seemed to be amplified.
‘Are you sure we should be doing this, Diane?’ he said.
‘Ben, for the past week people have been trying to push me to the sidelines of this enquiry. I’m not going to prove anyone right in their opinion of me by giving up now. I’m not going to give them the chance of saying that DS Fry packed up and went home because the weather was bad.’
Cooper couldn’t see her face properly, but he could hear the tension in her voice and he knew she was serious. This was important to her.
‘I understand,’ he said.
‘Good.’ Fry’s breath puffed out in clouds, mingling with the fog. ‘Now — are you with me, Ben? Or not?’
‘Of course I’m with you.’
As they picked their way carefully on to the site, the banging of corrugated-iron sheets met them again.
‘God, I wish someone would fix those loose sheets,’ whispered Fry, disturbed by the noise.
‘I think Elder’s car will be this way,’ said Cooper as they passed the front of the agent’s house. ‘Watch your step. There’s an underground flue that runs between the old winding engine and the chimney, and its roof has collapsed in places. Don’t fall into it.’
‘Thanks. I’ll try not to.’
They turned their torches off when they felt they were getting near where Elder had parked. Cooper tried to picture how the site had looked during daylight, orientating himself by the position of the main engine house, looming above him on its high mound. The top of the building, where the roof should have been, was high enough to be clear of the densest layer of fog. He could just make out the upper stonework, jagged and grey. The wheel of the winding gear appeared briefly in front of it, a steel cable glinting and dripping with moisture.
Just ahead were some abandoned pieces of machinery slowly rusting in the damp air. He remembered a small winching truck, its sides eaten away by corrosion, its tyres flat and sinking into the ground. There were iron hoppers and a huge cylindrical boiler, gradually being reduced to such a fragile state of ruin that they would crumble in the fingers.
‘Go carefully,’ said Cooper.
‘I already am.’
The far west of the site had contained the crushing circle and the washing floor. Here, heaps of crushed stone had been dumped, creating mountains of spoil that sheltered the mine from the adjoining fields and woods. One false step could be lethal, let alone the risk of creating a noisy cascade of stone.
‘It’s getting too dangerous,’ said Cooper. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘I don’t know.’
Fry had begun to shiver. The damp and cold were insidious — they crept into your bones and clung to your clothes. No one in their right minds would be out here on a night like this, unless they had serious business.
‘What do you want to do, Diane?’
‘How far is it to the edge of the car park?’
‘Not more than a few yards now. It’s just past the slime ponds, where the route of the sough heads off towards the north.’
‘Oh, great.’
They moved on again, with Cooper paying as much attention to what might be going on around him as to where he was putting his feet. It was because of his lack of concentration that he was the one to stumble over a mine shaft and kick a scatter of small stones that rattled on the steel grille.
He looked up guiltily, expecting figures to appear from the fog. But the only shape he could see ahead was that of a lone, stunted tree, somehow struggling to survive between the spoil heaps. Its bare branches marked the outer perimeter of the mine.
Fry stood on a heap of stones and looked down at him.
‘Hurry up, Ben.’
They slid down the last few yards to the picnic area. But they were just in time to see tail lights disappearing back towards the road.
‘Damnation,’ said Fry.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cooper. ‘That was my fault.’
‘No, we couldn’t have got here any quicker. It was a washout, after all. We should have called it off when you said, Ben.’
Cooper could hear the disappointment in her tone. Fry had been so sure that Elder was going to provide an important link that would hand her a breakthrough in this enquiry. He struggled to find something to say that would be supportive without provoking her to bite his head off. But he failed.
‘Oh, well. Back the way we came then, Diane?’
‘I suppose so. But we can use the torches now.’
As they walked back towards the invisible machinery and winding house, Fry began to curse. Maybe she found the fog liberating, felt freed by the fact that she couldn’t hear or see anyone. Cooper was trailing behind her, watching his step.
‘What a disaster,’ she said. ‘It’s one bloody disaster after another. Why am I wasting my life here?’
‘It isn’t that bad, Diane. Life can be fun, too.’
‘Fun? I’m nearly thirty years old, and I haven’t had sex for months.’
Cooper didn’t know what to say. He was gob-smacked — and not just in a surprised way, but in the way that felt as though his brain had shut down completely and he had no control over his vocal cords. His mouth fell open, and his eyes flickered nervously until they settled on a suggestion of movement behind the winding gear. But it was only a corner of the engine house, momentarily revealed through a gap in the fog.
‘Mmm, tumbleweed,’ said Fry.
Cooper cleared his throat. ‘Nearly thirty. Does that mean it’s your birthday soon?’
‘Next week.’ Fry sighed. ‘Yes, Christmas. I must have been some kind of miracle baby.’
Cooper became aware that the banging of corrugated-iron sheets had stopped. That could only mean the wind had dropped. He stopped and looked across the mine to the east. He couldn’t see the agent’s house now, or the base of the chimney, and certainly not the scaffold-like horse gin marking the site of the Red Soil shaft. The bank of fog was too dense.
‘Diane, have you noticed the banging has stopped?’ he said.
‘Yes, thank God.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that there shouldn’t have been any banging in the first place?’ said Cooper. ‘There’s no wind.’
Fry looked at the thick blanket of fog enveloping the mine. ‘No, it didn’t occur to me. But you’re right.’
‘Damn it, I should have noticed before. Damn it.’
Cooper stood quite still and listened, straining his ears for the slightest noise. After a few moments, he became convinced that he was only imagining things, creating voices where there weren’t any. It was another effect of the fog, producing sounds which weren’t really sounds at all but the components of silence. It seemed to him that he was hearing an echo, but without the noise that should have preceded it.
‘Do you think Jack Elder is still here in the mine somewhere?’ said Fry.
‘If not him, then someone else that he came to meet,’ said Cooper. ‘That banging sounded like a signal to me.’
At that moment, a figure appeared ahead of them, catching the light from their torches and throwing a vast, distorted shadow on the wall of the engine house.
‘Can you see who it is?’ whispered Cooper.
‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘It’s PC Bloody Palfreyman. And he’s carrying a shotgun.’
From his position on the mound, David Palfreyman heard the voices, but couldn’t locate them in the fog. He stepped quickly behind the winding gear, bringing the shotgun up ready.
Two of them, at least. That was pretty much as he’d expected. He could take two out easily, one with each barrel. And he’d be sure of killing them, if he got close enough. Or make a nice mess of them, anyway, if he couldn’t.
The fog should help him. And this maze of ruined buildings and the mountains of spoil made it easy to slip out of sight at any moment.
