Dead in the Dark

27

The front desk had called up to let Cooper know there was a member of the public downstairs asking to see him. His first reaction was to tell them he needed to make an appointment — he was busy, after all. But when he heard that his visitor had information about the Bower case he gave in to his instincts and had the man brought up.

When the door opened, Cooper found himself looking at a man in his seventies, slim and sprightly looking, with bushy white hair which stood out from his head in untidy wings as if he’d just been walking against a strong wind.

‘Eric Oldfield,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘You’re the detective inspector, are you?’

‘Yes, sir. DI Cooper.’

‘You look a bit young to me. But then, all bobbies look young at my age. Some of them I’ve just passed only looked about fifteen. I’m never sure whether they’re actual police officers or just on work experience.’

Cooper smiled as he waved the man to a chair.

‘I gather you may have some information for us.’

‘Well, there’s something that’s been troubling me for years,’ said Oldfield. ‘I don’t know if it means anything.’

‘What is it?’

‘It goes back to when that woman from Bakewell disappeared.’

‘Do you mean Annette Bower?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘It was ten years ago.’

‘Yes, ten years,’ he repeated, as if Cooper had said something profound and moving. ‘I should explain that I’m a widower, twice over. A little over ten years ago I met the woman who became my second wife. Margaret was the real love of my life, I realised. We met at a local history group and we were soon head over heels in love with each other. It all moved very quickly. It didn’t last, I’m afraid.’

Cooper let Mr Oldfield have a quiet moment. He looked as though he needed it. It seemed unnecessary to ask what had happened to Margaret. He’d introduced himself as a widower twice over. That spoke for itself.

‘The Annette Bower case...’ prompted Cooper gently.

‘Oh, yes. It was in the news an awful lot at the time, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘I didn’t really follow it,’ said Oldfield. ‘We were so busy with our own lives that we didn’t take much notice of what was going in the outside world, especially if it was something unpleasant. We didn’t want anything to intrude into our happiness. We were so focused on building a home and being with our new families. We were very much in love, you see. That’s the way it is, in the beginning.’

He sounded very apologetic. Cooper wanted to tell him it wasn’t something he should feel the need to apologise for. It sounded the kind of life that everyone dreamed about. It was certainly what he’d dreamed of himself, building a home and starting a family. For him, it had never happened.

Cooper fought down a pang of envy. This man didn’t seem so happy now, did he? And he was talking about the past. Perhaps that dream had fallen apart too.

‘This Annette Bower. At first they said her husband had killed her, didn’t they?’ said Oldfield.

‘Yes, he was charged with her murder,’ said Cooper.

‘But then they reported she was alive after all, and it went very quiet. It seemed he hadn’t killed her, she’d just gone off somewhere. Her husband was found innocent.’

‘Well, not quite,’ said Cooper. ‘But go on.’

‘So I forgot about what I’d seen. It didn’t seem to matter after that.’

‘What did you see?’ asked Cooper.

‘I recognised a photograph of the man, the husband.’

‘Reece Bower is his name.’

‘I believe I saw Mr Bower that day, on the day his wife disappeared. In fact, I think I saw him twice.’

Now Cooper was interested. ‘Really?’

Oldfield nodded. ‘It was an odd thing, actually. When you’re out there, you sometimes pass the same people going out and coming back. You say “hello” the first time, as you do when you meet a fellow walker. Then when you pass them again, you don’t know whether to say “hello” a second time or just to smile or nod. Some people laugh as if it’s a huge joke, or an amazing coincidence that they’ve run into the same person twice. But there’s only one route, isn’t there? You’re bound to pass the same people.’

Cooper held up a hand. ‘Slow down, please. Can you start from the beginning?’

‘Sorry. I get carried away.’ Oldfield took a breath. ‘I’m a bit of an amateur photographer. I was out taking photographs of the old mine workings. Margaret was with me, of course. I took quite a few photos of her too. I got them out to look at them yesterday. It brought back all these memories.’

‘The old mine workings...?’ prompted Cooper gently.

‘Yes. And while I was taking photos, a couple came past us. She said “hello”, but he just nodded. That’s the way it is sometimes. He looked a bit bad-tempered, so we let it pass. Had a bit of a giggle about actually, once they were out sight. And then the really funny thing...’

Cooper waited. He was sure there was a point to the story, if he was patient enough. And he felt Eric Oldfield was finally getting to it.

‘The funny thing, Mr Oldfield?’

‘It must have been about half an hour later, or perhaps a bit more. I was taking some shots of the viaduct buttresses. We’d walked off the trail a few yards, down towards the river, so I could get all the buttresses in one shot, looking towards the mine. And when I looked up from the viewfinder, there he was. The same man. The one who’d scowled at us when the woman said “hello”. Only this time, he was on his own.’

