Dead on Dartmoor

by Stephanie Austin

  Dean was silent, as if arranging his own thoughts. ‘We’re both here after the same thing,’ he said at last. ‘I’d been working with Nathan for some time, on and off. The Environment Agency got in touch with us last year.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘Waste crime wasn’t considered a high priority here at the time, so Nathan got assigned to me. He was convinced something was going on here. When I heard he’d been killed, I knew he must be on to something. Thought it was time I took a look.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me that Nathan was murdered just because they’re burying rubbish.’

  ‘The illegal dumping of waste,’ Dean answered gravely, ‘next to people-trafficking and drugs, offers the biggest profits for organised crime.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘We’re not talking about fly-tipping,’ he said earnestly, ‘dumping the odd mattress and a bit of garden rubbish. This is big business. It costs companies hundreds of thousands every year to dispose of their waste legally. And the nastier the waste, the more hazardous the stuff is, the more it costs to dispose of. But if you can pay someone to take it away for you and dispose of it illegally, without all the proper rules and safeguards, it costs a lot less.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that all that stuff in the pit, that construction waste, could have come from anywhere in the country?’

  ‘Courtesy of Moss and Pike.’

  ‘Jamie’s steward is called Moss.’

  ‘Family firm.’ Dean grunted. ‘They’ve been caught more than once for illegal dumping, upcountry. They’re just a gang of thugs, the kind of outfit that cruise around in vans, touting for business, looking for someone who’s tearing down an old bungalow or ripping out a kitchen. Slip ’em a few quid and they’ll cart your rubbish away for you, asbestos included. It won’t cost you much and it’s a lot less bother than taking it to the tip.’

  ‘But people must know where their rubbish is likely to end up,’ I protested. ‘Or don’t they care if it’s spread across some farmer’s field?’

  He held up a thick forefinger. ‘Ah, well that’s the good bit! Even if you do care … even if you’re a law-abiding citizen and you ask the blokes offering to dispose of your rubbish if they can prove they’re registered waste carriers − anyone can buy a licence, perfectly legally, on the Internet. You don’t even have to prove who you are. I bought one in my little daughter’s name,’ he added bitterly, ‘and she’s not a month old.’

  ‘But you said they’d been caught.’

  ‘The fines are small. Prison sentences are rare.’ He raised the hip flask in an ironic toast. ‘It’s worth the risk.’

  ‘And any rubbish can be baled up in plastic,’ I said, thinking about it. ‘People round here wouldn’t take any notice. They’d just think it was hay or silage.’

  Dean was nodding. ‘That’s the beauty of the countryside. You can move stuff around in broad daylight, no problem. And if you happen to know a greedy landowner with old mineshafts on his property who’s only too happy to let you pay him to dump the stuff …’ He shrugged. ‘That’s where the firm got lucky, when old Moss introduced his cousins to the Westershalls.’

  ‘There’s nothing like keeping things in the family.’

  ‘Nathan was at agricultural college with Jamie Westershall. He said he was a bastard, the sort who’s always banging on about heritage and tradition but who’d shit in his own nest for money.’

  ‘But if the police know about all this, why the hell haven’t you arrested them?’

  Dean shot me a fierce look. ‘Because there’s more to this than a bit of demolition waste or herbicide … Look, the problem is, waste crime is usually committed on a small scale, so it gets dealt with by local police forces. To realise the extent of what’s going on, nationally, you have to start joining the dots—’

  ‘You need a national agency,’ I said, ‘like the Environment Agency. Enter Nathan Parr,’ I added.

  ‘And exit, unfortunately.’

  We were both silent for a moment, lost in gloomy thoughts.

  ‘And Inspector Ford knows all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Listen, the boss has got his hands full. He’s Head of Serious Crimes for this whole area and with the crisis up at the prison he was happy enough for me to monitor the situation here, but that was all. But Nathan didn’t want to prosecute a few thugs for dumping rubbish down a hole. He wanted to catch the people higher up, the people who are producing this waste, the polluters who pay criminals to dump it illegally. He had Westershall in his sights for a long time, ever since the murder of Ben Luscombe—’

  ‘So you know Ben was murdered, then?’

