Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry)

by Stephen Booth

  He priced a tattered copy of The Natural History of Selborne at £2.50 and added ‘Or Near Offer’ for a bit of variety. His attention began to wander, and he looked around the shop. On the floor, between two sets of shelves, he noticed a telltale scattering of black mouse droppings. In a pigeonhole behind the counter there was a half-drunk tumbler of whisky. So that was how Lawrence kept himself from dying of boredom during the day.

  ‘How are we doing?’ called Lawrence.

  ‘We’re doing fine,’ said Cooper. ‘With a bit more practice, I could get a job filling shelves in Somerfield’s supermarket.’

  ‘I like a man with ambition.’

  The bookseller manoeuvred a tray carefully along the passage, swaying his hips to dodge some of the unsteady stacks of books. He looked approvingly at the newly priced labels.

  ‘There – wasn’t that worth coming in for? You’ve learned a new skill.’

  ‘I want to ask you about a woman called Marie Tennent,’ said Cooper, when he had his coffee in his hand.

  ‘Do I know her?’

  ‘That’s the question, Lawrence.’

  Lawrence had brought a plate of biscuits, too, but he didn’t seem to mind eating them all himself. In fact, he was stuffing them into his mouth absent-mindedly, the automatic movement of somebody used to snacking all day long.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘Marie … what was it?’

  ‘Tennent. She’d be aged about twenty-eight, medium height, dark hair, a little on the plump side maybe. She could have been buying books by Danielle Steel.’

  ‘Oh, a customer? That would be a novelty.’

  In between biscuits, Lawrence began to fiddle with his glasses, leaving crumbs on the frames and a large thumbprint on one of the lenses.

  ‘Do you remember her coming in here, Lawrence?’

  ‘Would this have been recently?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It could have been any time. She bought a few modern novels, fitness books, autobiography.’

  Cooper’s phone rang. He found it in his pocket, looked at the display, and sighed as he pushed the button to end the call. There was always another job waiting for him.

  ‘Danielle Steel, did you say? I don’t have many customers who buy Danielle Steel novels. They’re a bit too popular, if you know what I mean.’

  Cooper was starting to get irritated by Lawrence’s constant fiddling with his glasses. He found it distracting not to be able to see someone’s eyes when he was talking to them.

  ‘You don’t stock them, then?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, quite,’ said Lawrence. ‘Down at the end there, I do have a few boxes of books that I’ve bought at auctions and never bothered sorting out. People can have a rummage in there, if they want to. Anything they find, they can have for 10p. There might have been some Danielle Steels. There was a Jeffrey Archer found in there once.’

  ‘You would remember Marie Tennent, if she’d been a frequent customer, I suppose?’

  Lawrence picked up the last biscuit and broke it in half, then into quarters, scattering crumbs on the desk and on to the floor. More food for the mice tonight.

  ‘Yes, of course. I know my regular customers pretty well – I can usually guess what they’re looking for.’

  ‘But you don’t remember her?’

  Lawrence shook his head, then clapped his hand over one side of his glasses as if he were testing the eyesight in the other eye. ‘Sorry. Local, is she? Not a tourist?’

  ‘Local. She had a baby recently. You might have noticed her if she came in when she was pregnant?’

  Finally, Lawrence took his hand away from his face. Cooper noticed that one of the bookseller’s eyes was looking rather strange behind the lens of his glasses. It was slightly drooping and lop-sided. He wondered if Lawrence had suffered a minor stroke recently, which had left the muscles weak on that side of his face. But then the lens of Lawrence’s glasses dropped out and landed on one of the books in front of him on the desk, and his eye looked normal again. Cooper realized it had been working loose for the past few minutes.

  ‘Damn and blast,’ said Lawrence. ‘They’re a real bugger to get back in once they come out. Especially when you can’t see what you’re doing properly because your lens has fallen out.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a spare pair?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ said Lawrence vaguely. He peered around the shop with his other eye, and Cooper began to worry that the bookseller was going to ask him to look for his spare glasses among the mountains of books. But Lawrence was prepared – he carried a tiny screwdriver on a little chain round his neck.

