Facade

By Spencer Coleman

Holly Stringer is savvy, but will do anything to put food on the table for her young son. Divorced, she is in a desperate situation. Then the unthinkable happens, her dad has a stroke, forcing her to run his detective agency. She soon discovers this remains in the dark ages, surviving on past glories. In order to survive, she urgently needs to modernise the agency and requires a big case that pays big bucks. This duly arrives, but is she capable of solving this as the police warn her off, siting her inexperience? She discovers behind every smile lurks hidden secrets to be exposed and these facades need to be broken down. But every time she digs deeper, she is putting her own family in peril. Will her naivety in the situation win through as she unravels the truth and reveals the villains or will she succumb to the complexities that hamper her every step?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398460560

Spencer Coleman

Born in Leicester, 1952, Spencer Coleman spent his early years near Portsmouth. He has been a successful artist in oils for over 30 years, working with Harrods and Danbury Mint, to name just a few companies. He is a member of the CWA and has published four novels and two short stories. This is his fifth suspense book. His print, Bottoms Up, was a big seller around the world. He likes snow-skiing and tennis. He has one son, who now runs the family gallery in Lincoln. In 2015, Spencer suffered a stroke but he is recovering well.

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About the Author

Born in 1952 in Leicester, Spencer Coleman spent his early years near Portsmouth. He has been a successful artist in oils for over 30 years, working with Harrods and Danbury Mint, to name just a few companies. He is a member of the CWA, and has had published three novels and two short stories. This is his fourth suspense book. His print, Bottoms Up, was a big seller around the world. He likes snow-skiing and tennis. He has one son, who now runs the family gallery in Lincoln. In 2015, Spencer suffered a stroke but he is recovering well.

Dedication

To Arthur and George, the little big ‘Uns’.

Copyright Information ©

Spencer Coleman 2022

The right of Spencer Coleman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398460553 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398460560 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thanks to all those who know me, you have all helped shape my life; good or bad.

Prologue Present Day

First Voice

I walk with the dead.

I am their executioner; those that walk with me are my eternal damnation. They will haunt me to the grave. But I go on.

The art of killing comes natural to me because of my training, although the first time was messy. I panicked. Now I feel in control. The infliction of pain on someone requires nerves of steel, dedication and without remorse—personal attachment toward the fate of the victim is strictly out of bounds. There is no room for sentiment. It’s cleaner this way.

The job has to be done, fearlessly. I know precisely what I am going to do with them. The last thing I need is a connection of minds. Besides, in my considered view, emotion is abstract and overrated in the great scheme of things.

I have to remain calm, cool and calculating. Abduction comes first. Then killing is all in the detail and the timing and that is where I enter the scene.

This, I am supremely confident with. It is my speciality, exactly what I excel in.

Management, for want of a better word, sums up my skills. I like the analysis as it mirrors my former professional background. I have a ruthless streak, Find the girl, stalk her and wipe the smile from her face. In any split second, I have the capability to terminate life. Just like that.

I am cunning, all right. Disturbingly so, but I can laugh about it, even turn the joke on myself. It’s all for show, this facade. Outwardly, I wear a boyish look and extol a roguish charm (butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, my doting mother ha-ha had said when I turned seventeen). This often gets me into trouble, particularly with the opposite sex. To satisfy my hunger, my lust, I need to remain unobserved. Hence, the boy-next-door image. What is notoriety without freedom? Not smart.

I will not be stopped. This madness will go on and on. These women were arrogant and too stupid to realise their own vulnerability. I hate superiority, a belittling of people less intellectual—these blondes—it gets my goat up. They deserved their outcome—they brought it upon themselves with the disdain and disregard to others. They threatened to reveal my name and that of my family and I couldn’t have that. Payback time, I reckon.

Undetectable persona. This was how I got away with it. These crimes. Thrilling as they were, it was my veil of normality, which hid the monster from the prey that perversely provided a greater tease to unlocking my desires. In each case, the rush had taken hold. It started with a physical need, an unannounced pulsating in the groin. Then the cleverness kicked in.

The planning—the execution—is all in the head. I make a proclamation to myself. Find the target. Kill the bitch. It’s that simple.

Most of the time.

1

Hyde Park, London

The girl in the red beret stomped her boots in the thin layer of snow that had fallen overnight on the meadow.

She cursed aloud, ‘The bastard will kill again and soon.’

She repeated her lament, catching a canny glance from her disabled father who sat nearby in a wheelchair. His legs were protected by an extra blanket. He shared her anger.

She was cold and annoyed, more from frustration. She was seriously pissed off after an enforced taking over of a rundown detective agency owned by him. Holly, that was her first name, needed a meaty case in order to put food on the table. The business she had suddenly taken control over needed an instant infusion of cash because it was heading for bankruptcy. She needed a client to validate herself and the business and fast. Proof was needed but this sleuthing lark was proving a hard nut to crack.

