Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3)
Page 26
‘I never told you…’
‘What?’
‘That letter I found. It’s…’
I grabbed her arm.
‘Look! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy!’
There it was, riding across the mouth of the cove, not unlike the Miss Prosser, but bigger and that radar stuff sticking on the roof and some chairs at the back where you could do some fishing It stopped chucked an anchor out. Then a little later, a rubber dingy appeared from round the other side.
‘Time to go for a swim I think,’ I said. ‘You coming?’
We took our clothes off, walked into the water, started slowly outwards. She was a better swimmer than me. Me, I’d always had to fight the sea. Audrey seemed almost a part of it. It was all I could do to keep up. Then, after five minutes she stopped. The dingy was drawing slowly near.
‘This is far enough Al. You must go back now.’
‘Here?’
‘Here.’
She put her arms round my neck. Rain was falling on her face, her eyes all wet.
‘This is it, you know. You’ll never see me again.’
‘I know that.’
‘I’m sorry Al. Truly I am.’
‘I know that too. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’
I gave a kiss. The best one I ever did. Floated the world that kiss did.
‘Off you go. And no looking back. We done it, you and me. We done it, Audrey. Bonsai eh! Bonsai, with bells on.’
And I pushed off, swam ashore, never looking back until I was standing on the beach. There was nothing to see then, just the little dinghy disappearing behind the boat.
She’d gone.
A week later I was in the rest room of the Lady Di, with Johnny Caracas, taking part in first round of the outward bound Scrabble Challenge. He was floundering. Em bust in over carrying an international Daily Telegraph.
‘Al, have you read this.’
Johnny looked up, annoyed, but he knew better than to stick his oar in where Em and me was concerned. She sat down, started reading out loud.
‘The first committal hearing was held today for Mrs Durand-Deacon, arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband Gerald Palmerstone. Mrs Durand-Deacon was helped into the courtroom wearing crutches, thanks to injuries sustained while attempting to evade arrest the week before.’
‘Evade arrest! That’s a good one.’ Em continued.
‘Although she has denied any involvement in her husband’s death, in a later interview, newly promoted Chief Inspector Rump, who had arrested her while enjoying a brief summer holiday on the coast, and who himself sustained injuries in furtherance of his duties, intimated that the police had strong forensic evidence to connect her to the death of her husband, which was initially attributed to accidental death.’
‘What do you think it could be?’ Em asked. ‘The forensic evidence.’
I shrugged my shoulders. Then I remembered, Gerald’s handkerchief, the one she borrowed off me to blow her nose, the one with little bits of McWhirtle pasty caught in the folds, same type as caught in Gerald’s mouth, the one she tucked back up her sleeve.
‘No idea,’ I said, passing her my glass. ‘Fix us another gin, there’s a poppet.’
Ship Ahoy
Just in case you haven’t read them, there are two earlier books about Al Greenwood. Cliffhanger and Fish Tale. You can buy them on Amazon. Here are some reviews.
Cliffhanger
Perfectly paced, with sly wit and a blackly humorous ending.
— Sunday Telegraph
A rollicking ride, clever witty…Middleton’s characters are a treat
— Independent
A faced paced and ingeniously plotted thriller
— Daily Mail…
An Ayckbournesque comedy…the set pieces are excellent
— Daily Telegraph
“Al wants to get rid of his wife. So he pushes her from a cliff. When he comes home, who sits in the living room? His wife. Who was then the one he killed? An exciting puzzle, flavoured with a lot of black humour.”
— Playboy
“a wonderfully dark comedy, very dapper and quirky, like Miss Marple on marijuana.”
— NDR Info
“Tim Binding is a master of the psychology of characters, of their observations and descriptions. Cliffhanger is a delicately balanced mobile, a stunning, quirky tragic-comedy with depth and also sensuality.”
— Deutschlandradio Kultur
Fish Tale
“Hard to say what the British author Tim Binding is better at: creating special characters – or getting rid of them again….even the fish have more character than all the characters of most other thrillers put together.”
— Spiegel Online
“Highly entertaining… those strange characters grow on you more than many other protagonists in this genre.”
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Great slapstick….”
— Deutschlandradio Kultur
You can buy them on Amazon here:
If you haven’t already, sign up for my mailing list and you get a free story. They’ll be other stories down the line, only I’m a bit busy right now. Here’s why.
I’ve just started to write another book. Not about Al, but one of the characters you’ve already met. If you sign up and join my list, I’ll tell you who, and when I’m happy with it, send you the first chapter. After that you’ll get bits of info as to how I’m getting on, maybe asking your advice. After all, if you’ve read all three books, you’ll know the kind of person he or she is. When I’m done I’m going to ask those who’ve signed up to send in suggestions for the title. The winner will get a personal preview of the whole deal.
Click here.
That’s it. Back to the coal face. Thanks again.
Love T.J. Middleton?
Get your next T.J. Middleton story for FREE
If you sign up today, you’ll get all of these first class benefits:
1.A T.J. Middleton Exclusive, his short story, Al’s Christmas, available free to subscribers
2.Details of Middleton’s new novels and the opportunity to get copies in advance of publication, and
3.The chance to win exclusive prizes in regular competitions
Interested? It takes less than a minute to sign up. You can get the novels and your first newsletter by visiting tjmiddleton.com/signup
T.J. Middleton is the pen name of Tim Binding, acclaimed author of In the Kingdom of Air, A Perfect Execution, Island Madness, On Ilkley Moor, Anthem, Man Overboard, and The Champion. He lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
A publisher for over thirty years, Tim Binding was Editorial Director of Picador, one of Britain’s leading publishing house (where he introduced their now famous hardback imprint) and then from 1986-89 was appointed Editorial Director of Penguin and Chief Fiction Editor for Viking. After a gap of ten years, when he wrote his first three novels, he was asked by Ian Chapman to help start up the UK arm of Simon and Schuster, one of America’s largest publishers. He worked there for three years, and while there worked closely with the late Robin Cook on the publication of his diaries Point of Departure.
He now works for Peters Fraser + Dunlop in an editorial capacity, and has been responsible for a number of worldwide bestselling books, most notable 33 Miners, the story of the Chilean miners. He has enormous editorial experience, working with the widest range of authors. In his time he has worked with Booker Prize-winning novelists such as Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and Hilary Mantel; travel writers such as Mark Tully and Jonathan Raban, Grant Naylor; authors of the bestselling science fiction series Red Dwarf; and published Simon Nye’s Men Behaving Badly before it became a smash TV hit. He also wrote with Simon The Last Salute, a TV sitcom which ran for two series on BBC1 featuring a 1960s AA patrol team. He also unwittingly helped write Bob Dylan’s blurb for his masterful autobiography, No Direction Home, of which he is inordinately proud.
If you’d like to hear more from T.J. Middleton, follow
him on twitter, @TimBindingBooks, or check out his website – www.tjmiddleton.com
This edition published in 2016 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © T.J. Middleton, 2010
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
Ship Ahoy