‘I can’t see anything. There’s a massive tree root in the way. She must have fallen right through it.’
‘It might have broken her fall at least.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘But we can’t get to her. Too much debris has fallen in.’
‘Is there another way to get in?’
‘We can try to find one,’ the DCRO controller said doubtfully.
‘We’ve got to find one.’
More help arrived, and they began to scour the hillside for yards around the old mineshaft, dragging aside fallen trees and hacking through tangled brambles. Long minutes passed and it was almost half an hour before a rescuer held up a hand.
‘Here!’
‘Yes, we’ve got something.’
‘It looks like the remains of a mine entrance, but it may just be a ventilation shaft, or a drainage channel.’
‘If it goes into the same shaft, it’s what we need.’
Cooper began pulling away the undergrowth, tearing his hands on the brambles. Quickly other people came to his side and began to help.
‘Inspector Cooper, there’s something here.’
‘What have you got? Is it Carol?’
‘I’m... not sure.’
There was something about the man’s tone of voice that made Cooper’s heart sink, and his skin felt cold.
‘Let me look,’ he said.
‘Be careful, sir.’
‘I’m fine. Stand aside.’
Cooper pulled out his torch and shone it into the hole they’d made. The light worked its way along the edge of the hole until it hit something white and very still. An officer lowered himself down into the hole.
‘It’s a body,’ said the officer. ‘But it’s not DC Villiers.’
Cooper stared at him.
‘Is it the body of a male?’
‘Hard to tell, sir. The head and torso are buried under a collapse. The rest of the body is skeletonised.’
‘It will have to wait, then. Mark the spot. We’ll come back to it.’
Cooper joined him in the hole. A passage ran off in both directions, hacked through the hillside by miners, one of the last workings of Mandale Mine.
He took a moment to get his sense of direction.
‘This way.’
They had to stoop in the passage. The rock walls were worn smooth in places, in others left broken and jagged. A length of rusty chain hung from an iron bolt in the wall. Rotting lumps of timber lay crumbling underfoot. Cooper tripped over a jutting stone and the officer grabbed his arm to steady him.
After a few minutes they came to a point where the passage took a sharp turn. Rocks had tumbled from the roof here and it was a tight squeeze to get through, but he managed. Ahead was total blackness. He ducked to get the headlamp pointed forward. And his heart sank. The passage ended ten yards further on in a solid wall of stone.
But wait a minute. There was light coming through from above. Just a single shaft of it, almost hidden by his helmet lamp. Cooper began to move forward again. He was breathing heavily, and not only from the exertion. The air was bad down here.
He cast his light about the passage as he moved, conscious that he might pass over the opening to another shaft at any second. And then to his left he spotted an opening in the floor, a sloping access into another shaft. What did they call it? A winze.
The space around him was full of dust now. It swirled in his torchlight and settled on his skin. He could feel himself breathing it in. It formed a sour, rough coating inside his mouth, drying up his saliva. He was beginning to feel a bit light-headed. Any longer and he would have to retreat.
But there she was. Thank God she was wearing an orange waterproof. It reflected the light at the furthest limit of his torch beam and she was lying halfway down the slope into the next shaft. She was covered in dust and branches and small stones.
‘I can see her,’ he called back.
‘Is she conscious?’
‘I can’t tell. She isn’t moving.’
Even as he spoke, he saw Villiers stir. She moved her arms, then her legs, and began to sit up. He heard her groan.
‘Carol, stay where you are. I’m coming down.’
She looked up, shading her eyes against the glare of his torch.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘A bit scratched and bruised. I came right through the tree root.’
‘What did you land on?’
She looked at her hands, and wiped a smear of something dark on her jacket.
‘Wet mud.’
‘You were lucky. It could have been a lot worse. Wait a second, I think I can get down the rest of the way.’
‘Careful, Ben.’
Cooper took another step and found himself slithering the last few feet to the bottom of the shaft. Villiers put out a hand and stopped his descent.
‘You shouldn’t have come down.’
‘So they told me. Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She winced. ‘Well, perhaps a twisted ankle. And some of those bruises are going to be bad tomorrow.’
‘We’ll soon have you out when Cave Rescue get here.’
Cooper shone his torch around. A lot of soil and vegetation had fallen into the shaft and was scattered around their feet. The mud smelled like an accumulation of decades and decades of debris that had ended up in the hole and had lain rotting in thick layers at the bottom. That was what Villiers had fallen on to. Now she smelled the same way as the mud, ripe with decomposition. And so did he, probably.
He felt the need to support himself against the wall and realised the place they were standing in wasn’t on a level. It sloped slightly downwards into the hillside. In front of him, a great slab of rock formed a kind of roof. Beneath it, a roughly hewn passage vanished into the darkness.
This wasn’t a carefully constructed tunnel like the Mandale sough with its delicate and beautifully balanced stone arch. Miners had simply hacked their way through the rock here to get to where they hoped the veins of lead would be. They had left only a space wide enough for an average-sized person to walk through bent double.
A trickle of water ran into the passage from the muddy entrance. More water dripped from the roof, glittering for a second in his torchlight.
‘It’s very dark down here,’ said Villiers.
‘No one wants to die in the dark.’
‘Especially not alone.’
‘Actually,’ said Cooper grimly, ‘you weren’t exactly alone, Carol.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think we’ve found Annette Bower. Or what’s left of her after ten years.’
33
Day 6
‘Well done, Ben,’ said Detective Superintendent Branagh. ‘A successful outcome. So the system’s working.’
Cooper grimaced. He couldn’t say it wasn’t working, or it would be a sign of his own weakness. As usual, decisions were taken way above his head and he’d been presented with a fait accompli. He just had to make it work.
‘And did Detective Sergeant Fry help?’ she said.
‘No, we helped her,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s the way it works sometimes.’
‘The case looks sound against the Crowley brothers. EMSOU are happy. The Major Crime Unit are preparing all the paperwork, so that’s a load off our shoulders.’
‘I hope Detective Sergeant Sharma gets due credit.’
‘Of course. I’ve already made sure of it.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m very glad we resolved the Annette Bower case after all these years,’ said Branagh. ‘I have to admit, it’s been a thorn in my side for a long time.’
‘In a way,’ said Cooper, ‘it was taken out of our hands. The Annette Bower case was resolved by others.’
‘The sister-in-law and the new partner. They took their own form of justice.’