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Blood on the tongue bcadf-3 Page 33

by Stephen Booth


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  down the passage. The cobbles and the walls on either side were wet enough to suggest that it had happened before, and that any second he might get swept away and washed up in the market square.

  Further up, on the corner of Rock Terrace, he could see Eden Valley Books, nestling into the tall buildings around it. Starlight glittered faintly on the roof, and a light was visible in a window on the second floor. Here was someone else who didn’t bother closing curtains. But up there were only the pigeons and a view of the back of the town hall clock tower. Lawrence Daley must have a good vantage point over the roofs of Edcndalc. He must be able to look down into all the yards and closes, passages and alleys between here and the market square. He must be able to look down on the River Eden where it passed below the bridge.

  As Cooper looked up at the lighted window, a shape passed across it, then a second. The first, he was sure, was Lawrence Daley himself. But the second figure was female. Cooper couldn’t quite believe who he thought it was. Then she turned towards the window to look out, and he was certain.

  Cooper heard a cough. Eddie Kemp? Did he really have a delicate respiratory system?

  Then his radio came to life. ‘Ben, we’re in Eyre Street. Which way did he go?’

  ‘Dianc? I think he’s in one of the alleys between you and the market square. Somewhere near the bookshop.’

  ‘Which ways shall we cover?’

  ‘He’ll come out either on to Eyre Street or up Rock Terrace on to Buxton Road. I’m at the market square end of Nick i’ th’ Tor.’

  ‘OK.’

  Slowly, Cooper began to move forward again. It was steep

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  here, and the setts were slippery it he walked too near the walls. He passed Larkin s and one of the coffee shops and was almost at the bridge. Even if there had keen footsteps, he wouldn’t have heard them now because of the noise of the river under the bridge.

  Where a broken remnant of stone wall concealed a delivery door to one of the shops, there was a sudden a movement, and a dark shape on the edge of his vision. Before Cooper could turn towards it, he felt himself pushed heavily, and he fell hard against the door. Along with the sudden jolt of pain from the impact, he heard a thud of something hitting the door alongside him. Then there were feet clattering on the setts as someone ran off down the alley.

  Cooper tried to push himself away from the door to run alter them, but found he was unable to move. There was a strange tightness in his right side, and he couldn’t force his body away

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  from the door. It was as if he had lost all the strength down his right side. There was no real pain, except from his shoulder where it had collided with the door. He tried to raise his right arm above his head. It wouldn’t move all the way, but was held back by the tightness in his side, so that his arm hung ridiculously in mid-air. He felt like a man patting an invisible small boy on the head.

  Feeling ridiculously embarrassed, he lowered his arm again. Then he concentrated on each part of his body in turn, wondering if there was a serious, major pain somewhere that he had missed. Perhaps his brain had suppressed it, and the agony would hit him in a moment. Perhaps he was in a state of shock. He had heard of badly injured people who carried on moving for several minutes before their wounds overwhelmed them and they collapsed.

  Cooper clearly remembered an impact. And he knew, too, that he had heard a faint crunching of flesh and bone. Now his body refused to allow him to move to pursue his assailant. Something was definitely wrong.

  He bent his head to look down at his side. Blood was soaking through the lining of his coat. A thick drop of it trickled from the hem and landed in the snow, splashing on

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  the fro/en surface. The blood was very dark, so dark that it was almost purple.

  As the adrenalin drained away from his limbs and icy water dripped on him from the guttering, Ben Cooper began to feel very cold.

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  IJiane Fry had not seen Eddie Kemp before. But when the man coming up the alley dodged back into the shadows as soon as he saw the light of her torch and the uniform of the officer next to

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  her, she had no doubt who he was.

  She used her radio as she ran. ‘Ben he’s headed back downhill towards Eyre Street. We’ve got him boxed in. Ben?’ She got no reply, but assumed he was too busy closing in from the other direction. Cooper was never a man to use more words than necessary when communicating with other people.

  Round the corner Fry ran headlong into the man she had been

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  chasing. He had stopped suddenly on the bridge when he saw the other uniformed officer approaching from Eyre Street.

  ‘Edward Kemp?’

  The man stepped back and swung a punch at her. Fry deflected it easily. He was far too heavy and slow, and she had kept her roe Awon Jo skills sufficiently honed to make her responses good. Within a few seconds, she had his arm behind his back and his face against the stone wall.

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  ‘Edward Kemp or not, you’re under arrest.’

  The two uniforms got the cuffs on and took the man away. Fry looked round. Still no Ben Cooper.

  ‘Damn it, Cooper, arc you doing your shopping again, or what?’

  Her voice had risen on the last few words and echoed in the alley. The only answer was the noise of the river running under the bridge and the dripping of water from the roofs. Up on the road, the door of the patrol car slammed.

  He’d said he was at the market square end of Nick i’ th’ Tor. Somewhere over the bridge then, past the bookshop and round the corner.

  ‘Ben?’ she called.

  ‘Here.’

