Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) (2 page)

One

Tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering
wheel, Steve Wilson cursed his luck. Though he had driven this route time and
again, he had never been delayed. Not ever. Every now and then he might have
had to bide his time waiting for an opportunity to pass a slow moving car, and
sometimes he had to allow for groups of cyclists riding three abreast –
they were infuriating - but that was mainly at weekend when the narrow winding
lanes attracted sightseers and Sunday drivers into the countryside. Even so,
traffic jams were unheard of.

Until today.

He preferred this longer route because the main
dual carriageway that hugged the coast was often clogged by Liverpool bound
commuter traffic or Southport tourists. These back lanes, always relatively
free of traffic, were usually much quicker. In any case, winding lanes were
much more fun to drive.

So what had happened to make today different?
What on earth was causing the holdup? If only the stoppage had been another
half mile down the lane then he could have taken a right and cut through to the
bypass, or if he’d known about it earlier he could have cut off at the
Scarisbrick
Arms.

Not exactly a small man - his wife described
him as ‘thick set’ but others just made do with ‘fat’ - sitting cramped up in a
car seat that was too small on a warm day with the engine running and no A/C
wasn’t his idea of fun. A dribble of sweat started to run down his forehead,
dripping off his eyebrow. Dabbing his brow with a tissue in one hand he reached
out with the other, flicked a switch and the driver’s door window slid down.
The breeze was welcome, but not so other cars’ fumes accompanying it. Back up
went the window.

Get moving damned you!

Now he was getting really ruffled. Opening the
car door he manoeuvred his bulk so that, standing with one foot on the road and
one still inside the car, holding on to the door to keep his balance he could
see over the cars in-front. They were stationary for as far as he could see,
which wasn’t very far anyway, the road ahead curving to disappear behind a row
of trees. Up ahead he could see that several drivers had left their cars and
were stood talking in the road. Getting out completely he walked over to join
them.

‘What’s up?’ he
asked
as he got nearer.

‘
An’t
gorra
clue mate’ replied a skinny little man wearing a
designer tee shirt, a baseball cap and crumpled jeans. ‘
On’t
radio they just said road’s closed by an accident and traffic’s stopped.’

‘Shit’ said Steve. If the cars didn’t get
moving soon, there wouldn’t be any point in his carrying on.

‘What sort of accident?’ he asked. ‘And why are
the emergency services taking so long to get us on our way?’

‘How do I know?’ said crumpled jeans. ‘
Thi
din’t
say no more than it
were an accident and road were closed.’

Back in his car Steve’s temper was almost at
breaking point. Turning on Radio Merseyside he found that he was listening to
DJ Roger Phillips talking to a man stuck in a traffic jam caused by an
accident. From the sound of it, it was his traffic jam and the man was probably
out of view, just around the corner. According to the DJ, the police were
estimating at least an hour before the road could be reopened.

A bloody hour.
And then how long before they all got moving?
He struck out in sheer desperation, smashing his fist into the steering wheel
boss. A car horn shrieked. Crumpled jeans stuck his hand out of the car in
front and gave Steve a
Vee
. What was that for? Then
he realised, it had been his horn blowing when he had hit the wheel. Calm down
Steve.

Behind him, impatient drivers were making three
point turns. Hot under the collar, Steve followed suit.

..........

Driving along the by-pass, Wilson was again in
high spirits. Just a few short miles to go and he would at last be turning off
to the airfield. With no telephones ringing, no difficult customers to sort
out, no wife nagging about his weight or what time he would be home, and no
dratted traffic jams either, flying was Steve's favourite antidote for
work-time blues. Since buying the
microlight
aircraft
he had spent as much of his spare time flying as he could, or swapping yarns in
the clubhouse with fellow enthusiasts when conditions were not suitable. Today,
even though he’d lost the best part of an hour, sufficient time remained and
conditions were very suitable. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and hardly a
breath of wind either.

Turning off the
dual-carriageway
,
he eased the car along a narrow track, kicking up clouds of dust as he
negotiated the potholes and ruts of the dirt road. Just a quarter of a mile on,
the track took an acute right turn then a long lazy curve to skirt a small
coppice. Another sharp turn and the airfield appeared magically as if out of
nowhere.

Little more than a farmer’s field across which
a swathe had been mown as a runway, the airfield couldn’t be seen from the
road, and even close up only a cluster of portable cabins indicated anything
more than corn and root crops.

As if crafted by giant schoolboys and looking
like huge triangular paper darts atop rather frail looking tubular framework,
four machines were parked line abreast. Big fabric covered wings were canted
with one tip on the ground. School aircraft used for training, they were the
latest models combining advanced technology and lightweight components.
Extensions on their control bars allowed a rear seat instructor to override his
student in the front seat. Was this the ultimate back seat driver arrangement?

