Susan Hill - The Betrayal of Trust

Contents

About the Book

A cold case comes back to life in this sixth book in the highly successful Simon Serrailler detective series

Freak weather and flash floods all over southern England. Lafferton is underwater and a landslip on the Moor has closed the bypass. As the rain slowly drains away a shallow grave and a skeleton are exposed; twenty years on, the remains of missing teenager Joanne Lowther have finally been uncovered. The case is re-opened and Simon Serrailler is called in as Senior Investigating Officer.

Joanne, an only child, had been on her way home from a friends house that afternoon. She was the daughter of a prominent local businessman, Sir John Lowther. Joannes mother died heartbroken two years after her daughter disappeared. Cold cases are always tough, and in this latest in the acclaimed series from Susan Hill, Serrailler is forced to confront a frustrating, distressing and complex situation.

About the Author

Susan Hills novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is the author of over forty books, including the five previous Serrailler crime novels, The Various Haunts of Men , The Pure in Heart , The Risk of Darkness , The Vows of Silence and The Shadows in the Streets . The play adapted from her famous ghost story, The Woman in Black , has been running on the West End stage since 1989; it has also recently been made into a feature film starring Daniel Radcliffe, which will premiere in autumn 2011.

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at Kings College London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, and they have two daughters. She lives in Gloucestershire, where she runs her own small publishing firm, Long Barn Books.

www.susan-hill.com

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Simon Serrailler Crime Novels

THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN

THE PURE IN HEART

THE RISK OF DARKNESS

THE VOWS OF SILENCE

THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET

Fiction

GENTLEMAN AND LADIES

A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER

IM THE KING OF THE CASTLE

THE ALBATROSS AND OTHER STORIES

STRANGE MEETING

THE BIRD OF NIGHT

A BIT OF SINGING AND DANCING

IN THE SPRINGTIME OF THE YEAR

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

MRS DE WINTER

THE MIST IN THE MIRROR

AIR AND ANGELS

THE SERVICE OF CLOUDS

THE BOY WHO TAUGHT THE BEEKEEPER TO READ

THE MAN IN THE PICTURE

THE BEACON

THE SMALL HAND

A KIND MAN

Non-Fiction

THE MAGIC APPLE TREE

FAMILY

HOWARDS END IS ON THE LANDING

For Children

THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH

THE GLASS ANGELS

CAN IT BE TRUE?

To the carers of this world

Susan Hill

This is a work of fiction. It is entirely the product of the authors imagination. The comments made by and actions of the characters and fictionalized organizations should not be regarded as statements of fact.

One

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for much of south-west England from noon today. Storms will affect the whole region. There will be torrential rain and high winds, reaching gale force at times, with gusts reaching 80 miles per hour in exposed places. There is a risk of flash flooding in many areas and drivers are warned to take extra care. Flood alerts are now in place for the following rivers in the south and south-western region

THE RAIN HAD been steady all afternoon as Simon Serrailler drove home from Wales and the wedding of an old friend. Now, as he poured himself a whisky, it was lashing against the tall windows of his flat and the gale was roaring up between the houses of the Cathedral Close. The frames rattled.

He had spread out some of his recent drawings on the long table, to begin the careful business of selection for his next exhibition. The living room was a serene, secure refuge, the lamps casting soft shadows onto the walls and elm floor. Simon was no lover of weddings but he had known Harry Blades since university, after which their paths had diverged, Harry to go into the army, Simon to Hendon, but they had kept in touch, tried to meet every year, and he had been happy to play best man on the previous day. He was even happier to be home in his own calm space, sketchbooks open, drink in hand. For his last birthday his stepmother had bought him the Everyman hardback of Evelyn Waughs Sword of Honour trilogy and later, after making an omelette, he was going to settle down on the sofa with it, plus a second whisky.

The storm blew louder and a couple of times made him jump as a burst of hail spattered against the glass and a razor blade of lightning sliced down the sky at the same time as thunder crashed directly overhead.

Spare a thought for those who have to be out in it, his mother would have said. He spared one, for police on patrol, the fire and rescue services, the rough sleepers.

It was not a night to let a cat out.

In the Deerbon farmhouse, the cat Mephisto slept on the kitchen sofa, head to tail-tip and deep in the cushion, with no intention of venturing out of his flap into the howling night.

Cat pulled back the curtain but it was impossible to see anything beyond the water coursing down the window. Sam was in bed reading, Hannah was writing her secret diary, Felix asleep. It was not her children but her lodger Cat was worried about. Molly Lucas, final-year medical student at Bevham General, had come to live with them five months ago and slotted straight into their lives so easily that it was hard to imagine the place without her. She was out during the day but always glad to look after the children any evening, was tidy, quiet, cheerful and anxious to learn as much from Cat as she could in the run-up to her exams. She relaxed by baking bread and cakes so that there was usually a warm loaf on the table and the tins were full. The children had taken to Molly from the start. She played chess with Sam and shared a mystifying taste in pop music with Hannah. Felix was in love with her. It had taken Cat a while to feel happy about inviting someone into the house. Even just having a lodger felt like too big a change. She knew she was afraid that somehow it would move her on yet another step from the old life with Chris. But once Molly had arrived she realised, not for the first time, that when something new came about, the old was not therefore obliterated. Less importantly, she no longer had to rely on her father and Judith to look after the children if she was on call or at choir practice. Once or twice recently, she had also accepted invitations to supper with old friends. Going out was not only good for her spirits but a different kind of freedom for the children she had clung to them and it had been a long time after Chriss death before she had stopped waking in terror that one of them was going to die too.

It was after nine and she was worried. Molly had been working in the med. school library. She biked to and from the hospital, a well-equipped, fast and efficient cyclist, but this was no storm to be out in on two wheels and the severe weather warning had gone up a grade since the last time Cat had tuned in to Radio Bevham. She had rung Mollys mobile but it was switched off, tried the hospital but the library closed at six on Sundays.

She went upstairs. Hannah was asleep, her diary with its little gilt lock put away in the top drawer of her chest, its key on a chain round her neck. Cat remembered the need of an eleven-year-old to keep a diary private, and the fury she had felt when her father had mocked her about her own. How much it had mattered.

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