Slated for Death (9 page)

When you're young and the money is rolling in, you don't think about financial investments, rainy days, or what'll happen when the music stops, as inevitably it does. Or at least Karis didn't. But one Character did and her prudent investments now enabled her to live a more-than-comfortable, quiet life in Surrey well out of the spotlight with her husband, children, dogs, and horses. Another had made millions as a celebrity chef, cooking for the rich and famous, launching her own line of expensive cookware, endorsing products, and writing hugely popular cookbooks. Karis hadn't even known this one could cook, but then how could she? They'd had their own personal chef, hired by their manager, who travelled everywhere with them and whose job it was to keep the girls slim.

Another performer who hadn't done so well for herself after the band broke up at least managed to land a role every year as the fairy godmother in a Christmas pantomime in Birmingham or Llandudno and get almost top billing on the posters that were plastered all over the town.

And then there was the bass guitarist, who'd died of a heroin overdose in a bohemian New York apartment hotel where several other celebrities had died before her. Her death had merited a few paragraphs of print and minutes of airtime for a day or two and had revived nostalgic interest in the defunct group. Karis had picked up a few bookings in the wake of that, but they'd soon dried up.

Karis had never really moved on and found a solid new way to earn a living and be in the world. Singing was all she knew how to do and all she wanted to do. And now it had come to this: she was to perform a few songs as the special guest artiste in a St. David's Day concert to be held down a worked-out slate mine.

She blamed her agent who was worse than useless. If he'd been on top of things, if he'd put her interests first and promoted her properly, she could be enjoying the same kind of success as the last of her bandmates, who'd gone on to a brilliant, chart-topping career as a single artist. After all, she didn't have any more talent that Karis did; she'd just been luckier, that's all. She might have been better-looking, Karis would give her that, and in the shallow end of the entertainment pool, looks and youth are all that matter. Once you turn thirty you're on the slippery slope to oblivion, turning up only in the pages of some downmarket tabloid under the mean-spirited headline:
WHERE ARE THEY NOW
?

She thought that especially cruel. Showing a former celebrity on her way to the shops in a sloppy pair of sweatpants and baggy sweater, with no makeup and her jowls and turkey neck on show for all the world to see. Thankfully, apparently she didn't even rate that.

She leaned over and examined her face in the mirror above the sink, smoothing her neck and turning her face slowly side to side. She'd changed so much since those Character days. In fact, people rarely recognized her and when they did, it was usually a woman who squinted at her in a, “Do I know you?” kind of way. “Did you used to be somebody? Are you somebody I should know?”

She tilted her head to examine the centre part that divided her hair and noted the roots were starting to show. She'd always hated her grey hair; she'd pick up a bottle of hair dye at the chemist and get that sorted as soon as she could. One of the perks she missed most about the performing days was the grooming. Hairdressers and makeup artists travelled with the group to ensure everyone was ready for the next concert, promotional appearance, or store opening. Or even just a quick run to the shops on the rare occasions when no one was available to go for you.

She scowled as she added a sweater to the pile of clothes in her suitcase. At least her contract for this mine concert had stipulated she'd be put up in a decent hotel for the rehearsal and performance nights, not in some draughty B&B with 1980s flowered wallpaper borders. Rather like the one she was just leaving.

She didn't really want to, but she'd have to spend a few days with Mum. Or a few weeks, more like, if she was going to be honest about it. The concert was still a ways off and she had no bookings between now and then. She'd been given a rehearsal and performance schedule for the St. David's Day concert and really, all she needed to do was decide what to wear, what to sing, and show up on time. She sighed and tossed a few unwanted clothes, including a pair of blue cotton trousers, into the bin, remembering a time when she'd spent thousands on clothes that hung in the wardrobe with the tags still on them and then given them away. The one smart thing she'd done with her money was buy Mum that little house in Swansea so she'd always have a roof over head. Who could have known it would turn out that sometimes that roof was over her head, too? Mum was always glad to see her and knew enough not to ask too many questions. And she was always good for a “payday” loan that both knew would never be repaid as real paydays were few and far between.

