Murder Calling (Detectives Nash and Moretti #1)

Previously published as Latent Damage

Two bodies. One calling card. A killer just getting started.

London. Two weeks before Christmas. A respected Muslim trustee leaves a back-room card school and is murdered outside his own mosque.

His throat cut by a blade so sharp it leaves a surgeon's line. In his a single ace of spades.

Detective Inspector Pippa Nash of the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command takes the call before dawn. Sharp, principled, and used to fighting her corner in a command run by old-school men, she knows the moment she sees the body that the case is political dynamite.

Her Detective Sergeant, Nick Moretti, is harder to read — pipe-smoking, houseboat-living, the kind of detective who forgets to charge his phone but never misses a tell in an interview room.

They’re a tight team who trained together. Nash handpicked Moretti to move to Homicide with her, knowing she’d value his judgement on her team. They're going to need every bit of that history on this case.

Days later, a trainee priest is butchered outside an escort's flat in Crouch End. Same MO. Same calling card. Both men had broken a rule of their faith — and the killer sees himself as a cleanser of sinners.

He isn't finished.

Then the phone calls start. The killer wants Moretti to listen. He has his private number. He knows his routine. He knows Nash.

As Christmas closes in and the body count climbs, the killer's voice grows darker — and one chilling truth becomes impossible to ignore.

He hasn't just been watching the investigation.

He's already inside it.

The blistering first case for London detectives Nash and Moretti.