the man on the ice, I forgot ahout it until later. Then I found it even had the airman’s name and address on a lahel stitched inside the pouch.
‘Sojoti sent her the medal.’
‘I sent it hack hccause I’d hottlcd the whole thing up long enough. It was when I finally knew that Florence was dying, and I needed to get it off my chest, I suppose. But I didn’t put my name on the letter — I just said 1 was one of those hoys who saw Danny McTcague walking away from the crash.’
Cooper’s face twisted, as a remcmhcrcd taste came to his mouth. It was that hitter, metallic taste, like hlood seeping from his saliva glands, a hittemess that jerked a spasm from his
throat. Alison Morrissev had been to Hollow Shaw after he had
^
let Malkin’s name drop on Tuesday, and since then she had known everything. The following morning she had been on a flight hack to Toronto. Had she been as single-minded as she had claimed? Had she been concerned only with her own ohsession, even as she had kissed him outside the Cavendish Hotel? Alison Morrissev
v
had failed to mention that she had been kissing him goodbye. But Diane Fry had been watching, and she had known. No doubt she thought she had been right about Morrissev all along.
‘It was all for Florence, you know,’ said Malkin. ‘She was the one real treasure that I had in my life, not the monev. 1 carried the guilt with me so long that I grew not to trust anybodv, in case they found out my secret. But Florence was the one person I never felt like that about. 1 trusted her and loved her, and I did what I could for her.’
A PC opened the door of the patrol car and Malkin ducked his head obediently to get in. Rut he paused and turned back towards Cooper.
‘It means a lot if there’s somebodv you can trust,’ he said. ‘Even if they make a mistake now and then, you know they’re genuine about what they do. Somebody like that is rare. If you re a clever lad, you’ll find somebody like that and hold on to them, if you can.’
Cooper stared at George Malkin wordlessly. Now it was really raining, and the sky was hidden somewhere behind grey clouds.
423
Cooper was jjlacl not to be able to sec the sky. He was glad not to he able to see the scornful laces of the sheep. He was particularly ^lacl not to he able to see the tongue-shaped buttress of black rock on the hill, with its reptilian curl and its ridges and crevices. Irontongue had destroyed too many lives. He couldn’t have tolerated its eternal derision.
‘By the way/ said Malkin, ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting the knife.’
He pulled a blade from his pocket and held it out to Cooper. It was very sharp and stained with blood.
‘My God. Hold on, I need to get a bag for it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Malkin. ‘It’s sheep blood. I used it for skinning dead lambs. It’s a messy job, but it had to be done. I couldn’t see the orphans being left without any mothers.’
After Malkin had been driven away, Ben Cooper stood and listened for a moment to the rain dripping through the mist on to the peat moor. The sound was somehow reassuring. It was a totallv natural cadence, a reminder that the world all around him continued as normal, no matter what happened in his own life. I he moisture still condensed in the chilly air as it always had, and the rain drops still smacked against the wet ground, just as they would if he ceased to exist in this moment, if he were to vanish into a little pool of slush like a melted snowman. The rain was one of nature’s primeval forces, oblivious to all human obsessions. The world that Ben Cooper moved in hardly impinged on it.
In the end, the secret of getting through life was to achieve the right perspective. At moments like these, all his own concerns seemed trivial. Back in Edendale, there were difhculties to face, pain to be dealt with, hard things to explain and a lot of work to be done to achieve any kind of reconciliation and forgiveness. But for as long as he could stand here listening to the rain on the moor, those problems and anxieties were so small in the scale of things that they could easilv
C” v v
be overcome; they could even be washed away in the rain. Out here, life was simple and painless.
Cooper nodded to himself. Then he pulled up his collar and turned away from Hollow Shaw Farm. And the sound of the rain on the peat moor slowly faded behind him as he walked back to the car.
424
