Murder by Magic (2 page)

Skelgill
nods grimly.  Out of the woman’s line of sight DS Leyton is smirking.

‘What
else did he say to you?’

She compresses
her thin lips.

‘Very
little, Inspector – he was somewhat taciturn.  He just asked if I
had a room available for one night, and listened in silence when I explained
the house rules.  He probably paid no attention.  I left him here and
that was the last time I saw him.’

‘Where
was he from?’

‘I
have no idea.’

Now
the woman appears nonplussed – that she should be expected to know
this.  Evidently she dispensed with the regular pleasantries in greeting the
new guest.

‘What
about his accent?’

‘I
couldn’t say, Inspector.’

‘Well
– did he sound British?’

She folds
her arms and gives them a little shake of what might be frustration.

‘These
days it is quite frankly impossible to tell – I understand there are
thousands of British people in the country who barely speak a word of English.’

Skelgill
does not respond to this observation but instead he produces and holds open the
passport – for that is what it is.

‘Is
this the man, madam?’

*

‘So
much for “Mr Leonard”, Guv.’

‘I
suppose it was near enough.’

‘Think
he didn’t want to let on he’s a foreigner, Guv?’

Skelgill
takes a sip from his cup and grimaces – he has commandeered the
residents’ lounge, perhaps hoping that Mrs Robinson would feel obliged to
extend her hospitality to the second of the two
B’s
– but all that
has been forthcoming is a rather stewed and tepid concoction masquerading as
tea.  He shrugs in response to DS Leyton’s question.  He is carefully
perusing the pages of the passport.  Its owner – identified by the landlady
as a look-alike for the pixelated image – is in fact a
twenty-four-year-old Ukrainian citizen by the name of Leonid Pavlenko,
birthplace Donetsk.  Superficially, he could pass as British – his longish
wavy brown hair and blue eyes would blend in – and perhaps only critical
analysis of his mildly Slavic brows would raise any doubt.  Skelgill hands
the passport to his sergeant.

‘Leyton
– unless my eyes deceive me, there’s no UK visa in here.’

‘So
he’s an
illegal
, Guv?’

DS
Leyton begins to thumb through the passport, however his stout fingers lack
Skelgill’s fisherman’s dexterity and he finds it difficult to separate the
pages.  He pulls off the plastic cover to make the job easier.  As he
does so, a photograph flutters onto the surface of the table.  It lands
face up – and a striking portrait it presents: a girl, early twenties,
with long combed blonde hair centre-parted, a tanned complexion, immaculate
make up, and – beneath curving pencilled brows – penetrating pale-blue
irises with distinct black borders.  It is a model shot, taken
professionally, and its subject could be naked, for she poses provocatively,
her delicate chin resting upon a bare shoulder, an enigmatic smile creasing her
full pink lips, and in her eyes just the hint of an invitation.

‘Girlfriend,
Guv?’

‘He’s
a lucky lad if she is.’

Skelgill
picks up the photograph and flips it over.  He frowns: there is some
handwritten lettering – two words – but it is written in Cyrillic
script and makes no sense.  He rotates it so DS Leyton can see.

‘Maybe
her name, Guv?’  DS Leyton puffs out his cheeks as though he is defeated
by the prospect, but then holds up a forefinger to indicate an idea has struck
him.  ‘DS Jones might know.’

‘What?’

‘DS
Jones, Guv – ain’t her old granny from the Ukraine?’

Skelgill
looks irked.

‘News
to me, Leyton.’

DS
Leyton appears a little uncomfortable – that he should know this ahead of
his superior.

‘We
were discussing it the other day, Guv – in the canteen.  What with
all this independence malarkey –I was saying I’ve got ancestors from
Scotland, Wales, Ireland – in years gone by they flocked from all over to
work on the docks – and DS Jones reckons she’s a quarter Ukrainian
–
and
a quarter Welsh.’  He scratches his head
absently.  ‘And two quarters English, Guv.’

Skelgill
looks perplexed, as if he has hitherto assumed his sergeants Leyton and Jones
are one hundred per cent pure Cockney and Cumbrian respectively.

