Creatures of the Chase - Yusuf

L. M. Ollie

Description

Legally she was Sarah Develin Capritzo but very few people knew the truth. It really didn't matter since both Sarah's husbands were dead; the first of a heart attack; the second ... well, he was murdered. That's a truth too and no one knew it better than Sarah herself since she was the one who killed him. Twenty-one years of age with two young sons, she was mistress of Cavendish Hall and fabulously wealthy. The thought of marrying again never occurred to her until she met Yusuf Nessim Sarquazi under extraordinary circumstances; circumstances as extraordinary as he was and the country he called home – Morocco.

This is a novel packed full of history and exotic travel, customs and culture. An improbable love story that is both fast paced and riveting; the action takes place in Southern Ireland, Massachusetts and Morocco. Be in for a few surprises though, because this is a novel populated by a remarkable cast of characters that will amuse one moment, astound the next then leave you horrified.

Creatures of the Chase –Yusuf – Book Two: the second of a quartet.

Sujets

• Travel
• Morocco
• North
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 03 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780473184643
• Langue: English

Extrait

Creatures of the Chase
BOOK TWO
 
Yusuf
 
 
by
L.M. Ollie
 
 


Author’s Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
 
eBook published in 2011
ISBN: 978-0-473-18464-3
 
 
Copyright © 1996-2011 by L. M. Ollie
Email : [e-mail]
 
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by Taheke Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
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 permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 
L.M. Ollie has asserted her right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act to be identified as the author of this work.
 


Also by the same Author
 
Thirteen at Dinner
A play about King Richard the Third of England 1452-1485
ISBN: 978-0-473-18356-1
 
On the Trail of King Richard III
ISBN: 978-0-473-18310-3
Reputed to be the most concise and historically accurate rendering of the life and times of King Richard III set within the confines of an intelligently written, exciting and frequently amusing storyline.
 
Creatures of the Chase
Book One – Richard
ISBN 978-0-473-18463-6
 
Creatures of the Chase
Book Three - Mikail
ISBN: 978-0-473-18462-9
 
*****
 
Creatures of the Chase
Book Four - Sarah
 


Dedication
 
 
To my Mother
How she would have loved Yusuf
 
Part One
 
Man is the hunter; woman is his game:
The sleek and shining Creatures of the Chase,
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
They love us for it, and we ride them down.
 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson – The Princess
 
1
 
I will find where truth is hid
‘Though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.
 
Shakespeare - Hamlet
 
BOSTON, Massachusetts
August 14th, 1981
 
‘Goddamn it!’ Victor Yakinchuk growled as the unmistakable stench of canned tuna fish wafted upwards from the depths of his lunch bag, assaulting and insulting him simultaneously. He hated tuna fish but his wife Carol kept packing it and he kept throwing it out.
 
‘You’d think that after twelve years of marriage you’d have learned by now.’
 
He tossed the sandwich into the waste container beside his desk. It landed at the bottom, producing a dull squishing thud. He frowned. Twelve years - thirteen in November. Nearly thirteen years into a life sentence married to a woman he no longer loved, if indeed he had ever loved her. ‘Marry in haste, regret at leisure,’ he muttered aloud, thankful that he was alone in his office.
 
He looked hopefully back inside the brown paper bag only this time he didn’t bother pulling the contents out. A dead-ripe banana and store-bought cookies quickly followed the sandwich.
 
For some inexplicable reason he thought of his wedding day, conjuring up the image like a rabbit out of a hat. Abracadabra, please and thank you.
 
Carol was halfway up the aisle when near panic set in. Dreamlike he imagined himself plunging out of the vestry door into the cold of a November morning and running like hell, hoping that her father would never find him to remind him, yet again, that Carol was pregnant by him and what was he going to do about it. Instead he had stood there trapped inside one of the oldest and most successful snares known to mankind or to be more precise, womankind.
 
She had smiled at him as she came ever closer, her condition exaggerated by the twenty-five pounds she had already put on in preparation for forty more before Kenny was born. Victor assumed of course that she would lose the weight, but she didn’t. By their fifth wedding anniversary Carol had nearly doubled her original size and was pregnant again. That was a mistake on Vic’s part since the act had more to do with need than want although he wasn’t cruel enough to tell her that. He had sat and listened politely as her doctor described in detail her compulsive personality, while wondering all the while why she was compulsive towards food while leaving housekeeping, clean kids and a proper meal on the table out of the equation.
 
Strikingly attractive, slender and athletic with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, Victor Yakinchuk’s easy-going extroversion cloaked a darker side which was particularly useful in his line of work - homicide. So expert was he at solving murders that he was beginning to formulate one of his own and guess who the victim would be?
 
At thirty-five he was beginning to think that life was passing him by but at that precise moment it was about to take a very sharp detour into a world beyond imagining.
 
