The Arsenic Labyrinth

by Martin Edwards

  He closed his eyes, as if raising his voice had exhausted him. Or perhaps he was simply brooding in silence. Hannah coughed, wanting to get back to the point.

  ‘The Arsenic Labyrinth?’ she prompted.

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter,’ he murmured. ‘These tales of the past, handed down through the generations. The sophisticates who live in our towns and cities have no truck with the tales and traditions of the countryside. Why should they, when they have broad minds and broadband? England’s green and pleasant land is an irrelevance, fast being submerged by cheap houses and shopping malls. But it wasn’t always thus, Chief Inspector. Once upon a time, folk recognised the need for balance between progress and preservation of the past. That was what George Inchmore never understood. His folly led to his downfall and that of his family.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He heaved himself upright in his chair. ‘Many legends are associated with mining in the fells, Chief Inspector. Think of Simon’s Nick, by the Levens Water cascade, named after a Cumbrian Faust who sold his soul for riches in copper. Or the Knockers, little goblins whose tapping was supposed to direct miners towards the profitable ore. They kept quiet at Mispickel Scar, even when a company set up by Quakers dug for copper in the hillside. Different firms tried their luck, until a roof collapsed and killed a couple of men.’

  ‘Was that when the mines were abandoned?’

  He nodded. ‘Succeeding generations spoke of a jinx upon Mispickel Scar and those who ventured there. Clifford Inchmore was a prudent man who kept a safe distance, but his son thought he knew better. My grandfather warned him that he was deluding himself if he thought he would ever be able to compete with the Cornish arsenic traders. George being George, that made him all the more determined to proceed. He persuaded himself that my grandfather was motivated by envy rather than entrepreneurial wisdom.’

  ‘And George’s failure lent credence to talk of the curse?’

  Alban nodded. ‘In the nineteenth century, arsenic was associated in the popular imagination with malice and murder. Rumour had it that the land in the vicinity of the labyrinth was poisoned. When the works closed, George ordered his few remaining employees to raze the buildings to the ground. A cathartic act of destruction, but it availed him naught. His business was declared insolvent a fortnight later. My grandfather was on hand to buy up the surviving equipment for scrap prices.’

  He slumped back in the leather chair and breathed out. Telling the story had drained him, but a mischievous smile danced on the old dry lips.

  ‘One man’s curse, I suppose, is another man’s good fortune.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The mood up on Mispickel Scar reminded Hannah of a school trip. She’d aimed to keep numbers down, with a group of specialists and a helicopter on stand-by in case they found something, but there were still a dozen men and women at the search site, plus a couple of uniformed bobbies policing a cordon whose job was to turn away walkers who fancied sightseeing. With so many outside agencies involved, there were several people she’d not worked with before and although their demeanour was fiercely professional, she sensed excitement fizzing beneath the surface. This was something out of the ordinary, and anticipation sweetened the air. It wasn’t often that you had the chance to work with a crime scene team in a place so wild and remote, hunting for a hidden body. Nothing to do with disrespect for the dead, everything to do with being passionate about what you did. They were ready for a long day out in the cold and had packed their kit and brought along drinks and sandwiches. If nothing turned up, there was bound to be disappointment; it was only human nature.

  Hannah had briefed the team at first light, everyone chipping in with their own particular bits of expertise. Although it could not be seen from the Arsenic Labyrinth, a mobile command unit – an articulated lorry with a small office on the back – had now been set up at the point where the track gave way to terrain impossible to drive over. She could conduct on-site briefings there, but it wasn’t the nerve centre. The incident room had to be based at the station, despite its remoteness from the Scar, because they needed a link straight into the police network computer – as well as a decent canteen.

  Already the hours devoted to risk assessment and detailed preparation were paying off. Sooner than she’d dared to hope, after initial video and still photography of the site, the blockages at the access points to the two shafts were cleared and the CSIs were fiddling with battery-powered fluorescent lights to facilitate camera work underground.

