by Gwen Moffat
“I wasn’t going to mention napalm and burning babies,” Nell said, turning her cool eyes on Miss Pink, “we were talking about erosion. After defoliation there will be no soil left in Vietnam. It’s a world problem — erosion.”
“It seemed to be becoming rather emotional,” Miss Pink murmured.
“No, I wasn’t emotional.”
That’s true, Miss Pink thought. She doesn’t get red-faced or weepy with frustration at the rate the oil is being used up, or about sewage in estuaries and fluoride . . . Aloud she said wonderingly: “You don’t worry about problems like this, and pollution and over-population?”
Nell smiled. “Do you really believe that man is the only animal that can’t adjust his numbers to the available resources?”
“But,” Miss Pink floundered, “you’re not a conservationist then?”
“You mean: conserving water and minerals and fossil fuels. Yes, I suppose I am. One mustn’t squander resources.”
“But you’re not worried?” Miss Pink pressed, thinking that Nell was not very intelligent after all, remembering Linda’s fierce concern with social justice, “you think everything will come right on its own?”
“Not quite on its own. We’ll have to pull our weight.”
“How?”
“Form pressure groups, lobby our M.P.s.”
Miss Pink knew that she was being made fun of. Not sure of her motives for doing so, she retaliated. “Did you know that climber who did the Eiger in winter — Cary Paterson, was it?”
Nell’s face set.
“Yes,” she said, and waited.
“Why did he kill himself?”
“I don’t know.”
Ted said: “Didn’t he leave a note saying he took his life because he couldn’t bear what people were doing to the world?”
There were voices outside in the hall. Miss Pink ignored them. “Was that it?” she asked Nell.
The girl said gently: “Cary wasn’t a very strong character.”
Someone knocked. Nell went to the door and opened it. A small man in a raincoat stood there. He had a face like a sad ferret and Miss Pink might have thought him a commercial traveller but for the length of his raincoat. He introduced himself as Detective-Superintendent Crichton and they caught the initials “C.I.D.” He sat down and Nell brought him a coffee.
The directors waited politely. Their faces gave nothing away but Miss Pink felt a frisson of trepidation. There was trouble here, but from which direction? An accident to Bett Martin? But they would send a uniformed man for that, or telephone . . .
“Are you from London?” she inquired pleasantly, to break the silence as the little man sipped his coffee. “Have you come all this way to ask us questions?”
“We have regional branches, madam.” He sounded like a shoe salesman. “But in fact they’ve run into a little trouble in the old slate mines. Some of the explosives — Are you always here, madam?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” she said. “I’m visiting.”
Ted took it upon himself to explain the situation and the directors’ relationship with the Centre. The man appeared to lose interest in him and turned to Nell: “How long have you been here, miss?”
“About two years.”
“And you’re around the place all the time?”
“Most of the time I’m out.”
“Where?”
“On the hill, or canoe-ing.”
“On which hill?”
“None in particular.”
Miss Pink interposed: “‘On the hill’ is an expression, Superintendent; it means simply ‘mountaineering’.”
He glanced in her direction, acknowledged the interruption with a nod, and turned back to Nell: “Ever go out at night?”
“Yes.”
“I mean, ‘on the hill’.”
“Occasionally we have night expeditions.”
“In the combe where the mines are?”
“There are mines everywhere.”
“The one where the main entrance is. Cwm Caseg, is it?”
“Not really. We don’t use that one.”
“Where do you go?”
She started to elaborate with a list of Welsh place-names but he stopped her.
“That means nothing to me. D’you go anywhere that you can see into this Cwm Caseg?”
“Yes.”
“Ever see anything curious there, or hear anything?”
“Well, how curious?”
“Lorries, on that road up to the mine?”
“Well, there are Lawsons’ lorries going up with loads . . .”
“By night, I mean. See anything at night?”
“I can’t remember,” Nell said, showing annoyance now, “it’s not always good weather; we’re often in cloud high up.” She glanced at him with faint contempt. “You’ve got enough to do in your own immediate vicinity . . . If you saw lights, headlights, you’d assume that it was a couple who wanted privacy. Country roads are used for that purpose.”
“What are the lorries supposed to be doing?” Ted asked.
“No!” Miss Pink exclaimed unexpectedly, “they couldn’t have got into the mine!”
“They’ve got in all right,” Crichton said.
“Who?” Nell asked.
He didn’t answer her.
“How much?” This from Ted.
“A fair amount, sir.”
“But — lorries in the plural,” Miss Pink exclaimed. “That must have involved tons!”
“Oh yes, indeed, madam. Not just one lorry. A string of ’em. About twenty, I should say.”
*
“If one lorry carries three tons, that’s sixty tons of gelignite, or whatever it is, that’s missing,” Miss Pink said as they drove away from Plas Mawr.
“There are heavier vehicles than three-tonners,” Ted pointed out.
