‘There’s no evidence, Ben. The CPS won’t even consider amending the charges against him.’
‘So he stays out on bail.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. Really sorry.’
‘So am I.’
‘So what are you going to do next?’
‘Is that any of your concern?’
But it
was
her concern. She was responsible for this situation. And, when it came down to it, there was the question of loyalty.
In Welbeck Street, Diane Fry was not surprised to find that there was no answer to her knock at Ben Cooper’s flat. In no mood for patience or discretion now, she went straight to the landlady’s house next door.
‘Can I help you?’ said the old lady from behind her security chain.
‘Mrs Shelley,’ said Fry.
‘Yes? Who are you?’
Fry realised that the old lady didn’t remember her from five days previously, when she’d called here with Becky Hurst.
‘I’m a police officer.’ Fry showed her warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Fry.’
Again, Mrs Shelley didn’t even look at her ID, but peered at her as she shushed the dog.
‘I’m a friend of Ben’s,’ said Fry, speaking as loudly as she could. ‘Do you remember—?’
‘He told me he’s fine,’ said Mrs Shelley. ‘Just fine.’
And she slammed the door.
34
Ben Cooper had tuned the radio in his car to the local BBC station in Derby to catch the news bulletins. That morning, the Environment Agency had already issued flood alerts for five rivers in Derbyshire, including the Derwent and the Eden.
Several of the major waterways in the county were prone to flooding. In neighbouring Nottinghamshire, a fifty million pound project had been completed to construct flood barriers on the River Trent to protect the city of Nottingham after disastrous flooding thirteen years ago. But not here in Derbyshire. Not yet.
Today, the Trent was the first river to be affected. Low-lying agricultural land was flooding, and residents were being warned that access to villages could be cut off if water levels continued to rise. Nearby, the River Erewash was presenting a risk, and another alert had been issued for the Amber. But those were the concern of D Division, down there in the south of the county.
More locally, firefighters had been called out to deal with a flood at Buxton Opera House earlier in the day. An underground stream ran beneath the theatre, and heavy rain had led to flood water seeping into the building. About two feet of water had been pumped from the orchestra pit alone. But the opera house remained open, with a performance that night due to go ahead as planned.
Early in the afternoon, as he drove away from Bridge End Farm, the news came in that Cooper had been expecting. After days of heavy rain, the River Derwent was flooding all the way from Rowsley to the point where it met the Trent – a distance of more than thirty miles. A good ten or twelve miles of that was in E Division. Darley Dale, Matlock, Cromford and Whatstandwell were all affected. The B5057 between Darley Bridge and Two Dales was closed. Cooper remembered seeing a pub at Darley Bridge almost overwhelmed by flood water two years ago. He hoped this wasn’t going to be a repetition.
The Highways Agency was reporting that the village of Beeley, near Chatsworth, had been hit by flash floods. A steep stretch of the A619 from Chesterfield to Baslow was said to resemble a river as traffic struggled to force its way through the water. As usual, motorists were abandoning their cars, making it difficult for emergency services to get through. Even for anyone who knew the area well, large amounts of water could change the appearance of a road and make it impossible to gauge the depth. Yet some drivers ploughed into floods oblivious to the risk. The air intake on many cars was low down, and it only took a small amount of water to wreck the engine. You could blow a head gasket, break a conrod, or burst the entire cylinder head off.
Cooper worked his way through the back lanes on higher ground near Youlgreave as the news continued to get worse. Within an hour, the status of the emergency had been raised to a severe flood warning – and that meant danger to life. Emergency sandbags had been issued, pumps were being used to clear sections of road. Rail services were cancelled, flood water had closed more routes and landslides had blocked others. In places, high winds had brought down power lines and hundreds of homes were without electricity.
Now the Fire and Rescue Service had boats operating in the worst-affected areas, picking up people who’d decided to stay in their homes in spite of the warnings. More heavy rain was predicted for the rest of the day. Falling on already saturated ground, it would make the situation even more critical.
