King THE No.1 ZOMBIE DETECTIVE AGENCY

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-95835-975-8
Verlag: Icarus Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

The world has been taken over by zombies. Small pockets of humanity remain. Cities lay in ruins. But none of this can stop Jake Trundle from solving the biggest case of his career because Jake Trundle is also a zombie. And somewhere deep within the recesses of his long dead brain flicker the embers of the last case he was working before the world turned to hell. And now he is compelled to solve it for all eternity, or at least until New Orleans falls down around his ears. He doesn't know why, he doesn't know how and he doesn't know much of anything when the smell of fresh meat is on the wind. But he's going to solve this case anyway. Even if it kills him all over again. Jake Trundle is a zombie. But he was a detective first. And nothing can take that away from him. Not even death. »One of the few writers to make me laugh out loud.« - David Baddiel, Comedian »One of Britain's best kept literary secrets.« - The Big Issue in the North

Danny King is an award-winning British novelist and screenwriter. Born in Slough in 1969, he has worked on building sites and in offices, shops and on streets and today uses this rich tapestry of experiences to dodge all of the aforementioned. He has written over a dozen books as well as screenplays for both the big and small screens as well as the stage. His first book, The Burglar Diaries, won the 2002 Amazon.co.uk Writers' Bursary Award and was the basis of his BBC sitcom, Thieves Like Us (2007). His first feature film, Wild Bill, won both the 2012 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award and a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut. His second feature film, Eat Locals, was released in 2017 and is available on Prime and DVD/Blu-ray. He lives in Chichester, West Sussex with wife and four children, and divides his time between writing and wondering what to write about. Find and follow him on Facebook and Instagram at 'Danny King books'.

Autoren/Hrsg.

King, Danny

Leseproben

Chapter 2

Of course, Trundle didn’t sleep – he never slept these days – but he remained in his chair and did a fine impression of a man sleeping for another eight hours before dropping his feet off the desk a little after sun-up.

It had been a quiet night in all. Apart from Agnes’s non-stop wailing, he’d barely heard a sound pass his window, but then the city was becoming quieter and quieter as its population rotted away to nothing or got stuck in upturned refrigerators. Some familiar faces seemed to disappear every day, but not Trundle. He was bullet-proof. Literally.

Trundle wailed –

Agnes wailed back –

It was the same every morning – – so Trundle reached into his top drawer and poured himself another whiskey, finishing off the bottle and tossing it out of the window and into the open dumpster below. Perhaps this was why Trundle had fared better than most in this city. He’d done such a fine job of embalming himself in life that he had somehow managed to extend his shelf life by another couple of decades. Either way, Trundle knocked back his morning pick-me-up and smacked his cracked lips together.

Another day. Another dollar. It was a fine life – even if it wasn’t exactly a life.

Trundle reached for his smokes and slipped a Marlboro between his teeth. The silver lighter Francine had given him as a going-away present (as in, “please go away Jake, you’re no good for me”) wasn’t in his pocket where it normally was, but Trundle soon spotted it on the floor by his feet. He picked it up and flicked it a couple of times. Like Francine, her lighter always required a couple of flicks in the morning to get it going. A tiny yellow flicker popped out and Trundle baulked at the sight of it, instinctively dropping the lighter and tumbling back over his chair as he scrambled away from the dreaded flame.

Like most walkers, Trundle’s only terror was fire. Very little else seemed to frighten the Detective, probably because he didn’t know to be frightened of anything else but he understood fire and what it could do only too well.

The flame died the instant the lighter hit the floor and Trundle’s howls subsided a moment later. If his heart had been beating, it would’ve been beating hard, but the terror ebbed quicker than the memory and Trundle climbed to his feet again.

He hollered into the front office – A

Agnes moaned in response –

Trundle wandered through to Agnes’s desk and picked up the loose-leaf file on top of the pile in her In-Tray. The typed notes had long since fallen away, but the 8x10 black & white photograph remained held in place by a rusted binder clip that refused to relinquish its grip. And who could blame it? As assignments went, she was a peach: aged 22, with platinum hair, auburn eyes and an English rose complexion that almost leapt off the page to give him a kiss.

She had looked good enough to eat even before Trundle had lost his keys. Now her photograph drove him to distraction…

***

Reece Fairchild, the youngest daughter of Ronald Fairchild, the oil tycoon who owned that huge whitewashed pile up on St Charles directly opposite Audubon Park. The Mayor had once told Trundle that Fairchild regarded the park very much as an extension of his own gardens. The thought had amused Trundle at the time – how it must’ve irked old Ronald to look out each morning and see his neighbors taking their dogs for a crap on his front lawn.

