by Mike Ripley
Fred Booth’s brain did not work quickly enough to take in exactly what had happened to his cousin. He could see Colin laid out on the pit yard and what appeared to be a frantic old man in a flapping coat standing over him. Beyond, he noted that their precious bikes had been pushed over and seemed to be on fire, black smoke starting to billow from them. The absorption of all these facts made him stop beating on the cowering Arthur Exley, turn and take a hesitant but threatening step towards the old man in the shed doorway.
It was all the respite Exley needed. He uncoiled his bruised and aching body and, on his knees, wrapped his arms around Fred’s shins from behind and pulled. With a crack, Booth’s forehead hit the concrete floor before any other part of his anatomy could cushion the impact.
As Fred Booth yelped in surprise and toppled over, Adrian Elliff – whose rat-like cunning had always put a premium on self-preservation – assessed the situation with surprising speed. He removed himself from Roderick Braithwaite’s back, jumped to his feet and ran, wild-eyed, towards the door. He had no intention of helping either of the Booths, on whom the tables seemed to have been comprehensively turned. His sole motivation was to escape.
Campion saw the skinny youth charging towards him and knew that he did not have the physical strength to stop him and so resorted to offering some helpful advice.
‘Quick, get down!’ he shouted, gesturing to the burning bikes. ‘They’re going to blow!’
In a panic, Adrian Elliff did exactly as he was told and threw himself down, covering his head with his arms. Mr Campion casually stepped over his prone figure and said, ‘Everything under control here, Arthur? The police should be with us momentarily.’
Exley was already on his feet and helping Roderick on to his with a protective arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘Police, did you say?’
‘I’ve already telephoned for them.’
‘Well then,’ said Exley, unbuttoning his donkey jacket, ‘I’d better get my retaliation in now.’
He shrugged off the jacket and handed it to Roderick, then he unbuckled the wide leather belt he was wearing, pulled it through the loops on the waistband of his trousers and wound it tightly around his right fist.
With two paces he was standing over Adrian Elliff, who was still face down, his body shaking in anticipation of an explosion.
‘Get up, Adrian, and pick on someone your own size,’ said Exley grimly.
Mr Campion held out his hand to Roderick. ‘Let’s step outside for a minute.’
‘They killed him, you know; those Booths, the ones who beat up me and Andrew. I heard them say it. I got in the back of that lorry when I heard their bikes coming and I kept my head down.’
‘Sensible lad,’ said DCI Ramsden. ‘You did the right thing. Was Adrian Elliff with them?’
‘Not then, not when they were talking – and laughing – about it. He came a few minutes later and asked what they were doing as he hadn’t been expecting them.’
The pit yard was filling up with police cars and policemen. Fred and Colin Booth, both bloodied and dazed, had been handcuffed and placed in one car. Adrian Elliff had followed suit in another, but only after receiving a considerable amount of first aid roughly applied by an unsympathetic police sergeant.
Roderick sat on the rear seat of Ramsden’s Wolseley, the door open wide with Campion, Exley and Ramsden gathered in a semicircle to hear his story.
‘They thought it was funny,’ the boy continued with a sob, ‘to run him over like that. Funny. They laughed. Said he looked like a frightened rabbit.’
‘They didn’t mean Haydon Bagley, did they?’ asked Campion quietly.
Roderick stared up at him, puzzled. ‘Who? No, they were talking about Mr Browne – Bertie. They called him “that snooping teacher who was getting too close” and how he “never saw it coming” in the dark and now they were going to get rid of the lorry there would be nothing to link them to it. They were going to put their bikes in the back, drive the lorry to Manchester, dump it and ride back. I was sure they were going to find me, but then Arthur turned up.’
Campion and Exley exchanged a knowing glance, then Campion turned to Ramsden.
‘Chief Inspector, I’d like to share a theory with you,’ he said. ‘It’s not my theory in the sense that I can claim credit for it, but I think it was Bertram Browne’s and I am sure young Roderick here has worked it out for himself by now.’ He smiled down at the boy. ‘Otherwise he wouldn’t have come up here this morning to play at being a detective which, and I speak from bitter experience, is admittedly a young man’s game but not, perhaps, too young.’
