Val McDermid - The Distant Echo

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.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2003

Copyright © Val McDermid 2003

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018 Cover photograph © Roy Bishop/Arcangel Images

Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007344659

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007327652

Version: 2018-06-26

Set in Meridien by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

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‘She has created some of the most appealing figures in current crime fiction. Val McDermid has used the crime genre to write a novel that, above everything else, celebrates life and loyalty’

TLS

‘A real page-turner and another McDermid triumph’

Observer

‘McDermid’s plot is a classic, and she pulls out all the stops to achieve a sense of mounting anguish, as her hero juggles multiple red herrings, mixed loyalties, differing police agendas and complicated family ties. Impeccable’

Guardian

‘Reminiscent of one of Ruth Rendell’s Barbara Vine thrillers – a few more sly, old-fashioned whodunits like this and she’ll join the sturdy ranks of the queens of crime, on course to become Dame Val or Baroness McDermid’

Sunday Times

‘The real mistress of psychological gripping thrillers’

JENNI MURRAY, Daily Express

‘A powerful story of murder and revenge … an exciting page-turner’

Sunday Telegraph

‘McDermid’s capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing’

MARCEL BERLINS, The Times

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

Copyright

Praise for The Distant Echo:

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part Two

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

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. He saw it as a beginning. 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 Fife 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.’