Unti Peter Robinson #22

by Peter Robinson

  “Stop them.” Banks explained the situation to Wilson as quickly as he could, then he said, “Call for backup and hold them there. They’re not going anywhere. Then join us at High Point Farm, if you can find it.”

  Banks dashed into the custody suite in the basement, where he was relieved to see Annie chatting to the walking map of the Dales.

  16

  THOUGH THE SNOW WAS PILING UP AGAINST THE ROCK face, it was easy for Winsome to get through the opening into the large cavern. She risked a quick glance behind her and saw that Atherton was stumbling in pursuit, about two hundred yards down the hillside, but he didn’t seem to be carrying the bolt gun.

  About thirty feet inside the opening, which was high enough for even Winsome to enter without crouching, three caves ran deeper into the system, but only one led to the cathedral-­sized chamber where Winsome wanted to go. Another dead-­ended, and the third became so low at one point that hardly a mouse could squeeze through. You had to know which tunnel to choose, and Winsome did.

  To throw Atherton off the scent, she made sure she had her mobile and wallet and keys, but took off her quilted jacket and lay it outside the central cave before she took the one to her right. If he didn’t know the caves, it might fool him into picking the wrong entrance.

  It was cold inside the cave, especially without her jacket, but while the stone acted as a natural coolant, it also insulated the place from the worst of the cold. And the snow couldn’t penetrate here, no matter how hard the wind blew it. The walls were slimy, cool and moist to the touch, veined with minerals and crystals. It was getting darker with every step she took from the main entrance. Soon she was bending over to keep going, and as yet she had heard no signs of Atherton following her. He had seemed out of shape as he made his way up the hill, despite his sturdy build, and he was probably pausing to catch his breath and try to work out which way she had gone. At least, that was what she hoped.

  Soon, Winsome knew, the ceiling would hang so low that it would look impossible to get under. A novice would turn around and go back. But Winsome had been through more than once, and she knew it was higher than it looked, even though you had to crawl on your belly for such a long way that it was easy to panic if you were the slightest bit claustrophobic. And if you panicked, you got stuck.

  The trick, she remembered as she lay on her belly and slid forward into the clammy darkness, was to pretend that you were a snake and could squeeze through the narrowest of spaces. She cursed the few pounds she had put on since she had last been potholing and vowed to go to the gym regularly if she survived this ordeal, but even with her arse feeling much bigger than she could ever bear it to be, she managed.

  She slithered along on her stomach, oblivious to the sharp bits of rock and quartz here and there that cut into her. At the worst moments, she felt as if she were being crushed by an almighty weight, the breath squeezed out of her. For a few seconds, about halfway along, she stopped. There was silence except for the wind and water dripping somewhere. Now the rock underneath her was wet. About an inch of water had accumulated in the passage, soaking through her blouse and jeans, chilling her to the bone.

  When she turned a slight bend in the passage, she knew she was almost there, and soon the rock above her seemed to draw up, like a press after it had done its work. In no time she was on all fours, the jeans around her knees shredded to rags. She had grazed her elbows and they hurt like hell. But she was almost there. It was pitch black now, and she was far enough away from any possibility of the light being seen, that she finally risked taking out her mobile and using its light to show her the low entrance ahead. It was just a hole in the wall, really, but Winsome knew that it led to a ledge about forty feet from the bottom of the enormous cathedral-­like cavern so many intrepid visitors had oohed and aahed over. She bent forward and squeezed through. After about five feet, she found herself on the ledge, which was wide enough to sit comfortably on.

  The light from her phone didn’t have the power to illuminate the full glory of the cavern, but it was better than total darkness. If Atherton did follow her, if he chose the right path and made it under the overhang, then she would hear him coming and have time to stand in wait against the wall by the edge of the entrance and use his momentum as he came through the hole in the wall to hurl him forward over the edge. Whether the forty-­foot drop would kill him, she had no idea. It would certainly incapacitate him, and there would be no way he would be able to climb back up and get at her.

  Winsome turned off the phone to conserve battery power and huddled against the wall, shivering, arms locked around her drawn-­up knees. As her eyes grew used to the darkness, she could just make out the shapes of stalactites and stalagmites and sense the cathedral vastness of the space she was in. She would stay where she was until she was certain Atherton had given up, or her backup had arrived and caught him, then she would crawl and slither back out again, hoping to God the drifting snow hadn’t completely blocked the exit.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait. Water dripped. The wind moaned and whistled through the interconnected passages and made a deep humming music in the chamber. She heard a loud cry followed by what she thought were curses, swearwords. Atherton. She couldn’t tell where they were coming from, but they froze her blood. Again she heard howls and curses echoing around the vast space, as if she were being hunted by a pack of hounds, and she hugged herself tighter and tighter until she almost turned into a ball.

  BANKS AND Annie signed out one of the police four-­by-­fours from the car pool for their journey. Neither Banks’s Porsche nor Annie’s Astra would handle the present conditions well. It was tough going, and Banks gritted his teeth as he drove every inch of the snow-­swept roads out of town. Neither said a word. Banks didn’t even put any music on. He needed all the concentration he could muster for the driving.

  Out on the main dale road, through Fortford, Helmthorpe and Swainshead, the conditions were much worse, as Banks had expected. It hadn’t yet got to the point where any stretches were completely impassable, but it sometimes felt close to that, and once Banks skidded on a drift and clipped the dry stone wall before regaining control of the steering. Annie held on to him. It was hard to see. The windscreen wipers couldn’t keep up with the volume of snow. The only piece of good fortune was that there was hardly anyone else out on the roads.

  For a while after they turned off the main road, which branches toward Belderfell Pass to the left and the high Pennine moorland beyond the source of the river Swain to the right, Banks thought they might have to stop and continue on foot. But the drifting was patchy and for every deep and difficult stretch to plow through they would get a few hundred yards of relatively easy driving.

  Eventually, taking much longer than he would have liked, Banks pulled up in the yard of High Point Farm, happy to see that two squad cars had somehow managed to beat him there. Even better, one of the officers said he had used his police radio to send out for a snow plow from Crowborough, the nearest village, about seven miles north. There were telegraph wires leading to the farmhouse, Banks noticed, so Welles/Atherton clearly had a landline.

  Winsome’s Polo stood in the yard, half covered by snow. Without touching it, Banks glanced through the windows. No Winsome. No keys in the ignition, no signs of a struggle. The snow had covered up any tracks that might have been in the yard, except their own. There were no indications of where Winsome and Atherton might have gone.

  One of the uniformed officers told him there was also a red pickup truck in one of the outbuildings. Its engine was cold, which meant Atherton had probably been at home when Winsome arrived. Banks pulled up the collar of his three-­quarter-­length overcoat and surveyed the scene. Snow had drifted up against the front door of the low-­roofed farmhouse and one side of the barn. He thought there was something odd about the place when he looked closely. “What are those?” he asked Annie. “Those pens on the side.”

  “That’s not
a barn,” said Annie. “At least, it probably was once, but it isn’t now. They’re called lairage. They’re used to keep the animals waiting for slaughter. It’s an abattoir, Alan, a private bloody abattoir.”

  Banks hurried over to the building, with Annie not far behind. The front door stood open, and the long fluorescent lights shone on the inner workings of the small abattoir, the motorized rail running lengthways along the ceiling, the dangling hook with its bloody curve, the central trough, boilers and spray hoses for skinning. They stood just inside the doorway, wary of contaminating what might be a crime scene. Not to mention frightened of catching something. Whoever owned the place certainly had no interest in cleanliness and hygiene. It stank to high heaven and the floor was caked in shit and blood and worse. Banks almost gagged; Annie held her nose and breathed through her mouth. She pointed, and Banks saw an object on the floor, a bolt gun. They would leave it for the CSIs. At least Winsome wasn’t here, though she might have been, Banks thought. There could have been a struggle, and Atherton had dropped the bolt gun. But where were they now?

  Banks and Annie left the abattoir as it was when they found it and walked back to the farmhouse. The front door was locked, but one of the officers soon got it open with his mini battering ram, the “red door knocker” as it was affectionately called. Nobody gave any thought to a warrant. A police officer’s life was in danger, and they had every reason to suspect the person who lived there of serious crimes.

  The inside of the farmhouse was almost as unsavory as the abattoir. Cups, pans, plates, knives and forks stood piled in the stained sink, unwashed for days, or weeks. A plate on the small table with mold growing out of what had once been food on it, mouse droppings everywhere, signs of rats, too. On the wall was a rack of knives, and not Henckels cookware, either. These were nasty blades, clearly designed for the skinning and gutting of animals, or ­people. They were the only clean objects in the place, sharp blades so lovingly polished you could see your face in them.

  Though Banks and Annie wore latex gloves, they were careful not to touch anything as they went methodically through the place, the bedroom, with its unruly mess of sheets, like the apparition from the adaptation of M. R. James’s “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You” Banks had seen on television at Christmas. The toilet was a pigsty, the rest of the upstairs drab, bare and dusty. And nowhere were there any signs of Winsome or Atherton.

  Banks supposed that was a good thing. At least they hadn’t found her tied to a bed with a bolt pistol wound between her eyes. That meant there was a good chance she had escaped, or was at least on the run. If she had headed for the moors with Atherton in pursuit, Banks would put his money on Winsome. He had seen her in chases, and she was fast and strong. Whether either had the stamina to get very far under these conditions, however, remained doubtful.

  It was down in the cellar where they found the hydroponic setup. Marijuana plants, lots of them, along with about a kilo of hash and a similar amount of cocaine, clearly from elsewhere. Drugs were another of Atherton’s little sidelines. He had no doubt supplied Caleb Ross with the wacky baccy he had smoked.

  “We’ll seal the cellar off for now,” Banks said. “It’s more important to get search parties for Winsome organized. They can’t have got far. Have a word with the patrol officers. They might know the area a bit better than we do. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting a helicopter out in this weather, but it’s worth asking, too.”

