Blood on the Tongue

14

High above Irontongue Hill, another Boeing 767 left its white track across the lightening sky as it approached Manchester. It was a few minutes late, and it was waiting for clearance behind a shuttle from Paris. Much lower in the sky, a small plane banked and turned and came in slowly, as if someone in the cabin might be taking photographs.

On the hillside below, four people turned to watch the smaller aircraft as they heard its engine. They lifted their heads into the wind, squinting their eyes against the brightness of the sky and the hard flecks of snow driven into their faces from the higher ground.

'It's a Piper Warrior. A Type 18,' said Corporal Sharon Thompson. Her plump cheeks were bright pink from the cold, and her hair was pulled back tight under her beret and the hood of her cagoule. 'It's probably from Netherthorpe Airfield.'

Flight Sergeant Josh Mason glanced at the underside of the aircraft as it drew away from them.

'Don't talk crap,' he said. 'Any idiot can see it isn't a Type 18. Haven't you done your aircraft recognition?'

Thompson went a shade pinker, but her expression became stubborn. 'Come on, Flight. We've got a long way to go yet. We don't want to be out here all day. It'll be dark before we get back.'

'Well, as matter of fact, we're nearly there.'

The cadets scrambled through a snow-filled gully and up the slope on the other side. They slipped and slid until they were near the top and were able to clutch at bits of dead grass to pull themselves the last few inches.

'There you go,' said Mason proudly. 'The trig point. The Lancaster should be a hundred yards north north-west, just over that next rise.'

The cadets groaned. 'Why do we have to do this, Flight?' said Cadet Derron Peace. He brushed snow off the knees of his fatigue trousers where he'd slipped into a snowdrift.

'We're supposed to be on a navigation exercise,' said Thompson. 'If the skipper finds out…'

'Well, he won't find out, will he?' said Mason.

'It's foolhardy to take people out on the moors in this weather. We're not properly equipped.'

'All right, stay here then.' Mason began to walk away through the snow towards the next rise.

'But you're the one with the map and compass,' said Thompson.

The cadets looked at each other and began to follow him. The cabin windows of the Piper caught a flash of sunlight as the aircraft banked and turned over the hill ahead of them, the note of its engine dropping to an ominous grumble as the sound bounced off the rocky outcrop called Irontongue.

Chief Superintendent Jepson closed his eyes in pain. For a moment, he thought he might be having a heart attack. It was a fear that crossed his mind often these days, ever since his doctor had told him he had high blood pressure and needed to lose weight. Every time he felt a spasm of discomfort or a touch of cramp, he thought he was having a heart attack. He would sit back in his chair and breathe slowly, and reach for the aspirin to thin his blood, before it was too late. But it had never been a proper heart attack, not yet. Usually it was just the effects of one more bit of stress piled on to him by one of his junior officers, eager to tell the Chief superintendent about the latest disaster in E Division, careless of the damage they might be doing to his cardiovascular system.

And the news this morning was so typical. For fifty-one weeks of the year his resources were stretched, but not so stretched that they couldn't cope. In fact, they coped so well that Constabulary HQ in Ripley used it as a reason to fend off his demands for more officers. They always pointed out that E Division saw less major crime than any of the other letters of the alphabet from A to D. But they also said that he was managing the division brilliantly, that he was an example to the other commanders of the way intelligence-led policing should work, that his intelligence and information were so good that the question of how many officers he had on duty at any one time had become academic. It was supposed to make him feel better.

And then came the one week in the year when the whole system collapsed. The one week when traffic ground to a halt in snowdrifts on every road out of town and his officers were tied up trying to move abandoned vehicles. It was the week when half his available manpower seemed to have fallen over on the ice and broken their collarbones, or sprained their backs shovelling snow from their driveways, while the other half had phoned in sick with the 'flu. The same week when some idiot rammed a patrol car into a stone wall on Harpur Hill, and an even bigger idiot got his dog van nicked and burned out by two teenage burglars he was supposed to be arresting. Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary was asking questions about how the administration budget was being spent. And the Police Complaints Authority had received yet another allegation of racial abuse from one of those thieving gypsy bastards camped on the council golf course.

