Murder by Sunshine

By Garrett Russell

Stories of Dark Deeds in Sunny Places
A murderous couple with a taste for skydiving. A smuggling pilot down on his luck and a pearl diver who pushed his too far. A sideshow boxer haunted by his past and a hitman presented with an identity problem. These are just some of the characters lurking in the dark shadows of the sunny places which bring all these stories together – gathered in one volume for the first time since they appeared separately in the anthologies of the bestselling CrimeWriters Queensland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Garrett Russell
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648872627

Garrett Russell

Garrett Russell has, at various times, been a yacht delivery deckhand, an oriental antique dealer, a television producer, a film director, and he is still a flying instructor and glider pilot. His vocation, however, has always been writing. He has worked as an advertising copywriter, a screenwriter for television and film, a magazine contributor, and his short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines in Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, and internationally online. He has worked in England and Hong Kong as well as his native Australia, where he lives in the Sunshine State of Queensland.He was a founding member of CrimeWriters Queensland and creative director responsible for design and production of all that group’s publications: bestselling short story anthologies, an audiobook, and a series of booklets for travel reading called Tripping Yarns. His own stories were selected by the group’s independent editors for inclusion in all these titles.His television credits include Australian drama series Pacific Drive and Adrenaline Junkies, and documentaries for Discovery Channel and History Channel as well as all Australian commercial broadcast networks. He was most recently the writer/producer for seven series of the long-running network show Escape with ET and three series of Seafood Escape.His award-winning short films have screened at festivals around the world.

Book preview

Murder By Sunlight

Garrett Russell

Table of Contents

Introduction

Slither

Double Or Nothing

Punch Drunk

Hit the Silk

Of Pearls and Swine

Dead Ringer

Death of a Widow

Seventh Love

Copyright Page

Stories of dark deeds in sunny places

This is the first time the eight stories collected here have been published in one place, under one title and with one author. Seven of them are tales I wrote over a period of 11 years for the series of anthologies, from Murder Under the Mangoes to The Seventh Book of Sins, released by CrimeWriters Queensland.

These were books created around the idea that place can be as important as character in crime fiction, and that often the places where the sun shines brightest are also locations of the darkest shadows.

Queensland, the Sunshine State of Australia, provides plenty of sunny places and dark hearted villains. These stories will take you, in the company of smugglers and murderers, conmen and contract killers, from the city of Brisbane to the beaches and bush, into the air and out on the water. I hope you enjoy the trips.

And I hope you also enjoy le voyage the one non-Queensland story takes you on. It’s to the Côte d’Azur, where the weather and what happens are both suitably on theme.

Whatever the weather where you are reading this right now, if these stories add a dash of entertaining brightness to your day, my job will be done. Thank you for sharing your time with me and my shady characters.

Garrett Russell

Brisbane

2020

Slither

The Shark scanned the scene of death carefully. It was more like a scene for a postcard – a stretch of beach in late afternoon sunshine, a jet ski lolling in the shore break, the sea breeze ruffling the grasses on the dunes. Nothing more. No sign of a struggle. Not even a single footprint to disturb the sand.

‘Rest in peace,’ thought the Shark, and the thought made him smile with satisfaction.

After all, this was the scene of his own death.

He ran through the plan in his mind for what must have been the thousandth time, testing and probing for any weak points, any possible holes. And for the thousandth time, he came up with the same result. Perfect.

He imagined the headline in tomorrow’s Courier Mail. MILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN LOST AT SEA. Or maybe, if they were pressed for space, SHARK MISSING. His only regret was that he would not be in town to read it. By the time the paper hit the breakfast tables of all those stockbrokers and investment advisers and security commission snoops, he would be five flying hours away. And, as usual, one step ahead of them all.

By the time they realised he was gone for good, he would be settling into the security of his new identity. By the time they discovered how much money was missing, he (and it) would be safely established beyond extradition. By the time his old business empire finally collapsed, he would be too busy building the new one to give it a second thought.

One step ahead. The Shark marvelled at how far he’d come on that one simple ploy, how easily he’d been able to slither through a sea of gullibility to this, his moment of greatest triumph. Even his name was part of the game. He knew, early in his career and well before anyone was brave enough to say it to his face, that they called him the Shark. It was meant as an insult, but he twisted it to his advantage. Like the Rats of Tobruk revelling in the Rommel taunt, the Shark basked in the recognition of his predatory business tactics. He used the name to convince investors they were better off with him than against him, ran ads in the business pages with a sharp dorsal fin logo. And that’s when he really took off.

He discovered he enjoyed notoriety. His name and smiling face became a fixture in the social as well as business pages, and the money rolled in faster than ever. It was very nearly his undoing.

The Shark shuddered at the thought of how close he had come to disaster. It was his own fault, of course, for confusing profile with profit. He had been enjoying himself so much, he almost missed the warning signs. If Alice had been able to have her way, he most certainly would have. But something – instinct, he supposed – brought him back to his senses just in time.

He was less than half a step ahead of the pack when he realised he had to get out.

The business part, the money part, was easy, even with the securities commission plodding at his heels. The challenge was to get himself out clean and free. He’d been seduced into making himself so damned recognisable.

The solution, when he finally came up with it, was as brilliant as anything he’d ever dazzled the stock market with.

And it worked so well: there was no shortage of applicants to the three line classified he ran at the most desperate end of the