by Zoe Sharp
She stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I thought you told Nils, outside that café, that you were there to report the news, not become a part of it.”
Alison lifted an uncomfortable shoulder. “I still believe that,” she said in a low voice.
I shook my head. “So, how did you end up as the next TV Dangerwoman, then?”
She grimaced. “Not my first choice, I admit, but I had to give them something to justify the expense of being out there.”
I put my glass down, wiped a trickle of condensation from the side of it. “And what happened to your earth-shattering original story?”
Her face turned wry. “They squashed it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who – your network?”
“Yes . . . well, not really.” She started to shake her head, then stopped. “Pressure from above. They caved.”
“Does that mean I’m never going to find out what that whole damn thing was all about?”
She hesitated, shifting awkwardly on the squashy sofa. The open window was to her left, the breeze stirring against her artfully casual hair. A motorbike with a raucous exhaust roared past in the street below. She looked a million miles away from the terrified and bloodied figure I’d pulled from that desert ambush.
“Well, I did sign a confidentiality agreement and―”
I leaned forwards, lowered my voice. “Aren’t you people always banging on about the public’s right to know? Don’t you think at least that I have a right to know?”
Her shoulders came down. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, you do.” She took a deep swig of her drink, something in a tall glass with a lot of fruit salad – probably Pimm’s – and set it down carefully on the low table in front of her. “We managed to get hold of some video from about a year ago – government archives,” she said. “Amazing how often these tin-pot regimes record stuff like this for their own amusement. It showed the massacre of a group of dissidents. A big group of them. They were just herded into the desert and machine-gunned, for sport.” Her face contorted at the memory. “The kind of thing you could only watch once, and that was once too many.”
“Massacres happen all the time,” I said calmly. “What was special about this one?”
She glanced at me in reproof. “The people behind the guns,” she said. “The president himself was one of those pulling the trigger and laughing while he did so. We tracked down and interviewed some of the survivors, got their stories to intercut with the original footage. It was compelling and horrifying both at the same time.”
There was a wistful note in her voice, though. Stories that were both compelling and horrifying were the ones that tended to win Pulitzers. Maybe that was her biggest regret.
I shrugged. “Sadly, that happens all the time, too.”
She sighed, as if she’d been hoping that part of the tale might have been enough to satisfy me. The waitress arrived then with our salads, deposited them with a flourish and bustled away again. I let Alison pick at her food for a few moments, then nudged her to continue.
“What was special, Alison?”
She put down her fork. “One of the other people involved was the ex deputy president,” she said flatly.
That took a moment to penetrate. “Hang on – isn’t he the one who denounced the president and broke away to lead the opposition―?”
“The one who’s just routed the old regime and been sworn in as new leader?” she said, a cynical note in her voice now. “The one the west is courting? That’s him.”
This was the man Zak had supported, the one he’d spoken of when he’d claimed to act in honour. For my country. He had wanted to kill the story, and the storytellers, to prevent the public disgrace of a disgraceful man. He’d given his life for that loyalty.
“They will ruin us,” he’d said of Alison and Nils. Maybe it was better of have a strong dictator than a nation in chaos. Events in Iraq and Libya had proven that. Was it also worth the price in civil liberties? Somebody thought so – somebody high enough up to make it happen.
I glanced at her. “So, what was it all for – personal glory?”
Her face twitched. “It’s never clear-cut, Charlie,” she said. “It wasn’t my first choice to make myself into the story, but I had to do something to justify the time and expense. I couldn’t put the original story out, and I couldn’t take it elsewhere―”
“Why not?” I interrupted. “Why couldn’t you take it to another station, another network?”
“Because I have a contract that wouldn’t let me do that,” she said with the exaggerated patience of someone talking to a child. “And if I’d broken it, I might have been blacklisted, never got another job.”
“Bollocks,” I said shortly. “It might have delayed your next promotion, but it would have made your name as a journalist of principle.”
She eyed me cynically. “I could have gone to jail.”
“Same answer applies – possibly with a longer delay.”
