‘Your nephew.’
‘Has there been an accident? Has there been a lire at the shop? I always warned him that he was working in a death trap. All those books it only needed some thoughtless person to drop a cigarette end or a match, and the whole lot would go up, I told him.’
‘Nothing like that, Mrs Shelley. Could we come in for a moment? It would be better than standing on the doorstep.’
‘Oh, yes. Would you like some tea?’
‘It might be an idea to put the kettle on, but we’ll do it.’
‘Why on earth would you do that? I’m quite capable of putting the kettle on.’
‘I think this might be a bit of a shock for you.’
Mrs Shelley stared at them, her mouth moving slightly as she tried to pu//le out what they was saving. In a moment, Cooper expected her to ask him about the cat.
‘He can’t be dead,’ she said. ‘That isn’t possible. Not both of them.’
‘Both of them?’ said Fry. ‘Both of who?’
‘I’ll make that tea,’ said Cooper.
He was glad to find that the dog, Jasper, was outside the back door rather than in the kitchen. His yapping sounded peevish and demanding. Cooper was getting used to being in other people’s kitchens — Marie Tennent’s, full of nappies and bottles of sterili/ing fluid; Walter Rowland’s, sparse and utilitarian; Lawrence’s little cubbyhole at the bookshop; even his own kitchen next door at number 8, which he had not yet got used to.
And it ought really to have been the kitchen at number 8 that Mrs Shelley’s reminded him of they were the same lavout, with a similar view out on to the overgrown gardens. But of all the kitchens he had been in, it was Marie Tennent’s he was reminded of. It didn’t take him long to find out why.
Down at the end of the room, in the alcove that was occupied in his own flat by a new chest Irec/er, there was an incongruous piece of furniture. It didn’t belong in a kitchen at all. But it went
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with the smells, which he now realized were what had put him in mind of Marie Tennent’s house in the first place. The smells had transported him instantly to Dam Street, as if he had opened a door and stepped hack into Marie’s hallway on that day nearly a week ago. It was a trick of the memory, a sense of <A^a u. Except that here he had in front of him the one item that had keen so obviously missing from any room in Marie Tennent’s home.
‘What am I going to do with her?’ said Mrs Shelley plaintively, coming into the kitchen hehind him. ‘Jasper is so jealous of the attention she’s getting — that’s why he never stops harking. And if Lawrence is dead, he won’t he coming back tor her, will he?’
‘No, Mrs Shelley. And I don’t think her mother will he, either.’
Cooper stood looking down into the cot. The baby’s eyes were open, hut she lay with her hands curled into fists and her
face flushed bright red. She was lying very still indeed. Then the
C* y c* ^
pupils of her eves moved, as if she were trying to see something
I 1 v ‘ .10 6
a long way off, and her forehead creased in puzzlement.
Finally, she seemed to become aware of Cooper’s face. And Raby Chloe smiled.
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36
lypically, the Peak District weather had changed completely within forty-eight hours. Once the thaw had begun, it had accelerated so last that the last traces of snow were almost gone by Thursday, apart from a few frozen streaks in the deep gullies on the moors. Water cascaded off the hills and the rivers were swollen, threatening to hurst their hanks.
Ben Cooper drove out of Edendale on dark, wet roads, remembering how different the Snake Pass had looked on the day he had gone up to the wreckage of Sugar Uncle Victor with Sergeant Caudwell. The snow had still been pristine then, and the reflection of the sun off the hillsides had been so bright it had hurt his eyes.
Now, in the yard behind Eden Valley Books, there would be water running off the gun turret and the engine casings in rivulets, dripping and crackling as the snow melted. The body of Andrew Lukasx had long since been removed, though not without
o ‘ o
difficulty. His limbs had been folded to get him into the turret, and rigor mortis had made the pathologist wonder whether his arms would have to be dislocated to pet him out. But they had
o y
managed. And when they turned the bodv over, they had seen
O v V ‘ ^
the blood that had soaked into the scat, and the injury to the back of Andrew’s head.
Cooper felt sorry for LawTence Daley. His partners had made sure he was implicated in the death of Andrew Lukasz. With no Lawrence to testify against them, it was going to be very difficult proving whether it had been deliberate or an accident when Andrew had ended up at the foot of the fire-escape stairs. It might be true that they had simply opened the door to show him the yard. There had been ice for days, and snow had fallen by then. So did Andrew just lose his footing? Or had it been the only way that Baine and his friends could prevent him from meeting Nick Easton next day?
When he had visited the bookshop with Diane Fry to look at
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the upstairs room, Cooper had even stood at the top of the lire escape himself and looked down into the yard. Andrew Lukasz’s hody had already been there, waiting (or the snow to clear enough so that it could he removed. Yes, poor Lawrence. He had never really known what he was getting himself involved in.
