A call from Scotland Yard couldn’t have come at a worse
time for Duncan Kincaid. He has promised the weekend to
Kit, the eleven-year-old son of his ex-wife. The son he
never knew he fathered – who doesn’t yet know Kincaid’s
true identity. But Duncan’s best intentions are shattered
by a case that draws him in and consumes his interest.
A young woman’s body has been found in the tall grass of
East London’s Mudchute Park, her jacket and short skirt
carefully arranged to preserve her modesty. It seems too
odd a detail for a simple case of robbery or assault gone
awry. And indeed the case becomes more complex when the
dead woman is identified as Annabelle Hammond, bold and
brilliant head of a family-owned tea company. For the
victim was a mystery even to those who knew her best.
Alluring, headstrong, and ambitions, Annabelle was the sort
of woman who inspired the strongest of emotions…passion
certainly, jealousy, anger, even obsession. And when Duncan
and Gemma fan out to question anyone connected to her, it
doesn’t take long to discover that the lady was also adept
at keeping secrets…especially from those she loved. As the
detectives try to penetrate Annabelle’s tangled affairs to
glean the motive for her murderer, their list of suspects
grows to include her suave, upper-class fiancé; the
handsome street musician who may have been the last person
to see her alive; her sister’s vengeful ex-husband; even
her own father. But what they don’t know is that this case
has long roots that reach far back into the past, and that
resentments that should have been long buried still have
the power to hurt, and many even the capacity to kill.