The Hollow Tree

Book 0: A Shona Sandison Investigation

by Philip Miller

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; International Crime & Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

This spellbinding thriller conjures a tale of forgotten crimes, the sinister rise of modern fascism in England, and the compromises and imperatives of journalism.

The second installment of the Shona Sandison Investigations is perfect for fans of Ian Rankin and Denise Mina.

Investigative journalist Shona Sandison is attending the wedding of her closest friend and former colleague, Vivienne. But the night before the wedding, Viv’s reclusive school friend, Dan, jumps from a roof to his death. Shona is the only witness to the suicide—and so the only person who saw the occult tattoos covering Dan’s body, and heard the unsettling, mystical phrases he was uttering.

Compelled to look further into the tragic incident, Shona sets off on a quest to find out why Dan killed himself and what happened to Viv’s missing brother twenty years prior. Despite knowing that investigating Viv’s family will mean she could lose her friend forever, Shona travels to a small, forgotten town in the north of England to investigate an insular group of classmates who have held a dark secret for decades.

Haunting and hypnotic, The Hollow Tree is a return to Philip Miller’s dark world of subterfuge, betrayal, and fragile justice.

Release date: April 2, 2024

Publisher: Soho Crime

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter 1

Shona Sandison was going to a wedding. The day would end in death.
     She stood on the deck of the ferry, leaning against the metal barrier between her and the tilting sea, which stretched grey as ash to a white horizon. The world seemed huge and unfathomable, and she felt small and damaged, and unsuited to what it offered, and challenged.
     She was not alone. An old colleague and friend was beside her, shouting into the implacable Scottish wind. Shona looked down at her shoes, wet on the painted metal deck. Her stick was held tight in her left hand.
     “Fact is, Shona, I think they’re just bored of democracy, these people. They don’t care for it,” Hector Stricken bellowed. “A wee touch of fascism appeals to them. Look at them, propping up this fucking government. Seems to me, some of them prefer to be collaborators, not investigators. Cheerleaders, drunk on their access to power. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
     His angry monologue had begun on the train from Glasgow to the port of Gourock. Stricken, still hanging on as an undervalued and underpaid reporter at the Edinburgh Post, had then raged at the front pages of the national newspapers at the ferry port’s newsagent. He had picked out and bought several papers, just so he could stride across the platform to a waste basket, and bin them dramatically.
     “Give it a rest,” Shona said. “Not all of them, and not all of us. Calm the fuck down.”
     Hector went on. Shona listened, or heard. She watched the neat rows of white houses on the headland drift past like a line of teeth. “They’re not interested in committees, reports, policy reviews, the granular workings of a rigorous democratic system. It bores them. That’s why there’s no council reporters anymore. No court reporters. No specialist reporters. No local government reporters.”
     “Really, Hec—you sound like my dad. The old Communist digging in his allotment. I need a coffee.”
     “Does he still have that allotment? Good on him. Yeah, the problem is, that fear, that angry nostalgia, the appeal to a mythic past, is far more attractive and easier to package than probity, reserve, compassion, moderation, compromise, subtlety,” Stricken said.
     Shona nodded slowly. Not only had she heard this before, she had thought it before. Her body rocked gently as the ferry moved, slowly and massively into the cold grey waters of the Firth of Clyde.
     “Nuance!” he yelled.
     His bellow sunk into the air and was lost.
     “Jesus Christ. Give over, man,” Shona said, as firmly as she could without shouting. “It might be rotten politics but, whether you like it or not, it’s good business. For those papers.”
     “It’s a bad business,” Hector mumbled. “It’s the ruin of democracy.”
     “Och, wheesht. I know some good reporters in those papers. And the papers you binned are at least selling—more than can be said for yours.”
     The ferry chugged into a thick mist. It was as if they had entered an erasure. The form and volume of the hills and the sea had been rubbed out by dreary light. The distant deep hulks of mountains were smudged and edgeless. The sky was as solid as the water below—grey, lightless, unmoving.
     It was cold. Winter was dying hard. It had spent its spite and drowned the land in volumes of darkness, but spring had not yet emerged. It was as if the seasons were considering whether to continue their cycle. It was as if the seasons had paused.
     “I tell you, though, it’s not going to end well,” Stricken said. “I think the whole country is fucked.”
     “Come on, Hector—wasn’t it always fucked?” Shona said, turning to him. “I seem to remember everything being fucked. All the time. It’s just sometimes the things that are fucked are hidden or ignored. Then we all find the hidden fucked things and are astonished—wow, isn’t this thing fucked too? Let’s add that fucking misery to the Fucked Pile. Which gets higher and higher, until it falls on fucking top of us, and then we are all well and truly fucked.”
     “Well, if you put it that way,” Hector said, smiling.
     “Contentment is about how much you are prepared to ignore,” she said.
     “Brief period, wasn’t there,” he said, quieter, “mebbe in the 1990s? When it seemed to me that things were on their way to being un-fucked. When we were all a wee bit younger. Then it was all fucked again. I think this state as a serious concern is over. No one reads the news. No one cares about anything—just shopping, sport, and celebrities.”
