Stephen Booth - Blood on the Tongue

Alison Morrissey stared at the Chief Superintendent, and Cooper saw her redden slightly. The extra colour made her look even more attractive, but Jepson didn't seem to have noticed. He'd gone into public-meeting mode, as if he were addressing members of the Chamber of Commerce or a police liaison committee.

'That man was never positively identified as my grandfather,' repeated Morrissey.

'Yes, I see that,' said Jepson, looking at his report.

'And how did he get to the A6? Let's consider that for a moment. I've studied the maps of the area, and the place this man was picked up was over ten miles from the scene of the crash. Is my grandfather supposed to have walked all that way? And why didn't anybody else see him earlier?'

'It was dark,' pointed out Cooper.

The Canadian woman caught his eye. He had the feeling that, in different circumstances, she might have smiled.

Jepson nodded at Cooper gratefully. 'Of course it was. It was seven o'clock in the morning when the lorry driver picked him up. It's still dark at that time in January round these parts. Ben knows, you see. He's a local lad. There's nothing like a bit of local knowledge. It's better than any number of bits of paper you can produce, Miss Morrissey.'

The Chief Superintendent pushed the report aside, as if he didn't need it any more, and beamed at Morrissey. Cooper recognized it as his politician's smile, the one he normally only used for visiting members of the Police Authority when he was hoping they would go away and leave him in peace.

'The lorry driver couldn't even say that it was an airman's uniform this person was wearing,' said Morrissey, starting to sound a little desperate.

Jepson pulled the report back towards him. He glanced at the first page, then at Cooper, who mouthed three words at him silently.

'It was dark,' said Jepson hesitantly. 'Yes, of course it was — it was dark, as we've already established. Miss Morrissey, we can't expect a lorry driver to have noticed details of a serviceman's uniform in the dark. There were no street lights at that time, you know. There was — '

'- a war on,' said Morrissey. 'Yes, I know.'

Jepson steepled his fingers and looked round the meeting with some satisfaction, as if the point were proved. 'Did you have any more information you wished to produce, Miss Morrissey? Any new information?'

'My grandfather didn't desert,' said Morrissey quietly.

'With respect,' said Jepson, getting into his stride as he saw the home stretch appear, 'I don't think there's anything you've told us that could be considered new. There is no reason to believe that anything happened to your grandfather other than that he left the scene of the crash before the rescue teams arrived, he hitched a lift from a lorry driver on the A6 and…'

'And what?' said Morrissey.

Jepson flicked the report over uncertainly. 'Well, presumably he somehow managed to get out of the country and back to his home in Canada.'

'And how easy would that be for a deserter?' said Morrissey. 'Especially as there was a war on?'

The Chief Superintendent looked to be about to shrug his shoulders, then changed his mind at the last minute. He'd been told in senior management training sessions that it was a gesture that gave out the wrong message.

'Please. My problem is that, without being able to trace the two boys who saw my grandfather, my only possible sources of information in the area are Zygmunt Lukasz and a man called Walter Rowland, who was a member of the RAF mountain rescue team called out to the crash. Frank has contacted them, but both are refusing to speak to me.'

'Miss Morrissey, I'm sorry, but I really can't do anything for you,' he said.

'It's not that you can't — you won't,' said Morrissey.

'If you wish. But the fact is, I don't have resources to spare even to advise you on your mission.'

Cooper could see that Alison Morrissey didn't like the word 'mission'. Her jaw tensed, and her expression became obstinate. But she began to fiddle with the catch of her briefcase, as if she were about to put her papers away.

He took the opportunity to ask a question. 'Miss Morrissey, what exactly do you think happened to your grandfather?'

Morrissey met his eye, surprised for a moment, and pushed her hair behind her ear with a quick flick of the hand. 'I think he was injured,' she said. 'Probably dazed or concussed, so that he didn't know what he was doing or where he was. Possibly he couldn't even remember the crash. I think he took off his flying gear and left it by the side of the road because it was too heavy for him to carry. I think he reached a house somewhere nearby, perhaps a farmhouse, and the people took him in.'

'Took him in?'

'Looked after him and gave him somewhere to stay.'

'Knowing who he was? They must have heard later that there had been an air crash. Why would they keep him? Why not hand him over to the authorities? If he was injured, they would at least get medical treatment for him.'

'I don't know why,' said Morrissey stubbornly. 'I do know that the man who hitched a lift on the A6 was not my grandfather. I believe that man was an army deserter who'd gone absent without leave from the transport depot at Stockport. He was a man named Fuller. The police arrested him later at his parents' house in Stoke-on-Trent.'

'But your grandfather?' asked Cooper. 'What makes you think he stayed in this area? It seems very unlikely.'

' This is what makes me think so,' said Morrissey. She pulled a plastic wallet from her briefcase. Cooper could see that it contained a medal on a red-and-gold ribbon. The medal was perfectly polished, and it gleamed in the fluorescent lights, flashing in their eyes as if sending a message across the decades.

'What is it?'

'It's a Royal Canadian Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross,' said Morrissey. She turned the medal over in her hands. 'It arrived at my grandmother's old home in Ottawa one day during the summer. There was a note with it, too. It was addressed to my mother, and it just said: "Remember your father, Pilot Officer Danny McTeague."'

Cooper leaned closer to look at the medal. 'This is your grandfather's medal? But where did it come from?'

'All we know,' said Morrissey, 'is that it was posted here, in Edendale.'

The body from the Snake Pass had arrived in the mortuary at Edendale General Hospital, where it would be kept on ice, at least until it could be identified and somebody claimed it. When Fry had driven up to the mortuary, she'd left DC Murfin in the car, where he was no doubt adding to the pile of toffee wrappers on her floor.

Inside the mortuary, it was warmer than out on the street. The air smelled better, too — it was full of disinfectants and scented aerosols to suppress the odours of body fluids and abdominal organs.

'We don't get many of these now,' said Mrs Van Doon. 'People carry all sorts of identification with them these days, don't they? But if not, we can usually match up their fingerprints or dentition, or their DNA. No luck your end so far, I take it? Nothing we can match him to?'

'Nothing,' said Fry. 'We're putting appeals out, of course. But at present his description doesn't match the details of any missing person we know of.'

'So maybe no one's noticed he's missing yet.'

'There seem to be a lot of people who go around not noticing things,' said Fry.

The pathologist gave her a brief, quizzical look. 'He doesn't look like the average missing person to me,' she said. 'He's too clean and well dressed, for a start. Those shoes he was wearing are expensive.'

'I know. His shoes and the rest of his belongings are our best hope. They're distinctive.'

'He wasn't a hiker, not wearing those on his feet. The snow has ruined them.'

'No, he wasn't a hiker.'