Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (57 page)

'It wasn't his?'

'He says not. He says the father is Lawrence Daley.'

Cooper was glad he was no longer driving. He turned around in his seat. Lawrence's blue Vauxhall should have passed him by now. There was no road to turn off the Snake Pass until the Harrop road, the other side of Irontongue Hill.

'I've not long seen him,' said Cooper. 'A couple of miles back, I helped to get his car back on to the road. He told me he was heading this way, but I think he might have turned round.'

'I'm on my way. If you see him again, just keep contact.'

Cooper manoeuvred the Toyota in the gateway with difficulty, forcing more traffic to swerve round him. Finally, he got back on the road heading east. He didn't have to go far to find Lawrence's Vauxhall. Only two miles back up the A57, it was parked in another lay-by, but on the opposite side of the road. This time, it had been taken off the carriageway deliberately and was parked neatly. There was no sign of Lawrence Daley.

Cooper got out and scanned the nearby landscape. There was nothing but blank snow everywhere. It was about the remotest spot on the A57, familiar only by the sight of Irontongue Hill to the east. He checked the doors of the Vauxhall and found it locked. Then he looked in through the windows. He dialled Fry's mobile.

'What is it, Ben?'

'Lawrence Daley's car is here at the roadside. There's a length of plastic tubing and a roll of insulation tape on the passenger seat of his car.'

'It's a pity you didn't notice that when you were giving him a helping hand.'

'Do you think he drove out here to kill himself?'

'It sounds a bit like it. Can you see him? He can't have got far.'

'He'll be getting further and further away. But I don't know in which direction.'

Cooper turned to look to the north and cursed again. The weather was changing rapidly. Fat, heavy clouds were bumping over the flanks of Bleaklow and Kinder Scout. On the further slopes he could see the snow already falling. He shivered as the first cold gusts of a northerly wind reached him and bit through his clothes.

He cast about along the edge of the road, damning the slush and the deep tyre marks of every vehicle that had stopped in the last couple of days. Then he found the beginning of some footprints. They were fresh ones, the snow newly broken on the edge of the moor.

'I can see which way he went,' said Cooper. 'I should have guessed – he's heading towards Irontongue. But he'll never make it across that snowfield. It's treacherous under there. Groughs, loose peat, frozen bogs – you can't tell what you're walking on.'

The sky was darkening. The wind started to bluster around him, alternately whistling and moaning like an animal. The first flakes of snow fell – big, soft flakes that settled on the slush and began to freeze. Within minutes, they would be piling up, covering all the surfaces. Soon, he would be able to see nothing on the moor.

'Damn, damn and damn.'

'What are you doing?' said Fry.

Cooper didn't answer. He was opening the tailgate of the Toyota and taking off his shoes, balancing on one foot as he replaced his shoes with walking boots. He pulled on his cagoule, zipped up the hood.

'Ben, answer me. What the hell are you doing?'

'I'll take the phone with me. I'll try to keep in touch, depending what reception is like out there.'

He checked his rucksack for a compass, dry clothes, a torch. He shoved his phone into the front pocket.

'Ben, stay right where you are. I'm only a couple of minutes away. We have to call out the mountain rescue team.'

'They'll take hours and it's nearly dark already.'

'We can get them to put a helicopter up.'

'In a blizzard? Because if you take a look to the north, you'll see there's one on the way.'

'Ben, I can see you now. Stay with the car.'

'Diane, if we let him do this, we may never find Baby Chloe.'

Cooper pulled on a pair of gloves. Finally, he began to walk up the hillside, following Lawrence's footsteps. He'd gone a hundred yards when he heard a car pull up on the road.

'Ben!'

Cooper kept walking. Fry called after him again. But now there was an entirely different tone to her voice. No longer was there any anger, only fear and a strange appeal that made her sound like somebody else entirely.

