Fry straightened up. ‘Have you seen the clouds over there?’ she said.

Cooper looked across the valley in amazement. He had never known her to notice the weather in the Peak District before, not unless it was actually raining so hard that she was in danger of drowning. But he saw what she’d noticed. There were banks of dense grey clouds over Hammerton Hill, but they were breaking up as they rose, allowing a glimpse of sky.

He turned to look at Fry. She was gazing past him at the view, as if seeing the landscape for the first time. Over her shoulder, Cooper could see the carved miner smiling as the sun touched his face. The miner didn’t care what happened to his body – and why should he? Someone had captured his spirit and preserved it for ever. His memory would never decompose, his soul was intact, his eternity was beyond the need for a physical body. Somehow, from somewhere, he’d found the secret of peace.

But Cooper had one more thing he needed to say. It was something that had been burning a hole in his heart since he’d spent those hours sitting by his mother’s bed, with too much time to think.

‘Vernon Slack said the dead place was in other people’s hearts,’ he said.

‘Yes?’ said Fry.

‘But he was wrong about that, too, wasn’t he?’

‘What do you mean, Ben?’

‘Everybody who knew Vernon lied to protect him. Everybody. They tried to shift the blame on to his father, who deserved it, God help him. And his grandfather decided he’d rather suffer himself than allow Vernon to go through the nightmare he’d face if he was arrested.’

Cooper put his hand on the shoulder of the carved miner, testing for a bit of warmth where the sunlight touched the wood.

‘In fact, Vernon was loved by everyone around him,’ he said. ‘He just never knew it.’

‘Ben …’

Cooper withdrew his hand and looked at Fry. But he wasn’t sure who he was talking to when he spoke again.

‘We know so little about death. But the fact is, most of us know even less about love.’

About the Author

STEPHEN BOOTH was born in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley and has remained rooted to the Pennines during his career as a newspaper journalist. He is well known as a breeder of Toggenburg goats and includes among his other interests folkore, the Internet, and walking in the hills of the Peak District, in which his crime novels are set. He lives with his wife, Lesley, in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire.

www.stephen-booth.com

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Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.