Wilson’s trike was his pride and joy. An older
model, there were no extensions on its control bar – Wilson could fly
alone. But first he would need to drag the aircraft out of its hangar and get
it ready for flight. Parking his car near the clubhouse – really a
euphemism for one of the portable cabins – Wilson humped his kit bag out
of his boot and trudged around to the hangar – another euphemism, this
time for a 40ft metal sea container – where his
microlight
was stored.

The container was far narrower than the
aircraft’s triangular wing, which meant that the wing had to be removed for
storage. But rigging the aircraft, fixing the wing on top of the buggy like
tubular trike before flight, was never a chore. Indeed, with the prospect of
flight looming, fixing the wing, checking cables and getting the miniscule
craft airworthy served only to heighten his anticipation and excitement for
what was to come, pushing his earlier frustrations aside. And once the aircraft
had been rigged, donning his one-piece flying suit, his gloves and helmet,
signalled the final pre-flight procedure.

‘Clear prop!’

Behind Wilson, the tiny Austrian ex-snowmobile
engine burst into life. Increasing the throttle just enough to inch the trike
forward, he taxied out to the runway. Turning onto the mown swathe, he pulled
the control bar back close to his chest to tip the wing down while giving the
engine full power. Cushioned only by rather ineffective and rather limited
suspension, he could feel every bump and undulation of
 
the ground through the little machine’s
small wheels as he gained speed. But sensing rotation point as speed rose, he
pushed the control bar forward to increase lift and the
microlight
seemed to just jump into the air.

The bouncing and harsh vibrations stopped as
the ground fell away and the aircraft settled into a steady climb. Once over
the by-pass on which he had driven such a short time ago he banked the
microlight
south towards the Mersey. Flying first past
Crosby up to the coast-guard point, the furthest he could legally fly without
entering Liverpool Airport’s controlled airspace, would give him the longest
possible flight back along the coast – a magnificent sight if ever there
was one – and his favourite route.

Pushing the control bar over to his left put
the
microlight
into a gentle bank to his right, which
he held until he had flown a complete U-turn and was flying back along the
coast. Flying as free as a bird, the view really was magical. From this height
the coastline could have come straight out of a Mediterranean holiday brochure,
such was its magnificence.

Sandwiched between a gently rippled sea and
undulating sand dunes topped by tufts of grass with their fronds waving gently
in the breeze, lay a long ribbon of golden beach running from his turning point
close to the Mersey estuary as far north as the
Ribble
estuary. Along those miles it’s name changed many times – Crosby Beach,
Hightown
, Formby,
Freshfield
,
Ainsdale
,
Birkdale
, Southport
– but it was in reality one glorious stretch of magnificent coastline.

And flying above it was a privilege. Though
just minutes from home, looking down he could be thousands of miles away in
some sun drenched Mediterranean idyll.

He could see families strolling along Southport
pier and couples walking along the Marine Drive. Minutes earlier as he had
flown over Formby Point he had watched two horses frolicking at the edge of the
sea. Life was good.

Banking the little aircraft, he flew inland
and, using familiar roads and buildings as a guide, flew over his own house,
before turning again to fly back to the airfield. Losing a little height to get
a closer look, he could see several police vehicles close to a recovery truck
and a little hatchback. The hatch was on its side in a drainage gulley running
alongside the road. Several feet below road level, the truck driver was
struggling to attach a hitch to drag the car out. This must have been the
reason for the earlier holdup, but apart from the emergency vehicles, the road
was now clear. His drive home could be along his favourite route – and in
a better temper than the outward trip.

Two

Turning the gas down on the hob, Joan spoke
over her shoulder to her husband, busily setting the table in the open plan
dining area. ‘Perhaps he might not be trying to get it at all. He might just be
pushing in one direction to actually go in another.’ Pausing momentarily she
went on, ‘Or then again, he might be. And if he is then he could do anything
couldn’t he?’

 
‘What
in heavens name are you going on about?’ he quipped. ‘You are talking in
riddles. You’ve lost me.’

The man really was exasperating. Couldn’t he
understand plain English? Wiping her hands on a tea towel she turned from the
cooker to face her husband. ‘Well, he knows full well that we bought the barn
from Dad and that he’s no rights to it at all, so perhaps he is just throwing
the house into the argument to pressure us into giving him more money. Can’t
you see, it makes sense.’

