Dead And Buried

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.’

‘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?’