Carpenter road, p.1
Carpenter Road, page 1
Carpenter Road
A Leighton Jones Book
NM Brown
Contents
Also By NM Brown
Introduction
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
A Note from Bloodhound Books:
The Girl On The Bus
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2018 N.M Brown
The right of N.M. Brown to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Also By NM Brown
The Girl On The Bus
* * *
Toys In The Dust
Praise for NM Brown
"Anything but formulaic, the story is well planned and imaginative in its execution. It’s also riddled with believable characters whose actions are in keeping with the challenges and their personalities." Mark Wilson - Author
"This is a slick, well-written book that will capture your imagination and your heart." Shane Mc Guigan - Amazon Reviewer
"WOW!!! This is a five star page turner. I could not put this book down." Derek - Amazon Reviewer
"I highly recommend The Girl on the Bus for those looking for a fast, sinister, atmospheric read." Christine - Goodreads Reviewer
"Well written, full of tension and suspense this is a story that grabs you from the beginning and does not let up. Highly recommended." Lee - Goodreads Reviewer
"OMG where have you been Norman M Brown because you wore my goose bumps out!" Susan Hampson - Books From Dusk Till Dawn
For my children
Introduction
These events take place ten years before those of The Girl on the Bus.
Prologue
In the hour before her death, Sarah Kline had been squirming at the cluttered table for too long. She had been waiting for almost half an hour for the other members of the dinner party to finally finish eating their various main courses. Only then would she finally be free to excuse herself from the claustrophobic corner of the Beach House Café in the harbour area of Oceanside. The café was a relaxed place where surfers and tourists were equally welcome. On that particular Friday evening, some Sheryl Crowe song was playing in the background and bouncing off the various classic surfboards that were hanging from the ceiling.
All around Sarah people were tearing at burgers that were dripping with guacamole and ranch sauce. She, however, had stupidly skipped the main course, opting only for a side order. Her reason was purely financial – it was close to the end of the month and her bank balance would not extend to a main course and beers. If she had to choose, beer would be given greater priority. She had therefore decided to order something small and cheap.
When the sizzling bowl of hot fries had arrived, Sarah had cheerfully popped each of the golden sticks into her mouth one by one. Upon reflection, she wondered if she should have paced herself a little. Having finished her small bowl of pleasure, Sarah realised that she would have to endure watching her colleagues gradually devour another entire course. This situation would have been okay if she had been sitting beside someone sociable. Unfortunately, Sarah was hemmed in a corner by a mousy woman from the mailroom who smiled nervously, avoiding eye contact with any of the other diners, whilst taking delicate sips of mineral water.
Taking a gulp of her beer, Sarah felt the rush of bubbles tingle her tongue. The sensation reminded her of her childhood, when she had often loved drinking Coke from green glass bottles.
As drank, Sarah glanced absently through the large window of the café at the bruised colours of the darkening October sky. She almost shivered at the thought of standing outside in the cool air. It was not a particularly inviting prospect at this time of night, but her addiction was a powerful force and a means of escape.
Following the imposition of a strict smoking ban in her office – the result of a dangerous fire in a mailroom cupboard – Sarah had promised to quit cigarettes almost three months earlier. At the age of twenty-six she had better things than cigarettes to spend her income on; plus, the habit was becoming increasingly antisocial. Unfortunately, wrestling that particular monkey off her back had been much harder than she had anticipated, and now that most of her colleagues had replaced the coffee-break smoke with an extra strong latte, she was forced to visit the stub-littered area outside the depot’s fire exit on her own.
The reason for the celebration that evening was Ted Shennan’s leaving dinner. He was a popular and good-natured manager, who fostered good relations with the staff, but an unseasonal dip in temperature had meant fewer people than were expected had shown up for his farewell feast. This fact didn’t seem to bother Ted, who was laughing loudly and shovelling lobster into his mouth with all the passion of a Roman emperor.
Eventually, Sarah’s craving eclipsed her sense of propriety. She stood up, excused herself, and squeezed free of the table and diners.
Her long dark coat was hanging like a witch’s cloak on the row of hooks next to the café’s entrance. Sarah slipped on the garment and felt a sense of relief as her fingers instinctively found the angular cigarette packet in one of the pockets. Pulling open the door, she glanced quickly at the other diners. For a second, she considered sneaking home without letting anyone know.
