Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry)

by Stephen Booth

  Cooper unbuttoned the front of his waxed coat with his left hand and let it fall open. ‘Round about here somewhere. I felt this –’

  ‘Don’t touch it!’

  ‘What?’

  Gingerly, Fry used the head of the torch to pull open his coat. She drew it back far enough to show him the protruding handle.

  ‘It looks like the handle of a bayonet.’

  ‘Thank God it missed me.’

  ‘It didn’t miss you,’ said Fry. ‘You’re bleeding. I’m calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No, it missed me.’

  Fry shone her torch on the blood trickling into the snow. It had pooled in the big inside pocket of his coat and there was a greasy patch where it had soaked through.

  ‘Believe me now, Ben? You’re bleeding.’

  ‘No, it’s the rabbit,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ She looked at him as if he were delirious.

  ‘There’s a rabbit in my poacher’s pocket. George Malkin gave it to me.’

  ‘You are joking.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Cooper laughed unsteadily with relief. ‘The blade of the bayonet has gone right through the rabbit. The point pinned my coat to the door, but it passed through the entrails of the rabbit. Malkin said it was fresh. He was right.’

  ‘You’re sure you’re not hurt?’

  Cooper studied the rip where the bayonet had penetrated his waxed coat, gone through a few inches of skin and bone and embedded itself in the garage door. ‘This coat cost a fortune,’ he said.

  ‘As long as the only hole he made was in your credit card, and not in your guts.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Get the coat off, then, and we’ll get the whole thing along to forensics. God knows how we’re going to explain the rabbit.’

  ‘It would have been rude to refuse it, Diane. Besides, I paid him, so it wasn’t a gift.’

  ‘You haven’t got a couple of pheasant down your trousers as well, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m just pleased to see you.’

  As soon as Peter and Grace Lukasz got into bed that night, the argument began. It was about something trivial at first, a disagreement that Grace couldn’t even remember when it was all over. It might have been about the colour of the new wallpaper, or whether they could afford a holiday in Portugal this summer. It had begun to change in character when Peter had told her not to nag, that he had other things on his mind that were more important.

  Grace had looked at him lying next to her. His face was turned towards her, but was in shadow because of the bedside lamp behind his head. She’d turned off her own lamp already, and had taken off her reading glasses. Peter’s face was too close to hers, too blurred by the shadows, for her to read his expression. His eyes were open, but she could sense that his face was closed. She touched his arm, and she could feel that his muscles were tense.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There’s something wrong.’

  ‘Nothing at all. What do you mean?’

  ‘Tell me, Peter.’

  ‘Leave me alone – I’m tired.’

  He rolled over on to his back, thumping his pillow with the back of his head as if to beat it into submission. Now Grace could make out his profile, outlined by a halo of light from the bedside lamp. His expression was set into a determined scowl. It was the expression that reminded her most of his father, Zygmunt, the one that made her think of the old man as a warrior still. The same determination was there in Peter’s face. And the implacable hatred, too.

  ‘The Canadian woman coming here has upset you, hasn’t it?’ said Grace.

  ‘She’s not important.’

  ‘She didn’t want to go away, did she?’

  ‘I think I made it plain,’ said Peter.

  ‘It was strange, though, about the policeman. I thought that was strange, didn’t you?’

  Peter didn’t reply. Watching him, Grace felt a sudden surge of irritation.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to me?’ she said.

  He sighed. ‘Yes, it was strange. I thought it was strange she’d already met him, strange that he knew what she’d come for. It was very strange. But it was you that invited him into our house in the first place.’

  ‘Oh, it’s my fault, is it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Is that what it is? You’re sulking because you blame me.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘But all I did was to ring the police because of the description they gave of the man who died.’

  ‘I know. That’s all you did.’

  Now it was Grace’s turn to shift on to her back. She stared at the bedroom ceiling, not really seeing it at all, just more shadows. She was silent, waiting for Peter to speak, wondering if he would bother, willing him to feel her hurt.

  ‘You did it because of Andrew,’ he said.

  Grace was surprised to find tears suddenly leaking down her face and on to her pillow. She fumbled for a tissue in the pocket of her nightdress.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to think of him lying dead somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘Who? Andrew? Or some strange man you’ve never seen before in your life?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Andrew has gone back to London. You have to accept that,’ said Peter.

  ‘How can I, until I hear from him? Why isn’t he answering his phone? Why hasn’t he been in touch to tell us where he is?’

  ‘All right. But what did you think you were achieving by phoning the police and telling them you recognized the man they found on the Snake Pass? That was stupid. More than stupid. You brought the police here, as well as that bloody woman.’

  ‘Don’t swear at me.’

  ‘Well, it was bloody stupid. That was the last thing we needed. What do you think it would have done to Dad if the policeman had insisted on seeing him? I can’t believe you didn’t think about that. But, no, you were only thinking of yourself. Somehow you had to feed your obsession. It’s always been Andrew, Andrew, Andrew – it’s turning your mind. Can’t you see that?’

