Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) Read online

  Hot Blood

  The victim of a savage attack, a successful businessman living in relative luxury points the finger of suspicion at a less successful family member, then becomes a suspect himself when a courting couple find a body in the woods. When, later, a man is found murdered in a car a few miles away, the realisation that a sophisticated serial killer might be on the loose changes the whole perception of the enquiry.

  With it’s unexpected twists and turns worked into parallel plot lines, Hot Blood will appeal to lovers of Ian Rankin, P.D. James, Peter Robinson and Peter James crime novels. Centred around the NW coastal resort town of Southport, Hot Blood is based in a real region and cunningly weaves fact and fiction together into a seamless yarn readers will not be able to put away.

  Hot Blood is not a book to read and pass on. Though complete in its entirety, some of the characters and general parameters it introduces are already being worked into drafts for future plots. So Hot Blood is not just a debut novel; it will become the reference for those that follow, a Who’s Who? of characters and a virtual directory of what, where, and when.

  Read it, enjoy it – and keep it!

  Vic Marelle

  Vic Marelle originally trained and practiced as a professional advertising photographer. Freelance magazine assignments led to him providing complete feature packages combining photography and writing. Long periods followed as feature writer for a number of international airline in-flight magazines, motoring correspondent for seven local newspapers, a feature writer for UK national newspapers and specialist corporate copywriter. Based in the region in which Hot Blood is set, he continues to write for Middle East magazines. Hot Blood is his first novel.

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  This edition created entirely for eBook distribution.

  This evaluation edition published 2012 and set in Baskerville 10pt (with data sections set in Century Gothic) by Ace Corporate Editions

  Copyright © Vic Marelle 2012

  The right of Vic Marelle to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Cover image of Lydiate Hall © Ian W Bennett

  www.gulfmediaman.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced stored, transmitted or distributed in any form, including but not restricted to hard copy, digital, Internet or other means, without the express written approval of the copyright holder

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All major locations are entirely fictitious

  Author’s Notes - The North West Coast

  Reading through my final draft, the variety of both landscape and people inhabiting it shone through page after page. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the UK, on the NW coastal plain one can go from extreme to extreme in five minutes flat. From thatched cottages and chocolate box villages to glitzy shopping mall; from long stretches of desolate golden beach to bustling market towns; from built up concrete high rise developments to footballer’s palatial mansions and ruined buildings clothed in ivy and undergrowth hiding centuries of guilty secrets. Indeed, the NW coastal plain has it all.

  So although this yarn is entirely fictional, it is loosely set in a real region. Many of the towns, villages and even some individual buildings featured in the story actually exist, as do some of the events I have described. Others however have been created specifically for my story and my challenge has been to intertwine them all and blur their edges sufficiently so that you, my reader, cannot determine the one from the other.

  On the other hand, while I have observed life around me and the strange goings on of my fellow man (or woman), every single one of the characters in my story is a figment of my imagination and any similarity to real people is entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Purring like a big cat, the car’s engine was still ticking over, while its driver remained deep in thought and not in any rush to get out. Even with its cheap gravel driveway, this house had cost a fortune. More than that, it had been a millstone around his neck for the ten years it had taken to turn a crumbling wreck of a barn and farm buildings into a stunning modern home. Warm yellow light from the kitchen window shone through the dusk, bathing the car in its mellow glow, yet for all it’s warmth, the dream had not been realised and all he had left was a stone shell enclosing a cold depressing interior. Just owning the house had attracted unwanted attention, damaged his business and brought him to the brink of disaster. Where once a family dinner and a cosy night by the fireside would have been a pleasure, now even the thought of being inside, the constant unease, the threats and insecurity, kept him outside on the gravel, held in the yellow beam like an actor in a spotlight.

  A barrier to life itself, could Act One ever have a fairy tale ending, or would the performance turn into a comedy of errors? To stay outside would be better. Anything to distance himself from the mess that had become their lives.

  But his wife would have heard the car arrive. The kettle would be close to boiling and the TV game show would already have been switched off.

  Slowly, he turned off the ignition, gathered his briefcase and gloves from the passenger seat and flicked the remote boot lid release. Making his way to the back of the car he retrieved his laptop computer, closed the boot lid and straightened up to his full height.

  Grabbed from behind, he was flung roughly against the house wall. As the back of his head hit the cold hard stone his vision clouded and firecrackers exploded behind his eyes. He took a punch in his stomach – followed by another and another, sliding down the wall as his knees buckled and his legs could no longer support him. Vicious kicks accompanied sounds of cracking bones and short stabs of pain as he slid to the ground and fell over into a crumpled heap.

  It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Blows and kicks jarred his body. His legs and stomach were numb and lifeless after the short, but vicious pounding. Vision was long gone and his world had become black. Steel toe capped boots again drove into his groin. Drawing his elbows close in to his sides and covering his face for protection, he cowered into the foetal position. Dear God, let this end.

