Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over sixteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.
Reviews for Broken Ground
There is nothing more gratifying than watching a master craftswoman at work, and she is on fine form here’ – The Observer
‘Another stellar read from McDermid, and further evidence that her “Queen of Crime” status will not be challenged’ – The Scotsman
‘The masterly handling of the pace and plot, blended with brilliant characterisation, show why best-selling writer Val McDermid retains her title of new Queen of Crime’ – People
‘McDermid’s deceptively languid style, sly black humour and metronomic sense of pacing delivers a compulsively readable tale’ – The Irish Times
‘Her trademark combination of macabre suspense and a light touch keep you reading gratefully’ – The Sunday Express
Somebody has been here before us. And he’s still here . . .’
When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone’s long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past – until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems.
It’s not long before an overheard conversation draws Karen into the heart of a different case, however – a shocking crime she thought she’d already prevented. As she inches closer to the twisted truths at the centre of these murders, it becomes clear that she’s dealing with a version of justice terrifyingly different to her own . . .
Excerpt from Broken Ground (Little Brown) By Val McDermid
Dr River Wilde had clicked on her last PowerPoint
slide when she felt her phone vibrate against her hip.
Whoever it was would have to wait until she’d finished
running through the week’s reading list for her secondyear
forensic anthropology students. The undergraduates
could find the details of the required texts at the end of
her online lecture notes, but River always liked to end
the lecture with a quick run- through. That way nobody
could claim they didn’t know what they were supposed
to have covered before their next session in the dissection
room.
She zipped through the list at top speed then gathered
her scant notes and turned her back on the exiting
students to check her phone. As she suspected, the
missed call was from a withheld number. But there was
a voicemail. River would have put money on it being
from a police officer. Colleagues would know she was
lecturing; friends rang in the evenings when she was less
likely to be up to her elbows in cadavers; and because her
partner was a senior cop, they generally texted first to
arrange their calls.
Aware that a handful of students were still hanging
around near the podium, River tucked her phone back
into the pocket of her jeans and faced them. ‘Was there
something?’ she asked. Polite, but brisk enough to discourage
the trivial questions that one or two students
seemed impelled to put to her at the end of every lecture.
She fielded a couple of inquiries about dates by which
assessments were due, refraining from pointing out that
they were easily discoverable on the course website,
then disengaged, taking the stairs at a jog. When the
police called her, it was always a matter of life and death.
Literally, not metaphorically. For a forensic anthropologist
like River, the death was invariably in the past, the
life something to be teased from what the corruption of
the expedient grave had left behind. So while she didn’t
like to keep the police waiting, she’d never felt the need
for the performance of urgency and self- aggrandisement
that she’d witnessed in some of her colleagues. You didn’t
serve the dead by being self- serving.
The nearest private space was the mortuary. River used
her keycard to enter the secure corridor then turned into
the cool space where the cadavers were prepared for dissection.
Visitors were always surprised when they walked
through the doors. They expected to see bodies on slabs
being pumped with embalming fluids. But here there
was nothing visible to show that this was a place where
bodies were stored. The main part of the room was occupied
by large stainless steel tanks. Each was about the
size of an American- style fridge freezer lying on its back,
and the tanks were stacked two deep. Each had a serial
number slotted into a holder. It could have been some
arcane industrial food processing plant – a hydroponic
system, or a vessel for growing mycoprotein. The reality
was at once more extraordinary and more mundane.
Each tank held a preservative solution and a body. Over
a period of months, the bodies would effectively be cured
by the salts in the solution. By the end, they would still
be soft and flexible so that student anthropologists, dentists
and surgeons could learn their trade on something
that closely approximated a live body. River’s technicians
had even worked out how to simulate blood flow in the
cadavers. In her dissecting room, when a trainee surgeon
nicked a blood vessel, there was no hiding place.
That afternoon, there was nothing visible to even hint
at what went on there. River leaned against the nearest
tank and pulled out her phone, summoning her voicemail.
A man’s voice spoke clearly and decisively. ‘Dr
Wilde? This is Inspector Walter Wilson from N Division,
based at Ullapool. We’ve got a matter we need to consult
you on. I’d appreciate it if you could call me back as soon
as you get this. Thank you.’ He finished with a mobile
phone number. River scrambled in her lecture folder for
a pen and played the message again so she could catch
the number.
‘A matter’ meant human remains. Not a warm body,
never that. Those were for the pathologists. When they
called for River, it was because they needed someone
who could find answers in teeth and bones, hair and
nails. Unpicking a life – and often a death – from what
was left was her stock in trade. The university website
cut straight to the heart of it: Forensic Anthropology
is best described as the analysis of human remains for the
medicolegal purposes of establishing identity, investigating
suspicious deaths and identifying victims of mass disasters. It
is a specialised area of forensic science that requires detailed
anatomical and osteological training. Being able to assign
a name to the deceased is critical to the successful outcome
of all legal investigations. The squeamish thought there
was something creepy about her work. Not River.
Bringing the dead home. That was how she thought
of her trade.
River tapped in Inspector Walter Wilson’s number. He
answered on the second ring. ‘This is Dr River Wilde,’ she
said. All these years in the job and still, every time she
spoke to a cop for the first time, she inwardly cursed her
hippie parents. ‘You left a message for me.’
‘Thanks for getting back to me, Doc.’ His voice was
deep and gravelly, the Aberdeen accent still clear in
spite of having had the corners knocked off by time and
seniority. ‘We’ve got a body we need your input on.
