Prologue
As the woman at the window watched the activity on the beach, she knew the body on the sand was going to be the event that turned this quiet seaside village into a hive of activity for several days to come.
This isolated place was usually only frequented by local residents, delivery drivers from the nearby towns and the occasional tourist passing in and out of Scotland.
Now it would be teeming with forensic experts, journalists and bystanders harbouring a morbid curiosity.
That was the thing about the appearance of a body in an unexpected place.
It demanded attention.
And it always got it.
That was never more evident than on the day that the body of Drew Devlin was discovered sprawled out on the stretch of sand that lined this picturesque piece of coastline in the North of England.
The wet, white T-shirt that clung to the twisted torso was the same colour as the cloud-filled sky above, and the temperature of the corpse was as cold as the weather in this rainswept, wind-battered part of the country.
The black shorts covering the pale, lifeless thighs were almost as dark as the sky on the horizon, another storm incoming for a village that had already endured so much and had even more trying challenges to come.
And one grey trainer on the left foot, slowly losing its pristine condition as specks of dirt and sand were flicked onto it by the rolling tide that washed against the body in a weary fashion, and what could be considered a disrespectful one too.
The shoe that should have been on the right foot was missing, but if anybody looked for it then they would surely see it bobbing around in the sea several feet away, like a ship without a sailor, drifting aimlessly, most likely to come back to land with a bump at some point but, for now, completely at the mercy of the ice-cold current.
But nobody was looking at the shoe. Everybody was looking at the person it belonged to and that included the woman at the window.
She kept watching as the emergency services came to carry out their grim tasks, and she continued to watch as the sun began to set on this terrible day.
That was because the body out there on the sand was of a man that she had once loved.
But she hadn’t been the only one in this village who had loved the deceased.
He was popular with the opposite sex, too popular, if anything.
And that was one of the reasons why he was now dead.