Thankless Child , livre ebook

Creative Content - Penny Deacon

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167 pages

English

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Follow-up to A Kind of Puritan, Deacon's acclaimed first futurecrime novel: Humility's back at Midway Port and ruthless patriarch Morgan Vinci wants her to find out why a man's hanged himself on board one of the boats in his new marina. Just to complicate things, Humility's mother wants her to track down a thirteen-year-old runaway. But how do you find one child when the city streets are full of homeless kids? Especially when they're terrified of whatever is coming out of the night and making their friends disappear. When the missing children are linked to the hanged man's ferry company, his suicide needs a closer look. Humility quickly learns that good intentions count for nothing in a world where good wine is laced with poison, girl gangs will kill you if you step into their territory and nightmares are terrifyingly real.

Informations

Publié par	Creative Content
Date de parution	26 août 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781906790882
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A Thankless Child
Penny Deacon
First published in 2005 by Crème de la Crime. Crème de la Crime Ltd, PO Box 523, Chesterfield, Derbyshire S40 9AT
Copyright © 2005 Penny Deacon
The moral right of Penny Deacon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Typesetting by Yvette Warren Cover design by Yvette Warren Front cover photography by Zefa Visual Media UK www.zefaimages.com
Printed and bound in England by Biddles Ltd, www.biddles.co.uk
ISBN 0-9547634-8-3 eBook ISBN: 978-1-906790-88-2
A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library
www.creativecontentdigital.com
About the author
Penny Deacon was born in Scotland, christened in Dorset and partly educated in Sri Lanka. She spent ten years living on a yacht, and has taught sailing for a living. Her first published novels were romance, but she finds crime more rewarding. Humility, she promises, will return.
Thanks to Douglas Hill, the best kind of editor.
Also by Penny Deacon, the first novel in her future crime thriller series:

A Kind of Puritan
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Epilogue
1
The rope creaked as it swung with the barely perceptible motion of the boat. There wasn’t much swell in the marina, despite the winds of the past two days. Down below in the main saloon of the luxury cruiser, the light might even have been called cosy. Someone had decided to go with traditional materials, overlaying the hi-tech which was undoubtedly there under every surface, so there was the subtle gleam of bronze at the portholes and the lushness of dark red leather and upholstered cushions on the soft-looking bench seats. There was even enough headroom for all three of us, although the shoes of the man hanging from the ringbolt in the deckhead cleared the carpet by no more than a few centimetres.
A few centimetres were all it had needed. He was the burden which stretched the new white rope taut.
I don’t like death. I’d left Midway three weeks ago because I’d had enough of it. I didn’t want to be here, staring at the livid face of a man I’d never seen alive while one I’d never wanted to see again watched me.
"Suicide?"
That made it five times now that Morgan Vinci had spoken directly to me. If he was asking, not just thinking aloud. There was a note on the chart table. Hand-written: old-fashioned. The bench seat was only a long step away from the dangling feet. The rest of the cabin was neat. Ordered. Nothing out of place. He put his household in order, and hanged himself. "How would I know?"
2
How would I know anything? Twenty-four hours before, I had been at sea expecting my next landfall to be somewhere with a French or Spanish accent, plenty of sun and a good supply of wine. My only problem had been trying to ignore the nagging guilt left by a message from home I’d chosen to ignore. Now, thanks to bad weather and a damaged drive, I was back in Midway. I had limped in last night, just before the August light failed, sneaking through the marina lock behind a hi-powered racer which was more flash than stamina and just ahead of a very new cruiser whose owner looked almost as new. He was clearly worried that every touch on the wheel might prove catastrophic. For such sailors are pontoon edges made to be yielding. No need to alienate the paying customer.
I wasn’t paying. Free berthing and water rights for my barge were the only good things to come out of my recent clash with the Vincis, the Family who owned the Port along with large slices of the rest of the world which I didn’t want to know anything about. Where you have Families – which is what the great corporations that run EuroGov these days like to call themselves – you have power, and corruption. Experience hasn’t done anything to change my mind on that.
If I could have afforded it, I would have chosen any port but Midway, the port on the fiercely tidal river creeping into the middle of the sprawl which was the megacity formed by Sutton and Pompey. Unfortunately, not only was the price right but it was also the nearest downwind harbour for The Flying Pig after the night’s blow and an ill-advised jibe had left me with a barely functioning drive, a torn mainsail, and a lot of broken crockery. Including my favourite mug. The fact that I had fled Midway swearing not to come back this year – if ever – was just one more annoyance to add to the list. I’d meant to moor, then crash. Look at the damage tomorrow. The Pig was safe. She wasn’t going to sink under me and I wasn’t going to drown, or be rescued and homeless. None of the Bad Things which had been running through my mind like a horror holo without an off-switch was going to happen. I could deal with minor details, like the lack of credit for repairs, in the morning.
Like all my plans lately, this one didn’t work out. I’d no sooner finished coiling the end of the last mooring warp on my bedraggled decks than I was hailed from the opposite pontoon.
"Barge, ahoy!" Words like ahoy make me grit my teeth. I looked up, not quite snarling. The voice had come from the cruiser which had docked just after me. The owner of the voice wore the sort of expression which goes with relief at having accomplished something he’d feared would end in disaster. "Come and have a drink!" Sounded like he intended to celebrate the fact that his boat’s auto-drive and park had lived up to its builder’s claims.
I could have said no. Instead, I tried to remember I had to live alongside these people for the next couple of weeks. Besides, he wasn’t the only one who’d earned his drink. I waved back.
"Thanks. Be along in twenty."
Long enough for a quick shower and a change into clothes which weren’t rank and stiff with salt water.
The cruiser was called The Happy Family . It almost made me change my mind, but I hadn’t seen any sign of children and it would be rude or cowardly, or both, to back out now, so I stepped on board.
She had all the modern aids to easy sailing which always broke down when I approached. Everything automated. And, from what I had seen earlier, in working order. I didn’t have a chance to explore as the guy who’d called me over was on the afterdeck. It was big enough for two small round tables and several soft chairs.
"Hi. I’m Stephen." He was middle height, brownish hair, paleish skin. His smile was open and friendly. "This is Amanda."
She was altogether more focused. Same pale skin but sharper features: good bones or good sculpting. Hard to tell. Her smile was cooler, but she gestured to a cabinet which looked as though it dispensed every drink a guest could dream up.
"Hi. What would you like?"
My dreams don’t go much beyond red wine.
"Thanks. Red wine if you have it." As if they wouldn’t. "I’m Humility."
The pause I’d got used to was barely detectable. The name says I’m one of those weird people from a Puritan Community somewhere in the primitive west country. The questions about what I was doing on a barge in one of the most expensive marina developments on the south coast had to be swallowed before normal good manners and respect for privacy could continue. It wasn’t the first time I’d been glad of the privacy conventions: the answers were either too complicated or too personal. And I was still asking myself what, storm damage apart, I was doing here.
With all that the cabinet had to offer, she was drinking water. He had beer. Nice, normal drinks that didn’t fizz or offer kaleidoscope colours or promise mildly erotic hallucinations. I could be social. We made small talk about boats – theirs was as new as I’d guessed. They’d come all the way round – at least five miles – from Pompey and the cruiser had coped well with the rough weather. I smiled supportively and admitted that my barge had come a little further. "As you can tell from the state she’s in."
They looked across in the fading light and probably couldn’t see much. I wondered if they could tell damage from the usual wear and tear of a passage in full daylight.
"You’re here for the Opening," Amanda assumed.
The Opening was exactly what I’d planned to avoid: Morgan Vinci’s celebration of his new Port development. Corporate entertainment on a grand scale with several eyes on the media and publicity and scoring points over the other Families. I felt my smile become fixed.
"Looks like it." Gestured around the marina which was filling up nicely. "You know many people here?"
"Not yet." Amanda’s