Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (10 page)

Grace turned back to the room. Her eye immediately fell on the Lukasz family photograph in the alcove near the door. Herself and Peter, Zygmunt and Krystyna, with the grandchildren at their knees. She had once, before they were married, tried to persuade Peter to change their surname. She thought it would be best for their future children. A good alternative would have been Lucas, she'd said. It would only have been a change in spelling really - the pronunciation was almost the same. Peter had said no. He had said it in a tone of voice she hadn't heard from him until then, a tone that made her hesitate, then decide not to argue. He'd never given her a reason, and she hadn't asked, in the end.

She looked at the face of the old man, Zygmunt, at the proud tilt of his head and the direct stare. Peter was becoming more and more like his father with age. Sometimes, if she watched him carefully, she saw a different look in her husband's eyes when the old man called him 'Piotr'. It was a look that she'd never been able to bring to his eyes, even in their most intimate moments. No matter how many times she whispered his name, she could never bring the same look of pride. The meaning wasn't there for him in 'Peter' in the way it was when he heard his Polish name. For a moment, she wished she could do it by calling him 'Piotr' herself. But she knew it was too late to change a habit now.

Grace went quickly to the window when she heard the sound of a car. A Ford had pulled up at her kerb beyond their hedge. She could see a man with fair hair in the driver's seat. It wasn't Andrew. A woman got out on the passenger side. She met Grace's eyes for a moment. Then she turned away and walked to a house two doors down, while the driver waved and drove off. Grace let go of the breath she'd been holding. It wasn't her either. Not yet.

*    *    *    *

Frank Baine waited to be sure he still had their attention. Alison Morrissey had her gaze fixed on Chief Superintendent Jepson. She seemed to be trying to will the Chief to listen, though Cooper knew Jepson well enough to see that his brain had switched off already. Probably he'd decided in advance the amount of time he was prepared to give. Cooper wondered how fast the clock was ticking down.

'Former Pilot Officer Zygmunt Lukasz is the sole surviving crew member of Sugar Uncle Victor,' said Baine. 'Lukasz was one of the youngest of the crew, but even he is seventy-eight now. As it happens, he lives here, in Edendale.'

'No doubt you'll be visiting him,' said Jepson, as if suggesting there was no time like the present.

'We have been in contact with the Lukasz family,' said Baine. 'It would be fair to say that they're not keen to co-operate.'

'Pity,' said Jepson.

'On the day of the crash, the skipper had filed a visual flight record with flight control, as was normal practice,' said Baine. 'He'd been briefed on broken clouds at two thousand feet and poor visibility. But somehow he went off course and found himself over the Peak District. He discovered the fact too late, when he nosed the aircraft down through the overcast to establish his position. Directly in front of him was Irontongue Hill. He never stood a chance of avoiding it.'

'Five men died in the crash. There were two who survived.'

'Yes, the seventh was the pilot, my grandfather,' said Alison Morrissey. 'After the crash, he was never found.'

Cooper was ready for this. It was the whole point of the meeting, after all. The rest was just preamble. 'He was listed as having deserted,' he said. 'In the air accident enquiry, he was also blamed for the crash.'

Morrissey turned on him suddenly. 'He was the pilot. He was in command of the aircraft. Since there was no evidence given of enemy action or mechanical fault, he was bound to take the blame. He was branded guilty by default. And there's absolutely no evidence that my grandfather deserted. Absolutely none.'

'But he was seen leaving the area,' said Cooper.

'No – he was not.'

Chief Superintendent Jepson stirred slightly, his interest piqued by the suddenly raised voices. He studied the report that had been prepared for him by the Local Intelligence Officer. 'According to my information, two young boys were spoken to, who said they'd seen an airman walking down the Blackbrook Reservoir road, from Irontongue Hill towards Glossop. That seems fairly conclusive.'

'Their statement was crucial. I'd like to find them now to talk to them, but the boys aren't named in the reports I have.'

'That might be unfortunate from your point of view, Miss Morrissey, but they were only children, after all. Twelve years old, and eight. Why should they lie about something like that?'

'I have no idea.'

'Also, it appears that a man in uniform was reported to have been seen heading away from the area later that day. In fact, he was picked up by a lorry driver on the A6 near Chinley. That was a perfectly normal thing for a driver to do at that time.'

'The man was never positively identified as Pilot Officer McTeague,' said Morrissey.

'We used to do it until quite recently, in fact. But not for a few years.'

'Do what?'

'Give lifts to servicemen. They would stand at the roadside with their kitbags and a sign saying where they were going, and motorists would stop for them. You could see what they were by their haircuts, because all the other young men of their age had long hair then, I can remember picking a few soldiers up myself on the M6 roundabout near Preston, in the days when I was serving with the Lancashire force. These days, though, you can't trust anybody. You never know who might have got hold of an army uniform or a bit of equipment. Let them into your car and you could be mugged in a minute, or worse. I would advise members of the public against it, for their own safety.'

Alison Morrissey stared at the Chief Superintendent, and Cooper saw her redden slightly. The extra colour made her look even more attractive, but Jepson didn't seem to have noticed. He'd gone into public-meeting mode, as if he were addressing members of the Chamber of Commerce or a police liaison committee.

'That man was never positively identified as my grandfather,' repeated Morrissey.

'Yes, I see that,' said Jepson, looking at his report.

'And how did he get to the A6? Let's consider that for a moment. I've studied the maps of the area, and the place this man was picked up was over ten miles from the scene of the crash. Is my grandfather supposed to have walked all that way? And why didn't anybody else see him earlier?'

'It was dark,' pointed out Cooper.

The Canadian woman caught his eye. He had the feeling that, in different circumstances, she might have smiled.