 
‘No
it doesn’t love.’ The table set, Mike had hobbled painfully down the three
steps to their huge living area, which with its mezzanine gallery and two
storey high windows giving views over their fields, was his favourite room in
the whole house. ‘We bought the buildings true enough, but not the fields and
the land the barn stands on. Your Dad gifted those to us. So now that the old
man is gone, your brother has decided that they are all half his. And if he can
get his grubby little hands on the land, then since our house stands on it, the
house comes for free as well. No my love, your dear brother is claiming his
half of everything as though it still belonged to your Dad and hadn’t been
gifted in the first place; your Dad is no longer with us so he knows that there
is nobody to contradict him. I think that he is going for the jugular.’

‘Oh Mike’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that
melodramatic? Surely my own brother wouldn’t try to grab it all for himself and
leave me homeless? And what about the original documents – they will show
that it was all legal.’

‘Only if they exist’ Mike responded. ‘There’s a
lot at stake so brotherly love might well have gone out the window. As for
documents, your dear brother is using your Dad’s solicitor. That’s convenient
to say the least. He drew the gift up but what’s the betting that he’ll say
that there are no records of anything and he doesn’t recall any such gift.’

‘If I could find our copies then it would all
be cut and dried.’.

‘Of course it would. But we can’t. We’ve been
through this a million times. We were in such a mess when we were converting
the barn that we didn’t know where anything was and it’s my guess that when the
contractors cleared the site, some boxes of things we should have kept were
thrown away with the rubbish, so documentation of the gift is among the things
we don’t have. All we have is the record at the Land Registry. That proves that
we own everything. But that’s not the issue. It’s how we came to own it all
that he is jumping up and down about. We know the land was gifted, your brother
knows it was gifted, bloody hell, everyone knows that it was gifted, but he
feels left out of your Pop’s will and is fighting for what he believes is his
inheritance.
 
At least, that is what
he is claiming. You and I both know that that is not the real motive. He’s
desperate, needs money and land, and this is a way to get both. If that wasn’t
the case my guts wouldn’t be as raw as the meat on the butcher’s slab and I
wouldn’t be walking about like a cripple or living on pain killers.’

Before she could answer, the doorbell rang.
Their discussion cut abruptly, the unspoken question of who their visitor might
be hung in the air as they looked worriedly at each other. Was this the big
guns coming out? Was somebody coming to add some weight to the previous pressure?
Was this unfinished business? Mike raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and,
looking at his wife, shook his head slowly from side to side in a visual ‘I’ve
no idea’ response.

Joan brought two strangers into the room. ‘It’s
the police Mike.’

‘Good evening Mr Johnson.’ The older of the
two, a tall and immaculately dressed man in his fifties, with clean features
and greying hair beginning to recede introduced himself as Detective Inspector
Radcliffe and his sidekick as Detective Sergeant Fraser. ‘We’d like to ask you
a few questions about the attack please.’

Rubbing his bruised ribs, Mike struggled to
rise then fell back into his chair. Normally placid, pain had taken its toll on
his patience. His face ruddy and veins starting to protrude, the prospect of
repeating yet again what he had already said several times pushed him even
closer to snapping.

‘For Christ’s sake inspector’ he stormed, ‘I
know who worked me over and I’m trying to forget it as much as I can, but you
lot keep turning up to remind me. Pardon my cynicism but I’ve already told you
exactly what happened and who attacked me but nobody seems to care a shit. I
suggest that you check back in your reports if you want the details. Now if
that’s all, we are about to eat our evening meal. Goodbye inspector.’

‘I’m sorry if you’ve been troubled that much
sir,’ said the tall officer. ‘I am not surprised that you want to put it all
behind you as much as possible but a beating of the severity you received is a
serious crime and we cannot just ignore it. As for who did it, at the moment we
don’t know. But please Mr Johnson, don’t keep blaming your brother-in-law. At
the time you were being attacked he was nowhere near here. We have witnesses
corroborating that.’

‘No he wasn’t. I tell you it was definitely
him. I know that it was dark and by the time I was facing him my vision had
gone anyway, but it was him. There’s no doubt at all. It’s not just the attack.
He’s breaking my family and trying to steal my house, so if you cannot sort him
out then he’ll have another go at me. Before I’ll let that happen I will kill
the bugger myself.’

‘Mr Johnson,’ the young sergeant cut in. ‘I
advise you not to make rash accusations like that. We want a conclusion just as
much as you do and I assure you that we are making progress. We’ve taken
on-board what you have said and we are continuing to make enquiries, both with
respect to your brother-in-law and to any other potential suspect. But at the
moment he’s in the clear.’

‘Like hell he is!’

