Charlie Lomas was as skittery as a young pup straining at the leash with the scent of rabbit in his nostrils. Like George, he’d wanted to race down the dale to the place where river met crag as soon as he’d known what was afoot. But unlike George, who had learned the virtue of patience, he saw no advantage in waiting for the trained potholers to arrive. As far as Charlie was concerned, being a Scardale man was advantage enough when it came to investigating the mysteries of Scardale Crag.
So he’d paced up and down outside the caravan, smoking incessantly, nervously sipping from a cup of tea long after it must have been stone cold. George stared out of the caravan window, glowering at the village. ‘It’s not as if we’re not used to people withholding information, but there’s usually a motive behind it that you can see. Mostly they’re either protecting themselves or they’re protecting someone else. Or else they’re 158 just bloody-minded toerags who take pleasure in frustrating us.
But here? It’s like getting blood out of a stone.’
Clough sighed. ‘I don’t think there’s any malice in it. They don’t even know they’re doing it half the time. It’s a habit they’ve got into over the centuries, and I don’t see them changing it in a hurry.
It’s like they think nobody’s entitled to know their business.’
‘It goes beyond that, Tommy. They’ve all lived in each other’s pockets for so long, they know everything there is to know about Scardale and about each other. They take that knowledge totally for granted and simply forget that we’re not in the same boat.’
‘I know what you mean. Whenever we uncover something they should have told us, it’s as if they’re gobstruck that we hadn’t already known it.’
George nodded. ‘This is the perfect example. Ma Lomas never said at any point, ‘Oh, did you know there are some old lead mine workings inside Scardale Crag? It might be worth searching there.’ No, like everybody else, she assumed that we’d know about them and her only intent in mentioning them was to get into my ribs because she thinks the police search has been inadequate.’
Clough got up and paced the narrow confines of the caravan. ‘It’s infuriating, but there’s nowt we can do about it because we never know what it is we don’t know until we discover we didn’t know it.’ George rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I can’t help thinking that if only I was better at getting the locals to tell us what they knew, we might have saved Alison.’
Clough stopped pacing and stared at the floor. ‘I think you’re wrong. I think by the time the first call was made to Buxton Police Station, it was too late for Alison Carter.’ He looked up and met George’s eyes. Unable to bear what he saw there, he added, ‘But that might just be me whistling in the dark because I can’t stand the alternative.’ George turned away and looked again at the text in the nineteenthcentury book, trying to marry its description to the large-scale Ordnance Survey map.
Tommy Clough, recognizing his limitations, sat down again by the window and watched a pair of blackbirds scrabbling in the dirt under the heavy shelter of an ancient yew tree. There would be work to do soon enough; for now, he’d content himself with sitting and thinking. The cavers arrived in a Commer van with rows of seats bolted to the floor.
Peak Park Cave Rescue was painted in an amateur hand across the doors.
Half a dozen men spilled out across the green, apparently oblivious to the rain, grabbing handfuls of gear out of the back of the van. One man detached himself from the group and crossed to the caravan. Charlie stopped pacing and stared eagerly at him, like a gun dog on point. The man appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Who’s the boss man, then?’ George stood up, stooping under the low ceiling. ‘Detective Inspector George Bennett,’ he said, extending a hand.
‘You’ve got the look of Jimmy Stewart, anybody ever tell you that?’ the caver said, pumping George’s hand briefly.
George frowned as he caught Clough’s grin. ‘It’s been said. Thanks for turning out.’
‘Our pleasure. We’ve not had a decent rescue for ages. We’re champing at the bit for something a bit out of the ordinary. How d’you want to run this?’ He sat down on the bench seat, the rubber of his wet suit corrugating across his lean stomach.
‘We’ve got a vague idea where the entrance to these mine workings might be,’ George said. He gave a brief outline of what they’d learned from the book and the map. ‘Charlie here is a local. He knows the dale, so he can probably give us some pointers on the ground. If we find it, then I want to be with you when you go in.’
