An old woman watches a ten year-old boy burn to death under an outcrop known as the "Winking Man". The body is scarred by cigarette burns, the hands tattooed and the clothes scruffy. But a gold ring he is wearing belongs to a local MP, dead for over a year. D.I Joanna Piercy investigates.
On a late summer Monday, Doctor Claire Roget takes up her new post of clinical psychiatrist at Greatbach Secure Psychiatrist Unit in the Midlands city of Stoke on Trent. Six months earlier, her predecessor Heidi Faro was brutally murdered in her office by one of the inmates, Stefan Giulio. As Cla...
From her surgery window Dr. Megan Banesto watches as the body of Bianca Rhys is dragged from the local pond; a paranoid schizophrenic famed for her outrageous claims and stories, her death doesn't come as a surprise to the local community. Soon after, when a ten-year-old child goes missing, Megan...
Jonathan Selkirk, known as a ruthless, powerful lawyer, receives a threatening letter advising him to make a will. Only hours later he is recovering in the Leek Cottage Hospital from a suspected heart attack. Late that night Selkirk mysteriously disappears.The discovery of a dead body two days la...
A local man sits outside Horton village primary school watching the children. DI Joanna Piercy is called to investigate. Thinking the man is harmless she decides there is nothing to worry about. She is terribly wrong - a few days later Madeline Wiltshaw goes missing.
In separate locations in Leek, three separate tableaux are being performed. DI Piercy is writing to her lover to try and explain recent events; her sidekick Mike is filling in his insurance form after his wife has had a minor prang in the car; and an unknown person is penning love letters to the ...
A spate of robberies targeting elderly women has shocked the normally sedate town of Leek to its core. And now it appears that the robbers have moved on to murder. At the eerily named Spite Hall, the body of Nancy Lawrence has been found bludgeoned to death, lying over the tapestry she was in the...
When Dave Shackleton arrived at Hardacre farm to collect milk, he found Aaron Summers with a fatal shotgun wound in his chest. Next to him lay the body of his son, Jack, and by the door the abandoned shotgun. A massive Police search is set in motion to find the missing daughter Ruthie Summers -- ...
Martha expected a call to come in at any time about the house fire, either that the police had found a body or that they’d made contact with the missing woman. Had her job not been so absorbing the day might have passed slowly but it didn’t. She immersed herself in her tasks and left her office a...
When the alarm clock clicked on at 6.55 he opened one brown eye and waited. Nothing happened. He dropped a huge paw over the side of his basket and sat up on his haunches, waiting for the familiar sounds ... rustling of bedclothes, soft foot on the floor, steps to the bathroom. He opened the othe...
He would take it out of the box, unbutton his shirt, cradle it against his naked chest, press the long, slim heel hard against him, feeling the prick of the point. Then he would finger the sharp toe. When he closed his eyes he could imagine the long, shapely leg leading up from the shoe to its da...
He didn’t show. So I worked, as normal, through the day and put him from my mind. It was easy, surrounded by so many fascinating pieces, and I was absorbed for the entire day.So the days passed. He didn’t show either for breakfast or for dinner for almost a week. The weather had turned hot and hu...
It took ages to get the police diver out. Diana Tong had left them to inform Timony what was happening while Timmis and McBrine had rung Joanna to inform her what was going on. The Faulkeners hung around, partly out of excitement and curiosity, but also because they were uncertain whether they co...
They put Bobby into kennels – London was no place for a dog. She braved the M54 and the Birmingham box, reaching London late and in time for some supper, a few glasses of wine for her and Agnetha and bed for the exhausted twins.They rose late the next morning, spent the day at the Natural History...
They made no secret of the fact that they hated them being there but Hughes refused to be hurried. He was a thorough man and knew his job – inside out – and the Sedgewicks could go to hell and back for all he cared. They were not going to deflect him from his job. If there was forensic evidence i...
Everyone who’s suffered and braved it out over the weekend attends, plus a few who simply want to extend the break into the weekdays – the Sick Note Brigade with their vague tales of backache, headache, viruses or anything else the doctor can neither prove nor disprove. The waiting room was heavi...
She was a polished product, Joanna realised quickly. Manicured nails, shining strawberry-blonde hair, neat size-ten jeans and three-inch stilettos. Such women had always fascinated Joanna. How did they keep it up? To never have wild hair, be caught without make-up, slumming it in slippers and a s...
The regulation trousers did nothing for her, white blouse tucked in giving her the look of a sack of spuds tied around the middle. She was pale with thin dark hair which straggled to her shoulders and anxious, tired eyes. He knew she had not slept in her free morning. However tired she had been s...
Alex Randall had returned to the Long Mynd and was standing on the Burway, looking down into the crash site and Carding Mill Valley. An icy wind seemed determined to pierce his coat so he held it tighter around him as he studied the area. It was all too was easy to follow the trail of destruction...
8 a.m. The trouble with the search for Molly Carraway was that they had so little to go on. Nothing, really. Where do you start when a girl is missing? Police protocol sounds simple and clear – at the place where she was last seen. You study any CCTV footage for clues and then spread out like a s...
I asked her who drove it. But a ten-year-old girl has scant interest in make, model or driver. She eyed me indignantly. ‘I don’t know which blue car you mean,’ she said. I tried to describe it and realised how all cars are essentially the same, four wheels, a colour, a vag...