06.The Dead Place Read online

  ‘I hope that’s so.’

  ‘He wasn’t right about everything, though. Vernon Slack had been listening to him too much.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The idea that the soul hangs around the body until the flesh is gone from the bones – that isn’t true at all. There’s a moment when the personality dies, when the person you loved is gone for ever. In the hospital, I knew exactly when that had happened. There was no doubt about it, none at all. And then nothing mattered any more. I mean, I wasn’t worried about what death would mean for Mum, all that business about decomposition and the body digesting itself. Because anything that took place after that moment wasn’t happening to her. It was just nature tidying up.’

  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

  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 lives with his wife Lesley in a former Georgian dower house in Nottinghamshire and his interests include folklore, the internet and walking in the hills of the Peak District. The Dead Place is the sixth in the series featuring Derbyshire detectives Ben Cooper and Diane Fry. The second, Dancing with the Virgins, was nominated for the coveted Gold Dagger Award.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.co.uk for exclusive information on Stephen Booth

  www.stephen-booth.com

  By the same author

  Blind to the Bones

  Blood on the Tongue

  Dancing with the Virgins

  Black Dog

  One Last Breath

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005.

  Copyright © Stephen Booth 2005

  Stephen Booth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  EPub Edition © JANUARY 2008 ISBN: 9780007290628

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