Sooner than part from the mountains, I think I would rather be dead.
Watching the fires from a distance was making him feel helpless, and the necessity of being in the office was even more irksome than usual. He had to admit that he was itchy and restless, bothered by the nagging sensation that his past was being obliterated, even as his future was being planned out, fixed down and tied up in a neat bow with a bit of wedding ribbon.
"They"ve asked for a police investigation, though," said Murfin. "The cost of the damage is rising astronomically. There"s a request in for attendance by scenes of crime, too."
Cooper nodded.
"You know what?" he said. "I think I"ll go myself."
3.
St Luke"s Hospice had been built in a quiet location just behind Edendale General Hospital. Patio doors from the ground-floor rooms opened on to the hospice gardens, where patients could look out at a fish pond and mature trees alive with birds and squirrels.
The room occupied by Maurice Wharton had an electrically operated positional bed, air conditioning, a flat-screen TV and en suite toilet facilities. Wharton would have felt he was staying in a nice three-star hotel, if it wasn"t for the fact that he was dying.
During his stay in the hospice, he had received the constant attentions of the palliative care nurse, the health care support workers and the occupational therapist. At intervals he was given aromatherapy ma.s.sage with essential plant oils. He was becoming familiar with their powerful scents, which clung to his body. Camomile, lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus. So very different from what he"d been used to all his life a beer and cigarette smoke, the smells of cooking. He was starting to believe that death would smell of lavender.
It was two weeks since he"d moved from palliative care on a day basis, and taken up permanent occupation in St Luke"s. It was progress of a kind, he supposed a another step on the road towards his inevitable destination. And "permanent" was a word that didn"t mean quite what it used to do.
Terminal care. They said the aim was to make the last few months of life relatively peaceful and pain-free. Some patients escaped the pain, he"d been told. But intractable pain was experienced in more than seventy per cent of cases with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Ninety-five per cent of patients died within five years. He"d lived most of his life being considered out of the ordinary. Now, in his last few weeks, he"d become part of the majority.
The pain in his abdomen, the loss of appet.i.te, the yellowing in his skin and eyes, the fatigue and nausea, the insomnia. Why was the list so long? Doctors had initially related his symptoms to depression. So the pancreatic cancer had already been well advanced when the diagnosis was confirmed by CT scans of his abdomen, and surgery had become impossible. The only available treatment by then had been chemotherapy, a drug called Gemcitabine. It was ironic that the side effects of the drug were nausea and vomiting, skin rashes a and the fluid retention that swelled his body again.
Maurice Wharton had never really believed in G.o.d, or heaven. But occasionally he had a chat with the hospice chaplain, while he waited for his personal visitors at three o"clock in the afternoon. Should he be afraid of h.e.l.l? Was there some endless ordeal waiting for him when this temporary suffering was over? If so, the chaplain had never mentioned it. Eternal torment only came to him in his dreams.
Wharton wondered whether he should stop trying to keep up with the news from the outside world. But sometimes, when his family visited, he couldn"t avoid it. There were things they wanted to talk about. There were the moorland fires, which had been burning for weeks and were now destroying Oxlow Moor. There was the campaign against the building of a new Tesco store in town. Nancy and the children knew how irrelevant those topics were to him, yet it was important to talk about them, as if everything was normal.
But nothing was normal now. His four-hourly doses of oral morphine were vital to get him through the day, though they made him p.r.o.ne to vomiting, constipation and dry mouth. The cancer had also affected his liver. The doctors told him that worsening renal function altered the metabolisation of the morphine and caused toxicity. The explanation meant nothing to him. But he knew what the results were. Agitation, confusion, hallucinations, involuntary jerking of his limbs and vivid dreams.
Yes, those vivid dreams. Sometimes he couldn"t sleep at all. At other times he was afraid to sleep, because his dreams woke him in a panic, sweating in the face of unnameable fears.
Were those nightmares caused by morphine toxicity, or by something else entirely?
The road from Edendale climbed steeply over the edge of Abney Moor and pa.s.sed through the Hazlebadge parish. From here, the Light House was already visible. Cooper glimpsed it now and then from the highest points of the road as a distinctive feature on the horizon.
