Megan Taylor, "The Therapist's Daughter"

 

Megan Taylor is the author of five dark novels, most recently, The Therapist’s Daughter, an eerie psychological thriller, released from Bloodhound Books in September 2024, and We Wait, her take on a traditional haunted house mystery. Megan’s short stories can be found in her collection, The Woman Under the Ground, and in many other places, including Weird Horror Magazine and GONE: An Anthology of Crime Stories. For more information, please visit her website here. 

About The Therapist’s Daughter, by Megan Taylor

Forgetting is difficult but remembering might be worse …

Caitlin Shaw fled Underton fifteen years ago when her girlfriend was accused of murder, but concerned for her mother’s health, she’s forced to return to the village and face the secrets she thought she’d left behind. As her family starts to unravel, Caitlin’s soon questioning the truth about the tragedy and her girlfriend’s guilt. But if her first love was innocent, could the killer still be out there, watching and waiting, far too close to home?

From The Therapist's Daughter

“Enough,” Jill muttered. “For Christ’s sake, stop.”

She refused to put up with the racket from her daughter’s room any longer. The ceiling was quivering, the whole house bristling, and with her head feeling just as invaded, she stalked out into the hall. But she’d barely mounted the stairs when the girls’ infuriating whoops and laughter erupted into screams.

The noise was dazzling. It sheared the air like knives and Jill’s first instinct was to cover her face. Instead, she broke into a run.

But though she flew up the steps two at a time, as soon as she hit the landing, everything apart from the screaming slowed to a sludgy dreamlike pace. The wallpaper’s roses tumbled lazily past, the deep pile carpet tugged at her heels, and even when she made it, panting, to Caitlin’s door, she felt like she wasn’t keeping up, as if she’d left herself behind. 

Another Jill remained holed up in the living room, still jabbing at the stereo and knocking back her Chardonnay, and still cursing Richard – bloody Richard – for abandoning her. He should have been home hours ago.

Except what was she thinking? Caitlin was behind that door, part of those screams, and coming abruptly awake, Jill grasped hold of the handle and plunged inside, and the darkness was nearly as shocking as the sound. She longed to back away.

Isabelle Kenyon, "The Dark Within Them"

 

Isabelle Kenyon is a Manchester writer and editor, and the author of 5 poetry chapbooks including Growing Pains (Indigo Dreams) and one short story with Wild Pressed Books ('The Town Talks'). She has had work published internationally in journals such as Ink, Sweat and Tears and newspapers such as The Somerville Times and The Bookseller. She coordinates the Northern Fiction Alliance and runs PR campaigns for writers and publishers under Kenyon Author Services. She has performed at Cheltenham Poetry Festival and Verbose, Manchester, Leeds International Festival as part of the 'Sex Tapes,' Apples and Snakes and Coventry Cathedral's Plum Line Festival.

About The Dark Within Them, by Isabelle Kenyon

A TIGHT-KNIT MORMON COMMUNITY. 

Faith-healer Amber is hopeful about Lehi, the safe Mormon town to which she, her new husband and two kids have just moved. 

BODIES BURIED IN THE GARDEN. 

After the sudden death of her daughter, Amber discovers the community will do anything to keep its secrets.

ONE FAMILY DIVIDED. 

When nothing feels certain anymore, will Amber take a leap of faith, for love?

You can read more about The Dark Within Them on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the novel. 

From The Dark Within Them

The Meeting, July 11th 2015

Chad

This was the kind of meeting all diaries were cleared for. Chad stood central in a horseshoe of bodies, an unlikely orchestrator. The floor was his but his tongue lay slack, hiding behind his lower teeth. There was a tremor in his wife’s shoulders which made him roll back his own, and clear his throat for silence. Each sound in the Temple reverberated off the pristine white surfaces.

“Thank you for being here today,” he begun. “I have great faith in the church community and its advice. Hell, we’ve all stood where I am now at one point or another, I’m sure. And today it’s my turn to ask for your help, with our Gilly.”

The open windows seeped humid twilight into the hall and beads of sweat formed under his cotton shirt. He talked slowly, using his hands as an offering. Holding his palms open showed he had nothing to hide: he’d been taught that by his uncle Jim. His audience gazed, unblinking. He wiped clammy paws on his jeans. He was forgetting people knew him here—since he could wobble around the neighbourhood on pudgy toddler legs—and that earned him a kind of immunity from judgement.

