Fragile Lives

Contents

Cover

Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

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

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

After

The Naomi Blake Mysteries

KILLING A STRANGER

LEGACY OF LIES

BLOOD TIES

NIGHT VISION

SECRETS

GREGORY'S GAME

PAYING THE FERRYMAN

The Rina Martin Mysteries

A REASON TO KILL

FRAGILE LIVES

THE POWER OF ONE

RESOLUTIONS

THE DEAD OF WINTER

CAUSE OF DEATH

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in 2008 in Great Britain and the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA

This eBook first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Ltd.

Copyright © 2008 by Jane A. Adams.

The right of Jane A. Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Adams, Jane, 1960-

Fragile lives

1. Police - Fiction 2. Murder – Investigation – Fiction

3. Detective and mystery stories

I. Title

823.9'14[F]

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6680-6 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-684-7 (EPUB)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk
Stirlingshire, Scotland

H
e watched as they fetched the boy up on to the deck. Boy? Coran had told him the kid was twenty-two or twenty-three but to Stan he was still a boy. It seemed a long time since
he'd
been that age.

The kid was filthy, dressed in the same jeans and shirt he'd been wearing the day they'd taken him. Only the coat and shoes were missing and he shivered in the chill wind that cut across from the landward side; first time in weeks, Stan reckoned, that it had veered from that direction. That was the only reaction from the boy though, just a response to the cold. His eyes were unfocused and he had little control of his limbs, stumbling between the men that held him.

Stan looked across at Coran but it seemed the tall, blond-haired man was refusing to meet his eye. The rigidity of his pose told Stan he liked this no better than Stan did. It wasn't, for either of them, an aversion to killing, it was the whole scenario. It left a bad taste and made Stan wish he'd walked away when Coran had offered a way to make easy money.

Easy money never was easy in Stan's experience. There was always a complication. He'd have done well to have remembered that.

He still couldn't figure out why the boy had been brought aboard; Haines was usually so particular about keeping a distance between what he called his work and this boat, which he regarded as his home base. Coran, when he could be persuaded to talk about it, had let on that the boss man was acting a bit odd recently. Not so on top of things; not so rational or in control.

Stan figured that whatever this kid's family had done, Haines had taken it personally and now the boy was the one to suffer. Stan had chosen to know nothing about him, except that his name was Patrick Duggan.

He'd fought like a bloody maniac when they'd first brought him aboard. Haines told them to keep him quiet, give him something, he didn't care what.

Looking into the boy's blank eyes, Stan didn't
want
to know.

Haines appeared, standing there, on deck, surveying them all with his usual measured disdain. He was dressed ready for bed, silk pyjamas and monogrammed robe.

He held a pistol in his hand.

Reflexively, Stan moved back out of his direct line of sight. He didn't like the man and he knew it showed. Coran always said he was no good at playing politics.

A plastic sheet had been placed on the deck, close to the bow rail. Haines signed for the boy to be made to kneel, then he raised the gun and fired a single shot. Those that still held the boy pitched him over the rail and Stan heard him hit the water.

He turned away, disgusted. Haines walked past him and went below, as casual and unconcerned, Stan thought, as if he'd been somewhere in the suburbs and just put the cat out for the night.

Coran joined him, leaning on the rail.

‘That isn't what we signed up for.'

‘No, we signed up for the money.'

‘You bloody know what I mean.'

‘And I know I'd rather not talk about it. Neither should you. He has a way of hearing things.' Coran glanced over his shoulder. ‘Few weeks from now, maybe sooner, and I'll be gone. You should think about it too.'

‘Oh, he'd just love that. You know how he feels about people quitting.'

Coran grinned. ‘By then he'll have enough other problems,' he said. ‘He won't give the likes of me and thee a second thought.'

T
he rain had cleared just after nine and left a clear sky that, further inland, would have presaged frost. Now, closing in on midnight and beneath a coal-black night, bright with frozen stars, Mac stood on the narrow strip of beach and thought about the boy he had left that afternoon. He had taken George up to Hill House just before teatime. Rain beat down so hard against the windscreen he almost missed the turn into the narrow, winding drive. They had joked about the name, ‘Hill House'. The way it sounded like something out of a bad horror film, but Mac knew that for George this wasn't really such a good joke.

‘I felt like I was abandoning him,' he said. ‘I wanted to turn the car around and bring him back here.'