The pub had always seemed to draw his eye, as if it was trying to lure him, to tempt him to call in for a visit. It was a famous landmark in this part of the Peak District. Famous when it was open, at least. The Light House had shut its doors six month ago.
Well, it was just one of thousands of rural pubs that had closed during the last few years. But this one was such a shame. The pub stood on the highest point of Oxlow Moor and was known as a landmark for miles around. The roof line and the shape of the chimneys were recognisable from a great distance, unmistakably the Light House. When it was open, the illuminated facade of the pub had been visible at night in all directions, from the B6061 above Winnats Pa.s.s to the main road running south-west out of Edendale towards Peak Forest.
The Light House might still be visible now, once the smoke of the wildfires had cleared. But it was no longer the landmark Cooper had known. The roof line was still there, and the shape of the chimneys. But the pub itself was a blank, windowless and dead.
Finding the place was the difficulty, though. Its presence on the skyline gave no clue how you were supposed to reach it. And within minutes it had vanished again as the road descended past the abandoned open-cast mine workings at Shuttle Rake and Moss Rake.
From one short stretch of road, he could see part of the vast quarry that served the Castleton cement works. Its walls were blasted into deep ledges like an enormous Roman amphitheatre glowing white in the sunlight. A stack of white silage bags formed a startling feature of the landscape, an unexpected contrast to the usual black silage stores. Many of the road signs directed quarry lorries towards the best routes to reach the sites that were still operating. Without them, large vehicles would constantly be attempting to negotiate the narrowest of lanes, getting stuck and bringing traffic to a complete halt.
Cooper turned on to a short stretch of Batham Gate, the old Roman road, where he glimpsed a herd of piebald horses grazing in the field. Then he turned again towards Bradwell Moor, where the Light House soon came back into view.
The dark expanses of Oxlow Moor stretched away west and south, increasing the pub"s impression of isolation. Since the only approach was up the hill from the east, you used to be able to step out of the pub and feel as though you were in the middle of nowhere. Well, you were in the middle of nowhere. There was almost nothing in sight to remind you of civilisation, except the occasional farmstead nestled into the landscape on the more distant hills.
To the north he could see Rushup Edge and Mam Tor, with the plateau of Kinder Scout a ghostly grey presence behind them. Away to the east, he was looking across the Hope Valley to Winhill Pike, the distinctive conical tor on Win Hill. To the south-west, the view was over Jewelknoll Plantation to Ox Low, and a glimpse of farmland near Peak Forest. He knew Edendale was somewhere to the south-east, beyond Bradwell Moor, but the town was lost from view now.
He stopped for a moment, wound down the window and looked up the hill at the pub. A large auctioneer"s sign had been fixed high on the wall. Historic landmark inn for sale by public auction.
Below his position, a track snaked away towards the remains of some disused lead mines, crossing the Limestone Way about a mile down. There were walkers on the trail now. He could hear the clang of gates being closed as they pa.s.sed from one part of route to the next, sprung stainless-steel latches crashing into place. The sound was perfectly clear, though the trail was a long way below him.
All around the edges of the moor were irregular cl.u.s.ters of b.u.mps and hollow a the traces of those long-abandoned mine workings, their mounds of spoil thrown up like giant ant heaps. At another time, sheep would have been dozing on those mounds, using the extra height for vantage points, or places of safety. Beneath a tumble of stones in the bottom of each hollow would be the entrance to a disused mine shaft. Not so safe at all.
Many of the shafts had been filled in completely over the years. But some of them hadn"t. These workings were centuries old, and a few had been lost and forgotten a lost, that was, until someone stumbled on a loose stone and broke a leg, or slipped through a corroded capping plate and disappeared into the ground for ever.
Cooper put the Toyota back into gear and drove on over the moor, heading inexorably towards the clouds of black smoke on the skyline.
On Oxlow Moor, some of the firefighters were dousing smouldering hotspots with water from backpacks like garden sprayers. Others were stamping and kicking out the smaller fires, or flailing them with beaters.
