‘Yes, according to the guv at Lcadcnhall.’
They reached the Toyota and waited for the heater to clear the beginnings of another frost from the windscreen. The sky was completely clear and lull of stars. The gritting lorries would be out on the roads again tonight.
‘I wonder how close Graham Kemp is to his brother,’ said Frv. ‘I wonder if he might have been involved with Eddie in the
V O
double assault on Mondav night/
^ o
Cooper looked at her. ‘That would be a link.’ Fry rubbed her hands. “I think we have a couple of promising lines of enquiry to put to the meeting in the morning.’
‘It does give us the initiative,’ said Cooper. ‘Sergeant Caudwell
O I o
will be impressed/
‘All right, Ben. I admit that might be a factor/
‘On the other hand/ said Cooper, ‘what if someone thought Nick Easton himself was one of those vultures?’
‘What?’
‘If he was asking the wrong sort of questions, he could have given the wrong impression to someone who cared enough to be angry at the pillaging of the wreck sites/
‘Like who?’
‘Only someone with a personal interest. Someone who had lost a close relative in a crashed aircraft. Someone who thought it was a desecration, the robbing of a grave/
‘Someone like Zygmunt Lukasz, you mean?’
‘Peter Lukasz was very calm on the outside/ said Cooper. ‘And he attributed the hatred of the vultures to his father. But inside, 1 wonder if he shares the same feelings?’
Cooper put the Toyota in gear and drove down Harrington Street. They passed the Church of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Polish Saturday School, and the lighted windows of the Dom Kombatanta.
He supposed it was inevitable the op/a (e6 traditions would die out with the old people. In the Lukasz family, Zygmunt
278
and his sister Krystyna were-the only ones left who had been horn in Poland. The others were more English in their ways, even Peter Lukasz — though when the old man was around he seemed to take on the same set of the shoulders, the same look about the eyes that Cooper had noticed in the photograph of the young Zygmunt and Klemens. Determination, a fighting spirit. A capacity for hatred.
Cooper felt himself on unfamiliar territory. Yet these people weren’t recent immigrants, like the asylum seekers from Iran and Albania. The Poles had lived in Derbyshire for nearly sixty
J J J
years. He had lived right alongside them all his life, and yet he knew almost nothing about them.
As they drove back down into the town, he lifted his head and looked at the barrier of hills to the west of Edcndalc. They were bare and glittering in the starlight, ancient and unchanged since the geological upheavals that had left them there millions of years ago. But as he stared at the familiar hills, Cooper felt his perception of them shift and blur, until they were no longer merelv hills. For the first time in his life, they had begun to look
J ‘ - O
like the walls of a prison.
279
25
rVlison Morrissey stood in the cobbled alleyway of Nick i’ th’ Tor outside Hden Vallev Books. She hanged on the door, ignoring
J O ‘ O O
the sign in the window, and kept banging until Lawrence Dalev appeared in the gloom inside and drew hack the bolts.
‘The shop is closed,’ he said. “I never open on Sunday.’
‘Not lor anybody?’ said Morrissey.
Lawrence peered at her carefully, wiping a finger over the lenses of his glasses.
‘I don’t sell books on a Sunday,’ he said. “I work six days a week selling books. Sunday is my day off from selling books.’
‘My name is Alison Morrissey. I’m the granddaughter of the pilot of the crashed Lancaster on Irontonguc Hill.’
‘I know who you arc,’ said Lawrence. ‘I saw you on the television news. You were in the papers, too.’
‘That’s good,’ said Morrissey. ‘Can I come in?’
Lawrence still hesitated, as if a great deal depended on making the right decision. Then, reluctantly, he pulled open the door of the shop.
Morrissey stamped her (cet free of snow as she stood in the narrow passage near the counter. There was no light in the shop except from the open door to the stairs, and Lawrence made no move to find the light switch. ‘What is it you want?’ he said.
Morrissey kept her hands in the pockets of her coat as she looked around the shop, raising her eyebrows at the shelves and piles of books that gradually became visible as her eyes adjusted. ‘If you know who I am, perhaps you know why I’ve come/ she said.
