‘No. He frightened me. I couldn’t face him on my own, so I phoned Frank Bainc, and he came to the shop with Kemp.’ Lawrence coughed again. ‘I sent for the reinforcements.’
‘But Easton was still looking for Andrew Lukasz next day. So he didn’t meet him on Sunday night.
‘No.’
Cooper wondered where Andrew Lukasz was now. But time
390
was running out, and there was a more important question that was preying on his mind.
‘Lawrence, where’s the baby?’
This time, Lawrence didn’t answer. Then Cooper noticed the approaching noise. It seemed to come from the east, creeping round the sides of Irontonguc Hill and enveloping the outcrops of rock. It moved down the slopes towards him, hut at the same time was everywhere in the sky, spreading across the low clouds. It was more than a sound - it was a deep droning that he felt as a vibration in the air, a reverberation bouncing off the hillside and filling the space all around him.
As the rumbling continued, Cooper looked up, expecting to sec an aircraft. But nothing appeared in the sky. There was just the same blanket of iron-grey cloud rolling away towards the horizon, the same steady drift of snowflakes, thousands upon thousands of them parachuting towards him. The sound came from within the cloud; it was rumbling around inside it, spreading itself across the sky, so that it was impossible to pin down the direction it was coming (from.
‘ Where’s the baby, Lawrence? Where’s Baby Chloc?’
There was still no reply. After a few minutes, the noise gradually began to recede. It didn’t exactly move away; there was no direction he could have said it had headed in. It simply became more subdued, a little quieter and more muffled, until eventually the cloud had swallowed it completely.
Cooper had the ridiculous idea that the clouds might have been troubled by indigestion that had now grumbled its way out into the open, perhaps in a sulphurous outbreak of gas into the atmosphere somewhere over Glossop. But maybe the sound had been thunder, after all. Or maybe it had been an airliner somewhere in the overcast, flying blind towards Manchester Airport, its engines booming inside the banks of cloud. Or then, maybe he had imagined the whole thing.
‘We need to find Chloe, Lawrence. We have to be sure she’s safe.’
Cooper moved to bring his other leg under his body. It was icy cold and hardly felt part of him any more. Now there was only the sound of the wind scraping its way across the
391
moors, and the faint settling of the snow as it drifted past his ears.
He felt discouraged at the prospect of trying to get a response from Lawrence. But he had to keep him from falling asleep. He found himself casting around desperately for something to say.
‘I know you wanted to keep the bookshop going, Lawrence. Did anybody ever buy any o( those books that I priced up? No, I don’t suppose they did, though there must have been some bargains among them. And coming to the shop helped me to find the flat. I didn’t think you were very keen on me taking it at first. By the way, I suppose it’s too much to ask — but could you have a word with your aunt about the noise of the dog? It barks too much when it’s out in the yard. It wakes me up in the mornings.’
Cooper blinked his eyes. The wind was making them water, and the unending whiteness was playing havoc with his colour perception.
‘ Diane Fry will get help to us soon,’ he said. ‘ She’ s good at things like that, very efficient. That’s why she made sergeant instead of
‘ , V O
me, I expect. Who wants to be a sergeant, anyway? Who wants a management job shoving paper and dealing with other people’s problems?’
He blinked again. Instead of Lawrence’s blue jacket, he was seeing red. Cooper had met colour blind people who were unable to distinguish between blue and red. But he knew he wasn’t colour blind proper colour perception was one of the physical requirements for joining the police force. Candidates unable to distinguish principal colours and those who sutler from pronounced squints arc unacceptable. It was in the recruitment literature. Anybody could read it on the website.
‘You could do with someone like Diane to run the shop,’ he said. ‘Someone efficient, someone a bit ruthless who would throw out all those old books no one will ever buy that are cluttering the
^ o
place up. You could turn the business round completely. We can rely on Diane. She 11 have help here soon. Very soon.
Red, white and blue. Cooper used the back of his glove to rub his eyes. The colours had to be imaginary. Rut he was seeing both red and blue in the snow. Red, white and blue. Very patriotic. He fumbled for his torch and switched it on. The blue was Lawrence’s
392
jacket, the white was the snow. And the red was the Mood. As it trickled from Lawrence’s body, it was diluting itself from dark arterial red and spreading for a few inches until it thickened and froze, staining the snow pink, like strawberry ice cream.
‘Lawrence, where are you injured? Did you say it was your chest? Have you fallen on something?’
Carefully, with numh ringers, he tried to feel under Lawrence’s hody. He touched metal, a sharp splinter of torn steel.
Cooper stared at Lawrence’s white face, remembering the Irving flying jacket in that upstairs room at the bookshop. An Irving suit was exactly what he needed now to stop the steady leaching away of Lawrence’s body heat as the blood seeped from his wounds. Without their Irving suits, airmen would have died of exposure in a Lancaster bomber on a winter bombing run over Germany. Rear gunners like
o
Sergeant Dick Abbott had suffered frostbite despite their heated suits. Zygrnunt Lukasz had lost two fingers trying to staunch the blood pouring from his cousin’s wounds as they lay in the snow waiting lor rescue. Even now, Cooper could clearly picture the two Polish airmen in their RAH uniforms, lying no more than a few feet from
‘ v o
