‘The original crossroads used to run by here, ’ Sam told Rafferty. ‘Legend has it that this was the old Hanging Tree.’

When Inspector Rafferty first hears the report that a bound and hooded body has been seen hanging from a tree in Dedman Wood, he dismisses it as a schoolboy hoax, especially when police at the scene find nothing out of the ordinary.

But his anxiety rises sharply when the witness turns out to be a respectable local magistrate, who identifies the corpse as Maurice Smith, a man once accused of four child rapes. Thrown out on a legal technicality, Smith’s case had become a cause celebre which had generated much ill-feeling within the community.

Then the body turns up again in the woods. Could there be a self-appointed executioner at work, meting out his own form of justice on the legendary Hanging Tree?