Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) (52 page)

'Of course, it's fine,' she said. 'Come as often as you like.'

Then Cooper saw a familiar figure walking along the corridor on the way out. For a moment, he couldn't identify who it was. It was one of those moments when he saw somebody he knew but his mind failed to name them, because he was seeing them out of context. Maybe this man was dressed differently, too, from when he'd last seen him. Cooper's brain floundered for a moment. Then the front door opened and a draught of icy air blew into the waiting room. It was the chill that prompted his memory.

'That was George Malkin,' he said.

'Oh, do you know Mr Malkin?' said Rachel. 'His wife is one of our residents, too. She's been here for some time now.'

'Yes, it must have been a while.'

'Sorry?'

'I was just thinking. I've been to his house recently. It doesn't show many signs of a woman's touch, you might say.'

'Poor chap. Some men are completely lost when it comes to living on their own, aren't they?'

'So I believe,' said Cooper.

'Florence Malkin has dementia. She recognizes her husband sometimes. But, funnily enough, those are the worst days. Florence has a bit of an obsession. She's convinced that George is going to pay for her to get private treatment. She says he's got the money to do it, and he's going to send her away to get her cured. Some days it's a top doctor in Harley Street, other days a famous specialist in America. She asks him about it every time he comes, when she remembers. She asks him over and over again, and he doesn't know how to answer her. Well, however she thinks he's going to afford that, I don't know. It's obvious neither of them ever had more than two pennies to rub together.'

Rachel sighed. 'You can see he's absolutely devoted to her. I don't know how he's managing to pay for her care here without selling his house. But it won't be for much longer. Poor man.'

'Yes,' said Cooper. 'Poor man.'

31

Cooper rang Diane Fry's mobile. He'd never known what she did with herself in the evenings when she went off duty, except that she sometimes drove into Sheffield. Fry had told him once that she'd been trying to trace her sister, but she hadn't mentioned it to him for months. She was much too secret and solitary a person for her own good.

'Ben? Funny you should call. I've got some news.'

'Yes?'

'You were right about Marie Tennent. She was Sergeant Abbott's granddaughter. Strange, isn't it? Two granddaughters of the Lancaster's crew appearing at the same time. One dead and one very much alive.'

'It was the anniversary of the crash,' said Cooper. 'Anniversaries are important. They both felt they had to remember it.'

'That doesn't explain why one of them was dead.'

'No.'

'Ben, we've also had the preliminary results of the postmortem.'

'On Marie Tennent?'

'Yes.'

'It's bad news, isn't it, Diane?'

'I'm afraid so. She suffered from more than just frostbite. She'd been badly beaten. She had bruises to her face and the upper part of her body, consistent with being struck by a fist several times. It looks as though she'd been in a violent struggle not long before she died.'

'Damn.' The news made Cooper feel sick. Despite all the work on the Snowman enquiry, and all the time he'd spent on Danny McTeague and the crash of Sugar Uncle Victor, it had been Marie Tennent he'd woken thinking about each morning. She'd been there at the back of his mind – a sad, cold bundle lying on the hillside, waiting for somebody to explain what had happened to her.

'We've been neglecting her, Diane,' said Cooper. 'We have to find out where she'd been, who she'd been seeing.'

'We'll interview Eddie Kemp again tomorrow,' said Fry. 'But if he moved back in with his wife six months ago, the chances are there's been another boyfriend since then.'

'One who might not have been happy about the baby.'

'Exactly.'

'There's his brother, too,' said Cooper. 'Graham, isn't it? The guy at the aircraft museum mentioned him.'

'Yes, you're right. Graham Kemp was one of the people interviewed over the double assault. We have no evidence against him, though the CCTV film could help get an ID. The meeting with the MDP has been scheduled for tomorrow.'

'Hopefully Sergeant Caudwell might explain why she was interested in Marie Tennent and Sugar Uncle Victor.'

He heard Fry make a noise between a dismissive grunt and a resigned sigh. 'We're promised they're going to share intelligence,' she said. 'It's madness to keep details of this enquiry from us. They're making us work in the dark.'

'It would help to have a little more information of your own before that, wouldn't it?' said Cooper.

Fry was silent for a moment. 'What do you mean, Ben?'

'If you could have some evidence against the vultures.'

'
Vultures
?'

'It's what Zygmunt Lukasz calls them – the people who take things from the aircraft wrecks. Where are you, Diane?'

'Still at West Street.'

'More overtime? I think we could get some evidence. I think between us we could do it.'

'What? Ben, are you asking for my help?'

'A different approach might work. I thought we could tackle George Malkin again.'

'On what pretext?'

'There's the money.'

'What money?'

'The wages for three RAF bases were being carried on Lancaster SU-V the night it crashed. The money went missing and was never found. I suspect that Malkin once had at least a share in the money from the crashed Lancaster. Maybe his father was involved with the two Home Guards who were suspected of taking it. They could have got the money away and hidden it at Hollow Shaw Farm, to share it out later. I don't know. But Malkin has no money now. And he seems to have sold all the souvenirs he ever had, except for an old watch. I wonder who he sold them to, Diane. And I wonder what happened to the money.'

'I hope you're not on some flight of fancy again,' said Fry. 'Pick me up at the front door.' 

*    *    *    *

It was completely dark when they reached Harrop. As they entered George Malkin's house, Cooper was aware of Fry taking off her coat, then changing her mind and putting it back on again as she shivered with cold. She pulled her collar closer and tightened her scarf.

'Well, I
am
popular these days,' said Malkin. 'It's a proper social whirl I live in.'

