Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

He climbed back up the steps to a heavy steel door set into the outer wall. It looked like the entrance to a tunnel that would lead to the base of the mill chimney. He supposed someone must once have had to crawl in there to clean out the flue. Cooper paused for a moment, trying to decide between several doors and a series of smaller rooms, cramped spaces after the length of the weaving shed.

The door he chose turned out to be the bobbin room. The floorboards squealed and moved under the pressure of his feet as he entered. It occurred to him that he could be the ghost of Arkwright himself, prowling the mill at night, tracking down a fugitive child apprentice.

One flick of his torch showed Cooper a room like nothing he’d ever seen before. It contained dozens of musty-smelling hessian sacks spilling bobbins on to the floor. There were wooden tubs full of bobbins, bobbins in drawers and hanging on the walls. And above his head there were hundreds more of them strung in bunches — a thick layer of bobbins hanging as if they’d grown from the ceiling, like a strange fungal growth or a thousand stalactites filling every available inch. There were all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours, and they rattled slightly in a breeze blowing from an open door. Cooper could feel the chill striking through the doorway, and knew this must be the passage that led outside to the goyt, and to the river.

He slipped through the door on to a wooden walkway over the water channel. This area was open to the air, filled with the noise of the river and the sensation of empty space all around and above him in the darkness. The water that had once driven the mill’s waterwheels still ran the turbines, and it flowed fast under the walkway here. He could hear its rush and feel the vibrations of the current.

But beyond the end rail was a stagnant basin. His torch picked out iron chains hanging from ancient pulleys, coated with dust and cobwebs. The chains disappeared into the murk, reaching down towards mysterious shapes that he barely glimpsed in the depths, metal structures with a forgotten purpose. Cooper shivered as he saw bits of dead vegetation floating on the surface. Even an adult might have difficulty in that water. Imagine getting tangled in the chains and dragged to the bottom.

His torchlight illuminated a warning sign. But was it the fast-flowing goyt it was warning of? Or the still, dark basin with its shadows below the surface?

Cooper turned sharply to the left, not sure what he was reacting to. His senses were confused by the adjustment from the silent interior of the mill to the noise outside. A series of explosions reminded him that the fireworks display was still going on over the village. The cascade of coloured light helped him to orientate himself. Beyond the goyt he could make out the bank of the river, and directly in front of him was an area of slippery concrete channels and sudden drops into black, lethal water.

It didn’t feel any safer out here than it had inside. Of course, he ought to let Fry know where he was. So Cooper tried his phone again. But he was down by the river now, with the vast bulk of the mill behind him and the limestone crags towering on both sides. He raised his phone to head height and moved it in a different direction. No signal.

The roar of the weir sounded much louder at night. Now that he was close to it, it almost drowned the crack and scream of the fireworks launching from High Tor. Cooper strained to listen for sounds of movement above the rush of water from the weir and the hum of the turbines in the mill. The only other noise he could hear was a tap-tap-tap against the side of the channel as a polystyrene cup bobbed on the surface of the water. Tap-tap-tap on the concrete walls.

He thought he heard a shout somewhere, a woman’s voice. But the words were incomprehensible. He was almost sure he saw a shadow flickering, and caught the rustle of a long skirt on concrete.

Then the tap-tap-tap became a clatter, the sudden sound of running footsteps. Cooper swung his torch, but he couldn’t tell which direction the footsteps were coming from. The flashes and crashing of the fireworks were too disorientating, the reflection of his Maglite off the dark water too confusing.

So he spun round too late and didn’t see the black shape that came at him out of the night, or the fists that smashed into him and knocked him off balance. He teetered for a moment on the concrete edge, drawing a breath to cry out. His torch dropped from his hand and plunged into the goyt with a loud splash. A second later, Cooper was following it. He plunged into the water, falling towards the light as it swirled and spun towards the muddy depths.

It seemed a long time before the light stopped falling, its beam swinging through the water to dazzle him. Cooper closed his eyes against the shock and the roar of water in his ears. He panicked when he realized he couldn’t tell which way was up, and he began to thrash his arms and legs. He seemed to hit something, or something hit him, he couldn’t tell which. The cold was already striking through to his soaking skin.

He opened his eyes again, and saw that the light was receding now, drawing away from him into the gloom. He seemed to be trapped by something, his clothes caught up on some heavy, rusty object under the water. He thought he must be sinking, and he thrashed harder. Just when he felt he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, his head suddenly burst clear of the water and he gasped in a deep, ragged mouthful of air.

Dazed, Cooper realized that the collar of his jacket was being gripped by someone, and he was being dragged vigorously towards the side of the channel.

A deep voice laughed close to his ear.

‘ Bezopasno li e pluvaneto tuk? Are you sure it’s safe to swim here?’

Sunday, 30 October

The following afternoon, Fry was sitting alone in the CID room at West Street. Everyone else who was on duty today had joined the search for Luanne Mullen. Most of them were expecting the divers of the underwater search team to have made a find by the time they’d finished dragging the channels of the mill goyt. Unless the child’s body had been swept out into the river and was miles away from Matlock Bath by now.

Fry was thinking of her conversation with Brian Mullen early that morning. Same hospital, different ward. A Mullen who looked sicker and paler than ever.

‘I always thought the adoption in Bulgaria was the wrong thing,’ Mullen had said to her. ‘I mean, I love Luanne to bits, and I wouldn’t have parted with her, once we’d got her. I couldn’t have taken her away from Lindsay. But I never thought it was right. It felt dodgy to me. I knew there’d be trouble. But Henry kept pushing and pushing, and Lindsay always went along with what he said.’

‘I see.’

‘It was all illegal, wasn’t it? False documents, and everything?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

Mullen had lain back, exhausted. ‘I’ve never been involved in anything illegal before. Never. I knew they’d catch up with us.’

‘Who?’

‘I never knew who they’d be exactly, but I was sure someone would come one day, to take Luanne back. It was like we were living on borrowed time. And once that Rose Shepherd turned up again, that was the last straw. But no one else could see what I was afraid of. They told me I was being stupid.’

‘Is that what you were having arguments with Lindsay about?’

‘No, we never had arguments, I told you. We disagreed about some things. But I was right, wasn’t I? They did come.’

‘Possibly. But you have no idea who these people might be?’

‘Somebody from Bulgaria, that’s all I can guess at. They’ve got Luanne, haven’t they? Have they taken her back there?’