#AMAZON #KINDLE #READERS Behead the Serpent by Paul Anthony - an extract Driving through Crillsea Meadows, Joe ‘Jawbone’ Queen, smoothed his unkempt moustache, snatched a lower gear, and herded his black Vauxhall uphill through the leafy lanes. A moment later the car swept passed a road sign reading BEWARE OF EROSION - DANGEROUS CLIFFS AHEAD. ‘Nearly there, Ray,’ remarked Jawbone to his passengers. Nodding sympathetically, a bearded Ray leaned across into the rear of the car where he shook his dozing companion on the knee and declared, ‘Les! We’re here. Look alive!’ A large tattooed man with broad shoulders beneath a tight black tee shirt yawned and leaned forward replying, ‘Good! I could do with a little action.’ ‘We’ve a job to do,’ grunted Jawbone from the driving seat. His brown eyes drilled into an interior mirror when his deep gravel voice ordered, ‘Keep your eyes peeled, gents.’ Clobbering a pothole, the Vauxhall’s chassis creaked with the weight of the three occupants. They were all in their thirties, six feet tall, muscular, and each weighed in at fifteen stones or more. ‘Oh, my eyes are peeled,’ growled Ray. ‘I can’t wait.’ There was a laugh from the rear of the car when Les pointed at Ray’s black eye, made a fist, flexed his muscles, and suggested, ‘You should have ducked, Ray, and hit the other man first.’ He tensed his bicep and watched it stretch the cloth of his tee shirt and cracked, ‘Better luck next time!’ ‘Les, I’ll try to remember that,’ snarled Ray. Tweaking his broken nose with the end of his thumb, Les muttered, ‘We’re ready, Jawbone. No sweat! Just bring it on!’ Jawbone ignored Les’s remark and concentrated on the road ahead but Ray nodded at a tattoo sprawled across Les’s forearm and asked, ‘You fed her today?’ Chuckling, Les admired his bulging arm and tickled his fingers over a crocodile tattoo which stretched from his wrist to his shoulder saying, ‘Not yet, plenty of time for a pig later!’ Swinging the car round a bend, Jawbone finally saw the ocean come into view. Removing his foot from the accelerator, he allowed the car to cruise along the road parallel to the cliffs. Within a few hundred yards they reached a car park on the cliff side of the road and Jawbone braked, steered onto a gravelled area, and took second gear as he drove slowly along a line of parked vehicles. ‘What we looking for again?’ asked Ray. Slightly annoyed, Jawbone flipped the dashboard down, snaffled a piece of paper from within, and handed it to Les growling, ‘An open-topped sports car or to be precise a two door sapphire blue BMW Z1 Roadster.’ ‘Registration number?’ ‘It’s on the piece of paper. Read the damn thing,’ barked Jawbone. ‘Whoa! Sorry!’ apologised Ray. ‘There’s a sports car,’ pointed Les from the rear. ‘Is that it?’ Reading the note, Les cracked, ‘Yep! Sure is!’ ‘Okay,’ suggested Jawbone. ‘I’ll go round again. Check the other cars out. There’s only a few and I reckon their drivers are dog walking or whatever. Just remember; in, out, shake it all about, and we’re gone. Understand?’ ‘Yeah,’ acknowledged Ray. ‘We know what we’re looking for and why we’re here. Let’s get on with it.’ Jawbone trundled along the line to the end of the car park before turning round and cruising slowly towards the BMW Roadster. Half a mile away, scanning the ocean, Davies King smiled to himself and took a deep lungful of fresh clean sea air. Things are good, he thought. For him, a day off meant free time on Crillsea’s cliff tops. But a breeze bit into him and he decided Windy Brow Point was an appropriately named location even if it was shrouded with unpleasant memories. Dressed in a faded blue and black tracksuit, the off duty detective stood for a moment watching a yacht out at sea. Straining his eyes, he made out a tanker on the horizon but then returned to the task in hand and dropped to the ground. Press-ups! Day off signified keep fit day for the ex middleweight boxer and infamous chess master, Detective Chief Inspector Davies King. In his early forties, Davies was fighting the flab but had lost half a stone following a strict regime of exercise and diet. He’d reached that time of life when failure to look after his health might lead to other problems in later years. Taking the weight on his shoulders, he pushed upwards repeatedly before eventually falling to the ground. His heart pounded but he regained his feet and slowly jogged along the path, striking his fists into the air before him. He shadow boxed towards the car park where his new pride and joy sat resplendently waiting for him. Sad place to come for a training session, contemplated Davies. Windy Brow Point and Crillsea Meadows reminded him that Mark Tait was the last officer to serve in the village police station nearby. The