So the old coffin road that once ran across this part of the countryside had gone, the ground ripped up and excavated, the route switched to the south.

‘It’s mad,’ said Chris Thornton, taking them into the Portakabin he used as an office. ‘I mean, why would anyone do something like this?’

‘We don’t know, sir.’

‘Although I suppose it could have been worse. There have been a couple of bodies—’

‘Yes. But nothing for you to worry about.’

‘There was one at Pilsbury, which isn’t very far away from here. Do you know who it was yet?’

‘We haven’t released the victim’s identity at this stage.’

Thornton removed his hard hat and ran a hand across the top of his head, making his hair stand up as if he’d just received an electric shock.

‘Well, someone obviously got on to the site and did this. It scared some of the blokes to death. They thought it was real at first. The older ones can be a bit superstitious, you know.’

‘I understand.’

‘Anyway, it’s in here,’ said Thornton. ‘I suppose you’ll want it.’

He opened the door of a storeroom for Cooper to look in. The object had been ripped to shreds by the machinery. One of the legs was missing and the head hung from the neck by a few threads. Rips ran right up the plump torso. It was covered in white dust and Cooper coughed as he brushed some of it from the face.

There was no mistaking it, though. He could even take a good guess at who had made it. It was almost an exact copy of the Corpse Bridge dummy. But this time the effigy of Earl Manby had been through the crusher.

‘Could it have been one of your own employees who did this?’ asked Cooper.

‘I’d be surprised,’ said Thornton. ‘About a hundred people work here at Deeplow. But they’re like a family. Some of their jobs have been passed down from father to son, the way it’s always been.’

A siren went off – the first blast a long one, giving a two-minute warning of firing. Outside, near the quarry face, the blasting engineer had his det-line and detonator with two buttons like a simplified TV remote. The blasts followed each other within milliseconds. That vibration would be felt down in the valley.

‘What do you use for your explosives, Mr Thornton?’ asked Cooper.

‘It’s a coarse mixture of ammonium nitrate pellets and diesel fuel.’

Cooper nodded. ‘Do you happen to have any missing?’

Thornton went pale and dropped his hard hat on the desk with a thud. ‘We haven’t reported it yet,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’

When Cooper went to report to Detective Superintendent Branagh at West Street, they were joined in Branagh’s office by DI Walker. The superintendent was clearly unhappy with the new development.

‘We’re waiting for one more,’ said Branagh. ‘But you can give us the outline, Cooper.’

But Cooper had no sooner begun to tell his story, than the door opened after a brief knock, and Diane Fry came in.

‘Sorry I’m late, ma’am,’ said Fry.

The superintendent just waved a hand. ‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘Carry on, Cooper.’

Fry seemed to listen impatiently. Out of the corner of his eye, Cooper was aware of her fidgeting and leaning forward as if about to interrupt. It didn’t help his temper. When Cooper had finished, Fry was the first to react.

‘Explosives?’ she said. ‘And what do you think their target might be?’

Cooper turned to her. ‘Well, what do you think? An effigy of Earl Manby is found hanging from a noose, curses are packed into a witch ball with the Manbys’ eagle’s head emblem, an anonymous letter is received about death, and acts of vandalism are committed at the family chapel. Then we find a note arranging a meeting at the Grandfather Oak at one o’clock in the morning.’

‘You mean the target could be Knowle Abbey itself?’ said Branagh, calmly intervening.

‘Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what I mean.’

‘That would be a pretty dramatic statement.’

‘I’ll say.’

Yes, dramatic hardly covered it. According to what Mr Thornton had told him at the quarry, in the brief instant of an explosive detonation, the pressure could reach more than three million pounds per square inch. The detonation front travelled at twenty thousand miles per hour, with temperatures of up to five thousand degrees Celsius. The shockwave shattered rock by exceeding its compressive strength.

Cooper tried to imagine what kind of damage that would cause to the crumbling façades and sagging walls of Knowle Abbey, with its wooden floors and rooms packed full of antique furniture and dusty specimen cases. He tried, but failed. The devastation was beyond imagining.

Even worse was the possible fate of the earl and his family, not to mention the scores of staff and any visitors who happened to be enjoying the tour at the time of an attack.

‘It would be impossible to do an efficient job, of course,’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s good news?’

‘In a quarry, blasting is only carried out after laser equipment is used to survey the rock face. The surveyor has a computer program to calculate the most effective blasting plan, drill positions, the firing sequence. They might not cause much damage at Knowle Abbey. Unless someone knows what he’s doing.’

‘We won’t be able to keep this one quiet,’ said Branagh. ‘Too many of the workers at Deeplow Quarry know about it. It will be all around the area by now. All over the county.’

‘Agreed, ma’am.’

‘Well, one thing is obvious,’ she said. ‘We’d better make sure extra security precautions are being taken at Knowle Abbey. If some disaster happens that we had warning of, then it would be all of us being fed through the crusher.’

That was all very well. But how did you ensure the security of a place like Knowle Abbey? It seemed an unanswerable question as Ben Cooper and Diane Fry drove once again through the ornate gates and into the sprawling parkland towards the abbey.

There were hundreds of acres to cover, much of the landscape hidden by plantations of trees. There were so many buildings ancillary to the abbey – the restaurant, the craft centre, the gift shop, all the offices in the coach-house block. And then the abbey itself, vast and rambling, at least three storeys high, with attic rooms in the roof space and probably cellars under the servants’ quarters. How many rooms would that be? Cooper hardly dared to think.

There was only one practical solution, the one he’d come away with from the meeting.

‘Your friend Ms Burns isn’t going to like this at all,’ said Fry as they pulled on to the gravel by the estate office.

‘I know,’ said Cooper. Then he added: ‘But she’s not my friend.’

‘Everyone is your friend. Or, at least, you think they are.’

Cooper shook his head at her jibe, but didn’t feel resentment. Over the years he’d concluded that Fry did this as naturally as breathing. She didn’t mean any personal animosity. In fact, she might regard it as a normal form of small talk.

‘Let’s see if we can get a look at their overall set-up anyway,’ he said.

‘I can’t wait.’

34

The more eccentric members of the Manby family had amassed a vast collection of hidden treasures at Knowle Abbey. Dozens of rooms contained an eclectic accumulation of exotic artefacts and souvenirs of foreign expeditions, as well as antique objects. Some of them might have been fashionable or interesting at the time, supposed Cooper. There were stuffed marmosets and narwhal horns, mechanical toys and African tribal masks, not to mention a host of other mysterious, dusty objects whose purpose had long since been forgotten.

He remembered that a few years ago the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had cleared out their attics at Chatsworth House. They raised almost six and a half million pounds from the sale of valuable antiques and curiosities like the 6th Duke’s Russian sleigh and alabaster Borghese table. But no one would pay a fiver for this lot at Knowle Abbey. Even the seediest antique shop in Edendale would give it a pass. There were cases of crumbling butterflies and semi-precious stones, toy soldiers and porcelain dolls, stuffed antelope heads and sporting prints.