Alison let her breath out in an annoyed spurt, still looking past me, I noticed, to see who was paying attention to our quiet disagreement. “Charlie, that’s simply not how things happen in the real world―”
“No, it damn well isn’t,” I shot back, low but harsh enough for her eyes to jump back to mine. “In the real world, Alison, I killed four men – little more than boys – to protect you and your bloody story. If you were never going to have the balls to use it, you could have left via the airport weeks before it all went bad and saved me the trouble.” I let that settle for a moment, then added. “And Zak would still be alive, too.”
“But he betrayed us.”
“So you told the world,” I agreed dryly, and the pink stain rose again above her collar. “But in the real world you’re so fond of, Zak was the one who behaved with honour. Misguided perhaps, but honour of a kind nevertheless.” I got to my feet, looked down at her for a long moment. “You were the one who betrayed, not just yourself, but everyone in that godforsaken country.”
She flinched. “That’s a low blow, Charlie.”
“Is it?” I said. “Whatever happened to that old newspaper saying – ‘publish and be damned’? What happened to having the courage of your convictions?”
“There were consequences – not just for me!”
“There are always consequences, Alison,” I said tiredly. “Sometimes the truth hurts like hell, but – trust me – it’s nothing compared to the pain of a lie.”
Bonus Material
Meet Zoë Sharp
Zoë Sharp was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. After a promising start at a private girls' school, she opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve in favour of correspondence courses at home.
Zoë went through a variety of jobs in her teenage years. In 1988, on the strength of one accepted article and a fascination with cars, she gave up her regular job to become a freelance motoring writer. She quickly picked up on the photography side of things and she has worked as far afield as the United States and Japan, as well as Europe, Ireland and the UK. Since her fiction writing career took off, she dovetails her photography with working on her novels.
Zoë wrote her first novel when she was fifteen, but success came in 2001 with the publication of KILLER INSTINCT – the first book to feature her ex-Special Forces heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. The character evolved after Zoë received death-threat letters in the course of her photo-journalism work.
Later Charlie Fox novels – FIRST DROP and FOURTH DAY – were finalists for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. The Charlie Fox series has also been optioned for TV.
As well as the Charlie Fox novels, Zoë's short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines, and have been shortlisted for the Short Story Dagger by the UK Crime Writers' Association. Her other writing has been nominated for the coveted Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Anthony Award presented
by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Macavity Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers’ Association.
Zoë lives in the English Lake District, and is married. Her hobbies are sailing, fast cars (and faster motorbikes), target shooting, travel, films, music, and reading just about anything she can get her hands on. She and her husband, Andy, who is a non-fiction author, have recently self-built their own house. Zoë blogs regularly on her own website – www.ZoeSharp.com – and on the acclaimed group blog, www.Murderati.com.
Meet Charlie Fox
The idea of a tough, self-sufficient heroine who didn't suffer fools gladly and could take care of herself is one I had lying around for a long time before I first wrote about Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox. The first crime and mystery books I ever read always seemed to be populated by female characters who were only any good at looking decorative and screaming while they waited to be rescued by the men!
I decided early on that Charlie Fox was going to be very different. She arrived almost as a full-grown character, complete with name, and I never thought of her any other way. At the start of the first book I wrote about Charlie, KILLER INSTINCT, she is a self-defence instructor with a slightly shady military background and a painful past.
In RIOT ACT, Charlie has moved on to working in a gym, and comes face to face with a spectre from her army past − Sean Meyer. Sean was the training instructor she fell for when they were in the army together and she's never quite forgotten or forgiven him for what she saw as his part in her downfall. Sparks are bound to fly.
Close-protection work − the perfect choice
It's Sean who asks Charlie to go undercover to the bodyguard training school in Germany where the events of HARD KNOCKS take place. Charlie agrees as a favour to him, but gradually realises that close-protection work is the perfect choice for an ex-Special Forces trainee who never found herself quite in step with life outside the army that rejected her.
By the time we get to FIRST DROP Charlie is working for Sean's close-protection agency and he accompanies her on her first assignment in Florida. By now she has come to terms a little with her violent abilities − or so she thinks. But then she's plunged into a nightmare in which she has to kill to protect her teenage principal.
