‘My name’s Mead. David Mead.’
‘What can I help you with, Mr Mead?’
‘I thought it was you lot that wanted help from me.’
‘Was it?’ Cooper frowned. A lot of names had accumulated in the enquiry already, but he was sure he hadn’t heard this one before. He wrote it down on his desk pad, but it didn’t look any more familiar. ‘David Mead, did you say?’
‘That’s right. But you might know me better as Dangerous Dave.’
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‘Petrus Two isn’t actually my cache, you understand,’ said David Mead. ‘But I know it well. And I’ve got a few of my own in this area. Some of the best, if I say so myself.’
Dangerous Dave wasn’t quite what Cooper would have expected. He was a tall, athletic man in his thirties, with his hair cropped very short. He could have been a police officer, but he explained that he was a fireman based in a station on the outskirts of Sheffield. He liked to spend his off-duty time walking in the Peak District, and had been fascinated to hear from a friend that there was a sport where he could use his GPS unit as well.
‘But you do know the person who left this particular cache, Mr Mead?’ asked Fry.
‘Oh, yes. He’s OK. He’s been a geocacher for years. I’ve met him a few times, but I think he’s on holiday at the moment.’
‘All right. And what about these other people?’
She passed Mead a list of names transcribed from the log book left in the cache. He looked through it, nodding occasionally. ‘They’re all familiar names. Some of them I’ve met. The rest I’ve seen posting their reports on the website, or signing in other log books.’
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‘You’d say they were all genuine, er… geocachers, then?’
‘Yes, I would. It’s quite a small community in the sport. We tend to know each other.’
‘What about the items that people put into a cache? What’s the protocol?’
‘We do have some rules. Common sense, really. No explosives, ammunition, knives, drugs or alcohol. Nothing illegal. Oh, and food items are always a bad idea - animals will chew through the box and destroy the cache. So most people leave small toys, novelty items, perhaps a CD or a book, stuff like that.’
‘And what is this exactly?’ asked Fry, holding up the bag containing the purple grasshopper with its metal tag.
‘A hitchhiker.’
‘A what?’
‘Or, if it has a Groundspeak tag, a Travel Bug.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Well, a hitchhiker is an item that you can move from cache to cache,’ said Mead. ‘There’s a candle that has travelled from Australia to Arizona, and a Mr Potato Head that hops from cache to cache all over the place. With a Travel Bug, you can track your hitchhiker’s travels through the website.’
‘And all this is done with the help of GPS?’
‘A good GPS unit can give you an approximate location within around six to twenty feet, as long as it isn’t located somewhere really inaccessible where you need specialist equipment. But you don’t need to know all the technical jargon. All you need to be able to do is to enter a waypoint.’
‘And when you reach the co-ordinates and locate a cache, you open it up to make an entry in the log book?’
‘Sometimes you have to wait for muggles to get clear of the area,’ said Mead.
‘Muggles?’
‘Members of the public. Non geocachers. Usually hikers or mountain bikers, just passing by on a footpath or trail. But
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now and then they can do something infuriating, like settling down near a cache site to have their lunch. You can’t open a cache while they’re there, because it gives the location away to muggles. You either have to sit it out and wait for them to go, or move on to another site.’
‘Aren’t muggles the non-wizards in the Harry Potter books?’ asked Cooper.
‘It’s the same sort of thing, really.’
‘People who aren’t in the know and have to be kept out of the secret?’
‘Exactly.’
Fry sighed. ‘And in addition to making an entry in the log book, do I understand that the normal practice would be to take an item from the cache?’
‘Only if you put something else in to replace it,’ said Mead. ‘That’s the rule. Otherwise it’s TNLN.’
‘I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to explain that.’
‘TNLN: Take Nothing, Leave Nothing.’
TNLN. Cooper liked that idea. It was a good motto for anyone visiting the national park, where the number of wild flowers picked illegally was exceeded only by the amount of litter left behind. Visitors were constantly urged to take only photos and leave nothing but footprints. If only it were so simple.
‘Would you be able to find out for us who left these items?’ asked Fry.
Mead pulled a face. ‘Some of them. Maybe not all.’
If you could try …?’
