Remains of the Living

Ian Church

Description

Nick Paice is a newsman who has seen and had better times. Covering conflicts and disasters around the world brought its success, but at a heavy personal price. Being one of the best in the business was achieved by a ruthless and often callous pursuit of the story that left ruined reputations and broken lives, not to mention a wrecked marriage and estranged children, in its alcoholic wake.Disillusionment has set in. The world of news is changing, and, for Paice, not for the better. Can he change with it and does he want to? With his enthusiasm on the wane, the stories have stopped coming. But the job is his life, and his life is the job. He needs a big break to get them both back on track. When it comes it is in the form of a mysterious figure with a bloodstained past and a tale that could put Paice back on top. The passion for news that made him the best is rekindled and the old fervour returns.Paice is bad at making friends and good at making enemies. A multi-millionaire fraudster, former Irish terrorists, and a genocidal killer from an African conflict count themselves among the latter. Only when the body count rises and the bullets fly does Paice realise that he may be pursuing a headline to die for.This is a story of financial fraud, old enemies out to settle scores, a covert military operation that went wrong, and powerful people determined to stop Paice revealing the truth at any cost. But will Paice find himself back on the front page - or in the morgue?

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 13 juin 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843960881
• Langue: English

Extrait

Published in the United
Kingdom by Fulmar Publishing

Copyright © 2013 Ian Church

Ian Church has asserted his
Right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified
as the copyright holder of this work.

ISBN-13 978-1-84396-088-1

A CIP catalogue record
for this ebook is available
from the British Library.

ePub ebook production
www.ebookversions.com

The characters, places and events
described in this novel are entirely
fictional and figments of the author s
imagination. The people, places and
organisations described do not exist.
The presence of names that are shared by
living persons or actual organisations is
the result of unintended coincidence.

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in
or introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means
electronic, photomechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Any person who does any unauthorised act
in relation to this publication may be liable
to criminal and/or civil prosecution.
Dedication


This book is dedicated to four
remarkable women in my life - Christine,
Nicola, Ellie and Isabel - and to Joe.
Their combined encouragement and
inspiration were essential in enabling me
to write it.

I express my sincerest thanks
also to Steve and to Zoe - without whose
support, expertise and generosity this
novel would be a pointless file cluttering
up my hard drive. I wrote it - but without
all the aforementioned, you would not
be reading it now.
THE
REMAINS OF THE
LIVING


Ian Church





FULMAR PUBLISHING
Contents


Cover
Copyright Credits
Dedication

Title Page
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
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Prologue


