He sent them to the ‘works’ in the middle of Firs Field — a well-secured site surrounded by ten-foot-high metal fencing where nobody was working today. A notice warned of the dangers. Diamond walked round the perimeter.
‘Unless he’s a bloody pole vaulter he didn’t get in this way.’
The man they’d first questioned had followed them. ‘He wouldn’t need to. There are shafts I could show you that even the council don’t know about. The place is riddled with them. Some have been filled in, but plenty aren’t.’
‘Where?’
‘I know of two in people’s gardens. They were for air, or light.
There’s just a grille over them.’
‘Show me.’
Diamond sounded resolute, but his optimism was being tested. If Lang had gone underground it could take a small army of searchers to ferret him out.
He followed his guide back to the main street. A second police car had arrived and Leaman was updating the newcomers, but they weren’t cavers by the look of them.
The shaft was in the garden of an old lady who sounded as if she didn’t know which century it was. A runaway killer could have walked through the house and wished her the time of day without her noticing. The garden had gone wild.
‘He hasn’t been here,’ Diamond said, seeing the brambles arching over the grille. They hadn’t been disturbed in years.
They moved on to the next, in a better-kept garden. The owners were out. There was a gate at the side you could step over. The people had made quite a feature of their shaft by giving it a stone surround and siting the grille at knee height. Trays of seeds were arranged across the top.
‘I don’t think so. Is that all?’
He was taken to another entrance more like a cave, smaller than the first he’d seen. A sheet of corrugated iron was supposed to keep intruders out, but it was no longer anchored. A slim person could have squeezed past it, and when Diamond tugged at it he made room even for his far-from-slim body. ‘We’ll look in here,’ he said.
Three more vehicles had arrived in the Avenue, one belonging to the Mendip cave-rescue team. They’d brought enough hard hats and overalls for the police as well as themselves. Diamond briefed them on the operation and they briefed him and his officers on safety procedures. Roof collapse was a real possibility. Natural fractures in the limestone meant that the slightest disturbance could cause a rock fall.
He had to give an assurance that none of his men were armed and that he doubted if the suspect had a gun.
They levered back the iron barrier and went in, three cavers and nine policemen.
‘How big is this mine?’ he asked while they were going down some steps.
‘Twenty-five acres or more. Firs is the biggest and it links up with Coxe’s,’ the senior caver said, ‘but it’s not so much the size, it’s the complexity. It’s a warren. They worked any number of faces.’
Flashlights were in use from the start, picking out the way ahead. The roof at the bottom of the steps was some ten feet high and supported by massive pillars left by the miners as they cut their way deep into the bedrock. To left and right the lights exposed tunnels of variable depth.
‘Shouldn’t we send someone into these?’ Diamond said.
‘If you do, I won’t answer for their safety.’
He doubted if anyone’s safety was guaranteed, but he didn’t say so. In this situation he had to defer to the experts. The caver who’d just spoken seemed to know what was on Diamond’s mind. He stopped by an odd-shaped pillar much narrower at the base than the top. ‘You find this near the entrances. It’s called pillar robbing. After the mines were abandoned, the locals would come in and hack off slabs of stone for their own use. Some pillars got shaved down to spindles.’
They moved on and crossed an intersection where you could see the tramlines of the old transport system for moving the blocks to the surface.
‘Before we go on,’ Diamond said, ‘I wouldn’t mind looking at what we’re walking over, in case of footprints.’ The floor was thick with dust.
‘Good thinking,’ the caver said. ‘Let’s have some more light here.’
Nothing obvious was revealed. Diamond didn’t admit to his inner misgiving that nobody had been down here in years. ‘Maybe he was ultra careful.’
‘Could be,’ the caver said. ‘Want to go on?’
‘Of course.’
They entered a narrow passage where they were forced to stoop. It soon opened into a bigger area where a rusty hand-cranked crane had been abandoned, still attached to the face with steel cables. Saw lines were visible in a bed of stone that for some reason had not been cut right out. A huge heap of rubble lay to their left, partly blocking their route. They crunched over it.
There was a choice of tunnels ahead. Each decision was like the toss of a coin with the chance of making the wrong call. Diamond flicked his flashlight from one to the next and tried to sound confident.
‘That way.’
The earlier sense of awe at the surroundings was waning and some of the party were starting to talk. He stopped and asked for silence.
What he got was better than silence. Somewhere ahead came the definite sound of a movement that could have been somebody kicking a small piece of stone. They all heard it. The party moved on at a faster rate.
The senior caver said to Diamond, ‘I wouldn’t get too excited. Bits of stone are falling all the time.’
He didn’t answer. He pressed on for another fifty yards or more and then stopped because he’d heard another sound, more drawn out and heavier.
‘T Rex,’ some wag said.
‘Shut up.’
The caver said, ‘It’ll be traffic overhead. The roof is shallow here. We’re right under the Bradford road.’
‘Let’s move on, then.’ But he stopped a moment later, a Robinson Crusoe moment. His light had picked out a set of footprints in the dusty stretch ahead. They were not made by some miner a century ago. They had the zigzag pattern of modern trainers and they led into a side-tunnel.
Another vehicle drumrolled overhead as if dubbed in to emphasise the drama. Nothing needed to be said. Everyone appreciated the significance.
The tunnel looked no different from others the cavers had declared too dangerous to enter. Diamond didn’t give them the chance to object. He dipped his head and went in first, shining the beam as far ahead as possible. His hard hat struck overhanging parts of the roof more than once. The way through had been roughly hewn, suggesting it was a trial cut, or a passage linking with another part of the mine. He could just about walk without going on his knees, but he didn’t fancy stooping like this for long.
Suddenly he heard the scrape of stones only a short way ahead. He raised the torch beam and it caught the gleam of white trainers moving scarcely less than forty yards in front.
He shouted, ‘Police! Stop where you are, face down on the floor.’
If he was heard, he wasn’t heeded. The trainers moved on and disappeared.
He didn’t understand how, unless there was a side-passage. He didn’t think he could be outpaced that rapidly, although Lang was presumably a fit man. All he could do was press on and hope for another sighting. The flashlight showed nothing yet. More tunnel, but nothing else.
He shouted, ‘Harry Lang?’
There was just an echo.
But the tunnel ended not far beyond the point where he’d sighted the man ahead. It opened out into a far larger space where stone had been mined extensively and there were massive pillars supporting the roof. He stepped out and straightened up and the others emerged as well and stood with him, taking in the new situation, a roof ten to fifteen feet high and a choice of directions.
It was a relief to stand upright, but with it came the depressing realisation that Lang could have gone any one of six ways. No footprints here. Any dust was confined to the edges of the working.
‘I spotted him,’ Diamond said. ‘I definitely saw him.’