Still, it didn’t pay to laugh too hard in Fairchild’s face. Besides his awful Greek revisionist monstrosity, he also owned a considerable chunk of downtown, but like with so many powerful men, he seemed to be more concerned with what he couldn’t call his own than what he could. This extended to family members, hence Trundle’s involvement. He’d been summoned one blustery night a long-forgotten February ago and had duly attended – primarily to get the blanks filled in on the unsigned check the Fairchild Foundation had sent him, but also to listen to what the old man had to say. It seemed only polite.

“My daughter is a wayward and wicked young madam,” it turned out to be. “I’ve tried to help her in every conceivable way; private tuition, elocution, deportment and politics, all to no avail. Why I spent more money on that ungrateful creature than most men spend on airplanes.”

“I never spend money on airplanes myself,” Trundle replied, helping himself to a cigarette from the box on the desk between himself and Fairchild. “I have their complementary nuts but I always take my own bottle.”

Fairchild elected not to respond, either to Trundle’s admission or plundering. Instead, he continued. “She never wanted for anything, my daughter; hair, clothes, masseurs and maids; if I’d treated Cleopatra herself as I’d treated my own fair daughter, she would’ve hardly had grounds for complaint.”

“Hardly?” Trundle picked up on, striking a match against the underside of the desk before him. “There’s your problem, Mr Fairchild. That one little word.”

“Mr Trundle,” Fairchild responded, “I could not have pampered my daughter any more had I tried.”

“I guess not. So what did you require in return?” Trundle asked with the confidence of a man sitting on a signed check.

“I beg your pardon?” Fairchild bristled.

“To hear it laid out like that, it sounds like a swell deal, but very one-sided. And in my experience, no relationship is ever that one-sided, even between parents and their children. So what did you want from her, Mr Fairchild?”

“I don’t think I like what you’re insinuating, Mr Trundle,” Fairchild snapped.

“I’m not insinuating anything, I’m asking outright. I could do insinuating if you’d prefer but it only ever prolongs these conversations.”

“All I ever wanted for my daughter was her complete and utter happiness,” Fairchild fumed, although this still came across a little light for Trundle’s liking.

“That was all I ever wanted for my ex-fiancée too, but no matter how much I drank, gambled or womanized she never learned to love it so I guess I’m no expert on what makes women happy either.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Fairchild pointed out.

“And yet all the rage in the Quarter. Go figure,” Trundle replied.

Fairchild stood up and glared. He gave Trundle a moment to see if he was arrogant enough to remain seated and he wasn’t disappointed. Fairchild turned and paced the room. It was an opulent grand room designed to impress visitors with its stained oak panels and original canvases and it lent itself very well to pacing, yet Trundle remained where he was, wondering what a man had to do to get a drink around here.

“Are you a Communist, Mr Trundle?” Fairchild asked after a time.

“A Communist? No, Mr Fairchild I’m not a Communist, but I’ve met a few in my time, most of them frozen solid where they lay.”

Fairchild blinked.

“Ah yes, you were in Korea. How did you find it?”

“Cold,” Trundle replied. “And then hot. Hot and cold. Can’t say I cared for it much. What’s this got to do with your daughter?”

“My daughter is not a Communist either, Mr Trundle,” Fairchild said for effect.

“Does her maid know?”

“But she fell into a bad crowd, as they say.”

“Communists? In this town? There goes the neighborhood.”

“Even here, Mr Trundle. Never assume you are safe.”

“I live in Louisiana, Mr Fairchild. The thought had never occurred to me.”

Fairchild stopped circling the room by a tray of drinks and poured a glass of scotch. Before he could hand it to Trundle, he’d downed it himself and passed the Detective a plain brown envelope instead containing several photographs. Trundle pulled them out as Fairchild helped himself to another drink and flicked through them. The first of the photographs was an 8x10 portrait of a pretty girl with platinum hair – this one he would eventually be allowed to keep. The others were smaller but no less memorable. That same girl with platinum hair was featured in each, only scantily dressed and provocatively posed, and in the final picture, tied to a bed wearing nothing but a doped up expression on her pretty English rose face.

“You were sent these?” Trundle asked.

“Yesterday afternoon. A messenger was called to collect them from a locker at Union Station. These pictures and the messenger’s fee were inside.”

“That’s very trusting of the messenger,” Trundle cooed.

“I’ve had him checked out already. He’s just a mail boy working at the Monteleone Hotel.”

“Checked out? Checked out by who?”

“I have friends in the Police Department and in the FBI, both the regional and national offices,” Fairchild said, finally pouring Trundle a scotch, but only after Trundle held out a hand as a prompt.

“Which begs the question why am I here?” he asked, accepting the drink with a nod of gratitude.

“I have friends in the department, Mr Trundle, but also enemies.”

“Who’d be without ’em,” Trundle agreed, knocking back Fairchild’s 40-year-old whiskey as if it were 40-hour-old hooch.

“I have spoken out many times on the dangers of Communism, Mr Trundle, both here and abroad. If it were to be known my own daughter had succumbed to the Socialists, it might seriously undermine...