Stephen Booth - Blood on the Tongue

Finally, there was a splash of colour in the snow, barely visible in the dusk. Cooper turned and headed towards it. Fifty yards away, he could see it was Lawrence's blue jacket. He looked as though he had simply lain down to rest at the foot of a rock, among the first scattered fragments of aircraft wreckage. But from the distress on Lawrence's face, Cooper could see he was exhausted and in pain.

'I think I've broken my leg,' said Lawrence. 'And my chest hurts. Badly.'

'Lie still. We have to wait until they come to find us.'

'You shouldn't have come after me, Ben.'

Cooper felt Lawrence's cheek. He was very cold. 'What on earth made you come out dressed like that?' he said. 'You could have died of exposure.'

'Oh, yes,' said Lawrence. 'So I could.' And he coughed into the snow.

'I've just been told about Marie,' said Cooper. 'Her grandfather was Sergeant Dick Abbott.'

'Yes, I know. When Marie was a girl, her parents used to bring her down to Derbyshire every year to leave a poppy. Sometimes they made a holiday out of it, staying in Edendale for a few days. It's very quiet in the winter — there isn't much to do, except browse in bookshops. That's how I met her the first time.'

Lawrence's voice faded. Cooper looked at his face. The bookseller's eyelids were drooping, and Cooper knew he had to stop him falling asleep.

'But Eddie Kemp came along, didn't he?'

Lawrence didn't reply.

'Did you know you were the father of the baby, Lawrence?' asked Cooper. 'If Marie told Eddie Kemp, then she must have told you, surely. Kemp was jealous. He beat her up when she told him the baby was yours. The pathologist said she was weakened by her injuries and too exhausted to make it back down the hill. That was after she left the poppy. She kept up the ritual. But she must have lain down to rest and gone to sleep. It's a mistake to go to sleep, Lawrence. You can die of exposure out here.'

But Lawrence seemed to have something else he wanted to talk about. 'It was nothing to do with the baby. Kemp couldn't have cared less about the baby.'

'What? Why then?'

'He wanted to frighten her. I don't think he meant to hurt her so badly, but he always went too far. He meant to warn her what would happen if she told what she knew to the police. That was my fault, of course. I let her find out what the business was. It never occurred to me how she would feel about it.'

'Because she was Dick Abbott's granddaughter, of course. She must have felt about it the way Zygmunt Lukasz did. So when she found out, she threatened to give you away. Is that what happened, Lawrence? And Eddie Kemp had the job of frightening her off. Didn't you do anything about it? For heaven's sake — she was badly injured!'

Lawrence sounded resigned. 'You don't understand. It was all too complicated.'

'No, I don't understand. And I don't understand why Marie didn't report that he'd attacked her.'

'Because he threatened worse than that,' said Lawrence.

'Worse?'

Again, Lawrence seemed to go off at a tangent. 'Did you know Andrew Lukasz came to the shop?' he said.

'Did he?'

'He had a cigarette case he'd bought. He rang me and said he wanted to know the names of people involved in the business. He threatened he was going to speak to that RAF policeman that night.'

'When was this, Lawrence?'

'Over a week ago. On the Sunday, the day before Marie — '

'And did you tell him anything?'

'No. He frightened me. I couldn't face him on my own, so I phoned Frank Baine, and he came to the shop with Kemp.' Lawrence coughed again. 'I sent for the reinforcements.'

'But Easton was still looking for Andrew Lukasz next day. So he didn't meet him on Sunday night.'

'No.'

Cooper wondered where Andrew Lukasz was now. But time was running out, and there was a more important question that was preying on his mind.

'Lawrence, where's the baby?'

This time, Lawrence didn't answer. Then Cooper noticed the approaching noise. It seemed to come from the east, creeping round the sides of Irontongue Hill and enveloping the outcrops of rock. It moved down the slopes towards him, but at the same time was everywhere in the sky, spreading across the low clouds. It was more than a sound — it was a deep droning that he felt as a vibration in the air, a reverberation bouncing off the hillside and filling the space all around him.

As the rumbling continued, Cooper looked up, expecting to see an aircraft. But nothing appeared in the sky. There was just the same blanket of iron-grey cloud rolling away towards the horizon, the same steady drift of snowflakes, thousands upon thousands of them parachuting towards him. The sound came from within the cloud. It was rumbling around inside it, spreading itself across the sky, so that it was impossible to pin down the direction it was coming from.

'Where's the baby, Lawrence? Where's Baby Chloe?'

There was still no reply. After a few minutes, the noise gradually began to recede. It didn't exactly move away. There was no direction he could have said it had headed in. It simply became more subdued, a little quieter and more muffled, until eventually the cloud had swallowed it completely.

Cooper had the ridiculous idea that the clouds might have been troubled by indigestion that had now grumbled its way out into the open, perhaps in a sulphurous outbreak of gas into the atmosphere somewhere over Glossop. But maybe the sound had been thunder, after all. Or maybe it had been an airliner somewhere in the overcast, flying blind towards Manchester Airport, its engines booming inside the banks of cloud. Or then, maybe he'd imagined the whole thing.

'We need to find Chloe, Lawrence. We have to be sure she's safe.'

Cooper moved to bring his other leg under his body. It was icy cold and hardly felt part of him any more. Now there was only the sound of the wind scraping its way across the moors, and the faint settling of the snow as it drifted past his ears.

He felt discouraged at the prospect of trying to get a response from Lawrence. But he had to keep him from falling asleep. He found himself casting around desperately for something to say.

'I know you wanted to keep the bookshop going, Lawrence. Did anybody ever buy any of those books that I priced up? No, I don't suppose they did, though there must have been some bargains among them. And coming to the shop helped me to find the flat. I didn't think you were very keen on me taking it at first. By the way, I suppose it's too much to ask — but could you have a word with your aunt about the noise of the dog? It barks too much when it's out in the yard. It wakes me up in the mornings.'

Cooper blinked his eyes. The wind was making them water, and the unending whiteness was playing havoc with his colour perception.

'Diane Fry will get help to us soon,' he said. 'She's good at things like that, very efficient. That's why she made sergeant instead of me, I expect. Who wants to be a sergeant, anyway? Who wants a management job shoving paper and dealing with other people's problems?'

He blinked again. Instead of Lawrence's blue jacket, he was seeing red. Cooper had met colour-blind people who were unable to distinguish between blue and red. But he knew he wasn't colour blind — proper colour perception was one of the physical requirements for joining the police force. Candidates unable to distinguish principal colours and those who suffer from pronounced squints are unacceptable. It was in the recruitment literature. Anybody could read it on the website.

'You could do with someone like Diane to run the shop,' he said. 'Someone efficient, someone a bit ruthless who would throw out all those old books no one will ever buy that are cluttering the place up. You could turn the business round completely. We can rely on Diane. She'll have help here soon. Very soon.'