Cooper parked the Toyota by a structure of rotting timbers like the skeleton of a beached ship. From the number of old car tyres lying around, he guessed it was the remains of a long-disused silage clamp.
Across the road a small group of ponies with long manes trotted eagerly to greet him as he climbed over the stile into their field. From here he had a view down a shallow valley to the HSE laboratories, with one building shaped like a flour mill gleaming a startling white in the sun. Beyond the buildings the little tower that people called Solomon’s Temple stood on the crest of a hill, overlooking the town of Buxton.
Further on a gate was fastened with a series of lengths of baler twine. It was probably a subtle deterrent for walkers, without quite making the path inaccessible.
A farmer appeared on a quad bike and entered the fields where sheep grazed on the fringes of the HSE testing grounds. When Cooper got closer the white building turned out to be a mysterious structure of scaffolding and pipes shrouded in white plastic sheeting, with a large tank standing next to it.
A few employees from the laboratories had taken the opportunity during their lunch break to stroll or jog along the roadway where a disused railway line had once run. They were still wearing their yellow high-vis jackets, as befitted employees of the Health and Safety Executive.
A few minutes ago he’d driven past a nursery in Harpur Hill village, where the children were out playing. They’d been wearing high-vis jackets identical to those the workers wore at the HSL. Health and safety got everywhere. Cooper could hear Gavin Murfin’s voice in his head. Elf ’n’ safety. You can’t argue with that. It was one of Murfin’s favourite sayings.
Just out of sight of the path a dead sheep had been dismembered on the hillside. He found severed leg bones, an almost intact spine and ribcage, a bloodied fleece and part of the skull. It could have been scavengers, arriving after the carcase had begun to soften and disarticulate. A fox perhaps, or a pair of crows. But you could never be sure.
Cooper passed a large concrete-lined watering hole for the cattle and sheep, formed into ledges to provide a safe footing for the animals when the water was low. And it was certainly low now. There were only a few inches lying below the final ledge. He could see glimpses of the muddy bottom, though most of the water was choked by weeds. A few chunks of limestone had fallen in, along with a rotting timber or two, and a rusted iron feeding trough.
And something else caught his eye. No more than a slight, flapping movement in the wind. It was a white plastic bag, one corner protruding above the muddy surface. If the water had been a fraction deeper, he would never have seen it.
Becky Hurst appeared at the top of the slope. Cooper signalled to her to join him and waited until she scrambled down.
‘What have you found?’ she said.
‘I’m not sure. Probably nothing.’ He looked up the slope. ‘Where’s Gavin?’
‘Having a quick sulk.’
‘And a snack?’
‘Probably. I didn’t wait to see. There’s only so much I can take.’
Cooper found a length of wood, hooked a handle of the plastic bag and fished it out of the water. When he prised it open he discovered some sodden clothing inside. Thrown away instead of being taken to a charity shop or disposed of properly?
He teased the clothing out and spread it on the ground. A crumpled shape turned out to be a woollen hat, with ear flaps and a Scandinavian design. He’d been right about the reindeer.
Something metallic rolled out of the hat on to the ground. It was a small LED torch. A tiny thing, but it would have provided a bright light, if its batteries hadn’t been submerged in water for the past four days.
‘Sandra Blair’s possessions,’ said Cooper.
‘Wow,’ said Hurst. ‘Why would someone take the trouble to dump them here? Why not leave them with the body?’
‘They probably handled them.’
‘So they were worried about fingerprints or DNA?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Do you reckon we’ll be able get anything from them?’
Cooper slipped the items into separate evidence bags. ‘Let’s hope so. It’s about our only break so far.’
‘You really think there’ll be another victim, Ben?’ asked Hurst.
He straightened up and looked out over the Harpur Hill testing grounds, with the remaining route of the old coffin road heading away across Axe Edge Moor. The breeze fluttered a scrap of wool on the dismembered body of the sheep. It seemed inevitable. As if there had to be a death before anyone could cross the Corpse Bridge.
‘I’m certain of it,’ he said.
Chris Thornton was shift supervisor at Deeplow Quarry that day, when the crusher jammed. He was standing outside the office, checking the time sheets and cursing one of the dump truck drivers who’d failed to turn up for work. As far as he was concerned the first sign of trouble was the screech of metal. It shrieked across the quarry above the rumble of engines and the crash of broken stone. Then an alarm sounded for a few seconds before somebody hit the button and stopped the motor.
‘What the hell was that?’
Thornton began to run up the roadway towards the quarry face, kicking up limestone dust and veering aside to avoid a truck manoeuvring to deposit its load in the bottom hopper. He could see a group of men in orange overalls and hard hats, who were slowly gathering around the crusher. Someone had climbed on to the inspection plate and was staring down into the belt mechanism. Then the worker straightened up and said something to the other men below, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
As Thornton covered the last hundred yards, the entire group turned to look at him. He read a mixture of shock and relief on their faces. He knew the reason for the relief – they’d just set eyes on the man who was going to take responsibility from their shoulders. He didn’t yet understand why they were looking so shocked.
In a moment, though, Chris Thornton would find out. Within the next few hours the whole of Derbyshire would know.
33
The road to Deeplow Quarry ran steeply down through neighbouring villages, carrying the telltale signs of quarrying. The unnaturally white surface of the carriageway and the crash barriers on every bend were the clues.
Ben Cooper knew that limestone lorries ground their way down this hill every day. No matter how well they were sheeted or how often their wheels were washed, they left their traces on the roads in the neighbourhood and reminded everyone of the quarry’s existence. The barriers were there to protect residents living directly in the path of the lorries. If the brakes failed as one of them descended the hill, it would turn into an uncontrollable twelve-ton missile capable of demolishing a house. It had happened only once in living memory. But that was once too often for the people whose properties had been damaged.
Most of the quarries in this area were run by large multinational companies now. The name on the sign at the entrance would usually be that of Tarmac, or Omya, or Lhoist. But Deeplow was one of the few that had survived the spread of the conglomerates. It remained a locally owned operation, thanks to a source of good quality limestone which enabled it to produce pure lime, and kept it productive and profitable.
It was also thanks, perhaps, to the existence of a loyal workforce – local people who’d worked at the quarry for generations and relied on its existence for their livelihood, much as the workers on the Knowle estate did. Those quarrymen didn’t want to see Deeplow swallowed up by a multinational with its headquarters in Switzerland or Mexico.
Cooper turned his Toyota into the quarry entrance. The crusher, where the stone was ground to a powder, was one of the most prominent buildings on the site.