One Hot Summer: The BRAND NEW shocking, page-turning psychological thriller from Anita Waller

By Anita Waller

'A great cast of characters, a riveting storyline, a nail-biting climax' Valerie Keogh 'By page 3 I was hooked. By the end I was addicted' Owen Mullen

A city on fire. A killer who can’t be stopped. Who will be next?

When two teenagers are found dead in a fire, DI Laura Henshall and DS Will Peters are called in to investigate. They believe it was a revenge attack gone wrong.

But soon fires are cropping up everywhere, and the police suspect they’re dealing with something much bigger . . . something that could bring the city to its knees.

With time running out, can the detectives find the arsonists before the city goes up in flames?

What readers are saying about Anita Waller:

'I was completely hooked'

'She just gets better . . . An absolutely fabulous read'

'Grabs you from page one'

'Absolutely phenomenal'

'A cracking good read'

'Honestly, I cannot get enough of this author'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boldwood Books
• Release date: Aug 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781804152928

Anita Waller

Anita Waller is the author of many bestselling psychological thrillers and the Kat and Mouse crime series. She lives in Sheffield, which continues to be the setting of many of her thrillers.

Book preview

1

‘Stop it, Ad!’ Fourteen-year-old Shannon Ramsden tried to make her voice as firm as possible, but she was all too aware of the sensations at the bottom of her stomach and wasn’t convinced she really wanted him to stop. ‘My mum says I’ve not to let lads touch me, so just stop.’

She pushed him away, and for a moment he let her. She straightened her top, shoving her small, firm breasts back into the bra cups that had somehow ended up around her neck.

‘Can I put my hands in your knickers?’

‘No, you bloody can’t! My mum would go mad.’

‘She won’t know.’

‘You don’t know my mum. She knows everything.’

‘She doesn’t know we’re in here.’

She looked around the creepy room again: all harmless enough in daylight, but the dim light from her phone made the shadowy stack of lilos and kids’ toys in the corner look spooky. And what if someone heard them? They were far enough away from her mum’s watchful eye, perhaps, but the building was in someone’s back garden.

‘You been here before?’ she asked. ‘With another lass? You knew how to get in.’

He shook his head. She must be mad thinking that. He’d only ever wanted her since they’d started at infant school. ‘’Course not. I come in here when it’s raining, me and the other lads, but we have to be quiet. He don’t know that side door’s got a broken lock. He’s a nasty piece of work, him that owns it.’

She settled back on to the sofa. ‘My mum knows him. He built it for his sister to live in. Her and her kid. They lived here for about six months, then t’council gave her a house.’

‘It’s as big as a house. You been upstairs?’

She shook her head. ‘No, and I’m not going up. I know what you’ll be thinking, Adam Lawton. Get me upstairs, and I bet there’s beds up there. It might be a wooden hut, but it looks like a house. I’m staying here.’

His hands went once again unerringly to her breasts, and she turned towards him. ‘You can touch me there, but nowhere else, right?’

‘Right,’ he said, and bent his mouth to her nipple. She gasped at the intensity of the feeling and shoved him away again. ‘I’ve got to go home.’

‘Aw, not yet.’ He took hold of her hand and held it tightly against the front of his jeans. ‘Feel that?’ he asked.

‘Bloody ’ell, Ad.’

‘That’s you doing that to me. Take your knickers off, Shannon, just for two minutes.’

‘No!’ She struggled to her feet, trying to sort out her bra, while he was clearly trying to get the offending knickers off her body and onto the floor.

They heard the first bang and stopped. She looked at him. ‘What was that?’ she whispered.

‘Fuck knows,’ he said, and returned to the issue of her knickers. A second bang was followed swiftly by two more.

Flames whooshed from floor to ceiling in seconds, carried by the fumes of petrol. Shannon screamed once, then clasped her head as the flames turned her long brown hair into a halo of orange fire. She knew no more. Didn’t feel any pain as her clothes ignited into a huge ball. It took Adam twenty seconds longer to die than it did Shannon.

The fire quickly spread throughout the wooden building. Neighbours who had heard the bangs and assumed they were gunshots, came tentatively outside of their homes to see what was happening. Immediately five different mobile phones rang 999, and ten minutes later, two fire engines were on scene.

The flames were huge, as befitted a bonfire of this stature. The firefighters searched for water hydrants, and a way of safely getting into the rear garden of the house where the structure had been built. It wasn’t easy and was hampered by the difficulty of access. One engine tried a different route when it became clear it wasn’t a simple shed fire, as had originally been reported. When the summer house and decking in a neighbouring garden also caught fire, the second engine found a way around to the bottom of the garden via a derelict garage site.

