Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry)

by Stephen Booth

  The archivist had also sent him a copy of a report from the Accidents Investigation Branch of the Air Ministry. It had been signed in black fountain pen by someone called C.I. (Accidents), and it gave the results of a detailed examination of the main parts of the aircraft. No structural cause had been discovered. The report also covered weather conditions, the pilot’s history and the airframe’s history. The documents were useless to him. They told him nothing about the human lives involved.

  But someone had known the background of Sergeant Dick Abbott. Alison Morrissey had mentioned finding out that another member of the crew of Sugar Uncle Victor had a young child, as well as Danny McTeague. That had been Dick Abbott, hadn’t it? So where had Morrissey got her information from?

  Cooper dialed a number in Edendale.

  ‘Sergeant Dick Abbott, the rear gunner,’ said Frank Baine. ‘He was from Glasgow. He worked in a steel foundry before he joined up in the RAF.’

  ‘He was married, with a child?’

  ‘That’s right, he was. Only two members of the crew of SU-V were fathers – Abbott and McTeague. Abbott was very young himself – eighteen. Maybe he had to get married because of the baby, I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you manage to trace his family?’

  ‘Abbott’s? Well, I went through the squadron historical society. They tried to contact the wife for me, but it seems she re-married and emigrated. I never took it any further than that.’

  ‘I see. I suppose you know about these people who collect bits of aircraft wrecks. I’ve heard them called vultures.’

  ‘Yes, I know all about them. Some folk think it’s desecration, that the wrecks are memorials to the men who died.’

  ‘I imagine relatives must feel strongly about that.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Alison Morrissey, for a start?’

  ‘Alison? I’m not sure about her,’ said Baine.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Baine sighed. ‘She always seems to be holding something back. Do you know what I mean? She’s told me the entire story, all about her mother and her grandfather, Danny McTeague. I’ve had the whole thing. Sometimes it seems she’s telling me far more than I need to know, and that makes me wonder … Well, I have the impression she does it so that I won’t ask her questions. She doesn’t like questions, though God knows she asks enough herself.’

  ‘Is she paying you?’ asked Cooper.

  For a moment, Baine hesitated. ‘Well, expenses really. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You seem to be doing a lot for her, to say that she’s a complete stranger and you don’t even trust her yourself. Dropping her off near Irontongue Hill this morning was a bit stupid. It caused me a few problems.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but she’s very persuasive when there’s something she wants you to do.’

  ‘I know. I’ve found that, too.’

  Fry had entered the office while Cooper was talking to Baine. He wasn’t sure whether she’d heard him mention Alison Morrissey. But there was something about the way she toyed with her scarf, stretching and twisting it tightly between her hands, which made him think she had.

  She walked up to his desk and lifted the pile of faxes. She held them in the air and waited for him to finish the call.

  ‘So what’s with the faxes?’ she said. ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Oh, nothing important.’

  Before he could take them from her, she was reading the top sheet. ‘Who is Kenneth Rees? Should I know the name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s not very attractive, is he? Also, it seems that he lives in Canada.’

  Cooper gritted his teeth. ‘He’s Alison Morrissey’s stepfather.’

  ‘Ben, are you telling me that you’re having details of her family faxed to you at work?’

  ‘It’s to do with Pilot Officer Danny McTeague.’

  ‘Is it? Are you sure?’

  ‘I happened to suggest the possibility that he might have got back to Canada and taken on a new identity.’

  ‘Ah. Even you are sceptical, eh?’

  ‘It’s not impossible to change your identity. Deserters did it often.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re thinking that this Rees character is really McTeague with a new identity, who re-married his wife after a decent interval of mourning for his old self. Where on earth did you get that idea from, Ben?’

  ‘He’s nothing like McTeague anyway,’ said Cooper. ‘Kenneth Rees was a mining engineer from Newcastle. He had red hair, and was only five foot eight inches tall. You see, I checked.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – you read the idea in a novel. I read a novel myself once.’

