Dying to Sin

25

Minerals had been a key element in the wealth of the Peak District for centuries. The remnants of the lead-mining industry were widespread, their impact on the landscape had been so dramatic that it would be many centuries yet before their traces disappeared.

Magpie Mine was the best preserved of the hundreds of lead mines that had once been visible everywhere, rumpling the surface into bumps and hollows, piercing it with hidden shafts, scattering it with centuries of miners’ spoil. Its heyday was in the nineteenth century, but it had finally closed in the 1950s, and it was heritage now, one of the youngest protected sites in the national park.

‘I don’t think it was the picnic site that interested Farnham and Elder,’ said Cooper. ‘I think it was this.’

‘Why, Ben?’

‘A remote location, easy to access, and unlikely to be disturbed for development, because it’s a protected site. Yet look at these spoil heaps from the old mine workings, Diane. Heaps? They’re small mountains. You could bury anything here, and no one would notice any disturbance. Half of the remaining structures are underground anyway.’

A cloud of starlings swept across the road, twisting and turning, dipping until they almost skimmed the tarmac before settling all at once in a ploughed field. They immediately vanished, camouflaged against the brown earth. When Cooper parked and got out of the Toyota, the wind rattled the buckle of his seat belt against the side of the car. Ash keys hung in damp clumps from the branches of a tree, too wet even to rattle in the wind.

They stepped carefully over the bars of a cattle grid. Beneath the bars, the pit was filled with a black sludge of leaves and stagnant pools of water. Past the cattle grid, the sheep pellets scattered on the ground changed to cow pats, though Cooper couldn’t see any cows.

The wind scything across the plateau felt cold enough to slice off an ear if you turned the wrong way. As they walked on to the site, loose sheets of corrugated iron could be heard banging incessantly in the wind.

The former agent’s house was the first building, now a field centre for the mine’s historical society. Beyond the agent’s house, the old mine buildings crowded in suddenly, clustering on either side and looming overhead on a high mound.

Even in the sun, the wind was too cold to stand still in for long, too cold to leave your hands uncovered if you didn’t want your fingers to go numb.

Fry shivered. ‘What did you mean about the widows’ curse?’ she said.

‘Can you feel it, Diane?’

‘Feel it? I can’t even feel my fingers. It’s bloody freezing out here, Ben.’

‘They were the widows of the Red Soil men,’ said Cooper. ‘You see, there were originally two separate mines on this site, governed by the rules of the old Barmote Court. But Magpie miners broke through into the Great Red Soil vein, and there was a long-running dispute between the two mines. The Magpie men lit fires from straw and tar to smoke out their rivals, and three Red Soil miners were killed in the shaft, suffocated by the fumes. Ten men were tried for their murder at Derby, but they were found not guilty. Conflicting evidence, and a lack of intent. It could be difficult to get a successful prosecution, even in those days.’

‘Was that justice?’

‘Local people didn’t think so. It was one of those disputes that was bound to happen. Red Soil was being worked by local men, but the Magpie was being mined by labour imported from Cornwall. Anyway, it’s said that the widows of the murdered men put a curse on the mine. It never made money again.’

There were two tall chimneys surviving on the site, a round one and an older square chimney. At the base of the round chimney, Cooper found a large iron grille set into the ground. He tugged at it, and found the grille was loose and could be lifted off its bolts. It was heavy, but he had no trouble raising one side and letting it fall back on to the ground, leaving the entrance to a tunnel clear. In one direction, it seemed to lead into the base of the chimney. The other way, he guessed it must enter the engine house.

On the floor of the tunnel he could see a disposable lighter, crumpled yogurt pots, and an empty John West tuna sachet. Left-overs from someone’s picnic that could be forced through the bars of the grille.

The main mine shaft was supposed to be more than seven hundred feet deep, though the bottom fifth of it was always flooded. On a bright day, they said, you could see the water if you peered through the grille. But there was no brightness today, just the grey cloud and drizzle cloaking the skeletal trees.

Cooper stood over one of the smaller shafts. Ferns peeping through the grille were dying and blackened by frost. But below them, a couple of feet into the shelter of the shaft, he glimpsed the glossy green fronds of some plant he didn’t recognize, still thriving in the gloom, even in December. Whatever it was, it looked much too healthy, considering the lack of light and the cold wind whistling overhead.

A couple of old millstones lay abandoned on the ground, one of them broken into three pieces. The walls of the engine house ran with water on the inside. Drops of water fell from the arch and the lintels of the windows. Cooper craned his head back and watched a drop falling towards him. Before it reached him, it was caught by the wind and veered off suddenly, elongating like a tear drop as it accelerated.

The water above the flooded level of the shaft was drained by the Magpie Sough, which ran into the River Wye, away to the north below Great Shacklow Wood. That was one of the longest soughs in the Peak District, more than a mile and a quarter of it, and its construction had practically ruined the mines’ shareholders.

‘My hands are completely numb now,’ said Fry. ‘Why is it so much colder here than in Edendale?’

‘We’re completely exposed,’ said Cooper. ‘Imagine what it was like working here.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘And imagine,’ he said, ‘how easy it would be to bury a murder victim here.’

Fry took a call on her mobile. ‘That was the DI,’ she said. ‘They’re setting up a HOLMES incident room for the Farnham killing.’

‘I suppose that’s no surprise.’

‘No. A high-profile shooting takes immediate priority over our old remains at Pity Wood. So all the expertise will be arriving from Ripley, even as we speak. At least that means a lot more resources — there’ll be separate teams concentrating on the new lines of enquiry.’

