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  BLAST

  David Hodges

  © David Hodges 2017

  David Hodges has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.

  For more information about Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher, please visit www.endeavourpress.com.

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  This book is dedicated to my wife, Elizabeth, for all her love, patience and support over so many wonderful years and to my late mother and father, whose faith in me to one day achieve my ambition as a writer remained steadfast throughout their lifetime and whose tragic passing has left a hole in my life which will never be filled.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BEFORE THE FACT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  AFTER THE FACT

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although the action of the novel involves investigations by the Metropolitan Police and the Devon & Cornwall Police, these investigations, together with the story itself and all the characters in it, are entirely fictitious and drawn entirely from my own imagination. Similarly, while the story takes place in actual areas of the UK, The New Light Modelling Agency and specific premises, like The Philanderer’s Night Club, The Blue Ketch Inn, The Beach House and The Old Customs House, are also products of my imagination and any connection between them and existing businesses or properties is entirely coincidental. I would also point out that this novel is not a ‘police procedural’, but a crime thriller. Consequently, to meet the requirements of the plot, I have adopted a degree of poetic licence in relation to the police structure and some of the operational procedures followed by both forces and I hope that these departures from fact will not spoil the reading enjoyment of serving or retired police officers, for whom I have the utmost respect.

  David Hodges

  BEFORE THE FACT

  Shadows in the empty moonlit street. Curling around the vandalised lamp-standards. Masking the graffiti daubing the walls of the tenements and boarded-up derelicts. Discarded sweet wrappers and cigarette packets whirling in the low wind caressing the broken paving stones. Tin cans clattering along gutters, which had not felt the bristles of a council cleaning lorry’s brushes since marauding foxes, raiding the over-full dustbins, had abandoned them after savouring their putrid contents. Decay and despair inhabited this North London street, infecting the very senses and settling on the shoulders of the wayfarer like a clammy dead hand.

  At first sight, the hooded figure furtively hugging the shadows might have appeared to personify that decay – to be a product of the lost, no-hope community, which had long since turned in on itself and self-destructed. Yet appearances can be deceptive and there was something very different about this particular hoodie.

  Missing was the cocky, bouncing slouch of the arrogant street thug, with his over-sized jeans and head and shoulders thrust forward like the aggressive Neanderthal he sought to emulate. In its place was a noticeable hesitancy – a nervousness, which would have been totally alien to the sort of vicious waste-of-a-skin that prowled many of the Met’s so-called sink estates. Nevertheless, the body language of the lone walker communicated a degree of tension that would have aroused just as much suspicion in the mind of a passing police patrol. The figure constantly cast uneasy penetrating glances at the run-down buildings opposite and over one shoulder into the moon-splashed gloom behind, as if nursing a fear of being followed or the subject of surveillance, one hand snatching at the hood of the coat and tugging it forward as the wind did its level best to peel it back. It was clear that this was not some mindless tearaway who had taken to the streets, looking for any windows to smash or bus shelters to wreck. It was someone with a definite sense of purpose. Someone who had intended to be in this particular street at this particular time.

  It became evident that they also had a specific address in mind when the figure finally stopped outside a derelict terraced house, flanked by other abandoned properties with boarded-up doors and windows. A dim light filtered into the street from a curtained upstairs room and the front door stood ajar – as it had on the visitor’s previous visit a few weeks before.

  The door opened easily to the touch and the next instant the beam of the torch held in one gloved hand was probing the dark hallway beyond. Nothing stirred. The house seemed to be dead. Glancing quickly up and down the street, the hoodie stepped over the threshold and after further hesitation, turned immediately left to climb the staircase to the upper floor, thick crepe-soled shoes making hardly any sound despite the bareness of the wooden treads.

  A bar of light showed beneath a closed door on the landing and a chair creaked several times behind it, as if the occupant of the room was trying to ease into a more comfortable position. The need to knock turned out to be unnecessary. A heavily-accented male voice called out suddenly from inside, indicating that the visitor’s arrival had already been detected: ‘Entrez, my friend.’

  Pushing the door wide, the hoodie stood for a moment in the opening, surveying the room through narrowed eyes.

  A thin, bearded man, dressed in jeans and a sweater, sat at a rickety table illuminated by a portable battery-operated lamp, a haversack on the floor beside him. Save for the table and the chair, the room was unfurnished. The man treated his visitor to a brief smile that failed to reach his eyes. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he said. ‘I thought you might not come back after our first meeting.’

  The hoodie considered the statement, but ignored it and said softly, ‘You have the package?’

  The other nodded and bending down, unzipped the haversack before carefully lifting out a cardboard box and placing it on the table in the pool of light cast by the lamp. ‘I always deliver,’ he replied, his guttural East European accent even more pronounced. ‘You have the rest of my money?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The hoodie undid the coat and unclipped a wide body-belt before stepping forward a few paces to drop it on to the table. He stared at the wrapping on the box and commented cynically, ‘Chocolates?’