It turned up in a peat bog in Wester Ross earlier this
afternoon. Based on the information we’ve got from the
witnesses, we think it likely dates back to 1944.’
‘And you want me to confirm that?’
‘Ideally, aye. We could use your help in trying for an
ID as well.’
‘When would you like me on site?’
‘Well, we’ve got it taped and tented, so it’s reasonably
protected. If you could get here for tomorrow morning,
that would be good.’
‘Where exactly are you?’
‘A wee place called Clashstronach. It’s about an hour
north of Ullapool, just this side of the boundary with
Sutherland.’
River thought for a moment. It was a long drive, but
she could set off within a couple of hours. She was due
to take a class in the dissection room in the morning but
one of her post- docs could handle it. Cecile had specialised
in the spinal work they’d be doing; she’d enjoy the
opportunity to strut her stuff. ‘Can you book me a hotel
room for tonight?’
‘No bother,’ Wilson said. ‘I’ll get you something sorted
in Ullapool, that’s handy for our office and there’s a
couple of decent places to stay. I’ll send you a text, will I?’
Two hours later, she was on the road. Four hours should
do it, she reckoned. Dundee to Perth, then there would be
clots of traffic as she left the city and struck out up the A9,
with its average speed cameras and long stretches where
overtaking was damn near impossible. But this wasn’t
summer, and there would be few tourists and no caravans
so once she’d passed Pitlochry it would be an easy run to
Inverness, then a final hour or so with added twists and
turns as the road snaked across the Highlands to the west
coast. She plugged her phone into the car’s sound system
and let rip with her driving music, an eclectic mix that
spanned the past thirty years of female rockers. It was one
of the few things that she and her partner disagreed about.
Detective Chief Inspector Ewan Rigston liked torch singers
who delivered big ballads – Adele, Emeli Sandé, Ren
Harvieu. Once she’d even caught him listening to Shirley
Bassey. River reckoned that was all the blackmail capital
she’d ever need with his CID team.
Amy Winehouse finished belting out her version of
‘Valerie’ somewhere north of Dalwhinnie and River
decided she needed some conversation. She cut the music
and rang the number of her best friend. She thought it
was going to shunt straight to voicemail, but at the last
second, Karen Pirie’s voice filled the car. ‘Hey, River,
how’s tricks?’ It sounded like they were doing the same
thing – driving on a fast road at speed.
‘I’m good. I’m heading up the A9.’
Karen laughed. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘I wish I was. This is—’
Karen interrupted with a bad Chris Rea impersonation:
‘—the road to hell.’ Both women laughed. ‘Funny
thing is, so am I.’
‘Really? Where are you headed?’
‘Elgin. I need to interview a woman who owned a red
Rover 214 in 1986.’
River snorted. ‘Has that been reclassified as a crime?’
‘Only when Jeremy Clarkson rules the world. No,
we’ve got a lead on a car that might be implicated in a
series of brutal rapes from the eighties. I’m checking out
the possibilities.’
‘Is that not what you’ve got Jason for?’
‘There’s quite a few possibilities and I’ve nothing else
pressing. Plus . . . ’ She paused. ‘Ann Markie has landed
me with another body. A Weegie refugee from the MIT
through in the west.’
‘MIT? Whose toes did he stamp on to end up with
HCU? Not that I see that as a demotion, obviously.’
‘That’s because you get it. The work we do, what it
means. Jimmy Hutton’s doing some digging to see what
he can find out. I wonder whether it’s as simple as the
Dog Biscuit trying to keep me in line.’
‘The Dog Biscuit?’ River knew there would be an
explanation.
‘Markies are apparently a kind of dog treat. According
to Jimmy. Anyway, I think what she really wants is a
spy to see what rules I’m breaking. Like Leonard Cohen
says, “The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms
of the poor.”’
‘I thought you’d given up listening to that miserable
old man? Are you slipping back into the depths? Phil so
wouldn’t approve.’
Karen chuckled. ‘Field Commander Cohen was wise as
well as miserable. Anyway, enough of me. What’s dragging
you up the A9?’
‘Inspector Walter Wilson. You ever come across him?’
‘No, is he with Highland?’
‘Yes. Specifically, Ullapool. He’s got a bog body for me.’
‘Ooh. Anything for me?’
River chuckled. ‘You’re a glutton for punishment. But
no, not this time. Inspector Wilson’s information is that
it probably dates back to 1944. So even if we’re looking
at foul play, it’s well outside your seventy- year limit. No
reprieve from the red Rovers for you.’
‘So it goes. Good luck with it anyway. I look forward to
hearing all about it.’
‘Always interesting, a bog body. Up there in Wester
Ross, there should be a high level of preservation, given
the levels of sphagnum moss in the peat. We might even
get fingerprints.’
‘Aye, but what are the chances of meaningful fingerprints
from 1944? We didn’t even fingerprint the army
back then in case it put people off joining up.’
‘I know. But I still enjoy the challenge.’
‘I know what you mean. Like me and my red Rovers.
Anyway, if you can squeeze your bog body under the
seventy- year rule, I’ll only be a couple of hours away in
the morning.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind. But don’t hold your breath.’
Longlisted for The McIlvanney Prize 2019.
Winner to be announced at the Bloody Scotland opening night reception on Friday 20 September.
For festival tickets and information http://www.bloodyscotland.com
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