‘Even if they’re here, there’s no way we’ll spot them in this crush. We don’t stand a chance.’
‘Stay near the front of the crowd. He won’t have Luanne at the back, if he wants her to see the boats.’
‘OK.’
The strings of coloured lights were reflected and elongated in the water, and across the river the trees on the hillside were lit by patches of brilliant colour — blue, green, red. Seven thirty came and went. By the time announcements over the PA system warned of the impending boat parade, people were already jostling for the best positions along both banks of the river and on the new bridge. Above the gardens, a bus passed behind the illuminated trees. In the distance, Upper Towers was lit up on the Heights of Abraham. It floated in the sky like some airborne castle.
‘There are people standing three deep on the bridge. I don’t know how it can take the weight.’
‘That’s nothing. They’re about five deep this side of the river. It looks pretty much the same across the other side.’
‘At least they’re standing in one place now, instead of moving about. Let’s try and get round the crowd while the boats keep their attention.’
The commentary was almost impossible to make out from here. It was a loud blare, an indistinguishable voice echoing among the trees, only the occasional word emerging from the babble. The announcer seemed to be telling the crowd that the winning boat was called American Express.
The boats drifted out one at a time from the boat jetty until they were in the middle of the current. When they were midstream, each one lit up suddenly, to a cheer from the children on the bank. So the Empire State Building and the White House appeared all at once in the darkness, drifting above the water, glittering in multi-coloured lights that reflected on the surface.
The winner was followed by more boats. A steam engine rode magically on the river, a miniature paddle steamer floated in a pool of its own light. There was a vintage car, a carousel, a biplane, a Viking longboat. As they came by, it was impossible to distinguish the boats from their reflections, red cascades bursting and rippling across the surface in the splash of oars.
‘It’s hopeless, Diane.’
‘Keep trying.’
Cooper worked his way through the crowds on the bank. People were so tightly packed that it was impossible to walk normally. He found it uncomfortable to move with such short steps, squeezing his way between the backs of strangers. Some of the faces were too close to make out. People were standing on the slopes to see over the crowd. Some were under the lights, and some were in darkness. Underfoot, it was impossible to see if you were treading in mud or a puddle. A light drizzle had begun to fall, adding a mist to the blur of coloured lights above the heads of the crowd.
Soon after eight o’clock, people began to drift out of the gardens again, and Cooper made his way back across the bridge. The raised areas of grass had been trodden into mud and people slipped on damp tree roots. Fast-food cartons crunched underfoot. The rock band was still playing, but had moved on to ‘Sweet Child of Mine’.
‘Where are you, Ben?’
‘I’m near the bandstand. Look for the Dinky Donuts van. You can’t miss it — there’s a big pink thing on the roof, like an inflated condom.’
‘OK, I see it.’
Cooper waited, the crowds separating around him, music blasting his ears. Teenagers walked by with their mobile phones held out in front of them to take photographs of each other. He thought he caught a glimpse of the gypsy woman again, a blue scarf flashing briefly in the lights. When the band finished playing, the announcer started trying to persuade everyone to move across to the west bank of the river for the fireworks display.
‘I’m still here, Diane. I can’t see you yet.’
His ear piece was silent. And for a moment, Cooper remembered that you didn’t have to be a recluse to be alone. It was possible to feel desperately alone even in the middle of the biggest crowd.
36
An air of anticipation developed again as nine o’clock approached. Streams of people came back over the bridge to the gardens, or stood on the pavements outside the Pavilion and the Fishpond pub. Their faces were turned up towards the rock face of High Tor. The hill rose into the night sky above the swathes of multi-coloured trees. An expectant hush gradually developed, but for a little chatter here and there.
Then the crowd was silenced by a terrific bang that hit the village like a huge hand had been slapped down on the landscape. It punched eardrums and stopped a few hearts, judging by the expressions on the faces around him. It was the maroon, the single loud report that signalled the start of the display.