The caver looked dubious. ‘You done any potholing? Any climbing?’
George shook his head. ‘I won’t be a liability. I’m fit and I’m strong.’
‘You will be a liability, whatever you say. We’re a team, we’re used to working together and looking out for each other.
You’ll upset our rhythm. I don’t really want to go into an unexplored cave system with somebody that doesn’t know what’s what.’ He rubbed his cheek with his knuckles in a nervous gesture.
‘People die in caves,’ he added. ‘That’s why we were set up.’
‘You’re right,’ George said. ‘People do die in caves. That’s exactly why I have to be there with you. It’s possible that you might walk into a crime scene. And I’m not prepared to compromise any potential evidence. You have an area of expertise, I’m not denying that. But so do I. That being the case, you’re not going in there without me. Now, have you some spare gear, or am I going to have to get one of your team to strip off and give me his wet suit?’
The caver looked mutinous. ‘I’m not putting my team at risk because of your inexperience.’
‘I’m not asking you to. I’ll stay back, let you go ahead and check out any potential dangers. I’ll follow your orders. But I have to be there.’
George was implacable.
‘I want to come an’ all,’ Charlie burst out, unable to keep quiet any longer. ‘I’ve been in caves, I’ve done potholing, and climbing. I’m experienced. I know the terrain. You’ve got to take me.’ Tommy put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s not a good idea, Charlie. IfAlison’s in there, chances are she’s not going to be a pretty sight. It’d upset you, and you might destroy evidence without meaning to. My first murder, I thought I was going to be the next victim. I threw up all over the crime scene and the DCI looked like murdering me. Trust me. It’s better if you just help us find the way in.’
The young man frowned, pushing his hair back from his face. ‘She’s family, Mr Clough.
Somebody should be there for her.’
‘You can trust DI Bennett to do his best for her,’ Tommy said.
‘You know he wants this sorting as badly as you do.’ Charlie turned away, his shoulders slumped.
‘So what are we waiting for now?’ he demanded, his bravado betrayed by the break in his voice. ‘I need to get changed,’ George said. ‘I don’t know your name,’ he added to the caver.
‘I’m Barry.’ He sighed. ‘All right, we’ve got a spare suit that should fit you. You’ll need your own boots, though.’
‘I’ve got wellies in the car. Will they do?’
Barry looked contemptuous. ‘They’ll have to.’
Twenty minutes later, they made a strange procession down the dale and through the woodland where Charlie had uncovered the site of the struggle with Alison. He led the way, closely followed by George and Clough. Behind them the cavers walked in a clump, laughing, talking and smoking cheerfully as if they faced nothing more demanding than the usual Sunday exploration of some fascinating cave system. When they reached the base of the crag, the cavers squatted on the ground under the nearest trees and waited for directions. Charlie moved slowly along the edge of the limestone, pushing back undergrowth and occasionally clambering over fallen boulders to check if they were obscuring the remains of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old palisade. George followed where he could, but left most of the quest to Charlie, constantly comparing the topography to the description in the book.
Charlie pushed th
rough a thicket of young trees and dead ferns, then pulled himself over a group of small boulders and dropped down on the other side. He was lost from sight, but his voice carried clearly down the dale to the waiting men. ‘There’s a gap in the cliff here. Looks like…looks like there’s been a barricade, but it’s rotted away.’
‘Wait there, Charlie,’ George commanded.
‘Sergeant, come with me. We need to see if there are any signs of disturbance other than Charlie’s tracks.’
They made their difficult way to the cluster of boulders, trying to avoid being whipped in the face by overhanging small branches or tripped by the tenacious bramble suckers that criss-crossed the undergrowth. ‘It’s impossible to tell if anyone’s been here,’ Clough said, his frustration obvious.
‘You could come at it through the woods, or along the dale from the other side. As a crime scene, it’s worse than useless.’
They scrambled over the rocks and found Charlie dancing impatiently from foot to foot. ‘Look,’ he exclaimed as soon as he saw them. ‘It’s got to be this, hasn’t it, Mr Bennett?’
