Dead in the Dark

by Stephen Booth

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘This way.’

  He was led up on to the northern slope above the trail. To the north-west of the sough outlet was a wheelpit, built to house a large waterwheel. Mine tubs had passed above it on a leat, arched over with ashlar stonework. The remains of a rectangular engine house emerged from the gloom, a three-storey fragment of stone with an arched window opening, like the ruins of a church, standing nearly twenty feet tall among the trees.

  Halfway up the daleside was a circular chimney. Further on was an abandoned coe, a miner’s hut, and the ruins of a powder house. The aqueduct was long gone. It had been supported by six stone piers, which still existed on either side of the trail. Near the waterwheel were a few remains of the smithy and an ore house.

  The DCRO controller told Cooper there were several other known mine entrances in addition to the sough. They included two capped shafts and two adits, inclined entrances linking to the shafts below.

  From here, two long rakes had been driven through the side of the dale and deep into the hillside as far as the Monyash road. Most of the length of these tunnels must have collapsed by now, he guessed. But who could tell? There was no way of knowing how far the rakes were accessible without sending in a properly equipped team.

  They crested a rise under a cliff of limestone, and there was an iron grille in the rock face, closing off a shaft. It was fastened by a bolt into an iron bar. It looked as though it lifted on a hinge like a large cat flap.

  ‘This is the main adit,’ he said. ‘We haven’t checked this one yet. But, as you can see, it’s closed with an iron grille, so no one can just wander in.’

  ‘We’ll have to enter it anyway.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Cooper knew it would be foolhardy to go in there alone, even with the right equipment. Yet people often did. The DCRO could testify to that. They rescued solitary cavers from time to time. Even the most experienced could get into trouble on their own.

  He looked into the adit, with its low roof and stone walls chiselled and hacked away by miners. It sloped steadily downwards into complete darkness to a point where it reached the shaft. He could hear the hushed voices of the cave rescue team whispering off the stone, a trickle of water running somewhere in the blackness.

  He borrowed a helmet, turned on the light, and stepped up to the entrance, ready to enter the mineshaft.

  26

  In Shirebrook, Diane Fry and Jamie Callaghan had been sent to visit a member of the public who’d phoned the 101 number in answer to the press appeals, claiming to have information about the Krystian Zalewski murder.

  The young woman was working in a hairdresser’s, though the fascia outside the shop said it was a beauty studio. Several pairs of eyes turned to watch Fry and Callaghan as they entered, women twisting in their chairs to get a better look. The air was thick with chemical smells. Shampoo and hair spray, perming lotion and nail varnish remover. Hot blow-dried hair and a hint of ammonia.

  The staff were almost indistinguishable from each other. They all had short, dyed blonde hair and were dressed in black.

  Fry held up her warrant card.

  ‘Nikki Frost?’

  ‘Yes?’ said one of the women.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Fry. This is Detective Constable Callaghan. You phoned and said you had some information about an incident.’

  She said she was expecting them and left her colleagues to attend to the customers for a few minutes. They squeezed into a back room with a kitchen area and shelves stacked with styling products.

  Nikki looked nervous, so Fry made her sit down while she herself perched on a stack of cardboard boxes. Callaghan leaned against the wall in the doorway. They were crammed together in a densely perfumed space that had hardly any oxygen.

  ‘It’s about the man who was killed earlier this week,’ said Fry. ‘His name was Krystian Zalewski.’

  ‘Someone brought in one of those leaflets you’ve been giving out. Then I saw all the police tape that had been put up at the end of the alley, and I sort of put two and two together.’

  ‘Are you saying you were there in the alley when Mr Zalewski was attacked?’

  ‘I suppose so. I must have been.’

  Fry sighed. ‘You’d better start from the beginning, Miss Frost.’

  Nikki’s hands were trembling slightly. Her black-painted fingernails jerked like a nest of beetles disturbed from under a stone.

