Most of the task force had reached the cavern ahead of them in another boat, and were now spread out on the rocky slopes above the platform, shining their lamps into the nooks and crevices. A diver’s head broke the surface; green water ran from his wetsuit and mud slid across his mask. He raised a gloved hand to wipe away the muck and clear his vision. He gave a thumbs down to a colleague on the shore.
‘How far is it down to the water from here?’ said Fry.
‘Seventy feet.’
‘Does anybody ever decide to take a dive off the platform?’
‘That would be suicide. The water is full of rocks.’
‘Well, yes.’
The guide shrugged. ‘There are some weirdos who say they get an irresistible urge to throw themselves off whenever they’re in a high place with a sudden drop, like this. They say it’s something inside them they can’t help, a bit like vertigo.’
Fry drew her feet back from the edge of the platform. She’d been imagining launching herself into the air and plunging into the green pool, enjoying the feel of the cool air as she
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fell, and savouring the sensation of the water as it burst over her head. The rail was no barrier, if she’d wanted to do it. There was nothing to stop her at all, if the urge grew too strong.
‘Those people are really weird, though,’ said her guide.
When the lead miners had blasted the last few feet of rock and emerged from the wall of the cavern, would they even have been able to see what was down there, seventy feet below? Wouldn’t it just have been a black hole disappearing into the earth? Giant serpents might easily have sprung to mind. Fry looked up. They wouldn’t have been able to see the roof of the cavern, either.
‘What happens when it rains heavily?’ she said. ‘The lake down there floods right up to where we’re standing.’
‘I see.’ She took another step back from the edge.
‘There isn’t enough rain today,’ said the guide. ‘But we get thirty-six inches a year - a million gallons of it on every acre of the hill up there.’
‘What’s further on?’
‘More canal. There used to be the remains of some old boats, though I don’t know if they’re still there. But I told you - there’s no way anyone could get in here, except down the steps.’
Fry watched the task force officers clambering fruitlessly over the rocks and peering down into the green water. She thought of Ben Cooper, who’d gone to talk to Alistair Page and hadn’t reported back. Now Page was here at Speedwell, so where was Cooper?
She remembered Simon Lowe leaving his aunt’s house in Castleton. Where had Simon been going? She should have asked him, but she had no power to make him tell her. Then she thought of Mansell Quinn finding somewhere to lie up like an injured animal. A dangerous animal.
Finally, Fry recalled the moment back in the office earlier
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I
this evening, when she’d discovered that there was no Alistair Page listed among the Quinns’ neighbours back in 1990. The only fifteen-year-old, aside from Simon Quinn, was the Proctor’s son, Alan. Then she remembered Gavin Murfin joking about Cooper being in a cave.
‘Gavin,’ she said, ‘I think we’ve made a big mistake. We’re in the wrong place. We’ve got to get out of here/
Even before half an hour had passed, the glow from the light stick was beginning to fade. The blackness of the cavern was creeping back towards them, inching across the rock floor and running down the walls, like a dark tide filling the chamber.
Soon, the roof had disappeared and the walls had receded beyond Ben Cooper’s vision. For a while, he could see only Mansell Quinn and a few feet of floor between their feet. Quinn’s face had seemed to sag, the skin slipping away from the bones as the shadows thickened and lengthened. His eyes sank into his skull, the whites turned yellow and dull. There was almost too little light to show whether he was still alive.
Cooper was sure he must look that way to Quinn, too like a man sitting upright, but dying slowly. And that was the way he felt. He knew that Quinn couldn’t let him live beyond the last glimmer of yellow light.
Although he was still watching from across the chamber, Quinn had been quiet for a long time. He seemed to be chewing something that he’d taken from his pocket. Cooper could hear the occasional crack of his teeth.
‘Did you say your name was Cooper?’ said Quinn at last.
‘Yes. I’m Detective Constable Cooper.’
Cooper felt he was being assessed, analysed down to the soles of his boots. If this was some sort of test, he didn’t know what the right answers were, or what he should do to appease Quinn.
But eventually Quinn simply nodded. ‘You look a lot like him.’
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‘Who?’ said Cooper automatically. But he’d heard things like that said to him so often that he really didn’t need to ask.
‘Sergeant Joe Cooper. I suppose he was your dad?’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘Like father, like son. Isn’t that what they say?’
Quinn shifted the butt of the crossbow, leaving a red imprint in the damp skin over his collar bone. Cooper couldn’t help dropping his gaze to Quinn’s right index finger, where it lay against the trigger guard. The end joint of his finger flexed a little. Had it moved a fraction closer to the trigger on the mention of Joe Cooper’s name?
‘I know about what happened to him,’ said Quinn. ‘He died.’
