‘They’re all close. Yes, very close.’
‘Peter Lukasz – what does he do for a living?’
‘He’s a doctor, works in the A&E department at the hospital.’
Fry opened a folder full of postmortem photographs of Nick Easton. Cooper still thought of him as the Snowman, since Easton had arrived in Derbyshire with the snow.
‘According to Mrs Van Doon, the fatal wound on Easton was caused by a small, very sharp instrument. It could have been a scalpel.’
‘OK, I can see what you’re thinking. But Peter Lukasz is supposed to have been on duty at the hospital. We can easily check if he was where he ought to have been at the time Easton was killed.’
‘Do it, then. What sort of car does Lukasz drive?’
‘A blue BMW, three or four years old.’
‘Good in snow?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘But there’s a close little community there, you said.’
‘It doesn’t mean they’d conspire together to murder somebody. That would take a serious shared motive.’
‘Yes.’ Fry thought about it for a while, looked at the lists in front of her, and thought again.
‘Ben, where else have you been?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘On this business of Alison Morrissey’s. Who else have you been to see? There was Zygmunt Lukasz, and the old RAF rescue man, Rowland. Who else is there? Tell me.’
‘Well, there’s George Malkin.’
Fry’s face was grim. She looked as though she wanted to grab the lapels of his coat and shake him.
‘Tell me who George Malkin is, Ben.’
‘He was a farmworker, but he’s been retired for years. The place he lives in at Harrop was his father’s farm in those days, but there’s only the old farmhouse left now. He was a child at the time of the Lancaster crash, but he went up to the site with his brother that night. Malkin is a lonely old man – solitary, going a bit strange, but he remembers the crash all right.’ Cooper paused, thinking of Zygmunt Lukasz and Walter Rowland. ‘Well, Malkin is not so old, really. Only in his sixties. It just happens that he remembers the crash very well.’
Fry continued to stare at him. ‘It just happens?’ she said. ‘It just happens?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘This would be George Malkin, of Hollow Shaw Farm, Harrop?’
‘Yes. What’s all this about?’
Fry waved the file at him. ‘Ben, George Malkin is another one of the names on Nick Easton’s list. You’ve been wandering backwards and forwards across their enquiry, without knowing what the hell you were doing.’
Cooper felt a little surge of excitement, as if all his instincts had been justified.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Have you got anything on for the rest of today?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘And have you got a phone number for the Lukasz family?’
‘Yes.’
‘Try them. We’ll go and see them.’
Cooper rang. There was no reply. ‘They’re not in.’
‘Malkin, then.’
He tried another number. George Malkin was in, but said he’d be busy.
‘We’d really like to come today, Mr Malkin,’ said Cooper.
‘If you must. But be warned – you’ll take me as you find me.’
Cooper nodded at Fry. ‘He’ll see us.’
‘Let’s go, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll let DI Hitchens know the situation, and we’ll see how your friend Malkin comes into this.’
But Cooper still wasn’t sure where they stood. The arrival of the Ministry of Defence Police had confused him, and so did Fry’s sudden interest.
‘Diane, do you think I’m right, then – that there might be some connection with the Lancaster crash?’
‘If it was just you, Ben, I’d say it was definitely your imagination,’ said Fry.
‘But it isn’t just me?’
‘No. When the MDP phoned this morning, one of the first things they asked for was to be shown the site of the wreck of Lancaster SU-V.’
Cooper had never had any contact with the Ministry of Defence Police before, except when he’d met some members of their surveillance unit on a training course. But he did have an old acquaintance in the RAF Police. Carol Parry was a local woman. Soon she would be finishing her time in the RAF, and she’d been talking about applying to Derbyshire Constabulary for a job. Derbyshire would welcome her with open arms – officers with experience would be vital to balance the number of new recruits who were filtering into the ranks.
While he waited for Diane Fry, Cooper gave Carol Parry a call.
‘The MDP are an entirely different animal to us,’ said Parry. ‘They have a much wider remit, and they deal with civilians. All our customers are servicemen, and most of them end up with the provosts in the Military Correctional Training Centre at Colchester. If the Court Martial gives them more than eighteen months, they transfer to a Home Office prison. So we’re not really concerned with punishing serious crimes.’
‘Who is, these days?’
‘Well, don’t tell the MDP you’ve spoken to me. They won’t like it.’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s no love lost between the services. It’s like we take the mickey out of the Royal Military Police, and the RMP call us “snowdrops”. But the MDP, they don’t like either of us. Their numbers are being hacked all the time, because we’re finding other ways of doing the job. It’s the way of the world.’
‘But we work together with the RAF Police when it’s needed. We co-operate.’
‘Ah, but that’s because we need you. The RAF Police have no powers of arrest. You have the constabulary powers. But so does Sergeant Caudwell. By the way, are Caudwell and her staff armed?’
‘What? I have no idea.’
‘Seventy-five per cent of MDP officers are permanently armed.’
‘In Derbyshire we have to be specially trained before we’re approved to carry firearms,’ protested Cooper. ‘We have to pass regular tests.’
