Blood on the tongue bcadf-3

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Ben, answer me. What the hell are you doing?

  ‘V C?

  ‘I’ll take the phone with me. I’ll try to keep in touch, depending what reception is like out there.’

  He checked his rucksack for a compass, dry clothes, a torch.

  ‘Ben, stay right where you are. I’m only a couple of minutes away. We have to call out the mountain rescue team.’

  ‘They’ll take hours and it’s nearly dark already.’

  ‘We can get them to put a helicopter up.’

  ‘In a blizzard? Because if you take a look to the north, you’ll see there’s one on the way.’

  ‘Ben, I can see you now. Stay with the car.’

  ‘Diane, if we let him do this, we may never find Baby Chloe.’

  Cooper shoved his phone into the front pocket of his rucksack. He pulled on a pair of gloves. Finally, he began to walk up the hillside, following Lawrence’s footsteps. He had gone a hundred yards when he heard a car pull up on the road.

  386

  ‘Ben!’

  Cooper kept walking. Fry called after him again. But now there was an entirely different tone to her voice. No longer was there any anger, only tear and a strange appeal that made her sound like somebody else entirely.

  He turned and stared at her wordlessly. It was entirely the wrong moment to try to think of words to say to her that could mean anything. Trust Diane Fry always to be choosing the wrong moment. For a second or two he looked at her, the snow landing on her shoulders and on her face, melting into damp patches that glistened on her cheeks. A remnant of common sense urged him

  oo

  to walk back towards her, so that they could sit in the car together and wait. He stared at her for so long that he thought he would see her red scarf (or ever.

  Then he carried on walking on to the moor. Just once, Cooper looked back, and he could see Fry still watching him from the road in the dusk, with the snow falling thicker and thicker through the headlights of her car. Then his path led him over the top of a rise, and he couldn’t sec her any more.

  V

  Diane Fry made the necessary calls with a shaking hand. Once she had done that, all she could do was wait. Ben Cooper would know that she had more sense than to do anything else, that she had enough self-discipline not to go Hying in the face of procedures and the clear priorities of self-preservation and directing assistance.

  Of course, Cooper would never in his life appreciate that she felt the same instincts that he did, that her first impulse had been to run after him into the snow. Not everybody could give way to those impulses otherwise, where would the world be? What sort of mess would they be in now?

  And Cooper would never realize that waiting was the worst thing. He would never know how hard it was to sit alone in her car watching the sky darken and the snow fall heavier and heavier until it filled his tracks and obliterated signs of his presence. Fry switched on her wipers to clear her windscreen and looked at Cooper’s Toyota. He said it always got him through the snow. But now his car stood abandoned in the lay-by while he faced the

  387

  snow alone. Knowing Cooper, he had probably forgotten even to lock it in his eagerness to be a hero.

  Fry shivered despite the warm air from her car heater. Hor some reason, she remembered the rile she had in a locked drawer in her desk at West Street. She knew, in that moment, that she would destroy the Hie without hesitation, if Ben Cooper came back alive.

  The distant moors looked entirely artificial in the twilight, like mounds of polystyrene packaging, their white surfaces split by cracks. Beyond Ben Cooper’s immediate surroundings, the landscape was almost featureless. There was no horizon, just a vague softening where the low cloud lay on the tops, dropping more snow silently on the moors. The only landmark ahead of him was the outcrop of rock on Irontongue Hill, the blackest thing against a dark background.

  Cooper was able to follow Lawrence Dalcy’s tracks easily. There were traces of other walkers passing here, but they were frozen into the snow, like footprints set in wet cement, and Lawrence’s were the only fresh tracks. Cooper tried to follow a line that avoided the gullies, but now and then he sank up to his knees in a drift and had to drag himself out. The snow was too cold to make his clothes wet. Instead, it stuck to his trousers, boots and gloves in small, frozen lumps. The depth of the drifts sapped the strength from his legs, and his calf muscles were soon aching.

