Ky the time he rang the bell, the face of the woman had disappeared from the window, though he hadn’t seen her stand up. He saw movement through the glass panels of the door, and then realized why the woman hadn’t stood up. She was in a wheelchair.
Cooper introduced himself, and showed his identification,
interested by the woman’s nervous manner. She relaxed, though.
&
when she discovered who he was and why he had come. She
y
almost pulled him into the hallway of the bungalow and closed the door behind him. Then she leaned forward in her chair to fiddle with a draught excluder shaped like an elongated sausage dog.
‘If you wouldn t mind taking your shoes off,’ she said. ‘There are some spare slippers in the cupboard.’
The heat in the bungalow was already bringing Cooper out
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in prickles of sweat under his coat. The difference between this and Hollow Shaw Farm was like getting on a plane in Iceland and stepping off in tropical Africa. Grace Lukasz was wearing a cream sweater and slacks, managing to look both comfortable and smart. While he put on the slippers, Cooper looked at the passages going off the hallway in two directions. It was certainly a large bungalow. Four bedrooms, at least. He wondered what Piotr Lukasz did lor a living.
O
‘I’m not at all sure,’ said Mrs Lukasx,. ‘It’s just that the description sounded similar. And since the police were appealing tor help …’
‘Quite right. We always welcome the public’s help.’ She tilted her head slightly to one side to look at him, an amused smile on her face. She wasn’t one to be easily fooled. Cooper could see that she had been an attractive woman, too. Still was, for anybody who saw past the wheelchair. She had no trace of an accent. That didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t of Polish origin herself, but he was working on the assumption that she was English and that she was Zvgmunt
I O JO
Lukasz’s daughter-in-law.
‘Have you found out who he is yet?’ she said.
Cooper was taken aback to find that Mrs Lukasz had seized the initiative in asking the questions. He was forgetting what he was here for, speculating too much about the old airman who had flown on Sugar Uncle Victor. He knew himself well enough to understand that a thing like this could become an obsession, if he wasn’t careful. But he very much wanted to sec Zygmunt Lukasz, to compare him to the photographs in the book, to see whether he was the young man who had seemed to communicate with him across those hftv-scven years.
‘No, we haven’t, Mrs Lukas/. That’s what I was hoping you might be able to help us with.’
‘I see.’
She seemed irrationally disappointed. ‘But he didn’t tell me his name, I’m afraid. He came to the house, but I sent him awav.’
‘When was this again?’
‘Monday morning. I rang yesterday, after I heard it on the news. You’ve taken a long time coming, haven’t you?’
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‘We have a lot of people to speak to,’ said Cooper.
He suddenly got the feeling he was being watched from another part of the room. He looked round and met the sceptical eye of a blue and green parrot. It had its head cocked at him in almost the same way as its owner.
“I thought he was selling insurance or replacement windows/ said Mrs Lukasz. ‘We get so many of them here. I knew he wasn’t a Jehovah, of course.’
‘Oh?’
‘They stopped coming when they found out we were Catholics. It’s a shame. I always hoped I might have been able to convert one of them.’
‘The man who came to the house on Monday,’ said Cooper, ‘he didn’t say what he wanted?’
“I didn’t give him a chance,’ said Mrs Lukasz. ‘I don’t want to be sitting on the doorstep in the cold, arguing with salesmen. I nearly sent you packing, too, but I could sec you weren’t selling anything. Not in that coat.’ Cooper fumbled with his pen, embarrassed by the double stare
from the woman and the parrot. ‘Could you give me a descrip—
i v o r
tion of him, please? As much detail as you can remember.’
Grace Lukasz gave him the description succinctly. It fitted the Snowman exactly, down to the shoes. She was an observant woman, for somebody who hadn’t even given the man a chance to speak.
‘Did he have a car?’
‘Not that I saw/
‘Did you notice which way he came from, or which way he went when he left?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Is there anybody else in the household I might ask, Mrs Lukasz?’
She hesitated and began to look suspicious again. Cooper almost brought out his ID tor a second time, just tor its reassurance value.
‘His car might have been parked somewhere else in the Crescent,’ she said. Try our neighbours. I expect he went down the whole street if he was selling something.’
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I’ll