  By a happy chance, both the CSIs were not only rope-trained but volunteer members of the Yewdale Fells Mountain Rescue Team. The senior, a ginger-haired Mancunian called Billy, was also a talented photographer whose wife had a small gallery where his pictures were exhibited. For him, taking shots of sleepy tarns and rolling fells made a change from the day job of recording tyre impressions, footprints and teeth marks on bruised bodies. When they broke for coffee, he wandered over and gave Hannah a rueful smile.

  ‘What’s the betting we find some bugger’s chucked a dead sheep down the hole?’

  ‘Evens?’

  ‘I guess. Reckon we’ll strike lucky?’

  She shrugged, unsure about lucky. If Emma’s body had been lying under the Arsenic Labyrinth for the past ten years, there wouldn’t be much of it left. Even if she’d been buried deep enough to escape the attention of rats and foxes, hungry little insects would have had time to do a good deal of damage.

  He turned back to the shaft. ‘Least we’ve got a nice day for it.’

  Yes, it might be freezing, but the sky was clear and blue. The last thing they needed was mist or a heavy fall of snow and the forecast for the next twenty-four hours was encouraging, though Hannah knew better than to rely on it. In these parts, you might need sunglasses in one valley and a waterproof coat and wellies in the next. She spared a few words for a lad with a clipboard whose task was to monitor comings and goings at the scene before spending a few minutes at the cordon. A handful of curious walkers had already been turned away. A drop of sunshine and, even in brass monkey weather, the diehard walkers headed for the fells. Word of the police activity was trickling through the village and before long Candace, the press officer, would be besieged by enquiries. She walked back to the Scar, where Les was blowing his nose and looking a picture of misery.

  ‘Nasty cold you’ve got there.’ She beamed. ‘Might be worth trying those Hopi ear candles, after all.’

  ‘A drop of Scotch tonight is the only cure I need.’ He interrupted himself with a sneeze so loud Hannah feared it might start a fresh landslide. ‘None of that holistic garbage. Hey up, Billy’s waving us over.’

  Billy was checking the pictures from the camera that he and his colleague had lowered down the shaft nearest the labyrinth. One glance at his pink face told them all they needed to know.

  ‘Looks like we’ve found something.’

  Guy was curious to learn how Tony Di Venuto had used the information that Emma was buried beneath the labyrinth. Of course, it would be foolish to walk up through the Coppermines Valley to Mispickel to see if anyone was undertaking a search. Guy was too astute to give himself away like that. But he expected to read something in the Post at any time – after all, exclusives were lifeblood for any journalist, and they didn’t come better than this one – and he went on a pilgrimage to the convenience store to buy a copy and see if there was any further mention of Emma.

  Strolling from the checkout, he rustled through the pages. Not a word. He would, if pressed, have confessed to disappointment that the story had vanished from the newspaper as completely as – well, Emma herself. What were the police playing at? He was sure that he’d convinced Di Venuto that he knew what he was talking about.

  He was on his way out of the shop when the elderly woman in front of him stopped short to greet another old crone whose bright auburn wig merely emphasised the leathery texture of her skin.

  ‘Rita, have you heard? There’s a lot of police and such-like up by Mispick
el Scar. Sally Baines’ boy reckons they’re looking for a body.’

  Guy had to restrain himself from punching the air and shouting, ‘Yes!’ He loved nothing better than to be taken seriously and Tony Di Venuto must have taken him very seriously indeed. If they were searching around the labyrinth, it surely would not take long to find Emma Bestwick’s remains. And then the wretched Karen would learn the truth of her sister’s fate and a sad chapter in the life of their family would at last come to a conclusion. Closure for Karen – and for Guy too.

  There would be not much left of Emma other than a hunched-up skeleton. The calamity that had bound the two of them together all these years was wretched luck. Thank God he’d had the guts to call the journalist and set the record straight.

  ‘’Scuse me.’

