Reynolds The Lady in the Park

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-9162077-9-0
Verlag: Muswell Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 362 Seiten

Clever, humane, affectionate and realistic crime writing at its best. Maxim Jakubowski. Introducing a unique and unorthodox crime solving duo - ex Met DI Jim Domino, and his inquisitive six-year-old grandson, Danny. When a woman is found unconscious on a ping-pong table in Peckham's Warwick Gardens, it looks like a case of mistaken identity. Why would anyone want to injure this popular local mum of six? But Jim Domino, retired CID detective turned private eye, keeps asking questions. As the crime escalates to murder, Domino's investigations take him to the leafy Thames Valley, and plunge him into a dark world of ruthless people-traffickers and drug dealers. How might these sinister activities be linked to the Peckham murder? Assisted by sharp observations from his six-year-old grandson, Danny, Domino finds that important clues can come from unexpected sources. The Lady in the Park is about the good in most people, and about love, grief and childhood. The first in an exciting new crime fiction series, it weaves a diverse cast of characters into a twisty immersive plot that will leave readers craving for more investigations featuring the inimitable Jim Domino and his young sidekick, Danny.

David Reynolds was a co-founder of Bloomsbury Publishing in 1986. His non-fiction has been widely reviewed, Swan River (Picador, 2001), was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize. Since the launch of Quick Reads in 2006, he has been the programme's Literacy Editor, ensuring that authors write to an appropriate level. He lives in Putney, South London, and knows Peckham well, spending much time there looking after his grandchildren. The Lady in the Park is his debut novel and the first in the Peckham Private Eye series featuring Jim Domino and his grandson Danny.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reynolds, David

Leseproben

1

I was looking out through Laura’s white louvred shutters. Crisp brown leaves filled the gutter and the plane trees had shed patches of bark. A white mini that I didn’t recognise was parked behind Laura’s dirty black BMW. As I turned away, something moved out there: a young girl walking quickly from left to right on the other side of the street. She looked familiar, though I couldn’t think why. Then she crossed the road and stopped in front of Laura’s fence. She looked straight at me, but she didn’t seem to see me; I was hidden behind the louvres and my back was to the light. Next thing, she was pushing at the gate, flipping the doorknocker and, without waiting, rattling the letter box.

Dan glanced up at me. He was watching a Lego movie. Dan is my grandson – he’s six; I’ve been looking after him, off and on, since he was a baby. He looked back at the screen. He was used to urgent knocks at the door; used to men standing there holding brown cardboard boxes – things his mum had ordered.

I opened the door. And knew I had met her before: a girl from round the corner called … Ruby, maybe. She was out of breath. There was sweat on her lip and her forehead.

She spoke quietly, almost whispered, ‘Can you help me, Mr Domino? I don’t know who to ask.’ Then she was in tears – almost. ‘Please!’

I led her in, sat her at the table and she began to talk, in jerks, between big gulps of air. Her mum had been found about an hour ago on one of the ping-pong tables in the park. ‘She was unconscious,’ she said, and gave me a stare: the kind of stare that, for an instant, made me think that she thought it was my fault. She looked down and dabbed at her eye with her knuckle. ‘They took her in an ambulance. Muriel told me when I got home after football. Muriel’s looking after the kids. Could you … could you come with me to the hospital? I don’t know who else to ask.’ She was crying now and wiping her eyes on her sleeve, her voice a high-pitched whine. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t know what to do.’

I guessed Ruby – that was her name – was fourteen or fifteen. I’d seen her sometimes in the park when I was there with Dan. She was slight with a long, alert face, freckles on her nose and brown hair loosely tied back. I’d seen her kicking a football with a group of boys: anything between two- and five-a-side on the tarmac pitch with the miniature goals; sometimes she was the only girl, sometimes there were one or two others. She was kind to, protective of, smaller children like Dan. I’d noticed that.

She wanted me to take her, drive her, to the hospital. And go in with her and find out what was going on with her mum. And I said I would, of course.

‘Thanks, Mr Domino,’ she said. ‘That’s so kind. Cool.’ She leaned forward on the chair with her hands between her knees and smiled a hopeful smile. 

Only thing was: I’d have to take Dan. I was minding him that evening. I often did that, and sometimes – not that day – I collected him from school.

‘Who is Muriel?’ I asked.

‘Our neighbour. Next door. She’s really nice, and her husband, Joe; he works on the barrier at the station.’

I got my jacket, car keys, Dan’s coat. It was just after 6 pm. Dan’s dinner was in the oven, fish fingers and chips, and I had green beans in a pan, ready to be simmered on the hob. I turned the oven off. Laura, my daughter, Dan’s mum, wouldn’t be back till midnight. Laura is a jazz singer: 606 Club that night, a wedding somewhere on the Saturday, the Vortex the next week, and on it went – gigs all over the place: Brighton, Bristol, Manchester.