Admittedly, she was a novice in this game compared to her dad’s experience of over forty years in the front line, ably supported by Sidney who currently ran the threadbare office in Bermondsey. The young people who needed help wanted modern offices and a ‘cool’ image and older clients were either dead or dying, so something had to change. It was a daunting prospect. Aged thirty-three years, Holly was thrust by horrible circumstances into this new world. She suddenly felt very old and obsolete.

‘He will kill again and soon,’ the girl in the red beret said again under her hat. No one heard her quiet words of conviction this time. And panic set in, if the truth be told, because no one phoned the office anyway with a job she could get her teeth into. She had big decisions to make.

Holly stamped her boots for a second time. Her breath lingered like an opaque cloud in the mist that settled over the frozen water that was known as the Serpentine. The air froze to her bare lips, even though the first sun of the day peeped out from behind the sullen clouds. She watched as two swans took flight, arced gracefully and then disappeared into the ghostly purple distance.

Entranced, she came back to earth as tiny droplets of dew showered her as she sheltered under the crystallised branches of a nearby tree. She moved away, feeling a little foolish. Nevertheless, a kind of spiritual calm prevailed. It was the beautiful silence. Then she thought of her words just moments ago and the chill to her bones intensified. There was no respite, as the overnight temperature stubbornly remained at freezing point, just like her sad heart. This was not a day of fun.

It was a Sunday, just after ten in the morning, five days before Christmas. Holly shivered, pondering her future, which appeared as bleak as the hostile weather that surrounded her. She didn’t feel in the festive mood. No one else lingered in the vicinity, except her father and young son nearby.

London was still sleeping, it seemed. Her breath slowly dissipated in front of her, which made her smile inwardly. This was her first smile.

She blew out again and glimpsed at her son playing in the snow. Then he meandered off, obviously bored, along the edge of the water, poking the ice with a long branch he had found sticking out of the ground.

‘Be careful, Saul,’ Holly shouted.

Beside her, a man, her father, hunched in a wheelchair, grunted. He sat heavily-coated, his Chelsea blue woolly hat pulled down so that it protected his ears. His eyes were vacant pools of despair, his thin mouth twisted in a kind of grimace. She wiped the dribble from his chin. He looked like he should be still in hospital with his stroke, anywhere but here. But this place was his choice, she knew.

He was a stubborn old mule, her dad! This was his territory, as a boy and as a man. It was where his father always brought him, Hyde Park, all seasons. Today, in the snow, it seemed quite magical, despite her enforced temper. Holly was just carrying on with tradition and hoping for the best for her dad. She knew no different, actually.

Staring at this forlorn figure, she could have cried but Holly held counsel.

It was a long road back from the stroke which nearly killed him. Dearest Harry, she thought. Holly was acutely aware that there was just the three of them now.

Saul was growing up fast, having turned four a matter of weeks ago, a consequence of a one-night stand. These two tiny men beside her were her anchor, the only family she had in her entire life and what a pitiful life it had turned out to be, her treasured son the only bright spot on the horizon. What else had she achieved of any consequence during her thirty-three years on the planet?

She could easily list the failures for sure. They clung to her brain like barnacles on a whale’s backside, always reminding her of the discomfort of past cock-ups as she swam against the tidal currents in her mind.

Her relationship (frail at the best of times) with Saul’s father had collapsed, a promising teaching job scuppered by the dread of redundancy, looming bankruptcy leaving her skint when her second-hand vintage fashion shop closed and on top of that her father’s own health had suddenly deteriorated recently. She had no mother, who had died when she was fifteen. To cap it all off she’d inherited a new job of sorts (her dad’s detective agency of all things) that was on its last legs. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, she had to acknowledge.

Holly had to make something succeed at her age and she didn’t want to let her dad down! She just needed that meaty client to prove her worth and lead the Agency back from ruin.

She leaned over and wiped Harry’s mouth again and tightened the scarf around his neck to gain extra warmth for him and pulled the blanket up to his waist. It was his decision to make this trip every weekend, just the three of them, the idea being to feed the ducks, get some fresh air and have a chat as such. Just like with his own father. He also enjoyed admiring the military horses trotting down Rotten Row during exercise. It was a glorious spectacle, so regal to him, as if nobility shone down from the horses long faces as passers-by looked on in awe.

This, Holly knew, was what kept him going. Past fading memories and this gang of the three of them to view it like the old days. Now, he was a changed man, waning fast and Holly was burdened with what was left of him. The biting cold was not an obstacle for this tough bugger though, but there was a slight problem to overcome for his only daughter. Since his stroke, leaving him paralysed down his right side, he couldn’t speak properly.

