BooksBarbecue
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

‘You take the Transit, Gavin, and we’ll follow Elder.’

‘Fair enough. I’m mobile.’

Cooper watched for the Nissan to get well past him before he pulled out. There were three vehicles in between them by the time they left the slip road and re-joined the motorway. They were still heading south, of course, because there was no other option.

‘If he’s heading home, he’ll either come off at Junction 25 and go west, or he’ll double back the way he came,’ said Cooper.

Fry got out the map. ‘Let’s hope he’s going west, anyway.’

At least Derbyshire lay that way. If the Nissan left the M1 to the east, they could be in trouble. Close to the motorway were the sprawling outskirts of Nottingham – Bilborough, Wollaton, Aspley, circular housing estates like spiders’ webs.

Elder chose Junction 25. He led them on the A52 through the lights of Derby and on towards Ashbourne. The fog began to creep in as soon as they got west of the city. At first it was visible only as grey patches lurking in the low-lying fields, but as the land rose it began to drift across the road. On the darker stretches, Cooper had to close the gap on the Nissan, in case it should take a hidden turning.

Murfin called to say that he was in Nottingham and had trailed the Transit back to an address on the St Anne’s estate.

‘I don’t want to hang around here much longer, Diane. This is bandit country.’

‘OK, Gavin. I think you can go home.’

‘Thanks. Well, let me know if you need me.’

‘Jack Elder is on home ground, too,’ said Cooper, when they were past Ashbourne. ‘It’s back to Rakedale, I guess.’

But Rakedale went by in the night, invisible in the fog, and they found themselves passing through the village of Monyash. It was getting late now, and there wasn’t much traffic around by the time Elder took the last turning. Cooper dropped back as far as he could. The brake lights of the Nissan winked in the fog, like a nocturnal animal on the prowl.

By now, Fry knew where they were heading. It looked gaunt and eerie on the skyline, even in the darkness and shrouded in fog. Ruins like the keep of a medieval castle. Steel winding gear like a rusted scaffold. The site of the widows’ curse. It was Magpie Mine.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

The prevailing colour was grey. A dead grey, cold and brooding. It didn’t quite conceal the landscape, but made it more mysterious and distant, transforming the bumps and hollows of the old mine workings into shapes that played with the imagination. Cooper could understand why his ancestors had filled this country with myths and legends, populated the darkness with ghosts. He could almost see those ghosts now, flitting across the fields in the fog.