Mark Sennen: BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

AVON

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2013

Copyright © Mark Sennen 2013

Mark Sennen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007518166

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007518180

Version: 2019-03-01

For Gitte. Thank you!

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Afterwards

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Mark Sennen

About the Publisher

The pain always came when Ricky Budgeon least expected it. Right now a wave swept from within and hit him between the eyes like a needle pushing hard into the bridge of his nose. He put his hands up and gripped his scalp, pulling and clawing at the burning sensation which spread across his forehead to his temples. The last attack had had him writhing on the floor, but this time the jabbing ceased after a few seconds and he merely needed to steady himself. He moved his hands from his head, clasped them tight around the cool metal bar of the gate, and stared across the field into the night.

A scan had showed nothing but the old scarring, afterwards the doctor muttering reassuring words about migraine and mentioning therapy, maybe acupuncture.

Crap.

The idiots must have missed whatever was in there that was causing him such misery. Some sort of mutation of the cells, a cancer or a tumour, the latter growing fat on bad memories, enmity and bitterness.

When the doctor disagreed with his self-diagnosis and said surgery was out of the question he’d thought of taking a drill to his own skull, imagined placing the bit against his head and pressing the trigger. The whine of the motor would come first, followed by agony as the drill ripped into skin and bone. Then the spinning metal would seek out the tumour and chew it to a pulp. The pain would be gone forever. He had even gone so far as to go to his workshop and set up the equipment. With the drill in its stand all he had to do was press the switch, put his head beneath the bit and pull down on the lever. Eventually he had decided against it. Whatever the thing was inside his head frightened him, but it motivated him too. Remove the pain, and what would drive him forwards?

Budgeon stood in the darkness, gulping air and then biting his lip until he tasted blood. The throbbing in his head subsided and ebbed away. He bent and picked up his fag: a half-smoked roll-up, dropped as the agony had come on. Drawing on the cigarette, he looked out again and took in the landscape spread before him.

Close at hand, the hedges and trees appeared black against the sky. In a nearby field, the occasional sheep bleated, and from a copse off to his right the hoot of an owl rang out. But beyond the empty countryside lay the city, a corona of brightness where a thousand glittering lights promised excitement and danger, their individual pinpricks of heat coalescing like a mass of stars at the centre of a distant galaxy. Moving outward from the core, white dots crawled between avenues of static orange; cars heading for the soft radiance of the suburbs and home.

A twinge in his forehead caused him to screw his eyes shut.

Home.

He opened his eyes again and took another drag from the roll-up, pinching the end between the tips of his thumb and forefinger so he could extract every last piece of worth without burning himself. The way he had smoked in prison.

Years ago, before he had gone down, he’d had friends in the city. Friends who’d grown up on the same street as him. As kids they’d pinched sweets from the same shop and sworn at the same old ladies whose flowerbeds they trampled across. Later on, as young men, they’d thrown bricks at the same police cars, shared the same prison cells and sworn vengeance on the same enemies. They’d been like brothers, the three of them. Blood brothers.

Those days seemed so long ago now. As if someone else had lived the time for him.

Budgeon took a final drag from his fag and then dropped the butt to the floor, stamping the orange glow into the mud.

Everything had been fine until she came along.

Why did it always come down to a woman? Almost biblical. Garden of fucking Eden and all that shit.

In the end, he had been the lucky one, sliding around on silk sheets, relishing how sweet she tasted, promising her everything. But afterwards, as they shared a cigarette, he realised things weren’t going to be the same. Not with the others wanting her too.

He shook his head and took one last look at the distant lights, before moving back to the van and clambering in. The thin, pale man in the driver’s seat grunted and asked him if he was ready to go.

Was he? Peering down on the city and reminiscing about his childhood, thinking about the group of them as little boys, without a care in the world, had made him reconsider for a moment. Now, as the warmth of the van slipped around him, he felt cocooned and cut off from everything but those memories. He could easily get misty-eyed again. Half a lifetime later perhaps it was time to forgive and forget, move on.

An ache flickered across his brow.

No, life didn’t reward that kind of thinking. He’d gone soft over the girl and when his guard had been down he’d been betrayed. There were rules, unwritten maybe, but rules all the same. If you broke them, you paid; and some debts took more than money to settle.

Much more.

Of course he was ready to go. And the sooner they got the show on the road, the better.

Nr Bovisand, Plymouth. Sunday 13th January. 4.05 p.m.