Dead And Buried

On the way, he called Liz, conscious that he ought to put things right if she was still unhappy about his night off from wedding planning. But for once she seemed to be the one who was preoccupied.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in later when I see you,’ she said.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Of course. Tonight, then?’

‘Absolutely. Or …’

‘What?’

Cooper was thinking that tonight was too long to wait. He’d missed seeing her more than he could admit. Gavin Murfin just hadn’t been a substitute.

‘Well I’ll try to see you for a few minutes during the day, if I can. You’re on duty, aren’t you?’

‘Oh yes. Busy, busy. People keep finding crime scenes for us.’

‘I suppose they do.’

Within a few minutes Cooper was driving through Bradwell into the Hope Valley, phoning in to get the latest update on the operation. He joined the A625 and turned on to a back road by the post office in Hope village. The road snaked its way between the River Noe and the Hope Valley railway line until it finally reached the assembly point in a visitors’ car park near the hamlet of Upper Booth.

As usual there was a problem with rubberneckers. Some members of the public liked nothing better than a good fire. They seemed to treat it as an alternative to daytime TV. As a result, cars were drawn on to the verge and into every gateway along the road. Nearer to the car park, they were lined up as if for a party, with a young man with long hair leaning on his car playing a guitar. Other people were using binoculars or taking photographs with their mobile phones. A middle-aged couple had set up a folding table and were drinking tea. Late arrivals were finding it difficult to get parking spaces.

On the narrowest bend, Cooper found cars projecting so far into the roadway that it would be impossible for anything as large as a fire appliance to get past. Someone ought to be here sorting this out, keeping the access clear. But it would mean taking resources away from where they were needed most. Not for the first time, the public weren’t helping at all.

When he arrived at the assembly point, he was met by a national park ranger in his distinctive red jacket. The rangers were often the first line of defence against the spread of moorland fires. They were out there on the ground every day, and they didn’t worry about working nine to five when there was an emergency situation.

‘What I’m hoping for is that the wind will change direction,’ said the ranger.

‘To stop the fire spreading towards the villages?’ asked Cooper.

The ranger shook his head, and jerked a thumb towards the road.

‘No, so that all the gongoozlers get a face full of smoke. That might make them go home.’

Looking up the hill at the fire burning along the skyline, Cooper could see a helicopter hovering low over the moor, carrying a huge orange bucket full of water. It released its load to help douse the fire, and a moment later was heading back eastwards until it disappeared.

He glimpsed a farmstead sheltered by a belt of trees, reminding him too much of Bridge End. He imagined the farm where he’d grown up being threatened by a moorland fire. It didn’t bear thinking about.

And this wasn’t the first fire on Kinder. When he was younger, he’d walked across this moor while the peat below him was burning, warming the surface but not quite breaking through. It was a strange experience, like crossing a hotplate with clouds of richly scented smoke rising all around him.

‘How did it happen?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t the Fire Severity Index at its highest level already? The access land should be closed to the public.’

The ranger shrugged. ‘We can close access land all right, but we don’t have the power to shut public footpaths. Which is a nonsense, when you think about it — because a lot of those paths run right across access land anyway. People think they can hold barbecues in the middle of a tinder-dry moorland, as if they were in their back garden. Why don’t they all go home and set fire to their own property?’

Cooper spotted the fire service’s Argo making its way across the edge of the plateau, its fogging unit spraying water on to the advancing fire front. He remembered the whole of that part of Kinder being a bog at one time. You wouldn’t have been able to walk across it, even in summer, without your boots sinking into water and evil-smelling mud soaking through your socks. He could still hear the squelch of his footsteps, and smell the fetid gas that was released from the sodden ground.

But he knew there would be no bog up there now. That stretch of moor had been dry for years.

‘Which direction is it moving?’

‘Westwards at the moment,’ said the ranger. ‘Towards Hayfield.’

‘It won’t get that far, surely?’

‘No, we’ll have it under control before then. But we’re pretty overstretched. We’re having to pull in all the resources we can. The trouble is, some of the other fires aren’t completely damped down. They could flare up again.’

‘Like Oxlow Moor?’

‘Yes. Though there isn’t much left to burn up there, to be honest.’