by David Blake
‘You’re right, it isn’t, but the owner’s said that he doesn’t mind if I take her out occasionally, as long as I can find someone experienced enough to sail her.’
‘That would be me, then!’ she said, happy to volunteer.
‘That would be you, then, yes!’ agreed Tanner.
With a warm, appreciative smile, Jenny said, ‘I’d like that, very much. Thank you. The doctor said that I should be able to leave here tomorrow, although I doubt I’ll be up for doing much for a while.’
‘No, of course.’
‘How about next weekend? I’m sure I’ll be back on my feet by then. Certainly enough to sail some old Detective Inspector from London around for a few hours, even if he doesn’t know the difference between a quant and a rhond hook.’
Admittedly, Tanner didn’t know what either were, but standing there, staring deep into Jenny’s eyes, he was already looking forward to finding out.
DI John Tanner and DC Jenny Evans return in
St Benet’s, now available for pre-order!
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If you’d like to read the Prologue for St. Benet’s, please scroll to the end.
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A LETTER FROM DAVID
Dear Reader,
I just wanted to say a huge thank you for deciding to read Broadland. If you enjoyed it, I’d be really grateful if you could leave a review on Amazon, or mention it to your friends and family. Word-of-mouth recommendations are just so important to an author’s success, and doing so will help new readers discover my work.
It would be great to hear from you as well, either on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or via my website. There are plenty more books to come, so I sincerely hope you’ll be able to join me for what I promise will be an exciting adventure!
All the very best,
David
www.David-Blake.com
www.facebook.com/DavidBlakeAuthor
www.facebook.com/groups/DavidBlakeAuthor
www.twitter.com/DavidDBlake
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Blake is an international best-selling author who lives in North London. At time of going to print he has written fourteen books, along with a collection of short stories. He’s currently working on his fifteenth, St. Benet’s, which is the follow-up to this, his debut crime fiction thriller. When not writing, David likes to spend his time mucking about in boats, often in the Norfolk Broads, where his crime fiction books are based.
ST. BENET’S
SAMPLE CHAPTER
PROLOGUE
Thursday, 8th July, 1976
Claire Judson’s delicate bare feet burned against the black sun-scorched path as she sprinted over towards the half-open church door. Once inside, she crouched low, and took a moment to peer around.
The church was empty; at least she thought it was.
There she remained for a moment, basking in the cool stale air whilst relishing the touch of the cold flagstone floor against the soles of her feet.
She’d been forced to abandon her ugly school shoes, and the itchy white socks that came with them, when hiding behind a gravestone outside, waiting for the coast to be clear. As painful as it had been to run on the burning tarmac path, she didn’t feel she had much of a choice. The shoe’s solid block heels made it impossible for her to go anywhere in them without being heard, especially over the church’s hard stone floor, and it was imperative that she remained quiet. Her clandestine lunchtime rendezvous at the top of the bell tower with her much older boyfriend had to remain a secret. The all-girls Catholic boarding school she attended just down the road was well known for their zero tolerance towards pupils having relations with the opposite sex. If she was caught, she’d be expelled. There was no question about that.
However, with current circumstances as they were, she didn’t feel she had much of a choice. The stifling heatwave that had gripped the Norfolk Broads for the last two weeks, as it had the rest of the country, left her in a permanent state of sexual arousal. From the moment she awoke, a thin layer of sweat clung to her, making some of the most sensitive parts of her body stick to the course material that made up her hideously unfashionable school uniform.
Not wearing a bra probably didn’t help. She’d yet to get used to them. Although they provided her with much needed support, she found them to be insanely uncomfortable, and she was always looking for an excuse not to wear them; the intense summer’s heat proving to be the perfect one.
On that particular day, she wasn’t wearing any pants either. Her boyfriend, Gary, had asked her not to. After their normal sexual liaison the previous day, he’d mentioned that the idea of her walking around school without them would be a real turn-on for him. She’d yet to have the chance to tell him, but she was fairly sure that doing so had aroused her far more.
Since starting school that morning she’d found the combination of the oppressive heat, the lack of a bra, and the knowledge that she was secretly strutting around a strict Catholic all-girls boarding school without wearing anything under her knee high skirt, made thinking about anything other than Gary having his way with her virtually impossible.
