Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

But no such luck in this case. It was like delving back into the Stone Age.

Fry hesitated. Perhaps she should get the name checked out by the current HOLMES team anyway, and see if something came up.

She went through the files one last time, flicking through the questionnaires and statements again, looking now not for the name Page, but just for a boy of the right age. There was Simon Quinn, of course — himself now with a new identity. In his case, there had been no real need to change his name except for a desire to put the events at Pindale Road in the past.

Finally, she came to a halt. Apart from Simon, there appeared to have been only one other fifteen-year-old youth in the immediate area. A youth called Alan. He was Raymond and Carol Proctor’s son.

‘My God, why has nobody mentioned him ?’

Fry hardly knew where to start. The phone book showed no Alan Proctor anywhere in the Hope Valley; the electoral roll had no one by that name either, and certainly not living at Wingate Lees caravan park with Ray and Connie.

She reached for the phone. She really didn’t want to have to speak to Raymond Proctor right now, but there was no choice. Alan Proctor was what she’d been looking for — a missing piece in the equation.

Then Fry stopped and withdrew her hand. No, he wasn’t missing at all, just there in a different form, a man who had adapted his identity. She was quite certain that Alan Proctor and Alistair Page were one and the same person.

But before she could figure out exactly what that meant, Gavin Murfin stuck his head round the door.

‘Diane, are you coming?’

Fry stared at him. ‘Where?’

‘There’s been an alarm at one of the show caves in Castleton.’

‘Peak Cavern?’

‘No, Speedwell. The troops are all revved up to go. They think it could be Mansell Quinn.’

The lights ended at the last cottage, and the rest of the path was in darkness. As Ben Cooper reached the head of the gorge, with the streaked cliffs towering above him, he couldn’t help tilting his head to look up. A cluster of spindly trees on the edge of the cliff framed one of the brightest stars in the sky.

By the time he stood at the gates of the cavern, he could hear water dripping raggedly on to the roof of the ticket booth inside. The concrete floor was damp where the water gathered and ran away to join the stream further down the gorge.

Cooper felt very small standing at the entrance to the cavern. The outer gates were black wrought iron, topped with spikes. A steel mesh fence on either side was backed with thick rushes and strung with barbed wire, and it ran down into the stream bed to meet the wall of the cliff. Not an easy prospect for climbing over.

The constant chattering of the jackdaws overhead had begun to resemble the cry of seagulls at the seaside. The sound had that same harsh, high-pitched quality.

Cooper jumped as a stone dropped from the cliff and thudded on a wooden table between the ticket booth and the ropemakers’ house. Maybe the stone had been dislodged from a ledge by one of the jackdaws. Perhaps the cliff face was even more dangerous than it looked.

Looking at the black mouth of the cavern, Cooper knew it must have been a perfect place for outlaws. Who would venture into those depths to face them? Who’d want to leave the daylight far behind and pass along the stream bed, feeling that change in the air on the descent into the Devil’s Dining Room? By flickering candlelight, they’d have seen the stalactites like black hooks in the roof of the chamber, and watched shadowy shapes moving in the walls as the River Styx rushed far below.

He shook his head. No one who was superstitious or claustrophobic would dream of entering. But Cock Lorrel and his outlaws had been beyond the normal bounds of society, associated in the imagination with the Devil, and with every evil practice that people could think of — including cannibalism.

That reputation must have been relished by the gypsies and tinkers who’d come to the cavern each year for the Beggars’ Banquet. In fact, they had probably cultivated the myth, knowing it would ensure they’d be left alone.

A deep rumbling he’d been hearing came closer, and Cooper saw lightning over Castleton. He touched the handle of the iron gates. There should have been a chain and padlock, but the gates swung open easily at his touch. He could see several footprints at the top of the first terrace, where water running from the cliff face and splashing off the ticket booth had softened the surface.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘There’s no way I’m going in there again. Not on my own, in the dark.’

He fingered his phone, remembering that he’d have to walk all the back into the village to get a signal, or talk his way into someone’s house.

Cooper was about to turn away from the gates, but stopped. The last shreds of light from the lamps on the path reached a few feet past the ticket booth before being swallowed up in the blackness of the cavern. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the shapes of the abandoned rope-makers’ equipment on the terraces — the sledges and winders, and the jack with its rotating hooks.

And a few yards along the top terrace, he could see a human figure, motionless, slumped over one of the pulley-poles.

He pulled out his torch and shone it on the figure, illuminating a hunched back in a dark jacket, and legs that dragged on the floor at an unnatural angle. It hung on the edge of the darkness that led to the Devil’s Dining Room, and he knew he was looking at no one alive.

Carefully, Cooper moved over the terrace towards it. He touched the shoulder, already feeling a prickle of apprehension from the knowledge that something wasn’t right. His hand rested on the dusty fabric, and sank in. His fingers pushed into the shoulder as if it had been reduced to shreds of straw. The figure sagged and slipped sideways. Dust fell out of its sleeves, and a pale, shapeless face rolled towards him, painted eyes staring past him towards the soot-blackened roof.

Somewhere in the darkness of the cavern, Cooper heard a metallic scrape, the drawing back of a powerful spring.

‘Put down the torch and turn round,’ said a voice. ‘Or you’re as dead as that dummy.’

Outside Speedwell Cavern, Diane Fry could see the road that ran up into Winnats Pass. The sides of the pass certainly looked a peculiar shape, but no doubt there was some sound geological reason for that. Coral reefs and tropical lagoons, indeed.

Ben Cooper had also told her a story about the old A625 being closed by landslips from Mam Tor. She’d found it hard to believe, having spent most of her life among roads that stayed pretty much where they were put. But, from Speedwell, she could see the collapsed slopes of the hill, where the shale had been loosened by the vast amounts of water that fell in these parts. It was obvious even to her that thousands of tons of rock had slithered down into the valley, carrying the road with it, ripping up yards of tarmacked surface as if it had been so much black crepe paper.

A member of staff was waiting for them in a room at the top of a steep flight of steps. He made them put on white safety helmets from a heap on a table.

‘Was it you who called in?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘And what’s your name, sir?’

‘Page.’

‘Mr Alistair Page?’

‘That’s right.’

Fry studied him for a moment.

‘I’d like to talk to you later, Mr Page,’ she said.

A guide took them down the steps, which ran back under the road, descending steeply into the hillside. The arched roof was low, as if constructed with small men in mind. Fry found it impossible to get into her stride as she went down. She had to take the steps one at a time for fear of losing her balance and pitching headlong to the bottom, where even her hard hat might not save her. Behind her, Gavin Murfin clutched cautiously at the handrail, which meant he had to stoop rather than walk in the middle of the steps where the roof was high enough to stand upright.