Once more Calder Bay, a seaside town on the north-east coast of Scotland, was in the media spotlight with the discovery of a man’s body inside the garden of Hawthorn Cottage in Green Lane; the proximity of the property to where the gruesome remains only twelve months earlier were found, was not lost on the town’s residents, the more sensitive among them hoping this would not be a prelude to another disruption to their lives.

Inspector Alistair Dale leading the murder enquiry, had very little to go on, only that the victim had been called Christopher Taylor and had, the day before, arrived from Hong Kong. Alistair had no sooner begun making inroads towards finding out more, when he received a call from Inspector Craig Spencer in Dundee who had, the evening before, been informed of the suspicious death of a woman who, according to a message on her mobile phone, had been on her way to stay with a friend in Calder Bay. Coincidence was ruled out when it transpired that she also had recently arrived from Hong Kong, resulting in the two deaths now being treated as a double murder investigation.

Throughout the enquiry they were continually being reminded of a major jewellery theft in Hong Kong fifteen years earlier and, when the man the authorities had always suspected of being responsible, turned up in Calder Bay and it was learned he had known the murdered woman, Alistair Dale immediately considered him as a possible suspect, but with large quantities of drugs being discovered in Hawthorn Cottage, the investigation became even more complicated.

Finally, in conjunction with the Hong Kong Police and New Scotland Yard, the murder investigation came to a satisfactory conclusion, but not without leaving many people in Calder Bay shocked when they learned who had been arrested for the murder of Christopher Taylor.