The first bangs had been heard at around ten at night, and the fire was eventually under control by one in the morning.

Alice Ramsden had watched the drama unfold with her neighbours, standing in the street sharing bottles of wine, with the odd tipple of Jack Daniels thrown in for good measure, enjoying the unexpected party atmosphere. She had briefly wondered why Shannon hadn’t joined her, but guessed she preferred to stay in her bedroom, her location of choice these days, listening to her music. She wondered if every fourteen-year-old was like her daughter.

She felt quite tipsy as she staggered back down her own path, trying to remember how many times her plastic tumbler had been filled over the last three hours. She hadn’t had this much excitement in years. All the neighbours called loud good nights to each other, and eventually the street returned to normal.

Climbing the stairs made Alice giggle. The treads seemed a bit wobbly, just like her legs, she decided, and she eventually reached the landing. She couldn’t see a light under Shannon’s door, so reckoned she was asleep; her daughter wouldn’t appreciate being woken by a tipsy mother.

Alice didn’t surface until almost ten on that overcast Sunday morning, and her first port of call was the medicine cabinet for the paracetamol. She switched on the shower and set it for hot, then had ten seconds of cold. That was enough. She was now awake.

She went downstairs to try to persuade Shannon to do her a bacon sandwich and a coffee, but the curtains were still closed, so she headed for the kitchen. There was silence from the downstairs rooms, so she called Shannon’s name from the hallway. Surely that girl didn’t intend spending the whole of Sunday shut away in her bedroom.

There was no reply and Alice wearily trudged back upstairs, her head beating a rhythm all of its own with every step.

She knocked and pushed open her daughter’s bedroom door. ‘Shan, you getting up yet?’

Her daughter was still in bed, the duvet covering her entire form. Alice reached over and pulled it back but saw only cushions. ‘What the…?’

She checked the bathroom, then ran downstairs. Grabbing her phone, she felt her legs begin to tremble, and she sank on to a kitchen chair. Why had she refused to give Shannon a mobile all these years? She’d call her now and give her merry hell, but at least she’d be able to find her. Instead, she called the first person she could think of. ‘Trev? Is Shannon with you?’

Her ex-husband laughed. ‘Hardly. We had a proper fallout on Wednesday. Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Oh… erm… yeah, she did. You don’t know where she is, then?’

‘No idea. What’s wrong, Al?’

‘She’s not in her room. She went up about seven last night, said she was going to watch Netflix. Then we had that big fire across the road, and I was outside, big crowd of us, from about ten when it all kicked off, to one this morning. I thought she was in bed, Trev.’ The last part came out as a wail.

‘You want me to come over?’

‘Of course I bloody do. She’s your daughter as well, you know.’ Alice could hear her voice rising higher with each word she spoke. ‘We need to find her.’

‘Give me quarter of an hour.’ And Trev disconnected.

Alice went back upstairs to Shannon’s room and opened her wardrobe. There didn’t seem to be any clothes missing, so she began to rifle through the chest of drawers. Nothing out of kilter there either, but finally she struck gold when she checked Shannon’s desk. The central drawer contained a small diary, slim and about the size of a playing card.

Alice glanced through it, but nothing much registered until she saw the entry for the previous night. Seeing Ad. 8 p.m. in park.

Park? Which park? And then realisation hit. It had been called the playground when they were in junior school, but now at fourteen it had morphed into ‘the Park’, playground being a bit too childish a word for teenagers. So Shannon had gone to meet Ad, who Alice presumed to mean Adam Lawton, in the broken-down old playground where children rarely played because of the smashed bottles and empty beer cans lying around.

Where the hell was she now? She ran downstairs again and once more hit the call button, this time connecting with Kate Lawton. ‘Hi Kate, it’s me.’

‘I know it’s you, I can see it is,’ Kate laughed. ‘You okay after last night?’

‘Bit headachy. Is Adam there?’

‘He’s not up yet. Can he ring you when he’s awake?’

‘Kate,’ Alice said, trying to fight the panic she was feeling, ‘can you go and check on him? Make sure he’s okay?’

There was a brief moment of hesitation, and Alice heard Kate speak to Harry, her partner, asking him to nip upstairs to check Adam was okay. ‘What’s wrong, Alice? You’re spooking me a bit.’

‘It seems Shannon was meeting Adam last night, but Shannon isn’t home. I’ve only just found out.’

