Dead in the Dark

13

Ben Cooper knew a sergeant at Chesterfield. He didn’t see him very often, and they’d arranged to meet in the restroom for a coffee before he went back to Edendale. And when Cooper walked into the room, there she was. Diane Fry. Superintendent Branagh must have known perfectly well she was here. Fry had probably checked in with her on her arrival.

Fry spotted him straightaway. She was sitting at a table on her own, clutching a cup. He couldn’t tell from her expression whether she was surprised to see him, or pleased, or horrified, or anything in between. There was hardly a flicker of emotion on her face as she coolly met his gaze.

Cooper got himself a drink, took a deep breath, and walked over to her table.

‘Diane,’ he said.

‘Ben. Hello.’

‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine.’

It was typical of her not to ask how he was in return. He was never sure if it was because she wasn’t interested, or she’d never learned how to be polite. It was probably both.

Some people never seemed happy with life, and you could see it in their faces. Diane Fry had that look. It was a look that suggested the whole world was a terrible place. Everyone must know how awful it was. So, if you smiled too much, you must be an idiot. Too stupid to see how bad everything was. Stupid enough to be happy.

After a moment, Fry waved at an empty chair.

‘Sit down, if you want,’ she said.

Cooper sat, and took a drink of his coffee.

‘So what are you doing here?’ he said. ‘Where are you working?’

‘A place called Shirebrook in Nottinghamshire.’

‘No, it’s in Derbyshire,’ said Cooper.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, it’s just this side of the border. It’s part of North Division.’

‘Borders don’t matter that much in EMSOU,’ said Fry.

Cooper thought that didn’t excuse her ignorance, but he let it go.

‘Strange place, Shirebrook,’ said Fry.

‘I can agree with you on that. I remember it from when it was a small coal-mining town. Everybody worked at the pit. The place got pretty run down, I suppose, but it was one of those towns that had a strong sense of community.’

Fry looked at him for a second, as if trying to find something more in his words.

‘It isn’t like that now,’ she said.

‘Oh, I know. The coal mine closed in 1993. A distribution centre was built on the pit site after it was cleared.’

She looked around the room, as if assessing the officers at the other tables. As usual, she didn’t look as though she approved of any of them.

‘EMSOU have an operation under way in Shirebrook,’ she said.

Cooper nodded. ‘I think I saw an email.’

‘The situation is very tense.’

‘Is EMSOU responsible for community cohesion now?’ he asked.

‘Everybody’s responsible for community cohesion,’ said Fry. ‘Aren’t they?’

Cooper knew it was true, of course. In many ways, it was the number-one policing priority, ahead of solving crime. Good relations between communities prevented crime from happening in the first place. Certainly serious hate crimes, the type of violent offences Fry and her colleagues at EMSOU were concerned with. When tensions simmered beneath the surface, they could break out into violence at any time. The statistics showed a worrying increase in hate crime after the result of the EU Referendum, and in some areas the situation had refused to settle back to normal. In places like Shirebrook, with its large migrant population, tensions often weren’t even below the surface, but openly on display.

He noticed her cup was practically empty.

‘Do you have time for another coffee?’ he said.

Fry shook her head. ‘Sorry, we’re busy here. The inquiry has become urgent.’

‘You always try to be one up on me,’ said Cooper. ‘What’s the crisis?’

‘A murder case. We’ve got a body.’

Cooper sighed. ‘Well, that’s two up on me, then.’

‘The victim is Polish. I dare say you’ll get an email about that too.’

‘Probably.’

Cooper watched Fry as she drained her cup. Was she the right person to be dealing with sensitive issues like a conflict between communities? He doubted it. She wasn’t a community person. Surely there must be something else going on to justify the presence of DS Diane Fry and her colleagues. Had the murder happened at this time by chance?

‘And what have you got on at the moment?’ asked Fry.

‘A missing person case linked to a previous murder inquiry. A possible manslaughter in an arson incident. A spate of armed robberies.’

But Fry wasn’t really interested. He saw her eyes glaze over and she gazed around the room.

‘Oh, there’s Jamie,’ she said, pushing back her chair.

Cooper remember DC Callaghan from his visit to Fry’s new base at St Ann’s police station in Nottingham, but he was surprised by Fry’s eagerness to get up and greet him. She’d hardly ever let her coolness slip like that with him. Well, perhaps on one or two notable occasions. But it had taken a long time.

