Tales for the Tube.

By ML Stewart

A collection of five short crime stories from the author of the bestselling "Facebook Killer' trilogy.

In 'Jack and Jill', a husband and wife's lives are torn apart by a neighbour.

Follow 'The Backpacker' as he embarks on the ultimate suicide mission.

'The Blind Snail' sees a badly beaten woman awake from unconsciousness in a darkened house. Help is trying to reach her, but she has no idea where she is.

'The Mysterious Case of the Magically Missing Drugs': Scotland Yard's D.S. Liz Porteous assists an old friend from HM Customs to stop an ingenious drug trafficker.

'The Montgomerys' were the perfect family...until the money ran out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ML Stewart
• Release date: Jan 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301571833

ML Stewart

M.L. Stewart was born in London, England in 1968.Since first self-publishing in 2011, his books have been enjoyed by some 100,000 readers.

Book preview

Tales for the Tube

M.L. Stewart

Copyright 2013 by M.L. Stewart

Smashwords Edition.

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The Author.

M.L. Stewart is the author of The Facebook Killer trilogy, The United Kingdom of Islam, Hunter, and The Sunday Club.

Since first publishing in 2011 the author’s work has been mostly enjoyed by some 90,000 readers worldwide; reaching the number one spot in several Amazon and Apple e-book charts.

Born in London in 1968ish, M.L. Stewart now lives in mainland Europe, far from the grasp of angry readers and Her Majesty’s Tax Man.

Tales for the Tube

Contents

1 - Jack and Jill.

2 - The Backpacker.

3 - The Blind Snail.

4 - The Mysterious Case of the Magically Missing Drugs.

5 - The Montgomerys.

1

Jack and Jill

Jill and I knew something was amiss the second we realised the front door wasn’t locked.

Admittedly, my wife seemed a little more concerned than I; the cocktail of Pimm’s and champagne having dulled my senses over the course of the evening.

We’d spent that night celebrating our vet’s fortieth birthday: Graham Fotherington-Gill. The same vet who had tended to our livestock since I inherited the farm some ten years before. I shan’t bore you with such irrelevant details, but I will say one thing: We will never, ever, forget the date of that man’s birth.

Jill had driven the Range Rover home. At seven month’s pregnant, she had erred on the side of caution and merely partaken of a single champagne, to toast our host’s milestone.

Gable Ends Farm, or ‘The Gables’ as it’s known locally, stands in ten hectares. Rolling fields and grazing pastures for as far as the eye can see. An ocean, constantly changing with the seasons, from green to yellow then brown; broken only by solitary islands of oak and elm.

We had just over a hundred dairy cattle back then and twice as many sheep. The farmhouse itself was a large Georgian property, with bones of sandstone and skin of ivy. I say ‘was’ because I never look at it now. It’s still there. I still live in it, if ‘live’ is the correct word, but on the rare occasions that I leave the house, it’s always with my head down, eyes focussed on the cracked and overgrown courtyard as I run to the car.

The sheds and stables stand empty now: the cattle and sheep long gone; horses too. All sold, shortly after we found that door unlocked.

The darkness has held an eerie silence these past five years; broken only by the occasional scream of a temperamental child, or slamming of a door in the row of four cottages over the road. The same cottages my father sold off just before he passed away. An act I still partly blame for what happened.

He’d lived in cottage number 3. Dawson was his name. Ambrose Dawson.

He was the first official owner of the property, outside of the family that is, in over one hundred and fifty years. A fact that I resented beyond words. The power to choose and control my neighbours, the only neighbours for three miles, had been snatched from me in the time it took that man to scribe his signature.

I remember Ambrose Dawson well. He was older than me back then. Mid-forties I would have said.

Jill and I had agreed to give him some casual work on the farm: clearing the fallen wood from the copses, helping repair the fences, a bit of gardening work around the house, that sort of thing. Admittedly, we didn’t pay him much, but he claimed to be unemployed and lived by the motto every little helps.

And his voice: I recall that thick Somerset accent as clearly as Jill’s Londonian lilt; before she stopped speaking that is. But it was indiscernible that night. I don’t think a person screams with an accent when his front door is being kicked off its hinges.

I still remember his teeth: Yellowed from years of nicotine and lack of care. Smell the mix of whisky and fear on his breath. See his terrified brown eyes as my fingers tightened around his throat, and those thick glasses that fell from his skinny face to the filthy carpet as I threw him across the room.

I can still hear Jill screaming behind me. The animals becoming agitated. The horses neighing. The sound of terrified hooves slamming into wood. The crack of Dawson’s skull against the stone fireplace. Old Mrs Pugh from number 2 begging me to stop.

I don’t recall how many times I hit that man. I just remember stopping when I heard the sirens wafting through the open door on the cold night breeze. A sound I hadn’t heard since I was a small boy and Father took me to the city, shopping for Christmas presents. He told me the policemen were chasing bad men: murderers and bank robbers. I remember being petrified by the noise and flashing lights; thinking we would never escape that place with our lives. That was my first and last trip to the city. And The Gables, well, no police car had ventured down there since the dawn of time. Not until we found that door unlocked, anyway.

I can still feel the chaos the police brought with them. The animals going berserk at the noise. Jill yelling at the paramedics as they rushed in to treat Ambrose Dawson; telling them it wasn’t him they were here for; that they should be in the main house. Old Mrs Pugh demanding I be arrested for trying to kill the poor soul. Then the policewoman dragging Jill outside. More screaming. A woman’s voice, demanding everyone calm down. Mrs Pugh sticking her two penneth in. A slap of flesh, palm on cheek. Then Jill being threatened with arrest, followed by the front door to number 2 slamming shut with indignant outrage.

It was over in a matter of seconds but seemed to go on for hours, and I wasn’t a part of it. I was disconnected from the whole scene, my eyes remaining fixed on him: Ambrose Dawson. Doubled up, whimpering. His broken tooth on the carpet. His blood-soaked, filthy vest sagging from his skinny body like a mainsail.

I remember a face next to mine: One of the policemen, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then the policewoman was back in the room, waving her arms around. Then Dawson was alone in his suffering as we all ran across the road to The Gables. Jill was sitting outside, sobbing into her hands, her long blonde hair hanging like a veil over her face, not daring to go back inside.

The lights were on inside the house. The open door threw a carpet of