the middle of the room were tables covered in white tablecloths and laden with cutlery and floral centrepieces. It could have been the Rdendalc old folks’ Christmas party. It could have been the tennis club dinner, or a gathering of the Caledonian Society for Burns Night. The people sitting at the tables looked and sounded like any group of Derbyshire folk enjoying themselves except that these people were speaking a language Cooper didn’t understand. Their voices were raised, yet he couldn’t make out the meaning of a single word. There were a lot of children here, too. Their presence gave a different atmosphere.
Then there were the smells. Food vas being served - but it wasn’t microwaved beef and Yorkshire puddings, nor even boiled ham and baked potatoes. The smells were too spicy, a combination of rich meats and strong herbs. Even the alcohol in some of the glasses looked the wrong colour. Cooper wanted to turn round and walk out, then come back in again, to see if the
‘ o ‘
confusion cleared. The inconsistencies were too disorientating, the noise and the smells too redolent of a strange land.
He could see Zvgmunt Lukasz and several other old men
v CS
at a table. He watched them drinking glasses of clear liquid. Poles, like Russians, drank vodka, didn’t they? The old men
‘ ‘ V
were knocking it back in one go, with a sharp flick of the wrist to toss the vodka to the hack of the throat. And then they put down their glasses and attacked their starters — something that was decorated with small pieces of potato and cucumber, but smelled of fish.
Out of curiosity, Cooper picked up a copy of the menu from the bar. The starter was j/eJxic M .smiefanie. A helpful translation informed him that it was herrings in cream. His stomach gave a small lurch. He was sure that wasn’t what he had smelled being prepared earlier. Maybe it had been the piero^i or the 6^0.’; that were on the menu for later. It hardly mattered. It would still be a frozen meal for one that awaited him when he got back to Welbcck Street.
‘We’re probably one of the most traditional Polish communities left in this country,’ said Peter Lukasz, watching him read
271
the menu. ‘How long that will last, I don’t know. A lot of it is down to the old people, of course. Like my father and my aunt Krystyna. Will you have a drink?’
Fry shook her head. ‘That’s not what we re here for.’
Rut Cooper was starting to feel he deserved a little freedom.
‘Is there hccr?’ he asked Lukasz.
‘Za^/o6a O&ocim.’
‘I don’t know what it is, but that’ll be fine.’
The shelves behind the bar were full of vodka bottles, row upon row of them. Some of them were alarming colours, like a row of urine samples from people with virulent kidney diseases. He studied the labels. They were flavoured vodkas. He saw lemon, orange, pineapple, peach, cherry, melon and pepper. There was a pale green one that appeared to have a blade of grass floating in the bottle.
Lukasz was holding a tiny shot glass with a thick bottom and an eagle engraved on its side. Cooper noticed he was sinning his drink, not tossing it back in one go as the old
1 f o o o
men had done.
‘What are you drinking yourself?’ he asked.
‘Krupni^,’ said Lukasz. ‘Polish honey vodka. Do you know, you have to pay nearly twenty pounds a bottle for it here, even when you can find it at all. Back home, it would cost about fifty pence.’
Cooper nodded. He was more interested in the fact that Lukasz had said ‘back home’ than in the information about honey vodka.
‘Back home in Poland?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
Lukasz took another sip of his J?rupni&. Cooper knew perfectly well that Peter Lukasz had been born in Edendalc and had lived in the town all his life.
Lukasz led them through into a small lounge bar. Cooper sat where he could watch Zygmunt and the other old men in the main hall. Several of them wore blazers, with their medals displayed on their breast pockets. It occurred to Cooper that any one of them could have been an eighty-year-old Danny McTeague. He could have changed his identity; he could have
272
been living a different life for fifty- seven years. But why would he send his medal to his wife after all this time? Did he want someone to come and find him? Was he seeking some kind of closure, as Zygmunt Lukasz was?
The other old men seemed to look to Zygmunt whenever he spoke. Women fussed around him, and children stood nearby and smiled at him. His pale blue eyes responded to everything with the same expression a kind of calm pride.
‘We need to talk to you about a man called Easton, Mr Lukasz,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh?’ The name didn’t seem to mean anything to him, but it was difficult to tell. Some people were better at hiding their reactions than others. They could be in turmoil inside, while calm on the exterior. ‘What did you want to ask me?’
‘It’s a pity you failed to identify him when you came to the mortuary on Friday.’
‘Ah, this is your dead person.’