  He knew he needed to find Lawrence Daley before it became fully dark. The moor was a dangerous place to be at night in this weather. Not only dangerous but lethal, lor anyone inadequately equipped. The heavier the snow became, the more difficult it would be to see Lawrence, unless he could close the distance.

  He was climbing steadily higher towards the top of Irontonguc Hill, where the wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor lay. In the gullies, snow already lay uver a thin layer of ice that cracked and gave way under his weight. In the deeper areas of snow, his feet plunged in. But on the smoother areas he was aware only of the crackle and squeak as the snow compressed under his boots. No other route he chose would be a good one there were too many steep sided gullies and groughs to cross, too many sudden hollows hidden

  388

  by waist deep drifts, too many icy streams and channels full of drainage water to stumble into.

  Finally, there was a splash of colour in the snow, barely visible in the dusk. Cooper turned and headed towards it. Fifty yards away, he could see it was Lawrence’s blue jacket. He looked as though he had simply lain down to rest at the foot of a rock, among the first scattered fragments of aircraft wreckage. But from the distress on Lawrence’s face, Cooper could see he was exhausted and in pain.

  ‘I think I’ve broken my leg,’ said Lawrence. ‘And my chest hurts. Badly.’

  ‘Lie still. We have to wait until they come to find us.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come after me, Ben.’

  Cooper felt Lawrence’s check. He was very cold. ‘What on earth made you come out dressed like that?’ he said. ‘You could have died of exposure.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Lawrence. ‘So I could.’ And he coughed into the snow.

  ‘I’ve just been told about Marie,’ said Cooper. ‘Her grandfather was Sergeant Dick Abbott.’

  ‘Yes, I know. When Marie was a girl, her parents used to bring her down to Derbyshire every year to leave a poppy. Sometimes they made a holiday out of it, staying in Edcndalc for a few days. It’s very quiet in the winter — there isn’t much to do, except browse in bookshops. That’s how I met her the first time.’

  Lawrence s voice faded. Cooper looked at his face. The bookseller’s eyelids were drooping, and Cooper knew he had to stop him falling asleep.

  ‘But Eddie Kemp came along, didn’t he?’

  Lawrence didn’t reply.

  ‘Did you know you were the father of the baby, Lawrence?’ asked Cooper. ‘If Marie told Eddie Kemp, then she must have told jou, surely. Kemp was jealous. He beat her up when she told him the baby was yours. The pathologist said she was weakened by her injuries and too exhausted to make it back down the hill. That was after she left the poppy. She kept up the ritual. But she must have lain down to rest and gone to sleep. It’s a mistake to go to sleep, Lawrence. You can die of exposure out here.’

  389

  Rut Lawrence seemed to have something else he wanted to talk

  o

  about. ‘It was nothing to (Jo with the baby. Kemp couldn’t have cared less about the baby.’

  ‘What? Why then?’

  ‘He wanted to frighten her. I don’t think he meant to hurt her so badly, but he always went too iar. He meant to warn her what would happen if she told what she knew to the police. That was my fault, of course. I let her find out what the business was. It never occurred to me how she would (eel about it.’

  ‘Because she was Dick Abbott’s granddaughter, of course. She must have felt about it the way Zygmunt Lukasx did. So when she found out, she threatened to give you away. Is that w
hat happened, Lawrence? And Eddie Kemp had the job of frightening her off. Didn’t you do anything about it? For heaven’s sake she was badly injured!’

  Lawrence sounded resigned. ‘You don’t understand. It was all too complicated.’

  ‘No, I don’t understand. And I don’t understand why Marie didn’t report that he had attacked her.’

  ‘Because he threatened worse than that,’ said Lawrence.

  ‘Worse?’

  Again, Lawrence seemed to go off at a tangent. ‘Did you know

  O‘ O O v

  Andrew Lukasz came to the shop?’ he said.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He had a cigarette case he’d bought. He rang me and said he wanted to know the names of people involved in the business. He threatened he was going to speak to that RAF policeman that night.’

  o

  ‘When was this, LawTencc?’

  ‘Over a week ago. On the Sunday, the day before Marie - ‘

  ‘And did you tell him anything?’

