Chloe: Never Forget by Dan Laughey - Book Tour
Chloe:
Never Forget
An off-duty detective gunned down. A dead
woman. A student missing, feared dead. And now, a former policeman in search of
his past. All these people, dead or alive, have one thing in common. D.I. Carl
Sant must discover what it is.
A series of cold-case enquiries leads D.I.
Sant and his colleagues to investigate a botched assassination plot dating back
to the 1980s. The deeper they dig into the case, the more secrets are revealed,
including shocking connections to the infamous National Front.
Meanwhile, the memory of former P.C.
Tanner, survivor of the assassination horror, is beginning to
recover. Sant must find Tanner, and find out who is behind it all - before his
superiors lose their rag and more lives are lost.
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Excerpt
The following extract is from Chapter 4 of CHLOE: NEVER
FORGET. Detective Inspector Carl Sant and his colleague Detective Sergeant
Amanda Holdsworth visit a murder scene and try to work out if the victim is who
they suspect she is.
Sant scowled at the helicopter
gliding like an obese dragonfly above him. It wasn’t a police issue. Big, bad,
disastrous news was what this dragonfly lived off – the more the better.
‘Who tipped off the media?’ he
asked a scenes-of-crime officer decked out in overalls of spotless white at the
front, steel blue behind.
The
officer shrugged, replaced a pair of blue gloves to match his back, then ambled
in astronaut fashion to a low tent housing the mainstay of his vocation. The
rope-bound cadaver, much to his annoyance, had had to be transposed one point
five metres from its final resting place on the brink of the canal to enable
the tent to be pegged firmly into the rubbly ground.
A biting
wind flung around hard rain, forcing a couple of uniforms to lean their full
weight on the pegs to prevent the structure from blowing away.
Some of
the men at work glanced pointedly at Sant, curious about his hasty appearance
on the scene. They knew he was part of the CID team hunting down the killer of
one of their own, but where a connection could be drawn between Dryden’s murder
and this latest violent crime was unclear.
Sant
recognised several forensic officers who’d worked that blood-soaked bus just
five days ago, picking their way through fragments of glass jammed into bits of
loose limb – although four of their colleagues were on sick leave. These men
still standing are as tough as old boots, the inspector said to himself.
‘You’re certainly keeping me
busy, my boy,’ spoke a commanding voice from behind. ‘Next time you appear on
TV, tell the people to stop killing each other, will you?’
Sant
marvelled at the way the doctor didn’t break his stride as he marched
relentlessly towards the white tent. Just another day at the office for Wisdom
and Co.
Mouth
still dry from a night of wine-drinking and love-making, he sipped his lukewarm
tea gratefully and nibbled at a Kitkat, checking his watch every minute, making
a show of how he wasn’t there for the fun of it. Holdsworth was running late.
He’d phoned an hour earlier to give her the name printed in the pocket diary
found on the victim. Find out what you can, he’d told her.
A trio
of grey tits fluttered through clear sky, their effortless flight making a
mockery of the mechanical dragonfly jerking above them. Sant liked birds. He
was no ornithologist, but Kes was one
of his favourite films.
At last
he saw Holdsworth, her permed hair wafting in the wind and concealing most of
her face. Not for the first time he was struck by that Mediterranean poise to
the bronzed cheekbones and jawline.
‘What’s the score, Holdsworth?’
She
paused to catch breath. ‘Well, Marie Jagger is – ’
‘Was,’ he interrupted.
‘Marie Jagger was a social housing resident living at
66a Thorpe Towers, Bramley. The council folk tell me she’s lived at the flat
for the last seven years.’
Sant
juggled the years. He was better at maths than ornithology. ‘So Chloe Lee was
twelve or thirteen years old when she moved there.’
The two
detectives eyed each other.
‘It adds up,’ said Holdsworth,
‘but here’s the crux. Council records of the dates of birth of Marie Jagger and
our elusive Sheila Morrison living on Stanks Lane South in 1984 show a match –
both women gave their birth date as April the 23rd 1961. However,
those ever so efficient council folk (I don’t think!) can’t find a birth date
for the Susan Smith who once lived on Dufton Approach, a few doors down from
the Lees.’
