‘Damn it, man – get a grip.’

He found that the sound of his own voice reassured him a little. There was a job to finish, and he didn’t have much time. Focus. He must focus.

Merritt looked to his left. No, not that way. The angry red of flames flickered deep in the banks of smoke. The fire was burning at ground level, consuming the heather, surging across the miles of dry peat. With the wind behind it, a wildfire could advance faster than any human being could run. He mustn’t get himself trapped where the flames could cut him off. That would be suicide.

To the right, then. That way he could just see a stretch of post-and-rail fence, a dry-stone wall. Beyond it, scrubby grass and patches of bare soil. A field. The wall marked the point where the moor ended and rough grazing began. That was the direction he wanted.

‘Hey!’

A voice calling out of the smoke. Not a demon after all, but a human being, living and angry. One of the firefighters, he guessed. Small teams of them were scattered across the burning moor, thrashing at the flames with their beaters or spraying mists of water from backpacks. They’d been on duty fighting the moorland fire for hours already, and would be weary and irritable.

Merritt kept moving, trying to get up speed over the rough ground, regretting that he’d never tried to stay fit the way some of the others had. Now that he’d reached his mid-forties, it was really starting to tell on his body. His breath was soon rasping and his lungs began to burn.

‘Hey, you there! Stop!’

Well, they were too far away to see him clearly, and he was sure they wouldn’t bother trying to chase him. They had enough on their hands already.

Oh, but wait. There’d be a police presence somewhere, though. As he jogged over the heather, Merritt imagined a couple of bored coppers not too far away, given the job of closing the road and stopping traffic. He needed to be more careful. It was important not to draw attention to himself. No more than necessary, anyway. Let them think he was just some rambler who’d strayed too near the fire, and had turned back to leave the area the way he came.

Yes, this was the right direction. The line of the roof was visible now. He recognised those high chimneys, cowled against the moorland gales. He could picture them the way they once were, trickling smoke in the winter, with log fires roaring in the rooms below. The scent of woodsmoke was in his nostrils for a moment. He thought it was just another memory, until he realised his eyes were stinging and the back of his throat was sore with the acid taste of charred vegetation.

The smoke had caught up with him. It billowed around his legs and swirled into his face. It rapidly became thicker and thicker.

Frightened now, Merritt began to run, stumbling as the woody stems of heather and bracken caught at his feet. His boots felt heavy, and his corduroy trousers were sticky with insects and clinging burrs. The fabric of his shirt grew damp with sweat under the armpits of his jacket. He was wearing the wrong clothes for running. That was so typical. He was always doing the wrong thing. Always making the worst decisions. Always, always, always. Was there time to put it right? At least to put something right?

Startled, Detective Sergeant Ben Cooper hit the brakes of his Toyota. For a moment the wheels skidded on loose dirt before the car came to stop halfway on to the grass verge.

‘What the devil …?’

Cooper winced as a muscle strain from a game of squash earlier in the week sent spasms of pain through his lower back. Sitting alongside him in the passenger seat, Detective Constable Carol Villiers had been busy reading a file. She was thrown against her seat belt, scattering papers on the floor. They both stared ahead through the windscreen.

‘Well, that looks bad,’ she said.

Automatically, Cooper glanced in his rear-view mirror to check there was no traffic behind him. But the road was quiet at this time of day. That was lucky, because there was hardly enough room for two cars to pass, and those dry-stone walls on either side were pretty unyielding. That was normal for minor roads in this part of the Peak District, as the scrapes on his bodywork often testified.

Cooper shook his head. ‘Another one. That’s the fourth this month. The sixth so far this year.’

‘And it’s a big one, too.’

The sight of wildfires sweeping across the moors was always worrying. Once those fires got out of control, they threatened every type of wildlife, as well as the homes of people who lived in the national park. In serious incidents, human lives could be put at risk.

But for Cooper, there was an extra stab of personal distress. He knew these hills so well. He’d been born in this part of the Peaks, had grown up on a farm surrounded by moorland in every direction. Those vast expanses of rock and heather had been his playground. They still were, when he had time. The sense of peace, the closeness to nature, the sheer exhilaration of feeling the wind and breathing pure air – they were part of his own being. He could hardly bear to watch these fires destroying everything he loved.

His move away from Bridge End Farm to his flat in Edendale had partly broken that connection. The town had become his new home, and the police service his life. Yet it had also made the landscape more precious to him. Ben feared that one day he would no longer see the Peak District in the same way – not as he once had, with every bend in the road providing a glimpse of an enchanted land. In a few years, the countryside around him might seem like an endless series of crime scenes – some of them fresh in his memory, others still waiting to happen.

‘I can’t imagine the amount of devastation up there,’ he said. ‘It’ll take years for the moors to recover.’

‘It was the same last year,’ said Villiers. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Which means that some areas haven’t even had time to grow back properly. If it goes on like this every year, Carol, Derbyshire will never look the same again.’

Villiers had been brought up in this area too. In fact, they’d known each other at school. She was the only member of the CID team at Derbyshire Constabulary’s E Division who came close to sharing his background. Her arrival after a spell of service with the RAF Police had been like a breath of fresh air. Cooper couldn’t imagine speaking like this to anyone else – like, say, Diane Fry, who had been his boss when he was still a DC. Well, not without being sneered at as a country bumpkin, anyway.

A sudden gust of wind dispersed the smoke for a moment. Then it thickened again, scudding across the hillside in dark, roiling masses. Cooper and Villiers peered fruitlessly up the road, trying to make out any details beyond the barrier fifty yards ahead.

‘It doesn’t look as though this route is closed,’ said Villiers.

‘It should be. It’s getting dangerous.’

‘Maybe it’s just deteriorated in the last few minutes.’

‘Perhaps.’

Cooper coughed and pressed the button to raise the windows. The day was unseasonably warm for April, and the air conditioning in the Toyota wasn’t brilliant. But one breath of that smoke rolling towards the car was enough to make him want to withdraw from the area as soon as possible.

‘I’ll turn round,’ he said. ‘Did you notice a gateway?’

‘The nearest one is back round the bend there.’

‘Okay. Let’s just pray nothing comes round too fast.’

When he twisted round to look over his shoulder, Cooper felt another stab of pain. He hated twinges like that. Not for the discomfort itself, but because they made him feel that middle age might not be too far away. He was only in his thirties, for heaven’s sake. But the job could take a disproportionate toll on your body sometimes. His wedding was coming up in a few months’ time, and he ought to be fit for that. Liz certainly would, judging by the amount of dieting and exercising she was doing, the number of health and beauty treatments she was booking. At this rate, he’d look like the bride’s elderly uncle instead of the groom.