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Pneuma Springs Publishing - Neal James

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192 pages

English

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On Saturday 8th April 1975, in a fit of rage, Paul Townley took the life of his father, Harold. The significance of that single event was to affect the rest of his life, as he resolved to make it his mission to rid society of the kind of person that the man had become. The first killing took place six months later, and over the following fifteen years seventeen more were to follow, as the trail of devastation left by a serial killer covered the length and breadth of England. Detective Chief Inspector Colin Barnes looked down at the letter which lay on the desk before him. An icy hand gripped his heart as he read once more the details of the eighteen murders. Murders which had come back to haunt him from his past as he realised that he would, once more, be faced with the serial killer who had called himself ......Petey.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

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Thriller

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Publié par	Pneuma Springs Publishing
Date de parution	30 juillet 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782282006
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0195€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Two Little Dicky Birds

Neal James
Copyright

First Published in 2010 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
Two Little Dicky Birds Copyright © 2010 Neal James
Kindle eISBN 9781907728822 ePub eISBN 9781782282006 PDF eBook eISBN 9781782280668 Paperback ISBN: 9781905809936
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.
Dedication

In memory of Sally, Doris and Ivy.
Acknowledgements
In bringing “Two Little Dicky Birds” to its final state, the contributions of a number of individuals must not be forgotten. They are:
Rob Eldridge for the hours spent tirelessly and painstakingly proof reading and editing the 88,000 words, and the constructive criticism he has offered all along the way.
Russell E. Potter of Bryantown, Maryland for assistance with the intricacies of the US arm of the grammar.
David Chirban, Heather Chirban, Jaymie Greenway and Nathan Weaver, for agreeing to appear on the front cover.
Onyx Dragon Productions LLC for artwork and cover design.
Dave and Sue Quinney, without whose involvement chapter 79 would have lacked that certain something.
Steve and Jo Haslam for kind permission to use the White Horse in Ramsden Heath at a crucial point in the plot.
Alan Emmins and Sean Merrigan of the Editred writing community where I have sharpened my pencil on a number of occasions, and to all the site members who have offered critique over the past 12 months.
The New York Police Department in general, and Detective Martin Speechley in particular, for procedural and geographic help with the layout of the five boroughs.
To my dear wife, Lynn, once again, for listening and showing patience through all the writing and rewriting.
Prologue
Two little dicky birds sitting on a wall
One named Peter, one named Paul.
Psychopath
A person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviour.

Serial Killer
Someone who murders three or more people with a 'cooling off' period between each act (largely psychological gratification). All serial killers suffer from some form of Antisocial Personality Disorder, but rarely psychopathy. They are usually not psychotic, and thus appear to be quite normal and often even charming, a state of adaptation which is referred to as the "mask of sanity." There is sometimes a sexual element to the murders. These may have been completed/attempted in a similar fashion, and the victims may have had something in common, for example occupation, race, sex, etc. Also, the victims of a serial killer generally belong to the same race as the killer.

The classic depiction of the psychopath in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ in 1960 as a man, Norman Bates, suffering from the mental disorder schizophrenia, allows us to suppose that the criminal’s behaviour pattern will inevitably lead him to commit the crucial mistake which results in his downfall. A serial killer is not necessarily a psychopath, although the terms have been entwined by the media in modern times.
The serial killer also, typically, leaves a pattern for the forces of law and order to follow, and ultimately rid society of the menace. But what if such a killer existed who did not fit any known criteria? What if the only pattern were the complete lack of one as revealed by the facts surrounding each killing? What then?
Past members of this ‘fellowship’ have performed their acts on sections of society. They have included Peter Sutcliffe (prostitutes), Donald Nielson (young white males) and Fred West (young females).
A ‘volume’ killer who varied the location of each kill, the method of despatch, the modus operandi and the weapon involved, would be extremely hard to track down and apprehend. If such an individual was also one of the millions of anonymous citizens who walk our streets and go about their daily lives unnoticed, the task becomes even more difficult. If that person was also a member of the very forces of law and order which are set up to protect the rest of us, he then simply turns invisible.
Such a person would need to commit the most monumental of blunders in order to be caught, or come up against an opponent possessing a level of skill and determination which he could not have reasonably foreseen. This is the story of two such people.
The Novel
1
Saturday 5 th April 1975