“Gilly’s fifteen. Young. She’s … she’s mostly a good kid. Anything badness in her? It didn’t come from her mothering. That’s not to blame,” he nodded with what he felt was warmth at his wife, her cheeks betraying a shade of fuchsia. “Perfect mother in my Amber. She made sure those kids grew up in a loving, attentive environment, and they wanted for nothing—don’t doubt that. But since Gilly moved to Lehi, with young Ivan and their mom, well, she’s been finding getting settled tough. This is a good neighbourhood—we all know that—and Amber and I, we’ve been wanting them to make friends. And these days…well, kids are always on their phones, right? Texting nonstop. She was texting at dinner and, erm,” he paused and pulled on his earlobe, “I asked to see her phone.” He felt Amber’s disapproval nettle his skin and revised: “I took her phone. And that’s when we saw the pictures.” He looked away from his wife’s shrinking form. “To be sending those kind of images to a boy—outside of the church—well, we’re all kind of cut up about it. There’s a kind of darkness in my home these days.”

He breathed out, realising his fingernails had been digging so hard into his palms that they had left indents…He flexed his hands, feeling for the back of a chair to sink into.

“Thank you, Chad,” Brett’s eyes crinkled, kind. “This is exactly the right space to discuss these kind of family dynamics in.” The circle nodded at these words, mumbling approval. “You’ve done the right thing.”

Amber wasn’t looking at him. He shuffled his chair closer to reach for her hand, but she pretended not to notice.

Gus Gresham, "Kyiv Trance"

 

Fresh from ditching an engineering career in the early 1980s, Gus Gresham found his road guru and lifelong friend Laurie lying stoned and unconscious at the edge of a vineyard in the afternoon sun, an empty Beaujolais bottle in the grass and a Jack Kerouac novel spread-eagled on his chest …

They picked grapes in the same picturesque French villages; laboured in olive groves on Crete and pumpkin paddocks in New South Wales; sought enlightenment in India and did the Auf Weidersehen Pet bit on building sites in Germany. They followed seasonal work doing pretty much everything from thousand-acre wheat harvests to beachcombing. They slept in cornfields and woke up at dawn to wash their faces in the morning dew and start hitchhiking …

Alongside hard travelling, Gus always had a passion for writing, and somehow in between it all he has been a mechanical engineer, environmental activist, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal-skills facilitator, and mature student (MA in Creative Writing; MSc in Building Surveying). Currently, he juggles a building-surveying career with being a husband, father and writer.

A trip to Russia and three trips to Ukraine formed the inspiration for his latest novel, Kyiv Trance.

About Kyiv Trance

Haunted by the mysterious, tragic death of his girlfriend five years earlier, university tutor Richard Farr escapes his spiralling life in London by travelling to Kyiv, Ukraine, to teach English.

It is the winter of 2004 / 05, the midst of the Orange Revolution. Hundreds of thousands are taking to the streets to protest election-result rigging. Richard's arrival coincides with the first of a series of murders in the capital. Then he meets Nadya, who may turn out to be the love of his life or a femme fatale, or both. As they grow closer, her own tragic history is revealed.

Ultimately, Richard will tread a dangerous, obsessive path, seeking happiness against the odds – as his life, the reign of the serial killer, and the political unrest in Kyiv all lead towards a shattering, interconnected climax.

You can find out more about the book here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Kyiv Trance, by Gus Gresham

Some experiences change you utterly. It’s not possible to go back to being who you were before.

Richard was never charged.

At the nadir of the ensuing grief, his philosophy to anybody who cared to listen was, “Shakespeare had it right. ‘Life is a tale, told by a fool’ … etcetera. Most people blunder through their days in a series of hypnotic trances. Barely conscious. Never taking the blinkers off for more than a few moments at a time. Blindly following some hackneyed script laid down in childhood, no matter what torment it brings.”

There was a little bar he visited every night, called Marrakech, where they served cloudy designer lager in frost-coated glasses. It went down well with tequila chasers. They had a reasonable lunch menu, too, and the bar was only a ten-minute walk from the university.

