Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry)

by Stephen Booth

  As it happened, the third woman had been out. Cooper put his card through her door with a note asking her to contact him. This witness lived in one of the crescents that clustered on the hillside above Edendale. Most of the addresses here were bungalows dating from the 1960s or 1970s, some of them quite large, with well-established gardens or dormer windows built into their roofs.

  That left the address he’d saved until last. Cooper consulted the street map in the glove compartment of his car. Woodland Crescent was only two blocks down the hill from the street he was in, a few hundred yards away. He left the Toyota by the kerb and walked downhill towards Edendale, carefully sticking to the middle of the pavement to avoid sinking his shoes into more snow.

  He came across a little grocer’s shop and a corner post office that had billboards outside advertising the Derbyshire Times and Daily Mail. A small flatbed lorry with the name of a local builder on its cab door stood in a driveway next to an outdoor aviary full of fluttering zebra finches. Two hundred yards away, on the main road, was a Case tractor dealership, directly opposite Queen’s Park, the town’s largest open space.

  Woodland Crescent was much like the other streets: more bungalows, and a few newer homes at the top, with open-plan lawns separating their drives. A man of about sixty, dressed in yellow waterproofs like a fisherman, was slowing pushing snow off the pavement with a brush. He stopped as Cooper passed and gave him a nod. He was flushed and breathing hard. The clouds of his breath reminded Cooper of the early-morning cars standing in exhaust fumes pumped from cold engines.

  There was a woman sitting in the window of number 37, the Lukasz home. It was a large bungalow, with a built-in garage and a sizeable conservatory, which he could see down the passageway separating it from the bungalow next door. Cooper guessed the woman must be Grace Lukasz. Was she the wife of Piotr?

  Cooper walked up the driveway to the bungalow, conscious of the woman’s eyes on him. She was watching him suspiciously, as if he might be somebody undesirable – a Jehovah’s Witness or an insurance salesman. Near the front door, he stopped and looked at her. The woman was still staring at him. And her expression was more than suspicion – it was fear.

  By the time he rang the bell, the face of the woman had disappeared from the window, though he hadn’t seen her stand up. He saw movement through the glass panels of the door, and then realized why the woman hadn’t stood up. She was in a wheelchair.

  Cooper introduced himself, and showed his identification, interested by the woman’s nervous manner. She relaxed, though, when she discovered who he was and why he’d come. She almost pulled him into the hallway of the bungalow and closed the door behind him. Then she leaned forward in her chair to fiddle with a draught excluder shaped like an elongated sausage dog.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind taking your shoes off,’ she said. ‘There are some spare slippers in the cupboard.’

  The heat in the bungalow was already bringing Cooper out in prickles of sweat under his coat. The difference between this and Hollow Shaw Farm was like getting on a plane in Iceland and stepping off in tropical Africa. Grace Lukasz was wearing a cream sweater and slacks, managing to look both comfortable and smart. While he put on the slippers, Cooper looked at the passages going off the hallway in two directions. It was certainly a large bungalow. Four bedrooms, at least. He wondered what Piotr Lukasz did for a living.

  ‘I’m not at all sure,’ said Mrs Lukasz. ‘It’s just that the description sounded similar. And since the police were appealing for help …’

  ‘Quite right. We always welcome the public’s help.’

  She tilted her head slightly to one side to look at him, an amused smile on her face. She wasn’t one to be easily fooled. Cooper could see that she’d been an attractive woman, too. Still was, for anybody who saw past the wheelchair. She had no trace of an accent. That didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t of Polish origin herself, but he was working on the assumption that she was English, and that she was Zygmunt Lukasz’s daughter-in-law.

  ‘Have you found out who he is yet?’ she said.

  Cooper was taken aback to find that Mrs Lukasz had seized the initiative in asking the questions. He was forgetting what he was here for, speculating too much about the old airman who’d flown on Sugar Uncle Victor. He knew himself well enough to understand that a thing like this could become an obsession, if he wasn’t careful. But he very much wanted to see Zygmunt Lukasz, to compare him to the photographs in the book, to see whether he was the young man who’d seemed to communicate with him across those fifty-seven years.

  ‘No, we haven’t, Mrs Lukasz. That’s what I was hoping you might be able to help us with.’

  ‘I see.’

  She seemed irrationally disappointed. ‘But he didn’t tell me his name, I’m afraid. He came to the house, but I sent him away.’

  ‘When was this again?’

  ‘Monday morning. I rang yesterday, after I heard it on the news. You’ve taken a long time coming, haven’t you?’

  ‘We have a lot of people to speak to,’ said Cooper.

  He suddenly got the feeling he was being watched from another part of the room. He looked round and met the sceptical eye of a blue and green parrot. It had its head cocked at him in almost the same way as its owner.

  ‘I thought he was selling insurance or replacement windows,’ said Mrs Lukasz. ‘We get so many of them here. I knew he wasn’t a Jehovah, of course.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They stopped coming when they found out we were Catholics. It’s a shame. I always hoped I might have been able to convert one of them.’

  ‘The man who came to the house on Monday,’ said Cooper, ‘he didn’t say what he wanted?’

