Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2017
Copyright © Paul Finch 2017
Cover photographs © Henry Steadman
Cover design © Henry Steadman 2017
Paul Finch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007551330
Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780007551347
Version: 2017-09-12
‘Wonderfully dark and peppered with grim humour. Finch is a born storyteller and writes with the authentic voice of the ex-copper he is.’
PETER JAMES
‘Edge-of-the-seat reading … formidable – a British Alex Cross.’
SUN
‘An ingenious and original plot. Compulsive reading.’
RACHEL ABBOTT
‘As good as I expected from Paul Finch. Relentlessly action-packed, breathless in its finale, Paul expertly weaves a trail through the North’s dark underbelly.’
NEIL WHITE
‘A deliciously twisted and fiendish set of murders and a great pairing of detectives.’
STAV SHEREZ
‘Avon’s big star … part edge-of-the-seat, part hide-behind-the-sofa!’
THE BOOKSELLER
‘An explosive thriller that will leave you completely hooked.’
WE LOVE THIS BOOK
For my children, Eleanor and Harry, who, even though they’ve now left home, are always available to bounce around a few ideas.
The trouble with a really successful pub crawl – in other words, if you manage to hit all the hostelries on the proposed route – is that the team inevitably falls apart before you reach the end.
Oh, it’ll start off in the usual high spirits, with much yahooing and backslapping as you excitedly barge your way in through the first few sets of doors. But as the evening wears on, and the decibels rise, and the golden nectar flows down gulping throats, heads become progressively muzzier and one by one, as the team weaves ever on to the next establishment, members will drop by the wayside. Usually they end up lingering behind because they haven’t quite finished their pint, or because they’ve met a girl they know, or because they’ve lost track of where they’re supposed to be going next. Or quite simply, in that mysterious way of pub crawls the world over, they’ve simply vanished from the face of the earth – at least for the remainder of that night, no doubt to show up the following morning in a garden or on a park bench or maybe slumped in a shop doorway, rain-sodden and with head banging.
Either way, by the end of the night, only the hardy quaffers tend to remain; that small band of iron-core loyalists who will always see things through.
Tonight, oddly, even though the rest of his mates were well-known on campus as big-time boozers, Keith Redmond had somehow found himself at the last port of call alone.
It was called The Brasshouse and it was located on Broad Street, where its reputation as a popular watering hole was very well deserved. On this occasion though, Keith arrived there in a fog of confusion, at least twelve pints of lager sloshing around inside him, and none of the four or five faces currently in there – when he could focus on them sufficiently – even vaguely reminiscent of his fellow rugby club members. In the way of these things, he wasn’t quite able to work it all out. But as he ambled to the bar, filching his last tenner from his jeans pocket, he had some vague notion that the rest of the crew would catch him up in due course; either that, or they’d done what they’d said they were going to do some way back – namely not bother going the whole distance and, as it was only Wednesday, heading home early.