There was very little wind today, though, so human scent particles wouldn’t carry far before they were recognised by a dog. The handlers would have to compensate by shortening their sweeps. The search would take more time.
‘That was a good result,’ said DCI Mackenzie. He glanced at his watch. ‘A nice couple of hours’ work there. We have Mark Brentnall in custody for questioning. In due course he’ll be charged with conspiracy to supply firearms and ammunition.’
Fry had taken off her bulletproof vest. They were always uncomfortable to wear for any length of time. It reminded her of when she was in uniform. None of her kit ever seemed to fit her, from the tunic to the utility belt. It was as if everything had been designed for a fifteen-stone male.
‘What about the other teams, sir?’ she asked.
‘Great news there too.’
Mackenzie reported that a search conducted at Mark Brentnall’s business premises had resulted in the recovery of component parts, including sawn-off barrels and ammunition. Meanwhile, armed officers had stopped Brentnall’s Range Rover on a slip road of the M1 and recovered eight more sawn-off shotguns and two hundred cartridges from the boot.
In Birmingham, the Serious and Organised Crime Squad had arrested several people, including an individual named Michael Rafiq, believed to be the head of a drug-dealing network distributing Class-A drugs across the region.
Rafiq had been arrested in possession of wraps of crack cocaine and heroin, five mobile phones and more than two thousand pounds in cash. Officers searched his home address and found another eight kilos of drugs. Their haul also comprised twelve sawn-off shotguns linked to dozens of crime scenes, including two killings. Four more individuals had been arrested in the West Midlands — drug runners responsible for the distribution of Class-A substances from Birmingham to towns and villages outside the city.
Fry nodded to herself when Mackenzie had finished. It was definitely a good result. So why was she feeling so uneasy, as if something had gone badly wrong?
At the end of her shift, Diane Fry drove out of the secure car park and headed down the A611 to face the traffic on Western Boulevard.
To her surprise, another call came through from DCI Mackenzie before she’d passed Queen’s Medical Centre. She answered straight away. It had to be something urgent.
‘DS Fry?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Tomorrow morning. Don’t come into the office here.’
‘Why not?’ said Fry. ‘Where do you need me? Not back in Edendale?’
‘No.’
Mackenzie sounded less than his usual confident self. Fry began to sense that something might be wrong.
‘Sir? What is it?’
‘They want you at Ripley,’ he said.
‘Derbyshire HQ?’
‘Right. You’ve to report to your force’s Professional Standards Department at nine thirty a.m. for an interview.’
Fry stared at the traffic around her as she came into Matlock and stopped at the traffic lights before turning towards the M1.
‘What is it about?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mackenzie. ‘That’s all they’ve told me.’
‘All right, then.’
She thought he’d gone, just put the phone down at his end without saying goodbye, but Mackenzie was still there. He seemed to have been thinking about what else he should say to her.
‘Diane,’ he said finally. ‘I’m sorry.’
The news came through that search dog Dolly from Kinder MRT had located human scent. Dolly soon found the first group of walkers. They were cold and wet and miserable, and one of them had lost a shoe in the mud. The MRT carried spare boots, since it wasn’t unusual for walkers to leave theirs behind in the peat bogs.
The rest of the party soon followed. The injured man was treated by a team doctor before being stretchered down to a waiting ambulance and transferred to Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport. There had been no need on this occasion to call in the air ambulance, Helimed 54.
As the lost walkers gradually emerged from the fog, Villiers could see a couple of figures wrapped in emergency foil blankets. Others seemed unsteady on their feet or were suffering from cramp and needed assistance in walking. They were all covered in mud from falls in the groughs.
Eventually, a group of a dozen or so were gathered at the rendezvous point and were given hot drinks by their rescuers. They’d been out on the hill so long that their skin and hair were wet and they were shivering with cold.
‘It seems they became disorientated in the deteriorating conditions,’ said the controller. ‘They’d been walking round and round in circles instead of in straight lines, though at least one of them had an Ordnance Survey map they might have used.’
‘If they knew how to read it,’ said Villiers.
The controller sighed. ‘At least they weren’t high on cannabis, like that group in the Lake District last year. This lot were sober, but unprepared and reckless. Still, our first priority is people’s safety, no matter what ill-judged decisions they might make to put themselves in a situation like that.’
Villiers called Ben Cooper. He’d asked to be kept up to date, and she knew Cooper well enough to realise that he’d be calling her himself if she didn’t.
‘We’ve located a party of twelve,’ she said. ‘One casualty has been transported to hospital with a suspected broken ankle. One treated in situ with glucose for low blood sugar.’
‘Where are the rest of them now?’ he asked.
‘Having a warm-up before we return them to their vehicles at Bowden Bridge. They have no real injuries, but they’re cold and wet, and suffering from exhaustion in some cases.’
Villiers noticed that one of the walkers nearby was shaking his head when he overheard her call.
‘Hold on,’ he said when she came off the phone.
‘Yes, sir? What’s your name?’
‘Haslam. I’m Nick Haslam.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘We’re a party of thirteen, not twelve.’
Villiers frowned. ‘Are you sure? We’ve counted. One casualty has been sent to hospital. The rest of you are here.’
Members of the walking group stared at each other. They were scattered across yards of ground. Some were standing, some sitting. Villiers saw one man with wavy blond hair perched on a rock, another had lain out flat on the ground to rest, while an older couple had been given folding chairs to sit on. Was anyone missing, apart from Liam Sharpe, now in the ambulance on his way to Stockport?
‘Oh God,’ said Nick as he looked around. ‘Where’s Faith?’
7
Ben Cooper’s house in Foolow was in the heart of White Peak country, surrounded by fields and a tracery of white limestone walls so complex and intricate that it seemed to hold the landscape together. He sometimes thought that if you followed the right lines in that imaginary web, you could discover any story, find the clues to any mystery hiding in the Derbyshire countryside. All the answers he sought might be contained within that gleaming web.
It was one of the main differences between the White Peak and the Dark Peak areas to the north. There was no such form and structure on the vast bogs of Kinder Scout. Like so much of the Dark Peak, it kept its secrets to itself. It sucked them in and refused to let them go.
Cooper knew he was arriving in Foolow when he saw a rusty bowser standing in a field, feeding water into an old bath. One day, he’d come across an offering on a field gate near the village — a ball carefully formed from stalks of straw. In the White Peak, offerings could often be found hanging from trees, placed on stones, hidden in walls. The surviving connections with a pagan past existed more strongly here than in many other parts of the country.