  ‘What’s the problem with this Tennent woman?’ he said. ‘What has she done?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Cooper.

  Lawrence laid his glasses on the counter and bent over them short-sightedly as he tried to tighten the screws holding them together. Watching him, Cooper thought the job might take him a long time. His hands were too unsteady to either to keep the screw in position or to fit the screwdriver on to it.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Lawrence. ‘So that’s another customer gone, then.’

  Cooper hadn’t held out much hope of Lawrence. Even with so few people visiting his shop, it was asking a lot to expect him to remember a particular one. It was painful to watch him struggling with the screw, and it meant talking to the top of his head. But Cooper wasn’t going to volunteer to help.

  ‘I forgot to go and see your aunt about the flat,’ he said.

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Lawrence. ‘It probably isn’t your sort of place.’

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s fine. I meant to give her a call last night, but I was busy.’

  ‘There will be somewhere a lot better waiting for you. Have you tried the estate agent on Fargate? They’ve got some nice properties.’

  ‘I can’t afford them.’

  ‘Aunt Dorothy is getting a bit eccentric anyway.’

  ‘No, I’ll go.’ Cooper looked at the board. ‘I see you’ve taken the postcard down.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The flat has probably been let by now.’

  ‘Has it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lawrence was mumbling over his counter, so that Cooper could hardly hear what he was saying.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I just thought the card was getting a bit faded.’

  ‘It’s worth a try then. I’ll call round at Welbeck Street tonight.’

  It was in that moment of saying it that Cooper knew he had committed himself. If the flat was even half habitable, he wouldn’t be able to find a reason to get out of taking it – not without long and impossible explanations to make.

  He left the bookseller still trying to fit the lens of his glasses back in. Near the counter, he saw a set of illustrated Thomas Hardy novels: Far from the Madding Crowd, Under the Greenwood Tree, Jude the Obscure. Cooper had loved Thomas Hardy as a teenager. Jude had been one of his A-level set books, and he’d read all the rest one after another, drawn into the evocation of a remote yet familiar world. These editions were in gold covers with coloured panels, protected in a cardboard slipcase, and they were priced at £45. Cooper wondered what the profit on that was for Lawrence Daley. Assuming that he ever sold them, of course.

  It had already been dark for over an hour by the time Cooper got to the house in Welbeck Street. It was across the river from the Dam Street area where Marie Tennent lived. If it hadn’t been for the houses behind, he might have been able to see the roof of the heritage centre in the old silk mill.

  Dorothy Shelley stood in the hallway of the ground-floor flat at number 8 and looked him over. She was a slender woman wearing a cashmere cardigan, with another slung over her shoulders. The cardigans looked a bit frayed round the edges, and they gave her an air of decayed gentility, which might have been natural, but could just as easily have been the image she was aiming to present. Cooper was initially pleased with the look of the flat, which comprised the ground floor of a stone-built semi-detached house, solid and sympathetically converted, wi
th the occasional incongruity of stud wall and plastic coving.

  ‘If you could perhaps tell me what’s included in the rent,’ he said. ‘What about Council Tax and water rates?’

  ‘Do you have any objections to cats?’ said Mrs Shelley.

  ‘None at all. We have several back home. Well, they’re farm cats really. They’re supposed to be outside, but they spend as much time in the house as they do in the outbuildings.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Mrs Shelley ‘Only, there’s a sort of a lodger, you see.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She stays in the conservatory, except to go out in the garden to do her duty. She’s no trouble at all.’

  ‘You mean there’s a cat? That’s all right, as long as the central heating works and there isn’t too much damp. Who’s responsible for the maintenance work?’

