Like Father, Like Son

by Sarah Masters

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  Like Father, Like Son

  ISBN # 978-1-78651-601-5

  ©Copyright Sarah Masters 2017

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright August 2017

  Edited by Nicki Richards

  Pride Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2017 by Pride Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, UK

  Pride Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

  Sarah Masters

  Murder is never a good thing…

  Fingertips have been turning up in various locations around the city. The problem is, Detective Inspector Matt Blacksmith has no idea why they’re being left where they are. He knows who they belong to, though, so that’s something. However, the man they used to be attached to isn’t anywhere in sight, and Matt worries he’s been killed.

  Detective Sergeant Aaron Thaxter is the man who has stuck by Matt through thick and thin for the past few years. In and out of bed, he’s always there, the steadying hand that keeps Matt from drowning in the memories of his past. When the case takes a murky turn, forcing Matt to acknowledge those memories yet again, Matt is grateful that Aaron is there to help him.

  Robby Zeus knows that being in a gang isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Despite his dreams of being someone to be feared and respected, now that the reality of being in a gang has slapped him hard around the face, he’s desperate not to get himself into any more trouble. With the help of Matt and Aaron, Robby faces being wrenched from the only life he’s ever known to somewhere safe, away from the gang, where he can live a good life with his ma. But things have never been that easy for Robby. Can he be free from the leaders of the two gangs he’s tied to?

  Time will tell. Except time might not be on anyone’s side…

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee”: Muhammad Ali

  The Ritz: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC

  Big Mac: McDonald’s Corporation

  B&M Bargains: B&M European Retail Value S.A.

  Primark: Associated British Foods

  Burger King: Burger King Corporation

  Whopper: Burger King Corporation

  Mercedes: Daimler AG

  Formica: Formica Corporation

  Dettol: Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc

  Costa: Whitbread Plc

  Twiglets: United Biscuits

  Nik Naks: KP Snacks

  Tesco: Tesco Plc

  Werther’s Original: August Storck KG

  Coke: The Coca-Cola Company

  Netflix: Netflix Inc.

  Taser: Taser International

  Klingon (Star Trek): Gene Roddenberry

  Febreze: Proctor & Gamble

  Pot Noodle: Unilever Plc

  Volkswagen Golf: Volkswagen Group

  Rocky: United Artists

  Rambo: David Morrell

  Prologue

  Such a menacing bastard, he was.

  If he said to do something, people did it. No questions.

  Questions brought trouble one way or another. Pain. Suffering. Torture.

  Questions got you killed.

  “Cream, that’s what you’ve got to be,” he said, bouncing on the soles of his feet, as though he thought he were some kind of bloody heavyweight boxer.

  Looked stupid doing that in a suit. Still menacing, though, whatever he wore.

  He punched the air. “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.”

  Did he think he was Muhammad Ali now or what? Jesus Christ…

  “No matter how, you rise to the top. No matter what, you rise to the top. You end up just average milk, you’re nothing to me. Milk is all the underlings. The cream is the management. The best. You got that?”

  He nodded. Of course, he got it. He’d been told the same thing over and over since he’d been in nappies. He couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t heard words in a similar vein. If he heard one more time that cream was more expensive, more luxurious, more everything… It had grown old years ago. As had the beatings when he hadn’t done something exactly as his father had wanted it done. His old man was a hard taskmaster, expected only the best. Anything less was an insult to him. A slur on his good name, so he always said.

  He floated like a butterfly…

  Fuck, he nearly started laughing at that.

  His father pointed a meaty finger at him. “Oh, and along with being nothing to me, I’ll kick the shit out of you. How’s that for an incentive, eh?”

  It was an incentive all right. Dodging punches was the name of his game most days. Could have been a boxer himself. He was so good at it now, getting himself into a ball as quickly as he could, that the first blow rarely hit him before he was in his safe position.

  Safe-ish.

  As safe as he could be living with a monster.

  Damn memories. A fucking ball ache, the lot of them. Well, he had news for him. He wasn’t doing this for him anymore. Nah, he was doing it for himself.

  Wasn’t he?

  It had been drilled into him so deeply, rising to the top, that it was all he knew. A constant mantra that echoed inside his head all hours of the day and night. It whispered even when he was busy doing something else, always there.

  Got to be the cream. Got to take over.

  And that other thing his dad used to say. ‘Your main aim is to be a chip off the old block. Do as I do, act as I act, and you won’t go far wrong, trust me.’

  ‘Trust me.’ That was a laugh. He’d learned never to trust that man.

