Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (46 page)

But by then it was already too late. The stark face of Irontongue Hill would have been directly in front of them. Maybe the crew had seen it coming towards them a second before the impact, a huge black shape hurtling out of the cloud where there should have been only sky. But it had been too late by then. Far too late.

28

DCI Tailby looked around the conference room. He frowned. Fry had noticed that he was doing a lot of frowning these days. He'd never been a barrel of laughs, but his last few weeks at E Division were proving to be a burden on him.

'We don't seem to see much of DC Cooper at these meetings,' said Tailby.

'Everybody is so busy,' said Hitchens. 'There are so many actions. So many interviews to do.'

'I know that. Is Cooper all right? He wasn't injured in the incident last night?'

'No, he's fine. He reported for duty as normal this morning, and he's gone out with Sergeant Caudwell. The MDP asked to visit the site of the aircraft wreck.'

'He's with Sergeant Caudwell? You've thrown him to the dogs then?'

'I wouldn't say that exactly, sir,' said Hitchens.

'When things get difficult, there's a temptation to look around for a sacrifice,' said Tailby.

Fry blinked. She'd never heard their old DCI get so philosophical before. Perhaps he wanted to put on a display of wisdom in his final days before he handed over to Kessen, so that the contrast would be all the greater.

'I'm told Sergeant Caudwell asked for a scenes of crime officer as well. What is she hoping to find?'

'I've no idea,' said Hitchens.

Tailby frowned. 'I'm happy that we're co-operating. But there comes a point when co-operation has to be mutual.'

'Yes, sir.'

'All right,' said Tailby. 'Well, here we are – it's Monday morning, and we've had some major developments in this enquiry over the weekend. We have a confirmed identity for the victim: our so-called Snowman is Sergeant Nick Easton, an investigator with the Royal Air Force Police. And I gather we've managed to piece together some of his movements, with the help of the MDP officers who have been sent to Edendale.'

'DS Fry and her team came in yesterday to follow that line of enquiry urgently,' said Hitchens.

'Excellent. I'm sure all the overtime will be fully justified, Paul.'

'Yes, sir. I'll let DS Fry tell you what she managed to achieve for the money.'

Fry shuffled in her seat as the two DCIs stared at her, one smiling, one frowning. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They would never agree on anything.

'For a start,' said Fry, 'we know Sergeant Easton visited the air museum at Leadenhall on Sunday 6th January, between twenty-four and thirty-six hours before he was killed. He was enquiring about a volunteer there, Graham Kemp, who is well known as an aviation memorabilia collector.'

'This is the brother of Edward Kemp, I gather,' said Tailby. 'A gentleman we now have in custody again.'

'Yes, sir. We have his brother's address, and we're hoping to pick him up this morning. Of course, we've already been interviewing a number of Edward Kemp's associates in connection with the double assault last Monday night. It's worth bearing in mind that this incident happened within an hour or two of Easton's death.'

'OK. And from the aircraft museum …'

'We know Nick Easton stayed at a hotel near Chesterfield that night, then he visited Edendale the following day, Monday. He called at the home of a family called Lukasz in Woodland Crescent and spoke briefly to Mrs Grace Lukasz. It's odd that Mr Andrew Lukasz disappeared a matter of hours before Easton arrived.'

'Andrew?'

'Grace Lukasz's son. He lives in London, but had been visiting his parents. You might recall that we got the father and mother in to try to identify our Snowman because their son had disappeared rather suddenly.'

'And he hasn't he turned up since? He's not back home in London?'

'Apparently not. The Metropolitan Police called at his home early this morning and talked to his neighbours, and apparently there's been no sign of him for about ten days, which would tie in with his arrival in Edendale. His wife is American, and she's been away at a family funeral in Wisconsin, but we're trying to make contact with her. Even more interestingly, his employers say Andrew Lukasz was on leave – but that he should have been back at work today. He didn't turn up.'

'What was Sergeant Easton's interest in the Lukasz family?' said Tailby. 'Do we have any idea?'

