No Tears for the Lost

PROLOGUE

The box contained a severed finger.

It lay on a bed of cotton wool like a grisly jewel, dark in colour and slightly curled, the nail torn and rimmed with dirt. The amputation had been made just forward of the main knuckle, the separation ragged and crude, a flap of skin hanging on one side.

‘Who delivered this?’ He couldn’t take his eyes off it, his voice barely above a whisper. A faint smell of chemicals hung in the air, overlaid with something he didn’t recognise. The unstamped brown envelope which had contained the box lay discarded, the front bearing three simple words in bold print: Sir Kenneth Myburghe.

‘I don’t know, Sir Kenneth.’ The man in the smart grey suit spoke respectfully, his voice a deep rumble. He stood in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame. ‘It was on the doorstep.’ His face, all angles and crags, stayed carefully blank. ‘There was nobody about.’

‘Go check. Search the grounds.’ Myburghe brushed at a stray lock of distinguished grey hair above one ear. A faint sheen of perspiration had appeared on the mottled skin above his cheekbones, adding to the already unhealthy appearance of a gaunt face.

The man departed silently, leaving Myburghe alone with the object on his desk. It took a moment for him to realise that the finger in the box was a small one — a pinkie — and in studying the cut, he’d been ignoring something else lying alongside it.

It was a gold signet ring.

He took a tissue from a drawer, wet it and dabbed at the ring’s rim. Beneath the film of dirt — he tried not to think about what it might really be — was a crest, worn down by time and use. When he saw what it was, he felt sickened and sank into a nearby chair.

The ring had been commissioned and manufactured over a hundred years ago, barely twenty miles from where he was now sitting. Originating with his great-grandfather, it had been passed down the line of what had once been a noble and honourable family.

But that, he reflected, had been a long time ago. And the last person seen wearing this ring was barely nineteen years old.

His son, Christian.