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197 pages

English

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In the newest installment of Susan Hill's electrifying crime series, Simon Serrailler finds himself in devastating new territory as a sophisticated drug network sets its sights on Lafferton In A Change of Circumstance, the eleventh book in Susan Hill's acclaimed crime series featuring the enigmatic detective Simon Serrailler, Hill yet again raises the stakes. Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler has long regarded drug ops in Lafferton as a waste of time. The small-time dealers picked up outside the local high school can't or won't turn in any valuable names, so they're merely given a fine and the trail runs cold. But when the body of a twenty-two-year-old is found in neighboring Starley, the case pulls DCS Simon Serrailler into the underbelly of an elaborate drug operation that moves narcotics from the cities into the suburbs and right down to villages. The foot soldiers? Vulnerable local kids like Brookie and Olivia, whose involvement gives Simon a bitter taste of this new landscape. It's a harsh winter in Lafferton, and with struggles both at home and on the job, DCS Serrailler soon learns that even the familiar can hold shocking surprises . . . Dark, page-turning, and rich in mood and character, Susan Hill's A Change of Circumstance lands brilliantly as another gripping entry to the Serrailler canon, sure to enthrall fans and newcomers alike.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	29 mars 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781647005818
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2022 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS.
Originally published in 2021 by Chatto Windus, an imprint of Vintage, Penguin Random House UK.
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address above.
Copyright 2022 Susan Hill Cover 2022 Abrams
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947022
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5964-2 eISBN: 978-1-64700-581-8
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
For Katherine Fry, Who has meticulously copy-edited every Serrailler novel from the beginning, saved me from myself innumerable times, and knows far more about both the books and Simon than I ever will.