  ‘I was on my way home that night,’ she said. ‘I’d been at a spinning class. I can burn about seven hundred calories in a forty-five minute session.’

  ‘Spinning?’

  That puzzled Fry. She had an image of an old woman in a shawl bent over a wooden spinning wheel turning out yarn, and it didn’t seem to fit.

  ‘Indoor cycling,’ explained Callaghan. ‘You do time trials and sprints and flats to motivational music.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I go to a gym in Mansfield,’ said Nikki. ‘I usually get there by train, because it’s only a five-minute walk from the station at the other end.’

  ‘Shirebrook has a railway station?’ asked Fry. ‘I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Yes, it’s on the Robin Hood Line. Trains pass through here on the way from Nottingham to Worksop. But there’s no service to Shirebrook on a Sunday so my friend gave me a lift to the gym and we went to Pizza Hut for something to eat afterwards. Later, she dropped me off in the car park on King Edward Street, near the butcher’s. From there, I walked into the marketplace.’

  ‘Did you see anyone on the way?’

  ‘Not really. I have a friend who works at Deep Pan Kid, and I waved through the window as I passed. I’m not sure she saw me, though. Then I cut through the alley to get home. I live just off Thickley Close, you see.’

  ‘And what happened, Nikki?’

  ‘Well, it was very quiet. It does get really dead in Shirebrook at that time, since they enforced the order, you know, with all those posters—’

  ‘The Public Space Protection Order.’

  ‘That’s it. Well, there was no one around, and most of the shops were shut. I suppose I ought to have been more careful …’

  She shot a sideways glance at Jamie Callaghan, a look full of doubt and a hint of fear. It was enough to cause Callaghan to shift uncomfortably and change his position against the wall.

  ‘No, it wasn’t your fault,’ said Fry. ‘You should be able to walk home safely on your own, Nikki.’

  ‘I know, you’re right. Everyone says that. But still—’

  ‘Just take your time, and tell us what happened next.’

  ‘I turned into the alley. It was quite dark there, but I could see the street lights at the other end. Then I heard the sound of an engine.’

  ‘An engine?’

  ‘Not a car. There were a few of those around the marketplace, but this was different. It was a motorbike, and it was close. It must have been at the end of the alley. I had this feeling that something was wrong, that I could be at risk, that I ought to turn round and run. But I kept on walking, just putting one foot in front of the other like an idiot. That was my mistake. One man jumped out from a corner and grabbed my bag. Another one came into the alley. They were both wearing motorbike helmets and leathers.’

  ‘Did you call out, Nikki?’

  ‘Not at first. I don’t know why. Maybe it was shock or something. You don’t know how to react in that situation. You hear about it happening to other people, but when it happens to you, it’s different. I was thinking that they were just messing about, that it might be my brother and one of his mates having a joke on me. I couldn’t believe it was really true that I was being mugged.’

  ‘I know it’s difficult, Nikki, but did you notice anything else about these two men?’

  She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t see their faces. Like I said, they wore helmets with those dark visors. One of the helmets was red, I remember. I think the other might have been black. But it was dark, you know …’
<
br />   ‘Yes, of course. Did they speak to you?’

  ‘No, just tried to pull my bag away from my arm. I hung on to it like grim death. That was probably stupid, wasn’t it? There wasn’t much of any value in it. They say you should just let go, so that they don’t hurt you.’

  ‘So you struggled with them. How long?’

  ‘It seemed a long time, but it must only have been seconds.’

  ‘Did they threaten you? Did you see a weapon at all?’

  ‘It didn’t occur to me at the time. But since then I’ve been thinking about it. One of them did have something in his hand. He was holding it at his side like this.’

  Nikki bent her right arm away from her body with fist clenched.

  ‘Was it a knife?’ asked Fry.

  ‘I couldn’t say. Not on oath. But considering what happened afterwards …’

  ‘Okay, Nikki. So what did happen afterwards?’

