[Nathan Hawk Mystery 03] • Scattered Remains

Hawk is with his farmer friend, Martin Falconer, one night when the latter finds a titanium plate, just four centimetres long, one centimetre wide. The kind used to heal broken bones. Martin asks Hawk to find the body it must once have been attached to. Against his better judgement, Hawk agrees.

His charming, egotistical son Jaikie comes to England for the London premiere of a Hollywood film he’s starring in. Although on a publicity junket, Jaikie’s far more interested in the body which he and Martin Falconer believe must have been dumped in Martin’s Long Field.

Hawk's new girlfriend, Dr Laura Peterson, discovers rom engraving on the side of it, that the plate was made for The Chiltern Clinic. She phones them and is told that it was made for a young man called Patrick Scott, who broke a metatarsal in a ski-ing accident. A day later she discovers that all trace of Patrick Scott has been wiped from the NHS computer. Hawk has to concede that it’s probably because she’s asked questions about Patrick Scott.

But who wants the world to believe that Patrick Scott never existed? And did they murder him to achieve it?