so that he Celt as though his knuckles were scraping against sandpaper.
He stopped at the bottom and looked around the yard. Last week’s snow had lingered here because no sun ever reached the
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yard, at any time of day. The backs of buildings were all around it, and they were too high to allow any sun through at this time of year. There was a pink glow behind the buildings in the east as the sun rose, but it only made their outlines darker, their shadows longer, so that they almost seemed to meet here in this yard, like old men leaning towards each other to whisper their secrets. They might have been saying: ‘Have you seen Baby Chloe?’
Black cast-iron drainpipes formed an intricate spider’s web on the back walls of the buildings, and a large part of Edendale’s starling population was clustered on the edges of the guttering, chattering at the sunrise over the rooftops.
Cooper followed the paw prints of the cat that had walked through the fresh snow in the yard. It had crossed the tracks of the birds, but hadn’t paused - presumably the birds were long gone by the time it arrived. Starlings weren’t very bright, but they knew enough to make themselves scarce when there was a cat around. The prints went almost the full width of the yard, then veered awav towards one of the snowcovered mounds. Cooper scraped some snow of! it. It was a wheel, and part of an undercarriage leg. He caught a whiff of an acidic smell. There was a yellow stain at the base of the wheel, and a spattering of small, melted holes in the surface of the snow, where the cat had marked its territory. Then the animal had walked towards the next object and had circled it for a while, before leaping to the top and from there on to the wall and away into the adjoining yard.
It was easy to sec what the object was. The barrels of two rusted Vickers machine guns poked through the snow from a domed shape like a giant helmet. It was a gun turret. Cooper touched the end of one of the barrels, and found it moved slightly on its pivot, dislodging a few inches of snow that slid slowly from the Pcrspcx hood. Through the hole he had made in the snow, he could see the gunner’s seat and something dark thrown over it.
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Behind him, members of the task force were backing a Land Rover through the gates and unloading shovels to clear the snow. The vehicle’s exhaust fumes began to Oil the yard, and the reek of them overlaid the cool, clean smell of the snow.
Cooper couldn’t wait for the orderly progression of the search. He wanted to know what was inside the gun turret, what items had been left behind in the confines of the same kind of prison in which Sergeant Dick Abbott had died on board Sugar Uncle Victor. Maybe there was another Irving jacket like the one he had seen in the upstairs room; maybe there was a parachute harness, a flying helmet, or some other personal piece of equipment that he could hold in his hands, hoping it would tell him the story of the man who had lived and fought, and perhaps died, in this cramped space.
The area he had cleared wasn’t quite wide enough for him to see inside properly. Cooper wiped his hand across the Perspcx of the turret, so that another patch of snow broke away and landed on his boots, with a faint swish and a crunch. He had trouble for a moment because of the water that streaked and blurred on the Perspex. But soon it pooled and ran away down the curved surface, and be^an to drip quietly into the snow.
The sound of the dripping water seemed to absorb Cooper’s concentration, so that the noise of the officers behind him and the revving Land Rover engine retreated from him and became no more than distant intrusions on the edge of his hearing. He had to drag his attention away from the dripping sound and back to the blurred window he had made in the Perspex.
It was only then that he saw the eyes.
Grace Lukasz took the wafer in her mouth and closed her eyes as she sipped the wine. The body of Christ lay on her tongue, His blood dampened her lips. Christ had given His life, a voluntary sacrifice. But Grace also knew the Old Testament story of the Scapegoat, which had been forced to take the sins of the tribe on itself and had been driven into the wilderness. Not all sacrificial victims were willing.
Andrew had always been hot-headed, stubborn, a chip off the old block, the old people said. He was more like Zygmunt than
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Peter. He had the same stubborn jaw, the same blue eyes, the same capacity for singlc-mindedness. But Andrew was different in one important matter his desire was for money. She’d understood that, at least. She understood that it was Andrew that Zygmunt meant when he talked about vultures. Peter had been forced to choose between them — and he had chosen Zygmunt, choosing his origins rather than his future.
Grace would have to make herself feel glad. There was no other way of facing it. It was the time of forgiveness, for reconciliation. The sacrifice had been made, and now there would be peace in the family. This morning, Peter had looked content. Not happy, perhaps, but less haunted. She had always been the one accused of living in the past. But there was no one like these Polish families for that, no one like these old men clinging to their wartime memories, their gnarled hands grasping so tightly at remembrance of the time when they were needed so badly, a time when they had a role in life. A time when they had an enemy to fight.
Grace knew that Detective Constable Cooper was sitting at the back of the church. He hadn’t come forward to the altar for Communion, but had stayed in his seat watching. He looked like a boy who could be helped by faith, if he could only let God into his life. He was about the same age as Andrew, too. She felt the beginnings of a tear fill the corner of her eve. She
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felt for a tissue in the pocket of her skirt. The young people these days knew nothing except their own concerns. They had not learned the value of perspective. They cared only for their own short-term personal interest. They did not know that a small sacrifice could be for the greater good.
She eased her whcclchair away from the end of the pew and turned it in the aisle. The squeak of the wheels on the strip of carpet in the aisle sounded too loud. Members of the congregation turned to watch her as she propelled herself to the side door and wheeled down the ramp into the churchyard.
Ben Cooper was conscious of the faces turned in his direction as people watched her leave. He waited until the attention of the congregation had settled back on to the priest, then he slipped
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out, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could. He was glad to be out of the church and back in the cold air. It had
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a purer, cleaner feel to it that was closer to his own idea of something sacred. He saw that Grace Lukasx hadn’t gone far. Her wheelchair was on the path between the gravestones, close to where the giant figure of the Black Madonna and child was built into the outside wall of the church.
Mrs Lukasy. didn’t look around, but had heard him approaching. ‘Will you take me back to the bungalow? Peter was going to come for me, but he’ll be a while vet.
‘Of course/