Jepson nodded at Cooper gratefully. 'Of course it was. It was seven o'clock in the morning when the lorry driver picked him up. It's still dark at that time in January round these parts. Ben knows, you see. He's a local lad. There's nothing like a bit of local knowledge. It's better than any number of bits of paper you can produce, Miss Morrissey.'

The Chief Superintendent pushed the report aside, as if he didn't need it any more, and beamed at Morrissey. Cooper recognized it as his politician's smile, the one he normally only used for visiting members of the Police Authority when he was hoping they would go away and leave him in peace.

'The lorry driver couldn't even say that it was an airman's uniform this person was wearing,' said Morrissey, starting to sound a little desperate.

Jepson pulled the report back towards him. He glanced at the first page, then at Cooper, who mouthed three words at him silently.

'It was dark,' said Jepson hesitantly. 'Yes, of course it was – it was dark, as we've already established. Miss Morrissey, we can't expect a lorry driver to have noticed details of a serviceman's uniform in the dark. There were no street lights at that time, you know. There was –'

'– a war on,' said Morrissey. 'Yes, I know.'

Jepson steepled his fingers and looked round the meeting with some satisfaction, as if the point were proved. 'Did you have any more information you wished to produce, Miss Morrissey? Any
new
information?'

'My grandfather didn't desert,' said Morrissey quietly.

'With respect,' said Jepson, getting into his stride as he saw the home stretch appear, 'I don't think there's anything you've told us that could be considered new. There is no reason to believe that anything happened to your grandfather other than that he left the scene of the crash before the rescue teams arrived, he hitched a lift from a lorry driver on the A6 and …'

'And what?' said Morrissey.

Jepson flicked the report over uncertainly. 'Well, presumably he somehow managed to get out of the country and back to his home in Canada.'

'And how easy would that be for a deserter?' said Morrissey. 'Especially as there was a war on?'

The Chief Superintendent looked to be about to shrug his shoulders, then changed his mind at the last minute. He'd been told in senior management training sessions that it was a gesture that gave out the wrong message.

'Please. My problem is that, without being able to trace the two boys who saw my grandfather, my only possible sources of information in the area are Zygmunt Lukasz and a man called Walter Rowland, who was a member of the RAF mountain rescue team called out to the crash. Frank has contacted them, but both are refusing to speak to me.'

'Miss Morrissey, I'm sorry, but I really can't do anything for you,' he said.

'It's not that you can't – you won't,' said Morrissey.

'If you wish. But the fact is, I don't have resources to spare even to advise you on your mission.'

Cooper could see that Alison Morrissey didn't like the word 'mission'. Her jaw tensed, and her expression became obstinate. But she began to fiddle with the catch of her briefcase, as if she were about to put her papers away.

He took the opportunity to ask a question. 'Miss Morrissey, what exactly do
you
think happened to your grandfather?'

Morrissey met his eye, surprised for a moment, and pushed her hair behind her ear with a quick flick of the hand. 'I think he was injured,' she said. 'Probably dazed or concussed, so that he didn't know what he was doing or where he was. Possibly he couldn't even remember the crash. I think he took off his flying gear and left it by the side of the road because it was too heavy for him to carry. I think he reached a house somewhere nearby, perhaps a farmhouse, and the people took him in.'

'Took him in?'

'Looked after him and gave him somewhere to stay.'

'Knowing who he was? They must have heard later that there had been an air crash. Why would they keep him? Why not hand him over to the authorities? If he was injured, they would at least get medical treatment for him.'

'I don't know why,' said Morrissey stubbornly. 'I do know that the man who hitched a lift on the A6 was not my grandfather. I believe that man was an army deserter who'd gone absent without leave from the transport depot at Stockport. He was a man named Fuller. The police arrested him later at his parents' house in Stoke-on-Trent.'

'But your grandfather?' asked Cooper. 'What makes you think he stayed in this area? It seems very unlikely.'

'
This
is what makes me think so,' said Morrissey. She pulled a plastic wallet from her briefcase. Cooper could see that it contained a medal on a red-and-gold ribbon. The medal was perfectly polished, and it gleamed in the fluorescent lights, flashing in their eyes as if sending a message across the decades.

'What is it?'

'It's a Royal Canadian Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross,' said Morrissey. She turned the medal over in her hands. 'It arrived at my grandmother's old home in Ottawa one day during the summer. There was a note with it, too. It was addressed to my mother, and it just said: "Remember your father, Pilot Officer Danny McTeague."'

Cooper leaned closer to look at the medal. 'This is your grandfather's medal? But where did it come from?'

'All we know,' said Morrissey, 'is that it was posted here, in Edendale.'

6

The body from the Snake Pass had arrived in the mortuary at Edendale General Hospital, where it would be kept on ice, at least until it could be identified and somebody claimed it. When Fry had driven up to the mortuary, she'd left DC Murfin in the car, where he was no doubt adding to the pile of toffee wrappers on her floor.

Inside the mortuary, it was warmer than out on the street. The air smelled better, too – it was full of disinfectants and scented aerosols to suppress the odours of body fluids and abdominal organs.

'We don't get many of these now,' said Mrs Van Doon. 'People carry all sorts of identification with them these days, don't they? But if not, we can usually match up their fingerprints or dentition, or their DNA. No luck your end so far, I take it? Nothing we can match him to?'

'Nothing,' said Fry. 'We're putting appeals out, of course. But at present his description doesn't match the details of any missing person we know of.'

'So maybe no one's noticed he's missing yet.'

'There seem to be a lot of people who go around not noticing things,' said Fry.

The pathologist gave her a brief, quizzical look. 'He doesn't look like the average missing person to me,' she said. 'He's too clean and well dressed, for a start. Those shoes he was wearing are expensive.'