Pig Island

THE END Acknowledgements

Thank you to everyone at Transworld, particularly my utterly dedicated, 24/7 editor Selina Walker, and also Patrick Janson-Smith (keep trying, PJS, and one day I might forgive you for leaving Transworld). To Jane Gregory for being my rock — and a brilliant, flaming, red-headed rock at that. A loud cheer too for the Hammersmith office: Anna the traitor, Claire, Emma, Jemma and Terry.

To everyone in the Strathclyde police force: DC Dee Bradbury and DC Gary Brown for fitting me in between pregnancies and attempted murder charges, and DS Allan Derrick (glockenspiel king). To Dr Awny Lutfy (FRCPath) of The Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary; to Sisters Rosalyn Bonner and Jackie Iverson, and especially Nurse Practitioner Breeda McCahill of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary Burns Unit. To Mr Richard Spicer (FRCS) of the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children for the insights into the sacrococcygeal growth and its complications, and to explosives expert David Hargreaves for detailed explanations of how to make things go bang. Thank you to Minette Walters for teaching me more about the publishing industry in four days than I've learned in the last eight years, and most of all a huge hug to Mairi Hitomi for being my best chum and for teaching me how to get ma geggy round Glasgae slang.

Thank you also to: my mother, my father and my little brother; Jim Brooks; Broo Doherty; Simon Gerard; Pat Mallows (website king); Murf and Margaret (OWO Murphy); Karin Slaughter; Gilly Vaulkhard; the Downings, the Laydons; the Heads; the Roberts. A special hurrah for everyone at Bath Spa MACW (especially Tracy and Richard), everyone at Appletree and the Larkhall yummy mummies: Helen, the two Kates, Konny, Mel, Ness, Olivia, Rebecca. But most of all: love and a thank-you that goes on for ever to you, Keith, and our little girl, Lotte Genevieve.