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About the Author

Leona Deakin started her career as a psychologist with the West Yorkshire Police. She is now an occupational psychologist and lives with her family in Leeds. Her debut thriller? Gone? was published in 2019.

Also by Leona Deakin

Gone

Dedication

For my little show-off. This one’s for you.

Epigraph

‘No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.’

Abraham Lincoln

‘There is always hope.’

‘Girl with Balloon’, Banksy

1

As he walked up the stone stairway, Captain Harry Peterson had no idea that time was running out. In less than an hour, a bomb would rip this building apart.

He looked across the lawn. Everyone was peaceful, content. A hundred officers in full uniform were drinking champagne in front of a marquee. The buttons on their cropped jackets were shining in the sunlight. Their conversation, loud with laughter, mixed with music from the Royal Marines Band.

Harry smiled. He’d seen it all before, many times, but he knew he’d never grow tired of the glamour and decadence of a military ball.

Behind the officers’ wardroom at Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Devonport, a thin man in dark clothes waited patiently. He paced up and down, up and down. He checked the straps of his backpack and the trigger switch in his pocket.

Harry always thought it was a privilege to be in the Royal Navy, but never more so than when he was at Devonport. He smiled as he walked past the two miniature cannons housed on carved wooden lions on his way into the building. He had never wanted to do anything else but this: as a child he’d dreamt of travelling the world on the ships he’d seen in Portsmouth and as a teenager he’d watched films about fighter pilots and tacked a poster of The Dam Busters to his bedroom wall. It wasn’t that he wanted to fight but he liked the idea of being a hero. Who didn’t? He wanted to be a good person.

The man on reception glanced at the rank insignia embroidered on Harry’s jacket cuffs. ‘Good evening, Captain,’ he said.

Harry nodded. He squeezed past the photographer and collected a glass of champagne from a lady dressed in a red-tailed jacket and a gold waistcoat. The biannual balls were themed to separate them from the endless formal dinners and because, as the defender of the seas, the Navy felt it was not only the most senior service, but also the one with the best sense of humour and so Night at the Circus had been chosen for this evening’s event. Which explained the juggler on the lawn and the man on stilts parading around the concourse.