Fireflies

FIREFLIES

A NOVEL

BY DAVID MENON

Copyright 2014

Silver Springs Press

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any living person is purely coincidental.

David was born in Derby, England in 1961. He’s lived all over the UK but now divides his time between Paris and the northwest of England. In 2009 he left a long career in the airline industry to concentrate on his writing. He also teaches English to foreign students, mainly Russians, and is an activist for the
Labour party. He’s an avid fan of the American poet and singer Stevie Nicks who he calls the ‘voice of my inner being’, he loves red wine, gin and tonic, travelling and Indian food.

‘Fireflies’ is the second of his Detective Jeff Barton series of books. ‘Sorcerer’ was the first and he’s now working on the third which will be called ‘Storms’.  

This is also the second edition of ‘Fireflies’ and included right at the very end is a 38-page short story called ‘All about Simon’. He’s a man who’s going through troubled times but when he finds out that a former friend told lies about him that kept him apart from the one he loves for many years, he really does see red.
 

For
Maddie or, as I now call him, Mr. Orlov … for Uncle Malcolm and Aunty Lesley with whom I have to make up so much time … and for anyone who can find no easy way in the drama of the moment.

FIREFLIES PROLOGUE

The bride and groom checked into the wedding suite at the Manchester Hilton hotel and the groom carried the bride over the threshold. The room had been a surprise present from the groom’s parents and they’d even ordered a bottle of champagne which duly arrived a few minutes after the happy couple did. They’d already drunk their own body weight of the stuff all day but as this was a day that neither of them intended to ever repeat, they considered it an obligation to pop the cork and dive right in.

     They jumped on the bed and cradled each other in their arms whilst they sipped more of one the greatest French exports. In a little over twenty-four hours they’d be sipping cocktails on the balcony of their hotel room on the island of Phuket in Thailand where they’d be staying for a week before flying on to Melbourne in Australia to stay with the bride’s Aunt and Uncle. They were looking forward to their honeymoon. Why wouldn’t they be? Apart from the adventure of being in faraway lands a honeymoon was a way for the couple to extend the joy of their wedding day but without the company of all the guests. Their flight left Manchester airport at just before ten-thirty in the morning with a change at Abu Dhabi. They set their alarm and phoned down to reception to ask for a wake-up call. They’d be shattered when they got on that plane but it would be the best shattered feeling they’d ever experience.  

     The room at the Hilton had a floor to ceiling window that offered the most incredible view of their home city that either of them had ever seen. They could see the lights stretching all the way up to Rochdale and Bolton in the north and Salford to the west. They’d bought a house in Salford but they wouldn’t be able to move in for a month so when they came back from honeymoon they’d be staying with the bride’s parents for a couple of weeks until the
builders had finished their work. Everything about the joy of living together as a couple bound by love was waiting there in front of them. It was theirs to take the necessary steps to reach their own particular bliss.

     The groom wasn’t a heavy smoker but he did like the odd one or two. He hadn’t had one since they’d been halfway through the dancing at the reception so whilst the bride did what she wanted to do to prepare for her wedding night, the groom nipped outside for a fag. They’d already had sex in a back room of the restaurant in
Alderley Edge where they’d held the reception. The groom had still been in his tails and the bride was of course in her wedding dress. She asked him to wear his top hat whilst they did it and it fell right off just at the appropriate moment.

     When the groom got back up to the suite the door was slightly open. He pushed it wider and called out his wife’s name but the fact was he was already a widower. He walked round to the bedroom and there she was lying on the bed, still in her dress but with blood pouring out of the many stab wounds to her neck, face, and other parts of her body. The attack would later be described as ‘frenzied’. Her eyes were open but her soul had left her husband behind. He shrieked with terror and pain. The dreams of two people who’d been so in love had been shattered in such a brutal and sick way. Who would want to do something like this? He slid down the wall and crashed onto the floor. His heart was broken and so was his soul. He began to weep. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop.    

FIREFLIES ONE

Alicia
Zolkiewicz had recently been joined by her husband Stefan in a life they were building together in England. They came from Gdansk on the northern edge of Poland and though it meant leaving their two daughters to be cared for by Stefan’s parents it was worth it. Even accounting for the cost of the two-day coach journey each way that they made whenever they could amass enough hours in their respective jobs to get a full week off to go home and see their kids, and even though it meant they had to stay in the tiniest of bedsits in a nevertheless not too bad area of Stockport, it was all better than they could get at home. And they weren’t alone. They were surrounded by every nationality under the sun in a giant melting pot of people wanting to gain more than their own home countries could offer. Alicia and Stefan spent little money. They lived frugally. They were better off than some of their compatriots where either the wife or the husband had to come to England on their own. They missed their daughters every minute of every day but moving to England was worth it when they could provide them with so much more than if they’d stayed to work in Poland. The British are always complaining but they really don’t know how well off they are.