The maroon was followed by flares, fountains and rockets, candles. Brilliant white star bursts and red blossoms. They produced a barrage of bangs and whistles, whizzes and crackles, intense light and smoke. Glittering, coloured fire hung over the tor. A canopy of colour exploded into sparks, bangs, crackles and whistles. He saw the characteristic sparkling tail of a rocket on its way up. Screamers and screechers chased each other into the sky. Small stars and balls of fire changed colour in flight, finishing with a series of bangs. Comets grew brighter, their tails splitting into small fragments. Serpents snaked and wriggled through the air.
‘Hold on. Diane, I can see him.’
‘Brian Mullen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s him and Luanne. They’re right down the north end of the gardens, near where the boats are docking after the parade.’
‘Can you get to them, Ben?’
‘I’m on the wrong side of the river. The nearest crossing is the footbridge. I’ll have to go back and cross over.’
‘Which way is Mullen heading?’
‘He’s standing still at the moment. No, wait — he’s moving.’
‘Has he seen you, do you think?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m on the darkest part of the bank over here. But he’s moving all right. God, he’s running. Diane, he’s started to run. He’ll be on the road in a minute.’
‘I’ll get back to the car and drive down. Gavin, where are you?’
‘By the ice-cream kiosk in the Pavilion car park.’
‘Get to the road, and I’ll pick you up.’
There was no way of spotting Brian Mullen again, once he’d disappeared into the crowd. There were too many paths up there in the trees, too many dark corners, too many members of the public in the way. And too many of them were parents with small children.
‘I’m pretty sure there’s no way out at the other end of the gardens,’ said Cooper. ‘Not unless you’re fit enough to scramble up the slope and get over that wall. Mullen couldn’t do it with a small child in tow.’
‘So he’ll have to come back this way?’
‘The nearest way out on to the road is by the netball court. I left my car at this end, Diane — opposite the church.’
‘OK, we’ll catch you up. Don’t worry, he hasn’t got a big start on us.’
But the police on traffic duty had closed off the entire stretch of road when the fireworks started, and Fry found lines of traffic were already backing up in both directions.
‘Oh, shit.’
‘Did Mullen get through?’ asked Cooper when she told him.
‘A CSO up here says a red Citroen went through like a bat out of hell just before they closed the road.’
‘It’s lucky I was on this side of the gardens. Georgi’s with me now, and we’re nearly at my car. Where do you suppose he’s going?’
‘He isn’t going anywhere, as far as I’m concerned. His car will be stopped when it reaches Cromford. There are two officers posted at the junction, with manual control of the traffic lights.’
Kotsev followed Cooper into his Toyota, and it bounced off the kerb as Cooper accelerated down the empty roadway.
‘He’s definitely heading south, Diane?’
‘Yes. There’s nothing else that way, is there? No other roads? No way he can dodge us?’
‘There’s just Masson Mill. It’s only three hundred and fifty yards downstream from the gardens, but he’ll be able to see the Cromford junction from there. He’s not an idiot — if he sees the uniforms standing at the lights, he’ll know what’s going on.’
‘Masson Mill? The shopping village?’
‘That’s it. He could turn into the car park at the mill — the walls are high enough for him to get out of sight there.’
‘OK. He might think we’ll go flying straight past into Cromford. We’ll probably find him sitting quietly with his headlights off, praying that we don’t stop.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
The central storeys of the mill were lit up, picking out Arkwright’s name on the brickwork. But the rest of the building and the roofs of the weaving sheds below the road were in complete darkness. At the entrance to the car park, a couple of attendants leaned against a wall, looking bored as they waited for owners to return for their vehicles.
Sensing that something was wrong, Cooper twisted his head round, and stamped on the brakes.
‘Damn. The Citroen is on the forecourt in front of the main entrance. I almost didn’t see it.’
Motorists in the queue of stalled traffic stared at him curiously as he reversed a few yards towards Mullen’s car. It was parked at an awkward angle between two other vehicles that had been left there when the Car park full signs went up.
‘He must have swung straight across the pavement as he went through the pedestrian crossing. And I bet none of these people noticed anything.’
‘They don’t look happy about the hold-up,’ said Kotsev. ‘Why should they report another driver for escaping it?’
Cooper parked the Toyota across the Citroen’s tail end to block it in. As they approached the vehicle on either side, he spoke into his radio.
‘Diane, we’ve got Mullen’s car, in the main entrance to the shopping village. Right on the forecourt in front of the doors, you can’t miss it.’
‘You said that about Dinkie Donuts.’
‘Georgi and I are right here.’
‘Who’s in the car?’
Cooper peered in through the windows, though he’d already guessed the answer.
‘No one. They’ve legged it.’
‘Where could they have gone? The shopping village is closed.’
‘They can’t have gone far.’
Then Cooper saw an iron stairway leading down from the forecourt. At the bottom was a door into the second level of the car park, just below the road. The door was painted red and lit up like a beacon. And it was open.
‘That’s the obvious way, Georgi, wouldn’t you say? Especially if you were in a hurry.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
‘Hold on a minute.’ Cooper fetched his torch from the back seat of the Toyota. It was a four-cell Maglite, nearly fifteen inches long and weighing at least a couple of pounds. Not only would it give him a good light, but it was handy as a weapon, at a push. Then he found a spare torch from the car and handed it to Kotsev. ‘You might need this.’
He turned at the sound of a horn, and saw Fry’s Peugeot approaching, and her window winding down.
‘We’ll come in from the other direction,’ she called.
‘There’s a roof level up the ramp, Diane. You might start there.’
‘OK.’
She began to put her car into gear again, but Cooper put his hand on the door. ‘How far are we going with this?’ he said. ‘I mean, Brian Mullen hasn’t committed any crime that we know of.’
Fry gazed back coolly. ‘He’s running for a reason,’ she said, as the Peugeot pulled away.
Cooper and Kotsev clattered down the iron stairs and through the red door. Inside, the parking levels were already half empty, the gaps between vehicles allowing a view right down to the ramps at the entrance. They shone their torches into the corners and along the sides of the ramps.
They hadn’t been inside the car park long when Cooper heard a voice in his ear.
‘We’re coming in now,’ said Fry. ‘These attendants haven’t seen anyone in the last few minutes, but I’ll leave them to keep watch. How many parking levels are there, Ben?’
‘Three, I think.’
Cooper found a door by the stairs, which led into the main building.
‘Hey, there’s a door open here,’ he said.
‘Be careful, Ben.’
‘Aren’t I always?’
‘Actually, no.’
Cooper allowed himself a smile as he entered the darkened mill. The times Fry expressed concern for his welfare were so rare that they were worth collecting and treasuring for posterity.
He and Kotsev made their way slowly through the shopping floor. Although it was open-plan, there were far too many places to hide — counters and display units, racks of winter coats and free-standing shelves full of pottery. It would take dozens of people to search this place properly.
Without the presence of people, the dominant smell was the scent of polish rising from the wooden floors, as if they were walking through a low-lying mist. Cooper’s torchlight reflected off mirrors everywhere, dazzling him with sudden bursts of glare. Time and again, he caught a movement across the other side of the floor and swung his Maglite towards it, only to see himself or Georgi staring back from a full-length mirror, pale and wide-eyed like ghosts.
When they came to the central stairs, Kotsev gestured upwards, and Cooper nodded. He watched until Georgi reached the top of the first flight, then he moved on.
And it was better on his own, without the distraction of someone else’s footsteps behind him, another person’s breathing in his ear, or that continual jump and flutter on the edge of his vision. Now, he could concentrate on the natural sounds of the building, he could listen for the subtle intrusions into the silence, the surreptitious movement in the darkness.
When he felt the floorboards shift and groan under his feet, Cooper knew he was near the wooden steps that led down to the museum at river level. Standing perfectly still, he held his breath and listened. The faint creak of boards came from below him, somewhere near the bottom of the stairs.
The stairs led down to two doors, one opening into the spinning room and the other into the weaving shed. A doubling machine and some of the looms had been running last time he was here. The rattle of their bobbins and leather drive belts had seemed normal background noises then. Without them, the place was much too quiet, the long lines of wooden spindles dead and still, like rows of broken fingers.
His torchlight gleamed on white and pale blue walls, glared off red fire buckets, picked out the rainbow colours of the cotton on the bobbins. The weaving sheds had pitched roofs that were half glass to provide natural light for the weavers. Tonight, though, the glass only reflected his torch beam and the sporadic glint of machinery from the sheds beneath.
Cooper sniffed instinctively. The smell of lubricating oil and leather seemed stronger in the dark. Or perhaps in the silence. He wasn’t sure which made the most difference. His jacket whispered against the wall, every footstep squeaked on the boards. At this level, he could hear a deep rumbling noise, and even feel a faint vibration through the floor. Common sense told him it must be the turbines running. If they ran at night, they were probably supplying surplus power to the National Grid. But their rumble sounded more like the heart of the massive building, thudding through the walls of the mill, beating much too fast.
Cooper felt his own heart begin to thump faster in rhythm with the turbines, and his chest tightened with anxiety. It was as if he was picking up a sense of fear from the building itself. Be careful. Aren’t I always? Actually, no.
He froze to the spot, suddenly reluctant to go any further into the weaving shed. He didn’t know what he was afraid of. But that was always the most frightening thing, the unknown. You can onlyfear something that hasn’t happened yet. Damn right, Doctor. But lots of things had happened already. How many people had died? Too many to count.
For a m
oment, the rows of looms blurred and distorted. They seemed to change shape, mutating into crouching, angular beasts that lined a tunnel stretching away from him. They beckoned him further into the darkness, whispering with leathery tongues that had formed from their drive belts and pulleys.
Cooper shook his head, trying to drive away the illusion, to deny the lies that his senses were telling him. Then, at the far end of the weaving shed, he saw what his attention was being drawn to. His unsteady torchlight had picked out a shape on the floor. A bundle of rags, a pile of sacking? Well, it was possible in this place. Anything was possible. But Cooper knew it wasn’t a bundle of rags, or a pile of sacking, or even a trick of the light. It was a body.
‘Oh, shit.’
He recognized the smell of blood. This must have been the trigger for his anxiety, the message that his senses had been sending him. Blood meant danger. Be careful.
Suddenly, his surroundings came back into normal focus, and his feet began to move him forward again. Cautiously, Cooper edged around the looms and the other machines, checking the darkest corners of the shed, until he was bending over the body and feeling for a pulse. Despite the amount of blood matting the hair and spreading across the concrete floor, there were still signs of life.
There had been silence from his ear piece for several minutes now, and Cooper knew he’d lost contact. He pulled out his mobile, praying there’d be a signal. It wasn’t guaranteed, especially since he was below road level. But he was in luck for once. First he called for an ambulance, then he rang Fry’s number.
‘Diane, I’ve found Brian Mullen.’
‘Thank God. Is the child all right?’
‘No, listen. I said I’ve found Mullen. He’s unconscious — he looks as though he’s taken a bad blow to the head, and there’s quite a bit of blood. But he’s breathing all right. I’ve got an ambulance on its way.’
‘And Luanne?’
Cooper didn’t answer for a moment. He was staring at the long rows of looms, the gleaming wooden bobbins. White walls and dusty shelves, the flash of his Maglite reflected and multiplied like stars in the glass roof of the weaving shed. And, almost too far away, a distant doorway that must lead out of the mill to the goyt, where the deep channels drew water from the river.
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