Sant
nodded. ‘She kept switching names and addresses, but changing your date of
birth is nothing short of fraudulent, and this woman’s age tallies with what we
know about Susan Smith. More to the point, she’s the right kind of mystery.’
‘Meaning?’
He
lifted the small diary out of the pocket of his black Mackintosh. ‘Almost blank
apart from the name Marie Jagger, which we can safely say bears no resemblance
to her birth name.’
‘Why carry the diary then?’
Sant
thought hard. ‘She hid it in one of her shoes. It was an insurance policy. If
anything happened to her, and sadly it did, her discoverers would have a name
to work through.’
‘But why not carry proper ID? Or
as a minimum, give her address?’
He
downed the last dregs of his cold tea. ‘That’s what most people would do. But
we’re not dealing with an ordinary individual here. If this Marie Jagger aka
Susan Smith aka Sheila Morrison really is Chloe’s one-time neighbour and Dryden’s
informant on the Sergeant Gray murder, we’d expect her corpse to reveal as
little as the living being it once contained.’
‘Just as secretive dead as
alive,’ echoed Holdsworth.
‘And what’s more, we’ve a
ready-made motive for her murder.’
She
stepped forward and approached the tent, latching onto Sant’s train of thought.
‘She was killed because of what she knew.’
‘Or more precisely,’ he added as
he caught up with her, ‘because she’d told others about what she knew.’
‘Which explains the motive for
Dryden’s murder too.’ She tied her hair back and stuck her head into the tent.
‘You don’t think we’re jumping to conclusions do you, Carl?’
‘What conclusions?’
‘You know, assuming this latest
victim is who we think she is.’ Then she pulled her head out swiftly. ‘Hey!
Check the diary entry for October the 31st.’
Sant
smiled. ‘I did have a head-start, but it was worth the wait.’
‘Stop testing my powers of
detection,’ she cried, landing a friendly slap on his arm.
He
winced playfully and turned to the relevant page in the diary. ‘See what’s
written here? The 31st of October. 11pm. Kirkstall Abbey.’
‘That’s what’s called an unfair
advantage,’ she protested.
They
stared at each other. Words weren’t necessary. They knew what faced them. A
serial killer. Simple as.
Holdsworth
finally broke the silence. ‘Why did her killer leave her beside the canal
rather than in it?’
‘I’ve been chewing over that one.
Whoever was tasked with disposing the body didn’t finish the job.’
‘Perhaps they were disturbed?’
‘Either that or they chose to
leave their goods on show.’
‘Why do that?’
Sant
rubbed his ears as vibrations filled the air above. ‘Maybe they wanted us to
find her. Though I doubt that was the original plan.’
‘So what next?’
He only
just heard Holdsworth’s question over the sudden din of helicopter propellers,
but his reply was loud and clear as he pointed up at a TV cameraman bending
himself backwards to secure the best angle.
‘There’s no two ways about it,’
he bellowed. ‘We’ve got to go public.’
Author Bio
–
Dan Laughey is a lecturer at Leeds
Beckett University where he teaches a course called ‘Youth, Crime and Culture’
among other things. He has written several books on the subject including Music and Youth Culture, based on his
PhD in Sociology at Salford University. He also holds a BA in English from
Manchester Metropolitan University and an MA in Communications Studies from the
University of Leeds.
Dan was born in Otley and bred in
Ilkley, West Yorkshire, a hop and a skip away from the Leeds setting of
his Chloe novels.
His crime writing was purely
academic to begin with. He’s written about media violence and tackled the
age-old concern about television and video games influencing patterns of
antisocial behaviour in society. After years of research and theoretical
scrutiny, he still hasn’t cracked that particular nut.
He’s also written about the role
of CCTV and surveillance in today’s Big Brother world, the sometimes fraught
relationship between rap and juvenile crime, football hooliganism, and the
sociocultural legacy of Britain’s most notorious serial killer – the Yorkshire
Ripper.
All in all, Dan’s work has been
translated into four languages: French, Hebrew, Korean and Turkish. He has
presented guest lectures at international conferences and appeared on BBC Radio
and ITV News in addition to providing expert commentary for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
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