Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth

your hands on the table, please,’ said Cooper.

      Kemp stared at him sourly. ‘I suppose you’re going to spoil my breakfast,’ he said.

      ‘I’m afraid you’re under arrest.’

      The other man sighed and held out his wrists. ‘They only got what they deserved,’ he said.

      Yes, it was the sound of feet. Feet creaking around her in the snow. Marie Tennent’s heart lurched painfully against her diaphragm, and a spurt of adrenalin ran through her muscles like acid. She was sure she could hear the footsteps of human rescuers, as well as those of something quicker and lighter that skittered across the surface of the snow. She became convinced that a search dog had sniffed her out, and that arms were about to pull her from the snow and wrap her in a thermal blanket, that friendly hands would bring warmth to her skin with their touch and reassuring voices would ease the agony in her ears.

      But the footsteps passed her by. She couldn’t cry out for help, because her reflexes failed and her body had no strength left to react. Her lips and tongue refused to obey the screaming in her head.

      Then Marie knew she was wrong. The feet she heard were those of wolves or some other wild predators that lived on the moors. She could sense them creeping towards her and scuttling away, dragging their hairy bellies through the wet snow, eager to claim a share of her body. She pictured them drooling in desperation to tear off chunks of her cooling flesh with their teeth, yet afraid of her lingering smell of humanity. The faint tingling on her cheeks and in the folds of her eyes told her the predators were close enough for her to feel their breath on her face. If she had opened her eyes, she knew she would have found herself staring into their jaws, into the drip of their saliva and the whiteness of their teeth. But she could no longer open her eyes; the tears had frozen her eyelids shut.

      The fear passed, as Marie’s brain lost its grasp on the thought and it went slipping away. The pictures were still in her mind, but the cold had drained all the colours from them. The dyes had melted and run, leaving washed-out greys and dark corners, bleeding the meaning from her memories. She could no longer capture the sounds and scents and tastes, no longer even keep hold of that one overwhelming emotion which had swollen so large that it filled her mind, but which now wriggled away from her grasp. Was it grief, anger, fear, shame? Or was it just the same unnameable longing that had haunted her all her life?

      Marie had forgotten how she came to be lying in the snow, with the pain in her head and the blood in her mouth. But she knew there was a reason she ought to get up and go home. And she knew it had something to do with Sugar Uncle Victor. But the fingers of ice were squeezing out her consciousness, so that she would soon know nothing at all.

      Marie was unaware of her bladder failing and releasing a warm stream that thawed a ragged patch in the snow. Soon, the physical sensations stopped altogether. As Marie’s skin froze and her blood thickened to an ooze, even the illusory sounds retreated beyond the reach of her senses. The footsteps faded and the voices fell silent, because there was no one left to hear them. Her heart slowed until its valves were left fluttering uselessly, pumping no blood through her body.

      Finally, Marie Tennent existed only as a speck like a grain of sand floating in an oily residue of memories. Then they, too, swirled away into a hole in the back of her brain, and were gone.

      For the fifth time, Ben Cooper turned to peer towards the corner of Hollowgate and High Street. The traffic lights had changed to green, but a queue of traffic was stuck in the middle of the junction.

      ‘Where’s the car?’ said Cooper, feeling for the radio in his pocket, wondering whether it was worth worsening the mood of the control-room operators at West Street with a complaint about somebody else’s slow response. ‘It should have been here by now.’

      Eddie Kemp was wearing black wellies, with woollen socks rolled over the top of them, and his overcoat was long enough to have come back into fashion two or three times since he first bought it from the army surplus store, probably around 1975. Cooper thought he looked warm and comfortable. And no doubt his feet were dry.

      ‘We could flag down a taxi, I suppose,’ said Kemp. ‘Or we could catch a bus. Have you got the right fare on you?’

      ‘Shut up,’ said Cooper.

      Down the road, traffic was still moving on High Street. Cars crawled through white flurries that drifted across their headlights. An old lady in fur-lined boots picked her way over the snow in the gutter. For a moment, Cooper thought of his own mother. He had promised himself he would talk to her tonight, and make sure that she understood he was serious about moving out of Bridge End Farm. He would call in to see her when he finally went off duty.

      ‘I’m not walking all the way up that hill,’ said Kemp. ‘It’s not safe in these conditions. I might slip and injure myself. Then I could sue you. I could take the police for thousands of pounds.’

      Cooper wished he could distance himself from Kemp’s powerful smell, but he daren’t loosen his grip or shift from his eight-o’clock escort position at his prisoner’s left elbow.

      ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting for the car.’

      He was aware of customers coming out of the café now and then, the doorbell clanging behind them. No doubt each one stopped for a moment in the doorway, staring at the two men on the kerb. Cooper shifted his weight to maintain his grip. He felt the slush in his left shoe squelch as he put his foot down.

      ‘Maybe the car’s broken down,’ said Kemp. ‘Maybe it wouldn’t start. These cold mornings play hell with cheap batteries, you know.’

      ‘They’ll be here soon.’

      On the far side of Hollowgate, shopkeepers were clearing the snow from the pavement in front of their shops, shovelling it into ugly heaps in the gutter. The beauty of snow vanished as soon as it was touched by the first footstep or the first spray of grit from a highways wagon. By daylight, it would be tarnished beyond recognition.

      ‘I have to tell you I’ve got a delicate respiratory system,’ said Kemp. ‘Very susceptible to the cold and damp, it is. I might need medical attention if I’m kept outside in these conditions too long.’

      ‘If you don’t keep quiet, I’m going to get annoyed.’

      ‘Bloody hell, what are you going to do? Shove a snowball down my neck?’

      A pair of flashing blue lights lit up the front of the town hall in the market square, just past the High Street junction. Cooper and Kemp both looked towards the lights. It was an ambulance. The driver was struggling to make his way through the lines of crawling cars.

      ‘That’s clever,’ said Kemp. ‘Sending for the ambulance first, before you beat me up.’

      ‘Shut up,’ said Cooper.

      ‘If you took the cuffs off for a bit, I could use my mobile to phone the missus. She could get the sledge out and hitch up the dogs. They’re only corgis, but it’d be quicker than this performance.’

      Behind them, somebody laughed. Cooper looked over his shoulder. Three men were standing in front of the window of the café. leaning on the plate glass, with their hands in the pockets of their anoraks and combat jackets. They wore heavy boots, a couple of them with steel toecaps, like the safety boots worn by builders in case they dropped bricks or scaffolding on their feet. Three pairs of eyes met Cooper’s, with challenging stares. Four white males, aged between twenty-five and forty-five. Could be in possession of baseball bats or similar weapons. Approach with caution.

      Finally, Cooper’s radio crackled.

      ‘Sorry, DC Cooper,’ said the voice of the controller. ‘Your response unit has been delayed by a gridlock situation on Hulley Road. They’ll be with you as soon as possible, but they say it could be five minutes yet.’

      One of the men leaning against the window began to form a snowball between his gloved fists, squeezing it into the shape of a hand grenade with short, hard slaps.

      ‘Damn,’