When Ben Cooper and Carol Villiers arrived back at the rendezvous point in Lathkill Dale, the DCRO controller came forward to meet him. The man took off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. There were streaks of mud on his face like camouflage paint, and more stains in his beard.
‘We’ve looked in all the accessible places,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Well, that just means we’ll have to look in all the inaccessible places,’ said Cooper impatiently.
‘Where do you mean?’
Cooper hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. But that’s where we’ll have to look.’
‘Well, if you can show us, we’ll look. Otherwise—’
He looked around the dale, with its steep slopes covered in trees and dense undergrowth, rising to limestone cliffs.
‘Where is the main mine building from here?’ asked Cooper.
The man pointed. ‘Up the slope and towards the right. There’s no path from here though. You’ll have to hack your way through.’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘We,’ said Villiers. ‘I’ll come with you, Ben.’
A few minutes later, Cooper was working his way up the hillside with difficulty. Villiers had moved ahead of him and was ten yards further up the slope, pushing aside the branches of an overgrown elder tree and tramping down a patch of nettles. She was stamping on the weeds as if she really hated them, which perhaps she did. Some people were prone to get a bad reaction to nettle stings.
He looked down at his feet as he felt his toe catch on a root and had to stretch out his arms to keep his balance. He laughed at his awkwardness and wondered if Carol had seen him almost fall.
But when he looked up again, Carol Villiers had gone.
With a cold feeling gripping her heart, Diane Fry pushed open the scuffed door and walked into Geoff Pollitt’s shop in Shirebrook marketplace.
‘Wait out there, Jamie,’ she called. ‘I just want to have a word with Mr Pollitt alone.’
Callaghan hesitated. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, Diane?’
‘I won’t be long.’
Pollitt straightened up from behind the counter when she entered. He didn’t look directly at Fry, but gazed past her to see who she’d brought with her. When he saw she was alone, he smirked.
‘Can I help you with something, Sergeant?’ he said.
‘Why, what exactly are you selling?’
‘Nothing that would interest you. Maybe you should try next door at the pet shop? They sell peanuts for monkeys.’
‘We raided a house down at the Model Village on Wednesday,’ said Fry.
‘I heard. Not one of mine.’
‘No, but we do know about yours, Mr Pollitt.’
He went a little pale.
‘You can’t do. You’re just trying it on.’
Fry ignored him. He was right, of course. She was trying it on. But sometimes you had to bluff a bit. She hoped she was making him uneasy. When people were unsettled, they made mistakes, perhaps blurted out the wrong thing. It was something to hope for.
‘It’s all over, isn’t it?’ said Pollitt. ‘They say you got two blokes for doing in the Pole upstairs.’
‘Yes, we did.’ Fry looked up at the ceiling. Yes, the bloodstain was still here. It looked darker now. That could be bacteria growing on the blood. It wouldn’t meet approval from a health and safety inspection. But then, what in this shop would?
‘We’re not leaving Shirebrook just yet,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ said Pollitt. ‘Are you starting to feel at home?’
Fry gave a bag of cat litter an experimental kick. It gave way under the toe of her shoe and a slit let out a trickle of granules. The crunch felt very satisfying. But it wasn’t the only thing she wanted to kick.
‘We’ve been watching your shop,’ she said. ‘You get a lot of visitors, don’t you? People who don’t seem to buy very much.’ She looked around the bare shelves. ‘Not anything that you have on display anyway.’
‘So?’
‘So what are they doing here? Are you having meetings?’
‘Okay, yes. I get together with like-minded people sometimes. There’s no law against that, is there?’
‘Like-minded in what way?’
‘Do you need to ask? You know for yourself what the problems are. Everyone can see it. Quite a lot of us think we’re living in depraved and degenerate times. The EU has been a disaster for us in England. Brexit is our future. The Referendum vote gave us hope.’
‘Did it really?’
Pollitt’s lip curled.
‘You sneering liberals,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand, do you? You don’t want to hear what ordinary people think, how immigration is destroying our communities and ruining our lives. You just put your hands over your ears and shout “racist”. Well, it doesn’t work any more. Things are going our way. You’ll see.’
She studied Pollitt, feeling the anger growing inside her. He was a man of his time, a typical product of this moment in history. But that didn’t make him any less despicable in Fry’s eyes. It didn’t make him any less worthy of being stamped out of existence, like the cockroaches that no doubt were infesting his stock room.
Fry took a step closer. Pollitt seemed to recognise the look in her eyes and he flinched as if she’d hit him. But she hadn’t. Not yet.
A few minutes later Fry opened the door of the shop and stepped out into the daylight of Shirebrook marketplace.
Jamie Callaghan had been waiting impatiently for her on the pavement. He looked as though he’d been expecting the worst. He stared in horror at Fry’s hand as she rubbed her knuckles with a tissue.
‘Is everything okay?’ he said.
‘Fine.’
‘Are you sure, Diane?’
Fry shrugged. Callaghan went to the door and stuck his head into the shop.
‘Oh, God. What happened to him?’ he said.
‘I think he was visited by a group of local men who took reprisals.’
‘Polish men? East Europeans?’
‘I don’t know. They may just have been Shirebrook residents who took exception to outsiders attacking members of their community.’
‘He can tell us himself, can’t he?’
Fry turned to look at Geoff Pollitt. He glowered back at her over the hand clutching his nose.
‘He doesn’t seem to be talking,’ she said. ‘Which has got to be a good thing.’
In Lathkill Dale, Ben Cooper was lying on the ground and peering into an impenetrable darkness.
‘Carol! Carol!’ he called.
He called again and again. There was no answer. Only a trickle of soil and stone sliding into the hole from the dangerously unstable edge.
‘I didn’t even hear her fall,’ he said desperately.
‘It’s the entrance to an old mineshaft. They must be all over this valley.’
‘How far down does it go?’
‘There’s no way of telling.’
‘We need lights.’
‘The DCRO team are coming. They’ll deal with it, don’t worry.’
But Cooper was hardly listening. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he’d spotted a ledge of rock jutting out of a hole a couple of feet down. He twisted his body round and eased himself over the edge.
‘No, wait. It’s not safe.’
‘She’s probably injured,’ he said.
‘Well, we don’t want two of you getting hurt.’
Cooper hesitated only a second. One part of him knew that he was being given good advice, that it was foolhardy to risk his own safety, that he should wait for the rescue team with lights and proper equipment. But he was here, right now, and Carol was lying down there, hurt.
His boots touched the ledge and his fingers scrabbled on the side of the hole. He could feel grooves and scratches and smooth surfaces, as if the rock had been attacked by hundreds of hammers and chisels. He got a grasp on a crevice and steadied himself then pulled out his torch and shone its beam down into the shaft.