The Whole Truth

English graduate and worked as a teacher before joining the police

(in the first book she’s still a

PC

). Her surname is an anagram of ‘Morse’ – my nod to Oxford’s greatest detective!

‘I watch men underestimating her because she’s attractive and in a uniform, and I watch her registering that fact and using it to her advantage.’

Name

DC Andrew Baxter

Age

38

Married?

Yes, but no children

Personality

Stolid but dependable. Good with computers so often gets

lumbered with that sort of stuff.

‘A solid man in a suit that’s a bit too small for him. The buttons on his shirt gape slightly. Balding, a little out of breath. Halfway to high blood pressure. He looks forty but he’s probably at least five years younger.’

Name

DC Anthony Asante

Age

32

Married?

No

Personality

A fast-track graduate entrant to the police, he’s new to the team, having recently

transferred from the Met. His parents are very wealthy, and his father is a former Ghanaian diplomat.

Fawley describes him as

‘Diligent, intelligent, technically excellent. He does what he’s asked and he takes the initiative when he should. And yet there’s something about him I just can’t get a handle on. Every time I think I have him worked out, he manages to wrong-foot me.’

The other members of the team are Alan Challow, Nina Mukerjee and Clive Conway, in the CSI team, Colin Boddie, the pathologist, and Bryan Gow, the profiler.

Prologue

So you know what to do?

Yeah I’m on it

You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?

FFS you got a better idea?

Just saying. Coz if this goes wrong …

It won’t. Not if you do what I said

OK OK I get it

I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to

People like F – they think they can get away with anything. They don’t give a shit about other people

Time someone turned the tables

I thought you agreed?

I do but this is way more than a dose of their own medicine

WAY more

It’s the only way to stop it happening again

You get that, right?

Yeah I get it

You’ll get your revenge

I told you before. It’s not revenge

It’s justice

Adam Fawley

7 July 2018

13.15

‘More fizz, anyone? Dad – how about you? You’re not even driving, so no excuses.’

Stephen Sheldon smiles up at his daughter, hovering behind him with the bottle in her hand. ‘Oh, go on then. Only good thing about being as old as the hills is not caring about bloody government drinking guidelines.’

His wife shoots him a dry but benevolent look; they both know he has to be careful about his health but it’s his birthday and she’s going to cut him some slack.

Nell Heneghan leans across and fills his glass. ‘Seventy isn’t old, Dad. Not these days.’

‘Tell that to my joints,’ he says with a quick laugh, as Nell moves on round the table topping people up.

I reach for Alex’s hand under the table and I can feel the thin fabric of her dress slipping against her damp thigh. God only knows what it must be like to be thirty-five weeks pregnant in these temperatures. There are dots of perspiration along her upper lip and a thin little frown line between her brows the others probably can’t see. I was right: this has been too much for her. I did say we didn’t have to do it – that no one would expect her to, especially in this weather, and Nell had offered to step in – but Alex insisted. She said it was our turn, that it wasn’t fair on her sister to ask her to do it two years running. But that wasn’t the real reason. She knows it; I know it. As her pregnancy advances, Alex’s world contracts; she’s barely leaving the house now, and as for a twelve-mile drive to Abingdon, forget it. I told Nell it’s because she’s anxious about the baby, and she’d nodded and said she’d felt like that herself at this stage, and it was only natural for Alex to be apprehensive. And she’s right. Or at least she would be, if that’s all it was.