Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (5 page)

'I suppose it gets a bit much.'

'Water off a duck's back, my son. You've seen the guidelines, haven't you? 'All idle and foolish remarks will be disregarded'. It helps no end when some inspector in nappies tries to tell me what to do. You can ignore them and say, "It's in the guidelines, ma'am."'

'What's the point of the music, by the way?' said Cooper.

'It relaxes the customers,' said the sergeant. But Cooper thought he sounded a bit defensive.

'Does it?'

'So they tell me.'

The sergeant paused. They both listened to the Vivaldi for a moment. Kennedy had just reached Summer.

'It's the inspector's idea,' said the sergeant.

'Ah,' said Cooper. 'She's been on a course, has she?'

'Been on a course? I'll say she's been on a bloody course! Show me the week she's
not
on a course. This one was called "Conducting a Resources Audit of Your Public Interface". What the hell does
that
mean? Mark my words, she'll have us putting mirrors and potted palms in here next. Moving the doors and the desk to make the energy flow better or some such rubbish.'

'
Feng shui
,' said Cooper.

'Sorry?'

'
Feng shui
.'

'I think you've caught a cold standing out in the snow,' said the sergeant.

'Making the energy flow,' said Cooper. 'It's Japanese.'

The sergeant stared at him. ''Course it is,' he said. 'I must be stupid.'

He was much too tall for the counter he worked at, and he leaned awkwardly to write in the custody record. Unless Health and Safety had conducted a proper workplace assessment in here, there would be more compensation to pay out in a year or two, when the sergeant was walking like Quasimodo. But by then, he'd be haunted by the sound of Nigel Kennedy rather than the bells of Notre Dame.

Cooper felt his pager vibrating in his pocket. It was the fifth call for him in the last half-hour. They'd started plaguing him about other enquiries while he was still escorting his prisoner through the snowbound streets of Edendale.

'All these new ideas, what's the point?' said the sergeant. 'I can't get my breath sometimes. A bloody madhouse it is round here. And I don't mean the customers, either.'

A PC came out of the office behind the sergeant and handed Cooper a note. It said:
DC Cooper – report to DS Fry ASAP. Urgent.
Cooper reluctantly gave up the plan he'd been nursing for the last few minutes. He'd been hoping to call by his locker for some dry socks, then carry out a raid on Gavin Murfin's desk to see if he had any spare food.

'Mind you, you didn't hear me say any of that,' said the sergeant. 'I'm very happy in my work, I am.'

*    *    *    *

When passengers reached the arrivals gate at Terminal One of Manchester Airport from Air Canada flight 840, a tall, fair man with a beard was waiting. He greeted the woman by shaking her hand, but they both looked for a moment as though they regretted there were so many people around them on the airport concourse. Alison Morrissey smiled when she heard his strong local accent, as if it made her trip to England seem real.

'So you came,' she said.

'I couldn't think of you arriving on your own and knowing no one.'

'That's kind.'

There was a moment's silence between them. As the crowd of passengers passed her on either side, the woman looked at the unfamiliar names on the airport shops – W. H. Smith, Virgin, Boots the Chemist. For a moment, she looked no older than a schoolgirl as she cocked her head to listen to the announcements.

'We've got a bit of a walk to the car park,' he said, watching her. 'Will you be all right? You look pale.'

'Yes, I'm fine.'

He found a baggage trolley and pushed it for her towards the exit. Alison Morrissey paused to rub her legs, though she'd performed her exercises religiously all the way across the Atlantic from Toronto Pearson.

'The weather's not too good outside,' he said. 'But I suppose you're used to snow in Canada.'

'Frank, I live in a suburb of Toronto. No grizzly bears or lumberjacks for miles.'

She looked dizzy and disorientated, but when she shook herself hard, she reverted to a confident woman in her mid-twenties.

'The meeting is set up with the local police, isn't it?' she said.

'Of course. Don't worry about that. It's all organized.'

'I'm sorry, Frank. It just hit me suddenly. This is more than travelling to a foreign country – it's like venturing into the past.'

'I understand that.'

'And it's a dangerous past. I really feel as though I'm on the borders of hostile territory.'

'Don't expect hostility from every quarter,' he said. 'Not necessarily.'

Outside, Alison Morrissey looked at the grey sky and ran a hand across her forehead.

'You're right,' she said. 'Transatlantic flights knock hell out me. I suppose it's past breakfast time here?'

'Nearly lunchtime, in fact. We can find somewhere to eat here at the airport, if you like.'

'May we drive out to Derbyshire first, Frank? How long will that take?'

'It depends whether they've got the A57 clear yet,' he said. 'I had to come here by the motorway. The last I heard on the radio traffic bulletins, the Snake Pass was still blocked. I don't know why – they're usually pretty good at getting the snowploughs out to clear the main roads. Perhaps there's been an accident or something.'

*    *    *    *

Grace Lukasz peered cautiously round the door into the back room of the bungalow, clinging on to the wheels of her chair to suppress the noise. Zygmunt was in his armchair by the table. He looked as though he might be asleep. His hands lay on the table, the blue veins standing up prominently, as if he really did suffer from the high blood pressure he'd always complained about, but which the doctors said didn't exist. His head was tipped against the back of the chair, and he'd taken off his spectacles. Grace could see the red marks on the sides of his nose and the small wings of white hair pushed up over his ears. There were tufts of hair inside his ears, too, and more hair on his neck where he never thought to shave.

The old man's eyes were closed, but Grace wasn't sure that he was really sleeping. Often he sat like this while awake. Zygmunt always said he was thinking, when he took the trouble to explain at all. Grace supposed he was going back over his life in his mind, dwelling on his past. It was all he seemed to do now, to dwell on the past. But maybe she was misjudging him. Perhaps the old man was thinking of his wife, Roberta. She doubted it, though. It was more likely that he was thinking of Klemens Wach. These days, he thought mostly about Klemens.

