Stephen Booth - Blood on the Tongue

'I see.'

She turned her head wearily to look at Cooper. 'Andrew got himself into trouble, didn't he?'

'Let's go inside.'

But still Grace didn't move. 'There was another thing that Zygmunt always talked about too much,' she said. 'Sacrifice.'

At Grace's direction, Cooper opened the side gate and pushed her wheelchair down the passage past the garage to the back of the bungalow. He could see Zygmunt Lukasz in the conservatory. The lighting was strange inside because of the covering of snow on the glass roof, which gave a blue cast to the sunlight. But it seemed to Cooper that the old man was praying.

Zygmunt was seated in front of a tall candle that burned strongly in the enclosed space. His white hair shone with an unlikely purity in the snow-filtered light, as if it had recently been washed with bleach. The rest of his family were visible behind him in the house. There was Peter, and Richard and Krystyna, and even the youngest child, Alice. Cooper began to feel embarrassed, and he wanted to slip back round the corner before they saw him. But Grace Lukasz banged on the glass without hesitation, and her husband came to the door, staring at Cooper.

'I wasn't expecting you to be ready to come home so soon,' he said to Grace.

'I'd had enough. And Detective Constable Cooper wants to speak to you.'

'I'm sorry to bother you, sir.'

'You'd better come in.'

Krystyna was in the kitchen cutting carrots and parsnips with a small knife. There was a chicken soaking in cold water. In the sitting room, Peter Lukasz had automatically picked up the television remote and was fingering the buttons. 'What is it you want?' he said.

'I wonder if you've heard from your son yet?'

'No. But we will soon.'

Cooper shook his head. It was strange standing here in the Lukasz's home again. Over a week ago, he'd arrested Eddie Kemp in the Starlight Cafe. He'd never even heard of the Lukasz family then, but Kemp had just been involved in killing their son. There had been blood on the streets that dawn, in the snow. Now there was blood on Irontongue Hill.

'Mr Lukasz,' he said, 'I need you to come to the mortuary again to make an identification.'

Each of the Lukasz family stopped what they were doing. Grace spun her wheelchair to face him, Peter put down the television remote, Krystyna paused with her knife in mid-air. Cooper turned and looked into the conservatory. Zygmunt had fixed him with his pale blue, knowing eyes. The old man raised his head, tensing his jaw as if facing a challenge. The dog was beside his chair, with a thin, pink biscuit in its mouth that it had been dragging around the floor. The biscuit was dirty, but a design was visible on it — a picture of a nativity scene. Cooper recognized it as a version of the oplatek wafer.

'Forgiveness for the animals?' he asked.

Then Zygmunt Lukasz spoke in English for the first time in Ben Cooper's hearing.

'Of course,' he said. 'There were animals in the stable when Jesus was born.'

'So there were,' said Cooper. 'And animals are much easier to forgive.'

Cooper had never yet been next door to the house that Mrs Shelley lived in. He had only ever met her at number 8, in his own flat. Of course, number 10 looked identical from the outside, apart from the fact there was only the one bell.

'She's a bit vague,' he said. 'She might not understand what we're telling her first.'

'It's lucky she knows who you are, then,' said Fry.

'I'm not sure about that. She might not associate me with the police. She thinks of me as the young man who looks after the cat.'

'Promotion at last, Ben.'

Cooper turned to look at her, irritated by the jibe. But he saw from her face that she regretted having said it.

'If it's all right with you, I want to go to the Cavendish Hotel and see Alison Morrissey after this,' he said.

Now Fry couldn't meet his eyes at all. 'She's gone,' she said. 'She caught a flight back to Toronto this morning.'

'What?'

'I'm sorry, Ben. We agreed it was for the best.'

'Who's we?'

'I talked to her yesterday, after we arrested Frank Baine. I watched you take her back to the hotel. And I think she's already said goodbye.'

Cooper felt his mouth hanging open and a surge of anger flooding through him. But before he could demand an explanation, the door of number 10 opened and Mrs Shelley stood looking at them, a puzzled frown on her face.

'Can I help you?'

They could hear the Jack Russell terrier barking from the back of the house. Even in the hallway, the noise was deafening. Cooper was glad of the thick stone walls that stopped sound travelling between the two houses. He was reminded of the walls in the row of cottages where Marie Tennent lived. They were just as thick as these walls — thick enough, he remembered thinking, that her neighbours would not have heard a baby crying.

Seeing Cooper speechless, Fry took the lead. 'Mrs Shelley, we need to speak to you about Lawrence Daley.'

'Lawrence?' Mrs Shelley said, as if repeating the name might bring some meaning to the sound of it. 'Lawrence?'

'Your nephew.'

'Has there been an accident? Has there been a fire at the shop? I always warned him that he was working in a death trap. All those books — it only needed some thoughtless person to drop a cigarette end or a match, and the whole lot would go up, I told him.'

'Nothing like that, Mrs Shelley. Could we come in for a moment? It would be better than standing on the doorstep.'

'Oh, yes. Would you like some tea?'

'It might be an idea to put the kettle on, but we'll do it.'

'Why on earth would you do that? I'm quite capable of putting the kettle on.'

'I think this might be a bit of a shock for you.'

Mrs Shelley stared at them, her mouth moving slightly as she tried to puzzle out what they was saying. In a moment, Cooper expected her to ask him about the cat.

'He can't be dead,' she said. 'That isn't possible. Not both of them.'

'Both of them?' said Fry. 'Both of who?'

'I'll make that tea,' said Cooper.

He was glad to find that the dog, Jasper, was outside the back door rather than in the kitchen. His yapping sounded peevish and demanding. Cooper was getting used to being in other people's kitchens. Marie Tennent's, full of nappies and bottles of sterilizing fluid. Walter Rowland's, sparse and utilitarian. Lawrence's little cubbyhole at the bookshop. Even his own kitchen next door at number 8, which he hadn't yet got used to.

And it ought really to have been the kitchen at number 8 that Mrs Shelley's reminded him of — they were the same layout, with a similar view out on to the overgrown gardens. But of all the kitchens he'd been in, it was Marie Tennent's he was reminded of. It didn't take him long to find out why.

Down at the end of the room, in the alcove that was occupied in his own flat by a new chest freezer, there was an incongruous piece of furniture. It didn't belong in a kitchen at all. But it went with the smells, which he now realized were what had put him in mind of Marie Tennent's house in the first place. The smells had transported him instantly to Dam Street, as if he'd opened a door and stepped back into Marie's hallway on that day nearly a week ago. It was a trick of the memory, a sense of deja vu. Except that here he had in front of him the one item that had been so obviously missing from any room in Marie Tennent's home.

'What am I going to do with her?' said Mrs Shelley plaintively, coming into the kitchen behind him. 'Jasper is so jealous of the attention she's getting — that's why he never stops barking. And if Lawrence is dead, he won't be coming back for her, will he?'

'No, Mrs Shelley. And I don't think her mother will be, either.'

Cooper stood looking down into the cot. The baby's eyes were open, but she lay with her hands curled into fists and her face flushed bright red. She was lying very still indeed. Then the pupils of her eyes moved, as if she were trying to see something a long way off, and her forehead creased in puzzlement.