Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

‘Yes, Diane.’

But Cooper didn’t think that was right. For a moment, his father had walked back into his life, to remind him that he was dealing with people, and not with a sequence of numbers and chromosome locations on a DNA profile. He was in no doubt that it was Sergeant Joe Cooper himself who’d crept up behind him a second ago and breathed that icy breath on the back of his neck. His father had sent him a message with a single cold touch, an unspoken word in his ear.

Cooper watched Simon and Andrea Lowe standing together for a moment by the car. They weren’t touching or speaking, just looking into each other’s faces, communicating the way you could with a sibling. Then they threw their arms around each other and hugged so tightly it must have been painful.

At last they got into the car, reversed carefully among the police vehicles, and turned out on to the road towards Edendale. Simon drove a little too fast, as if afraid he might not get a second chance, after all, if he didn’t get away soon.

Cooper had heard of a Chinese religion called Taoism. Its members believed you were born containing all the breath you’d ever possess in your life. For them, every exhalation was a step nearer death. When you used up your last breath, there was no more.

But Cooper had thought about it in the last few days, and he knew they were wrong about that. There was always one last breath.

Speedwell Cavern, 10 September 2004

It was towards the end of the summer when a party of retired college teachers from Virginia climbed slowly down the steps at Speedwell Cavern to take the underground boat ride.

When they disembarked on to the platform above the Bottomless Pit, they straightened their safety helmets and looked up into the roof of the cavern hundreds of feet above their heads, where the remains of primitive wooden ladders still protruded from the rock.

Then they gazed down into the green water far below as the guide told them about the lead miners who’d hurled tons of rock into it. They listened politely to his stories about the Devil, who the miners believed had lived at the bottom of the lake, and about the giant white serpent that was supposed to emerge from the water and roam the passages, seeking human prey.

‘And, of course, it’s the high lead content of the rock that gives the water its green colour,’ he said.

The guide was about to turn off the lights and lead his party back to the boat. But one visitor had been leaning over the parapet and staring closely at the water. He was an old physics professor, and he had a question.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘I understand it’s the lead that makes the water green. But what causes the bubbles?’

Puzzled, the guide looked over the parapet. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The bubbles, see? Oh, and another thing — the smell?’

The guide wasn’t a man to be frightened by his own stories of giant white serpents. But even he could see there was something in the lake seventy feet below. It was pale and bloated, and it almost shimmered in the lime-green water as bubbles of gas burst around it.

And one thing he was sure of. The thing was rising slowly to the surface, gradually re-emerging from the depths of the Bottomless Pit.