Blood on the Tongue

‘If you say so.’

Cooper began to go through his pockets. He found the estate agent’s leaflets and pulled them out of the way while he felt at the bottom for some change. His pager was vibrating again, but it could wait.

‘Hello,’ said Lawrence, ‘have you fallen into the company of conmen and thieves?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Estate agents,’ he said, pointing at the leaflets. ‘Are you buying a house?’

‘I can’t afford that,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m just looking for a place to rent for a while.’

‘Ah. Striking out on your own? Or is there a live-in partner involved somewhere?’

‘On my own.’

‘Oh. And have you not found anywhere yet?’

‘No.’

Cooper handed over his fifty pence, and Lawrence rattled it into the drawer of his till, then found a striped paper bag from somewhere under the counter. Cooper stood looking at some postcards and fliers stuck to a board near the counter. Most of them were advertising the services of typing agencies, clairvoyants and aromatherapy specialists, but there was one that caught his eye.

‘There’s a furnished flat advertised here,’ he said. ‘It’s in Welbeck Street, by the river.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Lawrence.

‘That’s handy for town. I could walk to work from there. And it sounds quite a reasonable rent, too. Do you know who this person is? Mrs Shelley?’

‘I’m afraid so. It’s my aunt.’

‘Really?’

‘She lives in Welbeck Street herself, but she owns the house next door as well,’ said Lawrence. ‘My uncle had dreams of knocking the two places together and creating some kind of palatial town house to swan around in. God knows why – there were only ever the two of them, with no children.’

‘I have an uncle like that, too – he loves unfinished projects. It seems to give him a sense of immortality. He doesn’t think he can possibly die until all the jobs are finished.’

‘It didn’t work with Uncle Gerald – he died before he could even get round to knocking any walls down.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Aunt Dorothy wasn’t. She was over the moon to be rid of him. She had the house next door split into two flats. She had a proper job done of it. I think she wanted the workmen to pound the memories of Uncle Gerald into dust with their sledgehammers and cover him over with a nice layer of plaster and some magnolia wallpaper.’

‘And one of the flats is empty, is it?’

‘It was, when she asked me to put the card up,’ said Lawrence. ‘It might have gone by now, she hasn’t said. I’ve told her to make sure she lets it to the right sort of person. Reliable and trustworthy professional people only, you know. I do worry sometimes about who she might take in, if she’s left entirely to her own devices.’

‘I think I’d be interested, if it’s still vacant,’ said Cooper.

‘It might not be up to your standards, you know. Aunt Dorothy is getting a bit vague in her old age. Not quite barmy or anything, you understand. But vague about life’s little details.’

Cooper looked at the card again. ‘Reliable and trustworthy? Do you think I would qualify, Lawrence?’

‘No, but you could lie.’ The bookseller laughed. He reached out a hand and patted the corduroy collar of Cooper’s waxed coat. ‘I love the cold-weather gear, by the way,’ he said. ‘Policemen usually dress so boringly, don’t they? But the cap really suits you. It shows off your eyes.’

Cooper edged away a few inches. ‘I might give the flat a try,’ he said. ‘Mrs Shelley, 6 Welbeck Street? I’ll mention that you recommended me, shall I?’

Lawrence chuckled. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘you’d be better off lying.’

On the way out, Cooper noticed a morocco-bound volume of A Tale of Two Cities, which lay in the dust on the top of a set of shelves. It looked almost as if Mr Dickens himself had wandered into the shop one day and put the book down on the shelf, where it had stayed ever since.

Outside, in High Street, Cooper watched a Hulley’s bus splash slowly by like a dark blue ship. It threw a bow wave of slush to either side, which threatened to sweep away the pedestrians walking on the pavement.

As he walked back past the Clappergate shopping precinct towards West Street, Cooper patted his pockets thoughtfully. In the huge poacher’s pocket inside his coat were the books on Peak District aircraft wrecks, including the crash of Lancaster SU-V, which had brought Alison Morrissey to Edendale. In another pocket he had the estate agent’s leaflets for unsuitable properties. Cooper knew he didn’t really want to live on his own. He was moving out of Bridge End Farm because he felt so strongly it was time for a change in his life – and that was all.

He wondered whether Alison Morrissey lived on her own. Probably not. And she was nothing to do with him, anyway. She was in Edendale only as a passing visitor. Soon, she would be flying back to Canada, to an entirely different world, and he would never see her again after today. But perhaps he could hope that there was a person a bit like Alison Morrissey, waiting for him somewhere.

7 (#ulink_4e035489-a724-5e82-b3e9-d6ca4d21a2f8)

Diane Fry was waiting for Ben Cooper when he arrived back at divisional headquarters in West Street. She glared at him as he came into the CID room.

‘You didn’t answer your phone,’ she said.

‘I was in the middle of something,’ protested Cooper. ‘I was going to call you back. How’s the double assault case shaping up?’

‘Oh, you can forget about that for now.’

‘Forget it? There were a couple of serious assaults, wounding with intent, possession of offensive weapons Not to mention being potentially racially motivated

‘Yeah, yeah, and somebody probably dropped some litter on the pavement as well when you weren’t looking. Forget it.’

‘But, Diane –’

‘Add it to your pending file, Ben. We’ve got more important things to do.’

‘What’s so important? Have we got another body or something?’

‘What’s so important,’ said Fry, ‘is that we’ve got a meeting on the Snowman case. It just became a murder enquiry.’

Without really thinking about it, Ben Cooper had expected E Division’s new Detective Chief Inspector to be female. If not, then a member of an ethnic minority. Or at least gay. It was almost inconceivable that a senior appointment had been made without an attempt to address the balance of gender, ethnicity or sexual persuasion.

But no matter how carefully Cooper studied DCI Oliver Kessen, he still seemed to be a middle-aged white man with receding hair and bad teeth, an ill-fitting suit and a paunch. Seated next to their old DCI, Stewart Tailby, Kessen was the centre of attention for the entire room. It was the first time anybody there had set eyes on him, though he had only come from D Division, which wasn’t exactly Australia.

‘Good afternoon, everybody,’ said Kessen. ‘Glad to meet you all. Is everything under control?’

Several people opened their mouths to reply, but didn’t manage to get a word out when they saw the expression on DCI Tailby’s face. He looked like a headmaster who had warned his pupils not to talk to strangers.

‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ said Tailby.

‘Well, I’ve just arrived and I’ve got to settle in here, so I rely on you people to bring me up to date. But I dare say everything is going smoothly. I can see Mr Tailby has been running a good team.’