The Hawk, The Crow And The Canary

By Milly Reynolds

When the body of a policeman is found in the early hours, the investigation seems flawed. DCI Amanda Kerridge, unhappy with her superiors, calls the only man that she can think of to help - Jack Sallt - the former police officer who was forced out of his job. In his new unit where he operates invisibly, Jack finds himself working alongside some old friends to bring about justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milly Reynolds
• Release date: Jul 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215388358

Milly Reynolds

As you may have already guessed, Milly Reynolds is not my real name. Like my 'hero' Detective Inspector Mike Malone, I also hide my real identity. Having 'retired' from my job, I was a full-time teacher in a secondary school, I decided to pursue my dream of becoming a writer. So why Mike Malone? I love all things detective and wanted to create my own series. However, I decided not to go for the deep, dark thriller - I could never compete with the masters of that genre, like Jo Nesbo whose books I adore? Therefore I came to the decision that the Mike Malone series would be off-beat. I like to think that there is humour in my books; I don't want to scare people, I want to make them chuckle - there is not enough laughter in the world at the moment. As the series has progressed, I have become very attached to Mike; he is the comfortable pair of slippers that I put on at night. My husband has also become attached to Fi and I am under strict instructions not to let anything happen to her - yet. Living in Lincolnshire, I love the flat, endless landscapes and want these to be seen in my books alongside places that I know and love. Mike Malone has moved from the city to Lincolnshire and has fallen in love with the place; me, I was born here and can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be. However, although Mike was my first creation, he is not the only one. I have also created Jack Sallt, another Detective Inspector. Jack is grittier than Mike and there is not the humour in his stories that there is in the Mike Malone stories. I wanted to write a more 'grown-up' detective story. When time allows this will be developed into a series as well. With two male detectives under my wing, I also decided that it was time for the girls to take centre stage and 'Scorpion's Tale', my first novel featuring Liv Harris, a character in the Jack Sallt novels, was published in 2013. I am hoping that Liv will make another appearance at some point in the future. Not content with crime, I have also wandered into the realms of romance; my first stand-alone novel 'The Unseen Sky' was published August 2011. I'm lucky, I enjoy writing and find it just as relaxing to sit and create as it is to read, although sometimes a good book can get in the way of my writing. I read on average 50/60 books a year and always keep my blog updated with reviews. Anyway, I hope you like my novels. I have fun coming up with ideas for Mike -...

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The Hawk, The Crow

And The Canary

By Milly Reynolds

Copyright @ 2023 by Milly Reynolds

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

How would you feel about meeting him? I mean, talking to this guy, considering what’s happened and what we know?

Me? I’m not sure about that. It would certainly be… a challenge. Do you really think it would be worthwhile?

It’s up to you, but in our line it helps to listen dispassionately to all the sordid details of such nefarious activity, even when it might involve us personally. That way we can be out in the field and be reasonably confident that we will not be so easily shocked, or taken aback.

You’re talking about a baptism of fire here, aren’t you? This could all have ended so very differently.

I know, but, here we all are, still breathing. If you can keep a cool head listening to what he says, then you are better prepared for the future, and we never stop learning, you know that. We have to be ready for any and every eventuality. It will all be off the record, everything salient is already documented, so I would just want you to report to me afterwards with your observations and feelings.

If it’s an order, then it’s an order, it just doesn’t strike me as standard procedure. Intensive firearms training, for instance, I get that.

There are no orders on this. And you know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as standard procedures in what we do. So, how about it?

Reluctantly, I agree. I hope I won’t regret it.

00:04, October 29 2021

Invariably, he’s late to bed; the light’s only just been turned off. His eyes close and the phone vibrates; he grabs it, squints at it. A message from Eagle: Stand by. Wait for instructions.

"Now what?"

He sits up, turning the bedside light back on, cursing the methodology of his commander. This isn’t the first time. He picks up the paperback, a novel he’s been struggling to read for weeks now, one highly recommended to him by his ex wife. How does she find time to read? And how on earth did she get interested in this kind of material? Foucault’s Pendulum was hardly his sort of book. Neither the Kabbalah nor this Sefiroth thing was of much interest to him. Maybe that was why he had never joined the Masons, though there had been several invitations over the years. This sort of stuff would probably interest most of those guys. No, there were enough of these conspiracy theories about without inventing another one. He felt sure real conspiracies did exist but he was only one guy without the perception to figure any of it out. Sure, it might be entertaining, but it simply didn’t hold his interest. He throws the book aside at page 48.

Tomorrow, or rather today now, he was due to make an official foreign trip for the first time in a year. The coronavirus episode had curtailed many things, although unofficially he’d been to Holland. He had never been to Morocco, but even that was off now. Something else had occurred and although he wasn’t entirely sure what the change of plan was, it was probably to do with something which had transpired much closer to home in the early hours of the previous day in his hometown. Everything was done on a need-to-know basis, he got that, but sometimes a little more clarity would help.

