Thank you to my agent Charlotte Seymour – whose skill, faith and tireless determination have carried me through. Charlotte, I’m so happy to be working with you and the fantastic team at Johnson & Alcock.

  A huge thank you to Louise Cullen and the brilliant team at Canelo for taking Cal to your hearts and shepherding him to publication. It’s so much fun working with you all. Thanks to Siân Heap, Alicia Pountney and Katy Loftus as well as Deborah Blake, Miranda Ward and Vicki Vrint for your editing magic. Thanks also to Fran and everyone working behind the scenes to get Unsolved out in the world. Thank you Andrew Davis for the beautiful cover.

  Thank you to Bill Ryan for the transformational Writers & Artists course – kindness, insight and lots of yellow highlights! If it wasn’t for W&A I would also never have met the dream writing support group of Chris May, Eugenia Hall, Gillian Anton and Tammye Huf. Thank you all for your wise words, insightful critiques and sweet potato fries.

  For support, laughter and expertise on a daily basis, a massive jellyfish-laced thank you to the Criminal Minds crew: Adam Southward, Rachael Blok, Clare Empson, Dom Nolan, Elle Croft, Fliss Chester, James Delargy, Jo Furniss, Tim Kinsey, Susie Lynes, Niki Mackay, Simon Masters, Phoebe Morgan, Polly Phillips, Eleanor Ray, Kate Simants, Rob Scragg, Louisa Scarr, Victoria Selman and Harriet Tyce. It’s a privilege to learn from you all and to be published together in the Afraid of the Light anthologies. Rachael – thank you also for reading Unsolved at a crucial moment and for picking me off the floor when I needed it!

  Thank you to Sophie Hannah for the life-changing Dream Author programme. You’re an inspiration on navigating the ups and downs of writing life. Thanks also to all the other DAs, especially Barbara Copperthwaite and Katrina Ritters, partners in crime at the Hewenden retreat.

  Thank you to Caroline Green for reading a draft of Unsolved and giving invaluable feedback as part of the Books for Vaccines auction.

  Unsolved was partly written at the Scottish Creative Writing Centre Moniack Mhor. Thank you to tutors Karen Campbell and Adam LeBor, the incredible team running the centre and all of my Moniack friends, especially Suzy Aspley, Sheena Cook and Rachelle Atalla. A truly special place and special people.

  Closer to home, thank you to friends who’ve listened to me talk about writing (and probably wondered if I’ll ever make it into print) for a very long time. Thank you for the long runs and moral support Laura Gazey and Michelle Fadil, for dog walks and weekly doses of sanity Lizzie Singer, and for looking after the whole family so many times Jennie Potts. Thanks also to the rest of the ‘book’ group for long evenings supposedly talking about books and definitely drinking Prosecco!

  Geraldine DeRuiter and Rand Fishkin – thank you for being an amazing transatlantic cheerleading team. Your encouragement has lifted me.

  Rebecca Rattue, Claire Linney and Laura Thomas – our escapes are such a source of joy. Thank you for all these years of friendship and here’s to many more adventures together.

  Genevieve Loveland – how lucky to have sat next to you on the bus that day. Thank you for knowing where all the bodies are buried and still being my friend.

  Unsolved features a fictional country house hotel and is inspired by the landscape I lived in and explored as a teenager. To the people I waitressed with at Pittodrie House Hotel – thank you for all the lifts home and for being nothing like the characters in my imagined version! Thanks particularly to Maureen Forbes and Mark Fleming, who always looked out for me.

  Finally, to my family. At the heart of every writer is a reader and that fire was fed by my parents who have encouraged me every step of the way. Thank you Mum, Dad and Daniel (especially for letting me max out your library card). Thank you to Lindsay, James, Stuart and the rest of the extended Murray-Greig-Smith clan. Thanks also to my Critchlow in-laws. Lesley you take the award for being the most prolific crime fiction reader I know!

  Isobel Fettes, William Fettes, Edna Greig-Smith and Peter Greig-Smith. You aren’t all still here but your impact is and your memories treasured. There’s a lot of you in Unsolved and in me – from the love of the Scottish landscape to the love of books. Thank you.