I put Dan in his seat in the back of Laura’s Beamer. I’d no idea when we’d get home. It could be hours. It wasn’t ideal. Dan had school in the morning and he should have had a proper meal instead of the cold hot-cross bun that he was chewing on. But he was enjoying this; I could tell. He knows about me being a detective, and what detectives do – and he takes an interest, sometimes. ‘What you been detecting today, Grandpa?’ he’ll say. And if it isn’t too grisly, I tell him. 

I looked in the rearview mirror. He was smiling to himself. He likes a drama – and we’ve had a few, he and I. You could say we’re best mates. When he was three, he told Laura that I was his best friend. I loved that.

Ruby was beside me, sitting forward in the seat, staring ahead. I thought about her mum, whom I didn’t know at all well. She was a playground acquaintance – one of many I’ve stood beside at the swings – chatty sometimes; distracted, a bit tense, at others. And that didn’t surprise me; I knew, somehow, that she had five other children, all younger than Ruby, and a reputation for wildness. 

We were moving slowly in a line of traffic on Peckham Road and I was thinking for the first time about whether what I was doing was right. Should I be involved with this girl? Should I even be alone with her in a car (apart from Dan) for instance?

But she hadn’t made this up. How could she? Why would she? What would be the point? Silly! Silly thinking. Don’t be a wuss. I was doing the right thing. Of course! It would have been cruel to say no.

‘Why did you come to me, Ruby?’

She looked towards me and then away. ‘People say you’re a good person – and you used to be a policeman.’

Why had I asked? I’d expected her to say something like that. ‘You trust policemen, then?’

She was still looking away from me. She shrugged. ‘Mostly.’

‘They’re mostly good. They want to help people: policemen and policewomen. But they have a hard job, and it’s getting harder all the time. Budget cuts.’ I almost said ‘silly rules’, but that wasn’t the time and Ruby wasn’t the audience. 

She pulled out a phone in a rainbow-striped case. ‘I’m phoning my brother, to tell him what’s happening.’ She tapped with her thumb. ‘Luke …? Everything all right …? Muriel there …? Listen. I’m with Mr Domino; he’s driving me to the hospital … OK … Shit! I don’t know. I’d forgotten that. There’s a cake, isn’t there …? Yeah. Decide tomorrow … Let them stay up, unless they wanna go to bed … OK … Call you later.’

She looked across at me. ‘It’s my little brother’s birthday tomorrow. I’d completely forgotten.’ She was welling up.

‘Well … Right now, your mum’s the important thing.’

‘Can’t do his,’ – her voice cracked – ‘birthday without Mum.’

‘Maybe leave it till she’s better.’

She sat back and drew her knees up to her chin.

I drove past King’s College Hospital, turned right at the top of the hill and parked under a streetlight beside Ruskin Park. As we got out into the cold, the moon was over the trees sliding out from behind clouds. I pointed so that Dan saw it, and he watched as thin clouds drifted in front of it. Then I zipped up his coat and he took my hand.

* * *

As we approached the reception desk, I realised that I didn’t know Ruby’s mother’s full name. ‘Caroline Swann, double n,’ Ruby said.

Caroline was on the fifth floor, in intensive care. A policewoman in uniform and a man wearing a baseball cap and a denim jacket – almost certainly CID – were standing beside a hand-sanitiser with their backs to us. I squirted gel into my palms, rubbed them together and watched as Dan reached up and did the same. ‘Well done, Dan. Good stuff.’ He looked up at me with a grin.

‘Jim! What you doing here?’ The plainclothes policeman was smiling at me with raised eyebrows.

‘Charlie! Well … what are you doing here? It’s good to see you.’ A while ago Charlie Ritchie had been my sergeant. ‘This is Ruby. Her mum’s in here. We’ve come to visit her … if we’re allowed. And this is Dan, my grandson. I’m looking after him tonight.’

‘Hello Ruby. Hello Dan.’ Charlie leaned forward and smiled. ‘I’m a police officer.’ He pushed his cap back. ‘What’s your mum’s name, Ruby?’

‘Caroline Swann.’

‘Your mum is why we’re here, too.’ Charlie smiled. ‘This is PC Das.’ 

Unlike Charlie, the policewoman had taken off her hat and she was holding it in front of her; her hair was glossy and cut in a bob. She too smiled at Ruby. ‘Your mum’s asleep. We want to talk to her when she wakes up, find out what happened – you know.’

Ruby stared and spoke quietly....