It had been purely by chance that their covert encounters had coincided with the beginning of the heatwave. That was also when a deep sense of guilt had started to follow her around school, like an annoying unwanted friend. She’d been brought up to believe that sex performed outside of the holy unity of marriage was a sin against God. Of course, she’d never understood why. Less so after she’d had her first orgasm. How could something that felt that good possibly be against God? Quite the opposite! It made her feel empowered, liberated, alive - at least it did when she wasn’t worrying about what would happen to her soul after her mortal existence had come to an end. But as long as Gary wore a condom, she really couldn’t see the harm. The act itself made her feel far closer to God than anything had done before, certainly more so than having to sing insipidly boring hymns, or being forced to listen to never-ending sermons, the sole purpose of which seemed only to incite perpetual fear of what lay in wait for mankind beyond the grave, for all but the most spiritually minded.
Naturally, the Church took offence to the use of contraception as well. Now that really didn’t make sense! Why ban the one thing that made sex to be nothing more than a harmless act of mutual affection?
However, there was one thing that did mean that what she had been doing with such hedonistic pleasure was most definitely wrong, both in the eye’s of God and the law of the land. She was only fifteen! But it was a minor technicality, at least it was in her eyes. She would be sixteen in September, which was close enough.
Unfortunately though, she hadn’t been entirely honest about it with Gary. When they’d first met, she’d told him she was eighteen, and that she was about to sit her “A” levels. She wasn’t, of course. She hadn’t even done her mock “O” level exams. In her defence, she felt like she was eighteen, and she most definitely looked it! She could probably even pass for nineteen, maybe even twenty, at least she could if she was allowed to wear makeup and some half decent clothes.
Unable to neither see nor hear anyone, she began padding her way silently over the now chilly flagstone floor towards the narrow wooden door that marked the entrance to the church bell tower.
Ducking inside, she closed it gently behind her to begin stepping lightly up the steep narrow stone steps which circled around the outer edge.
As she neared the top, the stairs became progressively steep, so much so that with no hand rail, she used the steps in front of her like the rungs of a ladder, placing hand over hand on each as she climbed ever higher.
Eventually, the steps led out to where the giant domed church bells hung from their pivoted beams, waiting in patient silence for the next time they were needed. From there, first a steel ladder had to be climbed before reaching the final half-dozen or so wooden steps that led out
onto the roof.
Breathing hard, with her legs beginning to tire, she couldn’t help but begin to imagine Gary lifting up her skirt.
She glanced up to see the ancient wooden door that led out to the bell tower’s roof, and the band of luminescent light that surrounded the gap between it and the frame, as if it were a saintly halo.
A mischievous smile played over her lips as she imagined the door being the entrance to heaven itself. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t far off!
Before pushing it open, she caught her breath, bracing herself for the intense heat she was about to step into. It was supposed to be one of the hottest days of the year, not only of that one, but since records began, and even though she’d be at the top of a tower over a hundred feet high, she knew it would make no difference. The air would be as listless up there as it was at ground level, as it had been since their very first clandestine meeting.
Her breathing may have eased, but her heart continued to pound hard in her chest as she climbed the last of the steps. What she’d been doing with Gary at the top off the very place she attended Sunday school every week was by far the most exciting thing she’d ever done in her life, and by a very long way.
Inching open the door, she squinted in the sun’s incandescent brightness. Stepping carefully out onto the grey wooden decking, she glanced around.
Gary wasn’t there!
He’d normally be waiting for her, just beside the entrance, with one arm leaning casually over the stone ramparts, the other holding a cigarette.
She checked her watch.
She was a little early, perhaps, but she’d never arrived ahead of him before. He only lived down the road, and didn’t have a day job to escape from. He was a barman at The Swan Inn in Horning, but he worked the evening shift, not starting until three. That was why they were only able to meet during her school’s lunch break.
From the stairs behind her came the sharp creaking of wood.
Gary must have been coming up the stairs.
Relieved, she decided to strike the exact same pose he always did when she was about to emerge. Without a cigarette, she instead used her free hand to raise up her pleated green skirt, all the way to the top of her legs, exposing her smooth porcelain white thighs along with the perfectly formed curvature of her bum, so giving him demonstrable proof that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath, just as he’d requested.
When she saw the top of his dark head of hair begin to emerge, she called out, ‘Hello stranger!’ With self-amused nonchalance she then turned her head to gaze out over the quintessentially British village of Horning, shimmering in the breathless heat of the sun, adding, ‘What do you think of the view?’ as she did so.
Obscured from her sight, after the head appeared the wide square shoulders of a heavily-set man rising slowly up through the roof.
Before stepping out, he stopped and stared in motionless awe at the half-naked school girl who was on full display before his eyes.
Turning to look around at him, she was so expecting it to be Gary that it took her a full second to realise that it wasn’t. Instead, the man who appeared to be openly ogling her, and who seemed unperturbed by the fact that she was now watching him do so, was wearing the black cassock of a priest!