‘Hang on, I’m going upstairs.’ There was a clatter as Kate put her phone on the table, and then Alice heard her say, ‘Shit!’

‘Kate, you there?’ Alice yelled down the phone, and then she heard the unmistakable sound of it being picked up.

‘Alice? He’s not in bed. I didn’t check he was in last night when we got in a bit worse for wear. I’ve no idea what we were all drinking, but I was almost asleep going upstairs. What the hell do we do? Ring the police?’

Alice’s heart sank. ‘Doesn’t Adam have a phone either?’

‘He’s left it in his room. I didn’t know he was meeting Shannon, I swear. Do you know where they went?’

‘I know where they met. That old playground. They call it the Park now. Trev’s coming over. He’ll go out looking for them.’

‘We’ll come to yours, Harry can go with Trev. Two heads, and all that. We’ll be there in two minutes. We’ll find them, Alice, don’t worry.’

Trev and Harry started at the Park, and trudged all around the estate, talking to people, asking if they’d seen the two teenagers, but nothing came of it. They headed to Alice’s, where they discovered Kate had returned home in case Adam arrived back at their house under his own steam, and Alice had been joined by her sister.

Chrissie was making drinks, and had just handed one to Alice when the men walked in. She took down two extra mugs and poured milk in them.

‘Anything?’ Alice asked, fear etched on her face.

Trev shook his head. ‘Nothing. There were some kids up on the Park, but they hadn’t seen them. Knew ’em, of course – about the same age. I’ve left my mobile number with them in case they turn up there.’

Alice felt tears trickle down her face, and Trev pulled her close. ‘Hey, come on. She’ll turn up. But to be on the safe side, I think we need to ring the police. She’s not been seen since what? Seven last night? That’s a long time.’

Chrissie stared at the two men. ‘The police? It’ll take them a week to get here to talk to you.’

‘Not for this,’ Trev said. ‘Too much bad publicity if they ignore missing kids.’

Alice couldn’t hold her worry in any longer, and her wail reached all four corners of the room. Trev leaned across and pulled her towards him. ‘Come on, babes, we’ll find her. And she’ll be grounded for six months, if not years.’

The kitchen door burst open, and Kate almost fell in. ‘The police are on their way, I rang them. They’ll find them for us. They’re coming here, so I’ve left a note for Ad in case he goes home while I’m here.’

2

DI Laura Henshall from the Serious Crimes Unit at Moss Way Police Station in the southeast of Sheffield tucked her long blonde hair behind her ears, screwed it into an elastic hair band and stared at the burnt-out wreck of what had once been a shed, or so the owner, Dave Gordon, called it. The photograph he’d given her identified it as a shed that was house-sized, built along the lines of an Austrian chalet, with a huge clock adorning the peaked roof at the front.

She had initially thought, wow, but then had followed it up with, how the fuck did he get away with building something of this size in the back garden? When she had mentioned this, he had simply shrugged. It was clear the words ‘building regulations’ weren’t in his vocabulary. She wondered if the planning permission form had ever reached Sheffield City Council.

The council estate had been built in the fifties; the houses were all much the same: brick-built, with newly replaced white UPVC windows and large gardens back and front. Many were now privately owned, no longer council housing. A chalet was not in keeping with the current aesthetic.

The white crime-scene tent had been placed over the spot where two bodies had been revealed in the cold light of the morning, despite the protestations of Mr Gordon that nobody had been inside.

‘Mr Gordon,’ her sergeant, Will Peters, was saying, ‘you’re sure you have no idea who might have been inside your… structure?’

‘No. It’s a summer house that we only use in the summer, when we put the swimming pool up. I have a big family, they come over and we make use of it then, but there was definitely nobody in it that I know of.’

She left Will to question him further. They wouldn’t get much more, she was sure – Dave Gordon had a glazed look in his eyes as he stared through his lounge window at the activity in his back garden.

Kenny Ellington, the pathologist, was coming out of the tent as she reached it. ‘Hi, Kenny. Anything to tell me?’

‘Two bodies. That’s about it until I get them back to my place. I’ll start the post mortem straight away. I think they’re only kids, or very small adults. At a guess, I’d say teenagers. I have something for you that might help.’ He handed an evidence bag to Laura. ‘Looks like a small gold bracelet, found on one of the victims. It might help with confirmation of who it is before we get results back. I’ll leave you to log it. Nobody’s reported any kids missing?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’ She took her phone out of her pocket as it began to ring. ‘DI Henshall.’ She listened for a while then said, ‘Text me the address.’ As she spoke, she spotted Will emerging from the house and waved at him to join her.