Jamie Callaghan nodded at Cooper without a word as he waited for Fry.

‘No doubt I’ll see you around, Ben,’ she said. ‘Good luck with the case.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ said Callaghan.

Well, at least he could speak. Cooper watched the two of them walk away, leaving him alone to stare at his coffee. Not for the first time, he felt he had no idea what was really going on.

When he managed to get away from Chesterfield, Ben Cooper headed west, out beyond Bakewell. He needed to escape, and there was one place he couldn’t stop thinking about.

Half an hour later Cooper parked his car by the side of the road just outside the village of Monyash. A few hikers were making their way back across the fields to their vehicles or visiting the public toilets across the road.

He opened the tailgate of the Toyota, changed into his walking boots and put on his waterproof, then went through the gate, following a wide, flattened path across the grass. The walking didn’t stay easy for very long, he knew.

Brown dung flies rising from a cowpat warned him there was livestock ahead. A small herd of black-and-white cattle lay cudding, their hides covered in flies, flicking their tails and twitching their yellow ear tags. He expected them to move aside from the path as he approached. But these were Lathkill Dale cattle. They were used to noisier visitors than him. They barely blinked as he passed within touching distance of their damp noses.

There were reports on file of stock fencing being cut here in several places. Cooper found it hard to imagine the reason for it, except sheer vandalism. The upper part of this dale was a national nature reserve and famous for its rare wild flowers — purple orchids and Jacob’s ladder.

Soon he was approaching the remains of Ricklow Quarry, where Derbyshire Grey Marble had been worked, the stone used to make fireplaces at Chatsworth House. These slopes were said to contain fossils up to three hundred and sixty million years old.

Enormous cascades of rock covered the hillside as he picked his way through the old quarry. This was some of the roughest going he knew of in the Peak District, a slow scramble over muddy boulders made slippery by rain and mud.

Beyond the spoil heaps of Ricklow Quarry, the valley narrowed dramatically. This part of the dale had an eerie atmosphere, with moss-covered rocks amid dank, dripping trees twisted into unnatural shapes. Cooper thought of The Lord of the Rings — not the films, but the books he’d read as a teenager, the image he had of the hobbits’ Shire. A magical place where anything could happen, good or bad.

At this point the river that gave the dale its name wasn’t even visible. Limestone buttresses towered over each side of the valley. Rocks lay around, as if thrown by giants. It was a strange, mythical landscape. One dark and stormy night in the eighteenth century a vicar of Monyash had ridden his horse right over the cliff after an evening spent drinking in Bakewell. The horse survived, but he didn’t. The church in Monyash had kept a glass jar on display containing a tuft of grass that was said to have been taken from the clergyman’s clenched fist when his body was found.

Why were local legends like that still remembered and shared? Cooper guessed he must have been told it by his mother, or his grandmother, or some other relative. Perhaps he’d read it in a book. But were those stories still being passed on? Or would his be the last generation to look up at these crags and know about the drunken vicar and his horse and the tuft of grass?

Through a squeeze stile, a view finally opened up into the dale, with its elegantly curved limestone cliffs. He passed a fenced-off area where Jacob’s ladder covered the ground in violet-blue flowers in May and June. The sheep found it tasty, so they had to be kept off in the summer. A gate would be opened later in the year to let them graze the coarse grass.

He turned a bend on the path, and there was Lathkill Head Cave. This was where the River Lathkill emerged. Well, it did some of the time. The cave had an imposing entrance, a large square opening with a rock roof like a vast lintel, and moss-covered rocks tumbled on the floor below. The vivid green of the moss was a startling contrast with the silver-grey of the weathered limestone.

Today, the cave was bone dry. There hadn’t been enough rain recently. But in winter it could pour out a vast torrent of water that came from the mine workings. In the summer it was no more than a trickle and often disappeared completely in dry weather.

Lathkill. Yet another Scandinavian name. Derbyshire was thick with them. This one was said to be from Old East Norse, a legacy of the Danish invaders a thousand years ago. Hlada-kill. It sounded strange and exotic in the mouth now. But all it meant was ‘narrow valley’.

The Lathkill was unique even in the Peak District. It was the only river that ran over limestone for the whole of its length. That gave it a distinctive characteristic. And in this case, it was an important difference.

