Part 1 (2/2)

”Please help me,” she said, collapsing into the chair facing him.

”Someone's trying to kill me.”

CHAPTER ONE

London,1967

THE FIRST time EMMA mET her father, she was nearly three years old. She

knew what he looked like because her mother kept pictures of him,

meticulously cut from newspapers and glossy magazines, on every surface

in their cramped three-room flat. Jane Palmer had a habit of carrying

her daughter, Emma, from picture to picture hanging on the water-stained

walls and sitting on the dusty scarred furniture and telling her of the

glorious love affair that had bloomed between herself and Brian McAvoy,

lead singer for the hot rock group, Devastation. The more Jane drank,

the greater that love became.

Emma understood only parts of what she was told. She knew that the man

in the pictures was important, that he and his band had played for the

queen. She had learned to recognize his voice when his songs came on

the radio, or when her mother put one of the 45s she collected on the

record player.

Emma liked his voice, and what she would learn later was called its

faint Irish lilt.

Some of the neighbors tut-tutted about the poor little girl upstairs

with a mother who had a fondness for the gin bottle and a vicious

temper. There were times they heard Jane's shrill curses and Emma's

sobbing walls. Their lips would firm and knowing looks would pa.s.s

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