     Stefan was now a bus driver and worked out of the main depot in Stockport’s Mersey square. He was beginning to really enjoy his work. He liked being with people all day and it was an excellent way for him to continually improve his conversation skills. It was the same for Alicia and her job at the hotel. She was employed as a waitress in the restaurant where all meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served on a ‘buffet’ style basis and apart from putting the food out and replenishing it when necessary, her other main function was to serve drinks from the bar. Today she was on the early shift starting at six and she walked swiftly in
the darkness the half a mile from their flat to the Mayfair hotel which was situated on the main road leading out of the city towards the town of Marple in the Peak District. She got there with ten minutes to spare and decided to sneak out the back where the rubbish bins are for a cigarette. She was about to light up when she saw something she certainly hadn’t expected to see on this average Sunday morning and the shock led to her giving out a blood curdling scream.   

     Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton pulled up outside the Mayfair hotel feeling very bleary eyed. He hadn’t counted on being woken up at stupid o’clock on a rare Sunday morning when he could lie in bed and think about nothing except catching up on sleep. He was greeted by his partner in crime, Detective Sergeant Rebecca Stockton who’d arrived just a few minutes before. 

     ‘Sorry to get you up so early on a Sunday, sir’ said Rebecca.

     ‘It’s not like it’s the first time, Becky’ answered Jeff.

     ‘What have you done with Toby?’

     ‘He’s staying over with his Chinese grandparents this weekend which was lucky’ Jeff explained. ‘I spoke to him a few minutes ago and he was tucking into a soup with noodles, mushrooms, and prawns and his grandfather is teaching him Mandarin. I love it that he gets an insight into his mother’s culture. It means he holds onto something of her’.

     ‘What would you have done if he wasn’t with his grandparents?’

     That was a tough question for Jeff. He’d been wondering a lot lately about what to do long-term about Toby’s childcare. He knew that his brother Lewis and his partner Seamus didn’t mind at all sharing Toby. They adored him and Toby adored them too. But that didn’t help Jeff feeling bad about it. Lewis and Seamus have got their own life to live. They shouldn’t have to think about Lewis’s nephew before they planned even a weekend away.

     ‘Our Lewis and his partner Seamus are so good to us and then I can sometimes rely on Pam next door’ said Jeff. ‘Her two are Toby’s best mates’.

     ‘Toby doesn’t seem unhappy about his lot at the moment’ said Rebecca. ‘He seems like a really well adjusted kid despite everything’.

     ‘No I know’ said Jeff. ‘He is and I’m grateful for that. But I worry about the lack of long-term stability for him’.

     ‘Jeff, kids adjust a lot better than their parents give them credit for’ said Rebecca. ‘And he gets that stability from you’.

     ‘I know that too’ said Jeff.

     ‘Have you thought about getting a nanny?’

     ‘Well funnily enough Lewis and Seamus have got a mate who’s just qualified as a nanny and he wants a position where he lives in’.

     ‘Sounds ideal’.

     ‘Yeah but I don’t know’.

     ‘Jeff, don’t tell me you don’t want him to have a male nanny?’

     ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you know me and I’ve got no qualms on that score at all’.

     ‘So what’s the problem?’

     ‘Well it’s just that Toby is surrounded by dudes, you know.
Me, Lewis, Seamus. He doesn’t have any regular women in his life. A bit like his father’.

     Rebecca smiled. ‘Well he’s got his teacher at school, his Chinese grandma and Pam your neighbour and you’ve got me’ she said, hoping he’d see something in what she’d said although she wasn’t holding her breath. ‘Why don’t you give this guy a trial and see how it works out? It’ll give you the chance to get some of the stress off your shoulders’.       

     ‘I’ll think about it’ said Jeff who then looked over the u-shaped three-storey building with the gym and swimming pool attached. ‘Isn’t this a bit out of place? I mean, right in the middle of one of the most des res parts of Stockport? Have you ever been here?’

     ‘Yeah, my cousin had his wedding reception here a couple of years ago’ said Rebecca who noted that Jeff had once again switched off the personal talk. ‘I can’t say I remember much about it because the party was pretty good but I do recall thinking that it’s like a lot of hotels in Britain in that it charges the earth for everything but the decorating should’ve been done years ago and there are creaking floors under hideous carpets everywhere’.

     ‘And I bet they use tinned grapefruit segments at breakfast’.

     ‘Oh that’s standard in British hotels like this’ said Rebecca, smiling. ‘Along with the grease on everything because it’s been left out too long and toast that’s turned into cardboard for the same reason’.

     ‘That’s a pity because I’m starving’.

    
‘You and me both’.

     DC Oliver ‘Ollie’ Wright had been the first member of Jeff’s team on the scene and he led them round to the back of the hotel.
Ollie had become, along with Rebecca, one of Jeff’s most trusted lieutenants. He was going to make sure that Ollie was promoted because he was a bloody good police officer and not one of those lick arse types who shot up the ladder even though they were incapable of finding a seagull at the coast.

     The pathologist June Hawkins looked up and saw Jeff, Rebecca and Ollie lifting up the crime scene tape and putting on their white cover suits before walking over to her.

     ‘Well it’s too late for casualty that’s for sure’ said June in her usual deadpan way. ‘Your victim is well and truly dead, darling’.

     ‘Male or female?’ asked Jeff.

     ‘Male’ June answered. ‘I’d say he was in his late twenties. He didn’t wear a wedding ring but then not all married men do’.