c?
to get across.’
‘He must already have keen exhausted by the time he got to the reservoir,’ said Cooper.
‘Aye. He would never have suspected. But on the other side, near the weir, the water was still moving and the ice was thin, not enough to carry a man’s weight. By the morning, there was barely a crack on the surface where he had fallen in. You know, that bloke had been over Germany, got back home and walked away from a crashed plane. Then he put his life in the hands of two young bovs. And we let him die.’
Cooper knew that his own imagination could not match what Malkin was going through. The man had been over the events of that night too manv times.
o ^
“I always thought he would come back and haunt us out here, on the moor,’ said Malkin. ‘At nights, he does come back. But only in my nightmares.’
Cooper stared towards the reservoir, where it lav in a hollow between the snowcovered hills. He nodded, thinking not of Malkin nor even of Danny McTeague, but of Zygmunt Lukasz.
‘No forgiving. No forgetting,’ he said.
And suddenly, Malkin snapped. His face reddened and the veins stood out in his forehead, twisting his face into an unrecognizable expression.
‘Do you think I want to remember this?’ he said. ‘Don’t you
y v
think I’ve re-lived it often enough already since the night it happened? How many times do you think I’ve had the nightmare in that time? How many?’
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‘I don’t know/ said Cooper.
‘How many nights in fifty-seven years?’ said Malkin. ‘Work it out for yourself, clever lad.’
George Malkin turned and began to walk back towards the farm. Ben Cooper felt for his radio. Should he call in? But it was ridiculous — this was surely an accidental death, fifty-seven years old. The witness had been an eight-year-old boy. After all that had happened recently, everyone would think he had finally gone mad if he made a drama out of it. Then he saw that Malkin wasn’t heading for the house, but towards the big shed where Rod Whittaker kept his lorry. Malkin slid back the doors and disappeared inside.
‘Mr Malkin?’ called Cooper. He began to feel foolish standing in the Held. He started to run towards the shed as he heard a dicscl engine rumble into life. Cooper peered inside. The DAP wasn’t there, but the big Renault tractor was, along with all its implements lined up against the wall — a hay baler, a harrow, a snowplough blade. George Malkin was sitting high up in the cab of the tractor.
‘Mr Malkin!’ shouted Cooper. ‘Do you help Rod Whittaker with his contracting business, too?’
‘Nay, I don’t have an HGV licence/ Malkin called back.
‘You can drive this tractor, though.’
Cooper saw Malkin put the tractor into gear. He dodged round to the side and pulled himself up on to the step to clamber through the passenger door.
‘You said Rod Whittaker is contracted by the council. His contract includes clearing the snow sometimes, I bet. It’s much cheaper for the council to pay farmers and local contractors to do it, rather than buy expensive snowploughs of their own.’
‘Avc/ said Malkin, as the tractor began to move.
v ‘ ‘ O
‘So you could take this tractor out with the snowplough attachment, when it’s needed to clear the roads around here?’
‘I suppose I could.’
The tractor bumped across the yard and headed for the open gate on to the moor. Cooper remembered his visit to the Snake Inn, where the staff had said that one of the snowplough crews
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had stopped to fill their Masks on the morning Nick Easton’s body had been found. But only one crew. They said the crews that came over the Pass from the north weren’t council workers — they were on contract, so it was in their own interests to get the job done quicker. And one of them had been a big tractor with a snowplough. Very early on the job, it was. It would have come over from somewhere near Glossop, they said. It could easily have come from Harrop.
‘You could get as far as the Snake Inn, couldn’t you?’ said Cooper over the roar of the engine. ‘Nobody would think twice about a snowplough on the road after it had been closed to traffic. The staff at the inn didn’t. They never saw or heard any other vehicles just the snowploughs coming down the Pass, and then, later on, another one coming up. The one that found Nick Easton’s body. And I think one of those that came down left him there.’
Blackbrook Reservoir appeared ahead of them in the mist. Malkin swung the wheel and reversed through the wet peat towards a padlocked gate.
‘Stop,’ said Cooper.
‘Don’t worry. I’m stopping.’
Malkin kept the engine running while he climbed down and swung open the gate. Cooper stood clear of the tractor’s wheels, noticing that the padlock on the gate had been cut.
‘You helped Frank Baine get rid of the body,’ said Cooper. ‘Did Baine have some kind of hold over you?’
‘No, that’s not right/ said Malkin.
He backed the tractor tow ards the edge of the reservoir, where a concrete slipway ran down into the water. Then Malkin riddled with something at the back of the vehicle, and Cooper saw he had hold of a thick chain with a massive hook on one end. He watched in amazement as Malkin waded into the freezing water and was