  His voice sounded strange. Fry began to run, slithering on the

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  cobbles as she crossed the bridge. Then she saw him. He was standing against a garage door, with his back to her.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Hi, Dianc.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘I think we got Kcmp.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You’re sure it was him? I didn’t get a good look at him. Have they never heard of street lights at this end of town? Or did the gas supply just run out?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s pretty dark all right.’

  She looked at him, starting to get irritated. ‘Why are you leaning against that garage?’

  ‘Well, the fact is, I don’t think I’m able to move.’

  Fry moved to touch him, then stopped.

  ‘You think? Is this some kind of joke? Because if it is, I’m going to make you drive round with DC Murfin for a week, and you can pay for his onion bhajis yourself.’

  ‘It’s not a joke, Diane.’

  ‘Jesus, you don’t sound like somebody who’s injured. Let’s take a look.’ She pulled out the torch from her pocket and shone it at his chest. ‘Where’s the problem?’

  Cooper unbuttoned the front of his waxed coat with his left hand and let it fall open. ‘Round about here somewhere. I felt this -‘

  ‘Don’t touch it!’

  ‘What?’

  Gingerly, Fry used the head of the torch to pull open his coat. She drew it back far enough to show him the protruding handle.

  ‘It looks like the handle of a bayonet.’

  ‘Thank God it missed me.’

  ‘It didn’t miss you,’ said Fry. ‘You’re bleeding. I’m calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No, it missed me.’

  Fry shone her torch on the blood trickling into the snowr. It had pooled in the big inside pocket of his coat and there was a greasy patch where it had soaked through.

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  ‘Believe me now, Ben? You’re bleeding.’

  ‘No, it’s the rabbit,’ said Cooper.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ She looked at him as it he were delirious.

  ‘There’s a rabbit in my poacher’s pocket. George Malkin
gave it to me.’

  ‘You are joking.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Cooper laughed unsteadily with relief. ‘The blade of the bayonet has gone right through the rabbit. The point pinned my coat to the door, but it passed through the entrails of the rabbit. Malkin said it was fresh. He was right.’

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  ‘You’re sure vou’re not hurt?’

  Cooper studied the rip where the bayonet had penetrated his waxed coat, gone through a few inches of skin and bone and embedded itself in the garage door. ‘This coat cost a

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  fortune,’ he said.

  ‘As long as the only hole he made was in your credit card, and not in your guts.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Get the coat off, then, and we’ll get the whole thing along to Forcnsics. God knows how we’re going to explain the rabbit/

  ‘It would have been rude to refuse it, Diane. Besides, I paid him, so it wasn’t a gift.’

  ‘You haven’t got a couple of pheasant down your trousers as well, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m just pleased to see you.’

  As soon as Peter and Grace Lukasy. got into bed that night, the argument began. It was about something trivial at first, a disagreement that Grace couldn’t even remember when it was all over. It might have been about the colour of the new wallpaper, or whether they could afford a holiday in Portugal this summer.

  It had begun to change in character when Peter had told her not to nag, that he had other things on his mind that were more important.

  Grace had looked at him lying next to her. His face was turned towards her, but was in shadow because of the bedside lamp behind his head. She had turned off her own lamp already, and had

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  taken off her reading glasses. Peter’s face was too close to hers, too blurred by the shadows, for her to read his expression. His eyes were open, hut she could sense that his face was closed. She touched his arm, and she could feel that his muscles were tense.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There’s something wrong.’

  ‘Nothing at all. What do you mean?’

  ‘Tell me, Peter.’

  ‘Leave me alone — I’m tired.’

  He rolled over on to his back, thumping his pillow with the back of his head as if to beat it into submission. Now Grace could make out his profile, outlined by a halo of light from the bedside lamp. His expression was set into a determined scowl. It was the expression that reminded her most of his father, Zygmunt, the one that made her think of the old man as a warrior still. The same determination was there in Peter’s face. And the implacable hatred, too.

  ‘The Canadian woman coming here has upset you, hasn’t it?’ said Grace.

  ‘She’s not important.’

  ‘She didn’t want to go away, did she?’

  ‘I think I made it plain,’ said Peter.

  ‘It was strange, though, about the policeman. I thought that was strange, didn’t you?’

  Peter didn’t reply. Watching him, Grace felt a sudden surge of irritation.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to me?’ she said.

  He sighed. ‘Yes, it was strange. I thought it was strange she had already met him, strange that he knew what she’d come for. It was very strange. But it was you that invited him into our house in the Hrst place.’

  ‘Oh, it’s my fault, is it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Is that what it is? You’re sulking because you blame me.’

  ‘Not at all.”

  ‘But all I did was to ring the police because of the description they gave of the man who died.’

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  ‘I know. That’s all you did/

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  Now it was Grace s turn to shift on to her hack. She stared at the bedroom ceiling, not really seeing it at all, just more shadows. She was silent, waiting for Peter to speak, wondering i( he would hothcr, willing him to feel her hurt.

  ‘You did it hecause of Andrew/ he said.

