Hope Road
Authors: John Barlow
Tags: #Mystery, #Thrillers, #Crime, #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Police Procedurals
#1 novel in the LS9 crime mystery series
by John Barlow
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What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
J
OHN
B
ARLOW’S prize-winning fiction and non-fiction has been published by HarperCollins, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 4
th
Estate and various others in the UK, US, Australia, Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland. His current project, the LS9 crime mystery series, is set in Leeds and follows the life of John Ray, the half-Spanish son of crime boss Antonio ‘Tony’ Ray. The series will eventually comprise nine novels.
Praise for John Barlow’s previous books:
“A cracking read that’s impossible to put down.”
Yorkshire Post
“Barlow’s imagination appears unlimited, almost attuned to a parallel world.”
New York Times
“John Barlow is back with another story that’s surprising, funny and satisfying…
Intoxicated
delivers the goods. It’s the real thing.”
Washington Post
“Wonderfully innovative. Magic realism meets Yorkshire pragmatism.”
Booklist
“John Barlow demonstrates a vast love of language and, above all, the ability to tell a riveting yarn.”
Palm Beach Post
“John Barlow is the rare writer who can be playfully inventive, while deeply in touch with literary traditions.” Matthew Pearl, author of
The Dante Club
“Like T.C. Boyle, to whom he has been appropriately compared, Barlow paints personalities in broad strokes… Barlow’s lively imagination will carry along those who appreciate risk-taking fiction.”
Kirkus
“…masterfully written and paced, rich in back story and subplots. At times enthralling and at others heartbreaking… a rewarding novel by a gifted stylist.”
Charleston Post
H
e tells the cab to wait. Walks up the drive. There are
For Sale
and
To Let
signs next to each other in the garden. Kids’ toys lying in the flowerbeds. The lawn a few weeks away from a good cut.
She’s already at the door, hands running down the front of a blue print dress, flattening her stomach. She’d been jumpy on the phone. Eager to please.
I don’t like this.
Through the door comes the noise of children shouting and a TV turned up way too loud. In the hall he sees a small wooden table piled high with brown envelopes, and more envelopes on the floor.
Then she’s down the steps to meet him. Smiling.
He looks at the large detached house. Can’t be more than five years old. Tidy place. Nice area too. Very nice.
What happened?
“Hi,” she says, arm outstretched. “The car?”
He nods, shakes her hand. It trembles a fraction and her finger ends are pink, raw.
“I’m Alison.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
A pause.
“So…!”
They look across at the car, parked up close to the side of the house. Sleek, black, pristine. Then again, Porsche GT3s, a couple of years old? They’re all pristine.
“The asking price, it’s, y’know, I’m open to offers.”
An escalation of noise from the house.
“Ah, kids!” she says, trying to laugh.
“One careful lady owner?” he asks, still looking at the motor.
She lets the question find its mark.
“It’s in my husband’s name, but…”
She glances at the
For Sale
sign at the edge of the garden.
For Sale
,
To Let
.
He’s already turning.
“Not what I’m after. Sorry.”
Flashes her a clipped smile and he’s away down the drive.
“What the hell you come for, then?” she says as she watches him go, the softness gone from her voice.
You don’t want my money. You really don’t.
“Bloody time waster!”
He hears the house door slam shut, the screams from within.
As the cab moves away he pulls out a Nokia, fast dials.
“The last one, Porsche GT3? No good. We’re done. I’m going home. I’ve got a date.”
One
S
he’s dancing from one leg to the other, struggling into a pair of jeans, phone jammed between her chin and shoulder. Then, with a single thrust of the pelvis, her dark blue knickers, plus the buttocks they don’t quite conceal, disappear.
“Fifteen minutes,” she says, grabbing the phone as she speaks into it, looking around for more clothes. “No. It’s Saturday. Ten. Okay… Yes,
yes
…”
He watches from the comfort of a king-size bed as she snakes her arms up into the sleeves of a white shirt, juggling the phone between hands. When the brief conversation is over she throws the phone onto the bed and starts buttoning up her shirt.
On the wall behind her is a framed photograph of a motor yacht, shark-like as it slices through the water, its hull whiter than the foaming surf, whiter than her shirt, whiter than white.
He looks at the picture then back at Den. If he had to choose? Out there on the water, or in here with her? Will he ever be able to choose?
“What time is it?” he croaks, the rasp of yesterday’s late night in his throat.
“Eight-twenty. I’ve got a dead body and you’ve got cars to sell.”
“I wouldn’t call it dead,” he says as she leans over him and kisses his forehead.
“
And
,” she adds, grabbing a clump of his thick black hair and gently turning his head to one side, “you’re famous!”
Shit. Just what I needed.
On the pillow next to him sits a laptop. He squints at the screen:
FAMILY OF CRIME TURNS
AN HONEST PROFIT
Beneath the headline two people are grinning proudly to the camera, around them a fleet of luxury cars. He looks more closely. A third person, who he knows must be himself, stands some way behind, out of focus, his mop of dark hair casting a shadow over his features until he’s almost unrecognisable.