Now Cooper felt a surge of excitement. This was what he’d been waiting for. He touched the photograph of Annette in his pocket, picturing her smile, and the friendly expression. She could certainly have been the woman who said ‘hello’ to everyone she passed on a walk. Did she also fail to make the return trip?

‘Are you absolutely certain it was the same man?’ said Cooper.

‘Yes, certain. I even recognised the blue waterproof. He still looked bad-tempered too. He was walking very quickly, as if he wanted to get away. I had the impression he would have broken into a run if he could, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself or look ridiculous. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think I do,’ said Cooper.

‘And it was him. The man who they said had killed his wife, but hadn’t. The man who has gone missing now. I know it was ten years ago, but I remember it clearly, every detail. It was such a happy day. I treasure the memories.’

‘Why have you only come forward with this now?’

‘Well, it was all in the papers again, wasn’t it?’ said Oldfield. ‘And I read them now, more than I used to. There isn’t much else for me to do, you see. Not these days.’

His expression had changed. He looked almost tragic. Some of the memories weren’t quite so happy, clearly.

‘I think I know,’ said Cooper. ‘But just tell me — where exactly was this? Where did you and your wife see this man? Where were these mine workings?’

‘Oh, didn’t I say? It was in Lathkill Dale, of course.’

Jamie Callaghan was making calls as he and Diane Fry left the hairdresser’s in Shirebrook and drove down towards the Model Village.

‘Apparently, the media appeal was in connection with a series of small-scale armed robberies they’ve had in North Division over the past few weeks,’ he said. ‘Nikki Frost was right — the most recent one was at a corner shop in Edendale. Two men dressed in leathers and crash helmets, who made their escape on a motorcycle.’

‘This Asian detective she mentioned — is his name Sharma?’

‘Yes, DS Devdan Sharma. Do you know him?’

‘I’ve met him,’ said Fry.

‘It must be a coincidence,’ said Callaghan. ‘The red crash helmet, I mean.’

‘Possibly.’

Fry didn’t like coincidences, but she knew they happened. If this one involved Edendale divisional CID, it could be awkward. With luck, evidence would come to light that would rule out a connection.

Officers were still examining the house in the Model Village that had been raided the previous night. The presence of the police was no longer the spectacle for the residents that it had been a few hours ago, and when Fry found DCI Mackenzie inside he looked much more calm and relaxed.

‘Anything useful turned up here, sir?’ asked Fry.

‘You might say that,’ he said. ‘We found some documents in the pocket of one of the men’s jackets. One of them is some kind of agreement he signed for the rental of the house they were living in. It has the name of the owner-landlord. But there’s also the name of an agent mentioned. It might be a name you’ll recognise.’

‘Let me see.’

Fry studied the paper. It was written in Polish, but the names and signatures were perfectly clear.

‘Well, look at that,’ she said. ‘Our Mr Geoff Pollitt, no less.’

Dev Sharma looked pleased with himself today. When Cooper entered the CID room at West Street, Sharma was carefully carrying a large cardboard evidence box as if it contained the crown jewels.

‘What have you got, DS Sharma?’ asked Cooper.

Sharma smiled, a rare smile of genuine pride and pleasure in the job.

‘A motorcycle crash helmet, sir,’ he said.

Cooper hardly needed to look. ‘Red, with white stripes and black stars?’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

‘Just a guess.’

‘It’s a match for the one worn by a suspect in the TV footage of the robbery at the Singhs’ shop,’ said Sharma.

‘I thought it might be. Good work.’

‘Thank you, Inspector. We’ve also brought two suspects in for questioning.’

‘Even better,’ said Cooper. And he felt genuinely happy for Dev and the team that they’d done it without him.

‘They carried out one robbery too many. It was bound to happen. They all push their luck too far.’

‘Where did this happen, Dev?’

‘Down in the Matlock LPU. They robbed a small sub-post office and village store. Same MO — two men in crash helmets who got away on a motorcycle.’

Sharma explained the circumstances. This time the team had got a lucky break. They didn’t come very often, so they all felt suitably grateful. And it was all down to the introduction of new technology.

The police station had continued to change in many ways. A new feature downstairs was the docking station for the body cameras. There were more than seven hundred cameras issued to officers across Derbyshire now, partly paid for by a Home Office Police Innovation Fund.

In this case a response officer in the Matlock area had been equipped with a body-worn camera, a Reveal RS2-X2 with a front-facing screen, attached to his equipment vest with a Klickfast mount.

More importantly, the officer had decided to switch it on when he got out of his car. The camera had caught several good images of the suspects on its high-definition video footage before they climbed on to their motorbike and escaped down the A6.