And now the division had not just one body, not even two bodies — but maybe three, if the missing baby didn't turn up soon. One body was bad, and two was unlucky. Three would be a catastrophe. In fact, three was a whole mad rush of bodies. Chief Superintendent Jepson felt he could see them toppling towards him like a set of skittles, or like mummies tumbling out of their coffins and landing at his feet, grinning up at him from their wrappings. It seemed as though there were bodies littering the landscape everywhere. They were worse than the abandoned cars, worse than the police officers with sprained backs laid out flat on their settees at home, who ought to have been dead but weren't.

Intelligence-led policing methods ought to enable him to direct a solitary officer to the right addresses with a sheaf of arrest warrants in his hand. But intelligence had grown tired of doing all the leading and had trotted off in the opposite direction, where it would no doubt get lost on the moors in the dark and fall over a cliff.

'So who have we got available?' he said, opening his eyes just enough to examine the expression on DI Hitchens' face. The Chief was seeking enough evidence of insolence from the DI to justify losing his temper. But, as usual, Hitchens knew how to tread the line.

'The underwater section is at full strength,' said the DI. 'Otherwise, we have three traffic wardens. After all, there's not much else for them to do — the snow is covering up all the yellow lines.'

Jepson let out a sound more like a whimper than a sigh. 'That isn't funny,' he said.

'Well, you know yourself, Chief, that we've been talking about putting the division on emergency-only response.'

'I never thought it would seriously come to this. But a double assault, two bodies and a missing baby, on top of everything else…'

'And there's the ambulance, of course,' said Hitchens.

'What ambulance?'

'I'm surprised the press boys haven't been on to this one yet. It's the sort of story they love. They're bound to see it as another opportunity to bash the police — I can see the headlines now in the Eden Valley Times.'

'What ambulance?' said Jepson.

'Maybe it's a bit too early for the reporters, though. I expect we'll be inundated with them later on. Oh, and uniformed section say a couple of photographers turned up at the scene, so I suppose we can look forward to some pictures on the front pages, too.'

' What ambulance?'

'Sorry, Chief. I mean the ambulance that ran into one of our traffic cars on Buxton Road. There wasn't a lot of damage to the vehicles, mind you. It was just a shunt, really. A buckled boot on the Vauxhall and a cracked radiator on the ambulance.'

Jepson closed his eyes again. 'Tell me there wasn't a patient in the back of the ambulance.'

'There wasn't a patient in the back of the ambulance, Chief.'

The Chief Superintendent's eyes popped open in amazement. 'There wasn't?'

'Actually, there was. I was lying.'

'Oh Jesus. But hold on — a buckled boot? The ambulance went into the back of our vehicle? So it wasn't our driver's fault. That's some consolation. He had to brake a bit suddenly, perhaps?'

'You might say that,' said Hitchens. 'I suppose.'

Jepson ran a hand across his chest, feeling for movement under his shirt. He held it over the spot where he thought his heart ought to be. His fingers flickered, as if tapping out a beat. It was an irregular beat, more syncopation than rhythm. There was a faint answering flutter. He was still alive.

'What are you saying?'

'Well, it's just that the driver of the damaged milk tanker might tell a different story when it comes to court.'

'I think you can tell me the rest later.' The Chief Superintendent looked at Diane Fry, who was standing by impatiently. 'This woman they found, the suicide case — '

But Hitchens hadn't finished. 'They haven't managed to get the tanker out of the ditch yet,' he said. 'There's milk all over the road. Frozen solid it is, too, like a giant slab of vanilla ice cream. I'm told it looks delicious.'

Fry stirred restlessly at the DI's interruption. 'You mean Marie Tennent, the woman on Irontongue Hill, sir.'

'Yes,' said Jepson. 'What can you tell us about that, Fry?'

'It's an unusual way to choose to commit suicide,' she said. 'But perfectly effective, if that's what she did. There was no way she would have survived the night. She wasn't dressed for it, for a start. And she seems to have made no attempt to save herself. As far as we can tell, she simply lay down and froze to death.'

'It wouldn't be my choice of a way to die,' said Jepson, as if he'd already spent some time weighing up his personal options.

