but stayed on the path. When they arrived, he’d been unloading some propane gas canisters from the red Renault van, which had a rustic log cabin logo on its side and wing ate lees
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caravan PARK in large letters, with the address and phone number.
When he looked at his own car, parked inside the entrance to the site, Cooper found he could almost picture Mansell Quinn coming through the gate and moving up the roadway towards him. He saw a Quinn dressed in black and indistinct in outline, his face not quite clear because Cooper had never seen him in the flesh.
As he reached the car, Cooper shuddered. He’d never met Quinn, yet the thought of the man made him apprehensive. Surely he couldn’t be the only one who recognized the need to be afraid?
But of course he wasn’t. William Thorpe was afraid, too.
Cooper started up the car and let it drift slowly forward, past the end of the nearest caravan, so that they could see the house a hundred yards up the hill. Raymond Proctor was striding towards the back door, moving quickly in spite of his slight limp.
‘He couldn’t wait for us to leave, in the end,’ said Fry.
‘I’m certain something occurred to him that he decided not to tell us about.’
‘Something that he thought might be missing?’
‘Yes. And now it looks as though he’s going to check whether that something is still there.’
They watched Proctor enter the house via the back door, where his office was. He didn’t bother to shut the door behind him.
‘Wasn’t there something else you wanted to ask Mr Proctor, Ben?’ said Fry.
‘Was there?’
‘Something you forgot, but you’ve just remembered. Maybe you wanted to ask him for directions back to Edendale?’
‘You’re right. I’d better go up to the house and speak to him.’
A moment later, Cooper found Raymond Proctor in the
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untidy office, leaning into one of the heavy oak cupboards on the far wall. Cooper couldn’t quite see what was in the cupboard because the man’s body was in the way.
‘Mr Proctor?’ he called, knocking hard on the open door.
Proctor dropped the bunch of keys he’d been clutching and jumped back from the cupboard, wincing as he twisted his bad leg.
‘What the hell - I thought you’d gone!’
‘I just came back to ask -‘ Cooper began.
And then he noticed Proctor’s frightened expression, and a couple of empty wooden shelves behind him.
‘What should be in the cupboard?’ he said.
Proctor looked at him, dumbfounded. ‘I can’t believe it. I always have it locked, but the keys were on a hook with the others. I never thought anybody would bother to look in the cupboards.’
‘What’s missing?’
‘But it’s gone. He’s taken it. Some bolts, too.’
”What’s gone, Mr Proctor?’
‘My crossbow.’
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28
And finally, the moment came when they could no longer hear his breathing. It was just one sound missing from the clatter of boots and the murmur of anxious voices, the trickle of water and the clang of oxygen cylinders.
No one pointed out that the breathing had stopped. There was no need. For nearly three days it had been filling the confined space, seeping through the main chamber until it was inseparable from the clinging mud and the scent of fear. The narrow opening of the limestone shaft had been acting as an amplifier, so that no one could escape the sound or fail to recognize the battle for life in every breath.
For most of the rescue party, that sound was all they knew of the trapped caver, and all they would ever know. They had heard his breathing, but they never saw the man. A few feet away, he was pinned upright and dying, slowly being poisoned by the carbon dioxide that oozed into the crevices of the rock and settled around him, fouling his air.
Men cried with frustration as they worked in the chamber. No matter how many lights were brought in from outside, they did little more than cast additional shadows on to the rock walls in every direction, trapping the rescuers in a crushing mesh of light and noise, and dead air.
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One rescuer stripped off his survival suit, his sweater and overalls to squeeze into the shaft, and for a few moments he stood with his boots touching the dying man’s helmet. It was the last living contact Neil Moss would ever have, though it’s doubtful he would have been aware of it. By that time the lack of oxygen had probably caused irreversible brain damage.
When the sound of the breathing stopped, everyone knew that the carbon dioxide had won the battle. As the church clock in Castleton struck eleven, the news was passed back to a hotel in the village. Neil Moss was dead.
It would be another four days before a party began to fill in the shaft with stones from a scree slope, permanently sealing the young caver into his limestone coffin. But it would be much longer before they could forget the sound of his breathing. As they worked for days in the mud at the top of the shaft, they had known what no one dared to say. It had been the sound of a dead man’s breath.
Ben Cooper put down the copy of Death Underground he’d borrowed from Alistair Page and shuddered. Forty-five years had passed since Neil Moss had died in the cave system beyond Peak Cavern. And he was still there.
In the months leading up to his release, Mansell Quinn had taken this book out of the prison library three times.