  Grace held the tissue to her face. She tried to control a small, spasmodic sob that rose in her throat, not wanting to show Peter her weakness.

  ‘I want to protect Zygmunt as much as you do,’ she said.

  ‘You have a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘But it’s true – I do.’

  ‘I can’t stand this, I really can’t.’ He turned over on to his other side, crushing his pillow and dragging the bedclothes almost away from her.

  ‘Don’t turn away from me, please,’ said Grace.

  Without even touching him, she knew his body was knotted with tension. Peter was frightened, of course. But he would never admit it. It was a difficult time for him, since he was so close to his father. She accepted that. The last thing she wanted to do was make it worse for them both. She wiped her eyes and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt cold and resisting. She tried to pull him back towards her so that she could see his face.

  ‘Peter –’

  Then he rolled on to his back again. ‘Look, Grace, for God’s sake forget about Andrew for now. He’s not worth it. There are far more important things to worry about. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes, Peter. I understand.’

  Suddenly, the tension went out of them both. Peter rolled on to his side. He sighed deeply, as if overwhelmed by tiredness, and within a minute or two he was asleep. Grace smiled in the darkness and patted his shoulder gently. Then she turned over and pressed her body against his, for the sake of the warmth.

  After Cooper had been examined at West Street that night, Fry made him sit in the CID room and do nothing for a while. She even got somebody to make him a cup of tea, for the shock. Cooper knew there would be activity going on down in the town – the passageway where he’d been attacked would be sealed off, witnesses would be sought with the usual futil
ity. Later, he would have to make a full statement. It was something he wasn’t looking forward to.

  Cooper could see a pile of faxes waiting for him on his desk. Curious, he picked them up. They had come from Toronto, marked for his personal attention. There was a head-and-shoulders photograph of a man with wiry hair and a square jaw, and another of him standing next to a woman slightly taller than himself. The man was named as Kenneth Rees, Alison Morrissey’s stepfather. Despite the poor quality of the reproduction on the fax machine, there was no doubt this man wasn’t Danny McTeague. Fleetingly, Cooper considered the idea that there was no real proof it was Kenneth Rees either.

  He put the faxes down to study in the morning. There had been something else about his conversation with Alison Morrissey earlier that day that had been nagging at him, and he needed to check it. It had been a small thing, but it had undermined his faith in the accuracy of her information.

  Cooper found the file that the Local Intelligence Officer had put together for the Chief. According to the information on Klemens Wach, he’d done his initial training with the RAF at Blackpool at the same time as his cousin Zygmunt, and they had both been posted to the Operational Training Unit at Lymm, in Cheshire. At Lymm, they’d gone through a very British system of assembling air crews – hundreds of men had simply been put into a large room together and encouraged to mingle until they formed their own crews with the right combination of skills. It sounded a bit like the way football teams had been chosen at school – you always had to have a good goalscorer and a goalkeeper, and a couple of big lads in defence. But inevitably, there would be somebody left till the end, the boy who nobody really wanted. Cooper wondered who had been left to the last among the airmen. Might it have been Zygmunt Lukasz or Klemens Wach? It must have been even more difficult when different nationalities were involved. There were fewer natural bonds to bring them together.

  But the crew had been formed, and had been sent to their first operational posting – a Lancaster squadron at RAF Leadenhall, where they remained until that fatal crash in January 1945.

  According to the LIO’s note, the information on the airmen’s service history came from the official RAF records. So Klemens Wach had only one operational posting, which meant he could never have served with the famous 305 Squadron, as Alison Morrissey had claimed. Morrissey had got it wrong. Until then, Cooper had been assuming that her research was meticulous, with the help of Frank Baine. But now he was having doubts. There was a weakness in her research. He wondered what other information of hers might be inaccurate.

  But of course there was more than one inaccuracy. There had been a major gap. Morrissey hadn’t known the identity of the Malkin brothers, even though the information had been readily available. Walter Rowland, for one, would have been able to tell her. Thinking back to his conversation with the old man, Cooper recollected that he hadn’t seemed to have any great objection to talking to Alison Morrissey. He wondered who had persuaded Rowland not to.

  ‘Well, the bayonet isn’t some old military memento, anyway,’ said Fry. ‘So the chances are it didn’t come from one of your old soldiers.’

  Cooper looked across the office at her. She was holding up a latex evidence bag for him to see. There were still streaks of skin, dried blood and organ tissue along the sides of the long blade of the bayonet. The sight made Cooper wince and clench his stomach, as she’d surely known it would.

  ‘Airmen,’ said Cooper. ‘They’re old airmen. They wouldn’t have had much use for bayonets.’

  ‘Who knows what they might have collected? But this one’s quite new, the sort they sell openly in some shops, along with air rifles and hunting knives. The handle is a good surface. We might get some prints from it, or even enough traces of sweat from his hands to get a DNA sample, if he ever handled it without gloves. It could mean we’ve got Eddie Kemp tied up this time.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Cooper.

  Fry lowered the bag. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think it was him.’

  ‘Ben, we arrested Kemp at the scene.’