‘I’m all ears, Mr Campion,’ said Ramsden. ‘We haven’t got a peep out of the Booth boys and on past form we’re not likely to. Typical Cudworth yobboes, they’ll keep their mouths shut, though we’ve got them on suspicion of pinching detonators from the NCB, that lorry is almost certainly stolen and they’ll be in the frame for the hit-and-run on Mr Browne now. We haven’t even got to Haydon Bagley yet.’ He paused as if reconsidering. ‘When we’ve thrown all that at them, they’ll talk eventually. In the meantime, given that Adrian Elliff seems to have had a minor nervous breakdown’ – he glanced at Exley who stared back blankly – ‘I would appreciate any theory you’d like to pass on.’
‘I think,’ Campion began, ‘and I hope Roderick will back me up here, that Bertram Browne was convinced that the poltergeist visitations to the Braithwaite house were a result of underground seismic activity – shockwaves running along the fault line of a seam of coal which was mined out years ago, a seam which had at one time run right underneath Eleven Oaker Hill.
‘What he did not know – or he would surely have gone to the police, being as far as I can tell a straightforward, law-abiding chap – was that the seismic activity was man-made and the direct result of criminal activity, your recent epidemic of rather cheeky robberies by the gang who doesn’t just steal payrolls but steals the safes in which the payrolls are kept.’
‘And then they blow the safes with the detonators stolen from the pits,’ said Ramsden. ‘We guessed that was what was going on. The question was where on earth were they doing it?’
Mr Campion extended a forefinger and pointed it downwards.
‘Not where on earth, Chief Inspector, but where under the earth …’
The cage door rattled shut, a winding engine hummed, a cable twanged taut and the metal plates underfoot shuddered; then their stomachs flipped as the floor fell away and they dropped into the void. The daylight disappeared with frightening speed and their field of vision was limited to the dank, black wall of the shaft speeding upwards as they sped downwards.
DCI Ramsden had summoned reinforcements to Grange Ash and deployed them as quickly and efficiently as a good battlefield general. As well as policemen, he had also enlisted the expert help and equipment of the National Coal Board’s emergency rescue team of miners trained in handling pit accidents. They set about their task of recovering the body of Haydon Bagley with grim dedication and quiet professionalism, although Campion noticed that the rescue team members automatically looked to Arthur Exley for confirmation whenever Ramsden issued an order.
It had been Exley who had insisted on a safety check on the winding gear so that they could descend into the old pit workings, and Exley who had borrowed helmets and torches from the rescue team for Ramsden, two constables and Campion. They would be guided underground by two of the team who had first-hand experience of the Grange Ash shaft and tunnels.
‘You are not coming with us?’ Campion had asked him. ‘Not at all curious as to what’s down there?’
Exley shook his head. He was filthy; his clothes smelled of oil and dust. There was dried blood on his shirt collar and a large purple bruise was blooming on one cheek. Campion guessed that he himself looked even worse.
‘My concern was first and last seeing young Roderick safe,’ Exley said without embarrassment. ‘All else is your business, not mine. If one of Mr Ramsden’s bobbies’ll run me round to
the school, I’ll get me car and take Roderick home to his mother. She’ll be expecting him for his dinner.’
Campion automatically thought ‘lunch’ and chided himself for doing so.
‘That’s a very good idea, Arthur – the boy’s seen things he shouldn’t have.’
‘Don’t worry about the lad. He’s Yorkshire and so are we. He’ll be looked after.’
‘Of that,’ said Campion with a smile, ‘I have absolutely no fear – something I wish I could say about the prospect of going down into the bowels of this pit without my faithful Sherpa and bodyguard.’
‘Seems to me you did most of the body-guarding. You weren’t bad for …’
‘I know, I know,’ Campion interrupted, ‘for a man of my age … my great age … my advancing years … my decrepitude … my …’
‘I was going to say for a southerner,’ grinned Exley.
