Meredith & Hodge

Maggie Carter has had enough. Enough of working with politicians, enough of her husband, and enough of keeping secrets. The trouble is if she tells her secrets, dangerous people will be angry, and the one person she loves might end up hating her even more. A risk worth taking? Maggie lets her conscience guide her and Meredith and Hodge find themselves on the hunt of a serial killer.

Two women catch a train and leave Bristol years apart, their destination and fate the same. Both are murdered. DCI Meredith and the cold case review team investigate. But Hodge has left the team and Meredith. With Meredith’s personal life in freefall, the team questions whether he will be around to see the case through, and if their department can survive.

When the body of a young woman is discovered in a field near Reading, it is linked to a similar discovery five years earlier. Both women had lived in or near Bristol, both had boarded a train at Temple Meads bound for London, but never reached their destination, and both were found murdered within a few miles of each other. The cold case review team in Bristol, headed by DCI John Meredith, takes on the case. With few leads to go on, and the passage of time, it was always going to be a tough case to solve.

In 2012, Mike and Christine Hawker disappeared. Vanished without a trace. Christine while making breakfast for the children, Mike, less than two hours later. They were never seen again. Described by all who knew them as the perfect family, the Hawkers were devoted to each other and had no known personal or financial issues. So why disappear? Mike Hawker’s body is discovered twelve years later, and DCI Meredith’s cold case review team take on the case.

In October 2015, young police officer Corina Jones drowned in Bristol’s floating harbour. Was it an accident or foul play? There are no witnesses, and injuries to her body are inconclusive. When the senior investigating officer dies in a freak accident, the case is shelved and an inquest records an open verdict. Ten years later, the Chief Constable receives a series of anonymous letters, and Meredith’s cold case review team reopens the case. The letters say to look close to home, which, if true, given Corina’s circumstances, means a serving police officer could be responsible.