all those crawls and ducks.’
‘Experienced cavers do it regularly. And there’s another ten miles or so of the system beyond that.’
‘What happens if there’s an emergency down there - if somebody is trapped or injured?’
‘At least one member of the party comes out and phones 999. Then the operations room at Ripley and Cave Rescue send a team out. Of course, you’re supposed to let someone know where you’re going and what time you expect to be
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back, so the alarm can be raised if you’re overdue. Some people don’t bother doing that. A lot of our callouts are false alarms - cavers who get lost or stop to rest, so they take longer than they expected.’
‘Is radon a problem down there?’
‘Not in the show caves,’ said Page. ‘There are fans to clear the air, so the radon doesn’t settle. Beyond the Devil’s Staircase, it’s a bit different.’
Cooper got up to stretch his legs, ready to leave. It was dark outside now, and when he looked out of the front window the mouth of Peak Cavern had disappeared completely in the blackness beyond the last few cottages.
‘Alistair, what do you remember about Mansell Quinn?’ he said.
‘Quinn? Well, I wasn’t very old at the time of the murder.’
‘You must have had a reaction to it, though. Being so close to home and all.’
Page shrugged. ‘I was a teenage boy, so I suppose I thought it was kind of exciting. A bit like having a TV programme come to life in your own street. We went out to look at the police cars like they were part of a film set. Murder isn’t so exciting really, though, is it? It’s very unpleasant and regrettable.’
‘Regrettable? Yes, I suppose it is.’
It was an odd word to use, the sort of expression senior police officers used when they were addressing a press conference, choosing their words carefully to avoid sounding too much like a real person with emotions.
‘You must have been about the same age as the Quinns’ son, Simon,’ said Cooper.
The still am, I suppose.’
Page was folding up the map of the Peak-Speedwell system. He put it away in his bookshelf, sliding it in so that it disappeared completely between the spines of two books. He said nothing more. On Tuesday, Page had been keen to hear
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about Mansell Quinn, but Cooper seemed to have touched too close to something sensitive.
‘A difficult time, was it, Alistair?’ he said.
‘I knew Simon Quinn very well. That’s all I can say, really. You can imagine …’
‘Simon is still in the area. So is his sister Andrea at the moment. After what happened to their mother, you know. I can pass your phone number on to him, if you’d like me to.’
Page looked startled. ‘No, no, that’s all right. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to come to see me.’
‘OK,’ said Cooper. ‘Well, thanks for the book anyway.’
‘You’re welcome.’
But in that moment, Alistair Page had given more away about himself than in all the time Cooper had spent talking to him. He had seemed not just startled at the idea of Simon Quinn visiting him but frightened.
On his way back along the waterside walk, Cooper found a jackdaw going ahead of him. It fluttered along for a few yards, landed on the wall and looked back at him with a tilt of its head before moving on again. But then he got too close, and it launched itself into the air and disappeared into the shadows around the bend.
Cooper could feel that the atmosphere had changed. A cloying dampness in the air made him feel more uncomfortable than the heat, and when he looked up he realized the sky had already darkened. He was in danger of getting very wet before he made it to his car.
He had almost reached the bridge when the first drops fell from the sky. They began to hit the ground and splash on the roofs of the houses in a regular pattern, echoing his own footsteps, growing louder and faster, louder and faster, as the storm closed over him.
But there was more than noise in his head. There was the memory of Alistair Page’s last words about the trapped
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caver, Neil Moss. As Cooper had been about to leave the house, his thoughts had come back to it, strengthened by the recollection of is own experience of feeling helpless in the darkness.
‘So Neil Moss was dead by the time they got him out,’ he said. ‘That’s terrible.’
Page had paused then, as if deciding whether to tell him the next thing.
‘They never got Neil Moss out,’ he said. ‘In the end, they left him there and sealed up the shaft with stones.’
‘What? You mean … ?’
‘Neil Moss is still in Peak Cavern. He’s been there forty five years.’
There had been an awkward silence between them for a few moments. Cooper hadn’t known what to say. The thought of Neil Moss’s awful death made his chest tighten. He could almost feel the weight of the rock, the air getting thinner and filling with poison.
But finally Page spoke again.
