Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (29 page)

'At least give me a chance to tell you why it's so important to me,' she said.

Cooper hesitated. He wanted to say 'yes'. He wanted to hear her explain it, to know what was driving her, to share her passion for finding the truth. Instead, he finished pulling on his gloves.

'I don't have the time,' he said.

*    *    *    *

Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin drove into the Buttercross area and parked in front of one of the antique shops. A vanload of uniforms was due to meet them at Eddie Kemp's house, which they would be going over hoping for some sign of Baby Chloe.

Fry had chosen to stop by Decker and Miller – Purveyor of Antiques and Collectibles. From here, she could see Ben Cooper's red Toyota halfway up a steep, cobbled street, which was still covered in a sheet of compacted snow. Her Peugeot would never make it up there. It had never occurred to her when she bought it that she might have need of a four-wheel drive.

And there was Cooper himself, standing at the top of the street in his thick-soled boots and ridiculous poacher's coat. He was talking to a woman Fry didn't recognize. She was wearing a red jacket and black jeans, and her dark hair was pushed behind her ears. Fry could tell by Cooper's posture and manner that the woman was nothing to do with the enquiry he was supposed to be on. She could see his ears glowing pink even from here. The woman was probably some old flame he'd bumped into – at least, that was the most charitable assumption. If he'd arranged to meet her when he was supposed to be on duty, she'd crucify him. He was wasting enough time as it was.

Fry slammed her door and set off up the street. But the shoes she was wearing weren't made for walking on frozen snow. She felt herself slithering as soon as she set foot on the slope, and she had to hang on to the iron rail fixed to the wall to pull herself up. She was concentrating so hard on keeping her feet that, when she looked up again, the woman had gone. Cooper was standing in front of his car, waiting for her to reach him.

'Who was that you were talking to?' she said.

'Nobody in particular.'

'Well, you've no right to be talking to nobody in particular, Ben. Damn it, you're supposed to be interviewing potential witnesses.'

'Yes, I've done that.'

'And? What did they say?'

'"We don't know nothing, and if we did, we wouldn't tell you." If you want the expletives, they'll be in my report.'

Fry took her hand away from the rail to make a gesture at him, but she didn't quite complete it. The movement shifted her balance and she felt herself beginning to slip backwards. She grabbed at the nearest object, which happened to be the wing mirror of Cooper's Toyota. It folded in towards the car, but was enough to save her from plummeting headlong down the slope into the road. Cooper stepped forward as if to help her, but she glowered at him, and he dropped his hand.

'You need to get yourself some shoes with a bit of grip in the soles,' he said. 'If you're not careful, you'll be joining the bad back and twisted ankle brigade. We can't have that. How would we cope?'

Fry bit her lip. 'Ben, if by any chance you've finished chatting up every passing female, perhaps you could shift your snow shoes and your four-wheel drive and get yourself up to Kemp's house. Then I've got another job.'

Fry tried to turn, slipped, and had to cling on to Cooper's car even harder. She stared at the uneven slope ahead of her, which ran down towards the antiques shop and her own car parked on the road below. She felt as though she was facing a two-thousand foot ski slope without any skis.

'Maybe you should just hang on to the car,' said Cooper, 'and I'll tow you down.'

*    *    *    *

Vicky Kemp looked like a woman who was never surprised to see the police on her doorstep. She greeted the sight of the detectives' IDs and the uniforms behind them with a weary gesture of her hand across her face, followed by an invitation to stand in her hallway so that she could shut the door and keep out the cold.

'He's not here, of course,' she said.

'Your husband?' said Fry.

'I haven't seen Eddie since yesterday morning.'

'Where has he gone?'

'All he said was that he was getting out of the way for a bit. He said you lot would be coming back to make trouble for him again. He was right, wasn't he?'

'We're not the ones causing trouble, Mrs Kemp,' said Fry.

'What? You've taken his car away. How is he supposed to keep his business going? How is he supposed to earn a living for us? It's bad enough as it is. He has me stuffing envelopes all day for one of those home-working things. I hate it. But there wouldn't be much housekeeping if I didn't do it.'

'Do you have a family?'

'One boy, Lee. He's twelve years old.'

'He'll be at school, then.'

'Probably.'

Fry raised an eyebrow. 'You might have heard that we're looking for a missing baby,' she said.

'It was on the local news last night,' said Mrs Kemp. 'Baby Chloe. Only a few weeks old, isn't she? Poor thing. You never know what's going to happen to your kids these days.'

'Do you have any idea of the whereabouts of that baby?' said Cooper.

'Me? Why should I?'

'The name of Chloe's mother is Marie Tennent. We understand that your husband lived with her for a while.'

'Oh.' Mrs Kemp's eyes flickered from side to side uncertainly, as if she weren't quite sure how she was supposed to react. 'It's her, is it? I thought it might be. It's a bit of an unusual name for round here.'

'You know about your husband's affair with Miss Tennent?'

'We went through a bad patch about eighteen months ago and Eddie left me for a bit. I know it was her he lived with. People aren't slow to tell you things like that in this town. But he came back to me, and we've been back together for nearly six months. He knew it was best for Lee if he came back. Eddie is very fond of his lad. So it's all sorted out now.'

'Nearly six months?'

'Last July.'

Fry and Cooper both watched Mrs Kemp. She stared at them curiously, until a slow realization came over her face. 'You reckon that Eddie is the baby's father? Is that what you mean?'

'It seems a possibility,' said Cooper.

'The bastard,' she said. 'He never told me anything like that.'

'Has he never mentioned a baby? Have you seen no signs of a baby?'

'Not here,' said Mrs Kemp. 'He never brought it here. Eddie? Why would he?'

