by Peter James
‘Dad, can we have the top down?’ Felix said. ‘Can we?’
‘It’s too windy, darling!’ Rowena said.
Although the late-October sun was shining brightly, straight in their faces, it was blowing a hooley, and darkening storm clouds were massing on the horizon.
‘We’ll be there in five minutes,’ Johnny announced. ‘This is the village now.’
They passed a sign saying COLD HILL – PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY, with 30mph warning roundels on either side of the narrow road, then swooped over a humpback bridge, passing a cricket pitch to their left. To their right was a decrepit-looking Norman church. It was set well back and perched dominatingly high above the road. The graveyard, bounded by a low flint wall, was pretty, with rows of weathered headstones, many of them tilting, and some partially concealed beneath the spreading branches of a massive yew tree.
‘Are there dead people in there, Mum?’ Daisy asked.
‘It’s a graveyard, darling, yes, there are.’ She glanced at the low flint wall.
Daisy pressed her face against the window. ‘Is that where we’ll go when we’re dead?’
Their daughter was obsessed with death. Last year they’d gone on a fishing holiday to Ireland, and the highlight of the trip for Daisy, who was six, had been visiting a graveyard where she discovered she could see into some of the tombs and look down at the bones below.
Rowena turned round. ‘Let’s talk about something more cheerful, shall we? Are you looking forward to our new home?’
Daisy cuddled her toy monkey to her chest. ‘Yes,’ she said, a tad reluctantly. ‘Maybe.’
‘Only maybe?’ Johnny asked.
They drove past a row of terraced Victorian artisan cottages, a rather drab-looking pub called The Crown, a smithy, a cottage with a ‘Bed & Breakfast’ sign, and a village store. The road wound steeply uphill, past detached houses and bungalows of various sizes on either side. A white van came tearing down the hill towards them without slowing. Johnny, cursing, pulled the massive car as far over to the left as he could, scraping against bushes, and the van passed with inches to spare.
‘I think we’re going to need another car for our new country life,’ Rowena said. ‘Something more sensible.’
‘I don’t do sensible,’ Johnny replied.
‘Don’t I know it! That’s why I love you, my darling! But I’m not going to be able to walk the kids round the corner to school any more when the new term starts. And I can hardly do the school run in this.’
Johnny slowed the car and pulled down the right-turn indicator. ‘Here we are! The O’Hare family has arrived!’
On their right, opposite a red postbox, were two stone pillars, topped with savage-looking ornamental wyverns, and with open, rusted, wrought-iron gates. Below the large Strutt and Parker ‘Sold’ board, fixed to the right-hand gatepost, was a smaller, barely legible sign announcing COLD HILL House.
As he turned in, Johnny stopped the car for a moment, watching in the rear-view mirror for the removals van; then he saw it as a tiny lumbering speck in the distance. He carried on up the steep, winding, potholed tarmac drive. It was bounded on each side by a railed metal fence, beyond which sheep grazed on the steeply sloping fields. All this land belonged to the house, but was leased to a local tenant farmer.
After a quarter of a mile, the drive curved sharply to the right and they crossed a cattle grid. As they reached a gravel-surfaced plateau at the top of the hill, the house came into view ahead.
‘Is that it?’ Felix said. ‘Wow! Wowwwwww!’
‘It’s a palace!’ Daisy squealed, excitedly. ‘We’re going to live in a palace!’
The central part of the house was fronted by a classically proportioned Georgian facade clad in weather-stained grey rendering, on three floors, or four if the cellar was included. There was a porch with a columned balcony above it – ‘Like a super-grand Juliet balcony!’ Rowena had said the first time she had seen it. On either side were tall sash windows and there were two dormer windows in the slate-tiled roof.
On the left side of the building was, incongruously, a crenellated tower with windows at the very top, and on the right was a two-storey extension which, the estate agent had told them, had been added a century after the main house had been built.
‘Who’s that?’ Rowena asked, pointing up at a window.
‘What?’ Johnny replied.
‘There’s a woman up in that window – up in that dormer in the attic – looking at us.’
‘Maybe it’s the cleaners still here.’ He peered up through the windscreen. ‘I can’t see anyone.’
The car rocked in a gust of wind, and an unseasonably cold draught blew through the interior. With a huge grin, Johnny pulled up right in front of the porch, jammed his cigar back in his mouth, took a puff, and through a cloud of smoke said, ‘Here we are, guys! Home sweet home!’
The sky darkened, suddenly. There was a rumble above them that sounded, to him, ominously like thunder.
