For seventeen years, the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Judes Ferry has lain abandoned, requisitioned by the Government for military training. In its thousand-year-old history, it had been famous for one thing — never having recorded a single crime. Butwhen local reporter Philip Dryden joins the Territorial Army on exercise in the empty village, its spotless history is literally blown apart. For the TAs shells reveal a hidden cellar beneath the old pub. And inside the cellar hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck... Two days later, a man is pulled from the reeds in the river near Ely — he has no idea who he is or how he got there. But he knows the words Judes Ferry are important, and he knows he is afraid...
