A fourteen year-old girl’s body is found in a frozen grave by three children metal detecting in a field. Detective Inspector Josiah Dark of the Serious Crime Division at Greater Manchester Police thought he’d be investigating this case on his own, because his unwanted partner has been called away to a family crisis, but a reporter called Dixie Reyes knows more than she should – a lot more. |
An unidentified male corpse, with a wooden stake hammered into its heart, has been pulled from the Peak Forest Canal at Lock Number 9 in Marple. Detective Inspector Josiah Dark has been sent to investigate. The initial chaos at the crime scene is compounded by the unexpected return of his unwanted partner – Detective Constable Annie Lake. Leads are hard to come by, but eventually they begin to unearth a web of bribery, corruption and murder from fifteen years previously. Also, the two people helping him to find out the truth about his wife Ellie – the investigative reporter Dixie Reyes and her partner Hendrik Larsson – have stumbled onto the deaths of old people without relatives who have all their money transferred from their bank accounts days before they die. Morbid Maud – Professor Finn’s assistant at the mortuary in Wythenshawe Hospital – asks him to look into the case of her nine year-old sister, who was abducted from Blackpool seafront three years ago. And then, of course, there’s the suggestive photographs of Ellie that Hendrik has found . . . |
DI Dark is asked by Chief Superintendent Henn to join the task force under DCI Mathers to help solve the murders of seven children over eight months in Greater Manchester, but Dark will only get involved if he’s in charge. Henn relents, hands the investigation to Dark and Lake and disbands the task force. As a consequence, Dark makes an enemy of Mathers. To assist with the investigation, Dark agrees to take two detectives that were previously part of the task force – DS Eliza Snell and DC Robert Lee. Slowly, the team unravel the motive behind the murders, but one of them must be sacrificed as a consequence.
When Dark gives Hendrik the go ahead to hack into the Hendon server and gain access to Anthony Baker’s personnel records, the server is shut down for maintenance, but not before he finds three more photographs of Dark’s wife Ellie, and a page from a psychological evaluation by a Doctor Agatha Linton of a serial killer called “Robert”. Dark is then followed by men with guns, GPS trackers are hidden on his Rav-4 and Lake gets assaulted as a warning. Soon, it becomes clear that what they’re dealing with is much more deadly than one ex-copper on the run with Dark’s wife and children. . |