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Back Dying to Sin Save as PDF
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

‘The roads are very busy, too. There’ll be fatalities before nightfall.’

And Cooper thought it could be worse than that. If they cancelled flights at Robin Hood Airport, Fry might not be getting back from Dublin. Not today, anyway.

As he drove to Sheffield, Cooper tried to get everything straight in his head. But whenever he thought about the story, it began to unravel, like a tapestry with a loose stitch. If he tugged at it in the wrong place, everything changed shape, the picture twisted and distorted, figures vanishing from the scene and others coming closer together.

After a few minutes, the picture was becoming awfully grey and murky, just like the weather, like the landscape behind that belt of December rain.

‘Oh, you were hoping to tie this skull in with Victim B?’ said Dr Jamieson, when Cooper found him in his laboratory at the university.

‘Well … yes, that was the assumption.’

‘An assumption, eh? I don’t believe in them myself. Do you find they achieve anything?’

‘Well, Doctor, it does seem a logical conclusion that this skull belonged to the woman we’ve found with a missing head. Particularly when they both came from the same property.’

‘I see,’ said Jamieson. ‘So where does the male victim come in?’

‘Male victim?’

‘The person the skull belongs to. Because this is definitely male. Look at the distinctive shape of the jaw, the size of the occipital dome. Somewhere, there’s a male victim who’s missing a head.’

‘So this is the real Screaming Billy, after all,’ said Cooper. ‘Despite what Raymond Sutton said. This is the ancient skull that has been in the wall of the farmhouse.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘A local superstition, Doctor. A skull that protects the owners of the farm from bad luck. They call them screaming skulls.’

‘Interesting. And how long is the skull supposed to have been in the wall of the farmhouse?’

‘Centuries, according to local folklore.’

Dr Jamieson shook his head. ‘Never trust folklore, then. If this came out of the wall of that farmhouse, it’s a much more recent addition to the decor.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Science doesn’t lie, DC Cooper. Not within living memory, anyway. This skull is ten years old, at most. What I mean is – I’d estimate ten years since it was parted from its unfortunate owner.’

Cooper looked at the skull. ‘But Screaming Billy is supposed to go back to the eighteenth century, at least.’

The anthropologist shrugged. ‘This isn’t Billy, then, I’m afraid. I suggest we refer to him as Victim C.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

A few minutes later, Cooper was getting back into his Toyota in the university car park. ‘Not within living memory.’ Where had he heard that phrase recently? Oh, yes. It had been used by PC Palfreyman, the first time that Cooper had visited him at Hollowbrook Cottage, as early as Friday morning.