‘Probably. What did you take, then?’
Malkin pulled the box towards him and poked through its contents. ‘There arc some newspaper cuttings here, if you want to see them.’
‘I’ve seen most of them already, I think.’
‘Fair enough.’ He continued to fumble. ‘I think it’s here somewhere. Ah yes. This is the only thing I’ve kept.’ He produced a round metal object with a blackened casing. Cooper had expected some unidentifiable part of the aircraft superstructure, but this seemed more familiar.
‘It looks like a watch,’ he said.
‘Yes, it is.’ Malkin slid the cover away. The blackened lace wasn’t metal after all, but glass fused by intense heat. Underneath, the lace of the timepiece was pretty well intact, though the metal frame had buckled slightly and there was a scorch mark below the figure twelve. The hands had stopped a fraction short of ten to eleven.
‘Ten forty-nine,’ he said. ‘That was the exact time the Lancaster crashed.’
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‘You mean one of the crew was wearing this watch when the aircraft crashed?’
‘I expect so. I found it lying in the peat, half-buried. I didn’t show it to my uncle or anyone, just shoved it in my pocket and took it avvav with me. I only ever showed it to led and to my pals at school. Do you think it would he worth much?’
‘It was from the body of a dead man,’ said Cooper.
‘That was what gave it a bit of excitement,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see? The most exciting things are the ones you know are wrong.’
Cooper looked back at the photograph of the eight-year-old boy, while Malkin continued to finger the broken watch. The knowing expression on the boy’s face as he leaned against the wrecked propeller gave him an uncomfortable feeling.
Malkin noticed his expression as he stared at the photo. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I already had it in my pocket when my uncle took that snap.’
Cooper put the picture back carefully in the box. ‘It was you and your brother who saw the airman?’ he said. ‘The one who disappeared?’
‘Yes, you’re right. Who told you that?’
‘It’s in the reports. Did the police interview you?’
‘Aye, a bobby came here the day after the crash. We’d told our dad about seejng the airman, and he reported it to the local police station. Everybody round here was talking about it by then.’
‘Tell me where you saw the airman, Mr Malkin. What did he look like?’
‘Nay, I can’t tell you that it was dark. He was in a Hying suit, that’s all 1 know, with his leather helmet and all. He had a torch, and we saw him going along the road that runs round the reservoir and off down the hill. It comes out near the old toll cottage on the Crowden road.’
‘Can you show me?’
‘I’ll point you to it,’ said Malkin.
They went back outside and walked back along the wall towards Cooper’s car. The sheep munched and snorted quietly in the field.
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‘Look at that,’ said Malkin, waving a hand at the Held as if it had keen bright daylight rather than the true darkness of the countryside. ‘Good, rich land, that is. The best grazing (or miles. It used to he a quarry years ago, hut they hlled it in. 7low these Swaledales are prized tor miles around lor their meat. They produce the tastiest lamh chops in Derbyshire, my mate Rod says. If you like, I’ll get you a couple.’
‘Thanks. This reservoir road …’
Malkin pointed into the darkness. ‘Over yonder. Can you see the line of the wall, with a hi! of a gate and a hawthorn bush?’
‘just about,’ said Cooper, though all he could distinguish was the general direction the other man was pointing in.
‘That’s where the water board road runs. It has a locked gate on it now, but it was only a bit of a dirt track in those days, just made tor the maintenance men to get up to the reservoir. I bet that airman was glad to find it, though. He would have had to hike across the snow from Irontongue, and it must have taken him an hour in the dark, I bet. Ted and me, we went along the reservoir wall to get up near the crash we could see the fire burning from the house. I suppose we wouldn’t ever have seen the airman if he hadn’t been waving a torch around all over the
o
place. Aye, but we heard him.’ ‘Heard him? Was he shouting?’
o
‘Singing,’ said Malkin.
Cooper stared at him. He couldn’t sec anything of Malkin’s face at all under the cap and the earflaps, but from his voice he didn’t sound as though he were joking.
‘Sin^m^? Singing what, Mr Malkin?’
‘As I recall, it was “Show Me the Way to Go Home”.’
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10
INext morning, Ben Cooper was on duty early again. As soon as he arrived, he went to check out the morning’s action iorms for the Snowman enquiry. With no one in yet to allocate the jobs, he might get ?,vay with picking out something interesting. He could say he thought he ought to get on with it, since he was in early. That was something the snow could be thanked lor — everybody was arriving at work after him these days. The only people in the station were those on the late shift, who would be going home soon, and the
