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Chapter 2

I emerged and climbed down from the cave, backwards, trying not to slip on the worn stone. Relieved to be outside, I jumped awkwardly down the final few steps and enjoyed the smell of damp trees and the feel of solid ground and daylight.

Ben sidled up. ‘What do you think?’

What did I think? I had no idea. ‘The dead man’s initials are cut into the cave wall,’ I blurted. ‘But they look like they’ve been there for decades.’

Ben jerked his head back and wiped his forehead. ‘No. It can’t be.’

I felt a shiver of unease. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s…’ Ben took a step sideways. ‘I don’t like to talk about it.’

‘Well, if it might be relevant to our body, you’d better talk about it.’

‘You know the Labyrinth? On the other side of the valley.’

I shook my head. ‘What about it?’

Ben opened his mouth and paused. ‘Okay. It’s a vast cave system below the Devil’s Dice, you know, the rock formation. It’s not a good place. The tunnels go for miles and miles. Some of it’s underwater. And there’s a noose in a cavern deep inside. Teenagers go there to commit suicide.’

I felt a flush of adrenaline, hot then cold. Why was he telling me this? I didn’t want to know.

Ben continued. ‘The rumour is – if you can’t find the noose, it’s your sign you should live.’

I stared at the light filtering through the trees, feeling the familiar thickness in my throat. I couldn’t let it get to me. I was over all that now. Reinvented. I firmed up my stomach. ‘And the relevance of this?’

‘So, the point is, if you can find the noose, they say you find your initials have already been cut into the cave wall behind it.’

‘Cut into the wall by someone?’

‘They’re said to appear on their own.’

‘Have you been there?’

Ben hesitated, then licked his lips and nodded. ‘We tried to save a girl. We were too late. I’m a caver – I should have got to her quicker.’ He looked clammy and kind of avocado coloured. He pressed his hands against his stomach. ‘I could never go back there. Never.’

I tried to stop myself picturing the noose hanging still and straight, deep inside a cavern. My hands clenched into fists, nails digging into palms. ‘And the initials?’

‘Well, there were initials engraved into the cave wall. Lots of them. They looked old. We didn’t check for our girl’s.’

‘So it’s not a recent thing?’

‘It started in the times of the witch trials, apparently. If a girl was suspected of being a witch, she’d be led into the Labyrinth. If they could find the noose, then her initials would already be on the wall behind, and she’d be forced to hang herself. If they couldn’t find the noose, she was innocent, but she had to find her own way out.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. So then in Victorian times, there was a spate of girls going in to commit suicide.’

‘And this one more recently?’

He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Yes. It was about ten years ago.’

I imagined the cave wall, covered with the initials of dead people. ‘If people kept hanging themselves, why didn’t someone get rid of the damn noose?’

‘They put bars across the cave entrance after… that girl. But you can still get in from above, if you know how.’

*

Two hours later, fully prepped and preened, DCI Richard Atkins and I walked into the incident room back at the Station. The large quantity of cops crammed into a small space had given the room the fugginess of damp trainers and wet dogs, but the electricity of a suspicious death zapped around underneath.

A board at one end was covered with photographs of the dead man and his surroundings. I stepped forward to take a closer look while Richard bustled to and fro pinning names and assignments onto a grey board opposite. Low tech, but at least it wouldn’t crash.

DS Craig Cooper was peering at the photos and invading my personal space. Craig had worked his way up in the traditional manner and seemed to be the worst kind of old-fashioned police bloke – casually homophobic, with a fifty-inch TV, a subscription to Sky Sports, and a plastic-headed wife. I suspected he felt entitled to the job I’d been given, and I didn’t know how to handle him. I folded my arms into a defensive position.

‘Okay!’ Richard strode to the front of the room. He’d removed his jacket, and dark marks stained his armpits. His face glistened. I slid into what I judged was an appropriate second-in-command spot.

‘We have a male in his thirties, Peter Hamilton, found today in a cave house fifteen foot up a cliff face in Eldercliffe quarry.’ Richard looked at his notes. ‘Time of death around the middle of the day. We’re waiting on lab results and the post mortem but early suggestions are he was killed by cyanide poisoning.’

A rumble of voices filled the room. They liked the cyanide, with its hints of Agatha Christie.

‘In a cave house?’ DS Jai Sanghera squinted his surprise. ‘Fifteen foot up a cliff face?’

Jai was a lapsed, un-turbaned and de-bearded Sikh. He’d always appeared mild-mannered, but was apparently prone to occasional explosive incidents which no one had ever witnessed but everyone seemed to know about.

