For the past twenty years, there had been no need for anyone to slog up the winding paths to reach the hilltop park at the north end of the village. Strings of white cable cars now rode high over the valley from a base station near the railway line, carrying visitors up to enjoy the play areas, the Treetops gift shop, the Hi Café and the Summit Bar. A grey stone tower was visible on the summit, a flag fluttering in the breeze.
The weather had been warm right through into October, which felt wrong in the Peak District. After another dry summer, the trees had burst into an explosion of yellows and golds. Where the turrets and battlements of Lilliput Land Castle had lurked among dense foliage all summer, now they were emerging slowly from a sea of reds and golds. Some of the other features of Gulliver’s Kingdom were being revealed, too, like the chairlift and the campanile on Fantasy Terrace.
Cooper could see the new indoor facility standing out prominently on the hillside. It was designed to stay open during the winter, and it housed everything from Wild West shoot-outs to an ice palace. Or so his nieces told him. He supposed he’d have to take them there one day, when he got some time off.
Turning left out of the aquarium, he called at the neighbouring properties, which happened to be the two villas housing B&Bs. There was a chance that Rose Shepherd had come into Matlock Bath to meet someone who was staying here, although there didn’t seem to be any reason why she should have killed time next door in that case.
Drawing a blank, he walked a bit further up North Parade, where he found another amusement centre and a shop selling hand-made chocolates, both of which were closed.
Across the road was the Jubilee Bridge – wooden planks and iron girders, with an old gas lamp on a central arch. It led across the river to a bandstand and the remains of a switchback. There were more wooded slopes lying above Lovers’ Walk. Their steepness called for erosion controls: log revetments, brush and board hurdles, a dead hedge. Here and there, sycamores and beeches had been felled, no doubt condemned because they weren’t native to Derbyshire.
An artist had set his easel up on the bridge, trying to capture the scene downriver towards the Pavilion, with trees reflected in the moving water. Cooper often came across painters, though usually in the summer. He had to admire the effort they put in, if only to carry their equipment from the car. But they were setting themselves a hopeless challenge. This landscape was constantly changing. No set of watercolours was going to preserve it on a canvas.
He noticed that Life in a Lens stood on the other side of the aquarium, with a Victorian tea room on the ground floor. This was his chance to call in and ask about the webcam.
When he came out a few minutes later, a school party was queuing to enter the mining museum further down the road. There were two cameras on the outside wall nearby, but they were focused on the entrance to Brody’s nightclub. When he was a teenager, Brody’s had been known to the local kids as ‘The Pav’, because it was located on the upper floor of the Pavilion, above the mining museum and the tourist information centre.
But where the heck was Gavin Murfin? Cooper stood by his Toyota for a while, looking up and down the street. Then he walked a few yards along South Parade, past the ice-cream parlour and the antiques centre to the corner, where he found that a science-fiction bookshop he remembered had closed down. He supposed it had been a mistake to let Gavin take the interview with the waitress at the tea rooms. The smell of fish and chips on the promenade was so inescapable that he must be giddy with hunger by now.
Finally, Cooper pulled out his phone and called Gavin’s number. Strangely, the ringing tone seemed to be echoed by a tune playing somewhere nearby. He turned and looked into the windows of the building behind him. There was Gavin, eating a choc ice. And waving.
‘OK, I did the waitress at the Riber Tea Rooms,’ said Murfin when Cooper got him away from his choc ice. ‘Nice lass, name of Tina. Get this – reckons she saw Rose Shepherd talking to two other people at a table in the café on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Wow, you got more than I did,’ said Cooper.
‘That’s why I thought I deserved a reward.’
‘What time was this, Gavin?’
‘Around two thirty, she thinks.’
‘That must have been after Miss Shepherd came out of the aquarium.’
Murfin used the tip of one finger to wipe a bit of chocolate from his front teeth. ‘I chatted Tina up a bit, and I got her to do her best with descriptions. But the tea rooms were full that afternoon. She did say the woman she recognized from the paper was wearing a dark jacket.’
‘That fits. What about the other two?’
‘Ah, there she was struggling a bit, poor lass. She says they’d come in earlier, a man and a woman. But she had no reason to take particular notice of them. The Shepherd woman came in about a quarter of an hour later, and she was on her own, which is more unusual. She ordered a coffee, paid for it, then took her time looking round, and went and sat at the couple’s table.’
‘Did she seem to know them?’
‘That’s what Tina’s not really sure about. There were no empty tables, so Miss Shepherd would have had to sit with someone, and she chose those two.’
‘Right. We don’t know why, though?’
‘Maybe because they looked the most harmless. All Tina can say is that when she took the coffee to the table, the three of them weren’t talking and the atmosphere seemed cool. But they did chat a bit later on. The couple left the café first, and Miss Shepherd went out right after them. The money for the couple’s bill was left on the table.’
Cooper unlocked the car. Standing at the kerb behind it was an entire family of bikers – mum, dad and two small children, all dressed in matching leathers and gathered round a pair of purple Suzukis.
‘Well, it’s something at least, Gavin,’ he said. ‘She must have come down into Matlock Bath for a reason.’
‘Oh, and I did a couple of shops,’ said Murfin.
‘Yes, the ice-cream parlour. I saw that.’
Murfin groaned theatrically. ‘You know, Ben, you’re getting as bad as Miss.’
‘Get in the car, Gavin. We’ve got to call at Masson Mill.’
Masson had been the world’s oldest working textile mill until production stopped fifteen years ago. Here, in the middle part of the Derwent Valley, was where industrial history had changed. It had all started for Sir Richard Arkwright at Cromford Mill, just downstream. But Masson was his great flagship.
Cooper couldn’t remember details of the innovations that led to Arkwright’s success, the industrial secrets German manufacturers had gone to great lengths to get hold of. But he could see how Arkwright’s status had risen purely by looking at the building. This mill hadn’t been built, but designed. Instead of a dark, cavernous shed, it was an edifice intended to impress. The three central bays were built out towards the road and decorated with half-moons of glass between Venetian-style windows. Above the windows stood a shuttered cupola, and Sir Richard’s name spelled out on the brickwork in proud capital letters.
One of the later extensions to the mill had been converted into a car park. Cooper drove up a ramp and parked on the roof near a side entrance to the shopping village. Over the wall, he could see the convex weir built to take advantage of an outcrop of rock on the opposite bank of the river. From there, the water ran into a goyt, the fast-flowing channel that had driven the mill’s waterwheels.
‘What are we looking for here, Ben?’
‘Eva Hooper. She runs a retail unit on the road level.’
Murfin opened the door into the shops. ‘Mmm, cakes.’
There were four open-plan retail levels, accessed from a central staircase like an old-fashioned department store. Each floor was divided into areas selling discount designer clothes, furniture, food, golf equipment. The mill clock was still on the wall at road level, but for some reason it had stopped at twelve noon. On the lowest level was a restaurant, lined with windows overlooking the river. A patch of brown scum had formed on the water, as if a few gallons of coffee had been spilled there.