Outside The Rain

By David Menon

When a bomb rips through Manchester's Piccadilly railway station during rush hour, DCI Sara Hoyland narrowly escapes with her life but soon comes to realise that all is not as it would first appear.
The city is plunged into crisis and the usual scapegoats are wheeled out in the media and extremism seems to be taking hold on all sides. Yet just as moderate elements such as local MP Craig Sutherland seem to be calming the situation, terrorists strike again leaving a member of Sara's team fighting for his life.
Establishment fingers are pointed at the usual suspects but are they really the perpetrators? Is there a more sinister force at work hiding behind the cover of democracy? And why is MP Craig Sutherland receiving anonymous death threats and why has a respected political journalist gone missing leaving only his dead girlfriend in his apartment?
Uncovering the plot takes DCI Sara Hoyland into uncomfortable territory in this, the gripping third instalment of David Menon's acclaimed detective series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Empire Publications
• Release date: Sep 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909360181

Book preview

OUTSIDE THE RAIN

A NOVEL

BY DAVID MENON

*

First published in 2013by Empire Publications

Smashwords Edition

© David Menon 2013

ISBN: 978-1-909360-18-1

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by Empire Publications at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is available in print at:

http://www.empire-uk.com

*

This is for my father because I still think about him every day, and to my brother Stephen who took such great care of our mother.

It’s also for Maddie who continues to believe in me … and to anyone who has the courage to step outside the rain and entertain the word that is love … ‘

*

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to thank Ash at Empire Publications for putting the spring in my step again. You gave me the chance and I took it.

I’d also like to thank graphic designer Scott Gaunt for his wonderful creativity in designing the new ebook covers. You can get him at [e-mail].

I wrote much of ‘Outside the Rain’ whilst staying at the Sunnydale Hotel in Blackpool and I must thank Lyn and Brian Johnson for their wonderful hospitality, cooked breakfasts, gin and tonics, and the desk that they put in my room so that I could work comfortably. Go and meet them for yourselves. Their website is www.sunnydalehotel.co.uk

You can find out more about me and catch up with what I’m doing by going to my website at www.davidmenonwriter.com and you can email me at [e-mail]. Tell me what you think of the DCI Sara Hoyland series and how you’d like her to develop – I’d be really interested to know.

I’m also on Facebook and soon there’ll be a page on there dedicated to Sara Hoyland. You can also get me on twitter @ifanyonefalls.

This is a very complicated world we live in and with this book, as well as writing what I hope is an entertaining story, I’m also trying to say that those who we’ve been led to believe are the good guys aren’t always good.

David

Paris, Summer 2013

CHAPTER ONE

Jacob Abrahams was Professor of International Studies at Liverpool John Moores University and a widely respected academic in demand by corporations and governments alike. He wasn’t known for watering down his arguments to suit the sensitivities of his audience and his latest book on the definition of terrorism was climbing the non-fiction charts all over the world. It had taken him six months of blood, sweat and tears, often working into the small hours and waking up again only hours later as the sun came up to do some more before setting off to do the day job. But he felt it was important to get his message across, even if some didn’t like it. Indeed, it was especially because some didn’t like it that he had to speak up and given his stance on the most intractable issue of the day, namely the Israel/Palestine conflict, as a Jew he’d induced the most hatred from his own side.

His publisher didn’t have to cajole him into doing a publicity tour for his book entitled Who are the Terrorists? Jacob liked to go out and engage with his readers and as he walked up to the branch of Waterstones, on Deansgate in Manchester, he saw his face and the title of his book was written in large type on two posters spread across the main front window. The manager of the store greeted him warmly and Jacob’s publisher was there too. Jacob would read the first chapter of his book and then a question and answer session would follow before he sat down to sign some books. The store and Jacob’s own publishers had advertised the event in all the usual ways using the new social networking sites that were now available to book sellers as mass marketing tools and a sizeable crowd had gathered in the room on the top floor where the event was to take place. They were a mixed crowd made up of teachers, students, members of political parties, lonely nerd type nutcases who needed something to obsess about, and the usual kind of white, middle-class intellectuals who like to think about stuff. Then there were those who were genuinely interested in Jacob’s perspective and members of opposing Jewish groups were there as always when he did anything public like this, sitting next to Palestinians to whom Jacob was a hero.

