Oliver Ainsworth

Later first draft

The Last House on the Causeway

When a body is found in a half-flooded cottage on the edge of the Forth, local investigator Mairi Bell is drawn into a case that looks like a simple domestic killing until the dead man’s name starts turning up in old missing-person files. The house sits on a stretch of land due for redevelopment, and everyone with a stake in it seems to be lying about what happened there. The deeper Mairi digs, the clearer it becomes that the murder is tied to a long-buried decision someone thought had been safely forgotten.