by Zoe Sharp
Killer Instinct
( The Charlie Fox Series - 1 )
Zoe Sharp
KILLER INSTINCT
Charlie Fox book one
by
Zoë Sharp
with Foreword by Lee Child
For Andy, who always had faith
KILLER INSTINCT is the first in Zoë Sharp’s highly acclaimed Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox crime thriller series, now available in e-format for the first time, complete with previously deleted scenes and a Foreword by Lee Child.
'Susie Hollins may have been no great shakes as a karaoke singer, but I didn't think that was enough reason for anyone to want to kill her.'
Charlie Fox makes a living teaching self-defence to women in a quiet northern English city. It makes best use of the deadly skills she picked up after being kicked out of army Special Forces training for reasons she prefers not to go into. So, when Susie Hollins is found dead hours after she foolishly takes on Charlie at the New Adelphi Club, Charlie knows it’s only a matter of time before the police come calling. What they don’t tell her is that Hollins is the latest victim of a homicidal rapist stalking the local area.
Charlie finds herself drawn closer to the crime when the New Adelphi’s enigmatic owner, Marc Quinn, offers her a job working security at the club. Viewed as an outsider by the existing all-male team, her suspicion that there’s a link between the club and a serial killer doesn’t exactly endear her to anyone. Charlie has always taught her students that it’s better to run than to stand and fight, But, when the killer starts taking a very personal interest, it’s clear he isn’t going to give her that option . . .
‘Charlie looks like a made-for-TV model, with her red hair and motorcycle leathers, but Sharp means business. The bloody bar fights are bloody brilliant, and Charlie's skills are both formidable and for real.' Marilyn Stasio, New York Times
'Sharp deserves a genre all her own – if you are just discovering Zoë Sharp then you are in for a real treat.' Jon Jordan, Crimespree Magazine
'Charlotte (Charlie) Fox is one of the most vivid and engaging heroines ever to swagger onto the pages of a book. Where Charlie goes, thrills follow.’ Tess Gerritsen
Bonus Material
Don’t miss the bonus material at the end of KILLER INSTINCT:
The other Charlie Fox novels and short stories
Excerpt from RIOT ACT: Charlie Fox book two
Meet Zoë Sharp
Meet Charlie Fox
Excerpt from the Jonathan Quinn novella from Brett Battles – BECOMING QUINN
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Foreword
by Lee Child
I was on tour in the UK in the spring of 2002, for my sixth novel, and at the end of one of the events a woman came up to me and told me she loved my books, which is always a wonderful thing to hear. I responded happily – believe me, no forced politeness is ever required on such occasions – and then she said, “But Zoë Sharp is better.”
Naturally I asked, “Are you Zoë’s mom?”
She denied any family connection, and I filed the name away, because at heart I’m a reader, not a writer, and if a well-read fan offers a recommendation, I take it seriously. I write only one book a year, after all, but I read hundreds, and life is too short for bad books. Rushing from place to place on tour didn’t give me time to go shopping, but fortunately free books are a currency in the publishing trade, so I had my publicist call Zoë’s publicist, and within a day a copy of KILLER INSTINCT was biked over to my next stop, and I read it in short order.
And was very impressed.
Triply impressed, actually. Firstly, because apart from anything else, this was a debut novel, and there was nothing shy or tentative about it, and it waded straight in and tackled – secondly and thirdly – two huge challenges. Some things are just very, very difficult to do, because of the weight of cultural heritage and tradition and the limits set by others’ prior failures – but Zoë had gone right ahead and done them very successfully. (Full disclosure: Obviously I had never met Zoë at that point; knowing her as I now do, if I see her tackling a challenge, I get the body bag ready – for the challenge.)
The first challenge she beat was the difficulty of creating a truly convincing tough-girl protagonist. It shouldn’t be difficult, but it is. (Don’t get me – or Zoë – started on the legacy left by two centuries of sexism in our culture.) But Charlie Fox came across as real, true, and authentic. She wasn’t like anyone I knew – which to me is the point of thrillers: I don’t want to read about people like the ones I know – but she was someone I would want to know, and she felt like she could show up around the next corner. She wasn’t over-explained; her backstory was sketchy . . . above all, she didn’t seem invented. She just was.
The second challenge Zoë beat was to make an obscure and provincial place – in this case Lancaster, in North West England – seem convincingly dangerous. None of us has a problem believing New York City or Chicago or LA are jungles, but almost no writers can make a smaller location tough without a few winces and a lot of suspension of disbelief along the way. But Zoë did. As it happened, I knew Lancaster fairly well – I lived near it for seven years – and she wrote it like I felt it.
So, two big challenges easily defeated in a debut novel. Triply impressive. The next day I asked my publicist to call for Zoë’s second book, which was just out. I read it – and it was just as good. I have been a big fan ever since.
KILLER INSTINCT
One
I suppose I ought to state for the record that I don't make a habit of frequenting places like the New Adelphi Club, which is where this whole sorry mess began. Maybe if I'd run true to form and avoided the place, things might have turned out differently.
