‘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
OOC” v O
one and the same person/
‘OK. And she was remembering this dead airman . . p>
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
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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?
<3O
‘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.
oo 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.’
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‘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.
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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
VO 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
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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.
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‘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?’
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‘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
oo
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.
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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 exservicemen’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
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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.
IO
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
vy ‘ 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
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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.’
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‘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 exservicemen’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
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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.’
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