ONE MORE SUNDAY - Book review

 

John D. MacDonald wrote many standalone novels, besides twenty-one books in his popular Travis McGee series. One More Sunday is one of them. Published in 1984, it concerns the Church of the Eternal Believer – a big fundamentalist business using all the tricks of the religious trade.

Reverend John Tinker Meadows is the leader now; Matthew, the founder, his father, is in the throes of dementia. ‘But the face was like a castle where once a king had lived, a castle proud and impregnable. But the king had left, the pennons were rags, the gates open, moat dry, and an old wind sighed through the empty corridors’ (p56). Alongside John is his sister Mary Margaret, strong and devout.

The New York Times considered the book ‘highly topical and controversial’. John’s sermon at the outset probably justifies that comment: ‘Once upon a time our nation was great. Now we sag into despair. The climate changes, the acid rains fall, the great floods and droughts impoverish millions, taking the savings of those who thought they could be provident in these times. We see all our silent factories, all the stacks without smoke, like monuments to a civilization past. Selfish owners refused to spend for modernization. Selfish unions struck for the highest wages in the world. We see rapist and murderers and armed robbers turned loose after a short exposure to that prison environment which gratifies all their hungers and teaches them new criminal arts. We see an endless tide of blacks and Hispanics entering our green land illegally, taking the bread out of the mouths of those few of us still willing to do hard manual labour’ (P11) – and so on...

Ray Owen is an investment broker taking leave from his work. He is trying to find his missing wife, Lindy, who had been writing an article on the Church of the Eternal Believer for her New York magazine Out Front.

Glinda Lopez works for the Church, using a voice synthesiser, imitating Matthew Meadows, and telephones Church members delinquent in their tithes.

Joe Deets is a computer nerd – and clever. He has programmed the computers to cream off some funds donated to the Church. He is also a sexual predator of young women. ‘There was a beast in a cage in the back of his mind, in the shadows, pacing tirelessly to and fro, showing only the glint of a savage eyeball, the shine of a predator’s fang’ (p43). He was presently indulging himself with Doreen, one of the Church’s ‘Angels’.

The Meadows family lives well, travels first class, and have their own jet planes. All thanks to the generous donations.

Within these pages you’ll find hypocrisy, greed, pathos, anger, murder, redemption and hope.

MacDonald masterfully presents a fairly large cast of characters, all individual, each with their own past and failings, their hopes and dreams.

Not much has changed in the last forty years since this was written.

NINE LIVES - Book review

 

Peter Swanson’s Nine Lives (2022) is an intriguing thriller that keeps you turning the pages.

The starting concept is not necessarily new – nine people receive a list consisting of nine names, including their own. That’s all. No explanation. 

Then Frank Hopkins, the fifth on the list is found dead, murdered. The law find the list clasped in Frank’s hand.

Only when a second person with a name on the list dies do the authorities begin to worry. And the FBI gets involved – because special agent Jessica Winslow is also on that list… 

The whole thing is cleverly done. We get to know the characters and soon realise that when the book breaks into parts – indicated by the complete list – the chapter before that will mean the demise of someone else on that list.

Not all the people on the list are pleasant, though none seem to deserve death. Certainly, it must have been hard for the author to kill off a few of the characters since they were so likeable! 

Swanson keeps the suspense going virtually to the end.

Yes, the story is inspired by Agatha Christie’s (renamed) And Then There Were None (1939). Indeed, one character does allude to this book. Other books and authors are mentioned as well. 

An enjoyable ‘whodunit’ with a dark side.

Note: Book titles are not copyright and there are a good number with this title. My comments on a non-fiction book with this title can be found at

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-writers-research-cat-burglar.html

Jack Higgins - Review of two early thrillers

 

HELL IS TOO CROWDED

This is an early Jack Higgins novel, originally published under his real name Harry Patterson in 1962, reprinted by Fawcett in 1976 and reissued here in 1977 with the name-change and the strap-line ‘by the author of The Eagle Has Landed’.

It’s a pot-boiler and reveals that Higgins was learning his trade.