  Duncan, Suzi, Edward and Jessica Morris – I always forget you aren’t technically family but for these purposes you absolutely are. Thank you for everything.

  Last, but definitely not least, Will, Rachel and Adam – your belief and love, plus endless patience with the hours spent writing and editing, are the reason this book is here. You are the best people in the world. Thank you.

  Read on for an extract from the second book in the Cal Lovett Files series

  PROLOGUE

  BRYONY, 2007, WEST HIGHLANDS

  Bryony tilts her face to the weak sunlight, trying to catch some warmth to stem the chill that is snaking through her veins. It’s not the worst place to wait, but it is cold slumped on the doorstep. She lets her fingers fall to the slab of remorseless stone, worn smooth by centuries of farming feet. Her hands are sticky and warm, the blood congealing. Panic stirs inside her. Will someone come? Did they hear the shots? If so, they’ll be here soon, with their false concern and judgement.

  Her mind spirals, sending thoughts in loops and swirls. It would have been different if Robbie hadn’t wet the bed, she realises. They wouldn’t have been at home and this couldn’t have happened. That it all comes down to one tiny detail is breathtaking. A sliding doors moment of fate. The moment her son slipped shamefaced into their bedroom this morning, gears slid into motion and darkness smiled.

  Her fingers close tight, hands convulsing so that her nails pierce the skin in crescent moons. She was going to be better than this. She tried, but she failed. Since Robbie was born, she’s had something else inside her. An ugliness that lay beneath the surface, undiscovered for so long, rearing up with motherhood. She shuts her eyes for a moment but the bloody image is imprinted on her brain, the smell in her nostrils. She’s let everyone down. Her sons most of all.

  Her breath sounds loud in the quiet.

  Today was going to be a good day. They were going to go out. She was going to make an effort and take the boys to the green-watered lochan through the pine trees. She wasn’t going to rush them or scold.

  The bag she packed last night is just inside the doorway. Even with her eyes closed, she can see it: small swimming shorts and rash vests with dinosaurs on them; a box of Tunnocks tea cakes tucked in beside the good intentions. Sean loves the marshmallow. It was going to be an Enid Blyton-worthy adventure. Making the memories those Facebook bitches are always on about. She was going let them throw stones, get muddy, climb trees. She was going to be the kind of mother she had so much faith she would be – in those days before she truly knew herself.

  The sun slips behind a cloud and she shivers at the sudden cold, unable to clutch the wisps of thought that pirouette in her brain.

  She could tell by the look on Robbie’s face that he’d wet the bed again. She didn’t need him to confess, or to run her hand over the bottom sheet and find the damp patch, its penetrating odour roosting in the mattress, the room, his skin.

  She should have been kind. Felt what normal mothers feel. The ones who can tuck a baby into the crook of one arm and wipe a kitchen surface with the other hand, all the while smiling like their life isn’t the biggest heap of shite around. But she wasn’t. She lost her temper. She ripped the sheets from the bed and she cancelled their plans. It wasn’t that she didn’t see the tears in his eyes, so much as she couldn’t feel them.

  Does she sleep? Her eyes jerk open and, against the greenery and the gravel and the hardness of the doorstep and the carnage in front of her, she sees his eyes. Haunting her. Blue and staring. Shock painted onto them. Robbie. Her oldest. Her complicated one. The child who deserved so much more.

  ‘Robbie,’ she whispers, her lips dry and cracking. ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  And she is. She really, really is.

  She feels a sudden pain in her chest that blinds so bright it makes her fingers numb.

  ‘Mummy’s here,’ she wants to say. ‘Mummy’s got you.’

  But she doesn’t, because nothing ever comes out right when it comes to Robbie. He’s gone now. She can’t go where he’s going. She just hopes his brother will be waiting for him and they can hold tight to each other. Robbie and Sean. Her boys. The thought cracks her in two.

  Is it later or is it now? She can hear a man shouting and the horrible crunching noise feet make on the gravel but she can’t resolve the wailing into words. She thinks about putting her hands over her ears but she’s just too damn tired.

