Death At Willows End Read online

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  DEATH AT WILLOWS END

  By

  A.B.King

  DEATH AT WILLOWS END

  Copyright: A. B. KING

  First Published on Kindle: May 2012

  Revised Oct 2014

  Publisher: The author

  Images: Design incorporates a royalty free image by Marianne Gagnon

  Cover Design: By T A K Bridger

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted or circulated without written permission from the author or publisher.

  Also by A B King

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  Thrillers

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  Genre - Thriller

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  Synopsis

  Revised edition – May 2014

  Neil Hammond is by profession a design engineer, and by his own admission a bit of a square, and destined to be one of life's failures. Becoming a victim of the economic recession he very reluctantly accepts a temporary cash-in-hand job of looking after a friend's detective agency for a week while the proprietor, a friend of his from school-days is away on a case. The work seems to consist in the main of such exciting cases as looking for lost cats or watching erring husbands, but matters take an unexpected twist when he rescues a young woman from a car that has been washed away in flood waters. 'Danny' as she prefers to be known, is a glamorous and a highly successful business woman who insists on retaining his services in solving a murder that common sense says never happened. Knowing nothing whatever about being a detective, he is swept along by the whirlwind attitude to life of his client as he tries to prove that the whole business is nothing but a wild goose chase. And then there is another murder, and matters suddenly become a race to prevent a third and fourth.

  Index

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  Also by A B King

  Synopsis

  Chapter One.

  Chapter Two.

  Chapter Three.

  Chapter Four.

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven.

  Chapter Eight.

  Chapter Nine.

  Chapter Ten.

  Chapter Eleven.

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty.

  Chapter Twenty One.

  Chapter Twenty-Two.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR - A. B. KING

  Also by A B King

  Chapter One.

  I have to admit that I have talked myself into some pretty stupid situations in my time, and as I sat there looking at the cheap, flat-pack furniture reposing forlornly in that dingy room masquerading as an office I decided that this, my latest venture, was scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel as far as I was concerned. I looked with understandable distaste at the moth-eaten name plate at the front of the desk boldly proclaiming that the occupant of these insalubrious premises rejoiced in the unlikely title of 'Piers Larsen, Ace Private Detective'! That was stretching the truth a bit for a start; 'Piers Larsen', the usual occupant of the chair I was currently occupying was in real life one Pete Lanscomb, a sort of friend of mine who frequently had notions a good deal crazier than I would ever willingly get involved with, although to be fair, in his case even the wackiest of his ideas usually paid off. Pete had never settled down like many of his contemporaries, being a confirmed bachelor, yet he was also unquestionably a great one for the ladies. I gathered from the many hints
he had dropped at odd times in the past that several of his female clients paid him sizeable retainers as an 'Ace Private Detective' for doing remarkably little 'detecting', leading me to suspect that more than a few of them were kept happy in ways that may best be described politely as 'extra-curricular'! Be that as it may, in his early years he had had a bit of a chequered career, yet somehow he always managed to come out on top, and smelling of roses no matter what disasters appeared to stalk him.

  In contrast, my life could most definitely be described as humdrum by anyone's standards, and certainly by Pete's. I should explain that the pair of us go back a long way. We had palled-up at school, where, being about eighteen months older than me, I have to admit he was usually the leading light in the many scrapes we got into. He had a questing, restless and inventive mind; always keen to try something new; and rules of any sort always irked him. Left to my own devices I was the complete opposite, but I suppose his roguish nature was a bit like a candle-flame to a moth, and where he led, I usually followed, or perhaps blundered might be a more accurate description. Our juvenile escapades landed us in hot water more often than I care to admit, although to be fair, he never ratted on me when the going got rough, even if it was my fault when we came unstuck, which it usually was! If one could cope with his eccentricities he was a good friend to have. Once school-days were behind us, we inevitably followed different paths in life, and as a consequence we only saw each other at lengthy intervals. I went to college, and then on to uni, and after graduation I went into engineering. There wasn't much of a career choice available to me at that point, and I was glad of any offer by the time one finally came along. Unfortunately the reality of the opening I triumphantly secured against all the opposition fell far short of my expectations of it. Frankly, I soon came to accept that what I had really wasn't much of a job, still less a career, in a so-so company that wasn't going anywhere. When the recession finally bit, inevitably that was me out on my ear.

  With my parents deceased, and no close relatives I had been living in rather squalid digs until I acquired a small bachelor pad on the back of my earnings. This was situated on the edge of town, fairly close to local shops and suited my modest needs. Following the inevitable redundancy, which in some respects had come as a relief I had felt confident of swiftly obtaining a new position. Unfortunately there were a whole lot of other foot-loose graduates with the same idea. Initially things weren't too bad, but it is surprising how quickly one can get depressed when one's efforts of gaining worthwhile employment come to nothing as regular as clockwork, and with one's resources dwindle alarmingly day by day. I scoured the local papers, haunted the job centre, did a fair amount of cold-calling, sent of CV’s by the dozen, ransacked the web, all to no avail. It soon got to the stage where I debated whether it was worth rising from my bed of a morning to face another soul-destroying day of metaphorically beating my head against a brick-wall, although of course I always did. (Get up, that is!)

