Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (36 page)

'Some were damaged by enemy action, some suffered mechanical failure, or iced up and broke apart in mid-air. Other crashes were the result of pilot error or faulty navigation. If they found themselves over high ground in poor weather conditions, they were in trouble.'

'You really have done your research. Don't let it become an obsession.'

A group of men in their thirties came into the pub, let loose by their wives for Sunday lunchtime. They were talking noisily, joking about someone who'd lost money through his ignorance when buying a second-hand car. They wore sweatshirts, and denim jeans with the waistbands rolling over from the pressure of their stomachs, and they made a fuss of choosing the specialist guest beers as if they were ordering cases of vintage wine.

'Then I had another problem,' said Morrissey. 'I had to consider whether to contact the relatives of the other airmen. Would they want to know the information I had? I had to try to put myself in their position. I was worried that I would be opening up old wounds. Just because those wounds are fifty-seven years old doesn't necessarily make them any less painful. I know that.'

Cooper tried to keep his eyes on hers, to encourage her to carry on talking. Often, that was all people needed, an air of attentiveness. But gazing into her eyes began to make him feel too disorientated after a while, and he had to look away.

'At first, it seemed an impossible task that I'd set myself,' she said. 'My imagination failed at the hurdle of putting myself in other people's shoes.'

'If you've never had that sort of experience yourself …'

'No. It wasn't that. It was because these were people who blamed my grandfather for their relatives' deaths. In the end, I decided that there was only one approach to take. I had to assume that the relatives, like me, would be happy to know what had really happened.'

She was talking constantly, barely pausing to eat, hardly waiting for him to nod or shake his head in response. It was as if she didn't want him to get a word in, as if she were afraid he might try to change the subject before she'd finished explaining herself. Cooper began to feel he was unduly honoured by the fact that she'd chosen him to explain it to. He wondered if anybody else had been given this privilege. Frank Baine, probably.

'You see, to me it felt as though I'd been reading a book but had been forced to put it down before the final chapter, and had never been able to finish it. It was a sense of frustration that drove me, I think. I knew finishing the last page would be a bitter-sweet experience. But it was an experience I had to go through with. Do you understand, Ben?'

The fact that she'd called him Ben so naturally seemed to mark an important moment in their meeting. Cooper had interviewed enough people to know that unburdening herself of her thoughts had made Morrissey feel closer to him and had put him in the role of a friend. He had no problem with that.

'I think I understand.'

'Good.'

'Did you realize that last Monday was the anniversary of the crash?'

'Yes, I know that.'

'I don't know why – but it seemed important I should come over here now.'

'Do you happen to have the medal with you?' asked Cooper.

'Yes. And the package it came in, too.' Morrissey placed the medal on the table. 'My grandfather kept it on him all the time when he was flying. It was a kind of lucky charm.'

Cooper used a dessert spoon to tip the medal towards the light from the pub window, so that he could see the shine from its metal surface.

Morrissey watched him with a smile. 'If you're looking for fingerprints, I have to tell you that the first thing my mother did was give it a good clean. She said it was dirty. Tarnished. She used metal polish on it.'

'Great.' Cooper could smell the polish. But there were pitted areas of corrosion on the metal, and damp stains on the faded ribbon. There were darker stains, too – small specks that could have been blood. The medal had arrived in an ancient leather pouch, which had crumbled and split until it was practically useless. On the inside were the remains of decayed stitching, where a label might once have been attached. The pouch had been wrapped in brown paper folded over several times and sealed with parcel tape, and the Canadian address was written in capital letters with a black felt-tipped pen.

'No note?' he said.

'No.'

'And the address is correct?'

'Yes.'

'I wonder how the sender knew your mother's address.'

'Brilliant,' said Morrissey.

Cooper looked up from the package. 'Sorry?'

'Don't you think that's what we've been wondering for months, ever since the medal arrived?'

'Of course.'

'It has to be someone who either had access to my grandfather's service records, or who was close enough to him for my grandfather to have given them his home address. Perhaps he wrote it down for them, so that they could stay in touch after the war was over.'

'You mean one of the members of his crew?'

'And since it was mailed from Edendale …'

'You concluded that it came from the surviving crew member, Zygmunt Lukasz.'

'Who else? When Frank Baine told us Lukasz still lived in Edendale, it seemed a pretty logical conclusion. Who else could my grandfather have known in this area?'

Cooper passed back the medal and the package. 'Families of the other crew members would have received their possessions from the RAF after the crash. Any one of them might have had your grandfather's home address among their belongings.'

'None of them lives anywhere near here.'

'You're certain, then, that Zygmunt Lukasz is involved in some way?'

'Either that,' said Morrissey, 'or my grandfather is still alive and living in Edendale.'

*    *    *    *

The atmosphere in the CID room was icy. Gavin Murfin was already there, and he looked green, as if he'd finally eaten too many chicken tikka masalas. He saw Diane Fry come in and looked away.

'What's up with Gavin?' she asked Hitchens. 'Why does he look so sick?'

'He's been chasing down missing persons to match the Snowman, hasn't he? And he finally got around to circulating the description nationally.'

'Yes?'

'He did it properly, too. Sent details to all forces.
All
forces.'

Murfin definitely looked to be in a state of shock. His hair was standing on end, as if he'd pushed greasy fingers through it in his agitation.

'One of the forces had a match?' said Fry.

'Yes, and they're on their way right now.'

'That's good.'

'Do you think so, Diane?'