Dropping her skirt, with her face flushing with blood, she span around to face him, adopting the traditional pose of an innocent young Catholic school girl as she did; her legs locked together with her hands clasped in front of her skirt, as if the combination of the two created some sort of impenetrable barrier to her long-lost virginity.
As the man stepped out onto the roof, being careful not to trip over the hem of his cassock, taking in the girl’s full naturally red lips, and her cute up-turned nose, he said, ‘I thought I heard someone creeping around up here.’
Unable to think of anything to say in response, instead of replying she stared down at her still bare feet, attempting to offer the correct level of reverence due to a man of the cloth.
As he placed his hands firmly on his hips, with a look of stern condemnation directed at the top of her still bowed head, the man asked, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school, young lady?’
‘I am…I-I mean, I should, yes, sorry,’ she stuttered, ‘but…it’s my lunch break, you see, so…I, er…’
‘So you thought you’d sneak up here, did you?’
Claire returned to him a single nod.
‘To meet someone, I assume?’
With no idea how to respond to that, she chose to remain silent.
‘Was it Gary Johnson, by any chance?’
Once more her cheeks flushed, but now with embarrassed indignation.
How the hell did he know about Gary?
As if being able to read her mind, the man said, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.’
‘You won’t?’ she asked, lifting her head just enough to send him a questioning look.
‘I won’t,’ he confirmed. But then a devilish smile spread out over his face, and staring deep into her translucent blue eyes, he added, ‘As long as you’re prepared to do something for me.’
Assuming that whatever that was would involve some insanely boring chore, like having to mop the church floor after school for a week, with an indignant glare directed directly at his face, she asked, ‘And what’s that?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ he replied, taking a moment to glide his eyes down the length of her curvaceous young body. ‘My silence in exchange for, shall we say…a kiss?’
‘A…kiss?’ she repeated, incredulous, and began searching his face for a sign that he wasn’t being serious.
But the ravenous look in his eyes, along with the salacious grin that was now playing over his lips, did nothing to allay her fear that a kiss was exactly what he wanted.
Panic began to take hold. There was something about this whole situation that was beginning to make her feel increasingly uncomfortable - the way she’d seen him openly ogling her earlier, and how he’d done nothing to avert his gaze, even when she’d caught him in the act. And to have asked for a kiss in return for his silence?
The sense of heightened arousal she’d felt climbing the church tower had now been replaced by one of exposed vulnerability. He’d seen just how naked she was underneath her skirt, and from speaking to Gary, she knew the effect such knowledge could have on a man.
But a priest?
She stole a glance down at his groin.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Underneath his long black cassock, it was blatantly obvious that the man was fully aroused. But as disturbing a sight as that was, what was far worse was the fact that he seemed to be doing nothing to hide it.
Instinctively, she took a half step away from him, wrenching her eyes away from his groin to begin darting them around the enclosed square roof, desperately searching for a way to escape.
But she was at the top of a tower which was over a hundred feet above the ground. There was nowhere to escape to! The only way out was the door through which she’d come, and the only way to reach that was to pass the very man she was becoming increasingly desperate to get away from.
The man glanced down at where her hands remained locked in front of her pleated green skirt, before returning to stare at her face.
As if shocked by the fear he saw written there, he frowned down at her and said, ‘My goodness, child, I didn’t mean on the lips!’
As a surge of relief flowed through her body, she looked into his eyes to ask, ‘You didn’t?’
Returning to her what had transformed into a warm, almost benevolent smile, as if appalled by the very suggestion, he exclaimed, ‘Good Lord, no!’ His eyes then stopped to rest briefly on her soft inviting mouth, before continuing down the length of her body. Narrowing his eyes at where her hands were again, with a single step forward, he added, ‘At least, not on those lips.’
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ALSO BY DAVID BLAKE
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CRIME COMEDY
The Slaughtered Virgin of Zenopolis
The Curious Case of Cut-Throat Cate
The Thrills & Spills of Genocide Jill
The Herbaceous Affair of Cocaine Claire
SPACE CRIME COMEDY
Space Police: Attack of the Mammary Clans
Space Police: The Final Fish Finger
Space Police: The Toaster That Time Forgot
Space Police: Rise of the Retail-Bot
Space Police: Enemy at the Cat Flap
Space Police: The Day The Earth Moved A Bit
SPACE ADVENTURE COMEDY
Galaxy Squad: Danger From Drackonia
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Headline Love
Prime Time Love
SHORT STORY COLLECTION
Fish Fingered