Dead in the Dark

by Stephen Booth

  ‘My own husband would be astonished if I developed that sort of romantic streak,’ said Branagh. ‘I think he would divorce me in an instant.’

  Cooper rarely thought of Detective Superintendent Branagh as a wife or mother. She had always been a rather daunting authority figure to him. So the occasional reference to her family always took him by surprise. He knew, as a matter of record, that she’d been married for many years to the same man, a consultant paediatrician at Eden Valley General Hospital, and that they had two grown-up children. There had even been photographs of the family on her desk at West Street, but he’d never seen her look at them while he was in the office. When she was working, she fully concentrated on the job in hand. This sudden reference to her marriage sounded jarring. He wondered if there was more behind it.

  ‘And then there was the child,’ she was saying. ‘The Bowers’ daughter.’

  ‘Lacey,’ said Cooper.

  ‘She was very young at the time her mother went missing. About eight years old?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We couldn’t interview her obviously. Not at that age. Initially she was spoken to with her father present, but she was very uncommunicative. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen her mother, or anything she’d said. I suppose it was all too overwhelming for her. Too frightening and confusing, all those questions from strangers. She seemed very close to her father – she never let go of him, was clinging to him constantly for reassurance whenever I saw her. After the arrest, young Lacey went to stay with an aunt.’

  ‘Annette’s sister, Frances Swann.’

  Branagh nodded. ‘I felt very bad about tearing her away from her father, but the evidence …’

  ‘Yes, it was the right decision.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ve wondered, of course. I’ve had ten years to wonder about it, whether all I did in that moment was to make a terrible situation even worse for a small child. Her mother had gone missing, and now her father was being taken away from her. I felt I must appear to be the big, bad ogre in her eyes. I hope she’s forgiven me. I’d be interested to hear how she’s grown up.’

  ‘She’s on my list to speak to, obviously.’

  Superintendent Branagh’s face had set into a grim expression as she talked about the Bower case. Cooper could see that the memory of it made her … not regretful exactly, but angry.

  ‘When the victim hasn’t been found,’ she said, ‘one of the temptations for the killer is to claim themselves to have seen their victim alive. But Reece Bower didn’t need to lie. Someone else did that job for him.’

  ‘He was a very lucky man.’

  ‘Either that, or he was innocent,’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose there’s always that possibility.’

  Branagh’s expression didn’t change. She continued to stare grimly at Cooper.

  ‘But you don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Branagh sighed. ‘Between you and me, I see this as a chance to make amends, to explore missed opportunities,’ she said. ‘We may be able to put things right.’

  ‘And it’s long overdue after ten years,’ said Cooper.

  He’d heard the uncertainty in the superintendent’s voice. She had a lot of trust in him, but she knew she couldn’t order him to pursue the lines of inquiry she’d missed all those years ago. When it came down to it, the decision was his. Branagh recognised that.

  ‘Will you do this for me, Ben?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll do what I can.’

  She sounded relieved now.

  ‘There will be questions asked, no doubt. I’ll back you as much as I can. Let me know if you have any problems.’

  ‘I’ll get straight on to it.’

  Cooper stood up to leave.

  ‘DI Cooper …’ she said as he reached the door.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘When will you be seeing Detective Sergeant Fry?’

  Cooper stared at her in surprise.

  ‘Why would I want to see her?’

  ‘Well … no particular reason.’

  He knew that Detective Superintendent Branagh didn’t say things like that for no particular reason.

  ‘I’m puzzled that you should mention her, ma’am. She’s been working with EMSOU’s Major Crime Unit for some time now.’

  ‘I know that, of course. But I always thought you worked together really well.’ She waved a hand to dismiss his protests. ‘Oh, I know you’re very different, and you didn’t always get on. But you were a good team. You got results.’

  Cooper didn’t know how to reply. It wasn’t how he’d seen their relationship. But it might look different from the outside.