Because he was such a good English language and literature tutor, showing up at work half drunk was overlooked for a long time.

At some point in the dark early years of the new millennium, he was invited to resign. It was a comfort that he had substantial savings — once meant as capital on a house before Trixie’s death.

Autumn, 2004. London.

Never grasping where all the time had gone, Richard lay on the sofa reading a broadsheet newspaper one evening in late November 2004 when he saw the advert.

Kyiv School of English … Come and teach at our brand new facility … Immediate vacancies … Visas and flights arranged … contact Alexei Koval …

At the same moment, the TV news cut to images live from Kyiv, where the “Orange Revolution” had been gathering pace. Furious crowds filled Independence Square amid allegations of vote rigging.

Richard looked at the impassioned protesters waving their bright orange flags and banners. They cared about something. They looked alive.

He sat up straighter and read the job advert again.

Ruby Speechley, "Gone"

 

Ruby Speechley is a bestselling psychological thriller writer, whose titles include Someone Else’s Baby. Previously published by Hera, she has been a journalist and worked in PR and lives in Cheshire with her husband and two of her three children and two dogs. She has an older son and two grandsons.

About Gone, by Ruby Speechley

My son is missing, and everyone is lying to me.

Last night my son, Shay, sneaked out of the house and didn’t come home. He promised not to go to the illegal party in the woods. But someone’s been attacked and Shay has gone missing. The police want to know if he saw what happened. I’m worried he could be involved.

After all the trouble he’s been in lately, mixing with the wrong crowd, coming home beaten up and scared, I thought we’d put it all behind us. Trouble is, Shay resents me moving my new boyfriend into the family home. I found all sorts on his laptop, including a half-written email warning me not to trust David. What does he know that I don’t?

I’m beginning to fear for his safety. What is David hiding from me? Who have I let into our lives?

I don’t know who I can trust. Will I ever see my son alive again?

From Gone

Prologue

His breath is a plume of white as he stumbles into the cold tunnel of darkness ahead of him, the tangle of spiky branches thick with leaves slowing him down. He checks over his shoulder; he can’t see them, but he can hear them getting closer. His chest and throat are burning with exertion; the mossy earth is damp beneath his bare feet. He must reach the other side, where warm lights beckon him.

An arm reaches around his middle and bundles him to the ground. He falls on his face and lets out a pitiful groan. There’s a taste of blood on his lips, his nose thick and wet and throbbing. The smell of damp mud and torn grass are the last thing he remembers.

When his eyes flutter open, he’s lying on his back, on something as hard and cold as steel. He can’t move, not even a finger. There’s a stark white wall in front of him, grey ceiling tiles and right above him, a brown liquid stain. He blinks. Am I dead, or dreaming? A roaring pain tears down his side. His dry lips peel open but the scream in his throat is silenced by a hand pressing over his mouth. There is no face to this person, no words, only the milky skin of an arm, bleached by the bright light.

A woozy feeling washes over him, his vision blurs and his eyes fall shut.

David Tregarthen, "Come the Dark Night"

 

David Tregarthen is a writer, singer, accompanist, and tutor. He grew up in the North of England, studied at Oxford (where his novel Come the Dark Night is set), then worked for several years as an academic in the Midlands. In the past year he's taken some time out to travel (where the global pandemic allowed) and pursue his other interests. As a creative writer, he's interested in identity, truth, nuanced queer characters, and what (if anything) makes psychopaths different from the rest of us. Come the Dark Night is his first novel and is published by Bloodhound Books. He can be found on Twitter @davidtregarthen

About Come the Dark Night, by David Tregarthen

In this sophisticated novel of suspense, a killer with a taste for literature lurks in the shadows of Oxford University ...

After a student is found decapitated in the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre and a cryptic note in an unknown language is discovered, DS Kate Stewart and her partner turn to medievalist Dr. Jonathan Reynolds. He identifies the note as a passage from Beowulf and explains that the murder replicates a killing in the epic poem.

Then a second, equally grisly murder escalates the situation. The victim is Tom, Jonathan’s former student and stalker. Horrified, Jonathan identifies the crime’s literary connection to another early English poem. Is the killer obsessed with medieval times—or with Jonathan? When another death suggests that a serial killer is working his way through the English Literature syllabus, both the police and the scholar are drawn into a baffling mystery ...

