The Body on the Shore
Page 31
‘Oh, how sad.’
Amber nodded. ‘My brother shot him.’
Afterword and Acknowledgements
Please save this until you’ve read the book, as there are a few spoilers. I have taken a few liberties with the geography of Surrey and its public transport network, which will undoubtedly be noticed by those who live nearby. While Elmbridge is the real name of the council borough, there is no suburb bearing that name and of course Roosevelt Avenue, for all of its resemblance to many British high streets, is fictitious, as are the businesses therein.
I spent the best part of a month in Albania in 2017, and was treated with great hospitality. I was fortunate enough to witness a genuine mafia funeral, whose scale and power left a deep impression on me. Though some real crime families are mentioned in passing in the book, the Dragusha and Kreshniki are entirely my invention. Neither they nor their key personnel are based on any real organisation or people. Though, inevitably, a crime thriller throws a spotlight on the worst aspects of any society, I would emphasise that I was impressed by the vigour and aspiration of the Albanian people, striving to escape a troubled past. European readers who were taken aback by the revelation of the killer, and who doubt that such things are possible, may want to search YouTube for videos of automatic weapons being used by children as young as five. What is often proudly recorded in the U.S. is also true but less well-publicised in both Albania and Yemen.
On matters related to police and forensic procedure I would like to thank Kim Booth, Dr Stuart Hamilton, and Dr Jenny Ward. Neil Dowlman was kind enough to let me visit his architectural practice in Alford. I would also like to thank Kate Mitchell and Jess E. for their specialist insight and expertise, plus Sara Wescott for reading the draft. Any remaining errors are my own.
I would particularly like to thank Michael Bhaskar and his hard-working team at Canelo, who set me a tough deadline, and copy editor Séan Costello.
Above all, I owe everything to my wife Louise, always my first and most insightful reader.
Deadly Proximity
Don’t miss Nick Louth’s next thriller, coming in January 2019…
Deadly Proximity
In Manchester two desperate criminals, fresh from murder, take Catherine and her one-year old son hostage. For twelve agonising hours they are confined together in a squalid Transit van, under siege by armed police.
In that bullet-pierced metallic cage, survival seems unlikely. But it must be possible. And she has a plan to make it happen.
Catherine’s life has been a struggle: cancer, three miscarriages and five years of IVF. But a year ago, at forty, she finally gave birth to a beautiful boy. She may be terrified out of her wits, but she would lay down her life to save his.
Heroism rises from the most unpromising roots
One brave woman, her baby, two deadly criminals. In deadly proximity.
Now read on for the first chapter…
Deadly Proximity: Chapter One
This is my wife, Catherine, yesterday evening. Tuesday. You can see her, with a screwdriver, in the boot of our Nissan, trying to tighten the screws on the anchor points for the new child seat. I told her that they were secure, the man at the shop who had installed it had told us so, and he was fully qualified. I’d double-checked the seat too. Watched the video, read the instructions. Used all my strength to test the straps, wobbled it, tried to pull it loose. It was fine. But for her that isn’t enough. When it comes to Ethan, nothing is ever enough. She fears that in a collision, our one-year-old son could be catapulted from the back seat through the windscreen. Since Ethan arrived, Catherine has developed a tendency to worry about all sorts of things. Sometimes it is reasonable, sometimes not.
She is understandably anxious about the odd-shaped mole on her right shoulder. She frets about her figure, and the smile lines she has acquired at 41, and seems to be convinced that one day I will no longer find her attractive. She’s wrong. I will adore her to my dying day, I can guarantee that now. I love her corkscrew copper hair and her pale freckled skin, even though she hates it and wishes she were a dark-haired, olive-skinned Italian.
Wishing you were something else, someone else, somewhere else. It’s so clear to me now that you have what you have, and you make of it what you can. That’s what matters. When the time comes, when you are tested. You never know when that will be. I didn’t know, and neither here does she, still working on that seat for our son. Look at her. She has no idea of what is going to happen in less than twenty-four hours. That would make her worry, no mistake.