It was just after he’d finished signing when a couple of young guys who identified themselves as students at Manchester university got into conversation with Jacob about the current state of the peace process and whether President Obama in his second term would put enough pressure on Israel to conclude a deal. The guys didn’t know they were shielding Jacob from two other men who were striding purposely across the floor of the room to where Jacob was standing. One of them pushed through and fired his shot.

Everybody dived for cover but one person would not be getting up again.

*

Hettie Goldstein had been married to her husband Yitzhak for nearly sixty years. In that time they’d given five children to the world, two of whom now lived in Israel, and they had a total of eleven grandchildren with two more on the way. Hettie could barely keep up but just the thought of all that new life coming from God through her family was enough to fill her heart with joy on even the darkest day.

She well remembered that cold, wet day back in 1946 when she and her mother had arrived in Liverpool with only one suitcase and its contents to their name. Hettie’s father and two brothers had all perished in Belsen concentration camp and Hettie and her mother held onto each other for dear life. They’d been a happy family growing up in Frankfurt until Hitler turned the rest of German society against them and their fellow Jews. They should’ve fled when they had the chance but Hettie’s father had been convinced that the Nazi’s would never be able to carry out what had become their obvious intent. That false hope had been wiped out the day they came to take them to the camp. The evil of the next few years was intensified when her father and siblings were murdered. Even when liberation came, Hettie and her mother didn’t feel like they were free. How could they after what had happened to the rest of the family?

‘I don’t know what we are going to do,’ said Hettie as she cleared away the lunch dishes from the dining room table. ‘It took hours to get that paint off the door, Yitzhak’.

‘I’m well aware of that, Hettie.’

‘Then when are you going to do something?’

‘I’ve done all I can, Hettie.’

‘No, you haven’t or else it wouldn’t still be happening.’

‘Hettie, I’ve been to the police and ...’

‘... oh they don’t care about us! Don’t you know that by now? Are you an idiot or something?’

‘Don’t call me an idiot, Hettie.’

‘Well you’re indifferent then,’ she countered. Then she laughed sardonically. ‘As if the police are going to help us? I mean, really.’

‘Hettie, if only it was as simple as you like to make it sound.’

‘It is simple, of course it’s simple,’ said Hettie. ‘At least it would be simple if we weren’t Jewish. Then the police would be falling over themselves to help us.’

‘I’ve already made that point to them.’

‘Then you need to make it again with more force,’ said Hettie as she picked up his plate. It was quiet in the house now all the family had flown the nest. Hettie liked having people to cater for. When their daughter had worked in the kosher cake shop around the corner she’d always nipped back to her parents’ place for lunch but now she worked with the Rabbi at the synagogue it was too far and she didn’t have time. Hettie thought that was a pity. She missed her like she missed all her children.

‘I don’t know what else you want me to do,’ said Yitzhak with a sigh of exasperation.

‘Your father would’ve known what to do.’

‘Don’t bring my father into it, Hettie!’

‘Why not? He’d have known what to do when the community is under attack. Yitzhak, I love you dearly, you know that. But sometimes I wish you had some of your father’s steel.’

‘And look where that got him!’

‘Yes, an honourable death.’

‘In a hangman’s noose.’

‘It was an honourable death, Yitzhak.’

‘Is that what you want for me? Some kind of honourable death as you call it?’

‘No! Don’t be silly, sweetheart.’

‘Then get it into perspective, Hettie. Some front doors have been daubed in paint ...’

‘... with messages of hatred against Jews!’

‘And that poor professor almost lost his life in that assassination attempt in the bookstore last week.’

