Daniel Oriel and the Coven

By Oliver Franklin

Talk about upping the ante... Now the kids get to fight back! The band succeed in ruining the Mayor’s evening and there’s a secret meeting caught on film, followed by a gripping climax on the roof of the Randolph Hotel. Flying fists – flying food – flying bullets...! It’s quite galling when public figures lose their job, only to move somewhere else and carry on doing – whatever they were doing? Well, that’s what’s happened, and now they’re trying to buy off our hero. The problem is, there’s a war on and Daniel’s in the thick of it. He and Kavanagh have had to grow up fast. Resignations, it seems, are not enough. Yes, this is a fight to the death. Attention! This book is scarier than the last one. Read it with caution...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver Franklin
• Release date: Dec 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781005370190

Oliver Franklin

You will read some of it in the books...

Book preview

Daniel Oriel

and the Coven

by Oliver Franklin

Copyright © 2013 Oliver Franklin

The author has asserted his moral rights

First published in 2016 by Buddlewood House

Cover by P J Truscott – https://pjtruscott.wixsite.com/pjay/

Logo by angwerproductions.co.uk. Typesetting, page design, layout by DocumentsandManuscripts.com

The right of Oliver Franklin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, design and patents acts pertaining. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this work may be made without written permission from the author.

Before you read this book, please read Daniel Oriel and the Body in St Aldate’s otherwise a lot of things won’t make sense.

Chapter 1

Street Party

The crowd in the street was thronging the stage. For some of them, it had been a non-stop, twenty-four-hour party. They’d seen in the New Year, stayed up through the early hours, had breakfast in town – as many of the fast food places remained open – been too awake to go to bed, hung around until noon, when the Oxford Street Party had kicked off and then joined in with that.

It was now eight o’clock in the evening and the November Criminals were hammering out New Year’s Day by U2. The council had closed the road from half-past-eleven onwards and a number of musical and comedy acts had been lined up for the event. Daniel’s brother’s band had received joint-top billing, along with Magdalen College Choir and, after some negotiation, it was decided to let the rockers close out the evening. The local newspaper, the Oxford Times, had run a full-page advert three days in a row and huge numbers of people turned up for the party. There were still about five hundred of them in the crowd at this time.

Daniel and Kavanagh were sitting on top of the brick wall outside Lloyd’s bank, watching the band. The stage had been set up on the other side of the road. So it was a useful vantage point, as they could see over the heads of everybody else. Sitting beside them were the Taylors – Dominick and Gabrielle – friends who’d recently moved back to Oxford from the outlying village of Finmere. They had an older brother, also called Daniel, who was madly keen on Star Wars but he was at home with a bad headache, for some reason and had been unable to attend?

Daniel Oriel had known Daniel Taylor before he’d known Kavanagh; since playgroup in fact but they had grown apart. Now that the family had returned to the city, they’d renewed their erstwhile friendship with the Oriels.

‘We’re now going to do a number, which was the first ever song we did live – ’ Mark was addressing the crowd, slightly breathless. There was a howl of feedback as someone’s instrument got too close to their amplifier…

‘ – Sorry about that – Here it is: The Kinks, You Really Got Me!’

Huge cheers erupted, along with wolf whistles and a lone shout of, ‘Take your shirt off…!’

‘Not for you, Mrs Harris! She’s the school administrator, by the way, folks.’

Lots of people burst out laughing and there were renewed cheers and whistles as the band started up.

Daniel was content just to sit and watch, as talking was very difficult over the noise, but Kavanagh seemed to be trying very hard to maintain a conversation with Gabrielle, who was perched next to him on the wall. She was in the same year, modestly plump with long, dark brown hair. Her brother was two years younger.