     “You’re a miserable old git, Hector,” she said. “I was wearing a school uniform in the 1990s. I don’t remember too much light and hope and joy then.”
     Her fingers were freezing. Her ears were wet with sea fog. As if pushed by an invisible hand, her walking stick fell to the deck, splashing in a small puddle on the green metal. “Fuck’s sake.”
     Stricken bent and picked it up, and handed it to her. “Anyway, enough about you, Reporter of the Year—how do I look?” he said, suddenly smiling, extending his arms. Despite his sudden humour, he looked miserable: his long nose was red, his cheeks smarting. Under his red anorak, he was wearing a new suit: dark blue, with thin white stripes, and a vivid blue, shiny tie. A white shirt dug into his pale neck. Bobbles of cold rain gathered on his plastic shoulders.
     Shona smiled. “You look like the Antichrist.”
     He shook his head, and turned, leaned against the barrier and looked out over the sea.
     “You buy that thing?” she said, pointing at his suit.
     “No, rental. From that place on George Street.”
     “I thought you’d go for a kilt,” she said.
     “I don’t like my legs,” he muttered. “I don’t want them on display. Look, Shona—how can a man wearing a suit as fine as this look like the Antichrist?”
     “You telling me Satan doesn’t wear a fucking suit?” she said. He laughed.
     Shona stared into the waves, which slapped against the sides of the boat.
     “When you’re on a ferry, do you ever look over the side and wonder what it would be like to jump?” she said. She imagined standing on the railing, her weight tipping forward, her stick spinning in the wind, her head tumbling to the sea. The sky and sea revolving about her eyes.
     “What? No, Shona. I don’t—do you?” he said.
     “No. Never,” she said. She peeked over the rail, down to the deck below. It would not be a clean fall to the water. There would be metal in the way, and breakage—rupturing, blood and splintering.
     She shivered.
     “Aye, it’s dreich,” Stricken said, noticing her quivering, raising his voice over the churning engines. The boat was rocking almost imperceptibly from side to side. Enough to unsteady them.
     “Who in the name of fuck gets married in winter?” Shona said, pulling her hat over her ears.
     “It’s spring, actually.”
     “Get fucked, it’s winter,” she said. “I hate this time of year. Everything is dead. It’s all chores, and dread. White skies and fog. Why is Viv getting married now?”
     “I dunno, Shona—because people are optimistic? It’s spring, it’s a time of renewal, of green shoots, of . . . you know what I mean. Optimism, anyway,” Stricken ventured, before blowing into his hands. His eyes were watering now, as the ferry to Dunoon picked up pace, cutting stolidly through the waves.
     Shona felt the increase of the barrelling weight of the vessel beneath her feet. The sea was opening, the firth widening between the arms of grey land. The white cloud cover gently split, and the sun emerged, glowing dully. The long low waves were now gently gilded. The metal railings glistened, the deck, the flagpoles.
     They were going to a wedding. Vivienne Banks and Wayne Provan were to be married in a country hotel near Dunoon. Viv was both a friend and former colleague of Shona, and of Hector, and of the gathered gaggles of former and current journalists who were huddled upon and below deck. Viv had been the editorial secretary of their paper, the Edinburgh Post, for many years. Wayne worked for the police. Shona had met him in a pub, many months ago. He had seemed dour, unremarkable, like an undrunk cup of cold grey tea.
     Viv, bright as a needle, was from the North of England and had a way with blunt observations and crude descriptions. She could be lawless and sardonic. She was also warm, and sometimes chaotic fun. They had spent many hours and evenings together. Shona closed her eyes.
     The tang and drift of the sea summoned memories. There had been one long, hot day in July when the streets of Edinburgh shimmered and the heather on Arthur’s Seat seemed to fume with the heat. The sky, untouched and fierce and blue. They had skived off work together and headed for the coast. They had waded, socks in hands, in the sea off the beach at Gullane, and lain together on the slowly sinking dunes, drinking from a cold long bottle and wondering how they could ever get back to the city, and if they cared. There were other memories, too. Shona shrugged them away. They were lost and gone. She wondered if Viv remembered them.
     For the wedding, Viv had asked Shona to read a poem by the nineteenth-century Scottish magician and poet Ebenezer Mount. Shona had tried to memorise it. The folded words were in her inside pocket. She hoped she could read them without stumbling.
 
      Like hands our fears do tether
      and once joined, disappear,
      like tears that run together,
      pool, and become our mirror.
 
     She thought of Viv’s dullard fiancé and wondered if poetry meant anything to him.
     “I’m not sure what she has seen in him,” Shona muttered. A stray thought rose in her mind: she wondered if really Wayne should look a little like herself. But he looked nothing like Shona.
     “Who sees what in who?” Stricken said.
     “What she sees in that guy.”
     “You mean the handsome groom? And do you see anything in anyone?” Stricken said mildly.
     “Go on then, tell me more about him,” she said. “Tell me about his hidden shallows.”
     “Yeah, I don’t know him much,” Stricken said, and shrugged. “Think he’s in the polis. Seen him a couple of times in the pub with Viv, seemed a pretty confident guy.”
     “A knob then.”
     “Why’s that?”
     “I don’t trust anyone who actually wants to wear a uniform.”
     Stricken shook his head and looked along the deck. He saw someone he knew and waved—they nodded and waved back. “There’s a lot of hacks on this wee boat.”
     “I know, just think if we hit a submarine and we go down. Consider the vast loss to Scotland,” Shona said. “To culture.”