Sacrifice. Paul Finch
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Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Paul Finch 2013
Cover photographs © Arcangel & Roberto Pastrovicchio
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2013
Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007492312
Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007492329
Version: 2017-11-14
For my lovely wife, Catherine, whose selfless and unswerving support has been the bedrock on which I’ve built my career
Contents
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
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Acknowledgements
The whole of Holbeck should be bombed.
That was Alan Ernshaw’s view. Okay, he was a relatively new police officer – just ten months in the job – so if anyone overheard him make such a politically incorrect statement and complained, he’d have an excuse. But the gaffers still wouldn’t be impressed. Holbeck, the old warehouse district located just south of Leeds city centre, might well consist mainly of buildings that were now empty shells, its Victorian terraced housing might now mostly be derelict, the few parts of it that were inhabited reduced to grotty concrete cul-de-sacs strewn with litter and covered in graffiti, but policemen didn’t take these sorts of things personally anymore. Or at least, they weren’t supposed to.
Ernshaw yawned and scratched the dried razor-cut on his otherwise smoothly shaven jaw.
Radio static crackled. ‘1762 from Three?’
Ernshaw yawned again. ‘Go ahead.’
‘What are you and Keith doing, over?’
‘Well we’re not sitting down for a turkey dinner, put it that way.’
‘Join the club. Listen, if you’ve nothing else on, can you get over to Kemp’s Mill on Franklyn Road?’
Ernshaw, who was from Harrogate, some fifteen miles to the north, and still didn’t completely know his way around West Yorkshire’s sprawling capital city, glanced to his right, where PC Keith Rodwell slouched behind the steering wheel.
Rodwell, a heavy-jowled veteran of twenty years,