Which is why, at the start of ROAD KILL, Charlie was a little in limbo about her life and her career in close protection. Until, that is, one of her closest friends is involved in a fatal motorcycle crash and she agrees to take on an unpaid bodyguarding job. She and Sean are soon drawn together to protect a group of thrill-seeking bikers on a wild trip to Ireland.
The second book to be set in the US, SECOND SHOT, starts with a bang − or rather, two of them − when Charlie is shot twice and seriously injured in the course of her latest bodyguarding job in New England. The events of this novel strip away Charlie's usual physical self-assurance and leave her more vulnerable than ever before as she tries to work out what went wrong and still protect her client's four-year-old daughter from harm. Charlie is also forced to confront how far she's prepared to go in order to save the life of a child.
By THIRD STRIKE, Charlie and Sean are living in New York City and working for Parker Armstrong’s exclusive close-protection agency, where Sean has become a junior partner.
In this book, I really wanted to finally explore Charlie’s difficult and often destructive relationship with her parents − and in particular with her father. Charlie has to protect her mother and father from harm at all costs, but is hampered by trying not to let them witness just how cold-bloodedly their daughter must act in order to be effective at her job. It puts her in an often impossible situation, brings her relationship with Sean to an explosive head, and causes her father to reveal a side of himself everyone will find disturbing.
Not only that, but the story ends with big questions over Charlie’s entire future.
By the start of FOURTH DAY, where Charlie, Sean and Parker Armstrong are planning a cult extraction in California, Charlie has still not solved the problems that arose during the previous book − nor has she found the courage to explain it all to Sean. When she volunteers to go undercover into the Fourth Day cult, she’s looking as much for answers about her own life as about the man who died.
It's this battle with her own dark side that is one of the most fascinating things for me as a writer about the character of Charlie Fox. I wanted a genuine female action hero, but one who had a convincing back story. I've tried to ensure she stays human, with all the flaws that entails − a sympathetic character rather than just a 'guy in nylons' as someone described some tough heroines in fiction.
In the latest instalment, FIFTH VICTIM − involving a deadly kidnap plot among the jet-set of Long Island − there are complications with Sean’s ongoing condition, and Charlie’s increasing awareness that her boss, Parker, views her as so much more than a mere employee. Charlie is forced to make decisions this time out that will change her life forever . . .
The instinct and the ability to kill
Characters who live on the fringe have a certain moral ambiguity that we find seductive, I feel. Charlie has that obscurity to her make-up. She discovers very early on that she has both the instinct and the ability to kill. And although she does it when she has to and doesn't enjoy what it does to her, that doesn't mean that if you push her in the wrong direction, or you step over that line, she won't drop you without hesitation.
Dealing with her own capacity for violence when she's put under threat is a continuing theme throughout the books. It's not an aspect of her personality that Charlie finds easy to live with − a difficulty she might not have if she was a male protagonist, perhaps? Even in these days of rabid politically correct equality, it is still not nearly as acceptable for women to be capable of those extremes of behaviour.
But Charlie has evolved out of events in her life and, as you find out during the course of the series, things are not about to get any easier. I do rather like to put her through it! She's a fighter and a survivor, and I get the feeling that if I met her I'd probably like her a lot. I'm not sure she'd say the same about me!
Although I've tried to write each of the Charlie Fox books so they stand alone, this is becoming more difficult as time goes on and her personal story overlaps from one book to the next. I'm always expanding on her back story, her troubled relationship with her parents and her even more troubled relationship with Sean, who was once her training instructor in the army and, when she moves into close protection, he then becomes her boss. He continues to bring out the best and the worst in her.
And their relationship is becoming ever more complicated as the series goes on. In the next outing, Charlie is struggling to deal not only with the dangers faced by her client, but also from the one person she should be able to trust with her life . . .
Other Works by Zoë Sharp:
The Charlie Fox crime thrillers
KILLER INSTINCT
RIOT ACT
HARD KNOCKS
FIRST DROP
ROAD KILL
SECOND SHOT
THIRD STRIKE
FOURTH DAY
FIFTH VICTIM – coming in e-format Spring 2012
KILLER INSTINCT
Charlie Fox book one
by Zoë Sharp
'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.'
Charlotte ‘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