Dead in the Dark

28

The twelve-mile drive up the A6 from Bakewell to Buxton was always spectacular, whatever the time of year. As autumn approached, it came into its best with the changing colours of the trees. On the final stretch, the River Wye ran right alongside the road as it twisted and turned through the limestone quarries and railway bridges near Pig Tor and Cowdale.

A massive restoration project had been going on in Buxton to renovate the Georgian Crescent. It had been built by the fifth Duke of Devonshire as part of his scheme to establish Buxton as a fashionable spa town, but had stood empty for years. An eighty-bed five-star hotel and thermal spa was due to open next year, a project estimated to have cost forty-six million pounds. Judging from the signs on the safety fencing, this was where Martina Curtis’s National Lottery money was being spent. All those scratch-card purchases were helping to restore The Crescent in Buxton.

The bell of St John’s Church was ringing the hour as they arrived. Parked in the square outside the opera house was a miniature red double-decker bus that took tourists round the town.

They mounted the steps of the opera house among a tide of people and entered the tiled lobby. The various parts of the auditorium were reached by a maze of narrow passages and even narrower stairs. Signs pointed to the stalls, dress circle, upper circle, gallery, and a series of boxes on either side of the stage.

They had seats in the centre of the dress circle on Row A, looking down into the stalls. He found he had to lean forward to see what was happening at the front edge of the stage.

‘Do you want to rent a pair of opera glasses?’

‘Why not? It’s only a pound.’

For a moment he wondered how much Chloe Young had paid for the tickets. The programme was expensive enough.

Cooper couldn’t remember much about his last visit here. But the interior of the building was vaguely familiar.

Stained glass on the promenades, ladies bar on Upper Circle floor with a portrait of Arthur Willoughby, a Victorian gentleman. Brass lights, a brass rail on the parapet at the bottom of the aisle. Iron radiators painted gold. A theatre manager’s box to the right of the stage, and a box containing the lighting controls.

It was a long drop from the dress circle to the stalls.

‘It was designed by Frank Matcham,’ said Chloe. ‘He was the architect of many famous Edwardian theatres. I think of it as being like a miniature London Coliseum. Grand, but on the scale of a dolls’ house.’

‘I’ll have to take your word for it. I’ve never been to the London Coliseum.’

They settled themselves in the plush green seats. Cooper looked up at the ornate, domed ceiling. He’d never visited the Sistine Chapel in Rome, but he imagined it was painted something like this. Flocks of cherubs and angels floating on clouds and an immense amount of gilt had been used in the decoration of the interior. Gold edging glinted everywhere. Buxton Opera House was a little jewel box of a building.

Panels on either side of the stage commemorated William Shakespeare and Arthur Sullivan. Criterion Strawberry ice-cream tubs were for sale at £2.50, orange lollies £2. He found a tiny gents down a set of steps by the Stalls Bar.

Cooper found himself fascinated by the boxes. On this side, Box C stood over the stalls, while Box D directly overlooked the stage, with Box F above it. They were tiny, containing no more than two or three seats.

The orchestra filed into the pit and he knew they were close to the start. He spent a couple of minutes reading the synopsis of the story in the programme. But soon the lights went down and the curtains opened, revealing a candlelit church. The cast seemed to be dressed in ornate costumes with ruffles, frock coats and swords, but he couldn’t quite place the period and location.

‘When is this performance set?’ whispered Cooper.

‘The year eighteen hundred in Rome. Didn’t you read it in the programme?’

As a screen spooled out the words in English, Cooper did his best to follow the plot. It seemed to be about a painter called Cavaradossi who helped a fugitive to escape justice and attracted the attention of a sadistic police chief, Scarpia. He was quite a villain too. Heartless and malevolent, pursuing his prey ruthlessly. He was always introduced by dark, demonic music that contrasted with the arias of Cavaradossi and his lover, Tosca.

After torturing him, Scarpia ordered the execution of Cavaradossi, but promised Tosca that the firing squad would fire blanks if she gave herself to him. Thinking she’d achieved their freedom, Tosca stabbed the evil Scarpia. But the police chief had lied, and Cavaradossi was killed. Tosca ended up throwing herself off the ramparts of the castle.