'If somebody can spare the manpower to give us some back-up, that's great, surely? Well done, Gavin.' Fry looked at their faces, and saw how uneasy Hitchens was. 'It's not the RUC, is it? Don't tell me it's the Ulster troubles after all this time?'

'Oh, no,' said Hitchens. 'It's nothing so straightforward as a terrorist execution.'

'Who, then? Who've we stirred up? A neighbouring force?'

'No. A national force.'

'National?' Fry frowned. 'Railway police, you mean, sir? No? Not the National Crime Squad? Special Branch?'

'The military wing,' said Hitchens. 'Ministry of Defence Police. We've got two officers from the MDP arriving here today. They think they might know our Snowman. They think he might be one of theirs.'

'One of theirs? A missing serviceman?'

'The name of their missing person is Nick Easton. And when I say he's one of theirs, I mean one of theirs. He was an RAF special investigator. They'll be here in about an hour's time, so they're not messing about on this one. You'll be working with a Sergeant Jane Caudwell.'

*    *    *    *

Ben Cooper and Alison Morrissey split the bill between them and left the pub. For a few minutes, they walked in silence, until they found themselves on the river bank. In this one short stretch of river there were hundreds of birds on the water, calling and diving, splashing and arguing, cocking their heads at a few people on the paths. An old couple were discussing the difference between coots and moorhens. Two children argued over the last bit of bread, and tried to throw it to the furthest duck. Dogs became hysterical at the flapping of wings.

Near the weir, the water became shallower, and you could lean over and stare at the bottom, looking for fish. Rafts of dead willow leaves floated on the surface, swirling gently in aimless circles, clinging together in a dark scum as they touched the banks. Then, suddenly, a couple of feet away, the water roared over the weir. The meltwater was pouring off the hills, raising the level of the river. The water bounced so hard off the rocky bottom that it rose up again in white spurts inside the cascade. Then it foamed away towards the bridge, splashing over an old tree trunk that had lodged on the edge.

'It wasn't only my father who was a hero,' said Morrissey. 'Klemens Wach had an admirable service record, too. When he arrived in Nottinghamshire, he was already one of the heroes of Poland, the ones who aren't forgotten, even now.'

'What do you mean?'

'Wach was transferred to Leadenhall from 305 Squadron, the famous Polish unit.'

'Was he?' said Cooper.

'Sure. It's in the file. They're a legendary squadron in Poland, apparently.'

'Right.'

They passed two bikers, a couple in their thirties, who sat on a bench sipping tea from paper cups, their helmets on the wooden slats next to them and their boots outstretched as they watched the ducks foraging for food. They sat without speaking, lifting their heads only to stare with amazement at a white-haired man in a black overcoat who attempted to hand them a religious pamphlet.

'How long are you staying in the area?' said Cooper.

'As long as necessary.'

'Have you no job to go back to in Toronto?'

'I'm a high-school teacher. But I took a sabbatical,' she said, with a small smile.

'Lucky you. And no family?'

'Only my mother and a brother a few years older than me. They support what I'm doing all the way. My mother and I, we're very alike. We think the same way on this. We have to know how the final chapter ends. We just have to, Ben.'

'So your grandmother was left alone in 1945 with a small baby she must have had to bring up on her own.'

'Not for long. She found another man. In fact, my mother's maiden name was Rees. She took the name of her stepfather, Kenneth Rees.'

'Your grandmother re-married?'

'How could she? Her husband hadn't ever been declared dead. She didn't actually consider him to be dead. But she needed a man to support her, to help her raise my mother. That's the way it was back then. And Kenneth Rees was a good man. He never questioned it, my mother says. I remember him very well, though he died fifteen years ago.'

Irritatingly, Cooper found himself longing for a way he could ask Alison for a photograph of Kenneth Rees. He had an urge to compare one to the photos of Danny McTeague.

'Where was Rees from?'

'Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a structural engineer who came to Canada to build bridges.'

'Would he have been about the same age as your real grandfather?'

'About.'

'I suppose your grandmother had known him for a while? Or did she meet him after your grandfather went missing?'

Cooper found he was walking on his own. Alison Morrissey was no longer alongside him. He turned and saw that she'd stopped a few feet behind him. Her lips were apart, and her breath came in angry spurts. She had shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat again in the way that he'd last seen outside Walter Rowland's house. Her posture was angry, but defensive. Stubborn, yet awfully vulnerable.

'You think Kenneth Rees was my real grandfather using a different name,' she said. 'Why should he have married my grandmother – they were already married. He couldn't let anybody know who he was, because he was a deserter. He would have been sent to prison.'

'I didn't mean that.'

'Kenneth Rees was a Geordie engineer. He had red hair. He was only five foot eight. His accent was impossible to understand.'

'You say he's dead now?'

'Yes, but I can have his details faxed to you, if you want. A photograph, too.'

Cooper desperately wanted to say it wouldn't be necessary, but he knew he needed to see the evidence himself, for his own peace of mind. Alison simply nodded, understanding his lack of response. 'I'll phone my mother and get her to do it later today,' she said. 'So you'll have them first thing Monday morning. Is that soon enough for you?'

'Of course.'

'Do you have e-mail?'

'A fax will be fine.'

Morrissey looked across the road at the hotel. She seemed disappointed, but she had proved herself to be resilient so far, and he knew it would pass. He certainly hoped it would pass.

'Thanks for the lunch,' she said.

'You paid for it yourself,' said Cooper. 'I didn't do anything.'