Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (60 page)

Zygmunt was seated in front of a tall candle that burned strongly in the enclosed space. His white hair shone with an unlikely purity in the snow-filtered light, as if it had recently been washed with bleach. The rest of his family were visible behind him in the house. There was Peter, and Richard and Krystyna, and even the youngest child, Alice. Cooper began to feel embarrassed, and he wanted to slip back round the corner before they saw him. But Grace Lukasz banged on the glass without hesitation, and her husband came to the door, staring at Cooper.

'I wasn't expecting you to be ready to come home so soon,' he said to Grace.

'I'd had enough. And Detective Constable Cooper wants to speak to you.'

'I'm sorry to bother you, sir.'

'You'd better come in.'

Krystyna was in the kitchen cutting carrots and parsnips with a small knife. There was a chicken soaking in cold water. In the sitting room, Peter Lukasz had automatically picked up the television remote and was fingering the buttons. 'What is it you want?' he said.

'I wonder if you've heard from your son yet?'

'No. But we will soon.'

Cooper shook his head. It was strange standing here in the Lukasz's home again. Over a week ago, he'd arrested Eddie Kemp in the Starlight Café. He'd never even heard of the Lukasz family then, but Kemp had just been involved in killing their son. There had been blood on the streets that dawn, in the snow. Now there was blood on Irontongue Hill.

'Mr Lukasz,' he said, 'I need you to come to the mortuary again to make an identification.'

Each of the Lukasz family stopped what they were doing. Grace spun her wheelchair to face him, Peter put down the television remote, Krystyna paused with her knife in mid-air. Cooper turned and looked into the conservatory. Zygmunt had fixed him with his pale blue, knowing eyes. The old man raised his head, tensing his jaw as if facing a challenge. The dog was beside his chair, with a thin, pink biscuit in its mouth that it had been dragging around the floor. The biscuit was dirty, but a design was visible on it – a picture of a nativity scene. Cooper recognized it as a version of the
oplatek
wafer.

'Forgiveness for the animals?' he asked.

Then Zygmunt Lukasz spoke in English for the first time in Ben Cooper's hearing.

'Of course,' he said. 'There were animals in the stable when Jesus was born.'

'So there were,' said Cooper. 'And animals are much easier to forgive.'

*    *    *    *

Cooper had never yet been next door to the house that Mrs Shelley lived in. He had only ever met her at number 8, in his own flat. Of course, number 10 looked identical from the outside, apart from the fact there was only the one bell.

'She's a bit vague,' he said. 'She might not understand what we're telling her first.'

'It's lucky she knows who you are, then,' said Fry.

'I'm not sure about that. She might not associate me with the police. She thinks of me as the young man who looks after the cat.'

'Promotion at last, Ben.'

Cooper turned to look at her, irritated by the jibe. But he saw from her face that she regretted having said it.

'If it's all right with you, I want to go to the Cavendish Hotel and see Alison Morrissey after this,' he said.

Now Fry couldn't meet his eyes at all. 'She's gone,' she said. 'She caught a flight back to Toronto this morning.'

'What?'

'I'm sorry, Ben. We agreed it was for the best.'

'Who's
we
?'

'I talked to her yesterday, after we arrested Frank Baine. I watched you take her back to the hotel. And I think she's already said goodbye.'

Cooper felt his mouth hanging open and a surge of anger flooding through him. But before he could demand an explanation, the door of number 10 opened and Mrs Shelley stood looking at them, a puzzled frown on her face.

'Can I help you?'

They could hear the Jack Russell terrier barking from the back of the house. Even in the hallway, the noise was deafening. Cooper was glad of the thick stone walls that stopped sound travelling between the two houses. He was reminded of the walls in the row of cottages where Marie Tennent lived. They were just as thick as these walls – thick enough, he remembered thinking, that her neighbours would not have heard a baby crying.

Seeing Cooper speechless, Fry took the lead. 'Mrs Shelley, we need to speak to you about Lawrence Daley.'

'Lawrence?' Mrs Shelley said, as if repeating the name might bring some meaning to the sound of it. 'Lawrence?'

'Your nephew.'

'Has there been an accident? Has there been a fire at the shop? I always warned him that he was working in a death trap. All those books – it only needed some thoughtless person to drop a cigarette end or a match, and the whole lot would go up, I told him.'

'Nothing like that, Mrs Shelley. Could we come in for a moment? It would be better than standing on the doorstep.'

'Oh, yes. Would you like some tea?'

'It might be an idea to put the kettle on, but we'll do it.'

'Why on earth would you do that? I'm quite capable of putting the kettle on.'

'I think this might be a bit of a shock for you.'

Mrs Shelley stared at them, her mouth moving slightly as she tried to puzzle out what they was saying. In a moment, Cooper expected her to ask him about the cat.

'He can't be dead,' she said. 'That isn't possible. Not both of them.'

'Both of them?' said Fry. 'Both of who?'

'I'll make that tea,' said Cooper.

He was glad to find that the dog, Jasper, was outside the back door rather than in the kitchen. His yapping sounded peevish and demanding. Cooper was getting used to being in other people's kitchens. Marie Tennent's, full of nappies and bottles of sterilizing fluid. Walter Rowland's, sparse and utilitarian. Lawrence's little cubbyhole at the bookshop. Even his own kitchen next door at number 8, which he hadn't yet got used to.

And it ought really to have been the kitchen at number 8 that Mrs Shelley's reminded him of – they were the same layout, with a similar view out on to the overgrown gardens. But of all the kitchens he'd been in, it was Marie Tennent's he was reminded of. It didn't take him long to find out why.

