‘Thank you.’ Cooper nodded at the attendant and watched him cover the Snowman’s face. The Snowman had been travelling, and he seemed to be unknown locally or in neighbouring areas. He wondered whether Gavin Murhn had contacted Europol yet.
‘Mrs Lukasz, did you happen to notice whether this man had an accent at all?’
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Grace Lukas/. rubbed her hands on the wheels of her chair and looked up at her husband. ‘He didn’t say much, so I couldn’t tell.’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘He asked if Mr Lukasx was at home. That was all.’ She turned away, and they began to head tor the exit.
‘Rut which Mr Lukasz did he want?’ said Cooper.
Grace stopped. Her back was towards him, her shoulders tense. Her husband stepped behind her to push the wheclchair. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Rut Peter wasn’t home, and 1 couldn’t let him bother Zygmunt.’
Cooper frowned at their backs, irritated by their apparent lack of imagination, their readiness to ignore the possibilities.
‘It didn’t occur to you that he might be looking for
‘But Andrew had already gone,’ said Peter.
‘Exactly.’
On her way home to her Hat in Grosvenor Avenue, Diane Fry called at the shop on the corner of Castlcton Road. It was run by a Pakistani family, who were unfailingly polite to her, whatever mood she was in. Some days, she left the shop feeling guilty that she had failed to respond to their kindness. But those were the days when Edendalc was the last place she wanted to be, anvwav.
^ v
Fry had bought a bottle of milk and a frozen pepperoni pizxa. Near the counter, she picked up some newspapers, in case there was nothing on TV tonight that she could bear to watch. She
o o
had lived alone for a long time, but she was hardened to it. She was able to hold back the tide of loneliness quite easily now, as lon^ as there were no people around. The difficult times were when she heard the students who lived in the other flats laughing and calling to each other, coming back from the pub with their Iriends and playing music as they sat around putting the world right. That was when she needed all her strength. It was clear to her that Ren Cooper would not be able to cope with living alone. He had no idea what it was like.
When she reached the Hat, Fry glanced at the local papers
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while she heated up the pi//a and boiled the kettle. The first thing she realized was that the Canadian woman, Alison Morrissey, had been to the newspapers.
The Eden Valley Times had done a full-page feature on her; so had the Ruxton Advertiser. There had been items in the city papers, too, the Sheffield Star and the Manchester Evening News. Each of them carried pictures of the woman herself. Fry recognized her immediately as the woman she had seen talking to Ben Cooper at Underbank.
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20
Den Cooper awoke on Saturday morning thinking of Marie Tcnnent. Me had been dreaming that his limbs had fro/en together, that frostbite had eaten through the membranes of his ears and nose, and that his eyes would never open again. But finally they did open, and he saw his bedroom. It was the same bedroom he had slept in nearly all his life.
lie pulled back a corner of the curtain at his window. The room looked out on to the yard at the back of the farmhouse, and above it a steep hill that was covered in dark conifers until the top hundred feet, where the moors burst through. In his childhood, he had peopled those wooded slopes with all sorts of imaginary beasts and adventures. He had followed his brother Matt into many scrapes that had been terrifying and exciting in equal measures. 1 he memory gave him only a small pang of regret at the thought of leaving it behind.
Though the yard was pitch-dark, Cooper could see there would be no more snow this morning. The black sky was full of stars that were piercingly bright. Ihcre would be ice lying on
I t- - c- L>
the1 moors, just as there was on the night Marie Tennent died. Tor a moment, he tried to put himself inside Marie’s mind, struggling to grasp the compulsion that had driven her up to the top of Irontongue Hill in the worst possible weather. Had it really been a need to cover the bones of a long-dead bab, wrapping it against the cold that it would never feel?
Cooper shook his head. He knew it was one of those things he would never be able to understand, even if Marie had been here now to explain it to him in her own words. There was too much emotion in it, and too little logic.
On Monday, Marie Tennent would not be his first priority, though a copy of her file still sat on his desk. How much time was he likely to get to spend on her? Maybe he would have to shelve her altogether, until there was more time, or her baby was found, or the pathologist got round to a postmortem
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examination. He added Marie to a long list of frustrations, cases where he was powerless to help. On Monday morning, the Snowman would again be the main priority, because postmortem results had identified him as a murder victim. He was urgent and important.
Today, though, it was Saturday, and Cooper was off duty. Today it was time for him to leave Bridge End Farm. It didn’t take him long to pack his possessions.
‘I’ve got the pick-up ready/ said his brother Matt over breakfast. ‘I’ll give you a hand to load up.’
‘There isn’t all that much to take,’ said Cooper. ‘The flat’s furnished, so I don’t need much furniture. And it’s surprising how little stuff I’ve collected over the years, when I look.’
‘What about your guns?’
‘I’ll have to leave them behind. They’ll have to stay in the cabinet here. I’ve got nowhere to keep them.’
‘It’ll be the competition again soon, Ben. You should be practising.’
‘I know.’
Matt sat and looked at him helplessly. Neither of them knew what to say. Matt got up from the table so that he