Cooper found the incident commander by his white helmet and white tabard. He turned out to be the watch manager from Edendale fire station. This was a major incident, so somewhere there would be a Level Two commander in overall charge.
"How dense is the smoke up there?" asked Cooper.
"How dense? You can"t see your hand in front of your face," said the fire chief, pushing back the visor of his helmet.
"What"s the current Fire Severity Index?"
"The FSI has been at five for the past two days. It can"t get any higher."
Several square miles of moorland were burning now, with dense smoke trailing across the sky. At least barriers were out at strategic points along the adjacent roads to stop traffic. Some areas where earlier fires had started had been dampened down after a huge operation, but the ground was still smouldering.
Cooper could see a silver-grey ranger"s Land Rover Defender towing a water bowser on to the moor, and one of the national park"s eight-wheel-drive Argo Centaurs operating alongside the fire service"s Unimog all-terrain tender.
Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service were only part of the operation when it came to a moorland fire like this one. National park rangers, National Trust wardens, water companies and other major landowners all became involved. They"d come together to form the Fire Operations Group more than fifteen years ago, after a serious moorland blaze. They drew up joint plans, shared specialist equipment and worked side by side to tackle major fires.
The fire chief shook his head at the scene on the moor. "I"d be a lot happier if you could get hold of the people who caused these fires."
"They aren"t accidental?"
He laughed. "Accidental? I"m not convinced you could even do this accidentally. It isn"t so easy to start a moorland fire just by dropping a match or something. When you drop a spent match or a cigarette end, it"s almost always on a path anyway. Bare earth or rock. Nothing that burns easily. These fires began way out in the middle of the dry heather, where they had the best chance of catching. If we"d found the remains of any Chinese lanterns, I might accept it as accidental."
"Chinese lanterns? Really?"
"Absolutely. There"s been a complete craze for them recently. It"s mad. I mean, what is a Chinese lantern? You"re basically lighting a candle inside a paper bag and letting it drift off wherever the wind takes it. People send off whole swarms of them at once. Then they land on someone"s crop, or on a baking-dry moor like this, and the result is no surprise to anyone. Certainly not to me. And yet they call that an accident. Well, not in my book a it"s sheer recklessness with someone else"s property. They"re talking about banning the things in some places, and it"s none too soon in my opinion. It"s already the case in other countries, even in China."
Cooper remembered his brother complaining about Chinese lanterns too. Of course, Matt complained about a lot of things. But the National Farmers" Union had said the lanterns were not only a fire hazard, but could also wreck farm machinery, or be chopped up and get into animal feed, with potentially fatal results for livestock.
"But no signs of Chinese lanterns in this case? No one been holding a party and letting them off?"
"Not so far as we can see," said the fireman. "There"d be wire frames left, even after they"d burned up."
"Arson, then?"
The watch manager shrugged. "Without a confession, there"s no way anyone can actually prove the fires were started deliberately."
"But that"s your gut instinct?"
"Yes. But my gut instinct isn"t proof of anything."
"Fair enough."
"Our own fire investigator is on his way, but we"ve narrowed down the location where we think the fire started. Or was started. Whichever. We believe there are traces of accelerant use."
"Petrol? Lighter fluid?"
"Something of that nature. The burn pattern is distinctive. A higher rate of combustion, a greater degree of heat. In that one patch, the fire has just left ashes."
"Can we have a look?"
"Sure. Just take care."
As they walked, the fireman pointed up the slope, where the heather and bracken had been burnt off completely, leaving a blackened stretch of ground devoid of vegetation of any kind.
"Next thing, we"re going to have the archaeologists poking about up here," he said.
"Why?"
"Remains of some old stone buildings are showing through where the fire has caused most damage to the ground cover."
"Really?"
Cooper took a few steps up the slope to see more closely. Bare peat was visible in many places, and he could just see a line of muddy masonry protruding from the eroded surface. From this angle, it did look like the remains of a wall, or the foundations of a vanished structure.
"How old?" he asked.
"No idea, Sergeant. But I"m sure there"ll be no shortage of people wanting to come out here and tell us. It could just be some old shepherd"s hut. On the other hand ..."
"Yes, it could be anything. There"s supposed to be an abandoned medieval village around here somewhere. There are always Roman sites turning up. We"re only a stone"s throw from Batham Gate, the old Roman road. There could have been a small fort here, for all we know. It"s an ideal position. Look at the vantage point they would have had."
The fireman shrugged. "I wouldn"t know. I just hope we don"t start getting the blame for any damage that"s been done to it."
Cooper knew that Oxlow Moor had a lot of history. Some of it, though, was more recent, and less harmless than a few pa.s.sing Roman legionaries.
He turned and looked across the moor. The Light House wasn"t visible from here, because of the shape of the land. It must be over a mile away from his position.
"I pa.s.sed the old pub on the way here," he said. "There was a report of a break-in."
"That"s right. We used the place as a rendezvous point earlier, but the fires have been moving this way pretty fast, as you can see. The prevailing wind is moving to the east."
There was no mistaking the path of the fire. A huge tract of charred heather and bracken had been left in its wake as the flames advanced across a wide front. It looked as though an invading army had pa.s.sed through, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind them.
"Well I can check the pub on my way back," said Cooper. "I pa.s.s fairly close to it."
There was a disturbance among the firefighters and rangers further up the hill. Someone called down and waved a hand in an urgent gesture.
"What"s going on now?" asked Cooper.
"Oh Lord. It looks like they"ve found something else."
"More archaeological remains?"
"Chief," shouted one of the firemen, "you might want to take a look at this."
Out of curiosity, Cooper followed the watch manager up the hill through the remains of the burnt heather to where the firefighters had gathered. And within minutes he"d forgotten all about the break-in at the Light House.
A couple of hours later, the scene of the find on Oxlow Moor had been taped off, but only by driving plastic stakes into the burned peat around it. The taping seemed a bit unnecessary in view of the nature of the surroundings, but at least procedure was being followed. E Division"s crime-scene manager Wayne Abbott was present, which indicated the seriousness with which someone had responded to the finds. Cooper had been joined by Carol Villiers, dispatched from West Street on his call.
"What have we got, then?" he asked.
Abbott had been crouching in his white scene suit, but stood up and greeted Cooper. The knees of the paper suit were stained with brown from the churned-up peat.
"The main item is a small rucksack," he said. "Nylon manufacture mostly, so it"s survived being buried. I couldn"t say how long it"s been here, but a few years certainly."
"You"re saying "buried". It wasn"t just dropped and lost?"
"No way. It was dug into the peat and covered over. It was only a few inches down, but a layer of peat and then the heather or whatever growing on top of it would have concealed it pretty well. In fact, by the shape of it and the position it was lying in, I"d say it had been deliberately flattened, possibly by somebody jumping up and down on it."
"They were hoping it wouldn"t be found, then?"
"Not for a long while. In fact they might have been hoping it would rot down eventually, but, like I say, it"s nylon."
"Non-biodegradable."
"Yes." Abbott lifted off a fragment of charred bracken that had fallen into the hole. "If we"re really lucky, we might get a partial footwear impression," he said. "That looks like a boot print to me, near the shoulder strap there. Out here, the soles of anyone"s boots would be covered in muddy peat, just like ours. You couldn"t stamp on a clean surface like this without leaving a mark."
"Could the rucksack have been damaged in some way?"
"What do you mean?"
"Is there a hole torn in the bottom? Are the shoulder straps intact? I"m thinking that someone might have decided it was too badly damaged to be useful any more, and they couldn"t be bothered taking it home with them, or even carrying it off the moor to dispose of."
Abbott narrowed his eyes as he looked into the hole. "I understand what you"re getting at. It looks perfectly sound to me, but we won"t know for certain until we get it back and examine it properly."
Cooper straightened up. "There"s more than the rucksack, though. It isn"t just some hiker who decided to dump a bit of old kit in the heather."
"No, certainly not. There are other items coming to light. We have a couple of anoraks a quite expensive garments from the labels, and stains on them that could be blood at first glance. We"ll need to confirm that. There"s a mobile phone. Dead as a dodo, of course. And look at this."