Matt Brady was inebriated when he met the woman; he was ‘caught between the shadow lines of sleep and waking when strange things fill the mind’ (p5). One wonders if Higgins was alluding to the Joseph Conrad book The Shadow Line (1917) which depicts the threshold of a young man entering adulthood at sea. The woman was wearing a trench-coat and a scarf ‘peasant-fashion’.

‘A ship moved down the Pool of London sounding its foghorn like the last of the dinosaurs lumbering aimlessly through a primeval swamp, alone in a world that was already alien.’ (p5) Here, Higgins might be referencing Ray Bradbury’s classic short story ‘The Foghorn’ (1951).

Once in the woman’s apartment, he accepts a drink and abruptly passes out. When he comes to, the police are in the room and the woman is dead – her face brutally damaged… Brady is sent to prison for life. He must escape, however, to prove his innocence, which he does manage with some inside help. The trail leads him to several individuals, one of whom is Das who is a proud owner of a Ming vase among other items. In his desperation to get answers, Brady threatens to destroy the valuable vase. (This will be echoed in The Dark Side of the Island when the doctor Van Horn is threatened by the Nazi’s in a similar way).

Brady is befriended by Anne, a young woman, the daughter of a friend who has died. She believes in his innocence. The story behind the woman he was accused of murdering is revealed about three-quarters through the book; after which it’s a case of tracking down the real murderer.

There are several deaths before the denouement is reached.

The book was originally published in the US, I assume, since there were references to ‘color’, ‘hood’ of a car instead of ‘bonnet’, and ‘sidewalk’. Higgins may have been attempting an American point-of-view since Brady was from the States; however, there were other instances of the spelling ‘colour’. These were the days when publishers actually employed people to change the trans-Atlantic vocabulary as appropriate; now, they tend not to bother. None of this spoils the story-telling, which is page-turning.

 

THE DARK SIDE OF THE ISLAND

This is another early Jack Higgins novel, originally published under his real name Harry Patterson in 1963 and reissued here in 1989.

It’s a pot-boiler and reveals he was still learning his trade.

Seventeen years after fighting in the Second World War Hugh Lomax returns to the Greek island of Kyros. The last time he was here he’d been on a secret mission to destroy a vital Nazi radio station. Betrayal and capture followed and he barely escaped with his life. Now, he was back to find out the truth.

The Greek islanders haven’t forgotten him and indeed blame him for talking under Nazi interrogation and costing many innocent lives…

The book is split into three parts: 1) Lomax’s return and being confronted by antagonistic islanders; 2) Flashback to the actual landing on the island and the sabotage and escape and capture; 3) Lomax’s life threatened by the islanders while he seeks the truth.

There’s Katina, a local girl, who wears a scarf ‘peasant-fashion’. She’d been a teenager when they’d met in the war; now she was a mature woman who believes in Lomax’s innocence. Resident ex-pat Van Horn is a successful author and doctor; he’d been useful doctoring during the war. Van Horn was also an archaeologist and had a valuable collection, some of which was broken by the Nazi Steiner. Then there are the few Greek men who survived the Nazi depredations: Alexias, Dimitri, Nikoli, among a few others – any one of whom might have been the traitor…

The story is fast-paced, workmanlike, but the denouement is no great surprise.

Definitely, one for the Jack Higgins completists.

Editorial comments:

Some of Jack Higgins’s favourite words and phrases that are often repeated: ‘somehow’, ‘somewhere’, ‘moment’, ‘a frown on his face’. And: ‘heavy’ – ‘He pushed open the heavy glass door, crossed the heavy carpet soundlessly…’ (TDSOTI, p112).

These were early novels and his apprenticeship eventually paid off with his thirty-sixth novel, The Eagle Has Landed in 1975. The lesson here is blatantly clear: keep writing and improving.

Saturday Story - 'An Interrupted Journey'

Wikipedia commons

 

 

AN INTERRUPTED JOURNEY

 

Nik Morton

 

She wore a pale blue suit whose pleated skirt revealed long shapely legs. She sat in the corner of the train’s compartment, motionless save for the incessant rocking of the speeding night express. Dusk settled in over the fleeting countryside but neither occupant noticed. The overhead dim light reflected in the metal of the automatic pistol in her gloved right hand.