‘I mean,
Guv – it’s a Welsh name, ain’t it,
Jones
?’

Skelgill
does not respond, but instead he pulls out his mobile phone and uses it to take
a photograph of the inscription on the back of the picture.  He taps in a
short message and transmits the image.

‘Let’s
see if you’re right, Leyton.’

It can
only be a matter of two or three minutes before his phone rings.  It is
lying on the coffee table and he engages the loudspeaker function.

‘Jones
– got you on speaker so Leyton can hear.’

‘Sure,
Guv.’

‘Make
any sense?  Leyton here tells me you’re fluent in Ukrainian.’

DS
Jones chuckles.

‘
Trokhy
.’

‘Come
again?’

‘It
means a little, Guv.’

‘You’ve
kept that quiet.’

‘It’s
not often it comes up in conversation.’

‘Aye,
well – maybe now’s your chance.’

‘Don’t
expect too much, Guv.’

‘So
what about this name?’

‘It’s
not a name – it’s not even Ukrainian.’

‘What
do you mean?’

‘I’ve
been checking it online – it doesn’t make sense – the letters are
random.’

‘It
must mean something, Jones.’

‘I can
tell you what it sounds like, Guv – in case it’s phonetic.’

Skelgill
hesitates for a moment.

‘Aye?’

‘The
first word could be
block
or
black
, and the second
back
or
beck
.’

DS
Leyton leans forward.

‘A black-back’s
a seagull, ain’t it?’

Skelgill
stares at him rather disparagingly.  He speaks to DS Jones.

‘What
makes you think it could be phonetic?’

‘If
you wanted to ask for something in a foreign country, Guv – you’d write
it down so you could pronounce it – so the locals would
understand.’  She makes a tentative cough.  ‘Or if someone had told
you a name over the phone – you’d write it the way it sounded.’

Skelgill
is staring out of the window, his eyes narrowed.

‘So it
could be
black beck
?’

‘It
could be, Guv.’

‘There
is such a place.’

There
is a silence while Skelgill’s subordinates wait for him to elaborate.  In
fact he rises and stalks across to a bookshelf.  He extracts a folded map
from among a section of dated visitors’ guides and discarded paperbacks. 
Efficiently he locates what he is looking for and scrutinises it for a moment
or two.  Then he returns to the sofa and lays the quartered map on the
coffee table.

‘There’s
a thousand becks in the Lakes and more than one Black Beck – but the best
known’s a bit of an unofficial attraction – Blackbeck copper and slate
mines over in Little Langdale.  The beck joins the Brathay and runs into
Elter Water.’

He
indicates with a finger so that DS Leyton can see the locale.  DS Leyton does
not have Skelgill’s lifelong relationship with the Ordnance Survey and frowns with
consternation.

‘It
says
Blackbeck Castle
, Guv.’

‘Aye
– that’s a private estate – the abandoned mine workings are up the
valley towards Coniston Old Man.’

DS
Jones now chips in.

‘Do
you think he might have gone there, Guv?’

Skelgill
hesitates.

‘It’s
that or we’re talking needles and haystacks.’

Skelgill
suddenly chuckles to himself – for he has just named two specific
topographic features of the Lakeland fells – but he does not elucidate
for the benefit of his colleagues.

‘Jones
– you head over this way – rendezvous at Threlkeld in half an
hour.  We’ll go down through St John’s in the Vale.  My car keys are
on my desk – grab my boots, will you – and there’s a torch in the
driver’s door pocket.’

‘Sure,
Guv.’

Skelgill
terminates the call and scoops up the handset.  Then he picks his jacket
from the arm of the settee.

‘Er,
Guv –’  DS Leyton lifts a leg rather forsakenly.  ‘I’ve just
got ordinary shoes.’

‘Leyton
– which one of you two speaks Ukrainian?’

‘Well
– not me, Guv – obviously.’

Skelgill
holds out his hands in a gesture of the obvious.

‘So
drop me at Threlkeld and get back to your desk – see what you can find
out from Immigration.’

