SEVEN DEADLY THINGS (Henry & Sparrow Book 3), page 1
SEVEN DEADLY THINGS
A Henry & Sparrow Novel
A D FOX
SPARTILLUS
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Also by A D FOX
Acknowledgments
A D FOX
A D Fox © 2021
SEVEN DEADLY THINGS
Published worldwide by Spartillus.
This edition published in 2021.
Copyright © 2021 A D Fox
The right of A D Fox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted with accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book review.
1
www.adfoxfiction.com
Created with Vellum
Prologue
‘Say sorry.’
‘What?’ He looked genuinely confused. Like he really had no clue. Like he’d forgotten. And that was just it, really. How little it meant. So very little, it hadn’t even lodged in his memory.
‘Say sorry for what you did. Write it. Write it down.’
The guy screwed up his handsome face, trying to understand. It was going to be necessary to explain.
Afterwards, he looked even more baffled. ‘But… that was seven years ago! I mean… we weren’t much more than kids…’
‘So… you’re not sorry?’
‘Yes… yes, of course I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?
He blinked at the curved edges, wrote his apology in red ballpoint on the soft, pristine white, and then he seemed to think that was it. All sorted. Like writing sorry was going to make it all right. He realised that sorry wasn’t enough as soon as he saw the gun. That was the most satisfying moment - the dawning realisation.
Even so, he tried to talk his way out of it, as they walked towards the steamy spot beneath the palm trees. He talked and talked and talked, right up to the point when the blade cut through his voice box and he literally couldn’t talk any more.
1
‘ALLIGATORS!' screamed Ellie.
There was instant squealing and shouting. Ellie took a deep breath. Nearly thirty kids were running towards her, arms flailing wildly through the air, eyes wide, hair streaming.
It was going to be carnage.
‘ALLIGATORS — MARCH!’ she yelled. ‘ALLIGATORS — SNAP! ALLIGATORS LIFT YOUR HANDS AND CLAP!’
The kids got into an unruly line as she marched them around the ballroom floor, snapping and clapping for a couple of minutes until all the stragglers had caught up and joined on the end. Settling back with their drinks and watching with indulgent smiles, the grown-ups started to clap along to the ‘Time For Bed Song’ in the happy knowledge that soon all the little rugrats would have buggered off to go by-byes, and they’d finally be allowed to say the F-word without fear of censure.
‘EACH AND EVERY ALLIGATOR — EVERYONE SAYS SEEYA LATER!’ sang out Ellie — along with a good number of cheerfully pissed adults — as the house band took up the tune on the stage behind her. Nettie, her fellow Buntin’s Children’s Aunty, skipped down to bring up the rear of the alligator line, singing heartily along with the kids now as they replied: ‘WE HAVE HAD A LOVELY DAY, NOW IT’S TIME TO HIT THE HAY!’
The lyrics were somewhat confusing. Alligators didn’t tend to hit the hay, thought Ellie, not for the first time. Crash in the swamp, yes… but that didn’t really rhyme, and she guessed it wasn’t Sir Tim Rice who’d been hired to write the Buntin’s Alligator Club ‘Time For Bed Song’.
‘SNAP! SNAP! SNAP-SNAP-SNAP! ALLIGATORS MARCH! ALLIGATORS SING! ALLIGATORS SNAP AT EVERYTHING!’ Ellie warbled on. Jesus. It was probably the twenty-fifth time she’d sung the bedtime song and it was still just as crap as it had been on the day she’d learned it. Happily, the kids didn’t seem to care. The more ADHD ones were trying to snap the heads off the kids in front of them, encouraged by this nightly exhortation to pretend their arms were crocodilian jaws.
‘AUNTY ALLIGATOR SAID,’ Ellie and Nettie sang out, with feeling. ‘ALLIGATORS OFF TO BED!’
A roar of approval, accompanied by cheers and applause, followed the kids through the Embassy Ballroom doors — held open by a couple of fellow Bluecoats — and out into the carpeted foyer. The children never seemed offended by their rapturous nine o’clock send-off. Once in the foyer, the mums (and occasionally the dads) would come out too, waiting for the last loop of the Alligator March. This last loop went once around the flower beds and then through the top end of Buntin’s Jungle Water World — in one door, past the pool, and out through the other door, while everyone waved goodnight to Martin, the Bluecoat lifeguard.
Jungle Water World was emptied of kids at seven and closed to all punters by eight-thirty. So by nine, with its Rapid River now just rippling gently beneath the fake palm trees, and the main pool azure and mirror-still, it was all rather calm and serene. Ellie and Nettie had discovered that this atmosphere settled their troupe of overtired under-tens down quite nicely as they marched through it. By the time the line came to a final halt, back in the foyer, their charges were usually yawning and resigned to being taken off to their chalets for the night.
