New Friends Old Enemies

Jeff Dowson

Description

Spring 1950. Sergeant Major Ed Grover's liaison job in Bristol is intended to create new friends and make new connections. But the death of missing GI Bradley Parsons throws everything out of joint. The city Constabulary wants to investigate the business. The US army wants the body back. Grover re-connects with KC Zoe Easton and her legal firm, but slides into conflict with the police Serious Crimes Team. And in the process, comes up against second string gangster Rodney Pride, and Maltese club owner Daniel Zampa - the city's crime supremo. Events spiral out of control. The new Special Relationship comes under fire. And Grover finds himself caught in the 'no man's land' between friends and foes.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Diamond Crime Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 07 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781915649119
• Langue: English

Extrait

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Dowson began his career working in the theatre as an actor and a director specialising in productions of contemporary British and European playwrights.
From there he moved into television, and after early Channel 4 commissions he became an independent writer/producer/director. Screen credits include arts series, entertainment features, drama documentaries, drama series and TV films.
 
Turning crime novelist in 2014, he introduced Bristol private eye Jack Shepherd in Closing the Distance . The series developed with Changing the Odds , Cloning the Hate and Bending the Rules .
The Ed Grover series, set in Bristol in the years following World War 2, opened in 2018 with One Fight At A Time .
Born in northeast England Jeff now lives in Bristol. He is a member of BAFTA and the Crime Writers Association.
 
Visit: www.jeffdowson.co.uk
 
 
Published in Great Britain in 2021
 
by
DIAMOND CRIME
 
ISBN 978-1-915649-11-9
 
 
Copyright © 2021 Jeff Dowson
 
The right of Jeff Dowson to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
 
All rights reserved.
 
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher,
nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published.
 
 
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
 
 
Diamond Crime
is an imprint of Diamond Publishing Ltd.
 
 
Thanks to…
 
 
 
John Bone for his help in photographic research.
 
Peter Nash for reading the manuscript
 
Staff at Bristol Central Library
 
All at Diamond Crime for their enthusiasm and support
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                            Book Cover Design
by
Jackson Bone
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Cover photograph of King Square in Bristol used under licence from
the
REECE WINSTONE ARCHIVE
 
 
 
 
Also by Jeff Dowson
 
 
 
The Jack Shepherd Thrillers
 
Closing the Distance
Changing the Odds
Cloning the Hate
Bending the Rules
 
 
The Ed Grover Series
 
One Fight At A Time
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For information about authors and other books published by
DIAMOND CRIME
 
visit www.diamondbooks.co.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For Mary
Simply the best…
 
 
 
 
 
NEW FRIENDS
OLD ENEMIES
 
 
 
 
PRELUDE
 
 
The banner headline on the front page of the Bristol Evening Post roared Thou Shalt Not Kill . The copy underneath was lean and chilling…
The Prison Chaplain read the Bible to Ruby Willis at 8.40am. Fifteen minutes later, he watched as Mr Pierrepoint led her into the scaffold cell and closed the door. At noon Ruby was lowered into her grave, while the Prison Governor watched and the Chaplain read the burial service – all present, and indeed all of us not there, complicit in the breaking of the 6 th Commandment.
Ruby Willis was hanged at 9 o’clock on the morning of April 1 st 1950. There were demonstrators and onlookers in equal measure outside the gaol. The former, supporting the campaign to repeal capital punishment; the latter, determined to be there as the law exacted revenge on the city’s notorious ‘Goodtime Girl.’
The following Monday, a packed house at the ABC Cinema on Whiteladies Road watched enthralled as Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame lit up the screen, in the tense melodrama In A Lonely Place , providing enough electricity to power the whole suburb. Those who turned up for the entire programme, watched the Movietone News pictures of the crowd outside the South Gloucester prison four days earlier, listening in cold satisfaction to the narration.
The life of Ruby Willis was the stuff of which headlines were made – ‘Exotic and Shameless’ according to The News of the World . She was a model, executed for the murder of her lover, Bristol club owner Ronald Eaves. Her lawyer implored Ruby to plead temporary insanity. To which she simply responded, “I took Ronnie’s life. I don’t want you to save mine . ” Lord Chief Justice Bannerman told the Jury that Ruby’s defence was ‘essentially non-existent’. He instructed the twelve good men and true to ignore the extreme abuse dealt out by Eaves, the assault which resulted in a miscarriage, and her poor mental health, as ‘according to the law of the land this is no defence.’
She was shown no mercy. Petitions signed by thousands of people were ignored by the Home Office. Ruby Willis went to her death alone, save for the presence of half a dozen civil servants. There was no one to grieve for her.
* * *
The same day, in Aero Shop 1 at Filton, the launch of the latest Marshall Plan scheme was as ritzy as rationed Bristol could manage. With help from a huge chunk of American dollars, Filton boffins were about to start making jet engines for Gloster Javelins. The whole workforce, most of Bristol Chamber of Commerce, local worthies and faces, and a swathe of USAF 3 and 4 Star Generals, were invited to the bash.
There were speeches, toasts, steak, and fruit and cream. Everyone agreed that the future glowed with promise.

