As soon as he picks up the phone, Arnie knows something is terribly wrong. ‘We’ve found him. Damon’s finally been found.’ For thirty-five years, DS Arnie Hodgson believed his childhood friend was dead. But he didn’t die back then. He was murdered yesterday.

DS Karen Hart’s heart breaks for her colleague as she joins the investigation, but soon the case takes a darker turn. Burned into Damon’s chest is a vivid scarlet mark—a Victorian branding iron shaped like a scythe. Why did Damon vanish that night? And why has someone killed him now?

As Karen and Arnie track down his old friends in the small coastal town of Humberston, they become sure answers lie buried in Arnie’s past; they were all together at the fairground that summer night thirty-five years ago when Damon disappeared. And when the detectives uncover another body, it’s clear someone will kill to keep their secrets buried.

Then another person close to Arnie is brutally murdered—with the same vivid scarlet mark seared into their skin. And when a driver tries to run Arnie down in a car, he must finally confront a terrifying question: is one of his old friends a killer? And if so, can he bring them to justice before they turn on him next?

Born in Kent, D. S. Butler grew up as an avid reader with a love for crime fiction and mysteries. She has worked as a scientific officer in a hospital pathology laboratory and as a research scientist. After obtaining a PhD in biochemistry, she worked at the University of Oxford for four years before moving to the Middle East. While living in Bahrain, she wrote her first novel and hasn't stopped writing since. She now lives in Lincolnshire with her husband.