‘Did she mention a particular man?’
‘Not as such. Some girls talk about their boyfriends all the time, but Marie wasn’t that type. She was more private. But I always wondered …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, was there a baby, do you know?’
‘Did she hint at that?’
‘Not really. But there are little signs, aren’t there? She became more absorbed in herself, as if she had other things to think about than joining in with the usual chat. She started to look a bit different, too. Being pregnant suits some, but Marie looked ill. Not anything you could really put your finger on – she was paler, more tired sometimes. She held herself differently. I’ve seen it before.’
‘But you never asked her?’ said Fry.
‘It’s not my place. She obviously didn’t want to tell me, so I didn’t pry.’
Fry watched a woman poke through a rack of dresses, find nothing that interested her and walk out of the shop.
‘Did Marie ever mention her family?’
‘Oh, yes, her mother in Scotland. She talked about her quite a lot. And she had a younger brother, I think.’
‘Anybody else? Anybody in this area?’
The manager hesitated. ‘Funny you should say that. Marie always said she was from Scotland. I mean, she spoke with a Scottish accent and everything, and that’s where her mum lived. But I always thought she had some connection with Derbyshire. She talked sometimes as if she knew a bit about the history of this area.’
Fry turned to look at her. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘It’s hard to remember. But I think it was something to do with the war.’
‘Could it have been the RAF? A crashed Second World War bomber?’
The frown cleared from the manager’s face. ‘Yes, I believe you’re right. It was a funny thing for a girl like Marie to be interested in. But she mentioned those aircraft wrecks often.’
There was a crack as a gunshot split the frigid air. Recognizing the sound without even having to think, Cooper dived to his left, rolling into the snowdrift behind the undercarriage, scrambling to take advantage of its cover. He looked around for Caudwell, but saw that she hadn’t moved. She was still standing in the open, staring back over her shoulder at something beyond the wreckage.
Then Cooper heard a cackling and a drumming of wings as a brace of red pheasant panicked and burst up from the moor a hundred yards away. He caught a glimpse of the sunlight shimmering off their red backs like streams of blood in the air as they beat away towards the reservoir. And Cooper saw PC Nash laughing as he shoved what looked like a Glock pistol back into a holster under his jacket. So Carol Parry had been right – the MDP considered it necessary to be armed.
The natural sounds of the moor became audible again – the constant muttering of the wind as it nosed through the drifting snow, the barking of a dog and the clang of a bucket so muffled and distant that the world seemed to have slipped behind a thick curtain.
Caudwell turned back and watched Cooper picking himself up and brushing snow off his shoulders. She met his eye with a sardonic smile.
‘Nash!’ she called. ‘Behave yourself. You’re frightening the wildlife.’
Cooper sat in the snow for a few moments with his hands on his knees and watched Caudwell and Nash. He had to control his temper. He couldn’t lose it – that was exactly what they wanted him to do. Probably exactly what Diane Fry wanted him to do, too.
Looking at the ground where he’d fallen, Cooper noticed a glint in the dark peat. Another piece of aluminium? He picked it up and brushed the black fibres from it, revealing a peculiar whiteness. He puzzled over the material it was made from. It seemed to be a broken section of a narrow shaft, surely too brittle to have been part of the airframe. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed it, seeking the familiar smell of scorched metal. But instead he got a scent that reminded him fleetingly of Sunday dinners – a joint of beef with mashed potatoes and carrots round the dining table with his parents on a damp November day. He shook his head to clear the intrusive memory. Perhaps what he held in his fingers was a fragment from the aircraft’s radio apparatus. It was almost like bakelite, its broken ends grainy and hollow. But it was white …
He flung the object to the ground as if it had suddenly grown hot and burned his fingers. It lay on the peat, gleaming unmistakably now. He stared at it in horror. It was bone. Of course, it was more than likely a bit of a dead sheep, part of the carcase of a casualty from the flock across the hill that had been picked clean and dropped here by some scavenger. It didn’t look as though it had been out in the weather for very long. But Cooper couldn’t help associating it with what he’d just been thinking of. As he held it in his hand, it had seemed like part of one of the shattered bodies of the airmen who died in Uncle Victor.