As they stomped through the outer doors and headed for the pool complex, Ellie wished she could hit the hay herself. She would love to go back to the chalet and crawl into bed. She was absolutely knackered. But her shift ran from ten in the morning to ten at night. Her last hour, after the children had gone, was to be spent trying to chat to holidaymakers at their tables. ‘Mix and Mingle’ was what Gary, the Entertainments Manager, called it. Well, actually, he called it Mix an’ Fuckin’ Mingle, in a gravelly voice — like Ray Winstone warning off a fellow gangland boss. Any Bluecoat caught out just standing by the bar or chatting to a fellow Blue, would soon experience Gary creeping up behind and growling, ‘Oi! Mix an’ fuckin’ mingle!’ in their ear.
So, mandatory jollity with the Buntin’s holidaymakers until ten… and after that she was expected to party with all the other Blues until midnight. She didn’t know how they did it. She was nineteen and ought to be able to keep up, but she really wasn’t cut out for all the drinking and smoking and shagging that was just normal after-hours life for most of her workmates.
‘SNAP! SNAP! CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!’ sang out Ellie and Nettie as they approached Jungle Water World. Not long now and Ellie could get down to the last hour of mixing and mingling. She and Nettie would be vying to hang out with little Tyler’s hot dad for a bit, while Tyler’s mum tucked him into bed.
Ellie had to shove the pool door open. Martin must have forgotten to wedge it like he usually did. He normally liked to get up on his high lifeguard chair in time to wave the kids through, but the chair was empty tonight.
‘ALLIGATORS, NOT SO LEAPY! ALLIGATORS, GETTING SLEEPY!’ Ellie and Nettie heavily implied in song, Ellie walking backwards and waving her charges in.
There was some extra squeaking from two little girls nearest to her. Rosie-Mae and Blossom were shouting, ‘LOOK! IT’S ALL PINK!’
Others were joining in, too, thrilled at the sudden change of water colour, as if it had been magicked up just for them. Ellie blinked and felt something thud in her throat. The water wasn’t meant to be pink. It wasn’t meant to be red, either, but it looked red, up in the corner where the main pool flowed across a waterfall of tiles and into the Rapid River. The red faded to fuchsia, and the fuchsia to pale rose.
Shit, thought Ellie. She started leaping up and down, waving her arms madly. ‘HEY!’ she shrieked. ‘WATCH THIS! Let’s see if I can clap my hands over my head and walk out of the other door BACKWARDS!’
Some of the kids looked at her, but most were still staring at the pink pool.
‘WATCH MEEEE!’ Ellie heard the desperation in her own voice. In the corner of her eye she could see a trousered leg floating amid that reddest part of the pool, just protruding from the corner, beneath a palm tree which overhung the Rapid River run-off. Her need to keep the children’s eyes away from it was battling with her own instinct to stare — to work out if it was real. Suddenly, she stopped, just as Nettie arrived in the doorway at the end of the Alligator March. ‘AN
At this point, there was a loud bubbling sound and the Rapid River suddenly started to gush. It shouldn’t have happened — the rapids machinery ran on a timer every ten minutes and by now it was meant to be switched off. The trousered leg and its black-shoed foot began to bob up and down and move across the pink pool. Ellie felt the thudding in her throat increase in frequency.
‘EVERYONE! TICKLE NETTIE!’ she shrieked, going for cheeky and landing on terrified. Still, she nearly did it. She nearly pulled it off as two dozen kids turned to mob poor, baffled Nettie. But Rosie-Mae and Blossom could not be distracted for quite long enough.
They turned back to look again, just as Martin, glassy-eyed and leaking a crimson ribbon from his slit throat, floated across the pool.
When the screaming started, Ellie couldn’t even tell whether or not she was joining in.
2
Her head was abruptly jerked back.
Then she was violently propelled forward, the belt cutting into her skin.
She thought maybe she was going to die. Here, in this metal coffin which smelt of 1979.
‘Jeeezuz! Francis, can you stop stamping on the bloody brake at the last minute? You need to brake way earlier than that!’
Her brother huffed and rolled his eyes, but he had asked for this, so he couldn’t really give her a hard time. ‘I am braking early,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it takes a while for anything to happen.’
Kate Sparrow gripped the seatbelt a little tighter and watched the car ahead pull away into the distance, wisely shaking off Francis’s unintended tailgating. ‘Well, maybe that’s because instead of buying a new Nissan or VW, you irrationally went out and snapped up a piece of retro junk. ‘
The gunshot blast scared rooks out of nearby trees. Kate jolted in her seat and caught her breath, and Francis pulled the Ford over to the side of the road and killed the engine, looking stricken. ‘Sorry, sis,’ he muttered. ‘It does that sometimes. Really didn’t mean to trip your PTSD.’
‘No… no it’s fine,’ muttered Kate, through gritted teeth. ‘I mean… it’s a good six months now since I got shot; why would your backfiring 1970s shitwagon be a problem?’
