One Last Breath. Stephen Booth

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      Fry dropped the damp cloth and leaned on the washbasin for a moment. She listened to Angie shuffling away, her bare feet slapping on the worn tiles in the passage. Fry kept her head lowered. The one thing she didn’t want to do was see herself in the mirror again. She didn’t want the memories that had been visible for a brief moment in the reflection of her own eyes, in the hard line of her mouth and the frown marks etched into her forehead.

      Reluctantly, she looked at her watch. She had to go or she’d be late, and she couldn’t afford to be late when she had to set an example for the likes of Ben Cooper and Gavin Murfin, who would go wandering off in their own directions in a second if she didn’t keep an eye on them. – Fry walked into her bedroom to fetch her jacket from behind the door. She was annoyed to see that her hand was shaking as she entered the kitchen. Angie was sitting at the table, staring at her fingernails.

      ‘Angie, just now, what did you mean … ?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘When you mentioned Ma. What did you mean?’

      Angie shrugged. ‘Nothing really.’

      ‘But …’ Fry stopped, defeated. ‘I’ve got to go.’

      She went down the wide flight of stairs with its threadbare treads, and left the house by the back door. Number 12 Grosvenor Avenue was one of a series of detached Victorian villas in a tree-lined street, its front door nestling between mock porticos. It had space at the back for Fry to park her Peugeot, and she was glad to be able to get the car off the street, especially when she lay in bed at night listening to the passing drunks.

      Fry wound the windows down to let some air into the car. It might turn out to be one of the few days in the year when she wished she had air conditioning. She plugged her mobile phone into the cigarette lighter to make sure it would be fully charged by the time she got to West Street. Then she drove up to the corner of Castleton Road and waited for the traffic to clear. She looked at her watch again. Almost eight thirty. She might not be too late, after all.

      At this point, her mind was trained to switch off anything else and start to think about work. There was plenty to do, as usual. Today’s diary included a meeting to plan an operation against Class A drug misuse and a review of a long-running rape enquiry, as well as prioritizing whatever had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

      Then Fry frowned. She hated starting the day with irritations that she couldn’t classify. And she had one already this morning, thanks to the call from her DI. What was the name he mentioned? Quinn? It still meant nothing to her. But she would have to know – who the hell was Mansell Quinn?

      She looked at her phone. There was one person who was sure to know. She didn’t really want to talk to him if she could avoid it, but it might be preferable to walking into the DI’s office ignorant, and therefore in a position of weakness. Ben Cooper’s number was stored in her phone’s memory, one of a hundred invisible squiggles on its smart card, so that she carried his presence with her permanently, like a scar.

      From the moment she’d arrived at E Division, Cooper had been in her hair, probing into her past, turning over all the memories she’d left the West Midlands to escape. And then this business with her sister. Why had he got himself involved in that? The one thing she wasn’t going to do was give Cooper the satisfaction of asking him. It seemed impossible to Fry that there could be any acceptable explanation.

      She pulled his number up out of her phone’s memory and dialled, ready to pull over to the side of the road if he answered. But the number was unobtainable. Fry grimaced in frustration. Of course, Cooper was on a rest day today. Why shouldn’t he turn off his phone and enjoy himself?

      Water was pouring through the roof. Splashes of it landed on his face, making him blink. Ben Cooper tried to move a hand to wipe it away, but his arms were held too tightly. Then he felt himself travelling up a slope and saw a larger chamber, lit by artificial lights. At last there was a change in air temperature and a glimpse of daylight as the mouth of the cavern opened above him, then he heard the high-pitched cries of jackdaws.

      Giving an exhausted cheer, the six men in yellow oversuits dropped the stretcher with a thump. Cooper’s head banged on the plastic cover.

      ‘Hey, I’m a casualty, you know. Where’s the ambulance? Don’t I get an ambulance?’

      After a moment, one of the men came back to the stretcher.

      ‘Sorry, Ben. But you are dead, you know.’

      ‘My God, if I’d known it’d be like that, Alistair, I wouldn’t have volunteered. In fact, I didn’t volunteer – I was talked into it.’

      Alistair Page took off his gloves and leaned over to unfasten the buckles on the straps. He was still covered in the smelly silt that coated the caves and had been stirred up from the flooded passages by the rescue party. Like the rest of the team taking part in the exercise, he was protected by elbow and kneepads, and had a heavy tackle bag slung from his belt.

      Cooper tried to remember which of his friends had introduced him to Page. Whoever it was, he had a score to settle.

      ‘You’re not telling me you’re claustrophobic,’ said Page. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

      ‘I didn’t think I was, until an hour ago. But I’ve changed my mind. I feel quite sick.’

      ‘You’ll be all right in a minute.’

      At last, Cooper was free of the stretcher. His legs felt numb, and he had to walk up and down and shake them a bit before the painful tingling started, a sign that the blood was flowing back into his limbs. Glad to be using his muscles again, he helped Page to lift a bundle of ropes and slide them into the cave rescue vehicle, an old Bedford van that was kept in the police compound in Edendale. The van was well overdue for replacement, but the Derbyshire Cave Rescue was a voluntary group and relied entirely on donations. They’d have to raise tens of thousands of pounds before they could buy a new vehicle.

      The chattering of the jackdaws made Cooper look up. The birds were circling the roofless keep of the castle on the eastern rim of the Peak Cavern gorge, hopping restlessly from tree to tree, or flapping on to the cliff ledges.

      ‘Do they nest on those ledges?’

      ‘Yes. And so do mallard ducks sometimes,’ said Page. ‘But their ducklings have a habit of falling off. Visitors don’t like that very much.’

      ‘I can imagine,’ said Cooper, still craning his neck. It was a relief just to be able to move his head and see the sky.

      ‘You did a good job of being dead, by the way. Don’t forget – you get a free tour through the show cave for doing this.’

      ‘I’m coming down with my two nieces tomorrow afternoon. They’ve just broken up for the summer holidays, and I promised them a day out.’

      ‘You can cope with that, can you?’

      ‘At least you don’t get many real deaths here.’

      ‘There’s only ever been one in Peak Cavern. That was a long time ago. And, well …’ Page hesitated, looking back anxiously over his shoulder at the mouth of the cavern, as if he heard noises in the darkness but couldn’t see what was there. ‘Well, that was different,’ he said. ‘It was unique. And a long time ago.’

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