RATING: GOOD START BUT FLAT ENDIND
SPOILERS!!!
I have to say that the resolution to this mystery is too discombobulated for my taste. There are a few things that do not make sense.
The man who Kat saw in Whitby turns up and he tells Kat that he was the one who helped Lena. In 2004 she called him and said that he needed to help her husband hide, so he did. First, Andrew stayed at his place, but then Andrew changed his name, got his own place, and the man, Daniel, saw him from time to time. Kat lets him stay in the house, and the next morning she gets the visit of the boy in her office again. Now the boy is holding a knife, but he says he means no harm. Kat recognises a neckerchief she used to wear in her youth, so feeling miffed with Lena’s game, she grabs the neckerchief and tell him to go. Then she realises that the boy has left another envelope, and inside there is the photograph of a pub she and Lena used to frequent when they socialised.
Kat decides to walk and see the pub, and she finds it is out of business with the windows boarded. Then she is surprised by Lena appearing, and Lena says that the objects that she has been sending her are clues about the past. Kat is tired of Lena’s games and demands she tell her plainly, but Lena runs away again. Kat goes to sleep at Patricia’s, and the next morning Patricia says that she has a visit. It is Lena, who says that she followed her last night, and she is ready to tell the truth.
Lena says that when she was sixteen, she was raped one night they were in the pub. That is when she changed, and their mother took her to the police but they were horrible to her. Their father was the one who gave her the gun to make her feel safer. I have to say that I find that difficult to believe. Does that mean that Lena took that old, uncharged gun with her everywhere? Lena wanted to protect Kat from the truth, and one day he returned from the pub, crying and saying that men were pigs, and she thought that she had been raped as well. Years later she married Andrew, but the marriage fizzled out, and she started an affair with Philip, who was a friend of Andrew’s. One night when they were in bed, she checked a second mobile phone and saw photographs of women who she recognised as victims. Then she realised that the man who she had been having an affair with was her rapist, and in the photographs she also discovered that Andrew was also a rapist. Lena suffocated him with the pillow, and in that moment she realised that if the reason why she had killed Philip were to be known, all the girls who that man had been raped would go through hell again. So she decided it would be a better idea to say that the victim was her husband, and she called Andrew to tell her what she knew and he should disappear. He agreed.
I have to say that Lena’s account is something I find difficult to believe. Andrew was as guilty as Philip, so why would she help a rapist to escape? The excuse about protecting the victims doesn’t ring true because even if she had told she had killed her lover, she needn’t have said her motive, just like she kept quiet when the authorities thought it was her husband she had killed.
Lena goes, and Kat stays thinking. She calls Mark, and when she tells him the whole story, they start considering why Andrew returned and why he was killed. Then Mark says that if Andrew was a rapist in Derbyshire, he can’t have changed in Whitby. Then Mark says that it is strange that Daniel, the man from Whitby, came all this way to find Lena. Mark picks up Kat and they go to the house, and they find Kat dead and Daniel nowhere to be found.
Then the police discover that Daniel’s sister, Alison, was raped, and Daniel probably came to Derbyshire to kill Andrew, and he blamed Lena because it was her who brought Andrew to his family. Now the police are searching for Daniel. Apart from that, there is an ongoing investigation in the rape cases that were reported but the police at the time did not take it seriously and deemed that no crime had been committed.
The case does not finish here. Palmer and Connie are going through some photographs that the woman running the hostel gave them, and they see one in which Stephanie Alton is with her daughter, Mary. The woman was thirteen at the time and all gangly, and Connie wonders if maybe she is the ‘young boy’ who brought Kat the things. So Connie decides to go and see the girl alone, and when Connie tells her about her suspicions, in a moment of distraction Mary hits her with a chair.
Thankfully, Mark came to the house because he and Kat were wondering the same, and he finds blood on the floor, so he tells Kat to call the police. Connie has been taken to the old morgue where Andrew was killed. Mary says that he killed Andrew because he couldn’t kill Philip who raped her mother. Steph and Lena had rekindled their friendship when they ran into each other a few months ago, and Lena even showed Mary her gun, which she used to kill Andrew. Then Mary grabs Connie and hits her head repeatedly until she loses consciouness.
Sadler and Palmer rush to the place, and they find Mary standing over Connie’s body. There is a smell of petrol, and Mary is holding a lighter and threatens to use the lighter against Connie. Then Palmer lurches at her, and as Mary flicked the lighter. Soon flames surround Mary and Palmer. Palmer removes his jacket, and Mark appears and with his army training he knows how to help Mary.
At the end of the book Mary is treated for the terrible burns on her body, and Palmer is also in hospital but his burns are not life-threatening. Connie’s condition is more worrying, and she needs to have surgery to remove the clot in her head. Thankfully, she is recovering in the end, and she would still be in hospital for several weeks and off sick for months.
There is a personal aspect about Connie and Palmer which I have no mentioned. Once when they are having a drink, they flirt and have a one-night stand. Connie is attracted to him, but she knows he is married and what they had was only sex. Palmer first treats her as he has always done, but when Palmer discovers that his wife is pregnant, he keeps his distance. When Connie is recovering, she refuses to see him, and it seems everybody knows about them. Sadler guessed from their attitudes, and she told Scott, the pathologist’s assistant, who told Bill, the pathologist. Bill tells Connie that she should forget Palmer because she is worth ten Palmers.
I enjoyed the book for the most part, but there are some sections of the end which did not satisfy me as I found them implausible.
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