Terri glanced at her watch. Midday. They’d only been there half an hour, and she was bored. She stood on the rocky shore of Ennerdale Water, kicking at the stones, watching her girlfriend crouch down, pick things up, turn them over, then put them down again. Erica had assured her there would be treasure here. Pots. Bottles. Ashtrays. Old stuff. Terri wasn’t interested in old stuff, but Erica had a way of making boring things fun, so she’d agreed to come along and help search

Bobby Silver pushed through the door and stood, dripping onto the carpet, waiting for her eyes to adjust. It was shit out. Worse than shit. Like someone had thrown a bucket of ice and water over the country, and most of it had landed on Cumbria. Still, no surprise. Not for someone who knew the county. And at least it was dry inside the Henry Bessemer. She spotted Miles, the overhead lights picking out the lines, scars, and bruises of thirty years’ work at the port. He was in

Jim Wollason shivered as he climbed out of his van, parked next to the lifeguard building at the entrance to Lyme Regis’s famous Cobb. It was six am, only days until Christmas, and it was bloody freezing. Pulling the van’s back door open, he grabbed his coat; the warm one his daughter had given him last Christmas. He’d had the same old waterproof for years and had protested when she told him it wasn’t enough, but he was damn glad of this one. He zipped the coat up and made hi

“You taking part?” DI Carl Whaley turned towards the voice. Tall, lean, white hair to his shoulders: the man would have been a dead ringer for an Old Testament prophet if it weren’t for the green stain of mushy peas on his teeth. “I’m sorry?” Carl said. “You. You look like you could spin a yarn or two.” The man pointed towards the makeshift stage, where a microphone awaited the next contestant. “Not one of them politicians, are you?” His partner, DI Zoe Finch, laughed. “He’s

At least they’d been lucky with the weather. For the last three months, Pat hadn’t shut up about the forecast. Half a dozen different websites and apps, historic rainfall levels, the effect of global bloody warming. When she’d finally declared that late September was their best bet for a dry night, Carly hadn’t believed her. There was no science to it. They were in Cumbria, and the only thing you could be sure of was that if it wasn’t raining now, it would be raining later. L

Davina Wilson jogged along the lochside; the ground soft beneath her feet. The sun had only just risen, and the air was fresh and clean. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of pine trees and water. She was staying at a luxury hotel just half a mile up the loch, where the President of the United States, her boss, was holed up for the G7 summit. The President hated Scotland – the weather, the food, the people, the goddamn kilts. He’d only come because the Prime

“What’s your name?” asked the man opposite Sue. It was dark in here, on the first floor, and although they weren’t wearing masks, Sue couldn’t see his face clearly under his pointy hat. He’d already been there when she’d arrived, so she hadn’t been able to get a decent look at him walking in, either. Her own age, she guessed. Maybe a little younger. “My real name?” “No, no, I mean – I mean your name for this.” “Marston,” she said. Outside, there was something that might have

Simon Haslam stared at the woman’s outstretched hand in confusion, before remembering the etiquette, pasting on a smile, and taking it in his own. Even as he nodded and replied to her platitudes, he was looking over her shoulder and frowning, as if there was something important behind her he had to attend to. Anything to get away from all these people. He’d known it would be busy. He’d been to enough fell races over the years. But this was the first time he’d organised one. H

Paula glanced up. Clouds were gathering overhead, and even though there was no one else about, she was starting to regret letting herself get talked into this. “Come on!” called Ryan. He was standing up ahead, on one of those big concrete slabs, holding one corner of a banner and grinning. There were dozens of those slabs, a couple of metres wide and as much as four metres long, embedded in the ground. She’d asked about them when they’d arrived. Asked what was under them. Che

“Put a bloody smile on your face,” said DC Nina Kapoor as they shoved their way through the crowd. DC Tom Willis gave her his best fake grin to make her shut up. The pub Nina had dragged him to had apparently been around for more than a century, and he’d walked past it plenty of times. But he didn’t think he’d ever set foot inside, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was in the right pub now. Yes, it was cold and wet outside, and he’d agreed to go for a pre-Christmas drink with Ni

