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

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 bottomof 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.
    Coopercould 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