The first few pages…
The ringtone echoed through the trees around the lake.
Mel grabbed her phone.
‘Des Pittones. Bonjour.’
‘Mel! Mel!’
‘Mum?’ Mel turned over and pulled herself up on her elbows. Her fair hair, damp from swimming, fell both sides of her face. Her name again, shouted this time with more urgency.
‘Help!’ Her mother was sobbing now. Then the line cut.
Beside her, Jeff McCracken stirred, blinking hard. The light and stifling heat from the August sun were intense, even in the shade under the leaves.
‘What? What’s the matter?’ he muttered and shook his head to clear it.
‘I don’t know, but it was my mother. She sounds agitated and my mother doesn’t get agitated.’ She stood up, grabbed her clothes and pulled on shorts, T-shirt and trainers. The next second, she was running up the bank. McCracken followed, only a step behind her. After racing half a kilometre along tracks between the swaying branches of the beech trees, they emerged onto the open parkland leading up to the chateau. Once at the back door of the ancient building, Mel leant forward to catch her breath.
‘Right, let’s get in there and see what’s upset your mum.’ McCracken twisted the iron ring handle to the right and shoved the heavy wooden door open. Across the hard paved vestibule strewn with boots and edged with a dozen coats hanging on one side, they pushed through the kitchen into the hallway.
‘Mum?’ Mel glanced left and right but chose right leading to the back of the building. Her mother would be in her beloved conservatory. She was, but standing in a sea of broken glass and torn plant foliage. In one hand, she held a round black ball. In the other, shaking violently, her phone. A crumpled sheet of paper lay on the floor by her foot. Her usually immaculate blonde hair was unravelling from its chignon. Her face was twisted in terror.
Mel stopped on the threshold. She glanced upwards. A large hole in the conservatory roof. Fragments of glass dangled from metal struts. Every pane still in place formed a ripple effect from the hole.
‘We’re here, Mum. Everything’s going to be okay,’ Mel said slowly, then jerked to the side as she dodged a falling splinter of glass.
‘Are you okay to stay put for a mo’, Susan?’ McCracken said at Mel’s side.
Mel’s mother nodded, but her eyes were wide with shock. She blinked hard, but a tear ran down her face.
‘I’ll get a broom and get you out of there, Mum,’ Mel said in a soothing voice and disappeared.
McCracken pulled out his phone and took some quick photos, then a video.
Mel rushed back with a long-handled brush and a paper bag, one of Susan’s acid-free herb drying bags. McCracken nodded and Mel began to push shards back to make a path for her mother. When she reached her, Mel held out the paper bag with her hand cupped under it.
‘Drop the ball and piece of paper into the bag first, Mum.’
Susan stared at her daughter. Mel smiled back, hoping to reassure her mother.
‘Come on, Mum. Then we can have a nice cup of tea and you can tell us all about it.’
Susan stretched out her trembling hand and dropped the ball into the bag. Mel stiffened her wrist as she took the weight of the ball – it was incredibly heavy. She smiled at mother and nodded to the paper on the floor. Susan crouched down, picked up the paper and dropped it in. Mel folded the edges of the bag over and held it backwards to McCracken. She took her mother’s slim figure in her arms and hugged her tightly.
‘It’s okay, Mum. It’s over.’ She took Susan’s hand. ‘Let’s get you away from here.’ Holding tight to her mother’s hand, Mel moved their clasped hands to the back of her own waist. ‘Walk on the clear bit of floor right behind me.’
‘Hang on for one second,’ McCracken said. ‘Where did the ball actually hit the ground?’
Susan pointed to the centre of the carpet of glass covering the conservatory floor. ‘Just there, Jeff, under the hole.’
‘Okay, love. Thanks. You go and have a sit down with Mel. I’m going to check something.’
Mel shot him a look. He shook his head at her, then looked up, flicked his black hair out of his eyes and studied the wrecked roof. Mel took her mother’s arm and led her to the kitchen and put the kettle on. After a few minutes, McCracken joined them. Susan was sitting at the long wooden kitchen table, hunched over her mug of tea. Mel drew McCracken aside.
‘And?’ she said in a low voice. She didn’t for the world want to upset her mother further.
‘A bit odd. Obviously, that ball caused the hole. It’s blooming heavy.’
‘Thrown from a distance away and landed on the conservatory roof by accident perhaps. Kids or sports?’
‘Who’s here to do that? Your dad owns all the land for miles around. It’s fields with no buildings apart from the odd barn. There’s no sports ground anywhere near except your tennis court. And nobody’s playing there – everybody’s at work. The kids are at school. I thought it could be some local toerags having a laugh.’ He flexed his fingers to move the bag now sitting in the palm of his hand a few millimetres. ‘Mind you, you’d have to have the muscles of one of those TV gladiators to throw this thing that far up. I mean, the roof must be about four people high, so seven to eight metres from the ground.’
‘That makes it deliberate. We’ll have to check the trajectory. At least we’ll find out where it was fired from.’
‘No need. I found a dent in the conservatory floor right under the hole. It had cracked one of the tiles.’
‘So it must have been dropped from directly overhead. Dieu. If Mum had been standing on that spot, she’d… she’d have been hit direct.’ Mel grasped the base of her neck. Cold crept under skin. Her mother could have been lying there, her head crushed in.
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Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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