  ‘I didn’t think you read novels, Diane.’

  ‘I was sick at the time. It didn’t do anything to cure me.’

  ‘Right. Anyway, it looks as though McTeague never went back to his wife and baby. But the thing that worries me is that he kept telling his crew about his family back in Canada, and how he couldn’t wait to get back to them. He wouldn’t have deserted them, no matter what. He would have got in touch with them somehow and let them know he was alive, at least.’

  Fry put down the fax. Cooper was surprised that she was still listening to him. It was the first time she’d allowed him to talk about McTeague for more than thirty seconds.

  ‘So what then?’ she said.

  ‘I’m convinced now that he never made it back to Canada. Maybe he suffered amnesia in the crash and forgot who he was. I suppose he could have taken on a new identity here and settled down in England.’

  ‘Ben, I think the authorities were quite keen on knowing who people were at that time. They were paranoid about German spies landing and all that.’

  ‘Right at the end of the war? I’m not so sure. We’d have to ask somebody who was around at the time. But Hitler was beaten by then. The war had turned. It was Bomber Command and the American air force who were flattening German cities by then, not the other way round. The most the Germans could do to this part of the country was to fire off a few V2 rockets and hope they reached Sheffield. And here, in the Peak District … well, I suspect there might have been people in this area who didn’t ask too many questions. Let’s face it, they’re still like that today. During the war, they were short of men, short of labour for the farms. A lot of the farmers had to rely on German and Italian prisoners of war for their workforce. It’s possible an airman with a Canadian accent would have been accepted on a farm somewhere, without any questions asked. They were strange times.’

  He could see Fry was starting to get restless now.

  ‘It’s all speculation,’ she said. ‘You could never find out one way or the other, unless McTeague were to turn up somewhere.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘And, Ben? Reading that novel didn’t do anything for me. It just made me feel sicker.’

  Fry continued to tug at her scarf while Cooper told her about the visit to the crash site. He was economical with the details, but knew he had to tell her about Alison Morrissey’s appearance. No doubt she would hear from Caudwell anyway. But it was the poppy and the cross she was most interested in.

  ‘What makes you think it might have been Marie Tennent who placed the cross?’ she said.

  ‘January 7th was the anniversary of the crash. We’ve had appeals out for anyone who was up on the moor that day and might have seen Marie. But even the local ranger stayed away from Irontongue because of the weather. You’d have needed a pretty good reason to make it right to the top of the hill. But one person did go, to leave the cross. And one person died on the way back down – Marie Tennent. I’m suggesting they might have been one and the same person.’

  ‘OK. And she was remembering this dead airman …’

  ‘Sergeant Dick Abbott, the rear gunner. Apart from McTeague, he was the only member of the crew who had a child at home. Also, he was Scottish. We need to ask Mrs Tennent whether they were related. I think Marie could have been like Alison Morrissey – a granddaughter of one o
f the crew. Except, in this case, she knew exactly what had happened to Dick Abbott.’

  He expected Fry to mock him. He expected her to say that it was a question of priorities, that there could be no possibility of sparing any more resources on a likely suicide or death by misadventure. But she didn’t say any of those things. He knew it was the missing baby that made the difference for them both.

  Normally, a mother who abandoned a baby left it somewhere that it would quickly be found, though she might make great efforts to remain anonymous. But if Marie Tennent had hidden her baby, she’d chosen somewhere it couldn’t be found. The remains of the earlier child were too depressing a precedent. Although DNA tests on the bones were awaited for confirmation, the circumstantial evidence was all too clear that they’d belonged to Marie’s first child. Surely Baby Chloe, too, must already be dead, succumbed to a lack of care, because she’d been born to a woman who had no idea what to do with her.

  ‘I hope something is obvious to you, Ben,’ said Fry.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She stood up. ‘You’re going to have big problems justifying how you can spend so much time on this business of Alison Morrissey’s. Think about Sergeant Easton. Think about Marie Tennent and her baby, instead of your Canadian woman. Think about the people who really need you.’

