The Betrayal of Trust

Freak weather and flash floods all over southern England. Lafferton is underwater and a landslip on the Moor has closed the bypass. As the rain slowly drains away a shallow grave – and a skeleton – are exposed; twenty years on, the remains of missing teenager Joanne Lowther
have finally been uncovered. The case is re-opened and Simon Serrailler is called in as Senior Investigating Officer.

Joanne, an only child, had been on her way home from a friend’s house that afternoon. She was the daughter of a prominent local businessman, Sir John Lowther. Joanne’s mother died – heartbroken – two years after her daughter disappeared. Cold cases are always tough, and in this
latest in the acclaimed series from Susan Hill, Serrailler is forced to confront a frustrating, distressing and complex situation.

About the Author

Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is the author of over forty books, including the five previous Serrailler crime novels,
The Various Haunts of Men
,
The Pure in Heart
,
The Risk of Darkness
,
The Vows of Silence
and
The Shadows in the Streets
. The play adapted
from her famous ghost story,
The Woman in Black
, has been running on the West End stage since 1989; it has also recently been made into a feature film starring Daniel Radcliffe, which will premiere in autumn 2011.

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at King’s College London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, and they have two daughters. She lives in Gloucestershire,
where she runs her own small publishing firm, Long Barn Books.

www.susan-hill.com

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Simon Serrailler Crime Novels
THE VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN
THE PURE IN HEART
THE RISK OF DARKNESS
THE VOWS OF SILENCE
THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET
Fiction
GENTLEMAN AND LADIES
A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
I’M THE KING OF THE CASTLE
THE ALBATROSS AND OTHER STORIES
STRANGE MEETING
THE BIRD OF NIGHT
A BIT OF SINGING AND DANCING
IN THE SPRINGTIME OF THE YEAR
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
MRS DE WINTER
THE MIST IN THE MIRROR
AIR AND ANGELS
THE SERVICE OF CLOUDS
THE BOY WHO TAUGHT THE BEEKEEPER TO READ
THE MAN IN THE PICTURE
THE BEACON
THE SMALL HAND
A KIND MAN
Non-Fiction
THE MAGIC APPLE TREE
FAMILY
HOWARDS END IS ON THE LANDING
For Children
THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH
THE GLASS ANGELS
CAN IT BE TRUE?
To the carers of this world
Susan Hill
This is a work of fiction. It is entirely the product of the author’s imagination. The comments made by and actions of the characters and fictionalized organizations should not be regarded as statements of fact.
One
SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

The Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for much of south-west England from noon today. Storms will affect the whole region. There will be torrential rain and high winds, reaching gale force at times, with gusts reaching 80 miles per hour in exposed places. There is a risk of flash flooding in many areas and drivers are warned to take extra care. Flood alerts
are now in place for the following rivers in the south and south-western region …

THE RAIN HAD
been steady all afternoon as Simon Serrailler drove home from Wales and the wedding of an old friend. Now, as he poured himself a whisky, it was lashing against the tall windows of his flat and the gale was roaring up between the houses of the Cathedral Close. The frames rattled.

He had spread out
some of his recent drawings on the long table, to begin the careful business of selection for his next exhibition. The living room was a serene, secure refuge, the lamps casting soft shadows onto the walls and elm floor. Simon was no lover of weddings but he had known Harry Blades since university, after which their paths had diverged, Harry to go into the army, Simon to Hendon, but they had kept
in touch, tried to meet every year, and he had been happy to play best man on the previous day. He was even happier to be home in
his
own calm space, sketchbooks open, drink in hand. For his last birthday his stepmother had bought him the Everyman hardback of Evelyn Waugh’s
Sword of Honour
trilogy and later, after making an omelette, he was going to settle down on the sofa with it, plus a second
whisky.

The storm blew louder and a couple of times made him jump as a burst of hail spattered against the glass and a razor blade of lightning sliced down the sky at the same time as thunder crashed directly overhead.

‘Spare a thought for those who have to be out in it,’ his mother would have said. He spared one, for police on patrol, the fire and rescue services, the rough sleepers.

It was
not a night to let a cat out.

