Sunny Sands , livre ebook

The Conrad Press - Trevor Twohig

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133 pages

English

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A teenage body washed up on the beach...A twisted operation conceived by criminal masterminds...Can one man solve the case?For Fans of Lee Child and Ian Rankin, comes an absorbing and powerful thriller from a new, gritty, modern voice.The first book in the Charlie Stone series.Only one man sees the truthIn the sleepy, coastal town of Folkestone,Detective Sergeant Charlie Stone is struggling. Recently separated from his wife Jo and feeling estranged from his five-year-old daughter Maddie, Charlie is trying hard to keep his life together.An apparently cut and dried case of murder piques Charlie's interest. As he delves further into the murky coastal underworld, he soon understands that not everything is what it seems.As Charlie gets closer to the truth, he finds that he and his family are being dragged into a world of darkness, danger and depravity.Can Charlie find the answers, while keeping all he holds dear, safe from harm?

Informations

Publié par	The Conrad Press
Date de parution	15 décembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912317158
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

Sunny
Sands
a crime novel
Trevor Twohig

Sunny Sands a crime novel
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2018
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874
www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-912317-15-8
Copyright © Trevor Twohig, 2018
The moral right of Trevor Twohig to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

For the Family T, who believed in me

1
I stood on Folkestone beach, watching the sun sparkle on the breaking waves.
It was a sweltering Sunday, the third of July. The seafront was busy with families revelling in the English summer sun.
‘Come on Dad, I’m bored! Let’s swim!’ shouted my five-year-old daughter, Maddie.
A few moments ago, I’d gently kicked our football towards her, but she’d ignored it. My hopes of getting Maddie to enjoy ball sports continued to be thwarted.
With fatherly pride, I watched her race towards the ocean’s edge, her little legs spraying sand haphazardly, ruining the golden carpet beneath her feet.
Every two weeks I was allowed to see her for a weekend, in compliance with the court order – it wasn’t enough. The gap was too long from one visit to the next.
We both ran into the water. It wasn’t as warm as I would have liked, but it wasn’t cold either. Indeed, the feeling of the water stopped me thinking about how much I missed her when she wasn’t around.
I walked into the water up to my knees. Maddie jumped, giggled and, to my surprise, made it up to her tummy before screaming gleefully and scampering back through the froth.
As we walked back to our belongings, I suddenly noticed a crowd of people about fifty yards from us, where the rocks from the harbour’s edge jutted out. Maddie saw where I was looking and sensed my anxiety.
‘Daddy, what’s going on over there?’
‘I’m not sure, honey. Help me pack away our things and I’ll find out.’
She put away the toys and towels while I grabbed my mobile and badge, stuffing them into my trunks. I quickly put my t-shirt on and helped Maddie with her summer dress and sandals before walking her up the promenade steps and sitting her on a wooden bench.
‘I need to go and look at this, Maddie. Will you wait here for me like a good girl?’
Maddie sighed, she didn’t like being left on her own at all and I couldn’t blame her. Folkestone was still a strange, new place to her. I didn’t like leaving her, not for a moment, but the crowd concerned me and, whatever was there, I didn’t want Maddie to see it.
I still wasn’t over the separation from my ex, Jo. The twenty-third of November last year was indelibly printed on my thoughts, the day I left our home in Faversham and moved to Folkestone.
Every day of those seven months, I missed Maddie sleepily entering our bedroom early in the morning and tugging me to come downstairs to play with her. I missed our weekend drives down the country lanes near Faversham, usually to get fresh eggs so we could make breakfast for the family, but those days were gone now.
‘Dad, did you bring the iPad?’
‘No, but take my phone, I won’t be long.’ Maddie grabbed it and almost at once became transfixed by the lure of pixelated graphics and cartoon animals that awaited her.
I hurried down to the beach and towards the crowd. One of the coastguards I knew, Bill Davis, nodded to me as I approached.
‘Clear the way! Police coming through,’ he said in an authoritative tone. The crowd began to part.
Police coming through . I was one of those who went towards danger and chaos when everyone else was moving away from it.