DS
Leyton glowers disapprovingly as he falls in behind his superior.  They exit
the B&B unannounced.  As they descend the steep steps DS Leyton holds
back for a second and, with the tip of a toe, delivers a gentle prod to the
big-nosed gnome with the fishing rod, despatching it into a small ornamental
pond.

Although
Cumbria is England’s third largest ceremonial county, by area the Lake District
is only slightly larger than medium-sized counties like Leicestershire,
Nottinghamshire or Warwickshire.  Indeed, at 885 square miles, it would
fit within a grid of sides just 30 miles long.  That said, journeys in the
Lakes are measured not by distance, but by time.  Arthur Hope’s farm at
Seathwaite is a little over three miles as the crow flies from the inn at
Wasdale Head – but it is an hour-and-a-half’s drive on a good day.  It
is a topography that could never have endeared itself to Roman road-builders,
though they left their mark with a string of forts across the region.  And
travel times will soar in a few days, when the Easter vacation brings a tenfold
increase in traffic, choking Cumbria’s winding lanes and white-knuckle passes.

In a
similar vein, to reach Little Langdale from Penrith – DS Jones’s journey,
via Threlkeld to collect Skelgill – takes a good hour, despite the modest
mileage.  And that does not allow for Skelgill’s impromptu halt in order
to solicit a takeaway lunch from his chef cousin at the kitchen door of a
Grasmere hotel.  By the time they reach the nadir known as Fell Foot, at
the bottom of Wrynose Pass, the clock has ticked over to one p.m. – high
noon according to recently inaugurated British Summer Time.  Skelgill
directs his colleague to park on a rather rocky verge beside a dry stone wall,
in the shade of a mixed wood of budding native oak and introduced Sitka.

‘I
expected there to be some information signs, Guv – I looked up Blackbeck
mines before I left – they’re obviously popular with climbers and
cavers.’

‘Aye,
well – you might say this is the trade entrance.’

DS
Jones is lacing her trail shoes, an amused smile forming on her lips.

‘Guv,
I don’t see
any
entrance.’

‘It’s
a mile yet – but this is the quickest way on foot.  There’s a cart
track winds up at the old workings, but it’s kept locked.’

Skelgill
places his torch on the ridge of the wall and swarms over, dropping down
silently and reappearing as a head and shoulders.  He offers a hand to DS
Jones and they grasp one another’s wrists.  She finds a foothold and
levers herself up, though her tight jeans restrict her movement, and Skelgill
has to grab her waistband to haul her past the tipping point.  He rather
overdoes this and she is obliged to spring in hope – but the woodland
floor is a carpet of mulch and moss and makes for a soft if undignified
landing.  She rises, brushing pine needles from her knees and perhaps unaware
that Skelgill is critically scrutinising the small round damp patches on her
buttocks.

‘I’m
in a mess already, Guv.’

‘You
look fine to me, Jones.’

As
they set off there is no obvious path, and Skelgill appears to be navigating by
the sun, keeping it just a few degrees to their left, thus heading a touch west
of south.  While the wood is dense, the going is relatively
straightforward – beneath the mature conifers there is no shrub layer to
impede them, and the oaks are in flower but not yet in leaf, affording plenty
of light amidst the dappled shade.  Although it is too early for most summer
migrants, residents such as great tits, blackbirds and chaffinches are filling
the resonant ether with robust birdsong.  Here and there purple dog violets
and little constellations of wood sorrel hint at the forest’s antiquity.  In
a small clearing they pass a gnarled hawthorn – Skelgill snatches a pinch
of fresh green foliage, and to his colleague’s evident surprise stuffs it into
his mouth.

‘Aw
– Guv!’

‘What?’

‘How
can you do that?’

Skelgill
is chewing approvingly.

‘First
salad of the year, Jones – you must have heard of
bread-and-cheese
?’

‘I’m a
townie really, Guv – albeit a small-townie.’

Skelgill
grins.

‘You
don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘Grubs,
probably, Guv.’

‘It’s
all good protein.’

