Knock Knock Man

Russell Mardell

Description

Who is The Knock-Knock Man?A ghost, a killer, or simply a creepy urban legend?It is a question that haunts disgraced police officer, Ali Davenport, months after the devastating case that changedher life. Now, after the death of her former colleague, Ernie, Ali must uncover the truth about a past that won't stay buried.Found in the disused office building where he worked, Ernie's death seems to be an open-and-shut case. But not everyone is convinced. Wild stories abound about a supernatural presence that might have attacked Ernie that fateful night. Reluctantly, Ali agrees to take on Ernie's night shifts to debunk the story; an easy enough job, if you don't believe in ghosts. But then Ali meets Will, a teenage ghost hunter who claims to have evidence on film...As the mystery unfolds, Ali is forced to face the question of The Knock-Knock Man one last time. But what Ali doesn't know is The Knock-Knock Man has already been watching her for a very long time...

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839784750
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Also by Russell Mardell
Cold Calling
Darkshines Seven
Bleeker Hill
Stone Bleeding
Silent Bombs Falling on Green Grass
Russell Mardell
The Knock- Knock Man
If you hear him it may already be too late
Published by RedDoor www.reddoorpress.co.uk
© 2022 Russell Mardell
The right of Russell Mardell to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Patrick Knowles
Typesetting: Jen Parker, Fuzzy Flamingo www.fuzzyflamingo.co.uk
For Dad
Knock! Knock!
Don’t look him in the eye
Run! Hide!
Or you may die
Knock! Knock!
Don’t take his hand
He will lead you to hell
This is the devil’s land
(Children’s rhyme, circa 1970s. Orig. Chillman Grove)
Prologue
The problem was, the boy had said that he had seen a ghost. Where do you go from there? That was the question that Ernie kept returning to as his life slowly ebbed away.
Perhaps if the boy hadn’t told Ali about The Knock-Knock Man, and had Ali not then told Ernie, then the face they had seen that night in the woods could have been put down to a vivid imagination. Maybe the whole sorry mess could have ended at the Deveraux estate with the zip of body bags.
Maybe.
But the boy, Jake, months dead himself now, had said what he had said, and then Ali and Ernie had seen what they had seen. There was no going back after that. That moment wasn’t an ending to the awful events at Lord Deveraux’s estate; it was the start of a whole new story, and now that Ernie had the truth of that night, it seemed it was time for him to bow out, bent and broken on a dirty linoleum floor.
He barely gave his own demise any thought at all. His life hadn’t flashed before his eyes as he fell, and even now, as he lay prone on the floor, it all felt slightly ridiculous to him. He could sense his right leg jutting out to the side at an impossible angle, as shattered as his back, but he couldn’t turn his head to look. He was sure the wetness seeping from his left ear was blood, but he couldn’t move a hand to wipe it away. The tip of the index finger on his right hand was motionless against the cracked screen of his mobile phone. He wondered if the call had connected before the phone broke. He wondered if Ali could hear him breathing his last.
His vision was blurring now, images seemed overlaid and distorted. The blackness of the building rising above him held back a myriad of shapes, but occasionally they drifted and bloomed out of the shadows, and if he looked long enough, hard enough, those shapes would be figures, and those figures would all become the same person.
He thought of two more things before he died. He thought of his dear friend, Ali, and his guilt at not telling her the truth of that night when he had the chance. More than anything, he wished he had done that. Not to give her closure, at least not anymore, but to give her a warning. Then, before darkness drew down, and Ernie finally let go, another thought came to him as soft as a whisper. It was the same thought he’d had every day for the last fifteen months.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
It seemed a little stupid now.
Contents
Also by Russell Mardell
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Russell Mardell
Chapter 1
The past is sneaky; it tries to creep back in through the gaps we leave in our present.
Ali Davenport’s counsellor had said a lot of things like that to her over the eight sessions they’d had together and, bargain basement philosophy though it may have been, that particular piece of wisdom had hit a little close. That she had spent the whole hour being pushed back to that terrible night fifteen months ago hadn’t helped; being reminded of those awful mistakes she had made that had stripped her of everything she had always wanted to be, sending the bones of her life tumbling away, only to end up here. London.
You’re a fugitive from your own life, Ali.
