Stephen Booth - Blood on the Tongue

'Er, we do have some later messages,' said the operator.

'Yeah?'

'I could probably just skip to the last one. It says: "Don't bother."'

'What does that mean?'

'I suppose it means they've managed without you, dear.'

Cooper blinked. Suddenly, the control-room operator sounded like his mother. Or at least, like his mother used to before she became ill.

'Thanks a lot,' he said, and put the phone down. He looked again at the files on his desk. It seemed he was muggins again, the sucker landed with the work that nobody else wanted, not when there was something more interesting to do. And it was all because he'd set off for work early and found Eddie Kemp in that cafe. Next time, he would know better. Next time, he'd pretend he hadn't recognized the suspect, as ninety per cent of his colleagues would have done when they weren't officially on duty. That's exactly what he would do next time. Maybe.

Cooper slouched across the room to see if he could dredge any warmth out of the radiator. As he moved, his left foot squelched.

Frank Baine banged the bell for a third time. There was no response.

'Well, if you're sure you'll be all right,' he said.

'I'll be fine,' said Alison Morrissey.

She stood in front of the deserted reception desk with her bags. The lobby was like no other hotel she'd ever seen. It was dark, and it seemed to be full of ancient potted plants and stuffed fish in glass cases. It was also deserted. Baine had already put his head round all the visible doors to try to find a member of staff.

'Someone will appear in a second,' said Morrissey.

'We've got the meeting with the police at nine o'clock tomorrow morning,' said Baine. 'I'll pick you up here about eight-thirty, shall I? It isn't far.'

'That will be great. And thank you, Frank.'

Finally, he left. Morrissey gazed at a trout the size of a small dog. It stared back at her glassily, its mouth hanging open as if it might say something to her in a minute.

'Can I help you?'

A receptionist.

'A room,' said Alison. 'I have a room reserved. And I'm about ready to die unless I get to it soon.'

After she'd showered and rested, she got out the files again. There were files on every member of the crew of Sugar Uncle Victor. Some, of course, were slimmer than others. The thickest was that on her grandfather, Pilot Officer Danny McTeague. But at the top of the pile, the one Alison Morrissey would look at first and read again tonight, was the file marked 'Zygmunt Lukasz'.

Later in the morning, Cooper discovered who was going to have to interview Eddie Kemp in connection with the double assault.

'There isn't anybody else,' he was told. 'They're all out.'

Kemp looked almost pleased to see him. He seemed to feel they'd struck up a close friendship waiting at the side of Hollowgate, as if a bond had been forged between them by performing a bit of early-morning street theatre for the customers of the Starlight Cafe. Cooper wasn't sure how long the theatre would have lasted, without turning into a tragedy, if it hadn't been for the appearance of Sonny Patel and his two oldest sons, brandishing brushes and shovels. They'd made a great ceremony of sweeping the pavement clear of snow, until the three men leaning against their plate-glass window had shuffled their feet and moved on.

'The tea's not bad here,' said Kemp. 'But they're going to have to turn the bleedin' music off. It's doing my head in.'

Cooper and the PC accompanying him tried to keep their distance from the table, so they could breathe more easily. With the triple tape deck running and the duty solicitor sitting alongside Kemp, they took him through the events that had led to the injuries to the two young men at Underbank in the early hours of that morning. Kemp made no attempt to deny that he'd been involved, but insisted that he'd been assaulted first and had acted in self-defence.

'That old one,' said Cooper.

'They're known villains,' said Kemp. 'They're dealers off the estates.'

'And you say they attacked you first?'

'Yes.'

'When you arrived here, you were given the opportunity to see a doctor. You didn't report any injuries.'

'Well, I know how to handle myself,' said Kemp.

Now that Eddie Kemp wasn't wearing his Manchester United hat, Cooper could see that his hair was dark and wiry. He had the beginnings of a moustache, something more than a case of not having shaved this morning.

'Who were the other men who took part in this incident?' asked Cooper.

'No idea.'

'Complete strangers?'

'I reckon they were just passing and came to help,' said Kemp. 'Good Samaritans, if you like.'

'Who had the baseball bat?'

'Baseball bat? I didn't see that.'

'A snooker cue, maybe.'

'Dunno. Perhaps those lads that came to help me had been playing snooker at the club.'

Eddie Kemp looked at the solicitor and smiled happily. Kemp was experienced enough to know that witness identification was rarely sufficient in itself for a prosecution to go forward. Among a group of six men, it would have been impossible to say who had done what. And it had been at night, too. He was quite safe, for now.

'The victims were seriously injured, you know.'

'They deserved it,' said Kemp. 'They're scum. We don't want them coming around Underbank. We don't want them getting our kids involved in hard drugs. If a beating keeps them away, that's a good thing. Your lot can't seem to do anything about them, anyway.'

'Assault is still a crime, Eddie, no matter who the victims are.'

'There's a crime, and then there's justice.'

'Which one is this, in your view?'

'I reckon it could be both at once.'

'Well, aren't you the philosopher then?' said Cooper impatiently. 'Two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.'

Kemp nodded. 'You're right. Only I don't think they're contradictory. Not always.'

Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin finally blew in through the door of the CID room like Santa Claus and one of his elves. Their clothes were plastered with patches of snow and their faces were bright pink.

'Ah, Ben, at last,' said Fry, beating her hands together.

'I've been here all morning.'

'Got much done?'

'I've worked my way through most of the daffodils.'

'Sorry?'

'Yes, I've done quite a bit of work.'

'Oh well, whatever. I've got some jobs for you.'

'Fine.'

But Cooper got that sinking feeling again. No job that Fry had for him would ever be something he could get excited about. He suspected he'd be spending the rest of the afternoon chasing phone calls and shifting yet more paperwork.

'We need to put a name to the Snowman,' said Fry.

'The Snowman?'

'One white male, unidentified.'

'Right.'

'And dead,' said Murfin.

Cooper listened as Fry explained the details they knew, which weren't many. There had been no obvious identification on the man, though they would have his clothes to work on when the body was dealt with in the mortuary. There was also the overnight bag that had been lying nearby. Like the body itself, the bag had been scraped along the ground by the blade of the snow plough. It was scuffed and ripped, and it was soaking wet from the time it had spent underneath the snow. Worst of all, it was empty. Even a toothbrush and a can of anti-perspirant could have helped them to build up a picture that would identify the Snowman.

'What we need are some mispers,' said Fry.

Cooper had only that afternoon been dealing with some reports relating to a missing person. It was easy to refer to them as 'mispers' when they were merely a set of details in a computer database. But when you started to look into an individual case, they suddenly turned into people. They sprang out of the screen and became unhappy teenagers or abused wives, confused old women or businessmen who had hit fifty and decided to recover their youth with the girl from the marketing department.