'We don't really know. And nor does Peter Lukasz. But he says that Andrew had argued with his grandfather. There was some disagreement over a cigarette case that had belonged to Zygmunt Lukasz's cousin, Klemens Wach, who was killed in an aircraft wreck during the Second World War. Apparently, Zygmunt expressed outrage that this item might have been looted from the wreck.'

'In other words, a piece of aviation memorabilia?'

'It looks like it, sir,' said Fry.

'Go on.'

'We don't know where Easton went after he left the Lukasz home. According to the MDP, he was using a black Ford Focus, but we haven't been able to locate it. And he wasn't booked into accommodation in this area for that night, as far as we can tell. DC Murfin checked everywhere yesterday, which meant a lot of phone calls and visits. I have to say, sir, that we simply don't have the staff for an enquiry as complex as this.'

'Point taken, Fry,' said Tailby. 'Have we made any progress on the timeline for the morning Easton's body was found?'

'We've narrowed it down to a window of about half an hour, when his body could have been left at the side of the A57. But we've been unable to find any sightings of four-wheel drive vehicles on the road after it was closed because of the snow. There are so few houses on that stretch of road. The Snake Inn was our best bet, but the staff have been interviewed and it seems they saw and heard nothing but the snowploughs.'

'What about Edward Kemp's vehicle? A four-wheel drive, isn't it?'

'An Isuzu Trooper, yes. The rolls of plastic found in the back did have traces of blood, but the blood matched that of one of the assault victims. We think the baseball bats or other weapons that were used in the assault were hidden in the plastic rolls afterwards. Unfortunately, the weapons are now missing. However, we do have some possible traces from the plastic, if we can get approval for samples to go to the lab …'

'Yes, of course. Do it.'

'Also, the bayonet that was used in the assault on DC Cooper. We might get a DNA trace from the handle.'

'Obviously.'

'My main concern at the moment is that we've not yet been given details of the enquiry that Sergeant Easton was working on,' said Fry. 'We need that information urgently.'

'The Ministry of Defence Police have promised us a meeting tomorrow morning, when full details will be shared as far as possible,' said Tailby. 'But at this stage, it seems clear that there's a connection involving aviation memorabilia. The Leadenhall Aircraft Museum, this collector, Graham Kemp, and an item that is known to have been in the possession of Andrew Lukasz. That's a very positive line of enquiry you've developed, Fry.'

'The most interesting point is that Easton called at the Lukasz home shortly after Andrew disappeared,' said Fry. 'Obviously, we'll be interviewing both the Kemp brothers. But, if you asked me at this moment, I'd say the person I'd be most interested in talking to about the murder of Nick Easton was Andrew Lukasz.'

'And, in what has now become our traditional manner, the person we most want to speak to is missing,' said Tailby.

'Yes, sir.'

Tailby spoke stiffly to DCI Kessen, who nodded. He'd said nothing during the meeting. Fry feared that he was going to be out of his depth once Tailby departed.

'You're right, Fry,' said Tailby. 'There's a lot of work involved in this Easton enquiry, not to mention the assault on a police officer. We'll have to try to pull in some more assistance. But, Paul, do make sure you use the expertise of the MDP officers while they're here, too.'

'May I remind you we also have a missing baby, sir?' said Hitchens.

'Don't I know it? The papers say hope is fading for Baby Chloe. Is that right? Are our hopes fading?'

'If somebody has her, they're not coming forward,' said Fry. 'We're interviewing Eddie Kemp again after this meeting, both about the assault on DC Cooper and about the baby, since he was Marie Tennent's last-known boyfriend. But we've already checked his house and talked to his wife. I don't think he's been involved with Marie for some time, and it seems unlikely he'll have any information about the baby.'

'Bad news, then.'

'The bones of the other baby we found don't make the situation look good. If we can get DNA from the remains, we can confirm whether it was an earlier child of Marie Tennent's. But the clothes found with the bones were almost certainly left by her – Marie's mother identified them. It seems Marie might have gone up to the wreck to leave the clothes as some sort of memorial to the dead child.'

