Hell To Pay

HELL TO PAY A Detective Loxley Nottinghamshire Crime Thriller By A L Fraine The book is Copyright © to Andrew Dobell, Creative Edge Studios Ltd, 2022. No part of this book may be reproduced without prior permission of the copyright holder. All locations, events, and characters within this book are either fictitious or have been fictionalised for the purposes of this book. Book List https://www.alfraineauthor.co.uk/books Acknowledgements Thank you to Crystal Wren for your amazing editing and support. Thanks to Kath Middleton for her incredible work. A big thank you to the Admins and members of the UK Crime Book Club for their support, both to me and the wider author community. They’re awesome. A big thank you to Meg Jolly and Tom Reid for allowing me to use their names in this novel. I really appreciate it. Thank you also to the Authors I’ve been lucky enough to call friends. You know who you are, and you’re all wonderful people. Thank you to my family, especially my parents, children, and lovely wife Louise, for their unending love and support. Table of Contents Book List Acknowledgements Table of Contents 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 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Author Note Book List 1 “Oi!” she bellowed from the roadside as the man threw the car into gear. Its front wheels spun, kicking up dirt that hit her legs. “Don’t you bloody…” But it was too late. The car sped up the short side road, the rear door closing as it went, before it turned left, onto Mansfield Road and back toward Clipstone. “Shit.” Penny watched it go for a moment as it merged into the flow of traffic in the darkness, its rear lights mixing with others until she couldn’t tell which was the car she’d been in, and which wasn’t. She couldn’t believe the shithead had left her here, out on a sideroad towards the edge of the village, in the darkness of the night. She knew where she was and she knew it was only a short walk back to where she’d left her friend, but the nerve of that guy! They really were shitheads, sometimes. Having picked up all the crap that he’d thrown onto the side of the road to get her out of the car, she stuffed it in her bag with a grunt. Then, with a frown, she pulled her money out and counted it. With a sigh that seemed to affect her whole body, she realised she was short. He’d taken some of her money. “Fuck!” She shouted into the night, voicing her frustrations and the headache that the missing money would bring down on her. It was the last thing she needed, and just one more annoyance to add to the mountain that was already weighing her down. She needed to get back and find Izabela. Abel had asked her to keep an eye on Izabela, and she couldn’t well do that here, half a village away, could she? Feeling a sudden rush of anger, she kicked a small twig and shouted. “Fuck!” Frustrated, tired and alone, with a ten-minute walk ahead of her, Penny sighed and tried to let her worries and stresses drain from her body, but it wasn’t easy. She had to somehow think of a way to hide the missing money from Abel, which would be a headache in itself. Although, she guessed she could see how Izabela was doing. Maybe she’d be able to liberate some cash from Izabela by offering to hold her bag or something. There’d be a way for her to make it right, there had to be. She’d sort it. To her right, something moved in the corner of her vision; she caught sight of a figure walking along the main road, looking her way. Half a second later, they were gone, stepping out of sight before she could get a good look at them. For a moment, she felt very alone and vulnerable, at least partially because she’d just been taken advantage of by that idiot. He was long gone by now, though, and there’d be no tracking him down. Men were just fucking shitheads. With another laboured sigh, she turned to her left and gazed out over the huge stretch of open grassland between the sideroad she was standing on and the industrial and residential estates beyond. Standing tall, about a hundred metres away, was the last surviving derelict building of the Clipstone Colliery, marked by its distinctive Headstocks—a pair of huge metal towers made from massive steel girders, topped with humungous wheels that… Well, she didn’t really know what the wheels did, but she guessed they either lowered a lift down into the mine or carried the coal back out. Maybe both? She didn’t know, but what she did know was that the structure made a great navigation point that you could see from all over the village. But, standing in the darkness, surrounded by empty grassland, the towers and the smashed up, abandoned buildings they rose out of, took on a more menacing feel, as if they were towering dead monoliths, silently watching her from their lofty position. Her gaze slipped further left, out beyond the village to the rolling hills beyond and the slowly gathering mist in the valley. A shiver rippled up her spine as she looked upon the nearby gates that led into the fenced-off former Colliery. They seemed almost skeletal and black in the darkness. The dead, useless husk of a building reminded her of the finality of things. They were nothing but a reminder of a time long past. According to what she’d heard, however, they were going to be redeveloped, and the construction machinery parked up just