One last breath bcadf-5

by Stephen Booth

  He pulled out his phone. He didn’t have a mobile number

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  for Alistair Page, but Page had rung him the other day, so his number should still be logged in his last ten calls list. But no - Cooper remembered that Page had rung him at the office, not on his mobile.

  Then he noticed an old lady watching him. She had come out of one of the other cottages - perhaps the white one with the black door, or the empty-looking place with crumbling stonework. She was grey-haired and neat, and she reminded him of Enid Quinn in the cemetery at Hope, tending her husband’s grave with her rubber gloves and hearth brush.

  ‘It’s no use trying to phone young Alistair, if that’s what you’re doing,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You won’t get through where he is.’

  ‘Has he gone up to the cavern? Oh, of course, he does a security check, doesn’t he? But he said that was at nine o’clock. He should have been home long since.’

  The old lady shook her head. ‘He went off and hasn’t come back, anyway.’

  Cooper looked up at the sides of the gorge. He had a sudden image of Mansell Quinn watching him from the edges of the cliff, or from the trees near Peveril Castle, or from the mouth of Peak Cavern itself.

  ‘Of course. Could I use your phone, please?’

  The old lady retreated a few feet. The don’t let anybody into my house. I don’t know who you are.’

  ‘Very sensible. But I’m a police officer.’

  ‘Have you got any identification?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Cooper patted his pockets, but it was a warm night and he’d left his jacket in the car, all the way back in the main car park, knowing there was nowhere to leave it in these narrow alleys. ‘Damn. I’m sorry, I haven’t.’

  ‘We’ve been told to watch out for strange men hanging about here at night,’ said the old lady. ‘There’s a prisoner on the loose, you know. A man who did a murder.’

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  ‘Yes, I know. Look, if I could just use your phone.’

  ‘Not without showing me your identification. That’s what the policeman said who came to talk to us at the Darby and Joan Club. “Don’t let anybody in without identification,” he said.’

  ‘It’s very good advice normally.’

  ‘He gave us some little plastic cards, too. I’ve got one stuck to the inside of my door, so I know what to do, if I forget.’

  ‘Yes, but ‘

  Then Cooper heard a phone ringing in Rock Cottage. He turned towards the sound, listened to it ring four times, then stop, as if an answering machine had cut in.

  ‘Do you happen to know -‘ he said.41

  But the old lady had gone. She’d faded silently back into—r:

  the jumble of stone cottages and left him on his own.Ť

  As she walked back into the office at West Street, Diane Fry considered the irony of what Mansell Quinn’s mother had told her. A DNA profile of Quinn had existed after all. Ten years ago, he’d used a buccal swab on himself and had his own sample analysed. But the result of a private DNA test couldn’t be obtained by the police, even if it still existed, which was unlikely.

  There were no messages from Ben Cooper at the office. Fry tried his phone again, but still got no signal. If he’d been in one of the Dark Peak’s notorious black spots, he ought to have come out of it by now. Cave, indeed. Cooper was trying to avoid her.

  Did that mean he’d got something useful from Alistair Page? If Cooper had gone off on some crusade of his own without telling her, she’d have his guts for garters this time. Enough was enough.

  Fry picked up the Carol Proctor file and looked through the list of statements again. There was definitely nothing from anyone called Page. Maybe his parents had had a different

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  name; perhaps, like Rebecca Lowe, his mother had remarried.

  Of course, if the Carol Proctor enquiry were taking place now, there’d be a searchable index of houses and their occupants, the kind of index the HOLMES system provided as routine. Every name that cropped up would have been entered, and links established automatically by the computer. There would be indexes, too, for vehicles, street names, telephone numbers. A major enquiry could produce thousands and thousands of entries. On some enquiries, there were so many entries you’d think the SIO was going for the Guinness Book of Records.

  But au such luck in this case. It was like delving back into the Stone Age.

  Fry hesitated. Perhaps she should get the name checked out by the current HOLMES team anyway, and see if something came up.

  She went through the files one last time, flicking through the questionnaires and statements again, looking now not for the name Page, but just for a boy of the right age. There was Simon Quinn, of course - himself now with a new identity. In his case, there had been no real need to change his name except for a desire to put the events at Pindale Road in the past.

  Finally, she came to a halt. Apart from Simon, there appeared to have been only one other fifteen-year-old youth in the immediate area. A youth called Alan. He was Raymond and Carol Proctor’s son.

  ‘My God, why has nobody mentioned bimT

  Fry hardly knew where to start. The phone book showed no Alan Proctor anywhere in the Hope Valley; the electoral roll had no one by that name either, and certainly not living at Wingate Lees caravan park with Ray and Connie.

  She reached for the phone. She really didn’t want to have to speak to Raymond Proctor right now, but there was no choice. Alan Proctor was what she’d been looking for - a missing piece in the equation.

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  Then Fry stopped and withdrew her hand. No, he wasn’t missing at all, just there in a different form, a man who had adapted his identity. She was quite certain that Alan Proctor and Alistair Page were one and the same person.

  But before she could figure out exactly what that meant, Gavin Murfin stuck his head round the door.

  ‘Diane, are you coming?’

