Also by Stephen Booth
Black Dog
Dancing with the Virgins
Blood on the Tongue
Blind to the Bones
One Last Breath
The Dead Place
Scared to Live
Dying to Sin
The Kill Call
Lost River
The Devil’s Edge
Dead and Buried
Already Dead
COPYRIGHT
Published by Sphere
ISBN: 9781405525138
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Stephen Booth
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Table of Contents
Also by Stephen Booth
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
For Lesley, as always
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
– epitaph on the grave of William Shakespeare
Thursday 31 October
Dusk was falling on the Corpse Bridge by the time Jason Shaw reached the river. The broken stone setts felt slippery under his boots after a heavy shower, and the walls ran with moisture in the fading light. He shivered and shook the rain from his hair as he checked his watch one more time. He was going to be late.
Jason had come out unprepared for a downpour. He’d been in such a hurry, and the autumn weather was so unpredictable, that he’d been fooled into thinking a light jacket would be enough, and he’d left his waterproofs in the Land Rover. So when the shower started he’d stopped to shelter under a sycamore tree while the water drummed on the earth all around him and turned the river below into a seething foam. But it was the end of October and the leaves were almost gone from the trees. Within seconds his hair was plastered to his skull and water dripped inside his collar as rain cascaded through the branches. He decided he’d get less wet if he returned to the path and just hoped for the shower to ease off. By the time the sky cleared he was soaking.
And that was one of his problems. He always seemed to be in a hurry these days. There was too much going on in his life, so he was constantly rushing from one thing to the next. Sometimes he just wished everything would stop for a while and let him get his breath. If only he had time to think, at least. Perhaps he wouldn’t make so many bad decisions. He might be more prepared for what the world threw at him.
But circumstances were conspiring against him all the time. The situation was out of control and he was being dragged along, as if by an irresistible current. The most important decisions in his life were being made by other people. He was aware of it, but couldn’t do anything about it.
And Jason knew who was responsible for that. The one person he could never say ‘no’ to.
He was trembling with cold as he stepped round a patch of mud that had collected in a damaged section of the track. Every few yards the setts had been shattered or dislodged, exposing the earth beneath to serious erosion. Much of this destruction had been caused by off-roaders. The national park authority was trying to enforce a traffic regulation order on some of these narrow-walled byways and green lanes to keep four-by-fours and trail bikes from using them. There were places in Derbyshire where off-roaders swarmed in their hundreds on bank holiday weekends, with whole convoys of Land Rovers forcing their way down bridleways and gouging new tracks out of the hillsides. By the end of the summer you could see their wheel tracks for miles. Most were intruders from the cities, leaving their mark on the landscape.
It was as he was wiping the water from his eyes that Jason saw her. At first she seemed like an illusion – a pale shape glimpsed through a blur of water and the deceptive colours of twilight. He wasn’t a superstitious person, but Jason felt a jolt of fear at the ghostly flicker and swirl as the figure dodged its way through the trees on the other side of the bridge.
But did the figure run? It hardly seemed the right word. To Jason, she appeared to float or hover, her feet hardly touching the ground. By the time she vanished from his sight on the opposite hill, he still wasn’t sure whether he’d imagined the figure or not. He realised there had been no sound from her. But that could have been an atmospheric effect, a result of the damp air and the evening stillness.
And finally there was a noise. Something bigger and definitely physical was crashing through the undergrowth where the woman had disappeared. Jason saw nothing, but he felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to stir, an icy chill surging through his limbs. He heard one shout, an incoherent yell with no words, a cry that might almost have come from an animal.
Then the crashing stopped, and there was silence.
Jason was left standing for a moment on the approach to the Corpse Bridge, listening carefully for a sound, but hearing only the rush of the river and the dripping of rain from the trees.
Of course, Geoff and Sally Naden shouldn’t have been there at all. Not that evening. It was entirely the wrong night, a different time of the week from the one they’d planned. Yes, it was definitely a mistake. At least, that was what Geoff insisted.
Sally was in a bad mood even before they came out. She recognised her own moods, and knew that Geoff would say she was sulking. But she didn’t really care tonight. She wasn’t as young as she used to be, and she just wanted to get this over with.
‘It was definitely you,’ said Geoff. ‘You got it wrong again. You’re always getting things wrong.’
‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘It’s tonight, I’m certain.’
Sally had been saying ‘rubbish’ all evening, since even before they left the house. She didn’t have the energy or inclination to spell out her argument in coherent sentences. But she was starting to get bored with ‘rubbish’. She might have to think of something else to say.
‘You’ll get things wrong once too often some day soon,’ said Geoff, ‘and that will be the end of you. I hope you’ve written your will.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said.
Of course, Geoff was talking through his elbow. But Sally had to admit he was right about one thing. Some mistakes could have disastrous consequences. You found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, met the sort of person you’d normally spend your whole life avoiding, and you could end up putting yourself in a dangerous situation. In those circumstances, one of you might have an accident. Out here, in a spot as quiet as this, an accident might be fatal.