‘A clear shot of the number plate,’ said Sharma. ‘The make of the bike, everything.’

‘And the helmet,’ said Cooper.

‘Exhibit number one. We went straight round to the registered address in Clay Cross, found the bike outside with the engine still warm — and two suspects inside sharing out their stash. The crash helmet was in the hall, the weapons were in one of the bedrooms, and the house was full of items from their robberies, though it will take us some time to sort through it. We’ve also picked up potential leads to at least two other suspects.’

‘Names?’ asked Cooper.

‘Two brothers. Wayne Crowley, aged twenty-six, and Earl Crowley, twenty-three. It will all be in my report.’

‘Thanks, Dev. I hope the interviews go well.’

Cooper couldn’t resist a twinge of envy. Two suspects whose luck had run out. In fact, fortune had swung the other way, and Dev Sharma had benefited. It would look good on his record when the time came.

An hour or so later, Cooper saw Dev Sharma pass his office with Luke Irvine and Becky Hurst. They looked tired and no longer quite so jubilant. Cooper put his head out into the passage.

‘How are the interviews going with the robbery suspects?’ he said.

‘As you might imagine, sir,’ said Sharma. ‘A lot of “no comments”. And when we do get them talking, it seems to be all about their political views.’

‘Political views?’

‘They’re rather right wing.’

Cooper could understand now why Sharma had brought both Irvine and Hurst in for the interviews.

‘Basically, they’re racists,’ said Hurst. ‘They got on a rant about immigrants and the EU.’

‘It’s an issue about immigration, not racism,’ put in Irvine.

Hurst laughed. ‘If you say so, Luke.’

Irvine’s face flushed. ‘It makes me really angry when people have this knee-jerk reaction and want to condemn everything as racist. It’s an attempt to shut down any discussion of immigration. It’s an attack on free speech.’

Hurst appealed to the rest of the group.

‘Did you see how angry Luke got? As soon as the word “racism” is mentioned they always insist what they say isn’t racist, don’t they?’

‘He might have had some justification,’ said Sharma.

‘Come off it, Dev.’

‘Well, freedom of speech—’

‘Bollocks to your freedom of speech,’ said Irvine.

Hurst’s eyes widened, and Cooper could see she was about to answer in the same vein.

‘That’s enough,’ said Cooper. ‘All of you. Have you asked them if they’re members of a right-wing organisation?’

‘We’ll ask them in the next session,’ said Sharma, ‘if we get a chance. To be honest, I’m experiencing a bit of a problem. The two brothers we have in the custody suite are from Manchester and their accents are very thick. I’m having difficulty understanding them.’

‘Really, Dev?’

Sharma nodded.

‘I’m embarrassed to say I may need a translator,’ he said.

‘What about the search of their address?’

‘It’s going to take long time to go through their haul of stolen goods,’ said Sharma. ‘They have all kinds of stuff at the address in Clay Cross, besides a pile of cash. They don’t seem to have got rid of anything.’

‘Perhaps they were waiting for the attention to die down,’ suggested Cooper.

‘Either that or they’ve been so busy carrying out robberies they haven’t had time to sell anything. But there’s one interesting item I’d like to show you.’

‘Okay.’

Sharma came back to Cooper’s office a few minutes later carrying an evidence bag.

‘There were a lot of mobile phones taken from robbery victims,’ he said. ‘We happened to pick this one out. A Samsung Galaxy. It’s an interesting one, I think.’

‘Why?’

‘There are a lot of text messages and emails on it. And they’re all in Polish.’

‘Polish?’

‘One of the lads from scenes of crime is half Polish. He recognised the language, though he couldn’t translate it completely. The incoming messages are all for someone called Krystian. And here... look at the email address.’

Cooper peered at the screen. ‘Zalewski.’

Sharma nodded. ‘That rang a bell, so we checked with the phone company. The number belongs to Mr Krystian Zalewski. His current address is in Shirebrook, Derbyshire. Well, when I say current—’

‘He’s the murder victim,’ said Cooper.

‘Right. The one EMSOU are scratching their heads over. I hear they’ve been pulling in members of the BNP.’

‘They’re working on the possibility of a hate crime.’

Sharma laid the phone on Cooper’s desk. ‘Well, it looks as though he might have been the victim of a street robbery. But one that went badly wrong.’

‘Our suspects? They’ve never injured anyone in previous robberies. Threats, yes. People frightened and shaken up afterwards. But there have been no injuries. Why was this incident so different? Why did someone end up being stabbed to death?’

‘He must have tried to fight them off, I suppose,’ said Sharma.

‘In a previous incident, when a victim resisted, they simply ran off. These lads weren’t up for a fight. They relied on surprise and speed, intimidating a victim into cooperating, then getting away fast.’

