Before he could get to the window to release the butterfly, Cooper’s phone rang.
‘Damn.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it,’ said Murfin. ‘You’re on prisoner duty.’
Cooper nodded his thanks, and edged his way around the desks while Murfin reached over for his phone. He was careful not to bring his palms any closer together, for fear of wiping the golden dust from the insect’s wings. His grandfather had told him that wiping the dust off a butterfly’s wings prevented it from flying.
As he arrived at the window, he was half-listening to Murfin’s voice and smiling at his colleague’s telephone manner, which Murfin claimed charmed the old ladies who rang up to complain.
Cooper reached out of the window before opening his
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cupped hands. He watched the Red Admiral hesitate for a moment, resting on his palms. But then it unfolded its wings, flashed its red-and-black pattern in the sunlight, and fluttered away into the warm air.
Satisfied, Cooper turned back to the office and became aware of the silence. Murfin was standing waiting for him, holding the phone out with his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Mr Thorpe,’ he said. ‘William Thorpe’s father.’ Cooper took the phone. Fry went to the window and closed the sash with a thud that hurt his ears.
To reach Rakclov House, Cooper had climbed the 1:4 gradient of Winnats Pass out of Castleton, crawling behind a couple of cars whose drivers didn’t know how to handle the gears on a steep hill. Like many Pennine farms, Rakelow lay sheltered just below the level of the road, with only its roof line visible to passing motorists. From the roadside, it would be possible to toss a stone down its chimney. A glass porch had been built some years ago to keep the weather from the back door, which of course was the entrance that everyone used. Inside the porch, Cooper could see a tabby cat lying on a shelf among a few pots of cactus.
This was typical hill-farming land - poor, steep and half of it in shade except for a few months of the summer. A large wooden building next to the farmhouse might at one time have doubled as a barn and cattle shed, but it had been allowed to decay beyond repair. The roof was mostly gone, and fallen timbers lay in a heap under the back wall. Wooden buildings weren’t worth a lot. They needed too much maintenance, and no one was interested in converting them as long as there were stone barns left to be bought.
It was very warm inside the porch, the glass panels focusing too much sun into the small space. The cat looked listless, and barely roused itself to stare at Cooper when he clicked
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his tongue at it. Bluebottles buzzed around the plants, and one of them circled Cooper’s head as he introduced himself to Jim Thorpe. He swatted it away, but still had the impression that it followed him into the house.
Mr Thorpe was a morose-looking man with a long, bony face like a sheep. His wrists and chest sprouted wiry hair, which burst from the cuffs and collar of his shirt. Raymond Proctor had said he was a miserable bugger, and Cooper had come prepared to find exactly that. Old or middle-aged men living on their own were rarely the most sociable of people. But tea had been offered readily when he arrived, with the instinctive hospitality of a genuine country person.
While Mr Thorpe was out of the room, Cooper bent to take a closer look at the window sill near the door. The sill and the lower edges of the casement were covered in spots of blood. They were smeared on the white paint across a wide area, but not in a consistent pattern - and at the same time too far apart to be caused by a spray of blood from a wound.
‘Biscuit?’
Cooper jerked upright, embarrassed to find that Mr Thorpe was watching him, a cup and saucer in one hand and a plate of chocolate-chip cookies in the other. His face registered no curiosity about what his visitor had been doing with his nose pressed into the window sill. But Cooper mentally chided himself for becoming so absorbed that he’d lost his alertness.
‘Er, yes - thank you.’
‘Take a seat, then.’
He pointed at the table, and Cooper pulled out one of the dining chairs. Mr Thorpe himself sat in the armchair near the window. He had his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and the sunlight fell on his bare arms, making the forest of fair hairs glint and sparkle. The cat walked into the room and rubbed itself against the old man’s legs. Thorpe seemed to ignore the animal at first, but as soon as he’d settled in
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his chair, the cat jumped on to his lap and began to purr. Thorpe stroked it obediently.
‘As you know, I’d like to talk to you about your son, William,’ said Cooper.
Now Mr Thorpe became even more morose. His nose seemed to droop towards his moustache, and his expression became puzzled and slightly pained. It was a Swaledale ewe he resembled, thought Cooper.
‘Have you seen him?’ said the old man.
‘Yes, sir. I interviewed him earlier today.’
‘What would you call my son, then? A loner, a hermit, an outcast? Maybe a tramp?’
‘None of those, sir.’
‘Well, that’s what you say.’ Mr Thorpe took a drink of tea. ‘He joined the army, you know. Will was happy in the army. The life suited him down to the ground. There were rules for everything, and somebody to tell him what to do all the time. He never had to make a decision for himself.’
Cooper frowned. ‘Your son saw service in a number of hotspots. He must have been in action.’
‘Yes.’
‘So I imagine he had to make a few tough decisions along the way, don’t you?’
Mr Thorpe lifted one hip and pulled out something that had been pushed down the side of the seat cushion. It was a newspaper, but one that had been folded and crushed into a shape about a foot long.
The old man shook his head. ‘He was trained how to respond to everything. He was trained when to shoot people, and how. He was trained always to obey orders. He was trained by his mates how to enjoy himself when he was off duty - how many pints of beer he was expected to drink, how often he was supposed to go with a tart, when it was the right time to get in a punch-up. You know.’