  ‘He was in the vicinity. But I don’t think it was him who attacked me.’

  Fry put down the bag and sat back in her chair. ‘I hope you’re joking.’

  ‘He was some distance away from me, I’m sure. I don’t think it was Kemp who barged into me. The person who did that ran off in the other direction, not towards Eyre Street. Besides, I would have recognized the smell.’

  ‘He was certainly ripe when we processed him. The custody sergeant recognized him before we got him through the door. He said to thank you for sending “Homer” back.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  Fry sighed. ‘Prints or DNA will settle it one way or the other.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘If it wasn’t Kemp, who else would have known you were there? Could somebody have recognized you?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Yes, of course, how silly of me,’ said Fry. ‘Everybody knows you round here, don’t they? I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered doing undercover work, Ben?’

  ‘I didn’t see him. Not clearly.’

  ‘If we don’t get a match from the bayonet, we’re back to square one with Kemp – even for the double assault. The CPS think the witness evidence is insufficient.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It would have been nice, Ben, to have been able to charge somebody.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry – I’m only telling you the truth.’

  She sighed. ‘I suppose it’ll be in your statement.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Fry sat at her desk. The mountain of paper on it was rising and becoming unstable. Cooper could see that a couple of buff files in the middle were sliding free under the weight of those on top. It would be best to be out of the office when the avalanche started.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not injured, anyway,’ said Fry.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Because there’s a special job for you tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You’re to meet Sergeant Caudwell. You’ll be going on a trip together.’

  ‘Frankly, I’d rather be attacked with a bayonet in a dark alley.’

  ‘Tough. I hope your stomach’s feeling strong in the morning, Ben.’

  ‘Why?’ said Cooper suspiciously.

  Fry smiled at him, though her expression lacked the confidence she was trying to convey. ‘I’ve just talked to Sergeant Caudwell again,’ she said. ‘We’ve thought of a way of keeping you safe and off the streets.’

  In his flat above the bookshop in Nick i’ th’ Tor, Lawrence Daley had heard the sound of voices echoing in the alleyways outside. He assumed it was a group of drunks leaving one of the pubs around the market square, although it was a bit early in the evening for them to be causing trouble. Usually, that happened later on, when Edendale’s two night clubs closed.

  Lawrence went to one of the windows. But instead of looking out of the front of the building on to Nick i’ th’ Tor, he went to the back, where his bedroom overlooked a snow-covered yard and gates that led out on to a back alley. There was frost forming on the window, slowly covering the glass in delicate patterns. The sky was clear tonight, and a crescent moon threw some light on the shapes in the yard. Lawrence shuddered, picturing human figures moving among the shapes, hearing the scuffling of their feet in the snow and the sound of their muttered curses in the darkness. But the yard was as secure as he could make it. The gates were firmly closed, and there was broken glass set into the concrete along the top of the back wall. For now, the yard was too full of snow to open the gates. According to the weather forecast, it would be the end of the week before it thawed. He’d been watching the forecasts every day. Several times a day.

  Satisfied for now, Lawrence went back to the book that he’d been reading in front of the TV. On the floor above, he heard the noise of scurrying feet on bare boards, the faint scratching of claws on the wooden jo
ists that ran across his ceiling. He didn’t think the feet were those of the mice that lived in the shop downstairs, which sometimes darted out from among the bookshelves and startled his customers. The feet that scratched above his head belonged to something bigger and less quick, something that dragged a tail behind it along the boards.

  Lawrence supposed it was possible that squirrels had found their way under the eaves to live in his attic for the winter. But he thought it much more likely that rats had moved into his life. And now they were thriving.

  27

  Ben Cooper hung on to the back of a seat as his view of the ground tilted and wreckage rushed past below him. Directly underneath the helicopter, the scene looked like the aftermath of a hurricane that had passed through a scrap-metal yard. Fragments of aircraft fuselage glinted in the light reflected from the snow. There should be part of a tail fin still protruding from the peat and the snow somewhere up the slope to the west. But Cooper had lost sight of where the horizon ought to be, and he felt his stomach lurch as his sense of balance was disrupted.

  During his five years in Derbyshire CID, he’d never been called on to take to the air in a helicopter before, and he wasn’t sure it was something he was cut out for. He was a feet-on-the-ground man, no question. Half an hour this Monday morning had convinced him of it.

  The passengers braced themselves as the pilot pulled back on the controls and banked to avoid the sudden upward rush of bare, black gritstone that the maps called Irontongue. The rocks were jagged and unforgiving, full of crevices that held streaks of frozen snow. Even rock climbers stayed away from the face of Irontongue. Its surface was too treacherous for all but the most experienced and best equipped.

  The helicopter flew over the site again, banked, turned and came back to allow its passengers a good view of the remnants of the crashed aircraft. In the sharp morning light, the shadow of the rotor blades swept across the hill and over the wreckage.

  ‘No, that’s not the one,’ said Cooper. ‘That was a US Air Force Superfortress. Thirteen men died in that one.’