DS
Jones shakes her head, but before she can reply, ahead a white notice with printed
black lettering catches her eye.  It warns that
‘Trespassers Will Be
Prosecuted’
, and is fastened onto a wall that gradually takes shape through
the trees, and which must tower a good eight feet above the ground.

‘What’s
this, Guv?’

‘Blackbeck
Castle.  We need to circle round to the right to break out onto the fell.’

‘I
thought this was all Access Land, Guv?’

Skelgill
scowls.

‘It
doesn’t apply to the castle grounds.’

DS
Jones nods.

‘I
suppose they have to draw the line somewhere.’

Skelgill
regards the sign pensively and does not reply.  The issue of to whom land morally
belongs is a controversy that rumbles on in his own thoughts – never mind
in many a pub argument – and his opinion depends upon which hat he might
be wearing at any one time.  Public access in the Lake District falls
somewhere between Scotland’s more or less unfettered ‘right to roam’ and
England’s general policy that restricts ramblers to marked rights of way. 
As a fisherman and fell-runner Skelgill is often frustrated by the limitations
the landed classes are able to place upon his freedom; but as a police officer
and member of a mountain rescue team there has been many an occasion when he
has cursed the temptations that draw unqualified or delinquent citizens into
his ambit.  At this moment, while his ideal route would take a beeline
more or less due south, the high stone barrier forces a detour.

Although
the ground now begins to rise quite steeply, beside the wall there is easier
going underfoot.  In its shadow grows little vegetation – just
decurved ferns that spill from crevices, and creeping liverworts glistening like
seaweed exposed by the ebb tide.  After some ten minutes they reach a
grey-painted gate set into the stonework.  Skelgill stops to stare at the
construction.

‘What
is it, Guv?’

‘Don’t
remember this.’  He reaches to give it a push; but there is no ironmongery
on the outside and nothing yields.  ‘It’s a year or two since I’ve been
this way, mind.’

The
door is in good repair, and it fits flush with the stone jambs and
lintel.  Despite his best efforts to find a crack Skelgill is defeated,
and he is unable to see what lies beyond.  He sizes up the wall, as if he
is thinking about scaling it to peer over.  But then he examines the
ground below the step – there is no indication of wear, just an even
scattering of rotting leaves and twigs.

‘Doesn’t
look like it’s used.’  He shrugs and turns in the direction of their
travel.  ‘Come on – I’ll show you something more interesting.’

Still
in woodland they continue for another minute or so to a point where the
hillside on their right climbs into a vertical cliff.  There is perhaps
the semblance of a path along the foot of this miniature escarpment, and after
maybe thirty yards it abruptly angles left into a great fissure: a gorge about
ten feet wide, its walls as high as a house.  Upon first impression this
appears to be a natural feature, for a stream trickles out from its shingled
floor, and mosses and creepers trail down the damp rock faces; the atmosphere
is thick with the peaty humidity of a botanical hothouse.  But, as the eye
follows the tiny beck to its source some fifty feet into the crevice, the
jagged black mouth of a cave reveals man’s hand in this creation.  Skelgill
purposefully splashes the sole of his left boot into the rippling water.

‘Some
folk consider this to be the original Black Beck – it comes right through
the mines and joins another tributary further down the valley.’

He
sets off into the gully, watching the ground ahead of him as he goes.  But
the stony surface is unforgiving, and if he seeks tracks he is disappointed
– only near the entrance is there a trace of life, and that is an
indistinct cloven hoof print in a patch of silvery sand.

‘What
would it be, Guv?’

Skelgill
ponders for a moment and shakes his head.

‘Roe
deer, most likely – coming to this pool to drink where it’s deeper.’

‘I
hope they can’t read, Guv.’

‘Come
again?’

DS
Jones indicates towards the entrance of the cave.  Set back by a couple of
yards, and thus invisible to their approach, the tunnel is blocked by half a
dozen planks wedged diagonally across the passage.  On these is hung a
notice,
“Danger Keep Out”
– but DS Jones refers to additional
graffiti – a more curt Anglo-Saxon exhortation to go away (although this
might equally be directed rebelliously at the official sign writer). 
Skelgill smiles grimly and shakes his head.

