Dead Scared (53 page)

‘Tell him to go fuck himself.’ I’m up on the ledge. I’m going.

‘Lacey!’

I swear that voice wasn’t PC Leffingham’s.

‘Lacey, he says he can’t live if you don’t.’

I look up, for my big dinner-plate stars and the silver silk streamers that I will fly among. They’re gone and in their place are just tiny dots of light, millions of miles away. Below me, my black-velvet city strewn with gold has gone too. All that’s left is a town that is beautiful but cold. Over to the north, where the light from a flashlight hasn’t stopped waving, I can picture the man who’s holding it, a man who is up on the edge of a parapet, just like me, and I know that he and I are on the verge of a pretty big adventure. Whether we jump, or whether we don’t.

My call.

Without taking my eyes off Joesbury’s torch, I give PC Leffingham my hand and let him lead me safely back down to earth.

There have been a few cases of student suicide in Cambridge in recent years but their details are unknown to me. My research for this book has been general, not specific, and any similarities to real events are entirely coincidental.

I have long considered Cambridge to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and feel nothing but wistful envy for those lucky enough to live and study there.
Dead Scared
is a work of the imagination, nothing more.

References

Burn Unit
by Barbara Ravage,
The Suicidal Mind
by Edwin S. Shneidman,
Why People Die By Suicide
by Thomas Joiner,
November of the Soul
by George Howe Colt,
Dark Journey
by Ronald L. Bonner,
The Lucifer Effect
by Philip Zimbardo,
Training Birds of Prey
by Lee William Harris,
Falconry for Beginners
by Jemima Parry-Jones and
The Night Climbers of Cambridge
by Whipplesnaith.

Grateful thanks to my kind and clever friends and colleagues, without whose help I could not write my books: Sarah Adams, Jessica, Peter and Rosie Buckman, Lynsey Dalladay, Anne Marie Doulton, Matthew Martz, Sarah Melnyk, Kelley Ragland, Kate Samano, Denise Stott, Martin Summerhayes, Adrian Summons, Jess Thomas, Mark Upton, Claire Ward and Geoff Webb.

Any remaining mistakes are mine.

S. J. Bolton
is the author of four previous critically acclaimed novels,
Sacrifice, Awakening, Blood Harvest
and
Now You See Me
, all available in paperback.

Sacrifice
was nominated for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, and voted Top Debut Thriller in the first ever Amazon Rising Stars.
Awakening
won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Thriller of the Year in the US.

In 2010
Blood Harvest
was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year, and in 2011 S. J. Bolton was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library, an award for an entire body of work, nominated by library users.

S. J. Bolton lives near Oxford with her husband and young son. For more information about the author and her books, or to check out her addictive blog, visit
www.sjbolton.com
. Or join her on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/SJBoltonCrime

Also by S. J. Bolton

Sacrifice

Awakening

Blood Harvest

Now You See Me

For more information on S. J. Bolton and her books, see her website at
www.sjbolton.com

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.transworldbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain
in 2012 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © S. J. Bolton 2012

S. J. Bolton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409030676
ISBNs 9780593064153 (hb)
9780593064160 (tpb)

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found
at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1