Parish & Richards, Volume 6: Books 16-18

The Fragments That Parish and Richards are given the baffling case of a man drained of blood and left suspended in a Community Centre in the position of The Hanging Man from a pack of Tarot cards with a number on a piece of paper inserted into his heart, but this murder is only the beginning . . . Stick and Xena are given a series of double murders to solve, but nothing is ever as simple as it first appears. The men have had body parts removed, their wives have had their throats cut and there’s a bloody handprint on the children’s bedroom doors . . . Jerry is given two other students – Shakin’ and Joe – by the Professor in her law class, and is tasked to produce a project on the Baker Street Bank Robbery and the use of a D-Notice, but things begin to spiral out of control when Jerry is threatened by an MI5 agent, and then Bronwyn gets involved . . . The Kisses of an Due to a shortage of murders, Parish and Richards are asked to help out in the search for a missing eight year-old girl, but as usual things are never what they seem. Xena and Stick are seconded to the Kent & Essex Serious Crime Directorate and are put on stake-out outside an industrial unit waiting for a drug delivery. However, Xena gets bored on stake-outs and things quickly become something a lot more sinister when she decides that they should go and investigate. Bronwyn books into the Beautiful You Cosmetic Surgery Clinic in London, but when she hacks into the system she is drugged and locked in the basement. Jerry, Shakin' and Joe decide to find out what’s happened to her, but things quickly go from bad to worse – a lot worse. Evidence of Things The new Chief arrives – DCI Nigel Nibley – who hands out the new murder investigations. Parish and Richards are given the case of a murdered ten year-old boy, but a three-link chain tattoo under his top lip hints at something more than an abduction, sexual assault and murder. It becomes a lot more sinister when Doc Riley finds a DNA match on the database that has been sealed from prying eyes. Stick and Xena get the Painted Lady Killer case. Someone has body-painted a young woman as two halves of a clown – good and evil, which includes the insertion of a prosthetic eye, and left her in a house. During the post-mortem, a hidden message is discovered on the body, and they must delve into the world of body-painting to get to the strange truth. Kowalski and Bronwyn have opened up Abacus Investigations. Their first case involves a man – Linus Frost – who has been missing for six months. His daughter asks them to find out what has happened to him, and gives them a key in a box that came in the post, but all is not what it seems . . .