The kill call bcadf-9

by Stephen Booth

  ‘I’ll come down with you,’ said Headon. ‘I’m more appropriately dressed.’

  Cooper waited at the bottom of the shaft while Headon joined him. There wasn’t much room for two people standing on the grille of the sump. The handle of a pump protruded from the wall, and Cooper shone his torch on it.

  ‘That hasn’t worked for years,’ said Headon. ‘None of them do, now. They always seemed to be the first thing to seize up.’

  ‘It worked the sump?’

  ‘That’s right. You filled the priming point there and pumped the handle. My God, you had to pump hard, though, if you had a wet post. There might have been three or four hours of pumping to be done on a full exercise. One of the lads reckoned once that each stroke of the pump shifted about half an egg cup of water.’

  ‘Well, the exercise kept you warm on a cold night,’ said Headon with a laugh over their heads.

  ‘Some posts suffered so much from water that their crews had to bail them out with a bucket lowered down the shaft on a rope. You can imagine how comfortable those places were.’

  In a cupboard was an Elsan toilet, like a big green metal can with a plastic seat, still permeated with that distinctive odour of the thick, blue chemical. On a shelf stood a brush and a tub of Glitto — whatever that was. A ventilation louvre stood partly open over the toilet.

  Headon opened a door still labelled with a ‘no smoking’ sign.

  ‘This is the monitoring room. And that’s it, really. A full tour of the facilities.’

  The room was so low that Cooper felt he ought to duck to avoid banging his head on the ceiling. A table and some drawers stood against the side wall, with a couple of folding chairs. Cabling ran along the wall and vanished upwards, through crumbling polystyrene tiles.

  ‘Seven feet wide and sixteen feet long. Like a giant coffin, we used to say.’

  When Cooper pointed his torch at the far wall, he saw two bunk beds, their mattresses still wrapped in damp plastic, with a second sliding ventilation panel over them. And Headon was right. That was pretty much it. Except for a smell of abandonment and neglect.

  ‘All the operational equipment was taken out, of course,’ said Headon. ‘On the wall there, you can see the fitting for the bomb-power indicator. The blast pipe was attached to a baffle assembly upstairs. And that hole in the table is where we had the fixed survey meter. That was the fallout radiation sensor, which measured the level of gamma radiation outside. The only other measuring equipment we had was the ground-zero indicator, and that was up top, too.’

  ‘What was that supposed to do?’

  ‘The GZI? It recorded the height and direction of a nuclear detonation, so we could report exactly where a bomb had gone off, and whether it was airburst or groundburst, which made a difference to the fallout.’

  ‘And that’s all you could do?’

  ‘It was a simple idea. The only trouble was, someone had to go outside to get the readings off it.’

  Cooper realized there was some rubber sheeting on the floor, squelching as his weight squeezed out the water.

  ‘That’s conveyor-belt rubber. It was donated by the National Coal Board some time in the eighties. That’s all the insulation we had, apart from the polystyrene ceiling tiles.’

  After only a few minutes, Cooper was glad to get back up into the daylight. He couldn’t imagine staying down there all night, with the hatch closed and nothing more than a dim six-watt bulb to see by. Let alone being trapped down there for the duration. Trapped inside for — what was it? — fourteen days, until it was considered safe to come out? You could go mad down there in fourteen days.

  ‘Seen enough?’ asked Falconer.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  He got clear and watched Falconer re-fix the padlocks and turn the Allen key in its slot.

  But even when the hatch was shut and locked again, Cooper still had the feeling that there was something he was missing.

  ‘Well, you finally meet a decent bloke, and he turns out to be a murderer,’ said Naomi Widdowson.

  Fry looked at her. ‘There’s something wrong with the logic of that sentence.’

  ‘Well, what I mean is… he seemed all right, anyway.’

  Naomi was being transferred from the custody suite at West Street to a cell on remand. Magistrates’ court would decide whether to bail her on Monday. She had been issued with her personal belongings at the desk and was waiting for the van to pull up in the yard.

