Dead in the Dark

32

It was market day in Shirebrook. But the market traders were already packing up to go home, loading their unsold goods into a small fleet of Transit vans, while council workers began to dismantle the stalls.

DCI Alistair Mackenzie had bought himself a burger from a fast-food van. The smell of fried onions was turning Diane Fry’s stomach.

‘So that’s it,’ said Mackenzie through a mouth full of burger. ‘Job done.’

‘Krystian Zalewski was trying to prevent a street robbery,’ said Fry. ‘He came to the assistance of a woman who was struggling with two men. That was how he got stabbed.’

‘And the woman ran off when the attackers turned their attention to Zalewski.’

‘Nikki Frost, yes. She ran away as fast as she could and went home. I don’t suppose we can blame her for that. She had no idea what happened after she left. And she didn’t know Zalewski either. Even when she saw his photograph in the local paper, she didn’t recognise him. She only made the connection when someone pointed out the spot where he’d been attacked. It was then she realised he was her rescuer, and he was dead. I feel very sorry for her.’

Fry felt as though her last words were lost in the cacophony of diesel engines and steel tubes being thrown on to the back of a trailer. Mackenzie looked at her with an expression of dissatisfaction.

‘And how come Divisional CID got the suspects in custody before we did?’ he said.

Fry took a deep breath. She’d been asking herself the same question.

‘They just had a lucky break,’ she said. ‘It happens, sir.’

‘A body-worn camera?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Technology.’

‘And luck,’ repeated Fry. ‘It was just a coincidence.’

‘A coincidence? More of an inconvenience.’

‘I appreciate that, sir.’

‘Did you have any suspicion that it would turn out this way, Diane?’

‘No. It was a complete surprise to me,’ said Fry. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to apologise. They were circumstances out of your control. Out of anyone’s control.’

‘We’re on it now. A murder charge takes precedence.’

Mackenzie wiped his hands on a paper napkin and dropped it into a litter bin. A man on a mobility scooter buzzed past them, just missing Mackenzie’s toes. There seemed to be a lot of mobility scooters in Shirebrook. A lot of old people’s bungalows. A lot of England flags.

‘DS Fry...’ said Mackenzie.

‘Sir?’

‘Please try to make sure the next thing that happens is neither a coincidence, an inconvenience — or a surprise.’

‘Of course.’

‘So are we finished in Shirebrook? We’ve got the suspects locked up, we’ve got the statements we need. It’s just a matter of doing the paperwork and putting our case together for the CPS.’

‘There’s just one more job I want to do here,’ said Fry.

Mackenzie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question her. ‘Do you need DC Callaghan?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, keep him anyway, Diane. I’ll leave you to it. See you both back at St Ann’s.’

Fry watched him head back to his car. The stalls were almost gone now, the Transit vans had left. The marketplace would be empty and deserted again soon, just the way it had been when she first arrived in Shirebrook. Had anything changed in these last few days? It wasn’t very likely.

When Ben Cooper and Carol Villiers arrived back at the rendezvous point in Lathkill Dale, the DCRO controller came forward to meet him. The man took off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. There were streaks of mud on his face like camouflage paint, and more stains in his beard.

‘We’ve looked in all the accessible places,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

‘Well, that just means we’ll have to look in all the inaccessible places,’ said Cooper impatiently.

‘Where do you mean?’

Cooper hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. But that’s where we’ll have to look.’

‘Well, if you can show us, we’ll look. Otherwise—’

He looked around the dale, with its steep slopes covered in trees and dense undergrowth, rising to limestone cliffs.

‘Where is the main mine building from here?’ asked Cooper.

The man pointed. ‘Up the slope and towards the right. There’s no path from here though. You’ll have to hack your way through.’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘We,’ said Villiers. ‘I’ll come with you, Ben.’

A few minutes later, Cooper was working his way up the hillside with difficulty. Villiers had moved ahead of him and was ten yards further up the slope, pushing aside the branches of an overgrown elder tree and tramping down a patch of nettles. She was stamping on the weeds as if she really hated them, which perhaps she did. Some people were prone to get a bad reaction to nettle stings.

He looked down at his feet as he felt his toe catch on a root and had to stretch out his arms to keep his balance. He laughed at his awkwardness and wondered if Carol had seen him almost fall.

But when he looked up again, Carol Villiers had gone.

With a cold feeling gripping her heart, Diane Fry pushed open the scuffed door and walked into Geoff Pollitt’s shop in Shirebrook marketplace.

‘Wait out there, Jamie,’ she called. ‘I just want to have a word with Mr Pollitt alone.’

Callaghan hesitated. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, Diane?’

‘I won’t be long.’

Pollitt straightened up from behind the counter when she entered. He didn’t look directly at Fry, but gazed past her to see who she’d brought with her. When he saw she was alone, he smirked.

‘Can I help you with something, Sergeant?’ he said.

‘Why, what exactly are you selling?’

‘Nothing that would interest you. Maybe you should try next door at the pet shop? They sell peanuts for monkeys.’

