A boy discovers a man’s body in a Welsh river below a canal aqueduct. With no identification and no local witnesses willing to admit seeing him, Rutledge begins with a military tattoo and an unusual clothing label. The clues lead to Sam Milford, a respected man whose final journey crossed several communities and whose death is surrounded by incompatible accounts of a child, a suicidal woman and a protected past.
The investigation depends on reconstructing movement in a landscape of canals, railways and isolated villages. Wartime service offers one identity for the victim but not the motive for his death. Rutledge must determine which apparently compassionate lie has become fatal and who is still prepared to kill to maintain it.
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