Syn (The Merseyside Crime Series Book 2) - Malcolm Hollingdrake (world of reading TXT) 📗

She swiftly raised herself on tiptoe and pushed her face into his before planting a kiss on his lips. It was as if she were sucking the anger from his extended chest and his posture and bravado were immediately deflated. I remember the laughter increasing, and all eyes suddenly moved away. I was no longer the centre of their unwanted attention. The memory went back to real time along with the decreasing nervousness within my stomach as the music faded to a whisper and then was gone. Yet the dream continued. I knew it by heart. Just a different location.

Inside the bar it was busy but I remember finding the only quiet corner. I took my drink and sat. My nerves were still unsettled.

I had never been one for confrontation. I could never fight, never wanted to, never saw the point. I would flee rather than fight. I had always been like that – cowardly, some might say.

I can remember the cold bitter taste of my beer, which was not one of my favourites. The noise around me was a cocktail of music and human conversation which grew more inaudible as I sat with my own thoughts for company.

I remember throughout my school life I would seek out the meek and the quiet, often finding friendship more acceptable with the girls than the boys within the classes. The move from primary to secondary school, I recall, had been particularly traumatic. It had brought with it sleep deprivation and severe anxiety. The stories I had heard seemed so real. ‘Initiation’ was a word I was unfamiliar with one day, but it filled my imagination the next and tormented me throughout the summer holidays before secondary school began. ‘They’ will put your head down a used toilet before flushing it, I was told. ‘They’ will get you in a quiet corner, remove your trousers and paint your dick green before putting your clothes in another area of the school.

Who were these people? Who were those known as ‘They’, the aggressors, the faceless and yet soon to be the familiar. After all, they would be dressed the same as me: same trousers, same blazer, same tie – just bigger, stronger and more cruel. I had heard that it was nothing to do with who you were but purely because you were new. It was nothing personal and when it happened the crowd yelled, ‘Just do it, go on, do it!’ It was not a judgement, purely a rite of passage.

That summer the words, ‘nothing personal’, were written large on a piece of red card and added to my bedroom wall beneath my poster of Jean-Claude Van Damme. As I stared into the eyes of the man in the poster, I was determined to fight back. If they were to hurt me, then I would hurt them. If they embarrassed me, I would do the same to them. I, however, would do it in a more subtle way, using not brawn but brains. I recalled the exact moment when I realised that I knew I would always be intimidated and frightened by such people. It was also the time I vowed I would chase them down, flush them out from whichever class, group or gang to which they belonged. Being different, I was aware that I would always be the mouse to their cat but I would, in time, also be the phoenix and rise up for revenge. The mouse would turn and it would roar … quietly! When I sought revenge, I would add the name to the wall and follow it with a tick.

On that night, in the pub a female’s laughter had broken my reminiscing. It was familiar. I looked across the bar, my face flushed and my heart rate increased as the group I had encountered outside moved en masse towards the bar. Lifting my mobile phone from the table I set it on video before lowering my face. A few moments, that is all I would need until all of the faces were captured.

The images in my mind began to fade before turning to black. The whole memory went back to the start only to begin again. I awoke with a start. Sweat bathed my body. The light of the early morning barely penetrated the blinds and I knew for certain that sleep would now be impossible. Climbing out of bed I went to the kitchen. I needed tea.

Contents

Are you a thriller seeker?

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

The Golden Gallopers

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Also by Malcolm Hollingdrake

Hobeck Books – the home of great stories

Chapter 1

The high-pitched wail seemed almost smothered, trapped like her arms as the noise grew in volume and intensity. In that moment she had lost all sense of time and place. It was real and confusing and she continued to struggle before realising the truth.

In all humans, the critical moments between sleep and consciousness vary, those precious seconds affect us each in different ways as a dream or nightmare is interrupted by the screaming alarm. Skeeter was no different. Often, these moments are a juxtaposition of dark and light, catalepsy, and a sudden, physical movement of extending an arm from under cover to grope, locate and kill the intrusive noise. That very moment when fingers search and the offending article is found, questions are asked, nay demanded … Why now? Why me?

It was at this precise moment that Skeeter Warlock brought memory and experience into focus to overcome the serious desire to close her eyes, if only for another second. She knew the end result of that. It was sheer willpower that forced her to drag her reluctant frame from the warm sanctuary of her bed.

She believed that five in the morning in May had some benefits. It was light at least, and there was only