  Fry stared at him. ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s been an alarm at one of the show caves in Castleton.’

  ‘Peak Cavern?’

  ‘No, Speedwell. The troops are all revved up to go. They think it could be Mansell Quinn.’

  The lights ended at the last cottage, and the rest of the path was in darkness. As Ben Cooper reached the head of the gorge, with the streaked cliffs towering above him, he couldn’t help tilting his head to look up. A cluster of spindly trees on the edge of the cliff framed one of the brightest stars in the sky.

  By the time he stood at the gates of the cavern, he could hear water dripping raggedly on to the roof of the ticket booth inside. The concrete floor was damp where the water gathered and ran away to join the stream further down the gorge.

  Cooper felt very small standing at the entrance to the cavern. The outer gates were black wrought iron, topped with spikes. A steel mesh fence on either side was backed with thick rushes and strung with barbed wire, and it ran down into the stream bed to meet the wall of the cliff. Not an easy prospect for climbing over.

  The constant chattering of the jackdaws overhead had begun to resemble the cry of seagulls at the seaside. The sound had that same harsh, high-pitched quality.

  Cooper jumped as a stone dropped from the cliff and

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  thudded on a wooden table between the ticket booth and the ropemakers’ house. Maybe the stone had been dislodged from a ledge by one of the jackdaws. Perhaps the cliff face was even more dangerous than it looked.

  Looking at the black mouth of the cavern, Cooper knew it must have been a perfect place for outlaws. Who would venture into those depths to face them? Who’d want to leave the daylight far behind and pass along the stream bed, feeling that change in the air on the descent into the Devil’s Dining Room? By flickering candlelight, they’d have seen the stalactites like black hooks in the roof of the chamber, and watched shadowy shapes moving in the walls as the River Styx rushed far below.

  He shook his head
. No one who was superstitious or claustrophobic would dream of entering. But Cock Lorrel and his outlaws had been beyond the normal bounds of society, associated in the imagination with the Devil, and with every evil practice that people could think of - including cannibalism.

  That reputation must have been relished by the gypsies and tinkers who’d come to the cavern each year for the Beggars’ Banquet. In fact, they had probably cultivated the myth, knowing it would ensure they’d be left alone.

  A deep rumbling he’d been hearing came closer, and Cooper saw lightning over Castleton. He touched the handle of the iron gates. There should have been a chain and padlock, but the gates swung open easily at his touch. He could see several footprints at the top of the first terrace, where water running from the cliff face and splashing off the ticket booth had softened the surface.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘There’s no way I’m going in there again. Not on my own, in the dark.’

  He fingered his phone, remembering that he’d have to walk all the back into the village to get a signal, or talk his way into someone’s house.

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  Cooper was about to turn away from the gates, but stopped. The last shreds of light from the lamps on the path reached a few feet past the ticket booth before being swallowed up in the blackness of the cavern. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the shapes of the abandoned ropemakers’ equipment on the terraces - the sledges and winders, and the jack with its rotating hooks.

  And a few yards along the top terrace, he could see a human figure, motionless, slumped over one of the pulley poles.

  He pulled out his torch and shone it on the figure, illuminating a hunched back in a dark jacket, and legs that dragged on the floor at an unnatural angle. It hung on the edge of the darkness that led to the Devil’s Dining Room, and he knew he was looking at no one alive.

  Carefully, Cooper moved over the terrace towards it. He touched the shoulder, already feeling a prickle of apprehension from the knowledge that something wasn’t right. His hand rested on the dusty fabric, and sank in. His fingers pushed into the shoulder as if it had been reduced to shreds of straw. The figure sagged and slipped sideways. Dust fell out of its sleeves, and a pale, shapeless face rolled towards him, painted eyes staring past him towards the soot-blackened roof.

  Somewhere in the darkness of the cavern, Cooper heard a metallic scrape, the drawing back of a powerful spring.

  ‘Put down the torch and turn round,’ said a voice. ‘Or you’re as dead as that dummy.’

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  Outside Speedwell Cavern, Diane Fry could see the road that ran up into Winnats Pass. The sides of the pass certainly looked a peculiar shape, but no doubt there was some sound geological reason for that. Coral reefs and tropical lagoons, indeed.

  Ben Cooper had also told her a story about the old A625 being closed by landslips from Mam Tor. She’d found it hard to believe, having spent most of her life among roads that stayed pretty much where they were put. But, from Speedwell, she could see the collapsed slopes of the hill, where the shale had been loosened by the vast amounts of water that fell in these parts. It was obvious even to her that thousands of tons of rock had slithered down into the valley, carrying the road with it, ripping up yards of tarmacked surface as if it had been so much black crepe paper.

  A member of staff was waiting for them in a room at the top of a steep flight of steps. He made them put on white safety helmets from a heap on a table.

  ‘Was it you who called in?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what’s your name, sir?’

  ‘Page.’

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  ‘Mr Alistair Page?’

  That’s right.’

  Fry studied him for a moment.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you later, Mr Page,’ she said.

