Blood on the Tongue

8 (#ulink_3a17e83c-0a0d-531d-8ea0-5e934d0a140f)

The Buttercross area of Old Edendale had its own personality, its own picturesque gloss, which had been carefully polished and maintained over the years for the benefit of visitors. It was here that the town’s antique shops clustered, some of them stuffed with gleaming mahogany furniture and brassware, but others dim and dusty, with nothing in their windows but a few coloured bottles and a Queen Victoria diamond jubilee biscuit tin.

There were shops here that Ben Cooper had never seen open, not in all his life spent in and around Edendale. Today, as usual, the ‘closed’ signs hung on their doors, with no indication of when their owners would be available to do business. Maybe they only appeared on special occasions, such as bank holiday weekends, when tourists thronged the Buttercross with money to spend. Maybe the dealers sold enough bottles and biscuit tins on those days to see them through the rest of the year. On the other hand, maybe they all had proper jobs to do.

The Buttercross certainly lived up to the tourist brochure image this afternoon. The lying snow and the weathered stone and mullioned windows of the buildings hit just the right Dickensian note to set off the antique furniture. Sadly, there were no tourists in January to appreciate it.

Between two of the shops, a narrow street lurched suddenly uphill. There were steel handrails set into high limestone walls on either side for pedestrians, but no pavements to separate them from any cars that might scrape their way round the corner. The walls had been the traditional dry stone when they were first built. But now they were held together by mortar, and they had periwinkles growing out of their cracks – forlorn green strands encased in frozen snow.

Gavin Murfin swayed against the side of Cooper’s Toyota as they bumped over the cobbles, took a sharp turn and then made another steep climb to emerge into the Underbank area. The streets here were even narrower, and the doors of the houses had tiny knockers shaped like owls or foxes, with their numbers picked out in coloured tiles set into the stonework. Further up the hill, a set of three-storey Regency houses stood near a youth hostel. Several of the houses had been converted into flats, but one at the far end looked empty and uncared for. A broken window on the first floor had been left unrepaired.

Beeley Street was hardly more than an alley, with an unmade surface just wide enough for one vehicle to pass. Cooper and Murfin walked up the street and crossed a patch of snow-covered grass.

‘Well, that’s Eddie Kemp’s car,’ said Murfin. ‘I’ve seen it many a time at West Street.’

It was a silver Isuzu Trooper with a set of ladders clipped to its roof rack, and it was parked on a raised concrete platform in front of Kemp’s house, with its headlights looking down the street towards the Buttercross. The council binmen had left a new plastic refuse sack wedged behind a downspout near the front door. They wouldn’t be coming up here again with their wagon soon, though, unless the snow cleared.

Eddie Kemp himself emerged from the house when they knocked.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to.’

‘Is this your car, sir?’ said Cooper.

‘Are you deaf? I just said I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to.’

‘It won’t take a minute to check with the DVLC if you’re the registered owner.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ said Kemp.

‘I don’t know, sir. Is there something wrong with it? Would you like us to have a look while we’re here?’

‘No.’

‘It’s a nice motor,’ said Murfin cheerfully. ‘It looks really useful, like.’

‘Well, you know damn well it’s mine anyway,’ said Kemp. ‘All you coppers know. I park it up at your place regularly when I’m doing the windows.’

‘Four-wheel drive, isn’t it?’ said Cooper.

‘Of course it is.’

‘Good in snow?’

‘It has to be.’

‘Were you driving this car on Monday night, sir?’

‘It was parked here.’

‘From what time?’

‘Has somebody said they saw me in it?’

‘That isn’t an answer.’

Murfin leaned against the concrete platform. ‘You ought to answer DC Cooper,’ he said. ‘If he gets annoyed, he stops calling you “sir”. That can be very nasty.’

Cooper stepped up on to the platform and looked at the tyres of the Isuzu. They wouldn’t tell him anything at all, but Kemp didn’t know that.

‘What time do you finish work, sir?’ he said.

‘When it starts going dark.’

‘About quarter past four, then, at the moment. Did you come straight home from work on Monday night?’

‘I’ve got a wife and a kid,’ said Kemp. ‘They expect to see me occasionally.’

‘I’ll take that as a “yes”, shall I?’

‘You can take it as what the hell you like. What are you looking for?’

Murfin pointed down the street towards the Buttercross. ‘I had a girlfriend who lived around here once. I seem to recall there was a little Indian takeaway on the corner, near the hairdresser’s. Is it still there?’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Kemp.

‘What time does it open?’

‘How the hell should I know?’

There was mud on the tyres of the Isuzu and small stones embedded in the tread. Streaks of brown grit ran along the sides of the vehicle. Cooper worked round the back and looked in through the tailgate.

‘What time did you go out again on Monday, sir?’ said Cooper.

‘I went to the pub for a bit,’ said Kemp. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘Which pub?’

‘The Vine. I told them all this yesterday.’

‘Is that where you met your mates?’

‘I’ve got a lot of mates,’ said Kemp.

‘Really?’

‘And some of them drink at the Vine.’

‘Do they serve food at this pub?’ said Murfin.