 
 
CHAPTER ONE
 
 
Sam Nicholson was red-faced, heavily built and around five feet eight. Leader of the City Council, business man, fixer and long-time fence; he was sitting alone in the office he shared with the Mayor .
Bristol Council House stood on the corner of what remained of Broad Street and Corn Street. The building was flanked by a series of huge craters, some of them partly filled by the debris they had disgorged when hit by the Luftwaffe. Miraculously, the big, bold Victorian edifice built in the 1830s, had stayed upright, while the buildings around it had crumbled under the onslaught of incendiary bombs, and later, subsidence.
No longer scarred by rubble and bombed out buildings, simply full of gaps and holes where the buildings had been, the city was broke. And the question which now paralysed all council action and stifled debate was - new homes or restored places of business? Pre-fabricated houses were going up at a miserably slow rate. Something close to twenty percent of the city’s population was still bivouacking in the spare rooms of relatives, straining even the best of family relationships. The problem was clear as day; people needed homes. But even pre-fabs cost money. And no money was available, because city centre business had no place to work, and the council was earning no revenue.
Sam Nicholson had worked hard to get the red plush upholstery under his arse. He was too old to be called up in 1940. So, he stayed in Bristol and kept his home fire burning, with some advantage to himself. Today however, he was not in the sunniest of moods. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his comb-over and scratched his scalp. He could always smell trouble, and right now, the hair in his nostrils was standing on end. He needed to make some calls, but it was best not to do so from the office.
As if on cue, the phone on his desk rang. He picked up the receiver and immediately panicked.
“Why the fuck did you call me here?” He listened for a second or two. “He’s what?... Slowly, slowly...” His eyes popped and his facial muscles began to twitch. Explanation over, he said, “Alright. This is no fucking way to do business.” He listened again. “No…” Then yelled into the mouthpiece. “No no no, leave me to deal with this.”
He slammed the receiver down and stared across the room. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.”
He got up out of his chair, grabbed his jacket from the bentwood coat stand near the door and left the office.       
Since the war, a series of one-way traffic systems devised to make journeys across the city smoother, had grown like Topsy. But Bristol traffic had never been speedy before the blitz, and now the Highways Department was baffled and desperate. A smaller lobby than the citizens who had no roofs over their heads, Nicholson mused, but a bunch of irritating fuckers nonetheless. It took him half an hour to get to Albert Vale. And less than a minute to feel his gorge rising. He parked, got out of the Rover and fell to considering, yet again, what the hell Rodney Pride was doing to repay the city council’s generosity.
Albert Vale had been a community of tiny terraced houses, bordering narrow streets to the south of Temple Meads Station, until January 3 rd 1941. That night, the Luftwaffe launched an eight-hour onslaught on the city. Two bombers overshot their targets and dumped one hundred kilos of high explosive on the citizens of Albert Vale. Now the area was a flattened fifteen acres of rough, stony land, ringed by a chain link fence.
Rodney Pride had persuaded the council to sell him three acres for ‘light industrial’ use. The fantasy with which he magicked the City Planning Department promised a mini industrial park of warehouses, car workshops and small manufacturing sheds. He must have crooned better than Perry Como during his hour in the council chamber, because he got the three acres for a song. As yet, unsurprisingly, there was no development; save for the newly built headquarters of Prides Rides. A garage with offices above it, another alongside, and enough space on the site to park 30 cars.
At the window of his office, Pride grinned as he watched Nicholson muttering to himself. He waved as the Council Leader looked up at him from the tarmac.
Pride was short and wore shoes with lifts. By the most generous of opinions he was no oil painting. Ginger haired, with huge eyebrows, his teeth were uneven and he had a pronounced over-bite. To compensate for all this, he had bullied his way through life. Unmarried and never to be the first choice of an