As he stood there, Cooper noticed a nest on a narrow ledge just above his head. A neat bowl shaped from leaves and dry grass, insulated on a bed of moss. So even here in this dried-up cave, something was able to survive.

Below Lathkill Head, the valley widened as it was joined from the south by Cales Dale. Halfway along Lathkill Dale was a tufa waterfall. He thought of tufa as something specific to the Peak District, though he supposed it must occur in other parts of the world where limestone was predominant. The soft, porous rock was formed from calcium carbonate precipitated by water that had run through limestone. It looked unnatural, and in a way it was.

In the aquarium at Matlock Bath there were displays of objects left in the water that had turned almost literally to stone as they calcified. It was the sort of thing the Victorians had loved. Such oddities had appealed to them. Here in Lathkill Dale, the tufa cascade was just an indication of the nature of the landscape he was walking through. This was a place where strange things happened.

A footbridge over the Lathkill led to the Limestone Way a few hundred yards south, but it was a steep ascent up the side of the dale, with stone steps built into the hillside to help the climb. At the top, he knew there would be a wide open stretch of White Peak farmland towards Youlgrave, a landscape very different from the dale, which had begun to feel too dark, too enclosed. Too claustrophobic.

He recalled a swimming area in the River Bradford near Youlgrave. He’d been there a couple of times as a teenager with a group of friends, taking the opportunity of some rare summer sun during the school holidays. But there had been something unappealing about the fact that they were officially allowed to swim there, even if the signs spelled out that it was ‘at your own risk’. The most attractive sites were the ones that were forbidden — the reservoirs and flooded quarries. They’d all needed that sense of adventure back then. Now, he was too aware of the people who’d died or got into serious trouble swimming in the wrong place. It wasn’t that the world that had changed, he supposed. It was him. He’d grown up.

Cooper pulled out an OS map from his waterproof. A rock shelter was marked on the map here at the bottom of Calling Low Dale. A natural overhang in the cliff created a roof, and the shelter had been enclosed by a dry stone wall. The space was no more than six feet long and perhaps four feet wide. The vertical strata of the limestone meant water continually dripped from the roof. You wouldn’t want to use it as a shelter for long.

A hill fort had stood on the long limestone ridge, enclosing an area of about ten acres inside a rampart of limestone blocks and rubble. Like many other ancient sites, it had been badly damaged by stone robbing and years of ploughing. To the north was One Ash Grange, which he’d been told was once a reformatory for misbehaving monks. Up ahead, the eastern half of the dale had been extensively mined for lead ore right up until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Cooper put away his map. Yes, he’d been to all these places before, though the details were a bit vague and confused. Before he came today, he couldn’t have recalled the order he would pass them on the trail into Lathkill Dale from the Monyash road, or where they stood in relation to each other. He wouldn’t even have been able to say why or even when he’d come, or how old he was at the time. He just knew he’d been here before.

Lathkill Dale was a part of his life, the way it was for many people. It had a manner of creeping into your consciousness, as if you’d always known it.

He opened another pocket and took out the photograph of Annette Bower he’d been carrying with him. He felt an odd sort of connection between them. This place had been part of Annette’s life too.

But was it also the place of her death?

Diane Fry left Shirebrook and got on to the M1 at Heath. Twenty miles south, she pulled into Trowell Services.

She preferred the services on the southbound side, because it had a Burger King rather than a McDonalds. For half an hour she sat at a table in Burger King eating a veggie bean burger with apple fries on the side and drinking a tropical mango smoothie.

People ebbed and flowed around her, staying a few minutes and getting back on the road to wherever they were heading. Two customers came and sat at a table next to her, a large woman in a baggy denim trouser suit, with steel grey hair cut into a severe bob and a girl of about fifteen, in a lime green jumpsuit and a baseball cap, like a contestant in The X Factor. They might have been mother and daughter — but, if so, they bore no physical resemblance to one another.

Halfway through her burger, Fry’s phone rang and she saw from the display that it was Angie.

‘Sis.’

‘Hi. What are you doing?’

‘Eating. Why?’

‘You sound as though you’re in a railway station.’

‘Something like that. What do you want?’

‘Just to say, you know... keep it to yourself what I told you last night.’

‘You know you’re putting me in a difficult position,’ said Diane.

‘Well, that’s up to you.’

Diane pulled the lettuce out of her sesame seed bun and left it on the side of her tray.

