Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (17 page)

'Somebody in Edendale sent her a medal belonging to her grandfather, who went missing in 1945. He was a bomber pilot, and he was supposed to have deserted after his aircraft was wrecked near here.'

'Yeah?'

He could tell Fry had lost interest already. And why
should
she be interested? There was nothing in the story to concern the police. Not unless Morrissey produced some evidence of a crime. A lost medal that turned up after fifty-seven years was far from that.

'It's a bit of a coincidence, that's all. It's an unusual name.'

'You know what it's like,' said Fry. 'You notice an unfamiliar word or name for the first time, then you seem to keep hearing it again for days afterwards. It's just that you never noticed it before.'

'If it was a common name in Edendale, I think I would have noticed it before now.'

'Oh, I forgot – you're Mr Local Knowledge. You probably have the phone book memorized.'

She took the action form from him and studied it. The name of Lukasz meant nothing to her – she was assessing the action purely on its merits. Cooper found himself silently willing her to hand it back. But then she began to look through the rest of the forms.

'OK, but take these others as well,' she said. 'Kill several birds with one stone. Then I can justify you missing the morning meeting. I dare say we'll cope without you, for once.'

'All right, then. You know I still have several enquiries outstanding?'

'Haven't we all?'

*    *    *    *

Before he went out, Cooper checked the electoral register for the address given by Grace Lukasz. The entry for 37 Woodland Crescent showed three registered voters living in that household – Piotr Janusz Lukasz, Grace Anne Lukasz and Zygmunt Henryk Lukasz. So he had tracked down the survivor of the Lancaster crash without even trying. Maybe Diane was wrong about their luck – it looked as though it might be changing.

Not that he had any reason for wanting to find Zygmunt Lukasz. Not that there was anything he could ask the old man. Not officially. But on a personal level, he would be interested to hear Lukasz's version of the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor and of what happened to Pilot Officer Danny McTeague. It might put his mind at rest, settle down the uneasiness that had been aroused by seeing the photographs of the crew, particularly the young airman who seemed to have had death written on his face.

Besides, he personally thought that Alison Morrissey was justified in searching for answers about the fate of her grandfather. He could see she was hoping beyond that reason that the medal sent to Canada had come from Danny McTeague himself and therefore meant he was still alive somewhere in the area. It almost certainly meant someone knew more about McTeague than had ever been told. Cooper knew he would have wanted to do the same in her position. It was a little hard that he wasn't able to help her when he was ideally placed to do so. If only he didn't have so much else to do.

Cooper wrote the names of the Lukasz family in his notebook. He would leave them until after he'd visited the other two addresses. He liked to save the best until last.

*    *    *    *

Chief Superintendent Jepson was standing at the window of his office on the top floor of divisional headquarters, looking down on to the car park at the back of the building. Some of the snow had been swept to the sides to clear a bit of space, but cars and vans were parked at all sorts of angles, making the place look untidy. He watched a figure cross the car park. It was dressed in a long waxed coat and a peaked cap.

'Ben Cooper is a good lad,' said Jepson. 'I don't want him left out in the cold for long.'

DI Paul Hitchens was in early because he'd been told to be. He was standing in the middle of the room waiting for the Chief Super to get round to saying whatever it was that he had on his mind. So far, they'd touched only on the weather.

'I must admit, there's been some muttering in the ranks,' said Hitchens.

'Muttering? What do you mean?'

'Cooper is popular here. A lot of people think he's been badly treated, promotion-wise. Another one passed over for a newcomer from outside, they're saying.'

'Yes. Well, perhaps they're right,' said Jepson. 'I'd like to be sure that now DCI Kessen has arrived, he's made fully aware of Cooper's strengths and potential. It doesn't do to start off with the wrong impression. And Paul …'

'Yes, Chief?'

'That applies more generally.'

'I'm not sure what you mean.'

'I mean starting off with the right impression. The first impression someone has of you can last a long time.'

'I understand.'

'So let's have a bit more of a positive attitude, shall we? Less of the cheap humour.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Hitchens. 'I'll make sure my humour is more expensive in future.'

*    *    *    *

Of course, Fry was right. It was the wrong time to expect a bit of luck. Two of the people on his list had been far too vague about the man they'd seen to be any help at all in identifying the Snowman. Predictably, their descriptions had fallen apart and become useless when they were questioned closely. And, even if they
had
seen the Snowman, they couldn't say who he was, where he'd been going, or where he'd come from.

The first witness had been an old lady with bifocals and thinning hair, who'd seen a strange man walking down her street, stopping to look at the numbers on houses. She hadn't seen him call at any particular address. And, unfortunately, she hadn't noticed a car that might have belonged to him, which would have helped a lot.

The second woman was younger, a divorcée with two young children at primary school. This witness had a more detailed eye, and her encounter had been at closer quarters. She'd observed a person very like the Snowman doing his shopping in Boots the Chemists on Clappergate, where he had bought razor blades and a bottle of Grecian 2000 in a dark brown shade. She'd noticed that he was well dressed, with nicely polished shoes, and that he'd paid for his purchases with a brand new £20 note. She'd been standing right behind him in the queue at the till, and she thought his aftershave was Obsession. Afterwards, she'd watched him walk off towards the market square, but had lost him when he crossed the road near the High Street junction. That was the way she put it – she'd 'lost him'. Cooper had been impressed. With a bit more training, she might have made a useful surveillance operative.

As it happened, the third woman had been out. Cooper put his card through her door with a note asking her to contact him. This witness lived in one of the crescents that clustered on the hillside above Edendale. Most of the addresses here were bungalows dating from the 1960s or 1970s, some of them quite large, with well-established gardens or dormer windows built into their roofs.