‘Yes, Jai,’ Richard said testily. ‘It’s a cave, and people used to live in it. You have to climb steps to get there. We’re pretty sure he went up alive.’

‘Unless the murderer was the reigning Mr Universe,’ Craig said.

‘Yes, yes, or the victim was a zombie, climbing glassy-eyed and un-dead up to the cave house.’ Richard was in a creative mood.

‘Did it to himself then.’ Craig’s tone was scathing. He clearly had little time for the suicidal.

‘We don’t know. There were some odd things about it. Meg’ll fill you in.’

I moved sideways into the hot spot; steeled myself. An unnerving smirk crept across Craig’s fleshy face.

I told them about the probably poisoned cake, the carving on the cave wall, and the strange fact of the man’s initials appearing under it.

‘Was it home-made or shop-bought cake?’ Jai jiggled his leg up and down as if he was keen to sprint off and get started.

‘Bloody hell, Jai, have you been on the speed again?’ Craig said.

‘We don’t know for sure.’ I ignored Craig. I’d noticed that was what Richard did – his years of experience hadn’t given him a more advanced strategy. ‘The wrapper had a paper label stuck to it saying “Susie’s Cakes” and it had a “best before” date months away.’

‘Interesting,’ Jai said, also ignoring Craig. ‘What’s the history of the cave house?’

‘That bit of cliff hasn’t been quarried since pre-Victorian times. They think the cave house was created in the mid 1800s and people lived in it until about fifty years ago.’

Jai said, ‘I heard it was supposed to be haunted.’

Craig snorted.

‘It could be relevant,’ I said. ‘If it affects people’s behaviour.’

‘It’s why no one goes in there,’ Jai said. ‘No kids or tramps or anything.’

Craig made ridiculous X-Files noises. But Jai was right about no one going in the cave house. There’d been none of the usual beer cans, fag-butts or tortured teenage poetry.

Richard elbowed me out of the way. ‘Thank you, Jai, but I don’t think this man was killed by a ghost. Anyway, back to the cake.’ He swung his gaze around the room like Derren Brown about to reveal something astonishing. ‘We’ve already tried to trace “Susie’s Cakes” and there seems to be no such company. Unless it’s incredibly obscure.’

‘Won’t be obscure for long if they put cyanide in their cakes,’ Jai said. Gentle snickering passed through the room. Richard shot Jai a disapproving look.

‘Okay.’ Jai pursed his lips as if to emphasise that he was now being serious. ‘So someone put cyanide in the cake and made it look like shop-bought so he’d think it was okay and eat it? So, we’re talking murder, not suicide?’

‘Bit hasty there, Jai.’ Craig folded his chunky arms over his fledgling beer gut. ‘It could be suicide but he made it look like murder so his dependants still get his life insurance.’

‘If he gave a shit about his family, he wouldn’t have killed himself,’ Jai said. I took an audible breath before I could stop myself and Jai glanced at me, his face turning purple. I smiled weakly at him and mouthed reassurances. I didn’t want people walking on eggshells around me.

‘Yes,’ I said, trying to take control again. ‘It could be murder or suicide or deliberate contamination of cakes.’

‘If it’s not suicide, it’s probably the wife.’ Richard had recently been through a difficult divorce.

‘Yes, I’m keeping an open mind too.’ I couldn’t let that go, but statistically speaking he was probably right.

‘Who found him?’ Jai was bouncing his leg again, probably just to annoy Craig now.

‘A Labrador. It was after the cake.’

‘Is it okay?’

‘Didn’t think your lot liked dogs,’ Craig said.

I smiled at Jai. ‘He’s fine. We think he only ate—’

‘The dog’s fine, Jai.’ Richard rocked on his heels. ‘It’s admirable that you’re all so concerned about our loyal canine friends, but we do have a dead man as well as a slightly queasy dog.’

‘So he died in a haunted cave,’ Jai said. ‘And there was a hundredyear-old carving on the cave wall that seemed to predict his death?’

I gave a slow, deliberate nod.

Jai had stopped fidgeting. ‘Do we need to call an exorcist?’

*

We ended the briefing and everyone dispersed to do their stuff. I turned for another look at the photographs, and sensed Craig standing behind me, too close again.

‘I hope you’re up to this,’ he said.

I spun round. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

I felt the blush come over me, hot and sharp like needles.

‘Are you alright?’ Craig said. ‘You’re sweating like a paedo in a Santa suit.’

‘Yes, thank you, Craig, I’m perfectly fine.’

He took a step closer. His breath smelt of mint and stale garlic. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’