“All those bombs in Ireland. No wonder they’ve got plenty of explosives. But surely Lawsons are badly at fault. There couldn’t have been any security at all.”
“They’re still working on that. But as Crichton says, it could be an inside job. If one of the storemen is missing, it’s pretty conclusive. However, you can’t blame Lawsons for the defection of one of its employees. It happens everywhere.”
“What worries me is the thought of that convoy driving through the night with inadequate safety precautions. Suppose any one of them was involved in an accident as they went through an urban area. They could have blown up a whole town!”
“That’s a point. How did they do it?”
“Do what exactly?”
“What kind of lorries would they use? You don’t have convoys in peace time.”
“The Army still travels in convoys.”
He said nothing. A lay-by appeared. He drove off the road, stopped and turned to her.
“Yes,” she said before he could speak, “it’s the only way, isn’t it? And who’d suspect them — a large number of Army vehicles? Their engines and tyres have a distinctive sound. No one would even trouble to look out of the window.”
“Where would they get the vehicles?”
“Any organisation that’s big enough to steal tons of explosives at a time could command a string of service vehicles, however they obtained them in the first place. The problem in a country of this size is: where would they store them when they weren’t in use?”
“Remote farms? Caverns?”
“It gets bigger,” Miss Pink shivered, “It’s frightening.”
“The only consolation is that they won’t be able to do it again, now that the stuff’s being evacuated. And they’ve got the Army guarding the mine entrance so no one will try any funny business.”
“About the Army,” she began as he reached for the ignition.
“Yes?”
She told him of the man who had blocked her vision when she was watching the soldiers climbing on the crag.
“Did he appear to do it deliberately?”
“Difficult to say. Surely it doesn’t take a moment t
o pass in front of someone but I have the impression that he didn’t start to move aside until I lowered the glasses. I mean, he did appear to pause: to block me deliberately.”
“Did you notice anything interesting about the chaps climbing?”
“Interesting, yes, but not unexpected.”
“We’ll ask the Centre about them. As the rescue co-ordinator Lithgow’s informed when another organisation comes to the area. I wonder. What else is there near the crag? I mean, that you might be taking an interest in?”
“Nothing really. Lithgow’s cottage but that’s at right-angles, away to the left — no, it isn’t, it’s almost in a direct line.” She closed her eyes, visualising the scene. “There are the woods of course, either side of the ramp; scree, the mine —”
She stopped and they stared at each other in excitement. Then she relaxed.
“No good; it’s the wrong side of the mountain —” She tailed off.
“Not that so much; the tunnels run for miles underground but in this particular case that’s the way to the bricked-up level, remember?”
Many years before, a group of potholers had been exploring the old levels and had discovered a passage which connected with the explosives store. When they reported their find they were asked to seal off the passage which they did one weekend under the supervision of a police inspector from South Wales who had done some pot-holing himself.
“That’s the other way in, is it? I never knew.” Miss Pink thought about this new angle. “If it was only bricked up . . .”
“That had occurred to me. A small explosive charge could be child’s play to an expert.”
“But the police know all this. It’s the first place they’d have thought of.”
“Police come and go. Records disappear, particularly after eighteen years.”
He started the engine and drove for some way in silence. Miss Pink stared out of the near window in the direction of the crag and the old mine entrance, neither of which was visible from this point.
“You want to go and see, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes. The more I think about that man, the more convinced I am that he was edging me away from the spot. And they left early, before lunch. Service units usually carry on with their exercise despite bad weather.”
Chapter Six
A track surfaced with chippings led to the camp site and Ted parked the car where the lorries had stood. Across the fields they could see a gable end of the Lithgows’ cottage.
They had stopped at the Goat to pick up a packed lunch and two torches. Now Miss Pink selected a sandwich and said thoughtfully:
“The explosives business drove it out of my mind — but Linda appears convinced that Jim is having an affair, or has just finished one.”
“Does that concern us?”
“She says it’s Nell.”
Ted chuckled. “No!”
“I thought that too. Yesterday, when she told me without actually naming the woman, I thought she was referring to Bett Martin.”
“We-ll . . . Bett’s not discriminating, but I can’t imagine Lithgow . . . He’s a climber.”
“No time for it, d’you mean?”
“Quite. Same as Nell. They’re at the age when, if they’re not working, they live only for climbing. If they’re not actually on rock, they do nothing else but talk about it among themselves: the next climb, the next alpine trip. You know; you’ve done it too.”
“I was never a tiger,” Miss Pink said modestly, “the traverse of the Weisshorn was my limit; but I know what you mean. I thought it didn’t fit. Jim has a strong sense of melodrama, would you say?”
“Ha! Teasing her, d’you think? Not very kind.”
“I don’t think kindness is one of Jim’s strong suits. Yes, it had crossed my mind that what she told me this morning was rehearsed: a rehearsed retraction of what she said yesterday. She couldn’t deny the story but she could change the characters — or rather, one of them. I think Jim might have insisted on that but I don’t understand why he should substitute Nell. It seems a wild choice. Why weren’t you surprised at the possibility of Bett Martin having an affair? Do you accept her husband’s comments without question?”
