Praise for Sharon Bolton

  ‘Powerfully atmospheric, unguessably twisty’

  Elly Griffiths

  ‘I’m a huge Sharon Bolton fan, and this is her best yet’

  Lee Child

  ‘Original, compelling and unsettling. I loved it’

  Rachel Abbott

  ‘Fast-moving, addictive and thoroughly satisfying, this is another winner from one of my favourite crime writers’

  Jane Casey

  ‘Dark, fascinating and full of surprises’

  Mark Edwards

  ‘Another terrifying, shudder-making, utterly compulsive

  read from Sharon Bolton’

  Jill Mansell

  ‘Sharon Bolton is the queen of ultra-tense,

  claustrophobic stories and characters you care about

  even though they are far from snow white’

  Cressida McLaughlin

  ‘Sinister and gripping’

  Literary Review

  ‘A delightfully dark game of consequences’

  The Times

  ‘A welcome diversion from reality’

  Observer

  ‘Bolton, known for her devious plots and tricky endings,

  doesn’t disappoint here’

  New York Times

  ‘Masterfully plotted and paced, with

  wonderful descriptions’

  Daily Express

  ‘A highly original premise delivered with considerable panache and visceral tension’

  Irish Independent

  ‘This dark tale has more than a few twists and turns to

  keep you guessing’

  Crime Monthly

  ‘We couldn’t put it down’

  Closer

  For Belinda, who is my BFF, and for Simon, who was hers

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Sharon Bolton

  Dedication

  Title Page

  A Letter to My Readers

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  Part Two

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  Part Three

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  Credits

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  A Letter to My Readers

  Welcome, dear reader, and thank you for choosing The Dark from the millions of books on sale today. I’m honoured, not to mention pleased as punch.

  As all good authors should, I write the sort of books that I love to read myself: tense and twisty tales of dark deeds, peopled by characters who are compelling but deeply flawed; stories full of passion and intrigue, when lives are frequently on the line and the narrative flows at breakneck pace. I write in the Gothic tradition that I love, packing my books with chills, thrills and tons of creepy atmosphere.

  Given this, you might imagine I live alone in a ruined Scottish castle, scribbling through the night in candlelit rooms, wandering the windswept hills by day in pursuit of the muse.

  Nothing so glam, I’m afraid. In reality, I’m a middle-aged mum in the home counties (although the famous Midsomer Murders is filmed in our village, so there may be something in the water after all), I live with my lurcher dog Lupe, my husband, and, occasionally, our university-aged son. My passions, apart from family and stories, are wild swimming and sailing, and I enjoy nothing more than a cosy dinner with friends and lashings of cold white wine.

  If you’re new to the Lacey Flint stories, I hope you love her as much as I do, and if you’d like to stay in touch in-between books then please sign up to my newsletter, or find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

  www.sharonbolton.com

  @Author.SJBolton

  @SharonJBoltonCrime

  @sharonjbolton

  And now, it’s time. Take a deep breath, tread carefully, but most of all, enjoy your walk on the dark side.

  Prologue

  A few hours after midnight, two young women sat in a car close to the edge of a cliff; one of them was dead, the other merely felt that way. The spot they’d arrived at, leaving the road to drive the final yards over rough heathland, was the highest of Britain’s chalk cliffs. It was also one of the most notorious suicide spots in the world, with cautious estimates giving it responsibility for a little short of five hundred deaths since the early 1960s.

  The woman whose heart was, technically, still beating, wondered if two more might be enough to make the nice, round half-millennial. She switched off the ignition, let the sounds of the engine cooling fade into the night, and opened the door to say goodbye to the world.

  Held tight by her seatbelt, her companion’s eyes were closed, but as air flooded into the car, her hair blew across her face, giving it, for a second, the illusion of life continuing.

  A cruel trick. The woman clinging to life – for a few minutes more – closed the car door and saw, with relief, the interior slip into darkness. Driving the eighty miles from south London, with nothing but her own thoughts and the recriminations of a corpse beside her, had been harder than she’d expected. Leaving the car, she stepped towards the black void that she knew was the cliff edge.

  The night was cool for September, a light breeze blowing in from the west. Coming almost directly from the Isle of Wight, it brought with it hints of the previous day’s fish catch, early autumn fires, ripe fruit falling from overladen trees. Then again, she’d always had an active imagination; the smell might be nothing more than the salt stench of the beach, a hundred and sixty metres below.

  It would be a grim beach. It had embraced too many broken and battered bodies, absorbed too much blood of the dying, to be anything other. It was too late now, far too late, but there had to be better, sweeter places to die.