  ‘I didn’t give him chance,’ said Mrs Lukasz. ‘I don’t want to be sitting on the doorstep in the cold, arguing with salesmen. I nearly sent you packing, too, but I could see you weren’t selling anything. Not in that coat.’

  Cooper fumbled with his pen, embarrassed by the double stare from the woman and the parrot. ‘Could you give me a description of him, please? As much detail as you can remember.’

  Grace Lukasz gave him the description succinctly. It fitted the Snowman exactly, down to the shoes. She was an observant woman, for somebody who hadn’t even given the man a chance to speak.

  ‘Did he have a car?’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘Did you notice which way he came from, or which way he went when he left?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Is there anybody else in the household I might ask, Mrs Lukasz?’

  She hesitated and began to look suspicious again. Cooper almost brought out his ID for a second time, just for its reassurance value.

  ‘His car might have been parked somewhere else in the Crescent,’ she said. ‘Try our neighbours. I expect he went down the whole street if he was selling something.’

  ‘I’ll certainly do that.’

  ‘Will you let me know who he was when you find out?’

  Again, Grace Lukasz had taken him by surprise. But she was waiting expectantly for his answer, as if the information should be part of their deal. It was understandable, he supposed, that she should want to know who the man was who’d been on her doorstep and had died shortly afterwards.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we like to get as much corroboration as possible. So while I’m here …’

  ‘Well, my husband is home at the moment,’ she said. ‘And there’s my father-in-law. But neither of them saw him.’

  ‘Perhaps we could check with them, to be sure. It would be very helpful.’

  Mrs Lukasz seemed almost to be laughing. ‘Come this way.’

  She led him down a passage to the back of the bungalow, where she knocked on a door and called a name. Cooper noticed that she called ‘Peter’, not Piotr, as her husband was listed in the electoral register. A man came out, and Cooper caught a glimpse of a bright conservatory full of plants. Lukasz had dark hair and lon
g, slim fingers, which he wiped on a cloth. His eyes looked rather tired.

  ‘No, I didn’t see him,’ said Lukasz stiffly when he was asked. But Cooper was getting the same feeling that he had from the man’s wife. With each of them, there was that brief moment when they might have answered differently, but held something back.

  ‘Are you quite sure, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain,’ said Lukasz. ‘I wasn’t even at home by then. I’m a consultant in the Accident and Emergency Department at the hospital, and I’d stayed late that morning because we had a crisis.’

  ‘I believe your father lives here also.’

  ‘I don’t think he would be able to help you.’

  Cooper was considering how hard he could risk pushing his luck, when the doorbell rang. He heard Grace Lukasz go back into the hall to answer it. Automatically, Cooper turned towards the front door. So he was standing in plain view next to Peter Lukasz when Grace opened it.

  And then he wished he’d been standing somewhere else at that moment, anywhere else at all. Waiting on the doorstep of the Lukasz bungalow were Frank Baine and Alison Morrissey.

  ‘We need some clothes,’ said DI Paul Hitchens. ‘Otherwise, all we have are the bare facts.’

  There were photos of the Snowman pinned to a board behind the two DCIs. There was no hope of an identification yet. One idea being considered was the production of an artist’s impression of the dead man, to be reproduced in the papers and on the local television news, and for officers to show to drivers at checkpoints on the A57. Motorists had already been stopped, but nobody could recall seeing a man walking along the roadside with a blue bag, or a vehicle parked in the lay-by where the Snowman’s body had been found. A picture might make all the difference to their memories.

  Fry thought DCI Kessen looked as though he hadn’t yet adjusted to the sense of humour in E Division. According to the grapevine, he hadn’t been popular in D Division. The theory was that when the new Detective Superintendent arrived, it would be someone who could keep him from causing too much trouble.

  ‘So our task for today is to find some clothes,’ said Hitchens. ‘And I’m in charge of the shopping expedition.’

  DI Hitchens looked in his element when he was the centre of attention. He stepped up to a map pinned to the wall and tapped it with a ruler. He was pointing to an area to the west of the lay-by on the A57 where the Snowman had been found. A search of the lay-by itself had recovered plenty of assorted debris from under the snow, but nothing that might have been the contents of the blue bag – unless the Snowman had been in the habit of wearing hub caps and cushion covers.

  ‘Here’s the place to start,’ said Hitchens. ‘Right below the road here is an abandoned quarry. It’s well within reach of the lay-by and a favourite spot for fly-tippers. This is what you might call the Knightsbridge boutique of our shopping trip. It could have exactly what we want – but it’s difficult to get into.’

  Fry didn’t see many officers laughing at the joke. Even DCI Tailby frowned. Since Hitchens had moved in with his new girlfriend to a modern house in Dronfield, he’d definitely gone upmarket. It sounded as though he’d been dragged off to London at some point to learn what shopping was all about. An inspector’s salary was a nice step up from a mere sergeant’s.

  ‘If the bag was emptied in situ, chances are the contents will be somewhere down here, in the quarry,’ said Hitchens. ‘Unfortunately, when the quarry was abandoned, the owners spared no effort in blocking it off to stop people getting in. They piled rocks up in the entrance like they were building the pyramids of Giza, and the sides are sheer. I suppose they must have been worried about somebody stealing their leftover millstones.’