Tailby looked at her, horrified. 'That's rather macabre, Fry.'

'It's speculation, of course,' said Fry. 'But why else should Marie Tennent have gone up to the aircraft wreck on Irontongue Hill that day?'

*    *    *    *

The wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor began a hundred yards below the trig point, on the windward side of Irontongue. Between the larger sections, the ground was covered in molten fragments of metal, slivers of glass and strands of torn rubber. A few tufts of ragged wool clung to an undercarriage axle where sheep had rubbed their itchy backs against it, glad to find something hard and solid in the expanse of soft peat. There were shreds of tyre still left, hanging from the huge hub of a wheel.

Close to the main wreckage, there were poppies on wreaths or attached to small makeshift crosses. Some of the crosses were wooden, but others seemed to have been made out of bits of melted tubing from the aircraft itself, tied together with wire. Parts of the metal on the undercarriage and fuselage were still uncorroded, even after so long. On the other hand, the poppies had faded completely to white, their original blood-red bleached by the sun and rain.

'One survivor and five fatalities, not including the pilot,' said Cooper, his eyes following the tail of a small aircraft as it headed towards Glossop.

Jane Caudwell seemed hardly to have heard him. The snow had spattered her boots and the legs of her trousers where she'd stamped her feet in the snow. She was dressed in black – a totally impractical colour on the snow-covered peat moors. Bright colours were what you should be wearing, especially if the weather turned bad and the mountain rescue teams turned out to try to locate you. They could spot bright clothes. But black amounted to camouflage.

Caudwell took off her right glove, exposing a pale, plump hand with a gold ring on the middle finger. She held the hand up for Cooper's inspection, splaying the fingers into something that looked like an obscene gesture, multiplied several times over.

'Yes, five,' she said. 'But are you quite sure Pilot Officer McTeague was aboard this aircraft?'

'
What
?'

Caudwell smiled. 'Just a thought. By the way, I don't think it's a good idea for
her
to be up here, whoever she is.'

'Who?'

'Up there.'

Cooper turned and saw Alison Morrissey standing among the rocks nears the trig point. She had a camera in her hand, though at the moment she was making no effort to photograph the officers working on the wreck site. The hood of her cagoule was pulled up to protect her ears from the wind that whipped the snow off the surface of the Irontongue rocks. But Cooper thought he could see the expression in her eyes, a dark mingling of satisfaction and pain.

'I'd better go and speak to her,' he said.

'No,' said Caudwell. 'Let someone else do it.'

She gestured at PC Nash, who scowled as he lumbered up the slope, kicking his feet in the snow. Morrissey watched him approach her, as she might have observed the movements of a bit of interesting wildlife. When Nash was within a few yards of her, with his head down, struggling to keep his footing on a stretch of wet scree, she raised the camera and took his picture. Nash heard the click and looked up angrily. He charged the rest of the way, thrusting against the rocks with his arms.

Cooper took a couple of steps towards them but felt Caudwell's hand on his arm and stopped. Morrissey had stood her ground and was listening with amused attentiveness to what Nash was saying. She didn't seem to reply, and he began to wave his arms, indicating that she should move back down the hill. Still she didn't move.

Then Nash tried to snatch her camera. Morrissey resisted. Nash towered over her, but there was a stubbornness plain from her body language that told him she wasn't going to be bullied.

'No.' Cooper pulled away from Caudwell and began to run up the slope.

'For heaven's sake,' called Caudwell, 'what's the matter with you?'

Cooper kicked up the snow as he scrambled across the scree, using his hands against the rocks to push himself up. He looked up. Nash had hold of the camera, but the strap was still tight round Morrissey's shoulder and, when he tugged, it almost pulled her off balance. She slipped and flung out her arms to keep her balance. One of her hands hit the shoulder of his fluorescent jacket with a loud slap. Nash grabbed her arm.