* * *
That mole. Catherine survived skin cancer, you see. She knew about the risks. She never sunbathed, was rarely drawn to the beach, always wore a broad-brimmed hat and gallons of sunscreen when on our brief foreign holidays. She had been aware since childhood that with milky skin and about as many freckles as a galaxy has stars that there would always be a chance of some malevolent sun-seared alien cell, splitting and growing in a forgotten corner of her epidermis. And she had always looked out for the arrival of that malignity. Believe me, she looked. I saw her after every shower, in front of the mirror. But it was a dab of pigment she noticed for the first time under the nail of her left little toe, just a smear of brown visible through the cuticle, when she was about to apply nail varnish. It didn’t even look like the moles you see on the chart. But better safe than sorry. The nail was removed, the offending clump of melanocytes excised and tested.
The test results were not good.
Acral lentiginous melanoma. Not benign. Malignant. Dangerous. Potentially lethal, that tiny little blot. It’s not related to sun exposure, so there was no blame on her (or us). Still, tests showed that it had spread to a lymph node on the foot. A sentinel node, that’s what they call them. Watching out for trouble. If that’s infected, then the next stage is worse. Stage III, they call it, like some tricky examination. Maths, Further Maths, Much Further Maths. Catherine had her entire lymph node basin removed from her foot and ankle. Basin – it’s a good description for what is an entire river system, carrying white blood cells to where they are needed, and taking toxins away. But hiding away amongst the toxins are cancerous cells, still alive. She was thirty-two, and she was very brave about it, when under local anaesthetic she watched them peel back her creamy skin, remove the nodes, then stitch it almost invisibly back. The next nodes, the next basin, seemed to be uninfected. It was then a question of waiting. Cancer’s Russian roulette. That was when the question of having a child became more urgent. As she always said to me: ‘That’s what I was made for. To bring a new life into the world.’
And to protect it, Catherine. Against all the badness this world can throw at you. That’s why you survived cancer, Catherine. You have a job to do. I can’t help you now. No one can help you. It’s your task alone. I know the date and the time, and the place. But I can’t come back and warn you. God, how I wish that I could.
* * *
Tuesday. Almost eight in the morning, and she has to leave for work in half an hour. I’ve just finished getting Ethan up. Catherine is doing Pilates, lying in the centre of the lounge listening to the CD, whose soft rain forest music is full of bird calls and pattering raindrops. Because of the time, she hasn’t bothered to put her leggings and leotard on. She’s just wearing shorts and an old T shirt with a faint orange stain on one side that, I am now experienced enough to be sure, is baby vomit. The voice on the CD, all mid-Atlantic vowels and breathy enthusiasm, is enjoining her to be aware of her own body, its balance and alignment. ‘Make sure you are square aware, and breathe, breathe in until you have expanded your ribcage to its maximum. Now hold it gently, and make a few slow pelvic tilts.’
Mindfulness seems out of reach though. She eyes me staring at her, and starts giggling. ‘Don’t. You know I can’t concentrate if you watch.’ More giggling. But I stay leaning in the doorway, my arms folded, a slight grin on my face as I listen to Ethan’s happy burbling from the bedroom. Her hips tilt, her tummy flattens, the puke patch c
reases. I see the tell-tale vibration in her diaphragm. Silent laughter.
‘Right, that’s it!’ She jumps up and chases me around the lounge. I let her catch me by the kitchen door, and she tickles me quite hard in the ribs. As I mock-up a wounded expression, she stands on tip-toes to give me a slow, languorous kiss. ‘Tonight. I promise. He’ll sleep better, even if I have to have a G&T before I feed him,’ she whispers.
‘You are going to drug our precious child?’ I say in faux horror.
She smiles and licks my neck. It’s a delicious feeling. ‘Maybe.’
I did get that promised act of lovemaking on Tuesday night.
It was wonderful.
It was my last.
Also by Nick Louth
Thrillers by Nick Louth
Bite
Heartbreaker
Mirror Mirror
The Body in the Marsh
The Body on the Shore
Financial titles
Funny Money
Bernard Jones and the Temple of Mammon
Dunces with Wolves
Multiply your Money
How to Double Your Money Every Ten Years
About the author
Nick Louth is a best-selling thriller writer and an award-winning financial journalist. A 1979 graduate of the London School of Economics, he went on to become a Reuters foreign correspondent in 1987. He was for many years a Financial Times columnist, and a regular contributor to Investors Chronicle, Money Observer, and MSN Money. It was an experience at a medical conference in Amsterdam in 1992, while working for Reuters, that gave him the inspiration for Bite, which in 2014 went on to become a UK No1 ebook best-seller. The Body on the Shore is his fifth thriller. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.
www.nicklouth.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Nick Louth, 2018
The moral right of Nick Louth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788632225
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co