BooksBarbecue
Back Scared to Live Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Dedication
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-One
  23. Chapter Twenty-Two
  24. Chapter Twenty-Three
  25. Chapter Twenty-Four
  26. Chapter Twenty-Five
  27. Chapter Twenty-Six
  28. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-One
  33. Chapter Thirty-Two
  34. Chapter Thirty-Three
  35. Chapter Thirty-Four
  36. Chapter Thirty-Five
  37. Chapter Thirty-Six
  38. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  39. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  40. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  41. Chapter Forty
  42. About the Author
  43. Also by Stephen Booth
  44. About the Publisher

When it reached the bottom of the hill, the Shogun slowed to a halt. It idled for a moment in the road, with its front windows half-open and its engine ticking over. Then the driver swung the wheel to the right. He rammed his foot on the accelerator, and the car surged off the road through an open gateway. Its headlights dipped and swayed as it bumped along the field boundary and followed an uncultivated strip of land close to the hedge. With its four-wheel drive engaged, the vehicle growled towards the top corner of the field, where it turned and coasted along the back gardens of the houses in Pinfold Lane.

Finally, the headlights died and the Shogun rolled the last few yards in darkness. After it stopped, there was silence for a moment, then the whirr of a window lowering, the creak of seat leather as a body shifted position, and the slow, careful scrape of metal. With a final click and a grunt, the movement stopped. From a position near the driver’s seat came a green glow and a faint electronic beeping.

A hundred yards away, in Rose Shepherd’s house, the clock was softly chiming three as the bedside phone began to ring.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Monday, 24 October

Detective Sergeant Diane Fry pushed at the half-open door and stepped carefully past the tape. In the hallway, she had to squeeze past a child’s bike propped against the wall, one wheel off and a spanner on the saddle. She almost tripped over two bulging bin liners full of clothes, ready to go to the charity shop, or maybe the launderette. The smell in the house was overpowering, despite a cold draught blowing through the rooms from the broken windows.

‘Home, sweet home,’ said a voice behind her.

DC Gavin Murfin leaned on the front door, forcing it back against the bin liners with an ominous creak of hinges and a popping of plastic.

‘I hope you remembered to wipe your feet, Diane,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t want to ruin the décor.’

Fry felt her shoulders stiffen inside her jacket. From the moment she’d entered the house, the fabric of her clothes had begun to feel prickly and uncomfortable, as if the sensitivity of her skin was suddenly heightened, her nerve endings screaming in sympathy with the dead.

‘Shut up for a bit, Gavin, will you?’

Murfin sniffed, and rattled the empty sweet wrappers in his pocket. Fry did her best to ignore him. Everyone dealt with these things in their own way, of course. Gavin’s instinct was to retreat behind a flippant façade. For Fry, the urge was to focus on small details, the trivialities that could so easily be missed if you saw only the big picture.