Kenny looked at her, understanding without being told what the phone call had been about. ‘Two kids missing?’

She nodded. ‘Just across the road from here. I’m going down now to speak to the parents. It’s a boy and a girl, both aged fourteen.’

‘Then I’m glad I’ve got my job and not yours,’ he said, before heading back into the tent.

She shook Trevor Ramsden’s hand. ‘DI Laura Henshall, and this is DS Will Peters. We understand you have two missing children?’

Alice moved slightly so that she was closer to Trevor. ‘Our Shannon, Shannon Ramsden, and Adam Lawton.’

Kate grasped Harry’s hand. ‘And I’m Adam’s mum, Kate,’ the other woman said. She indicated the two men in turn. ‘Trevor and Harry’ve been out looking for them.’

‘Is it possible for us all to sit down, Mrs…?’

‘Alice Ramsden,’ Shannon’s mother replied. ‘How about in the lounge?’

They followed the parents into the house. Will remained standing, his brown eyes ever observant as the others sat down around the room. Laura moved to a straight-backed chair, effectively giving her control of the room. ‘Were the two children together?’

‘It seems they were,’ Alice said, ‘although we didn’t know – I thought Shannon was home in bed. I found Shannon’s diary in her desk that said she was meeting Adam at eight last night. They’ve grown up together,’ she wailed. ‘He wouldn’t hurt her. Where are they?’

Trevor pulled Alice close, as if sensing something was coming.

‘There is no easy way to say this,’ Laura said, keeping her voice as gentle as she could, ‘but there was a fire last night, in a summer house down the road. We have found two bodies in the ruins of the building.’

She removed the evidence bag from her jacket pocket and showed it to all of them. ‘Do any of you recognise this bracelet?’

Alice moaned loudly and stared around her in utter panic, as if hoping to see her child come through the door and prove she wasn’t one of the bodies. ‘Yes, it belongs to Shannon. It was a Christmas present from me last year.’

‘Thank you, Alice.’ Laura slipped the bag back into her pocket.

‘Where?’ Trevor said. ‘Where are our kids?’

‘They are currently being transported to the morgue, where a post mortem will take place later today. To help with identification I would like to take samples of DNA from both mums, please. I must stress at this stage we have no positive ID on them.’

Alice and Kate looked at each other, horror etched on their faces, hoping they were getting the wrong end of the stick with what this woman was telling them.

‘They’re dead?’ Kate whispered, as she felt Harry let go of her hand and place his arm around her shoulders. ‘But we sent for you to help us find them, to bring them back home to us from whatever stupidity they were up to. How can they be dead?’

‘This is the stupidity, isn’t it?’ Trevor said, ignoring the tears running down his face. ‘They were in that bloody fire, weren’t they? That bloody overgrown shed Dave thought it was so fucking clever to build.’

Alice seemed to fold into herself. ‘I was outside drinking wine and having a laugh, watching the firemen, picking out the best ones, when all the time…’

‘Mrs Ramsden,’ Laura said as gently as she could, ‘it won’t benefit anyone if you start thinking along those lines. Now you can help Shannon by giving me a DNA sample, and let us fight for her from here on in. We will look after her, as we will look after Adam. But we do need official confirmation. I’m so sorry.’

The two women looked at each other again, and both nodded. Will Peters stepped forward, his dark brown hands holding two DNA sample kits, and Laura breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t had to fight them over the issue. ‘There will be a family liaison officer with both families within half an hour of my leaving. They will keep you informed every step of the way, and I promise you we will find out what has happened to your children.’

Alice walked upstairs and headed to her bedroom window. She could see across two gardens to where the fire had been a few short hours earlier; the property was hemmed in by crime-scene tape, but she could see the white tent being taken down in the back garden. She watched until it was all packed away, then leaned her head against the window pane and sobbed.

Trevor had gone back home to tell Molly what had happened, but said he would be back later. Even in her grief, Alice had managed to say, ‘Well, don’t bring that cow back with you.’

Molly stared at Trevor. ‘You’re going back to her? To Alice?’

‘Just for tonight. I’ll sleep on the sofa, but I can’t leave her on her own, I just can’t. We’ve lost our Shannon, for fuck’s sake, Moll. Our Shannon.’

She bit back a retort, folding her arms around the bump that used to be her flat stomach. ‘And what if I need you?’