'Marie Tennent was aged twenty-eight. She'd been working as a shop assistant until the baby was near. Her GP confirms she was in a nervous state about the baby, even before it was born. Who knows what goes through the mind of a woman in that state? Maybe she found the responsibility too much and couldn't face it.'

'She didn't leave a note?'

'No.'

'That's a problem. The coroner won't bring in a suicide verdict without a note, or at least some conclusive evidence from her family or close friends about her state of mind. And this Marie Tennent has no husband, I suppose?'

Fry didn't even bother to answer that question. 'The main problem is the baby,' she said. 'I'm afraid we're going to find it dead somewhere. The question then will be whether it died before the mother or after.'

Jepson sighed. 'Oh, that's terrible.'

'No neighbours came forward to report Marie missing. She has no family locally, but we've traced her mother in Scotland. She says the baby's name is Chloe, and she's only six weeks old.'

The baby's fate would be causing concern everywhere. In the morning the newspapers would be asking: 'Have you seen Baby Chloe?' The publicity would be their best hope of an early result.

'And there's no husband?' said Jepson. 'No fiance? A boyfriend maybe?'

'Not that we can find so far.'

'There must be someone, Fry. I mean, nine months ago, there must have been someone.'

Fry shrugged. 'It was probably another case of a Saturday night out in Sheffield.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'That's what some women tell the Child Support Agency when they ask who the father was. They say they don't know, that it was just a night out in Sheffield.'

'Jesus. A Saturday night out in Sheffield? In my day, all that meant was that you woke up next morning with a hangover. Or a bit of vomit on your shoes, at worst.'

'With respect, sir, you were a man.'

Jepson smiled tiredly. 'So I was, Fry, so I was. You must have been looking at my medical records. But don't they have a "morning-after" pill these days?'

Fry laughed. 'Yes. And they've had condoms for decades, and lots of other methods of contraception too. I suppose I don't have to mention that the man could have exercised some responsibility…'

'All right, all right. Did Social Services have no reports of any potential problems with this woman?'

'None.'

'And we weren't involved anywhere along the line? There was no information received from neighbours worried about her welfare? No anonymous tip-offs about babies that had suddenly gone missing? Please tell me there weren't any reports that we never got round to following up.'

'I haven't checked yet, sir.'

'Better do it sooner rather than later, Fry, before someone goes to the press with that as well. Two dead bodies are enough. That's all we need right now.'

'The patient in the ambulance died, by the way,' said Hitchens.

The Chief Superintendent was so still and pale for a few moments that Fry began to wonder whether she ought to start cardiac massage. Then Jepson stirred. When he spoke, it was clear he'd decided to ignore the ambulance.

'Thank God we got rid of the Canadian woman. The last thing we need is that sort of distraction.'

'But Marie Tennent,' said Fry, 'we need to find out who she left the baby with. And how do we know for certain she left it with anyone?'

'We don't,' said Hitchens.

'And where's the damn father?' said Jepson.

'Marie's mother might give us some clues,' said Fry. 'She's arriving tomorrow morning.'

'Diane, you've got another case here,' said Hitchens.

'Thank you. I was so hoping you'd say that.'

'Use available resources where they're needed most,' said Jepson, like man repeating a mantra.

'What does that mean exactly?' asked Fry. She looked at the DI.

'It means you get half a traffic warden,' said Hitchens.

Jepson tried breathing deeply through his nose, filling his lungs with oxygen until his head became pleasantly light.

'You can tell me about the ambulance now,' he said.

On the television monitor, a street scene appeared. Cooper recognized it as Fargate, with the antique shops in the Buttercross area in the background. Two figures were visible, waiting to cross the road. There was no snow on the ground. The display gave the date as 8th January, and the time was 01:48.

One of the figures in the CCTV footage was a tall, slim, white youth of about eighteen with a prominent nose and an aggressive haircut. He was followed across Fargate by an Asian of the same age, less tall and wearing a heavily padded jacket that made it impossible to judge his build. They walked with a kind of overly casual swagger that suggested they'd been fuelled by alcohol to an artificially heightened bravado.