Tosca was described in the programme as ‘a roller-coaster story of love, lust, murder and political intrigue’. As Becky Hurst had said, pretty much the usual.

‘How long does it go on?’ he asked Chloe.

‘This is only the first act.’

‘I know.’

‘About two and a quarter hours, with intermissions.’

Cooper was impressed by Scarpia’s gloomy study with a hidden torture chamber where Cavaradossi’s screams came from, and he liked the sound effects — from the distant cannon fire during the Te Deum in Act One to the tolling of church bells and the sudden rattling shots of the firing squad.

He could see that Scarpia had a manipulative mind. The police chief had calculated that he could succeed in his objective by turning the strength of Tosca’s passion to his own advantage. There was a moment towards the end of Act One, when the chorus came in on Scarpia’s Te Deum that made Cooper sit up. There was one familiar aria later in the piece. Tosca’s Vissi d’arte.

Above, and to the left, Cooper could see people in the boxes overlooking the stage. The upper box looked a bit high for comfort — though it would be ideal if you felt like throwing fruit or rotten eggs on to the stage after a performance.

He frowned, then looked again at the upper box. There were three people in it, one male and two females. He could only see them from the shoulders upwards. But as one woman leaned forward on the rail to look down at the stalls, Cooper felt a stab of recognition.

During the second act he was leaning forward to look over the low parapet when Young pulled him back.

‘Careful,’ said Young. ‘You’re not thinking of jumping, are you?’

‘Just thought I saw someone I recognised,’ said Cooper. ‘I need to see if it’s really them.’

She put a hand on his arm.

‘Ben, wait for the intermission at least.’

Reluctantly, he eased back into his seat for the rest of the opera, occasionally casting a glance at the box to make sure the group of people were still there.

Cooper was struck by the scene in which Tosca quietly took a knife from the supper table and concealed it. As Scarpia triumphantly embraced her, she stabbed him, crying ‘Questo è il bacio di Tosca!’ — ‘This is Tosca’s kiss!’. The supertitles scrolled out her words in English:

When he was dead, she forgave him, lighting candles and placing a crucifix on his body.

By the time Tosca made her fatal leap from the wall of the castle crying O Scarpia, Avanti a Dio! — ‘O Scarpia, we meet before God!’, Ben Cooper was watching Box F carefully.

Even before the thunderous applause had died down, he jumped up from his seat.

‘I’ll catch you in the bar,’ he said.

‘Ben, wait—’

But he couldn’t wait. He needed to know for certain. Everything hinged on this moment, in the same way that Reece Bower’s life had been changed by that positive sighting of Evan Slaney’s.

He found himself on a narrow stairway between Box D and Box F. A door led into the Upper Circle, where a man was sitting at the end of a row, close to a speaker and a set of spotlights.

He heard the door of Box F slam. Cooper ran up the stairs. But when he opened the door, there was no one there. Too many doors, too many stairs.

Quietly, he cursed to himself. He’d spent so much time looking at the photographs of Annette Bower that he’d impressed a very clear image of the missing woman in his mind. And he was sure he’d just seen her.

Diane Fry watched an old couple make their way down the street in Shirebrook. Jamie Callaghan was handing out more flyers with the appeal for information. Some passers-by swerved sharply away from him as if he was selling insurance. Others took a flyer, glanced at it, then dropped it in a bin a few yards up the road.

Fry shook her head. The idea that some of these people were still fighting the Miners’ Strike from 1984 didn’t make any sense to her. She had a suspicion Ben Cooper was right, though. He knew this place and she didn’t. She would probably never know it, no matter how much time she spent here. She would always been an observer, an outsider, just like she’d been in Edendale. Someone who didn’t belong.

She recalled her last meeting with Ben Cooper in Edendale. That case of the suicide tourists. And for a while she thought it had been the last meeting between them too. It had been the way Cooper said ‘Goodbye, Diane’ in that casual yet final way. She left Edendale feeling a period of her life had come to an end, and surprised by a sudden turmoil of mixed emotions she couldn’t explain.

How could two words do that to her? They were simple enough. Just an ordinary ‘goodbye’. He was distracted by something else as she was leaving and he hadn’t looked at her as he spoke. That was all it was. That was all.

