‘Who?’
‘Up there.’
Cooper turned and saw Alison Morrissey standing among the rocks near the trig point. She had a camera in her hand, though at the moment she was making no effort to photograph the officers working on the wTeck site. The hood of her cagoule was pulled up to protect her ears from the wind that whipped the snow off the surface of the Irontonguc rocks. But Cooper thought he could sec the expression in her eyes, a dark mingling of satisfaction and pain.
‘I’d better go and speak to her,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Caudwell. ‘Let someone else do it.’
She gestured at PC Nash, who scowled as he lumbered up the slope, kicking his feet in the snow. Morrissey watched him approach her, as she might have observed the movements of a bit of interesting wildlife. When Nash was within a few yards of her, with his head down, struggling to keep his footing on a stretch of wet scree, she raised the camera and took his picture. Nash heard
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the click and looked up angrily. He charged the rest of the way, thrusting against the rocks with his arms.
Cooper took a couple of steps towards them hut felt Caudwcll’s hand on his arm and stopped. Morrissey had stood her ground and was listening w ith amused attentiveness to what Nash was saying. She didn’t seem to reply, and he began to wave his arms, indicating that she should move back down the hill. Still she didn’t move.
Then Nash tried to snatch her camera. Morrissey resisted. Nash towered over her, but there was a stubbornness plain from her body language that told him she wasn’t going to be bullied.
‘No.’ Cooper pulled away from Caudwell and began to run up the slope.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ called Caudwell, ‘what’s the matter with you?’
Cooper kicked up the snow as he scrambled across the scree, using his hands against the rocks to push himself up. He looked up. Nash had hold of the camera, but the strap was still tight round Morrissey’s shoulder and, when he tugged, it almost pulled her off balance. She slipped and flung out her arms to keep her balance. One of her hands hit the shoulder of his fluorescent jacket with a loud slap. Nash grabbed her arm.
‘Let her go!’
PC Nash turned and looked at him. He wasn’t smiling, but Cooper could sense that he was enjoying himself. Cooper felt at a complete disadvantage. He was standing down the slope from Nash, who loomed over him. For a moment, Cooper thought he had engineered a situation that was impossible to get out of. Nash looked past his shoulder and let go of Morrisscy’s camera.
‘Go back to the road, Alison,’ said Cooper. ‘Please.’
Finally, Morrissey turned and walked away from him, with one backward glance. Cooper and Nash then scrambled down the slope together.
Hen Cooper took a deep lungful of air as he tried to calm himself. It was totally different from the air in the Lukasz bungalow or at Walter Rowland’s house, or even at George Malkin’s. This was clean and pure, straight off the top of the hill. It had even seemed a shame to walk through the virgin snow
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this morning. A single set of tracks was one thing they were like a statement, emphasizing the untouched purity all around. But when several pairs of feet had trampled backwards and forwards and pressed the snow into slush, stained with dirt from their hoots, it made the rest of the landscape look tarnished and seedy.
‘So, these poppies,’ said Caudwell. ‘Who leaves them here?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper. ‘Perhaps members of exservicemen’s organizations who think the crew should be
o
remembered. Or perhaps the local air cadets do it.’
‘You think they come up here on Remembrance Day every year?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘So what about this one?’
Cooper walked over to where she was standing. There was a single poppy on a wooden cross, tucked under the edge of the undercarriage. It was gradually emerging from a patch of thawing snow, and it was bright red, like a splash of arterial blood from a fresh wound.
‘I think your officer was right. This doesn’t look as though it’s
V O O
been here tor two months.’
‘There’s been too much rain,’ said Cooper. ‘The colour would have been washed out of it, same as the others.’
‘What was the date of the crash again?’
‘January 7th, 1945.’
‘The seventh was a week ago,’ said Caudwell. ‘The day Nick Easton was killed.’
‘So?’
Caudwell gave him an exasperated look. ‘Men don’t know this,’ she said. ‘But anniversaries are very important to some people. Anniversaries of births, anniversaries of deaths. The day you first met the person you fell in love with. You know, dates that you never forget.’
‘Yes, I do know,’ said Cooper, thinking of the yearly visit with Matt to his father’s gjave, which would be an annual ritual until they became too old or infirm to make it to the cemetery. ‘Relatives of one of the crew, then?’
Caudwell swapped her gloves for a pair of latex ones from a
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packet in her coat. ‘Somebody who felt they had to leave the cross on the right day, whatever the weather.
