: E.M. Scott
: The Missing and the Dead
: No Exit Press
: 9781835010297
: 1
: CHF 7.60
:
: Krimis, Thriller, Spionage
: English
: 288
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
'A slew of satisfying narrative twists' Barry Forshaw, Crime Time It appeared that Helen McAllister - for whatever reason - had simply got out of the car sometime the previous morning, taking her keys and bag and phone with her, and walked away... Ten years later there has been no trace found of the teacher who went missing from a small village on the last day of the school year. Her lover Alice Hauser's accusations of impropriety on the part of the senior investigating officer, DI Thomas Maitland, led to his early retirement, his life in disrepair. Maitland now lives alone, consumed with grief over the death of his wife two years ago. Then he's involved in a road accident in which a man is killed. The victim's twin, John, is convinced that Maitland is to blame for his brother's death. And when John meets Alice, they are determined that Maitland should pay the price they demand of him...

Under the names Elizabeth McGregor and Elizabeth Cooke, EM Scott has been writing for thirty years and has some 15 novels and one non-fiction work to her name, as well as over a hundred published short stories. Although having worked in various genres, crime is her first love. She lives in Dorset.

1

In those time-frozen seconds, ThomasMaitland saw three things.

The trees beside the road. The slope of the valley ahead. And the red Fiat turning in mid-air, silent, red against white and pale green and grey: as graceful as a dancer, and shocking in its irrationality.

Then he heard the noise. The astounding impact of the Fiat and his own vehicle colliding: deafening, slamming the breath from his body.

He must have stamped on the brakes of the van, because it swerved. He felt it roll about. The road rocked, shattered into fragments, reassembled through a crack in the windscreen. Through it, Thomas could see the sharp bend clearly again at the bottom of the hill. The green fields beyond. The melting snow under the beech trees.

He sat gasping for a moment, then reached in a panic to switch off his engine. He found it hard to turn the key in the ignition. He did not dare to look to his right into the wood. There were other sounds, he realised: car’s brakes squealing as it crested the hill behind him, 40 yards away. Another impact behind him. He saw a lorry, stalled, that had been behind the Fiat; and he closed his eyes.

The Fiat had rounded the bend below almost in the centre of the road. He saw it again, coming towards him, steadily veering. He had put his hand on the horn: he had sounded it, he was sure. He recalled the noise of that and then nothing, a blank, only the elegantly turning Fiat in the air. It reminded him of the kind of car that he had owned at college. A beaten-up thing with a taped-together wing.

A man had been driving. As the car came closer Thomas had seen him looking directly at him for a moment before glancing down to his side.

Thomas had seen the white of the driver’s hands, one skimming the dashboard, one on the steering wheel.

*

Thomas had left his house that morning at 6 o’clock. He had finished the commission for the large painting, and loaded it, with much cursing and difficulty, into the van the night before. He had to go to Gloucestershire via a customer in Claverton Down: it was likely to be a long day.

In the half-light of the morning, he had stopped in the garden to look at the field beyond, waiting to see if the deer would come back to the maize stubble.

A dawn light. Astronomical dawn, the sun 18 degrees below the horizon. Followed by nautical twilight, 12 degrees. Civil twilight, 6 degrees. He rubbed his forehead, frowning quizzically. Emptied of what mattered, his brain had become saturated with pointless information. He was a repository for it; he’d become a place where names and facts and numbers washed up.