The book starts in the summer solstice of 2005.
Amy is watching the beautiful scenery when she feels she should return as it is too late. A voice comes behind her - supposedly the person she came to this place with - and when she tells him that she wants to go, the man takes a step towards her, and when she pulls back, he gets angry and violent. Amy realises that she is in danger and tries to flee but the man catches her and kills her.
The novel moves forward in time. It is ten years later and Colin Hart is walking near Hadrian's Wall when he decides to go to Sycamore Gap to see the sun rise. Then he spots something bright among the stones of the wall, and he starts to remove the stones and to his shock he finds some bones and calls the police.
Ryan and Frank Phillips are called that Sunday. Ryan hopes that the body could be an ancient one to let archaelogists have. Apart from his colleagues, there is the head archaelogist of National Heritage, Jane Freeman, who demands the police not damage the wall. At first sight it seems that the body is female and apart from some childhood injuries, there is a fracture in her wrist, and a crack in her skull, which might have killed her. When he and Frank talk to the patholotist and anthropologist, they learn that the body can't have been there for more than ten years, so now they have a case to investigate. Through her rental records they discover that the name of the victim is Amy Llewellyn, and when Ryan looks at her photograph, she looks familiar, and it is Frank who reminds him that they saw a photo of Amy when they warched the rooms of Keir Edwards, the killer in the previous book. Ryan thinks that Keir must have killed Amy too, but Frank is not certain as Keir is known to boast about his murders.
Gregson, his boss, talks to him, and he wants to make sure that Ryan could be in charge of the case as this is too close to home as his sister was murdered by Edwards. Ryan insists that he is the man to lead the case, and Gregson sets a condition. He needs to start seeing the department psychologist.
That night Gregson, who is part of the Circle, the cult that Keir was the High Priest of. There is a new High Priest, whose identity is hidden but from the previous book we know it is Mark, Anna's mentor, and Jane Freeman is also part of the circle. They talk about Ryan and how they need to make him fail. They also talk about DC Jack Lowesrson, who in the first book was attacked and has been in a coma until now. The young policeman has come out of the coma but appartently, he does not remember anything, but Gregson and the other two agree that he needs to be taken care of.
At the same time the real killer of Amy is not happy that someone else could take credit for his murder. So it seems that he plans to do something.
The next day Ryan and his team are about to start the day with a meeting. Denise is in Sycamore Gap, supervising Professor Jane Freeman as she and her archaelogists are to check the rest of the wall. Then Ryan gets a call. It is Denise. Another body has been found in the same gap. Ryan and Frank rush to the place. This is not an old body, but someone must have dropped a body in the gap that Amy left after the police and technicians left there. This time they found a body that has been mutilated of a young woman. In the previous chapter there was a part about a young woman, Claire, who had finished her shift at a diner and was on her way home. She had missed the bus, so she was about to start walking home in the dark. So I imagine that the dead woman is her.
I loved the first book in the series and I am already hooked on this second mystery
No comments:
Post a Comment