From Come the Dark Night

Oxford, 1998, First Week in Trinity

I look down from my vantage point high above the city, scent the early morning air and smile. It will be another of those sultry days that spring borrows from summer. On such a day, the air holds out the promise of a time beyond the teaching term that has just grudgingly begun; beyond the testing, fraught, close-knit days of Finals; beyond even those precious weeks of quiet libraries where dust motes dance as scholars snooze. On such a day, the illusory prospect of drifting on a peaceful river or browsing in bookshops along deserted lanes has not yet been shattered by the squalid reality of building works and the blind hunger of the omnipresent crowds. And on this day it is that I – or rather my Work – shall be seen.

I walk back across the wooden floor, carefully lift and place the head to one side, then take a moment to rest from my labours. As the young April sun rises over Oxford’s spires and bell towers, my city is neither dreaming nor sleeping. Whilst darkness and quietude still prevailed – though I, of course, was busy about my Work – three dozen college porters waited patiently within the establishments they guard. Now, as the bells of Tom Tower and a hundred churches strike their conflicting chimes, these men begin to unlock the smaller wickets set inside the great iron-studded timber gateways. The more famous – or cupidinous – colleges ‘fling wide their gates,’ knowing an influx of tourists waits to make its less than royal way. Agog to consume cultural capital, the sheep will stream inexorably in from early morning until dusk: from the grubby ring road and coach parks and railway station. Within each college, gardeners are doubtless hard at work weeding borders and mowing precious lawns still thirsty for the month’s promised ‘shoures soote.’ Scouts and bedders begin to scrub porcelain and polish stainless steel – or so I imagine. I do not know the truth of it. Perhaps they are instead counting out linen for distribution amongst the students in their charge – most of them still dead to the world, it’s safe to assume, bins outside their rooms to guard against unwanted intrusion. Excluded here, of course, the chasers of Firsts already annotating texts in quiet carpeted libraries, the earnest chapelgoers kneeling in prayer, and those Lycra-clad rowers quick-stepping it to the cold river. I see one now, cycling along the pavement, weaving between concrete bollards, almost close enough to … but, no, I must not allow myself to be distracted.

I hammer in the spike, muffling the sound of metal on iron with his scarf, then rest again. As I wait, silent and unseen, elsewhere cheerful shouts, ribald laughter, rise from the meat stalls in the Covered Market and the kitchens they stock. Along Catte Street and Cornmarket, Broad Street and the High, the thin light shines down alike on saints peering myopically from their niches in the church towers, and sinners, scurrying back from strange beds, rumpled-black-jacketed and pallid-faced. Loathsome in their petty deceit. Ants, all of them, waiting for one divine foot to mash them into the cobbles of Radcliffe Square.

My breath returns and I begin to pack away my tools. Nearby, the Old Bodleian’s great quadrangle lies yet hushed, as lonely staff dribble their way past old Pembroke’s statue. He stands now in shadow, impassively watching over the doorways with their neatly painted homage to the Old Schools, as he has done since his translocation in the Year of Our Lord 1723. Nearby, the sun’s warming rays slide tentatively up the wall of the Sheldonian Theatre, past its encircling grotesques with their gaping mouths, till they reach the cupola’s arched windows and pale-green dome, high above the waking city. My mouth waters. Soon and very soon.

Jonathan Wilkins, "Utrecht Snow"

About Jonathan Wilkins, by himself

I am sixty-six. I have a gorgeous wife Annie and two beautiful sons; I love to write. I am a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstone's bookseller, and former Basketball Coach. I taught for twenty years and coached women’s basketball for over thirty years before taking up writing seriously.

Up until Covid, I regularly taught Creative Writing workshops in and around Leicester and also via zoom. I currently take notes for students with Special Needs at Leicester University.

I have always loved books and reading, but nine years at Waterstone’s nearly put paid to that!

I’ve had a work commissioned by the UK Arts Council, and had several non-fiction pieces published traditionally as well as fiction online. I have had some of my work placed in magazines and anthologies and also exhibited in art galleries, studios, museums and at Huddersfield Railway Station Waiting Room. I have my writing on various blogs. I love writing poetry.