‘We raided a house down at the Model Village on Wednesday,’ said Fry.

‘I heard. Not one of mine.’

‘No, but we do know about yours, Mr Pollitt.’

He went a little pale.

‘You can’t do. You’re just trying it on.’

Fry ignored him. He was right, of course. She was trying it on. But sometimes you had to bluff a bit. She hoped she was making him uneasy. When people were unsettled, they made mistakes, perhaps blurted out the wrong thing. It was something to hope for.

‘It’s all over, isn’t it?’ said Pollitt. ‘They say you got two blokes for doing in the Pole upstairs.’

‘Yes, we did.’ Fry looked up at the ceiling. Yes, the bloodstain was still here. It looked darker now. That could be bacteria growing on the blood. It wouldn’t meet approval from a health and safety inspection. But then, what in this shop would?

‘We’re not leaving Shirebrook just yet,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ said Pollitt. ‘Are you starting to feel at home?’

Fry gave a bag of cat litter an experimental kick. It gave way under the toe of her shoe and a slit let out a trickle of granules. The crunch felt very satisfying. But it wasn’t the only thing she wanted to kick.

‘We’ve been watching your shop,’ she said. ‘You get a lot of visitors, don’t you? People who don’t seem to buy very much.’ She looked around the bare shelves. ‘Not anything that you have on display anyway.’

‘So?’

‘So what are they doing here? Are you having meetings?’

‘Okay, yes. I get together with like-minded people sometimes. There’s no law against that, is there?’

‘Like-minded in what way?’

‘Do you need to ask? You know for yourself what the problems are. Everyone can see it. Quite a lot of us think we’re living in depraved and degenerate times. The EU has been a disaster for us in England. Brexit is our future. The Referendum vote gave us hope.’

‘Did it really?’

Pollitt’s lip curled.

‘You sneering liberals,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand, do you? You don’t want to hear what ordinary people think, how immigration is destroying our communities and ruining our lives. You just put your hands over your ears and shout “racist”. Well, it doesn’t work any more. Things are going our way. You’ll see.’

She studied Pollitt, feeling the anger growing inside her. He was a man of his time, a typical product of this moment in history. But that didn’t make him any less despicable in Fry’s eyes. It didn’t make him any less worthy of being stamped out of existence, like the cockroaches that no doubt were infesting his stock room.

Fry took a step closer. Pollitt seemed to recognise the look in her eyes and he flinched as if she’d hit him. But she hadn’t. Not yet.

A few minutes later Fry opened the door of the shop and stepped out into the daylight of Shirebrook marketplace.

Jamie Callaghan had been waiting impatiently for her on the pavement. He looked as though he’d been expecting the worst. He stared in horror at Fry’s hand as she rubbed her knuckles with a tissue.

‘Is everything okay?’ he said.

‘Fine.’

‘Are you sure, Diane?’

Fry shrugged. Callaghan went to the door and stuck his head into the shop.

‘Oh, God. What happened to him?’ he said.

‘I think he was visited by a group of local men who took reprisals.’

‘Polish men? East Europeans?’

‘I don’t know. They may just have been Shirebrook residents who took exception to outsiders attacking members of their community.’

‘He can tell us himself, can’t he?’

Fry turned to look at Geoff Pollitt. He glowered back at her over the hand clutching his nose.

‘He doesn’t seem to be talking,’ she said. ‘Which has got to be a good thing.’

In Lathkill Dale, Ben Cooper was lying on the ground and peering into an impenetrable darkness.

‘Carol! Carol!’ he called.

He called again and again. There was no answer. Only a trickle of soil and stone sliding into the hole from the dangerously unstable edge.

‘I didn’t even hear her fall,’ he said desperately.

‘It’s the entrance to an old mineshaft. They must be all over this valley.’

‘How far down does it go?’

‘There’s no way of telling.’

‘We need lights.’

‘The DCRO team are coming. They’ll deal with it, don’t worry.’

But Cooper was hardly listening. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he’d spotted a ledge of rock jutting out of a hole a couple of feet down. He twisted his body round and eased himself over the edge.

‘No, wait. It’s not safe.’

‘She’s probably injured,’ he said.

‘Well, we don’t want two of you getting hurt.’

Cooper hesitated only a second. One part of him knew that he was being given good advice, that it was foolhardy to risk his own safety, that he should wait for the rescue team with lights and proper equipment. But he was here, right now, and Carol was lying down there, hurt.

His boots touched the ledge and his fingers scrabbled on the side of the hole. He could feel grooves and scratches and smooth surfaces, as if the rock had been attacked by hundreds of hammers and chisels. He got a grasp on a crevice and steadied himself then pulled out his torch and shone its beam down into the shaft.

‘I can’t see anything. There’s a massive tree root in the way. She must have fallen right through it.’

‘It might have broken her fall at least.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘But we can’t get to her. Too much debris has fallen in.’

‘Is there another way to get in?’

‘We can try to find one,’ the DCRO controller said doubtfully.

‘We’ve got to find one.’

