certainly do that.’
‘Will you let me know who he was when you find out?’
Again, Grace Lukas/ had taken him by surprise. But she was waiting expectantly lor his answer, as if the information should be part of their deal. It was understandable, he supposed, that she should want to know who the man was who had been on her doorstep and had died shortly afterwards.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we like to get as much corroboration as possible. So while I’m here …’
‘Well, my husband is home at the moment,’ she said. ‘And there’s my father-in-law. But neither of them saw him.’
‘Perhaps we could check with them, to be sure. It would be very helpful.’
Mrs Lukas/ seemed almost to be laughing. ‘Come this way.’
She led him down a passage to the back of the bungalow,
I o o ‘
where, she knocked on a door and called a name. Cooper noticed that she called ‘Peter’, not Piotr, as her husband was listed in the electoral register. A man came out, and Cooper caught a glimpse of a bright conservatory full of plants. Lukas/ had dark hair and long, slim fingers, which he wiped on a cloth. His eyes looked rather tired.
‘No, I didn’t see him,’ said Lukas/ stiffly when he was asked. But Cooper was getting the same feeling that he’d had from the man’s wile. With each of them, there was that brief moment when they might have answered differently, but held something back.
‘Are you quite sure, sir?’
‘Yes, I’m certain,’ said Lukas/.. ‘I wasn’t even at home by then. I’m a consultant in the Accident and Emergency Department at the hospital, and I’d stayed late that morning because we had a crisis.’
‘I believe your father lives here also.’ ‘I don’t think he would be able to help you.’ Cooper was considering how hard he could risk pushing his luck, when the doorbell rang. He heard Grace Lukas/ go back into the hall to answer it. Automatically, Cooper turned towards the front door. So he was standing in plain view next to Peter Lukas/ when Grace opened it.
114
And then he wished he had been standing somewhere else at
o
that moment, anywhere else at all. Waiting on the doorstep of the Lukasz bungalow were Frank Baine and Alison Morrissey.
‘We need some clothes/ said DI Paul Kitchens. ‘Otherwise, all we have are the hare tacts.’
There were photos of the Snowman pinned to a board behind the two DCIs. There was no hope of an identification yet. One idea being considered was the production of an artist’s impression of the dead man, to be reproduced in the papers and on the local television news, and for officers to show to drivers at checkpoints on the A57. Motorists had already been stopped, but nobody could recall seeing a man walking along the roadside with a blue bag, or a vehicle parked in the lay-by where the Snowman’s body had been found. A picture might make all the difference to their memories.
Dianc Fry thought DCI Kcssen looked as though he hadn’t yet adjusted to the sense of humour in E Division. According to the grapevine, he had not been popular in D Division. The theory was that when the new Detective Superintendent arrived, it would be someone who could keep him from causing too much trouble.
‘So our task for today is to find some clothes,’ said Hitchens. ‘And I’m in charge of the shopping expedition.’
DI I litchcns looked in his element when he was the centre of attention. He stepped up to a map pinned to the wall and tapped it with a ruler. He was pointing to an area to the west o! the lay-by on the A57 where the Snowman had been found. A search of the lay-by itself had recovered plenty of assorted debris from under the snow, but nothing that might have been the contents of the blue bag — unless the Snowman had been in the habit of wearing hub caps and cushion covers.
‘Here’s the place to start,’ said Hitchens. ‘Right below the road here is an abandoned quarry. It’s well within reach of the lay-by and a favourite spot for fly-tippers. This is what you might call the Knightsbridge boutique of our shopping trip. It could have exactly what we want - but it’s difficult to get into.’
Fry didn’t see many officers laughing at the joke. Even DCI Tailby frowned. Since Hitchens had moved in with his new
115
girlfriend to a modern house in Dronficld, he had definitely gone upmarket. It sounded as though he had been dragged off to London at some point to learn what shopping was all about. An inspector’s salary was a nice step up from a mere sergeant’s.
o
‘If the bag was emptied in situ, chances are the contents will be somewhere down here, in the quarry,’ said Hitchens. ‘Unfortunately, when the quarry was abandoned, the owners spared no effort in blocking it off to stop people getting in. I hey piled rocks up in the entrance like they were building the pyramids of Gi/a, and the sides are sheer. I suppose they must have been worried about somebody stealing their leftover millstones.’
Hitchens twirled his ruler happily, as though he were conducting a tune. The two DCIs sat stony-faced at their table.
o ^
refusing to sing.
b o
‘The net result is that there’s no vav we can get into that quarry without the use of heavy machinery,’ said Hitchens. ‘And that would take time not to mention money. Since we have neither, we’re falling back on a bit of good old-fashioned improvisation. To put it bluntly, we’ve decided to use a man with a long rope and a careless disregard for his personal safety.’ Hitchens smiled. ‘Now all we need is a volunteer. Don’t all shout at once.’
Nobody moved. Nobody so much as let his chair creak.
T have some photographs to encourage you,’ said Hitchens.
