Fall Down Dead

6

Ben Cooper called back at his office in Edendale Police Station on West Street. He checked the latest bulletins and noticed a report of a group of walkers lost on Kinder Scout.

Everyone’s heart sank when there was news of people missing on the wildest moors of the Dark Peak. There had already been too many deaths. Only a couple of years previously, a leading Mountain Rescue volunteer had died on a call-out to help a teenage girl in distress on Kinder, and a mountain biker had been killed after falling eighty feet at Laddow Rocks.

So another incident was no great surprise. Even from Edendale, Cooper could see the weather deteriorating over the moors, the cloud layer getting lower and heavier.

Kinder was the highest point in the Peak District at more than two thousand feet, a windswept gritstone plateau rising steeply from the surrounding landscape, its edges punctuated with crags and rocky outcrops. The visibility would be poor up there, the conditions cold and damp.

It was an easy place to get lost at the best of times. The surface had been suffering serious erosion from overgrazing by sheep and the boots of so many walkers, particularly along the Pennine Way. Many people had no idea about the lethal bogs they might be facing, where they could find themselves stuck in mud up to the knees.

Stranded walkers having to be rescued was a familiar story. One of the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation teams would be dealing with it, probably more than one if the location of the party was unclear. The reports said that the walkers had set off from the direction of Hayfield. Kinder MRT was the Mountain Rescue team based on that side of the moor.

Cooper reached for his phone. One of his DCs, Carol Villiers, had recently volunteered as a member of Kinder MRT. Surely Carol had mentioned that she was on exercise with them this weekend? She might be out there right now. It was always good to have someone on the ground.

‘Carol?’ he said when he got through. ‘Where are you right now?’

‘On the edge of Kinder, near the reservoir.’

‘You’re with the MRT?’

‘Right.’

‘Do we know any more about the missing walkers?’

‘Not at the moment, Ben. The team are on the job, though. They were already in the area when the call-out came and deployed straight away. The first report was of an injured walker. His party had walked up towards the Downfall but got lost in the fog after straying from the path on the plateau. Visibility is really poor up there. Too bad for a helicopter to operate.’

‘What about SARLOC?’ asked Cooper.

‘No luck so far,’ said Villiers. ‘A SARLOC text was sent but failed to reach them. The phone signal is very poor. The controller has just said they’re going to activate the Kinder Plan.’

‘OK. Can you keep me informed?’

‘It’s not a CID job, Ben. It’s a bunch of lost walkers. I just happened to be here.’

‘I know. But Kinder... well, it’s a special case.’

‘Will do, then. As soon as I know anything.’

Cooper ended the call. He knew the MRT would do a good job. They did it week after week. They were on call twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and entirely on a voluntary basis. It was a task that called for skill and dedication. But Kinder — that mountain carried its own legends.

The formation of the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation itself had happened after a tragedy in the 1960s when three young Rover Scouts had lost their lives on Kinder Scout during the gruelling Four Inns Walk. Their forty-mile hike had started in West Yorkshire, hitting checkpoints at the Snake Pass Inn, the Nag’s Head and the Cat and Fiddle — a route that could take more than twenty hours to complete. The weather had deteriorated rapidly during the day, and eventually volunteers had gone out in blizzard conditions armed only with torches and whistles to search for the missing youngsters. But by then the mountain and treacherous weather had already claimed their lives.

That incident came only a short time after the deaths of two children from Glossop who went missing on the hills, and two climbers’ deaths in an avalanche in Wilderness Gully.

Cooper gazed out of his office window at the distant hills. It seemed wrong to him that lives should be left in the hands of volunteers, no matter how skilled and dedicated they were. This morning, he and his officers had arrived at the Athertons’ home in Edendale too late to prevent a death. All he seemed to do was clean up the consequences. It was the most frustrating part of his job.

Right now, he didn’t want to hear about another death. He envied Carol Villiers for being involved in the rescue operation. She was part of a team out there on Kinder doing their best to save someone’s life.

At a rendezvous point near Hayfield, Kinder MRT had called in three other Mountain Rescue teams to divide the search area between them. Triggering the Kinder Plan carved up the plateau into four areas, each allocated to one of the teams. It was a well-proven method for managing a search on the almost featureless expanse of Kinder.

Carol Villiers went back to the mobile control vehicle and found the MRT’s duty controller. When the location of the missing walkers couldn’t be accurately determined, a link to the SARLOC website had been sent to the phone of the person who’d called 999. If they were able to click on the link, their location would be transmitted with an accuracy of twelve metres, allowing the rescue team to log the grid reference on their GPS and walk straight to the spot.

But in this case they were only able to make outgoing 999 calls via another network. They had no idea where they were, and SARLOC had failed to reach them.

‘We’ve had a description of a rock formation,’ said the controller. ‘They say it looks like an upside-down ice cream. Some of the blokes reckon they’re near Fairbrook Naze. The trouble is, the party seems to have split up. There are at least three separate groups now in different locations, including one known injury.’

With minimal details received and being unable to re-contact the group, teams were being mobilised in the pre-planned search patterns. Colleagues from Glossop Mountain Rescue Team were already deployed following a couple having reported themselves lost on the hills to the north. With visibility down to fifty feet on the plateau, the decision was taken to call in the other teams in order to cover the whole area more quickly.

Villiers knew that the longer the search took, the more anxious the searchers would become. It was October and the days were getting shorter. Darkness was only a couple of hours away. Even in the summer, hypothermia could be a real danger on these hills. Mountain Rescue teams had been called out to assist hypothermic casualties on a rainy weekend in August.

‘The SARDA dogs have arrived,’ said the controller. ‘They’re our best chance now.’

