snow.

'That's where your missing pilot is,' said Malkin. 'He's helping
to teed those ewes.'

Cooper gaxed at the sheep. One of the animals lifted its head
and stared back at him. Its jaws were rotating steadily, and it had a
look of sullen insolence on its black face. Cooper felt an irrational
surge of anger. It had been such a long way to come, only to end
with a field full of sheep.

'There's something I've often wondered since then,' said
Malkin. 'What do you think the folk of Manchester would have
said, if they'd known what was in their drinking water?'


Finally, the first patrol car bounced up the potholed road from
Harrop. It had its headlights on as it climbed into the mist. George
Malkin put his coat on, and walked with Cooper towards the car.
'The Morrissev woman did you trust her?' said Malkin.


./	v

' Of course. I know some of her facts were w rong,' said Cooper.
'Frank Rainc gave her false information.'

'That's not what I meant at all. She's known since Tuesday
night how her grandfather died. She came here to ask me about
the medal, so I told her.'

Cooper stopped suddenly. 'The medal?'


422



'I picked it up on the moor the night of the crash. It was in a
little leather pouch, but with all the excitement ahout the money
and the man on the ice, I forgot ahout it until later. Then I found
it even had the airman's name and address on a lahel stitched inside
the pouch.

'Sojoti sent her the medal.'

'I sent it hack hccause I'd hottlcd the whole thing up long
enough. It was when I finally knew that Florence was dying,
and I needed to get it off my chest, I suppose. But I didn't put
my name on the letter -- I just said 1 was one of those hoys who
saw Danny McTcague walking away from the crash.'

Cooper's face twisted, as a remcmhcrcd taste came to his
mouth. It was that hitter, metallic taste, like hlood seeping
from his saliva glands, a hittemess that jerked a spasm from his

throat. Alison Morrissev had been to Hollow Shaw after he had

^

let Malkin's name drop on Tuesday, and since then she had known
everything. The following morning she had been on a flight hack
to Toronto. Had she been as single-minded as she had claimed?
Had she been concerned only with her own ohsession, even as
she had kissed him outside the Cavendish Hotel? Alison Morrissev

v

had failed to mention that she had been kissing him goodbye. But
Diane Fry had been watching, and she had known. No doubt she
thought she had been right about Morrissev all along.

'It was all for Florence, you know,' said Malkin. 'She was the
one real treasure that I had in my life, not the monev. 1 carried the
guilt with me so long that I grew not to trust anybodv, in case they
found out my secret. But Florence was the one person I never felt
like that about. 1 trusted her and loved her, and I did what I could
for her.'

A PC opened the door of the patrol car and Malkin ducked
his head obediently to get in. Rut he paused and turned back
towards Cooper.

'It means a lot if there's somebodv you can trust,' he said. 'Even if
they make a mistake now and then, you know they're genuine about
what they do. Somebody like that is rare. If you re a clever lad, you'll
find somebody like that and hold on to them, if you can.'

Cooper stared at George Malkin wordlessly. Now it was really
raining, and the sky was hidden somewhere behind grey clouds.


423



Cooper was jjlacl not to be able to sec the sky. He was glad
not to he able to see the scornful laces of the sheep. He was
particularly ^lacl not to he able to see the tongue-shaped buttress
of black rock on the hill, with its reptilian curl and its ridges and
crevices. Irontongue had destroyed too many lives. He couldn't
have tolerated its eternal derision.

'By the way/ said Malkin, 'I suppose you'll be wanting the knife.'

He pulled a blade from his pocket and held it out to Cooper. It
was very sharp and stained with blood.

'My God. Hold on, I need to get a bag for it.'

'Don't worry,' said Malkin. 'It's sheep blood. I used it for
skinning dead lambs. It's a messy job, but it had to be done. I
couldn't see the orphans being left without any mothers.'


After Malkin had been driven away, Ben Cooper stood and listened
for a moment to the rain dripping through the mist on to the peat
moor. The sound was somehow reassuring. It was a totallv natural
cadence, a reminder that the world all around him continued as
normal, no matter what happened in his own life. I he moisture
still condensed in the chilly air as it always had, and the rain drops
still smacked against the wet ground, just as they would if he ceased
to exist in this moment, if he were to vanish into a little pool of slush
like a melted snowman. The rain was one of nature's primeval forces,
oblivious to all human obsessions. The world that Ben Cooper moved
in hardly impinged on it.

In the end, the secret of getting through life was to achieve the
right perspective. At moments like these, all his own concerns seemed
trivial. Back in Edendale, there were difhculties to face, pain to be
dealt with, hard things to explain and a lot of work to be done to
achieve any kind of reconciliation and forgiveness. But for as long as
he could stand here listening to the rain on the moor, those problems
and anxieties were so small in the scale of things that they could easilv

C"	v v

be overcome; they could even be washed away in the rain. Out here,
life was simple and painless.

Cooper nodded to himself. Then he pulled up his collar and turned
away from Hollow Shaw Farm. And the sound of the rain on the peat
moor slowly faded behind him as he walked back to the car.


424