The story begins back in the day, in grisly fashion. A lad, in the so-called ‘care’ of a Roman Catholic children’s home in Scotland has been sexually abused to the extent that his self esteem is shattered and he sees no reason to live. He hangs himself from a beam, using torn up bed-sheets. The police are eventually called, but the patriarchal attitude of the priests (and a handy golf club connection with a top copper) means that the death is just written off for what it was, a suicide, but the cause goes uninvestigated.
Cut to the present day and we are in the cathedral city of Lincoln. The location gave me a huge amount of pleasure, as one half of my ancestry is as Lincolnshire as haslet, Sincil Bank, Mablethorpe, the wonderful Wolds – and Lincoln’s imp itself. When a body is fished out of a local lake and eventually identified as a former Roman Catholic priest (and child abuser), DI Dalton and his oppo, DS Gibb, are drawn into a murder investigation that will take them away from their bailiwick to Glasgow, and the less than salubrious visitors’ rooms of HMP Barlinnie. Someone – maybe with an accomplice – scarred by their brutal days in church care has decided to take revenge, and the body count increases.
Dalton and Gibb follow one or two false trails before they are forced to face the fact that not only is their quarry extremely adept using modern technology, and suspiciously familiar with the way modern police work is done, but they are also something of a weapons expert. As a keen target shooter myself, I can vouch for the fact that a 7.62mm rifle with a decent scope is a formidable weapon in the hands of a sniper. I am not sure if KIm Booth has had the misfortune to fall foul of the deeply secretive and self-protective world of the Roman Catholic church, but the crimes he describes here sound grimly authentic.
The procedural aspects of the story are totally convincing as one might expect from a former police officer – after several jobs and a brush with the law Booth decided to join the Lincolnshire Police, where he served 35 years mainly in investigative roles. The attention to crime-scene detail, the awareness of sharp-eyed defence lawyers for any slight slip-up in the chain of evidence and the debilitating effect form-filling and box-ticking can have on investigators is described in detail. Perhaps the author (in my view) has taken something of a risk in the way he chooses to end the search for the children’s home avenger, but Dalton and Gibb have the potential to become an established CriFi partnership, and I hope that future books will let us know a little more about the men and what makes them tick as people.
Kim Booth was born in Lincolnshire. After leaving the police he worked as a Corporate Security Manager for a well know international holiday company for a number of years. Currently he has started to fulfill a long standing intention to write true crime and crime fiction books. He lives in the city of Lincoln. The Water Doesn’t Lie is available now.
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