Malkin’s face contorted again. ‘Oh yes,’ he said.
Cooper misunderstood him at first. He thought Malkin was agreeing with him. But there was something about the tone of the man’s voice, an abruptness that choked the words in his throat.
‘Mr Malkin?’
‘He came to the surface when the ice began to melt,’ said Malkin. ‘Pour davs later.’
‘You saw him?’
‘Not at first. The ice gradually began to get thinner so thin that we could see through it when we stood at the top of the reservoir wall. On the third day, we saw him. He was floating on his back, staring up at us, with his face squashed up against the ice. It was like he was pulling faces at us, sticking out his tongue to say that he had got the better of us, after all.’
‘So what did you do about the body? Didn’t you tell your father?’
Malkin laughed. ‘Not bloody likely. He’d have beaten us black and blue with his belt and locked us in the coal shed for telling lies. And then he would have told the police. We thought we’d be put in prison for murder. Because we believed we AaJ murdered him, see. It was our fault he died.’
‘But if the body had been left there, it would have been found eventually.’
‘Nobody found it, because we sent it back down to the bottom.
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There was a little rowing boat that was kept by the reservoir. We took it and tilled it with stones, and we took our dad’s fishing net from his shed. He noticed it was gone one day, hut he blamed some gypsies who’d been hanging around.’
Cooper was starting to feel wet and uncomfortable. He almost wished he could see Irontongue Hill. At least the black buttress of rock would have been something solid and familiar. Yet together, Irontonguc and the Malkin boys had been the end of Danny McTcague.
‘We tied the ends of the net to the airman’s body,’ said Malkin. ‘We tied it to his flying suit, his parachute harness, wherever we could. Then we filled it with stones and we threw it over the side. We didn’t think he was going to sink at first, then his face stopped staring at us, and the stones pulled him down to the bottom, and all that was left were some bubbles. 1 kept looking, in case he came back up. I kept looking for months, even when the summer came. I spent so much time sitting staring at this reservoir that my dad thought 1 was turning peculiar. But the dead airman never came back up.’
‘We’ll have to send divers into the reservoir to look for the remains,’ said Cooper. ‘We might have to drain it.’
‘Not much point in that,’ said Malkin. ‘They drained the reservoir thirty-five years ago.’
‘But…’
‘It was old and leaking by then, so they emptied it to put a concrete lining on the bottom. It’s been drained twice more since, for maintenance. You don’t just let a reservoir alone for sixty years, you know — it’d be so full of holes it wouldn’t hold a drop of water. And what would be the good of that?’
Cooper wondered whether he had been spun a complete yarn. But Malkin wasn’t laughing. His face was almost grey, and he made no attempt to wipe away the moisture that was settling on his checks as the mist gathered around them.
‘Mr Malkin, are you telling me the truth?’ said Cooper. ‘Orwas that some childish fantasy you had at the time?’
‘Every word I’m telling you is true. But time passes, and things change. A body doesn’t stay a body for ever, not in water, not with fish and things nibbling away at it. By the time they drained
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the reservoir, there would only have keen a few bits of hone and some rags buried in the mud on the bottom. Have you ever seen a reservoir when it’s emptied? The mud is three teet deep on the bottom. Disgusting the smell is, too.’
‘Yes, I remember the year there was a drought and all the reservoirs started to dry up. You could smell them for miles.’
‘It was worse than that. It was foul enough to knock your head
O V
off. They scooped the mud out and tipped it into lorries. Nobody bothered to sift through it to rind any bodies they wanted to get it away as quick as they could. It all got tipped into a landfill site, over where Rents Quarry used to be. Later they put some top soil over it, and levelled it off. It grassed over nicely in a year or two it makes a decent bit of grazing now. In fact, it’s the pasture Rod Whittaker uses for his sheep.’
Malkin pointed back across the moor towards Hollow Shaw Farm, where Cooper could make out a scatter of white shapes among the remaining patches of snow.
‘That’s where your missing pilot is,’ said Malkin. ‘He’s helping to teed those ewes.’
Cooper gaxed at the sheep. One of the animals lifted its head and stared back at him. Its jaws were rotating steadily, and it had a look of sullen insolence on its black face. Cooper felt an irrational surge of anger. It had been such a long way to come, only to end with a field full of sheep.
‘There’s something I’ve often wondered since then,’ said Malkin. ‘What do you think the folk of Manchester would have said, if they’d known what was in their drinking water?’
Finally, the first patrol car bounced up the potholed road from Harrop. It had its headlights on as it climbed into the mist. George Malkin put his coat on, and walked with Cooper towards the car. ‘The Morrissev woman did you trust her?’ said Malkin.
./ v
‘ Of course. I know some of her facts were w rong,’ said Cooper. ‘Frank Rainc gave her false information.’
‘That’s not what I meant at all. She’s known since Tuesday night how her grandfather died. She came here to ask me about the medal, so I told her.’
Cooper stopped suddenly. ‘The medal?’
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‘I picked it up on the moor the night of the crash. It was in a little leather pouch, but with all the excitement ahout the money and