I enjoy presenting papers at Crime Fiction conferences. It keeps my mind active through the research process and is a great way to meet new people and gain fresh ideas for writing.

As well as my Utrecht Murders Trilogy, I am writing a crime series set at the end of the Great War and into the early 1920s. 

My website is here. 

About Utrecht Snow, by Jonathan Wilkins

In Utrecht Snow, a crime novel initially written as my MA Creative Writing dissertation, we meet widow Caes Heda, Hoofdinspecteur at Kroonstraat police station, and his daughter Truus, a student at the local University. Caes is head of crime whilst his daughter is fed up with her studies and links up with private investigator Thijs Orman. Girls go missing from Utrecht and the police and Truus investigate kidnapping and murder. This is the first of a trilogy set in the beautiful city of Utrecht.

From Utrecht Snow

Caes Heda was normally about six foot two inches tall; but today he was hunched up against the cold and felt like a goblin, at half his normal size. He shivered yet again and breathed out the cold air, imagining it freezing on his neatly trimmed beard and moustache.

Caes could just see the Gothic Dom Bell Tower outlined against the grey morning sky. It was towering above everything, and it made him smile. Even as the snow feathered down it was still the centre of their universe. It watched over Utrecht from a height of what, over one hundred and ten metres, and could more or less be seen in Utrecht from wherever anyone stood, whatever the weather. True, it was a bit faint today, covered as it was in snow. No melting due to no heat leaving the building, the Dom was always cold, always frozen, it mirrored how he felt. Cold and alone, he just wanted to be alone. All of a sudden, Caes just didn’t fancy going to work. He just wanted some peace and quiet and to be left on his own, to wallow in his sudden misery.

Unfortunately, all his defence mechanisms didn’t stop the woman from sitting next to him - well, almost sitting on him in fact, as the bus picked up from Bleekstreet. She wedged Caes against the window and started talking to herself, or was it to him? He opened his left eye and taking a closer look, saw what it was. Dirty faux fur coat and then the sickly smell of snowy dampness and then, yes it was urine. Caes had to start breathing through his mouth to try to avoid the smell. He couldn’t get his arm away from her; he was stuck and she muttered on, words incomprehensible to him, Greek? Russian? He couldn’t tell, maybe it wasn’t a language at all; he was suddenly too tired to think. The half hour it took the bus to get to his office on Kroonstraat was a torment, where had she arrived from? He’d never seen her before on this route, though to be honest he did spend most of his journeys to work with his eyes closed.

It was such a welcome relief when she stood and got off the bus. Her smell, though, was hanging in the air. He hoped it wouldn’t hang on his clothes. The pressure on him at last relented as she moved; typical, it was also his stop. She shambled to the exit. Caes followed the smell.

He got off and found himself trailing the woman as she shuffled across the road and through the snow. Her muttering increased, talking to no one but everyone. People avoided her, even in the snow they could see her and they must have thought she was mad. She was going his way; in fact, she was going all the way. She entered the Bureau at Kroonstraat. Caes followed.

Caes Heda was Hoofdinspecteur in Utrecht. Thirty-nine and in charge of Crime at Kroonstraat Police Bureau, not committing it obviously, but tidying up after it had been committed. If he could catch them great, but he felt there was not much chance of stopping them all. It was a full-time job!

He did enjoy it, though, it was a bit like a game, but he was never sure who was winning. They had success and then the criminals had a win. They locked some up, but more and more were getting community service and prisons were closing due to lack of customers. He had always thought that saving money this way was a false economy as there seemed no deterrent anymore, but there again, he was but a simple policeman.

Anita Sivakumaran, "Cold Sun"

 

Anita Sivakumaran was born in Madras and has lived in the UK since 2004. Her historical novel, The Queen, based on real events, has been made into a major television series. The Birth of Kali, her acclaimed second book, retells Indian mythology from a feminist point of view. Cold Sun is her first novel in the DI Patel detective series. She lives in Leicester with her husband, children and a rescue dog from Greece. Anita has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. 

 

About Cold Sun, by Anita Sivakumaran

Cold Sun heralds the literary debut for Detective Vijay Patel of Scotland Yard.

