Acknowledgements

Empire of Spice Ltd is not based on any particular business, and its dynamics and characters within are imagined. None are based on any real person. However, the issues of shareholdings for women in Indian businesses in the UK are real enough. In 2007 a male heir of the Patak curry business was ordered by a British court to hand over £9 million of shares to his two sisters who had complained that their father had transferred shares from them illegally. The company was later that year sold to Associated British Foods.

I’d like to thank all the staff at Surrey Police during my visit there, particularly Charlotte Cooke for showing me the forensic centre, and for answering my many questions. Kim Booth helped with many issues on police procedure. Other police sources have asked not to be identified, and I have respected their anonymity.

Michael Bhaskar and the Canelo team as always were enthusiastic backers of the book. Miranda Ward did an excellent editing job.

Of course above all is my wife and first reader, Louise, to whom this book is dedicated.

About the Author

Nick Louth is a best-selling thriller writer and an award-winning financial journalist. A 1979 graduate of the London School of Economics, he went on to become a Reuters foreign correspondent in 1987. He was for many years a Financial Times columnist, and a regular contributor to Investors Chronicle, Money Observer, and MSN Money. It was an experience at a medical conference in Amsterdam in 1992, while working for Reuters, that gave him the inspiration for Bite, which in 2014 went on to become a UK No1 ebook best-seller. The Body in the Snow is his fourth book in the DCI Gillard crime series, and his eighth thriller overall. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.

www.nicklouth.com

DCI Craig Gillard Crime Thrillers

The Body in the Marsh

The Body on the Shore

The Body in the Mist

The Body in the Snow

Find out more

Don’t miss Nick Louth’s next DCI Gillard crime thriller, coming in July 2020…

The Body Under the Bridge

A talented young music student, daughter of a powerful German minister, goes missing while travelling by train from Surrey to London. DCI Craig Gillard is quickly called in, amidst fears for the woman’s life. But a shocking discovery soon throws the investigation into chaos.

As torrential rains douse the commuter belt, the detective gets involved in a daring rescue from a flooded river. A body is found, then another. Are these the victims of the raging waters or of some sinister killer? With Surrey Police stretched as never before, Gillard is led on a frantic and desperate search for the truth.

Only later does he discover that he is up against an old enemy, one who has him and his wife Sam firmly in his sights.

Now read on for the first chapter.

Chapter 1

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard slid his unmarked grey Vauxhall into the last available space in Epsom Police Station car park. He was not in a great mood. It was the first time that he had ever been called away from a funeral by work. It was to attend a witness interview in a missing persons case, not normally something so urgent as to require him to say an early goodbye to the family of the deceased. But on this occasion he had been allocated the case directly by Chief Constable Alison Rigby. She always had her reasons, but didn’t always share them with subordinates.