Silent Bones is the new instalment in Val McDermid’s ‘Karen Pirie’ series.
Read on for an extract.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When torrential rain causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland, it reveals a crime scene: someone hid a body in the tarmac eleven years before. Journalist Sam Nimmo had been the prime suspect in the murder of his fiancee when he disappeared, and now DCI Karen Pirie and her Historic Cases Unit must find out who buried him, and why.
Meanwhile in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case and the accidental death of a hotel manager starts to look like murder. But what did Tom Jamieson’s book club have to do with his demise – and what will they do to keep their secrets?
Karen and her team begin to untangle a web of lies, one which connects their murder cases with Scotland’s rich and powerful. They will be tested to their limits – and possibly beyond . . .
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EXTRACT
I swear to God we never had tropical downpours like this when I was wee,’ Detective Chief Inspector Pete Niven complained, pulling the hood of his raincoat closer to his narrow face. ‘Can we get a fucking tent up here?’ he shouted at the crime scene technicians battling the howling wind and the sheeting rain to erect a shelter over the collapsed section of the M73. A massive mudslide had careened down the hillside when the heavens had opened during the night, shifting enough mud and previously unseen rocks to bite a chunk out of the motorway. Bad enough that it had completely blocked one lane, destroyed the hard shoulder and caused mayhem on the morning commute, but when the road crew had finally turned up, the traffic problem swiftly morphed into a very different one.
The torrential rain had dislodged more than the steep bank beside the road; the layers of roadway had shifted downwards and sideways to reveal unmistakably human remains.
DCI Niven had been dragged away from his warm office at the nearby Police Scotland Crime Campus to contemplate the grim sight of a skull grinning up at him out of the mud. Recovering the body would be a logistical nightmare in this weather, never mind figuring out how to secure the most chaotic crime scene he’d ever seen.
Niven glared at the body as if it was a personal insult directed at him. His dark thoughts were disturbed by his bagman, DS Richie Scott, who announced his arrival with a typically tasteless comment. ‘Found Jimmy Hoffa, then, boss?’ He leaned over the crime scene tape. ‘Makes a change from all the stories about Glasgow gangsters bricked up in the Kingston Bridge.’
‘Give it a rest, Scott. We don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman.’
‘So you’ve not PLE’d it?’ Scott was, as usual, grating on Niven’s nerves. ‘I have done this before, you know. I have not only pronounced life extinct, I’ve spoken to the Fiscal’s office. They think there’s someone over at Gartcosh who can come across and formally confirm it so we can get the body removal under way.’
Niven turned away and headed for the shelter of the police Land Rover. Scott climbed in alongside him and the two men waited for the crime scene techs to secure the scene. A few minutes of silence passed, then Niven said,
‘When was this bit of motorway built?’
‘Not a scooby, boss. I don’t remember it not being here.’
Niven rolled his eyes. ‘Of course you don’t remember it. You’re just a bairn, Scott. Which means you’re supposed to be a fucking genius with the technology. Get your phone out and do some research.’
Scott sighed, his cheerful expression swept away like rain under the windscreen wiper.
‘Aye, right.’ His chubby fingers stabbed his phone as if he was trying to injure it. At least, thought Niven, it shut him up. •
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dubbed the Queen of Crime, has sold over 17 million books to date across the globe and is translated into more than 40 languages. She is perhaps best-known for her ‘Wire in the Blood’ series, featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, which was adapted for television starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris.
She has written three other series: private detective Kate Brannigan, journalist Lindsay Gordon and, most recently, cold-case detective Karen Pirie, whose debut appearance in The Distant Echo is soon to become a major ITV series. She has also published in several award-winning standalone novels, books of non-fiction, short story collections and a children’s picture book, My Granny is a Pirate.
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