  Grace was surprised to rind tears suddenly leaking down her face and on to her pillow. She fumbled for a tissue in the pocket of her nightdress.

  ‘I couldn’t hear to think of him lying dead somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘Who? Andrew? Or some strange man you’ve never seen hefore in your life?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Andrew has gone hack to London. You have to accept that,’ said Peter.

  ‘How can I, until 1 hear from him? Why isn’t he answering his phone? Why hasn’t he hccn in touch to tell us where he is?’

  ‘All right. But what did you think you were achieving hy phoning the police and telling them you recognized the man they found on the Snake Pass? That was stupid. More than stupid. You hrought the police here, as well as that bloody woman.’

  ‘Don’t swear at me.’

  ‘Well, it n^j hloody stupid. That was the last thing we needed. What do you think it w ould have done to Dad it the policeman had insisted on seeing him? I can’t believe you didn’t think about that. But, no, you were only thinking of yourself. Somehow you had to feed your ohscssion. It’s always been Andrew, Andrew, Andrew - it’s turning your mind. Can t you see that?

  Grace held the tissue to her face. She tried to control a small, spasmodic sob that rose in her throat, not wanting to show Peter her weakness.

  ‘I want to protect Zygmunt as much as you do,’ she said.

  ‘You have a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘But it’s true I do.’

  “I can’t stand this, I really can’t.’ He turned over on to his other side, crushing his pillow and dragging the bedclothes almost away from her.

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  ‘Don’t turn away from me, please/ said Grace.

  Without even touching him, she knew his body was knotted with tension. Peter was frightened, of course. Rut he would never admit it. It was a diliicult time (or him, since he was so close to his lather. She accepted that. The last thing she wanted to do was make it worse for them hoth. She wiped her eyes and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt cold and resisting. She tried to pull him hack towards her so that she could see his face.

  ‘Peter ‘

  Then he rolled on to his hack again. ‘Look, Grace, for God’s sake forget about Andrew for now. He’s not worth it. There are far more important things to worry ahout. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes, Peter. I understand.’

  Suddenly, the tension went out of them hoth. Peter rolled on to his side. He sighed deeply, as if overwhelmed by tiredness, and within a minute or two he was asleep. Grace smiled in the darkness and patted his shoulder gently. Then she turned over and pressed her body against his, for the sake of the warmth.

  After Ben Cooper had been examined at West Street that night, Diane Fry made him sit in the C1D room and do nothing for a while. She even got somebody to make him a cup of tea, for the shock. Cooper knew there would be activity going on down in the town — the passageway where he had been attacked would be sealed off, witnesses would be sought with the usual futility. Later, he would have to make a full statement. It was something he wasn’t looking forward to.

  Cooper could see a pile of faxes waiting for him on his desk. Curious, he picked them up. They had come from Toronto, marked for his personal attention. There was a head-andshoulders photograph of a man with wiry hair and a square jaw, and another of him standing next to a woman slightly taller than himself. The man was named as Kenneth Rees, Alison’s mother’s stepfather. Despite the poor quality of the reproduction on the fax machine, there was no doubt this man wasn’t Danny McTcaguc. Flcctingly, Cooper considered the idea that there was no real proof it was Kenneth Rees either.

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  He put the faxes down to study in the morning. There had been something else about his conversation with Alison Morrissey earlier that day that had been nagging at him, and he needed to check it. It had been a
small thing, but it had undermined his faith in the accuracy of her information.

  Cooper found the file that the Local Intelligence Officer had put together for the Chief. According to the information on Klemens Wach, he had done his initial training with the RAF at Blackpool at the same time as his cousin Zygmunt, and they had both been posted to the Operational Training Unit at Lymm, in Cheshire. At Lymm, they had gone through a very British system of assembling air crews — hundreds of men had simply been put into a large room together and encouraged to mingle until they formed their own crews with the right combination of skills. It sounded a bit like the way football teams had been chosen at school you always had to have a good goal-scorer and a goalkeeper, and a couple of big lads in defence. But inevitably, there would be somebody left till the end, the boy who nobody really wanted. Cooper wondered who had been left to the last among the airmen. Might it have been Zygmunt Lukasx or Klemens Wach? It must have been even more difficult when different nationalities were involved. There were fewer natural bonds to bring them together.

  But the crew had been formed, and had been sent to their first operational posting a Lancaster squadron at RAF Leadcnhall, where they remained until that fatal crash in January 1945.

  According to the LIO’s note, the information on the airmen’s service history came from the official RAF records. So Klemens Wach had only one operational posting, which meant he could never have served with the famous 305 Squadron, as Alison Morrissey had claimed. Morrissey had got it wrong. Until then, Cooper had been assuming that her research had been meticulous, with the help of Frank Bainc. But now he was having doubts. There was a weakness in her research. He wondered what other information she had might be inaccurate.

  But of course there was more than one inaccuracy; there had been a major gap. Morrissey had not known the identity of the Malkin brothers, even though the information had been readily

 

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