Stephen Booth - Dying to Sin

By now, Fry knew where they were heading. It looked gaunt and eerie on the skyline, even in the darkness and shrouded in fog. Ruins like the keep of a medieval castle. Steel winding gear like a rusted scaffold. The site of the widows’ curse. It was Magpie Mine.

The prevailing colour was grey. A dead grey, cold and brooding. It didn’t quite conceal the landscape, but made it more mysterious and distant, transforming the bumps and hollows of the old mine workings into shapes that played with the imagination. Cooper could understand why his ancestors had filled this country with myths and legends, populated the darkness with ghosts. He could almost see those ghosts now, flitting across the fields in the fog.

They’d carried on past the entrance to Magpie Mine, leaving the lights of Elder’s Nissan turning into the picnic site. They knew where he was, and he surely hadn’t come all this way for no reason.

Cooper had turned off the engine of the Toyota and wound the window down to listen. There was no other traffic on the road, not within half a mile or so. Whether there was a vehicle already parked at the picnic site, they couldn’t tell without getting too close.

‘Are we going to have to call it off, Diane?’ he said.

‘No chance.’

‘We can’t drive any nearer. They’d hear us coming.’

‘Reverse into the mine entrance, and we’ll walk from there. Have you got a torch?’

Cooper produced two maglites from the glove compartment, and they got out of the car. He’d driven his car on to the verge, turning swathes of dead leaves to mush under his tyres. Fry slithered her way through them on to the gravel, and they began to walk back into the remains of the mine.

Of course, the gateway and the first few yards beyond it were a quagmire. Someone had chosen to avoid the rutted track and drive across the soft, uneven ground, churning even more ruts in the process. Cooper heard Fry cursing under her breath as she slipped and squelched, trying hard to make as little noise as she could.

Somewhere in the darkness, cattle were sleeping. Cooper could hear them breathing, so loud that they could have been right next to him. Fog had that peculiar effect — it muffled distant sounds, so that noises closer to hand seemed to be amplified.

‘Are you sure we should be doing this, Diane?’ he said.

‘Ben, for the past week people have been trying to push me to the sidelines of this enquiry. I’m not going to prove anyone right in their opinion of me by giving up now. I’m not going to give them the chance of saying that DS Fry packed up and went home because the weather was bad.’

Cooper couldn’t see her face properly, but he could hear the tension in her voice and he knew she was serious. This was important to her.

‘I understand,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Fry’s breath puffed out in clouds, mingling with the fog. ‘Now — are you with me, Ben? Or not?’

‘Of course I’m with you.’

As they picked their way carefully on to the site, the banging of corrugated-iron sheets met them again.

‘God, I wish someone would fix those loose sheets,’ whispered Fry, disturbed by the noise.

‘I think Elder’s car will be this way,’ said Cooper as they passed the front of the agent’s house. ‘Watch your step. There’s an underground flue that runs between the old winding engine and the chimney, and its roof has collapsed in places. Don’t fall into it.’

‘Thanks. I’ll try not to.’

They turned their torches off when they felt they were getting near where Elder had parked. Cooper tried to picture how the site had looked during daylight, orientating himself by the position of the main engine house, looming above him on its high mound. The top of the building, where the roof should have been, was high enough to be clear of the densest layer of fog. He could just make out the upper stonework, jagged and grey. The wheel of the winding gear appeared briefly in front of it, a steel cable glinting and dripping with moisture.

Just ahead were some abandoned pieces of machinery slowly rusting in the damp air. He remembered a small winching truck, its sides eaten away by corrosion, its tyres flat and sinking into the ground. There were iron hoppers and a huge cylindrical boiler, gradually being reduced to such a fragile state of ruin that they would crumble in the fingers.

‘Go carefully,’ said Cooper.

‘I already am.’

The far west of the site had contained the crushing circle and the washing floor. Here, heaps of crushed stone had been dumped, creating mountains of spoil that sheltered the mine from the adjoining fields and woods. One false step could be lethal, let alone the risk of creating a noisy cascade of stone.

‘It’s getting too dangerous,’ said Cooper. ‘Don’t you think so?’

‘I don’t know.’

Fry had begun to shiver. The damp and cold were insidious — they crept into your bones and clung to your clothes. No one in their right minds would be out here on a night like this, unless they had serious business.

‘What do you want to do, Diane?’

‘How far is it to the edge of the car park?’

‘Not more than a few yards now. It’s just past the slime ponds, where the route of the sough heads off towards the north.’

‘Oh, great.’

They moved on again, with Cooper paying as much attention to what might be going on around him as to where he was putting his feet. It was because of his lack of concentration that he was the one to stumble over a mine shaft and kick a scatter of small stones that rattled on the steel grille.

He looked up guiltily, expecting figures to appear from the fog. But the only shape he could see ahead was that of a lone, stunted tree, somehow struggling to survive between the spoil heaps. Its bare branches marked the outer perimeter of the mine.

Fry stood on a heap of stones and looked down at him.

‘Hurry up, Ben.’

They slid down the last few yards to the picnic area. But they were just in time to see tail lights disappearing back towards the road.

‘Damnation,’ said Fry.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Cooper. ‘That was my fault.’

‘No, we couldn’t have got here any quicker. It was a washout, after all. We should have called it off when you said, Ben.’

Cooper could hear the disappointment in her tone. Fry had been so sure that Elder was going to provide an important link that would hand her a breakthrough in this enquiry. He struggled to find something to say that would be supportive without provoking her to bite his head off. But he failed.

‘Oh, well. Back the way we came then, Diane?’

‘I suppose so. But we can use the torches now.’

As they walked back towards the invisible machinery and winding house, Fry began to curse. Maybe she found the fog liberating, felt freed by the fact that she couldn’t hear or see anyone. Cooper was trailing behind her, watching his step.

‘What a disaster,’ she said. ‘It’s one bloody disaster after another. Why am I wasting my life here?’

‘It isn’t that bad, Diane. Life can be fun, too.’

‘Fun? I’m nearly thirty years old, and I haven’t had sex for months.’

Cooper didn’t know what to say. He was gob-smacked — and not just in a surprised way, but in the way that felt as though his brain had shut down completely and he had no control over his vocal cords. His mouth fell open, and his eyes flickered nervously until they settled on a suggestion of movement behind the winding gear. But it was only a corner of the engine house, momentarily revealed through a gap in the fog.

‘Mmm, tumbleweed,’ said Fry.

Cooper cleared his throat. ‘Nearly thirty. Does that mean it’s your birthday soon?’

‘Next week.’ Fry sighed. ‘Yes, Christmas. I must have been some kind of miracle baby.’