            She said, ‘I know all about you. I’m going to kill you.’

            Daniel Prestwick nervously brushed back his wavy brown hair. All about me? What was she talking about? His mouth was dry, his palms wet, and he was incapable of saying anything. All he could do was stare at her angry blue eyes and that gun!

            It must be Rag Week or something? She can’t be serious!

            She fired directly into his chest.

*

Zora replaced her automatic pistol in its holster beneath her jacket. As she knelt by the prone figure she heard shouting from further up the corridor. The racket of the train had not altogether drowned the pistol-shot.

            She stopped her professional search of the man’s body, slid open the compartment door and peered intently along the swaying corridor.

            Bermanos and Lyudin would be waiting a little further up the railway track.

            The carriage’s other occupants hammered on doors, enquiring about the sound of a shot, heading in her direction.

            She pulled the emergency handle.

            The small group of disturbed sleepers were bundled into one another as the train braked.

            Zora swung open the carriage door and leapt out into the pitch night, the cries of the train’s passengers drifting away.

            Her feet hit soft turf and she rolled over – as she’d been trained with paratroops – rolling down the damp grassy slope.

*

A torch beam joined in the chaos and probed a wide arc from the diesel engine to encompass the coarse grass of a field across which ran a dark figure that appeared to be female.

            Then, as the engine driver and guard descended the slippery slope in pursuit, they heard a massive chomping sound.

            They hesitated, suddenly afraid.

            The guard’s torch beam illuminated a small helicopter.

*

Breathless now, Zora loped beneath the whirring rotor-blades. Sliding into the cockpit, she looked back at the torch beam. She gave co-pilot Bermanos a sidelong glance and clicked her fingers.

            He understood the simple gesture and grabbed a bazooka-like weapon alongside his seat and placed it in Zora’s waiting hand.

            She rested the weapon on her shoulder, aimed at the torch beam’s source. The thing jarred her shoulder and she heard the whooshing sound of the ejected missile. Minor singeing of the cockpit’s upholstery resulted, burnt by the back-blast.

            The two dismayed railmen backed away as they noticed the cockpit light up. They ducked instinctively and lay very still on the damp grass. Acrid smoke filled their nostrils and mouths and made them cough and retch – smoke temporarily paralysing the nervous system.

            Lyudin gently levered on the joystick and the helicopter climbed gradually into the night.

*

The doorway of the compartment was crammed with a knot of onlookers. The speculative mumbling increased as a tall brown-haired man waded through the corridor of sensation-seekers.

            Paunches and breasts, concealed by gaudy and colourful night-attire, gave way. His unwavering deliberation in the way he headed for the compartment gave the onlookers the impression that he was some kind of authority – a policeman, perhaps?

            When the lean newcomer reached the doorway he was confronted by a corpulent hirsute fellow in blue-striped pyjamas who said, grumpily, as he scratched the hairs covering his belly, ‘And what, sir, gives you the privilege to push your way to the fore?’ He jutted out his lower lip.

            ‘Are you a doctor?’ the man asked, ignoring the animosity.

            ‘Yes, I am.’

            ‘Good.’ The tall man’s blue eyes sparkled as they met the doctor’s. He turned, said to the attentive crowd, ‘Everything is under control. Please return to your compartments. There’s been a slight accident, that’s all.’ He gently pressed the foremost spectator’s chest and the crowd receded into the corridor, a little indignant. ‘The train will be late.’ He closed the compartment door and rolled down the blind.

            ‘Gun-shot to the heart,’ said the doctor. ‘Mr, er –?’

            ‘Strong. Adam Strong, doctor.’ Strong began examining the contents of the dead man’s pockets. As he scanned the wallet he wondered about the similarity between the deceased and himself – in looks, build and eye-colour... And Strong’s line of work forced upon him the more than coincidental contingencies of his resembling a murdered man: he was employed in the ostensible firm of International Enterprises, a branch of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

            ‘I’m Dr Stafford Ord,’ said the doctor, intruding on Strong’s thoughts.

            ‘I’m a detective sergeant on leave,’ Strong lied. ‘Such a violent death necessitates an on-the-spot–’

            Then the bazooka blast mutely reached them.

