The Detective's Daughter - Hardcover

Thomson, Lesley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1908800240 ISBN 13: 9781908800244

Verlag: Head of Zeus, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

As winter closes its grip on snow-bound London, a daughter solves the case that her father never could. The number one bestseller.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lesley Thomson is the bestselling author of The Detective's Daughter series, which has sold over 850,000 copies worldwide. The tenth instalment, The Shrine, marks a major milestone in the acclaimed series. Renowned for her atmospheric, character-driven mysteries, Thomson's writing has been likened to Barbara Pym for its keen psychological insight and wit. Her debut, A Kind of Vanishing, won the People's Book Prize, cementing her reputation as a distinctive voice in crime fiction. She lives in Sussex with her partner and their dog.
Visit her website at www.lesleythomson.co.uk

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The Detective's Daughter

By Lesley Thomson

Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Lesley Thomson
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-908800-24-4

CHAPTER 1

Sunday, 9 January 2011

The Toyota took three attempts to fire and the car was out of sight by the time Terry got moving. A skilled driver, he wove through the lunchtime traffic, snatching space, overtaking to slip in two vehicles behind the car at lights on Chalker's Corner. It was indicating right. There was no right turn. Terry felt heat rise as the police officer in him wanted to pull alongside and flash his badge. The car crossed the junction but the indicator had warned him there would soon be a right turn. At Lower Richmond Road the car did indeed go right, then right again to rejoin the A316. Terry slid in behind and when it took the slip road on to the M3 congratulated himself on keeping his petrol tank full.

Terry Darnell knew he was dealing with a meticulous and observant personality, likely to notice a vehicle keeping pace, so he hung back until the M25; then he risked overtaking and keeping the vehicle in his rear-view mirror. He knew better than to underestimate his quarry: people surprise you.

Later he dropped back and tucked into the left lane with the car ahead. Luckily this was a cautious driver who would not speed; just like a woman. Just as well because Terry's ten-year-old 1.4 engine would not be tortoise to this fuel-injected hare. He increased his distance when the other car crossed into his lane.

When it took the exit, Terry didn't need to keep the car within his sights. He knew where they were going.

The hamlet had no through road and, although close to a town with a station, felt to Terry as remote as the depths of Dartmoor. It was remote in time too; iron lamp-posts had yet to shed light on a Victorian pillar box and the one street sign. Spreading oaks and forbidding acers and flint walls partially concealed substantial detached houses.

Terry watched the car go off left and continued on the bypass before he took a road to the sea and doubled back.

He let the Yaris bump along a lane treacherous with potholes and, steering it on to a secluded verge, killed the engine. If anyone came he would ask for directions to the church; that always went down well.

Terry registered his full bladder. He had not touched the flask of coffee he had made for staking out the premises; these days he wanted to piss all the time. He relieved himself behind the boot of the car. He tested his camera with shots of the tyres; feeling the tightening in his chest, he dismissed it.

The air was freezing; snow was forecast. He buttoned up his jacket. Snow would obliterate clues and hamper the simplest action. He did not find it as joyful as when Stella was little.

A weather-beaten sign pointed him towards the church and, picking his way along a rutted footpath crunchy with fallen leaves, he reached a lych gate. The intense quiet was broken by bells chiming three o'clock. Already the sky was darkening. He patted his pocket; his torch was there.

As he unlatched the gate and walked under the tiled canopy, another bout of dizziness overwhelmed him; despite what the doctor said, Terry knew it was blood sugar dropping. He had not eaten since his cornflakes that morning and these days he could not get away with it. There was no quaint village shop and he was reluctant to go into the town. It was when the perpetrator was cornered that less experienced detectives grew careless. Later he would eat the Kit Kat in the glove box with his coffee.

Terry lowered himself on to a bench within the lych gate and, resting his head back, read the laminated notices pinned opposite: flower rotas, times of services; a Wednesday coffee morning. His attention was aroused by a sign on red paper: 'If you have lost a child, or know of a child that has died, however long ago, please come and join us in remembering them.'

He wondered if anyone could come or if it was for locals only. Did it matter if your child was alive and lost only to you?

He mulled over how many parents in this backwater could have suffered such a particular bereavement. It could not amount to a large congregation. A child had gone missing in the sixties near here; the girl had never been found but, as was becoming frequent, Terry could not conjure up detail. Some poor sod was tortured by that case; worrying over minor specifics, rifling through files he knew off by heart. Terry wiped his face – his memory really was on the blink – the poor sod was called Hall and was dead. He had read that the girl's parents had also died; they would not be attending the service.

Kate Rokesmith's murderer would be brought to justice. His own torture was at an end.

Terry took the path to the church. The tower was square and tapered; each point where it slimmed was marked by a line of jutting bricks giving the impression the structure could be telescoped upon itself. On its spire a golden cockerel weathervane facing towards the sea glinted in sunshine escaping from a break in the clouds. He remembered it from the funeral; it had put him in mind of his little girl. By then fifteen and doubtless into make-up and boys, she had no time for him. It was like one of Stella's drawings which he had mounted in a scrapbook. Stella's primary school pictures were bright with colour; if only life was how she had drawn it. When he asked if he could keep the ones she did on her visits, modest about her talent, she would shrug OK. The scrapbook still gave him happiness.

He had attended the service with a colleague, a woman whom he had quite fancied. Afterwards they dropped off for a drink at a pub on the A3 where she had called her boyfriend from a phone booth by the toilets; no mobile phones in those days. So that was that. Terry told himself it was not wise to mix business with pleasure. Instead, he had not mixed it with anything. Neither of them had seen anyone suspicious at the funeral. The case was as cold as ice and Kate had only been dead six weeks.

The murderer had been there, coiffured and respectable, in the left of the photograph by a headstone, watching the coffin carried out from the church. Three decades on, Terry, knowing whom to look for, had quickly spotted the killer in the crowd.

Any hope the Rokesmith family had of privacy had been dashed by the photographers, journalists, television crews and the obligatory straggle of onlookers who packed the churchyard. They had made Terry's job harder but now he was grateful; he had the picture. It only proved the culprit's presence at the funeral, but it was a start.

It would have been easy to chat with mourners without them batting an eyelid. There was no talk of a stranger acting oddly from the would-be detectives on the ground that day. Truth be told, Terry had been more interested in his sergeant – Janet, that was her name; after all, they believed they had solved the case, so in reality were only crossing Ts.

Hugh Rokesmith, Terry had observed to Janet over a pint of Fuller's London Pride, had given a sterling performance, with the boy in his arms the perfect prop for the grieving widower. Terry had gone into the telephone booth after Janet and, with Stella's weathervane drawing on his mind, called the Barons Court flat to see if she fancied meeting when he got into London. Stella informed him she was busy.

The dizziness ebbed. Trying to recall the whereabouts of the grave, Terry stumbled over uneven ground, going anti-clockwise around the building. The word 'widdershins' popped up: he had an idea his mum had warned it was bad luck to go widdershins around a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Head of Zeus
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1908800240
• ISBN 13: 9781908800244
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar