Numbers

Ewan Scott

Description

Just another day on the traffic-choked London motorway.Until someone turns up dead near the M25, slumped behind the wheel of a car, a bag tied over his head. A list of seemingly random numbers tucked under the wipers. And the killer's signature: a child's toy left on the back seat.The press call him the Road Ripper - a vigilante who hunts reckless drivers on the M25. This is victim number six.DCI Arthur Law and rookie DS Ellie Buckland race to decipher the clues before the Road Ripper strikes again. But he's always one step - and one murder - ahead. What exactly is this brutal killer trying to say? How many more people have to die? One thing is for sure: he's not going to stop until he gets what he wants.The Numbers is the first book in a series featuring DCI Law and DS Buckland.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 26 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781843965657
• Langue: English

Extrait

Published in the UK by Eye Write Publishing

Copyright © 2019 Ewan Scott

All rights reserved

Ewan Scott has asserted his right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 to be identified as the author
of this work

ISBN 978-1-84396-565-7

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.

Ebook production
eBook Versions
27 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AX
www.ebookversions.com
Contents


Cover
Copyright Credits
About the Book
About the Author

Title Page
Epigraph
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
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty

Acknowledgements
About the Book


Just another day on the traffic-choked London motorway.

Until someone turns up dead near the M25, slumped behind the wheel of a car, a bag tied over his head. A list of seemingly random numbers tucked under the wipers. And the killer's signature: a child's toy left on the back seat.

The press call him the Road Ripper-a vigilante who hunts reckless drivers on the M25. This is victim number six.

DCI Arthur Law and rookie DS Ellie Buckland race to decipher the clues before the Road Ripper strikes again. But he's always one step-and one murder—ahead. What exactly is this brutal killer trying to say? How many more people have to die? One thing is for sure: he's not going to stop until he gets what he wants.

The Numbers is the first book in a series featuring DCI Law and DS Buckland.
About the Author


Ewan Scott is the pseudonym of a Scottish medical practitioner living in the south of England. He loves sailing, scuba and Systema. At various stages of his life he s worked as barman, truck loader, pathologist and ophthalmic surgeon. He went to medical school in Glasgow and has worked in Glasgow, Dundee, Nottingham, Amsterdam, and London as well as the Gold Coast of Australia, Barbados and Brunei.

His influences include Ed McBain, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Henry Chang, Janet Evanovich, Gordon Ferris, Tess Gerritsen, Thomas Harris, Dashiell Hammett, Peter May, Denise Mina, Adrian McKinty, Craig Robertson, James Robertson, Craig Russell, and Ian Rankin.

Throughout his career he has written for medical journals and textbooks, but has wanted to be a fiction writer since reading Robin Cook s Coma in one sitting when he should have been in lectures.

His anthology of short stories, Seven Shorts , is also published as an ebook. The Numbers is his debut novel. Featuring DCI Arthur Law and DS Ellie Buckland of the Metropolitan Police, it was first published by Bastei Luebbe in German and English but the English version is now only available in this ebook edition.

He is currently working on the Law and Buckland sequels, and a standalone thriller, Flightpath , featuring aircraft accident investigator Dr Julia Vaughan.
THE
NUMBERS

A Law and Buckland Thriller


Ewan Scott





Eye Write Publishing
EPIGRAPH


In 1885 Karl Benz constructed the first automobile.
It had three wheels, like an invalid car,
And ran on alcohol, like many drivers.
Since then about seventeen million people have been killed by them
In an undeclared war...
Autogeddon by Heathcote Williams

I have to admit: I was developing an unhealthy obsession with the M25, London s orbital motorway. The dull silvertop that acts as a prophylactic between driver and landscape. Was this grim necklace, opened by Margaret Thatcher on 29 October 1986, the true perimeter fence? Did the conceptual ha-ha mark the boundary of whatever could be called London? Or was it a tourniquet, sponsored by the Department of Transport and the Highways Agency, to choke the living breath from the metropolis?
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair

This week, however, I found a woman coming up the A44 at 30 and I went beyond incandescence into a semi-catatonic state of pure rage. My blood turned to acid and fizzed. My heart was filled with hate. I very nearly followed her home, just so I could burn it down. But there wasn t time.
Don t Stop Me Now by Jeremy Clarkson

