BooksBarbecue
Back Dying to Sin Save as PDF

Dying to Sin

Stephen Booth
Chapters (43)
  1. Dedication
  2. Epigraph
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. About the Author
  42. Also by Stephen Booth
  43. About the Publisher
image

Dedication

Dedicated to the officers and staff of Derbyshire
Constabulary B Division, with particular thanks
to Divisional Commander, Chief Superintendent
Roger Flint (the man with all the best anecdotes),
and PC 2204 Rachel Baggaley

Epigraph

For he that is dead is freed from sin.

Romans 6:7

Chapter One

Chapter One

Thursday

The mud was everywhere at Pity Wood Farm. It lay in deep troughs under the walls of the house, it surged in wet tides where the cattle had poached the ground into a soup. And it was all over Jamie Ward’s boots, sticky and red, like blobs of damson jam. His steel toe-caps were coated with the stuff, and smears of it had splashed halfway up his denims – long, fat splatters, as if he’d been wading in blood.

Crouching in a corner of the yard, Jamie stared down at the mess and wondered when he’d get a chance to wipe it off. He couldn’t remember if he had a clean pair of jeans back at his parents’ house in Edendale, whether his mother had done his washing this week, or if he’d thrown his dirty clothes behind the bed again, where she wouldn’t find them. She’d been complaining for the past month about the amount of dirt he brought into the house, the number of times she had to clean the filter on the washing machine. He wondered what she’d say about this latest disaster when he got in.

And, as he heard the first police sirens wailing up the valley, it occurred to Jamie to wonder whether he’d actually be going home tonight at all.

‘Damn it, boy. Why didn’t you just cover it up again? It would have been for the best all round.’

Jamie shook his head. You couldn’t just do that, could you? No matter what anyone else said, it wasn’t right, and that was that. He’d done the only thing he possibly could, in the circumstances. He’d done the right thing, so there was nothing to regret.

‘Throw some dirt on it and forget it. There’s no need for all this.’

He felt bad about it, all the same. It was bad for Nikolai and the other blokes. This was a nightmare they didn’t want, and some of them couldn’t afford. Just before Christmas, too, when they needed the money more than ever, he supposed. He was going to be popular, all right.

Jamie felt his muscles beginning to stiffen. The longer he stayed in one spot, the more he felt as though his boots were sinking into the ground. If he stayed here long enough, perhaps the blood-tinted earth would slowly close in and swallow him. His own weight would bury him.