Claws

By Stephen Booth

A stunning landscape, a ruthless conflict... and one young police detective.

On the wild moors of England's Dark Peak, a conflict has been raging for years. The discovery of an illegal haul from the bedroom of a terraced house is a clue to what might be at stake - not only the fate of local wildlife, but perhaps the entire future of one of the most prized landscapes in the Peak District National Park.

Derbyshire police detective DC Ben Cooper, on assignment to the Rural Crime Squad, finds himself stepping into the middle of the conflict, without being quite sure whose side he's on. The predators come in all shapes and sizes - and in this battle, not all the victims are human...

CLAWS is a short novella from award-winning British crime writer Stephen Booth, author of thirteen novels in the Cooper & Fry series, all set in England's beautiful and atmospheric Peak District. At around 15,000 words, the story features one of the author's popular series characters, Detective Constable Ben Cooper, tackling the issues of wildlife crime.

The ebook includes an excerpt from the first novel in the Cooper & Fry series, BLACK DOG.

"One of the elite British mystery writers" - Washington Times
"Booth is a modern master of rural noir" - The Guardian
"There are few, if any, contemporary writers who do this as well as Stephen Booth" - Arena Magazine
"Booth delivers some of the best crime fiction in the UK" - Manchester Evening News

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Booth
• Release date: May 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9780956902726

Stephen Booth

Stephen Booth's fourteen novels featuring Cooper and Fry, all to be published by Witness, have sold over half a million copies around the world.

Book preview

CLAWS

A Detective Constable Ben Cooper story

Stephen Booth

Published by Westlea Books at Smashwords

Copyright © 2013 Stephen Booth

First published in paperback in the Crime Express series by Five Leaves Publications, PO Box 8786, Nottingham NG1 9AW. www.fiveleaves.co.uk

Paperback ISBN 978-1-9078690-8-2

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing. All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Our ebooks are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. They may not be resold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

Discover the novels in the Ben Cooper and Diane Fry series at:

http://www.stephen-booth.com

Westlea Books,

PO Box 10125, Tuxford, Newark,

Notts. NG22 0WT. United Kingdom

www.westleabooks.com

CLAWS

1

The bones were tiny. They lay in his hand like a set of pearls, translucent and fragile. When he turned them to the light, he could see their fractured ends and hollow cores. They were light as a feather, as brittle as chalk. And as easy to break as a straw.

For a moment, Detective Constable Ben Cooper stared at the narrow window and faded curtains, though they hid nothing more than a street corner in a Derbyshire mining town. He was trying to picture a shape coming out of nowhere, a shadow against the sun. He could almost feel the sudden grab, hear the sharp snap. A broken back, he guessed. Dead in an instant.

Cooper looked up. Had he spoken that last thought out loud? PC Tracy Udall had been watching him handle the bones, her expression suggesting he might do something against procedure at any moment. His secondment to the Rural Crime Squad had given him a kind of loose cannon status in Udall’s eyes. He was the rogue element that no one quite controlled.

Where did you say these were found, Tracy? he asked.

Udall nodded at the opposite wall. In a Tupperware box. They were stuffed in a drawer, with his underwear and socks.

She said it as if the socks made the presence of bones worse, somehow. A casual attitude to death was always disturbing. No one could tolerate a life tossed away like so much rubbish.

As usual, Udall was in full uniform, her duty belt loaded with equipment that rucked her yellow high-vis jacket into untidy folds over her waist. Handcuffs, baton, CS spray. And a series of leather pouches that Cooper had forgotten the use for. In fact, he didn’t think there had been all those items to carry when he was in uniform. Changes happened fast in Derbyshire Constabulary, and six years in CID were long enough to get out of touch with core policing.

But at least they’re only a handful of bones, said Udall. Less than a handful.

The only thing she’d taken off was her hat, which she laid carefully on a chair, a gesture to informality. In the enclosed space, she had to stand very close. And despite the six-inch difference in their heights, Cooper found her slightly intimidating.

This had been an unremarkable bedroom once - one of those tiny spaces that was no more than a box room. There was just enough distance between the walls to fit a bed, and a chest of drawers under the window. He’d slept in a bedroom like this himself as a child, back at Bridge End Farm. But some youngsters spent their entire lives in a space this size.

I suppose he didn’t have much interest in bones, he said.

"No. They weren’t one of his special trophies."

Downstairs, officers from Serious Crime could be heard moving through the rooms, checking the kitchen, breaking open the shed in the back yard. They’d raided the house in response to intelligence that it was being used to stash the proceeds of activities by local drug dealers who were being targeted in a major police operation. It was the sort of place they might find to keep their money safe until the attention died down. The officer in charge downstairs had hopes of finding a couple of hundred grand hidden under the floorboards, or stuffed into coffee tins, the way a southern force had in a similar raid a while ago.

Cooper turned slowly and studied the room. It couldn’t be called a bedroom any more. There was no bed in it, for a start – only a series of glass-fronted cabinets, a small table, and a single chair. Some of the contents of the cabinets were difficult to make out, unfamiliar shapes under a gathering layer of dust. Shoeboxes and biscuit tins had been crammed into the rest of the available space, and two suitcases lay open on the floor.

Cooper put the bones down, feeling oddly disturbed by the way they slid and rustled in their evidence bag, like the last few crumbs in a packet of biscuits.

Prey, I suppose, he said.

Udall nodded. Aren’t they all?

She was strangely quiet this morning. Cooper wondered if some issue in her personal life had come too close to the surface. Tracy Udall had two small children at home, and he gathered that the father had been absent from the word ‘go’. Present for the conception, maybe, but missing for the birth. Udall was as professional as they came, but even police officers were human.

A small species of some kind, he said. It would have been taken by the male, then dismembered later on. You wouldn’t think there’d be much flesh on it, would you? Enough to keep a few hungry mouths quiet for a while. But that’s all.

Every scrap is important when you’re a parent.

I see. Well… maybe I don’t.

One day, Ben.

Between them, the boxes and suitcases in this room contained a collection of several thousand eggs. Nestling between layers of cotton wool were the speckled pale greens and blues of bullfinches, redstarts and wheatears, the creamy white

Reviews for Claws

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tempted in the charity shop by the corvid on the cover. It was all right but Cooper doesn't have the space to shine in such a short book and for anyone who knows anything about the Peak district and the illegal killing of raptors, comes across as a bit preachy.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A short story set on the Derbyshire moors. The dialogue seemed a little forced and unnatural to me, but it was a quick read with an interesting take on marriage and creatures which bond for life.

[nicx27 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought this was a great little book (80 pages). I haven't read any Stephen Booth novels before, but will now definitely consider reading his full length work. This book is about DC Ben Cooper, who features in his other books, and the story is about wildlife crime in the Peak District.I found this a good read, and the story was self-contained, which is no mean feat with only 80 pages to play with. I particularly liked the ending, which made me smile.

[kevincannon1968 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

‘Raptor’ous ApplauseDecent short story set in the world of twitching and egg collectors.Nice and compact with interesting detail on the avian wildlife in the peaks and it’s ongoing battle with egg and chick thieves.Thought provoking ending