At a lush villa on the sun-soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather-bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What’s more, Martin is being offered a job—to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family. Martin is intrigued by Strafford’s story, by the man’s overwhelming love for a beautiful suffragette, by her inexplicable rejection of him and their love affair’s political repercussions. But as he retraces Strafford’s ruination, Martin realizes that Strafford did not fall by chance; he was pushed. Suddenly Martin, who has not cared for many people in his life, cares desperately—about a man’s mysterious death and a family’s terrible secret, about a love beyond reckoning and betrayal beyond imagining. Most of all Martin cares because the story he is uncovering is not yet over—and among the men and women still caught in its web, Martin himself may be the most vulnerable of all…. “A wonderful read…the satisfying climax weaves together the strands of past and present.…A poised telling of a complex tale.” — Publishers Weekly "Combines the expert suspense manipulation skills of a Daphne DuMaurier romance with those of a John Le Carre thriller."— New York Times "One of the best novel I've read in a long time...I loved every one of its 500 pages"— Washington Post "A hornet's nest of jealousy, blackmail and violence. Engrossing"— Daily Mail "A complex trail of blackmail and murder. Recommended"— Daily Express ROBERT GODDARD was born in Hampshire and read History at Cambridge. His first novel, Past Caring , was an instant bestseller. Since then his books have captivated readers worldwide with their edge-of-the-seat pace and their labyrinthine plotting. His first Harry Barnett novel, Into the Blue , was winner of the first WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award and was dramatized for TV, starring John Thaw. Chapter One The spring of 1977 found me, newly past thirty, a bad case of wasted talent in a largely waste city—an unemployed, divorced ex-schoolteacher of foundered promise and dismal prospect. London, that grey month of March, seemed to echo my self-pity. That morning, the echo was a painful one in my head, fused with the dull ache of last night's beer and a well-worn theme being pursued by my increasingly reluctant host in the kitchen of his Greenwich house. It was Saturday, so the throb of traffic from Maze Hill was muted, the light, too, decently suffused as it struck the table where I sat, sipping strong black coffee. Jerry sat opposite me, washed and shaved, dressed and clear-headed just four things he was and I wasn't—scanning the shares pages of The Financial Times. "Millennium up again," he said. "They would be," I replied. The last thing I needed to know was that my former employer was continuing to prosper, but it didn't surprise me. Millennium Properties had always been astute in their purchase and promotion of historic buildings, but their only concession to scholarship was to hire over-qualified menials like me to fudge together their tour booklets. Millennium had given me the first half-decent job I'd had since leaving teaching. But, in an unguarded moment at a Christmas party, I'd confided my contempt for their historical standards—which were as transatlantic as their parent company—to completely the wrong person. After that, it had just been a question of resigning before they could sack me. I'd been in debt even before that and the loss of a salary soon meant the flat in Richmond had to go. That's when Jerry, a friend from schooldays, had offered me his spare room in Greenwich, to help me through a bad patch. But the patch had spread to two months and Jerry's patience was beginning to wear thin. "Did I mention that Tribune are planning to open a new regional office in Crawley?" He had. And he'd mentioned that they'd be recruiting staff as a result and that, if I was interested, he could put in a word. I was, in fact, monumentally uninterested. Jerry was an earnest, hard-working actuary for the Tribune Life Assurance Company, where he was doubtless highly thought of. But I could never thrive in his world and it wouldn't have done me—or Jerry—any good to try. Yet explaining that to him was supremely difficult. Not only would his sense of efficiency be affronted, but his over-serious, understated personality would fail to comprehend how Tribune Life—thirty-eight hours a week in modern offices with increments for the industrious and special rates for staff—could be ideal for him but anathema to me. "Yes, you did. I'm looking out for the adverts when they start staffing it." It was a lie, of course. I wasn't looking out for those or any other vacancies. My pretence was designed to appease Jerry and still my own s