  Annie walked over to the nearest patrol car, leaning down to speak through the window. Banks looked around. The snow showed no signs of abating. He imagined Winsome caught in a drift, slowly freezing to death. He put away such disturbing thoughts when he heard a car approaching. It turned out to be a dark blue Focus, and it appeared around the bend in the drive and pulled to a halt behind the police four-­by-­four.

  Though he had never met Terry Gilchrist before, Banks recognized him from the car he drove, his limp and Winsome’s description. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said as Gilchrist advanced through the snow. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you might need some help.”

  “It’s a police operation,” said Banks. “We don’t normally involve civilians, not even ex-­military.”

  “So that’s all the thanks I get for fighting for my country? Not to mention driving all this way in a bloody Ford Focus?”

  Banks shrugged.

  “What exactly are you doing that you don’t want my help on?”

  “Why don’t you just get back in your car and head for home, Mr. Gilchrist. Leave it to us.”

  “It’s Winsome, isn’t it? I knew something was wrong when she didn’t call.”

  “Yes, it’s Winsome,” said Banks, losing his temper. “She’s a friend and a colleague and I’d like you to clear out of here and let us do our job.”

  Gilchrist stood his ground and looked around the farmyard. “It doesn’t look to me as if you’re actually doing very much.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  Gilchrist sighed. “Look, Chief Inspector, you may not like me, or you may simply not like the idea of someone telling you your business, but if you’re looking for Winsome, I might be able to help. And if I think what’s happened is true, the sooner the better.”

  Banks was suddenly interested. “Oh? And what do you think happened?”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “High Point Farm. You said you’d never heard of it. I blame myself for letting it slip.”

  “I hadn’t, but it was easy to look up. You’re within a quarter of a mile of Woadly Edge, though you can’t see it from here in this weather. It’s up that hill and across the moors a ­couple of hundred yards or so.”

  “So?”

  “Winsome and I have had a few conversations. I wouldn’t say I know her well, but I do know one or two things about her that I think you ought to consider.”

  “Those being?”

  “First off, Woadly Edge is one of the main access points for the Swainsdale cave system. And second, Winsome used to be a keen potholer. She’d know the caves like the back of her hand.”

  “So you’re saying . . .”

  “You’re catching on. If she was in trouble out here, the odds are she’d run for the caves. It would give her an advantage.”

  “And her chances once she’d got there?”

  “Depends on whether someone was after her, and whether that someone also knows the system. It’s not for novices, though, so he’d have to be an experienced potholer. The odds that he’s not are good. There aren’t that many.”

  “From what I know of him, I doubt he goes potholing in his spare time. More like pulls the legs off flies. What would you advise us to do, assuming this is true?”

  “Get up there right away and find out if I’m right.”

  Banks said nothing.

  As if sensing and understanding his indecision, Gilchrist said, “Look, I know you don’t want ­people like me interfering, but I assure you I also have experience of the caves. I have military training, too. I can handle myself, despite the injury.” He held his arms out. “Look, no stick.”

  “You don’t need it?”

  “Actually, it’s in the car, and I could certainly use it to get to Woadly Edge. But once I’m inside, no. As long as I don’t have to run.”

  “This is against my better judgment,” said Banks.

  “Come on, we should get going. Bring the others. We might need some help clearing the entrance.”

  Banks spoke to Annie and two of the patrol officers while Gilchrist got his walking stick and torch, along with two spades they found in the yard, then the four of them set off up the rise toward Woadly Edge. It didn’t take long to get there, and the drifts had not covered the entrance. A gaping dark hole showed in stark contrast against the white surroundings. The snow was light enough that they could walk straight through
it.

  “That’s her jacket,” said Banks, pointing his torch toward the middle of three cave entrances. “That’s Winsome’s jacket.”

  His voice echoed. They were standing in a sort of stone hallway or foyer with a high ceiling, or so it seemed to Banks, and Winsome’s quilted jacket lay on the ground in front of the central of three openings. There was no trace or sign of Atherton.

  “That’s a dead end,” said Gilchrist. “She was trying to misdirect him.”

  “Which means she knew he was after her, and he wasn’t far behind,” said Banks. “She must be bloody freezing.”

  Gilchrist bent forward and went into the right-­hand tunnel.

  “What are you doing?”

  Gilchrist looked back. “If she went anywhere,” he said, “it was down here. She’d know as well as I do about the left-­hand entrance.”

  “What about it?”

  “It gets too narrow. This one’s narrow in parts, too, but it’s the only way in from here.”

  “Into where?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” said Gilchrist, edging forward even as he spoke, “but it’s a large system of passages and caverns, one of the biggest in Europe. There are miles and miles of connected caves in there, but it’s a bit like a maze.”

  “Can you get through?” Banks said, bending in the entrance after him.

  “Yes,” Gilchrist said, then vanished into the darkness.

  Banks caught up with him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t forget, Atherton might be in there, and we believe he’s a killer.”

  “I’ve encountered killers before,” said Gilchrist. “I’ll make sure I see him before he sees me.”