The Bride's Trail
Table of Contents
The Bride's Trail, with bonus stories for Instafreebie
Chapter 1 Amy
Chapter 2 Ross
Chapter 3 Shaun
Chapter 4 Charles
Chapter 5 Amy
Chapter 6 Shaun
Chapter 7 Jeb
Chapter 8 Shaun
Chapter 9 Marty
Chapter 10 Amy
Chapter 11 Shaun
Chapter 12 Charles
Chapter 13 Amy
Chapter 14 Ross
Chapter 15 Amy
Chapter 16 Ross
Chapter 17 Jeb
Chapter 18 Amy
Chapter 19 Jeb
Chapter 20 Amy
Chapter 21 Jeb
Chapter 22 Ross
Chapter 23 Amy
Chapter 24 Shaun
Chapter 25 Amy
Chapter 26 Charles
Chapter 27 Ross
Chapter 28 Marty
Chapter 29 Amy
Chapter 30 Charles
Chapter 31 Ross
Chapter 32 Amy
Chapter 33 Shaun
Chapter 34 Amy
Chapter 35 Ross
Chapter 36 Jeb
Chapter 37 Amy
Chapter 38 Shaun
Chapter 39 Amy
Chapter 40 Shaun
Chapter 41 Amy
Chapter 42 Marty
Chapter 43 Amy
Chapter 44 Ross
Chapter 45 Charles
Chapter 46 Amy
THE BRIDE’S TRAIL
by A.A. Abbott
Who will find Kat first - her friends or her killer?
This great story, packed with twists and turns, begins in London’s smart Fitzrovia and ends in secret tunnels below central Birmingham.
In an exclusive giveaway, two bonus short stories are included at the end of this full length crime thriller novel.
Copyright © 2015 (The Bride’s Trail, The Gap) and 2017 (The Perfect Murder) A.A. Abbott
This novel and bonus short stories are entirely a work of fiction. With the exception of Jackie Molloy, the names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are a product of the author’s imagination. So, alas, is the wonder drug, darria. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events, is entirely coincidental.
A.A.Abbott asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
Published by Perfect City Press.
Chapter 1 Amy
“Had a hairspray fire today,” Kat reported. As usual, she was wired on her return from work.
“Really?” Amy turned on the tap, splashed water into a glass. London’s summer heat had settled into every corner of their basement flat. The air was stifling. She yawned, fragments of dreams still clouding her head. Slamming the front door at three in the morning, Kat had only half-woken her.
“January, the new croupier,” Kat continued. “She’d just done her hair, then she lit a cigarette. We’re not supposed to smoke in the loo, but we all do.” Kat tutted. “Then, boom!”
“Is she okay?”
“Needs a haircut.” Kat laughed. “She needed one before, anyhow. Wearing a ponytail to one side is wrong on every level past the age of twelve.”
“How old is she?” Amy’s curiosity overcame her drowsiness. Kat always made the casino sound so glamorous, and it paid well, although not enough to fund Kat’s designer dress habit.
“Says she’s twenty one. If you ask me, going on thirty.” Kat yawned. “Must sleep. I’m getting married in the morning.”
“Who to? Jeb?” It was the first name that sprang to mind, although he was the last man that Amy herself would choose for a mate. There was a hint of evil about him, a calculating gaze that chilled her. Even his roguish smile, smooth coffee-coloured skin and abundant charm couldn’t compensate for that. What was he to Kat, exactly? Once, she’d called him a gangster. She’d always denied he was her boyfriend. He never stayed the night. Despite that, Kat often disappeared with him to the nightspots in Charlotte Street. Only round the corner, it was a honeypot for both of them. Just north of London’s Oxford Street, Fitzrovia had all the party potential of Soho to the south, without its sleaze.
Amy frowned. The lack of a wedding invitation, or even a wine-fuelled chat about the occasion, was a little hurtful. After two months sharing a flat, she would have expected to go to the party.