‘Ben – are you all right?’
Liz Petty was standing over him looking concerned, puzzled by his silence.
‘Yes. Fine.’
But the truth was that Cooper had felt himself shift through time for a moment. He’d been picturing that young airman, Sergeant Dick Abbott, hurtling through the torn and splintered metal edges of the Lancaster’s fuselage, his limbs ripping from his body as the impact hurled him into the darkness, where he would bleed to death in the snow.
Cooper had once seen a sheep that had been hit by a car on an unfenced moorland road above the Eden Valley. One of the animal’s forelegs had been smashed so badly that bits of its femur lay sprinkled on the tarmac like pieces of a jigsaw. This was far worse than that. Men’s bodies had been torn apart here, their bones had been shattered and their blood had soaked into the peat. People talked about men who had sacrificed their lives. But this was more than a sacrifice. He was standing on the site of a massacre.
Everyone had blamed Pilot Officer Danny McTeague for the crash of Lancaster SU-V, for the death of five men. Cooper wondered what Marie Tennent, or anyone else, might consider to be justice for such a crime.
Fry found Eddie Kemp in a more amenable mood. He looked like a man who was confident there was insufficient evidence against him. It was the sort of confidence that came to a man who had been questioned many times before without being charged, or who had appeared in court and been acquitted. Also, Fry couldn’t detect the smell any more. Maybe the custody suite staff had scrubbed him up specially.
‘Of course, my Vicky knew all about the thing with Marie,’ said Kemp. ‘Vicky had kicked me out at the time, so she couldn’t really complain about what I did, could she?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘We sorted it all out, anyway. I went back to Vicky, and that was that.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last July.’
‘About six months ago, then. Was the parting amicable?’
Kemp hesitated. ‘Marie was bit upset, and she said some things she didn’t mean. She told me I smelled. But it’s a medical condition I have, so that wasn’t fair, was it?’
‘And you haven’t seen Marie Tennent since then?’
‘No. There was no reason to.’
‘Wasn’t the baby a reason?’
Now Kemp looked a little less comfortable. Fry watched him squirm. ‘I didn’t know anything about a baby,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure.’
‘Marie never contacted you to tell you about it? I would have thought she would be expecting some maintenance. If you were living with her until six months ago, we take it you’re the father.’
‘Is there any proof?’ said Kemp.
Fry stared at him. ‘I’m sure you know that we haven’t been able to find the baby.’
‘No, well …’
‘Did she tell you she’d had a baby previously?’
‘No.’
In the absence of any evidence otherwise, Fry changed tack. ‘Mr Kemp, why did you break your bail?’
‘All I did was go to spend a bit of time with my brother,’ he said. ‘Vicky was fed up with me for getting
in trouble again. To be honest, that’s why she kicked me out the first time. So I cleared out for a day or two to let things calm down. I was still in town, though – I was staying with our Graham.’
‘All right. Now I need to ask you about an assault on a police officer last night.’
Kemp shook his head. ‘As for that,’ he said, ‘you definitely have no proof.’
29
Cooper could see Alison Morrissey waiting for him by his car. He could see her from a long way off, as soon as the track levelled out on the last quarter of a mile across the peat moor. Her yellow coat stood out against his red Toyota like a splash of mustard.
‘Your friend doesn’t deter easily, does she?’ said Jane Caudwell. She nudged Cooper and dimpled at him. ‘Do you want me to set Nash on her again?’
PC Nash sniggered behind them. Liz Petty had been very quiet since they’d set off back from the crash site.
Cooper was embarrassed. He hoped his flush wasn’t noticeable in the cold. All the way across the moor, he alternately wished Morrissey would go away, then hoped she wouldn’t.
‘Funny how she knows which is your car,’ said Caudwell.