‘Oh God,’ Rowena said, reaching for the door handle. ‘Let’s get inside quickly.’
As she spoke, a solitary slate broke free and began sliding down the roof, dislodging and collecting more slates in its path, creating a small avalanche. They smashed through the rusted guttering and fell, gathering speed, sharp as razors, slicing through the fabric roof of the Cadillac, one severing Rowena’s right arm, another splitting Johnny’s head in two, like a wood axe through a log.
As Rowena and the children screamed, chunks of masonry began raining down on them, ripping through the roof, smashing their skulls and bones. Then an entire slab of stonework fell from near the top of the facade, landing directly on the remains of the roof, flattening the car down on its suspension, buckling its wheels, and crushing its four occupants into a mangled pulp of flesh and bone and blood.
Minutes later, as the removals van crested the hill, all the driver and his crewmates could see was a small mountain of stonework, slates and timber. And above the sound of the howling wind, they could hear the monotone blare of a car horn.
DEAD LETTER DROP
Dead Letter Drop is Peter James’ first ever novel, originally published in 1981, and has now been reissued with a new foreword by the author.
Max Flynn, undercover agent, has the unenviable job of spying on his own side. When to kill, who to kill, whether to kill. These are all quick-fire decisions that have to be made if he wants to stay alive.
But why does an innocuous airline ticket hold such significance for Flynn? Who has gone to the trouble of making him bear witness to their own suicide? And could the agent’s beautiful companion be hiding secrets as a spy? The hazy, murky world of counter-espionage leaves no room for errors of judgement – Flynn knows he’s finished if he makes one false move.
ATOM BOMB ANGEL
Atom Bomb Angel was originally published in 1982. Now reissued, it features a brand new foreword by the author.
Terrorists are threatening to sabotage Britain’s nuclear power plants. One nuclear explosive smuggled inside a reactor would turn the entire core into a massive atom bomb . . . and bring death and disease to millions of people for centuries to come.
Sir Isaac Quoit, chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority and the man responsible for the running of all nuclear power stations in the UK, disappears without trace. Then MI5 intercept mysterious film footage of Quoit that apparently shows him defecting to Russian terrorists. But all is not as it seems. Has Quoit in fact been kidnapped? And what is the mysterious Operation Angel? Max Flynn is briefed to find out who the terrorists are, and which power stations they will sabotage, in a race against time to stop Britain being engulfed in a nuclear nightmare.
BILLIONAIRE
Peter James was educated at Charterhouse, then at film school. He lived in North America for a number of years, working as a screenwriter and film producer before returning to England. His novels, including the Sunday Times number one bestselling Roy Grace series, have been translated into thirty-six languages, with worl
dwide sales of sixteen million copies. Three books have been filmed and two, The Perfect Murder and Dead Simple, have been adapted into highly successful stage plays. All his books reflect his deep interest in the world of the police, with whom he does in-depth research, as well as his fascination with science, medicine and the paranormal. He has also produced numerous films, including The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. He divides his time between his homes in Notting Hill, London, and near Brighton in Sussex.
Visit his website at www.peterjames.com
Or follow him on Twitter @peterjamesuk
Or Facebook: facebook.com/peterjames.roygrace
By Peter James
DEAD LETTER DROP
ATOM BOMB
ANGEL
BILLIONAIRE
POSSESSION
DREAMER
SWEET HEART
TWILIGHT
PROPHECY
ALCHEMIST
HOST
THE TRUTH
DENIAL
FAITH
PERFECT PEOPLE
THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL
The Roy Grace Series
DEAD SIMPLE
LOOKING GOOD DEAD
NOT DEAD ENOUGH
DEAD MAN’S FOOTSTEPS
DEAD TOMORROW
DEAD LIKE YOU
DEAD MAN’S GRIP
NOT DEAD YET
DEAD MAN’S TIME
WANT YOU DEAD
YOU ARE DEAD
Short Stories
A TWIST OF THE KNIFE
Children’s Novel
GETTING WIRED!
Novella
THE PERFECT MURDER
First published 1983 by W. H. Allen
This electronic edition published 2015 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-5602-1
Copyright © Really Scary Books / Peter James, 1983
Figure © Arcangel/Collaboration JS, Cityscape © Shutterstock
Roy Grace®, Grace®, DS Grace® and DI Grace® are registered trademarks of Really Scary Books Limited.
Lyric excerpt from ‘Sunny Afternoon’ by The Kinks here written by Raymond Douglas Davies © Abkco Music Inc., Davray Music Ltd.
The right of Peter James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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