Chloe - Prime Victim (Carl Sant Murder Mysteries Book 3)

Book summary

In "Chloe - Prime Victim," a complex crime thriller unfolds as retired policeman D.I. Carl Sant grapples with escalating violence and societal tensions. Amidst the turmoil, a suspected sex offender disappears, followed by his accuser, intensifying the mystery. As England's only legal brothel faces public outrage and zealots demand its closure, Sant confronts a series of challenges, including the discovery of two bodies in a wintry field. The story navigates through a labyrinth of crime involving muggers, pimps, and killers, putting Sant's capabilities to the test in a city rife with conflict and intrigue.

Excerpt from Chloe - Prime Victim (Carl Sant Murder Mysteries Book 3)

Her laughter rose in the night sky to greet the screeching gulls. They looked down at her and stretched out their necks approvingly. Wisps of sea fret coated their white wings and her dark hair. The yellow of a Victorian street lamp portrayed her face in profile, the ring on her nose a halo in miniature.

‘Why me?’ he said.

She laughed again, tied her hair back, dropped both hands to the barrel strapped by her side and caressed its steel touch.

‘Allow me to talk.’ He shifted his weight along the iron railing, the dog lead wrapped around his bony wrist. Bullseye, moments earlier, had darted into darkness. ‘This is no way to solve your grievance.’

She raised the barrel and levelled it. The dog lead flew up in self-defence, almost tipping its holder off balance.

‘Please, give an old man a chance.’

She grinned a reply and placed her index finger on the trigger of the Remington. There were many on her hit-list. Not one of them, she imagined, would argue with this beauty – loaded or otherwise.

‘Can’t you allow me to live out my life in peace?’

She cocked the gun and stood with her legs apart, anticipating recoil. Then she walked slowly towards him, nose ring glittering.

‘What are you trying to achieve?’

Rifle trained at a spot between his sagging eyes, she drew alongside him, pressed her shoulder against the rails, rolled her eyes and looked down from the bridge. The tide was out. Careless currents glided in from the north, fizzling out in foam.

‘The beach,’ she said at last. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’

He was too scared to look. She knew it.

‘You’ve quite a track record, pigface.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You do.’

‘Elaborate, young lady.’

‘It would take too long, pigface.’

‘You don’t know a thing about me.’

‘Cover-ups, brutality, abuse of authority, perverting the course of justice. Need I go on?’

‘You’re mistaken, young lady.’

‘I think not. You’re a sorry excuse for a retired officer. You and your wife both. But you live on, withdrawing your pension, soaking up this sea air without a care in the world.’

He peered up at the circling gulls and shook his head. ‘You’ve got the wrong man.’

She tapped the barrel against rusty iron, pushed herself off the rail and levelled the weapon again, pressure applied to the trigger. The temptation to pull it was erupting.

‘I know everything about you, and her. You can blame your late spouse in the next world for what you’re about to receive.’ She widened her stance and began counting: ‘After three. One, two–’

‘No! Please, I can explain. It was a different world back then.’

‘Correct, pigface. A world where you got away with murder.’

‘Not true, young lady.’

‘Oh, I forgot.’

‘Forgot?’

‘To count to three. One, two–’

‘No!’

‘Three!’

He threw a hand over his face and crushed his spectacles against the ridge of his eyebrows, a red pinprick pooling at the top of his nose. But there was no explosion of fire. Just the faint click of the hammer being released. Harmless fun.

It did the trick, though. Overbalancing as his back arched, he caught his right ankle between metal bars and capsized over the edge, the snap of his tibia like tubular music to her ears. She approached her overturned prey and heard his muffled howl as he stared hundreds of feet below him at sandy hell. The dog lead dangled and twisted in his wrist, fishing in vain for a change in gravity. Her laughter rose once more in chorus with the guffaws of the seagulls above, and when she finally forced the splintered ankle free, she couldn’t get enough of those sweet endorphins pulsating through her brain.

They gathered in their hundreds carrying placards with STOP STREET SEX and KEEP OUR KIDS SAFE inked on them. They wore hi vis vests and woolly hats and sturdy boots and steadfast frowns. They came on a gusty afternoon after the school run, and not from far because this was their home, next to what the council called its Managed Approach. It was actually a licensed brothel; a red-light district with everything but the red lights.

Carl Sant hadn’t come to protest. Instead of a placard he sported a 2X-Large black duffle coat over his customary black Mackintosh to ward off the wind chill. His superior, Superintendent Harry Hardaker, had told him to gauge the mood ahead of a public consultation meeting with the SAVE OUR EYES pressure group. But Sant was also recruiting witnesses. A violent mugger wielding steel toe-capped boots was doing the rounds.

Several hapless souls had been drugged, indecently assaulted and relieved of their belongings, the latest victim three days ago in the park Sant was walking through. It was hoped that someone might have seen the thug in action. There was a prime suspect, though he was missing, and so was any interest in the appeal for information. The poster fastened to the park gates had barely received a backward glance.

The suspect’s wife was a local nurse known to the police. Diplomacy wasn’t her middle name, but at least she was talking. Sant and his trusted colleague Detective Sergeant Amanda Holdsworth were due to meet her later that day.

‘Just cos I happen to live here,’ said a grey-haired woman clutching a NO PROSTITUTES placard, ‘I get drivers beeping their horns, asking how much for this and that. It’s a disgrace. Whores are meant to stay in one spot and not come out till after dark. Instead, they’re here and everywhere, every frigging day.’

‘One slut had a customer outside my front door last night,’ her friend remarked. ‘Left a couple of dirty johnnies on the pavement. They should be forced to tidy up after them.’

The two women nattered on. Sant sympathised with their plight. They’d lived in this city since birth, when the white heat of technology had radiated promises of better times, and now they were faced with a sex shop on their doorstep and sex workers as neighbours.

The future told of newfound prosperity. Grand regeneration hinted at a share of the spoils eventually. This part of the city bordered the shiny new South Bank and was set to benefit from the digital green economy: eco parks and eco homes, music and film studios. Who wants to make a movie here? That was the question on every Leodensian’s lips.

Despair stretched far and wide from the smashed-up bus shelters to the boarded-up wastelands of cash-and-carry failure. The only thing flourishing was fornication. The Managed Approach had decriminalised soliciting and kerb crawling, bringing a boom in both. A boom no longer manageable; an approach without direction.

Sant scanned the line of protestors and recognised a young man championing their cause. Independent Councillor Rory Dobson had been elected to serve the locals as a reward for his stance on sex. He was all smiles, the darling of the crowd. The other two councillors in the ward represented the Labour Party and so were duty-bound to back the Labour-run council to the hilt. Rory, free of political affiliation, spoke his mind and the people loved him for it. His straight-talking attitude towards the powers that be made him a hero in their eyes.