Cooper turned and glanced at Liz. She glowered at him. It wasn’t any better for her – she had to walk with Nash. His stride was twice the length of hers, but he was holding back deliberately so that they were shoulder to shoulder on the narrow path.
When they reached the cars, he found Alison Morrissey pale and shivering with the cold. She had her hands tucked under her armpits and her chin shoved into the collar of her coat to minimize the amount of exposed skin. Strands of her hair had escaped from her hat and were hanging in her eyes.
‘Are you mad? You’ll freeze to death,’ said Cooper. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘I haven’t got one. Frank dropped me off.’
He noticed that she mumbled her words because her lips were so numb. There was hardly any colour to her lips at all.
‘That was stupid,’ he said. ‘When is he coming back for you?’
‘I told him not to. I thought you would give me a lift back to Edendale, Ben.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Think of it as part of your service to the public, right?’
Liz Petty got into her van and drove away first, without looking back. As Caudwell and Nash changed out of their walking boots, Caudwell said something over the bonnet of their car, and Nash sniggered again.
‘You’re determined to get me in trouble, aren’t you?’ said Cooper. ‘You can see I’m on duty.’
‘You’re worried what your colleagues will say. But they don’t really care, do they? Not those two.’
It wasn’t Caudwell and Nash that Cooper was worried about it. He knew they would take the first opportunity to tell Diane Fry – if Liz Petty didn’t get there first.
‘You’re making it difficult for me to help you.’
‘Oh, is that what you’re trying to do?’ said Morrissey.
She was so pale that she looked very vulnerable. But a thought sneaked into Cooper’s mind. He wondered whether her shivering was a little overdone, for effect. Caudwell and Nash drove past them. Nash played a little tune on the horn of their car, and Caudwell waved from the passenger seat, smiling graciously, like the Queen. They disappeared down the A57 towards the Snake Inn.
‘They can’t see us now,’ said Morrissey. Her pale lips parted slightly, so that he could see her perfect teeth and the tip of her tongue. He felt her breath on his face and realized he was standing much too close to her.
‘Damn it, Alison,’ he said. ‘You’d better get in.’
‘Thanks, Ben.’
He unlocked the Toyota to let her in and threw his boots and cagoule in the back. He slammed the tailgate a little too hard, and she looked at him reproachfully through the back window.
‘Is there a heater in here?’ she said, as he opened the driver’s door. ‘I’ve lost all the feeling in my legs.’
‘Why did you come?’ he said. ‘Did you know that we’d be up here this morning?’
‘Frank did.’
‘How?’
‘A lot of people know Frank. I think the pilot phoned him last night to get the exact location of the crash site.’
‘Damnation.’
‘When he told me this morning, I asked him to bring me,’ said Morrissey. ‘I wanted to know what you were doing.’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
Cooper wasn’t sure what he was so angry about. He turned the heater up full and revved the engine before he pulled out into the road. He was determined he wasn’t going to speak to Alison on the way back into Edendale. She was deliberately putting him in a difficult position. But he knew she wouldn’t be able to last all the way to into town without asking questions. They drove in an uneasy silence for a few moments. When Morrissey spoke, it wasn’t the question he’d expected.
‘Don’t you find your job frustrating?’ she said. ‘All this grubbing around for evidence. A lot of it must be futile. A waste of time and effort, I guess.’
Cooper was taken by surprise at how she had thrust straight to what he’d been thinking himself. It made it impossible for him to refuse to respond.
‘Yes, it’s very frustrating at times,’ he said.
‘So why do you carry on with it?’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s no answer, Ben. You’re a man who has to have a reason for doing things. You have to believe that it’s the right thing to do. So why do you carry on?’
Cooper frowned. He had never been able to explain it to himself, but now the words started to come when someone else asked him.
‘Sometimes, just occasionally, I feel that I’ve done something worthwhile,’ he said.
‘And is that enough? Just occasionally?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Cooper.