‘And even though I would never have shed any tears for that self-loathing Jew who apologises for terrorists, the attempt on his life does prove my point.’

‘He doesn’t apologise for terrorists, Hettie! He just tries to understand the problem so that a fair and just solution can be found and sometimes, yes sometimes, he tells us Jews some home truths when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.’

‘He advocates the murder of Jews, his own kind. How much more treasonous can you get?’

‘No, he doesn’t advocate the murder of Jews, Hettie! That is nonsense and if you actually listened to what he said you wouldn’t be able to make such a grotesque accusation.’

‘Yitzhak, I’m not going to argue with you anymore. Our people are under attack. Now, are you going to just sit around and wait until it gets more serious? Are you going to wait until one of us dies before you do something?’

*

DS Joe Alexander had been looking forward to going home to be with Carol and the kids. But then he got the text message to say that Carol would be going out with her friends, again, and that the girls were at their grandmothers. She told him not to wait up.

But it shouldn’t be like this. He didn’t mind Carol going out with her friends. Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t a fucking cave man. But she was going out more with her friends than she was staying in with him for the evening and she seemed more enthusiastic about going out with her friends than staying in with him for the evening.

Had he been used as some sort of bridge between her abusive husband and another future with another man? It was beginning to feel that way sometimes. He should be feeling on top of the world now that Carol had moved in but instead he didn’t know if it had been a good thing or not. He’d been delighted to welcome her into his home when her husband threw her out after he found out about their affair. Her two teenage daughters came with her of course and three women in the house meant that Joe never got more than a couple of minutes in the bathroom each morning. But he could put up with stuff like that. What was harder to work out was the way Carol had changed towards him since they’d been living together. He thought that she’d want them to spend as much time together as they could and for the four of them to build a home life together as a family. But instead Carol seemed to want to re-discover her freedom. She’d started going out with her friends three or four nights a week, leaving Joe to look after the girls. She also seemed less keen on the physical side of their relationship than she’d been when they were having their affair. He’d tried to make light of it but she hadn’t taken the hint so he was wondering how long he could leave it before talking to her about it more seriously. He didn’t want to ruin everything. He’d waited all his life for a woman like Carol but it was turning out to be a very long way from where he thought it should be.

‘Are you still with us, Joe?’ asked DCI Sara Hoyland.

‘Sorry, Ma’am,’ said Joe who didn’t like being disrespectful to the boss. ‘Sorry.’

‘How had he got it so wrong at such close range?’ Sara asked as she and her squad sat around the large table in the squad room. The man who’d tried to assassinate Professor Jacob Abrahams had missed his target despite being so close. The professor had escaped unharmed but the student from Manchester University who’d been standing next to him had caught the bullet. He’d only been in his first year. The assailant had then been able to escape in the panic that followed.

‘He was a lousy shot?’ Joe offered.

‘Well yes, obviously, but I suspect that given the public profile of Professor Abrahams they’d done a lot of planning. They intended to kill him and we’ll need to start by asking him to give us a list of potential enemies.’

‘That could be a long list,’ said DI Tim Norris, Sara’s deputy.

‘The professor has got what some would call some pretty outspoken views,’ said Joe as he looked through some of the professor’s previous speeches. ‘It’s made him a lot of enemies particularly from within his own community.’

‘How is that?’ asked Sara.

‘Because Professor Abrahams is critical of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and some can’t accept a Jew criticising Israel,’ said DS Adrian Bradshaw.

‘So we’ll need to proceed with our usual sensitivity,’ said Sara.

‘Maybe things will become clearer after we’ve interviewed the professor?’ offered Joe.

‘Well for the sake of the family of the young student who was killed we need answers,’ said Sara. ‘The professor isn’t dead but the student is and all because he was standing in the way of a mad bastard with an axe to grind against someone he disagrees with. We need to get justice first and foremost for him and his family.’

