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Pneuma Springs Publishing - Harry Riley

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143 pages

English

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Ruthlessly manipulated for most of his adult life by a cunning enemy posing as his friend, half drowned and enslaved in the Congo and hoodwinked in New York, Doctor James Parker slides into a deep pit of depression. Utterly consumed by misery and grief with his best friend and his fiance missing, his family decimated by the death of his father and his beloved sister, he is past listening to reason and believes he has every reason to kill his generous benefactor, the man he blames for all his misfortunes. But the gallows await! ~~~~~After a cruel start in life, abandoned outside an orphanage as a baby, Billy Turpin grows up to become big, strong and handsome, a natural and highly successful entrepreneur running several companies. Greedy councillors, gullible men and women are willingly hypnotized by his wealth, his easy confidence and charismatic charm. But one person suspects he is also a psychopathic killer with a very personal and mysterious grudge against him, his family and friends.Two people whose paths were doomed to cross even before they were born, with the most tragic consequences imaginable for all concerned.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

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Publié par	Pneuma Springs Publishing
Date de parution	30 novembre 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782281467
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Extrait

Sins of the Father

The haunted life of Doctor James Parker

Harry Riley
Copyright

First Published in 2009 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
Sins of the Father Copyright © 2009 Harry Riley
Kindle eISBN: 9781907728730 ePub eISBN: 9781782281467 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782280576 Paperback ISBN: 9781905809776
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: admin@pneumasprings.co.uk W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
Authors Note

In the late 1980’s I bought a small farm workers cottage in a Northumbrian village on the banks of the river Tweed and close to Berwick on Tweed, intending to renovate and eventually to retire. Cross the ancient stone bridge at the edge of the village and the white saltire on a blue background proudly proclaims you are in Scotland. ‘Sins of the father’ is based in this village (by a lightly changed fictional name) just after the end of World War two.
I also changed the name of the ancient church, added a village pond and one or two other fictional features to aid the storyline.
Dedication

For Margaret and Karen, and for Stephen without whose technical, knowledge, help and assistance this tale would never have seen the light of day.
Contents

