Blood on the tongue bcadf-3

by Stephen Booth

  ‘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

  ^ O1 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

  OV

  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 b
alance 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

  VO 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

  bo ,

  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

  v66

  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.

  oo

  ‘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 exservicemen’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

  jj 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?’