Down at the end of the room, in the alcove that was occupied in his own flat by a new chest freezer, there was an incongruous piece of furniture. It didn't belong in a kitchen at all. But it went with the smells, which he now realized were what had put him in mind of Marie Tennent's house in the first place. The smells had transported him instantly to Dam Street, as if he'd opened a door and stepped back into Marie's hallway on that day nearly a week ago. It was a trick of the memory, a sense of
déjà vu
. Except that here he had in front of him the one item that had been so obviously missing from any room in Marie Tennent's home.

'What am I going to do with her?' said Mrs Shelley plaintively, coming into the kitchen behind him. 'Jasper is so jealous of the attention she's getting – that's why he never stops barking. And if Lawrence is dead, he won't be coming back for her, will he?'

'No, Mrs Shelley. And I don't think her mother will be, either.'

Cooper stood looking down into the cot. The baby's eyes were open, but she lay with her hands curled into fists and her face flushed bright red. She was lying very still indeed. Then the pupils of her eyes moved, as if she were trying to see something a long way off, and her forehead creased in puzzlement.

Finally, she seemed to become aware of Cooper's face. And Baby Chloe smiled.

36

Typically, the Peak District weather had changed completely within forty-eight hours. Once the thaw had begun, it had accelerated so fast that the last traces of snow were almost gone by Thursday, apart from a few frozen streaks in the deep gullies on the moors. Water cascaded off the hills and the rivers were swollen, threatening to burst their banks.

Cooper drove out of Edendale on dark, wet roads, remembering how different the Snake Pass had looked on the day he'd gone up to the wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor with Sergeant Caudwell. The snow had still been pristine then, and the reflection of the sun off the hillsides had been so bright it had hurt his eyes.

Now, in the yard behind Eden Valley Books, there would be water running off the gun turret and the engine casings in rivulets, dripping and crackling as the snow melted. The body of Andrew Lukasz had long since been removed, though not without difficulty. His limbs had been folded to get him into the turret, and rigor mortis had made the pathologist wonder whether his arms would have to be dislocated to get him out. But they'd managed. And when they turned the body over, they'd seen the blood that had soaked into the seat, and the injury to the back of Andrew's head.

Cooper felt sorry for Lawrence Daley. His partners had made sure he was implicated in the death of Andrew Lukasz. With no Lawrence to testify against them, it was going to be very difficult proving whether it had been deliberate or an accident when Andrew had ended up at the foot of the fire-escape stairs. It might be true that they'd simply opened the door to show him the yard. There had been ice for days, and snow had fallen by then. So did Andrew just lose his footing? Or had it been the only way that Baine and his friends could prevent him from meeting Nick Easton next day?

When he'd visited the bookshop with Fry to look at the upstairs room, Cooper had even stood at the top of the fire escape himself and looked down into the yard. Andrew Lukasz's body had already been there, waiting for the snow to clear enough so that it could be removed. Yes, poor Lawrence. He had never really known what he was getting himself involved in.

Now, with all the interviews completed, the work was going on to build a case against Frank Baine and the Kemps, and the MDP were still pursuing their own enquiry. The one thing they were still looking for was Sergeant Easton's black Ford Focus.

Alison Morrissey was back in Canada, and Baby Chloe had been taken into care. The baby had come to no harm while she was under Mrs Shelley's protection, kept out of the way of Eddie Kemp's threats. And Marie Tennent had been wrongly judged from the start. The only thing she'd cared about was keeping the baby safe. No, there had been two things she cared about. She had also remembered the dead.

But it seemed to Cooper there was one person left whose fate everyone had forgotten about. This whole business hadn't started with Nick Easton or Marie Tennent, or any of them. It had started with Pilot Officer Danny McTeague.

*    *    *    *

On Irontongue Hill, water was scouring the moors in every direction, carving channels through the bare peat, sculpting it into castles and mounds, dragging small stones into heaps and gathering in dark pools in the hollows. Further down the hill, the streams had turned brown with peat, bursting with far more meltwater than they could cope with. They were no longer picturesque.

Yet George Malkin's house at Harrop still had snow on the roof. Normally, that was a sign of good insulation, which prevented the heat from rising. But in Malkin's case, Cooper knew there wasn't enough warmth in Hollow Shaw Farm to melt the snow.

Malkin had been right about the grass in the field near his house. Even now, as the snow began to wear thin, the grass looked a brighter green than any other grazing in Derbyshire. The black-faced ewes lifted their heads and watched Cooper as he parked the Toyota and walked up the path to the house. Some of the animals nodded their heads, as if to say they'd known this would happen. If they hadn't been sheep, they might have looked wise. But their constantly rotating jaws and unblinking eyes were only derisive.

'How was the rabbit?' said Malkin, when Cooper entered the house.

'It was a life saver.'

'Ah, grand.'

In Malkin's sitting room, a small drift of snow lay on the window ledge where the blizzard had driven it through the twisted window frame. The snow showed no sign of thawing, even now. The crystals glittered against the stained wood. Cooper didn't want to be inside this house today.

'Mr Malkin, would you come outside with me for a minute?'

'If you like.'

They walked a few yards up the slope of the hill, to where Irontongue was just visible in the distance, with the hump of Blackbrook Reservoir in between, its dam wall emerging from the snow.

'The night before last, I was up there in the dark,' said Cooper. 'I wouldn't normally go up on the mountain in the dark, but that night I did.'

'I heard about that,' said Malkin.

'Well, when you're up there at night like that, in the snow, you're desperate for any signs of life, you know. For a long time, there was only one thing I could see anywhere – a light. It was the light from your window. I knew it was yours. You don't bother drawing your curtains.'

'I didn't know you were up there,' said Malkin. 'What did you expect me to do?'

'Nothing,' said Cooper. 'But if I'd been lost and didn't know which way to go, I would certainly have headed for your house. It was the one light for miles. It was like a symbol of safety.'