New York Times bestselling author Clare Mackintosh is back with another unputdownable installment in the DC Morgan series.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Clare Mackintosh’s Other People’s Houses, which is out now.
You want what they have, but what price would you pay?
The Hill is the kind of place everyone wants to live: luxurious, exclusive and safe. But now someone is breaking and entering these Cheshire homes one by one, and DS Leo Brady suspects the burglar is looking for something, or someone, in particular.
Over the border in Wales, DC Ffion Morgan recovers the body of an estate agent from the lake. There’s no love lost between Ffion and estate agents, but who hated this one enough to want her dead – and why?
As their cases collide, Ffion and Leo discover people will pay a high price to keep their secrets behind closed doors . . .
Prologue
SUNDAY
The weather broke overnight, rain drumming onto baked earth and swirling along the pavement. There were few awake to see it, and by the morning, summer was restored. Now the sun is hot and high despite the early hour. Water has drained into gutters and soaked into the cracked soil, and all that’s left of the night’s sudden storm is a welcome freshness in the air and the swollen banks of the Awen. The river tumbles over itself in its effort to reach the lake, rushing over rocks and tree roots in a torrent of white foam. Every now and then, the force of the water dislodges a stick or a handful of moss from the bank and whips it downstream too fast for the eye to follow.
Fifteen-year-old Ed Clough is walking along the southern bank, away from the rafting center. He has been sent to look for a missing kayak, and he is taking his time with it. Ed is supposed to be on kitchen duty this morning, but he spent yesterday evening at a Young Farmers rally, and the thought of greasy bacon pans makes his stomach churn. He draws deep lungfuls of clean air and wonders how long he can string out his search.
Most of the rafts and canoes are locked in a secure unit at night, but there are a few old yellow kayaks on a rack at the back of the center, and they occasionally go missing. They are carried aloft by drunk stags and abandoned in the road once enough fun has been had, or they’re launched into the river by bored kids. Before Ed started working at the rafting center, he’d once done exactly that with his best mate, the two of them sprinting down the banks to try to beat the empty vessel to the lake. They had lost by a country mile, as they’d known they would. White water won’t be beaten.
Just as Ed is about to turn around, he sees a glimmer of yellow through the trees. He brightens. Donna can’t give him a row about how long he’s been away from the kitchen if he finds the missing kayak. She might even let him off bacon duty.
The vessel is upside down between rocks, stern pushed underwater and bow in the air. Ed tugs at it, but it’s hard to get purchase on the resin hull. The bank is steep and slippery, and he grips a tree root with his left hand to stop himself from sliding into the water. He pushes his foot against the kayak, but it won’t budge. Ed sighs, then kicks off his trainers and strips to his underpants. Donna better put something extra in his pay this month; this is above and beyond a minimum wage weekend job.
Despite the heat wave, the river is freezing. Mud squelches beneath his toes; something flits, tiny and fast, between his legs. Ed squeals involuntarily and immediately looks around, relieved to confirm there was no one to hear it. Waist-deep, he reaches over the kayak to grab the opposite side of it so he can use his full force to yank it out from
between the rocks and flip it back over. It’s stuck fast, and Ed pulls and pulls, and suddenly it comes free. And now the kayak is right side up, and it’s Ed who’s upside down, thrown off balance and clinging to the kayak as he flails for a footing.
It’s barely a second (although it feels like longer) before he resurfaces, cursing this stupid job, his stupid boss, the stupid kids who stole a kayak and let it float downriver to lodge itself in these rocks, and…and…
Ed stops thinking. He stops breathing. His entire body is trembling, goose bumps covering his skinny frame, from his ice-cold feet to the white-knuckled hand still gripping the kayak. The kayak that had been so hard to turn over, not only because it was trapped but also because it was heavy.
Because there was someone in it.
Ed’s stomach gives a sharp, painful spasm. The kayaker is dead, that much is obvious, and yet the face is…the face is moving. Ed cries out, and this time he doesn’t care who hears him.
It’s only river water, he tells himself. That’s why it looks as though the skin is sliding off the skull. River water seeping out from the eyes and nostrils. River water trickling from the corners of those deep-blue lips…
Ed’s throat fills with bile. He staggers backward, then he turns and vomits into the foaming waters of the Awen.
