Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth
Isuzu Trooper with a set of ladders clipped to its roof rack, and it was parked on a raised concrete platform in front of Kemp’s house, with its headlights looking down the street towards the Buttercross. The council binmen had left a new plastic refuse sack wedged behind a downspout near the front door. They wouldn’t be coming up here again with their wagon soon, though, unless the snow cleared.
Eddie Kemp himself emerged from the house when they knocked.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to.’
‘Is this your car, sir?’ said Cooper.
‘Are you deaf? I just said I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to.’
‘It won’t take a minute to check with the DVLC if you’re the registered owner.’
‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ said Kemp.
‘I don’t know, sir. Is there something wrong with it? Would you like us to have a look while we’re here?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a nice motor,’ said Murfin cheerfully. ‘It looks really useful, like.’
‘Well, you know damn well it’s mine anyway,’ said Kemp. ‘All you coppers know. I park it up at your place regularly when I’m doing the windows.’
‘Four-wheel drive, isn’t it?’ said Cooper.
‘Of course it is.’
‘Good in snow?’
‘It has to be.’
‘Were you driving this car on Monday night, sir?’
‘It was parked here.’
‘From what time?’
‘Has somebody said they saw me in it?’
‘That isn’t an answer.’
Murfin leaned against the concrete platform. ‘You ought to answer DC Cooper,’ he said. ‘If he gets annoyed, he stops calling you “sir”. That can be very nasty.’
Cooper stepped up on to the platform and looked at the tyres of the Isuzu. They wouldn’t tell him anything at all, but Kemp didn’t know that.
‘What time do you finish work, sir?’ he said.
‘When it starts going dark.’
‘About quarter past four, then, at the moment. Did you come straight home from work on Monday night?’
‘I’ve got a wife and a kid,’ said Kemp. ‘They expect to see me occasionally.’
‘I’ll take that as a “yes”, shall I?’
‘You can take it as what the hell you like. What are you looking for?’
Murfin pointed down the street towards the Buttercross. ‘I had a girlfriend who lived around here once. I seem to recall there was a little Indian takeaway on the corner, near the hairdresser’s. Is it still there?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Kemp.
‘What time does it open?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
There was mud on the tyres of the Isuzu and small stones embedded in the tread. Streaks of brown grit ran along the sides of the vehicle. Cooper worked round the back and looked in through the tailgate.
‘What time did you go out again on Monday, sir?’ said Cooper.
‘I went to the pub for a bit,’ said Kemp. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Which pub?’
‘The Vine. I told them all this yesterday.’
‘Is that where you met your mates?’
‘I’ve got a lot of mates,’ said Kemp.
‘Really?’
‘And some of them drink at the Vine.’
‘Do they serve food at this pub?’ said Murfin.
Kemp came up on to the platform and stood next to Cooper, though it was more in an effort to get away from Murfin than a desire for companionship. Kemp was an inch or two shorter than Cooper, but he was powerfully built. They both looked through the tailgate at the contents of the Isuzu. There were buckets, sponges, plastic trays of cloths and wash leathers. There were also two rolls of stiff blue plastic sheeting, each about four feet long, with mud stains on their outer surfaces.
‘What do you use the plastic sheets for?’ said Cooper.
‘Standing the ladders on, so they don’t make marks on anybody’s fancy paving, and such.’
‘What time did you get home from the pub on Monday?’
‘When it shut. I said all this.’
‘Did you go out in the car again?’
Kemp said nothing. Cooper could see fresh grazes on his knuckles when he leaned on the car. He was also standing quite close now, and the freezing cold air did wonders for clearing the sinuses and sharpening the sense of smell. Cooper thought of the people who claimed to be able to see auras. Was it possible to smell auras, as well as to see them? If he could see Eddie Kemp’s aura, it would be a sort of bilious green, shot through with yellow streaks, like pea soup flavoured with cinnamon.
‘Did you decide to drive up the A57 with your mates?’ said Cooper.
Kemp still said nothing.
‘Which of your mates were with you? The same ones you met in the Vine? Did you find more than two victims that night? Did something go wrong?’
Kemp began to walk back to his house.
‘Can you recommend a good chippie then?’ said Murfin as he passed.
‘We’re going to have to take your car away to have a look at it, sir,’ Cooper called after him.
Kemp put a hand in his pocket, turned and threw a set of keys on to the concrete platform.
‘Give it a wash, then, while you’re at it,’ he said, and slammed the front door.
Ben Cooper and Gavin Murfin sat in Cooper’s Toyota to wait for the vehicle recovery team to arrive. It was cold, and it was starting to get dark already. Cooper kept the engine running so that they could have the heater on, and wondered what he could do with his time while he waited. He looked at Murfin, but as soon as he’d felt the warmth from the heater, Murfin had put his head back on his seat and closed his eyes. His mouth hung open slightly. Not much hope of conversation, then.
Cooper tried the radio. There was a sociological discussion programme on Radio Four, a phone-in on Radio Sheffield, and pop hits of the 1980s on Peak 107. He poked around among his cassettes and found nothing he hadn’t listened to already in the last few days. Then he remembered the books he had bought from Lawrence Daley, which were still somewhere deep in his poacher’s pocket.
He switched on the courtesy light and flicked through the contents pages of the two books. He quickly found the chapter about the crash of Lancaster SU-V, Sugar Uncle Victor. It was one of many aircraft that had fallen victim to primitive navigation equipment and treacherous weather conditions over the Peak District. Some of them were aircraft the Germans hadn’t been able to shoot down, but which the hills of the Dark Peak had claimed.
Ironically, Mk III Avro Lancaster W5013 had been built locally, by Metropolitan Vickers at their factory in Bamford. So it had started life only a few miles from where it had finished its days. From a recent photograph of the wreckage, he could see there were still several of the larger pieces left – part of the tail, a wing section, and engine casings minus their propellers.
Like Frank Baine, the author of these books had done plenty of research, and the details of SU-V’s crew