“Too many questions, my dear!” Kat laughed. “Definitely not Jeb. He isn’t rich enough. An Asian guy, Bangladeshi. He’s not rich either, but it’s only a short-term arrangement. Please be a darling, Amy. Can you knock on my bedroom door tomorrow morning? Just in case I don’t wake up early.”
There was no need, though. When the shrill siren of her alarm drove her out of bed at seven, Amy could already hear Kat moving around.
“Want to see my dress?” Kat asked, peeping out from her bedroom into the lobby that also served as a kitchen.
The flat was cramped. When the 1970s apartment block had been built forty years earlier, these basement rooms had been a storage area. The subsequent conversion was optimistic. Technically, it was a one bedroom property. The bedroom, however, barely had space for a single bed. Kat had sublet it to Amy and commandeered the lounge for herself. Although a larger room, there was nowhere to fit an ironing board. Kat’s white frock was laid out on a small dining table covered with towels.
“What do you think?” Kat asked, steaming iron in hand.
The low-cut silk and lace confection flowed like a foamy waterfall over the table’s edge. It would look stunning on Kat’s curves, not to mention offsetting her creamy skin and long blonde hair. “Wow,” Amy said.
“It’s a Stella,” Kat said, omitting to mention the designer’s surname. There was really no need. “Too good for Ahmed, but I’ll use it again. By the way, I forgot to tell you – Ross visited the casino last night. He was very chatty, actually.”
“Who’s Ross?”
“You know, the stud who lives in the penthouse flat upstairs. Bronwen, my last flatmate, had a crush on him. You can see him in the gym next door sometimes.” While most of the basement was occupied by a car park, next to their flat was a small room crammed with fitness equipment. The girls sometimes heard the hum of the treadmill through their thin partition walls.
“Oh, him,” Amy said dismissively. “He works at Veritable Insurance, so he’ll be as boring as the rest of them.”
“Yes, he told me he was an actuary. But if everyone who works there is boring, what does that say about you?” Kat teased, her green eyes merry.
“I don’t belong there. It’s just a stepping stone,” Amy pointed out. The sole redeeming feature of her workplace was the monthly salary she received. Even that was poor; it vanished quickly. “Anyway, what do you fancy most about Ross: the size of his wallet or the size of his muscles?”
Kat winked.
As she left the flat, Amy heard clattering in the gym and realised the step machine was in use. She peeked through the glass door. She recognised Ross immediately: a young man with curly, fair hair and the physique of a Greek god. He would be handsome if he didn’t look so pleased with himself.
Ross glanced up. His deep blue eyes met hers, showed total indifference and promptly looked away again. Amy was discomfited. While she wasn’t attracted to Ross in the least, she would have liked some appreciation of her appearance. As usual, she’d made an effort for work: her hair was straightened, shirt pressed, make-up fresh.
Amy walked briskly in her trainers, mulling over the ways of men. She couldn’t pretend to understand them. Her parents had always assured her she was beautiful, and all around there was evidence that slimness was alluring. Indeed, towering over h
er friends as a teenager and skinnier than anyone she knew, she’d dreamed of being a supermodel. All the glossy magazines Kat bought had pictures of girls like Amy, beanpoles with inscrutable, some might even say grumpy, expressions. Yet men stayed away, flocking instead to Kat’s fuller figure.
It wasn’t far from Fitzrovia to the City, and it was a pleasant walk. The air had cooled at last, morning sun just burning through cloud before the streets overheated later in the day. The attractive jumble of tall, flat-fronted brick houses and sixties office blocks that Amy loved in Fitzrovia gave way to more offices and shops as she passed the souvenir emporiums of Oxford Street. Her route became busier, with traffic and pedestrians rushing past the Centre Point skyscraper and down the thriving thoroughfare of Charing Cross Road. She watched street sweepers clean evidence of night-time revels as she crossed Trafalgar Square, finally striding along the Embankment and enjoying a view of the languid river before reaching Veritable’s office. This was a huge, unlovely, concrete cuboid in the shadow of Blackfriars Bridge. Amy made it in thirty minutes, saving the Tube fare. She changed into court shoes on arrival. They were a shiny plastic that was supposed to look like leather, and all she could afford since her credit card maxed out.
