PROLOGUE
The detective was wearing a dark suit under an overcoat more expensive than you might expect, and he was flanked on either side by two other men of slightly smaller stature. None of the three men seemed seriously intent on their drinks and sat there quietly, and gave the impression of waiting for someone, or something. All of them, the detective and the two others, were too well dressed to be in such a bar. Incongruous clientele.
The walls of the Horse’s Head hadn’t been repainted in over forty years. The three men, the only patrons apart from the man asleep with his head on a formica tabletop, were sitting more or less facing the double doors. The bar was to the left of where the three conscious customers were sitting, and the bar man stopped rubbing on the beer glass he’d been rubbing on for quite some time, looked up at the clock again, then slipped through to the back.
The double doors burst open right about then and a traffic warden came running into the bar then stopped. He wore a false beard, which seemed on the point of falling off, and his face underneath was reddened, his eyes like saucers on stocks, the pupils hugely dilated. The massive dose of multifarious stimulants on top of the whisky had the sweat bursting, pounding out of him. Pulling a gun from inside his tunic, he started quickly towards the table where the three men sat, firing as he went.
Bullets went into the throat and head of the men on either side of the detective, and he was shot in the shoulder, but then the gun jammed and the man dropped it. He pulled a sharpened chisel with a custom made hand guard from inside his tunic and he grabbed the detective by the hair, knocking over the table as he dragged him onto the floor, stabbing him on the head and neck as he went.
The detective came to rest on his back, the head held down by the hair as he was stabbed in the throat, then many times in his face, then several times through both eyes. He was dead by the time his forehead was being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and the stabbing didn’t seem to be ever going to end as a furious madness gleamed out of the face of the man in the traffic warden uniform, his lips pulled back, the gnashing teeth bared.
The traffic warden didn’t stop stabbing till the skull over the deceased eyes collapsed into his brain. There was blood all over the traffic warden, the corpse and the floor by the time the murderer finally stopped stabbing and scooped out a handful of the detective’s brains. He stood up and threw the brains, still as if in a mad fury, at the wall. Then he stretched out his arms, one hand still holding the chisel and shouted in exultation.
Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass!
Two other traffic wardens came running through the door then, one with a red blanket which he threw over the killer’s shoulders. The other picked up the gun and the beard and all three traffic wardens rushed out.
The drunken man asleep with his head on the formica topped table claimed later that he never heard a thing and neither he did.
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I've decided to write another book after all. At first it was going to be called The Revenge of the Traffic Wardens, but it'll probably end up called Cold Killing. This will be the second book in the series which started with Remote Control. I'm going to write at least one more book with Jimmy McGovern as the main protagonist. I've been working on the ideas for this book for quite some time now and all I have to do now is write it.
I going to write it using very short chapters since I like the look of that and short chapters make for easy reading.
I've sold about three books on Kindle during March so far. But this is at the new price of about $3 and I'll make the same from selling three books at that price as I would selling eighteen books at the old price. I'd rather have more readers than more money, but I don't think this current price if off-putting. The problem is, as usual, that the ebooks are more or less invisible, and they are attracting reviews very slowly. But I'd rather spend time writing than going around the net telling folk how good my books are.
A couple of folk with Kindles have told me that they've had trouble finding them, but since I don't own a Kindle, I can't think why that should be. If you put John McKenzie into the Amazon books search engine, the books come up, at least on my computer.
