[Ackroyd & Thackeray 16] • Dust to Dust

DCI Michael Thackeray is horrified when he learns that Laura Ackroyd, his newly pregnant girlfriend, has been persuaded to investigate the case of a young miner convicted of the murder of a policeman during the coal strike twenty years before. Thackeray had been a young copper then, only briefly involved, but he was well aware of the virtual war which had broken out between the strikers and the police and knew that feelings still ran high in the devastated pit villages which had never recovered from the defeats of 1984.

He watches as Laura is sucked into the campaign to free Billy Baxter, who has served twenty years for a murder he still claims he did not commit. Old tensions surface and the village is devastated yet again by the suspicious death of one of the former strike leaders and the arrival of a former London copper Intent of keeping Billy in jail and implicating others in the crime.

Thackeray and Laura's relationship is put under strain as the DCI is put in charge of the investigation and the village is convulsed by hatreds old and new. But in spite of their best efforts, official and unofficial, nothing it seems can prevent a violent end to twenty years of subterfuge and injustice.