  Then it all stopped as quickly as it started. Silence. Now the real pain came. He could hear his pulse pounding in his head. Each beat brought a harsh stab that nearly blew his head apart. Between pulses his stomach and legs hurt more painfully than anything he had ever experienced. It had been quick and short, but brutal. Had they gone or were they watching him, gloating over their vicious onslaught? His legs wouldn’t work and he couldn’t sit up. He could taste blood but running his tongue around his mouth his teeth still seemed to be intact, though a few at the front were loose. Slowly he moved his hand inside his jacket. His ribs hurt and his shirt felt sticky. But his mobile was still inside his pocket and it felt unbroken. Gingerly feeling the buttons and guessing their positions he keyed in hash and one – quick dial for home.

  A phone rang inside the house. More lights came on and after a hurriedly exclaimed ‘shit’ he heard footsteps on the gravel and a car door slam. Then it drove away.

  One

  Tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, Steve Wilson cursed his luck. Though he had driven this route time and again, he had never been delayed. Not ever. Every now and
then he might have had to bide his time waiting for an opportunity to pass a slow moving car, and sometimes he had to allow for groups of cyclists riding three abreast – they were infuriating - but that was mainly at weekend when the narrow winding lanes attracted sightseers and Sunday drivers into the countryside. Even so, traffic jams were unheard of.

  Until today.

  He preferred this longer route because the main dual carriageway that hugged the coast was often clogged by Liverpool bound commuter traffic or Southport tourists. These back lanes, always relatively free of traffic, were usually much quicker. In any case, winding lanes were much more fun to drive.

  So what had happened to make today different? What on earth was causing the holdup? If only the stoppage had been another half mile down the lane then he could have taken a right and cut through to the bypass, or if he’d known about it earlier he could have cut off at the Scarisbrick Arms.

  Not exactly a small man - his wife described him as ‘thick set’ but others just made do with ‘fat’ - sitting cramped up in a car seat that was too small on a warm day with the engine running and no A/C wasn’t his idea of fun. A dribble of sweat started to run down his forehead, dripping off his eyebrow. Dabbing his brow with a tissue in one hand he reached out with the other, flicked a switch and the driver’s door window slid down. The breeze was welcome, but not so other cars’ fumes accompanying it. Back up went the window.

  Get moving damned you!

  Now he was getting really ruffled. Opening the car door he manoeuvred his bulk so that, standing with one foot on the road and one still inside the car, holding on to the door to keep his balance he could see over the cars in-front. They were stationary for as far as he could see, which wasn’t very far anyway, the road ahead curving to disappear behind a row of trees. Up ahead he could see that several drivers had left their cars and were stood talking in the road. Getting out completely he walked over to join them.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked as he got nearer.

  ‘An’t gorra clue mate’ replied a skinny little man wearing a designer tee shirt, a baseball cap and crumpled jeans. ‘On’t radio they just said road’s closed by an accident and traffic’s stopped.’

  ‘Shit’ said Steve. If the cars didn’t get moving soon, there wouldn’t be any point in his carrying on.

  ‘What sort of accident?’ he asked. ‘And why are the emergency services taking so long to get us on our way?’

  ‘How do I know?’ said crumpled jeans. ‘Thi din’t say no more than it were an accident and road were closed.’

  Back in his car Steve’s temper was almost at breaking point. Turning on Radio Merseyside he found that he was listening to DJ Roger Phillips talking to a man stuck in a traffic jam caused by an accident. From the sound of it, it was his traffic jam and the man was probably out of view, just around the corner. According to the DJ, the police were estimating at least an hour before the road could be reopened.

  A bloody hour. And then how long before they all got moving? He struck out in sheer desperation, smashing his fist into the steering wheel boss. A car horn shrieked. Crumpled jeans stuck his hand out of the car in front and gave Steve a Vee. What was that for? Then he realised, it had been his horn blowing when he had hit the wheel. Calm down Steve.

  Behind him, impatient drivers were making three point turns. Hot under the collar, Steve followed suit.

  ..........

  Driving along the by-pass, Wilson was again in high spirits. Just a few short miles to go and he would at last be turning off to the airfield. With no telephones ringing, no difficult customers to sort out, no wife nagging about his weight or what time he would be home, and no dratted traffic jams either, flying was Steve's favourite antidote for work-time blues. Since buying the microlight aircraft he had spent as much of his spare time flying as he could, or swapping yarns in the clubhouse with fellow enthusiasts when conditions were not suitable. Today, even though he’d lost the best part of an hour, sufficient time remained and conditions were very suitable. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and hardly a breath of wind either.

  Turning off the dual-carriageway, he eased the car along a narrow track, kicking up clouds of dust as he negotiated the potholes and ruts of the dirt road. Just a quarter of a mile on, the track took an acute right turn then a long lazy curve to skirt a small coppice. Another sharp turn and the airfield appeared magically as if out of nowhere.

