Cooper turned and looked down across the expanse of snowcovered moor to a spot which even now stood out from the rest of the area. It looked hare and hrown, churned up by the hoots of the men who had stood round a frozen body and made poor jokes about ice axes and thermometers.
To Cooper’s surprise, Sergeant Caudwell spoke exactly what was in his thoughts.
‘Marie Tennent,’ she said.
Cooper stared at her. ‘How do you know about Marie?’
‘A combination of local know ledge, elementary detective work and inter-agency cooperation. I’ve read the Hie. We need to take the poppy.’
Liz Pcttv came over and took photographs of the poppy in position on its cross. Then she carefully eased the cross out of the ground. Cooper could see there was an inscription on the wood, written in white, as if it had been done in correction fluid.
‘We found Marie Tennent’s bodv a few hundred vards from here,’ he said. ‘She’d been there for davs, in the snow. She’s a presumed suicide. I don’t think we’ve even had the postmortem results vet.’
‘Don’t tell me — you’re short-staffed in the pathology department?’
Caudwell was peering at the wooden cross that Liz had placed in an evidence bag. ‘What does the inscription say?’ asked Cooper.
‘It savs: “Sergeant Dick Abbott 24th August 1926 to 7th
V O O
lanuarv 1945.”’
-* V
‘Abbott? He was the rear gunner. Tail-end Charlie.’ ‘It says something else,’ said Caudwell. ‘I don’t know what this bit means …’
Cooper waited, thinking of Dick Abbott. The newspaper reports had said the rear gunner’s body was severely mutilated. According to Walter Rowland, the rescue team had spent hours on the moor picking up the pieces of human bodies. The only consolation in Sergeant Abbott’s case was that he might never have known what happened to him. Prom his rear turret, he would not have seen Irontongue Hill at all. There might have
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been a second when he heard terrified voices on the intercom, then he would have felt the impact as Sugar Uncle Victor collided with the gritstone buttress and flipped over to shatter his turret on the rocks.
‘Is it Latin? It might be the squadron motto or something,’ said Cooper.
‘Oh, no/ said Caudwcll. ‘I can read the words. I just don’t know what they mean. It says: “Justice at last.*”
The manager of the Wise Buys shop in Clappcrgatc remembered Marie Tennent perfectly well.
‘She was a good girl. Hard working. Brighter than most of the others,’ she told Dianc Fry. ‘I was sorry to lose her when she went. But the best of the young ones never stay long.’
Fry looked round the shop. Judging from the window displays, the main attraction of the stock was its price. The racks were Hlled with warm coats and colourful sweaters, trouser suits and matching scarf and hat sets. Spring fashions hadn’t arrived yet.
‘Did Marie tell you why she was leaving the job?’ she asked.
‘No. She just said she wanted to do something different. They get fed up after a while, you see. Dealing with the public isn’t always easy.’
‘I know,’ said Fry.
‘Oh, I expect you do.’
‘But Marie didn’t have another job to go to, as far as we know.’
‘No, I didn’t think she did. Personally, I thought there was probably a man. I expected to hear she was getting married before long.’
o
‘Did she mention a particular man?’
‘Not as such. Some girls talk about their boyfriends all the time, but Marie wasn’t that type. She was more private. But I always wondered …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, was there a baby, do you know?’
‘Did she hint at that?’
‘Not really. But there arc little signs, aren’t there? She became more absorbed in herself, as it she had other things to think about
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than joining in with the usual chat. She started to look a bit different, too. Being pregnant suits some, hut Marie looked ill. Not anything you could really put your finger on — she was paler, more tired sometimes. She held herself differently. I’ve seen it before.’
‘But you never asked her?’ said Fry.
‘It’s not my place. She obviously didn’t want to tell me, so I didn’t pry.’
Fry watched a woman poke through a rack of dresses, nnd nothing that interested her and walk out of the shop.
‘Did Marie ever mention her family?’
‘Oh, yes, her mother in Scotland. She talked about her quite a lot. And she had a younger brother, I think.’