Karis Edwards took one last look around the room to make sure she had everything, then picked up her bag and carried it to her car.

 

Sixteen

The fields that surround the town of Llanelen, green even in midwinter and segmented with dry stone walls, gradually give way to a more rugged terrain as the A470 passes through the Valley of the River Conwy, heading deeper into Snowdonia National Park. Steep hills, brown and barren now, but emblazoned with yellow gorse and purple heather in summer, tower over the two-lane asphalt road as it climbs higher, twisting and winding higher until it reaches the Crimea Pass.

“Your ears might pop,” Victoria said.

Penny took a deep breath and continued looking out the window.

“You're very quiet.”

“I'm really not looking forward to this. Going down the mine.” She glanced at Victoria. “Have you ever been down there?”

“Once, more years ago than I care to remember. I was looking after my nieces during the half-term holiday and it seemed like a fun day out. It's actually rather interesting. The sense of history is powerful and it's certainly unique.” She took her eyes off the road for a moment to check her rearview mirror. “And safe. Much safer for us today than it would have been a hundred years ago when it was a working mine.”

Penny shuddered. “I can't bear to think of it. The conditions must have been horrendous.”

As the sun struggled to emerge from behind the clouds that blanketed the tops of the hills, many scarred with deep grey slashes that marked the sites of former quarrying operations, huge mounds of slate waste came into view. For every tonne of usable slate extracted from the earth, approximately nine tonnes of waste—dust, rubble, unusable chips, and small pieces—are generated. Wherever slate was mined or quarried, the operation was surrounded by vast tips of by-product, now glowering over the landscape as constant reminders of what was once a great industry and a long gone way of life consigned to history.

“Here we are,” Victoria announced a few minutes later as they pulled into the parking lot of the Llyn Du mine.

They entered the reception area and after introducing themselves to a helpful woman in the gift shop, were asked to wait. A few moments later a man in a red boilersuit approached them, holding out a welcoming hand.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said, smiling broadly. “I'm Bevan Jones, the operations manager. Pleasure to meet you. I'm here to take you down and show you where the concert will take place.” After Penny and Victoria introduced themselves Bevan led the way out of the reception area, along a covered walkway past the caf
é,
or
caban
as it was originally called, and then past a large, open-fronted shed where slate-splitting demonstrations were held.

“Here's the train that will take us down,” he said when they reached the winch house, pointing to a bright yellow conveyance that did not look like a conventional train, but rather like a set of large metal boxes staggered on a track. “But before we go down, you must put on one of these.” He handed each woman a coloured hard hat. “Make sure it fits tightly.” When Penny hesitated, he gave her a reassuring smile. “You can't go down without one and you wouldn't want to. Visitors think they're just a touristy gimmick, but believe me, before this is over, you'll be glad you're wearing it.” She put it on. “You'll ride in the front car with me. Ladies first. Mind your heads.”

Victoria ducked her head and climbed in the first car. As Penny followed, her red helmet hit the top of the entrance into the car with a resonating clang. Bevan and Victoria laughed. “Oh,” said Penny, raising her hand to touch the helmet, “I did think these were a touristy thing, but now I get it.”

“Brace yourselves! It'll be a bit noisy,” said Bevan as he sat beside Victoria in the guard's seat. He pushed a button inside the cab and an alarm sounded. A moment later the train lurched forward, then chugged and rattled as it entered a tunnel, leaving daylight behind and descending deeper and deeper into an all encompassing darkness. For a few minutes they travelled through an unknown place between worlds, the earth above and what lies beneath.

“This is the steepest passenger train in Britain,” Bevan remarked. Penny took a deep breath and cleared her throat. After what seemed ages, the train juddered to a stop and they climbed out.

“This way,” said Bevan. “Follow me. Stay close now and don't wander off. It's easy to get lost down here if you don't know where you're going and it could take us a while to find you. We don't want that.” He switched on the lamp attached to his helmet and the three set off, stepping over small, grey, chalky puddles that seemed to ooze out of the uneven path. Although electric lights were positioned along the slate walls, the lighting was dim and the darkness, deep and impenetrable, felt close and confining. Penny ran her fingertips along the sides of the tunnel, feeling the jagged roughness. The air smelled damp, with a tang of earthy loaminess. A few moments later they emerged into a cavern and Bevan opened a small gate in a metal fence. “This,” he said, “is where the concert will take place.” The chamber was massive, with an open space in front of a stage area made entirely of slate.

“And the chairs would be here?” Penny asked as she gestured at the open area. “How many can we seat? A hundred or so?”

“Well, yes, that's about the seating capacity. When we do weddings, that's what we plan for.”

“Do you store the chairs down here somewhere, or bring them down?” asked Victoria.

“We store them aboveground, where it's dry,” Bevan replied. “It's too damp down here. They'd be okay for a night or two, but anything longer and they'd soon be ruined. There are a lot of underground springs and streams as we are so deep in the earth.”

Penny looked around and above her in wonder. The vast, soaring underground space, resembling a villain's lair in a James Bond film, carved and blasted out of a mountain by the hard, dirty work of generations of men who spent their entire working lives breathing in slate dust, left her speechless.

“It's moving, isn't it?” commented Bevan. “It takes everyone who comes down here like that. Well, thoughtful people, anyway.”

“It's too bad the word ‘awesome' has become so overused that it's lost its true meaning,” said Victoria. “Because this is truly awesome.”

“The other lady who was planning the concert,” Bevan said, “Glenda Roberts. She felt that way, too. Friend of yours, was she?”

“Well, I knew her because she was a customer of ours,” said Penny. “But Victoria is a harpist so she knew her on a more professional level. Did you know her?”

“Well, when you say ‘know,'” Bevan replied cautiously, “not exactly know. I wouldn't use that word. But I knew who she was and I knew of her. I'd seen her around and about and at the market. And I was in the group that found her body. In fact, I was the one that yelled, ‘Fetch the box.'”

“‘Fetch the box'?”

“Yes. In the old mining days anyone who was injured and needed carrying to the surface went up in a box. To this day, whenever anyone's hurt down the mine the code is, ‘Fetch the box!' That's what you shout if someone's injured or even if you think they might be dead. We've got a box on display in one of the caverns. I can show it to you on the way out. Many bodies transported in that.”

“So where did you find the body?” asked Penny.

“In front of the lake, she was. I'll show you that, too, in a few minutes, if you like. The mine was named after that lake. Llyn Du. Black Lake.”

“Tell me,” said Penny. “What do you make of this? Of Glenda's body being found down here in the mine.”

“Well, we were all very sorry it happened, of course, but sadly, this place is no stranger to death. Many men died down here or were so badly injured that they died because of injuries they got here.” He leaned back a little and pushed his hard hat a little further back on his head. “I heard she was murdered. Glenda Roberts.”

He paused for a moment, as if weighing his words.

“I can tell you one thing for sure. If she was murdered, no one who works here did it.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Victoria.

“Because there are about three hundred caverns down here, on sixteen or seventeen levels. The public only sees about ten chambers. So anyone who knew their way around here wouldn't have left the body where it was found.” He shook his head. “No. Someone who worked here would know about all the unused caverns and warrens of tunnels. Twenty-five miles of tunnels. In fact, we're getting ready to backfill an old unused tunnel right now. So anyone who works down here, me for example, would know that. I'd have put the body in the tunnel and once it had been backfilled and sealed, her body would never be found.” He took a step toward the fencing to indicate that it was almost time to move on and then turned to look back at them. “Never be found,” he repeated.

“Would you like to see more of the mine—the lake, maybe?—or would you like to go back to the surface now?” he asked when they were back on the path. Victoria and Penny exchanged a quick glance and reached an unspoken agreement.