"Richard Cadogan is at loose ends in Oxford, very late at night indeed. Charmed by the window display of an old-fashioned toyshop, he is worried to find the door unlocked; surely the owner should be alerted to the potential for danger. At least that's what Cadogan tells himself, as he slips into the darkened store and up the narrow stairway to the apartment above. But rather than a snoring toyman, Cadogan finds a very dead old lady, the marks of murder...

"On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession-a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, silence his only protection. Meanwhile, Latif Mahmud, a distinguished young professor, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When the...

Detective Inspector Nick Dixon is sent undercover as a trainee teacher at a boarding school to find the killer of Isobel Swan, a murdered sixth form student. To find the killer, Dixon must first confront his inner demons and lay to rest the ghosts lurking in his own past.