"Detective Chief Inspector Peter Porteous came to the small town of Cranford to escape the frantic pace and pressure of urban police work. So he was not expecting one of the first cases in his new job to be a murder investigation. And a thirty-year-old one at that." "Following the recent dry weather, the nearby lake at Cranwell Village has yielded up a body with a stab wound in its back, an anchor tied round its waist." "With the help of Detective Sergeant Eddie Stout, Porteous begins a painstaking search through the town's missing persons records - and identifies the victim as eighteen-year-old Michael Grey, who disappeared in 1972. But Michael is an enigmatic figure, and the more they research his life the more elusive it becomes." "Fifty miles away, in the seaside town of Millhaven, Hannah Morton is listening to a news report about the discovery of the corpse in her old home town. And, like the body, memories she had tried so hard to bury begin to surface. For Michael Grey was Hannah's boyfriend, and she was with him only hours before he disappeared."--BOOK JACKET.