2
T he first thing I saw was white human flesh lying on the yellow sand. The body was hidden behind brown, craggy rocks, but the pale, youthful flesh of the leg and abdomen was unmistakable.
As I moved around the rocks, I saw this was the body of a woman. I grabbed her arm and felt for a pulse. I leaned in to listen for breath, but there was no breath at all.
I glanced back at the crowd, ‘Step back and give her some privacy. Can I have a couple of towels please?’
‘Is she... is she dead?’ a middle-aged lady near me asked.
I glanced at the lady who’d asked the question. ‘I’m afraid I think she probably is.’
There was a collective gasp from the remnants of the crowd at the tragedy and finality of my words, as I covered the body with a couple of multi-coloured beach towels.
I went to my pocket for my phone, then remembered it was with Maddie.
‘Bill, pass me your phone.’ I opened it up and tapped in the number of my DCI at Folkestone Station, Dave Marsh.
‘Hello?’
‘Dave, it’s Charlie.’
‘How’re you doing?’
‘Not good, bad news. I just found a girl washed up on Sunny Sands. She’s dead, boss.’
I heard Dave tell one of the coppers at the station to call an ambulance. He also radioed for two squad cars to my location.
‘How long do you think she’s been dead?’ he asked.
‘At least a few hours.’
‘Jesus. Right. Clear the beach as quickly as you can - cordon it off. Is the coastguard there?’
‘Yeah, Bill’s here,’ I replied, thinking ahead. These people would’ve trodden any evidence into the surface of the sand. I needed to move fast. ‘I’m here with Maddie. I left her on the promenade and need to get back to her.’
‘Good. Get him to stay with the body. You go and look after your daughter, Charlie. Leave the rest to me and Bill.’
‘Thanks, boss.’
I passed Bill’s phone back to him and asked him to wait with the body until the ambulance arrived.
I hurried back to Maddie, still happily playing her game, legs swinging languidly from the bench. She looked up at me, her face in the shadow I cast over her before sitting down. She smiled her cheeky grin and I put my arm around her.
‘What was it, Daddy?’ she asked.
‘A girl’s had an accident,’ I said, quietly, not having any intention of giving Maddie any more details of the tragic scene I’d just witnessed. The more we were apart, the more I tried to cling to the role of her father and protector.
‘Oh no, is she OK?’ she asked, genuinely concerned.
‘I hope she will be.’ OK, now I was lying, but Maddie was only five.
‘The ambulance will be here soon. Anyway, what are you playing?’
It was best to deflect her thoughts. I didn’t want her childhood memories of Sunny Sands to be tainted by what was found today. On average, there were around five murders in Folkestone every year. Two or three of those were usually of the homeless, or drug-related; this was not a common event.
I checked my watch – eleven thirty-six am.
‘When are we going home, Dad?’
‘In a moment.’ I knew my colleagues would be here soon. Once they’d arrived, I could go. They could take over from Bill.
‘Darling, I thought you might want to stop in town and get an ice cream first?’
‘Oooh, yes please, Daddy!’
‘OK. We just have to wait here a minute, until my police friends arrive, and then we can go.’
Maddie started counting to sixty. I loved how her world was so simple and beautiful, I wanted to preserve that innocence, so she could be spared knowing the horrible truth: the tragedies and failures of the adult one. I put another layer of sun cream on her face and shoulders.
Five minutes later, Detective Constables Jimmy Wade and Karl Bullen arrived. They drove slowly past me down the promenade, blue-lighting but with no siren, and pulled up in front of the bench where Maddie and I were sitting. They jumped out.
‘Hi Karl, the girl’s down there.’ I pointed to Bill waiting patiently below on the beach. ‘Get down there and clear the last of the stragglers as quick as you can. Jimmy, cordon off the beach at both entrances, make sure no-one else comes anywhere near, it’s potentially a crime scene.’
Despite Sunny Sands being a small, secluded beach, it was accessible by a ramp at the Market end near the town, and by foot from the promenade.
‘Where’s the DCI?’
‘On his way, Charlie,’ Karl replied.
‘OK. After clearing the beach, direct the ambulance when it arrives. It’ll come via Fisherman’s Street and down the ramp there.’ I pointed to the area and Karl rushed off in that direction.
Maddie watched this strange world of orders and directives intently, as the DCs went to do what they had to do. I asked her for my phone, and she passed it back to me. We walked towards town, seeing who could spot the most seagulls that were now descending in great force upon the empty beach in hope of a stray chip or an abandoned ice cream cone.
Dave arrived within five minutes, driving his silver BMW a little too quickly on the narrow promenade. Luckily, it was clear now and he pulled up behind the squad cars.
Dave burst out of the driver’s seat of his vehicle, I noticed his customary furrowed brow first and felt slightly more relaxed. He was always in control, a permanent frown on his face, looking for danger, intensely managing the most difficult of situations.
He looked like something from the 1960s, he had a short-sleeved white shirt on, unbuttoned at the collar. His hair was teddy-boy style, slicked back and to the side. He wore his sideburns long, past his ears and his trous