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Overview
From New York Times bestselling and Edgar award-winning author Peter Robinson comes this brilliant novel of suspense—a thrilling tale of family secrets and past evils that have spread from one generation to another and wreaked havoc on an unsuspecting town.
One phone call from a concerned neighbor has inadvertently led police to Terence Payne, the elusive serial killer known only as "Chameleon." Now Payne is in custody, perhaps dying, and a long nightmare appears to be over at last. But is it?
For Alan Banks – currently head of the local police force – too many questions remain unanswered at the chamber of horrors the press will dub the "House of Payne." Because the darkness has not yet lifted, the casualties are still mounting...and there are still monsters loose in the world.
Showcasing the dark forces of human nature, master of suspense Peter Robinson is at the height of his storytelling powers in a novel that will leave readers guessing until the final page.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062400246 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 07/21/2015 |
| Series: | Inspector Alan Banks Series , #12 |
| Pages: | 480 |
| Sales rank: | 428,817 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
One of the world’s most popular and acclaimed writers, Peter Robinson was the bestselling, award-winning author of the DCI Banks series. He also wrote two short-story collections and three stand-alone novels, which combined have sold more than ten million copies around the world. Among his many honors and prizes were the Edgar Award, the CWA (UK) Dagger in the Library Award, and the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Martin Beck Award.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Maggie Forrest wasn't sleeping well, so it didn't surprise her when the voices woke her shortly before four o'clock one morning in early May, even though she had made sure before she went to bed that all the windows in the house were shut fast.
If it hadn't been the voices, it would have been something else: a car door slamming as someone set off for an early shift; the first train rattling across the bridge; the neighbor's dog; old wood creaking somewhere in the house; the fridge clicking on and off; a pan or a glass shifting on the draining board. Or perhaps one of the noises of the night, the kind that made her wake in a cold sweat with a thudding heart and gasp for breath as if she were drowning, not sleeping: the man she called Mr. Bones clicking up and down The Hill with his cane; the scratching at the front door; the tortured child screaming in the distance.
Or a nightmare.
She was just too jumpy these days, she told herself, trying to laugh it off. But there they were again. Definitely voices. One loud and masculine.
Maggie got out of bed and padded over to the window. The street called The Hill ran up the northern slope of the broad valley, and where Maggie lived, about halfway up, just above the railway bridge, the houses on the eastern side of the street stood atop a twenty-foot rise that sloped down to the pavement in a profusion of shrubs and small trees. Sometimes the undergrowth and foliage seemed so thick she could hardly find her way along the path to the pavement.
Maggie's bedroom window lookedover the houses on the western side of The Hill and beyond, a patchwork landscape of housing estates, arterial roads, warehouses, factory chimneys and fields stretching through Bradford and Halifax all the way to the Pennines. Some days, Maggie would sit for hours and look at the view, thinking about the odd chain of events that had brought her here. Now, though, in the predawn light, the distant necklaces and clusters of amber streetlights took on a ghostly aspect, as if the city weren't quite real yet.
Maggie stood at her window and looked across the street. She could swear there was a hall light on directly opposite, in Lucy's house, and when she heard the voice again, she suddenly felt all her premonitions had been true.
It was Terry's voice, and he was shouting at Lucy. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard a scream, the sound of glass breaking and a thud.
Lucy.
Maggie dragged herself out of her paralysis, and with trembling hands she picked up the bedside telephone and dialed 999.
Probationary Police Constable Janet Taylor stood by her patrol car and watched the silver BMW burn, shielding her eyes from its glare, standing upwind of the foul-smelling smoke. Her partner, PC Dennis Morrisey, stood beside her. One or two spectators were peeping out of their bedroom windows, but nobody else seemed very interested. Burning cars weren't exactly a novelty on this estate. Even at four o'clock in the morning.
Orange and red flames, with deep inner hues of blue and green and occasional tentacles of violet, twisted into the darkness, sending up palls of thick black smoke. Even upwind, Janet could smell the burning rubber and plastic. It was giving her a headache, and she knew her uniform and her hair would reek of it for days.
The leading firefighter, Gary Cullen, walked over to join them. It was Dennis he spoke to, of course; he always did. They were mates.
"What do you think?"
"Joyriders." Dennis nodded toward the car. "We checked the number plate. Stolen from a nice middle-class residential street in Heaton Moor, Manchester, earlier this evening."
"Why here, then?"
"Dunno. Could be a connection, a grudge or something. Someone giving a little demonstration of his feelings. Drugs, even. But that's for the lads upstairs to work out. They're the ones paid to have brains. We're done for now. Everything safe?"
"Under control. What if there's a body in the boot?"
Dennis laughed. "It'll be well-done by now, won't it? Hang on a minute, that's our radio, isn't it?"
Janet walked over to the car. "I'll get it," she said over her shoulder.
"Control to three-five-four. Come in, please, three-five-four. Over."
Janet picked up the radio. "Three-five-four to Control. Over."
"Domestic dispute reported taking place at number thirty-five, The Hill. Repeat. Three-five. The Hill. Can you respond? Over."
Christ, thought Janet, a bloody domestic. No copper in her right mind liked domestics, especially at this time in the morning. "Will do," she sighed, looking at her watch. "ETA three minutes."
She called over to Dennis, who held up his hand and spoke a few more words to Gary Cullen before responding. They were both laughing when Dennis returned to the car.
"Tell him that joke, did you?" Janet asked, settling behind the wheel.
"Which one's that?" Dennis asked, all innocence.
Janet started the car and sped to the main road. "You know, the one about the blonde giving her first blow job."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Only I heard you telling it to that new PC back at the station, the lad who hasn't started shaving yet. You ought to give the poor lad a chance to make his own mind up about women, Den, instead of poisoning his mind right off the bat."
The centrifugal force almost threw them off the road as Janet took the roundabout at the top of The Hill too fast. Dennis grasped the dashboard and hung on for dear life. "Jesus Christ. Women drivers. It's only a joke. Have you..."
Aftermath. Copyright © by Peter Robinson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
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“One of today’s most accomplished practitioners of detective fiction.”
“The novels of Peter Robinson are chilling, evocative, deeply nuanced works of art.”