Tell Tale (32 page)

BOOK: Tell Tale

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As she walked across the car park Savage took a moment for reflection too. Taking Fox in now would end the cycle, but she took no pleasure from it. Nothing was going to bring Clarissa back. The feeling of revenge she’d harboured for so long was an angry, bitter thing, which had eaten her up. Now, at the end of it all, there was nothing but emptiness. She’d almost made the same mistake as Fox. Thrown everything away.

Fox wore his uniform. Black. Silver buttons. His cap sat on the dash in front of him, the badge as shiny as the buttons. He’d tilted the seat back a little, relaxing in the last of the day’s warmth as he sat cocooned in the car. As Savage crunched the final few metres across the gravel he didn’t turn, just waited impassively, eyes forward. Now Savage could hear something. Voices. The car radio. Some sort of sports commentary. Cricket. She reached the car and paused. Fox ignored her, playing a silly game, obviously struggling to hold on to the last vestiges of his superiority.

‘Sir?’ Savage would humour him. No need for any sort of humiliation. Not now. She tapped on the window. ‘DI Savage, sir.’

Nothing. Just the sound of the radio, a few seagulls wheeling and calling overhead, an engine on a boat humming in the distance.

Savage
bent to the window and peered through. Fox sat frozen, his lips parted in a grin or a grimace, a globule of saliva hanging on a thread of liquid which drooled from his chin. She tapped on the glass again, aware as she did so that the low noise wasn’t from a distant boat, but rather the sound of the Jaguar’s engine purring at low revs. She clicked the door open and a waft of air soured with exhaust poured out. Fox’s hands lay in his lap, clutching a tin of boiled sweets. From the radio a spattering of applause rang out, the commentator announcing that bad light had stopped play.

MISSED THE FIRST BOOKS IN THE DI CHARLOTTE SAVAGE SERIES?

‘Harry likes pretty things. He likes to look at them. Sometimes that isn’t enough. He wants to get closer. Naughty Harry.’

Introducing DI Charlotte Savage: woman, mother and crime fighter.

‘We’re going to find them, sort them, pay them back …’

DI Charlotte Savage is back chasing a killer with a very personal grudge …

‘He could be out there right now. Passing you on the street. You’d never know …’’

DI Charlotte Savage is back, chasing a killer who was last at large ten years ago, a killer they presumed dead … Now he’s back and more dangerous than ever.

Acknowledgements

Tell Tale
is the fourth book in the DI Savage series and by now you’d think that Charlotte and I would know what we are doing … not so! Without continuing help and advice from many people too numerous to mention we’d be stuck on page one, book one. Thanks to one and all.

Thanks to HarperCollins/Avon for agreeing to take the series onward to books four, five and six.
Tell Tale
was a struggle to write, but was made easier by my editor Katy Loftus offering much encouragement and many suggestions. Thanks to the rest of the Avon team for all the behind the scenes work without which there’d be no book.

A special mention must go to my wife and daughters for putting up with moody author syndrome whilst I endeavoured to whip
Tell Tale
into shape. A whole summer went AWOL – I promise it won’t happen again!

Finally, as always, thanks to
you
for reading.

About the Author

Mark Sennen was born in Epsom, Surrey, and later spent his teenage years on a smallholding in Shropshire. He read Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Mark has had a number of occupations, including being a farmer, drummer and programmer. Now his hi-tech web developer’s suite, otherwise known as a shed in the garden, has been converted to a writer’s den and he writes almost full-time.

@MarkSennen

www.marksennen.com

THE DI CHARLOTTE SAVAGE SERIES