‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘No, there might not be people living here any more. But the whole world comes by to feed the rats in Longdendale.’
‘It’s a good job they can’t get to the cables in the other tunnel. They can gnaw their way through anything, given time, can rats.’
‘We need some more poison, anyway,’ said Norton.
A few yards away, in the old eastbound tunnel, a pair of four hundred thousand volt cables ran through a concrete trough. The cables entered the tunnel three miles away at Dunford Bridge, carrying a section of the National Grid between Yorkshire and Manchester. As they emerged again at Woodhead, they ran past a relay room, then up into a series of giant pylons that marched down the valley towards Manchester. The abandoned Woodhead
tunnels had saved the moors from being covered in pylons lor those three miles.
Sandy Norton had often admired the quality of the stonework in the tunnel arches, which had survived in good condition for more than a hundred and fifty years. But their present use was one the navvies who built the tunnels couldn’t have imagined as they hacked their way through the hill with their pickaxes and gunpowder.
In fact, those navvies wouldn’t even have been able to imagine the newer two-track tunnel to the south, which had been cut in the 1950s and accommodated the country’s first electrified rail line. That tunnel was empty, too, now. Apart from the little battery powered locomotive that ran on the maintenance track in the National Grid cableway, the last trains had run through the Woodhead tunnels over twenty years ago.
Norton and Cade were packing up to leave the site when a car slowed and stopped on the road overhead. They heard it pull on to the bare concrete pad where a house had once stood above the tunnel entrances, but which was now no more than a pull-in for a good view down the valley. After a few moments, the car started up again and drove off.
‘That was an old Volkswagen Beetle,’ said Norton.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I recognize the sound of the engine. It’s distinctive - air-cooled, you know. I used to have a Beetle myself years ago, when I was a lad.’
‘Have we finished with these rats, then?’
‘For now,’ said Norton. He turned off his torch. ‘You know, I wouldn’t like to walk through this tunnel in the dark.’
Cade shuddered. The neither. Three miles in the dark? No thanks. It’d be bad enough, even without the rats/
He turned back towards their van. But Norton didn’t follow him immediately. He was looking up at the stones over the arch of the tunnel mouth. He’d once been told that the navvies who built the old tunnels had been very superstitious men. They were convinced that their tunnelling had disturbed something deep in the hill, which had been the cause of all the disasters that happened to them - the tragedies that had earned Woodhead the nickname ‘Railwaymen’s Graveyard’. Norton had heard that when the navvies had finished tunnelling, their final act had been to carve faces at each of the tunnel entrances to control the evil spirits.
But if the carvings were still there, they were so worn now that he couldn’t make them out.
Sandy Norton shrugged. He didn’t know about evil spirits. But the faces hadn’t done much to control the rats.
Finally, he locked the steel gate that prevented unauthorized access to the middle tunnel. All three tunnels had their own gates. Without them, rail enthusiasts and others who were even less welcome would always be trying to get into the tunnels. Some of those folk would want to walk all three miles to the other end, just to prove they could do it. They wouldn’t be bothered by the rats. They wouldn’t take any notice of the risk from the high voltage power cables. They wouldn’t even be deterred by the National Grid’s yellow-and-black signs on the gates. The meaning of the signs was clear enough, with their symbol of a black lightning bolt cutting through a body. It was clear even without their message, which read: ‘Danger of Death’.
Whenever the phone rang in the Old Rectory, Sarah Renshaw stopped what she was doing and looked at the nearest clock. It would be important to have the exact time, when the moment came.
She was in the sitting room, where the mahogany wall clock said five minutes past ten. Sarah checked her watch, and adjusted the minute hand slightly so that it read the same. She didn’t want there to be any confusion. All the times were important - the time Emma had last been seen, the time her train had left Wolverhampton, the time she should have arrived home. And the exact minute they got news that she had been found would be vital. Sarah felt comforted by the recording of the minutes. It was more than a ritual. Time was important.
Howard had gone to answer the phone, so Sarah waited. In the middle of their big oak Jacobean sideboard, a candle was burning. The wick was already halfway down, and the melted wax was pooling in the brass holder. There were plenty more candles in one of the drawers, and Sarah wanted to light a new one right away to mark the moment, as if the act itself would make a difference. But she hugged her hands under her armpits and restrained herself as she listened to Howard speaking in the next room. She would be able to tell by the tone of his voice.
Sarah looked at the clock again. Six minutes past ten. For a moment, she panicked. Which would be most important - the
8
exact time the phone had rung, or the moment she had got the news? Which would she celebrate, in the years to come?
‘Howard?’ she called. ‘Howard?’
But he didn’t respond, and Sarah quickly calmed again. Howard’s voice was subdued. If the call had been about Emma, she would have known it by now. The news would have communicated itself to her through the wall. Sarah had often thought that the call, when it came, wouldn’t produce any normalsounding ring on their phone, but would announce itself like a fanfare. She vaguely imagined a line of liveried trumpeters like those who appeared with the Queen at state occasions. Her ears already rang to the sound they made.
And certainly there would be the sensations - the tingling and the little quivers of pleasure that she experienced whenever she felt that Emma was close by. When the call came, she expected a jolt like a great charge of electricity, like the entire four hundred thousand volts from the cables that ran through the hillside two hundred feet below their house.
Yes, when the phone call came, she would know. Sarah would have no need to listen to the sound of Howard’s
