Stephen Booth - Dead And Buried

‘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 — 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 passing 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 passed 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 passed through, leaving nothing but scorched earth behind them.

‘Well I can check the pub on my way back,’ said Cooper. ‘I pass 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 — 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.’