One
January, and Christmas vanished without trace. The pavements of Starly village were greasy under a day of drizzle and there was an unhealthy mildness in the air.
A police patrol car, a dark grey saloon with Doctor on the windscreen and Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler s silver Audi were all parked on double yellow lines outside the Chinese pharmacy. Crime scene tape was stretched across a side entrance that led to the flat above the shop with a uniform constable standing by the gate to keep back the prying public of two teenagers straddling their bikes and smoking ostentatiously.
The pathologist in the upstairs room with Serrailler was one he did not know, a completely bald man with white eyebrows and lashes. He was also a man of few words.
Overdose? Simon said.
A nod.
Can you say when, roughly?
A shrug.
And you ll know more when you get him on the table, yes, OK. What s happened to forensics?
The doctor ripped off his gloves with the particular tearing sound that always set Simon s teeth on edge, and swung his rucksack onto his back. The older ones still carried bags.
Heroin. His tone said everything.
The body was hunched forwards, syringe still hanging from his arm. His age had been put somewhere between seventeen and twenty.
It s everywhere.
The pathologist glanced up at a New Age poster half peeling off the wall.
Love. Light. Peace, he read aloud before he left.
Serrailler s phone beeped.
Bypass closed. Rerouting - eta 25 minutes .
But he was used to being alone with dead bodies.
The room was filthy, damp, with bare boards, the corpse the purple-brown bruise colours of a Francis Bacon painting, but at least there was not yet the rotten-sweet smell of death. The boy had a shaven head, dirty feet, was wearing a soiled vest and shorts. His skin had erupted in sores and boils among the thicket of tattoos, his eyes were half closed, his mouth hung open, and he was emaciated, but his skull was well shaped, his fingers long and, in spite of their filth, delicate.
Serrailler felt anger, at the waste of life, anger, despair and disgust, but the feelings were impersonal, and about the squalor of the scene not about the young man whose body was now such a revolting mess. It had not always been like that and, whoever he was, he had been, in the phrase, somebody s son .
On a first quick search there had seemed to be nothing in the room to identify him, or to confirm that he had lived here - indeed, that anyone had, none of the usual signs of habitation even of the most basic kind, no sofa, table, crockery or kettle, no bedding. No bed.
The pharmacy had been closed when he had arrived a few minutes after the patrol car, on a job he would never normally be involved in at this early stage, but he was one of the few members of CID left standing, in the flu epidemic that had swept through the station, in spite of the fact that they were all supposed to have been vaccinated back in October.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, as the forensics team arrived, apologising, cursing the traffic.
Thanks, guys. The doc s left and the van should be on its way. Sorry to leave you with him.
He won t bite, one said, unpacking his equipment. The other sniggered.
Simon looked at her, then down at the body with sudden sadness, and a strange urge to defend him, whoever he was, protect him. Someone else should be here, he thought, someone close to him, not a copper and a load of clue-seekers. Someone to pray for him. What was it the priest would say? Go forth upon your journey, Christian soul. But had he even been a Christian?
Do we know who he is, guv?
Serrailler shook his head.
I m heading back.
Back to the station, not back home where he should be, enjoying two days off.
He stopped by the PC on duty beside the gate. He looked cold. Once the body s gone and forensics are done you can go too - just leave the tape and make sure you check that the flat door is fully secured.
Guv. Oi, you two! But the boys had already spun their bikes and were off, doing wheelies round the corner and away.
Two
I don t want to go in there, Doc.
Cat Deerbon sat with 95-year-old Lionel Brown, waiting for an ambulance. She had called it nearly an hour ago, hearing him say over and over again that he wouldn t be taken into hospital, that once you went in you never came home again, that he would walk out and get back home. I ll do it somehow.
He had been found on his living-room floor, having fallen during the night. He had pneumonia and he was seriously dehydrated as well as hypothermic. Cat had her hand on his as she looked out of the window. Each almshouse had a long strip of garden, some better tended than others, but now there was only frozen grass to see and a few shrivelled flowers, plus, in Lionel Brown s, a bird table and a lilac bush close to it, both holding an array of bird feeders, fat balls, seed cakes, on which a robin and several blue tits were feeding now.
Yes and that s another thing and another reason why I can t go. Who else is going to look after my birds? There s a party of long-tailed tits comes down morning and afternoon, easily a dozen of them, they flock down like a gang of kids. Well, I ll tell you who ll look out for them, nobody, that s who, and my birds have grown used to it, they rely on me, I feed them every day. They won t know what to do if it s left empty.
But I can see some peanut feeders in the garden next door, I m sure your neighbour ll look after them for you.
What, her? She s got a broomstick parked inside her back door, I ve seen it.
Cat laughed. His skin was pale ivory and translucent as an honesty pod, his finger bones felt like winter twigs under her hand.
Are you getting warmer? I can find you another blanket.
No, I m all right now, you ve made it lovely and cosy in here, Doc, which isn t what you went to college all those years for.
I ll make sure you re wrapped up well when you leave, it will be colder in the ambulance. When it comes.
I am not going in an ambulance, I m not going anywhere, I ve already told you.
Cat thought he had probably had a mild stroke, fallen and been unable to get up, or else simply tripped over, though he had no broken bones and his contusions were only superficial. When the almshouse warden had found him on her morning check, she had found Lionel alive, though as she had said, Only just.
The twelve almshouses, built and endowed in the sixteenth century by a local landowner, had dark red-brick walls, tall, barley-twist Elizabethan chimneys and rather small rooms, but all of them had been modernised within the last ten years and the warden installed in an adjacent, newly built bungalow. The founding benefaction had been augmented over the centuries by several large bequests and the money shrewdly invested by the trustees. The last doctors surgery in Starly had closed several years ago, following the major changes in the NHS, with GP home visits a rarity. Nobody in the almshouses had a car and the warden had spent too much time driving residents in and out of Lafferton for medical appointments. The problem had been solved by another benefactor, anonymous - though Cat had a shrewd idea of his identity - who had set up a fund to pay for registration of every almshouse resident with GP care from Concierge Medical.
She still wondered occasionally how Chris, her first husband, would have dealt with it, given his steadfast opposition to private medicine, thought about how much he would have objected when she had, as he might have put it, gone over to the dark side .
I know I m going to die, Doc, I should have died last night, shouldn t I?
Not should have - but you easily might have done, that s why -
And I m all right with that, I m old - I m too old. But I m not dying in that hospital. My wife, Lois, did that and it was terrible, and I m not having it happen to me. Why won t you just take some notice of what I keep saying? Why doesn t anyone take notice of you when you re old? I m ninety-five but I m still all there, I m the same person I always was and I know what I want and why, but nobody takes any notice. I thought you d be different, but you re not.
His eyes were full of tears, not of sadness but of frustration, of apprehension and deep loneliness, and Cat felt ashamed of her own obtuseness. She had been thinking medically, which was right, but over her years as a GP she had prided herself that she always thought of her patients first and foremost as people, individuals, who needed and deserved more than fast diagnosis and treatment. It was those other things that took the time, but