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Chapters (55)
  1. PERFECT CRIME
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  42. Chapter Forty
  43. Chapter Forty-One
  44. Chapter Forty-Two
  45. Chapter Forty-Three
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. Can’t get enough of the Perfect series?
  48. Chapter 1
  49. Loved Perfect Silence? Then why not get back to where it all started with book one of the D.I. Callanach series?
  50. Welcome to Edinburgh.Murder capital of Europe.
  51. The worst dangers are the ones we can’t see …
  52. When silence falls, who will hear their cries?
  53. About the Author
  54. By the same author:
  55. About the Publisher

He hadn’t liked the man who’d pushed the pram. The thought came to him, a non sequitur mixed into memories of other more successful points of his career. That was ridiculous, though. You couldn’t dislike someone based on seeing them talk – not even hearing them – for three minutes as they walked along, or because their smile had seemed excessive in the circumstances.

Only he really hadn’t liked him. He wasn’t imagining it. It had been to do with the ruffling of the boy’s hair. Lance closed his eyes and reconstructed the details in his mind. The man had been carrying a shopping bag, a full one, up in his arm. Entirely macho positioning, like he was too embarrassed to carry it swinging from his hand like a housewife. Balanced on the top of the shopping, prominently, had been a pack of nappies. A small pack. Usually when Lance saw them in the supermarket they were the huge bumper packs and the damned things were expensive. No point buying them unless you were buying in bulk. The man hadn’t thought of that, apparently.

He saw the male ruffle the boy’s hair in his mind once more. Just before that, the boy had positioned himself between the woman and the man, jostling for control of the pram. It wasn’t just Lance. The boy hadn’t liked the man, either. Hadn’t wanted him next to his mother, or helping with the baby.

He’d ruffled the boy’s hair. The image kept returning. No parent did that to someone else’s child. You didn’t do it to your own child because you knew children hated it. They really bloody hated it. Hair-ruffling was reserved for politicians who didn’t have children of their own, or who – if they did – had a nanny and hadn’t spent a single hour caring for the children without military-style backup.

Lance’s next thought – and it came with a clarity that made his chest hurt – was that the man wasn’t a parent at all. He knew it the same as he’d known when his wife had decided to leave him and when he’d known his son was experimenting with drugs. He just knew. But he’d been carrying nappies. Keeping them in full view, up in his arms. In the woman’s face. Like a badge of domesticity. He might as well have been wearing a sign on his chest that read: I’m a dad.