Bangalore. Three high-profile women murdered, their bodies draped in identical red saris. 

When the killer targets the British Foreign Minister’s ex-wife, Scotland Yard sends the troubled, brilliant Vijay Patel to lend his expertise to the Indian police investigation. A stranger in a strange land, ex-professional cricketer Patel must battle local resentment and his own ignorance of his ancestral country, while trying to save his failing relationship back home. 

Soon, the killer’s eyes will turn to Patel. And also to Chandra Subramanium, the fierce female detective he is working with in Bangalore.

This breathless thriller will keep you guessing until the final, shocking revelation of the killer’s identity.

Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Cold Sun

Sparks flew from the welding gun. Spots danced in the boy’s unprotected eyes. He blinked them away, placed the gun on the tamped earth, stood, stretched. Waiting for the metal to cool, he watched the mechanic kneeling in the dirt, blue coveralls filthy, reattaching a rusty bumper to an old Ambassador. The mechanic glanced up, his eyes meeting the boy’s and flitting away like a butterfly. He nearly dropped the bumper.

It wasn’t often that the boy allowed his eyes to meet another’s. Crouching now, he steadied the cylinder at his feet, checked if the joint had sufficiently hardened. Tugged at it to make sure. Then he lifted the cylinder into his backpack. Without a word or nod to the mechanic, he lifted the pack to his shoulder and left.

Outside, he paused to blink a few times. The sun hung low over the strip of wasteland on which the concrete and corrugated-iron motor-repair shack perched. Scrub grass, hard brown earth. Torn plastic bags flapped in the dusty breeze. A faint stink of decaying offal and human faeces. The rough concrete walls and curtained rear doorways of a row of butcher shops stretched in either direction. The boy walked slowly, eyes lowered.

A street dog nosed at a mound of rubbish. Her teats stretched low, pink and white patches on them. One eye glistened pearly in blindness. Ignoring the angry buzz of displaced bottle flies, the boy knelt beside the dog. He brought some stale bread from his pocket. The dog wagged her tail. Intent, the boy watched her gobble it down from his open palm. He let her lick his fingers, lifted them to his nostrils, smelt the stench of rotting meat and butcher’s bones in her saliva.

Soon the dog grew restless. She cocked her ears at some far off sound, prepared to move on. The boy reached for his backpack, slid the zip open. The dog wagged her tail again with renewed enthusiasm. He tugged at the metal ball one more time. The joint had hardened well. He fitted it into the tube.

The dog’s tail drooped to cup her anus as the boy positioned the tube’s mouth to her forehead, his knee propped under her jaw. Inured to the city’s noise, she barely flinched when he pulled the lever and the sudden boom filled the air.

The tail wagged on for a few moments, even after the one good eye had glazed over. A smile curled the boy’s lips. He gazed slowly around the empty wasteland. Then he packed up and left.

Soon, a blanket of bottle flies covered the carcass.

Chapter One

‘Patel!’ Sergeant Jackson hollered across the heads of fourteen detectives busy at their desks. ‘Skinner’s looking for you. Hop to it, baby.’

Patel ignored the sniggers. He took the blue pencil to the report in his hand, marked a missing apostrophe to the word ‘its.’ He threw the pencil into an open drawer, where it was swallowed by clutter, and ran a hand through his hair.

‘Sadly, I already left,’ he said to Jackson, who just shrugged.

He closed the file, tucked it under an arm, slung his jacket over one shoulder and jogged to the stairs. His hair bounced and flopped over his forehead, overdue a cut. Boyish locks did not suit a homicide detective. Even if, as Sarah put it when she felt friendly, combined with his smoky brown eyes they made him look like a Bollywood hero.

By the time he’d passed the IT help desk and rounded the conference block, he was out of breath. Those years of athletic training were long gone, together with his cricketing career. Mostly now he ran to catch the Piccadilly Line and lifted pints of lager.

He slowed outside the row of senior management’s private cubicles, glanced through windows overlooking the Thames. Bitter rain streaked the glass, transforming London’s dust into slime. Through the worm-runs of water, he saw the traffic lights flash dully on Westminster Bridge. Orange, then red.