‘I don’t know the answer,’ said Sharma. ‘We might be able to get to it during the interviews. We’ll be adding a charge of murder, it seems. That might shake them up enough to get one or both to talk.’

‘Of course.’ Cooper leaned back in his chair. ‘I suppose they must have picked up his phone after the attack. It was stupid of them to keep it.’

‘Well, they’re not the brightest of criminals, sir,’ said Sharma.

For a moment, Cooper stared at the phone in its evidence bag on his desk. He could hardly believe that one of his team’s inquiries had helped solved Diane Fry’s murder case.

Cooper didn’t have long to wait for the expected reaction to his latest message.

‘Are you expecting a visitor, sir?’ said the front desk. ‘Detective Sergeant Fry is here from EMSOU Major Crime Unit.’

‘Yes, I’m expecting her.’

‘I’ll send her up. She says she knows the way.’

Cooper hesitated. ‘No, she’s a visitor. Escort her up.’

‘Will do.’

Cooper waited, wondering what he should do in the meantime. Straighten his desk, or leave it as it was to show that he was busy? He got up and moved one of the chairs back from the desk a bit.

A few minutes later, Diane Fry was sitting opposite him with a look of incredulity sharpening her features.

‘You seriously think you’ve solved our case?’ she said. ‘That’s a bit much even for you. Your little team can’t compare with the expertise and resources we have at EMSOU.’

‘I didn’t think it was a competition,’ said Cooper mildly. ‘We’re on the same side, aren’t we? I’m offering our assistance.’

‘The crime happened in Shirebrook,’ said Fry. ‘It’s a long way from your Local Policing Unit here in the Eden Valley.’

Cooper didn’t like the way she said ‘Local Policing Unit’. Somehow, she added a hint of a sneer to the phrase.

‘There are no borders in Derbyshire,’ said Cooper. ‘People can drive from Edendale to Shirebrook without passing through Customs, you know. It takes less than an hour, even through Chesterfield.’

Fry frowned. ‘What does Chesterfield have to do with it?’

‘Never mind.’

‘So what exactly have you got for me?’

He dropped the evidence bag on the desk with a smile of triumph.

‘A mobile phone,’ he said. ‘Very useful, mobile phones. I’ve got one in my own case. It can tell you an awful lot, as long as you find it in good condition and get access to it.’

She leaned forward. ‘Whose phone is this?’

Cooper knew she must have figured it out as soon as she saw the contents of the bag. There was no point in dragging it out any further.

‘It’s Krystian Zalewski’s,’ he said.

In Lathkill Dale, the DCRO had come back with a report of high carbon dioxide levels in the upper entrance of Lathkill Head Cave. A group descended the cave with a CO₂ meter to measure the atmosphere. On the surface, the reading was barely 0.01 per cent. The highest levels were found in a choke between two chambers called where readings went up as far as 2.31 per cent, where there was little air flow near the stream.

‘In the choke, the extra exertion of climbing over the rocks would increase the effects of CO₂, and the lower levels of oxygen. A short trip is fine in those conditions. But if you stay in too long—’

‘I understand.’

The remnants of his own team had wandered back into Lathkill Dale and arrived at the rendezvous point. Only Carol Villiers and Gavin Murfin were left now, and he could see from their faces that there was no good news.

‘We interviewed the people at the Lathkill Hotel in Over Haddon,’ said Villiers. ‘We also went to the Mandale campsite, and the Reckoning House camping barn. Nothing.’

‘Have you checked the car park at Over Haddon?’

‘Yes. Nobody has seen any suspicious vehicles. There were only a few cars there and we accounted for them all.’

‘It was amazing,’ said Murfin.

‘What was?’

‘I went in the toilets there. Do you know there are pot plants in the gents? And they’d been watered recently too.’

‘Okay, you can call it a day. We can manage here.’

‘See you tomorrow then, boss.’

The afternoon was getting late. Cooper knew he was no use here for now. He had to leave the search to the experts and hope they came up with something. It was time for him to get back to the office and do his own job. But he wanted to get one last look inside this mine.

‘Inspector—’

‘I won’t go far in,’ he said.

Cooper’s urge was to go deeper in, and deeper, to keep going through the tunnels and shafts of the mine until he found what he was looking for. But if he got trapped or lost, it would only create more problems for the search team and put others at risk. He had to take some responsibility.

‘Inspector, we need you to come back out, please. It might not be safe without proper equipment.’

‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said.

He couldn’t resist taking one last look at the tunnel, a final sweep of his torch. The depth of the darkness was unnerving. It was easy to imagine anything in here. Yet anything, he felt, would be far better than nothing at all.