Part 21 (2/2)

During their training, student crime-scene examiners never knew quite what to expect at the end of an a.s.signment. It could be a person hanging from a tree or slumped in a car dead from exhaust fumes. They had to feel that shock factor a they couldn't be sent off to their forces after training only to freeze when they saw a dead body. Part of the job was detaching yourself from emotion.

Cooper looked around for the presence of police vehicles. A liveried Honda CR-V four-wheel drive had left the pub car park and ventured out on to the edge of the moor. It was now sitting like a UFO on the black expanse of charred heather. He could see it a hundred yards away, with its red stripe and its light bar still flas.h.i.+ng blue against a backdrop of smoke.

'It reminds me of a fire I attended once,' said Villiers. 'That was a gra.s.s fire, along about a mile of railway embankment.'

'You don't have experience of firefighting, surely?' said Cooper.

'Not really. But back in 2002 and 2003, our guys took part in Operation Fresco. If you remember, that was the operation to provide fire service cover during the strike by civilian firefighters. It went on for six or seven months.'

'The old Green G.o.ddesses. Of course.'

Villiers laughed. 'They were what all the press wanted to take pictures of. But the armed forces have some modern equipment too, you know. In fact, there are professional firefighters in the RAF. They're needed at airfields. During the strike, they headed up specialist units, like breathing apparatus and rescue equipment support teams. Firefighting isn't such a mystery.'

Cooper shook his head. He found himself constantly amazed at the breadth of experience Carol Villiers had gathered during her career in the RAF Police. Just the number of countries she'd served in made his time with Derbys.h.i.+re Constabulary seem incredibly parochial. He wasn't sure whether he envied her or not.

'Wayne, have they decided what sort of buildings have been uncovered?' asked Cooper.

'Just mine buildings,' said Abbott.

'Someone will be interested.'

At High Rake nearby, the Peak District Mines Historical Society had undertaken an eight-year excavation project, which had uncovered two steam-engine houses, a platform for a capstan and wooden gin engine, an ore crusher and an ore-dressing floor. The remains had mostly dated to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the mine was state-of-the-art. The highlight of the excavation was the discovery of the bottom third of a Cornish pumping-engine house, which had been set underground, a relatively rare and complex type of engine and thought to be the best surviving example in the world. Yes, there would be people interested.

'A lead miners' building?' said Villiers. 'They didn't have many structures on the surface.'

'Not so old as we first thought, then.'

'No. But see ...'

Abbott directed Cooper a few feet away from the line of stones. He noticed a corroded iron plate lying in the burnt gra.s.s. He'd seen one of these before, only recently.

'A capped mine shaft?'

'Yes. I don't think this one was generally known about. It's not on any maps. We're checking with the Mines Historical Society to see if they have any information on, it, but I suspect it's one that got lost and forgotten.'

The plate was around three foot square and made of rusted iron on crude hinges. There was no lock or bolt on it of any kind, and it would be easy to raise, even using one hand. Another hole was covered by a larger buckled iron sheet, which hadn't been fixed down at all but simply rested on stone edgings. Cooper examined the hinges of the plate. They were caked in rust and covered in a layer of peat, with fragments of burnt vegetation fused to them as if stuck with glue.

Unlike the open-cast workings of Moss Rake and Shuttle Rake, these were vertical shafts dug deep into the ground by lead miners. Some of the local rakes were still in use for the quarrying of minerals like fluorspar and calcite. But the lead mines had fallen into disuse decades ago.

The two shafts had been fenced off at some time with a few posts and a bit of barbed wire. But the posts were gone, and the wire that had hung between them lay on the ground.

'Haven't you looked inside?' asked Cooper.

'No,' said Abbott.

'But there might be traces of the Pearsons down there.'

'No, no. That's not possible. These shafts haven't been opened for decades. Possibly for a hundred years or more.'

'I see.'

Abbott looked at him, as if sensing that he was disappointed.

'However,' he said, 'these old lead mines rarely had just one shaft. If there was a vein of ore running across this area, they would have dug several shafts to get access to it.'

'We'll find some more, then?' asked Cooper.

'If we look. Yes, I'm sure we will.'

When he lifted the plate, Cooper found he could look straight down into the hole, though without a torch he could see only a few feet into its depths. The shaft was simply hacked out of the rock and was barely wide enough to accommodate a fully grown man. The sides had been worn smooth in places by the shoulders of miners pa.s.sing up and down. A single iron bolt had been hammered in as a makes.h.i.+ft foothold, but otherwise there seemed to be nothing to prevent a direct plunge into darkness.

Those old lead miners must have been small men. Poor people had been small anyway in those days, thanks to the general lack of nutrition. But perhaps miners had been chosen for their size, like jockeys. It would certainly be much easier to get access through the shafts if you were no more than five foot six and built on the skinny side.

There had been incidents recorded in the past of small children falling into mine shafts and being killed. But as Cooper looked at the width of the shaft in front of him, he found it difficult to imagine any adult being unable to prevent themselves from falling all the way in.

At least, he corrected himself, any conscious, living adult.

During their years at the Light House, the Whartons had tried to fight off the inevitable. Long ago, they'd moved away from the traditional hunting prints and picturesque Peak District scenes. The horse bra.s.ses and decorative plates had gone.

For a while, Cooper recalled, they'd opted for a cultural look a shelves of ancient hardback books bought in a job lot, modern abstract artworks, an occasional musical instrument hung near the ceiling. Then one day it had all vanished again, the pub closed for refurbishment, consultants swarming through the rooms, distressing the decor, jamming decrepit furniture into every corner a wooden benches and oak dressers, a reproduction writing desk. An antique look, he supposed. Nostalgic chic. It was an attempt to recapture some past that had never existed. Because the Light House as it appeared now had been a Victorian re-creation. Still a stop-off for travellers, yes. But it had been the height of modernity in its day. The facade hinted of aspirations to grandeur.

Well, the antiques were gone again, sold off to raise a bit of cash against the Whartons' debts perhaps. The main bar was left with a range of standard pub furniture, gla.s.s-topped tables and wooden chairs, scattered haphazardly, as if the clientele had abandoned the pub in a hurry.

'I want to take a look at the function room upstairs,' he said.

'Oh, the party?' said Villiers. 'Right, I see. Reliving the memories.'

They climbed the stairs to the first floor, where Cooper opened the door and examined the dusty floor and the little bar in the corner. The YFC party had taken place in this room, he was fairly sure. Even in his inebriated state, he remembered coming up and down those stairs. There seemed to have been a lot of people in the pub that night, though. Had someone else been holding a party here? Or was the function room spilling out revellers into the public bar from time to time?

Given the lack of records, it would require someone with a better memory than his to recall the facts. He could get Hurst or Irvine to trawl through the witness statements again, looking for someone who'd been attending a different party. Two days before Christmas, though? Whose memory wasn't hazy, especially if you were the kind to get caught up in the social whirl?

'Why not ask your brother?' suggested Villiers, as he was about to close the door again.

'Matt?'

'That's the only brother you've got, as far as I recall.'

'Yes, but ...'

'He was there too, wasn't he? I mean, he was in the Light House that night. You came here with him. That's what you told us, Ben.'

Cooper said nothing, and found he was gripping the door handle a little too tightly. Villiers nodded, reading his silence as clearly as if he'd spoken everything that was in his mind.

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