NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED (Gavin & Palmer)
NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED
Gavin & Palmer – Book 1
by
ADRIAN MAGSON
Copyright © Adrian Magson 2012
The right of Adrian Magson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental
This ebook is licenced for your personal enjoyment only and should not be sold, given or loaned to any other person.
Previously published in paperback - 2004 (1st edition) and 2006 (2nd edition)
ISBN: 0-9547634-2-4
by
Creme de la Crime Ltd (now part of Severn House Publishers)
~~~~~~~~~~
Books by Adrian Magson
Riley Gavin/Frank Palmer series
No Peace for the Wicked
No Help for the Dying
No Sleep for the Dead
No Tears for the Lost
No Kiss for the Devil
Harry Tate spy thriller series (Severn House)
Red Station
Tracers
Deception
Retribution (Sept 2012)
Inspector Lucas Rocco crime series (Allison & Busby)
Death on the Marais
Death on the Rive Nord
Death on the Pont Noir
Young Adult (Gate Way Publishers)
The Lost Patrol
Non-fiction (Accent Press)
Write On! - The Writers' Help Book
For more information, please visit his website at: http://www.adrianmagson.com
PRAISE FOR ADRIAN MAGSON’S WRITING:
NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED (Gavin & Palmer 1)
"...a real page turner... a slick, accomplished writer..."
Reviewing The Evidence - www.ReviewingThe Evidence.com
NO HELP FOR THE DYING (Gavin & Palmer 2)
“Gritty and fast-paced detecting of the traditional kind, with a welcome injection of realism."
Maxim Jakubowski – The Guardian
NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD (Gavin & Palmer 3)
"As with all Riley Gavin & Frank Palmer stories, action packed from start to finish...touches of humour...guaranteed to keep you reading.
Monsters & Critics - http://www.monstersandcritics.com
NO TEARS FOR THE LOST (Gavin & Palmer 4)
"This intelligent crime novel... should garner this British author a larger following in the U.S. The crisp writing and fresh characters make this stand out from the mystery pack."
Publishers Weekly (US)
NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer 5)
"... a gem of a writer. Magson has a unique voice and his characters are unforgettable. If you've not read him before, you need to start right now."
Crimespree Magazine - http://www.crimespreemag.com
"With plenty of crisp dialogue and tense moments, the plot hurtles forward at a furious clip. A strong choice for all mystery collections."
American Library Association - Booklist Magazine
DEATH ON THE MARAIS (Insp. Lucas Rocco 1)
"...this book captures perfectly the rural atmosphere of France... Littered with characters and oodles of charm, this is a brilliant debut, a great read and terrific fun. Excellent!"
Books Monthly - http://www.booksmonthly.co.uk
DEATH ON THE RIVE NORD (Insp. Lucas Rocco 2)
“…a darker and subtler novel than Death on the Marais… The novel is ingeniously plotted and works up to an unexpected climax… A thoroughly enjoyable read from an accomplished crime writer… “
http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/death-on-the-rive-nord/
"France’s answer to Jack Reacher – tall, dark, broad and dedicated to right wrongs. C’est magnifique’!"
Crime Squad - http://crimesquad.com - Author of the Month.
DEATH ON THE PONT NOIR (Insp. Lucas Rocco 3)
"Rocco is every bit as strong as Martin Walker's Bruno Courreges... with an authentic sense of place. I'm extremely glad this is a series and will certainly be back for the next."
Linda Wilson - http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com
“… a rapid storytelling pace and intriguing collections of characters. The colorful French backdrop and Magson’s attention to the details of the country’s political history are welcome bonuses.”
J. Kingston Pierce - The Rap Sheet - http://therapsheet.blogspot.co.uk/
RED STATION (Harry Tate 1)
"The nail-biting suspense, high-octane action, and keep-’em-guessing plot set this book apart from the usual spy thriller, but it’s smart, tough, fearless, quick-thinking superspook Harry Tate who puts it in a whole other league. Superb!"
Booklist (American Library Association)
“This is an assured polished piece of writing. Magson lays down the ominous sense of betrayal carefully as anything you’d expect to read in a Fleming or le Carre. So I can’t wait until the next Harry Tate thriller.”
Shots Magazine - http://www.shotsmag.co.uk
TRACERS (Harry Tate 2)
Starred review! “With high-octane action, steadily building tension, and a plot packed with twists, Magson’s second Harry Tate novel suggests the best of Ken Follett or Robert Ludlum but with a touch more substance.”
Booklist Online (American Library Association)
“... if you enjoy a well-written, uncomplicated plot free of foul language and gratuitous sex, this is for you. Snog Marry Avoid? Definitely snog. (Harry's) a man I'd like to get to know better."
The Sun.
DECEPTION (Harry Tate 3)
“Well constructed and exciting, with plenty of strong dialogue and plot twists to keep the reader guessing, and probably guessing wrong.”