‘You’ve two months to go, Moll, you’re not going to need me, but if you do, ring me.’ He pushed a clean T-shirt into his holdall and zipped it up. ‘If you need me, ring me.’

Molly changed tactics. ‘I’m so sorry about Shannon. You know that, don’t you?’

He nodded.

‘She was a lovely girl, looking forward to meeting her new baby brother. I’ll miss her.’

‘So that’s it, is it? You’ll miss her. I’m aching for her, Moll. She’s my daughter for fuck’s sake. Aching for her. And I’ve got to be with Alice at this time, so I don’t want hassle about this.’ He picked up the bag and headed out of the bedroom. ‘I’ll ring you.’

Laura and Will walked across the road from the Ramsden house and up the small road opposite for about fifty yards until she reached the home of Dave Gordon, briefly wondering how the parents would be able to ever move on with their lives while living in such close proximity to where the children met their deaths.

Dave Gordon was sitting in his car, which was parked on a grass verge across from his own home, and outside the boundary created by the crime-scene tape. The engine hadn’t been started; he was simply staring at his house.

Laura knocked on the window and he rolled it down. ‘Mr Gordon, we’d like a quick word.’

He flicked his head backwards. ‘You can get in the back seat.’

‘No, we’d like you to come with us. Is your house locked up?’

Dave looked startled. ‘It is. You want me to come now?’

‘We do.’ Laura opened the driver-side door. ‘We shouldn’t be too long; we’re only going round to Moss Way police station – but we do need a formal statement and to ask a few questions.’

Dave eased his large frame out of the car and followed the two police officers to their vehicle. Laura spotted the arrival of Bernie Granger, the PC allocated to the Ramsden family as FLO, and indicated to Will she was popping down to speak to the young PC.

Bernie locked her car and looked up with a smile as she recognised her superior. ‘Morning, boss. Any instructions?’

‘Not really. We don’t know anything yet, but they’re obviously in a state. The mum, Alice, lives here, with her daughter, the now deceased Shannon, although ID hasn’t been officially confirmed. I’m a hundred per cent sure it will be; Alice identified a bracelet found on one of the bodies. Divorced from Trevor, but not estranged. They still talk. He was here, but now gone to his new partner to fill her in on what’s happening. He may come back, reading between the lines. Liaise with Eva Dukes, she’s FLO at Adam Lawton’s house. His mum is called Kate. Ring if you need anything else. We’re just taking in the chap who had the fire, got some questions for him, so he’s not happy. We’ll be asking if he’s upset anybody enough to result in this.’

Bernie smiled. ‘I’ll report in later. I’ll stay here as long as they need me.’

‘Thanks, Bernie. See you later.’

Laura drove the two-minute journey to Moss Way without any words being spoken. Will was never quiet, he always had something to say, but today there was silence, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled the car into the car park.

‘Will, can you book Mr Gordon in, and make sure he has a coffee, please?’

‘Yes, boss.’ He opened the rear door to let out their client, and waited until Dave shuffled himself out.

‘Bloody child lock at my age,’ Dave grumbled. ‘And I don’t take sugar.’

Will grinned at him, his brown skin creasing into his usual smile. ‘You’ve not tasted our coffee. You might be begging for sugar by the end of it.’

He led Dave through the front door and gave his name to the PC on duty before leading him in to be formally admitted into the inner workings of the busy police station.

‘David Owain Gordon,’ he said.

‘Unfortunate set of initials,’ the duty sergeant said.

‘Welsh mother who was a bit thick,’ Dave responded glumly.

He was escorted to an interview room, while Will disappeared to get him a sugarless coffee. He collected two teas for himself and Laura, and after delivering the sludge-like coffee, he headed upstairs to Laura’s office.

It was quiet in the main office – Sundays were usually subdued, with a skeleton crew of officers keeping things running, and others on call should they be needed. Monday would be busy, once they started to get results in from the fire. In the meantime, he had already tasked the few officers available to him with checking who had CCTV in the

Reviews for One Hot Summer

[sucharita1986 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A next door cozy mystery thriller...................One Hot Summer by Anita Waller is a mystery thriller which keeps you on your toes throughout the whole plot. The plot cris- crosses through various events and finally reaches its climax. The plot is fast paced with some efficient characters. The climax was engaging and full of action. Better not skip it. A lovely neighborhood turning into a fireball seems a perfect getaway for a thriller fan.I would like to give the book 4 stars. Thanks to Boldwood Books and Rachel's Random Resources for providing me an opportunity to read and review the book.