            The sound animated Strong immediately. He raised himself from his haunches and leapt out the compartment door.

            Landing on the cinder track, he sank to one knee, picking out the loud sound of a helicopter from the other side of the carriage.

            Gingerly, his bare feet impregnated by cinders and chippings, he ducked beneath the train’s undercarriage.

            Diesel fumes and oil and the smell of metal filled his nostrils as he reached inside his housecoat. Still under the motionless carriage, he withdrew an ArmaLite rifle from its sheath strapped to his waist. Swiftly his deft fingers removed the barrel lock and ammunition from the fibreglass stock, then assembled the lightweight eight-shot automatic.

            Strong emerged and slid down the grassy slope, jumped the fence. But his housecoat snagged on barbed wire so he discarded it and then ran towards the diminishing sound of the helicopter.

            Through the night-sight he watched the aircraft, about twenty feet above him and still climbing.

            His first shot pierced the cockpit and splintered the glass.

            Shocked, Bermanos screamed and fell into the rear of the cockpit.

            Zora growled, ‘Quick – NG9!’ She was handed the bazooka and a large capsule in its mauve housing; mauve signified it comprised a chemical nerve-agent. A second bullet shattered some instrumentation: the altimeter read thirty feet.

            The blast from the bazooka thrust out an orange-tinted glow and the capsule rushed down at Strong.

*

Diving to one side, Strong rolled over and over, away from the dangerous cloudburst.

            His limbs were shaking uncontrollably as he reached the fence: motor nerves losing control.

            He shakily picked up his housecoat, placed it on the barbed wire and clumsily clambered over using his arm on the material-covered wire for support. He thumped drunkenly onto the grassy slope.

            Vision blurred. Hands felt leaden. Couldn’t sense the damp grass: sensory nerves affected already...

            As he crawled under the carriage, he could smell and feel nothing. Everything was grotesquely distorted.

            Mustering all his latent strength, Strong pulled himself up to the doorway of the dead man’s compartment, croaked, ‘Doctor Ord...!’

            The rhesus face of the medical man appeared unreal.

            ‘Compart - ment - four - on bed - jacket - quick - b-b-bring it!’

            Doctor Ord bent down to raise Strong into the carriage but the agent weakly waved refusal. ‘Please - compart - ment - four...’

            As the doctor rushed away Strong dimly heard the voices of disturbed travellers descending to the track, echoes of frustration and indignation: the usual commuter complaints, he thought absurdly...

            It was becoming impossible for Strong to keep his unseeing eyes open. It seemed as if a mountain had erupted and cast its detritus out and over his world, buried him alive, the choking, tasteless dust – the nerve-gas – sending its biochemical message of death to his brain.

            Dr Ord hurried into the compartment carrying Strong’s jacket over his arm.

            Somehow, Strong registered the doctor’s presence. ‘Ball-point pen – atropine inside!’

            Ord obediently removed the pen and unscrewed its case to discover a miniature liquid-filled hypodermic syringe. He was suddenly afraid of what this man was, this man who possessed secret nerve gas antidotes and God knows what else.

            He ripped open Strong’s pyjama jacket and noticed the rifle holster round the man’s waist, soaked in a thin film of sweat, as was Strong’s entire body. He professionally punctured the skin and injected the atropine.

*

‘You killed the wrong man,’ said the bald cadaverous Onetti. ‘My sources say Adam Strong survived and is recuperating.’

            Unflinchingly, Zora replied, ‘I followed instructions. He was supposed to be in that compartment.’

            Onetti sighed. That was the trouble with brainwashing people to be killers. They never used any initiative! ‘Never mind, my dear,’ he said. ‘It was just bad luck there happened to be someone closely resembling Strong.’ He shrugged, the wasting of an innocent life forgotten. ‘Better luck next time, eh?’

 

A Network South-East spokesperson regretted the delay of last night's Inter-City express from Kings Cross London to Newcastle and said that it was due to a foiled terrorist attempt to blow up the line outside Thirsk. (Reuters)

 ***

 

Previously published in The New Coastal Press, 2010.

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014.