‘Goodnight!’ one of the cheery waiting staff called to her, thinking that she was genuinely leaving.
‘I’ll be back. I’m just heading out for a smoke,’ she replied, but the busy waiter had already been distracted by a waving hand from another table.
It was even colder outside than she’d expected. For most of her life she had only ever known the southern Californian coast to be comfortably warm in October. Yet tonight a formidable bank of fog had drifted in silently from the ocean and was creeping into the harbour area like a sprawling phantom. Having pulled her collar up against the relatively chill air, Sarah plunged one hand into her pocket and pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. Popping one in her mouth, she felt the pockets for her plastic lighter: both were empty.
‘Shit!’ Sarah stomped the heel of her shoe against the sidewalk. Her lighter was most likely sitting on her cramped desk – back at the depot.
She glanced over her shoulder to peer through the window at her fellow diners. They were all still consuming their meals; returning to endure another half hour of drooling and slurping was not an option. In a moment of desperation, Sarah briefly considered trying to cross the freeway to either of the two nearby gas stations. However, deciding that she was quite likely to find another shunned smoker at the rear of the café, Sarah wandered to the quieter Cassidy Street side of the building. The parking lot, which was located behind the café, was empty except for an old silver Ford and a chilled-food delivery van.
Sighing, she wandered back to the main entrance, and discovered a woman standing smoking on the corner of Cassidy and the South Coast Highway. Sarah, who was still fixated on a nicotine hit, naturally assumed that the woman was a diner from another table, who had also popped outside for a smoke.
‘Excuse me!’ Sarah called over to the woman.
‘Hey, Jenna.’ She responded with a small wave and hurried across the sidewalk to Sarah.
‘Did you call me Jenna?’ Sarah asked, with a small frown.
‘Sorry, I thought you were somebody else.’ The woman partly turned her head and blew a grey cone of smoke into the air. ‘Did you call to me?’
‘I wanted to ask if you could give me a light, please.’
‘Sure, honey,’ the woman said as she turned around, revealing her leopard-print jacket, stretched miniskirt and cropped vest. She dug into her tiny pink handbag and produced a cheap, gold coloured lighter, which she held out to Sarah.
&nb sp; ‘Are you a pros …?’ the words escaped Sarah’s lips before she’d intended them to.
‘Yeah, I am,’ the woman said defiantly. ‘You got something you want to say about that?’
‘No,’ Sarah said with a shrug. ‘I just … guess it’s a cool night to be working out here.’
‘Damn true, but, take it from me, the weather sure isn’t the worst part of the job. Are you wanting this damn thing or not?’
‘Sorry,’ Sarah said, as she accepted the cheap plastic lighter and lit her cigarette.
At that moment, a glossy black police car pulled into the brightly lit gas station across the freeway. In response to this, the woman instinctively turned away from the vehicle. Her almost subconscious response at seeing the car was not lost on Sarah.
‘Do you get much bother from the cops?’ she asked, with an air of fascination.
‘No, honey,’ the woman replied, with a shrug of her shoulders, ‘most of the time we’re pretty much invisible – not just to the cops either. It’s what comes with the territory. But sometimes some assholes from Vice will haul a couple of girls into the station to keep the legitimate business owners happy. The rest of the time, we’re just trash on the street.’ Something shifted in her eyes, as if a light had dimmed. ‘Hookers aren’t real people – at least not to the customers, the cops, or the public. Working on the streets is a bit like being a ghost.’
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence until Sarah suddenly realised that she could at least make a gesture of acceptance. She turned to the woman and met her gaze.
‘I’m Sarah,’ she said, purposefully, and held out her hand.
The woman looked at Sarah’s hand and then at her face, as if to say: are you shitting me? But the persistent hand remained, hovering there just the same.
‘Rochelle,’ she said, taking Sarah’s hand and shaking it briefly.
‘Your hand’s freezing,’ Sarah said. ‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘No,’ Rochelle said, with a shake of her head, ‘the temperature doesn’t get to me much anymore. I’ve just got a full bladder. Either that or I’ve picked up a urine infection again – another bonus of the job I guess.’ She smiled grimly and sucked on her cigarette.
Suddenly, Sarah found that her own job, stacking mail in the depot, wasn’t quite as grim as she had thought.