Perfectly miserable weather. Perfect for a jaunt down the road for a pint of London Pride. But really, he ought to be heading home to pack. The flight was at five a.m. and he hadn’t so much as laid out a pair of swimming trunks. In fact, where were his trunks? He’d last seen them in September, when they’d booked a holiday at some posh hotel in Cornwall. He and Sarah. Booked and cancelled last minute for emergency root-canal treatment. The very thought of it made his jaw ache.

He pushed Inspector Rima’s door open.

She looked up from her computer, swept her hair off her shoulder, said, ‘Don’t you knock?’

‘I was going to leave this on your desk.’

She held her hand out for the report, eyes twinkling. ‘So you’re off, then? Sunny Tenerife?’

‘Yeah.’ He grimaced, breathless and sweaty, feeling a little foolish to be having this conversation. ‘Nearly got cancelled again.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘This case came up.’ He indicated the file, the cover of which Rima was flicking open. ‘Skinner assigned me.’

Rima raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t unaware of Superintendent Skinner’s feelings about Patel.

‘You got lucky?’

‘I guess.’

‘How?’

‘Deceased is a forty-one-year-old homeless male. Name: John Snow.’

‘No kidding.’

‘Anyway, another homeless fella comes down off his four-day bender under some bridge in West Margate, half frozen to death. Looks down, sees the blood all over his bony hands, his rags. Runs himself and his bony arse straight to Station WB10 South Precinct and ’fesses.’

Rima, flicking through the report, didn’t appear to be listening.

‘You’d think the devil got hold of the poor bugger.’

Rima closed the report, opened it again, studied the top sheet. She frowned, put her finger on it.

‘Why no copy for the FLO?’

‘Homeless man doesn’t rate a Family Liaison Officer.’

She made a face. ‘Of course. We’ve to make “savings” –’ she used air quotes ‘– of thirty million by the end of the year.’

‘You sound just like Skinner.’

She smiled. ‘If we had the resources, we’d track his family down. Even a bum has family, somewhere.’

It was unlike her to display Samaritan urges.

‘Homeless murder,’ said Patel. ‘Cold pavement to cold slab.’

‘Poor bugger,’ she said. She stared at him. ‘Come here.’

A shiver up his spine. ‘Got to go pack, Inspector.’

She came around the desk and put a finger on his shirt button.

‘How about something to remember me by in Tenerife?’ Fighting the urge to back away and run, he said, ‘Sarah wants to—’

A knock on the door. Without pause, it opened.

‘There you are, Patel. Been looking everywhere for you.’ The smarmy voice of Detective Inspector Bingham.

Rima’s hand was back by her side. ‘Dave,’ said Patel. ‘Not down the pub yet?’

‘About to, then I got asked to run an errand.’ Bingham chuckled, then guffawed.

Patel smelled beef stroganoff from the canteen lunch. He waited. He thought there was a joke brewing.

Bingham guffawed and chuckled some more before saying, ‘Super wants you.’

‘When? Tomorrow?’

‘Now, cupcake. He’s got an assignment for you.’

‘He knows I booked the week off.’

‘Yeah, he might have mentioned something like that. All the homicide detectives tied up, you know? After the New Year’s Eve spike in cases and all.’

‘You’re the SIO?’

‘Nothing to do with me. I’m going to Thailand tomorrow. Did I tell you? Warm up me old cobblers.’

Patel just looked at Bingham.

‘Don’t keep the man waiting. Ta, love.’ A quick ferrety glance at Rima and Bingham went away, strutting and chuckling his head off.

Patel raised his eyebrows at Rima.

She twitched her lips in a smile. ‘Go and get some, Sergeant.’

*

‘Have a seat, Patel.’

Superintendent Skinner gestured to the faded leather chair across his desk. Patel cautiously lowered himself into it, knowing it creaked madly. Although the smile on his face and his salt and pepper bouffant hair gave Skinner an avuncular air, his steel-grey eyes emanated hate.

‘You’ve closed the homeless case.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’d think that in these times of austerity we wouldn’t have the resources to go after every teenage drug overdose, every homeless man pissing himself to death.’

‘It was murder, sir.’

Skinner’s smile vanished. ‘Murder of one fuck-head bum by another.’