Villiers peered at the patchy fog on the slopes of Kinder. The Search and Rescue dogs were making their way up the hillside to the plateau. They didn’t need an item of clothing from a missing person but worked on air scent to locate a casualty. They could cover much more ground than human search teams. And it didn’t matter if visibility was poor — a dog could search as well as on a clear day.

There was very little wind today, though, so human scent particles wouldn’t carry far before they were recognised by a dog. The handlers would have to compensate by shortening their sweeps. The search would take more time.

‘That was a good result,’ said DCI Mackenzie. He glanced at his watch. ‘A nice couple of hours’ work there. We have Mark Brentnall in custody for questioning. In due course he’ll be charged with conspiracy to supply firearms and ammunition.’

Fry had taken off her bulletproof vest. They were always uncomfortable to wear for any length of time. It reminded her of when she was in uniform. None of her kit ever seemed to fit her, from the tunic to the utility belt. It was as if everything had been designed for a fifteen-stone male.

‘What about the other teams, sir?’ she asked.

‘Great news there too.’

Mackenzie reported that a search conducted at Mark Brentnall’s business premises had resulted in the recovery of component parts, including sawn-off barrels and ammunition. Meanwhile, armed officers had stopped Brentnall’s Range Rover on a slip road of the M1 and recovered eight more sawn-off shotguns and two hundred cartridges from the boot.

In Birmingham, the Serious and Organised Crime Squad had arrested several people, including an individual named Michael Rafiq, believed to be the head of a drug-dealing network distributing Class-A drugs across the region.

Rafiq had been arrested in possession of wraps of crack cocaine and heroin, five mobile phones and more than two thousand pounds in cash. Officers searched his home address and found another eight kilos of drugs. Their haul also comprised twelve sawn-off shotguns linked to dozens of crime scenes, including two killings. Four more individuals had been arrested in the West Midlands — drug runners responsible for the distribution of Class-A substances from Birmingham to towns and villages outside the city.

Fry nodded to herself when Mackenzie had finished. It was definitely a good result. So why was she feeling so uneasy, as if something had gone badly wrong?

At the end of her shift, Diane Fry drove out of the secure car park and headed down the A611 to face the traffic on Western Boulevard.

To her surprise, another call came through from DCI Mackenzie before she’d passed Queen’s Medical Centre. She answered straight away. It had to be something urgent.

‘DS Fry?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Tomorrow morning. Don’t come into the office here.’

‘Why not?’ said Fry. ‘Where do you need me? Not back in Edendale?’

‘No.’

Mackenzie sounded less than his usual confident self. Fry began to sense that something might be wrong.

‘Sir? What is it?’

‘They want you at Ripley,’ he said.

‘Derbyshire HQ?’

‘Right. You’ve to report to your force’s Professional Standards Department at nine thirty a.m. for an interview.’

Fry stared at the traffic around her as she came into Matlock and stopped at the traffic lights before turning towards the M1.

‘What is it about?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mackenzie. ‘That’s all they’ve told me.’

‘All right, then.’

She thought he’d gone, just put the phone down at his end without saying goodbye, but Mackenzie was still there. He seemed to have been thinking about what else he should say to her.

‘Diane,’ he said finally. ‘I’m sorry.’

The news came through that search dog Dolly from Kinder MRT had located human scent. Dolly soon found the first group of walkers. They were cold and wet and miserable, and one of them had lost a shoe in the mud. The MRT carried spare boots, since it wasn’t unusual for walkers to leave theirs behind in the peat bogs.

The rest of the party soon followed. The injured man was treated by a team doctor before being stretchered down to a waiting ambulance and transferred to Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport. There had been no need on this occasion to call in the air ambulance, Helimed 54.

As the lost walkers gradually emerged from the fog, Villiers could see a couple of figures wrapped in emergency foil blankets. Others seemed unsteady on their feet or were suffering from cramp and needed assistance in walking. They were all covered in mud from falls in the groughs.

Eventually, a group of a dozen or so were gathered at the rendezvous point and were given hot drinks by their rescuers. They’d been out on the hill so long that their skin and hair were wet and they were shivering with cold.

‘It seems they became disorientated in the deteriorating conditions,’ said the controller. ‘They’d been walking round and round in circles instead of in straight lines, though at least one of them had an Ordnance Survey map they might have used.’

‘If they knew how to read it,’ said Villiers.

The controller sighed. ‘At least they weren’t high on cannabis, like that group in the Lake District last year. This lot were sober, but unprepared and reckless. Still, our first priority is people’s safety, no matter what ill-judged decisions they might make to put themselves in a situation like that.’

Villiers called Ben Cooper. He’d asked to be kept up to date, and she knew Cooper well enough to realise that he’d be calling her himself if she didn’t.

‘We’ve located a party of twelve,’ she said. ‘One casualty has been transported to hospital with a suspected broken ankle. One treated in situ with glucose for low blood sugar.’

‘Where are the rest of them now?’ he asked.

‘Having a warm-up before we return them to their vehicles at Bowden Bridge. They have no real injuries, but they’re cold and wet, and suffering from exhaustion in some cases.’

Villiers noticed that one of the walkers nearby was shaking his head when he overheard her call.

‘Hold on,’ he said when she came off the phone.

‘Yes, sir? What’s your name?’

‘Haslam. I’m Nick Haslam.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘We’re a party of thirteen, not twelve.’

Villiers frowned. ‘Are you sure? We’ve counted. One casualty has been sent to hospital. The rest of you are here.’

Members of the walking group stared at each other. They were scattered across yards of ground. Some were standing, some sitting. Villiers saw one man with wavy blond hair perched on a rock, another had lain out flat on the ground to rest, while an older couple had been given folding chairs to sit on. Was anyone missing, apart from Liam Sharpe, now in the ambulance on his way to Stockport?

‘Oh God,’ said Nick as he looked around. ‘Where’s Faith?’