It was hard to reconcile what they could see with the mine entrance whose representation George had been studying all morning. Chunks of rock had fallen away from the mouth of the tunnel, leaving it an entirely different shape. The arch that simple tools had carved out of the soft limestone now looked more like a narrow triangular crack, at least twice as high as it had been. Bracken and ferns reached waist height, while an elder tree camouflaged the higher part of what looked as if it might be the way in. ‘See,’ Charlie said proudly. ‘You can see the remains of the iron spikes they hammered in to support the wooden barricade.’ He pointed to a couple of black lumps extruding from the rock at one side. ‘And down here…’ He pulled the bracken to one side to reveal the rotten remains of heavy timber. ‘I thought I knew every inch of this dale, but I never knew about this place.’
George looked around with a heavy heart. Charlie had trampled the area like a young elephant.
IfAlison had passed this way, alone or under restraint, there would be no traces now. He took a deep breath and called, ‘Barry? Bring your lads up here, would you?’ He turned to Clough.
‘Sergeant, I want you and Mr Lomas to go back to the caravan. I’m going to need some uniformed officers down here to cordon this area off. And not a word to the press at this stage.’
‘Right you are, sir.’ Clough clamped a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
‘Time for us to leave it to the experts.’
‘I should be in there,’ Charlie said, pulling away and making a break for the entrance. George neatly stuck out a foot between his legs. Charlie crashed to the ground and rolled over, staring up at George with a look of injured rage.
‘That’s us quits now,’ George said. ‘Come on, Charlie, don’t make this harder than it is. I promise, you’ll be the first to hear if we find anything.’
Charlie stood up and picked strands of bracken out of his hair. ‘I’m going back to tell my gran what I found,’ he muttered defiantly. But George had already turned his attention to the cavers, who swarmed over the fallen boulders as if they were mere undulations in a path. Now there was proper work to be done, they were quiet and methodical, each man checking his equipment carefully.
Barry handed George a hard hat with a miner’s lamp fixed to the front. ‘Here’s how it’s going to be. You stay back at all times. We don’t know what it’s going to be like in there. Judging by the state of this, it’s not looking to be too promising. Or safe.
So we go first, and you follow when I say and not before. Is that clear?’ George nodded, adjusting the strap of the hard hat. ‘But if we find anything that looks like recent disturbance, you mustn’t interfere with it. And if the girl’s in there…well, we’ll just have to come straight back out.’
Barry jerked his head towards one of his fellows. ‘Trevor’s got a special camera for taking pictures underground. We brought it, just in case.’ He looked around. ‘Right then. Des, you lead. I’ll be at the back to make sure George here does what he’s told. You heard him, lads—no messing with anything you find. Oh, and George—it’s no smoking down there. You never know what little surprises the earth has in store for you.’ It was like entering the underworld. The crack in the hillside swallowed them, depriving them of light almost as soon as they had passed through its portals. Feeble cones of yellow light splashed against streaked white walls of carboniferous limestone. Patches of quartz glittered; damp drizzles of wet flowstone gleamed momentarily; minerals striped and stippled the rock with their particular colours. George remembered a trip he and Anne had made to one of the show caverns near Castleton, but he couldn’t recall the correspondences between the strange markings and their sources. It took him all his time to figure out that he was in a narrow corridor, no more than four feet wide and five and a half feet tall. He had to walk with knees bent to avoid battering the hard hat against the strange excrescences that bloomed from the roof. The air was damp but strangely fresh, as if it were continually renewed.
There was a constant irregular series of splashes as drips from the stalactites became too weighty and their surface tension burst. The ground beneath his feet was uneven and slippery, and George had to shine the beam from his hand torch downwards to prevent tripping over one of the many fledgling stalagmites that dotted the floor of the passageway. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ Barry called over his shoulder, his light briefly blinding George.
‘Impressive.’