  The bearded man chuckled, stacking the wads of notes from the pockets of the belt on the table in front of him. ‘Open it and see,’ he invited. ‘What I have for you is sweeter than a woman’s smile.’

  The hoodie carefully lifted the lid off and stared at the tray of dark chocolates. He nodded slowly. ‘And exactly how sweet would that be?’

  Another chuckle and the other reached across to lift the tray out.

  ‘Just so,’ he said. ‘Complete with all the instructions.’

  The hoodie stared at the contents and emitted a hard laugh. ‘Very nice too. You have done well.’

  An indifferent shrug as tobacco-stained fingers began counting the money ‘It’s what I do, what I’ve always done – since the old days.’

  ‘Pity you won’t be doing it anymore then,’ his visitor said.

  Pulling a pistol from a side pocket, the hoodie shot him once between the eyes. Then, carefully slipping the chocolate box into a canvas bag produced from another pocket, the cold-blooded assassin scooped up the money and the body-belt and disappeared into the night without a backwar
d glance.

  CHAPTER 1

  It had come at seven in the evening. Unheralded. Unexpected. A thunderous, rendering blast of destructive energy, which knew no ally or foe, but mercifully anaesthetised the young woman’s brain in an instant, blotting out the screams, the mutilation and the pain.

  The police said afterwards that some new terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the bomb, which had been planted at the select Philanderer’s Night Club in London’s Mayfair. ‘Christians Against Sexual Exploitation’ or something, they’d said. But she didn’t really care. All she knew was that the blast had scarred her body beyond repair.

  The surgeons had done their best, of course, but the wounds had not been suitable for plastic surgery. As a result, the tracer-like scars were still visible and lying naked on the hot sand of the secluded little Cornish cove, making the most of the Indian summer and roasting in the unexpected early autumn sun, she knew that even a good tan could never conceal the hideous marks, no matter how much she tried to delude herself. Maybe it would have been better if she had actually died.

  To think that, until the moment of the blast at the celebrity fashion show, she had been a successful glamour model. A 24-year-old raven-haired beauty, with large almond-shaped eyes the colour of a stunning hypnotic green and a flawless skin, which had once tanned a rich nut-brown at the merest hint of sun. She had been tipped as one of the prime contenders for a contract with a major fashion house and their scouts had been given VIP seats at the show so they could make their final selection. The club’s spot-lit catwalk could have taken her to the top of her profession, with the prospect of a fortune in earnings from film and glossy magazine advertising at the end of it.

  She would have been the envy of every woman, the desire of every man. Mixing in the most exclusive social circles and enjoying the company of a succession of wealthy admirers, with their Porsches and ocean-going yachts. Now? Now she was just another ex-model, with nothing to show for five years of spitting, clawing graft, except an album of photographs and a future already heading deep into oblivion. As for the men in her life, like her most recent ex, Greg Norman, they had melted away faster than ice-cream when it hits the hot sand.

  She turned over on to her back and applied more sun-tan lotion to the front of her body, the burning orb in the fierce blue sky just a fuzzy white spot through the lenses of her sunglasses. Staring down at herself, she grimaced. The shape hadn’t changed. The long legs, flat stomach and pert breasts were just the same. But the disfiguring scars from the flying glass and other debris were clearly visible. In fact, her tan actually seemed to have accentuated them and she knew one side of her face and under her chin were just as badly marked.

  She remembered the day the boss of the New Light Modelling Agency, fat Freddie Baxter, had paid her off, patting her arm with one podgy bejewelled hand, which was better manicured than her own. ‘Don’t worry, sweetness,’ he had consoled with an oily, insincere smile. ‘You’ll be back just as soon as those scars have healed. Don’t forget, Lynn Giles is already a household name. There’ll always be a job for you in this business.’

  ‘’Course there will,’ Felicity Dubois, her arch-rival, had purred from the usual position she occupied draped across the sofa in Freddie’s plush office. ‘You can always model for the winter catalogues, dahling. You know, hats, overcoats, that sort of thing. Maybe wear one of those little black veils too. Very chic.’

  ‘Bitch!’ Lynn muttered, her resentment burning like acid through her veins at the thought of how her disfiguring scars had ruined everything. Feeling for her shoe, she used the heel to savagely crush an over-inquisitive wasp as it settled innocently on the rock beside her, pulverising it with blow after blow. Damn Felicity! Damn the agency! Damn the whole rotten world!

