‘So you’re paying back a personal debt?’
‘Something like that.’
‘It’s okay, Ben. I can relate to that.’
‘We can manage anyway,’ said Cooper. ‘The barn fire is manslaughter at most, possibly an accidental death. Shane Curtis may even have been involved in starting the fire himself. The robberies — it’s just a matter of time until they make a mistake or we get some correlation in the witness statements.’
‘There’s the murder of a Polish man in Shirebrook,’ said Villiers.
‘Not our case. It’s in Bolsover LPU, and EMSOU are on the case anyway.’
‘So they are.’
‘Carol, did you finish going through the address book Naomi Heath gave us?’
‘Sorry, Ben. DS Sharma didn’t think it was a priority, considering our workload.’
‘It’s okay.’
Cooper watched Villiers leave. He worried that if Carol didn’t get a promotion soon she would be passed over in favour of Becky Hurst, who was bright and ambitious, just the kind of officer who attracted attention from the command structure.
Hurst would deserve it, of course, though she might need just a bit more experience. But he hated the idea of Carol Villiers becoming a sort of female Gavin Murfin, middle-aged and embittered.
Murfin appeared as if on cue, arriving back from his morning visit to Bakewell.
‘Any luck?’ asked Cooper.
‘One of the old guys at a car repair business says there was a lad who used to come there ten years ago to visit his girlfriend. He had a red Nissan. I think that’s all it was, boss.’
‘The original inquiry team must have followed that up surely?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Murfin.
‘What do you mean “you suppose so”?’
Murfin shifted uneasily. ‘To be honest, I remembered this as soon as I saw the units. We went to check them out back then. I was with Bill Osborne.’
‘Your old DS?’
‘Bill was a bit of a character, like I said.’
‘A character? Gavin, are you telling me Detective Sergeant Osborne was bent in some way?’
‘No, no... it’s a bit more complicated than that. It was ten years ago. And Bill was old school.’
Cooper frowned. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this at all. Murfin looked as guilty as hell.
‘Gavin, you’d better sit down and tell me all about it.’
Murfin collapsed wearily in a chair. ‘Well, when the two of us went to the industrial units we soon tracked down the lad with the red Nissan. It turned out he was the son of a mate of Bill’s who’d gone a bit off the rails, like. He wasn’t a bad lad really. At least, that’s what Bill said.’
‘And DS Osborne didn’t want this person interviewed for some reason?’
‘He was just visiting his girlfriend,’ said Murfin. ‘She worked at one of the other units, in the office.’
‘Come on, let’s have it, Gavin.’
Murfin sighed. ‘He’d been involved in a bit of a domestic dispute. He’d been in court and he was put on probation. One of the conditions was a restriction on his movements. He wasn’t supposed to go within five miles of Bakewell. But he badly wanted to see her. If he’d been reported, he would have gone to prison for breach of his probation order. He had nothing to do with Annette Bower’s disappearance, Ben.’
‘So you and Bill Osborne covered it up?’
‘Bill told the incident room we couldn’t trace the owner of the red Nissan. It wasn’t important.’
‘And you went along with it?’
‘It was ten years ago,’ repeated Murfin.
‘So you said.’ Cooper tapped a pen on his desk. ‘Where is DS Osborne now? He retired, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he was only a few months away from his thirty at the time. So I reckon he didn’t really care all that much about, you know—’
‘Disciplinary hearings?’
‘Right.’
‘But the interests of the inquiry didn’t matter either, I take it?’
‘He went abroad,’ said Murfin, as if it was a defence. ‘He lives in Portugal now.’
‘I’m going to have to put this in my report,’ said Cooper. ‘I’m sorry, Gavin.’
‘Bill Osborne was very good to me,’ said Murfin as he stood up to leave the office. ‘You understand, Ben.’
Cooper sighed. That was one of the difficulties of his position. He understood all too well.
He put on his jacket, and put his head round the door of the CID room.
‘Are you okay with the arson inquiry, Dev?’
Sharma turned to him. ‘It seems fairly straightforward, Inspector. Reckless endangerment of life. A charge of involuntary manslaughter at the most. Our two suspects are juveniles, so they’ll go to youth court for remand.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Keep me up to date with how you’re getting on. What about the armed robbery?’
‘DC Hurst is following some lines of inquiry and we’re gathering the intelligence together. I’m hopeful of an arrest soon.’
‘Great job.’
Cooper was conscious of the quizzical look DS Sharma gave him as he left. No doubt Sharma wanted to ask him the same questions that Carol Villiers had. But in Sharma’s case, they didn’t know each other well enough.
Derbyshire Cave Rescue Organisation were already on the scene this morning. Cooper recognised their yellow Iveco rescue vehicle with the red-and-white checkerboard pattern and blue lights parked at the rendezvous point he’d established in Lathkill Dale. The back doors of the rescue vehicle were open, revealing an equipment storage area.
Cooper knew he was lucky to get their assistance for an extended period. A call-out could take them away to a serious incident at any moment, anywhere.
The DCRO controller had a grey beard that stuck out in tufts around the straps of his red helmet. He’d been on operations in Lathkill Dale before.
‘Actually, that shaft behind Bateman’s House originally housed a water-powered pumping engine that was installed at sough level to drain the flooded mines,’ he said. ‘They put it thirty-six feet down, then built the house over it to hide the pump.’
‘To hide it? Why?’ asked Cooper.
‘To guard against industrial espionage, so they say. The pump’s design was unique at the time. It was supposed to be secret.’
‘Really?’
‘So they say. Top secret. Mind you, it didn’t work. Not in the long run.’
Cooper had always thought of the Peak District as beautiful on the surface, but with a sense of darkness lurking underneath. That feeling was often associated with the history of places. Even the most picturesque village could have a sinister and disturbing past. The signs of it were everywhere, if you cared to look.
But here in Lathkill Dale, in this pretty valley with its wooded slopes and crystal-clear river, there was genuine darkness underneath, the real blackness of the tunnels those old lead miners had worked in.
They said that lead mining had begun in Derbyshire as early as the Bronze Age. Mandale Mine was a survival of mining activity that had lasted into the late nineteenth century. Among the undergrowth here were the remains of shafts, engine houses, ponds, and an aqueduct. And some features whose names had been forgotten, and sometimes their purpose. Coes, soughs, goits, leats, stopes and gin circles.
It was the geology of Lathkill Dale that eventually put an end to lead mining. The mine companies had dreamed of riches from the deeper veins of lead. They had one massive problem, though — underground flooding. The water that poured into the dale and sank through the limestone found its way into the mine workings in vast quantities. Engines and waterwheels were installed to power underground pumps. But nature won in the end. The vast amount of water continually flooding through the mine workings eventually forced the closure of Mandale Mine.