He turned and stared at her wordlessly. It was entirely the wrong moment to try to think of words to say to her that could mean anything. Trust Diane Fry always to be choosing the wrong moment. For a second or two he looked at her, the snow landing on her shoulders and on her face, melting into damp patches that glistened on her cheeks. A remnant of common sense urged him to walk back towards her, so that they could sit in the car together and wait. He stared at her for so long that he thought he would see her red scarf for ever.

Then he carried on walking on to the moor. Just once, Cooper looked back, and he could see Fry still watching him from the road in the dusk, with the snow falling thicker and thicker through the headlights of her car. Then his path led him over the top of a rise, and he couldn't see her any more.

*    *    *    *

Fry made the necessary calls with a shaking hand. Once she'd done that, all she could do was wait. Cooper would know that she had more sense than to do anything else, that she had enough self-discipline not to go flying in the face of procedures and the clear priorities of self-preservation and directing assistance.

Of course, Cooper would never in his life appreciate that she felt the same instincts that he did, that her first impulse had been to run after him into the snow. Not everybody could give way to those impulses – otherwise, where would the world be? What sort of mess would they be in now?

And Cooper would never realize that waiting was the worst thing. He would never know how hard it was to sit alone in her car watching the sky darken and the snow fall heavier and heavier until it filled his tracks and obliterated signs of his presence.

Fry switched on her wipers to clear her windscreen and looked at Cooper's Toyota. He said it always got him through the snow. But now his car stood abandoned in the lay-by while he faced the snow alone. Knowing Cooper, he had probably forgotten even to lock it in his eagerness to be a hero.

Fry shivered despite the warm air from her car heater. For some reason, she remembered the file she had in a locked drawer in her desk at West Street. She knew, in that moment, that she would destroy the file without hesitation, if Ben Cooper came back alive.

*    *    *    *

The distant moors looked entirely artificial in the twilight, like mounds of polystyrene packaging, their white surfaces split by cracks. Beyond Cooper's immediate surroundings, the landscape was almost featureless. There was no horizon, just a vague softening where the low cloud lay on the tops, dropping more snow silently on the moors. The only landmark ahead of him was the outcrop of rock on Irontongue Hill, the blackest thing against a dark background.

Cooper was able to follow Lawrence Daley's tracks easily. There were traces of other walkers passing here, but they were frozen into the snow, like footprints set in wet cement, and Lawrence's were the only fresh tracks. Cooper tried to follow a line that avoided the gullies, but now and then he sank up to his knees in a drift and had to drag himself out. The snow was too cold to make his clothes wet. Instead, it stuck to his trousers, boots and gloves in small, frozen lumps. The depth of the drifts sapped the strength from his legs, and his calf muscles were soon aching.

He knew he needed to find Lawrence Daley before it became fully dark. The moor was a dangerous place to be at night in this weather. Not only dangerous but lethal, for anyone inadequately equipped. The heavier the snow became, the more difficult it would be to see Lawrence, unless he could close the distance.

He was climbing steadily higher towards the top of Irontongue Hill, where the wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor lay. In the gullies, snow already lay over a thin layer of ice that cracked and gave way under his weight. In the deeper areas of snow, his feet plunged in. But on the smoother areas he was aware only of the crackle and squeak as the snow compressed under their boots. No other route he chose would be a good one – there were too many steep-sided gullies and groughs to cross, too many sudden hollows hidden by waist-deep drifts, too many icy streams and channels full of drainage water to stumble into.

Finally, there was a splash of colour in the snow, barely visible in the dusk. Cooper turned and headed towards it. Fifty yards away, he could see it was Lawrence's blue jacket. He looked as though he had simply lain down to rest at the foot of a rock, among the first scattered fragments of aircraft wreckage. But from the distress on Lawrence's face, Cooper could see he was exhausted and in pain.

'I think I've broken my leg,' said Lawrence. 'And my chest hurts. Badly.'

'Lie still. We have to wait until they come to find us.'