He turns the light out again and lays back, eyeing the red numerals of the clock. There may be another message any time and that thought prevents him from sleeping. He turns over, but it’s pointless. So he gets up, turns the bedside light back on and begins to roll up a cigarette. Walking to the window, he pulls back the curtains and opens the window before lighting up. Outside he can make out the trees swaying in the wind, perhaps the hoot of a tawny owl, the screech of an urban fox. Or maybe it’s just a cat. Only then does it strike him: what is he doing here? The summation of his whole life up to this point flies by his consciousness in a few seconds. But instead of clarity, all he gets is pointlessness, confusion, chaos and sadness. He is not one to linger on self pity, but does he deserve this? Money is not the issue, he is paid well, but much of that flows out on the outcome of horses, greyhounds and football. All these are mere distractions, like smoking and staring out of windows in the early hours of the morning.

The phone vibrates again. Stand by, get dressed. That’s an assumption. He might have been out at a club, but he is known to be a homebird these days. He stubs out the roll up on the brick wall outside the window and lets it drop into the dark. Jeans on, shirt, pullover, a fleece.

Ambling through into the small living room, he turns on the light before flopping onto the sofa and looking at a collection of used plates, forks and mugs; Chinese takeout and pizza cartons. On the mantelpiece his eyes fall on family pictures, kids’ football trophies. There’s Mum and Dad, his former wife and two sons. Some are dead and some are living. Has his life become like a favourite Beatles’ song? And how his small flat could do with what used to be called a woman’s touch.

Feeling uncomfortable, he pulls out a book digging in the small of his back. The cover is now a little creased but never mind, at least it’s a book he has finished. It’s a book purporting to be the official history of Norwich City Football Club, a decent enough read, although he has doubts about certain facts. Statistics - do they lie? What is certain is that the Canaries are going to struggle to stay in the Premier League this season. They are becoming a proverbial yoyo club.

Picking up the Norwich City mug nearest to him, he sees he only half drank his tea. He downs it cold and picks up the book, flicking through the pages to the pictures. If things had been different his eldest son might have been smiling back at him.

The phone goes again: Stand down, nothing imminent. Meet Eagle in the park at 8:00.

Bloody hell. He sighs, rubbing tired eyes. Make up your mind, won’t you. He texts, Which park?

"The park where you live, you numbskull."

Ok.

Leaning back he closes his eyes. Five minutes later he is asleep, snoring loudly on the sofa, though there’s no one else there to hear him.

02:28, October 29 2021

He thought he heard his phone again, unless he dreamt it. Sitting up, now back in bed, he checks the time and the phone. No, it was nothing. Now what chance sleep? While yawning, he reaches across for his laptop to check the coming day’s horse racing. Uttoxeter, Dundalk, Newmarket and some others. He scans through to see if there’s anything he fancies, some long shot which may come good. There is always that chance. He likes the look of an Irish horse in the 5:00 at Kempton Park, a 16/1 shot, it could be worth a punt. But then there’s the 15:40 at Newmarket, a horse called Bad Company. He likes the look and the name of that, quite fitting for his present situation. 11/1, the odds may get longer yet and certainly worth putting twenty on it.

Racing, what would he do without it? It was perhaps the one constant throughout his life. Relationships come and go, as do jobs and places to stay, but there’s always a bet to be made. He would always have the excuse to get up and look forward to the promise, the potential of something better, a chance to make a few quid. It kept him sane, if not particularly rich. He doesn’t keep accounts like some, he is a chancer, he does things on the fly with no particular method. Despite that, he figures that this year so far he has made nearly five grand from betting, horses and dogs mainly, though some football too. So how did he account for that success? Form may have counted for something, as did the jockey, the trainer, the weather. But it was picking out that little nugget, the unfancied horse with the unknown rider who might bring the nag home by a short head.

Like father, like son. His dad had been a betting man, too, a drinker and a smoker. He was very much like his dad but he didn’t always like him. Mother suffered as much as the women did in his own life, but sometimes, perhaps most of the time, you don’t see your own faults. Regrets - yes, he now has a few. Those who got away. He misses working with Matt Bleech, perhaps the best officer he had known and someone who had probably deserved to have been promoted to detective inspector before his untimely departure from the force. And then there was Liv, Olivia Harris, a great colleague and friend who had never quite become his lover. The strange thing was he knew it was mutual, he could sense it, see it in her eyes, the way she stood with him, rearranging her hair; she had had a thing for him stemming back years. But now he was in his fifties and she was… well, a bit younger than that. Maybe the time for them had come and gone already.

Ironically, Liv had turned up at his door in Walney the other year, using a cryptonym. Up to that point, he had thought she might be dead. How strange that both of them were technically colleagues again, although officially you had no colleagues in this game, this shenanigans. Like him, she was pretty much no one now, merely eyes and ears, with the ability to slip between the cracks in any given situation, or to appear out of the blue to do the deed and then conveniently disappear. What a game it was, most people simply wouldn’t believe it. But largely it was waiting, hanging around. But like Liv, he hadn’t had a choice in the matter, not really. ‘They’ could have made his life very difficult if he had said no. So he said yes. And you could never leave. It was a bit like some American had once told him many years ago, once ONI, always ONI. The Yank wasn’t joking either, even though he was using a fairly common quote. In England it wasn’t common knowledge what ONI stood for, the former Office of Naval Intelligence, which effectively became the CIA in the late 1940s. But he had heard of it and all the intrigue.

He returns to the computer screen, the horses. Newmarket. Liv Harris was born in Newmarket, he remembers - a filly who had never quite come home.

Daybreak October 29 2021, a town centre car park.

The net curtains were often flapping. Living alone makes you more aware of what’s going on around you. This time she pauses because her attention has been