  Then abruptly the all-consuming fit of rage subsided, her eyes misting over behind the designer sunglasses as she fell back on to the sand. Brave words, she mused bitterly, but what the hell was she going to do with her life now? She was single and had known nothing but modelling since fat Freddie had spotted her working as a pole-dancer in a London bar. So she had no other job experience and very few skills that could be transferred to any of the more up-market mainstream – and therefore highly paid – careers, which might have proved attractive to her. Okay, so the financial settlement Freddie had been forced to agree to when he had terminated her contract, coupled with the big insurance pay-out she had received, guaranteed her financial security for the foreseeable future. But even that wouldn’t last forever and as an ambitious Type A achiever, she couldn’t see herself remaining in her beach-side bungalow, hiding behind the name Mary Tresco for longer than a few more weeks anyway.

  That said, the place itself had certainly been a boon. Renting out her luxury flat in London’s Mayfair and burying herself in this isolated spot by the sea had enabled her to escape the media feeding frenzy, which had inevitably followed the bomb outrage. The tabloid press had tried every trick in the book to get some revealing pictures of her scarred body. At least here, living under her assumed name, she was safe from their long lenses and with her hair now cut short and treated to a blonde dye, it was unlikely anyone in this back of beyond place would recognise her from the glossy photo-shoots. Unless they were into fashion modelling, which she doubted.

  Losing her identity for a while was vital for another reason too. Although she’d told the police that she was unable to remember anything about the bomb blast itself or even her own routine on that fateful day – what her psychiatrist had called selective amnesia due to shock – she had revealed a vague recollection of seeing something out of the ordinary prior to the explosion. But her traumatised brain had so far stubbornly refused to give up the information despite specialist therapy. Because of this and the fact that the experts expected her memory to return one day – possibly producing vital evidence, which could make her a crucial witness – the senior police officer leading the case, Detective Chief Inspector Mick Benchley, had expressed concern that the terrorists might come after her and had strongly recommended she disappear for a while. He had also recommended that, apart from himself, no one should be told where she had gone to ground.

  She had reluctantly agreed to it all, but contrary to his advice had given her new address to Freddie Baxter, just in case he was able to find her another lower-profile modelling job – Felicity’s winter catalogues suggestion, for example, she thought bitterly. But she wished now she hadn’t said anything to the police in the first place. She should have kept her big mouth shut. Having set the hare running, however, it was too late for her to do anything about it now.

  The irony of it all was that, despite the potential evidence still locked in her subconscious, it seemed she was not actually considered important enough to be offered the usual protection afforded vulnerable witnesses anyway. To be fair, the last thing she wanted was some armed chaperone invading her life and following her about everywhere for months on end, but it would have been nice to have been given the option of refusing such an offer. Benchley had denied her that opportunity. ‘Sorry,’ he’d said, ‘but we don’t know for certain that the information you hold would be of any significance to our inquiry. Without an arrest and an imminent court case, I’m afraid you don’t qualify under the witness protection programme, and the economic situation being what it is …’

  His voice had trailed off and he’d shrugged, like the good detective he was, washing his hands of any responsibility for the decision. But he had assured her that he would pull out all the stops with the local police force if she rang him with a problem. No offer of boots on the ground, though, just a grimace and the almost prophetic words, ‘We’ll be in touch if there are any new developments.’

  ‘I bet you will,’ she said drily, ‘but I won’t hold my breath.’

  ‘Hello there, talking to yourself then?’

  The dark figure blotted out the sun completely and jumping to her feet, she snatched up her towel and held it over the front of her body – for the
first time in her life conscious of her nudity.

  The speaker was a tall, athletic-looking man in his 30s, with a mop of jet black hair, wearing very dark sunglasses and a pair of blue boxer shorts, and he was accompanied by a black Labrador dog, which he held on a short lead.

  ‘Where the hell did you spring from?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t you know this is a private beach?’

  There was a soft laugh. ‘My apologies,’ he replied, without taking his eyes off her, ‘but Archie here cannot read notices and where he goes I follow, I’m afraid.’

  She snorted. ‘Well, now you know it is private, perhaps you and Archie here will push off again.’

  The lean handsome face flashed her an engaging smile. ‘Now, that’s not a very nice welcome for your neighbour, is it? I assume you are the lady living in The Beach House?’

  ‘Neighbour?’ she echoed, without answering either question.

  He extended his free hand. ‘That’s right. Alan Murray. I’m renting The Old Customs House on the headland above Diamond Cove. Arrived shortly after you.’

  She scowled, doubting his explanation and suspecting a chat-up line. ‘I thought that place was empty – I was told it’s been shut up for years.’

  He nodded. ‘So it has been, but I’ve opened it up again. Rented it for a song too.’

  He changed the subject. ‘You must be Mary Tresco, eh?’

  She ignored the proffered hand and shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re incredible. I mean, do you normally barge on to private property and try to introduce yourself to naked women you have never met before?’

  His jaw dropped and he snatched his hand away as if she had bitten it, while the Labrador crouched down in the sand with a nervous whine. ‘Good Lord,’ he gasped, ‘are you saying you’ve got no clothes on?’