He just mumbled as he fought to recover his lost vocal cords that were controlled by his voice box. The only one who could really understand his shambled utterances was Saul, bless him. So Holly always volunteered the gossip when they were together and asked nothing in return. So she garbled on regardless, which usually veered in the bizarre direction of murder and mayhem, which normally her dad understood! There was no point in discussing tonight’s lack of dinner, for instance. Not his scene.

Holly gulped. If the truth was told, she too was incapable of running the Detective Agency business even with his basic training over the past three months as she tried to understand the trade! Many times she had asked herself the same question. Why did he think he could depend on her to do this? Well, he didn’t exactly expect a stroke. Was this a mad death wish on his part? The shit had truly hit the fan on this one. The story of her life so far.

So here she was, flat broke, a single mum and a full-time care giver to a man who thought that she was more than a match for the task in hand, which was in essence another failed business venture, she guessed. This scared her. He was sadly mistaken—believing the Agency was golden ticket to the future. This would be a tall order. In his heyday, Harry was a star. Then the swinging sixties came along, then everyone turned to computers. Harry never modernised and business was lost. He was sure his legendary disguises would pull him through the dark days but he was wrong. Evidently love was blind.

Holly was deep in the crap. She couldn’t refuse her dad.

Here was the rub. Examining the accounts (That was her first job. Was there any choice?), she quickly discovered that the Agency hadn’t settled last month’s rent, nor a court order against it for unpaid business rates going back six months and god knows what other debts it owed to all and sundry and she was expected to just take up the reins and kick life into the bloody thing. As if she was a magician!

And whenever she looked into those sad old eyes of his, she knew that that was what he expected of her. She knew this because she had found a letter in his flat (above the agency in Bermondsey) outlining his wishes in his scrawled handwriting for the business to continue in the event of an accident which might befall him. With her name clearly at the helm.

What was he – a bloody clairvoyant?

According to his cherished words of wisdom, she was a chip off the old block and born to do the job as she had done for the past quarter of a year, albeit part-time and under his haphazard guidance. But she was still a ruddy amateur in her eyes and his. Her other job was working as a waitress at the local gastro pub, where she lived—hardly conducive to becoming an expert sleuth. She shrugged. He knew best, apparently.

Now she was faced with the prospect of a full-time occupation and without money and his expertise, as he was pig shit useless to her in his current state. Even his partner, Sidney, was a pain but that was a different story. Two dinosaurs, Holly reckoned. Even the chats with her dad were short-lived because often or not she was met with a withering glance of contempt, which spelt boredom on his part. The only time his eyes lit up was when the subject of his precious Chelsea footie club came up.

She tried her best, but was never up to speed on the managers as they appeared to be changed every few months. How was she expected to know the rotation system only applied to the players? She got more sense from Saul when he wasn’t up to mischief or siding with his granddad.

But she persevered, as best she could, with everything that was thrown at her in life and it usually involved a fair degree of shit. She reminded herself that better days lay ahead. There had been an improvement in Harry’s speech and his weekday nurse (free of charge from Outreach) was adamant that part of his recuperation was to continue with these little excursions in the park. Easy for her to say, Holly thought, banging her head on an unseen brick wall.

This was not a good day to do this walk, though. Holly was frozen to the core from the downpour of snow but she had to laugh at her own stupidity of fashion sense, which was not her strongest point. Her tartan skirt was half way up her arse, (revealing a good pair of legs, she had to admit, mind) and she wore a short black leather jacket over a pink jumper which barely covered her midriff. Oh and the red beret accessorised the shiny cheap red lipstick from Primark. She looked a disaster, although the bizarre attire seemed a good idea at the time, before leaving the warmth of her rented flat.

What was she thinking?

This was what she was thinking. He will kill again and soon.

A jogger appeared spookily from out of the mist, staggering past and crunching white grass and gravel under foot. Then a family appeared, as their two perfect chocolate-coloured Labradors raced around the park insanely at their freedom, barking joyously and surrounding her bemused son.

‘Saul,’ Holly called, waving to him to come back.

His attention was now fixed on the dogs instead, as they delightedly snatched at the stick he was throwing.

She repeated his name, louder this time and clamped her frozen fingers on the wheelchair handles and pushed her father in the direction of the café nearby.

Her son luckily made up the ground quickly, his cheeks puffed and rosy, his nose wet and now running down his face. Saul was dressed appropriately in winter attire of thick woollen socks, boots and a full-length Parka, thankfully.

Relieved by this response as Holly called out his name, Saul clung to her legs but the words still remained in her brain. He will kill again.

Over tomato soup and a fried bacon bap, Holly managed to put the stinging words to the back of her mind but not before wondering why they haunted her so much. She just wanted the chance to expose the killer in her midst! Now that she was in the trade (ha-ha!), her brain thought differently to normal girls.

She was never off duty, which was a curse of sorts.