  ‘I don’t mean that you can’t get results on your own,’ said Branagh. ‘Of course not. I have absolute faith in you to make the right decisions, Ben.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ll try to do that.’

  13

  Ben Cooper knew a sergeant at Chesterfield. He didn’t see him very often, and they’d arranged to meet in the restroom for a coffee before he went back to Edendale. And when Cooper walked into the room, there she was. Diane Fry. Superintendent Branagh must have known perfectly well she was here. Fry had probably checked in with her on her arrival.

  Fry spotted him straightaway. She was sitting at a table on her own, clutching a cup. He couldn’t tell from her expression whether she was surprised to see him, or pleased, or horrified, or anything in between. There was hardly a flicker of emotion on her face as she coolly met his gaze.

  Cooper got himself a drink, took a deep breath, and walked over to her table.

  ‘Diane,’ he said.

  ‘Ben. Hello.’

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  It was typical of her not to ask how he was in return. He was never sure if it was because she wasn’t interested, or she’d never learned how to be polite. It was probably both.

  Some people never seemed happy with life, and you could see it in their faces. Diane Fry had that look. It was a look that suggested the whole world was a terrible place. Everyone must know how awful it was. So, if you smiled too much, you must be an idiot. Too stupid to see how bad everything was. Stupid enough to be happy.

  After a moment, Fry waved at an empty chair.

  ‘Sit down, if you want,’ she said.

  Cooper sat, and took a drink of his coffee.

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ he said. ‘Where are you working?’

  ‘A place called Shirebrook in Nottinghamshire.’

  ‘No, it’s in Derbyshire,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, it’s just this side of the border. It’s part of North Division.’

  ‘Borders don’t matter that much in EMSOU,’ said Fry.

  Cooper thought that didn’t excuse her ignorance, but he let it go.

  ‘Strange place, Shirebrook,’ said Fry.

  ‘I can agree with you on that. I remember it from when it was a small coal-mining town. Everybody worked at the pit. The place got pretty run down, I suppose, but it was one of those towns that had a strong sense of community.’

  Fry looked at him for a second, as if trying to find something more in his words.

  ‘It isn’t like that now,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I know. The coal mine closed in 1993. A distribution centre was built on the pit site after it was cleared.’

  She looked around the room, as if assessing the officers at the other tables. As usual, she didn’t look as though she approved of any of them.

  ‘EMSOU have an operation under way in Shirebrook,’ she said.

  Cooper nodded. ‘I think I saw an email.’

  ‘The situation is very tense.’

  ‘Is EMSOU responsible for community cohesion now?’ he asked.

  ‘Everybody’s responsible for community cohesion,’ said Fry. ‘Aren’t they?’

  Cooper knew it was true, of course. In many ways, it was the
number-one policing priority, ahead of solving crime. Good relations between communities prevented crime from happening in the first place. Certainly serious hate crimes, the type of violent offences Fry and her colleagues at EMSOU were concerned with. When tensions simmered beneath the surface, they could break out into violence at any time. The statistics showed a worrying increase in hate crime after the result of the EU Referendum, and in some areas the situation had refused to settle back to normal. In places like Shirebrook, with its large migrant population, tensions often weren’t even below the surface, but openly on display.

  He noticed her cup was practically empty.

  ‘Do you have time for another coffee?’ he said.

  Fry shook her head. ‘Sorry, we’re busy here. The inquiry has become urgent.’

  ‘You always try to be one up on me,’ said Cooper. ‘What’s the crisis?’

  ‘A murder case. We’ve got a body.’

  Cooper sighed. ‘Well, that’s two up on me, then.’

  ‘The victim is Polish. I dare say you’ll get an email about that too.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Cooper watched Fry as she drained her cup. Was she the right person to be dealing with sensitive issues like a conflict between communities? He doubted it. She wasn’t a community person. Surely there must be something else going on to justify the presence of DS Diane Fry and her colleagues. Had the murder happened at this time by chance?

  ‘And what have you got on at the moment?’ asked Fry.

  ‘A missing person case linked to a previous murder inquiry. A possible manslaughter in an arson incident. A spate of armed robberies.’

  But Fry wasn’t really interested. He saw her eyes glaze over and she gazed around the room.

  ‘Oh, there’s Jamie,’ she said, pushing back her chair.

  Cooper remember DC Callaghan from his visit to Fry’s new base at St Ann’s police station in Nottingham, but he was surprised by Fry’s eagerness to get up and greet him. She’d hardly ever let her coolness slip like that with him. Well, perhaps on one or two notable occasions. But it had taken a long time.

  Jamie Callaghan nodded at Cooper without a word as he waited for Fry.

  ‘No doubt I’ll see you around, Ben,’ she said. ‘Good luck with the case.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector,’ said Callaghan.

  Well, at least he could speak. Cooper watched the two of them walk away, leaving him alone to stare at his coffee. Not for the first time, he felt he had no idea what was really going on.

  When he managed to get away from Chesterfield, Ben Cooper headed west, out beyond Bakewell. He needed to escape, and there was one place he couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Half an hour later Cooper parked his car by the side of the road just outside the village of Monyash. A few hikers were making their way back across the fields to their vehicles or visiting the public toilets across the road.

  He opened the tailgate of the Toyota, changed into his walking boots and put on his waterproof, then went through the gate, following a wide, flattened path across the grass. The walking didn’t stay easy for very long, he knew.

  Brown dung flies rising from a cowpat warned him there was livestock ahead. A small herd of black-and-white cattle lay cudding, their hides covered in flies, flicking their tails and twitching their yellow ear tags. He expected them to move aside from the path as he approached. But these were Lathkill Dale cattle. They were used to noisier visitors than him. They barely blinked as he passed within touching distance of their damp noses.

  There were reports on file of stock fencing being cut here in several places. Cooper found it hard to imagine the reason for it, except sheer vandalism. The upper part of this dale was a national nature reserve and famous for its rare wild flowers – purple orchids and Jacob’s ladder.

  Soon he was approaching the remains of Ricklow Quarry, where Derbyshire Grey Marble had been worked, the stone used to make fireplaces at Chatsworth House. These slopes were said to contain fossils up to three hundred and sixty million years old.

  Enormous cascades of rock covered the hillside as he picked his way through the old quarry. This was some of the roughest going he knew of in the Peak District, a slow scramble over muddy boulders made slippery by rain and mud.

  Beyond the spoil heaps of Ricklow Quarry, the valley narrowed dramatically. This part of the dale had an eerie atmosphere, with moss-covered rocks amid dank, dripping trees twisted into unnatural shapes. Cooper thought of The Lord of the Rings – not the films, but the books he’d read as a teenager, the image he had of the hobbits’ Shire. A magical place where anything could happen, good or bad.

  At this point the river that gave the dale its name wasn’t even visible. Limestone buttresses towered over each side of the valley. Rocks lay around, as if thrown by giants. It was a strange, mythical landscape. One dark and stormy night in the eighteenth century a vicar of Monyash had ridden his horse right over the cliff after an evening spent drinking in Bakewell. The horse survived, but he didn’t. The church in Monyash had kept a glass jar on display containing a tuft of grass that was said to have been taken from the clergyman’s clenched fist when his body was found.

  Why were local legends like that still remembered and shared? Cooper guessed he must have been told it by his mother, or his grandmother, or some other relative. Perhaps he’d read it in a book. But were those stories still being passed on? Or would his be the last generation to look up at these crags and know about the drunken vicar and his horse and the tuft of grass?

  Through a squeeze stile, a view finally opened up into the dale, with its elegantly curved limestone cliffs. He passed a fenced-off area where Jacob’s ladder covered the ground in violet-blue flowers in May and June. The sheep found it tasty, so they had to be kept off in the summer. A gate would be opened later in the year to let them graze the coarse grass.

