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

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 aboutbanning 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.
    ‘Nextthing, 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