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152 pages

English

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A man stands trial for a brutal murder, a crucial witness disappears, an MP's daughter confronts a dark family secret and an Asian assassin with a passion for Tom and Jerry cartoons inflicts hideous deaths on those who cannot answer his single question. Welcome to the world of Hatewave where the World Wide Web harnesses hate to bring death and destruction to its chosen targets.

Sujets

Crime

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	24 novembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781456625887
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Hatewave
by
Malcolm McLeod and Nigel Barley

Copyright 2015 Malcolm McLeod and Nigel Barley ,
All rights reserved.

Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2588-7

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Chapter One
They met by arrangement in the back room of a small, gloomy café located just off the Essex Road in Highbury, one of the cheap ones left over from gentrification. He was the first to arrive. He normally wore a Savile Row suit but this morning he had chosen to put on a cheap black leather jacket bought from a charity shop, a dark green roll neck sweater and sagging grey corduroy trousers. He hoped that his crumpled clothes and unshaven face would suggest he was one of those semi-intellectuals who hung around Islington, perhaps a book reviewer or a writer on African art, a man who grubbed his way through life. He would like it if people thought that: anonymity was important at times like this.

Maisie Jebb arrived ten minutes late - but then she always did. He knew she liked making people wait for her: it was part of her technique. The ways they reacted to her lateness – annoyance, resignation, even amusement - helped her to size them up.

She had insisted they meet at the seedy cafe. Perhaps she owned the place? Perhaps she calculated he’d pay the bill and so add a bit more to her wealth? He knew she was both greedy and mean: it was one reason he liked to work with her. You knew where you were with strong, definite vices. They defined and simplified the soul.

Still, meeting in the open like this made him slightly uneasy: the strong contrast between them might make people remember them. He was confident that he was relatively inconspicuous but she was far more memorable. She had the pale blue eyes, the milky white skin and flaming red hair often found in the Scottish Highlands. How that set of genes had combined to create her had always puzzled him. He had investigated her and knew she had no connection to Scotland. Her father had been a Cockney pork butcher in Southwark and her Kentish mother worked as an office cleaner in the good old, bad old, days before such jobs were taken by illegal immigrants from Africa and Central Europe. Well, she’d moved a long way from her family background. He wondered again about the fire that had killed her parents but then she had inherited nothing, so it probably was just an accident.

She nodded back as she reached the table and sat down. The chair seemed to wince beneath her thirteen stone, another inheritance from her butcher father. She was almost six foot tall, solid, heavy, shaped straight up and down, a pillar or tree trunk rather than a set of curves. It always struck him as odd that she liked to dress in frilly, patterned dresses and wear delicate necklaces, tinkly ear-rings and rattling silver bracelets. None of them suited her. She looked as comfortable as an elephant in a tutu.

He sometimes fantasised that she would dress more appropriately in an old fashioned female prison officer’s uniform: long navy blue skirt, square shouldered jacket, a tight, hair constricting hat and clumping black shoes. She had a touch of butch, flannelette-knickered cruelty about her that would have suited the role of Holloway wardress, force-feeding suffragettes and having fluffy little favourites among the younger prisoners.

He watched as she shifted ponderously in her seat, still taking her time, getting her bulk comfortable, arranging which bits overflowed where and then pulling off the fine black leather gloves she always wore. He wondered if long ago someone had told her a lady always wore gloves when she was out in public. There were oddly old fashioned touches about her.

She fluffed her hair up and pressed her lips together, taking yet more time to get settled. Her bloodless white skin reminded him of the the undersides of the soles and plaice on the fishmonger’s stall round the corner. He smiled to himself; the likeness fitted her slithery coldness.

‘Hallo, Geoffrey darling,’ she said finally. It was a market stall keeper’s ‘darling’ not a lover’s. They had known each other for years, even worked together in the past. ‘What surname are you using these days?’

‘Gorer. I’m Geoffrey Gorer. Good, alliterative. Bit bloody.’

The Greek Cypriot who ran the cafe slouched over to their table, chewing absently, his expression conveying a bovine lack of interest in his customers. He took their order without speaking. She demanded tea and two large slices of chocolate cake, he wanted only a coffee. They waited in silence again till their order had been plonked down on the red Formica-topped table.