When Henry Lesser asked him: What s your racket? Panzram smiled and replied: I reform people. When Lesser asked how, he replied: By killing them.
The Serial Killers by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman
PROLOGUE


The baby is looking at him with trust in her eyes.
Lau is standing with the baby in his left hand, a blowtorch in his right, and a gun to his head. He's got a gun to his head. Three bodyguards watch him, their faces impassive, their Heckler Koch automatic pistols pointed at his chest.
Lau is in a basement in Hong Kong. The guy smashing the gun into his temple is Danny Leung, a triad lieutenant. Lau has been undercover for nine months on the trail of the mythical Tai Huen Chai boss, Gideon Chang. Gideon s crew kidnap children and systematically burn and cripple them before putting them to work begging outside Hong Kong s MTR stations.
Danny Leung suspects that Lau is a cop. So he has ordered Lau to prove himself by burning the baby in his left hand with the blowtorch in his right.
Lau glances down at the baby.
Her forehead crinkles, and her eyes wander into focus on him.
I ll count to three, Leung says through gritted teeth. And then you die.
In one swift movement, Lau pulls the baby to his chest, swipes the gun aside, and thrusts the cobalt-blue flame of the blowtorch into Danny Leung s face. Leung screams and brings his hands to his eyes. Lau drops the blowtorch and grabs Danny Leung s gun with his free hand, still clutching the baby to his chest. Three double-taps, and the bodyguards go down. He twists his upper body, smashing an elbow spike into Leung s hand-covered face. He shoots him in the chest, twice. Leung collapses next to the bodyguards.
Lau checks for a pulse at the neck.
Nothing.
Lau threads his way through the maze of rooms in the basement and finds children in various stages of deformation. They shy away from him in their cages. He stares with horror at the accoutrements of their torture: blowtorches, bottles labelled muriatic acid , and a hideous collection of branding irons.
Lau finds a phone and calls it in. Waiting for backup, he retraces his steps to the room where he killed the bodyguards. They are crumpled on the floor where they fell.
Danny Leung, however, is gone without trace.
CHAPTER 1


Lenny Nelson was sure the car was following him.
As dread congealed in his gut, he wished he hadn t sharked in on the guy. Or he should have apologised by flashing his hazards or waving or doing that thing where you put two fingers like a gun barrel to your head so that the driver behind sees that you know you ve done something dumb.
But he hadn t shown any signs of remorse - and now the car he d cut up was definitely following him.
They d been queuing at the toll when it happened. He was distracted, thinking about his bloody father-in-law, who lived in Dubai and periodically breezed into London with the sole purpose of causing family arguments. Whenever he did, Trish expected Lenny to drop all his other commitments and meet for dinner in whatever unaffordable restaurant was fashionable this week. His next royal visit (tomorrow) had just been announced (today). Memo to self: he was going to stand up to him this time. Shit, the last time … yeah, the old bugger had the gall to order a bottle of Chateaux Recougne, for God s sake, two hundred quid a pop, leaving him to foot the bill as usual. You didn t refuse Trish; but he was going to stand up to her old man this time and, fuck it, he was in the longest bloody queue for the toll so he just switched lanes, no mirror check, no indicator, no nothing.
And that was when he heard the screech of tyres on tarmac as the car behind him shuddered to a halt. An inch to spare, maybe.
And so here he was, about five miles from home, wondering what to do because he was about to come off the motorway and onto the A-roads, and then they d be in deepest darkest Kent, with nobody around if this turned into a road rage incident.
They were coming up to an exit. Maybe he was imagining it. Maybe the guy would turn off the motorway.
Yes?
No.
He was closer now, if anything.
Options. He could continue as normal, or he could put his foot down. Yes, that was it. Friends might take the piss out of his job in insurance, but his car was a Mercedes E-Class Cabriolet, and he was pretty sure he could outrun a - what was the guy driving, anyway?
He studied the tailing car in the rear view mirror. It was non-descript; even the colour was difficult to identify.
He could phone the police. He reached out. His finger hovered over the call button on the central console. A non-descript car like that … Shit, what if the guy was police? He checked his speed and saw it was seventy-five. What was it they allowed? Ten percent over? So he could do up to seventy-seven without much chance of being boo