‘Mr Johnson, please keep an open mind.’ Why did
everybody get bogged down with their own agenda instead of accepting the facts
thought the inspector. ‘We need to check up on a few things to help us resolve
this. Did you come straight back here to the house that evening or did you divert
somewhere else on the way?’

‘Why is that important? I was jumped at the
back of my car in my own driveway so what the devil has my route from work to
home got to do with anything?’

Give me strength thought Radcliffe. Who’s
asking the questions here? Given the facts they knew, the dreaded
brother-in-law wasn’t even in the frame for the attack so Johnson’s route home
would be entirely relevant. If he had stopped off somewhere then he might have
been followed, say by an opportune thief spying his chance only to be
frightened off when the phone rang and lights came on.

Or what if Johnson was playing away? Now that
was a thought.
 
In front of his
wife, wouldn’t that explain why he didn’t want to disclose whether or not he
had come directly home from his shop? Yes, quite a possibility. If Johnson was
having something of a dalliance, what if the lady’s husband had been watching
and had followed him back home. Plenty of scope in that theory wasn’t there?
And opportunity too.

‘Well it could be important. Your shop closes
at five thirty and it’s only fifteen minutes drive back here to
Crosshill
Village, but you said that you didn’t arrive
until around eight thirty. That leaves almost three hours unaccounted for.
Wherever you were, anybody could have followed you back here and unless we can
check it all out we will be none the wiser. Help us out here Mr Johnson.’

This really was getting nowhere except for
round and round in circles. Radcliffe looked Johnson in the eye with a
quizzical expression and left the silence to do its work. Radcliffe was a past
master of the silence psychology and knew that Johnson would be the first to
break. He’s also wager that no matter where he had been or what he had been
doing, and despite his wife’s sudden attentiveness, the beans would be spilled.

It wasn’t Johnson but a strident wail that
suddenly broke the spell.
 
Over in
the kitchen a smoke alarm was vibrating itself to destruction, sounding like
the air exiting the
 
stretched neck
of a balloon.

Oh crikey. The carrots!’ exclaimed Joan as she
flung herself up the steps into the split-level kitchen. ‘I left them on a low
light and they must have boiled dry. Just look at them, burned to a cinder.
Mike, can you shut that blasted siren up?’

Crunching across the gravel, the sergeant
looked at his superior. ‘What do you make of that then? He’s adamant that his
brother-in-law worked him over isn’t he? Do you think that there’s any
credibility in it? To me he just seems so hell bent on it that he cannot see
any other alternative.’

‘He could be right at that Fraser. Don’t rule
anything out until it is proven and cast in stone. He might look to be on the
better side now but if I had been worked over to the extent that Johnson was
and I had recognised the voice of my attacker, I would be hell bent on bringing
him to justice as well, even if my attacker was a relative. Actually, probably
moreso
. All the same, that dratted smoke alarm stopped us
getting an answer to where he was between closing his shop and getting home.
There could be more than meets the eye there or it could just be a red herring,
so let’s keep all our options open and not preconceive anything. We need to
delve a little before we make assumptions. Maybe a look at his shop will
suggest a few options.’

……….

Walking down the street, Radcliffe couldn’t
help but cast his mind back a decade or so. What had been a thriving area of
the town centre had, without doubt, gone downhill. The supermarket had only
lasted a couple of years before moving to a new site and the old store had
become an eyesore; an empty shell with filthy windows and graffiti spattered
walls. Further up the street, empty shops stood shoulder to shoulder with a few
in which hopeful new tenants were trying their hardest to start businesses.
They seldom lasted more than three months and usually lost all their money.

Crossing over and turning the corner, about
half way down a block of shops he could see The Palette. The street ran
obliquely to the empty supermarket and although every shop was occupied and
trading, the common view was that that was but temporary. The council’s
introduction of a one-way traffic system with bollards at each end of this
previously thriving thoroughfare had not turned it into a bustling
pedestrianised
shopping centre but, rather, an empty street
devoid of any shoppers. Yet just around the corner, Chapel Street had benefited
from
pedestrianisation
, attracting top line multiples
and drawing shoppers away from Southport’s established
 
traditional traders.

Reputedly, Mike Johnson had made a packet out of
his art shop. A career change to rid himself of the stresses of being a chef in
a busy coastal resort hotel, he had invested his savings and indulged his
passion – painting. Everybody in town knew The Palette. And they knew
Mike Johnson. Something of an extrovert, he had become the local celebrity,
regularly teaching small and large groups. In good weather, old ladies, wealthy
wives with too much spare time, and anyone else who would pay the course fee,
trooped out with their easels and little wooden boxes full of paint and brushes
to create pretty views of the Marine Lake, Promenade or beach. And when that
was not possible they sat around in Johnson’s studio above the shop.