  As the young woman’s eyes grew used to the darkness, she could see the silver-white line of the chalk cliffs stretching west, and the flicker of the lighthouse in the bay. The moon was a little over half full, misshapen, oddly unsatisfying in its incompleteness, but bright as a polished coin, gently illuminating the clouds. The stars were tiny, flickering, like fairy lights about to run out of battery, the ocean endless blackness, a vast solid sheen that gleamed as though its dark light were coming from its depths. It was a silent ocean, robbed of voice; the waves neither crashing nor grumbling, let alone thundering, against rocks.

  The pain of too much loss weighed the young woman down as she approached the cliff edge, expanding in her chest like rising dough, filling all the available space, so that even breathing was becoming hard. At the same time, the wind stung her eyes, forcing tears she’d been unable to shed until now. Tears were for bearable pain, for lighter sorrows; this pain couldn’t possibly be released by tiny drops of water. It would burst forth when it came, exploding her skin, flesh and bones apart like shrapnel. It would get some help, of course, from the rocks below.

  At least then, it would end.

  When the figure emerged from the darkness, she thought her dead friend, grown impatient, had summoned the unnatural strength to walk herself to her grave. Her cry of alarm broke upon the wind.

  Not her friend, a stranger, but one drawn with the same grim purpose.

  ‘You can’t stop me.’ The boy was tense, quivering, like a runner on the brink of the race of his life. He, too, was feet from the edge. Were he to sprint forward, the momentum would take him over.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  He was about her age, late teens, although it was hard to tell in the meagre light. Shorter than she, he was thin at the shoulder, thicker around the waist, and he was panting, as though the walk here – there had been no other vehicles in the car park – had been hard work. Or maybe he’d been crying; his face was blotchy, streaked with mud in the half light. He must have been sitting close to the edge, half hidden among the grass, must have jumped to his feet at her approach.

  ‘It’s my choice,’ he said, still poised to sprint. ‘My life.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  His clothes, damp from recent rain, smelled fresh and looked clean. They were newish, his trainers weren’t cheap, and his dark hair had been well cut, not too long ago.

  ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ He looked frantically around, as though others – her fictional co-conspirators – might be sneaking up on him. ‘The people who try to stop us.’

  She sighed. ‘I’m not going to stop you.’

  ‘This forum I’m in, it warned me there’d be people like you. It said to come between two and six in the morning, that I’d be least likely to come across someone then.’

  His breath was ragged, his voice catching. She felt a moment of deep annoyance, that her final moments weren’t to be peaceful; that her thoughts would be dragged from her by this needy teenager who probably hadn’t faced a real trouble in his short, spoiled life.

  But that was unkind, and she didn’t want to be unkind, not in the last minutes of her life.

  ‘Your mate, in the car.’ He was pointing back, as though she might have forgotten where it was. ‘Is she phoning this in? Is she calling for, what do you call it, backup?’

  The laugh, short and bitter though it was, surprised her; laughing felt like something she’d closed a final door upon. She said, ‘I doubt it.’

  He took a step closer to the cliff. ‘Don’t come near me,’ he called, shrill as a startled old lady.

  ‘Not planning to.’

  She didn’t want to be unkind, but this was getting tiresome, and besides, sooner or later, someone else would come along: a patrol car, the Samaritans, an insomniac do-gooder. She didn’t have forever.

  ‘It’s a big clifftop. I won’t get in your way if you don’t get in mine.’

  Stepping closer to the edge she looked down. She’d never been afraid of heights, but a wave of nausea swept over her; for a moment, it seemed that the ground beneath her feet was moving. Chalk was far from stable, its cliffs crumbled all the time. She bounced; nothing gave, and she felt a stab of disappointment. How much easier it would have been, to have the moment taken from her.

  ‘You serious?’ the boy said.

  Possibly more than he. She wondered how long he’d been here, pondering his woes, kidding himself he was going to jump.

  ‘You’re not from the, what do you call it, the coastguard, or those Samaritan people?’

  ‘I’m here to go over the edge, same as you.’

  ‘You’re lying, it’s a trick, some reverse psychology bollocks. Make me think you don’t care, so that I start to.’

  ‘Is it working?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Damn,’ she muttered. ‘I’m losing my touch.’

  Silence, then, ‘I’m Nick.’

  He sounded, hesitant, unsure of his own name. She said, ‘I didn’t ask.’

  ‘I left a note, for my mum and dad.’

  ‘I’m sure that will make all the difference.’

  A moment of just wind and, yes, now she could hear the waves below.

  ‘Are you for real?’ he said. ‘You’re actually going to jump?’

  ‘Technically, I’m going to drive. Put my foot down and soar into oblivion, like Thelma and Louise over the Grand Canyon.’