  ‘He hasn’t been convicted yet,’ pointed out Fry. ‘In fact, he hasn’t even been charged.’

  ‘Yes, but you must be sure that he did it, right?’

  ‘We can’t comment on that,’ said Fry.

  ‘Like I said in my statement, Adrian went back to the huts when I left. I argued, but I couldn’t stop him. So if someone did Rawson in, then it must have been him, mustn’t it?’

  ‘It will be for a jury to decide.’

  Naomi shrugged. ‘I’m cutting my losses, anyway. Time to forget about him and move on, I think. Don’t you?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to make even the least effort to argue that he’s innocent?’

  ‘What? You expect me to stand by him? Act the loyal girlfriend for the newspapers? No way. Absolutely no bloody way. He took some money to do this, didn’t he? And he never even told me. Bastard.’

  ‘Did you want a share?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me, do you hear? As far as I was concerned, it was all an accident.’

  ‘An accident?’

  ‘I had no idea what he meant to do. He let me think he was just going along with the plan. In fact, he seemed to be really into it. Like that thing with the hunting horn. He said it would be a laugh.’ Naomi shook her head. ‘He was pretty useless at it, though. He’d only learned the one call.’

  ‘The kill call,’ said Fry.

  ‘If that’s what it was. I wouldn’t know.’

  Fry and Murfin watched in amazement as Naomi Widdowson walked away towards the van, accompanied by a prison escort officer.

  ‘Well, I’ve heard about women who care more for their horses than they do for people,’ said Murfin. ‘And I’ve just seen one.’

  ‘I’m not a big fan of horses,’ said Fry. ‘But, even so, I know how she feels.’

  That evening, in the CID room, Fry stood by the window. It was only a few minutes after six, but darkness was falling rapidly. Heavy clouds gathered in the sky to the west. More rain was on the way.

  She had been watching the pedestrians passing by on the pavement. There was nothing unusual about any of them. They were perfectly ordinary members of the public. A young woman in a smart grey business suit, talking on her mobile; a young couple carrying rucksacks, probably early tourists; a man with a dark beard and stained jeans; two girls with magenta hair and nose studs. Ordinary, innocent passers-by.

  But were they all so innocent? How many potential murderers were out there, walking the streets of Edendale? Well, wasn’t everyone a potential murderer, in the right circumstances? Or the wrong circumstances. Push any average person into a corner and most of them would cross the line, wouldn’t they?

  Fry thought so. The vast majority of these people hurrying by her now probably couldn’t imagine what those circumstances would be. But some of them would. A few might have a specific victim in mind right now. Who knew what fantasies were going on in their heads; violent scenarios playing out, involving a partner, a boss, or a motorist who had just given them the V-sign. Only a tiny minority of them would ever follow through on their fantasies, or act out a violent thought. But there was no way of telling who those individuals were. It might be the man with the beard. But it could just as easily be the young businesswoman, who might be plotting bloody vengeance as she chatted on her phone.

  Naomi Widdowson might, or might not, have intended Patrick Rawson to die. But she certainly had no regrets that it had happened. She had badly wanted a person’s death. Deborah Rawson had gone further than that.

  Fry knew there wer
e individuals in prison right now, serving life sentences for murder, who were every bit as ordinary as these passers-by on the streets of Edendale. She’d met some of them, and talked with them. They were people who had found themselves in the wrong circumstances, people who had crossed the line.

  She thought about what Angie had told her last night. In a smaller way, her sister had crossed a line at some time, too. But was it ever possible to cross back again?

  Cooper dropped David Headon and Keith Falconer back at the pub and bought them a drink for their time. He knew they’d enjoyed themselves, because it had been impossible to stop them talking all the way back to Edendale.

  When he left them, Cooper drove home in the dark, remembering that there would be no Randy to welcome him, and never would be again. Was that why he had subconsciously been seeking something to distract himself, an excuse to avoid going home? It was the sort of thing that he suspected of Diane Fry. But it was definitely disheartening to think that the flat would be so dark and silent, with Randy lying in his grave.

