title: Root Causes
author: Durham, Barry
description: An unexpected legacy enables Valerie McKellern to buy her first house: a newly built semi-detached on an estate that is still being developed in the Lancashire countryside. Unfortunately for Val, it appears to be haunted. That does not deter her best friend Leigh however for when Val asks if she would consider a house share, Leigh jumps at the chance - especially after an encounter with her pervy landlord. After contacting Ratcliffe and Kat, a pair of private detectives who specialize in 'Unusual Investigations', they manage to discover the strange type of entity involved in the haunting. However, as work continues on the rest of the estate, suddenly body parts begin to turn up in one of the newly dug foundations. Detective Chief Inspector Stone finds himself heading up a murder investigation that has its root causes in events on the North Island of New Zealand more than a hundred years ago at the turn of the twentieth century.