  He turned a bend on the path, and there was Lathkill Head Cave. This was where the River Lathkill emerged. Well, it did some of the time. The cave had an imposing entrance, a large square opening with a rock roof like a vast lintel, and moss-covered rocks tumbled on the floor below. The vivid green of the moss was a startling contrast with the silver-grey of the weathered limestone.

  Today, the cave was bone dry. There hadn’t been enough rain recently. But in winter it could pour out a vast torrent of water that came from the mine workings. In the summer it was no more than a trickle and often disappeared completely in dry weather.

  Lathkill. Yet another Scandinavian name. Derbyshire was thick with them. This one was said to be from Old East Norse, a legacy of the Danish invaders a thousand years ago. Hlada-kill. It sounded strange and exotic in the mouth now. But all it meant was ‘narrow valley’.

  The Lathkill was unique even in the Peak District. It was the only river that ran over limestone for the whole of its length. That gave it a distinctive characteristic. And in this case, it was an important difference.

  As he stood there, Cooper noticed a nest on a narrow ledge just above his head. A neat bowl shaped from leaves and dry grass, insulated on a bed of moss. So even here in this dried-up cave, something was able to survive.

  Below Lathkill Head, the valley widened as it was joined from the south by Cales Dale. Halfway along Lathkill Dale was a tufa waterfall. He thought of tufa as something specific to the Peak District, though he supposed it must occur in other parts of the world where limestone was predominant. The soft, porous rock was formed from calcium carbonate precipitated by water that had run through limestone. It looked unnatural, and in a way it was.

  In the aquarium at Matlock Bath there were displays of objects left in the water that had turned almost literally to stone as they calcified. It was the sort of thing the Victorians had loved. Such oddities had appealed to them. Here in Lathkill Dale, the tufa cascade was just an indication of the nature of the landscape he was walking through. This was a place where strange things happened.

  A footbridge over t
he Lathkill led to the Limestone Way a few hundred yards south, but it was a steep ascent up the side of the dale, with stone steps built into the hillside to help the climb. At the top, he knew there would be a wide open stretch of White Peak farmland towards Youlgrave, a landscape very different from the dale, which had begun to feel too dark, too enclosed. Too claustrophobic.

  He recalled a swimming area in the River Bradford near Youlgrave. He’d been there a couple of times as a teenager with a group of friends, taking the opportunity of some rare summer sun during the school holidays. But there had been something unappealing about the fact that they were officially allowed to swim there, even if the signs spelled out that it was ‘at your own risk’. The most attractive sites were the ones that were forbidden – the reservoirs and flooded quarries. They’d all needed that sense of adventure back then. Now, he was too aware of the people who’d died or got into serious trouble swimming in the wrong place. It wasn’t that the world that had changed, he supposed. It was him. He’d grown up.

  Cooper pulled out an OS map from his waterproof. A rock shelter was marked on the map here at the bottom of Calling Low Dale. A natural overhang in the cliff created a roof, and the shelter had been enclosed by a dry stone wall. The space was no more than six feet long and perhaps four feet wide. The vertical strata of the limestone meant water continually dripped from the roof. You wouldn’t want to use it as a shelter for long.

  A hill fort had stood on the long limestone ridge, enclosing an area of about ten acres inside a rampart of limestone blocks and rubble. Like many other ancient sites, it had been badly damaged by stone robbing and years of ploughing. To the north was One Ash Grange, which he’d been told was once a reformatory for misbehaving monks. Up ahead, the eastern half of the dale had been extensively mined for lead ore right up until the middle of the nineteenth century.

  Cooper put away his map. Yes, he’d been to all these places before, though the details were a bit vague and confused. Before he came today, he couldn’t have recalled the order he would pass them on the trail into Lathkill Dale from the Monyash road, or where they stood in relation to each other. He wouldn’t even have been able to say why or even when he’d come, or how old he was at the time. He just knew he’d been here before.