RATING: SUPERB
SPOILERS!!!
The last part of the book has quite a few sad moments. It did not end in a high note, but with quite a subdued air.
I was surprised to learn that Ned Chesham had been killed. It’s not that this wasn’t a plausible possibility, but I didn’t expect it. Chesham is stabbed to death in his flat, and the murder weapon is one of his knives, so the detective leading the investigation reaches the conclusion that the murder wasn’t premeditated.
Grace is shown some photographs from a camera keeping watch on the building where Chesham lived. Apparently, Scotland Yard and DAC Marx were keeping tabs on him. To Grace’s dismay she identifies one of the men in the photographs. It is Duncan, and when he is questioned, he confesses to having gone to the building and talked to the porter, but he never went up to his flat.
Grace learns that she has also been watched by Scotland Yard, and as she keeps investigating Ned Chesham, she discovers that MP Starling, whose daughter committed suicide six years ago, is linked to the case. At first, Grace thinks that Lucy, the daughter, who was treated for anorexia by Chesham, could have been one of the man’s special girls, but Grace rules it out soon as she finds out that Lucy was in treatment at the same time as Helen, who was then the girl Chesham was abusing.
Then Grace feels that someone wants to threaten her when a pair of officers come to investigate her. She thinks her liaison with Ivo has been found out, but then she learns that the issue is about the house she bought from one suspect in her first case (book 1). She should have registered the sale, but she did not. Grace feels upset and angry. The she discovers that the person who reported her was MP Starling. From the beginning his intention was to keep tabs on her, and the reason wasn’t his late daughter, as I thought, but his own skin. When Chesham was first investigated, he knew about it; the girl’s daughter told him, so he asked Starling for help, so he used his influence with the lawyer who persuaded the police to stop the investigation. Then the lawyer, Geraint Pryce, got a very coveted position. Grace finds out that a neighbour had seen Starling in the lift of Chesham’s building, and thanks to these findings, DAC Marx discloses the rest of the photographs, which she claims had got mislaid, and there MP Starling was caught. Starling is arrested and charged with murder; he doesn’t deny the charges, but he claims that it was Chesham, who attacked him first, when he refused to help him. In any case, he killed him.
Grace would have liked to go after Pryce, the lawyer, but she has no competence here. So once again she asks Ivo a favour, and he collars Pryce and puts fear into him, threatening to expose him.
The two sad events in the end of the novel affect Grace greatly. The first one is when she gets a note from Clive Goodwin, Meghan’s father. In the letter Clive says that by the time she receives the note, he and his family will be dead. We know that Meghan confessed to her father what Chesham had done to her, which Merrick had witnessed, and that is the reason why Merrick was killed. That information tortured Clive so much that he felt guilty, and he couldn’t even step forward and tell his wife, so at some point he came up with the idea that the only thing he and his family could do was die, and he wanted to spare his parents-in-law the shame of having a murderer as a daughter. So he bought some sleeping pills, which he administered to his wife, daughter, and parents-in-law, who he later smothered to death, and then he slashed his wrists. It was such a waste. These poor people!!!
Feeling broken and bitter, Grace and Blake go to tell Helen, who acts all indifferent. She only cares about Ned and his death, and how the culprit should pay. Grace tries to make her see the truth, but the woman is in denial, and she is so damaged that she almost admits to hating her niece because Ned had singled her out as his new special girl. I can’t say that I feel any sympathy for this woman, but I can understand how someone can be damaged by trauma and abuse.
The second sad thing is about Grace and Blake. I liked them so much together, but Blake soon realises that there is something going on with Grace. She can’t tell him about Ivo because that would put him and his job at risk, and she can’t allow that. And at the same time, she can’t afford to lose that contact with Ivo because she feels that he is her only way to do things she can’t do as an inspector. Grace’s reassurances that what she won’t tell him has nothing to do with their relationship, but Blake thinks that he can’t continue in a relationship in which there is a crack. So he tells her that she will have all his support as a colleague, but the relationship is over.
