Stephen Booth - Blood on the Tongue

It was an hour before dawn when Detective Constable Ben Cooper first began to get the news. An hour before dawn should be the dead hour. But in the bedrooms of third-floor flats on the council estates, or in stone-built semis in the hillside crescents, there were people blinking in bewilderment at an alien world of deadened sounds and inverted patterns of dark and light. Cooper knew all about the hour before dawn, and it was no time of day to be on the streets. But this was January, and dawn came late in Edendale. And snow had turned the morning into shuddering chaos.

Cooper pulled up the collar of his waxed coat to meet the rim of his cap and brushed away the flecks of snow that had caught in the stubble on his jawline, where he had rushed shaving that morning. He had walked down one of the alleyways from the market square, crunching through fresh snow, slithering on the frozen cobbles, passing from light to dark as he moved out of the range of the street lamps. But he had stepped out of the alley into a noisy snarl of traffic that had choked the heart of Edendale and brought its snow-covered streets to a halt.

On Hollowgate, lines of frustrated motorists sat in their cars, boot to bonnet in clouds of exhaust fumes. Many of them had been driving almost blind, their windscreens covered in half-scraped snow or streaks of brown grit that their frozen wipers couldn't clear. The throbbing of engines filled the street, echoing from shop facades and the upper storeys of nineteenth-century buildings. Headlights pinned drivers and their passengers in cruel shadows, like silhouettes on a shooting range.

'We have a serious double assault, believed to be racially motivated. Approximately zero two hundred hours. Underbank area.'

The voice from his radio sounded alien and remote. It was the crackly voice of a tired operator in a control room with no windows, where they would never know if it was still snowing or the sun had risen. Not unless somebody called in and gave them a weather report. We have sporadic outbreaks of violence. Occasional blood on the streets. It's an hour to go before dawn.

Cooper stepped off the edge of the pavement and straight into six inches of wet slush. It went over the top of his shoe and turned his foot into a frozen sponge. Since it was only seven o'clock and still completely dark, it was going to be a long, uncomfortable shift unless he got to his locker at E Division headquarters in West Street pretty soon for a change of socks.

'Two male victims received multiple injuries and are described as being in a serious condition.'

Cooper worked his way between the gridlocked cars to reach the far side of Hollowgate. Around him, fumes rose from the shadows and hung under the lamps, trapped in the street by the freezing temperature and the stillness of the air. They created a grey blanket that absorbed the light and swirled slowly in front of black Georgian windows sparkling with frost.

'Four suspects are currently being sought. All are white males, aged between twenty-five and forty-five. Local accents. One suspect has been identified as Edward Kemp, 6 Beeley Street, Edendale. Thirty-five years of age. Hair short and dark brown, approximately six feet tall.'

The weather changed so quickly in the Peak District that snowfall always seemed to take motorists in the town by surprise. Yet within a few miles of Edendale all the minor roads and passes would still be closed and outlying villages would be cut off until the snowploughs reached them. They might be isolated until tomorrow, or the next day.

Cooper had set off early because of the weather. On his way in from Bridge End Farm, as he steered his Toyota into the tracks left by the first snowplough, the hills around him had been glittering and pristine, like huge wedding cakes covered in sugar icing, lurking in the darkness. But it meant he had missed his breakfast. Now what he needed was a couple of cheese toasties and a black coffee. He was tempted by the lights of the Starlight Cafe, reflecting off the banks of untouched snow.

'Edward Kemp is described as powerfully built, with a distinctive body odour. Last seen wearing a dark overcoat and a hat. No further description available at this time.'

Cooper peered into the cafe. Behind the condensation on the plate-glass window there were figures wrapped in coats and anoraks, scarves and gloves, and a variety of hats made of fur, leather and wool. They looked like models posing for an Arctic explorers' clothing catalogue.

'All suspects could be in possession of baseball bats or similar weapons. Approach with caution.'

Now he could almost taste the coffee. He could feel the crunch of the toasted teacake and the clinging softness of the melted cheese. Saliva began to seep on to his tongue. Cooper pulled back his glove to look at his watch. Plenty of time.

While his nose was pressed close to the window, a hand came up and wiped away some of the condensation. A woman's face appeared, her eyes wide with outrage. She mouthed an obscenity and raised two fingers that poked from a blue woollen mitten. Cooper pulled away. There would be no toasties this morning, and no coffee.

'Control, I need a car outside the Starlight Cafe in Hollowgate.'

'With you in two minutes, DC Cooper… Is it still dark out there?'

'It's an hour before dawn,' said Cooper. 'What do you think?'

It was the ice and the scouring wind that created the worst of Marie Tennent's delusions. They were like daggers thrust into her brain, plunged in so deeply that their edges scraped together in the middle of her skull, filling her head with noise.

For the last hour before she died, Marie believed she could hear music wailing in the wind, the hissing of wheels on an icy road, and the muttering of voices deep in the snow. Her mind struggled to interpret the sounds, to make sense of what was happening to her. But the music was meaningless and the voices distorted, like the babbling of a badly tuned radio when its batteries were almost dead.

Marie lay amid the smells of bruised snow and damp air, with the taste of her own blood in her mouth and her body a bewildering pattern of cold spots and numbness and pain. Her arms and legs were burning where the snow had melted into her clothes and frozen again. And the ache in her head had flowered into a savage, unbearable agony.

It was because of the pain that Marie knew, in a lucid spell, that the sounds she could hear were caused by the tiny bones of her inner ear shrinking and twisting as they froze. They were grating against each other as they contracted, creating an internal whisper and mumble, a parody of sound that mocked her slow withdrawal from the boundaries of reality. It was a disturbing and inarticulate farewell, a last baffling message from the world. It was the only accompaniment to her dying.

The sun had dropped over the edge of Irontongue Hill, so that the snow-covered moor was in shadow, and the temperature was dropping fast. Marie felt the faint, cold kiss of snowflakes on her face. Yet the top of the hill was still touched by the last of the sun, and the snow on the rocks was turned blue by the light. Irontongue itself was hidden from her, its fissured shaft of dark gritstone poking southwards over the valley. But she caught a glint of water to the north, where Blackbrook Reservoir lay in a hollow of the moors.

The last thing Marie saw before her eyelids closed was a thin, dark shape that sliced the skyline on the hill. It seemed to cut into the grey belly of cloud like the blade of a razor. Her mind clutched at the thought of it as she drew together the dregs of her willpower to fight the pain. In the end, that crumbling memorial in the middle of the snowfield had not been the place she was destined to die. It was for men who had lived and died together. It was quite a different thing to die alone.