Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth
They had started plaguing him about other enquiries while he was still escorting his prisoner through the snowbound streets of Edendale.
‘All these new ideas, what’s the point?’ said the sergeant. ‘I can’t get my breath sometimes. A bloody madhouse it is round here. And I don’t mean the customers, either.’
A PC came out of the office behind the sergeant and handed Cooper a note. It said: DC Cooper – report to DS Fry ASAP. Urgent. Cooper reluctantly gave up the plan he had been nursing for the last few minutes. He had been hoping to call by his locker for some dry socks, then carry out a raid on Gavin Murfin’s desk to see if he had any spare food.
‘Mind you, you didn’t hear me say any of that,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’m very happy in my work, I am.’
When passengers reached the arrivals gate at Terminal One of Manchester Airport from Air Canada flight 840, a tall, fair man with a beard was waiting. He greeted the woman by shaking her hand, but they both looked for a moment as though they regretted there were so many people around them on the airport concourse. Alison Morrissey smiled when she heard his strong local accent, as if it made her trip to England seem real.
‘So you came,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t think of you arriving on your own and knowing no one.’
‘That’s kind.’
There was a moment’s silence between them. As the crowd of passengers passed her on either side, the woman looked at the unfamiliar names on the airport shops – W. H. Smith, Virgin, Boots the Chemist. For a moment, she looked no older than a schoolgirl as she cocked her head to listen to the announcements.
‘We’ve got a bit of a walk to the car park,’ he said, watching her. ‘Will you be all right? You look pale.’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
He found a baggage trolley and pushed it for her towards the exit. Alison Morrissey paused to rub her legs, though she had performed her exercises religiously all the way across the Atlantic from Toronto Pearson.
‘The weather’s not too good outside,’ he said. ‘But I suppose you’re used to snow in Canada.’
‘Frank, I live in a suburb of Toronto. No grizzly bears or lumberjacks for miles.’
She looked dizzy and disorientated, but when she shook herself hard, she reverted to a confident woman in her mid-twenties.
‘The meeting is set up with the local police, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Of course. Don’t worry about that. It’s all organized.’
‘I’m sorry, Frank. It just hit me suddenly. This is more than travelling to a foreign country – it’s like venturing into the past.’
‘I understand that.’
‘And it’s a dangerous past. I really feel as though I’m on the borders of hostile territory.’
‘Don’t expect hostility from every quarter,’ he said. Not necessarily.’
Outside, Alison Morrissey looked at the grey sky and ran a hand across her forehead.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Transatlantic flights knock hell out me. I suppose it’s past breakfast time here?’
‘Nearly lunchtime, in fact. We can find somewhere to eat here at the airport, if you like.’
‘May we drive out to Derbyshire first, Frank? How long will that take?’
‘It depends whether they’ve got the A57 clear yet,’ he said. ‘I had to come here by the motorway. The last I heard on the radio traffic bulletins, the Snake Pass was still blocked. I don’t know why – they’re usually pretty good at getting the snowploughs out to clear the main roads. Perhaps there’s been an accident or something.’
Grace Lukasz peered cautiously round the door into the back room of the bungalow, clinging on to the wheels of her chair to suppress the noise. Zygmunt was in his armchair by the table. He looked as though he might be asleep. His hands lay on the table, the blue veins standing up prominently, as if he really did suffer from the high blood pressure that he had always complained about, but which the doctors said didn’t exist. His head was tipped against the back of the chair, and he had taken off his spectacles. Grace could see the red marks on the sides of his nose and the small wings of white hair pushed up over his ears. There were tufts of hair inside his ears, too, and more hair on his neck where he never thought to shave.
The old man’s eyes were closed, but Grace wasn’t sure that he was really sleeping. Often he sat like this while awake. Zygmunt always said he was thinking, when he took the trouble to explain at all. Grace supposed he was going back over his life in his mind, dwelling on his past. It was all he seemed to do now, to dwell on the past. But maybe she was misjudging him. Perhaps the old man was thinking of his wife, Roberta. She doubted it, though. It was more likely that he was thinking of Klemens Wach. These days, he thought mostly about Klemens.
Next Sunday was the day for the Edendale oplatek dinner. Almost the whole of the Polish community would gather for the event in the ex-servicemen’s club, the Dom Kombatanta. Grace knew that for Zygmunt this would be the emotional high point of the year, more important even than Wigilia, the Christmas Eve celebration. This was the time when everyone began the year anew, but it was also a chance to reflect on their history and their place in the world. Most of the folk who would come to the dinner had not been born in Poland, of course. But since Solidarity and democracy, and the possibility of EU membership, some of those people had begun to talk more and more about their culture, their roots, their place in Europe. Not Zygmunt, though. Zygmunt didn’t talk much at all these days. When he did, it was about the past.
But still, there would be the dinner. Though the community celebration had drifted back into January, it was no less of an occasion and everything had to be done just right. Grace could taste already the beetroot soup, the poached pike, the carp with horseradish sauce, the mushroom-stuffed tomatoes. The ladies who organized the dinner clung tenaciously to the traditions, no matter how much trouble they had to go to.
The stops had been pulled out for the family Wigilia, too, when all of them had sat down to the traditional twelve meatless dishes, with the extra place set for an unexpected guest. First they had shared the oplatki wafers. The symbols of reconciliation and forgiveness meant more this year than ever. Of course, forgiveness wasn’t easy. Grace knew Peter was thinking of their eldest son in London, with no family around him to celebrate Wigilia, except some skinny bottle-blonde. They had sent an oplatek to Andrew as always. But whether Andrew had shared it with his blonde was doubtful. As far as Grace could gather, the apartment they rented in Pimlico contained nothing of relevance to oplatek, precious little that spoke of forgiveness.
The younger members of the family would change the traditions, if they had their way. Richard and Alice were embarrassed by the whole business. They would have made a meaningless ritual of oplatek just to get it over with quickly, so they could move on to the food and watch some American film on television. But they knew better than to upset Zygmunt, not at this time of year, and particularly not in these last few months. It was the time for reconciliation, when they could forgive each other their faults and their mistakes over the previous year. It was not a time for arguments.
So Zygmunt, as the eldest, had taken the first oplatek and offered it to his sister Krystyna, blessing her and wishing her health and a good year ahead. She had then broken off a piece of his wafer and offered her own oplatek in turn. And she had gazed into his face as she carefully wished him health and happiness in the year ahead, repeating the words as she was supposed to; but then her voice had broken and the old woman had begun to cry. Grace had edged her wheelchair nearer and put her arm round Krystyna’s shoulders. But the old woman had looked as though she would go on weeping for ever, for the whole twelve days of Christmas maybe, right through to the Feast of the Three Kings. The front of her best dress had got stained with her tears.
Zygmunt had simply frowned