  He’d heard nothing from Fry since he left West Street, but he hoped for her sake that her interviews had led to a successful conclusion. His own interest in the Rawson enquiry had waned, and he wasn’t sure why. It was something to do with the ROC badge he’d found at Eden View, and with Michael Clay’s local connection. If Clay hadn’t been a member of the Edendale ROC post’s crew, why did he have the badge?

  As he crossed the lights and turned into Welbeck Street, Cooper thought about the stories Headon and Falconer had been telling him about the 1960s and the start of the Cold War. It was hard for him to imagine what people had gone through in those strange times. The 1960s weren’t so far in the past, yet they might as well be a chapter in a history book, for all he could understand of the world those young ROC observers had lived in.

  Come to think of it, he didn’t think it had even been covered in his Modern History lessons at school. The Cold War did get a mention, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War. But the preparations in Britain for life after a nuclear apocalypse? That had gone unremarked.

  Yet for many thousands of ordinary people it had been something right at the forefront of their lives. Any day, any night, they could have heard that rising and falling wail of the siren, following an Attack Warning Red, and know that they had only four minutes. Four minutes — to do what? To find some way to live, and to decide the way they wanted to die.

  When he thought about the present enquiry, Cooper felt as though they’d all been drawn off on a false trail, misled by a powerfully laid artificial scent. It seemed as though he and Fry had almost physically been following a trail of meat across the country, their noses close to the ground, sniffing the scent like a pack of hounds. But, like all hounds, they were easily mis-directed by a clever and experienced saboteur.

  For a moment, Cooper wondered what those big, purple steaks of horse meat that Fry had described actually smelled like.

  But he knew, of course. Like all meat, they would smell of blood.

  In their underground bunkers, the ROC observers would have been able to lock down the hatch and protect themselves against nuclear blasts and radioactive fallout. But there were some things you couldn’t close your door against. Time, death, the plague.

  The people of Eyam had done much the same thing when the Black Death hit their village, hadn’t they? Battened down the hatches, stayed indoors waiting out the storm, until the fallout cleared, emerging only to bury their dead. He imagined Mompesson’s parishioners peering out of their cottage windows, praying that it was safe, that the holocaust was finally over. But wondering, all the same, whose turn it was to die today.

  36

  Journal of 1968

  Well, then came the time for Les to die. He might have been number one, but he had to take his turn. Nature stepped in, struck him down with a heart attack. And I couldn’t say I was sorry.

  Since then, there have been some days when I would just go down there and think. For a while, we still had the folding chairs, the wooden cupboard, a set of drawers that came out of Les’s kitchen. Now and then, I would light one of the tommy cookers at the bottom of the shaft, though it would take twenty minutes to boil a kettle, the way it always did.

  For a few minutes, I’d sit and remember the foul air, the cold of the concrete that crept into flesh and bone. We wore two of everything back then, because once the cold got into your bones, you would never get warm again. There was always an icy draught across your feet as you sat there waiting for the messages, filling in the log, baling out the sump. The only thing you could do was go for a walk or run round upstairs. We were pretty numb by the end of the night.

  Of course, the pit was long since derelict and overgrown. When we were active, we were given an allowance to keep it tidy. Twenty-five pounds a year, I think it was. The grass wasn’t allowed to grow then, not a single weed or thistle was allowed.

  In the real old days, we spent our time watching the sky for rats. But it was all different when the 1960s came round. Instead of the sky, we had a concrete ceiling and a pair of metal-framed bunk beds. Some blokes sneaked in a comfy chair or two, curtains, or an office desk. Once we took down some carpet pieces. Years afterwards, they still lay there, half-rotted.

  I don’t know what would have happened if it had really all kicked off one time. I reckon it would have been a bit like musical chairs, a matter of luck who found themselves down below. We talked a lot about what would happen to our families. You wanted to be sure they were looked after, if you were one of the crew underground.