Kirkus Reviews – www.kirkusreviews.com
“Magson offers up his usual taut, keep-‘em-guessing thriller packed with action and unexpected twists, and guaranteed to keep espionage aficionados on the edge of their seats.”
Booklist Review
*********
Chapter 1
The first old man died on the beach.
Unaware of his impending fate, he watched, huddled in a blanket, as gulls screamed over a plastic bottle bobbing in the choppy water, while under a heavy sky a tanker plodded up the Channel. Apart from him, the beach was deserted. It was too early in the season for day-trippers and too cold for beachcombers with their wretched metal detectors.
He wasn’t interested in seagulls or tankers. The birds were noisy and demanding, like people, and the tankers too remote. He had long ago given up interest in anything much, surrendering willingly to an ill-tempered isolation. Now all he had left was the creeping disease of old age, made bearable by the few bits of comfort a well-stocked bank account could buy. As long as the account received regular additions, that was all that concerned him.
A car approached along the promenade and he sank instinctively deeper into his deckchair, pulling the blanket tighter around him. If he’d wanted strangers stopping by for a chat he’d have hung out a sign.
Maybe it was Willis. His minder was due about now with a flask of coffee laced with something that would truly piss off his doctor, if only he knew.
The hairs on his neck stirred as the footsteps approached, bringing faint memories of other times when danger had moved against him.
Well, he’d faced that an
d usually walked away laughing.
The newcomer stopped behind him, so close he must have been staring down at the top of his head. He fought a strong desire to turn and look. Damn him! He’d sit and defy the intruder to come round and look him in the eye.
Whoever it was didn’t bother. Instead the old man heard a rustle of cloth and a familiar metallic click. It turned his blood to water. Then the seagulls and the wind, the impending rain and the tanker, all ceased to matter.
Half a mile away, in a block of exclusive flats overlooking the sea front, another old man stared out to sea, puffing on his first cigar of the day. He knew it would likely kill him, but he didn’t give a bugger. Too old to let it worry him now, anyway. He wriggled his toes into the pile of his new carpet. Nothing like the feel of a fresh nap, he thought. About as far from Linoleum as it was possible to get.
He brushed a speck of ash from his sweater and debated going for a walk. Over to the east he could see two figures down on the pebbles. One appeared to be huddled in a deckchair, the other standing behind him. Bloody mad, some people, he thought idly. Probably asylum seekers, looking for something to steal.
The standing figure appeared to be holding a hand out to the other. Offering something maybe, or pointing. There was something familiar in the stance that made the cigar smoker shiver. He decided he was better off staying in. Far too cold to venture out, anyway. Easy way to catch a chill. In any case, the boys would be here later for a game of cards.
He glanced at the coffee table, with its single sheet of paper covered in neatly typed figures. He smiled momentarily. Money was still rolling in, and as long as the managers didn’t get greedy and the other two let him run things the way he always had since… well, since the changeover, it should be fine.
The front door clicked. Startled, he swung round. Two figures were standing in the hallway as if they had materialised out of the walls. Their heavy coats and dark slacks gave them the appearance of men attending a funeral.
“What the fuck do you want?” he demanded. For the first time in years he felt a skewer of fear deep in his gut. “How d’you get in?”
The leading figure stepped forward and pointed at the smoker. There was a sharp, flat sound and the cigar snapped into the air. It landed on the new carpet where it sizzled pungently.
The old man fell alongside it.
The second newcomer stepped past the gunman and carefully retrieved the cigar. He placed it in an ashtray where it could burn safely without threatening the other residents in the tower block.
Then both men stepped across to the window and looked out. Over to the east a solitary figure was walking up the beach towards a car parked on the promenade. Behind him was a figure slumped in a deckchair as though sleeping.
The two men turned and left the flat, barely glancing at the man lying on the floor.
Job done.
Chapter 2
The young man in the smart suit seemed oblivious to the chill in the air as he stood on the patio watching his employer. She was kneeling on a cushion, digging the blade of a knife between the flagstones and levering out stems of couch grass, the crepe-flesh in her upper arms quivering with the effort. The knife strokes were short and vicious, as if the battle with the weeds was personal, old age against new growth.
He looked around, eyes flicking over the tree line a hundred yards away, then turned to take in the house behind him. Set in an acre of prime Buckinghamshire countryside, the house wore sweeping eyelash gables overlooking a magnificent stepped garden, and every brick and tile, each bush and shrub, echoed solid, undeniable wealth. He’d heard it was once the home of a merchant banker. He wasn’t surprised.
Inside the house a telephone warbled pleasantly, as if promising good news. The young man went into the kitchen and through to the hallway, breathing a sigh of relief once he was out of earshot of the woman. Guard duties with no danger of action had a definite downside.