‘The
places folk bring marker pens never ceases to amaze me.’

DS
Jones grins.

‘So,
what is this, Guv?’

‘The lowest
outlet of the copper mine.  This part was closed over a hundred-and-fifty
years ago.  There’s shafts coming down seven hundred feet, chasing the
veins through the rock.’

DS
Jones takes a couple of tentative steps inside the mouth of the adit.

‘Here.’ 
Skelgill hands her his torch.  It is small – about the size of a
Churchill
cigar – but when she switches it on it floods the recess with its
brilliant light.  She approaches the makeshift barrier, finding a gap
through which to shine the flashlight.  ‘Slide the hood – it focuses
the beam.  You’ll be able to see further down the tunnel.’

She does
as directed – and immediately recoils with a shriek and a grimace of
revulsion.

‘Oh, my
God – what is
that?
’

Skelgill
takes the torch from her and pokes it between two of the planks, holding its
base against his left cheek.  In the slick wet darkness of the cave,
seemingly hovering just beneath the arch of the roof, a demonic visage gleams bone-white,
the ebony hollows of its eye sockets staring ghoulishly from beneath great curled
horns.  It is the skull of a Herdwick ram.

‘Bloody
kids.’

DS
Jones shudders and backs out into the half-light of the fissure.

‘That’s
more than enough to keep me away, Guv – never mind the danger of falling
down a pit.’

Skelgill
grins.  He clicks off the torch and slides it into his back pocket. 
Then he takes hold of one of the planks in both hands and gives it a hard
shake, but it refuses to budge.  He tries a couple of others, but they
appear to be firmly wedged, and nailed together where they overlap.

‘I
don’t reckon our Leonid came this way.’

He
bows his head and ducks out into the fresh air.  DS Jones’s complexion
appears pale, despite their brisk walk up through the forest; Skelgill seems to
notice, for he leans sideways and pulls a half-eaten packet of glucose sweets
from the map pocket of his trousers.

‘Here
– the best I can do in lieu of brandy.’

She
grins self-consciously.

‘Sorry,
Guv – I wasn’t expecting that – it really spooked me.’

Skelgill
shrugs and steps past her.

‘Come
on – let’s get up to the top.  They mined the slate up there as well
– there’s some big chambers – that’s where folk tend to knock
around if they’re exploring.’

*

‘This
is like being in a secret Covenanters’ chapel, Guv.’

Skelgill
glances about proprietorially.

‘Aye,
well – you’re not so far wrong – they call this the
Apse
.’

DS
Jones nods appreciatively.  They are speaking in whispers, and have halted
at an aperture that leads into a huge domed chamber.  Skelgill has
switched off his torch, for there is a fracture in the roof through which a
shaft of sunlight illuminates a rockfall of gigantic flakes of slate.  The
biggest of these points back skyward like a jagged standing stone, and in front
of it one great slab the size of a bed lies flat – together they give the
impression of a primitive altar and reredos, mysteriously floodlit amidst the
crowding shadows.  Beyond, the darkness gathers, even blacker for the
light that streams down into the centre of the cavity.  But before the
shadows consume all, it is evident that a large pool of water stretches from
behind the rock formation to the back of the cave, and the constant timpani of
drips and plops make an eerily echoing fugue.

‘This
is as far as you can go – or you can abseil in and walk out the way we’ve
come.’

Skelgill
directs his flashlight so that its beam reflects off the black water and highlights
the naturally vaulted ceiling, a succession of arched ribs like the interior of
a great pharynx, taking a greenish hue from the once sought-after slate.  At
either side of the chamber are horizontal shafts, known as drifts, but these
are blocked with rubble – whether by accident or design it is impossible
to know.  As they begin to retrace their steps other side-passages beckon,
and Skelgill inspects them as far as is possible.  In due course he leads
them along one such corridor; killing the torch reveals a bend some seventy-five
yards ahead, with daylight filtering from just beyond.