  Hitchens twirled his ruler happily, as though he were conducting a tune. The two DCIs sat stony-faced at their table, refusing to sing.

  ‘The net result is that there’s no way we can get into that quarry without the use of heavy machinery,’ said Hitchens. ‘And that would take time – not to mention money. Since we have neither, we’re falling back on a bit of good old-fashioned improvisation. To put it bluntly, we’ve decided to use a man with a long rope and a careless disregard for his personal safety.’ Hitchens smiled. ‘Now all we need is a volunteer. Don’t all shout at once.’

  Nobody moved. Nobody so much as let his chair creak.

  ‘I have some photographs to encourage you,’ said Hitchens.

  He picked up a large print of a photo taken from the fence at the edge of the lay-by, looking down into the quarry. The sides were almost smooth, except for patches where the stone was crumbling away. There was snow at the bottom, but it looked a long way off. It covered large, uneven shapes, like a white dust sheet thrown over a room full of modern furniture. They all knew there were rocks littering the floor of the quarry under that snow, guaranteed to break a few ankles.

  ‘No one?’ said Hitchens. ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to nominate a volunteer.’

  Peter Lukasz had reacted so angrily to the presence of the two people on his doorstep that Cooper had begun to think he would have to intervene to prevent a breach of the peace, or an outright assault. Until that moment, Lukasz had seemed an ordinary, reasonable man – but he’d changed into a snarling guard dog. He’d pursued Alison Morrissey and Frank Baine from his property, seen them right down the driveway, then had come back in and slammed the door after them.

  Breathing hard, Lukasz had answered Cooper’s questions with a distracted air, and terse replies. He knew nothing, and he hadn’t seen the man that his wife was talking about, he said.

  Cooper got ready to move on. He’d have to call on the neighbours, to see if they, too, had been visited by the Snowman but hadn’t noticed a resemblance to the description given out on the local news. Maybe one of the neighbours had bought some double glazing from him, which would be a stroke of luck indeed. There was also the third witness, who hadn’t been home when he called. And no doubt there would be other jobs waiting for him back at West Street.

  But Cooper was reluctant to leave too quickly. He tried to stretch out the process of changing back into his shoes, while squinting through the glass door to see if anyone was hanging around outside.

  Then he noticed that Lukasz hadn’t disappeared back into the conservatory but had turned towards another room next to it. As he opened the door, Cooper caught sight of a third person, seated at a table. It was an old man, with thin, white hair receding from his forehead and brushed back over his ears. He had wire-rimmed glasses worn on the bridge of a Roman nose, and he was wearing a heavy brown sweater that made his shoulders look out of proportion to his body. The old man looked up as Peter entered, and Cooper saw his eyes. They were pale blue and distant, like glimpses of the sky through broken cloud.

  It was only a second or two before the door closed again. But Cooper had been given his first glimpse of Zygmunt Lukasz.

  DI Hitchens folded his arms and looked around the room, which had gone horribly quiet. No volunteers came forward for the privilege of being lowered into the quarry. There were officers here who were likely to have a panic attack if they thought the stairs were too steep. There were others whose technical capabilities fell short of inadequate. There was Gavin Murfin, for a start. Give him a rope, and he would try to eat it.

  DI Hitchens gazed at Murfin briefly, and passed on. Then he stopped, and looked round the room again with a frown.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody missing.’

  11

  Ben Cooper had never quite got used to the sensation of stepping backwards into space. That second before his boot connected with the rock face was like no other experience. It went through his mind every time that he might never touch ground again – or rather, that he would hit it only once more, down at the bottom.

  But the soles of his boots landed gently on the gritstone surface. The rope in his hands vibrated, and the harness tightened round his body. He let out more rope until he was leaning well back, gaining stability by pressing his wei
ght into the rock. Then he adjusted his grip and bent his torso forward. The angle had to be just right. Too narrow an angle and his feet would slide off the smooth surface and he would smack into the wall face-first.

  Cooper looked up at the edge of the quarry, and saw two members of the Buxton Mountain Rescue Team peering down at him, their faces already too small and out of proportion against the sky.

  ‘OK, Ben?’

  ‘Fine.’

  To his right, one of the scenes of crime officers, Liz Petty, back-pedalled to the edge and took her first step backwards. She was bundled up in her blue overalls and a yellow waterproof jacket, with a red helmet pulled low over her eyes.

  Cooper had been initiated in the pleasures of abseiling by his friends in the MRT, and he knew it was a lot easier than it seemed to a spectator up top. For one thing, you didn’t have to look all the way down as they did. Your eyes were on your rope, on where your feet were going, and on the rock face in front of you. Once you’d turned your back on that dizzying drop and braced yourself for the first step into nothing, it was easy.

  He paused to manoeuvre around a gritstone outcrop. Liz came alongside him, and she turned to smile. It was the conspiratorial smile shared by rock climbers. Liz’s face was flushed with cold and excitement, and her eyes shone with pleasure from under her helmet.