A mile further on, Cooper came across a team of council workers in yellow high-vis jackets, desperately trying to pump water off a flooded section of road. A huge amount of water was surging across the roadway, surely more than would be caused by surface flooding or blocked gulleys. It looked more like a burst water mains. He wound down the window and leaned his head out.
‘What’s happened?’ he said.
‘An adit has burst.’
Then Cooper heard the noise. A thunderous roaring in the air, as if he was standing close to a giant waterfall. When he looked up he was amazed to see thousands of gallons of brown water gushing from an enormous hole in the hillside, forced out under pressure by the flood that had built up in the old mineshafts behind it. Where it hit the air, the torrent foamed into a creamy head as though the hill had turned itself into a vast spout of Guinness.
He could see that the water was full of debris being scoured out of the mine. Soil, stones and the occasional larger lump of rock plummeted through the deluge and bounced off the hillside further down the slope before crashing into trees near the stream bed.
‘It must have got blocked further down for it to burst here. The water’s obviously been backing up for days. There’s not much we can do about it until the adit has emptied itself.’
‘Where is the water going?’
‘On to the road, as you can see. And then to wherever is downhill from here. You’ll have to find another way round.’
‘I’ll try Lea Road.’
‘I think you’ll find Lea Road is already closed, mate.’
Cooper turned the Toyota round but a few minutes later he discovered the council workman was right. He could see across the valley that the road running down from Holloway into Cromford was flooded in two places, at Bow Wood near the car park for High Peak Junction, and again between St Mary’s Church and the railway station, where the rugby field was well under water.
Down in the village, the water was three feet deep, and sandbags were piled at every door. People were always shocked by the speed that this could happen. Within twelve hours of heavy rain, you could find the waterline three feet up your walls and stinking brown sludge filling your ground-floor rooms.
No vehicles could get through in these conditions. Driving at any speed into water more than about fifteen centimetres deep could feel like driving into a brick wall. Unexpected patches of deeper water might be hidden by a bend or a dip in the road. Just two feet of standing water could float your car, and just one foot of water if it was moving. As wheels failed to hold their grip, you lost control.
The Toyota had an air intake higher off the ground then most modern cars, so Cooper had an advantage. But even a four-by-four vehicle could get swept away by flood water. It might be four-wheel drive, but it wasn’t amphibious. The abandoned cars standing in deep water for hours would need to have their spark plugs or injectors removed and their engines turned over to expel water from the cylinders before anyone tried starting them. But he bet that wouldn’t happen in a lot of cases. There would be a surge of claims on motor insurance policies for Glen Turner’s colleagues at Prospectus Assurance to deal with in the next few days.
Walking could be just as dangerous. If the flow reached four miles per hour, anyone would be knocked off their feet and never be able to regain their footing.
Cooper left his car, and looked over the wall. These low lying fields would have been constantly waterlogged at one time, a permanent marshland. Derbyshire’s answer to the Everglades. But the path through them was an ancient trackway. Centuries ago, stones had been laid to raise it above ground level, so that people were able to walk across the marshy fields. The river that started as a trickle a few miles to the north-west had collected water from the surrounding hills and swollen to a powerful torrent by the time it reached this point. A substantial bridge had been built to cross it. The meadows on either side had been flooded a week earlier, and large pools of surface water had been left behind. It was strange to think that the climate here was classified as a Marine West Coast. Temperate summers, and no dry season, waterlogged soils with poor drainage.
Beyond the river, the trees of Shining Cliff Woods look dark and eerie. It had started to rain again, not with a gentle transition but a dramatic opening of the sluice gates, a torrent of water instantly cascading through the air. If he was to reach his objective, he would have to drive all the way round via Wirksworth.
Cooper looked north, back towards Carl Wark’s stone ramparts, which marked the edge of the Dark Peak. A large part of him felt he belonged up there, among the bleak expanses of peat moor and the twisted gritstone outcrops. He’d felt at home in the darkness, surrounded by hostile reality. It had reflected what was happening inside him.
