The Distant Echo

The Distant Echo
Val McDermid

The award-winning Number One bestseller and Queen of crime fiction Val McDermid carves out a stunning psychological thriller. The past is behind them, but what’s still to come will tear them apart…Some things just won’t let go.The past, for instance.That night in the cemetery.The girl’s body in the snow.On a freezing Fife morning four drunken students stumble upon the body of a woman in the snow. Rosie has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in an ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are the four young men now stained with her blood.Twenty-five years later the police mount a ‘cold case’ review of Rosie’s unsolved murder and the four are still suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, it seems that someone is pursuing their own brand of justice. For the remaining two there is only one way to avoid becoming the next victim – find out who really killed Rosie all those years ago…

Copyright (#ulink_cd053fb0-5a66-524f-96e7-380029444831)

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2003

Copyright © Val McDermid 2003

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Cover photograph © Roy Bishop/Arcangel Images

Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007344659

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007327652

Version: 2018-06-26

Set in Meridien by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Grangemouth, Stirlingshire

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Praise for The Distant Echo: (#ulink_36ff12a3-4517-557d-81c7-781318b97f3a)

‘She has created some of the most appealing figures in current crime fiction. Val McDermid has used the crime genre to write a novel that, above everything else, celebrates life and loyalty’

TLS

‘A real page-turner and another McDermid triumph’

Observer

‘McDermid’s plot is a classic, and she pulls out all the stops to achieve a sense of mounting anguish, as her hero juggles multiple red herrings, mixed loyalties, differing police agendas and complicated family ties. Impeccable’

Guardian

‘Reminiscent of one of Ruth Rendell’s Barbara Vine thrillers – a few more sly, old-fashioned whodunits like this and she’ll join the sturdy ranks of the queens of crime, on course to become Dame Val or Baroness McDermid’

Sunday Times

‘The real mistress of psychological gripping thrillers’

JENNI MURRAY, Daily Express

‘A powerful story of murder and revenge … an exciting page-turner’

Sunday Telegraph

‘McDermid’s capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing’

MARCEL BERLINS, The Times

Dedication (#ulink_ca531e67-77a7-5a8e-9b51-c76ee890188c)

For the ones who got away; and for the others, particularly the Thursday Club, who made the getaway possible

Epigraph (#ulink_f01484d8-b461-5014-9a0d-62e1946a529e)

I now describe my country as if to strangers

From Deacon Blue’s ‘Orphans’, lyrics by Ricky Ross

Contents

Copyright

Praise for The Distant Echo: (#ulink_2061d790-f6a1-5232-b591-e9678ec79722)

Dedication (#ulink_fb265004-80f3-5d47-bd04-df63aaf3e24a)

Epigraph (#ulink_a179cb52-69ab-526f-b8a3-76bf04e08722)

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1 (#ulink_0e6a37a3-3db5-5ec0-ad89-95980d30f613)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_10aea469-95a1-5a0c-8f5f-5329fa4d24c0)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_c6fa50a0-6010-591c-831e-5bbffd4eee82)

Chapter 4 (#ulink_f74ee969-c7a7-57e5-86c3-b50d0be648c8)

Chapter 5 (#ulink_26430c22-8bb6-5dcb-a552-2baa2f6a777f)

Chapter 6 (#ulink_44c07692-5617-5a95-96eb-64820f25bc5b)