‘So do they,’ said Parry. ‘Every one of them is fully weapons trained. It makes you remember what they’re really there for. Of course, the only time the general public is likely to notice them is when they’re escorting nuclear convoys up the A1. It’s a very British way – if you don’t make a fuss about it, nobody notices.’
‘That’s been a help,’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose.’
‘What’s the weather like there, anyway, Ben?’
‘Warming up a bit,’ he said.
23
At least Fry had the sense to let Cooper drive them to Harrop in his Toyota. She’d glanced at the road map and seen the clustering of contour lines that indicated the steep descent on the other side of the Snake Pass and the even steeper climb to Harrop. There were still patches of snow and lurking corners of black ice that would be worsening now as it grew dark again.
On the way to Harrop, they passed an empty patrol car parked in a lay-by near Irontongue Hill. The car displayed the force’s website address on the side – www.derbyshire.police.uk. Members of the public were able to visit the site and read the Chief Constable’s report and news of the Bobby of the Year Award. Cooper’s favourite was the recruitment section, which stated that candidates had to be proficient in the use of ‘everyday technical equipment’, like telephones and riot shields.
A few yards further up the road, two officers in fluorescent jackets were walking up and down the road opening the yellow grit bins placed on the verges by the council. They were still looking for Baby Chloe.
‘I was thinking about Marie Tennent yesterday,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh, yes?’ said Fry.
‘I was trying to understand why she did it. Why she went up there, I mean, to leave the baby clothes.’
‘And did you succeed in understanding, Ben?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem enough of a reason to me.’
‘Nor me,’ sai
d Fry.
‘I wish there were more time to spend on her. I’d like to be able to understand.’
‘Finding the baby is what’s important, for now. We can leave that to others.’
Despite Fry’s words, Cooper didn’t think she sounded entirely convinced. She, too, wanted to know about Marie Tennent. But there were procedures to be followed, priorities to be observed. A need to understand why people behaved the way they did was not enough to justify their time.
They drove on in silence for a while, following the twists and turns of the Snake Pass.
‘So how’s the new place?’ said Fry. ‘Settled in OK?’
‘Sure. It’s very handy.’
‘You won’t have any trouble getting into work on time, anyway.’
‘I never did,’ said Cooper.
‘A lot of people don’t think it’s a good idea to live on your own patch. The customers can get to know where your home address is. It’s been on my mind out at Grosvenor Avenue, but you’re really in the thick of it where you are. Right on the doorstep for any tanked-up hooligan who staggers out of a town-centre pub and fancies throwing a brick through a copper’s window. I know you’re everybody’s favourite bobby, but even you must have a few enemies, Ben.’
‘I don’t mind that,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ll put up with that risk. I prefer to feel part of the community.’
‘Oh,’ said Fry. ‘Community.’
‘It’s not a dirty word.’
‘It isn’t something real, though, is it? It’s a word that we use in the titles of reports. Community liaison. Working with the community. Understanding the ethnic community. It’s a word, Ben. It’s not something you actually live in, not these days. You’re living in the past. You should have been born fifty years earlier. You’d have loved that, wouldn’t you? The days when a bit of friendly advice or a clip round the ear would solve most things.’
‘Friendly advice still doesn’t go amiss now and then.’
The Toyota crested the hill above Glossop, and the view over Manchester opened up in front of them. From here, the road wound down over western-facing moors to where the drystone walls ended and it became a different kind of country.
‘Ben, I’m concerned that your mind seems to be on other things.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. I wondered whether it was something to with moving out of the farm. I know it’s a big wrench for you. I know it’s not easy living on your own for the first time.’
Cooper looked at her in amazement. This sounded horribly like a caring Diane Fry. But it wasn’t really him she cared about. It was a question of doing the job right. No doubt she’d been told to take an interest in the personal welfare of the officers under her supervision. He was probably her first attempt, a bit of practice.
‘Ben? You were miles away again. What were you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘And that’s the trouble,’ she said. Her voice had changed suddenly.
‘What is?’ asked Cooper, surprised.
‘You never want to share what you’re thinking. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, Ben, but sometimes it’s obviously nothing to do with your job. There’s a part of your life that you won’t let anybody into.’
It was difficult to know what to say to her. So Cooper just kept quiet, and drove on.
Fry was appalled by Harrop. It was like an outpost of the Wild West, without the cowboys. For a start, there didn’t seem to be any roads, only potholed tracks, some of them barely wide enough for the car. There were no street lamps and no facilities of any kind. Nothing. Not a pub or a shop or a school, no village post office. Not even a phone box, as far as she could see. Just a few clusters of houses made of blackened stone, sheltering behind high walls.
The back of Irontongue Hill loomed over the village like the carcase of a dead whale, the outcrops of gritstone like patches of barnacles encrusted on its sides. Around Harrop, there was still deep snow lying in the fields, getting deeper as the grazing land deteriorated into open stretches of heather and dead bracken. The space between the houses and the rocky hillside was crammed with sheds and outbuildings, barns and derelict hen huts. In some cases, the supply of stone must have run out, because their builders had improvised with breeze-block and corrugated iron.
