Dead And Buried (Cooper and Fry) Read Online Free PDF Page A

how irrelevant those topics were to him, yet it was important to talk about them, as if everything was normal.
    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 ashame. 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.
    Thedark 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