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Andrews UK - Marc Blake

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170 pages

English

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Description

Sarah Rutherford, using a job in Fuengirola as a cover, is investigating her sister's death. Mike, a lonely sub-editor, is drawn into her quest after witnessing the death of a hotel manager. Things hot up in the British ex-pat community, culminating in a collision of double-crossing and wild dogs.

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	10 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781849894579
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Title Page

SUNSTROKE

Marc Blake

Publisher Information

Copyright © 1998 by Marc Blake
First published in 1998 by Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline PLC

Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

The right of Marc Blake to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with 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 without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline PLC
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

Dedication

To Claire

Prologue

The Brit stood on the balcony of the old villa and gazed at the morning mist settling in the valley. Taking a final drag on his cigarette, he ground it under his trainer and put his hands on the railing. The metal was already warm to the touch. He let out a sigh, thinking of how the harsh Spanish sun would soon be baking his belly, frying his fading tattoos and roasting his bald head to a violent crimson. It hadn’t been a good year so far. He’d been given the prognosis, the diagnosis, the second and the third opinions and now the truth was undeniable: he was dying. Not slowly, basting in sun and Sangria like the other expats, but fast, eaten up inside. He spat out a bolus of phlegm. It was going to be his last summer in the Costa del Sol and he intended to make it count.
A pair of flip-flops smacked on the tiles and a dark Andalucian youth appeared at his side.
‘Venga, Señor! Aquí, ahora.’
The boy scuttled through to the bedroom and hovered by the doorway. As the Brit padded inside, he saw that the youth was pointing a trembling finger at the bed. A naked girl lay twisted on the sweat-stained sheets. Removing the gag from her mouth, he slapped her across the face. Nothing. He stood back and stared at her, hearing only the faint clunk of a goat’s bell in the distance as the herd returned from milking. The youth’s eyes were on him now, willing him to magic her back to life.
‘Fuck it,’ he said.
He strolled through to the kitchen, the boy watching as he sprung open the fridge, fished out a cool San Miguel and drained it in one. Tossing the bottle aside, he wiped the froth from his lips and crooked a gold-encrusted finger to summon the youth closer.
‘ ¿Qué vamos a hacer, Señor? ’
He put a fatherly arm around the boy’s shoulders and the youth melted into his chest. Tears dampened his shirt front. He began to smooth the boy’s hair, stroking and preening and then twining a clump of it around his fist. Another whimper, softer this time. The Brit slowly shuffled across to the fridge. Without warning, he gripped the youth by the neck and rammed his head against the freezer door. He pulled back and, with all his strength, hit home again and again until red tears of blood ran down the white metal surface. Grunting with the effort, he gave a final thrust and the door buckled inwards. The youth folded on to the filthy tiles and lay still.
The refrigerator shuddered. Wiping trickles of sweat from his temples, the Brit leaned forward, wrenched the door open against the body and groped inside for another beer.
‘Gonna be a scorcher today,’ he muttered.

Part One
Chapter 1

A disco beat murmured in the midnight air as Mike Trent slipped into the deserted pool. Above him, blue television strobes played on the hotel balconies. He swam a length, stopping short of the filter which was fizzing away like a giant aspirin. Treading water now, he relaxed as the smooth liquid licked his shoulders and caressed his hair. He peddled his legs to the surface, spread his arms wide and prepared to float. Gazing up at the sky, he smiled at the stars. They were bright and in sharp focus. Better than London, he thought. It never really gets dark there, just shades of plum and dirty orange like rotten fruit. He kicked back and sculled to the centre of the pool.
‘This is the life,’ he said aloud.
The body plummeted into the water from three storeys above him.
As the wash dragged him under, it occurred to Mike that perhaps the holiday hadn’t started so well after all.

