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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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 whe
re 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.
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‘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
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this, as if he wasn’t coming up to expectations.
The books he had bought from Fden Valley Books were on
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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
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
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soldiers to satisfy that Canadian woman’s obsession. Do you understand what I’m saving?’
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‘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/
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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