‘That’s it. I guess I’ve changed a bit since the sixth form at .5
Edendale High.’
& ‘It was a few years ago.’ L
‘Nine wears, I suppose,’ she said. ‘You’ve not changed much, Ben. Anyway, I saw your picture in the paper a while ago. You’d won a trophy of some sort.’
‘The Shooting Trophy, yes. Look, can we —?’
Till take you through.’
‘Do you live here then?’
‘No, it’s my grandparents’ house.’
They stepped through into a back room, hardly less gloomy than the hallway despite a window looking out on to the back garden. There was a 1950s tiled fireplace in the middle of one wall, scattered with more photographs and incongruous holiday mementoes — a straw donkey, a figure of a Spanish flamenco dancer, a postcard of Morocco with sneering camels and an impossibly blue sea. Above the fireplace, a large mirror in a gilt frame reflected a murky hunting print on the opposite wall, with red-coated figures on horseback galloping into a shadowy copse in pursuit of an unseen quarry. Cooper smelled furniture polish and the musty odour of old clothes or drawers lined with ancient newspapers.
There were two elderly people in the room — a woman wearing a floral-patterned dress and a blue cardigan sitting in one armchair, and an old man in a pair of corduroy trousers and a Harris wool sweater facing her in the other chair. They both sat upright, stiff and alert, their feet drawn under them as if to put as much distance between themselves as they could.
In front of the empty fireplace stood a two-bar electric fire. Despite the warmth of the day outside, it gave the impression of having been recently used. Cooper, though, was glad of the slight chill in the room, which had begun to dry the sweat on his face as the two old people turned towards him.
‘It’s Ben Cooper, Granddad,’ said Helen.
28
‘Ave, I can see that. Sergeant Cooper’s lad.’
Cooper was well used to this greeting, especially from the older residents around Edendale. For some of them, he was merely the shadow of his father, whose fame and popularity seemed eternal.
‘Hello, sir. I believe somebody phoned the station.’
Harry didn’t answer, and Cooper was starting to form the idea that the old boy miwht be deaf when hi.s granddaughter
to & i>
stepped in.
‘It was me, actually,’ said Helen. ‘Granddad asked me to.’ Harry shrugged, as if to say he couldn’t really be bothered
whether she had phoned or not.
‘I thought it’d be something you lot would want to know
o o ^
about, like as not.’
‘And your name, sir?’
‘Dickinson.’
Cooper waited patiently for the explanation. But it came from the granddaughter, not from the old man.
‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she said, leading the way through another door. An almost brand-new washing machine and a fridge-freezer stood among white-painted wooden cupboards, with an aluminium sink unit awkwardly fitted into place among them. Neither of the old people followed them, but watched from their chairs. The rooms were so small that they were well within earshot.
‘Granddad found this.’
The trainer lay on a pine kitchen table, lumpy and grotesque among the bundles of dried mint and the brown- glazed cooking pots. Someone had put a sheet from the Burton Advertiser underneath it to stop the soil that clung to its rubber sole from getting r o t> o
on to the surface of the table. The trainer lay in the middle of an advertising feature for a new Cantonese restaurant, its laces trailing across a photograph of a smiling Chinese woman serving barbecued spare ribs and bean sprouts. On the opposite page were columns of birth and death notices, wedding announcements and twenty- first birthday greetings.
Cooper wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers and took out a pen. He gently prised open the tongue of the trainer to look
29
I
inside, careful not to disturb the soil that was starting to dry
and crumble away from the crevices in the sole.
‘Where did you find this, Mr Dickinson?’
‘Under Raven’s Side.’ If
Cooper knew Raven’s Side. It was a wilderness of rocks and J
holes and tangled vegetation. The search parties had been slowly
J ]m
