Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

Hannah had briefed the team at first light, everyone chipping in with their own particular bits of expertise. Although it could not be seen from the Arsenic Labyrinth, a mobile command unit — an articulated lorry with a small office on the back — had now been set up at the point where the track gave way to terrain impossible to drive over. She could conduct on-site briefings there, but it wasn’t the nerve centre. The incident room had to be based at the station, despite its remoteness from the Scar, because they needed a link straight into the police network computer — as well as a decent canteen.

Already the hours devoted to risk assessment and detailed preparation were paying off. Sooner than she’d dared to hope, after initial video and still photography of the site, the blockages at the access points to the two shafts were cleared and the CSIs were fiddling with battery-powered fluorescent lights to facilitate camera work underground.

By a happy chance, both the CSIs were not only rope-trained but volunteer members of the Yewdale Fells Mountain Rescue Team. The senior, a ginger-haired Mancunian called Billy, was also a talented photographer whose wife had a small gallery where his pictures were exhibited. For him, taking shots of sleepy tarns and rolling fells made a change from the day job of recording tyre impressions, footprints and teeth marks on bruised bodies. When they broke for coffee, he wandered over and gave Hannah a rueful smile.

‘What’s the betting we find some bugger’s chucked a dead sheep down the hole?’

‘Evens?’

‘I guess. Reckon we’ll strike lucky?’

She shrugged, unsure about lucky . If Emma’s body had been lying under the Arsenic Labyrinth for the past ten years, there wouldn’t be much of it left. Even if she’d been buried deep enough to escape the attention of rats and foxes, hungry little insects would have had time to do a good deal of damage.

He turned back to the shaft. ‘Least we’ve got a nice day for it.’

Yes, it might be freezing, but the sky was clear and blue. The last thing they needed was mist or a heavy fall of snow and the forecast for the next twenty-four hours was encouraging, though Hannah knew better than to rely on it. In these parts, you might need sunglasses in one valley and a waterproof coat and wellies in the next. She spared a few words for a lad with a clipboard whose task was to monitor comings and goings at the scene before spending a few minutes at the cordon. A handful of curious walkers had already been turned away. A drop of sunshine and, even in brass monkey weather, the diehard walkers headed for the fells. Word of the police activity was trickling through the village and before long Candace, the press officer, would be besieged by enquiries. She walked back to the Scar, where Les was blowing his nose and looking a picture of misery.

‘Nasty cold you’ve got there.’ She beamed. ‘Might be worth trying those Hopi ear candles, after all.’

‘A drop of Scotch tonight is the only cure I need.’ He interrupted himself with a sneeze so loud Hannah feared it might start a fresh landslide. ‘None of that holistic garbage. Hey up, Billy’s waving us over.’

Billy was checking the pictures from the camera that he and his colleague had lowered down the shaft nearest the labyrinth. One glance at his pink face told them all they needed to know.

‘Looks like we’ve found something.’

Guy was curious to learn how Tony Di Venuto had used the information that Emma was buried beneath the labyrinth. Of course, it would be foolish to walk up through the Coppermines Valley to Mispickel to see if anyone was undertaking a search. Guy was too astute to give himself away like that. But he expected to read something in the Post at any time — after all, exclusives were lifeblood for any journalist, and they didn’t come better than this one — and he went on a pilgrimage to the convenience store to buy a copy and see if there was any further mention of Emma.

Strolling from the checkout, he rustled through the pages. Not a word. He would, if pressed, have confessed to disappointment that the story had vanished from the newspaper as completely as — well, Emma herself. What were the police playing at? He was sure that he’d convinced Di Venuto that he knew what he was talking about.

He was on his way out of the shop when the elderly woman in front of him stopped short to greet another old crone whose bright auburn wig merely emphasised the leathery texture of her skin.

‘Rita, have you heard? There’s a lot of police and such-like up by Mispickel Scar. Sally Baines’ boy reckons they’re looking for a body.’

Guy had to restrain himself from punching the air and shouting, ‘Yes!’ He loved nothing better than to be taken seriously and Tony Di Venuto must have taken him very seriously indeed. If they were searching around the labyrinth, it surely would not take long to find Emma Bestwick’s remains. And then the wretched Karen would learn the truth of her sister’s fate and a sad chapter in the life of their family would at last come to a conclusion. Closure for Karen — and for Guy too.

There would be not much left of Emma other than a hunched-up skeleton. The calamity that had bound the two of them together all these years was wretched luck. Thank God he’d had the guts to call the journalist and set the record straight.

‘’Scuse me.’

He was blocking the doorway. With voluble apologies, he stood aside to allow an old man with a bad cough to squeeze past and buy a packet of Silk Cut. Better be getting back, Sarah would be wondering where he’d got to. She’d become clingy, and this was starting to weary him.

He stopped in front of an estate agent’s window. House prices were high enough to bring tears to the eyes of a first-time buyer. The Glimpse had a sizeable back garden, with trees beyond the boundary fence, and that ought to add a premium of a few thousand. Sarah lacked green fingers and there were bicycle tyres and old bricks lingering in the undergrowth. But all it needed was tender loving care. Sarah was sitting on a goldmine.

A makeshift scaffold loomed over the shaft by the labyrinth. The site resembled an eighteenth-century place of execution, hidden away in the snow-dusted fells. The plan was to winch the body up once the CSIs had photographed it in situ and combed the subterranean crime scene for whatever trace evidence had survived the passage of time. When dealing with a ten-year-old corpse, Hannah preferred not to rely on a GP to certify death, and she’d lined up Grenville Jepson, Barrow-in-Furness’s answer to the late Bernard Spilsbury, to take charge of the post-mortem. No chance of dangling a consultant pathologist so eminent at the end of a rope — though one or two defence counsel would have loved to have him at their mercy — so the corpse would be transferred to the mortuary as soon as it had been disinterred.

The operation was going to plan, but Hannah felt sombre rather than elated. Entering the presence of death always disturbed her. Get used to it , Ben Kind had warned her years ago, but although she’d developed a carapace of calm, in her heart she feared she never would.

She had a coffee with the forensic entomologist, a jolly, red-haired woman who did all the talking. Impossible to share her enthusiasm for poring over insect eggs and larvae on rotting flesh, but it took all sorts. When she’d drained her cup, Hannah wandered towards the scaffold. The CSIs would take a couple more hours to recover the corpse. Even before they reached it, they needed to take pictures of the shaft, in the hope it might yield clues to what had happened. You never knew, perhaps whoever had shoved Emma into the hole had snagged a piece of clothing on a ledge of rock.