Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (18 page)

'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 long, 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 weight 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.

'Going down?' she said.

Cooper felt his foot slip off the rock. He put out his left hand to steady himself and stop his weight making the rope swing. He twisted his torso slightly to look down at his brake hand as he fed the rope through the figure eight of the descender. The gritstone was hard and bruising to the fingers, yet in some places it was crumbly and unsafe, its stability undermined by decades of quarrying.

They moved on a bit further. The officers at the top kept calling down to ask if they were OK, as if somehow they might get lost on the way down. Cooper promised he would be sure to let them know if the rope broke. They laughed, but not much.

A few yards from the bottom, Liz paused. Cooper watched her wrap the rope round her thigh with three loops. This freed her brake hand, and she reached into the pocket of her jacket for her digital camera to take an establishing shot of the quarry floor. They didn't know what to expect down there. Probably it was a futile effort. But there had been too many instances when small items of forensic evidence had been overlooked until it was too late.

Liz was lighter than Cooper, and had perfected that effortless rhythm that allowed her to float down in easy steps. She'd already unclipped her belay and removed her harness by the time he touched bottom. She shouted up to a colleague at the top, and her case was lowered down to her.

'Right,' said Liz, as Cooper unclipped his straps. 'Let's see what we've got.'

The floor of the quarry was littered with lumps of gritstone blasted away from the walls. To the east, a vast stack had been heaped up to block access to the site. Liz Petty took some shots of the quarry floor. Then she crouched by a large rock, opening her case and unfolding a tight stack of evidence bags.

'We're looking for clothes, right? Well dressed? Casual, or what?'

'Yes, well dressed.'

'We can discount the donkey jacket, then.'

Cooper leaned over her shoulder. She was pointing to a dark, sodden mass on the ground. It reeked of mould, and patches of the fabric were turning green with mildew. There were rips in the leather patches on the shoulders.

'It's been there too long, anyway.'

'Pity. It could probably have told you a lot about the owner. What he had for breakfast, for a start. Those encrusted stains have survived well.'

Much of the debris and rubble from the quarrying operations had simply been left in place, and there were still lethal shards of buried metal and invisible holes to fall into. Cautiously, they picked their way among the stones, glad of the boots that protected their feet from the sharp edges and the sudden shifting of the ground that could turn an ankle.