“What body?” he says, sitting up and watching as she perches on the end of the bed and pulls on a pair of white trainers.
“Just work.”
She springs up again and grabs a brown leather jacket, moving over to the huge Victorian windows to check the weather.
He sighs, knowing that however much he enjoys watching her slither into a pair of jeans, it also means that the metamorphosis is in progress: lover to copper, from Den to DC Denise Danson. Each time she disappears inside her work clothes it’s like saying goodbye to an old friend and hello to one of those acquaintances you wish you didn’t see half so often.
Coppers are dull bastards on duty. They take themselves so seriously it’s painful. Even now, after two years of getting used to it, he steers clear of her when she’s working. Lunchtime dates are the worst. She tries to loosen up, but never quite manages to drop that slightly tetchy, detached nature that all detectives seem to have. No, he and Den are made for the social hours. Whenever they have any.
She grabs her phone, emits a noise which might be a goodbye, and she’s gone.
He looks up at the massive windows. Yellow-grey light spills into the bedroom, down across the white linen duvet and onto the polished wooden floorboards, which despite their high sheen are badly snarled and gouged, as if they bear the permanent scars of teenage acne. Which in a sense they do.
Just over three decades ago he walked into this room for the first time, a nervous eleven-year-old about to get his first taste of a proper art class. Since then he’s always liked it in here, the art studio on the top floor. When he bought the flat, he deliberately asked the developers not to remove the floorboards, just varnish them. Art was never his strong point, but thirty years later and the old studio has turned out to be a remarkably comfortable place to live.
Out beyond the windows the sky is changing rapidly, thick grey clouds dispersing to reveal a radiant blue, like the last remnants of a stormy Mediterranean night surrendering themselves up to a day of intense heat. Were he to kneel on the bed and peer through the glass, though, he would see not a great glistening expanse of sea but rows of red-brick council houses running down the valleyside, an ugly-as-hell modern comprehensive school, and further off the kind of grey tower blocks that seem to be rain-dampened whatever the weather.
When the old high school had been converted into flats, the main selling point was their high ceilings and the sense of space. But for him the building had an added attraction, because he’d always felt comfortable here, as if he belonged. This is where he’d become John Ray, where he’d escaped the shadow of his father and the family name. From these classrooms he’d gone on to Cambridge, then abroad, far away from the place where he’d grown up, and where he was always someone’s son, never just himself. He had a lot to thank the school for.
Then, two years ago, he came back. It wasn’t his choice, not exactly. Regrets? The view from the window isn’t great, and it definitely isn’t the Mediterranean. But it’s home. For now at least.
He looks again at the photo on the laptop. In the foreground stands a young woman with mad, voluminous hair, a pierced nose and slightly sunken gypsy eyes. Next to her is a young guy in a pale suit and a boyish smile; he’s as big as a bear and his shoulders are so wide they seem to take up most of the shot.
“Freddy, you’re blocking me out!” he says, smiling. “And that’s fine by me.”
He looks again at the figure in the background, arms crossed, reserved. Is there something quizzical about his posture? Difficult to tell. He hardly even recognises himself. And behind them all, high up over the entrance to the showroom:
TONY RAY’S MOTORS
.
He shuts the laptop and glances around the bedroom. An empty bottle of
Carlos I
brandy lies on its side beneath the windows, two crystal tumblers next to it. He and Den had spent half the night there on the floor curled up in the duvet, talking about a million things, life, work, fate and how it comes creeping up on you… Occasionally they’d argued about who was going on top, because the truth was that, however well varnished the floor was, it did give you the odd splinter in the bum.
On the bedside table sits a thick square of clear perspex,
Auto Trader Used Car Dealership of the Year
embossed on it, and in smaller letters,
Yorkshire Region
. Within the perspex a silver steering wheel is trapped, as if suspended in formaldehyde, a Damien Hirst take on the secondhand motor trade. The award was just a bit too big to fit into his jacket pocket, and he’d had to carry the thing home in his hand last night. There’d been a few sarcastic comments in the city centre. Then again, at six-two and fifteen stone he didn’t get that many comments.
He hadn’t intended to go to the award ceremony at all. But the people organising it just kept asking for confirmation, and then that girl from the
Yorkshire Post
rang, and wouldn’t leave him alone until he agreed to an interview. By which time it looked like the most natural thing to do was just to go and get it over with. Same with the interview.
The ceremony, at least, had been short. Buffet food. No plate of chicken in a Champagne sauce to pick at while some slurring bloke next to you wearing a Burton’s suit tells you exactly why Leeds United were wrong to get rid of David O’Leary.
All in all it hadn’t been too bad. An hour milling about sipping bubbly and nibbling a variety of forgettable hors d’oeuvres in the
Metropole Hotel
. Then, at the very moment his name was announced, Den had embraced him, pulling him close onto her, and whispered: