Blood on the tongue bcadf-3

by Stephen Booth

  ‘I’d still like to keep coming every day, if that’s all right.’

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  Rachel smiled. She wasn’t very old, twenty-five or twenty-six. He couldn’t understand what made a woman like this want to look after other people’s elderly relatives.

  ‘Of course, it’s fine,’ she said. ‘Come as often as you like.’

  Then Cooper saw a familiar figure walking along the corridor on the way out. For a moment, he couldn’t identify who it was. It was one of those moments when he saw somebody he knew but his mind failed to name them, because he was seeing them out of context. Maybe this man was dressed differently, too, from when he had last seen him. Cooper’s brain floundered (or a moment. Then the front door opened and a draught of icy air blew into the waiting room. It was the chill that prompted his memory.

  ‘That was George Malkin,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, do you know Mr Malkin?’ said Rachel. ‘His wife is one of our residents, too. She’s been here lor some time now.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been a while.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I was just thinking. I’ve been to his house recently. It doesn’t show many signs of a woman’s touch, you might saw.’

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  ‘Poor chap. Some men are completely lost when it comes to living on their own. aren’t they?’

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  ‘So I believe,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Florence Malkin has dementia. She recognizes her husband sometimes. Rut, funnily enough, those are the worst davs. Florence has a bit of an obsession. She’s convinced that George is going to pay for her to get private treatment. She says he’s got the money to do it, and he’s going to send her away to get her cured. Some days it’s a top doctor in Harley Street, other days a famous specialist in America. She asks him about it every time he comes, when she remembers. She asks him over and over again, and he doesn’t know how to answer her. Well, however she thinks he s going to afford that, I don’t know. It’s obvious neither of them ever had more than two pennies to rub together.’ Rachel sighed. ‘You can see he’s absolutely devoted to her. I don’t know how he’s managing to pay for her care here without selling his house. Rut it won’t be for much longer. Poor man.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘Poor man.’

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  31

  Ken Cooper rang Diane Fry’s mobile. He had never known what she did with herself in the evenings when she went oft duty, except that she sometimes drove into Sheffield. Fry had told him once that she had been trying to trace her sister, but she hadn’t mentioned it to him for months. She was much too secret and solitary a person for her own good.

  ‘Ben? Funny you should call. I’ve got some news.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were right about Marie Tennent. She was Sergeant Abbott’s granddaughter. Strange, isn’t it? Two granddaughters

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  of the Lancaster’s crew appearing at the same time. One dead and one very much alive.’

  ‘It was the anniversary of the crash,’ said Cooper. ‘Anniversaries are important. They both felt they had to remember it.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain why one of them was dead.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ben, we’ve also had the preliminary results of the postmortem.’

  ‘On Marie Tcnncnt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s bad news, isn’t it, Diane?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. She suffered from more than just frostbite. She’d been badly beaten. She had bruises to her face and the upper part of her body, consistent with being struck by a fist several times. It looks as though she had been in a violent struggle not long before she died.’

  ‘Damn.’ The news made Cooper feel sick. Despite all the work on the Snowman enquiry, and all the time that he had spent on Danny McTeague and the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor, it had been Marie Tennent he had woken thinking about each morning.

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  She had been there at the back of his mind - a sad, cold bundle lying on the hillside, waiting for somebody to explain what had happened to her.

  ‘We’ve been neglecting her, Diane,’ said Cooper. ‘We

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  have to find out where she had been, who she’d been sec—

  ing.’

  ‘We’ll interview Eddie Kcmp again tomorrow,’ said Fry. ‘But if he moved back in with his wife six months ago, the chances are there’s been another boyfriend since then.’

  ‘One who might not have been happy about the baby.’

  ‘Exactly/

  ‘There’s his brother, too,’ said Cooper. ‘Graham, isn’t it? The guy at the aircraft museum mentioned him.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Graham Kcmp was one of the people interviewed over the double assault. We have no evidence against him, though the CCTV Aim could help get an ID. The meeting with the MDP has been scheduled for tomorrow.’

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  ‘Hopefully Sergeant Caudwcll might explain why she was interested in Marie Tennent and Sugar Uncle Victor.’

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  He heard Fry make a noise between a dismissive grunt and a resigned sigh. ‘We’re promised they’re going to share intelligence,’ she said. ‘It’s madness to keep details of this enquiry from us. They’re making us work in the dark.’

  ‘It would help to have a little more information of your own before that, wouldn’t it?’ said Cooper.

  Fry was silent for a moment. ‘What do you mean, Ben?’

  ‘If you could have some evidence against the vultures.’

  ‘(‘u/turg^?’

  ‘It’s what Zygmunt Lukasz calls them — the people who take things from the aircraft wrecks. Where are you, Diane?’

  ‘Still at West Street.’

  ‘More overtime? I think we could get some evidence. I think between us we could do it.’

  ‘What? Ben, arc you asking for my help?’

  ‘A different approach might work. I thought we could tackle George Malkin again.’

  ‘On what pretext?’

  ‘There’s the money.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘The wages for three RAF bases were being carried on

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  Lancaster SU-V the nig^ht it crashed. The money went missing and was never found. I suspect that Malkin once had at least a

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  share in the money from the crashed Lancaster. Maybe his father was involved with the two Home Guards who were suspected of taking it. They could have got the money away and hidden it at Hollow Shaw Farm, to share it out later. I don’t know. But Malkin has no moncv now. And he seems to have sold all the souvenirs he ever had, except for an old watch. 1 wonder who he sold them to, Diane. And I wonder what happened to the money.’

  ‘I hope you’re not on some flight of fancy again,’ said Fry. ‘Pick me up at the front door.’

  It was completely dark when they reached Harrop. As they entered George Malkin’s house, Ben Cooper was aware of Fry taking off her coat, then changing her mind and putting it hack on again as she shivered with cold. She pulled her collar closer and tightened her scarf.

  ‘Well, 1 am popular these days,’ said Malkin. ‘It’s a proper social whirl I live in.’

  ‘We’re sorry to bother you again, sir.’

  ‘Aye, I’m sure.’

  The sitting room looked no different from when Cooper had been there a few days before. Malkin didn’t bother to draw the curtains at night. There was no point, since there were no other houses to be seen, and no one ever passed on the track outside, except Malkin’s friend, Rod Whittaker, who ran his contract haulage business from here and kept his sheep in the fields.

  On one window ledge was a collection of empty jars. They were the type that would once have contained strawberry jam or marmalade, but they had been stripped of their labels and washed clean for some long-forgotten purpose. Now they were left to gather dust instead. The jar nearest to Cooper had several small, dead spiders desiccating on the glass bottom.
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  Their tiny, fragile legs, no thicker than a hair, had folded into their bodies as they had curled up to accept death in their incomprehensible prison.

  ‘How long have you been living on your own?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘It’s nearly three years since Florence went into the home.’

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  ‘Long enough when you’re on your own/

  ‘Aye, if you’re not used to it. It’s thirty-eight years since we were wed. When you And yourself alone, you start to get into tunny little ways. You don’t realize it after a while, unless somebody points it out.’

  ‘Like living without any heating, perhaps?’ suggested Cooper.

  Malkin laughed. The sound was like someone shovelling loose gravel. A trickle of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘I don’t need it,’ he said. ‘Not for myself. And I’m not about to start a blazing fire, just in case I get visitors the likes of you. I suppose you live in a town, do you?’

  Cooper was about to say ‘no’, then remembered that he did, in fact, live in a town. He had lived in a town since Saturday. He was touched by Malkin’s concern for his comfort, but strangely oHended by the man’s assumption that his visitor was some kind of soft townie.

  ‘You don’t get the weather the same, not in a town,’ said Malkin. ‘If you’re a bit ncsh, lad, you should put on an extra sweater when you go out. That’s what our mam always used to tell us.’

  Cooper had never thought of himself as ‘nesh’ - soft, too sensitive to the cold. It was the sort of term normally reserved for southerners in the ironic way that local people had of winding them up. But he wasn’t a southerner he was local himself. Being nesh was for townies.

  But Cooper could sec that his way of living was a couple of steps away from that of George Malkin these days; his comfort level was several notches up the central heating thermostat. He

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  had a low er degree of tolerance to discomfort and deprivation. So perhaps he was ncsh, after all, in the eyes of the George Malkins of the world. Perhaps he had lost the link with these people that he once thought he had. In the end, the bond between them wasn’t genetic but a social link that could be broken if it was stretched too far.

  ‘I dare say Florence would be ashamed of how I live now, if she knew,’ said Malkin.

  Cooper (elt a surge oi sympathy. He recognized a man cut o(l from the support that had kept him on a normal course.

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  Alone, it was too easy to fall into a way of living that seemed abnormal to everyone else.

  ‘Detective Constable Cooper had a long talk to Mr Walter Rowland yesterday,’ said Fry. ‘DC Cooper is very good at getting information out of people. They seem to trust him/

  Malkin looked from Fry to Cooper, and his stare lingered. Cooper fidgeted uneasily.

  ‘You and your family have always been known for collecting aircraft souvenirs,’ said Fry. ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘I suppose it might be. A lot of things came our way over the years. My dad was a terror for it, I don’t mind admitting. Us lads learned it from him. I picked up my share of souvenirs here and there.’

  ‘More than just a broken watch, then.’

  ‘I’m not saying 1 kept them. I’m not a collector - I can’t see the point. But some folk will pay cash for stuff like that, you know/

  ‘Yes, we know/

  Cooper wondered if the souvenirs had brought a steady trickle of cash in for Malkin over the years. It would hardly have been enough to pay for private medical care for Florence. Perhaps she had heard her husband talk about his sideline and got the wrong idea about the value of the items. Poor woman — her husband had not lived up to her expectations.

  ‘But we’re enquiring into something more than just a few souvenirs,’ said Fry.

  ‘There was the money,’ said Cooper. ‘The wages for RAF Bcnson/

  Malkin took off his cap for the first time. It was such a surprise that it seemed to indicate better than anything his emotional response. His hair was remarkably thick, though going grey.