'If the child was his …'

'Not here,' said Mrs Kemp firmly. 'I'd soon have shown him the door again. Believe me on that.'

'We're going to have to take a look in the house.'

'I suppose so.'

'And are you sure you've no idea where your husband has gone?'

'No, I haven't.'

'Is there anywhere you might expect him to go? To a friend's? A relative's?'

'I don't know,' she said.

'And who did he go with?'

'It would be one of his friends,' she said. 'He went down to the pub to meet them. The Vine, that's where they all go. I'm not telling you any more.'

'He's in breach of bail, Mrs Kemp. Are you sure you can't give us the names of any of his friends?'

Mrs Kemp paused, maybe picturing Marie Tennent and the missing Baby Chloe. 'I'll think about it,' she said.

*    *    *    *

Within a few minutes, Fry began to get restless as she watched the uniformed officers examining the Kemps' house and garden. Vicky Kemp showed no interest in the proceedings, except to follow round straightening cushions and rubbing invisible fingerprints off cupboard doors. Fry gestured Cooper outside the house, while she phoned in and reported Eddie Kemp's breach of bail conditions. He was supposed to reside at his home address so they could find him easily when they wanted him. Now, he'd be arrested again when he was found.

'Ben,' she said. 'Do you know of an aircraft museum at a place called Leadenhall?'

Cooper was startled. 'Where did you say?'

'Leadenhall.'

'Leadenhall?' he said.

'Are you going deaf or something? Has the snow got in your ears? Apparently, there was an old RAF station in Nottinghamshire called Leadenhall, but now it's an aircraft museum.'

'I only heard of it for the first time recently,' said Cooper. 'Not the museum, but the airfield.'

'Oh? Heard of it in connection with what?'

'It was where Sugar Uncle Victor was based. The aircraft flown by Pilot Officer Danny McTeague and his crew.'

'Ah. You're talking about Miss Alison Morrissey again,' said Fry.

'Yes.'

'I can't believe this. Why does everything seem to come back to that in your mind?'

'I can't help it. You asked me about Leadenhall, and that's where I heard of it, from Alison Morrissey and her journalist friend, Frank Baine. McTeague's Lancaster bomber was flying from Leadenhall to an airfield in Lancashire when it crashed on Irontongue Hill.'

'Ben, I'm working on a line of enquiry which relates to an aircraft museum. I'm talking about here and now, not something that happened half a century ago. You're obsessed with the past.'

'Surely that's what a museum is all about – the past? Anyway, don't forget the baby. The fact it was found at the crash site makes a connection worth considering, doesn't it?'

She sighed. 'All right. Where is this Leadenhall place? I expect you've located it precisely, with your usual attention to detail when something interests you. You can probably give me the exact map co-ordinates
and
the course directions your World War Two pilot was supposed to be following.'

'It's near Newark, in the Trent Valley area of Nottinghamshire.'

'Think you can find it?'

'Of course. Why?'

'That's where we're going this afternoon.'

'What about Eddie Kemp and the baby?'

'Gavin and the search team can cope here. It's obvious they're not going to find Baby Chloe being cared for by Vicky Kemp. Her darling husband will be picked up somewhere in due course. You know there's no point in us chasing our backsides over that.'

'I suppose not. But Leadenhall …'

Fry waved his protests aside. She wasn't going to be put off her chance to go somewhere and do something at last.

'We're going to follow the footsteps of the Snowman,' she said.

18

The Leadenhall Aircraft Museum opened on some days during the winter months, but it was obvious that hardly any visitors came. Diane Fry and Ben Cooper found the gates open and a few volunteers taking the opportunity of the lull to carry out restoration and maintenance work on their aircraft.

The main hangar was gloomy and cavernous. Inside, a Spitfire had been roped off and the armour plating round its nose had been dismantled. A man in blue overalls was doing something with a wrench deep inside the engine. The clink of metal against metal echoed in the hangar like a pebble rattling at the bottom of a deep well.

A twin-engined Vickers Wellington seemed to be the central exhibit. Cooper edged towards the information board under its nose. This wartime bomber had been recovered from a remote Norwegian fjord where it had crashed in 1941 after being damaged by a German fighter. Its canvas fuselage had been torn away in large sections, exposing a metal grid-like structure underneath and offering glimpses of the flight cabin and the navigator's table. The aircraft's upper surfaces were painted a camouflage green, but underneath it was black, where it would be seen only against the sky.

The Wellington had a powerful presence, even in this setting, and it reminded Cooper of something. He learned from the information board that Wellington bombers had been referred to affectionately by their crews as 'Wimpeys' after a fat, hamburger-eating character in the Popeye cartoons. But the impression it made on him was far from cartoon-like. There was nothing harmless and bumbling about this machine. The comparison he was trying to grasp was more animal-like.

After they'd crossed the concrete floor, Cooper turned for another view of the Wellington. The Perspex panels of the cockpit were like a pair of dark eyes staring down the long nose and over the front gun turret towards the sky beyond the hangar walls. For Cooper, there was nothing cosy or nostalgic in the impression at all. The aircraft had a snout like a muzzled hunting dog.

'How recent was the Snowman's visit here, Diane?' he said.

Fry paused by the sliding doors of the hangar, near a set of display boards filled with newspaper reports of Second World War air battles.
Fighter Command Spitfires destroy eight Messerschmidts over English Channel.

'Sunday 6th January.'

'The day before he was killed, probably.'

'Somebody might remember him – it was only a week ago. And look at this place – it isn't exactly heaving with crowds, is it?'

'No, you're right. But, Diane …'

'What?'

'I'm supposed to be interviewing the staff at the Snake Inn this afternoon, trying to jog their memories about four-wheeled drive vehicles. You could have brought Gavin here with you. They didn't need
him
at the Kemps either.'