When Sara and Joe drove over to Liverpool to interview Jacob Abrahams he didn’t turn out to be what Sara had been expecting. The professor had thick, wavy dark brown hair with matching eyes that looked at her with great purpose as if meeting him had somehow been pre-ordained. The top two buttons of his light pink shirt were open revealing a thick rug on his chest. He had a short beard cut close to his skin and his black corduroy jacket finished off the forty-something academic look. All this and brains too! Sara found herself licking her lips. She saw that he noticed and she blushed. This man was seriously sexy. She told herself to focus on the work but she already knew that he was single and she couldn’t ignore the lurch in her senses that told her that this was a man she could take home to mother.

He made them tea in his ramshackle, hopelessly untidy office where there were piles of papers scattered about all over the place in no apparent order and declared in answer to their wandering eyes. ‘I’m afraid that tidiness isn’t a virtue with which I’ve been blessed but I’m bloody good in other areas of my life so damn my critics to Hell.’

Wonderful, thought Sara. She was in love with him already. And did those other areas of his life include bed?

‘As long as you know where to find everything, sir,’ said Joe with his usual polite charm.

‘Oh I do,’ said Jacob as he sat down at his desk and pushed his computer keyboard to one side to make way for his tea. ‘And please call me Jacob, detectives. I don’t go much for formalities. There are much bigger things to worry about.’

‘Like why would someone try to kill you?’ said Sara.

‘Well there’s a long list that I drew up that you’ve no doubt seen?’

‘Yes,’ said Sara. ‘And my colleagues are slowly going through it. It is a long list. Don’t you feel… well uncomfortable being able to draw up a list like that?’

‘Sara, when you have views like mine you make enemies everywhere. I’m a Jew who’s dared to criticise Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. That makes me public enemy number one too many of my fellow Jews. When I go down to visit my parents in North London where I grew up, some of their friends, who I’ve known since I was a kid, won’t speak to me. Even one of my brothers thinks I’m a traitor but of course, being family and being Jewish, he tells me he hates me and then tells me he loves me straight after!’

Sara could listen to that hearty laugh of his all night long. This was getting a little crazy. She was smitten.

‘What is it that you criticise exactly that offends them so, Jacob?’ asked Joe.

‘I criticise Israel’s illegal occupation of land that doesn’t belong to it and the throwing out of Palestinians from their homes at two o’clock in the morning to populate that land with Jews. Where are those Palestinians supposed to go? Have we learned nothing from our history to know that you can’t do that to people? But the pro-settlement camp thinks that it’s okay to expand Israel at whatever cost to others because of something God is supposed to have said three thousand years ago. Don’t they think that God might’ve said something to the Palestinians too? I say it’s not moral and it’s not Jewish.’

‘And you call it terrorism even though it’s carried out by the Israeli state?’ Sara asked.

‘I do because my point is that terrorism is what it is. Just because it’s carried out by a democratic state doesn’t excuse it. And what I also say, with regard to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, is that if you try and strangle somebody then don’t complain because they’re not breathing properly. Do you understand what I mean, Sara?’

‘Yes’ said Sara who was giddy that he’d used her first name. ‘I think I do.’

‘Well Jacob, you do argue a well thought out case’ said Joe. ‘But we’re here in terms of your personal security and you say you didn’t recognise the man who tried to shoot you?’

‘Not at all, no, detective,’ said Jacob. ‘I looked into his eyes for a moment but there was no recognition on my part.’

‘Well we know he was with someone else,’ said Sara.

‘Yes’ said Jacob who was going deep into her eyes with his own. ‘Although I honestly didn’t notice the other guy. Do you have any leads so far?’

‘No, but we’re working on it,’ said Sara. ‘In the meantime our Merseyside colleagues are providing you with around the clock protection but please don’t abuse that. My colleagues take their jobs very seriously.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Detective,’ said Jacob with a glint in his eye. He watched as Sara took a breath.

‘And we’ll need to know about all your