  ‘Let’s just say we were suspicious,’ Dean admitted, ‘but we couldn’t prove anything at the time. Nathan knew he’d be putting himself at risk if he approached Westershall openly, but he was convinced that the Moorworthy estate is receiving a big kickback from a major pharmaceutical company—’

  ‘Sandy Westershall was in pharmaceuticals.’ I told Dean about the photograph I’d seen on his study wall, of Sandy receiving a business award from some firm whose name I couldn’t remember.

  ‘Well, whatever the Westershalls are dumping for them, it’s nasty stuff, not the sort of thing they’ll risk throwing in an open pit like that building waste. They’ll be hiding it somewhere else.’

  ‘I know where it is.’ I pulled the folded map from my pocket and opened it out. ‘Moorworthy shaft.’ I tapped my finger on the map. ‘There. Ben Luscombe reported seeing lights coming from that shaft—’

  Dean almost snatched the map from my hands. ‘Where d’you get this?’

  ‘Ashburton Library.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, I asked the librarian, she gave it to me.’ He gazed at me, astonished. But then, he’s a man, he probably doesn’t ask for directions either.

  ‘Moorworthy Pit is fenced off, because of the bats, supposedly.’

  He frowned. ‘Then how do we get into it?’

  ‘We can get there through the adit.’

  ‘Adit?’ he repeated.

  ‘This map doesn’t show them, but there were tunnels dug so that the miners could get level access to the shafts. I saw some in old engravings up at the house. There’s a tunnel connecting the shaft at Applecote with the one at Moorworthy, I’m sure there is.’

  ‘And the entrance to this tunnel is somewhere down in this pit.’ He jabbed at the map with his forefinger. ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘I didn’t see it earlier, but I wasn’t looking, I was concentrating on not being swallowed up by all that rubbish.’

  ‘The entrance to this tunnel might be buried under it all,’ he pointed out.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour or so.’ I realised I probably wasn’t going to be sitting down to tea with Olly and Elizabeth. ‘We must try and find it now, while we still can.’

  This time I knew about the pit and we threaded through the hawthorn with more caution. We stopped a few feet away from the edge, lay on our bellies and crawled. There was no one around, no work in progress. Despite Jamie’s orders, GBH was not dumping bales today. There was still light draining from the sky, but down in the depths the pit was already deep in shadows. Dean shone his torch, sweeping the beam around its rocky walls. The mine had originally been open-cast; years ago men had dug their way down with shovels, creating ledges and stepping stones that allowed them to cut deeper and deeper into the granite. But there was no sign of a tunnel, no hole in the pit wall.

  ‘Perhaps it’s underneath us,’ I whispered. ‘Perhaps we need to be over there, on the other side, to see it.’

  We crawled, keeping back from the rocky edge until we reached the place where the bushes had been cleared away to make open ground for lorries to roll up to the pit edge. It was a relief to stand up, to walk normally for a yard or two. Then we hunkered down again and swept the walls of the pit with the torch beam.

  On the other side, the walls were not as clear. Nature had reclaim
ed crannies in the rock, wind-blown seeds taking root in tiny cracks, growing into straggly bushes. Ivy scrambled over ledges.

  ‘There!’ I pointed. ‘Just to the right of that metal pole that’s sticking up, d’you see?’

  The circle of the light swung around the walls crazily as Dean tried to find what I was pointing at. ‘Got it!’ He lit up a dark rent in the granite, half-hidden by a tangle of dusty creeper straggling down from above.

  ‘Look, we can clamber down to that ledge just above it—’ I began.

  I heard Dean sigh softly as he turned to look at me. ‘Sorry, Juno, but you’re not coming. It’s too dangerous,’ he went on hastily, ‘and you’re only a civilian. I’m responsible for your safety and I can’t allow it. From here on in, I’m on my own.’

  I must have gaped at him. ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘No. I want you to go back to the blow house, wait for me there—’

  ‘I want to catch these evil bastards just as much as you do!’

  ‘I know.’ He laid a consoling hand on my shoulder. ‘I know you do.’

  I shook him off. The reasonableness of his tone was infuriating.