  ‘I call her Miranda,’ said Mrs Shelley. ‘She’s a stray, but she seems to have moved in for a while. I’m glad you don’t mind, because I couldn’t throw her out. Not now.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Is the electricity supply on a coin meter? Or would I get a separate bill? I could do with an estimate of the running costs, so I can tell whether I can afford it.’

  ‘Actually, I’m worried about Miranda,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I know she’s only a stray moggie, but I took her in because I could see she was pregnant. I couldn’t bear the thought of her having her babies out in the cold and the snow.’

  Cooper opened a cupboard door, hoping to find the electricity meter. But the cupboard was full of cleaning equipment and empty boxes.

  ‘So I brought her into the conservatory and made her a little bed in there,’ said Mrs Shelley.

  Cooper sighed. ‘And has she had the kittens?’

  ‘No. That’s what I’m worried about.’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind if I bought a few small pieces of furniture, would you? The odd chair, a writing desk. And I need somewhere to set up a personal computer. Perhaps over here, near the power points. I’d have to move the sideboard a bit.’

  ‘She seems to be getting bigger and bigger, but nothing’s happening.’

  ‘The sideboard would go nicely in that corner, Mrs Shelley. If I moved the table over a foot or two …’

  She wrung her gloves in her hands. ‘In fact, since you’re here, would you mind having a look at her? At Miranda, I mean.’

  ‘Mrs Shelley, if there’s a problem with your cat, I really think it would be a better idea to let a vet have a look at her.’

  ‘I know, but vets are so expensive, aren’t they? Won’t you please have a quick look? You said you live on a farm, so you must know about animals. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell whether I’m panicking for no reason.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve got time. I only popped in from work. I really should be getting back. If you could just let me know a few things. I was wondering about a parking space for my car.’

  ‘If you tell me the poor thing needs a vet – well, I suppose I’ll find the money somehow.’

  Cooper sighed again. ‘All right. I’ll take a quick look.’

  Mrs Shelley led the way through the kitchen into the little conservatory. Cooper followed, pausing to examine the electric cooker and the fridge. They looked reasonably new and in good condition, but there were hardly any work surfaces, and the cupboards were old and starting to look chipped around the edges.

  ‘Is there a freezer, or enough space to put one in?’ he said.

  ‘She’s in here,’ said Mrs Shelley, ‘the poor love.’

  Miranda was jet black, with thick fur that looked as though it had recently been groomed. The cat lay curled in a wicker basket padded with cushions and part of an old blanket. The basket was pulled up close to where the flue from the stove passed through the wall, and it looked the warmest and most comfortable spot in the entire house.

  ‘What do you think, dear?’

  ‘I think a freezer would go better in the kitchen,’ said Cooper.

  Mrs Shelley looked at him in complete bafflement. ‘You haven’t even looked at her,’ she said.

  Obediently, Cooper bent down, and the black cat opened a wary eye at him. It was a sharp, yellow eye set in a broad face that was almost Persian. He could see that the cat’s stomach was pretty large. In fact, the animal had to lie sideways in the basket to accommodate its bulk.

  Cooper put a hand out cautiously, fighting memories of cats that had taken exception to being touched by a stranger and had left their claw marks on the back of his hand to reinforce the message. But Miranda didn’t move as he stroked her side and felt the rounded swelling under the black fur. A faint, rumbling purr started up, like the revving of a tiny motorbike, and Cooper gently eased his hand underneath to where the cat’s belly rested on the blanket.

  ‘How long has she been this big?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, she was quite large when I took her in,’ said Mrs Shelley. ‘And she seems to have got bigger and bigger since then. It must be six weeks now.’

  ‘Six weeks? Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Cooper moved his hand over the cat’s belly, feeling carefully for signs of engorged teats, then moved it backwards. Miranda didn’t protest as he raised one back leg and took a quick peek at the rear end hidden under the fur. He lowered the leg and looked at the floor to the side of the basket, where there were several saucers, one containing fresh milk and the other three with various tasty-looking delicacies – one seemed to be tuna, and there were some scraps of chicken, too.