He’d said that too, and on that he was probably right as well. Having escaped from a town that seemed to know your every move, a place where your history was etched into every expression you wore, and your secrets were never buried deep enough, London was the perfect place to run away to. London made it easier to be invisible.
Usually.
Ali had felt the little girl’s eyes on her from the moment she and her mother had got on the tube at Tottenham Court Road. Ali had returned the look, fleetingly, and had found the little girl a smile from an old and dusty place. The girl didn’t return it.
Ali looked away, feigning interest in the shoes of the lady opposite her, and then at the dried chewing gum on the floor, her left hand now at her face, index finger rubbing at her eyebrow as the palm shielded the ugly semicircular scar around her left eye. She turned her attention to the adverts just above the window then, as the girl continued to stare, a smiling man was making an irresistible offer, a very pretty woman was telling you how she did it. Slogans were shouting, faces were cartoon and empty, dead behind the eyes. Someone had put a sticker across one poster, which read: The World is Upside Down. Please shake after use . Euston came and went, and then as Camden Town became Kentish Town the girl and her mother gathered their bags and left the carriage.
Ali settled back in her seat and became invisible again.
Leaves danced around her boots, the sharp November wind setting a frantic tempo as Ali walked the tree-lined residential streets of Highgate. Evening stole in all around her, curtains were drawn and streetlights flickered on. She pulled her coat more tightly around her body and quickened her pace. An old poppy seller was still diligently standing his spot on Muswell Hill Broadway and Ali fed some coins into his tin and took a poppy, pinning it to the lapel of her coat. The man offered his thanks and said she was a kind young lady. Ali informed him that she was forty and then carried on walking, head down.
The raggedy, battle-scarred ginger tomcat that had been visiting Ali for the past month was sitting on the windowsill of her ground floor flat, cleaning itself. It sprang to life at the sound of her boots on the pathway and slinked up to greet her with a cat’s casual coolness. The man who had been perched on the windowsill next to it followed a moment later.
‘Hello, Ali.’
DC Frank Gage was a man whose every word seemed to be delivered on the end of a laugh. It was a trait that had annoyed Ali since the first day Gage had transferred to New Salstone. Gage went in for a half-hug and they ended up bumping shoulders. She gently pushed him away.
‘Ernie?’ Ali asked.
‘You’ve heard?’
‘Two weeks, Frank. Two weeks! No one thinks to tell me?’
‘It was your decision to fall off the grid.’
‘You could have found me. You could have tried.’ Ali stared back at her old colleague for the first time in months; Gage’s impeccable beard and hair, his short, compact frame bound up in the famous white linen suit jacket that he always seemed to wear, whatever the weather, were all still in place. Yet Frank Gage looked different somehow, like a caricature, an approximation of the man she used to know. ‘Thanks for the personal touch, Frank. But a phone call would have done. Sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’
‘That’s not why I’m here. I need your help.’
‘Things must be bad.’
Gage gave a weak smile and nodded towards the house. ‘Could use a cup of tea as well.’
The smell of weed was thick in the communal hall; Steph in the first flat was clearly home. Across the hall, Archie was playing his old 78s again, big band stuff usually, but today something a little jazzier, a little filthier. The cat took them across the hall, and then under the small archway next to the stairs, down the narrow corridor at the back of the house that had necessitated Ali bringing her meagre furniture in through the window, and then they were at the door to her flat.
Every time Ali walked into her poky one-bedroom flat it felt smaller. Jen, who had helped Ali find it, had called it a flat – a garden flat, no less – but really it was little more than a bedsit hiding in some creative wording. It didn’t help the sense of creeping claustrophobia that Ali rarely cleaned, that her belongings were piled high on three shelves and the dining table, and that she never put her fold-out bed back against the wall, but still that room – her pathetic world – was one small place. And now it stank of cat.
‘How have you been?’ Gage moved a couple of dirty T-shirts from Ali’s bed and gingerly took a seat on the edge. His sad gaze around the room gave more of an answer than her non-committal grunt.
A sun-bleached and creased photo of a much younger Ali was Blu-Tacked to the wall next to the bed. She was standing on a beach, smiling wide and bright for the camera, a fake plastic police helmet at a slant on her head, a crudely mocked-up warrant card in her hand, held up in front of her. Her father knelt at her side, flashing his o