The New Adelphi was a nightclub that had risen phoenix-like from the ashes of the old Adelphi, a crumbling Victorian seaside hotel on the promenade in Morecambe. It had a slightly faded air of decayed gentility about it, like an ageing bit-part film actress, hiding her propensity for the gin bottle under paste jewellery and heavy make-up.
I should have seen the changes coming, of course. Over the last eight months the Adelphi has had 'under new management' written all over it. The first inkling of a revolution had been a line of skips along the front wall of the car park. The next, a sheepish visit from Gary Bignold, the assistant manager, to tell me that I no longer had use of one of the upstairs function rooms for my Tuesday night class.
“Sorry, Charlie,” he'd said awkwardly as he'd broken the news. “We've got a new boss man and he's sweeping clean. He's decided that making a few quid every week so you can teach a load of frumpy housewives how to slap down flashers in the park just doesn't fit in with his game plan.”
I teach women's self-defence, have done for four years now. I use gymnasiums in local schools, indoor badminton courts in leisure centres, and even the converted ballroom of a country house that's now a women's refuge. Finding a replacement venue for this class wasn't going to be impossible, but it wasn't going to be a piece of cake either. I thought regretfully of the lost revenue, and shrugged.
“Don't knock it 'til you've tried it,” I said. He'd caught up with me in the car park, near the skips. I was packing my jogging pants and trainers into the tank bag of my RGV 250 Suzuki for the ride home to Lancaster, only five miles or so away.
Gary hovered from one foot to the other until I'd double-zipped the bag and clipped it down. “So what's happening to the old place then?” I asked, tucking my scarf round the neck of my leather jacket. “They going to pull it down and build yet more luxury flats that nobody wants?”
“Nah, this new bloke, he's dead
switched on,” Gary said, relieved enough to be chatty. “He's going to turn this old dump into a nightclub. I've seen the plans. It's going to be absolutely excellent. Couple of bars, split-level dance floors, bit of food. The business. You'll have to come. Opening night. I'll get you in free, no trouble.”
I raised an eyebrow and he looked hurt at my scepticism. “I will,” he repeated. “I'm going to run the bars for him. It's all been agreed.”
I didn't say anything as I swung my leg over the bike and kicked it into life. Gary sometimes lets his enthusiasm run away with him. He looks too wide-eyed to ever be put in charge of anything more than asking the next person in line if they want fries with that.
I gave him a cheery wave as I circled out of the car park, ignoring his shouted assurance that he'd give me a call when they were about to re-launch.
It's a good job I wasn't holding my breath.
***
The New Adelphi Club opened about six months afterwards, just after Christmas. In record time if the murmurs in the building trade are to be believed. It seemed Gary had been right about the new boss being a mover and shaker.
At night the neon on the outside of the building lights up low cloud with an eerie violet glow and is visible from halfway across Morecambe Bay. It's become quite a local landmark.
I learned from the local paper that Gary did, indeed, become the bar manager for the new enterprise, but he never called to offer me those free tickets. I must admit I hadn't really expected him to.
It came as quite a surprise to myself, then, that I ended up at the place only a month or so after it opened.
That was my friend, Clare's fault, not mine. She'd dropped it on me over the phone a few days before. “There's this karaoke competition on at that new club in Morecambe this Saturday,” she'd said, out of the blue. “I fancied giving it a whirl, but Jacob won't go, so will you come along and lend some moral support?”
I hesitated. Clare's a mate. I've known her and her feller, Jacob, ever since I first moved to Lancaster, but I thought such a request was stretching a friendship too far. “I didn't know you were into that sort of thing,” I said cautiously, playing for time.
She laughed. “Well, Jacob says I haven't much of a voice. He says my strangled mewlings make the nocturnal warbling of our elderly tomcat sound like Pavarotti, but I reckon he's just too much of an old fogey to want to go to a nightclub.”
I vaguely heard rude mutterings by someone at the same end of the line as Clare, and she laughed again. Jacob must be in his early fifties, his dark wavy hair streaked through with grey, but he's one of those men who oozes sexual attraction. Always laughing behind eyes the colour of expensive plain chocolate, and just as tempting. If he could reproduce that kind of chemistry in a lab he'd be a millionaire.
Clare is twenty-five years his junior, more my own age. Tall, slender, she has endless legs and a metabolism that means she can binge peanut butter straight out of the jar without putting on an ounce. I recognised years ago that food was not going to be one of my indulgences in life if I wanted to stay under a size twelve.
I envied Clare the ability not to gain weight more than I envied her her looks, which were stunning. She had long straight hair to go with the legs, golden blonde without bottled assistance, and a sense of style I guess you just have to be born with.
She also rode a ten-year-old Ducati 851 Strada motorcycle like a demon and had the distinction of once having outrun a bike copper through the local Scarthwaite bends at well over a hundred. He'd pulled her over out of curiosity and his chin had bounced off his toecaps when she'd taken off her helmet. Where anyone else would have had their licence taken away for three months, she didn't even get a producer.
“So, Charlie, what do you say?” Clare prompted now. “I don't really want to go by myself,” she admitted.
I heard Jacob in the background again, loudly this time. “You're not going alone until they've caught that bloody rapist!”