He looked up to find his partner Neil Perry leaning against the doorframe, smiling that ludicrous smile Yakinchuk hated almost as much as his wife’s sandwiches.
 
‘Tuna fish again, eh?’
 
‘Piss off Perry.’
 
‘I’ve got some news for you Vic.’
 
‘Yeah, what?’
 
‘Remember that Irishman you had a run in with awhile back?’
 
‘Develin?’
 
‘Yeah, that’s the one. Thought you’d like to know, Maggie O’Shea just told me he’s dead.’
 
Yakinchuk blinked. ‘What?’
 
‘Natural causes apparently. She’s got a copy of the obit so why don’t you go and have a chat with her. Be in for a surprise though when you mention the name because according to Maggie, Develin’s old man murdered her brother.’
 
*****
 
Yakinchuk watched as Maggie O’Shea pushed the last slice of pie into place behind the glass doors. ‘Neil said you might be popping in Victor.’ She turned and offered him a ghost of a smile set in a face that had known more sadness than anything else in her fifty-eight years. Slowly she pulled the obituary out from inside the pocket of a cheap cotton import of a dress almost lost behind a starched white apron. ‘He’s dead and I’m not one bit sorry for the hearing of it.’
 
‘Did you know him Maggie?’ Yakinchuk asked, bewildered by the depth of her enmity.
 
‘Aye, when he was a lad but already showin’ the signs.’
 
‘Signs; what signs?’
 
‘Of the curse and the evil that circles it, generation after generation.’ Quickly Yakinchuk scanned the obituary. ‘If you’re looking for heirs,’ she hissed, ‘they’ll not be spoken of though they exist, close to their mother’s breast; protected by the she-wolf what birthed them.’
 
‘Maggie look, I understand that maybe you…’
 
‘You understand nothing, not while you are here in this part of the world. But there … there it is different. There where my brother Drover lies in an unmarked grave in unhallowed ground. There where my sister Maureen lived out her days in a world of her own imagining. He is gone but in time two will take his place.’
 
‘Two?’
 
‘Sure there’ll be two. Brothers so close in age to be like twins with at least one with pale, pale eyes sharp as death itself.’ She cupped her hand then swept it across his chest. ‘Sharp enough to cut a soul clean of its body.’
 
Yakinchuk swallowed hard as he remembered Develin’s eyes. ‘Maggie, ah … it says he died quietly at his home. Where is that?’
 
‘Houses aplenty he has but home, there is only one - Cavendish Hall.’
 
Yakinchuk reeled back as if hit violently in the face . ‘But that’s where … holy shit!
 
‘Maggie, the mother of these kids; who might she be?’
 
‘You will know her if you should see her. Wild she’ll be with raging green eyes and hair the colour of fire. She will bear his name though their union is of the devil. Beware of her for it is very like she has killed once already and will do so again if needs must.’
 
‘Tell me about the curse,’ he urged, but she shook her head slowly.
 
‘It can’t be spoken of, but come to me here tomorrow and I will give you the words of Peter the Anchorite, written just before he was burned alive with the church around him.’
 
*****
 
Yakinchuk thought about returning to his office after talking with Maggie but instead he wandered outside too amazed by what he had heard to be able to concentrate on anything.
 
… the curse and the evil that circles it, generation after generation.
 
… burned alive with the church around him.
 
… home, there is only one - Cavendish Hall.
 
‘Where Capritzo died,’ he muttered, appalled by what had to be more than a mere coincidence.
 
‘Beware of her for it is very like she has killed once already and will do so again if needs must.’
 
Yakinchuk leapt up from the picnic bench where he had come to rest. Minutes later he was in a taxi heading into the very heart of Boston.
 
Try as he might he couldn’t stop remembering that day – was it really only three years ago – and the investigation into the death of Susan Kojak. The memory rose, took hold and solidified. The traffic, the buildings, the people beyond the taxi’s window disappeared to be replaced in his mind’s eye with the image of Richard Develin.
 
He was standing near the booking desk waiting for Carl Emery to be released. In his hand was a brown envelope containing Emery’s personal affects. Yakinchuk stared at him through the glass panel which separated his office from the more general area; an area not normally available to the public.
 
Develin was immaculately dressed in a three piece suit. His shoes looked right out of the box. Yakinchuk judged him to be six feel tall; mid-forties. His hair was jet black, drawn straight back and lightly oiled. He had about him that aristocratic bearing one would associate with royalty; wealth, privilege, class. As casual as his manner seemed, he was taking in everything around him; of that Yakinchuk was certain. As certain as he was when Develin’s eyes shifted suddenly to focus directly on him. Yakinchuk felt his heart constrict as Develin’s eyes seemed to narrow like a predator’s might when it has selected its prey.
 
‘Her