  Little more than a farmer’s field across which a swathe had been mown as a runway, the airfield couldn’t be seen from the road, and even close up only a cluster of portable cabins indicated anything more than corn and root crops.

  As if crafted by giant schoolboys and looking like huge triangular paper darts atop rather frail looking tubular framework, four machines were parked line abreast. Big fabric covered wings were canted with one tip on the ground. School aircraft used for training, they were the latest models combining advanced technology and lightweight components. Extensions on their control bars allowed a rear seat instructor to override his student in the front seat. Was this the ultimate back seat driver arrangement?

  Wilson’s trike was his pride and joy. An older model, there were no extensions on its control bar – Wilson could fly alone. But first he would need to drag the aircraft out of its hangar and get it ready for flight. Parking his car near the clubhouse – really a euphemism for one of the portable cabins – Wilson humped his kit bag out of his boot and trudged around to the hangar – another euphemism, this time for a 40ft metal sea container – where his microlight was stored.

  The container was far narrower than the aircraft’s triangular wing, which meant that the wing had to be removed for storage. But rigging the aircraft, fixing the wing on top of the buggy like tubular trike before flight, was never a chore. Indeed, with the prospect of flight looming, fixing the wing, checking cables and getting the miniscule craft airworthy served only to heighten his anticipation and excitement for what was to come, pushing his earlier frustrations aside. And once the aircraft had been rigged, donning his one-piece flying suit, his gloves and helmet, signalled the final pre-flight procedure.

  ‘Clear prop!’

  Behind Wilson, the tiny Austrian ex-snowmobile engine burst into life. Increasing the throttle just enough to inch the trike forward, he taxied out to the runway. Turning onto the mown swathe, he pulled the control bar back close to his chest to tip the wing down while giving the engine full power. Cushioned only by rather ineffective and rather limited suspension, he could feel every bump and undulation of the ground through the little machine’s small wheels as he gained speed. But sensing rotation point as speed rose, he pushed the control bar forward to increase lift and the microlight seemed to just jump into the air.

  The bouncing and harsh vibrations stopped as the ground fell away and the aircraft settled into a steady climb. Once over the by-pass on which he had driven such a short time ago he banked the microlight south towards the Mersey. Flying first past Crosby up to the coast-guard point, the furthest he could legally fly without entering Liverpool Airport’s controlled airspace, would give him the longest possible flight back along the coast – a magnificent sight if ever there was one – and his favourite route.

  Pushing the control bar over to his left put the microlight into a gentle bank to his right, which he held until he had flown a complete U-turn and was flying back along the coast. Flying as free as a bird, the view really was magical. From this height the coastline could have come straight out of a Mediterranean holiday brochure, such was its magnificence.

  Sandwiched between a gently rippled sea and undulating sand dunes topped by tufts of grass with their fronds waving gently in the breeze, lay a long ribbon of golden beach running from his turning point close to the Mersey estuary as far north as the Ribble estuary. Along those miles it’s name changed many times – Crosby Beach, Hightown, Formby, Freshfield, Ainsdale, Birkdale, Southport – but it was in reality one glorious stretch of magnificent coastline.

  And flying abo
ve it was a privilege. Though just minutes from home, looking down he could be thousands of miles away in some sun drenched Mediterranean idyll.

  He could see families strolling along Southport pier and couples walking along the Marine Drive. Minutes earlier as he had flown over Formby Point he had watched two horses frolicking at the edge of the sea. Life was good.

  Banking the little aircraft, he flew inland and, using familiar roads and buildings as a guide, flew over his own house, before turning again to fly back to the airfield. Losing a little height to get a closer look, he could see several police vehicles close to a recovery truck and a little hatchback. The hatch was on its side in a drainage gulley running alongside the road. Several feet below road level, the truck driver was struggling to attach a hitch to drag the car out. This must have been the reason for the earlier holdup, but apart from the emergency vehicles, the road was now clear. His drive home could be along his favourite route – and in a better temper than the outward trip.

  Two

  Turning the gas down on the hob, Joan spoke over her shoulder to her husband, busily setting the table in the open plan dining area. ‘Perhaps he might not be trying to get it at all. He might just be pushing in one direction to actually go in another.’ Pausing momentarily she went on, ‘Or then again, he might be. And if he is then he could do anything couldn’t he?’

  ‘What in heavens name are you going on about?’ he quipped. ‘You are talking in riddles. You’ve lost me.’

  The man really was exasperating. Couldn’t he understand plain English? Wiping her hands on a tea towel she turned from the cooker to face her husband. ‘Well, he knows full well that we bought the barn from Dad and that he’s no rights to it at all, so perhaps he is just throwing the house into the argument to pressure us into giving him more money. Can’t you see, it makes sense.’