  She’s always wishing for life to go faster, for the boys to grow, the drudgery to end. Time is interminably slow and awful. But just at the moment she changes her mind, it speeds up. Of course it fucking does. She just wants a few more minutes to sit here, to feel the wind on her face and hear the rush of the sea in the distance. To linger in regret.

  But it’s all louder now – the sirens, the feet, the slamming. She’s finding it harder to stay calm. She can’t breathe. They’re all going to know. They’re going to know how bad she truly is.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CAL, WEST MIDLANDS

  Cal stands on the street corner, hesitating – or at least pretending to. He made a promise that he keeps on breaking. Go home, Cal, go home. Even muttering the words doesn’t help. Where is home, anyway? Living back with his mother in a house he swore he would never return to, his marriage over. That’s not home; it’s necessity. Something stirs inside him, a compulsion that he can’t shake. Even as he rehearses the arguments against it, he finds himself looping through the streets towards his prey, compelled to scratch the impossible itch.

  The cafe is only open for another hour. There are few patrons left inside, just the dregs of the post-school pick up crowd. Fractious kids and tired mothers, a spaniel slumped on the floor, head on its paws in despair.

  He orders a coffee – black, because it’s quick and he isn’t bothered about drinking it – then chooses a seat at a table with an abandoned highchair, dodging the scattered crumbs and half a banana squashed onto the floor.

  His hands shake a little with adrenaline as he uses a napkin to wipe a clean spot for his laptop and pulls it from his bag, no intention of logging in, only of hiding behind it. He grips the hot mug between his hands and focuses his gaze on the garage over the road, where a recovery truck is unloading a dented car. A man in a luminous vest unclips cables, lowers a ramp. Then the man he’s talking to rounds the vehicle and Cal’s breath constricts. He can’t prove it. She’s been missing for thirty-six years so there isn’t even a scrap of evidence, but this, he is sure, is the man who killed his sister.

  As he watches ex-convict Jason Barr, something tightens inside Cal’s chest, sucking the breath from him. He shouldn’t be here. If the police knew what he was doing they’d be furious. He made a promise to Detective Foulds when she gave him privileged information in a moment of sympathy. He’s abusing that trust. But he can’t look away.

  The man is thick set, walks a bit like he’s sitting astride a horse – his thighs great trunks of muscle under jeans. The roll of fat on the back of Barr’s neck beneath his shaved skull is one of the few changes that dates him from the pictures of him as a young man. The predator may have aged, but he’s still ox-strong and muscular.

  Cal’s attention is absorbed by the tattooed arms that are now propped on the roof of the broken vehicle. Old patterns and declarations of love swirl and ripple there, an inked history of changing loyalties. Barr has altered them since doing time for assaulting women, hiding the man he was before.

  As Cal stares at the hot metal beneath Barr’s hands, he pictures the paleness of his sister’s neck, the fragility of her collarbone, the red silk of her hair. He runs his fingers over the small tattoo of a swallow on the inside of his own wrist. A tiny memory of her.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Cal is wrenched back into the present by a woman bending forward to insert herself into his vision. ‘Is this chair taken?’ He can tell by the tone of her voice that this isn’t the first time she’s asked.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, his voice shaking. ‘No. Sorry. It’s not.’

  By the time he shuffles so she can remove the chair from his table and carry it across to her own, Cal looks up to find that Barr and the battered car have gone. He feels a turn of wretchedness, a queasy sort of regret after giving into his compulsion. He comes here often, and for what? Watching, waiting, unable to do anything.

  It bothers him, how close to his childhood home this garage lies. How close to where Margot was set down in the countryside after an argument with her boyfriend. Left to make her own way back. Never seen again. It’s almost like Barr is taunting him with proximity, blatantly getting on with his life.

  Detective Foulds promised the force were looking into things and yet it has been months. Impatience nags at Cal as he slugs back a few mouthfuls of the now-cold coffee and slides his untouched laptop into his bag. He should go to his mother’s now; it’s getting late. But, as he pauses on the pavement and inspects the dark clouds at the edge of the sky, Jason Barr steps from the dark cavern of the garage. His arms are stiff and swinging, a pack of cigarettes in his hand and his phone bulging in his back pocket. Barr saunters down the street and, even though Cal knows he shouldn’t, that Barr may well recognise him from the papers, he can’t help himself. The devil inside takes over and he trails him down the road, hurrying to match the length of the man’s stride, heart pulling inside him, dread in his belly.

