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182 pages

English

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Spring 1950. The city of Bristol is broke, the scars of World War Two slow to heal. Good people are struggling to get by, while an organised criminal underclass is thriving. Days before his repatriation home, American GI Ed Grover visits a family who had shown him extraordinary kindness nine years earlier. The family's only son Harry has disappeared. In a bed sit, Grover finds the body of a young man with his throat cut. Harry becomes the prime suspect. After spending five years in Berlin since the end of the war, Grover knows more than most people about chancers, black marketeers, extortionists and killers. He decides to stay in Bristol to find Harry.

Sujets

Thriller

Informations

Publié par	Diamond Crime Books Ltd
Date de parution	07 avril 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781915649003
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Dowson began his career working in the theatre as an actor and a director specialising in productions of modern British and European playwrights.
From there he moved into television, and after early Channel 4 commissions, became an independent writer/producer/director. Screen credits include arts series, entertainment features, drama documentaries, drama series and TV films.
Turning crime novelist in 2014, he introduced Bristol private eye Jack Shepherd in Closing the Distance . The second thriller in the series, Changing the Odds , was published the following year, Cloning the Hate in 2017 and Bending the Rules in 2019.
One Fight At A Time is the first in the American GI Ed Grover series.
Born in northeast England Jeff now lives in Bristol. He is a member of BAFTA and the Crime Writers Association.
Visit www.jeffdowson.co.uk

Published in Great Britain in 2021
by
DIAMOND CRIME

ISBN 978-1-915649-00-3

Copyright © 2021 Jeff Dowson

The right of Jeff Dowson to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998

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 without the prior permission in writing of the publisher,
nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

Diamond Crime
is an imprint of Diamond Publishing Ltd.

Thanks to…

John Bone for his help in researching photographs taken during
the Bristol Blitz

Steve Timmins and Peter Nash reading the manuscript

The staff and associates of Diamond Crime for their enthusiasm
and support

Book Cover Design

by

JACKSON BONE

Cover photograph of Park Street in Bristol used under licence from
the
REECE WINSTONE ARCHIVE

Also by Jeff Dowson

The Jack Shepherd Thrillers

Closing the Distance
Changing the Odds
Cloning the Hate
Bending the Rules

The Ed Grover Series

New Friends Old Enemies

For information about authors and other books published by
DIAMOND CRIME

visit www.diamondbooks.co.uk

For Mary… for every day

ONE FIGHT
AT A TIME

Jeff Dowson

PRELUDE

Sergeant Major Ed Grover said ‘goodbye’ to West Berlin from the Cafe Adler; two smoky rooms on the ground floor of a shell scarred, four storey building, sitting at the junction of Zimmerstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. Outside it was raining, and inside, the smell of damp raincoats, beer and cooking, mingled with the cigarette smoke. The menu was written in chalk on a board behind the bar. The lunch of the day was carrot soup, followed by pork and potatoes. There was no dessert. It would have been something with fruit probably, but there had been no fruit deliveries for two days. The blockade emergency was over, but the Berliner’s daily ration of nine hundred and fifty calories could only be conjured out of whatever was available.
Grover wiped the condensation off the window at his shoulder and looked across at the Soviet concrete gateposts, the barrier and the double row of barbed wire that permitted access to East Berlin. During the past four and a half years, Stalin had postured, growled and threatened from two hundred metres away. But brinkmanship had produced very little beyond frustration, misery and hunger.
He was conscious of an arm waving at him from inside the large wooden hut squatting at the side of the road a couple of metres across the pavement. He wiped the window again and stuck his face against the glass. Corporal Leaman was the front man at Barrier C this morning. Grover waved back and hoisted his glass of schnapps in a toast. He hated schnapps. But it was the first drink he had taken on his arrival in Berlin and he had vowed it would be his last before he left. He took a deep breath and emptied the contents of the glass down his throat. The schnapps burned and made him choke, but he swallowed it and claimed victory.
He got up from the table, buttoned his greatcoat and stepped out into the rain.
A black Opel Kadett was parked road-side of the hut. Private Bowman stepped back from the driver’s door and waved the car towards the Soviet barrier. There was no other traffic; nobody on foot. Corporal Leaman was completing the process of fastening a hand painted sign on to the side of the hut. He hammered a nail into the top right hand corner and stood back to admire his effort. Grover stood at his side and read the words Welcome to Checkpoint Charlie.
“That’s what the people round here are calling it now,” Leaman said. “Kinda catchy, don’t you think?”
Grover turned up the collar of his coat. Leaman nodded at his art work.
“I’ll lay you 6 to 4 that some guy with stars on his shoulder rolls up and tells me to take it down. But what the hell...”
He shifted the hammer into his left hand and offered Grover his right. Grover shook it, turned and walked away, head bowed into the onslaught of rain. He found Private Kowlaski and his jeep parked on Potsdamer Platz and climbed aboard for the drive to Tempelhof Airport.
* * *
Baker and Charlie Companies of the 21 st Infantry, were flown from Berlin to Wiesbaden for R and R. Two weeks later, they were sent south to Mannheim on a final tour of duty - a low profile, policing job with no complications and little stress. In late November, they returned to Berlin and were given orders to stand down.
At 16.00 hours on December 31 st 1949, a C-54 Skymaster rose up into a darkening sky and flew Baker and Charlie Companies out of Germany, five and a half years after they had battled ashore at Omaha Beach. The plane landed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Sergeant Major Ed Grover’s war was done.