In the Deerbon farmhouse, the cat Mephisto slept on the kitchen sofa, head to tail-tip and deep in the cushion, with no intention of venturing out of his flap into the howling night.

Cat pulled back the curtain but it was impossible to see anything beyond the water coursing down the window. Sam was in bed reading, Hannah was writing her secret diary, Felix asleep.
It was not her children but her lodger Cat was worried about. Molly Lucas, final-year medical student at Bevham General, had come to live with them five months ago and slotted straight into their lives so easily that it was hard to imagine the place without her. She was out during the day but always glad to look after the children any evening, was tidy, quiet, cheerful and anxious to learn as much
from Cat as she could in the run-up to her exams. She relaxed by baking bread and cakes so that there was usually a warm loaf on the table and the tins were full. The children had taken to Molly from the start. She played chess with Sam and shared a mystifying taste in pop music with Hannah. Felix was in love with her. It had taken Cat a while to feel happy about inviting someone into the house.
Even just having a lodger felt like too big a change. She knew she was afraid that somehow it would move her on yet another step from the old life with Chris. But once Molly had arrived she realised, not for the first time, that when something new came about, the old was not therefore obliterated. Less importantly,
she
no longer had to rely on her father and Judith to look after the children if
she was on call or at choir practice. Once or twice recently, she had also accepted invitations to supper with old friends. Going out was not only good for her spirits but a different kind of freedom for the children – she had clung to them and it had been a long time after Chris’s death before she had stopped waking in terror that one of them was going to die too.

It was after nine and she was
worried. Molly had been working in the med. school library. She biked to and from the hospital, a well-equipped, fast and efficient cyclist, but this was no storm to be out in on two wheels and the severe weather warning had gone up a grade since the last time Cat had tuned in to Radio Bevham. She had rung Molly’s mobile but it was switched off, tried the hospital but the library closed at six
on Sundays.

She went upstairs. Hannah was asleep, her diary with its little gilt lock put away in the top drawer of her chest, its key on a chain round her neck. Cat remembered the need of an eleven-year-old to keep a diary private, and the fury she had felt when her father had mocked her about her own. How much it had mattered.

The wind sent something crashing. Rain was coming in through the
cracks around two of the bedroom window frames and the ledges were full of water.

The storm seemed to be trapped in the roof space and roaring to be let out. Thunder cracked, startling Felix, who shouted out but barely woke and was easily settled again.

‘This is how the world will end,’ Sam said casually, looking up from
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
as she went past.

‘Possibly, but not
tonight.’ Cat did not wait for him to ask how she knew that, nor did she tell him to put his light out. He would debate until dawn if she let him and she had no need to worry about the reading – when he was tired, he simply fell asleep, lamp on, book in hand, and either she or Molly sorted him out when they went upstairs.

Molly.

Cat picked up the phone again.

Just after midnight the river burst
its banks. The car park of the supermarket on the Bevham Road was underwater within
minutes
, the streets and the lanes around the cathedral filled up, and in the grid of roads known as the Apostles water roared up through back gardens and pushed its way under doors into the terraced houses. The fire services were out but could do little in the dark, and it was too dangerous to try installing floodlights
in the high wind. The storm washed a ton of debris down from the Moor onto the road below, causing a lorry to overturn. The road that skirted the Hill was impassable and the houses nearby now at risk.

‘Si, were you asleep?’

‘You’re joking. Are you OK?’

‘We are, but Molly isn’t back and she’s not answering her phone.’

‘Which way does she usually come?’

‘Depends … at this time of night probably
the bypass – it’s quiet and it’s quicker. What should I do? I rang the hospital but they don’t think she’s there.’

‘Could she have gone home with a friend rather than risk it on her bike?’

‘She’d have rung me.’

‘Right, I’ll put in a call … there’s a red alert now and there’ll be plenty of people around. If she’s had an accident they’ll find her.’

‘Thanks, I’d be grateful. Molly’s so reliable,
she’d always let me know. How was the wedding?’

‘Fine.’

‘How did she look?’

‘Who?’

‘The
bride
, duh.’

‘Oh God, I don’t know … fine, I guess, beautiful, all that sort of thing.’