He’s a barbaric killer, guilty of the most terrible crime. He abducted and tortured an innocent 17-year-old girl, brutally raped her, then left her to die. Yet when James Martin O’Donnell stood trial at Exeter Crown Court he was acquitted. Twenty years later a chance DNA test makes it tragically dear that there has been a shocking miscarriage of justice. But the law of double jeopardy means O’Donnell cannot be tried again — with haunting consequences for all those determined that this evil monster will pay for his depravity. And when Joanna Bartlett, the once brilliant but now jaded crime correspondent who covered the case two decades ago, starts to delve into the past, she is forced to revisit not only the crime she can’t bear to remember but also the maverick police detective she has forced herself to forget