Next Sunday was the day for the Edendale
oplatek
dinner. Almost the whole of the Polish community would gather for the event in the ex-servicemen's club, the Dom Kombatanta. Grace knew that for Zygmunt this would be the emotional high point of the year, more important even than
Wigilia
, the Christmas Eve celebration. This was the time when everyone began the year anew, but it was also a chance to reflect on their history and their place in the world. Most of the folk who would come to the dinner had not been born in Poland, of course. But since Solidarity and democracy, and the possibility of EU membership, some of those people had begun to talk more and more about their culture, their roots, their place in Europe. Not Zygmunt, though. Zygmunt didn't talk much at all these days. When he did, it was about the past.

But still, there would be the dinner. Though the community celebration had drifted back into January, it was no less of an occasion and everything had to be done just right. Grace could taste already the beetroot soup, the poached pike, the carp with horseradish sauce, the mushroom-stuffed tomatoes. The ladies who organized the dinner clung tenaciously to the traditions, no matter how much trouble they had to go to.

The stops had been pulled out for the family
Wigilia
, too, when all of them had sat down to the traditional twelve meatless dishes, with the extra place set for an unexpected guest. Then they'd shared the
oplatki
wafers. The symbols of reconciliation and forgiveness meant more this year than ever. Of course, forgiveness wasn't easy. Grace knew Peter was thinking of their eldest son in London, with no family around him to celebrate
Wigilia
, except some skinny bottle-blonde. They'd sent an
oplatek
to Andrew as always. But whether Andrew had shared it with his blonde was doubtful. As far as Grace could gather, the apartment they rented in Pimlico contained nothing of relevance to
oplatek
, precious little that spoke of forgiveness.

The younger members of the family would change the traditions, if they had their way. Richard and Alice were embarrassed by the whole business. They would have made a meaningless ritual of
oplatek
just to get it over with quickly, so they could move on to the food and watch some American film on television. But they knew better than to upset Zygmunt, not at this time of year, and particularly not in these last few months. It was the time for reconciliation, when they could forgive each other their faults and their mistakes over the previous year. It was not a time for arguments.

So Zygmunt, as the eldest, had taken the first
oplatek
and offered it to his sister Krystyna, blessing her and wishing her health and a good year ahead. She'd then broken off a piece of his wafer and offered her own
oplatek
in turn. And she'd gazed into his face as she carefully wished him health and happiness in the year ahead, repeating the words as she was supposed to. But then her voice had broken and the old woman had begun to cry. Grace had edged her wheelchair nearer and put her arm round Krystyna's shoulders. But the old woman had looked as though she would go on weeping for ever, for the whole twelve days of Christmas maybe, right through to the Feast of the Three Kings. The front of her best dress had got stained with her tears.

Zygmunt had simply frowned and waited for her to continue with the ceremony, until everyone had shared their wafers with each other, biting into the nativity scenes moulded into the unleavened bread. And then, and only then, had they sat down to dinner, to the twelve meatless courses, one for each apostle. The family had visibly sighed with relief. Some of them had expected Zygmunt to make a speech, to talk about the mistakes and the sins of the last year, as he said his father and grandfather had always done, listing all the things the young people had done wrong before forgiving them and wiping the slate clean for a new year.

If Zygmunt had done that, it would have made things difficult. It was easier to pretend things hadn't happened when they weren't spoken out loud.

Grace took one last look at Zygmunt, to assure herself that he was still breathing, and backed across the passage. Peter was in the conservatory, among his cacti and the pelargoniums. There remained a thin covering of snow on the glass panels of the roof, and the light beneath it was pale blue.

'Is Dad all right?' he said, without turning from his inspection of a spiky monstrosity on a high shelf. His hearing was attuned to the sound of her chair. Even Zygmunt had acute hearing. Grace wouldn't have been surprised if the old man had known she was there, in the doorway of the room, all the time she'd been looking at him. It would have been just like him to pretend he was unaware of her. It was like Peter, too. She could imagine him being exactly the same when he was a decade or two older. They were stubborn and hot-headed in turns, immovable or flying into tempers. His unpredictability had been one of the things that had attracted her to Peter. But recently his temper had been kept firmly in check, corked up inside.

'He's fine,' she said. 'He's been looking at the photo albums.'

It hardly seemed necessary for Grace to say it. The photographs had been in front of Zygmunt on the table where they stayed almost permanently. They were photographs of the family, the bits of the Lukasz history pieced together as best they could be, given the gaps, the sudden ends to so many lives. There was nothing that could be said to explain the page on which a young man of eighteen stood smiling and full of life in one photo, while below it the rest of the page was blank but for an almost indecipherable shot of a metal plaque.

At
Wigilia
, there had been many quiet prayers as the Lukasz family had tried to connect with their relatives overseas. They'd been thinking mostly of Zygmunt and Krystyna's cousins in Poland, but now also of Andrew. Everybody had spoken of him as Andrzej in the presence of the old people.

Krystyna said she always tried to conjure the memory of her dead parents back in Poland to strengthen the connection. Grace wanted to ask her if the prayers actually worked. But a glimpse of Krystyna's face in an unguarded moment told her what she wanted to know.

As always, there had been midnight Mass at the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa on Harrington Street, under the pictures of the Black Madonna. Alongside the church was the Polish Saturday School, where a handful of pupils still kept the language alive, studying for their Polish GCSE exams, learning the history of Poland and the Catholic faith. It was the children of the Saturday school who would stage the nativity play at the
oplatek
dinner next Sunday.