GRAVE PASSION
Phillip Strang
BOOKS BY PHILLIP STRANG
DCI Isaac Cook Series
MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS
MURDER HOUSE
MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER
MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE
MURDER IS THE ONLY OPTION
MURDER IN NOTTING HILL
MURDER IN ROOM 346
MURDER OF A SILENT MAN
MURDER HAS NO GUILT
MURDER IN HYDE PARK
SIX YEARS TOO LATE
GRAVE PASSION
MURDER WITHOUT REASON
DI Keith Tremayne Series
DEATH UNHOLY
DEATH AND THE ASSASSIN’S BLADE
DEATH AND THE LUCKY MAN
DEATH AT COOMBE FARM
DEATH BY A DEAD MAN’S HAND
DEATH IN THE VILLAGE
BURIAL MOUND
THE BODY IN THE DITCH
Steve Case Series
HOSTAGE OF ISLAM
THE HABERMAN VIRUS
PRELUDE TO WAR
Standalone Books
MALIKA’S REVENGE
Copyright Page
Copyright © 2020 Phillip Strang
Cover Design by Phillip Strang
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service.
Author’s Website: http://www.phillipstrang.com
Dedication
For Elli and Tais, who both had the perseverance to make me sit down and write.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
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 1
Brad Robinson was about to break the law, not that he knew it, and he was in too much of a hurry to worry anyway. He was a bright child, his mother would say, but then she had a soft spot for him, seeing that he was the only one of her three children who wasn’t taking drugs, incarcerated in prison, or, in the case of her daughter, selling herself. To the sixteen-year-old’s mother, it looked as though he might make his way in the world without resorting to crime, even becoming a worthwhile member of society, which she had aspired to but had failed to achieve.
Jim, the eldest of her three children, had at twenty-two seen the inside of more than a few prison cells. He had had to grow up hard; his father was a criminal as well as a drunk, and on many a night, he had beaten his mother senseless.
At the age of fourteen, Jim, strong for his age, had taken on the bane of the Robinson household and thrashed his father mercilessly with a cricket bat. The upshot was that Jim, the saviour of his family, spent time in a young offender’s institution, and his father, once the wounds had healed, had briefly returned to the family home, a squalid council house with little charm, picked up his clothes, packed them in a suitcase and had left; not a word of farewell to anyone in the house, other than a pat on the shoulder for the eight-year-old Brad.
The second eldest, Janice, was an attractive blonde-haired child until puberty hit. After that, she had discovered boys, and then men, and then drugs. She was now twenty-one and living a transient life, moving from one place to another, eking a living by selling herself, injecting when she could, eating whatever food she could afford.
Brad tried to see her every couple of months, but it wasn’t easy. He was sixteen, and his life should have been a time for exams and sport and chasing girls. Not that he tarried on the latter, as he had grown up a good-looking lad, and the genetic traits that had made Jim violent and Janice a tart hadn’t touched him. He was more like his mother, except that he had tried alcohol on a couple of occasions and never found a love for it. He was glad of that.
The house wasn’t somewhere you took Rose Winston. Brad didn’t want to destroy her impression of him. She lived not far away in a better house and her parents owned it; her father was a professional man and her mother was a schoolteacher.
Rose had made it clear that sex was the next step in their relationship; after all, they had passed through passionate kissing and heavy petting. The next stage was the final act, where he, the over-eager Brad, and Rose, the expectant female, would come together in a crescendo of drums, the sound of waves lapping on the shore, an abandonment of themselves as they became one.
That was how Rose, an avid reader of love stories, saw it. Brad, sensitive as only a sixteen-year-old male could be, knew that wasn’t how it was, but he wasn’t about to tell her the truth, not just yet. It was messy, he could have told her, over far too quickly, and if she wanted banging drums and the music, then she’d better take a radio with her.
The best he could hope for was a balmy summer’s night, a secluded spot in Hyde Park. He had purchased a cheap bottle of wine and taken a blanket from home, the cleanest one he could find. His mother wasn’t strong on cleanliness, although she was on vodka.
Brad, in his reflective moments, wondered about his parentage. His mother was a short woman, whereas he was tall for his age and slim, although her facial features showed in him, as they did in his brother and sister.
