From Water to Oil , livre ebook

Austin Macauley Publishers - J Houghton T

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

90 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

The British Empire rules most of the known world and in the dark places of its steam-fuelled streets, murder is whispered. Michael has signed another contract and must stop those that plot to kill the founder of the steam industry. The Empire relies on vehicles of every kind, all running on steam power, but change is coming, not just in its leadership but in the very way they operate and Michael has found himself dropped into the centre of it all.With a lack of understanding of anything that happens in the big world of business, Michael must delve deep into past grudges, dirty deals and dangerous shootouts to get to the mastermind behind one of the dirtiest takeovers of the century.

Informations

Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	29 mai 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528908993
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0175€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

From Water to Oil
T J Houghton
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-05-29
From Water to Oil About The Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgements A New Contract An Artistic Diversion A Factory Finish The Mighty Scotswoman Meeting with a Madman The Family Grows Back to Work Casualties The Plot Thickens Retracing Steps Keeping Up with Accounts Chasing the Chasers Haunting Revelations Epilogue
About The Author
Born and raised in the city of steel, Sheffield, T J Houghton tried many things, like being a chef and a van driver. But he found that he spent too much time daydreaming. So, now he writes about those daydreams and hopes you get as much a kick out of them as he does.
Dedication
Dedicated to Mr Affleck and Mr Taylor for inspiring my love of history and storytelling in school, to my parents that made this possible and to my friends far and wide that continue to inspire me every day.
Copyright Information ©
T J Houghton (2020)
The right of T J Houghton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 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 publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528903646 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528908993 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my father, Dr Andrew Houghton, for his constant proofing and continuous support, as well as his reminders of the proper rules of grammar. He helped me shape the book into something readable. I hope I made him proud.
A New Contract
Michael had only just woken to the sound of his grandfather clock echoing from the hallway as pale light seeped into the office – as best as it could through the smog of old London town. He tried, painfully, to shake the effects of the previous night’s whisky from his head, his pain made worse as the door to his office was thrust open by an elderly woman barging her way in. To his shock (having checked the pocket watch he kept at his breast at all times) it was five in the afternoon, the elderly woman had become a background noise, babbling of some plot against her husband’s life, his attention was concentrated on his watch. The same story on a different day, he thought to himself. However, he found his interest peaking after the value she had given her husband’s life broke through, it was nestled in between her panicked babblings of a book and a murder. Michael rose from his seat behind his desk and sat her down, beginning the consultation, she sat on the chair opposite him legs pressed together and knuckles clenched. The woman was so panicked and angry that she shook from head to toe, he brewed a teacup of coffee from a large contraption of small copper pipes and wooden knobs and passed the drink – and a shot of gin to calm her nerves; She was an older lady of fifty-nine, still looking glamorous for her age, she wore a dark red on her lips and a long, red dress that peaked at her shoulders and swept the floor by her boots. Something told him that the wife of a multimillion-pound industry tycoon had probably been an actress or singer in her past life. He returned to his seat around the desk and sat back into the warm leather; He liked the corner of the room in which his desk was placed, it sat out of the view of the window and in his particular profession the window proved to be a dangerous place.
She calmed herself down and began to unravel the story of an assassination plot to remove her husband from his place atop the largest company in the empire. She told him what she knew and what she needed him and his particular expertise to do, and what she knew was surprisingly a lot. She paid men well to keep eyes and ears on the dark places, working hard to gather information on any threats to the business from other businesses or saboteurs. One of them had stumbled across more than he could have hoped for and was killed for it, he had uprooted a conspiracy to overtake management the nasty way.
She gave him names, places and times of operations currently in motion, this was too much information to handle for a man only awake for ten minutes, she handed over a little green book bound in leather, eaten away by time and carelessness. Still in surprise at the vastness of her knowledge – and still half asleep, he took the book without thought and only after staining his hands realised it was damp, further investigation revealed a bullet hole straight through the top right corner encrusted with a ring of blood around the entry and exit holes. He wiped his fingers on a small handkerchief he took from a drawer filled with other blood-soaked items and placed the book on said desk, he saw all the signs to stop this meeting and like a fool, he tended to ignore them; The book belonged to one Brian Fletcher, the poor sap who had discovered this plot to remove Mr Preston, she had taken it from his corpse after he had bled out on her gypsophila patch back home. A classy way to go , he thought.
The old lady, Mrs Preston, was out of breath by the time she had finished speaking, but she managed a little more.
‘My husband is the only name not in the book’.
Her sharp lips were pressed together hard and her sharp nose gave her the demeanour of a schoolteacher, staring at him from across the desk. He took out a large piece of paper covered in writing and wax seals along with a large figure and terms of service, she took a while to read it and faced him with a fierce gaze, and then reluctantly signed his contract.
He walked her to the door and helped her into her automobile with the help of her personal driver. The engine was a big, shiny and expensive beast that rolled off down the cobbled street spewing steam into the smog already enveloping the streets of London. Michael stood at his doorstep and lit his pipe as he often did in spots of thought, watching life happening around the vanishing street, people moving from building to building, horses pulling Cabbies across the city and carts selling the last of the morning’s local goods door to door. The merchants were selling the cheap rotten new fruits, vegetables and spices from the new lands across the sea.
Just behind the fog, horses were pulling large steam-machines down the street into the industrial sector and into businesses around the city. Eighteen-ninety, a glorious time to be alive. The steam revolution was at its peak, just last week the papers had released a terrific story.
“Preston’s new medical section replaced a soldier’s arm with new armoured sleeve steam contraption.”
Some sort of skeleton formed of metal surrounded by the flesh of rubber, piping and hydraulics that powered the arm in its daily activities, apparently hooking the wires to the tendons was a painful process but worth it for the final results, all powered by pressurised steam. Fantastic pieces of machinery that were improving the industrial progress of her majesty’s empire every day. He had to admit that even he was fascinated by the whole concept of steam and it kept his mind occupied in calm moments.
He reached for his coat by the front door and set off into the city tapping out the ash from his pipe and replacing it with more tobacco, it was a nice long walk in which one could lose themselves. It was not a particularly cold morning however the coat did well to hide a large pistol and its holster on the back of his belt. As well as dangerous, London was a cloud on the map of England, the progress of the steam industry meant lots of smog and pollution that spilt out of the factories and into the streets; it was so thick one could cut a slice out of it with a butter knife and behind that smog wicked men did wicked things, and it did nothing to help the spinning in his head and the whisky haze that rested slightly over his eyes and behind his nose.
Michael stopped as he approached the River Thames, resting his hands upon the railings spanning the edge of the walkways overlooking the water he looked up towards the Cloud Cart, the richest of the rich lived their lives upon the cart, a giant city hovering above the capital; well hardly a city, he thought, its size was that of a large village filled with real estate for the rich, Buckingham palace had even been dug up and lifted into the heavens, high above the spreading pollution of the city he now stood in. The Cloud Cart floated elegantly overhead held in place by giant blades and high-powered turbines using a constant supply of steam to keep the platform airborne.
Michael began to recap the evening’s events, he had a bloody journal containing a plot to kill the head of the biggest industrial business of the western world, and the rest of the world for that matter, A list of every person that will be killed in the process of working up to Mr Preston, he had no idea of where to start and would be rewarded a lot of money for resolving the case. The wind picked up and brought the heavy smog from the industrial sector across the river covering everything, even the sight of his hands on the rails. He walked a little down the river until he found little Thomas and bought the newspaper that he kept on reserve for him, He then turned and followed t