They passed the Snake Inn, where the staff had neither heard nor seen any cars on the night that Nick Easton had been killed, only the snowploughs. They passed the lay-by where the plough crew had found Easton’s body. But Cooper wasn’t thinking about Easton, or even Marie Tennent. Alison Morrissey knew exactly when to keep quiet. It was a skill that would make her useful as a police interviewer.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘when it happens, when I feel as though I’ve done something worthwhile, it’s like the world suddenly settles into place and looks as it ought to do for once, the way it was created, before we messed it up and made it cruel and dirty. It’s hard to explain. It’s not that anything in particular happens to the world, of course, not so that you would notice. It’s something that happens to me. But whatever it is, it feels … real.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her nodding. Still she said nothing. They were on the long descent into the Derwent Valley. Glittering ribbons of water stretched ahead and alongside them as they drove into the long arms of Ladybower Reservoir.
‘It’s a sensation that isn’t like anything else I’ve ever known. I suppose it’s like taking a powerful drug. It gives me a buzz, makes me feel alive. It’s good, for a while.’
She nodded again, and he felt her watching him. He was glad that she said nothing. He needed another moment to finish the thought, to get the words out that were suddenly jostling among themselves somewhere in his subconscious, waiting to be let out.
‘But it’s like any other drug,’ he said. ‘It does something to your mind. It leaves you always craving more. It leaves you willing to do anything, anything at all, to get that feeling again.’
They were soon through Bamford and approaching Edendale. Morrissey had left him alone with his thoughts. He was starting to feel embarrassed again that she was able to get him to say such things, yet he was glad he’d articulated it to himself. It had made a kind of sense of his own feelings that he’d never been able to grasp before.
‘I’ll drop you at your hotel,’ said Cooper. ‘Please don’t do anything like that again.’
‘OK,’ said Morrissey. ‘I’m grateful for the lif
t.’ She sounded meek now, no longer provocative. ‘I wanted the chance to say I’m sorry for getting annoyed with you yesterday. You’re right to be sceptical about what people tell you. So I apologize.’
‘That’s all right. I’ve seen the faxes anyway.’
‘Good. There’s just one thing I’d like you to do for me, Ben.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘You know these people won’t talk to me. I want you to go and see Walter Rowland again.’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘There’s something that my grandmother told my mother, and my mother passed on to me. It was one of the allegations that were thrown at my grandfather at the time. But even Frank Baine doesn’t seem to know anything about it. So I want you to ask Walter Rowland.’
‘About what?’ said Cooper.
‘I want you to ask him what he knows about the missing money.’
As Cooper tried to warm himself up back at West Street, two images stayed with him. One was the powerful impression he’d had of the dead and dying airman. The other was an image of the bright red poppy on its wooden cross, which remained imprinted on his memory as if it had been burned there by the electric brightness of the snow. Sergeant Dick Abbott, 24th August 1926 to 7th January 1945. Who would take the trouble to remember Dick Abbott?
During that afternoon, Cooper tracked down the old inquest reports for the five airmen in the county archives at Derby and had them faxed to him. Of course, the verdicts on Klemens Wach, Dick Abbott and the other airmen had all been recorded as accidental deaths. There was some technical evidence given by an RAF accident investigator, who’d referred to the fact that the Lancaster was well off course and over high ground in low cloud – that fatal combination. But there was also the suggestion of human error. Either the navigator had given the pilot the wrong course, or the pilot had ignored his instructions. Nobody could know, except those who had been involved. The navigator had died in the crash, and the pilot himself had gone missing.
The RAF’s own investigation had placed the blame for the loss of the aircraft on the pilot. The pilot was always in charge, no matter what his rank. But no one seemed to have troubled to ask what the flight engineer might have known about SU-V’s last few minutes. He was best placed to have noticed whether the navigator had got his calculations wrong, or whether the pilot had been incapable. But the flight engineer had been Zygmunt Lukasz, and the navigator had been his cousin Klemens.
Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) Page 35
