One way or another, we’d both been brought back to life.
The crow flapped out of the tree as I reluctantly put away my phone. The clatter of its wings was loud in the crystalline silence. I watched it fly across the frozen Scottish moorland. But as bleak as it was, even now there were green shoots starting to push through the frozen earth, forerunners of the spring to come.
I turned as a young policewoman approached, feet crunching on the frost. Above the dark coat, her face was white and shocked.
‘Dr Hunter? Sorry to keep you waiting. It’s over here.’
I followed her to the waiting group of officers, shook hands as introductions were made. They moved aside to let me approach the reason for the gathering.
The body was lying in a hollow. I felt the familiar detachment start to take over as I took in its position, the texture of skin and blown wisps of hair.
I stepped closer and set to work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SIMON BECKETT is a freelance journalist. The Chemistry of Death, his first novel to feature forensic anthropologist Dr David Hunter, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Novel of the Year. He is married and lives in Sheffield, England, where he is at work on his second David Hunter novel, which Delacorte Press will publish in 2007. For more information, visit www.simonbeckett.com.
THE CHEMISTRY OF DEATH
A Delacorte Press Book / October 2006
Published by arrangement with Transworld Publishers
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Beckett, Simon.
The chemistry of death / Simon Beckett.
p. cm.
Forensic anthropologists—Fiction. 2. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.E276 C47 2006
813'.54 22 2006046391
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33634-1
v3.0