Daniel was happy for his friends to meet friends, as it expanded his own circle and that of others. His mind then drifted into reminiscing of years gone by; it was almost as though the music had a hypnotic effect. He remembered one occasion, when he was about seven or eight, when his parents had two Swedish girls over on an exchange program. Another girl was staying with the Taylors in Finmere. These three students knew each other, so David Taylor, Daniel’s dad, had invited him and the girls out for a day, punting on the river. He couldn’t remember why his brother hadn’t gone – he might have been away with friends. Anyhow they’d happily agreed.

At that time, Mr Taylor drove a red Porsche 924, which, according to him, he’d only bought because it was cheaper than a Peugeot he’d also wanted. The upshot was that all six of them had to squeeze into the Porsche. Daniel smiled fondly as he remembered cramming himself into the boot with the other Daniel, as they drove to the river.

Then he remembered something else: whilst on the river, Mr Taylor had ‘accidentally’ gone the wrong way and ended up punting past a naturist camp beside the riverbank. There was a fellow on display, reading a book and possibly another one on a sun lounger. Daniel’s memory was a bit dim but he remembered his father saying afterwards that Mr Taylor only did it to wind up the Swedish girls… At the time, he hadn’t understood what his father meant, although he understood now.

His attention was drawn back to the present as the band was starting its final piece, its signature tune, Sweet Child o’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses. He leant past Kavanagh, over to Gabrielle and Dominick and shouted, ‘Are they good or what?’

‘That’s his big brother,’ Kavanagh boasted, pointing to the lead singer.

‘We know,’ Dominick replied blandly.

After the gig, the band began packing up their kit and a large part of the crowd melted away, except for a few diehard fans and some hardcore drinkers. Kavanagh’s father arrived in the car to drive the younger ones home and Sam Jones’ dad turned up in his van to transport the band and their gear. It was usually kept in the Jones’ garage.

Later that night, about ten o’clock, Daniel was sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, drinking a mug of hot chocolate, sleepily checking whether he’d done all his homework assignments. There was only the weekend left and then, the Christmas holiday would be over.

He ticked off the last thing he had to do, yawned, and decided to try for an earlier night than he’d been expecting. Then there came a bump and a crash downstairs – it was his brother coming in. At once, Daniel was tempted to turn out the light and pretend to be asleep but that would be dishonest. So he prepared himself for the inevitable debrief that his big brother would require.

Sure enough, five minutes later, there came the knock on the door and it burst open before Daniel could say, ‘Come in’.

Mark stumbled into the room with a can of beer in one hand and a large chicken burrito in the other. He wasn’t drunk – he hadn’t had time – he was simply dizzy with euphoria.

‘Hi Dan! Want some of this?’

‘No thanks, I’ve just done my teeth.’

‘Good,’ Mark declared, ‘’cause I’m famished! Haven’t eaten a thing since three o’clock. Been too busy! Zac’s brother videoed the whole gig tonight, which is great. We’ll get it edited and uploaded to Facebook in the next couple of days. I reckon we’re going to be famous even without a record deal. D’you know, we’ve got over a thousand followers? We’ve also had about five thousand views on YouTube?’

‘Cool,’ Daniel replied. ‘I didn’t see Zac’s brother. Where was he?’

‘Standing on top of the bus shelter so he could get a decent shot of us. Hopefully, there won’t be people’s heads in the way like last time.’

‘I was watching the crowd,’ Daniel informed him. ‘There were more people in the street earlier on, before tea time but you guys had the biggest audience – about twice as many as the choir. Although they were good; they did an abridged version of Handel’s Messiah. I quite liked it.’

‘You said you’d done your teeth! Why’re you drinking chocolate?’

‘I’ll do them again.’

‘How was the sound?’ Mark enquired, returning to his usual line. ‘We got one of our mates to run the desk, but he didn’t seem that good.’

‘Drums were a bit quiet,’ Daniel reflected.

‘Strange, they sounded loud to me but you can never tell when you’re on stage. That’s why it’s important to have someone you can trust who knows what he’s doing in the audience.’ He winked at his brother and took another huge bite of the burrito.

‘Thanks.’

‘How was my voice?’

‘A