Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“I don't know, Frank…” Teddy's mum was the doubtful kind. She didn't like disruptions, and a move to the country was Disruption Times Ten.

But Teddy's dad had his mind made up, so here they were, on a sheep farm where the sheep and the land were rented out to a farmer who lived in Peak Forest, which was the nearest thing to a town within miles. Except it wasn't a town, it wasn't even a village. It was a handful of houses, a church, a pub, and a grocery, where, if a bloke decided to sneak a packet of crisps for an afternoon snack-even if the bloke paid for them, mind you-that bloke's mum was sure to hear about it by six o'clock in the evening. And there'd be hell to pay.

Teddy hated it. The vast empty space that stretched into forever on every side, the great dome of sky that went pewter with fog on a moment's notice, the wind that whipped round the house all night and rattled his bedroom window like aliens trying to get in, the sheep that bleated like something was wrong but ran off the first time you took a step towards them. He just bloody hated the place. And as Teddy left the house and plodded into the yard, a piece of grit-shot by the wind like a missile-flew past his glasses, exploded into his eye, and made him yowl. He hated this place.

He removed his glasses and used the bottom of his T-shirt against his eye. It stung, it burned, and his sense of grievance grew. Blurry of vision, he stumbled to the back of the house, where the Saturday morning washing was flapping and snapping on the line that was strung from the eaves to a rust-eaten pole near a crumbling drystone wall.

“Pooey, phooey, poop,” Teddy muttered. On the ground near the house he found a long, thin branch. He scooped this up, and it became a sword. He used it as he advanced on the washing, a row of his dad's jeans his target.

“Stay where you are,” he hissed at them. “I'm armed, you lot. And if you think you can take me alive… Ha! Take that! And that! And that!”

They'd come from the Death Star to deal with him. They knew that he was the Last of the Jedi. If they could just get him out of the way, the Emperor would be able to Rule the Universe. But they couldn't kill him. AbsoLUTEly no way. They were under orders to take him captive so that he could be made an Example to All Rebels in the Star System. Well, Ha! And Ha! They would NEVER take him. Because he had a laser sword and swish swish lash and swish. But omigod. Hang on now. They had laser guns. And they didn't want to capture him at all! They wanted to kill him and… eeeeooooowww! He was completely outnumbered! Runrunrun!

Teddy turned and fled, waving his sword in the air. He sought the protection of the drystone wall that fronted the property and edged the road. With a leap, he was over. His heart pounded. His ears throbbed.

Safe, he thought. He'd gone into light speed and left the Imperial

Star Troopers behind. He'd landed on an undiscovered planet. They'd never find him here in a zillion years. HE would be an Emperor now.

Whoosh. Something whizzed by on the road. Teddy blinked. The wind pummeled him like an angry ghost's fists, bringing water to his eyes. He couldn't quite see. But still, it looked like… No. It couldn't be. Teddy peered to the right and to the left. He realised with horror where he'd landed. This wasn't a brand-new planet at all. He'd taken himself into Jurassic Park! And what had lightninged by with the fury of hunger driving it was a velociraptor homing in on something for the kill!

Omigod omigod. And he had NOTHING with him. No high-powered rifle, no weapon of any kind. Just a stupid old stick and what good would THAT be against a dinosaur with human flesh on its mind?

He had to hide. One velociraptor didn't exist without another nearby. And two meant twenty. Or a hundred. A thousand!

Omigod! He tore along the road.

A short distance ahead, he saw his safety. A yellow bin stood in the weeds on the verge. He could hide in there till the danger passed.

Whoosh. Whoosh. More 'raptors tore by as Teddy flung his body inside the bin. He lowered himself and brought the lid down.

He'd seen what 'raptors could do to a person, Teddy had. They tore at flesh and sucked out eyeballs and crunched bones like they were McDonald's french fries. And they liked ten-year-old boys the best.

He had to do something. He had to save himself. He crouched within the safety of the bin and tried to come up with a plan.

The bin held the remainder of last year's grit: some six inches of it, left over from the winter when it was used on the road so that car tyres didn't slide on the ice. Teddy could feel the pebbles and shards of it biting into the palms of his hands.

Could he use the grit? Could he make it a weapon? Could he ball it up into a nasty missile that he could throw at the 'raptors and hurt them enough for them to leave him alone? If he did that, he would then have time to-His fingers grabbed on to something hard, something buried three inches into the grit. It was slender and palm-sized and when he dug round it, he was able to free it and to bring it up into the weak light that came through the yellow walls of his hiding place.

Wicked, he thought. What a find. He was saved. It was a knife.

Julian Britton was doing what he always did at the end of a mountain rescue: He was checking his equipment as he put it away. But he wasn't being as thorough or as careful as he usually was when organising and repacking his gear. His thoughts were far away from ropes, boots, picks, hammers, compasses, maps, and everything else they used when someone got lost or someone else got injured and a team was required to find them.

His thoughts were on her. On Nicola. On what had been and what could have been had she only acted the appropriate part in the drama he'd written for their relationship.

“But I love you,” he'd said to her, and even to his own ears the four words had sounded pathetic and stricken.

“And I love you back,” she'd replied kindly. She'd even taken his hand and held it-palm upwards-as if she intended to place something within it. “Only it's not enough, the kind of love I feel for you. And the kind of love you want-and deserve -to have, Jules… well, it isn't the sort of love I'm likely to feel for anyone.”

“But I'm good for you. You've said it enough times over the years. That's enough, isn't it? Can't the other sort of love-the sort you're talking about… can't it grow from there? I mean, we're friends. We're companions. We're… for God's sake we're lovers … And if that doesn't mean we have something special together… Hell. What does?”

She'd sighed. She'd looked out of the car window to the darkness. He could see her reflection in the glass. “Jules, I've become an escort,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”

The statement and the question had come out of nowhere, so for a moment he'd thought ridiculously of tour guides, travel escorts who stand at the front of a coach and speak into a microphone as the vehicle lumbers round the countryside with tourists crammed into its seats. “You're traveling?” he'd asked.

“I'm seeing men for money,” she replied. “I spend the evening with them. Sometimes I spend the night. I go to hotels and pick them up and we do what they want. Whatever they want. Then they pay me. They give me two hundred pounds an hour. Fifteen hundred pounds if I sleep in their beds for the night.”

He stared at her. He heard her clearly, but his brain refused to assimilate the information. He said, “I see. You have someone else in London, then.”

She said, “Jules, you're not listening to me.”

“I am. You said-”

“You're hearing. Not listening. Men pay me for companionship.”