But of course, that had really happened to him, so perhaps it couldn’t be called a nightmare at all. The distinction between a dream world and the quagmire of distorted memories was a difficult one to make. He hadn’t yet learned to detect the dividing line, couldn’t distinguish one from the other. As a result, he never quite knew which world he was in.
Intubation, they’d called it in the hospital. Necessary because he was showing symptoms of upper airway problems. A tube had to be inserted in his throat to keep his airway from closing due to swelling, the result of heat damage to the tissues of the respiratory tract. It was just one of the major consequences of smoke inhalation. Smoke also blocked the intake of oxygen to the lungs and raised carbon monoxide levels, reducing the ability of the blood to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. Inhalation of smoke particles and chemicals like carbon monoxide and cyanide caused direct irritation of the lung. But at least smoke cooled rapidly once it was inhaled and heat damage was limited to the tissues of the mouth and upper throat.
His latest test results at the hospital showed that there was still a significant decline in his PEF, his peak expiratory flow. Permanent respiratory tract damage would be bad news. It could even see him leaving the police service completely. Those memories weren’t something he could put behind him and forget, as many people thought. Because they didn’t just belong to the past. They affected his present, and would have an impact on his future too.
No, it wasn’t possible to keep those memories out. Far from it. Sometimes he felt as though they were tearing through the walls, trying to get inside his head.
26
Saturday
There was free parking near Ravenscar station. That was hardly ever the case inside the national park. As he headed up the path, Cooper passed a few people walking their dogs back to the car park. The figure ahead of him was moving slowly, so he stopped to look down the slope at the railway line.
Ravenscar station was a grand name for what was basically a platform a few yards long, where a spur stopped at the buffers to let off passengers for the National Stone Centre and the High Peak Trail. This had never served as a station in the days of British Rail or its successors. It had been built in the middle of abandoned quarries by a group of enthusiasts who wanted to run restored steam locomotives up the incline from Wirksworth. There was only a summer service on the Ravenscar line. In winter it would be dead here, apart from the occasional maintenance team perhaps.
A tarmac freight truck stood on rails by the exit from the station, still loaded with stone, though brambles were growing over it now. The hoppers above it would have tipped the stone in from the quarry.
They were moving again. Cooper began to walk up the steep incline, passing waymarks for the Stone Centre. A hum in the trees above reminded him of the industrial centre close by. There was wet limestone dust under his feet, masses of tall buddleia in flower on the slopes, butterflies flitting from blossom to blossom over his head. They would disappear when it rained again.
A bridge crossed the track at a sharp angle, and he passed the remains of a large lime kiln buttressed like the walls of a castle. The entrances to the kiln had been sealed up with breeze block, but of course someone had knocked holes into the bottom sections. A glimpse inside suggested that the alcoves had been used, probably by rough sleepers, certainly for smoking cigarettes and drinking cider.
He slipped in a patch of mud. An off-roader had been through here and churned up the track. When the winter came, and these beeches and sycamores shed their leaves, it would be impossible to use this route past the lime kiln.
Lane had disappeared round a bend at the top of the slope. Cooper put on a bit more speed. He still didn’t cope well with hills. His lungs burned whenever his breathing became hard. But it was appropriate, in a way. It was a constant physical reminder of the reasons why he was here.
At the top, he emerged in an old quarry. There were six of them within the site of the National Stone Centre, so he’d probably reached his destination. Limestone quarrying had created an amphitheatre here, with an almost level floor and sheer rock faces on three sides. Dozens of jackdaws circled overhead, or perched in the trees struggling to maintain a foothold on the upper ledges.
Cooper had been here on a school outing not long after the centre opened. Groups were allowed to go gem panning, sifting through buckets of wet sand to find interesting semi-precious stones, which they were allowed to take home. A lot of kids loved that. But the young Ben Cooper couldn’t help being disappointed by how obvious it was that the bits of stone had been planted for children to find. He found the genuine bits of geology on the site far more interesting.