Note: The character Adam Strong featured in my first ever novel way back in 1964, unpublished. He worked for an adjunct of MI6, International Enterprises, which features in the first Tana Standish psychic spy novel, The Prague Papers, now an e-book. Some ideas are so tenacious, they survive…

 

Purchase from Amazon UK here

Purchase from Amazon COM here

 

Saturday Story - 'The Newly Weds' - part 1 of 2

Wikipedia commons

 

 

THE NEWLY WEDS 

Nik Morton

 

Part 1 of 2

 

Barry Paice hammered a piton into Crag Lamore’s volcanic overhang and it echoed down the dusk-filled valley. Here, the wall veered sharply, protruding out into the Scottish winds again. He unslung the hundred-foot nylon rope and banged a karabiner into the outcrop and fed the rope sling through its spring-loaded gate, testing it.

            He looked down. ‘Sadie!’ he bawled, lank black hair blowing into his screwed up eyes.  ‘It’ll soon be dark, we’ll bivouac above this buttress!’

            His wife waved acknowledgement.

            Once on the shelf, he made fast, lowering the rope sling. Gingerly, she clambered after him. He was really proud of her: she’d done very well. This wasn’t his ideal choice for a honeymoon activity, but she’d insisted that she wanted to learn alongside him. ‘Learn everything about you, darling,’ she’d whispered.

            Now, as she breathlessly joined him, he kissed her flushed cheek and stroked the long glistening blonde ponytail down her back. Her sparkling hazel eyes widened, alight with her achievement.

            Ahead on the scree slope was a tent. A man and a woman stood outside it.

            Abruptly, Sadie gasped. ‘My God, that’s Jasper!’

            ‘Your ex husband?’ Barry said.

            She nodded.

            ‘That’s a damned big coincidence.’

‘I know. What do we say?’

            He shrugged. ‘Just be civil.’ He chuckled. ‘Maybe that’s his new wife.’

            ‘Maybe,’ she said and they walked to meet the pair.

            Barry said, ‘You know Sadie, my wife, I believe.’

            ‘Yes,’ Jasper grunted into his grey-flecked beard. Weathered face crinkling lopsidedly, he embraced the auburn-haired young woman beside him. ‘This is Lynne, my girlfriend.’

Lynne was slim, almost petite, her brown eyes strangely withdrawn, evasive.

‘Bygones be bygones, Sadie?’ Jasper said, extending a hand.

Sadie nodded. ‘Very well. Friends, Jass.’ They shook.

Jasper Balfour was quite a character, jovial and knowledgeable and, surprisingly, the shared supper went down well.

Night fell. The full moon glowed. ‘Barry, old son,’ barked Jasper, beard bristling, ‘how about us climbing the peak tomorrow together, eh?’

Barry glanced at Sadie and she smiled vaguely and nodded. ‘All right,’ he said.

Some time later, Jasper rose. ‘Sadie, do you fancy a chat? We’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do, eh?’

‘Is that okay, Barry?’ she asked.

‘Of course, go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’m going to turn in anyway, I’m knackered.’

‘Me too,’ Lynne said.

Later, Sadie woke Barry as she slid into the sleeping bag beside him. She felt warm.

‘Talk about much?’ he murmured.

‘Oh, just what we’ve been doing since the divorce, that’s all.’

‘Not comparing notes, I hope?’

Her body stiffened for a second against his then relaxed. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said in a sultry tone. ‘And you won hands down,’ she said, meeting the action to the words.

‘Hm, I like that,’ he whispered and their lips met in the darkness.

Early next morning the foursome set out after breakfast and crossed a grey defile without too much trouble.

While waiting for Sadie, Barry noticed that Lynne was finding handholds with ease. She was above, in the lead on the vertical rock face. Jasper was traversing virtually at her feet.

Fumbling for a hold, Jasper’s hand knocked Lynne’s foot from its crevice.

Barry gasped. Lynne’s yell of alarm echoed. Sparks flew from her boots and metal implements as the gneiss screeched under her. Amazingly, she fell without dislodging Jasper.

With measured haste, Barry belayed the rope round his waist and a needle of rock by the ledge mere seconds before Lynne slithered screaming into his arms. She hit him with such force that he stumbled backwards, her bloody hands and torn cheek pressed against his face. His hands clamped onto her and the nylon rope tautened and held. Near the edge, he sank to his knees with her in his arms.