  But some of us never knew, were never entirely sure, whether we’d leave our wives and children when it came to it. Once you were down there, you might have to stay for a fortnight. Imagine waiting for the message to come — those three fatal words: Attack Warning Red. Then measuring the fireball over your own county, taking the elevation and bearing, waiting for the radioactive dust cloud to arrive. Attack Warning Black.

  And that meant the maroons. Three of them, of course. According to regulations, we were supposed to fire them, one after the other, to warn against nuclear fallout. Two bangs meant nothing; it was the third one that counted.

  So what about Jimmy and Les? Did they mean nothing? Was Shirley’s death the one that really mattered, the final thump and scream that changed the whole world? There are some situations where we have no regulations to follow, some questions that can only be answered from the heart.

  And here we are, forty years later… Did there have to be so many deaths to restore the balance? I thought there was just one, but I was wrong. There had to be another, and another.

  It’s funny, really funny, how everything happens in threes.

  37

  Sunday

  It had rained heavily again during the night. Below ground, the limestone caves of the White Peak would be flooding dangerously, water roaring through fissures and cracks like thunder, scouring another half a centimetre from the rock.

  Yet when the sun came out after heavy rain, the amount of colour in the landscape was stunning. On the main street of Eyam that Sunday morning, Cooper could detect a real feeling of spring in the air. He could smell it, and taste it, and even sense its warmth on his skin.

  Each year, it was becoming more difficult to judge when to expect this feeling. It seemed to come anywhere between the middle of January and April. That was climate change, he supposed. Hawthorns were in blossom in February instead of May, blackthorns had been flowering since the end of January. Once again, there had been no real winter.

  Cooper had passed an ancient lock-up garage with a collapsing roof. And here on the village green were the stocks, still intact — a reminder of the days when justice was not only harsh, but had to be publicly seen to be done.

  In this part of Eyam, there were no pavements or footpaths, doors opened directly on to the road. He could never resist peeking into the front windows that were so temptingly available to the passers-by. Didn’t other people do that?
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  He looked up at the sound of a car, but it passed him by, and he walked back down the road. He found himself standing in front of Plague Cottage again, where the Black Death had first arrived in Eyam. A massive stone lintel sat over the door of the cottage, pressing down on the frame, as if representing the great weight of history.

  ‘So this is Eyam. Sorry — Eem.’

  Fry was standing on the pavement a few feet away, not looking at him but at the houses. She was regarding them as if they were exhibits in a museum — which, in a way, they were.

  ‘I didn’t think you would come,’ he said.

  ‘It was touch and go. The washing and ironing nearly won.’

  Cooper smiled. He had been amazed when Fry agreed to come. He’d been expecting the usual rejection, the sharp response of someone who had far better things to do with her time than socialize with her colleagues, thank you very much. He didn’t know what had changed in her, to make her accept. But now she was here, he realized he had no proper plan. He’d only suggested Eyam because it seemed to have some relevance, a link to the one aspect of life they had in common.

  ‘And this is the Plague Cottage.’

  Fry looked at the green plaque with its gold lettering.

  Edward Cooper, aged four, died on the 22nd

  September 1665

  Jonathan Cooper, aged twelve, died on the 2nd

  October 1665

  Mary alone survived, but lost thirteen relatives.

  ‘Two brothers, who died within days of each other,’ said Fry.

  ‘They told us in school that the arrival of the Black Death was blamed on a miasma,’ said Cooper. ‘“Evil humours” drifting in the air. Women carried scented posies around to ward off the poisonous fumes, and men smoked pipes, hoping to protect themselves with tobacco smoke.’

  He felt no need of maps or tourist guides to find his way around Eyam now. It had a familiar feel to it already. As they walked, they passed interesting little alleyways, passages into back yards and stone-flagged ginnels. At one point an enormous stone water trough stood by the side of the lane, a trickle of water still issuing from a pipe in the wall, as it must have done for centuries.