‘You did what you had to do.' The elderly woman standing beside him shifted her sensibly shod feet against the shingle. ‘George knows he has to have a proper place to live, for now at least.' She jabbed hard against the shingle with a walking stick Mac knew she didn't really need and, one-handed, turned up the collar on her old waxed coat.

She's as upset as I am, Mac thought. They had both become very fond of George and both felt responsible for him, Rina because she had been there when Edward Parker, George's violent father, had fallen from the cliff at Marlborough Head. Mac's feeling of inadequacy was a little more difficult to define. George's mother had killed herself, in Mac's flat, in a place where she was supposed to have been safe. And Mac had not anticipated this; not seen how desperate and lost the woman was. He found it hard to forgive himself.

Mac thrust cold hands deeper into his pockets and stared harder at the ink-black ocean that dragged at the shingle just a few yards away.

‘They were all so damnably cheerful,' he complained. ‘The carers or whatever you call them. All so “come along in, George, you'll be fine. Just have some cake”.' He laughed awkwardly, aware suddenly of how petulant he sounded. ‘I think Paul's parents would have kept George if they could but they have to jump through the usual hoops first. Seems like a stupid waste of time to me.'

‘I suppose social services have to do things according to their own, mysterious plans,' Rina said calmly. ‘They can hardly hand a child over to just anyone and to them Paul's family are just that. An unknown quantity. And he could hardly have moved in with you, now, could he?' She patted Mac's arm, her bright-red woollen gloves greyed out against the bleak, stark, black of the night sky.

‘He'll be all right,' she said. ‘The boy has survived much worse things than over-cheerfulness and the offer of cake.'

Mac knew he was meant to laugh but somehow it wouldn't come.

‘Anyway,' she continued, ‘he has friends who will look out for him. I'd even go as far as to call us family, of sorts.'

Mac nodded, knowing she was right; hoping it would be enough.

‘We should go in,' Rina said. ‘You're frozen through.'

‘And you're not?'

‘Oh, I'm rarely cold, you know that.'

He glanced sideways, taking in the solid figure in the old waxed coat, twin scarves and straight tweed skirt. Topped and tailed by those ugly crêpe-soled boots and that unsquashable, shapeless, red velvet hat. ‘Dressed like that, I'm not surprised. You know,' he continued as they turned to go, ‘there was a time when I couldn't even bear to look at the ocean. Couldn't stand the sound of it.'

‘You've come a long way,' she said and nodded emphatically. ‘Do you still dream about her?'

Mac did not immediately respond. Rina was always direct but this subject – the little girl that Mac had been unable to save – was one that even her straight-to-the-point approach usually diverted around. Mac had confronted her abductor on a beach very like this one. Had seen the child die; forced to watch and been unable to do a damn thing about it. He hadn't even realized Rina knew until the story had made it into the local papers after someone had taken the trouble to dig into Mac's past.

Not that they'd had to dig very hard.

A quick web search and Mac would be there, staring out of the page, his picture side by side with …

‘I don't need to dream to see her. She's there, every time I blink, every time I see a little girl in the street, every time …'

‘And nothing new on her killer,' Rina finished for him. She slipped her arm through his. ‘Do you want to stay with us tonight?'

He thought about the flat above the shops on the promenade. Cheerless and, though his stay in Frantham was still only six weeks old, already full of bad memories. He compared this to Rina's warm, chaotic household where she looked after a house full of lodgers, all retired theatrical folk. Good food, bizarre but friendly company, no ghosts sitting on the sofa. And he was tempted. Sorely tempted. Mac sighed. ‘I'd best not,' he said. ‘I've got to make an early start and besides, I've spent more nights at your house than at mine lately. You'll be charging me rent soon.'

‘Still nothing permanent on the horizon?'

‘A couple more places to see.' He released Rina's arm so that she could climb the steps on to the promenade. ‘I'll walk you home,' he said. Then go back to the flat and his other, newer ghost. He didn't want to tell Rina that he saw them
all
now. It sounded weak and stupid and melo-dramatic to say that they all lay in wait for him these days. The frail old lady and the sad, blonde woman now joined the little girl he had watched die on that other beach in that other time. He glimpsed them out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of them, like a snapshot printed on the inside lids of his closed eyes. Heard their voices in the conversations of those walking along the promenade, and he did not want to admit, either, just how close he had come lately to being tempted back into the bottle. The urge to crawl inside and not come out again until their faces and their voices and the scent of the woman's perfume and the stink of the old lady's house had been drowned in alcoholic oblivion.