‘Is she all right?’ Jasper called.

‘I think so!’ Barry replied. Lynne’s ripped jacket spewed white material as he quickly unfastened it to assess her injuries.

Her eyes were wide open, staring. Cradling her skinned palms against her chest, she moaned. Auburn hair fell in disarray.

Barry unstrapped his pack, took out a flask and gave her a swig of brandy.

She gulped it gratefully. ‘I – I think my arm’s broken,’ she whispered.

Tenderly, Barry checked. ‘No, it’s sprained – and your cuts are superficial. You were lucky.’ He quickly improvised a sling for her left arm. ‘Everything’s all right.’

Small dribbles of blood streamed over her scratched cheek. Even though she was now safe, her eyes held alarm, not pain. She glanced fearfully at Jasper who was slowly descending towards them. Then Lynne’s eyes darted at Sadie who hurriedly scrambled up. She whispered, ‘Everything’s not all right.’

Dabbing her torn palms with a lint pad, he eyed her sceptically.

‘Believe me,’ she pleaded, clasping his anorak. ‘Jasper meant to kill me up there.’

He shook his head.

‘Honestly,’ she said, bravely regaining her feet. ‘They want us both dead.’

 

To be continued next week!

 

Previously published in 2 parts in TV Choice, 2010.

 

Copyright Nik Morton, 2014

If you liked this story, you might like my collection of crime tales, Spanish Eye, published by Crooked Cat, which features 22 cases from Leon Cazador, private eye, ‘in his own words’.  He is also featured in the story ‘Processionary Penitents’ in the Crooked Cat Collection of twenty tales, Crooked Cats’ Tales.

 
Spanish Eye, released by Crooked Cat Publishing is available as a paperback and as an e-book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton/dp/1909841315/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1399383023&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton/dp/1909841315/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1399382967&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00GXK5C6S/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399383023&sr=1-4&keywords=nik+morton

http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00GXK5C6S/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399382967&sr=1-5&keywords=nik+morton

Writing - Shadows over Lornwater-02

SHADOWS OVER LORNWATER

 

Morton Faulkner

 

continued from yesterday (where you can also find a short glossary)...

II

 

Their life is sucked from your bone.

But not only in obscure curtained night.

No, they draw strength from any light.

Barely the suggestion of a glimmer will do.

 

Of all, children understand them alone,

They know that the Unreal in Darkness breeds,

And their dread sustains all gloomy needs.

Oh, and children’s tears enrich them, true.

- A Life of Their Own, from The Collected Works of Nasalmn Feider (1216-1257)

 

***

First Durin of Juvous

Shadows danced in the room, a faint breeze from the open door wafting the flames of the shagunblend torches, casting stripes of darkness over the supine naked woman’s corpse. Welde Dep stroked his black beard and cursed his bad luck as well as the gods. He removed his watchman’s bronze helm and placed it on the wine-stained sideboard. Those same shadows flickered over the helm’s vigilant eye, giving the absurd impression that it blinked. Kneeling beside the dead woman’s head, he glanced at the two attending watchmen who hovered near the doorway of the House of Velvet. “Make sure nobody enters until I have completed my examination.”

            “Yes, sir,” said Banstrike, the more reliable of the pair. Cursh appeared disconcerted, which was not surprising, considering the amount of blood on the floor and walls. Dep suspected that Cursh didn’t have the stomach for the job; he bore watching. Watch the watchmen. As ever. The two men hurriedly slipped under the bead curtain and out the door.

            The corpse was no longer recognisable. Her face had been expertly sliced off, baring bone. That accounted for the mess of blood. He shuddered and wondered if the mutilation had been done while the victim was alive. As Lornwater’s chief special investigations watchman for eleven years, he’d seen all manner of sights and dealt with man’s depravity, the cruelty meted out to men and women alike by disturbed individuals forsaken by the gods. Yet even now he was not quite inured to the grisly nature of his calling. He still felt empathy for the victims.