Paul Townley was twenty. How he had survived to that age he wasn’t really sure, but it had been a hard struggle. From the age of about six, he and his mother had been subjected to a reign of terror inflicted by his alcoholic father, which culminated in regular weekend beatings after daylong sessions at one of the local pubs in the East End of London. By the time he was eight, it had become the accepted way of life in the Townley household, and regular visits to the doctor, with a range of injuries from broken arms due to ‘falling from walls’, to bruises acquired as a result of ‘fights at school’, were commonplace. His mother, Rose, suffered the worst and, despite regular advice from neighbours to leave the area, she stuck it out. Where would she go? She had no family of her own apart from Paul and his father, and the man would only track her down, doing who knows what damage as a result.
Harold Townley was a bully, and a physically big one at that. As the years passed however, overindulgence in alcohol together with a voracious appetite was slowing him down, and it was becoming easier for Paul and his mother to evade the worst of his violent temper and fists. When they did connect though, the results were alarming, and by the time he had reached his nineteenth birthday the boy decided that enough was enough. It was, nevertheless, twelve months later before he summoned up enough courage to take his father on. Harold had returned home from one of his regular binge sessions to find dinner waiting for him on the table. He turned and locked the front door. Rose could do nothing right it seemed; throwing the steaming plate full of food at the wall, he launched into a tirade of abuse and grabbed her by the hair.
Loosening the broad brown leather belt from underneath his ample stomach, he brandished it like a whip as he bent her across the table in preparation for a particularly brutal thrashing. It was the last time he ever did it. Paul brought the poker down on the back of his head with a sickening thud. Reeling backwards in surprise, Harold turned to face his son with a face full of savage fury. He was just in time to see the weapon descend across the bridge of his nose. Blood and bone sprayed outwards from the middle of his face and, screaming in pain, he released his grip on the now hysterical Rose to launch himself at the boy. If Paul had lost his nerve at this point, the man would surely have killed him. Stepping smartly to one side, he caught Harold a third time on the side of his head as he stumbled past on his way to the floor, followed the fall across the room, and as his father turned once more, rained four more bone-splintering blows onto the man’s face. It was questionable which of those blows it was that killed Harold Townley, but by the time he had ceased to move, his face was a bloody, unrecognisable pulp of flesh and bone.
Paul stood over him, breathing heavily, with the poker poised in case the job was not finished. His attention was only drawn away when he heard the soft, plaintive whimpering coming from the corner of the room where Rose had retreated for cover. She was shaking uncontrollably, eyes wide in horror at what she had just witnessed. As her son approached, she automatically shrank away behind one of the chairs, and he pulled back in surprise.
“Mum, it’s only me. He’s gone now, he can’t hurt us anymore and I won’t let anyone do anything like that to you ever again. Come on; don’t be scared, I’m not going to hurt you.”
Slowly, Rose Townley was coaxed out of the corner of the room and into Paul’s arms.
“You have to ring the police, Paul. We’ve got to let them know; they can’t lock us up, it was self-defence.”
“No, Mum. I killed him, and I meant it. You must tell them the truth. I’ll go to prison.”
This argument swung backwards and forwards for a quarter of an hour, as the body of Harold Townley lay where it had fallen. A total of thirty minutes had elapsed since his fateful entrance.
A banging at the front door brought them both back to the stark reality of the situation. It became frantic and louder when they didn’t answer. Harold was well known locally as a bruiser, and all their neighbours had witnessed the results of his domestic activities on a number of occasions. The door crashed inwards, and two friends accompanied by a uniformed police officer rushed into the room. The sight which greeted them stopped all three in their tracks, and an ambulance was summoned immediately. It was all academic – Harold was pronounced dead at the scene; Paul and Rose were taken to the local police station for questioning.
That Paul was responsible for the death of his father was beyond doubt, and he never tried to deny it - a fact which hung heavily in his favour when the case came to trial. Enough evidence was gathered from the neighbourhood to ensure that there was no likelihood of a custodial sentence, but in his summing up the judge went to great lengths to labour the point that a life had been taken, and that the jury’s only concern should relate to the facts of th