  I need to do this. Be that chip off the old block. Prove to myself that I can do it. Prove it to him.

  And it didn’t matter that his father couldn’t see him doing it. And, anyway, he hadn’t beefed himself up for nothing, spent hours in the gym sculpting his body into something that resembled the heavyweight boxer image that had been in his mind since forever. He hadn’t crept up the leader of the gang’s backside all these years for nothing. It had all been planned out so he’d become the leader whose backside would
be crept up by others wanting to be in his good books. That was what his dad had planned for himself, but he’d ended up leader for only about a week before he’d snuffed it.

  Heart attack.

  Bit of a bugger, that. All those years of striving to be top dog, only to hold the crown for seven lousy days. It must have been bittersweet to know he’d made it but hadn’t retained the title for long. He’d bet his old man would say that at least he had made it, that he had attained his dream.

  What would it feel like to reach such a goal? To be the one in charge? Brilliant, he reckoned. Wouldn’t be long and he’d find out for himself.

  Some psychoanalyst or other on one of those therapy shows on Netflix had come a little too close to the bone for his liking the other week. She’d made him question stuff, and he didn’t like people who could make him do that. He might say he was doing all this for himself, but he wasn’t, apparently. His need to be in his father’s good books, regardless of the fact his old man was dead, overrode everything, so the TV therapist had said. To be the same as him, that’s what she’d implied he needed. That was what he needed to make him feel whole.

  He reckoned it was all bollocks, what she’d said—or he’d tried to convince himself of that, anyway. But deep down—and going deep down wasn’t something he liked doing often—he knew whatever shite had come out of the therapist’s mouth had been the truth.

  In the end, her words had hurt too much and he’d turned the TV off.

  Silly bitch. What did she know? Brought up safe and secure in her no doubt prissy house with her perfect bloody parents. She knew nothing. It was all psychobabble designed to make her loads of money. She was just another form of manipulator. And her type were everywhere. People who had the gift of the gab and the ability to worm their way into your head before you’d had a chance to even blink.

  The real world—she could do with going there for a visit, not just viewing it from the point of view of her clients, who, he’d bet, paid a fortune for her to spout her crap at them. She most probably lived in a mansion or something—a big house at least, with all the mod cons and cash at her disposal for whatever she fancied buying.

  I’m going to have disposable cash soon. And lots of it.

  The world where he lived would be a good start for her. In order to survive in this city, on this housing estate, he’d long ago found he had to either jump in with both feet or use them to run the hell away—run good and fast, too, if that ended up being his only option, because if they caught up with him under the current bastard leader’s orders, he’d be a goner. There were rules once you joined up. He’d said them to members time and time again.

  ‘Either you’re in or you’re out, no in between. In this gang, you have to do as you’re told or you’ll find yourself six feet under.’

  He’d relished saying those words, seeing fear on the faces of the new recruits. Loved the fact that it would be him putting them beneath the ground if they fucked up. But he didn’t want to be the one doing all the dirty work anymore. He wanted to be giving the orders to someone else. His father had always told him that being an underling was all well and good, what with gaining respect and all that, but being the leader was the ultimate prize. No son of his was going to forever be the right-hand. No, his son was going to be the cream.

  He was sick of that phrase.

  Being his son had been sodding hard work. It had been a blessing when the old git had died. Some people might think that was a mean thing to say, but when you’d been brought up by a tyrant, their death tended to become one of life’s highlights. Talk about relief climbing off his shoulders. Talk about feeling free. There had been a problem, though. All his life, he’d thought that with him gone, he could go his own way, do what he wanted, instead.

  He couldn’t. The lessons, the beatings, the mind manipulation had all been so well orchestrated that he could no more walk away than he could marry a princess or become a politician. Unattainable goals.

  What was attainable, though, was doing what his father had said.

  So, the old fuck had told some truths, then.

  There was nothing else to do, anyway. Around here, options were limited. And he’d already come so far, had already bagged the right-hand man’s slot. Now all he had to do was steal the crown. Do whatever it took to steal it, too.

  A tiny part of him knew it was wrong.

  A big part of him thought it was right.

  ‘Your main aim is to be a chip off the old block. Do as I do, act as I act, and you won’t go far wrong, trust me.’

  He shrugged. He was in too deep to get out now. He’d gone one step too far already—no turning back. All right, it had been a rush, a big thrill to try on someone else’s shoes, to plunge into someone else’s property—and that was what she was, someone else’s property—but she wasn’t for him. Not in the long run, she wasn’t. He’d just been borrowing her for a while. Giving her a shag because he could. She was just a means to an end. Something he’d had to do on the rung of the ladder below the one at the top.