‘Look - it’s got a few issues, but it’s a collector’s item,’ he said, patting the wheel as if defending its feelings. ‘These babies really hold their value — getting it for ten grand was an absolute steal.’
Kate opened the passenger door and ducked awkwardly out of her brother’s bargain buy. It was mercifully cooler out here. Another charming original feature of the Ford Capri was its total lack of air conditioning. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of rapeseed blossom and nettles. The long, flat road they were travelling stretched away between fields of almost neon yellow, hemmed with green, under a bright blue sky. Apart from the offensive mustard hue of the Capri at its centre, the rest of the scene could have been painted on a plate by Clarice Cliff. Kate took long, slow inhalations of the warm May air and reminded herself that everything was fine. Nobody was shooting anyone. Nobody was suffocating anyone. Nobody was drugging or starving anyone. It was all fine. Just fine. It had to be. She had just been promoted to detective inspector with Wiltshire Police; a little PTSD was not going to hobble her career.
Francis arrived next to her, carrying two magnetic L plates. ‘You want to drive the rest of the way?’ he asked.
She let out a long sigh. ‘No… no, it’s OK, Fran. I said I would help you learn and that’s what I’m going to do. You’re doing fine, apart from the braking thing. You should be good for your test.’
Her brother raked his fingers through scruffy blond hair and looked less than confident. He’d been taking driving lessons for a year now, embarrassed to still be learning at twenty-four. Kate had passed her test ten years ago, when she was still seventeen. She had agreed to let him get some more practice on their journey to Suffolk. She shouldn’t have given in about the car, though. She should have stuck to her guns and made him drive her Honda.
‘How’s the shoulder?’ asked Francis, and she realised she had been rubbing it, distractedly, again.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘We should get going. Put the learner plates back on. We’re only half an hour away, you might as well keep driving.’ She tried to think of something nice to say about his choice of car as he reattached the magnetic L plates front and back. ‘The wheels are cool,’ she said, eventually.
‘They’re original thirteen-inch alloys,’ he enthused, grinning. ‘And the engine is a two-litre which could do nought to sixty in 10.4 seconds back in 1979. That was world-rocking stuff back then.’
‘Right…’ She smiled, shrugged, and got back in. She really needed to be a bit more upbeat. This whole trip was meant to be fun. She’d invited him along because he spent too much time cooped up in his room, online. It was his job — he was some kind of IT guru, working from home — but it was also all his downtime and it wasn’t healthy, given that her brother wasn’t a vampire. If he didn’t get some daylight and Vitamin D soon, he was going to turn from pasty-pale to see-through. He needed to get out and meet other people, too, in the flesh.
When Talia had got in touch a few weeks back about the Magnificent Seven After Seven plan, Kate had initially thought she might give it a miss, but Talia insisted, ‘You have to come, or it’ll only be the Sorry Six. That’s no good. Kate — I demand that you come!’
Talia had always got what she wanted seven years ago when they were working as Bluecoats at Buntin’s Holiday Village, and it appeared nothing much had changed. And Kate knew it would be fun, meeting up seven years on from that first summer, when she had just turned twenty and was earning a little money before starting her last year at uni. A very little money, it turned out. The pay at Buntin’s was piss-poor because so many excited young luvvies applied, hoping the weekly Bluecoat cabaret shows might earn them an Equity card. They were wrong about that, it turned out, but by the time they realised it they were usually fully on board for fourteen weeks of entertaining holidaymakers for little more than their keep. It was hard work but a lot of fun, and a total shagathon from start to finish. Nobody but Kate had gone to uni, so this was their Freshers’ Week equivalent and it had lasted for an entire summer.
Kate had only gone for the job because Talia had. Bruised by constant drama school rejections, her Salisbury College friend had opted for Buntin’s, hoping for that elusive Equity card. After all, an assortment of comedians and telly presenters had started out as Buntin’s Bluecoats, so why not try that route? It had to be worth a shot.
Kate could still vividly remember the day she’d first arrived at the site, perched on the chilly Suffolk coast. Talia had booked a later train, having stopped off in London to see some theatrical friends en route, so after a rail journey through the flatlands of East Anglia, followed by a bus ride through the Fens, Kate had found herself standing alone at the bus stop opposite the entrance to Buntin’s Lakefield Holiday Village.
And wondering what the hell she was doing there.
Dragging her wheelie case down the long drive, between neatly tended flower beds, she had reached an empty car park and a whitewashed pavilion with WELCOME TO BUNTIN’S emblazoned on a rainbow hoarding over its three sets of glass double doors. Inside, on a carpet of violently red and orange swirls, Gary, the Entertainments Manager, had welcomed her with a pack of forms and badges, a ticket to collect her Buntin’s Bluecoat uniforms, and a key to the chalet she would be sharing with Talia.
