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 …”
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‘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
vO
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.
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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
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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 reappear 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
oo 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
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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. An
d 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
. Jo o
volumes. Near the top were 0/ťejvanonj in (Ae fie/J mm fne loner Derwen! ( a/gj’ and I Oomprenenjite RecorJ of EirJ Migration in Mc.scern Der^y.siire 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 . . p>
‘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
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“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
oJ 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,
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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
iO 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 A
rcher 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
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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
Blood on the tongue bcadf-3 Page 18