'You shouldn't have come after me, Ben.'

Cooper felt Lawrence's cheek. He was very cold. 'What on earth made you come out dressed like that?' he said. 'You could have died of exposure.'

'Oh, yes,' said Lawrence. 'So I could.' And he coughed into the snow.

'I've just been told about Marie,' said Cooper. 'Her grandfather was Sergeant Dick Abbott.'

'Yes, I know. When Marie was a girl, her parents used to bring her down to Derbyshire every year to leave a poppy. Sometimes they made a holiday out of it, staying in Edendale for a few days. It's very quiet in the winter – there isn't much to do, except browse in bookshops. That's how I met her the first time.'

Lawrence's voice faded. Cooper looked at his face. The bookseller's eyelids were drooping, and Cooper knew he had to stop him falling asleep.

'But Eddie Kemp came along, didn't he?'

Lawrence didn't reply.

'Did you know you were the father of the baby, Lawrence?' asked Cooper. 'If Marie told Eddie Kemp, then she must have told
you
, surely. Kemp was jealous. He beat her up when she told him the baby was yours. The pathologist said she was weakened by her injuries and too exhausted to make it back down the hill. That was after she left the poppy. She kept up the ritual. But she must have lain down to rest and gone to sleep. It's a mistake to go to sleep, Lawrence. You can die of exposure out here.'

But Lawrence seemed to have something else he wanted to talk about. 'It was nothing to do with the baby. Kemp couldn't have cared less about the baby.'

'What? Why then?'

'He wanted to frighten her. I don't think he meant to hurt her so badly, but he always went too far. He meant to warn her what would happen if she told what she knew to the police. That was my fault, of course. I let her find out what the business was. It never occurred to me how she would feel about it.'

'Because she was Dick Abbott's granddaughter, of course. She must have felt about it the way Zygmunt Lukasz did. So when she found out, she threatened to give you away. Is that what happened, Lawrence? And Eddie Kemp had the job of frightening her off. Didn't you do anything about it? For heaven's sake – she was badly injured!'

Lawrence sounded resigned. 'You don't understand. It was all too complicated.'

'No, I don't understand. And I don't understand why Marie didn't report that he'd attacked her.'

'Because he threatened worse than that,' said Lawrence.

'Worse?'

Again, Lawrence seemed to go off at a tangent. 'Did you know Andrew Lukasz came to the shop?' he said.

'Did he?'

'He had a cigarette case he'd bought. He rang me and said he wanted to know the names of people involved in the business. He threatened he was going to speak to that RAF policeman that night.'

'When was this, Lawrence?'

'Over a week ago. On the Sunday, the day before Marie –'

'And did you tell him anything?'

'No. He frightened me. I couldn't face him on my own, so I phoned Frank Baine, and he came to the shop with Kemp.' Lawrence coughed again. 'I sent for the reinforcements.'

'But Easton was still looking for Andrew Lukasz next day. So he didn't meet him on Sunday night.'

'No.'

Cooper wondered where Andrew Lukasz was now. But time was running out, and there was a more important question that was preying on his mind.

'Lawrence, where's the baby?'

This time, Lawrence didn't answer. Then Cooper noticed the approaching noise. It seemed to come from the east, creeping round the sides of Irontongue Hill and enveloping the outcrops of rock. It moved down the slopes towards him, but at the same time was everywhere in the sky, spreading across the low clouds. It was more than a sound – it was a deep droning that he felt as a vibration in the air, a reverberation bouncing off the hillside and filling the space all around him.

As the rumbling continued, Cooper looked up, expecting to see an aircraft. But nothing appeared in the sky. There was just the same blanket of iron-grey cloud rolling away towards the horizon, the same steady drift of snowflakes, thousands upon thousands of them parachuting towards him. The sound came from within the cloud. It was rumbling around inside it, spreading itself across the sky, so that it was impossible to pin down the direction it was coming from.