  He was blocking the doorway. With voluble apologies, he stood aside to allow an old man with a bad cough to squeeze past and buy a packet of Silk Cut. Better be getting back, Sarah would be wondering where he’d got to. She’d become clingy, and this was starting to weary him.

  He stopped in front of an estate agent’s window. House prices were high enough to bring tears to the eyes of a first-time buyer. The Glimpse had a sizeable back garden, with trees beyond the boundary fence, and that ought to add a premium of a few thousand. Sarah lacked green fingers and there were bicycle tyres and old bricks lingering in the undergrowth. But all it needed was tender loving care. Sarah was sitting on a goldmine.

  A makeshift scaffold loomed over the shaft by the labyrinth. The site resembled an eighteenth-century place of execution, hidden away in the snow-dusted fells. The plan was to winch the body up once the CSIs had photographed it in situ and combed the subterranean crime scene for whatever trace evidence had survived the passage of time. When dealing with a ten-year-old corpse, Hannah preferred not to rely on a GP to certify death, and she’d lined up Grenville Jepson, Barrow-in-Furness’s answer to the late Bernard Spilsbury, to take charge of the post-mortem. No chance of dangling a consultant pathologist so eminent at the end of a rope – though one or two defence counsel would have loved to have him at their mercy – so the corpse would be transferred to the mortuary as soon as it had been disinterred.

  The operation was going to plan, but Hannah felt sombre rather than elated. Entering the presence of death always disturbed her. Get used to it, Ben Kind had warned her years ago, but although she’d developed a carapace of calm, in her heart she feared she never would.

  She had a coffee with the forensic entomologist, a jolly, red-haired woman who did all the talking. Impossible to share her enthusiasm for poring over insect eggs and larvae on rotting flesh, but it took all sorts. When she’d drained her cup, Hannah wandered towards the scaffold. The CSIs would take a couple more hours to recover the corpse. Even before they reached it, they needed to take pictures of the shaft, in the hope it might yield clues to what had happened. You never knew, perhaps whoever had shoved Emma into the hole had snagged a piece of clothing on a ledge of rock.

  Assuming it was Emma down there. Assuming that she’d been murdered, probably by the man who had phoned Tony Di Venuto. Though Hannah didn’t have much doubt.

  She moved her shoulders up and down to relieve the tension in her upper body. She was as keyed up as a callow DC on her first murder case, but to the rest of the team she needed to radiate calm authority. This was what she’d joined the police service for, the adrenaline rush of investigating serious crime. Although she’d risen fast through the ranks, promotion was a mixed blessing. It turned her into a manager when she still hankered after being a detective. For years she’d shared the view that cold case work was a cushy number, somewhere second-raters were put out to grass. But she was doing what she loved best, working in the thick of a criminal inquiry. In a live case, you had to depend on a DS to get a grip of the detail. The SIO had too much to do. Now she could take charge of the whole shooting match, and that was the way she liked it. Not out of control freakery, but because she preferred to take the rap for her own mistakes, not someone else’s.

  As for mistakes, should she have met up again with Daniel Kind? Her thoughts drifted from Mispickel Scar to the Café d’Art. She’d stayed longer than planned; when she’d checked her watch, she’d panicked that Marc would be fretting. She needn’t have worried; when she arrived home, he was absorbed in a novel he’d bought on behalf of a mail order customer in Hexham. If he lost sleep each time she was late, he’d have succumbed to insomnia long ago. She had no reason to feel guilty and of course she told him that she’d seen Daniel for a drink. Marc’s only question was whether Daniel had found out anything fresh about John Ruskin.

  She liked men who were intelligent and witty and didn’t just want to talk about themselves. Because he was Ben’s son, detective work fascinated Daniel, unlike Marc, who saw her job as an obstacle to meals on the table at regular intervals and going out to a film or a concert without fear of interruption. He’d asked endless questions about the Emma Bestwick case and his intense curiosity was flattering. He was such a very good listener; she enjoyed capturing his attention. Seeing him hadn’t been wrong, but it wasn’t something to repeat too often. Her hands were full, juggling work and her relationship with Marc. She didn’t need any further complications in her life.