‘Is this some kind of test?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You shouldn’t have told me, you know you shouldn’t. Why didn’t you just hold on to your own secrets?’

‘We’re sisters, aren’t we? Family. We ought not to have secrets from each other, Di. We never did when we were growing up in Warley.’

‘Oh, that’s right. Until you left.’

She wished she could see Angie’s face. She could never really tell what she was thinking, unless she could look her sister right in the eyes.

‘I didn’t want to leave. It was something I had to do.’

‘But you didn’t tell me where you were going. You let me think I’d never see you again. You became very good at keeping secrets, Angie.’

‘Things have changed. I’m a different person now.’

‘Not all that different,’ said Diane, ‘if what you told me last night is true.’

She heard the baby screaming the background. Zack. Now, that was something that had definitely changed about her sister.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Angie. ‘We can talk about this some other time, if you want. But, Sis — remember. Keep it to yourself.’

Fry dropped her phone on the table in exasperation. Last night’s conversation with her sister was one she’d been hoping to forget. She’d shared her Yuk Sung Chicken and vegetarian spring rolls with Angie, conscious at first of an unusual silence. Then Angie had sat back and taken a deep breath.

‘There’s something I should have told you a long time ago,’ she’d said. ‘About a part of my life I’ve always kept from you.’

Diane had immediately experienced the sinking feeling in her stomach that her sister was uniquely able to provoke.

‘Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.’

But Angie had shaken her head firmly. ‘You have to listen, Sis. It’s too late to do any harm now.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

She had been convinced her sister was about to tell her some shady truths about her previous boyfriend Craig, the father of Zack. She’d always had suspicions about him, but there were times when it was best not to know.

But that wasn’t what Angie had in mind.

‘It goes back a long way,’ she’d said, ‘to when you first found me — or rather, when your friend Ben first found me.’

‘What?’

That had been a painful part of their history. Diane had been trying to trace her sister for years after she ran away from their foster home in the West Midlands. It was why she’d transferred to Derbyshire Constabulary in the first place, following a trail that suggested Angie had ended up in nearby Sheffield. Yet it had been Ben Cooper, interfering with his usual naïve and clumsy style, who had tracked Angie down and arranged their meeting. It had changed her life, and not always in a good way.

‘You don’t need to remind me of that,’ she said.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Angie. ‘In all this time, you’ve never asked me what I was doing in Sheffield. I know you wanted to skate over all that and go back to the way things were in Warley. But that just wasn’t possible, Sis. Not after everything that had happened to me in the meantime. Didn’t you ever wonder?’

Of course she’d wondered. Yet Angie was right — it was an aspect of her sister’s life that she’d pushed determinedly to the back of her mind. She’d tried to pretend that Angie was the same person she’d lost sight of years ago, even though the truth was staring her in the face.

‘It didn’t seem important,’ she said.

Angie had laughed then. ‘Liar. You just didn’t want to know, in case it compromised your principles. I kept quiet then, but it had to come out. And there are reasons I have to tell you now.’

The chicken had lost its flavour by that point in the evening. Diane had felt trapped in her own apartment, with no means of escaping whatever her sister was about to inflict on her.

‘The fact is,’ said Angie, ‘I fell in with some very bad people in Sheffield. The worst kind you can imagine. I was an idiot, of course. I was at risk all the time. But then I did something even more dangerous — I got recruited as an informer. That was when Ben Cooper traced me. It almost caused disaster for a major operation the NCA were planning.’

‘The NCA?’

‘As in the National Crime Agency.’

‘I know who they are. But Angie—’

Her sister had held up a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘I’ve got to tell you now, Di. Because there’s a good chance I’m going to need your help.’

Sitting in Burger King, Fry sighed at the memory of the previous evening. She pushed her meal aside, finished her smoothie and stood up. Immediately her table was claimed. A young man with tousled hair, sideburns and heavy framed glasses sat down across from a dumpy young woman with a plump face and dark hair.

In the women’s toilets at the service area the walls were covered with adverts for insurance policies and bladder control products. A poster near the door encouraged her to text a donation to a charity in Africa.

Fry wondered what kind of adverts were on the walls of the men’s toilets. Something about cars or football, she guessed.

She walked back outside, pressed her key fob, and saw her Audi’s lights blink. Her car, winking at her in the darkness.