Dead And Buried

The amount of alcohol they’d consumed might well have impaired their judgement. Those two bottles of wine could have led them astray from the path. It only needed one rash decision, and they were lost. It was so easy to get disorientated on the moor, to follow a dry-stone wall for reassurance, then cross a stile in the wrong direction. He supposed the Pearsons didn’t have a map with them, let alone a compass. Far too many walkers went on to the hills without any of the proper equipment.

Cooper looked at the OS map again. Those last few hundred yards, where the path south from Goose Hill ran alongside the Limestone Way, were scattered with the ominous symbols indicating disused mine workings.

Villiers had stopped, and he turned to see what she was doing.

‘I’m starting to get the idea,’ she said, with a hint of surprise in her voice.

‘You are?’

‘It felt really safe when we walking up past the houses. You’re so closed in there, it’s as though you’re protected. It evens feels a bit claustrophobic, because the buildings are packed so close together.’

‘I’ve often thought that about Castleton,’ said Cooper.

‘But it’s misleading, isn’t it? It gives you a false sense of security. Because once you’re up here …’

She gestured towards Mam Tor, the sweep of her arm expressing the sudden wildness of the landscape. It was quite unexpected after the intimacy of Castleton’s narrow lanes, even for someone who knew the area well.

Cooper followed her gaze. So when the Pearsons got up on to the moor, what would they do? Were they looking for a light in the distance to guide them? Had they been searching so hard that they hadn’t seen the headlights of a car sitting on Goose Hill, where someone had been waiting for them? Were they surrounded by that eerie silence created by snow, the world around them white and dead and hushed? Or had the snow been driving horizontally across the moor, the wind moaning and whining like an animal?

It was funny how in winter everyone found it difficult to remember what summer was like, and in summer it was just as hard to imagine the cold of winter.

Yesterday, surrounded by acres of blackened heather, with smoke still drifting across the slopes, Cooper would have found it almost impossible to picture Oxlow Moor deep in snow. After months of dry, unseasonably warm weather, it took quite a leap of the imagination to visualise the freezing-cold conditions the Pearsons would have been struggling through that night. They must have gone over that same hill he could see now in the distance, but in the teeth of an icy wind and zero visibility.

Cooper recalled driving back from the Light House to Bridge End Farm one winter night many years ago, with horizontal sheets of snow streaming through the headlights of Matt’s Land Rover and sweeping across the road. No one lost on the moors in those conditions would have stood a chance, unless they found shelter.

To the north of Oxlow Moor, Winnats Pass was hardly an easy road to negotiate at the best of times. But once a bit of snow began to settle, and drivers found their wheels failing to get traction on the first incline, they soon turned back and looked for another way out of Castleton. Well, there wasn’t another route — not in this direction. The old A625 had been swept away by the landslides off Mam Tor years ago.

So, even if they had any visibility in the snowstorm, the Pearsons would have seen little or no traffic passing to the north. No headlights to reassure them that there were other people around that night.

Where was it the family came from again? Surrey, somewhere just south of London. Dorking, that was it. In their day-to-day lives, they were probably never out of sight or earshot of a major trunk road. They were within spitting distance of the permanently congested M25, almost under the flight paths of two of the busiest airports in the world.

The Peak District wasn’t exactly the remote, inaccessible wastes of the Antarctic. But that night, for the Pearsons, it might as well have been.

When Villiers had gone, Cooper looked at his watch. It would be a good time to catch his brother at Bridge End Farm. Matt didn’t like being disturbed during milking or when he was out on the tractor. But right now, he’d probably be tinkering in the workshop or the equipment shed.

‘Ben? How’s it going?’ said Matt when he answered. ‘Nothing wrong, is there?’

‘No, no. Everything’s fine.’

‘We’ve not seen you and Liz for a while. We thought you might have called round.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘Well, aren’t there things to discuss? I mean …’

‘Oh, you mean the wedding.’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘We’ve been a bit busy, Matt. House-hunting, looking at cakes … You know the sort of thing.’

Matt sighed. ‘Yes, I remember.’

‘But you’re right, we do need to talk some time.’

‘Kate says I can’t make any rude jokes during my speech,’ said Matt. ‘Is that right? I thought it was traditional for the best man.’

‘You can say what you like, as far as I’m concerned,’ said Ben.