In fact, that haunted look and the grey, grainy quality of the photograph made the airman appear almost as though he wasn’t there at all. He might have been no more than a faded image superimposed on the interior of the aircraft, the result of an accidental double exposure on the film.
To Ben Cooper, it seemed that the photographer had captured a moment of presentiment and foreboding, a glimpse into the darkness of the near future. Sergeant Dick Abbott, only eighteen years old, looked as if he were already a ghost.
Back at West Street, Ben Cooper dug through the paper that had been collecting on his desk until he found the file produced by the Local Intelligence Officer for the meeting with Alison Morrissey. It didn’t have anything like the amount of detail about the crash and the Lancaster’s crew that was in the book from Lawrence’s shop. But the LIO’s file did have one advantage – it had the names of the two boys who had reported seeing the missing airman walking down the Blackbrook Reservoir road that night.
Cooper had remembered that point, because Morrissey had complained during the meeting that she was unable to track them down since their names weren’t given in the reports. It hadn’t seemed wise to admit that he had the information in front of him; the Chief Superintendent would certainly not have approved of too apparent a willingness to assist. But it meant the LIO had done a good job collecting the information. Either that, or Alison Morrissey’s research was badly flawed.
‘Do you know Harrop, Gavin?’ he said.
Murfin sniffed. ‘Godawful place. Back of the moon that is, Ben. That’s not where you’re thinking of moving to, is it?’
‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever been there.’
‘It’s up the top of the Snake Pass somewhere, on the way to Glossop.’
‘It must be over the other side of Irontongue Hill.’
‘That’s it. I bet they were cut off up there today all right. There’s no bus service in Harrop. No bus route, so no priority for the snowplough. Somebody will dig them out tomorrow, maybe.’
The names of the boys were Edward and George Malkin, aged twelve and eight, of Hollow Shaw Farm, Harrop. From what Gavin said, Harrop sounded the sort of village where families might stay in one place, generation after generation of them sometimes. Cooper found a telephone directory. Sure enough, there was a G. Malkin still listed at Hollow Shaw Farm. There seemed a good chance that this was the same George Malkin, then aged eight, now sixty-five.
‘Knocking off, Ben?’ said Murfin. ‘Fancy a pint?’
‘I’d love to, Gavin,’ said Cooper. ‘But I’ve got things to do. Places to look at.’
‘Ah, the pleasures of house-hunting. It kind of ruins your social life, like.’
Cooper drove eastwards out of Edendale. He climbed the Snake Pass and descended again almost into Glossop before he turned north and skirted the outlying expanses of peat moor around Irontongue Hill. The buttress of rock on top of the hill was a familiar sight to him, as it was prominently visible on a good day from the A57. The rock was certainly tongue-shaped when you looked at it from this direction, with ridges and crevices furrowing its dark surface. It wasn’t a human tongue, though. There was something reptilian about its length and the suggestion of a curl at the tip. And it was colder and harder than iron, too – it was the dark rock that millstones had been made out of, the sort of rock that the weather barely seemed to touch, even over centuries. The wind and rain had merely smoothed its edges, where the tongue lay on the broken teeth of volcanic debris.
Tonight, Irontongue was visible even in the dark. It uncoiled from the snow-covered slopes to poke at the sky, with dribbles of white lying in its cracks.
Cooper found that Harrop was barely big enough to be called a village, yet the roads were clear enough of snow for the Toyota to have no problems. Above Harrop there was a scatter of farms and homesteads with those austere Dark Peak names – Slack House, Whiterakes, Red Mires, Mount Famine and Stubbins. They clung to the edges of the mountain like burrs on the fur of a sleeping dog.
The lane up to Hollow Shaw Farm passed a single modern bungalow and an isolated row of stone cottages. Past the bungalow, the lane was no longer tarmacked. After the cottages, it ceased to have any surface at all. Cooper hadn’t seen any street lights for the last few miles. He had to slow the Toyota to a crawl and swing the steering wheel from side to side to avoid the worst of the potholes, but in the total darkness he couldn’t see some of the holes until he was almost in them. It was sudden death for suspension systems up here. This was the sort of lane that delivery drivers and salesmen would avoid like the plague, the kind of track that people needed a good reason to live at the end of. As he climbed to Hollow Shaw, Cooper wondered what George Malkin’s reason might be.
He parked in front of the old farmhouse and got out. A few yards away, a man was leaning on a wall. It was so quiet here that Cooper could hear rustling from the field on the other side of the wall, and the faint snorting of a flock of sheep. Somewhere in that direction must be Blackbrook Reservoir. He knew it wasn’t a large reservoir like those in the flooded valleys, where the vast stretches of Ladybower and Derwent attracted the tourists. Blackbrook was small and self-contained, just enough at one time to supply drinking water for the eastern fringes of Manchester.
‘Mr Malkin?’ said Cooper.
‘Aye. That’ll be me.’
Cooper made his way across the garden to where the man stood. Malkin was wearing a pair of blue overalls and a black anorak, and a cap like a lumberjack’s, with woollen ear-flaps. Cooper thought at first that he was bundled up with sweaters round his waist, but when Malkin moved he saw that the man was actually pear-shaped, with wide hips like someone who hadn’t ever got enough exercise. Cooper introduced himself and explained the reason for his visit.
‘I wonder if you could spare a few minutes, Mr Malkin? Nothing to worry about.’
‘You’d better come in the house.’
This was one farmhouse that had never been converted to the standards of modern living. There was no double glazing and no central heating – a spiral of smoke from the chimney testified that there was still at least one coal fire inside. The last modernization had been in the 1960s by the look of the front door panelled with frosted glass and the blue linoleum visible in the hallway.
Malkin took off his anorak and cap. His skin was weathered and he looked like someone old before his time. George Malkin had been eight years old when the Lancaster crashed, so he could only recently have started drawing his pension.
‘Excuse the mess,’ said Malkin. ‘I don’t get a lot of visitors.’
Cooper shivered. There was an unrelenting coldness in the house. Partly, it was the sort of chill that came from years of inadequate heating and a Pennine dampness that had soaked into the stone walls. And now the winds that spiralled down off Kinder and moaned through the empty fields had found their way into Malkin’s house for the winter. The draught had crept under the back door and slithered through gaps in the frames of the sash windows, wrapping itself round the furniture and draping the walls in invisible folds. The chill seemed to Cooper like a solid thing; it moved of its own accord, butting against his neck as he walked across the room, and hanging in front of him in every doorway, like a wet curtain.
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