Please note this is a revised version of the book that was previously published as Guilt. A missing child. A killer on the loose. A past that refuses to die. Six-year-old Lucas Jackson is so excited to be at the funfair that evening—it’s the perfect birthday treat. He races up the steps of the inflatable slide, waving happily to his mother and sister . . . and vanishes into thin air. The case is too close to home for Detective Nicki Hardcastle. Her little brother Dean disappeared in uncannily similar circumstances when she was just ten. Nicki had only taken her eyes off him for a moment, to pay for a stick of candyfloss. She’s lived with the guilt ever since. Now Nicki and her team are in a race against time to find the missing boy. Where is Lucas? Nicki questions those closest to him, but it’s clear the Jackson family are keeping secrets. There’s something Lucas’s mother and sister aren’t telling her. Then Nicki makes a startling discovery. Could there be a connection to her own brother’s disappearance all those years ago? The past that Nicki thought buried forever is about to catch up with her.

Three grisly crime scenes. Body parts strewn across the town. Detective Nicki Hardcastle tackles her darkest case yet. It’s a freezing December night when Detective Nicki gets the call. An elderly theatregoer finds his Dress Circle seat and receives the shock of his life: resting on the faded cushion is a pair of human eyes. Several hours later, a few miles across town, comes the second macabre find. A severed human tongue. Then a worshipper at the cathedral is appalled to discover a human hand under the pew in front of her. The pretty market town of Bury St Edmunds has never seen anything like it. Someone is playing twisted games with Nicki and her team—but only they seem to know the rules. The detectives are in a race against time to track down a brutal killer—before more victims meet a grisly fate.

Two grisly murders. Three days apart. One brutal killer? The call comes at midnight on a stormy March night. A body has been found hanging from a tree on Hardwick Heath. In the dead man’s pocket is a handwritten SORRY. LIFE IS JUST TOO HARD. LOVE TO YOU ALL. Detective Nicki’s instincts tell her this was no suicide — but someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like one. Three days later, a second body is found floating in a pond, just a few miles away. But the victim didn’t drown. The police are treating the deaths as separate cases. Then Nicki uncovers a link between the two dead men — and the case takes a shocking twist. As she unearths a series of secrets stretching back twenty years, Nicki and her team find themselves in a race against time before more people die.