That Summer He Died

Emlyn Rees
ran a horse-tipping service from a public phone booth when he was sixteen, the profits of which he spent entirely on cider and cigarettes. He spent his early twenties travelling around Asia and mixing cocktails in London for the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Princess Anne.

He published his first crime novel aged twenty-five, his second a year later, and then co-wrote seven comedies with Josie Lloyd, including the Number One S
unday Times
bestseller
Come Together
. He’s currently working on a series of novels featuring hostage negotiator Danny Shanklin – the one guy you would want on your side in a fight.

The first Danny Shanklin novel,
Hunted
, is out now in paperback and eBook. You can contact Emlyn at
www.emlynrees.com
, or on Twitter
@emlynreeswriter
.

Also by Emlyn Rees

Hunted

That Summer He Died

Emlyn Rees

Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Corsair,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

Copyright © Emlyn Rees, 2013

The right of Emlyn Rees to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-47210-827-2 (ebook)

Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson

For my mother, Anne Rees, with all my love

Thanks to James Gurbutt, Rob Nichols and everyone at Corsair for their help with making this edition happen. Thanks also Jonny Geller and the Curtis Brown team, and additional thanks to Patrick ‘Legal Eagle’ Howarth for help with the technical stuff. And finally to Joanna Rees, my real-life partner-in-crime.

When the LAPD, alerted by reports of a gun shot, broke down the door of Peter Headley’s apartment at ten minutes before ten o’clock on the morning of Friday 14 August, they discovered him slumped in an armchair, facing the television.

On the table to his left was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a glass containing ice which had not yet melted, a silver Zippo lighter engraved with his name, a crystal ashtray with the singed butt of a Marlboro cigarette resting on its rim, and a computer printout, three columns wide and thirteen rows deep, detailing names and dates and places.

His right hand lay on his lap, wrapped around an antique Luger pistol. An undried fresco of brain and blood and bone covered the wall behind his head.

On top of the television, a digital camera had been positioned, pointing at the chair. Its red record light was on.

James Sawday stopped typing, looked up from the screen of his laptop and checked his watch: twelve-fifteen. His hand squeaked against the cab window as he wiped the condensation away and gazed outside.

The warehouses, hotels and car parks of Heathrow airport had been replaced now by the imposing façades of Knightsbridge department stores. The traffic was boot to bumper, but still a blessing compared to the gridlock he’d grown used to in LA. The weather, though – he watched the rods of October rain pummelling the pavement and pedestrians – he would have traded in for LA smog without a second thought.

He rubbed his eyes, screen fatigue or flight fatigue – he wasn’t sure which was affecting him worse – making him regret his decision to report into the office before going home.

Twenty minutes later, the cab pulled up in a street off Soho Square. James paid the driver, stashed his laptop and dragged it with him in his battered courier bag.

By the time he reached Hinton House, his white ‘The Black Keys’ t-shirt had turned grey with rain. The wet soles of his trainers squeaked as he crossed the marble tiles of reception to the lifts.

On the way up to the fifth floor, he checked his reflection in the mirrored wall. He looked wasted, like he’d been out on a week-long bender. A crop of two-day stubble patterned his jaw and dark pouches protruded beneath his eyes. His hair, darkened by the rain so that it no longer matched his soft brown eyes, hung down over his forehead in long lank curls.

Even with a tan, his complexion, which normally led people to place him nearer twenty than thirty, was dull. He looked like he needed a hot bath, a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. He looked like he needed someone to look after him.

Just like the kind of man, in other words, who Peter Headley would have invited home and tended and cared for, propped up with a pillow and covered with a blanket, before picking up a baseball bat and beating his skull to a pulp.

James shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the thought, but the thought wasn’t having any of it, and stuck to him like a leech.

Headley, although deceased, had been living in James’s head for the best part of two weeks now, since he’d gone over to LA to research the grim lifestyle that had led to the serial killer’s suicide two months previously. The sooner James put the article to bed and evicted the dead murderer’s spectre, the better.

He stepped out of the lift, crossed the two yards of chequered carpet to the double glass doors and punched the code into the key pad. The lock buzzed and he pushed the door open with his foot and stepped inside.

‘Hello, you’re through to
Kudos
. . .’ Marcus answered the phone in reception, glancing up from his desk at James and rolling his eyes as he finished reciting the company’s official business greeting ‘. . . the uptown gentlemen’s forum and guide to modern life. . .’

James dumped his suitcase next to a rainforest of potted plants and put his courier bag on the reception desk. While he waited for Marcus to finish with the caller, he checked out the framed covers on the wall – ten editions in all, since
Kudos
had been launched back in January.

He picked up a copy of the new October issue from a rack and lingered over the cover shot of Emma Watson for a couple of seconds, before flipping it open and checking out what people had been up to since he’d been away.