“She’s a slut,” he said shortly.
“It’s not obvious.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. I would have said she was desperately bored and that she flirted as a diversion.”
“No, she doesn’t flirt.”
She nodded, reflecting that he would know more of the local gossip than herself. She said wryly: “Is it a coincidence that John managed to delegate power to use and escape to the States just as we have our first scandal?”
“— And the explosives blow up — in a manner of speaking? It must be a coincidence. John isn’t that wily.”
She looked absently at the grassy ramp leading to the mine entrance: a blank black hole in the mountain-side.
“I don’t like it,” she said.
“Rather go back?”
“No, I don’t mean that. The mine doesn’t bother me; I’m not claustrophobic. No, it’s this business of the Martins. I have to keep reminding myself that the woman’s disappeared. We all assume that she’s gone away with a man but isn’t that merely because it’s the easy way out for us?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I can’t forget John saying on the phone that it would be as well if she didn’t come back. There’s a strong vein of callousness in this business.”
*
She had never been inside a mine and at first she was distracted by the speed with which Ted moved. Their torches were on headbands like miner’s lamps. If she directed the beam downwards to see the ground, she was afraid of bumping her head on the low ceiling. If she looked up in order to gauge the height, every nerve screamed that the next step would be into space.
Deep in the mine the sweating walls were shored with ancient props covered by a white fungus. The air felt warm but in places there were cool spots like cold patches in the sea. It was very quiet, but once, when they stopped and Ted was peering along a side tunnel, they heard a faint sound, unidentifiable.
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“Bats.”
“Bats! We’re too far inside!”
He didn’t answer.
They came to flights of descending steps with thick, rust-flaked cables for handrails. Here their voices, which had bounced back stonily at them in the narrow passages, floated away into emptiness and she felt that they were surrounded by limitless fathoms of air. The torch beams were lost in it.
They started down one of these flights, one that was longer than the others. The steps were in the form of a zig-zag; they came to a square slate ledge and then turned back so that they were below the previous flight.
“Stop there,” Ted said suddenly.
She could see nothing beyond him because his body blocked her vision. She looked sideways over the edge where there was no rail. Her eyes widened and she flattened herself against the rock wall, tightening her grip on the cable. Water gleamed an incredible distance below.
“There’s a break here,” he was saying, “looks as if there’s been a rock-fall. We can still get by though. What’s left seems sound, but wait till I’ve crossed.”
Shining her torch on his feet she saw that the outer edge of the steps had gone, leaving a jagged break. He kicked each half-tread from the one above before he trusted his weight on it. The cable was still secure and he used this as a handhold. It looked to Miss Pink, as the gap widened between them, as if he were descending the wall of a monstrous well.
He stopped and turned to face her, standing easily.
“I’m across,” he called, “it’s not so bad as it looks. You can trust the cable.”
Her hands were sweating and she wiped them on her breeches, then she bent one stiff knee and kicked the first broken tread — but only the first. It was unnecessary, she chided herself; she had watched him test all the footholds. But the u
nique situation, so different from rock climbing, was disorientating; the dark water so far below, now invisible but there, the thick silence, the stillness, these spawned an irrational panic which she had never known in the open air.
She shook herself mentally and, with an enormous effort of will, concentrated on the next few feet of rock, and on the cable which was her life-line. She had to shine her torch downwards to make sure she didn’t put her weight too close to the edge of the crumbling steps but, frowning with the effort, she refused to entertain any thought of what lay below that pool of light. Her spectacles steamed up and she swore.
“You’re there,” Ted said calmly, and she saw the first whole step on the other side.
She followed him carefully to the bottom of the flight and some safe level place where she leaned against a wall and cleaned her spectacles.
“What’s that water below?” she asked.
“They call it a loom. It’s a catchment tank for floodwater.”
“How deep is it?”
“Deep enough,” he said grimly, “but don’t worry, we’ll get back all right. It’ll be easier going upwards.”
They started down another passage. At one point he stopped and she saw a hole in the wall about a yard wide and two feet high. It looked as if it might have been made by some projectile. Through the hole and against ubiquitous blackness their lights showed huge unstable slabs piled at bizarre angles.
“That’s fresh,” he said.
“Fresh?”
“It wasn’t there when I was a boy. Nor was the rock-fall on the steps, of course. The whole place seems to be disintegrating.”
“You have a fantastic memory. Is it good enough to find our way back?”
“Oh yes. I often came here with my uncle. He was manager — Mathias Roberts. He knew every yard of the levels and he loved the place — perhaps he hoped I’d come into the mine when I left school. But slate wasn’t a career for me. The mine was just fun. I knew the levels pretty well in those days and you don’t forget what you did when you were young. I’m remembering more as I go along.”
“And what’s this hole?”