‘Pity Wood is ours, then?’ said Cooper.

‘Pretty much. So we’d better get back to the farm.’

A few minutes later, as they got close to Pity Wood, Cooper saw a solitary figure walking along the edge of the road, trying to stay off the muddy verge. A young man in his twenties, dark hair, medium height. A black padded jacket. ‘You know, you see asylum seekers wearing them when they get pulled off the EuroStar.’

‘I’m going to pull up. Let’s check this guy out.’

When he heard the car slowing down, the man looked as though he was about to start running. But he slipped on the mud, thought better of it, and slowed to a walking pace again.

He didn’t look round to see who was in the car until it stopped just ahead of him, and Cooper got out.

‘Police, sir. DC Cooper, from Edendale CID. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble, but could you tell me your name?’

‘My name is Mikulas Halak.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Slovakia.’

The young man was carrying a small rucksack over his shoulders, and his skin was a shade or two darker than most Derbyshire folk. In some places, that would be enough to put him under suspicion. Fry got out of the car and came to stand on the other side of Halak.

‘And what are you doing in Derbyshire, Mr Halak?’

‘I’m doing no harm. I’m looking for my sister. She was working here, in this place.’

Cooper and Fry looked at each other.

‘In Rakedale?’ asked Fry. ‘Your sister was working in Rakedale?’

Halak pointed out Pity Wood in the distance. Even from here, the police vehicles were visible, and one of the crime scene tents was flapping damply in the breeze.

‘I believe she had work at the farm, there. I’ve seen it on the television. I believe Nadezda was there. Look, I have a photograph.’

‘Get in the car, please, sir,’ said Fry. ‘We need to talk to you back at the station.’

When Mikulas Halak had been provided with coffee and seated in a free interview room, they checked his documents. He carried a Slovak passport, issued since the country had become a member of the European Union, and everything looked to be in order.

Once he seemed reassured and a little more relaxed, Fry produced the broken crucifix in its clear plastic evidence bag.

‘Do you recognize this, sir?’

‘Nadezda had one just like it,’ said Halak. ‘But it wasn’t broken like that.’

‘Would there be any way to tell whether it was hers?’

‘My sister — she always put her initials on her things, in case someone tried to take them from her. She would scrape it, you know.’ He mimicked using a small, sharp object like a needle on the back of his hand.

‘She scratched her initials on her possessions?’

‘Yes.’

Fry picked up the bag and turned it over. She held it up to the light and squinted at the back of the crucifix. The metal was flaking away and discoloured. But in the middle, where the upright and the arms of the cross met, she could see the glitter of the scratch marks.

‘N.H.’

‘Nadezda Halak. That is my sister’s.’

The photograph Halak had produced showed a young woman with shoulder-length, dark brown hair pulled back and tied behind her head. Her eyes were a warm brown, and her brows finely arched.

She wasn’t exactly pretty, though. Her skin had a faintly sallow tone, and her cheeks showed the signs of faint blemishes, the residue of some earlier illness, perhaps. And Fry thought Nadezda’s jaw was wide enough to have confused the anthropologist, if that had been all he had to go on. Nadezda was wearing a white nylon jacket, unzipped to reveal a T-shirt underneath. She was smiling, but not showing her teeth.

‘She was very unhappy in Slovakia,’ said Halak. ‘She was poor, we were all poor. But Nadezda had no hope of work. She watched the television, and she kept saying she wanted to go to England, or the USA. She had been married, but she was treated very badly by her husband. He beat her, and hurt her very much. Then she said she would get the money any way she could, and she would come to England to work. So that’s what she did.’

Fry watched his face as he said ‘any way she could’. She knew that many young women from Eastern Europe set off to Britain with high hopes, only to be sold into virtual slavery when they arrived at the airport, trafficked for their bodies.

‘Sir, I have to ask you this,’ she said. ‘Was your sister a prostitute?’

Halak became distressed.

‘No, no. She was a worker, an honest worker. She went where she could make money. But a prostitute? No, never.’

Before he left the station, Fry asked Mikulas Halak to agree to a buccal swab. A DNA sample would enable the lab to confirm whether he was indeed related to Victim A, and how closely.

But at last they did seem to have an identification for the first body, and she was no longer just Victim A. Now she had a name. Nadezda Halak, aged twenty-three, a Slovak from the city of Kosice. About five feet three inches tall, according to her brother. Slight build, dark brown hair.

All that remained of her was that hair, and a partial set of fingerprints from her sloughed-off skin. Oh, and those inexplicably decayed teeth.

Fry briefed the DI and received the congratulations she was hoping for. But she knew she wasn’t going to take the focus away from the shooting, which was currently claiming her bosses’ attention.

Accommodation had been found for Mikulas in Edendale, where he promised to make himself available if he was needed. Fry swore she would keep him informed of developments, and she meant it.

‘I hope he doesn’t do a runner, or anything else stupid,’ she said when he’d gone.

‘He doesn’t seem the type, does he?’ said Cooper.

‘If he’s concerned about his own status in this country, he might disappear again. After all, he’s achieved what he came here to do and found out what happened to his sister.’

‘I think he’ll be interested in helping us get justice for her,’ said Cooper. ‘Don’t you agree, Diane?’

‘Yes, but I bet forged papers can weigh heavily on your mind when you’re involved with the police.’

‘If they are forged.’

Cooper really did think Mikulas Halak would want justice. But he worried about that word sometimes. It seemed to mean something different when it came from other people’s mouths. Raymond Sutton, for example, had quite a contrary idea of its meaning.