  Cooper flushed. Why did Fry always have to be right? And why did she always have to speak to him in a way that prevented him from admitting that she was right?

  ‘Whatever I’m doing to help Alison Morrissey, I’m doing it in my own time,’ he said.

  Fry smacked a hand on the faxes from Canada. ‘Really? With these on your desk? I’m seriously doubting whether I can trust you to be out on your own, Ben. If we weren’t so short-staffed, I’d be considering asking to have you replaced with someone I can trust.’

  Cooper stood and began putting on his coat. His hand was trembling, and he fumbled with the buttons. But he needed to get out of the office. He didn’t want to get into an argument.

  Fry watched him, her voice quietening. ‘Ben, I’m saying this for your own good. Forget about Alison Morrissey. Tell her to get lost. Seeing her again won’t do you any good at all.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you,’ said Cooper.

  Cooper went out to his car and started the engine. He found his mind was going round in circles, and he needed to calm down before he began to drive. He would only put his foot down too hard on the accelerator and break the speed limit on the relief road.

  He picked up one of the books on Peak District aircraft wrecks. There was a picture of those men in their flying suits that was as clear in his mind as if it had been an actual memory. He could have been there himself, standing with the group of smiling airmen – perhaps feeling grateful, like them, for the bit of sun that lit their tired faces, and breathing in the familiar smell of aviation fuel and rubber from the aircraft that were lined up behind them on the edge of the runway.

  Cooper could almost feel the wind that must have been blowing across the exposed Yorkshire airfield. He knew there had been a wind, because it had lifted Sergeant Dick Abbott’s fringe of dark hair from his forehead. He wanted to reach out and pat the sergeant’s hair back into place, because of the way it made his face look so young and vulnerable.

  But that reaction was partly due to the knowledge Cooper had of what would happen to Sergeant Abbott a few weeks after the photograph was taken. He could no longer look at the photograph of the Lancaster crew without also seeing a phantom image superimposed on it – an image of splintered bones and torn limbs, of charred bodies trapped in twisted metal. He was seeing the ghosts of dead men, overlaid on the page by historical hindsight.

  Fry had watched Cooper go, noting the stubborn set of his shoulders as he buttoned his coat and pulled on his cap before stamping out of the room. Probably she’d been wasting her breath in speaking to him. He wasn’t in a state to be talked sense to. But she’d meant what she said. It was absolutely for his own good.

  Still Fry regretted that she couldn’t say to him what she really wanted to say. She couldn’t tell him that she thought he was being used by Alison Morrissey, that he was going to end up being hurt. He would never take that from her.

  In any case, the words would have stuck in her throat. Fry could imagine the look of embarrassed disbelief on his face, the first mocking laugh at the idea that she could possibly care.

  Fry looked at the Marie Tennent file sitting on Cooper’s desk. Still waiting for postmortem results. She decided to ring Mrs Van Doon there and then. If no one nagged, they might have to wait for days to get a report.

  ‘Just done it,’ said the pathologist. ‘Your timing is admirable.’

  ‘Preliminary results?’

  ‘Cause of death was hypothermia and exposure. No surprise there, surely?’

  ‘Any contributory factors? Injuries?’

  ‘Frostbite damage to the extremities – feet, hands, parts of the face. And this is the bit you probably don’t want to hear …’

  ‘Go on. I can take it.’

  ‘There was bruising and a number of minor abrasions on parts of the body.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Chest and abdomen, including two cracked ribs and some liver lacerations. Bruising on upper and lower arms. And an extensive bruise on the temple, near the left ear.’

  ‘Are these injuries consistent with a fall? Like the Snowman?’

  ‘Oh, your other body? No, I’m afraid not. This is different. The bruises and abrasions on the arms look like defensive injuries to me. The blow to the head is quite severe, as are some of the injuries to the torso, hence the cracked ribs. I imagine that she must have been in some considerable pain from her injuries.’

