by Ashley Dyer
But Adam had been thorough: he included a story about an evidence review that had resulted in the rearrest of Jones some months later, charged with the murders of John and Millie Garrod. He was convicted and sentenced to life.
The final press report was one short paragraph, headlined: “Double Murderer Beaten to Death in Prison Attack.”
Adam had penned handwritten notes on a sheet of sketch paper.
Fact 1: Mum and Ffion; Damien and Naomi Ryan; John and Millie Garrod—all murdered with a clawhammer. All beaten about the head.
Fact 2: Dad confessed to murdering Mum and his girlfriend.
Fact 3: Dad was dead when the other murders (same MO) happened.
Fact 4: You said you believed Dad when he said he didn’t kill Naomi.
Question 1: Why? You didn’t think so at the time. So what changed?
Question 2: If Dad WAS innocent, why did he confess?
Question 3: Why did Dave Ryan say justice was done? (See Fact 1)
Question 4: If Jones murdered the Garrods, how come it took an evidence review to get the conviction?
Question 5: Did Ryan have Jones murdered in prison?
Question 6: Why does Ryan “owe” you, Ruth?
He had doodled in the margins: graphic-novel-style ink drawings of a clawhammer, dripping blood; of Jones wielding a hammer, teeth bared, eyes bulging, the whites shot with blood.
At the bottom of the page, Adam had scrawled, “Fact 5: We need to talk.”
Acknowledgments
My love and gratitude to Murf, my anchor through life’s storms, my first auditor, champion, and gentle critic. To Felicity Blunt and Lucy Morris at Curtis Brown, and Emily Krump at William Morrow, I am deeply grateful for your editorial insights and guidance in crafting and honing this book—it has been greatly enhanced by your input. Julia Elliott, thanks for efficiently and cheerfully keeping the wheels turning so smoothly during the hiatus. Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate the importance of great copyediting, and I feel blessed to have worked with Laurie McGee on both Splinter in the Blood and The Cutting Room. Huge thanks also to Melissa Pimentel at Curtis Brown and Jenn Joel at ICM for bringing the book to the wider world.
To Ann Cleeves, Mo Hayder, and AJ Finn—all brilliant writers—my thanks for your kind words of support, and my admiration, always.
I will be forever in the debt of those who put my books into the hands of readers—publicity, sales, and marketing experts who work behind the scenes, and booksellers who stock, display, and recommend the novels to their customers. In this regard, I owe special thanks to Kaitlin Hari, Gena Lanzi, and Mary Ann Petyak at William Morrow, for their enthusiasm and expertise. To the Goodreads reviewers and podcasters and book bloggers who have taken time to read, comment on, and champion my work, my heartfelt thanks. I hope this new tale pleases you.
About the Author
ASHLEY DYER is a writing duo based in the UK.
MARGARET MURPHY was a longstanding Writing Fellow and Reading Round Lector for the Royal Literary Fund, and is a past chair of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) and founder of Murder Squad. A CWA Short Story Dagger winner, she has been shortlisted for the First Blood critics’ award for crime fiction as well as the CWA Dagger in the Library. Under her own name she has published nine psychological suspense and police procedural novels.
HELEN PEPPER is a senior lecturer in policing at Teesside University. She has been an analyst, forensic scientist, scene of crime officer, CSI, and crime scene manager. She has coauthored, as well as contributed to, professional policing texts. Her expertise is in great demand with crime writers: she is a judge for the CWA’s Non-Fiction Dagger Award and is Forensic Consultant on both the Vera and Shetland TV series.
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Also by Ashley Dyer
Splinter in the Blood
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the cutting room. Copyright © 2019 by Ashley Dyer. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © Paul Gooney/Arcangel
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition June 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-279773-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-279770-4
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