  Dark fantasies descend: the going home traffic beside him is steady – a bus heaving with people ready for their tea. What if he pushed Barr in front of it? He can almost see the ensuing scene: the blood, the wailing, the peace. He feels his fingers twitch and his arm jerk slightly; a shadow movement of his deepest desires.

  But then Barr halts, turning and peering back along the road as if looking for someone. Cal feels adrenaline tear through him, followed by shame and fear that make him every bit the nine-year-old boy whose older sister never came home. He bends and fiddles with the laces of his trainers. In a head to head between the two of them, it is easy to see who the loser would be.

  When he glances up, Barr has moved on. The bus has stopped, disgorging passengers. People stream around him, tired and ready for home. He straightens and scans the distance, frantic to see over their heads. The ex-bouncer turns into a side street, vanishing from sight.

  He should go home. Everything rational and sensible inside Cal’s head is telling him to turn around, walk away. Instead, he finds himself jogging along the street, desperate to reach the corner before Barr slips away from him. He skids into the side street, sees the lumbering form in the distance and slows his pace, cursing his recklessness.

  He falters when Barr turns to the side, but the man is just extracting and lighting a cigarette, barely pausing as he exhales. Cal follows the scent of the smoke in the air. Tailing him here is so risky. If Barr looks back he will see Cal, but he follows anyway, realising with a chill that he is mirroring his crimes, the way he stalked women in the early hours as they wound their way home after evenings out, late night working or arguments with their boyfriends. The thought makes Cal uneasy – makes him wonder if he is in some way becoming the predator he is shadowing.

  But he shoves the misgivings aside because, as they thread their way through the streets in the direction of the river and the green swathes of willows dipping in the flow, he understands where Barr is going.

  It seems too audacious, too insulting to be true. It’s only when Barr pauses on the bank and stretches to peer over some bushes that Cal knows for sure he is right. The scrapyard is just across from where the bulky mechanic is rocking from foot to foot: rusting hulks of old machinery clothed in weed. A place that is usually still and silent with the remnants of the past rusting into the earth.

  This is the place that serial killer Marc Dubois hinted Cal’s sister is buried – information he and Foulds believe came from Jason Barr. At least, Foulds used to believe that. Who knows now? She’s avoiding his calls.

  Dubois and Barr only shared a cell for a short time, until Dubois was moved to a secure hospital setting, but it was enough time, Cal is sure, for a bored and manipulative serial killer to extract information for fun. The final piece of the puzzle as far as he is concerned, is the discovery that Barr once worked in this scrapyard. How many coincidences do you need before something becomes meaningful? Cal asks himself this question all the time.

  The truth is, he knew the moment Dubois uttered Margot’s name that there was a sick honesty behind the words. It is impossible to properly explain – he tried so many times with Allie before the divorce and she still saw room for doubt – but there was a gleeful kind of satisfaction in the way Dubois had dropped his crumbs. The pleasure of knowing something Cal didn’t, and the plan to stretch it out and watch him suffer.

  Cal drops back to the shadow of a bridge to watch, biting his lip as Barr circles the same patch of ground, grinding his cigarette butt into the grass with his heel, fists clenching and unclenching. When Barr moves off, Cal slips from his hiding place, tempted to follow, though he is increasingly uneasy at the man’s erratic behaviour.

  But then Barr spins to face him, turning back along the narrow river path, his face thick with twisted thunder. There is no time to move, or hide. Nothing to do but keep walking. A sense of terrible inevitability rises up inside Cal. His sister’s laugh echoes in his mind as the man bears down on him.

  Cal takes his hands from his pockets as Barr draws near. His heart shouts so loudly inside his chest that all he hears is the blood pumping in his ears, distant traffic fading away to nothing. Without choice, his gaze is pulled to the wide face, like metal to a magnet. As they meet on the path, Cal readies himself for a blow but, instead, the man he hates like death catches his eye and nods to him like he could be anyone.