When they reached the antique shops in the Buttercross, one of the youths tapped the other on the arm as they came up behind a third figure, someone heavier and slower. The two youths broke into a run over the last few yards and pounced on their victim, fists flying. What they intended wasn't clear — whether it was an attempted mugging, or merely a moment of casual violence. But their attack didn't last long. They were near the corner of one of the shops, where Cooper knew there was an alleyway leading up towards the Underbank area. And suddenly there were more figures appearing from the alley, and the two youths were in the middle of a melee.

Cooper cursed the lighting that threw too many shadows on faces and washed out the colours of clothes. It was impossible to be sure how many newcomers were involved in the attack, but there were at least three. The white youth pulled something from his coat that looked like a knife, and a weapon that might have been a baseball bat was swung at him. Cooper saw one youth go down, then the other, and a boot connected with someone's ribs so hard you could almost hear the thud on the videotape.

The fracas was over quickly. It was going to be very difficult to sort out who did what, even if anybody could be identified. Cooper knew Eddie Kemp, but he couldn't be sure that he was among the group that had been lurking in the shadows.

He'd almost stopped the tape when he saw a group appear further up the road, walking away from the camera. There were four of them, probably all male, and it was possible they had cut through one of the alleyways to avoid passing in the direct line of the CCTV surveillance. There were cars parked by the roadside, but the group had disappeared from view before they could be seen approaching a particular vehicle.

Cooper re-wound the tape. At accelerated speed, the group backed down the street, and the two youths stood up and drew back. When he ran the tape forward again, he confirmed what he'd glimpsed the first time. There was a second when one of the men walking away turned to look back over his shoulder at the youths, and his face was partially exposed to the light from a street lamp. The picture would be grainy, but the frame was good enough to be usable in court. Eddie Kemp would have a lot of talking to do to get out of this one.

The air cadets found the wreckage easily. There was no mistaking it once it appeared out of the snow. For a while they poked around the scattered pieces. There was probably more under the snow, but the smaller fragments would not re-appear until the thaw. The cadets were growing colder and more unhappy as they watched Flight Sergeant Josh Mason clamber over the undercarriage and sit astride an engine casing. He waved his arms like a rodeo cowboy.

'Watch me ride this bugger!'

'Can't we go back now?' said Sharon Thompson.

'Don't you want to look at it, now we're here? It's a Lancaster bomber. You won't see one of these very often. Do you know how many pounds of bombs these babies carried?'

Mason tugged at the wing section, lifting it an inch or two from the ground, revealing a dark cavity between mounds of peat, and a trickle of gritty sand. Then he stopped and braced himself against the weight, his cagoule flapping suddenly in a spiral of wind.

'Hey,' he shouted, 'I think they missed one of the crew!'

'What?'

'There are bones under here. It's a skeleton! A dead body.'

'Don't talk daft.'

'It's a missing airman from 1945.'

The cadets laughed uneasily. They knew Mason had found nothing more than the remains of a sick sheep or abandoned lamb that had crawled under the wing section to die.

With a grunt, Mason heaved up the wing. Peat dribbled from the underside of the metal in dark, wet gobbets. Reluctantly, the others moved closer, prepared to humour him for a minute or two longer as he play-acted over a dead sheep.

The bones lay in a hollow where the wing section had protected them from the weather and the attention of scavengers. They appeared to be almost intact — the skull still attached to a fragile neck, the thin bones of the limbs still jointed in the proper places, and tatters of skin still hanging from the ribcage and the lower legs. But the cadets could see that the body was too small to be a sheep. And it wasn't curly grey wool they could see clinging to the decomposed skin of the skull but something man-made and far more shocking. It was something that cried out to them from the dark peat.

With a jerk, Mason let go of the wing. There was a thud and a scatter of wet snow across their boots as it slammed back into place, plunging the tiny skeleton again into darkness. The cadets gasped in horror, shuffled backwards, and shook their heads to clear the image. Then they stared up at Josh Mason, as if he alone were responsible for putting the picture in their minds.

But they'd all looked at the bones under the wing. And they'd all seen the white knitted jacket and the ridiculous pink bonnet. They'd seen quite enough to know that the flaps of the bonnet were designed to cover the tiny ears of a human baby.