That morning as they were packing, he’d failed to prevent Nicola from forcing the contents of her wardrobe into two cases.
‘You won’t need all that stuff,’ he’d said, waving a hand at the battered suitcase he’d borrowed from his mother. ‘See? That’s all I’m taking.’
He stuffed in a shirt and took inventory. T-shirts, jeans, trunks, a crumpled jacket and several books he’d always meant to get round to reading and probably still wouldn’t.
Nicola ignored him and crammed in another pair of sandals. Arriving at Gatwick too late to get smoking seats, Nicola stared doe-eyed at the check-in clerk and invented a number of medical reasons why she had to sit at the rear. When this didn’t work, she strode off in her new white platforms and sulked until take-off. Her mood improved only when the plane punctured England’s perennial grey blanket. However, it nose-dived again at the arrivals lounge in Malaga when one of her bags emerged leaking moisturiser on to the carousel. Leaving her to mop up in the restroom, Mike heaved the other cases on to a trolley and wheeled off to find the rep.
Sarah Rutherford’s bright uniform was more a cry for help than a fashion statement. She was standing in the epicentre of the hurricane of tired holiday-makers and ticking off names on her clipboard. Her dark curls were thrust into a wiry bun and her pretty, elfin face was lightly tanned. It was enough to make Mike tuck in his shirt and feign the nonchalance of a more experienced traveller. He’d almost reached her when Nicola clopped up alongside. He averted his eyes and fell into step as they followed the others on to the coach bound for Fuengirola.
The coastal strip of the motorway which stretches between Malaga and Gibraltar is known as the road of death. One reason for this is tourists who, new to driving on the right, swerve on to the busy carriageways with the caution of teenagers let loose on the dodgems; another reason is the local coach drivers. Mike and Nicola had been unlucky enough to get Pepe, a man who wore sunglasses day and night in the mistaken belief he was a South American despot. Consequently, he drove like one. As he wrenched the silver juggernaut into the teeming lanes, Mike clung to his seat and shuffled through his passport to check the ‘next of kin’ section.
After half an hour of crazed slaloming, their speed decreased as they approached the suburbs of Torremolinos. The Tannoy crackled as Sarah began to recite her rehearsed speech. The passengers showed no interest when she explained that the town had once been a tiny fishing village, they failed to react when she informed them that Ernest Hemingway had spent time in Ronda and they ignored her suggestion to visit the pueblos blancos up in the Sierras. However, when she pointed out that Sean Connery lived off the autovía , their heads whiplashed back and forth like wipers in a hail storm.
Nicola shuffled beside him as she dug into her bag for her lighter. Mike reached between his feet for the carton of duty- free cigarettes and, snapping open the cellophane, handed her a fresh pack. She lit one, revolved the cassette in her Walkman and settled back with her eyes shut and her chin raised. He smiled at this habit of hers. It wasn’t that she was scared of getting a double chin: quite the reverse, her chin was tiny and it barely cupped her face. She was sensitive about it and constantly pulled at the skin or stretched out her neck in an attempt to firm up her jaw. This often had the effect of causing people to think she’d spotted someone more interesting across the room.
Mike gazed out at the dark hills and rewound their relation- ship. They had met when she came to Sorted! magazine as a temp. Although her arrival had led to a marked improvement in grooming amongst the staffers, Mike’s only concession had been to rake a comb through his tangled brush of hair. He hadn’t thought he stood a chance with this effervescent blonde. After all, who’d want a sub-editor twelve years past his sexual peak? He’d immersed himself in his copy-editing and had studiously ignored her.
Opportunity came by default. One slack day in February, the staff drew up a list of her more visible attributes and held a sweepstake on who’d be first past the bedpost. Mike, having arrived late due to a dose of flu, found her weeping at the word processor. Apparently, she’d found the list and had called them all animals. Someone had then corrected her by saying ‘Mammals’. Her response was to start lobbing potted plants as they retreated to the pub to re-evaluate their attitudes. Mike discovered she was on the rebound. Her ex, Gavin, was a car salesman whose hobbies were his Maserati, other women and his Maserati. He slipped into the role of transitional man with a mixture of gratitude and ill-concealed glee.
The following month was a sexual marathon which culminated in pet-names and thrush. Come April, they had stopped writing weekly love-notes to each other. Soon after that, their differences emerge