Blood on the tongue bcadf-3

by Stephen Booth

  ‘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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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.’

  ‘Fiftyseven years,’ said Cooper, trying to (md a patch of carpet to stand on.

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  ‘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.

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  ‘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.’

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  ‘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 so
cks 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

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  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

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  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.

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  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

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  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.

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  ‘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?’

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  ‘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

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  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.’

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  ‘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.

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  ‘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. 7low 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 wate
r 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

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  place. Aye, but we heard him.’ ‘Heard him? Was he shouting?’

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  ‘Singing,’ said Malkin.

  Cooper stared at him. He couldn’t sec anything of Malkin’s face at all under the cap and the earflaps, 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”.’

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  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

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  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.