  ‘I hope you haven’t been spoiling Miranda too much,’ he said.

  ‘She has to eat properly,’ said Mrs Shelley, following his gaze. ‘It’s very important in the later stages of pregnancy. I make sure there is always plenty to tempt her appetite. I give her a few little tidbits. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’

  ‘Not within reason.’

  Cooper let the cat settle back into its position. It eased itself over to allow space for its rounded belly and looked up at him. The cat’s stare was faintly challenging, but full of conspiratorial knowingness. A message seemed to pass between them, an acknowledgement by the cat that it had met someone who understood these things. A warm basket, as much food as you could want, a bit of affection and no demands made on you at all. It sounded idyllic to Cooper, too.

  ‘I don’t think Miranda will be having kittens any time soon,’ he said.

  ‘Oh dear, what’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong really. Nothing that a little less rich food and a bit more exercise wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Oh, but poor Miranda –’

  ‘And you might think about changing his name as well,’ said Cooper.

  The cat gave him that look again. It was a steady gaze, resigned but with no hint of shame. ‘Man to man,’ it said, ‘you’d have done exactly the same.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve quite finished,’ said Mrs Shelley. ‘Are you going to tell me what you think of the flat?’

  Cooper hesitated. He looked at the side wall of the house next door, at the cat hairs tangled on the floor of the conservatory, and at a raffia chair with black specks of mould, which sat under the boarded window. He still had no idea as to the whereabouts of the electricity meter, the size of the Council Tax bills, or who paid for the maintenance. In the pause before he answered, Cooper could hear nothing in the house but the purring of the cat and the ticking of the radiators, like a faint background heartbeat, the sound of somebody sleeping.

  ‘It’ll do fine,’ he said.

  That night, at home at Bridge End Farm, Cooper discovered that the Canadian woman, Alison Morrissey, had taken her story to the media. In fact, she must have contacted them in advance of her arrival with information on the purpose of her visit. It had been a clever move, and he wondered if someone had been advising her on a public relations strategy.

  The regional television stations had picked up her story and there were items about her tha
t night. Morrissey was a gift to the screen – her face played well for the cameras, being striking as well as full of both passion and intelligence. There was a particular scene in a Calendar piece on YTV that showed her against the backdrop of a snow-covered Irontongue Hill, where the wreckage of her grandfather’s Lancaster bomber still lay. Morrissey’s face was flushed with the cold, and her dark hair was in constant movement in the wind as she spoke to the interviewer. Her voice came across calmly and with absolute clarity against the bluster of the wind on the microphone. She was an articulate woman, too. There were no signs of the usual stumblings and ‘ers’ and ‘ums’ that were so irritating in people unused to being interviewed.

  Cooper watched as the camera finally pulled away and lingered on a shot of Alison Morrissey gazing at the hill, her face in profile, her expression a picture of common sense and determination, but with a hint of strong emotion held in check. It wasn’t quite clear how she achieved that effect – it was something about the way she tilted her head, or the angle of her neck. He didn’t think it was entirely an act for the camera.

  This woman wasn’t some nutcase whose life had been taken over by an irrational obsession. Determined and clever Morrissey certainly was, but she seemed to be sincere too. Sincere people could be the most trouble.

  The sight of Morrissey on the screen had made him forget for a while all the noise around him. The noises were the sounds of his brother Matt’s family going about their usual evening activities, which seemed to consist mostly of shouting and arguing, laughing and singing. But even these seemed to retreat into the background as Cooper watched the piece shot on the hillside. He could see it had been filmed early that afternoon, with clouds already starting to build up in the east, but shafts of sunlight hitting the outcrops of rock on top of Irontongue Hill. The producer must have been delighted with the effect, as well as with the performance in front of the camera by Alison Morrissey herself.