She bent forward and went straight to the point, making clear that she was determined to get his agreement: ‘As I said on the phone, it works, it works beautifully. Beautifully. You’ll see.’ Her voice had a slight nasal whine, like a small bearing in need of grease.

‘I tell you, it definitely works.’ She gave a predatory smile, revealing yellow teeth, ‘And of course the money will be good, very good.’ Her tongue slid along her lips, ‘very good indeed.’ She was fighting not to attack the cake. It lasted all of ten seconds. She lifted her fork and went in like a soldier on bayonet practice.

‘So you say.’ He spoke as if he doubted her claim. He needed to be sure before getting involved. He knew she needed his skills and especially his contacts, his ability to recruit other people, people to play parts convincingly, but what she was proposing was dangerous. If it went wrong they would spend the rest of their lives in jail and he was the one who would have actual contact with the punters. ‘So you say,’ he repeated.

‘I do say, Geoffrey. It works, it really does,’ she repeated, fixing her pale eyes on his as if to hypnotise him. ‘All it needs now are more participants. That’s the key to the whole. It’s obvious: the more people involved, the more effective it will be. If we can recruit hundreds, even thousands, we’re on to a winner. We need to grow the numbers.’

She might have been talking about the membership of a local tennis club, not planning an entirely new way to kill people for money. She pressed on, attempting to roll over his doubts like a trundling tank. She had finished the first slice of cake and flipped the second on its side to expose the soft underbelly like a feeding hyena. ‘Just think: the real novelty, what will make it unstoppable, is the way we’ll use modern technology, the way we harness the World Wide Web. That’s the way for us to get more and more people involved. That’ll strengthen everything.’

He was still looking mildly sceptical, deliberately so.

She was insistent, ‘I tell you, it can’t fail. There’s masses of money in it, masses. For both of us, that is. And all of it in cash.’

Her jaws chomped savagely as if she was punishing the food for some heinous offence. Brown crumbs clung precariously to the sides of her mouth, refugees from a disaster. Her tongue flicked out and they disappeared. Her eyes shone with almost lust.

He saw that she’d said all she intended to say; now he had to decide if he was going to participate. A month ago she’d told him the outlines of her plan and sketched in the next stages. The idea had interested him and he had had done some checking, had asked around. Now he saw it would be a very attractive investment if the terms were right.

‘Right, Maisie, I’ve considered it and I’m willing to come in - but only if we split the profits. The deal is fifty-fifty. Yes?’

She gulped down her last mouthful of cake and stared at him. Then she shook her head. ‘Ridiculous. Impossible. It is my idea, my system. I’ve done all the preliminary work.’ The whine in her voice was stronger now. ‘The most I can agree to is seventy percent for me, thirty for you - thirty.’

He laughed, genuinely amused by her rapacity. ‘Well, it’s fifty-fifty or nothing. I think all the risk is mine’

‘I’ll go a bit higher. How about sixty-five, thirty-five?’ An angry flush brightened her pallor.

‘Fifty-fifty or nothing.’ He was adamant.

‘Sixty-forty.’ Her face was flaming.

He shook his head slowly then pushed his chair back a fraction, signalling he was getting ready to leave. He had not drunk any of his coffee but he thought he could do without it. He pushed the chair further back.

She glared at him and then, after a moment, she muttered, ‘OK. I agree. You’re a tight bastard’

He smiled back at her.

‘I’ll pay for the cake. Right, it’s a deal. So what do we do next?’

She glanced round, checking nobody could hear them. ‘I’ve thought about that. Obviously we need to do some recruiting: that’s your job. But we also need to show people that it works. We need something totally convincing, something unmistakeable as a demonstration - and the more public the better, something lots of people will see.’

He thought about it for a moment. It was a good idea: any new product needed to convince potential buyers it did what it claimed.

‘Sort of proof of concept, eh? Yes, I can see that will be needed.’ He thought for a few moments, considering the implications. ‘And we also need a name for the website, we need something memorable. Any ideas?’

She frowned and then said, ‘I was thinking of “Clean Sweep.” Getting rid of dirt, you know, and hints of gambling?’

‘Mmmm.’ He drew circles of doubt in the coffee slops on the table top. ‘Sounds a bit like a bunch of office cleaners. Let me see what I can come up with.’

She nodded; she knew he was good with words. It was one of the reasons she wanted him as her marketing partner.

‘Right, agreed - we need a name and we need demons