  Yet what could cause complications? She’d had a drink and a chat with the son of a former colleague, simple as that. Nothing secret or hole-in-corner, no spicy chat laced with innuendo. All perfectly innocent and above board.

  Sarah extricated herself from a passionate embrace and said, ‘You’re in a very good humour all of a sudden.’

  ‘I’m always in a very good humour,’ Guy murmured, undoing the clips of her bra.

  ‘Not! You were pretty quiet before you went out to the shop.’

  They were sprawling on the sofa, scene of several enjoyable encounters over the last few days. He’d opened a bottle of Merlot and was in celebratory mood. With a couple of drinks inside her, she’d be only too willing to help him save his job with the financial conglomerate by taking out a second mortgage on the Glimpse. It wouldn’t be a purely altruistic gesture. Naturally, he’d explain that she was looking at a fifteen per cent a year minimum return over a mere eighteen months. You could buy an awful lot of black lingerie with that. To say nothing of a brand new car and a lick of paint for the newly hocked house.

  ‘Oh, I was thinking how nice it would be if I could help you find the money to enjoy life to the full.’

  ‘I don’t want money, Rob. People are what matter.’

  He pulled her to him and whispered what a wonderful woman she was. Half an hour later, when they were resting in each other’s arms, she shifted from under him and gazed into his eyes.

  ‘I was afraid you’d think I was only interested in you because you were a successful businessman.’

  This had not occurred to him; he flattered himself that a man with his personality and looks was quite a catch for any woman, let alone a Coniston landlady who’d seen better days. But it didn’t trouble him; she’d initiated a line of conversation bursting with promise.

  ‘Just as well that wasn’t the reason. If I don’t set up a new deal soon, I’ll be kissing goodbye to my annual bonus as well as the job.’ He hesitated. ‘As a matter of fact … no, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes?’ She pulled him closer. ‘Tell me!’

  He sighed. ‘I suppose it can’t do any harm. In fact, it would do you a great deal of good in the long run. But I don’t think …’

  ‘Darling. We mustn’t keep anything from each other, we agreed, remember? Tell me!’

  He was a model of reluctance. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘Of course I insist.’

  It took him less than five minutes to explain. He thought that no woman had ever paid him such close attention as he described the complexities of the scheme that would save his career and net her a handsome profit into the bargain. She wasn’t simply admiring his fine profile or smooth chest, she was fascinated by his mastery of
high finance.

  ‘Oh, Rob, it sounds so marvellous. If only I could help.’

  ‘I do understand, it’s a lot to ask, but thank goodness there’s no risk because of the money-back guarantee. This is one scheme that is literally safer than houses. If you were willing to …’

  ‘No.’ Her face was the same beetroot shade as the carpet. ‘It’s not a question of willingness. I’d walk through fire if you asked me to, you know that already. It’s just the cash that I can’t manage.’

  He gave her nipple a playful tweak. ‘You’d be surprised. Lenders are falling over themselves to make advances to trustworthy borrowers. Property inflation in Cumbria has shot through …’

  ‘Rob, listen to me.’ She dipped her head in shame. ‘It’s not as simple as that. You see, I have a confession to make.’

  Clouds masked the sun, the temperature was slipping. Hannah called at the command unit, talking to Candace from the press office, fine-tuning their media strategy in anticipation of the moment when the body was lifted out of the ground. Lauren Self’s PA had been on the phone twice already, wanting to know the best time for a photo-opportunity. Emma could not be named until all the formalities of identification were complete, although after ten years in an ancient mine shaft, there wouldn’t be much to identify her by. It was wet down there, so the corpse would not be mummified. Her insides would be eaten away and there wouldn’t be much skin left covering the skeleton, though some might remain, trapped in the cuffs of her jacket. Probably her leather walking boots would still contain her feet.