Green Lord's Guardian — L.J. Hutton

Off-duty DI, Bill Scathlock, foils the kidnapping attempt of a young Finnish boy with his friend and former DC, Morag, but he has no idea of how strange things are going to get. For a start, there seems to be no motive for the kidnapping, and the two thugs in custody apparently don't even speak English. What they are doing in rural Worcestershire nobody can work out. Nor can anyone find Tapio's parents, and the girl looking after him is as much in the dark as the police.

Unable to move the case forward, the leading detective calls on Bill for help because he is the one person Tapio is willing to open up to, and with Bill being off on sick leave he has time on his hands. As Bill gains Tapio's confidence, he has his credulity stretched to breaking point by what he hears. Yet the danger is very real, and never more so than when there is a second attempt to get to Tapio.

What Bill really does not need is the appearance of the au pair's family from Finland and the complications they bring with them. Her aunt's ex-husband is a dangerous man working under some kind of bizarre compulsion, and her grandmother clearly knows more than she's telling anyone, not even her own family, and may be horribly implicated in the conspiracies Bill unfolds. Raking through their past brings damning revelations, but of a sort Bill could never have anticipated.

In the light of that, he realises that the kind of help he needs isn't the sort his colleagues at the station can provide, and he turns to an old friend who is now a priest. Together they find sanctuary for Tapio, but the final showdown with his enemies at the old cathedral brings a resolution with unearthly consequences. And it is only when Bill is able to make a visit to Finland himself do the final pieces of the puzzle drop into place.