It was so desolate up here. Uninhabited and uninhabitable. But at least Fry had been able to see Manchester from further up the hill – a rare indication that civilization wasn’t all that far away, after all. Down in the city, there would be restaurants and theatres and anonymous crowds, and concrete and tarmac instead of the relentless cold wind snatching at her clothes in this isolated moorland landscape. She had never felt so exposed in her life.
‘We have to turn right and go up the hill a bit,’ said Cooper.
‘Up the hill? Aren’t we high enough yet?’
‘Hollow Shaw is the top farm, on the brow of the hill there.’
‘I see it.’
Amazingly, the road got even worse as they approached Malkin’s home. At one point, a ragged sheep stood in the roadway, chewing at a branch of a tree growing in a gateway. The animal turned and looked at the car as the headlights hit it. The light reflected from its eyes as if they were mirrors. Reluctantly, the sheep trotted away, its hooves slipping on the compacted snow.
‘Do you know, if you’d told me what it was like, this is the last place I would have wanted to come in the dark,’ said Fry.
‘I expect it looks a bit better in the daylight,’ said Cooper.
‘You mean it does get light here sometimes?’
When George Malkin answered the door, he had his sleeves rolled up to reveal strong forearms, the hair on them stained with what looked like streaks of blood. He’d taken his boots off in the house, but was wearing thick socks, as well as a brown sweater full of holes and plastic over-trousers on top of his blue boiler suit. His clothes were wet and sticky.
Cooper could sense Fry staring at Malkin’s stained forearms, ready to jump to some wild conclusion from the man’s appearance. But he could smell that unique odour of blood and birth fluids, both fruity and metallic at the same time – the scent of new life.
‘Have you got some early lambs?’ he said.
‘Aye, I’m helping out Rod Whittaker – he’s the lad who owns the land here now. He’s got fifty head of ewes indoors.’
‘We’ve a few routine questions, sir,’ said Fry, who’d learned to ignore agricultural conversations that she didn’t understand.
‘Oh, aye?’ said Malkin. ‘You’ll have to come to the lambing shed with me, then.’
‘Where?’
‘This way. I can’t leave ‘em for long.’
They followed Malkin round the side of the house, through a gate and past a large steel shed with sliding doors that had been left open on their runners. Inside, there was a big articulated DAF lorry, parked next to a powerful Renault tractor with a snowplough blade attachment on the front.
‘I take it that’s your friend’s truck,’ said Cooper.
‘Aye, he keeps the wagon here.’
‘And the tractor?’
‘Rod has to get work where he can – when it snows like this, he can’t run the big wagon, but the council pays him to clear the roads around here, so he doesn’t lose out. He can’t afford not to have any money coming in – he has a family to keep. Contract haulage is almost as dodgy as farming, but he’ll make a go of it.’
Behind the shed, they walked across a farmyard towards another building.
‘Rod grazes his flock on these fields here. That grass comes up in the spring like little green rockets. He can afford to lamb the ewes early – he gets a good start with them.’
‘You’ve split up the farm and kept the farmhouse for yourself,’ said Cooper. ‘So where does Mr Whittaker live?’
‘Up the far end of the village,’ said Malkin. ‘It was my dad who sold off the land, when he couldn’t keep the farm going any more. You could get a goo
d price for land then, and it was enough. Rod has the land and these buildings here. Of course, he has the contract haulage business as well. That’s why he can’t be here to see the ewes all the time. But he can’t afford to pay for hired help, and he knows I don’t mind.’
‘You’ll have lambed a few in your time, I bet,’ said Cooper.
‘Aye, a fair few.’
They entered the shed. It was much warmer than outside, and it was half-full of steel pens containing black-faced ewes. Cooper breathed in the warm smells of animals and straw. But Fry looked at the sheep and drew away.
‘This isn’t a very suitable place. Can we go back to the house?’ she said.
‘This lot are in the middle of lambing – you can see that,’ said Malkin.
Fry gazed blankly at the sheep. Cooper knew she could see nothing more than some mutton chops and several nice Sunday roasts milling about in the shed.
‘They look all right to me,’ she said.
‘They can’t be left to their own devices. Ask me your questions here.’
‘All right. Do you recognize this man?’ said Fry, producing the photograph of Nick Easton.
‘It’s no use showing me that – I haven’t got my glasses on.’
‘Well, where are they?’
‘Back at the house, where I need them.’
‘For goodness sake!’
‘I don’t plan my day around you lot turning up, you know.’
Fry took a deep breath. Cooper could see her face twist as she drew in all the smells of sheep droppings and straw and sour milk.
‘We’re enquiring about a man called Sergeant Nick Easton. Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He worked for the Royal Air Force.’
‘Oh,’ said Malkin. ‘Is it to do with the complaint?’
‘What complaint?’
‘About the low flying. There were some jet fighters came over here so low they almost knocked the chimney tops off. They frightened the sheep to death. Rod put in a complaint about it. He says he might be able to get compensation.’
Fry stared at him. Then she looked at Cooper.
‘I think you’d have to prove the aircraft caused some damage or injury to the sheep,’ he said. ‘Did any of the ewes lose their lambs?’
Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) Page 28