When irascible farmer Guy Beardon meets a very dirty death in his own farmyard, at first it seems like an accident - despite the fact that he was widely disliked. Only his daughter suspects foul play. Suspicion becomes certainty when two more deaths occur - and both of them are unmistakably murder.
It had already been a spring laden with mortality. News reports were full of terrorist bombings, earthquakes and floods, and a whole herd of prime beef animals had been wasted on the altar of BSE-phobia. So it was with a strange momentary lack of surprise that Lilah found her father, early that morning, half-submerged face down in the slurry pit.