Terry Newman - Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf

TERRY NEWMAN

Harper Voyager an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Terry Newman 2014

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Terry Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008101206

Version 2014-11-27

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf TERRY NEWMAN

Copyright Harper Voyager an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014 Copyright © Terry Newman 2014 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Terry Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for 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. Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress. Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008101206 Version 2014-11-27

Chapter 1: The Two Fingers

Chapter 2: Tree Friend

Chapter 3: On the Beach

Chapter 4: Surf Elves

Chapter 5: Mrs Hardwood

Chapter 6: Truetouch

Chapter 7: Wet Work

Chapter 8: Rosebud

Chapter 9: The Evening Forget-Me-Not

Chapter 10: Petal

Chapter 11: Hardwood House

Chapter 12: An Unexpected Lunch Date

Chapter 13: The Homely House Bar and Grill

Chapter 14: Walls Around the Citadel

Chapter 15: Of Dragons and Natural Selection

Chapter 16: Here There Be Demons

Chapter 17: The King of the Desolate Wastes

Chapter 18: A Dark Horse.

Chapter 19: Little Hundred

Chapter 20: A Fire Down Below

Chapter 21: A Matter of Business

Chapter 22: Rescued

Chapter 23: Elf Queen

Chapter 24: Alderman Hardwood

Chapter 25: After the Fire

About the Author

About the Publisher

Thunk!

The arrow hit Alderman Castleview in the middle of his right eye socket. A promising start. I took careful aim and let fly again.

Thunk!

The second arrow caught him just below the temple.

Thunk!

The final arrow buried itself plumb centre of that famous winning smile. I smirked and awarded myself a bonus point before retrieving my darts.

The picture of Alderman Castleview had occupied pride of place on my dartboard ever since he had announced his intent, the previous spring, to redevelop the Third Level and cause yet more traffic nightmares. I sat and tilted back my chair before taking aim again – but, to be honest, my heart wasn’t in it. This time I left the darts abandoned in the wood and walked over to the window instead. I leant against the ledge and took in the view.

On a good day the sixteenth floor of the Two Fingers building just poked clear of the smog that wound round the High Summer Citadel. This was a good day and I watched it from my office on the sixteenth floor.

I have never found anyone who could adequately explain why this office block was called the Two Fingers, as there was, in fact, only one. Some said the answer lay wreathed in legends, others said that the first block had simply been pulled down. Perhaps the stonemason did have bigger plans, but had forgotten his kickback to the Dwarfs Construction Guild. Nobody knew and nobody really cared, apart from me, but then again I cared about a lot of outdated edifices – like law, justice and good government. Down below I followed the various people going about their late-afternoon Citadel business. The Citadel, the city on a mountain: actually a giant granite extrusion located near where the River Everflow meets the sea. One last, remaining lonely outcrop of a mountain range, lost on the horizon like a melody in a dream. A city gift-wrapped by five towering walls, with gates that have not been closed since the songs were fresh, and you could still tell who the heroes were by their shiny swords and better complexions.

With characteristic humour, most of the population referred to the place simply as ‘The Hill’. And today The Hill was sweaty and irritable.

A nasty undercurrent of violence had been evident throughout this, the hottest summer on record. The Citadel Press , the Hill’s main news scroll, was working itself up into a lather of indignation and turning umbrage into an art form. Elections were scheduled for the autumn and all sorts of worms were crawling out of their holes. But today the heat had defeated even them. The sun was raising bubbles in the road-coat like the boils on a goblin’s back, and the parchment pushers, the slogan shouters – all the ranters and ravers – seemed content to give the rest of the population some time off and sulk in whatever shade they could find. The sun was beginning to go down; nevertheless humidity was still in the nineties, which meant I was as cool as a goblin on a twenty-league route march.

I pushed my chair back from the window and sighed. It was the time of day for important decisions – more coffee or the office bottle – in the end coffee won out. I would twitch ’till midwatch; but I already knew there was little chance of sleep on a night like this. I got out of the chair and stretched, marking how the muscles in my back creaked and moaned a bit. They take to inactivity like a dragon to gargling extinguisher foam.

In common with other dwarfs, I was born to wield an axe of some variety, whether it be pick or battle. Although not particularly conceited, I am quite at home with my physique. I am tall for a dwarf, which makes me about the height of a short man – but then again we all know dwarf heights have been increasing in recent years. My mother says it’s the free school milk. Musculature? Well, my current ‘party piece’ is cracking nuts in the crook of my elbow, an activity that always impresses the ladies, be they of the dwarf variety or otherwise. And, furthermore, like the rest of my kin, I have a wrestler’s shoulders; the dwarf that needs shoulder pads in his suit jacket has yet to be born. A lot of men, particularly those more used to the company of gnomes, often forget that dwarfs and gnomes do not frequent the same tailors. Not that I have anything against gnomes; we dwarfs are simply just not built to the same scale. This has come as an unwelcome surprise to more than one would-be assailant, on a dark gloomy winter Citadel night.