  As I have said, once school-days were over I didn't see Pete that often, although I had heard from one source and another that he had become a bit of a rolling stone, trying his hand at all manner of things. He never actually fell foul of the law as far as I knew, but I imagine he skated pretty close to the line at times. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise about six months after I had been made redundant that Pete looked me up one day, took me out for a drink, dutifully listened to my tale of woe, and promised he would keep his ear open, etc., etc., as friends often do. He told me that he was now running a very successful private detective agency, and was bound to hear something through his many 'contacts'. Needless to say, nothing came of his assurances. Not that I was overly surprised; Pete often promised things, but words were cheap from him, and so I wasn't unduly disappointed. I had been pleased to see him, because his infectious good humour soon cheered me up.

  Meanwhile, just to keep the proverbial wolf from the door, I tried my hand at various stop-gap occupations while I waited for a half-way decent career opportunity to arise. (By this time I had long since given up waiting for the wholly decent of course.) I had a go at delivering leaflets, and got bitten by an anti-social dog. Losing my enthusiasm for this, I tried door-step selling,(if you have never tried selling a doorstep, don’t bother; the effort’s not worth it!) and got bitten again. Deciding that I would never make a salesman, I tried to make a living by cleaning windows. This was another venture that did not last long; when the regular man on the round I'd foolishly decided was ripe for my attention got to hear of what I was up to he promised to set his dog on me. What is it with me and dogs, I wonder?

  Then Pete rolled in again one day right out of the blue just as I sent off my umpteenth application for a job, and asked if I would like to 'stand in' for him for a few weeks? Frankly, I thought he was joking, but he explained that he had to go away 'on business' and needed someone to 'hold the fort' for him whilst he was away. While I was weighing up his offer I asked him what sort of 'business' was taking him away, and learned that he was on an 'important case', for which he was ostensibly being employed as a 'bodyguard' for a rather voluptuous and well-heeled blonde. I discretely avoided making further enquiries; what he got up to was nothing to do with me. I cannot say that I've ever fancied myself as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, any more than I can say I was that keen, (on the job, that is, not the blonde he was so graphically describing) but financially, he made it sound all too good to be true. In the event I wasn't so far wrong on that score, and that was no surprise to me where Pete was concerned. Still, it was cash in hand, paid in advance, and all I had to do was to sit in his office, answer the telephone and check through the correspondence. Given my parlous financial situation, I'd have been a mug to have turned it down.

  “Money for old rope, my son,” he said confidently, “Come on in about nine, check the phone and so forth, then put the sign on the door that says 'out on a case, back at four', and buzz off and do your own thing. Come in again if you have time at the end of the afternoon, check it all again, and go home. There's nothing to it; the appointment book is on the desk, along with the scale of charges, and there's leaflets lurking somewhere in the filing cabinet, along with a plentiful supply of coffee and a few packets of biscuits. Help yourself if you want to use the phone or the computer.”

  “You don't expect me to go out solving anything, do you?” I asked suspiciously. “I mean, I can't see me trying to track down a straying husband, or finding out who's been throwing bricks through the vicar's window!”

  “You don't have to do anything, just write down name, phone number and brief details of what is wanted, and I'll deal with it all when I come back,” he answered happily, then added as an afterthought; “By the way, in case you ever get asked, it’s usually the vicar's wife that heaves the bricks through windows round here.”

  I hoped he was joking. “Well, so long as that is all,” I finally agreed warily, thinking of the cash he had promised me. “I'll just answer the phone and make appointments, right?”

  “Trust me,” he said with that beaming smile that suggested that trusting him ought to be the last thing in the world I should ever be contemplating. “Who knows, I may even offer you a junior partnership when I get back.”

  And so there I was, bright and early on a sunny Monday morning sitting behind a tatty desk and pretending to be a private eye.

  But before I launch into my tale, perhaps I'd better give you some background information first. My name is Neil Hammond, I'm thirty years of age, just about six foot tall in my socks, (when I can find any) about twelve and a half stone in weight, (being awkward, I much prefer the imperial to the metric system) black haired and still possessed of most of my own teeth. At the time my story opens I was single, mostly because the few women I've become drawn towards soon decided that I wasn't quite up to what they were looking for in life. Jobless, as I have said, and with very little in the way of prospects, I was no great catch for any sort of woman with more than half a brain. As I have mentioned, my parents
are dead, I have no siblings, nor any close relatives that I'm aware of; certainly none that were likely to leave me a comfortable fortune. I don't smoke, drink, or take drugs, which makes me pretty boring according to some of my acquaintances. I'm not that keen on sport, although I had done a little amateur boxing while I was at uni. I can't stand pop music, and not being particularly extrovert in nature I have to admit that I'm not a particularly social animal. In other words I'm a bit of a square, and even that phrase is dated.

  Monday morning's are never my favourite times, and sitting in that office waiting for something to happen didn't help matters much, particularly as this was the second Monday that I had had the place to myself, and I still had at least another to go. I couldn't complain about the money; Pete had been pretty generous, but sitting at a desk twiddling one's thumbs is not my preferred pastime. The phone had only rung a couple of times the preceding week, and there was nothing much in the post or incoming e-mails. Actual visitors were conspicuous by their absence. Without putting too fine a point on it, I was bored rigid. I'd read the 'Express' from cover to cover, (even the sport) completed all the crosswords, filled in a couple of 'special offer' coupons and then tore them up, drank enough coffee to drown myself, and was fed up to the back teeth with doodling. I just couldn't figure out how Pete made it pay; he was always flush with money, drove a swank car, and could even afford to pay me out of the petty cash, yet the amount of business I'd booked in for him seemed scarcely worth the effort! Obviously he had sidelines that he didn't discuss with me, and on the whole I thought that perhaps it was better that I didn't know about them.