  Time to move up. Time to do what the old man wanted.

  If he didn’t, the bastard would haunt him while he slept. And he’d do anything to stop the nightmares, to stop seeing him coming toward him with his fists raised and a look of anger on his face. A look of disappointment.

  Anything.

  Chapter One

  A fingertip. That was what it was, on the reception desk in The City Hotel beside a weary-looking, clear plastic ruler. A fingertip being rested on a desk of this type wouldn’t be unusual, given the location, except it had been severed from someone who would undoubtedly be missing the use of it.

  Poor sod.

  Detective Inspector Matt Blacksmith bent over to get a better view. A clean cut, no ragged edges. One swift whack with a machete or something similar, job done. He wondered who had done such a thing and how they slept at night. Did the echo of the person’s howl of pain infiltrate their dreams? Had they enjoyed what they’d done, or had the removal of the fingertip been an order the cutter hadn’t been able to refuse? That wouldn’t surprise Matt in the slightest. Being on a team of police officers who, along with murder, investigated local gangs in surveillance operations, nothing much would surprise him these days.

  He pulled himself out of his thoughts and gave the fingertip his attention again. Going by the size, the short square nail, the line of dirt beneath, and a shard of thickened skin coming away from the side, he’d say it had belonged to a man.

  The same man as all the others?

  He straightened, his back clicking, and glanced to his right at the receptionist. She sat huddled on a puffy beige settee, which had probably been put there so customers could wait in comfort if there was a checking-in queue. He doubted there ever was. This place wasn’t exactly the Ritz. No, customers here were more inclined to book a room for an hour or two so they could have a quick, illicit shag. It wasn’t anywhere Matt would choose to stay for an extended period of time. A bit rundown, kind of seedy, the place had a tired air about it. Old-fashioned. Very nineteen-eighties.

  The receptionist sniffed, which was understandable, given the amount of tears she’d shed. A uniformed officer sat beside her, giving comfort in his usual way with a hand on her shoulder. PC Jacobs was the kind of bloke who handled other people’s emotions well and always seemed to know what to say in any given situation. He’d have been better off being a therapist, in Matt’s opinion. He had more empathy than anyone else Matt knew. Someone a person would want in their corner if they were a bit off-kilter.

  The woman appeared more than a bit off-kilter, and who could blame her? Her face was white apart from her cheeks being stained by the red flush of fright. Short hair—mussed where she’d possibly grasped at it upon discovering the gift left on her desk—had a gray tint to it that was so fashionable these days for the younger folks. Pink lips in a pout, tight as a chicken’s arsehole. Not the best way to start her working day, granted. Matt could identify with that, seeing as the s
ame sight was what had greeted him within his first half an hour on shift.

  The days where he began work without some grisly aspect of crime slapping him across the face were few and far between. If he managed to walk straight into his office to tackle the ever-present pile of paperwork once a week he considered himself lucky. Grateful. Pleased that no one had been attacked or killed. But it was always in the back of his mind that someone would be, and he spent the majority of his time feeling coiled up, waiting for news of another crime.

  What a way to fucking live. Always on a knife edge.

  He sighed and turned to raise his eyebrows at Detective Aaron Thaxter, the name Matt used while they were at work. If Matt was exasperated by him, he called him Aaron George Thaxter, and when they fucked or were hanging out, plain and simple Thax.

  They’d fucked as recently as an hour ago. Matt’s arse still stung from the passionate, quick assault. Quick being the right word. It was always fast these days. Always a rushed affair.

  Shame, that.

  “What do you reckon, then?” Aaron asked, moving from the entryway to come and stand beside Matt. “Same fella?”

  How come he always appears so well-put-together? Hair in place, tie dead center, suit and shirt without a crease in sight? Me? Dragged through a hedge backwards is my look of the day.

  “I’d hazard a guess it is. One inch tip this time,” Matt said. “Significant, what with them always being put next to a ruler. Probably has some warped meaning to the person doing the chopping. One we may never find out—and it’ll be one of those things that pisses me off for ages. I like to know why they do the shit they do.”

  “They don’t always reveal their reasons, you know that,” Aaron said. “Let’s hope when the fingertip’s printed we’ll get the same hit on who owns the damn thing. Last thing we want is more fingers from more people. Bad enough trying to find the man these ones belong to.” Aaron slid his hands into his suit trouser pockets.