The Stratford Hunter

Detective Inspector Catrin Sayer is in her first year leading the art investigation team within the Art and Antiques Unit of the London Metropolitan Police. Her friendship with a lawyer in Hong Kong has drawn the attention of SIS, the security service, and she is approached to assist them. As she thinks about the implications of the proposal, her team is suddenly assigned to assist Trident, the organized crime unit of the Metropolitan Police, at a crime scene investigation in East London where a valuable painting has been found.

It is a suspicious death; a young woman has fallen from the balcony of an apartment owned by a gang leader. The painting is by a Scottish artist, Leslie Hunter and has links back to a Glasgow drug gang led by a man called Dominic Connolly. Some years ago, Sayer was part of an investigation that led to Connolly and others ending up in prison. Now she is sent to Scotland to conduct interviews of the gang leader and his accountant, with instructions to ‘stir them up a bit’.

She does; and it has surprising consequences.