He picked up a large print of a photo taken from the fence at the edge of the lay-by, looking down into the quarry. The sides were almost smooth, except for patches where the stone was crumbling away. There was snow at the bottom, but it looked a long way otf. It covered large, uneven shapes, like a white dust sheet thrown over a room lull of modern furniture. They all knew there were rocks littering the floor of the quarry under that snow, guaranteed to break a few ankles.
‘No one?’ said Hitchens. ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to nominate a volunteer.’
Peter Lukas/ had reacted so angrily to the presence of the two people on his doorstep that Ben Cooper had begun to think he
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would have to intervene to prevent a breach of the peace, or an outright assault. Until that moment, Lukasz had seemed an ordinary, reasonable man — but he had changed into a snarling guard dog. He had pursued Alison Morrisscy and Frank Baine from his propertv, seen them right down the driveway, then had come back in and slammed the door after them.
Breathing hard, Lukasz had answered Cooper’s questions with a distracted air, and terse replies. He knew nothing, and he hadn’t seen the man that his wife was talking about, he said.
Cooper got ready to move on. He would have to call on the neighbours, to sec if they, too, had been visited by the Snowman but had not noticed a resemblance to the description given out on the local news. Maybe one of the neighbours had bought some double glazing from him, which would be a stroke of luck indeed. There was also the third witness, who hadn’t been home when he called. And no doubt there would be other jobs waiting for him back at West Street.
But Cooper was reluctant to leave too quickly. He tried to stretch out the process of changing back into his shoes, while squinting through the glass door to sec if anyone was hanging around outside.
Then he noticed that Lukasz hadn’t disappeared back into the conservatory but had turned towards another room next to it. As he opened the door, Cooper caught sight of a third person, seated at a table. It was an old man, with thin, white hair receding from his forehead and brushed back over his ears.
o
He had vire-rimmed glasses worn on the bridge of a Roman
o o
nose, and he was wearing a heavy brown sweater that made his shoulders look out of proportion to his body. The old man looked up as Peter entered, and Cooper saw his eyes. They were pale blue and distant, like glimpses of the sky through broken cloud.
It was only a second or two before the door closed again. But Ben Cooper had been given his first glimpse of Zygmunt I.ukasz.
DI Hitchens folded his arms and looked around the room, which had gone horribly quiet. No volunteers came forward for the
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privilege of being lowered into the quarry. There were officers here who were likely to have a panic attack if they thought the stairs were too steep. There were others whose technical capabilities fell short of inadequate. There was Gavin Murtin, for a start. Give him a rope, and he would try to eat it.
DI Hitchens ga/cd at Murfin briefly, and passed on. Then he stopped, and looked round the room again with a frown.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody missing.’
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11
Den Cooper had never quite got used to the sensation of stepping backwards into space. That second before his boot connected with the rock face was like no other experience. It went through his mind every time that he might never touch around again or rather, that he would hit it only once more, down at the bottom.
But the soles of his boots landed gentlv on the gritstone surface. The rope in his hands vibrated, and the harness tightened round his body. He let out more rope until he was leaning well back, gaining stability by pressing his weight into the rock. Then he adjusted his grip and bent his torso forward. The angle had to be just right. Too narrow an angle and his feet would slide off the
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smooth surface and he would smack into the wall face-first.
Cooper looked up at the edge of the quarry, and saw two members of the Buxton Mountain Rescue Team peering down at him, their faces already too small and out of proportion against the sky. ” ‘OK, Ben?”
‘Fine.’
To his right, one of the scenes of crime officers, Li/, Petty, back-pedalled to the edge and took her first step backwards. She was bundled up in her blue overalls and a yellow waterproof jacket, with a red helmet pulled low over her eyes.
Cooper had been initiated in the pleasures of abseiling by his Iriends in the MRT, and he knew it was a lot easier than it seemed to a spectator up top. For one thing^ you didn’t have to look all the way down as they did. Your eyes were on your rope, on where your feet were going, and on the rock face in front of you. Once you had turned your back on that di/’
, I O’ J
He paused to manoeuvre around a gritstone outcrop. Li/, came alongside him, and she turned to smile. It was the conspiratorial smile shared by rock climbers. Li/’s face was flushed with cold
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and excitement, and her eyes shone with pleasure from under her helmet.
‘Going clown?’ she said.
Cooper felt his foot slip off the rock. He put out his lelt hand to steady himself and stop his weight making the rope swing. He twisted his torso slightly to look down at his brake hand as he fed the rope through the figure eight of the descender. The gristone was hard and bruising to the fingers; yet in some places it was crumblv and unsafe, its stability undermined by decades of quarrying.
They moved on a bit further. The officers at the top kept calling down to ask if they were OK, as if somehow they might get lost on the way down. Cooper promised he would be sure to let them know if the rope broke. They laughed, but not much.
A few yards from the bottom, Li/ paused. Cooper watched her wrap the rope round her thigh with three loops. This freed her brake hand, and she reached into the pocket of her jacket for her digital camera to take an establishing shot of the quarry floor. They didn’t know what to expect down there. Probably it was a futile effort.