            Stripping the skin from a person’s face was a message. Usually, the messenger was an assassin. This particular message meant that the victim would be consigned to forever roam Below and never attain eternal rest with the Overlord. That raised at least two questions: who was the assassin, and who hired him? Yet more questions lingered, however. This disfigurement was slightly different: the woman’s right eye had been cut out and placed in her left palm, and her nose was missing. Absently, he fingered the gristle that was all that remained of his right ear and let out a throaty mew of sympathy.

            The dead woman’s body was twisted, as if she had fallen abruptly, her right arm trapped under her. Gripping her cold shoulder, Dep eased up the corpse and released the arm.

            The glint of a gild ring on her finger immediately caught his attention. Most odd. There were not many female assassins registered in Lornwater. And what was a member of the assassin’s gild doing here; and why was she killed? Was it a failed assassination attempt?

            Clutched in the woman’s right palm was the missing grisly nose. The placement of the eyes and nose signified something esoteric, he felt sure. He must solicit advice from someone adept at dealing with the Darkness; his own dealings were concerned with ranmeron magic, involving personal power, and this was beyond his knowledge. He sighed. He had no choice but to approach Nostor Vata, the king’s witch.

            Dep stood and studied the room.

            This was a place of leisure and pleasure. He expected to see scantily-clad nubile women, fruit of the gods and wine, plenty of wine. A goblet lay on the floor, its red liquid spilt, near the sideboard. No bottles, no more goblets. Wine mixed with blood. He noticed his own bloody footprints – and those of Banstrike and Cursh – but there were no others. Most odd, indeed.

            Business-like, he fished out a small black leather pouch and bagged the eye and nose. Then he removed a thin sliver of coloured paper and dabbed its edge into the spilt wine; the colour changed, but not red, rather blue. Poison, then. That was the female assassin’s method, though it clearly went awry and cost her life.

***

 

“I find it hard to believe that you’ve developed a sudden case of memory loss,” Watchman Dep said, levelling his dark brown eyes on the proprietor of the House of Velvet, Ska-ama. The office was small, two walls filled with shelving. Only high narrow windows admitted daylight. Shadows abounded wherever Dep looked.

            “I’m trying to remember, Watchman.” He leant on his desk top, screwed-up his features. “But… it is the shock. Who was she?”

            “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

            Ska-ama shook his balding head and his jowls wobbled. “I didn’t recognise her. How could I, with… with…”

            “What about her other features? They weren’t defiled by her killer.”

            Ska-ama nodded hesitantly. “She – a terrible waste, she had a good body… but nothing that would identify her for me.”

            “Do you know who was visiting your establishment earlier today?”

            “No, I can’t keep account of…”

            “The law says you should.” Dep sighed. “I will have to close you down, since you’re incapable of abiding by the law.”

            “But – some very important people visit here. They don’t want their names associated with… with my house.”

            “I’ll spare their reputations and blushes, providing you give me the information I require.”

            Reluctantly, Ska-ama got up, moved sluggishly to a shelf and removed a book. “My receptionist records every person who enters and when they leave.”

            “Really?”

            “Yes.”

            “So, since the woman’s body was found the place has emptied. And she managed to make a note of everyone leaving?”

            “I imagine so. It’s her job.”

            Dep took the book, leafed through its pages, found the most recent entries. “Seemingly not. A good half-dozen visitors are not logged out. Yet they certainly are not here now.”

            “An oversight. My receptionists are usually very conscientious.”

            “I’m sure they are. And doubtless being scared of vicious murderers, they abandoned their post.” He wasn’t going to get anything out of Ska-ama. “I need to interview your… staff.”

            “I’ll arrange it at once. But please don’t keep them too long. They have a job, you know. Time is money.”

            “Since you said ‘please’, I’ll do my best.”

            “Thank you, Watchman.” Irony was lost on him, clearly.

            Dep sent his two men away to check on the whereabouts of today’s visitors listed in the receptionist’s book. In the meantime, he spent the next two orms interviewing the men and women “entertainers” who “catered for all tastes”. Every one of them vowed that none of their company was missing. The dead woman was a stranger to them. This suggested that she had entered this place without being noticed, which wouldn’t be difficult for an adept assassin, and was here on a killing contract.

***

to be continued... in later blog pages !