  A guide took them down the steps, which ran back under the road, descending steeply into the hillside. The arched roof was low, as if constructed with small men in mind. Fry found it impossible to get into her stride as she went down. She had to take the steps one at a time for fear of losing her balance and pitching headlong to the bottom, where even her hard hat might not save her. Behind her, Gavin Murfin clutched cautiously at the handrail, which meant he had to stoop rather than walk in the middle of the steps where the roof was high enough to stand upright.

  ‘And how far does this canal thing run?’ Fry asked the guide.

  ‘Over half a mile. The old lead miners cut southwards from here to intersect the veins that run east to west through this hill. Some of the veins are still visible in the tunnel we’ll go through.’

  ‘We’re not here for the tour, by the way.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  When they reached the landing stage at the bottom, two members of the task force dressed in boots and overalls were already sitting in a long punt-type boat. In front of them was the mouth of a tunnel cut through the rock. Once they entered it, they would find their heads only an inch or two below the roof.

  ‘There isn’t much weight in this boat, so it’s going to ride a bit high in the water, I’m afraid,’ said their guide. ‘You’ll have to duck as we go through the tunnel. Also, it might go a bit too fast for me to control properly. But don’t worry it’s perfectly safe.’

  He switched on an electric motor and the boat began to move. The low hum of the motor was no louder than the

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  splash of water and the bump of the hull against the walls. They ducked their heads to avoid the roof, but couldn’t avoid the occasional scrape of a helmet on rock. Around them was the smell of cold, wet stone. And the tunnel was dead straight. All Fry could see ahead were two rows of lights fixed to the walls, reflecting in the slowly moving water like elongated candles. They made the tunnel seem endless, and the entrance to the cavern unreachably far away.

  Ben Cooper watched Mansell Quinn closely for a clue to his intentions. He knew he was trying to look for humanity in a face hardened by despair. The creases at the corners of Quinn’s eyes hadn’t been there in the old photographs, and his hairline had receded a little from his forehead. But his hair was still much the same colour - still that sandy blond, like desert camouflage.

  Quinn was very lean, but the muscles in his shoulders were well defined. Apart from his hands and face, he had remarkably fine, translucent skin. He’d taken off his shirt, and his ribs and collarbones were visible, their fragile shapes like scaffolding under plastic sheeting. Blue veins snaked across his shoulders and along the insides of his arms, and gathered in clusters in the crooks of his elbows. Above his left hip was an angry wound, about three inches across, that wept trickles of blood.

  ‘I’m Detective Constable Cooper, Edendale Police. Please put the weapon down, sir.’

  Quinn didn’t respond. His torso was wet, as if he’d been washing, perhaps trying to clean the wound. He was standing a few yards away on one of the terraces where the rope makers’ sledges and winders stood abandoned. Cooper guessed he’d been down to the stream in the bottom of the cavern.

  The crossbow was pointing steadily at Cooper’s chest. Quinn nodded towards the interior of the cavern.

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  ‘Walk straight ahead on to the path.’

  ‘This isn’t a good idea, Mr Quinn. Put the weapon down.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what is and isn’t a good idea.’

  Cooper hesitated. The usual advice was to keep the subject talking in a situation like this. But he saw Quinn’s reaction and remembered his reputation for violence and a quick temper. It might be best to co-operate, or seem to.

  ‘It is Mr Quinn, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Walk straight ahead. Don’t step off the path. And don’t stop until I tell you.’

  ‘I’ll need the torch,’ said Cooper, gesturing at his feet. ‘The lights are off in there.’

  ‘No. There’ll be all the light we need. Just move.’

  Cooper looked at the crossbow in Quinn’s hands. The b
olt was about eighteen inches long, with a wickedly sharp point. A draw of a hundred and fifty pounds, and a hunting range of forty yards. The statistics had seemed academic at the time. But not now.

  Cooper turned towards the path, and walked into the darkness.

  ‘There’s Poor Vein, then Pocket Holes,’ said the guide. ‘They found blocks of lead ore in there weighing several pounds, buried in yellow clay. We’re four hundred and fifty feet below the surface now.’

  ‘I did say ‘

  ‘I know you did. But I thought it might help if I keep talking.’

  Diane Fry silently cursed the man for noticing that she was having a problem. Once they’d entered the tunnel, she’d begun to feel the rock closing around her. She knew without the guide telling her that they were getting deeper, the weight pressing down harder and harder as they slid through the water.

  The darkness ahead was unnerving, too. Despite the lights,

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  she couldn’t see an end to the tunnel. The walls converged slowly, but vanished in the distance before they met. There was still a long way to go before she could get out of the boat. Fry looked down into the water.

  ‘How deep is it?’

  ‘Only three feet.’

  Enough for her to drown in, if she had a panic attack and went over the side of the boat. She didn’t have much hope of Gavin Murfin saving her, if that happened. Fry looked at Murfin on the next seat. His shoulders were hunched and his head was down. He was very quiet.

  ‘Enjoying it, Gavin?’ she said.

  He shook his head, squinting at the sides of the tunnel. The bow swung to the right and hit the wall with a bang, shuddering the planks in the bottom. The guide pushed against the rock face to get it back into the centre. But with no more than a few inches’ clearance, the boat bounced off the opposite wall almost immediately.