Unholy Murder
Thank you for reading my books, you keep me writing
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Lynda La Plante Readers’ Club
Letter from Author
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
The yellow JCB digger was backhoeing a deep trench for the concrete foundations to be laid. As Barry, the driver, started to scoop up another load of rain-sodden soil he knew, from the tension on the digger arm, the bucket had struck something solid under the ground.
Opening the cab window, he shouted to his colleague who was sitting in a large open-top dumper truck waiting for the digger to empty its next load of soil.
‘Oi, Dermot, I’ve hit something hard. See if you can make out what it is.’
Dermot did a thumbs up and slowly stepped down from the dumper truck.
‘Get a move on, Dermot,’ Barry shouted.
‘Whatever it is, it’s still under the soil. Give it a prod with the bucket so I can hear if it sounds like stone or metal.’
Barry raised then lowered the bucket. When it struck the unknown object, there was a clanging sound.
‘I reckon it’s something metal,’ Dermot said.
As Barry pulled back on the bucket the sudden unbearable screech of metal scraping on metal made Dermot wince. He frantically waved his arms. ‘Whoa, stop digging!’
Barry repositioned the bucket, so it was lower in the ground. This time he was able to pull the unknown object up so part of it was sticking out of the soil. It was still covered in dirt, so Barry jumped down from the cab into the trench and brushed away the topsoil with his hands. ‘It’s a bloody coffin!’
‘We’d better let Lee know about it. This area could be the old convent graveyard,’ Dermot said warily as he walked off.
Barry grabbed him by the arm. ‘We’ve been digging the new foundations for two weeks now and we ain’t uncovered no other coffins, so this can’t be a proper graveyard, can it?’
‘Better safe than sorry, Barry.’
‘You’ll be sorry if Lee calls the Old Bill and the site gets shut down. No work means no bloody wages. I say we dig a hole somewhere in the woodland over there and put the coffin in it. No one will be any the wiser.’
Dermot shook his head. ‘You can’t treat the dead like that. We have to tell Lee. He’s in charge of the site.’
‘Let’s have a look inside first . . .’
‘No way. That would be sacrilege,’ a shaken Dermot exclaimed.