‘Hey, why don’t you use the bathroom in there?’ She nodded over her shoulder to the bustling café.
‘You kidding?’ Rochelle raised her drawn-on eyebrows at the suggestion. ‘Dressed like this, I’d be spotted and thrown out before I’d even reached a cubicle. It’s cool; I’ll survive.’
Sarah looked at Rochelle for a moment then glanced down at her own knee-length coat.
‘Listen, take my coat’ she announced suddenly. ‘I mean it’s long enough, and no one will ever know. Our hair’s pretty much the same colour so the staff will probably just think it’s me heading back in to re-join the party.’
‘You sure?’ Rochelle asked in a tone of disbelief. Two acts of courtesy in one night was something she had never encountered before.
‘Of course,’ Sarah smiled, and had already begun to slip her arms out of her coat.
As the two women exchanged garments, each of them knew that the gesture involved a silent exchange of experiences too.
* * *
Sneaking quickly into the brightly lit bathroom of the café, Rochelle almost didn’t recognise her reflection in the mirror. Her deep-set eyes looked tired and older than her twenty-two years.
Her addiction had stolen everything from her. She had never really fit in at school – it was always a competition to be either the smartest or the most popular. Rochelle, who was neither, had increasingly found herself hanging around at the graffiti-covered skatepark, instead of attending classes for subjects she hadn’t liked or couldn’t understand. This colourful, concrete landscape was where she had slid into a pit of a relationship with Billy Spencer. He was six years older than her and had lived off a combination of welfare and whatever he could earn from peddling drugs around the regular teenage haunts. On the day of her seventeenth birthday, Billy had relentlessly pestered Rochelle until she reluctantly shared his crack pipe. After that, they were both high for most of the time during the five years they had stumbled along together. However, the previous summer Billy was arrested, in a drugs operation, outside a local pool hall. He made bail, and, after stopping off at home long enough to dump a bag of white powder and pack a bag of clothes, he promptly vanished. Billy’s unplanned departure had left Rochelle with no income, a slum of a home and a formidable drug habit. The slide into working the streets was inevitable.
Her reflection revealed the eyes of the girl she had once been, but nothing else. It was like looking at a young girl wearing the mask of an older, troubled woman.
* * *
Before she left the warmth of the bathroom, Rochelle stopped in front of the mirrored wall to apply some cherry lip gloss. It made her look more appealing to the customers and hid her anaemia. However, when she reached into the jacket pocket, she realised that the small metal tin was in the pocket of her own cheap coat, rather than this soft fabric. It was then she remembered that her meagre earnings for the night were also in her own jacket. Rochelle hoped the girl who was wearing it was trustworthy, or she might be down a few bucks.
Stepping outside of the café, Rochelle was suddenly more aware of the biting cold that Sarah had mentioned earlier. She was considering telling her this when she realised, with a sense of panic, that Sarah was no longer there. The street was quiet and empty.
‘Shit!’ Rochelle kicked at the sidewalk.
Trying to calm her jitters, she turned around and pressed her hand to the window of the café and peered through the glass. The tables inside were full of eager diners, but none of them resembled the girl Rochelle had spoken to. As she stepped back from the breath-steamed glass, a young, male waiter pushed assertively through the café door and approached her.
‘Hey, do you mind not pressing your face against the window?’
Normally, Rochelle would have told the guy to take a hike, but she needed him.
‘I was just looking for a girl – about my height, wearing a leopard-print jacket. Have you seen her inside at all?’
‘No, we don’t allow street workers in the café,’ he replied proudly, as he turned around and disappeared back inside the bright refuge of the café.
‘Screw you!’ Rochelle shouted after him.
The situation felt weird to Rochelle. Stepping to the edge of the sidewalk, she peered across the freeway at the two parallel gas stations. Their coldly lit forecourts were deserted, and in the creeping fog they resembled deep-sea stations.
Rochelle decided to check the rear of the buff coloured building, in case Sarah had simply walked off to escape the gaze of all the diners. As she wandered around the corner to the deserted parking lot behind the café, she was struck by the blinding glare of full-beam car headlights. Even though the solitary car was parked several feet away, in one of the six bays, Rochelle could hear the engine rumbling, and behind that was the pulsing sound of repetitive, thumping music. The piercing lights of the car were so harsh that Rochelle held up her hand to shield her eyes and stepped instinctively backwards.