More help arrived, and they began to scour the hillside for yards around the old mineshaft, dragging aside fallen trees and hacking through tangled brambles. Long minutes passed and it was almost half an hour before a rescuer held up a hand.

‘Here!’

‘Yes, we’ve got something.’

‘It looks like the remains of a mine entrance, but it may just be a ventilation shaft, or a drainage channel.’

‘If it goes into the same shaft, it’s what we need.’

Cooper began pulling away the undergrowth, tearing his hands on the brambles. Quickly other people came to his side and began to help.

‘Inspector Cooper, there’s something here.’

‘What have you got? Is it Carol?’

‘I’m... not sure.’

There was something about the man’s tone of voice that made Cooper’s heart sink, and his skin felt cold.

‘Let me look,’ he said.

‘Be careful, sir.’

‘I’m fine. Stand aside.’

Cooper pulled out his torch and shone it into the hole they’d made. The light worked its way along the edge of the hole until it hit something white and very still. An officer lowered himself down into the hole.

‘It’s a body,’ said the officer. ‘But it’s not DC Villiers.’

Cooper stared at him.

‘Is it the body of a male?’

‘Hard to tell, sir. The head and torso are buried under a collapse. The rest of the body is skeletonised.’

‘It will have to wait, then. Mark the spot. We’ll come back to it.’

Cooper joined him in the hole. A passage ran off in both directions, hacked through the hillside by miners, one of the last workings of Mandale Mine.

He took a moment to get his sense of direction.

‘This way.’

They had to stoop in the passage. The rock walls were worn smooth in places, in others left broken and jagged. A length of rusty chain hung from an iron bolt in the wall. Rotting lumps of timber lay crumbling underfoot. Cooper tripped over a jutting stone and the officer grabbed his arm to steady him.

After a few minutes they came to a point where the passage took a sharp turn. Rocks had tumbled from the roof here and it was a tight squeeze to get through, but he managed. Ahead was total blackness. He ducked to get the headlamp pointed forward. And his heart sank. The passage ended ten yards further on in a solid wall of stone.

But wait a minute. There was light coming through from above. Just a single shaft of it, almost hidden by his helmet lamp. Cooper began to move forward again. He was breathing heavily, and not only from the exertion. The air was bad down here.

He cast his light about the passage as he moved, conscious that he might pass over the opening to another shaft at any second. And then to his left he spotted an opening in the floor, a sloping access into another shaft. What did they call it? A winze.

The space around him was full of dust now. It swirled in his torchlight and settled on his skin. He could feel himself breathing it in. It formed a sour, rough coating inside his mouth, drying up his saliva. He was beginning to feel a bit light-headed. Any longer and he would have to retreat.

But there she was. Thank God she was wearing an orange waterproof. It reflected the light at the furthest limit of his torch beam and she was lying halfway down the slope into the next shaft. She was covered in dust and branches and small stones.

‘I can see her,’ he called back.

‘Is she conscious?’

‘I can’t tell. She isn’t moving.’

Even as he spoke, he saw Villiers stir. She moved her arms, then her legs, and began to sit up. He heard her groan.

‘Carol, stay where you are. I’m coming down.’

She looked up, shading her eyes against the glare of his torch.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘A bit scratched and bruised. I came right through the tree root.’

‘What did you land on?’

She looked at her hands, and wiped a smear of something dark on her jacket.

‘Wet mud.’

‘You were lucky. It could have been a lot worse. Wait a second, I think I can get down the rest of the way.’

‘Careful, Ben.’

Cooper took another step and found himself slithering the last few feet to the bottom of the shaft. Villiers put out a hand and stopped his descent.

‘You shouldn’t have come down.’

‘So they told me. Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’ll be fine.’ She winced. ‘Well, perhaps a twisted ankle. And some of those bruises are going to be bad tomorrow.’

‘We’ll soon have you out when Cave Rescue get here.’

Cooper shone his torch around. A lot of soil and vegetation had fallen into the shaft and was scattered around their feet. The mud smelled like an accumulation of decades and decades of debris that had ended up in the hole and had lain rotting in thick layers at the bottom. That was what Villiers had fallen on to. Now she smelled the same way as the mud, ripe with decomposition. And so did he, probably.

He felt the need to support himself against the wall and realised the place they were standing in wasn’t on a level. It sloped slightly downwards into the hillside. In front of him, a great slab of rock formed a kind of roof. Beneath it, a roughly hewn passage vanished into the darkness.

This wasn’t a carefully constructed tunnel like the Mandale sough with its delicate and beautifully balanced stone arch. Miners had simply hacked their way through the rock here to get to where they hoped the veins of lead would be. They had left only a space wide enough for an average-sized person to walk through bent double.

A trickle of water ran into the passage from the muddy entrance. More water dripped from the roof, glittering for a second in his torchlight.

‘It’s very dark down here,’ said Villiers.

‘No one wants to die in the dark.’

‘Especially not alone.’

‘Actually,’ said Cooper grimly, ‘you weren’t exactly alone, Carol.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think we’ve found Annette Bower. Or what’s left of her after ten years.’