James’s eyes flitted around the room, as if making sure they were alone. Robin could have told him there was barely anybody else in the building, let alone the room. “I’m in construction—work for a building company in Huddersfield called Laker’s. A couple of years back, we were hired by the Canal and River Trust to perform some maintenance on the disused canal tunnel that runs parallel to Standedge. I’m going to assume you know what they use it for—the vans that follow the tours.”

Robin nodded and so did Sally.

“The tunnels with the live train lines are fine. But. Well, the two other tunnels are notoriously unstable. When they built the canal tunnel, they started from either end. One team started in Marsden and one team started in Diggle. They came together slowly, but they misjudged it. When they got to the middle, they had to create an S-type shape to join it up. There have been loads of patch jobs throughout the years to the canal tunnel—that’s why if you go through you can see that some parts have brick walls, some parts are stone and some parts are just rock.

“The railway tunnel has fared a little better, but still had plenty of repairs done to it. And a couple of years ago, my team was hired to do some. An employee’s lights had gone out when driving through the tunnel and his van had slammed into a load-bearing column. Part of the outer wall of the tunnel was damaged, and we had to go in, assess the damage and see if it was safe.”

“And was it?” Sally said, sharing a look with Robin.

James shook his head and laughed. “No. No. Not by a long shot. The guy who did it was lucky that the whole damn tunnel didn’t come down on his head. We instantly told them that they had to shut down, until we could stabilize the structure. The disused railway tunnel and Standedge are intrinsically linked. A house of cards. One weak link and everything could come tumbling down.”

“I don’t suppose the Trust took kindly to you saying they had to close up shop,” Robin said.