‘Blood is strong,’ she told him. ‘It makes people do things, good and bad. Come on, we’ll take you back. And I’m going to visit every day. You’ll soon be sick of the sight of me.’
Winter stood behind them, jealous of their closeness but also absorbed. He wondered lamely whether it was worse to have lost your parents, as he had, or to lose them regularly as Rachel was now fated to do with her dad.
He thought of the futility of washing blood with blood. And he wondered if he’d ever be able to stop doing it.
Rachel slowed her step, turning to him with a warm smile and waiting till he caught them up. She slipped her right arm through his, her left still entwined with her father’s. Danny stepped up to join them on the other side, linking his arm through Alan Narey’s and completing an unlikely yet appropriate chorus line.
Together they walked back up the cemetery’s main thoroughfare, the twin chapels directly ahead of them, separated and connected by the towering steeple with its theatrical archway leading to the world beyond. Resisting a last glance over his shoulder towards Lily’s final resting place, Winter forced himself to look ahead. He couldn’t deny that it made quite a picture.
Acknowledgements
I owe gratitude, as ever, to everyone at Simon & Schuster UK; particularly my editor Maxine Hitchcock for her endless supply of ideas, patience and reassurance. Thanks too to Emma Lowth and Florence Partridge for always being there to offer help when needed, which was often.
My head and heart — if not my liver — thanks my agent, Mark “Stan” Stanton for his continuing wise counsel. Less wise but nonetheless welcome advice came from my good friends in The Midnight Plumbers, particularly in this instance to Robert Clubb for his invaluable knowledge of computer geekery.
For equally expert assistance, I am grateful to Professor Caroline Wilkinson of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee and to Andy Rolph and the staff of R2S Crime in Aberdeen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
During his 20-year career in Glasgow with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson has interviewed three recent Prime Ministers, attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, been pilloried on breakfast television, beaten Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, been among the first to interview Susan Boyle, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. His debut novel, Random, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger.