Stephen Booth - Dead And Buried

But nothing was normal now. His four-hourly doses of oral morphine were vital to get him through the day, though they made him prone 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 passed 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 Pass 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 passed 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 clusters of bumps and hollow — 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 — 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.’