‘Report’s been submitted, sir. Second-degree manslaughter.’

‘Justice for the poor homeless man. Could go on a recruitment poster: “We serve with ... care in the community.”’

‘Just doing my job, sir.’

‘Twice the patriot, aren’t you? Playing cricket for the country, and now righting the wrongs done to your countrymen, be they royals or the great unwashed.’

Patel felt a prickle of wariness.

‘Our poster boy.’ Skinner’s tone implied he was a highly unlikely one, and on that point, at least, Patel had to concur.

‘You’ve been with us three years, have you not?’

Patel nodded. Baiting, taunting, and now the trip down memory lane.

‘You certainly caused a storm in Yorkshire.’

Patel stared at Skinner, keeping any emotion off his face. ‘The Dales Ripper.’ Skinner smacked his lips. ‘Some of us can only dream of netting such a high-profile criminal.’ Skinner leaned forward. ‘Tell me. What did it feel like, the eureka moment?’

‘Eureka moment, sir?’

The whites of Skinner’s eyes shone like a dirty enamel sink that’d had a good scrubbing.

Heidi James, "The Sound Mirror"

 

Heidi James is the author of critically acclaimed novels Wounding, So the Doves (a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) and The Sound Mirror. She won The Saboteur Award for her novella, The Mesmerist’s Daughter, and was a finalist in The Cinnamon Poetry Collection Prize. Her short stories, poetry and essays have been published various anthologies and magazines including, among others, We’ll Never Have Paris, Somesuch, Dazed and Confused and Galley Beggar Press. She hosts a podcast, First Graft, where she discusses the writing process with other writers. Her website is here.

About The Sound Mirror

Tamara is going to kill her mother, but she isn’t a monster. She just has to finish what began at birth and put an end to the damage encoded in her blood.

Quitting her job in Communications, Tamara dresses carefully and hires a car to visit her mother for the last time. Accompanied by a chorus of ancestors, she is harried by voices from the past and the future that reveal the secrets of these women’s lives that continue to echo through her own.

Is Tamara fated to make the same mistakes as her ancestors or can she break the cycle and lead her own life, and on her terms too?

The Sound Mirror is a haunting novel that avoids classification. Spanning three generations from British Occupied India to Southern England, Heidi James has crafted a moving examination of class, war, violence and shame from the rich details of ordinary lives.

From The Sound Mirror, by Heidi James

TAMARA

She is going to kill her mother today. But she’s no monster. She’s not the villain. It’s a beautiful day for it, winter sharp, the sky an unfussy blue. She’s taken two days holiday from work and hired a fancy car, a Mercedes, essential for this journey, where appearances and a quick getaway are everything. The man gave her a discount when she told him where she was going. The two-hundred-mile round trip will be a breeze. She’s dressed carefully too; just jeans and a shirt, but they are expensive, well-cut. Understated, but a signal to those in the know. So here we are, driving down to be face to face with her for the last time. Of course, we’re along for the ride, how could we not?

It’s been a long time coming, and our fault, we should say. Funny that, speaking with one voice now, agreeing with each other. But yes, our fault, and all the others, tangled up with poisons and infections and rottenness. Our mothers and mother’s mothers containing us, we, in their bellies, seeds of each in the cells and the breath. Before the splitting in two, the doubling like an atomic bomb and now she holds us all, a rabble of ancestors, pressing up from inside against her skin, and too, she contains the next generation, if she wanted. If she can bear to, bear it, bear a child. Who could blame her if not? But for now, she’s the sum of all us women, the total. She is what’s left.  

You imagine history trails you like clanging tin cans on a wedding car, but you’re wrong. History is a halter that leads, we’re beasts of burden with a ring through our nose. You go where we lead. We are not whole, we are fragments, ununified, unstable entities colliding under the swirling universe. Overflowing with memories and feelings not our own; archives of those who came before. It’s almost romantic, imagining we’re individuals, cut off from the rest, making ourselves feel special. What we are is the story she is made of. Then of course, there’s free will, if you believe in that, which she does. It’s a nice idea anyway. That we are free to choose our actions, and the consequences. 

Passive, she drifts where she’s pushed, lifted and dropped. Caught in tides she can’t fathom, impulses and currents she can’t navigate.