  ‘What?’ he’d missed the pop culture reference.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. So long, Nick. Have a good death.’

  ‘Wait!’ He called out to her before she’d walked half the distance to the car. She turned and knew that that, in itself, should be telling her something: she could still be called back.

  ‘It will be instant, won’t it? Death, I mean. I won’t know anything about it?’

  Sighing, she joined him once more on the cliff edge.

  ‘Instant deaths aren’t that common,’ she said. ‘Decapitation will probably do it. An explosion, maybe. Otherwise, it takes time for the body to shut down. So no, it won’t be instant. Quick, but not instant.’

  ‘How quick?’

  She pretended to think about it, although she’d thought of little else on the drive down here. ‘Seconds, if you’re lucky. Your bones will break on the rocks. Parts of your skull will go into your brain and there’ll be no coming back from that, a couple of your rib bones might go into your heart, and it’ll bleed out. Your lungs might get ripped apart too, again by your own bones, making it impossible to breath.’

  She saw him shudder.

  ‘If you’re not lucky, your essential organs won’t be too badly damaged. You’ll be stuck on the beach for hours, probably para­lysed, in a shed load of pain, waiting to bleed out, or for your heart to give up. Still, what do I know? It’s not like I’ve done this before.’

  ‘You are one of them, them councillor types. You’re trying to frighten me out of it.’

  Enough. She took a half step towards him. ‘Do you want a push?’

  His eyes opened wide in alarm. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll push you, if you want. Say the word.’

  He backed away, hands warding her off. ‘Stay away from me.’

  ‘Your call.’ She needed to get to the car, to get it over with, but something held her back.

  ‘The impact won’t be the worst,’ she said. ‘The worst will be the moment you jump, when you’re in free fall. You’ll regret it then, will give anything to be back up on solid ground, even with all the pain you’re going through, but it will be too late.’

  ‘If you think that, why are you doing it?’ he glanced back at the car. ‘Is it some sort of suicide pact, you and that other girl?’

  A fresh wave of pain. ‘She’s already dead. She died a few hours ago. Drug overdose.’

  ‘Was she, what, your girlfriend?’

  ‘No. Just the only friend I had left.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He looked it too. ‘Thank you.’

  Seconds ticked by.

  ‘So, why are you here?’ the young woman asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Girlfriend break up with you?’

  ‘I’ve never had a girlfriend.’ His voice was ugly with resentment. ‘Girls don’t date guys who look like me.’

  Curious, in spite of herself, she took another look at him, really looking this time. He was short, and the weight around his girth would sit better on his shoulders and upper arms, but there was nothing a decent diet and a few months of exercise wouldn’t put right. His nose was a little hooked and his eyes rather deep set, giving him a hawklike look, but his hair was a glossy dark brown and his lips full and well-shaped. His worst feature was bad acne, covering the lower part of his face, and breaking out on his cheeks and forehead, but time and the right medication would sort that out. No scars, no disfiguring birthmarks. She opened her mouth to utter some platitude about his looks and decided she couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘Would you?’ he asked, reluctant to let it go.

  ‘You hitting on me?’

  ‘Girls who look like you aren’t interested in boys like me,’ he went on. ‘Even the ugly girls go after the good-looking ones. Guys like me don’t stand a chance.’

  He wanted her to argue, to tell him he was wrong, that plenty of girls would find him attractive. Half of her wanted to, if only so he would leave her in peace, but she was so very weary. More than anything, she wanted to sleep. The problem with sleep, though, was that it always came to an end. When you slept, you woke. From the kind of sleep she had in mind there was no waking up.

  ‘You wouldn’t, would you? You wouldn’t go out with me?’

  ‘No,’ she said truthfully. ‘Do you want to come with us?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m getting in the car now. I’m going to drive over the edge. I don’t think you’ll ever have the courage to do it by yourself, but if you get in the back seat I’ll take you with us.’

  She was on her way back to the car and this time, she wasn’t stopping. She called over her shoulder. ‘Last chance. Just don’t get in our way, because I won’t stop.’

  ‘I’m coming.’ He caught up as she reached the car.

  ‘Sure?’ she said.

  He looked on the verge of being sick, but he nodded.

  She opened the car door. ‘That side,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want you grabbing hold of me when we go over.

  ‘Nice car,’ he said, as he got in behind the front passenger seat.

  ‘Stolen.’

  She locked the doors and turned on the engine; tested the accelerator, although she already knew the car drove perfectly. Her hand was on the brake, ready to release it.

  ‘Shit!’ He’d touched the woman in the front passenger seat. ‘She’s really dead. This is sick. She’s actually dead.’

 

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