at work.
The cat had moved up on him silently and sat watching him from the arm of a chair. When Cooper stroked its fur, he felt the sharp sting of static electricity, and the animal flinched away from his hand. The air was very dry. There would be another frost tonight.
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21
t very morning when Diane Fry opened the door of her car she had to vacuum bits of polystyrene carton and fragments of greasy paper off the floor. She also had to spray air freshener inside until it was so thick she had to open the windows to prevent herself from suffocating. Sunday morning was no exception. The traces of Gavin Murnn lingered all weekend. She was sure MurAn used food as a means of avoiding talking to her when they were in
O O V
the car. Ben Cooper at least had some conversation. He didn’t have to buy a singing lobster to do his talking for him.
This Sunday morning, Fry finished cleaning out her car to find that her mobile was ringing and ringing. It was DI Hitchens.
‘Dianc, you’d better get into the office right away,’ he said. ‘Before the shit hits the fan.’
The Cavendish wasn’t exactly the newest hotel in Edcndalc. There was the Holiday Inn on the roundabout at the end of the relief road, and the Travelodge in Eyre Street. And now there was the recent conversion of the old Conservative Club, with its portraits of Margaret Thatchcr and John Major still hanging on the wall in the bar as historical souvenirs, like the heads of stags
‘ o
that had been shot and stuffed. But the Cavendish was the hotel that had ‘character’, according to the tourist brochures. It was the one where a waiter would bring you a copy of TVie Time; as you relaxed in a leather armchair in the residents’ lounge; it was the one where the Rotary Club held its charity dinners at i80 a head. In front of the hotel, there were iron railings painted green and topped with spikes. In most towns such ironwork had disappeared long ago, ripped up during the Second World War to make weapons. Somehow they had escaped this fate in Edendale.
Ben Cooper found Alison Morrissey waiting for him on the steps of the Cavendish. The morning was cold, but not unpleasant. It felt as though there could be rain at any time,
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which would at least wash away the snow still lying in the gutters
and on the hillsides rising out of the town.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure you would. I
didn’t think they would let you.’
‘I’m off duty today. I can do what I like.’
‘You can probably guess what I’m going to say.’
‘Yes. But the reason I came is that I don’t want there to be
any misunderstanding.’
‘Misunderstanding? I’ve had to accept that the Derbyshire
police weren’t going to offer any assistance. I hadn’t realized
you would actively try to interfere and obstruct me.’
V v v
‘That isn’t the case,’ said Cooper.
‘No? You visited the Lukasx family before I could get to them. And then you went to sec Mr Rowland. Don’t try to tell me it’s a coincidence. You’re trying to thwart me. Your chiefs don’t want me to talk to these people. They’d like me to get so frustrated that I ^ivc up and go back home. They’ve sent you to hinder me, to make sure that happens.’
Cooper felt himself shuffling his feet with embarrassment and tried to pretend that he was stamping them against the cold.
‘I’ve had no instructions to do anything like that/ he said.
‘No?’ Alison hesitated. ‘But you’re the man to do it, aren’t you? You talk the same language as these people. Every time you get there before I do, you make me seem so much more of an alien. They hear my accent and they shut up, like I’m a foreign spy. You’d think it was still wartime as far as they’re concerned. Careless talk costs lives. They’re still carrying the motto with them. Don’t they know we w^ere on their side?
‘It isn’t like that,’ said Cooper. ‘They’re naturally reticent people. You have to work a bit harder to get them to talk to you.’
‘Yeah? It seems to me they’re still living in the war. Suspicious isn’t the word.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’re the one obsessed with the war. It’s been over a very long time. Long before you and I were born.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Alison. ‘It isn’t over for me. It won’t be over until I And out what happened to my grandfather.’
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They looked at each other for a moment. Where they stood, on the corner near the Cavendish Hotel, there was an icy wind blowing round the stone walls. He saw Morrissey shiver. But then her mood changed suddenly, and she smiled.
‘Well, you have to let me buy you a drink, at least. No argument,’ she said. ‘Where can we go - is there somewhere near?’
They went into the Wheatshcaf, where, to Cooper’s surprise, Alison Morrissey asked tor a pint of cider. Cooper realized that he didn’t have to drive home any more when he was in town, and he ordered a pint of Derbyshire Drop. It was one of the strong local beers, its label a tribute to the original name for the unique semi-precious mineral Blue John, which attracted so many tourists to the Peak District.
‘I’ve asked for the Sunday lunch menu, too,’ said Morrissey. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘I can’t let you pay for me,’ he said.
