‘Making the energy flow,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s Japanese.’
The sergeant stared at him. ”Course it is,’ he said. ‘I must be stupid.’
lie was much too tall lor the counter he worked at, and heleaned awkwardly to write in the custody record. Unless Health and Safety had conducted a proper workplace assessment in here, there would be more compensation to pay out in a year or two, when the sergeant was walking like Quasimodo. But by then, he’d be haunted by the sound of Nigel Kennedy rather than the bells of Notre Dame.
Cooper felt his pager vibrating in his pocket. It was the fifth call tor him in the last half-hour. They had started plaguing him about other enquiries while he was still escorting his prisoner through the snowbound streets of Edendale.
‘All these new ideas, that’s the point?’ said the sergeant. ‘I can’t get my breath sometimes. A bloodv madhouse it is round here. And I don’t mean the customers, either.
A PC came out of the office behind the sergeant and handed Cooper a note. It said: DC Cooper report to DS Fry ASAP. Urgent. Cooper reluctantly gave up the plan he had been nursing for the last few minutes. He had been hoping to call by his locker for some dry socks, then carry out a raid on Gavin Murfin’s desk to see if he had any spare food.
‘Mind you, you didn’t hear me say any of that,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’m very happy in my work, I am.’
When passengers reached the arrivals gate at Terminal One of Manchester Airport from Air Canada flight 840, a tall, fair man with a beard was waiting. He greeted the woman by shaking her hand, but they both looked for a moment as though they regretted there were so many people around them on the airport
26
concourse. Alison Morrissey smiled when she heard his strong local accent, as if it made her trip to England .seem real.
‘So you came,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t think of you arriving on your our and knowing no one.
‘That’s kind.’
There was a moment’s silence between them. As the crowd of passengers passed her on either side, the woman looked at the unfamiliar names on the airport shops VV. H. Smith, Virgin, Boots the Chemist. For a moment, she looked no older than a schoolgirl as she cocked her head to listen to the announcements.
‘We’ve got a bit of a walk to the car park,’ he said, watching her. ‘Will you be all right? You look pale.’
‘Yes, I’m hue.’
He found a baggage trollev and pushed it tor her towards
OO O . 1
the exit. Alison Morrissey paused to rub her legs, though she had performed her exercises religiously all the way across the Atlantic from Toronto Fearson.
‘The weather’s not too good outside,’ he said. ‘But I suppose you’re used to snow in Canada.’
‘Frank, I live in a suburb of loronto. No gri/./lv bears or lumberjacks lor miles.’
She looked di/xv and disorientated, but when she shook herself hard, she reverted to a confident woman in her mid-twenties.
‘I he meeting is set up -with the local police, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Of course. Don’t worry about that. It’s all organi/ed.’
‘I’m sorrv, Frank. It just hit me suddenly. This is more than travelling to a foreign country - it’s like venturing into the past.’
‘I understand that.’
‘And it’s a dangerous past. I really feel as though I’m on the borders of hostile territory.’
‘Don’t expect hostility from every quarter,’ he said. ‘Not necessarily.’
Outside, Alison Morrissev looked at the grey sky and ran a hand across her lore-head.
27
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Transatlantic: flights knock hell out me. I suppose it’s past breakfast time here?’
‘Nearly lunchtime, in fact. We can find somewhere to eat here at the airport, if you like.’
‘Mav we drive1 out to Derbyshire first, Frank? How long will that take?’
‘It depends whether they’ve got the A57 clear vet,’ he said. “I had to come here by the motorwav. The last I heard on the radio traffic bulletins, the Snake Pass was still blocked. I don’t know why they’re usually pretty good at getting the snowploughs out to clear the main roads. Perhaps there’s been an accident or something.’
Grace Lukas/ peered cautiously round the door into the back room of the bungalow, clinging on to the wheels of her chair to
o ‘ o o
suppress the noise. Zygmunt was in his armchair by the table. He looked as though he might be asleep. His hands lav on the table, the blue veins standing up prominently, as if he really did suffer from the high blood pressure that he had always complained about, but which the doctors said didn’t exist. His head was tipped against the back of the chair, and he had taken off his spectacles. Grace could see the red marks on the sides of his nose and the small wings of white hair pushed up over his ears. There were tufts of hair inside his ears, too, and more hair on his neck where he never thought to shave.
o
The old man’s eyes were closed, but Grace wasn’t sure that he was really sleeping. Often he sat like this while awake. Zvgmunt always said he was thinking, when he took the trouble to explain at all. Grace supposed he was going back over his life in his mind, dwelling on his past. It was all he seemed to do mm , to dwell on the past. But maybe she was misjudging him. Perhaps the old man was thinking of his wife, Roberta. She doubted it, though. It was more likely that he was thinking of Klemens Wach. These days, he thought mostly about Klemens.