CHAPTER ONE

“What is it you want to do Ed?”
The Adjutant’s office was a fourteen feet square, brick built hut, with a corrugated tin roof. The accommodation was basic. A wooden desk with a swivel chair behind it. Bookshelves on the wall to the right of the door. A row of filing cabinets along the wall to the left. And in the corner, a cast iron stove with the chimney reaching up to the roof and through a hole in it. The stove was burning wood and the office was warm. There were matching battered armchairs each side of the stove. Grover was sitting in one of them. The Adjutant, Lieutenant Berger, was on his feet, staring out of the office window.
Outside, Fairford was silent as the grave.
The 21 st had been scheduled to leave England mid-January and fly home, via a stopover in Reykjavik. The mid-Atlantic US base had a reputation for providing entertainment. It was close enough to home to have US newspapers, magazines, films, booze and even girls, flown in on regular basis. However, the inevitable SNAFU occurred and the planes were sent elsewhere. So confined to base, the 21 st sat around at Fairford with nothing to do, throughout January and most of February. The weather was foul and all the comforts of home available in Reykjavik, were conspicuous by their absence in Gloucestershire. Boredom had morphed into restlessness, which in turn had generated night long poker games and eventually, debts and disagreements. Currently, there were seven men in the Brig.
“I want to build a jeep,” Grover said.
Berger turned back into the room and stared at him.
“What the hell for? We already have more then we need. They’re not doing anything. You can requisition one any time you want. They’re lying around all over the place.”
“So are the bits,” Grover said. He waited for a response.
“You want to build another one? Out of bits?”
“Something to do Lieutenant.”
“Hell why not?” Berger said. “Knock yourself out.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
Grover stood up, saluted, and left the room
* * *
Grover’s best buddy in the 21 st was Master Sergeant Henry Whelan, boss of the Motor Pool. A black Texan, six feet three inches tall and a tough, muscular, thirteen stones. Big and strong and quietly spoken; he simply never had to raise his voice to anyone. And he knew about women. In times past, wherever the infantry were, the moment there was a break in hostilities, Whelan had appeared with a girl on his arm.
His response to Grover’s proposition, was word for word the same as Berger’s.
“What the hell for?” He pointed across the Motor Pool garage. “Take that one there. Anytime.”
“I need something to do. Sitting around here is driving me crazy.”
Whelan shook his head. “I re-built that jeep, in a farmer’s garage near Nordhausen. There were shells bursting all around me. The fucking roof fell in. I worked all night because I had to. The jeep was back on the road by dawn. Now all I have to do, is sit here on my ass and check the oil once in a while.”
“Are you enjoying sitting on your ass?”
“I’m enjoying not having to worry about getting it shot off.”
Like Grover, Whelan had started June ’44 in the 21 st Infantry. The two men first met on Overlord Day 2, courtesy of a German machine gun post behind a sand dune at St Laurent-sur-Mer. Whelan was doing his utmost to breathe life into a stalled half-track, while on the receiving end of a hammering from German mortars dug in at the side of the road to Port-en-Bassin. Baker Company’s 2 nd Platoon managed to cross the road and hit them from the rear. Whelan and his mechanics scrambled out of the hole they were hiding in and kicked the half-track back into action. The two men met up again five days later in Bayeux, where Whelan introduced Grover to twin sisters he had encountered in a newly liberated bakery. It was clear t