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Back The Kill Call
Chapters (46)
  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. Chapter Forty-one
  43. Chapter Forty-two
  44. About the Author
  45. Also by Stephen Booth
  46. About the Publisher

FRY HAD WATCHED Ben Cooper leave the office. It had been another bad day, and Cooper always seemed to be involved somehow. Perhaps he didn’t actually intend to show up her failings. But he did it so effortlessly.

She so hated to admit that Cooper was right. That he was ever right. In retrospect, she much preferred the old Ben Cooper, the one who’d been careful not to say anything, had tried not to rub it in, even when he’d turned out to be right in the end. These days, he seemed to be proving that he knew better at every turn. The bastard.

When she got into her car to leave West Street, Fry sat for a moment in a kind of dull apathy. She didn’t really want to go home to her flat in Grosvenor Avenue. But she couldn’t think of anywhere she did want to go. It wasn’t as if there was anything to look forward to, except more bad days.

HALF AN HOUR later, Cooper drove down the track to Bridge End Farm. At one time, his nieces would have run out to meet him when they heard his car coming down the lane. Now, there was no sign of them. Busy doing their homework? Well, perhaps. More likely, they couldn’t even hear his engine above the music playing on their iPods.

He pulled up in the farm yard, and got out of the car. Then he stood for a moment, doing nothing. Just listening to the familiar sounds, and smelling the familiar smells. And he realized Claire was right – he’d stayed away from home far too long.

Chapter Twenty-four

Journal of 1968

WELL, IT WAS quite a year, 1968. It was all Dr Strangelove and the Prague Spring – Soviet tanks crushing Czechoslovakia, the USA getting a kick up the arse by the Viet Cong, and Enoch Powell making his Rivers of Blood speech. In Londonderry, it was the start of The Troubles. In Paris, students thought they were starting a revolution. That summer, the two best-known people in the world were Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray. Famous because they’d killed the right people.

But most of the time, we were too busy listening to the Beatles’ White Album, and watching Hawaii Five-O on TV. Trying to shut out reality, some might say. And that wasn’t the same after 1968, either.