“Yeah, that too,” Clare said. “You've heard about that, I suppose?”
I agreed that I had. It was a vicious attack that had only happened a few weeks previously. I'm not the morbid type, but I took a professional interest in the crime. Enough to keep tabs on the progress – or lack of it – in the news reports.
When you make your living teaching people, mainly women, how to avoid potentially ending up in the same situation, you tend to notice anything that affects business. When new pupils turn up at my classes with a sudden burning desire to learn how to reduce a large, hairy would-be mugger to a jellied heap on the pavement, you tend to ask what sparked off their interest. You don't come out of it looking too good if you haven't heard all about the latest stabbing, rape, or murder. Particularly if it took place on your own doorstep.
In this case, the victim was just turned eighteen, walking home along a gloomy footpath near the River Lune late one Thursday night and not smart enough to take a taxi. When she'd regained consciousness two days later she was only able to give a hazy description of her attacker.
He'd raped her with a knife held at her throat, then beat her savagely around the head. The police announced piously that it was a miracle she wasn't dead. As it was, the doctors predicted that she was going to need months of physio, speech therapy, and counselling. The surgeons had managed, after a fashion, to save her right eye.
Lancaster may have its share of violence, but it's still not the kind of town where things like that happen on a regular basis. The local paper was having a field day with tabloid-style headlines it never normally got to air. Public figures expressed their outrage. Worried citizens wrote to their MP.
Prominent policemen promised early results. It was a brutal and senseless attack, their spokesman said. The culprit must have been covered in his victim's blood. He must have been spotted arriving or leaving along the busy main road which shadows the river. He must have got home in a dishevelled and excited state. He would, they prophesied, soon be under lock and key.
As it was, several weeks had now gone past. Nothing happened. Appeals were made on the television and would-be witnesses obligingly came forward by the dozen. Unfortunately, none of them had anything of real value to tell. It appeared that the only witness of any sort was a derelict wino called Jimmy.
Jimmy thought he might have seen a car, and he even thought it might have been on that evening, but through the fog of his perpetual alcoholic stupor, he couldn't quite recall the registration number. Or the model. Or the colour.
There was an air of fear in the city that you could almost reach out and touch. I'd noticed it in my students, seen it on the street. Even over the distortion of the telephone system I could hear it now in Clare's voice – and in Jacob's, too.
I sighed.
“OK,” I said. “I'll come with you. Just don't expect me to sing!”
Which was how, a few days later, I came to be waiting for Clare in the car park of the New Adelphi Club, twiddling my thumbs and rapidly having second thoughts about the whole exercise.
It was partly because the noise level belting out of the place was so high I feared permanent hearing damage if I ventured any closer. The bass could be physically felt across the other side of the tarmac. I could well imagine that at closer proximity the high frequency would qualify as an offensive weapon.
In the ten minutes or so since I'd parked up and sat, watching people arrive and go in, I'd come to the conclusion that I was probably ten years too old to be there, which made most of the clientele too young to buy cigarettes, never mind alcohol. Also, in a clean pair of black jeans, an almost-ironed shirt, and my least tatty leather jacket, I was wearing way too many clothes.
Despite the chill of the evening – it was February, after all – the boys were all wearing tight little vests that showed off how many hours they'd spent down the gym, or untucked luridly coloured shirts that tried to hide the fact they didn't know where the gym was. The girls looked like they'd come out in their nightdresses. God, I felt old.
A new set of lights swept into the car park, and Jacob's rusty old cream Range Rover pulled up next to where I'd parked the bike. Clare waved through the window as she killed the motor and hopped down out of the driver's seat.
“Hi,” I said. I nodded to the car. “I thought for a moment Jacob had changed his mind about coming.”
“Oh no,” she replied with a little grimace. “He drew the line at just lending me the car.”
I eyed the skimpy little frock Clare was nearly wearing as I dumped my helmet on the Range Rover's back seat. “The way you're dressed I won't ask why you didn't come on the bike.”
She looked down at herself with a wry smile. “It would have been cold, wouldn't it?” she agreed, then nudged my arm. “Come on, Charlie, lighten up.”
“Lighten up? You'll be beating them off with a shitty stick looking like that and I'm the one Jacob's relying on to get you home in one piece,” I grouched. In view of her glam appearance I tried to do something with my untidy mop of pale reddish blonde hair, but it spent too much of its time stuffed under an Arai bike helmet to pretend to have a style now.
She grinned at me again. “Don't worry, if we walk in holding hands they'll all just assume we're gay.”
“Yeah,” I said sourly, “and I don't have to ask which one of us they'll think is butch.”
Clare locked the Range Rover's door and linked her arm through mine. “Well,” she said, a smile dimpling her lovely face, “we should both be safe then, hmm?”
To start with, we nearly didn't get into the New Adelphi Club at all. Gary's new boss man had employed some very useful-looking door staff. Two big guys I didn't recognise, which came as a bit of a surprise really, when I think about it. I thought I knew all the local hardcases.
Clare didn't have a problem. They waved her through staring at her legs so hard that afterwards I doubt they would have been able to pick her face out of a line-up.