Finally, he stood at the top of the tower, with its three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. It was so misty today that it was like a steady drizzle falling on him when he stood at the top of the tower. Spider’s webs in the hawthorn bushes had collected the moisture and shone like silver handkerchiefs draped between the branches.

Lowther looked over the parapet. Matlock Bath was below him, with the A6 and the Derwent snaking their way from the north beneath the crags of High Tor. Masson Hill and High Tor had split apart at some time. A fissure in the tor was a continuation of the same mineral vein that formed Masson Cave, which now lay on the opposite side of the valley. He could hear the traffic on the road, the clank of machinery working somewhere, a flock of jackdaws on the hill. Then the cables whirred into life as another set of cars began their descent.

The cable cars stopped automatically near the top of their climb, to allow visitors to admire the view and take photographs. He’d hung there himself on the way up, alone in his bubble high above the ground. Where to go next? The answer was too tempting. He’d imagined his cable car breaking loose and dropping towards the A6, the wind whistling through the sides as it fell, turning slowly in the air. The sound of the wind might drown out the voices. The impact with the ground might stop the world whirling round his head, scare away the colours and shapes that crept closer to the corners of his vision like spiders in his brain.

Southwards, he was looking at the dome of the Pavilion and the Fishpond Hotel. At the south end of the village, high among the trees, was Gulliver’s Kingdom, with its towers and turrets and the screams of children riding the switchback. That was where most of the voices came from. The voices of children. They were difficult for him to ignore, and even harder to understand.

If he put twenty pence in the telescope, he might be able to see right into the theme park. He might make out the pirate ship on Bourbon Street, or the singing frogs and a talking apple in the Palais Royale. Further away, there’d be the Rio Grande Train Ride chugging its way through fake cacti and replica Indians, and imitation vintage cars that ran on tracks, like trams. Kids didn’t need much to spark their imaginations, if they were young enough – if they hadn’t reached the age when they were taught to fear anything that wasn’t quite real.

He didn’t go to Gulliver’s Kingdom any more. He hadn’t been there for over three months, not since that day in July. But he could still picture himself wandering away from the Music House, through the Millennium Maze and across the Stepping Stones to reach Lilliput Land Castle. There was a mirror room in the castle. He loved the distortions there, enjoyed knowing that this was one place in the world where everyone saw a distorted version of reality, and not just him. He would stand looking at the fragmented images for a while, not focusing on any one detail, but letting the shapes blur and tremble on the edge of his vision as he swayed gently from side to side. Then he would move on, past the giant chess set to Fantasy Terrace.

They’d asked him to stop coming to Gulliver’s Kingdom. They said he frightened the children. But there was nothing to be frightened of, was there? His hallucinations were fully under control now. He could hold them in his hand and spin them, watching the light play on their colours, turning on their sound for as long as he wanted to listen, then turning them off again.

It was good to give himself a little glimpse into that world, knowing he had the power to switch it off whenever he liked. It was as if he possessed the key to a door that allowed him a glimpse of a strange, enticing universe. It was far too tempting not to take a peek now and then, wasn’t it?

Dr Sinclair had explained it was simply another way of seeing reality, and it was nothing to be frightened of. Well, as long as it was all under control, it was fine. And it was, right now. It was all under control.

33

By the station car park in Matlock Bath, a laurel hedge had dropped its big, black berries all over the path, where they’d been squashed by passing feet. No one picked these berries – well, not if they had any sense. Laurel berries looked very appealing, but they were poisonous.

‘We can go up on a cable car,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s a lot quicker.’

The alpine-style cable cars had replaced the zigzag paths up the hillside as the easiest way to get to the Heights of Abraham estate. The tower was visible on the summit near the cable-car station, its flag fluttering in the wind.

‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

Cooper laughed. He’d bumped into Kotsev on the way out of the office at West Street, and the Bulgarian had somehow tagged along, promising not to be in the way. Sergeant Fry had told him to make sure he behaved properly, he’d said.

‘It’s fine, Georgi. You’re not scared?’

‘No, no. It’s no problem.’

They climbed into one of the cars. It was big enough to hold six people, but it was a quiet day. The doors closed, and the cars rotated slowly before suddenly swinging out of the station, into the light. They immediately began to climb steeply up the cable, soaring high over the river and the rapidly dwindling traffic on the A6. The sides of the car were clear perspex from ceiling to floor level, so it was possible to look straight down at the ground, already hundreds of feet below and getting further away by the second.

‘Dyavol da go vzeme. Oh, God.’ Kotsev covered his eyes and gripped the edge of the seat tightly.

‘Are you sure heights aren’t a problem for you?’

‘I’ll be OK. OK, OK.’ He risked a peep through his fingers. ‘Mamka mu!’

By the time they had reached the highest point above the valley, Kotsev was sweating and breathing deeply to calm himself. This was the point on the journey where the cars slowed down and hung stationary for a minute or two, high above the valley floor.

‘Are we broken?’ said Kotsev nervously. ‘Do we need rescue?’

But then the wheels whirred again, and the cars approached Masson Hill through an avenue of trees as the cable passed over the first gantry. From there, it was an easy coast in, past the base of the stone tower to the hilltop station.

‘You can look now,’ said Cooper.

Kotsev took his hand away and opened his eyes. ‘Yes, OK. It was a little too high.’

Fry found Jed Skinner in the garage at the distribution centre outside Edendale, where he worked as a mechanic. He was wearing disposable gloves like a scenes of crime officer as he worked on the engine of a large van. No more dirty rags and oily hands for car mechanics these days, then. Gavin Murfin had been exaggerating.

‘Do you happen to know where your friend Brian Mullen is right now?’ asked Fry when they’d taken him into the supervisor’s office.

‘He’s staying with his parents-in-law. They live at Darley Dale.’

‘He’s not there any more.’

‘Oh?’

‘When were you last in contact with him?’

‘Yesterday. They wouldn’t let me visit him while he was in hospital, but Brian rang me yesterday afternoon to say he was out. He was pretty fed up, so I went to see him in the evening.’

‘At Darley Dale?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything to you about leaving to stay somewhere else?’

‘No, not a thing.’

‘You live at Lowbridge, don’t you, Mr Skinner?’

‘Yes, but you won’t find Brian there. He could have come and stayed with me, if he’d asked, because we’re mates. But he didn’t ask.’

‘All right.’

‘Phone my wife if you don’t believe me.’

‘We might do that,’ said Fry.

Skinner gazed out of the window of the office at a truck being backed out, its reversing alarm echoing inside the garage.