The Mine by Rachel McLean and Joel Hames, book 2 in the Cumbria Crime series - Chapter 1

Paula glanced up. Clouds were gathering overhead, and even though there was no one else about, she was starting to regret letting herself get talked into this.

“Come on!” called Ryan.

He was standing up ahead, on one of those big concrete slabs, holding one corner of a banner and grinning. There were dozens of those slabs, a couple of metres wide and as much as four metres long, embedded in the ground. She’d asked about them when they’d arrived. Asked what was under them.

Chemicals, apparently. This place had been a chemical works, before it had been bought by the mining company. No one seemed to know what sort of chemicals, or whether they were dangerous, but the others were all wearing thick boots.

Paula looked down at her Crocs, and decided to walk between the slabs rather than over them.

Ryan was OK, though. She only knew him through Fatima, and she only really knew Fatima from a couple of meetings and a few hours in the pub, but Fatima was a laugh. And the two of them knew what they were doing. The wire cutters, the banner with its clever pun about the mine, the tips for keeping out of sight as they approached the location through quiet residential streets where strangers would stand out and strangers with pink hair would stand out even more. They’d had it all planned down to the last detail.

Paula had been excited. She’d been looking forward to it.

But now they were in the flat depression that made up the site, with the concrete slabs and the low, deserted buildings all around. She didn’t like the way the windows stared at her. She didn’t like how close they were to the residential streets surrounding the site. She didn’t like the half-dead ground, the dry grass and weeds clinging to life in the gaps between the slabs.

And she didn’t like the look of those clouds.

Get it over with, she told herself. There were six of those slabs between her and Ryan, and the others, Fatima, Aishling and Del, were striding over them without a care in the world.

Paula veered left to pick her way between the slabs towards Ryan. She glanced up again. A patch of blue. Were the clouds starting to break up?

“Not that way!” Ryan shouted. He was looking at her, gesturing at her to come back and across the slabs. Not likely.

The others had already reached him. Del and Fatima were laying the banner out, adjusting its position. Aishling was fiddling with her camera, checking the light and the angles. Beyond them, Paula spotted a flash of white and yellow, a clutch of daisies growing in the unlikeliest of spots. Ryan was still looking at her. The grin had gone.

She swallowed and broke into a gentle trot. She was still looking at Ryan when the ground seemed to give way under her left foot.

The ditch.

She’d run straight into it, not looking where she was going. And now she’d tripped and was lying in it, her leg already pulsing with pain.

She winced and pulled herself onto all fours. Ryan hadn’t seen: he’d already turned to issue instructions about the banner. She hoped the others hadn’t been watching.

The ditch was deeper than she’d expected. Dry earth, of course, plus whatever chemicals were left behind.

This place was like a curse. First a chemical works and now a mine, if those bastards got their way. Stuck here between the ocean and the fells like… like whatever the opposite of an oasis was.

Paula grabbed a tussock of grass, pulling herself up and halfway out. She reached further and felt something else.

It wasn’t grass. Some sort of material, she thought. Cloth.

She pushed down with the leg that she’d fallen on, wincing again, and lifted herself to get a better look.

She screamed.

She was still screaming thirty seconds later when the others reached her.

“What’s going on?” Ryan snapped. “Stop bloody screaming.”

Paula screamed even more. Her eyes were closed, squeezed tight against the memory of what she’d seen.

“Ryan, mate.” It was Aishling’s voice. “Look.”

Paula gulped down her nausea. Aishling had seen it.

Paula rolled over, away from the body. Was someone going to help her get up?

But they weren’t focused on her any more. She could hear Aishling talking into her phone.

“Police,” she said. “We need the police. We’re at the old Marchon Chemical Works, and we’ve found a body.”