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Back Cross and Burn Save as PDF
Chapters (74)
  1. About the Author
  2. Also by Val McDermid
  3. COPYRIGHT
  4. CROSS AND BURN
  5. Dedication
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Epigraph
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
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So I’d like to say thanks to Professor Dave Barclay for his DNA expertise; to Catherine Tweedy for her fascinating exposition of fingermarks; to Professor Sue Black for her unerring ability to astonish me; and to those who prefer to remain anonymous. Thanks to Marie Mather whose generous donation to the Million for a Morgue campaign is the reason why she appears in these pages.

The character of DCI Alex Fielding was first created by Patrick Harbinson for Wire in the Blood, the TV series based on the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan novels. I have appropriated her for my own purposes with the kind permission of Coastal Productions.

Unstinting gratitude to Kiri, who organises my life; to Carolyn, who makes it beautiful; to Tony, who keeps me on the fiscal straight and narrow; and most of all, to Kelly, Cameron, the cousins and their mums, who save me from myself. Not to mention the dog.

Finally, a big shout out to the professionals: Jane and the team at Gregory & Co, David Shelley and his crew at Little, Brown, my copy editor Anne O’Brien, Amy Hundley and her colleagues at Grove Atlantic, and all the booksellers, librarians and bloggers who have helped my books find their readers.

Lucky me.

Epigraph

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.

David Russell

But you’re not here, now, to lead me back

To bed. None of you are. Look at the snow,

I said, to whoever might be near, I’m cold,

Would you hold me. Hold me. Let me go.

‘Hammersmith Winter’
Robin Robertson

1

Day one

He woke every morning with a prickle of excitement. Would today be the day? Would he finally meet her, his perfect wife? He knew who she was, of course. He’d been watching her for a couple of weeks now, growing used to her habits, getting to know who her friends were, learning her little ways. How she pushed her hair behind her ears when she settled into the driver’s seat of her car. How she turned all the lights on as soon as she came home to her lonely flat.

How she never ever seemed to check in her rear-view mirror.

He reached for the remote controls and raised the blinds on the high skylight windows. Rain fell in a constant drizzle from an unbroken wall of featureless grey cloud. No wind to drive the rain, though. Just a steady downpour. The sort of weather where people hid under umbrellas, heads down, paying no attention to their surroundings, faces invisible to CCTV.

First box ticked.

And it was a Saturday. So she’d have no appointments booked, no meetings arranged. Nobody to notice an unplanned absence. Nobody to raise an alarm.

Second box ticked.