It was ridiculous that she should start trying to read deeper meaning into everything people said or did. Not now. She’d avoided it all her life, had watched people doing it and had shaken her head in pity. Such futility in attempting to second-guess what someone else was thinking, so much pain you could cause yourself by dwelling on the possible meaning of a word, an expression, a casual gesture. It was a tragic waste of time and emotional energy, not something Diane Fry would do. She was immune to all that. She left it to the Ben Coopers of the world.

She turned and unlocked the car.

‘Come on, then, Jamie,’ she said.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Callaghan in surprise.

‘The pub?’

He smiled. ‘If you say so, Sergeant.’

Ben Cooper was still distracted as he came out of Buxton Opera House with Chloe Young. Walking through the tiled lobby and down a flight of steps, he looked everywhere, staring at the crowds of opera goers.

‘That execution...’ Young was saying. ‘Well, I suppose he was just a painter.’

Cooper stopped suddenly. ‘There she is.’

‘What?’

‘It’s her, I’m sure of it.’

‘Ben—’

He let go of Young’s arm and ran down the steps, dodging between the crowds. He caught up with a group of three people, two women and a man, who were heading towards the taxi rank.

Breathless, Cooper came up behind them and touched one of the women on the shoulder. She spun round with a small cry of surprise.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

The man pushed himself in between her and Cooper.

‘What’s going on here, friend?’

Automatically, Cooper pulled out his warrant card and held it in front of the man. But he was looking only at the woman. Now that he stood right in front of her, he realised that she looked nothing like Annette Bower. Well, a bit perhaps. She was the same height, same build, and had the same colour of hair. The style of it was different, but that was to be expected. What he noticed most that she was too young. He’d been looking at photographs of Annette Bower from at least ten years ago.

‘So you’re police? What have we done?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ said Cooper.

He spoke to the woman. ‘I’m sorry to startle you. Can I ask your name?’

‘Hannah,’ she said. She was starting to relax now and smiled at him quizzically. ‘Hannah Moulton. These are my parents.’

‘I think I made a mistake,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve confused you with someone else.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Are we free to go, then?’ asked her father.

‘Of course. I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘There’s no reason to panic.’

Cooper jumped as an alarm began to sound. He looked around for a car flashing its lights, but it wasn’t coming from the street. The woman he’d approached looked flustered and began to dig in her bag. It took her a minute or two to pull out a rape alarm and turn it off. She sensed him watching and met his eye with a small shrug and a rueful smile. Sometimes there was no reason to panic. It could just be a false alarm.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘No problem.’

Cooper stood and watched the group get into a taxi. People passed him on either side, with the occasional wary or amused glance.

He turned and found Chloe Young standing behind him, shaking her head in bemusement. She looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

Across the road from the Opera House, geraniums gleamed in hanging baskets lining an arcade. A young man was half-heartedly asking passers-by for change. He was wearing a slouch beanie hat that made him look like an overgrown garden gnome.

They’d decided to try the theatre menu at the Old Hall Hotel. Chloe had been tempted by the salmon terrine and the pan-fried sea bass with crushed new potatoes, samphire and lemon butter sauce. Cooper chose tian of crab and apple salad, followed by fillet of pork with black pudding mashed potato, creamed cabbage, and whole grain mustard sauce.

According to the plaque on the wall outside, Mary Queen of Scots had stayed here between 1576 and 1578. Well, not exactly in this building, since the present hotel was built in 1670. It was likely that a lot of other events had happened here in the last three hundred and fifty years. Cooper was pretty sure he’d been to a wedding reception at the Old Hall some years ago. So it had played a part in his own life, in a way.

He looked across the table at Chloe Young. She was eyeing him speculatively over a forkful of sea bass.

‘I suppose I seemed to have behaved a bit oddly in the opera house,’ he said.

‘I’m not sure. Isn’t that the way you normally behave?’

‘Only when I’ve got a bit too involved in an inquiry.’

‘And how often is that?’

He laughed. ‘Quite often, to be honest.’

‘I thought that might be the case.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, don’t apologise. I like it. It means you’re dedicated. Passionate about your job. That’s a good thing, in my book.’

‘And you’re the same?’

‘Yes, I think I am,’ said Young. ‘Though I try not to embarrass myself in public too often.’

Cooper laughed. ‘You didn’t get the murder victim from Shirebrook, did you?’

‘Not in my mortuary. It’s in a different area. But I heard about it. Sad case.’

‘Mmm.’

He was conscious of Young watching him closely as he ate. Her eyes were keen. She didn’t miss very much, he was sure.

‘Is something else bothering you, Ben?’ she said.

‘Oh, just that it’s Friday tomorrow.’

‘The start of the weekend? People usually look happier about that.’

‘No, sorry. I mean — it’s my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife Kate. She has an appointment at the hospital.’

‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

‘It could be.’

‘I see. Well, she’ll be in good hands.’

‘I hope so.’

‘You care about her, don’t you?’

Cooper was taken aback.

‘I care about them all — Matt, Kate, their two girls Amy and Josie. They’re my family.’

‘There’s no need to feel embarrassed about that. I like it.’

There was more meaning in her gaze than he dared to acknowledge. Cooper felt a sudden rush of emotion, a feeling that he would like to spend the rest of his life with this woman. But it was too soon. He had to take it more slowly.

He toyed with his mashed potato, seeking a way to change the subject. He let a few moments pass, hoping it would feel more natural.

‘So how are you liking being back working in Derbyshire?’ he asked.

‘I love it,’ she said. ‘It’s like coming home.’

He felt himself relax. ‘I’m glad you feel that way.’

‘I’m starting to think that I’d like to live further out this way rather than in the suburbs of Sheffield. Totley is nice, and it’s close to the Peak District of course. But it isn’t quite the same.’

‘No. I can’t imagine ever living in a city now.’

Young studied him as he ate his pork.

‘You know I have a brother?’ she said.

‘Yes, you’ve mentioned him. Martin?’

‘That’s right. He works near here, at the Nestlé bottling plant.’

‘Oh, the one at Waterswallows, where Buxton Mineral Water is bottled?’

She nodded. ‘They claim that the whole process from rainfall to bottle takes five thousand years. The water fell on Derbyshire at the end of the last Ice Age, slowly filtered down through about a mile of limestone, then was naturally pumped up again.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Martin thinks it is.’

‘Five thousand years,’ said Cooper. ‘I thought the last Ice Age was longer ago than that.’

‘Me too. Though actually the scientists say we’re still in an Ice Age now.’

‘It feels like it sometimes.’

‘Well, that’s the way I think of Derbyshire,’ said Young. ‘A long, slow process of absorption, until you think what you’re looking for has long since vanished. Then up it comes again, out of the landscape.’

‘Ah, like my missing body. It might just pop up again, after ten years.’

She smiled. ‘You never know.’

‘It would be nice. But I’m not depending on help from the Peak District landscape. It doesn’t always yield up what it’s absorbed.’

They ordered dessert. Warm chocolate and vanilla ice cream, glazed lemon tart, coffee and chocolate truffles.

‘Nestlé relocated the Buxton Spring Water bottling plant a few years ago,’ he said. ‘It was right here in the centre of Buxton before that, on Station Road. It had been there for a hundred years or so.’

‘Yes, that’s right. The new factory is on the edge of the national park, so Martin says they clad it in recycled stone and gave it a wavy roof to fit in with the setting.’

‘But the water comes from right here, at St Ann’s Well,’ said Cooper. ‘Didn’t they have to build a pipeline from the old site to supply the new plant?’

‘Yes, more than two miles of it.’

Cooper paused over his coffee, imagining water flowing two miles underground below Buxton. Then he pictured the water being pumped out of the flooded mine workings in Lathkill Dale. Miles of underground tunnels and soughs. Would they yield up what they had taken? Would they even give him a clue exactly where to look?

He realised that Young was still gazing at him. In fact, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him.

‘I think you need to relax more,’ she said with a lift of an eyebrow.

‘How do you suggest I do that?’

‘I’m sure we could think of a few ways.’

Cooper felt a warm glow that had nothing to do with the heat from his coffee.

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Your eyes look lovely when you smile.’