Blind to the Bones. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ to turn it the wrong way. There was a curious kind of bonding that took place over a set of dirty spark plugs or a blocked fuel jet. The words alone, as they came into his mind, made Cooper smile with something like nostalgia.

      Following a trace of light, he walked to the back of the garage and found himself in a workshop behind it. Two men were in there, drinking tea from mugs. One of them wore overalls, and the other was in uniform, with a yellow jacket and the peaked cap of a traffic officer on a bench next to him. They both looked up at Cooper in amazement. The traffic officer twitched, and spilled some of his tea on his uniform trousers.

      ‘Can we help?’ said the one in overalls.

      ‘I’ve just come from a meeting upstairs and I think I must have taken a wrong turn,’ said Cooper. ‘Can you show me the way out?’

      ‘CID, are you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Thought so.’

      ‘I’m DC Cooper, from Edendale.’

      The expression on the traffic officer’s face changed, and Cooper knew what he was going to say.

      ‘I’m Dave Ludlam,’ he said. ‘I knew your dad.’

      ‘A lot of people did.’

      ‘I served with him for a while, when I was a young bobby. He was a good sergeant, Joe Cooper. Tough, but fair.’

      Ludlam put his mug down as if preparing for a long conversation. ‘I bet you’re really proud of him,’ he said.

      ‘Yes, of course. Look –’

      ‘It was a tragedy, what happened. A tragedy.’

      Cooper bit his lip. He wanted always to look as though he was proud of his father. But it made it hard to let people know that he really, really didn’t want to talk about what happened. Not any more. There had to be a time when he could get on with his life without someone thrusting the fact of his father’s death in his face all the time and waiting for him to react.

      ‘Would you like some tea?’ said the overalled mechanic. ‘The kettle’s not long boiled.’

      ‘No, thanks. I have to get back to Edendale.’

      ‘Can’t you stop and talk for a bit? We’re just taking a few minutes’ break, that’s all.’

      ‘It’s a bit of a drive from Glossop.’

      ‘Be careful on the roads, then,’ said PC Ludlam. ‘Don’t go speeding or anything daft like that – or I’ll be after you. At least, I will once Metal Mickey here gets the bloody motor fixed. Until then, you can do what the hell you like, of course. And so can every other bugger in E Division.’

      ‘If you could show me the way out,’ said Cooper.

      ‘Are you sure you won’t have some tea?’

      ‘Sorry, I’m in a rush.’

      ‘Ah,’ said the traffic officer. ‘You’re working with Jimmy Boyce’s lot. Rural Crime Team. That was the meeting upstairs, wasn’t it?’

      ‘Yes.’

      It had been a long day. Cooper had been up well before dawn to get from Edendale to Glossop and meet the team for the raid at the suspected drugs factory in the isolated Longdendale farmhouse. After his visit to Withens with PC Udall, there had been a series of interviews to do back at Glossop section station, and then a final debriefing meeting with the Rural Crime Team. Now, he was starting to feel dizzy with tiredness. He had eaten at some time during the day, but couldn’t quite work out how many hours ago that was.

      Cooper turned back towards the garage, only to find that PC Udall had followed him out of the meeting and was standing watching him.

      ‘I noticed you’d gone the wrong way,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit of a rabbit warren, I’m afraid.’

      ‘Don’t tell anybody I couldn’t find my way out of the station.’

      Udall smiled. ‘I’ll show you the way. You wouldn’t want to be in here all night.’

      ‘No, it’s kind of scary.’

      ‘Yes, it’s all the white tiles that do it. We call this the morgue.’

      Later that night, two firefighters found they’d taken the wrong path as they were making their way down the hillside from Withens Moor. They were both tired and smelled strongly of smoke. Their personal water carriers felt heavy, but at least they weren’t full of water now. They had just finished a late shift damping down the hot spots that still flared among hundreds of hectares of scorched peat moor.

      The two men were sweating heavily inside their suits and helmets, and cursing the distance they had to walk to get to the four-wheel-drive Land Rover that would ferry them back to their station. Crews from all over North Derbyshire had been on the moor all day, as well as a dozen Peak Park rangers and a team of gamekeepers employed by the landowners. But because of the location, even Land Rovers had only been able to ferry the men to within a mile and a half of the spreading fire and the clouds of smoke rising high above the hills. From there, they had to walk with their equipment, knowing that there was no possibility of pumping water up to the summit.

      ‘There’s the air shaft, Sub,’ said Leading Firefighter Beardsley.

      Sub Officer Whittingham stopped and peered into the darkness. ‘It’s the wrong one,’ he said. ‘The next air shaft beyond it is where we meet the track.’

      ‘You sure?’

      ‘Well, if not, where’s the Land Rover?’

      ‘Right.’

      As they approached the nearest air shaft, Beardsley asked if they could stop for a rest.

      ‘I’m knackered,’ he said. ‘This gear is killing me.’

      ‘Just for a minute, then.’

      Beardsley eased off his water carrier and flexed his shoulders with a groan.

      ‘You’d think they’d have mobilized the helicopter,’ he said.

      ‘We’re cheaper,’ said Whittingham. ‘Besides, it’s no good for damping down.’

      Though a helicopter had been on standby at Barton Airport, ready to scoop water from the Longdendale reservoirs and bomb the blaze, it had not been called on. Now it was no longer needed. Because moorland fires could burn underground for many months, firefighters had to dig deep into the peat to deal with hot spots.

      ‘Hold on, what’s that?’ said Beardsley.

      Whittingham peered into the darkness. ‘I think you mean “who”.’

      Someone was lying alongside the air shaft, stretched out on the ground with his head turned to the side, as if sleeping.

      ‘It’s some hiker,’ said Whittingham. ‘This is access land up here. They camp СКАЧАТЬ