He picked up the phone and listened to a brief message, then replaced the handset without comment and returned to the patio. Over the old woman’s bowed back he checked the garden for signs of movement but saw only borders and flower-beds in perfect splendour; neat, ordered and unblemished. Not that he cared for any of it, save for the fact that intruders had no place to hide. Gardening wasn’t really his forte.
The woman glanced up as his footsteps sounded on the stones, the knife hand stilled, thumb resting on the top of the blade. The way she held it reminded the young man of a combat instructor he’d once trained with. Vicious bastard liked to nick trainees with the point of his dagger, to give them a sensation they never wanted to experience again. It had worked, though. The memory still made his gut twitch.
“What is it, Gary?” she asked.
“It’s done,” he replied, hands clasped respectfully behind his back.
The woman very nearly smiled. She didn’t, much, as if she had never learned how. “Good. Thank you.” She gazed down at her handiwork. “Much better without all those horrid weeds, and I must get that back border sorted out - it’s looking quite a mess, don’t you think?”
Gary made no comment. He had learned not to. When the woman levered herself upright with a grunt, Gary made no move to help, either. Something else he’d learned not to do.
The woman was in her mid-seventies and dressed smartly as always - even for gardening. There was still a hint of the showgirl she used to be, mostly revealed by a taste for gaudy jewellery and too much makeup. Behind Dior glasses and heavily layered mascara were eyes that looked out on the world in a seemingly benevolent manner. Eyes like someone’s grandmother, which she was, although not recently. Those eyes made Gary shiver. And he didn’t shiver at much.
“Have you called Spain?” she asked, dropping the knife onto the cushion at her feet.
“No, Mrs G. I thought you might want to do that.”
Her full name was Letitia Grossman. Lottie for short. But she liked being called Mrs G; she thought it showed respect. There had been too many times when respect had been denied her, and she had a lot of ground to make up.
She reached up and patted Gary’s cheek with a wrinkled hand, one of her long fingernails trailing momentarily across his cheek. Then she walked towards the house, leaving behind a sickly trace of sweet perfume overlaid by the tang of damp soil. Like she’d been recently dug up and bought back to life, Gary thought.
For Riley Gavin, the first rays of sun in Sotogrande, on the southern coast of Spain, brought a shiver of a much more welcome kind. The day promised to be hot and still, just the way she liked it. She dropped her towel and bag by the pool and revelled as the heat rolled across her naked shoulders. The long, grey winter had dragged on like a depressing cold, and she had been waiting weeks for this moment when she could forget about the wind and rain, the slogging along grey streets back home looking for stories, and allow herself to relax for a while.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass door to a changing cubicle. My God, she thought, I’m so white I look like the blood’s been drained out of my backside. She flicked back her long, blonde hair, wondering if maybe she hadn’t also got a little soft around the chin. Too much junk food while sitting in her car watching and waiting for something to develop. Instinctively she adjusted her stance to pull in her stomach. There was no vanity in the move, simply a self-conscious need to look ‘right’, as her mother always used to say.
She lowered herself on to a lounger and looked around. Perfect. No one else about.
The complex was a real find. Small and exclusive, the only other residents were a few golfers too busy playing the local courses to have any interest in the pool. Casual visitors were politely turned away, and there was little to attract families. The small flat was hers for a week and she didn’t intend straying far from where she was right now. Riley reached up behind and pulled at the thin cords of her pink bikini top. The unaccustomed heat, as well as the sudden exposure in the open air, brought an instant tingle to her sensitive skin, and a brief
shiver ran the length of her body. Oh, yes, she thought. I’m in Heaven…
She lay back and sighed, wondering why she didn’t do this more often. Money is why, you silly bitch, she reminded herself, and stretched her legs out before her. Money and the thrill of it all. The chase.
Well, the chase could go hang itself for a while as she recharged her batteries. She hadn’t taken a decent holiday since last August and she deserved one more than usual. God knows, she’d worked her little tush off for it. Her last assignment had been long and wearing, chasing up an investment scam perpetrated on a flock of churchgoers in the Midlands who had put their trust in a self-styled Christian Broker. The fact that thirty per cent was an unusually high return and the proposed ‘opportunity’ was a land development fund in Colombia, home of coffee and cocaine but rarely top land deals, had failed to ring alarm bells among the virgin investors. It wasn’t long before phone calls by the church’s pastor to the broker received nothing but the disconnected tone. It had taken Riley two months to track down the culprit, hiding behind another front company, this time in the retirement homes business. By then she had gathered enough information on his activities to put together a fireproof story that made the front pages of at least three dailies. Her research, someone else’s by-line, but what the hell. The main thing was that the ‘Broker’ would shortly be appearing in front of a jury and later, ripped-off investors and court willing, be in a home of another kind altogether.
Warmed by the sun, she slipped into a shallow sleep. Gone were thoughts of work and earning a living. Time enough for that next week.