  ‘No. He frightened me. I couldn’t face him on my own, so I phoned Frank Bainc, and he came to the shop with Kemp.’ Lawrence coughed again. ‘I sent for the reinforcements.’

  ‘But Easton was still looking for Andrew Lukasz next day. So he didn’t meet him on Sunday night.

  ‘No.’

  Cooper wondered where Andrew Lukasz was now. But time

  390

  was running out, and there was a more important question that was preying on his mind.

  ‘Lawrence, where’s the baby?’

  This time, Lawrence didn’t answer. Then Cooper noticed the approaching noise. It seemed to come from the east, creeping round the sides of Irontonguc Hill and enveloping the outcrops of rock. It moved down the slopes towards him, hut at the same time was everywhere in the sky, spreading across the low clouds. It was more than a sound - it was a deep droning that he felt as a vibration in the air, a reverberation bouncing off the hillside and filling the space all around him.

  As the rumbling continued, Cooper looked up, expecting to sec an aircraft. But nothing appeared in the sky. There was just the same blanket of iron-grey cloud rolling away towards the horizon, the same steady drift of snowflakes, thousands upon thousands of them parachuting towards him. The sound came from within the cloud; it was rumbling around inside it, spreading itself across the sky, so that it was impossible to pin down the direction it was coming (from.

  ‘ Where’s the baby, Lawrence? Where’s Baby Chloc?’

  There was still no reply. After a few minutes, the noise gradually began to recede. It didn’t exactly move away; there was no direction he could have said it had headed in. It simply became more subdued, a little quieter and more muffled, until eventually the cloud had swallowed it completely.

  Cooper had the ridiculous idea that the clouds might have been troubled by indigestion that had now grumbled its way out into the open, perhaps in a sulphurous outbreak of gas into the atmosphere somewhere over Glossop. But maybe the sound had been thunder, after all. Or maybe it had been an airliner somewhere in the overcast, flying blind towards Manchester Airport, its engines booming inside the banks of cloud. Or then, maybe he had imagined the whole thing.

  ‘We need to find Chloe, Lawrence. We have to be sure she’s safe.’

  Cooper moved to bring his other leg under his body. It was icy cold and hardly felt part of him any more. Now there was only the sound of the wind scraping its way across the

  391

  moors, and the faint settling of the snow as it drifted past his ears.

  He felt discouraged at the prospect of trying to get a response from Lawrence. But he had to keep him from falling asleep. He found himself casting around desperately for something to say.

  ‘I know you wanted to keep the bookshop going, Lawrence. Did anybody ever buy any o( those books that I priced up? No, I don’t suppose they did, though there must have been some bargains among them. And coming to the shop helped me to find the flat. I didn’t think you were very keen on me taking it at first. By the way, I suppose it’s too much to ask — but could you have a word with your aunt about the noise of the dog? It barks too much when it’s out in the yard. It wakes me up in the mornings.’

  Cooper blinked his eyes. The wind was making them water, and the unending whiteness was playing havoc with his colour perception.

  ‘ Diane Fry will get help to us soon,’ he said. ‘ She’ s good at things like that, very efficient. That’s why she made sergeant instead of

  ‘, V O

  me, I expect. Who wants to be a sergeant, anyway? Who wants a management job shoving paper and dealing with other people’s problems?’

  He blinked again. Instead of Lawrence’s blue jacket, he was seeing red. Cooper had met colour blind people who were unable to distinguish between blue and red. But he knew he wasn’t colour blind proper colour perception was one of the physical requirements for joining the police force. Candidates unable to distinguish principal colours and those who sutler from pronounced squints arc unacceptable. It was in the recruitment literature. Anybody could read it on the website.

  ‘You could do with someone like Diane to run the shop,’ he said. ‘Someone efficient, someone a bit ruthless who would throw out all those old books no one will ever buy that are cluttering the

  ^o

  place up. You could turn the business round completely. We can rely on Diane. She 11 have help here soon. Very soon.

  Red, white and blue. Cooper used the back of his glove to rub his eyes. The colours had to be imaginary. Rut he was seeing both red and blue in the snow. Red, white and blue. Very patriotic. He fumbled for his torch and switched it on. The blue was Lawrence’s

  392

  jacket, the white was the snow. And the red was the Mood. As it trickled from Lawrence’s body, it was diluting itself from dark arterial red and spreading for a few inches until it thickened and froze, staining the snow pink, like strawberry ice cream.

  ‘Lawrence, where are you injured? Did you say it was your chest? Have you fallen on something?’

  Carefully, with numh ringers, he tried to feel under Lawrence’s hody. He touched metal, a sharp splinter of torn steel.

  Cooper stared at Lawrence’s white face, remembering the Irving flying jacket in that upstairs room at the bookshop. An Irving suit was exactly what he needed now to stop the steady leaching away of Lawrence’s body heat as the blood seeped from his wounds. Without their Irving suits, airmen would have died of exposure in a Lancaster bomber on a winter bombing run over Germany. Rear gunners like

  o o

  Sergeant Dick Abbott had suffered frostbite despite their heated suits. Zygrnunt Lukasz had lost two fingers trying to staunch the blood pouring from his cousin’s wounds as they lay in the snow waiting lor rescue. Even now, Cooper could clearly picture the two Polish airmen in their RAH uniforms, lying no more than a few feet from

  ‘ v o

  where they were now. Red, white and blue.

  In the far distance, he could see a single light. Its rectangular shape blinked through the swirling snow like a beacon as it floated in the blackness over the snowficld. He thought for a moment of the bright star in the cast that the Wise Men had followed. Rut

  o

  this light was in the north, and it was not a star. Cooper realized it was the uncurtained bedroom window of a retired farmworker, where a man might even now be counting his regrets.

  A little way to the west, there was a dark shape in the snow. I hat was the stone wall of the dam and the cold expanse of Blackbrook Reservoir. Cooper pictured Pilot Officer Danny McTeaguc, staggering from the wreckage of his Lancaster bomber and about to set off across the moor to find help. In another few minutes, it would be completely dark, as it was when McTcague walked away from Sugar Uncle Victor. And then he wouldn’t be able to see the reservoir only the light.

  ‘At least you helped George Malkin, Lawrence,’ said Cooper. His souvenirs produced a bit of money for him, didn’t they?’
/>
  Still Lawrence didn’t answer. But Cooper stared at his face as

  393

  il he had spoken. It was as ii Lawrence had just said something perceptive that Cooper hadn’t thought of before.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘You did help George Malkin - didn’t you, Lawrence?’

  The wind was really getting up now. Cooper heard an answering moan from the rocks behind him and felt a spatter of frozen snow on the back of his neck where it was blowing off the top of the drifts. There was a pain in his ears, but it was nothing to what Marie Tennent must have felt as she lay out in the snow the night she died. Where his hand had been plunged into the snow, it looked red and raw. He rubbed it on a dry part of his trousers and thrust it back into his glove. But the glove had got snow on the inside, too, and it didn’t help.

  ‘I know you weren’t involved in Nick Easton’s murder. And Marie’s death wasn’t your fault. Rut you have to tell us where the baby is, Lawrence.’

  Was mat the noise of a helicopter, that dull thudding in his ears? Or was it his own heart struggling to push the blood through his veins? If he could convince Lawrence that rescue was on its way, perhaps he would decide not to die. Perhaps he would rouse himself and they could share their bodv heat to survive together.

  Cooper held his breath in his hands to prevent it from drifting awav, afraid it might take his life with it. But LawTence wasn’t going to rouse himself. There was no warmth left in his bodv to share. Cooper lay over him, covering both their bodies with the cagoulc, leaving only his head and his feet free. I le needed to be able to hear the helicopter so that he could signal their position. He didn’t know whether he was going to be able to do that in the dark, but somehow he would have to. AH he had was his torch, and the moor was a big place. If anyone were thinking properly, they would have thermal imaging equipment on board to locate their body heat. If there was any body heat left by then.