Val McDermid - The Distant Echo

home@page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } The distant echo by Val McDermid val mcdermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and lives in South Manchester. Her novels have won international acclaim and a number of prestigious awards. A Place of Execution won both the Anthony Award for best novel and the Los Angeles Times 2001 Book of the Year Award Mystery/ Thriller category), while The Mermaids Singing took the 1995 Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Jacket photograph (c) Getty Images Author photograph by Mimsy Moller VAL McDERMID Val McDermid grew up in Kirkcaldy on the east coast of Scotland, then read English at Oxford.

She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she lives in Cheshire. In addition to storming the bestseller lists, her novels have won a host of awards, including the 1995 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year for The Mermaids Singing, and the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award for A Place of Execution (which also won the Anthony Award and the Macavity for best crime novel). By the same author Killing the Shadows A Place of Execution TONY HILL NOVELS The Last Temptation The Wire in the Blood The Mermaids Singing KATE BRANNIGAN NOVELS Star Struck Blue Genes Clean Break Crack Down Kick Back Dead Beat LINDSAY GORDON NOVELS Booked for Murder Union Jack Final Edition Common Murder Report for Murder NONFICTION A Suitable Job for a Woman VAL McDERMID The Distant Echo BCA1 This edition published 2003 by BCA by arrangement with HarperCollmsPublishers CN 115034 This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) Val McDermid 2003 Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Typeset in Sabon by Palimpsest Book Production Limited Polmont, Stirlingshire Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media, Possneck r All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Acknowledgements It's a welcome relief to write a book that doesn't take much research. Nevertheless, I'm indebted for their backstage assistance to Sharon at That Cafe, Wendy at the St. Andrews Citizen, Dr. Julia Bray of St.

Andrews University and forensic anthropologist Dr. Sue Black. As always, my efforts were improved by suggestions from my editors, Julia Wisdom and Anne O'Brien, my editorial consultant Lisanne Radice, my agent Jane Gregory and my legal adviser and first reader Brigid Baillie. For the ones who got away; and for the others, particularly the Thursday Club, who made the getaway possible I now describe my country as if to strangers From Deacon Blue's "Orphans', lyrics by Ricky Ross Prologue November 2003; St. Andrews, Scotland He always liked the cemetery at dawn. Not because daybreak offered any promise of a fresh beginning, but because it was too early for there to be anyone else around.

Even in the dead of winter, when the pale light was so late in coming, he could guarantee solitude. No prying eyes to wonder who he was and why he was there, head bowed before that one particular grave. No nosy parkers to question his right to be there. It had been a long and troublesome journey to reach this destination. But he was very good at uncovering information. Obsessive, some might say.

He preferred persistent. He'd learned how to trawl official and unofficial sources, and eventually, after months of searching, he'd found the answers he'd been looking for. Unsatisfactory as they'd been, they had at least provided him with this marker. For some people, a grave represented an ending. Not for him. Of sorts. Of sorts.

He'd always known it wouldn't be sufficient in itself. So he'd waited, hoping for a sign to show him the way forward. And it had finally come. As the sky changed its colour from the outside to the inside of a mussel shell, he reached into his pocket and unfolded the clipping he'd taken from the local paper. FIFE POLICE IN COLD CASES REVIEW Unsolved murders in Fire going back as far as thirty years are to be re-examined in a full-scale cold case review, police announced this week. Chief Constable Sam Haig said that new forensic breakthroughs meant that cases which had lain dormant for many years could now be reopened with some hope of success.

Old evidence which has lain in police property stores for decades will be the subject of such methods as DNA analysis to see whether fresh progress can be made. Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) James Lawson will head the review. He told the Courier, "Murder files are never closed. We owe it to the victims and their families to keep working the cases. "In some instances, we had a strong suspect at the time, though we didn't have enough evidence to tie them to the crime. But with modern forensic techniques, a single hair, a bloodstain or a trace of semen could give us all we need to obtain a conviction.

There have been several recent instances in England of cases being successfully prosecuted after twenty years or more. "A team of senior detectives will now make these cases their number one priority." ACC Lawson was unwilling to reveal which specific cases will be top of the list for his detectives. But among them must surely be the tragic murder of local teenager Rosie Duff. The 19-year-old from Strathkinness was raped, stabbed and left for dead on Hallow Hill almost 25 years ago. No one was ever arrested in connection with her brutal murder. Her brother Brian, 46, who still lives in the family home, Caberfeidh Cottage, and works at the paper mill in Guardbridge, said last night, "We have never given up hope that Rosie's killer would one day face justice.

There were suspects at the time, but the police were never able to find enough evidence to nail them. "Sadly, my parents went to their grave not knowing who did this terrible thing to Rosie. But perhaps now we'll get the answer they deserved." He could recite the article by heart, but he still liked to look at it. It was a talisman, reminding him that his life was no longer aimless. For so long, he'd wanted someone to blame. He'd hardly dared hope for revenge.

But now, at long last, vengeance might possibly be his. PART ONE 1978; St. Andrews, Scotland Four in the morning, the dead of December. Four bleary outlines wavered in the snow flurries that drifted at the beck and call of the snell north-easterly wind whipping across the North Sea from the Urals. The eight stumbling feet of the self-styled Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy traced the familiar path of their short cut over Hallow Hill to life Park, the most modern of the halls of residence attached to St. Andrews University, where their perpetually unmade beds yawned a welcome, lolling tongues of sheets and blankets trailing to the floors.

The conversation staggered along lines as habitual as their route. "I'm telling you, Bowie is the king," Sigmund Malkiewicz slurred loudly, his normally impassive face loosened with drink. A few steps behind him, Alex Gilbey yanked the hood of his parka closer to his face and giggled inwardly as he silently mouthed the reply he knew would come. "Bollocks," said Davey Kerr. "Bowie's just a big Jessie. Pink Floyd can run rings round Bowie any day of the week.

Dark Side of the Moon, that's an epic. Bowie's done nothing to touch that." His long dark curls were loosening under the weight of melted snowflakes and he pushed them back impatiently from his waif-like face. And they were off. Like wizards casting combative spells at each other, Sigmund and Davey threw song titles, lyrics and guitar riffs back and forth in the ritual dance of an argument they'd been having for the past six or seven years. It didn't matter that, these days, the music rattling the windows of their student rooms was more likely to come from the Clash, the Jam or the Skids. Even their nicknames spoke of their early passions.