  ‘Another man came into the alley. I don’t know whether I’d called out or screamed by then, or if he’d seen the men trying to grab my bag, but he ran to help me. That’s what he did. He came to stop me being robbed.’

  ‘And this was Krystian Zalewski?’

  ‘I think it must have been. I didn’t know him, of course. He was Polish, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he was Polish.’

  Callaghan moved restlessly and seemed to be about to speak. Fry gave him a look and he relaxed again. It would have been better if he wasn’t here at all, but she was stuck with him.

  ‘Why didn’t you come forward to tell us about him before, Nikki?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you see his photograph in the local paper?’

  Nikki flushed, a mottled red spreading up her neck that looked oddly out of her place with her image. The cool blonde dressed in black, blushing like a child.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t recognise him. It all happened so quickly that night, you know. Really fast.’

  ‘So what exactly did you see of Mr Zalewski?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Nikki. ‘He ran up behind me shouting something I didn’t understand. When the two men turned towards him I managed to pull free, and I legged it. I mean, really legged it. I was terrified, and I wasn’t stopping to look back. So I had no idea what happened afterwards. I saw the photograph, but I suppose I just didn’t make the connection at first.’

  ‘I see.’

  Nikki looked up at Fry with a slightly puzzled expression.

  ‘To be honest, I didn’t read the whole story,’ she said. ‘I saw his name, and I thought … well, I thought it was just another row between the Poles. They get drunk and start fighting each other. You know what it’s like. It happens all the time. I reckoned it was a row that had gone too far and one of them had got unlucky.’

  Fry recalled the statistics. Two prosecutions for affray in the past three years, the dramatic reduction in incidents of drinking in public and drunk and disorderly offences. Even Geoff Pollitt’s impeccable record-keeping showed nothing like the picture of Shirebrook this woman was suggesting.

  ‘We have no reason to think the men who tried to rob you were East European,’ said Fry.

  ‘But it’s what you expect, isn’t it? After everything else that’s happened around here in the last few years.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Have you caught them?’ asked Nikki, a small tear glinting in her eye for the first time during the interview.

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘I’d hate to think they’ve got away with it,’ she said. ‘That would be awful.’

  Fry remembered the map of the Public Space Protection Order, with that thick red line running all the way around Shirebrook.

  ‘They weren’t contained within the sack,’ she said.

  Nikki looked baffled. ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll ask me why I didn’t report the attempted robbery at the time, too,’ said Nikki.

  ‘Yes, I was going to ask that. It’s a serious incident. You should have contacted us straightaway. Why didn’t you dial 999?’

  Nikki shrugged and looked embarrassed.

  ‘I didn’t want all the fuss,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s the truth. It didn’t seem worth going through all the bother of dealing with the police and giving statements and all that. I thought it was something that passed without any serious consequences. And I didn’t lose anything. I kept hold of my bag.’

  ‘But you did lose something, didn’t you, Nikki? You lost something during the struggle in that alley.’

  Nikki Frost stared at Fry as if she was a magician.

  ‘Yes, I did. I didn’t realise it until I got home, and I wasn’t entirely sure where I lost it. For all I knew, it might have been at the gym, or in the toilets at Pizza Hut, or in my friend’s car. But you’re right, I did lose something. I lost an earring.’

  ‘Thank you, Nikki. I’m glad you came forward in the end.’

  ‘There was one other thing,’ said Nikki. ‘I saw an appeal on the TV last night.’

  Fry frowned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘An Asian detective, it was. I didn’t catch his name.’

  ‘Something to do with Krystian Zalewski? I’m not aware of it.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it was something else. A robbery at a corner shop in Edendale.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why do you mention it?’

  ‘There was a bit of CCTV. It showed two men robbing the shop. And there was a red crash helmet one of them was wearing. It looked familiar. I think it was like one I saw that night in the alley.’