‘Leave it alone for a hundred and fifty years and it’s well on its way to becoming a show cave. I tell you, if we don’t find anything here today, we’ll be back at the weekend to have a proper explore.
You know how the Scarlaston just seems to seep out of the ground? That means there’s got to be an underground cave system somewhere around here, and this mine might just be the way through to that.’ Barry’s tone of breathless excitement made George feel slightly queasy. He was far from claustrophobic, but the other man’s undisguised desire to spend hours underneath these tons of inimical rock was entirely alien to him. He loved the sun and the air on his skin too much to be attracted by this strange half-world.
Before George could reply, a cry echoed back towards them from ahead, so distorted it was impossible to decipher. He started forward, but Barry’s arm barred the way. ‘Wait,’ the caver ordered him. ‘I’ll go and see what’s what. I’ll come right back.’
George stood fretting, trying to make sense of the mutter of voices ahead of him. It felt as if he stood there for ever. But within minutes, Barry appeared before him. ‘What is it?’ George asked.
‘It’s not a body,’ Barry said quickly. ‘But there’s some clothes. Up ahead. You’d better come and take a look.’
The cavers pressed against the wall to let George pass. A few yards on, the passage widened into what had obviously been a junction of four passages. The other exits had been blocked with rocks and rubble, leaving a small cavern about ten feet across and seven feet high. On the far side, barely visible by the lights from the cavers’ lamps, it was possible to make out what looked like clothing.
‘Has anybody got a more powerful light?’ George asked. Hands thrust a heavy lamp towards him.
He switched it on and pointed its powerful beam towards the clothes. Something dark was bundled against the rocks. What had at first looked like two dark strips became identifiable as a torn pair of tights. The black cloth near them, George realized with a lurch of pain and disgust, was a ripped pair of knickers.
He forced himself to breathe deeply. ‘We’re all going to leave now. The man at the back, just turn round and head out. Everyone else, follow him. I’ll bring up the rear.’ For a moment, no one moved. ‘I said, now,’ George shouted, releasing a fraction of the pent-up tension that strung his nerves tighter than the top string of a violin.
He stood glowering at them. At last, they turned and walked back, their own sure-footedness a taunt to his stumbling pursuit. When they
emerged into daylight, he felt as if they’d been inside for hours, but a glance at his watch revealed it had been less than fifteen minutes. Only now were the two uniformed officers emerging from the woodland path to keep the mine workings safe from prying eyes and destructive feet. George cleared his throat and said, ‘Barry, I’d like your colleague Trevor to stay here with me and take some photographs. The rest of you, I’d appreciate it if you’d wait here until we’ve got the area properly secured. If you go back to the village now, the word will spread that we’ve found something and the place’U be mobbed.’
The cavers muttered agreement. Barry fished a packet of cigarettes from a waterproof pouch slung round his neck. ‘You look like you could use one of these,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ George turned to the two uniformed officers and said, ‘One of you, go back to the caravan and tell Sergeant Clough we’ve found some clothing and we need a full team down here to secure a possible crime scene. And for God’s sake, man, do it discreetly. If anybody asks, we have definitely not found a body. I don’t want a repeat of Friday’s newspaper story.’
One of the bobbies nodded nervously and turned on his heel, jogging back up the path towards the heart of the village. ‘Your job is to make sure nobody who isn’t a police officer comes within twenty yards of this mine entrance,’ George told the other PC before turning back to Barry. ‘That central area in there—is there any chance that any of the other passages are accessible from there?’
Barry shrugged eloquently. ‘It doesn’t look like it. But I can’t be sure without a proper good look.
It’s always possible that there was a way through and somebody backfilled the passage behind them to make it look impassable. But this is a mine, not a cave system. Chances are there’s only one straightforward way in and one straightforward way out. Anybody that dug themselves into the hill is still going to be there, but they’re not very likely to be alive and kicking. I don’t think she’s in there, lad.’ He put a hand on George’s arm then turned away to squat on the rocks with his mates.