'We're sorry to bother you again, sir.'

'Aye, I'm sure.'

The sitting room looked no different from when Cooper had been there a few days before. Malkin didn't bother to draw the curtains at night. There was no point, since there were no other houses to be seen, and no one ever passed on the track outside, except Malkin's friend, Rod Whittaker, who ran his contract haulage business from here and kept his sheep in the fields.

On one window ledge was a collection of empty jars. They were the type that would once have contained strawberry jam or marmalade, but they'd been stripped of their labels and washed clean for some long-forgotten purpose. Now they were left to gather dust instead. The jar nearest to Cooper had several small, dead spiders desiccating on the glass bottom. Their tiny, fragile legs, no thicker than a hair, had folded into their bodies as they curled up to accept death in their incomprehensible prison.

'How long have you been living on your own?' asked Cooper.

'It's nearly three years since Florence went into the home.'

'Long enough when you're on your own.'

'Aye, if you're not used to it. It's thirty-eight years since we were wed. When you find yourself alone, you start to get into funny little ways. You don't realize it after a while, unless somebody points it out.'

'Like living without any heating, perhaps?' suggested Cooper.

Malkin laughed. The sound was like someone shovelling loose gravel. A trickle of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth.

'I don't need it,' he said. 'Not for myself. And I'm not about to start a blazing fire, just in case I get visitors the likes of you. I suppose you live in a town, do you?'

Cooper was about to say 'no', then remembered that he did, in fact, live in a town. He'd lived in a town since Saturday. He was touched by Malkin's concern for his comfort, but strangely offended by the man's assumption that his visitor was some kind of soft townie.

'You don't get the weather the same, not in a town,' said Malkin. 'If you're a bit nesh, lad, you should put on an extra sweater when you go out. That's what our mam always used to tell us.'

Cooper had never thought of himself as 'nesh' – soft, too sensitive to the cold. It was the sort of term normally reserved for southerners in the ironic way that local people had of winding them up. But he wasn't a southerner – he was local himself. Being nesh was for townies.

But Cooper could see that his way of living was a couple of steps away from that of George Malkin these days. His comfort level was several notches up the central heating thermostat. He had a lower degree of tolerance to discomfort and deprivation. So perhaps he was nesh, after all, in the eyes of the George Malkins of the world. Perhaps he'd lost the link with these people that he once thought he had. In the end, the bond between them wasn't genetic but a social link that could be broken if it was stretched too far.

'I dare say Florence would be ashamed of how I live now, if she knew,' said Malkin.

Cooper felt a surge of sympathy. He recognized a man cut off from the support that had kept him on a normal course. Alone, it was too easy to fall into a way of living that seemed abnormal to everyone else.

'Detective Constable Cooper had a long talk to Mr Walter Rowland yesterday,' said Fry. 'DC Cooper is very good at getting information out of people. They seem to trust him.'

Malkin looked from Fry to Cooper, and his stare lingered. Cooper fidgeted uneasily.

'You and your family have always been known for collecting aircraft souvenirs,' said Fry. 'Is that correct?'

'I suppose it might be. A lot of things came our way over the years. My dad was a terror for it, I don't mind admitting. Us lads learned it from him. I picked up my share of souvenirs here and there.'

'More than just a broken watch, then.'

'I'm not saying I kept them. I'm not a collector – I can't see the point. But some folk will pay cash for stuff like that, you know.'

'Yes, we know.'

Cooper wondered if the souvenirs had brought a steady trickle of cash in for Malkin over the years. It would hardly have been enough to pay for private medical care for Florence. Perhaps she'd heard her husband talk about his sideline and got the wrong idea about the value of the items. Poor woman – her husband had not lived up to her expectations.

'But we're enquiring into something more than just a few souvenirs,' said Fry.

'There was the money,' said Cooper. 'The wages for RAF Branton.'

Malkin took off his cap for the first time. It was such a surprise that it seemed to indicate better than anything his emotional response. His hair was remarkably thick, though going grey.

'Poor old Walter Rowland,' he said. 'He must be in a bad way now. He wasn't well last time I saw him.'

'No, he isn't too good.'

'If Walter knew about the money, he's kept quiet about it for fifty-seven years. I wonder what made him say something now.'

'He didn't. Not exactly,' said Cooper.

'Oh?'

'So you admit that you took the money that was on board the Lancaster?' said Fry.

Malkin turned his attention back to her. 'You've got good timing, you folk. You know when to ask your questions, all right. It doesn't matter to me now, you see. Not at all. So you might as well know everything.'

'Go on, sir.'

'Yes, it was me and my brother Ted who took the money. We were only lads at the time. I was eight years old, so I didn't really know what I was doing. But I don't suppose there's much point in me saying that now.'

'I think it's unlikely there will be a prosecution after all this time,' said Fry. 'Not for something you did when you were eight years old.'

'Oh, well,' said Malkin. 'It doesn't matter.'

'There was a lot of money,' said Cooper. 'We'd like to know what you did with it. What did you spend it on?'

Malkin smiled then, a sheepish, embarrassed smile. 'You won't believe me.'

'Try us. We've heard all sorts of things that people waste their money on. Foreign holidays? Women? Did you gamble it away?'

'None of those things.'

'What, then?'

'I didn't spend it at all. I've still got it.'

Cooper stared at him. 'You're kidding.'

'I said you wouldn't believe me.'

'You found yourself suddenly in possession of a fortune, and you're telling me that you just put it in the bank and saved it up for a rainy day? You didn't spend any of it?'