station was closed now and there were no plans to inhabit the building in the near future. It was mothballed due to the recession and the government’s budget cuts. Perhaps just as well, thought Davies. The overgrown station was a silent gravestone to the dead policeman. No, the murdered policeman corrected Davies shaking his head. Scanning the horizon, Davies recalled the recent funeral of Detective Constable Mark Tait. Such an unnecessary waste of a life, thought Davies. From village bobby to local detective signalled an aspiring successful career. Mark had done well. Undoubtedly a heroic death tackling two armed bank robbers, acknowledged Davies. But for what? The offenders, namely Conor O’Keefe and Mansfield de Courtenay Baron, were still at large and, as far as Davies was concerned, they were Britain’s most wanted criminals. All he needed, he reflected, was a lead on the whereabouts of the killers to kick-start an investigation that had floundered in the water when all their initial leads ran dry. I intend to revenge Mark Tait if it is the last thing I do, thought Davies. Frustrated, punching into the air with anger and venom accompanying his private thoughts, he jogged along the cliff path towards a five-barred gate set into the dry stone walls. Here, the path climbed to the highest point at Windy Brow before the wall separated the meadows leading to the cliffs. Davies delivered a bone-crunching left into an imagined solar plexus and decided he’d never been as fit as this for a long while. Abandoning the shadow boxing, he relaxed, took in the sea view, and jogged casually along the path. On reaching the high point, Davies noticed a man approaching his vehicle on the car park about a fifty yards away. A moment later, the man, dressed in jeans and a black tee shirt, jabbed a tool of some kind into the rear body of Davies’s car and stood back to allow the boot to pop open. Then he leaned inside and began rummaging through the contents. ‘Oy!’ yelled Davies but the man in the black tee shirt didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Hey!’ screamed Davies, louder, and the would-be thief spun his head in the direction of Davies. Gathering speed, Davies shouted, ‘Stop! Police!’ and then he sprinted like a gazelle. In a few strides, he reached the wooden gate and vaulted over the obstacle. But with a noisy clatter, his trailing foot tangled in the gate’s framework and he tumbled agonisingly to the ground. Looking up, Davies glimpsed the suspect in a black tee shirt and saw him drop a screwdriver on the gravel. A tattoo, stretching from the man’s shoulder to his wrist, caught Davies’s eye. Collecting himself, Davies set off in pursuit hobbling towards the car park as fast as he could. He held his thigh and cursed at his damaged ankle. Ignoring the pain, fighting his inner self, Davies gritted his teeth and strode out eating up the ground to close on his quarry. A second man, bearded, and wearing a dark coloured leather jacket, appeared from the nearside of the BMW. Two toxics, realised Davies when he agonizingly made the edge of the gravel car park. A black Vauxhall suddenly accelerated from the far end of the car park towards the two would-be car thieves who leapt into the rear of the vehicle. With a screech of tyres, a twitch of its back end, and in a cloud of dust, the Vauxhall sped from the car park and bounced onto the highway with Davies stumbling behind shaking his fist, shouting, and trying to grasp a door handle. Davies abandoned the foot race and leapt into his BMW Roadster, fired the engine, and set off in pursuit. ‘Three!’ he shouted aloud. ‘A beard, a tattoo and the driver has a moustache. Three bloody stooges!’ An elderly couple held tight their tiny Terrier and gawped in amazement when the BMW screamed passed and a cloud of exhaust fumes exploded into the atmosphere. With wheels squealing, gravel spitting, and the back end slewing uncontrollably from left to right, Davies hit the tarmac and gunned the accelerator pedal to the floor. Grimacing with pain from his limb, unaware of blood slowly seeping through his tracksuit, Davies bounced through a pot hole in the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Forty miles an hour soon became sixty when Jawbone lambasted his car round the corner and pounded downhill. ‘Move it, Jawbone,’ screamed Ray from the rear. ‘He’s gaining on us,’ screeched Les. Flat out, engine screaming, Jawbone slammed the pedal hard to the floor and dominated the centre of the narrow highway as the two cars hurtled down a descent towards Crillsea Meadows. The BMW Roadster was soon on the tail of the Vauxhall.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 20:23:30 +0000
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