Halfway up the daleside was a circular chimney. Further on was an abandoned coe, a miner’s hut, and the ruins of a powder house. The aqueduct was long gone. It had been supported by six stone piers, which still existed on either side of the trail. Near the waterwheel were a few remains of the smithy and an ore house.
The DCRO controller told Cooper there were several other known mine entrances in addition to the sough. They included two capped shafts and two adits, inclined entrances linking to the shafts below.
From here, two long rakes had been driven through the side of the dale and deep into the hillside as far as the Monyash road. Most of the length of these tunnels must have collapsed by now, he guessed. But who could tell? There was no way of knowing how far the rakes were accessible without sending in a properly equipped team.
They crested a rise under a cliff of limestone, and there was an iron grille in the rock face, closing off a shaft. It was fastened by a bolt into an iron bar. It looked as though it lifted on a hinge like a large cat flap.
‘This is the main adit,’ he said. ‘We haven’t checked this one yet. But, as you can see, it’s closed with an iron grille, so no one can just wander in.’
‘We’ll have to enter it anyway.’
‘Understood.’
Cooper knew it would be foolhardy to go in there alone, even with the right equipment. Yet people often did. The DCRO could testify to that. They rescued solitary cavers from time to time. Even the most experienced could get into trouble on their own.
He looked into the adit, with its low roof and stone walls chiselled and hacked away by miners. It sloped steadily downwards into complete darkness to a point where it reached the shaft. He could hear the hushed voices of the cave rescue team whispering off the stone, a trickle of water running somewhere in the blackness.
He borrowed a helmet, turned on the light, and stepped up to the entrance, ready to enter the mineshaft.
26
In Shirebrook, Diane Fry and Jamie Callaghan had been sent to visit a member of the public who’d phoned the 101 number in answer to the press appeals, claiming to have information about the Krystian Zalewski murder.
The young woman was working in a hairdresser’s, though the fascia outside the shop said it was a beauty studio. Several pairs of eyes turned to watch Fry and Callaghan as they entered, women twisting in their chairs to get a better look. The air was thick with chemical smells. Shampoo and hair spray, perming lotion and nail varnish remover. Hot blow-dried hair and a hint of ammonia.
The staff were almost indistinguishable from each other. They all had short, dyed blonde hair and were dressed in black.
Fry held up her warrant card.
‘Nikki Frost?’
‘Yes?’ said one of the women.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Fry. This is Detective Constable Callaghan. You phoned and said you had some information about an incident.’
She said she was expecting them and left her colleagues to attend to the customers for a few minutes. They squeezed into a back room with a kitchen area and shelves stacked with styling products.
Nikki looked nervous, so Fry made her sit down while she herself perched on a stack of cardboard boxes. Callaghan leaned against the wall in the doorway. They were crammed together in a densely perfumed space that had hardly any oxygen.
‘It’s about the man who was killed earlier this week,’ said Fry. ‘His name was Krystian Zalewski.’
‘Someone brought in one of those leaflets you’ve been giving out. Then I saw all the police tape that had been put up at the end of the alley, and I sort of put two and two together.’
‘Are you saying you were there in the alley when Mr Zalewski was attacked?’
‘I suppose so. I must have been.’
Fry sighed. ‘You’d better start from the beginning, Miss Frost.’
Nikki’s hands were trembling slightly. Her black-painted fingernails jerked like a nest of beetles disturbed from under a stone.
‘I was on my way home that night,’ she said. ‘I’d been at a spinning class. I can burn about seven hundred calories in a forty-five minute session.’
‘Spinning?’
That puzzled Fry. She had an image of an old woman in a shawl bent over a wooden spinning wheel turning out yarn, and it didn’t seem to fit.
‘Indoor cycling,’ explained Callaghan. ‘You do time trials and sprints and flats to motivational music.’
‘Really?’
‘I go to a gym in Mansfield,’ said Nikki. ‘I usually get there by train, because it’s only a five-minute walk from the station at the other end.’
‘Shirebrook has a railway station?’ asked Fry. ‘I haven’t seen it.’
‘Yes, it’s on the Robin Hood Line. Trains pass through here on the way from Nottingham to Worksop. But there’s no service to Shirebrook on a Sunday so my friend gave me a lift to the gym and we went to Pizza Hut for something to eat afterwards. Later, she dropped me off in the car park on King Edward Street, near the butcher’s. From there, I walked into the marketplace.’
‘Did you see anyone on the way?’
‘Not really. I have a friend who works at Deep Pan Kid, and I waved through the window as I passed. I’m not sure she saw me, though. Then I cut through the alley to get home. I live just off Thickley Close, you see.’
‘And what happened, Nikki?’
‘Well, it was very quiet. It does get really dead in Shirebrook at that time, since they enforced the order, you know, with all those posters—’
‘The Public Space Protection Order.’
‘That’s it. Well, there was no one around, and most of the shops were shut. I suppose I ought to have been more careful...’
She shot a sideways glance at Jamie Callaghan, a look full of doubt and a hint of fear. It was enough to cause Callaghan to shift uncomfortably and change his position against the wall.
‘No, it wasn’t your fault,’ said Fry. ‘You should be able to walk home safely on your own, Nikki.’
‘I know, you’re right. Everyone says that. But still—’
‘Just take your time, and tell us what happened next.’
‘I turned into the alley. It was quite dark there, but I could see the street lights at the other end. Then I heard the sound of an engine.’
‘An engine?’
‘Not a car. There were a few of those around the marketplace, but this was different. It was a motorbike, and it was close. It must have been at the end of the alley. I had this feeling that something was wrong, that I could be at risk, that I ought to turn round and run. But I kept on walking, just putting one foot in front of the other like an idiot. That was my mistake. One man jumped out from a corner and grabbed my bag. Another one came into the alley. They were both wearing motorbike helmets and leathers.’
‘Did you call out, Nikki?’
‘Not at first. I don’t know why. Maybe it was shock or something. You don’t know how to react in that situation. You hear about it happening to other people, but when it happens to you, it’s different. I was thinking that they were just messing about, that it might be my brother and one of his mates having a joke on me. I couldn’t believe it was really true that I was being mugged.’
‘I know it’s difficult, Nikki, but did you notice anything else about these two men?’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t see their faces. Like I said, they wore helmets with those dark visors. One of the helmets was red, I remember. I think the other might have been black. But it was dark, you know...’
‘Yes, of course. Did they speak to you?’
‘No, just tried to pull my bag away from my arm. I hung on to it like grim death. That was probably stupid, wasn’t it? There wasn’t much of any value in it. They say you should just let go, so that they don’t hurt you.’