Long gone and best forgotten had been Bradfield's harsh verdict on the beautiful Italian girl who had gone missing on Coronation Day. But when a young woman's bones are dug up on a building site bitter memories and old hatreds surface too. DCI Michael Thackeray meets only deceit and evasion when he starts his investigation but when one crucial witness is found dead old murder turns brutally new. His girl-friend Laura Ackroyd finds her own reasons to be interested in the case when it emerges that her own father played with the gang of children who were the last to see the Italian girl alive. And to her consternation she finds deceit touching her own life too. How long, she wonders, can her relationship with Thackeray survive?