‘Yes, of course, how silly of me,’ said Fry. ‘Everybody knows you round here, don’t they? I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered doing undercover work, Ben?’
‘I didn’t sec him. Not clearly.’
‘If we don’t get a match from the bayonet, we’re back to square one with Kemp - even for the double assault. The GPS think the witness evidence is insufficient.’
“I know.’
‘It would have been nice, Ben, to have been able to charge somebody.’
‘Well. I’m sorrv I m only telling you the truth.’
‘ V V O V
She sighed. ‘I suppose it’ll be in your statement.’
‘Of course.’
Fry sat at her desk. The mountain of paper on it was rising and becoming unstable. Cooper could sec that a couple of buff files in the middle were sliding free under the weight of those on top. It would be best to be out of the office when the avalanche started.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re not injured, anyway,’ said Fry.
‘Thanks.’
‘Because there’s a special job for you tomorrow morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘You’re to meet Sergeant Caudwell. You’ll be going on a trip together.’
‘Franklv, I’d rather be attacked with a bayonet in a dark alley.’
‘Tough. I hope your stomach’s feeling strong in the moming, Ben.’
‘Why?’ said Cooper suspiciously.
Fry smiled at him, though her expression lacked the confidence she was trying to convey. ‘I’ve just talked to Sergeant Caudwell again,’ she said. ‘We’ve thought of a way of keeping you safe and off the streets.’
300
In his Hat above the bookshop in Nick i’ th’ Tor, Lawrence Daley had heard the sound of voices echoing in the alleyways outside. He assumed it was a group of drunks leaving one of the pubs around the market square, although it was a bit early in the evening for them to be causing trouble. Usually, that happened later on, when Edendale’s two night clubs closed.
Lawrence went to one of the window s. But instead of looking out of the front of the building on to Nick i’ th’ Tor, he went to the back, where his bedroom overlooked a snowcovered yard and gates that led out on to a back alley. There was frost forming on the window, slowly covering the glass in delicate patterns. The sky was clear tonight, and a crescent moon threw some light on the shapes in the yard. Lawrence shuddered, picturing human figures moving among the shapes, hearing the scuffling of their feet in the snow and the sound of their muttered curses in the darkness. But the yard was as secure as he could make it. The gates were firmly closed, and there was broken glass set into the concrete along the top of the back wall. For now, the yard was too full of snow to open the gates. According to the weather forecast, it would be the end of the week before it thawed. He had been watching the forecasts every dav. Several
O V V
times a dav.
Satisfied for now, Lawrence went back to the book that he had been reading in front of the TV. On the floor above, he heard the noise of scurrying feet on bare boards, the faint scratching of claws on the wooden joists that ran across his ceiling. He didn’t think the feet were those of the mice that lived in the shop downstairs, which sometimes darted out from among the bookshelves and startled his customers. The feet that scratched above his head belonged to something bigger and less quick, something that dragged a tail behind it along the boards.
Lawrence supposed it was possible that squirrels had found their way under the caves to live in his attic for the winter. But he thought it much more likely that rats had moved into his life. And now they were thriving.
v O
301
27
-Den Cooper hung on to the hack oi a seat as his view of the ground tilted and wreckage rushed past below him. Directly underneath the helicopter, the scene looked like the aftermath of a hurricane that had passed through a scrap-metal yard. Fragments of aircraft fuselage glinted in the light reflected from the snow. There should be part of a tail hn still protruding from the peat and the snow somewhere up the slope to the west. But Cooper had lost sight of where the horizon ought to he, and he felt his stomach lurch as his sense of balance was disrupted.
During his five years in Derbyshire CID, he had never been called on to take to the air in a helicopter before, and he wasn’t sure it was something he was cut out for. He was a feet-on-the-ground man, no question. Half an hour this Monday morning had convinced him of it.
The passengers braced themselves as the pilot pulled back on the controls and banked to avoid the sudden upward rush of bare, black gritstone that the maps called Irontonguc. The rocks were jagged and unforgiving, full of crevices that held streaks of frozen snow. Even rock climbers staved awav from the face of
v v
Irontongue. Its surface was too treacherous for all but the most
o
experienced and best equipped.
The helicopter flew over the site again, banked, turned and came back to allow its passengers a good view of the remnants of the crashed aircraft. In the sharp morning light, the shadow of the rotor blades swept across the hill and over the wreckage.
‘No, that’s not the one,’ said Cooper. ‘That was a US Air Force Superfortress. Thirteen men died in that one.’