Aisha pulled her jacket tight around her and shivered. It wasn’t all that cold, thank God, because the jacket’s job was to look good more than to keep her warm. But she’d been inside and on the dancefloor most of the night. Now she was outside, standing still. It was dark, and the wind coming in off the sea didn’t care that it was October and only an hour or two till sunrise. “Come on,” she muttered. Claire, standing beside her, giggled. Claire was drunk. Simon was a few feet

“Where’s she gone?” Faye Reed tugged on her boyfriend’s hand as she surveyed the abandoned village. He turned to her. “Who, Daisy?” he asked. She nodded. Kyle looked at her. “She went to look at the schoolhouse, didn’t she?” Faye shook her head. “It’s locked, this time of night.” “Huh?” Faye gave him a look. “You heard me. She went to have a look, knocked on the door, then went off that way.” She pointed past the church, the only fully intact building in the place. Kyle shrug

“Jeez, Helen, why did you think we’d want to climb this bloody hill?” Helen looked round to see her friend Bal standing in the middle of a patch of gorse, hand wedged into the small of her back, face red as Helen’s hair. “You’ll be fine, Bal. It’s worth it, I promise.” Bal shook her head. “Nothing’s worth this. It’s torture.” Lisa was a few feet ahead of Helen, poking around in a hole in the hillside. “D’you reckon this is where the castle once was?” She deepened her voice an

“Just give me five minutes, love. I want to watch the news.” Gina O’Toole didn’t wait for her husband to reply before making her way from the kitchen into the living room. The TV was already on in the corner; she’d turned it on as soon as she’d got the text from Hattie. There’s been an escape. Gina had almost choked when she’d read that. An escape. There were hundreds of prisoners in His Majesty’s Prison Service. Thousands. It wouldn’t be him. But it might be. Clutching her h

The room was dark when DCI Lesley Clarke woke up, and for a moment she wondered where she was. She lay back on the pillows, listening. The flat she and Elsa shared in Bournemouth was quiet in the mornings, the only sound the seagulls screeching over the beach three streets away. But the bed was at the wrong angle. She could see light seeping round curtains and it was at the side of the bed, not the foot. She remembered, smiling. Rolling over, she snuggled up to Elsa. “Morning

Christina smiled as Nick swung her hand, keeping pace with their footsteps like a pendulum. It was chilly today and she’d forgotten her gloves, but she was trying to ignore that as she felt his fingers wrapping around hers. It wasn’t just the first time they’d gone for a walk together; it was the first time she’d brought him home to Dorset. He slowed pace, forcing her to slow too, and frowned. “What’s that?” he said. “What’s what?” “That birdsong. I’m trying to place it.” She

DCI Lesley Clarke had to focus to keep herself from tumbling down the hill towards the River Frome. This lane, a mile or so from Wareham in Dorset, was steep and narrow, the trees reaching over her head and meeting there like a green archway. Her second in command DS Dennis Frampton huffed along behind her, unhappy that they’d had to walk down. “Come on, Dennis,” she called back to him. “Gail’s been there almost an hour. At this rate, even Whittaker will get there before us.”

At Christmas time, Brummies could be split into two groups. The first contained those people who loved the Frankfurt Christmas market. They adored the cheesiness of it all. The little wooden cabins. The abundance of lebkuchen. Gluhwein on tap twenty-four hours a day, and the fact that for six brief weeks of the year the currywurst replaced the Balti as Birmingham's traditional dish. On the other hand, there were people like Wendy. Wendy hated the Christmas market. To be fair,

Phineas Montague, Silicon Valley’s newest internet billionaire, stood with his hands on his hips and gazed out across the loch. He liked to do this walk every night: two miles along its bank, to the spot where his house disappeared from view, then back again via a circuitous route that took him through woods and across moorland. He turned to check on his house, a low, modern structure nestled in amongst trees a couple of hundred yards back from the water. It was ideally place

PC Douglas Anderson was having a bad day. He’d been woken at 4am by his daughter Poppy, and despite Naomi getting up and sending him back to bed, he hadn’t found sleep afterwards. At 6:30 when he’d eventually given up, he’d discovered that the boiler was on the blink and there was no hot water for a shower. And now, despite the skies being clear when he left home, raindrops the size of gumdrops were splattering his police uniform. Douglas yawned and tried to shake himself out