That left the address he'd saved until last. Cooper consulted the street map in the glove compartment of his car. Woodland Crescent was only two blocks down the hill from the street he was in, a few hundred yards away. He left the Toyota by the kerb and walked downhill towards Edendale, carefully sticking to the middle of the pavement to avoid sinking his shoes into more snow.

He came across a little grocer's shop and a corner post office that had billboards outside advertising the
Derbyshire Times
and
Daily Mail
. A small flatbed lorry with the name of a local builder on its cab door stood in a driveway next to an outdoor aviary full of fluttering zebra finches. Two hundred yards away, on the main road, was a Case tractor dealership, directly opposite Queen's Park, the town's largest open space.

Woodland Crescent was much like the other streets: more bungalows, and a few newer homes at the top, with open-plan lawns separating their drives. A man of about sixty, dressed in yellow waterproofs like a fisherman, was slowing pushing snow off the pavement with a brush. He stopped as Cooper passed and gave him a nod. He was flushed and breathing hard. The clouds of his breath reminded Cooper of the early-morning cars standing in exhaust fumes pumped from cold engines.

There was a woman sitting in the window of number 37, the Lukasz home. It was a large bungalow, with a built-in garage and a sizeable conservatory, which he could see down the passageway separating it from the bungalow next door. Cooper guessed the woman must be Grace Lukasz. Was she the wife of Piotr?

Cooper walked up the driveway to the bungalow, conscious of the woman's eyes on him. She was watching him suspiciously, as if he might be somebody undesirable – a Jehovah's Witness or an insurance salesman. Near the front door, he stopped and looked at her. The woman was still staring at him. And her expression was more than suspicion – it was fear.

By the time he rang the bell, the face of the woman had disappeared from the window, though he hadn't seen her stand up. He saw movement through the glass panels of the door, and then realized why the woman hadn't stood up. She was in a wheelchair.

Cooper introduced himself, and showed his identification, interested by the woman's nervous manner. She relaxed, though, when she discovered who he was and why he'd come. She almost pulled him into the hallway of the bungalow and closed the door behind him. Then she leaned forward in her chair to fiddle with a draught excluder shaped like an elongated sausage dog.

'If you wouldn't mind taking your shoes off,' she said. 'There are some spare slippers in the cupboard.'

The heat in the bungalow was already bringing Cooper out in prickles of sweat under his coat. The difference between this and Hollow Shaw Farm was like getting on a plane in Iceland and stepping off in tropical Africa. Grace Lukasz was wearing a cream sweater and slacks, managing to look both comfortable and smart. While he put on the slippers, Cooper looked at the passages going off the hallway in two directions. It was certainly a large bungalow. Four bedrooms, at least. He wondered what Piotr Lukasz did for a living.

'I'm not at all sure,' said Mrs Lukasz. 'It's just that the description sounded similar. And since the police were appealing for help …'

'Quite right. We always welcome the public's help.'

She tilted her head slightly to one side to look at him, an amused smile on her face. She wasn't one to be easily fooled. Cooper could see that she'd been an attractive woman, too. Still was, for anybody who saw past the wheelchair. She had no trace of an accent. That didn't necessarily mean she wasn't of Polish origin herself, but he was working on the assumption that she was English, and that she was Zygmunt Lukasz's daughter-in-law.

'Have you found out who he is yet?' she said.

Cooper was taken aback to find that Mrs Lukasz had seized the initiative in asking the questions. He was forgetting what he was here for, speculating too much about the old airman who'd flown on Sugar Uncle Victor. He knew himself well enough to understand that a thing like this could become an obsession, if he wasn't careful. But he very much wanted to see Zygmunt Lukasz, to compare him to the photographs in the book, to see whether he was the young man who'd seemed to communicate with him across those fifty-seven years.

'No, we haven't, Mrs Lukasz. That's what I was hoping you might be able to help us with.'

'I see.'

She seemed irrationally disappointed. 'But he didn't tell me his name, I'm afraid. He came to the house, but I sent him away.'

'When was this again?'

'Monday morning. I rang yesterday, after I heard it on the news. You've taken a long time coming, haven't you?'

'We have a lot of people to speak to,' said Cooper.

He suddenly got the feeling he was being watched from another part of the room. He looked round and met the sceptical eye of a blue and green parrot. It had its head cocked at him in almost the same way as its owner.

'I thought he was selling insurance or replacement windows,' said Mrs Lukasz. 'We get so many of them here. I knew he wasn't a Jehovah, of course.'

'Oh?'

'They stopped coming when they found out we were Catholics. It's a shame. I always hoped I might have been able to convert one of them.'

'The man who came to the house on Monday,' said Cooper, 'he didn't say what he wanted?'

'I didn't give him chance,' said Mrs Lukasz. 'I don't want to be sitting on the doorstep in the cold, arguing with salesmen. I nearly sent you packing, too, but I could see you weren't selling anything. Not in that coat.'

Cooper fumbled with his pen, embarrassed by the double stare from the woman and the parrot. 'Could you give me a description of him, please? As much detail as you can remember.'

Grace Lukasz gave him the description succinctly. It fitted the Snowman exactly, down to the shoes. She was an observant woman, for somebody who hadn't even given the man a chance to speak.

'Did he have a car?'

'Not that I saw.'

'Did you notice which way he came from, or which way he went when he left?'

'Not particularly.'

'Is there anybody else in the household I might ask, Mrs Lukasz?'

She hesitated and began to look suspicious again. Cooper almost brought out his ID for a second time, just for its reassurance value.