  The DCRO controller shone his torch through the iron grille of the adit. A totally incongruous object lay on the uneven stone floor of Mandale Mine, reflecting the light from his torch.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Ben Cooper. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A mobile phone,’ said the controller in astonishment. ‘It looks as though someone has thrown it through the grille. Why would anyone do a thing like that?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ said Cooper.

  The controller unbolted the grille, and it lifted like a giant cat flap to be secured by a couple of hooks on the walls. Two Cave Rescue members entered the adit to reach the shaft. Their torches and helmet lamps illuminated the whole area.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ said Cooper.

  He pulled out an evidence bag form the pocket of his jacket and pulled on a pair of gloves. Stooping, he gathered up the phone and slipped it carefully into the bag. It was an iPhone 7. He pressed the home button, but nothing happened. Then he remembered that the button was a pressure sensitive fingerprint scanner. It wouldn’t work while he was wearing gloves, or even inside the bag. He tried the power button on the side, but still got nothing. The battery was most likely dead.

  It would have to go back to the lab for examination. In the meantime, he had little doubt who it belonged to.

  ‘Are we okay to go in now?’ asked the controller.

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  You were supposed to check out the area when you arrived at a scene, make sure you knew where all the entrances and safe exits were. That kind of knowledge could save your life in a dangerous situation. But how could he do that here? No one knew how many entrances there where to these mine workings, which passages might lead to the surface and which were blocked at some point before they got there.

  Entering the shaft, Cooper felt the instant change of temperature as the chill struck through the rock. He sensed the alteration in sound too, as the peace of the woods was lost and the noise of his own movements became amplified, the sound of his breathing too loud in the enclosed space. He watched his breath cloud in front of his face, and a drop of moisture glittered in his torchlight as it fell from the roof.

  The mineshaft itself was quite large. Downstream from the adit entrance Cooper could see the arched and fragile top end of Mandale Sough, which finished in the collapse he’d reached from the other side.

  A DCRO team set off to wade through the passage. They wer
e soon lost from sight. Some levels of Mandale Mine were a long way from the entrance.

  ‘You can just about creep through a gap here,’ said the controller. ‘There’s a capped vertical shaft to the left, and the sough continues for some way to the right. Further on, the passages become lower, and a lot wetter.’

  Cooper saw remnants of blackened timbers against the walls of rock.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Down there is a section where we carried out a rescue a few years ago. We brought the timbers in to hold up the roof while we led some trapped cavers to safety.’

  ‘Hold the roof up?’

  ‘Well, you never know. Parts of the mine are unstable. It’s inevitable, given the amount of water flowing through it. You’ve seen the collapse in the sough. It could happen in any part of the mine just as easily.’

  ‘So this search is risky.’

  ‘As long as we take proper precautions, we’ll be fine. But some areas are inaccessible, you understand that, don’t you? We’ll have to wait until the teams come back.’

  Cooper hated waiting. But after what seemed a long time, helmet lamp beams appeared and the DCRO teams began to return and report to the controller.

  He shook his head at Cooper.

  ‘There’s nothing down here.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘One of the teams did find something, but it turned out to be an animal. You’d be surprised how often that happens.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Cooper knew that many of their call-outs were for animals. A dog, a calf, or half a dozen sheep that had fallen into old mineshafts. A dead badger rotting in a passage. A caver once spotted what he thought could have been human remains down a mine working. A small DCRO team investigated and found the suspicious object was actually a very old and decrepit cuddly toy.

  The controller wiped across his forehead below the rim of his helmet.

  ‘A few years ago,’ he said, ‘the RSPCA and the Fire Service called us out after a calf fell into a recently collapsed mineshaft. The shaft was about fifty feet deep, and the top ten feet or so were through loose soil and rock. Very dangerous to descend. We decided to remove the loose material around the shaft top and stabilise it to see if we could make a safe descent to bring the animal to the surface in a sling. It took hours of digging by hand and with a JCB to make the top section of the shaft safe and install a platform. We were sending up bags of loose material to the surface to clear it out. But we did eventually reach the calf.’