‘Welcome back,’ Marcus said then, fixing a grin on him. ‘Good time in Californ-I-A?’

‘Not bad.’ James was rummaging through the papers in his bag. ‘Even picked you up a souvenir. . .’

Marcus got to his feet and leant across the reception desk. ‘Let me guess. A Raiders cap? A bag of crack? What was it you were doing out there? Oh, yeah, the Headley piece. Shit, if it’s a dismembered penis, you can stick it up your—’

‘Not funny,’ James said, locating the book he was looking for.

‘Pretty gross, was it?’ Marcus asked, the mischievous sparkle in his eyes doused.

‘Gross doesn’t come close. Even writing it up makes me want to puke.’ James handed the paperback over. ‘But this has got nothing to do with it.’

Marcus smiled. He was one of the few people James knew who still preferred paper books to electronic, and was a sucker for a thriller.

He read the title out loud: ‘
Hunted
. Any good?’

‘No idea,’ James said. He didn’t really go in for crime fiction himself. The real world was already plenty scary enough. ‘But it is signed. The writer was staying in the same hotel as me. I met him at the bar.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘A lot balder than in his author photo.’

Marcus put down the book.

‘Norm said he wanted to see you as soon as you got back,’ he said.

James glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘He in yet?’

‘Is he ever out? He said something about a new assignment. He seemed pretty excited about it.’

‘Great.’ Gathering up his bag and suitcase, James headed down the corridor into the swarm of bodies and buzzing voices. ‘More work. Just what I need.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the trouble with being good,’ Marcus called after him. ‘There’s always going to be more.’

Norm Gattis was pacing up and down by the window of his office, taking in the view of Soho. At twenty-nine, only two years older than James, he was the youngest magazine editor in London. Dressed in artfully creased handmade jeans, cowboy boots so beaten it was a wonder they hadn’t pressed charges, and a t-shirt covered with a faded print of Jack Kerouac’s face, he was talking – or, rather, shouting – into his cell phone, sucking on an electric cigarette like he was planning on inhaling it whole.

‘I need tits! Tits and ass,’ he yelled. ‘Did you even see how many copies those shots of the future Queen of England sold? Bare back and legs at the very least. But nipples if you can get them. Nipples sell more copies and ramp up the site hits too. So ask round the photo agencies, OK?. . . Yeah, of course the sleazier, the better. She’s bound to have done some skin work to kick-start a career like that. . . No, no one’s gonna give a shit about her being into Zen Buddhism. Not unless she’s into Tantric sex too. Does she chime when she orgasms?’ He noticed James, nodded him towards the sofa. ‘No? Well, screw that, then. Screw
her
if you’ve got to. Just do your job. Dig some dirt. Why else do you think I’ve sent you halfway round the bloody world at my expense?’

Norm glared at his phone screen, swiping his finger across it like he was slitting someone’s throat as he cut the other caller off.

‘Let me guess who it is you’re after,’ James asked. He named one of the actresses from the new Bond flick, the one who was shot in the film because Daniel Craig had got the shakes.

Norm grinned, but not kindly, more ferally. ‘Can’t keep anything from you, can I, sleuth? Like having Miss bleedin’ Marple on the staff. I should have sent you out there instead of that useless prat Lee Rickman. Calls himself a journalist. Bollocks! Way he’s acting at the moment, he couldn’t find dirt up a tramp’s arsehole.’ Norm pulled his desk drawer out. ‘Shut the door and pull the blind down, will you?’

James did as requested and returned to the sofa as Norm cut a couple of fat lines of coke on his desk and snorted the first one up.

‘Want some?’ he asked.

James shook his head.

Norm did the other line, rocking his head back and pinching his nose as his eyes began to water. He closed his desk drawer.

‘’Course not,’ he said, ‘because you don’t, do you? Never did get round to asking why. You just say no, the same as with pills, but you’ll still smoke yourself stupid with weed. I mean, what the fuck is all that?’

A girl’s face. . . a redhead. . . a face James would never forget. . . hovered now in the forefront of his mind.

‘Just because,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but “just because” what?’

The redhead. . . James remembered her eyes. He pictured them staring. . . she was staring, because she could not blink.

‘Because I’m mad enough already?’ he suggested.

‘Or maybe because if I stuck anything more stimulating than my finger up your nose, you’d end up scrabbling round the floor of a nut-house, thinking you were a gerbil called Clive?’

‘It’s possible.’

James forced the image of the red-headed girl from his mind.

‘You look shit, by the way,’ Norm said.

James studied Norm’s own dishevelled appearance and decided to take this as a compliment. ‘Thanks.’

Norm walked over to the fridge and took out a bottle of beer, flipped the top against his nicotine-stained front teeth, spat it on to the floor and drank. He waggled another bottle at James, who again shook his head, this time thinking of the cool sheets and soft mattress waiting for him back at his flat.