After firmly placing a miner’s helmet on Campion’s head, attaching the light to it and then clipping the heavy battery which powered it to Campion’s belt, Exley accompanied the expedition party to the lift cage over the main shaft.
‘Just keep your extremities inside the cage and swallow as much as you can when your ears pop,’ he advised and then held out a hand to Campion as though to receive something rather than shake.
‘Oh, you want your coat back,’ said Campion, misunderstanding. ‘I really should have it cleaned – it’s quite filthy.’
‘Nay, you can keep that and a bit of muck never hurt anybody anyway. It’s that lighter of yours I’m after. Safety procedure. We’re a bit keen on that and I’ve seen the damage you can do with that thing.’
Campion fumbled the lighter out of his blazer pocket and handed it over. ‘Keep it,’ he said, ‘as a souvenir. It’s already engraved from A to A – from Albert to Arthur if anyone asks.’
The cage landed at the bottom of the shaft with a thump which reverberated through the feet and legs of Campion and the policemen but which went unnoticed by the miners accompanying them. The chamber-like area at the bottom of the shaft was much larger than Campion had imagined and more claustrophobic than an Underground station; in fact, the dust, the cables crudely fixed to the brick walls, the rusted railway tracks and the sheets from a newspaper wafting in the downdraft from the shaft all conjured images of a chilly evening on any one of a number of stations on the Northern Line.
One of the rescue-team miners announced in sepulchral tones that there were two tunnels leading off the chamber, the larger being the Grange Ash end of the Flockton Thick seam. That, he was pleased to say, was perfectly comfortable for a man to walk down without ‘bashing ’is ’ead’ as long as he wasn’t over five-foot-six tall, at least for the first three-quarters of a mile. After that, he added with just a hint of malice, they would have to get down on their knees and crawl.
In fact, having travelled eight hundred feet vertically, the expedition had to make their way no more than thirty yards horizontally before they discovered buried treasure – or rather the chests which had once contained treasure.
Their helmet lights illuminated a row of eight similar-sized office safes littered along the rail lines on which had once been pushed trucks of finest Flockton Thick coal, freshly hewn. The safes lay on their sides or backs, as though they had been rolled like dice by some giant subterranean hand, their doors clearly and conspicuously having been opened by force.
‘No sign of £40,000 or thereabouts, is there?’
The voice of Dennis Ramsden, echoing in the tunnel, snapped Campion out of a minor reverie. He had been focussed on the way the light from his helmet lamp was so quickly swallowed by the dark maw of the tunnel which stretched ahead into infinity.
‘They wouldn’t stash the loot here, Chief Inspector. It would be far too difficult to get at in a hurry if the gang needed to make themselves scarce.’
‘Well, the Booth boys certainly seemed to be planning to do a runner,’ said Ramsden. ‘Applying for passports and getting rid of that lorry points that way.’
‘It does,’ replied Campion, ‘and it ties in with something Roderick said – or rather something somebody said to him – about the poltergeist; about its visits coming to an end soon.’
‘So you reckon the gang’s called it a day?’
‘I think so. It doesn’t answer your question about where the money is, though.’
‘But you have an idea, don’t you, Mr Campion?’
‘That’s very flattering, Chief Inspector, but I would put it no higher than a notion if that – it’s probably only half a guess.’
‘Go on. I’m not proud, Campion, I don’t mind asking for help now I’ve got three murders on my books as well as the robberies.’
‘Well, then, for what it’s worth, you’d agree that the gang who did the robberies was highly organized?’
‘Certainly, and somebody far cleverer than the Booth boys was giving the orders.’
‘Working with some degree of insider knowledge, perhaps?’
‘Naturally we thought of that and we looked into it long and hard, checking all the usual suspects: disgruntled employees, ex-employees, managing directors with debt problems or gambling habits. We found a couple of shady individuals but nothing to connect them to any other of the eight companies that got robbed.’