  ‘Listen, if I’m not back at the blow house in two hours—’ he began.

  ‘Forget it, I’m coming with you! I owe it to Gavin,’ I added as he tried to interrupt.

  ‘Gavin’s death was an accident,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I don’t care. Maybe someone shoved that sword into him or maybe he did it himself, but the only reason he was in the woods that day was because of what had happened to his friend, to Ben. Accident or murder, his death is directly connected to what’s going on here.’

  ‘Juno—’

  ‘You try and leave me behind,’ I warned him, ‘I’ll go straight to Inspector Ford and tell him what you’re up to.’

  That shut him up. He frowned ominously.

  ‘Because he doesn’t know you’re here, does he?’ I persisted.

  ‘Of course he does.’

  I shook my head. ‘If this were an official operation, there is no way you’d be here on your own. You’d be working in pairs and there’d be at least one other team on this.’ His frown was like thunder, so I knew I was right. ‘Detective Inspector Ford believes you’re on paternity leave at this moment, isn’t that so? And if I tell him what you’re really up to, right now, together with what I know, this place will be crawling with coppers in five minutes. And that won’t suit you, will it?’ I added finally. ‘Because you want to be the one to bring Nathan’s killers down.’

  He seemed lost for words. When he eventually came up with one to describe me it wasn’t complimentary.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ I smiled sweetly and waved an arm at the mouth of the tunnel opposite. ‘Shall we?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Dean couldn’t climb with the torch in his hand and clambering down to the mouth of the tunnel was unnerving in the gathering dusk. One missed footing would mean a fall into the pit, floundering amongst filthy rubbish, amongst broken rock, ripped metal and shattered glass or sinking beneath that oily bilge never to surface again.

  The ledge we reached was narrow, its rocky edges fallen away. We were forced to crawl on our hands and knees, inch our way forward, dislodging loose chippings and sending them bouncing down the walls into the pit below. Halfway along we stopped for a breather, sitting back on our heels. Dean switched on the torch and shone it along the path to the mouth of the tunnel. ‘Just a few more yards, but be careful here.’

  Something pale had caught my eye down in the shadows, something like a mask. I pointed. ‘What’s that?’

  Dean shone the torch. I was startled into a gasp and he swore softly. Staring up from dead eyes was a screaming skull, bone-white and open-mouthed in horror: the face of Ted Croaker, sunk to his neck in an oily swamp, one rigid hand, a black and glistening claw, reaching up in desperation as he had tried to scrabble his way out.

  ‘Do you think he fell or was thrown in?’ I asked when I felt able to speak.

  ‘I don’t know, but he’s been there a few days by the look of him, poor sod. Of course, when they’ve filled this shaft up, they’ll just cap it off with concrete,’ he went on. ‘A few tons of earth on top of it, turf it over, and no one will know there’s anything down here.’

  I was still staring into the hollow eyes of Ted Croaker. ‘Or anyone,’ I added.

  It was a relief to drag ourselves in through the mouth of the tunnel, to collapse, to sit there, getting our breath back. We sat for a few moments, our breathing the only sounds in the quiet dark. My stomach rumbled. I thought longingly of the nutty bars I’d left behind in my rucksack. I heard Dean chuckle in the darkness, then a rustle of paper and the unmistakeably attractive snap of a chocolate bar being broken in half. ‘Here.’

  I’d left my torch behind in my rucksack, so I switched on the light on my phone, its blue glow showing me what he was holding out, and took it thankfully.

  ‘Enjoy it,’ he advised with a grim laugh, ‘it could be our last meal.’

  We munched in silence.

  ‘What’s your little daughter’s name?’ I asked, after a minute.

  ‘Alice.’ There was love in the darkness, even in that one word. A moment later his features were lit by the colourful glow from his mobile. He scrolled down until he found what he was looking for and then passed it to me.

  One bald, pink baby looks much like another to me, but I took it dutifully. I had to admit, Alice was cute. When the photo was taken, she must have been fresh out of the pod, her face red and crumpled, her tiny fist curled tight as a rosebud next to her little mouth, but she already had more hair than her father.

  ‘You should be at home with her, Detective Constable Collins,’ I reproved him, ‘not sitting here in this dark hole.’

  He murmured something unintelligible.

  ‘Does your wife know where you are?’

  ‘Gemma?’ He gave a crack of laughter. ‘Christ! No.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘That they were short-handed at the station and needed me to go in. She knows that uninterrupted paternity leave is a pretty fantastic idea to begin with. She won’t fret if I don’t turn up till the morning.’

  ‘Did Nathan have a girlfriend …?’

  ‘He’d just been through a divorce … Look, while we’re asking personal questions, do you have a significant other?’ he demanded crossly. ‘Because he could do with a bloody good talking-to about the things you get up to.’

  ‘I don’t, as it happens.’ I could hear an edge in my voice I wished wasn’t there. The last time I’d felt attracted to a man, things hadn’t worked out well.

  ‘I heard about what happened with the Nickolai murder,’ he began.

  ‘Let’s just say I’m not actively seeking a significant other at the moment,’ I responded before he could get any further.

  ‘Understood.’ Dean flicked on the torch and shone it around the walls of the tunnel. Above our heads a cat’s cradle of slanting timbers shored up the roof. They were ancient, festooned with cobwebs and some of them looked decidedly dodgy to me. ‘It’s high enough to stand up in here, thank God. I didn’t fancy crawling on our hands and knees.’ He rose to his feet and thumped a fist against one of the lower timbers, dislodging a century of dust. ‘We’ll have to watch our heads, though.’ His coughing echoed around the walls.

  I got up and fell into step behind him. What little light was coming from the tunnel mouth soon faded. Ahead the blackness was dense, thick, all light blotted out. But in the torchlight the walls around us glistened, tin-bearing ore buried in the rock showing here and there as silver specks and patches.

  ‘I feel as if we’re going slightly uphill,’ Dean said after a while.

  ‘These tunnels slope up a bit towards the entrance to allow water to run out,’ I explained.

  ‘It’s quite dry in here.’

  ‘There could be another tunnel beneath this one; the lowest adit was always for drainage.’
r />   ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  I only knew what Alec had told me and what I’d read in the library. ‘I’m an expert,’ I told him. ‘I might write a book, Tin Mining for Dummies.’

  ‘Well, Miss Expert, do you know how long this tunnel goes on for?’

  ‘It can’t be very long, not if it leads us into the Moorworthy shaft.’

  ‘And we’re sure about that, are we?’

  Why is it that if someone asks if you’re sure about something, you’re suddenly not sure about it, even if you were perfectly certain about it before they asked? Dean noticed my hesitation and grunted. We carried on in silence.

  It got steadily warmer, stuffier, as we went deeper into the rock. I started to find the heat oppressive, thought about shedding my jacket; but then I’d only have to carry it. Around us, the blackness was stifling, closing in around the torch’s narrow beam. I’d decided to put my phone away, save it in case Dean’s torch failed. The thought of being down here in blind black was too appalling to dwell on. I pitied the poor bloody miners who’d had to spend every day of their working lives down here.

  ‘There’s something up ahead,’ Dean called out suddenly. He shone the torchlight on a plastic cylinder, white, dustbin size, lying on its side. The lid had rolled away and whatever had been inside it had seeped into the ground beneath our feet, dried into a dark stain.

  The lingering smell was acrid, made me want to catch my breath. I pulled my scarf up over my nose. Dean rolled the thing over with one push of his boot to reveal a lot of labelling with some long, chemical-sounding names I did not understand, and a yellow triangle with a black exclamation mark which I did: hazardous waste. There was another label to indicate the contents were corrosive and flammable.

  ‘This is what Nathan was on about,’ Dean coughed, a hand to his mouth. ‘Be careful where you step.’ He aimed the torch back, directing the light towards the ground so I could pick my way. This stuff could probably melt boots.

  Stack after stack of containers almost blocked the tunnel ahead, all displaying labels with cheery yellow triangles. Dean swore softly. He handed the torch to me, got out his phone and started taking pictures. Chemical waste, medical waste, I read as I edged my way past: explosive; toxic; reactive.