DEATH OF CELEBRITY

So, many people have been asking me (well three, but that's a lot for me!) what my writing style for my novels is actually like, and sometimes it's hard to explain.  Obviously there was a free sample of the first page on my blog and on the Kindle site it gives you a couple of chapters but for those people who still aren't sure here is a taste of my future writing for the above book later in the year, which I would guess as being grisly but gripping.

ENJOY!

May 1st 

10 years earlier.

  “Sounds of screams heard 14 Markham Road.  Can the nearest unit report to check it out?” buzzed the radio.  
  Kevin had drawn the short straw today and been sent to get the lunches from KFC.  There were three nearer ones to the station but the one at Wickham Walls had the best gravy and chicken of the lot AND you could give phone orders there.  It never ceased to baffle Kevin how a restaurant that was a chain with a strict recipe for all its goods could have such differences between branches.  

  His partner next to him was only six months out of training and was still a mixture of perky optimism one minute and Serpico the next.  In ten years time he wouldn’t even remember the guys name as the memory of the day was overtaken by the events about to occur.  They drove down only three roads to get to the house.  

  Kevin felt nervous before he’d even entered the house.  In future recollections he told himself he knew something was wrong, but in reality it was exactly the same kind of nerves he felt every time he heard that someone was under threat.  The door to the house was open and no sound coming from inside where only moments earlier screams had been reported.  Kevin’s stomach tightened and his left fist clenched as he rested his right on his baton.  Kevin took the lead down the path, past the garden with kid’s toys, well-played, still out.  They would not know play again.

  The first thing Kevin noticed was the blood as his eyes scanned through the hall.  The carpet was sopping.  The trail led to the stairs, where the boy was face down with no visible wounds to his back.  Kevin’s veins chilled.  He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight and time had tricked him into thinking there would be years of his life to go.  Kevin put his hand to his neck, careful not to step in his blood either through respect or to preserve the scene, he still couldn’t figure out which it was, but no pulse could be found.

  “ANYONE HERE?” Kevin shouted, his voice breaking on the H.  The silence echoed back from the empty bedrooms as upstairs gave its chilling reply.  Then from downstairs a tiny cough came from the front room.  Kevin felt his eyes go wide at the timid sound.

  “GET AN AMBULANCE HERE, NOW!” shouted Kevin to his young colleague who nodded and ran back to the car clearly relieved not to have to go into the desolate scene any further as his perkiness was forever removed.  Kevin of course never lost his, having had it taken from him years earlier.

  He pushed the door open as gently as he could, his eyes again drawn to the blood on the the carpet.  He turned his head as he entered the living room, past the television, past the fireplace and there on the sofa sat as though they were still watching TV sat, what Kevin assumed, was the boy’s parents, unmoving.  When he first saw the Dad he couldn’t tell if he’d been shot or stabbed as a single dark wound to his left eye was the only mark on him, 'cept for the trail down his front where he’d bled out.  The wife however was a different matter.  Her chest was covered in so many stab wounds that it was hard to tell she was a woman.  A huge slash across her neck being what had seemingly stopped her from assisting her son.

  Kevin turned to look at the dining room and finally found the source of the cough.  Kevin ran the short distance to a small girl rubbing her fingers against the patio windows as though trying to claw her way out.  As he turned her over he noticed she had a stab wound in her stomach matching the one on her back.  She stared straight at him, her eyes going wide in terror, her arms having barely the strength to flail him away, before she finally fixed on his face.

  “Easy, easy, I’m here to help, shh!” said Kevin as he bent down close to her.  The little girl calmed and gently placed one hand on his epaulette, before letting her final breath escape and slumping to the floor.

  “NOO!” Kevin screamed, immediately commencing CPR till the ambulance arrived.  They had to drag him away as he refused to give her up.  Still being in uniform he could have nothing to do with the investigation directly, but while he and his colleague waited for the CID to show up Kevin scoured the house for clues, anything that stood out as unusual.  The door was open but there was no sign of forced entry, meaning the family may have known their attacker, the killer upon leaving walked out of the patio doors, leaving a trail of blood and washing it in the tiny garden pool before leaving via a doorway to a back ginnel, he knew what he was doing and this seem to be very well planned.  From his own shoe size (nines) he was able to surmise that the killer wore a size ten, there was some kind of trace under the wife’s nails and she may have taken a chunk of her killer with her.  When the detectives arrived and he saw it was Tash, he just handed over his notebook and said...

  “Find him!” said Kevin.

  “I will” replied Tash.

  But they never did.

  He’d speculated with Tash endlessly over who would and could have killed an entire family.  The brutality of the attack, particularly on the wife indicated it was personal and someone really wanted to hurt them; closer examination of the family’s biology found that both the son and daughter were not related to the Dad.  Speculation that the mother was having an affair was a lead that was quickly followed and almost as immediately quashed as they discovered that the father was infertile, tough luck that but way it goes they guessed.  After that he and his wife had sought a ...contribution from a sperm bank.  The donor was anonymous.  A TV appeal for news on anyone who may have contributed to that clinic brought a few new leads but no match for the trace found at the scene.

  As the case became cold and no further similar attacks were noted it became pretty obvious that whoever had done this had disappeared into thin air.  While Kevin had progressed finally to the Detective ranks Tash became withdrawn.  Soon after he was diagnosed with the one cancer that men don’t talk about, prostate cancer, he had to retire early and thankfully, for the bureaucrats in Whitehall, didn’t last long to get much of a pension.
  Kevin never gave up on the case long after it had given up yielding any further secrets to him.  That was the way it went some times.  Over the years he'd interviewed numerous callous psychopaths who treated the police with nothing but disdain as if THEY were fine and everyone else had the problem, responding almost glibly with "No comment"as you destroyed their alibi's and placed them at the scene.  But those guys always struck again because they didn't feel anything, this guy clearly felt something, this guy clearly felt A LOT.   
  These events were the catalyst for Kevin to become the detective he was; to get the guys who shed their skin of evil at the crime scene and exited to live a shiny new life in the sun.


My earlier volume FREE AT LOST: A NOVEL is still available on Amazon.com and .co.uk for $2.99 and £2.29 respectively, enjoy.


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