Campion turned to Ramsden and then rapidly turned away, redirecting the light on his helmet from the policeman’s eyes.
‘Perhaps there was someone who could have inside knowledge on all eight firms, and I mean “inside” quite literally.’
Now it was Ramsden’s turn to blind Campion with the beam from his lamp. ‘Haydon Bagley.’
‘I would suggest it as a distinct possibility. He was, I believe, a local bank manager before his arrest. You might find all those robbed firms were clients of his, in which case he would know what sort of safe they had and how much money was likely to be in it at any one time.’
‘That certainly needs checking,’ said Ramsden with energy. ‘In fact, we should have done that but it never occurred to us. I mean, why would it? The robberies started months back but Haydon Bagley was in Wakefield Prison until two weeks ago.’
‘But his cell mate wasn’t. Malcolm “Malkey” Maude, or “Banger” as he was known, due to his liking for explosives when it came to opening safes. Not that we were on nickname terms, of course. I’ve never met the fellow, though I know a man who has.’
‘Malkey Maude? He was one of Commander Luke’s Greatest Hits, wasn’t he?’
‘I doubt that Charlie Luke would put it that way,’ said Campion, ‘but Maude was certainly a person of interest. I take it he’s not on your Most Wanted list here in Yorkshire.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. As far as I know we’ve not even got a photograph of him or his prints, let alone an outstanding warrant. We wouldn’t have if he hasn’t done a crime in the West Riding.’
‘I think he has made up for that oversight in his curriculum vitae in recent months. I suspect Malkey Maude and Haydon Bagley whiled away the long winter nights in their cell. Bagley had the targets, Maude had the expertise. He was released first, recruited his gang and went on a spree. The mining industry provided him with a pair of young thugs with access to explosives and a disused pit as a base. It began to fall into place when Arthur and I found that body on top of the muck stack. Why bury a body on top of a hill when you have a very large hole at your disposal?’ Campion turned his head so that his head torch shone around the tunnel. ‘Unless,’ he continued, ‘you were using the very large hole for some other purpose?’
‘So Bagley and Maude plan the robberies when they’re in jail and when Bagley gets out he comes straight here to get his cut of the loot?’
‘Something like that, or perhaps it was the classic “thieves fall out” scenario. Bagley had had six months alone to think things over and maybe decide he wanted a bigger share.’
‘So Maude topped him?’
‘He would be my odds-on favourite,’ Campion agreed, ‘and he probably gave
the order for the Booths to arrange a road accident for poor Bertie Browne who was getting close to tracking the source of the noisy poltergeist. By the way, if you check the dates, I’ll lay even money this time that the poltergeist manifested itself only in the immediate aftermath of one of the robberies.’
‘They’d have brought the safes down here when that idiot Elliff was night watchman,’ said Ramsden.
‘That was how he earned his cut, but I suspect his slice was a thin one. He didn’t strike me as being over-blessed in the brains department.’
‘You can say that again. He’ll talk right enough; all I have to do is threaten him with another lathering from Arthur.’
‘Hardly proper police procedure, Chief Inspector, but I won’t tell on you and you might try asking who told him to watch Ivy Neal – and Ivy’s visitors. The problem is I’ll lay odds – my goodness, I’m beginning to sound like a betting office, aren’t I? – that he doesn’t know. I think it is perfectly possible that Adrian never met our Mr Big. He was recruited by the Booths.’
‘And this Mr Big killed Ivy Neal?’
‘I can’t prove it but I’m sure of it.’
‘Why?’
‘If our Mr Big is Malkey Maud, Ivy Neal was the one person in Denby Ash who could identify him. She’d met him when visiting Haydon in prison and he’d mentioned a “Malcolm” in his letters. Perhaps he said something in that last letter …’
‘The one we can’t find.’
Campion nodded, his helmet torch beam slashing the musty air, which made him feel rather ridiculous.
‘The one he did find, when he killed her? Haydon could have been telling her things were going to look up and life get better now he was coming out. Didn’t Mrs Bagley – the real Mrs Bagley – say as much last night?’