Her mind was on overdrive now. Three random women had been found murdered in the east of London on her patch near Bermondsey, during the past eighteen months. Were the dead women linked? The police were baffled, the killer or killers still at large, the public uneasy.

The deaths did not seem to have a real connection (except the girls in question had blond hair) and like the public, she was largely unconcerned (living in a large city) until each unsolved murder mounted to a multiple of three over a short period of time. Now, it had people’s attention. Now, it had Holly’s professional attention. It was too close to home for Holly. No one remained untouched by crime in London. It came with the territory.

A killer or killers were on the prowl. Was he or they about to strike again?

Who was the next victim? There was sure to be one, Holly thought.

Reality kicked in as Saul suddenly dropped his bap and decided to reconstruct it from the bits of bacon and bread on the floor, much to his mum’s horror.

‘No,’ Holly shouted, snatching it from him. ‘Have mine—’

A headache raged. She wiped his sticky fingers, brushed the crumbs from her father’s lap and settled the bill.

Let’s get home, she sighed.

Later, after driving the distance in her old beaten up car, they all settled into her cramped ground floor apartment in Leytonstone and watched the footie on the TV. Chelsea were playing, so Harry was as happy as can be.

Holly prepared Sunday roast with a cheap cut of pork from the reduced counter at the local Tesco, followed by a rhubarb crumble and custard. She had made this herself, with the assistance of Saul; who’d created more of a mess than she had bargained for. Her bones had finally thawed, helped considerably by the second glass of cheap supermarket Merlot. By six, Chelsea had won 3-0 convincingly and they had all fallen asleep with idle thoughts, the dirty plates stacked in the sink, the smell of cooked food lingering in the air.

Holly was the first to wake, startled. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up on the sofa and tried to get her bearings, conscious of the fact that her son had fallen asleep on her and dribbled on her ample bosom as she sprawled across the length of the red cushions. He stirred too and dribbled down her midriff this time.

‘What is it, Dad?’ Holly muttered in the half-dark of the room.

He was sitting up in his wheelchair and staring wildly at the TV screen, mumbling incoherently.

‘What’s the matter—?’ She swung her legs over the old cushions and climbed to her feet and rushed over to him.

‘Worrrkor— Worrrkor—’ Harry mumbled.

‘Water? OK, hang on.’ She moved to the sink and poured a glass and returned to where he sat, forcing the glass to his chapped lips.

‘Worrrkor!’ Harry shouted, agitated by something in the room at the front of the converted house.

‘Is it too cold, Dad?’ Holly tested the water herself and tried again but this time his arm flung unexpectedly across his chest and caught the glass as she pressed it to his mouth. It clattered to the floor, drenching his trousers with its contents and her sleeve. It was going to be one of those days, she thought.

‘Dad, what are you playing at?’ She retrieved the glass and set it on the old coffee table. ‘It could have broken and hurt someone,’ Holly snapped.

She hurriedly got a towel and tried to mop up the spillage, but he was having none of it.

‘Focking worrrker,’ Harry yelled.

Holly was shocked by this sudden outburst, not least by Saul hearing his weird inappropriate language.

‘It’s just water—There’s no need for that behaviour, Dad. What’s gotten into you?’

Harry snarled and threw his arm out again.

Saul pointed to the TV screen and grabbed his mother’s arm. She turned and caught the end of the news story, with the image of a man, a stranger to her, leaving the steps of an office building, surrounded by a horde of photographers.

‘And so,’ the reporter announced, ‘is this the beginning of the end for Sir Sebastian Saville, as he departs the offices of Land Assurance, amid serious accusations of mismanagement and the miss-selling of insurance policies, which has already led to the loss of three hundred jobs and a write off of 35% of the share price of the company. Tomorrow, he is meeting with the Financial Services Authority at nine o’clock—it promises to be a very heated exchange— as the rumours persist that his position as head of the company is now untenable. Plus, his marriage is in trouble after he admits to an affair.’

‘Worrrker!’

‘Dad! What is your problem—I don’t understand what you are saying!’

Saul climbed up on the sofa and tugged on her sodden sleeve again.

Holly was flustered. ‘What is it, darling?’

‘Granddad’s calling that man a name, mummy.’

‘What? I don’t think so—.What’s wrong, Dad?’

‘He says he’s a wanker,’ Saul proudly announced.

‘Worrrker!’

‘Wanker!’ The boy repeated with glee!

Holly shook her head in despair. ‘Saul, that’s enough—’

Saul giggled and climbed upon Harry’s lap, pointing to the screen.

‘Wanker,’ he yelled again excitedly, as his granddad too began to laugh for the first time since he left his hospital bed just six weeks earlier. The gang of two, it seemed to her now.

Holly, perplexed, headed straight for the last dregs in the wine bottle. Why was her dad so appalled by the TV image? And what compelled him