There was only one place Ben Cooper could be heading for. Diane Fry called into the office and obtained the address of Josh Lane. A mobile home park? She looked at a map and struggled to locate it. She was lost in this area without someone like Cooper or Irvine to give her directions.
Fry put her foot down and drove on through the rain, peering through the water that sluiced across her windscreen to catch a glimpse of a signpost or a familiar landmark. The Peak District looked darker and more dangerous than she’d seen it in all these years.
Cooper could see the rising flood
water lapping at the walls of the homes in the lower part of Derwent Park
.
Some residents had already left, advised to evacuate by the police. Others had stayed, determined not to be forced out of their homes but to see it out, trusting that the flood would subside within a few hours. This was England, after all, not New Orleans or the Indian Ocean. Surely the weather would change soon, and things would be back to normal, except for a major clean-up operation.
A church stood on higher ground in the nearby village, but no one had gone there. Even in the middle of a natural disaster, they didn’t think of turning to God, but preferred to rely on a few sandbags. Those who had left were refugees now, with suitcases and carrier bags.
Outside, fence posts dragged out of the earth by the flood bobbed to the surface. A sheep tried to swim, its eyes wild with fear as it was carried along by the current. The river had burst its banks,
spilling out over the lower-lying fields, spreading inexorably into the bumps and hollows of the abandoned lead mines, filling the shallow bowls between the old spoil heaps and pouring through holes in the crude concrete caps that covered the shafts.
Josh Lane’s home stood on its own shrinking island. Finally, Cooper saw his car, the silver grey Honda. Lane was trying to make a run for it. Had someone tipped him off? Who would do that? Cooper didn’t have time to worry about it.
It was obvious that Lane had left it too late. All the other residents of Derwent Park had been evacuated but Lane must have been concerned with packing his belongings into the Honda. By the time he came out and got into his car, the roadway was already submerged, and water was lapping at the base of his mobile home.
But like so many other motorists that week, Lane decided to risk it. He pointed the Honda towards the exit and drove into the water, hoping for the best. Cooper could see that he was driving too fast: his instinct was to put his foot down and get to the safety of the public road as quickly as possible. But it didn’t work that way when you were driving in a flood.
Within seconds, the car had stalled. But then it began to move slightly. Not under control, but bobbing in the water as its wheels left the road surface. Its bonnet slewed to the left, in the direction of the current. A moment later, it was floating freely, swept away by a powerful flow of water strong enough to lift a car clean off the road.
A hundred yards downstream was a low stone bridge, a single arch carrying the little back road from Cromford over the stream. Already, the level of the water was almost up to the top of the arch. As Lane’s Honda spun in the current, it gathered speed until it was heading rapidly towards the bridge. A few seconds later, a bang and a crash of metal against stone told Cooper that the car had impacted with the bridge.
He ran towards his Toyota and started the engine. Slowly he crept down the road, staying in first gear, trying not to send up too much of a bow wave, slipping the clutch and revving the engine to clear the exhaust and keep the engine running if any water splashed on to the electrics.
In a shallow dip, the Toyota began to aquaplane. He held the steering wheel lightly and lifted his foot off the accelerator until the tyres regained their grip. Like many four-wheel drive vehicles, this one had a high-level air intake, allowing him to drive through water a few feet deep, though he knew he could say goodbye to his carpet. And even a four-by-four could be swept away in flowing water.
Cooper felt his wheels start to lose grip again halfway through the flooded section. The car was trying to float. He opened the driver’s door and allowed some water into the car to weigh it down until the tyres gripped the road surface again. At the same time, he continued revving the engine and slipping the clutch.
Finally, he reached the bridge. He slid the Toyota to a halt and looked down at the trapped car. When he stepped out of the driver’s door, he was relieved to feel tarmac beneath an inch or two of water streaming down towards the flood below.