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Cooper found himself gazing up at Sergeant Caudwcll as the
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helicopter banked. She yawned and stretched, almost pushing him off his seat. Her dark hair was scraped up inside a fake fur hat like a Russian commissar’s. He felt unreasonably uncomfortable with Caudwcll. Though on the surface she maintained the normal
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courtesies, there was a restrained hostility about her. It wasn’t the overt edginess he had grown used to from others, but something deeper that he felt he ought not to rouse.
‘Have you seen what you wanted?’ he asked.
‘I want to get down there. I need to get a closer look at the
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Lancaster wreck.’
‘There’s nowhere to set down safely here, said the pilot.
‘We’re going to have to walk up then, I suppose,’ said Caudwell. ‘Detective Constable Cooper, could you arrange for a scenes of crime officer to accompany us, please?’
Cooper stared at her. ‘I don’t know what you’re hoping to rind. We carried out a forensic examination on Friday, after the remains of the baby were found. Rut they were old bones.’
‘Not as old as the crew of the Lancaster, eh?’
Every police officer knew that there was nothing worse than going over cold ground, sifting through old bones. And there weren’t many bones much colder than these. Wouldn’t it have been better to let those fliers rest in peace, rather than raking over their graves and stirring up their ghosts?
‘I think it’s crazy,’ said Cooper.
Caudwell smiled at him again, and her cheeks dimpled. Every time the MDP sergeant smiled, Cooper felt as though he was about to be swallowed up and spat out by a giant rodent, an enormous hamster in a fur hat.
‘No doubt you’re right, dear,’ said Caudwcll. ‘Sometimes it seems the whole world’s gone crazy, doesn’t it?’
More hillsides and more miles of snow passed below them as the helicopter made its turn to head back to base. At first, the shape created by the spread of the wreckage had made Cooper think of a crucifixion. Hut he knew he had it wrong. This had
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nothing to do with Christianity there was no message of death and resurrection, the forgiveness of sins. It was something more pagan that he was thinking of. Not a resurrection, only a celebration of death.
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A few weeks ago, Cooper had keen reading about the Danish invaders who had occupied Derbyshire and neighbouring counties tor a white. Their army had made a point of executing defeated Saxon kings in the most gruesome way. Their chests had been cut open and their ribcages spread on either side like wings, to expose their hearts. It was a symbolic act, a celebratory sacrince to their Norse pods. The act was called a ‘Blood Eagle’. It
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was uncomfortably like the process involved in a postmortem examination the cutting open of the sternum, the spreading of the ribcage, the removal of heart and lungs and other internal organs. Cooper had never been able to escape the notion that every autopsy was a ritual sacrince, a ceremony dedicating the victim to the new god of science.
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Rut the memory had made the shape of the wreckage clear to him. It wasn’t shaped like a crucifixion at all — it was a blood eagle.
On the way up to the Snake Pass, Ben Cooper had to put on his sunglasses as they climbed higher and the snowcovered slopes on either side daxzlcd him with their reflected glare. In the valley, the snow hadn’t lingered so long on the banks of dead bracken, though it still showed through the copses of bare trees, like the exposed lining of a threadbare overcoat. The plantations of conifers further up the valley were different. In the sunlight, the lines of spruces glowed orange against the blue sheen of the snow.
Then, on the higher slopes, there was no bracken, only coarse grass with frozen snow clinging to its stems. Looking southwards, into the sun, the moor looked like an ocean, all its waves and swells solidifying as they reached the shore.
Today, there was no mistaking the flight path for Manchester Airport. In the sky were the vapour trails of six or seven jet airliners, each one white and distinct. One of the greatest fears of the emergency services was that an airliner would one day fall out of the sky as it was passing over the high ground of the Dark Peak. There were enough wrecks lying on the remote moors already for everyone to be aware of the difficulties involved in a rescue plan.
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They parked their vehicles in the lay-by nearest to Irontongue Hill. It wasn’t the one where Nick Eastern had keen found, but further up, almost at the highest point of the Snake Pass. Cooper pulled his Toyota in behind the MDP’s Ford and the Scientific Support van. He was pleased to see that the SO CO they had sent was Liz Petty. She was conscientious, but she was also fitter than some of the other scenes of crime staff and would have no problem with the hike across the moor to the crash site.
‘What a beautiful day for a brisk walk,’ said Sergeant Caudwell cheerfully. ‘How long will it take us?’
‘About three-quarters of an hour, if we keep up a steady pace.’
‘No slacking then, eh?’
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m like a camel. I may not look pretty, but I can keep going for hours.’
In the cold, bright morning, the walk to the top of Irontongue Hill was exhilarating. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the moors looked unsullied, their tracts of untouched snow glittering temptingly. The only patterns on the landscape were those caused by the different textures of light falling on the northern slopes, by the shadows in a sudden dip, or the bright highlights of a rocky summit. Further south, in the limestone areas of the White Peak,
