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’d discovered that his new landlady had a Jack Russell terrier called Jasper. He could hear it now, yapping in the backyard next door.
A little later, Mrs Shelley herself came in from next door to see how he was getting on. Lawrence Daley was with her, and he was wearing his bow tie. He went round and shook hands with everybody, including Josie and Amy, which made them giggle hysterically for more than half an hour afterwards. Mrs Shelley watched Kate cleaning the kitchen, nodding approvingly.
Then Cooper’s sister Claire appeared briefly. She always complained of being too busy for anything. But she’d managed to spare him a few 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 breeze, 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 felt very strange. He was surrounded by his family, the people he’d known for many years, some of them all his life. He’d lived in the same house as Matt for twenty-nine years. But because they were all in an unfamiliar place, he felt like an alien among them. In half an hour they would be gone. The tide would go out again and they’d ebb away, leaving him high and dry, stranded like a bit of seaweed tossed on to the rocks to dry 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’d all come out of curiosity, out of bafflement that a member of the family was cutting himself off in this way. For that’s what he was doing, in their eyes. Coopers didn’t 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’d 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 decided he was the anti-christ. But 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 for 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 are too dangerous. They go batting 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 fall 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. But 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 Ben might prefer to be left to settle in now,’ said Lawrence.
Mrs Shelley gave a little giggle. ‘Lawrence says I talk too much. You will look after Miranda, won’t you? Only I can’t have her in my own house, you see.’
‘Because 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’d heard neither the TV, nor the dog barking indoors.
‘Not that I have the TV on all that often, you understand,’ said Mrs Shelley. ‘There’s far too much news on it. I can’t stand news – it’s always full of people being cruel to other people, and to animals as well. I 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 be a few minutes, didn’t we?’
‘All right. Bye for now, then,’ she said. ‘Duty calls.’
Then even Mrs Shelley was gone, back to her house next door. The dog, which had been yapping her backyard, went back 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 by 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 flat, Cooper couldn’t see any trees. They must be in the gardens between Welbeck Street and the shops on Meadow Road, but they were hidden from his view. 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’d given up expecting to hear back from him by now. He wondered what she was doing with herself while she was in Edendale, 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 be the best time. He rang the number of the hotel.
‘Can I speak to Miss Alison Morrissey, 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, but couldn’t remember now who the gift was from. It had stood in his bedroom at Bridge End Farm for over a decade.
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 where 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 if you would be 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 th
en.’
‘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 wheelie bins standing at the entrance to a ginnel, 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 see. One of his new neighbours maybe, or another family member, coming to see 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.
‘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 this, as if he wasn’t coming up to expectations.
The books he’d bought from Eden Valley Books were on top of the pile, only because they were the most recent. Of course, Fry spotted them. She didn’t miss much.
‘The History of Peak District Aircraft Wrecks,’ 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.’
‘If 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 Morrissey?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Fry smiled. ‘Ben, make sure you keep your head. Keep your focus on what’s important. Just because you’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 off interviewing old soldiers to satisfy that Canadian woman’s obsession. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘I’ll do it in my own time,’ he said.
‘Make sure that you do, Ben. Because I’ll be keeping an eye on what you’re up to.’
‘Right.’
Cooper found himself breathing a bit too hard. He couldn’t believe that Fry had chosen to walk into his new flat on the day he moved in and try to humiliate him. He had to either throw her out or find something to help him to calm down.
‘Would you like a coffee while you’re here?’ he said.
‘There is a kitchen, is there?’
‘Of sorts.’
‘Thanks, then.’
Cooper went to make the coffee. First he had to find the box 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 Fry moving around in his new sitting room, but he heard nothing. Perhaps she’d seen all she needed to see 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 bother. There was no doubt in his mind that she took it unsweetened.
But when he got back to the sitting room, he found Fry unpacking a box of pictures. She was arranging them on the walls, lining them up neatly on some tacks left by the previous tenants. She’d 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 right 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 had to admit it was the ideal spot for the print. If he’d 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 find. She rejected some rather ordinary fox-hunting prints, then found a bigger picture at the bottom of 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. But 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.
But 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 tenderly. He’d 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 reverence made his throat spasm uncomfortably. He wished she would stop now, and drink her damn coffee. He thrust the mug at her, forcing her to put down the cloth and stop what she was doing. He couldn’t think of a thing to say for a few moments, until he managed to get his vocal chords working again.
‘Where exactly were you passing on your way to?’ he said, finally.
The tone of 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 typi
cal,’ said Fry. ‘Only you, Ben, would take on a flat 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 see that she was thinking of where she had to go next. She’d 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 sealing the parcel.
‘No need to open it now,’ said Fry. She swung her scarf round her neck. ‘I can see you’ve still got things to do.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘See you on Monday, then.’
Cooper watched her slither down Welbeck Street. Presumably, she’d been obliged to leave her car at the bottom of the street because of the number of vehicles parked outside the houses. Fry didn’t look back, and she soon disappeared. He’d noticed when she was in the flat that she was wearing new shoes. He wondered whether she’d bought some that had a bit of grip in the soles.
He went back to the sitting room and opened the little parcel. She’d bought him a clock.
Cooper considered the advantages of living alone. He looked forward to being able to listen to the omnibus edition of The Archers on Sunday morning, without competition from videos or pop music or daytime children’s TV. And, because he was on his own, it would hardly seem necessary to get dressed or have a shave on his days off. As long as he didn’t have to go out of the house, no one would see him. He could slop around in his dressing gown or a pair of jogging bottoms for as long as he liked. He could sit at the kitchen table and drink coffee and eat toast and read the Sunday papers all morning, if he really wanted. If he’d thought to put an order in to have any papers delivered, that is. At the moment, all he would be able to do while drinking his coffee and eating his toast was stare at the cat. Maybe he’d have to unpack the box of books he’d brought.
Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) Page 25