  ‘Poor old Walter Rowland,’ he said. ‘He must be in a bad way now. He wasn’t well last time I saw him/

  ‘No, he isn’t too good/

  ‘If Walter knew about the money, he’s kept quiet about it for fifty-seven years. I wonder what made him say something now/

  ‘He didn’t. Not exactly,’ said Cooper.

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  ‘Oh?’

  ‘So you admit that you took the money that was on board the Lancaster?’ said Fry.

  Malkin turned his attention back to her. ‘You’ve got good timing, you folk. You know when to ask your questions, all right. It doesn’t matter to me now, you sec. Not at all. So you might as well know everything.’

  ‘Go on, sir.’

  ‘Yes, it was me and my brother Ted who took the money. We were only lads at the time. I was eight years old, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. But I don’t suppose there’s much point in me saying that now.’

  ‘I think it’s unlikely there will be a prosecution after all this time,’ said Fry. ‘Not for something you did when you were eight years old.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Malkin. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘There was a lot of money,’ said Cooper. ‘We’d like to know what you did with it. What did you spend it on?’

  Malkin smiled then, a sheepish, embarrassed smile. ‘You won’t believe me.’

  ‘Try us. We’ve heard all sorts of things that people waste their money on. Foreign holidays? Women? Did you gamble it away?’

  ‘None oi those things.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I didn’t spend it at all. I’ve still got it.’

  Cooper stared at him. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I said you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘You found yourself suddenly in possession of a fortune, and you’re telling me that you just put it in the bank and saved it up for a rainy day? You didn’t spend any of it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But I didn’t put it in the bank either.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘I’m going to have to show you,’ said Malkin.

  George Malkin led Cooper and Fry up to the top of his garden, through a gate and across a snowcovered paddock. They had to lean into the wind and lift their feet high out of the snow

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  to make progress. But Malkin seemed almost unaware of it. He ploughed across the field like a carthorse, with his head down and his shoulders hunched forward inside his overcoat.

  At the far side of the field was a stile huilt into the drystone wall. They crossed it carefully, and found themselves floundering waist-deep in a drift that had keen blown up against the other side. When they had struggled out of it, they were panting with the effort. In front of them was another field, hut this one sloped gently up to the rocky base of the hill, and the snow became less deep as they crossed the last few yards.

  It was only when they were standing at the foot of the hill that they saw they had reached the entrance to an old mine. It

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  was no more than a cleft in the rock face, about as wide as a man’s shoulders not wide enough, in fact, for George Malkin, who had to slide through it sideways. A fine layer of snow had blown a foot or two into the entrance, but beyond that the rock floor was only damp, so that it gleamed in the light of an old bicycle lamp that Malkin took from his pocket.

  ‘We should have brought a Dragon light from the car,’ said Fry. ‘I can hardlv see a thing.’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ said Malkin. ‘We’ll not be doing much reading or anything.’

  Like all caves or mines, even the smallest and most insignificant, there were unidentifiable noises and echoes in its darkest corners, and angles of rock that made sudden black fists in the edges of the shadows. The smell was of wet sand, and the dampness was as heavy as a blanket, as if they had stepped below the level of the water table.
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  George Malkin used the wavery beam of the bicycle lamp to locate a deep crack in the wall. He lifted a foot-wide boulder clear and fumbled inside with one hand until he drew out a length of baling twine. The twine was bright blue, and it seemed to be the only flicker of colour in the gloom. At first, there seemed to be no weight on the end of it, but then a small rope appeared, knotted to the twine.

  ‘Maybe you could help me pull,’ said Malkin.

  Cooper took hold of the rope and they pulled on it together, while Fry held the lamp over them. The light failed momentarily

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  and left them completely in the dark until she shook it, rattling the battery inside the casing to restore the corroded connection. Cooper could hear a dragging sound deep inside the rock. He could feel the resistance on the rope of something heavy that snagged on every bump. They seemed to he pulling at about a forty-five degree angle.

  ‘It’s a leather bag of some kind,’ said Fry, peering over the shoulders of the two men into the hole. ‘No, two bags - there’s another one tied behind it.

  ‘Aye, there were two/ said Malkin as the bags appeared over the lip of rock. ‘We managed one each, just about. Of course, in those days, I was only a little lad. 1 was small enough to slide right down into that hole. It levels out at the bottom, like a shelf. Ted sent me down there and passed the bags to me. I remember they blocked the way at first, and they were so heavy I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to get out again. But Ted was there. I knew he would rescue me if I got stuck.’

  Malkin grabbed a leather strap as Cooper took the weight on the rope. ‘It was totally dark down there,’ he said. ‘I hated the dark, always have. I’ve been scared of it since I was tiny. Darkness and deep water — those are the things that frighten me. I always had nightmares of being trapped somewhere with water coming in. You’d think you would grow out of that when you’re not a nipper any more. But it just got worse after Ted was killed. I reckon it was because I knew he wouldn’t be there any more to rescue me.’