1. Billy’s hammer blow
2. The victim
3. Frank Mortimer’s new purpose
4. The grateful survivor
5. Tom Parker’s dream becomes a reality
6. Big plans for Billy
7. A hand in the till
8. The cast iron alibi
9. The manipulation begins
10. The engagement
11. Mariners Rest
12. James Parker’s big adventure
13. The field hospital
14. Capture and disposal
15. Out of the frying pan
16. Slave mine in the jungle
17. Deliverance and recriminations
18. Repatriation and melancholia
19. Billy the Good Samaritan
20. The new partner
21. A letter
22. Death of a sister
23. Wedding bells
24. The Best Man’s betrayal
25. Journey of desperation
26. In the land of the free
27. False hope
28. The wise old Pastor
29. Accepting defeat
30. Thoughts of retribution
31. Guilty as charged
32. Drumridge Gaol
33. The dream
34. Janie Morgan
35. The man they cannot hang
36. The helpful salesman
37. Death of a hangman
38. The dreaded hour
39. With the Lord’s help
40. Euphoria and depression
Epilogue
The Novel
1 … Billy’s hammer blow
The moon came partly into view and lit up the night sky in a pale glow. No one else was about at this lonely spot. It was approximately eleven thirty in the evening and the dark hooded figure stooping at the wayside, looked up at the sky in nervous anticipation lest the moon should expose him more fully in his nefarious activity. He was quite alone.
The scene briefly illuminated, was that of a country lane at a very sharp bend. The road was icy and dripping wet from the spitting sleet, and a deep ditch at the nearside edge was already half filled with murky water. The figure, now straddling the white line painted in the middle of the road, was that of a large male with the agile movements of a young person.
His feet moved with a definite purpose and his legs were bent in a half crouch, but his arms made odd jerky movements, going from side to side. A closer inspection would have shown him pouring a thick viscous liquid down onto the surface of the road. This was heavy motor oil, being vigorously shaken out of a large metal container, and liberally spread over the glistening tarmac.
A motorist, approaching from the other direction had his headlights blasting full on as he slowed right down and approached the bend. The figure leaped over the ditch and into deep cover just in time as the bright lights swept around and illuminated a road sign. The black and white direction sign bore the legend ‘Norbridge Village’ four miles. This was Northumberland at the Scottish Borders just after the end of World War Two.
The vehicle slowly carried on its way and the crouching figure made himself as comfortable as possible, pulling up his hood more fully in the damp night air, clasping and unclasping his hands in joyous anticipation of the mayhem to come.
He had not long to wait. Very soon a sporty saloon came into view.
The gleaming, black Mk. IV Jaguar, with its elegant, long bonnet and frog eyed headlamps, blazing light, was being driven slightly erratically, veering across the centre of the road and travelling very fast, way too fast for this bend, on this wet and windy night.
Billy Turpin was the hooded youth. He peered out from between the waving foliage of his hiding place and waited in readiness as the inevitable disaster came to pass. His eyes lit up and his young face contorted into a demented snarl of satisfaction.
Just before the bend the car’s tyres hit the patch of oil that had expanded on the wet tar. There was a sudden, late, screech of brakes being applied harshly and in desperation. The silence was shattered as the vehicle skidded and lurched over to the wrong side of the road with the driver struggling for control. The situation was hopeless; the car now had a mind of its own.
Back it came, miraculously, onto its correct side of the road, but the front tyres, by now covered in thick, sticky oil, failed to grip, and were within inches of the edge of the gulley. The driver, with the moon back-lighting his hunched figure, as he squinted through the windscreen, could be seen quite clearly as, with eyes popping out of his head and teeth fixed in a rigid death mask grimace, he made a valiant final effort to regain control of the front wheel skid, and might have succeeded had the camber of the road been more favourable.
A hideous screech rent the air as the vehicle careered right across the road again and one and a half tons of highly sculptured steel rammed into solid oak, bouncing off and finally coming to rest a few feet away. Absorbing the impact, the mighty tree creaked and groaned and shook itself down, sneezing a mighty shower of dusty rainwater out of its myriad of timbers, cracks and crevices, and in the process, evicting the sleepy and over-wintering wildlife from its comfy rest, but it never gave an inch! The car had crashed headlong through the heavy wooden barrier and hit a local landmark. The giant Hanging Tree at Devils Dyke!
Billy watched spellbound.
The drama he had helped to create, unfolded in front of him. In the years to come he would replay this scene in his mind, over and over again in slow motion, thrilling to the moment of impact, remembering the driver’s panic stricken face as the Grim Reaper’s bony finger beckoned him on to his fate. Now as he watched, Billy knew it was wrong and that innocent people might die by his actions. But he didn’t care, ‘emotions were for women and children,’ all that caring nonsense had been surgically removed from his psyche at birth when the umbilical cord was callously torn from his body and an unconcerned mother had dumped him on the steps of the orphanage. ‘Somebody had to pay!’ He hoped the driver was dead. ‘Kill ‘em all!’ This was his moment and he was enjoying the tremendous feeling of power.
He had made it happen and had ruthlessly started a chain of events that would have violent and untold consequences for many lives. He had chosen this spot with infinite care. This bend in the road was not just any bend. It had once been a crossroads, a busy coaching route, where highwaymen had lain in wait for unsuspecting victims. For many years in past times, the “Hanging Tree” at the crossroads, with its caged and rotting corpse, dangling from a chain, had been a grim warning to all and sundry at Devils Dyke. This ravaged land had been no-mans land, bandit country, where for over three hundred years lawless clans lived in fortified farms and towers and terrorised the English populace with their murderous border raids. They were known collectively as the “Border Reivers.”
This troubled land had been akin to the “American Wild West.”
He had climbed this magnificent oak with its great canopy, many times, using the muscular strength in his arms and legs to carry him right to the top, higher than any of the local boys had ever dared to go, where the tree ran straight and tall, with virtually no hand or foot holds. The panoramic views from this vantage point gave him sight of the Cheviot Hills in the far distance and backwards across to the North Sea. Clinging like an ape, breathless at the top, he felt as if this was his personal tree, he owned it, Up here on a bright and windy day he had swung precariously in the stiff breeze, his back arched away from the tree and, barely holding on with one hand, with the spike of his heavy black jack-knife in the other, he had carved his initials, deep into the bark for all time.
He had tamed it, and it held an incredible fascination for him, not least because only last summer, along with the other orphanage kids, he had been present when Councillor Binks had organised the placing of a large boulder of local stone, in the lay-by, near the Hanging Tree, but also because he was Billy Turpin, bearing the surname of a famous highwayman (the only gift his mother had bestowed on him) so to his impressionable mind, this historical, living landmark held a special, deeper, meaning. For all his pathetic, start in life, discarded in an old basket, like so much unwanted rubbish, he had grown up big and strong, like a straight young sapling from this very tree. ‘He was going to be a mighty oak!’
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