In the darkened corner of the room, from the turntable drifted the closing bars of Erroll Garner s tranquillising interpretation of Skylark . The vinyl disc was feeling its age, the sound having degraded noticeably, perhaps inevitably, in some slurred passages after thousands - or could it be millions? - of revolutions.
He had tried for another copy, but the only record shop now remaining - a relic with not much of a future, much like its ageing customers - offered no hope of success. Terry, the proprietor, unshaven as usual, was wearing a soup-stained T-shirt boasting of a rock concert he had attended 10 years before. The details were long forgotten in a haze of sweet smelling, musky smoke. He had shaken his head as he turned the sleeve back and forth. You won t get that for love or money. Sorry.
He wasn t.
Then, as an afterthought: Perhaps they ve put it on CD.
His response to Terry was a look of disappointment tinged with disdain. A CD? He admired Garner, who had avoided the inconvenience of an academic education and instead pursued his musical genius. Paradoxically, having used his hands - fists to be precise - in the ring to beat his subject into submission, he had then laid them on a piano keyboard gently to coax and seduce it into producing those soothing and magical sounds.
When he handled the LP, he sensed a direct connection with Garner, felt the lifeblood of the music flow into his fingers. It was all there, captured on that glossy, black plastic disc. It was beyond science to commit the meaning and emotion it conveyed to the sterile and lifeless mechanics of a cold, metal, digital product with its flashing lights and gimmicks. Might as well print the Mona Lisa on a beer mat and expect to be just as entranced by that enigmatic smile while you poured a pint down your throat. The medium must respect the artists and their art, and, somehow, a circular piece of aluminium could not do that. At least, that was his view.
Anyway, what did Terry mean about love and money? Typical. Why did people rate them as the two big things in life? They all said it: You couldn t get that for love or money. So, if you can t get something for love or money, you are not going to get it.
Most people would go for one or the other. Probably most of them thought that anything worth having could be bought, especially people. Wealth brought privilege and opportunity. Women would queue up to shower you with their favours. Fawning yes-men would flock around you hoping for a few crumbs. Yeah, if that was your thing, money was the answer. Money could get you anything you wanted. You win millions on the lottery and your troubles are over. Sure, money s powerful. Money talks. But people forget that what can talk can lie.
What do you want? To be happy? Money says: I can do that for you. That s a lie. To be free of worry? Money claims: I can give you that. Another lie. Good health? The cemeteries had plenty of headstones for the millionaires who had learnt the bitter truth of that one.
Money was too slick, too plausible. It promised but it didn t deliver. So it talked and it promised. And it talked big and it promised lots. And just like people, it let you down. But it did a lot more besides. It perverted, it corrupted and it destroyed. That was obvious from what people were prepared to do to get it.
Perhaps love and money went together. His worst moves had come from ditching loyalty, dedication, commitment, principles and belief and doing something for love or money. They were similar in some ways. They both built you up and then left you to crash down. There was nothing half so sweet as love s young dream, the poet said. But when sweet turned bitter and you awoke from the dream to an emotional nightmare, you were left with a rage and a raft of regrets. Love, like money, perverted, corrupted and destroyed. At least, it did when it took control, pushed suckers to do things that, in their right minds, they would never contemplate. And it certainly did when it turned sour.
He sipped his drink, drew on the cigarette and blew smoke towards the ceiling, watching it evaporate into the darkness. The record player had lapsed into silence. He certainly knew all about love turning sour. He d watched it cross that very thin dividing line on to the territory marked hate.
Amor vincit omnia. Yeah, love sure does conquer all, especially common sense. It certainly pushes rational thought into the back seat. When love is racing round your head like some demented dog chasing its tail, what chance do you have to think straight? Like money, it promised but it didn t deliver.
He hummed a tune and mentally ran through the words that claimed that love is the sweetest thing. People too often made the mistake of falling for that old tripe and it made them drop their guard. One day you are light-headed with excitement. Your heart can t seem to beat fast enough. Every time you think of her you get short of breath. The next thing you know, it s all gone wrong and you feel like your guts have been ripped out.
Love should come with a health warning. And if it s songs that get you through the day, how about the one that says you always hurt the one you love? And if you d hurt the one you love, what would you do to them when, blinded by scalding tears, you stumbled over that line and your love turned to hate?
Anyway, a big part of love was possession - you are mine, you belong to me. That s when it started getting really nasty. Particularly when someone else came along and took what you reckoned was yours. That s when love started to corrupt and destroy. Far from being the route to happiness, it became a malevolent force driving you down the highway to hate.
So, without the power of love or money you can t get it? Oh yes you can. Try using something with real muscle. Try something he knew a great deal about. Try fear. Fear made people do things they would never do for love or money. Frighten someone enough and they would give you their money. Terrify them enough and watch them betray the ones they loved. Not me, they would say. I could never do that. He had news for them: yes, you could - in the grip of blind terror you would do it.
People betrayed their loved ones for a lot less. A quick fondle at the office party with that bimbo from accounts that your wife has always accused you of fancying - that s betrayal. And after a few more drinks, you ll want more than a fondle - a lot more. That s real betrayal. And what s happened to love in that distasteful little episode? It s been trampled in the rush, that s what. And if a bloke is so genetically weak that he would do that to satisfy a bit of lust, think what fear would make him do when someone was about to tear his dick off with a pair of rusty pliers or burn his eye out with a blowtorch.
There were always exceptions. There were those - very few - for whom no amount of money and not even the greatest fear would induce them to betray and desert. They would never sell out or bail out. Well, that was not him. He knew that not because he had ever been offered a bribe - well, nothing to merit serious consideration. But fear - yes, he had known fear and now he had to live with the thought of what it had made him do.
Never judge another bloke s courage until you ve felt fear turn your guts to a bubbling soup and the shit has poured out of your bowels like water out of a drainpipe. He knew. For him, fear was a demon that sat watching him f