The Break

By Russell James

Paul and Fay have little in common. He is well-paid and comfortable while Fay, after breaking up with Roper, her violent boyfriend, has nothing left but her young daughter. On the night Paul rescues her their two worlds briefly touch, like a kiss on a pool table after which the flight of the balls will change. They may meet again or they may continue to bounce off side cushions, skating across green baize, slowing with every bounce, never touching again. Who knows what will happen? With each bounce as the balls skid off in fresh directions, it may be time for another kiss – or for a collision, when all the balls will fly apart.
Tucked away in the longboat on the river, Paul, Fay and Emma begin to feel secure – but Roper is an angry, jealous man. He wants her back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell James
• Release date: Mar 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476227146

Russell James

Russell has been a published writer for some 25 years, is an ex-Chairman of the Crime Writers Association, and has written a dozen and a half novels in the crime and historical genres. He has also published various non-fiction works, including 4 illustrated biographical encyclopaedias: Great British Fictional Detectives and its companion work, Great British Fictional Villains, followed by the Pocket Guide to Victorian Writers & Poets, and its companion, the Pocket Guide to Victorian Artists & Their Models. His books include: IN A TOWN NEAR YOU (Prospero) THE CAPTAIN'S WARD (Prospero) AFTER SHE DROWNED (Prospero) STORIES I CAN'T TELL (with Maggie King) (Prospero) THE NEWLY DISCOVERED DIARIES OF DOCTOR KRISTAL (Prospero) EXIT 39 (Prospero) RAFAEL'S GOLD (Prospero) THE EXHIBITIONISTS (G-Press) POCKET GUIDE TO VICTORIAN ARTISTS & MODELS (Pen & Sword) POCKET GUIDE TO VICTORIAN WRITERS & POETS (Pen & Sword) GREAT BRITISH FICTIONAL VILLAINS (Pen & Sword) GREAT BRITISH FICTIONAL DETECTIVES (Pen & Sword) THE MAUD ALLAN AFFAIR (Pen & Sword) MY BULLET SWEETLY SINGS (Prospero) REQUIEM FOR A DAUGHTER (Prospero) NO ONE GETS HURT (Do Not Press) PICK ANY TITLE (Do Not Press) THE ANNEX (Five Star Mysteries) PAINTING IN THE DARK (Do Not Press) OH NO, NOT MY BABY (Do Not Press) COUNT ME OUT (Serpent's Tail) SLAUGHTER MUSIC (Alison & Busby) PAYBACK (Gollancz) DAYLIGHT (Gollancz) UNDERGROUND (Gollancz)

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THE BREAK

by Russell James

Published at Smashwords

copyright Russell James 2012

Full-length novels by this author include:

Underground

Daylight

Payback

Slaughter Music

Count me Out

Oh No, Not My Baby

Painting in the Dark

The Annex

Pick Any Title

No One Gets Hurt

Requiem for a Daughter

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

This ebook is for your own use only, and may not be given away or sold to other people. If you are reading this book but did not purchase it, be aware that you are infringing copyright. Please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s rights.

CONTENTS:

CriticsWhat the Critics Say

ForewordForeword

The BreakThe Break

AboutAbout the Author

For more about the author check his website at

http://russelljamesbooks.wordpress.com/

Critics on Russell James:

'The Godfather of British Noir,'

- said Ian Rankin

'The great unknown talent of British crime writing,'

- said GQ magazine

'Dangerous and fascinating . . . someone to watch,'

- said Hardboiled magazine

'For me, the best hard boiled writer in the world,'

- said Ed Gorman

'The best of Britain's darker crime writers,'

- said The Times

'He goes looking for trouble where more circumspect writers would back off,'

- said The Times Saturday Review

Foreword

If we're lucky, we crime readers will never meet a criminal in real life. We'll snuggle up in bed with them, curl up in an armchair and listen open-mouthed, or we'll gaze equally open-mouthed while they cavort glamorously on screen. A good many crime writers have exploited this, choosing as the fulcrum of their story the moment when somebody's ordinary law-abiding life is abruptly interrupted by crime. Or by a brush with crime. Or by meeting someone who has been affected by crime.

Around the time my stories were moving up from the shadowy underclasses into a more sunlit world – more like my readers' world – I wrote this story in which the two worlds briefly touched, like a kiss on a pool table after which the flight of the balls is changed. They may meet again or they may continue to bounce off the side cushions, skating across green baize, slowing with each bounce, never touching again. And who knows? With each bounce as the balls skid off in fresh directions, it may be time for another kiss.

To many of those who live in the shadowy underclasses, crime is not a once-off interruption to their lives, it is a continual presence. These unfortunates (as the Victorians would call them) are affected less by a specific criminal act than by the continual ambiance of crime. There are young men in Britain today who when arrested by the police declare their profession outright as 'burglar' or 'car thief'. Crime is what they do; being caught is part of the down side, an interruption. But it's no reason to give up the job.

These people share the same streets as the rest of us. In The Break, Paul is an office worker – a conventional office worker, though he'd be the last to think of himself as that – with plenty going on in his work and love life and no reason at all for him to think of those people who live a different life but who inhabit the same streets. He is neither a sympathetic nor an unsympathetic character. He is ordinary, too ordinary perhaps. On the night which forms the fulcrum to this story he has had a little too much to drink (drink is the lubricant to a surprising number of crime stories) and, being wise and law-abiding, he decides to park his car and get out and walk. Which puts him on the same night-time streets that those other people share. Having left his car, he has left the protective cocoon which surrounds us – we comfortable crime readers – most of the time. He has become open to possibility.

Was it drink, night-time or chance - or was it all three? Night-time and chance come to each of us, everyday. But do we respond? The inspiration for this story, as so often, came from the slightest incident. After twenty-five years – quarter of a century, it slips away – I had occasion to return to the place where I'd worked so long ago, early in my wage-earning life. (IBM, since you ask, where I once had what passed for a professional life as a computer programmer. Hard to recall it now.) While in their offices that day I bumped into a man I'd worked with twenty-five years before. Did I say a man? He'd been a mere lad, joining IBM straight from school. And he was still there. Had this been his life, I wondered? At the time I worked there he'd been engaged to an attractive, rather flighty, young woman who I came to know rather better than I ever told him. Did he marry her? Were they still married? Yes to both.

Now, in a sense, his was an exemplary life: joining as a school-leaver he'd started in a lowly position but had stayed with the company and had carved out a good career. He had married young and had stayed married to the same woman. Exemplary, as I say, and certainly an example my parents would have held up against my own nomadic life. But I was appalled - no, that puts it too strongly: in a company like IBM you'd expect to find people who'd been there twenty-five years. But he'd stayed in the same place since leaving school? I stared at him aghast. Had he lived for ever on this narrow path? You may think I had no right to criticise a man for leading a good regular life. Undeviating. Exemplary. And I do not