  ‘Not in any condition to hike up Irontongue Hill in the snow, then?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have done her much good at all,’ said the pathologist. ‘She was already in a weakened condition. As for her general state of health, you’ll have to wait for the results of all the tests. But I can tell you she was well nourished, though she hadn’t eaten a meal for several hours. No immediate evidence of disease. Parturition within the last two months. Probably not the first. No surprises there either, eh?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’ve seen the newspaper reports. Are you still looking for the baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tragic. Another failure of the medical profession, I suppose. I see all their mistakes here, you know.’

  ‘We’re not jumping to any conclusions,’ said Fry cautiously.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. A long week.’

  ‘Oh, tell me about it.’

  ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’

  ‘Yes, what about a time scale? When were the injuries caused? How long before her death?’

  ‘Right. Judging by the progress of the bruising, I would estimate the injuries were inflicted at least thirty-six hours prior to death – long enough to have become pretty painful. In fact, there was some fresh internal bleeding, which I imagine was the result of putting too much stress on the liver and chest injuries. She would have been in quite some pain at that stage.’

  ‘She would have sat down to recover,’ said Fry. ‘Maybe even passed out from the pain?’

  ‘Possibly.’ The pathologist paused. ‘Of course, I’m estimating the time of death, too. This person didn’t die quickly, you know. In fact, she would have taken a long time to die.’

  Fry didn’t want to think about that too closely. She had one more thing to ask Mrs Van Doon.

  ‘Could the injuries have been self-inflicted?’

  ‘No way.’

  Next, Fry rang Mrs Lorna Tennent, who’d gone back to Falkirk. Mrs Tennent was surprised at the question.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Dick Abbott was my first husband’s father. We used to come down to Derbyshire to leave a poppy regularly every year when Marie was younger, but we stopped when I got divorced. I had no idea Marie still felt
she had to keep it up. No idea.’

  Fry put down the phone. She wanted to tell Cooper the news immediately, but she didn’t know where he’d gone. Probably he was off seeing Alison Morrissey again, purely out of bloody-mindedness. He was going to have to wait, then. There was no way Fry was going to interfere with his social life. At the moment, Ben Cooper was thinking only of himself.

  30

  Tonight, the Gospel Hall was in use. Through a side window, Cooper glimpsed members of the congregation sitting on wooden chairs on a quarry-tiled floor. The sound of an electric organ reached him, and then voices singing a hymn.

  On his first visit to Walter Rowland, Cooper hadn’t recognized the other church, the one on the corner of Harrington Street. Now he saw that it was Our Lady of Czestochowa, the church attended by the Lukasz family and other members of the Polish community. It was distinguished by the representation of the Black Madonna over the door. And there was the little school alongside it, too – the Saturday school where Richard and Alice Lukasz studied for their Polish O-levels. Halfway down the street from here was the Dom Kombatanta, the club of the SPK, the Polish ex-servicemen’s organization.

  Cooper knocked on Rowland’s door, but found it off the latch. He pushed it open a few inches.

  ‘Mr Rowland?’

  A tired voice answered him. A voice drowning in pain, barely managing to stay above the surface of despair.

  ‘Aye. Through here.’

  Walter Rowland was in his front room, and at least he had some heating in his house. The old man would long since have been dead if he’d lived in Hollow Shaw.

  Rowland was sitting in a curious position. He had his hands resting on the table in front of him, palms upward, as if he were expecting coins to drop from the ceiling and it was important that he should catch them. Cooper was reminded of a yogi sitting in a lotus position, with his hands held on his knees. What was it a yogi expected to receive when he meditated like that? Some kind of inner peace? But inner peace surely wasn’t what this old man was expecting. Rowland’s hands weren’t relaxed at all. His fingers were curled in towards the palms like claws, and their flesh was dry and shrivelled, so that the joints of the fingers stood out in bony ridges. Those hands spoke so clearly of calmly accepted suffering and pain that Cooper revised his religious image from the meditating yogi. All that was missing from these hands were the nails pinning them to the wood.