“Good morning, Parveen.” Annoyingly, Parveen was already there, so relaxing with Facebook was out of the question.
Amy’s boss glanced at the clock on the wall. “Eight o’clock meeting, Amy.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. Anyway, it’s ten to.”
“You should read your emails. And we need a pre-meeting first.” Parveen raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Do you have those mood boards ready?”
She had forgotten. Parveen realised it before Amy could say anything. “You put it off, right? Because it was difficult. Well, I’ll reschedule the meeting with Bert. Just get them done, OK? Start now. What am I always telling you? Swallow a live frog before breakfast.”
That was Parveen’s mantra. Do the difficult stuff first. Of course, as a manager, Parveen must have very little to do herself. That was obvious from the way she immediately phoned Bert, batting her eyelashes as she explained that David Saxton had given her team a special project, so the product literature just had to wait a couple of days, and could she buy him lunch to say sorry?
It was evident from Parveen’s body language that Bert had fallen for her wheedling tone, even if he couldn’t see her soulful eyes and long lashes.
“What’s the project?” Amy asked as Parveen replaced her phone.
“There isn’t one,” Parveen said scornfully. “As if David Saxton knows who we are – we’re too far down the food chain for that, and so’s Bert. He’ll never find out. Hurry up with that frog.”
It wasn’t just one frog, Amy reflected sourly, but many. As Parveen sent an intern to collect coffees and wrote emails ordering the rest of the team to tackle the labours of Hercules, Amy began her task. She’d imagined her marketing degree would lead to a job in fashion, or a high tech company where she could hang out with hip young engineers. Veritable Insurance meant wearing a suit, spending long days with other people who wore suits and seemed to like it, and scouring the internet for images and phrases that would sell household insurance.
“Are you on Facebook?” Parveen asked sharply.
“No.” Amy’s face flamed. “Just surfing for stock images. How do you like ‘Safe as houses’, by the way.”
Parveen shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a cliché. You can do better than that.”
Amy was distracted by a glimpse of Ross strolling towards them, his gym wear replaced by a dark suit and crisp shirt. He was wearing spectacles, an achingly trendy pair with thick black frames. They didn’t spoil his looks at all, simply giving him the air of an intellectual.
As an actuary, his spot in the open plan office was many yards away, close to the glass-fronted meeting rooms that overlooked the Thames. Like a despised poor relation, the marketing department languished in a dark corner, deprived of the sunlight blazing down on the City. Amy waved, about to declare it was an honour to be graced with a visit.
Ross blanked her even more effectively than he’d done a few hours before, walking straight past without so much as a glance. Were his spectacles made of plain glass, purely worn for effect? They certainly hadn’t helped him notice her. As Parveen glared, Amy saw Ross stop at the coffee machine. She was suddenly reminded of her broken night. Caffeine was exactly what she needed too.
Chapter 2 Ross
Ross noticed the dreary girl waving at him, and realised with a start that he’d seen her already this morning. She had walked past the gym. Presumably she lived in the poky little flat next to it, although it would be a stretch on her salary; he had seen it advertised at £1,500 a month. He hoped she was his neighbour, because otherwise, she must be stalking him. He shuddered at the thought. Tall, flat-chested redheads would never be his type. Shapely green-eyed blondes were a different matter. He must return to the Diamonds casino soon, see Kat again and ask her out. She’d really appreciated being offered champagne last night, although she’d said sorrowfully that she wasn’t allowed to drink at work. They had chatted for a while, though, about mathematics and probability and cards. It was refreshing to meet a woman who understood him, especially such a stunner.
It had been a lucky night. Ross had only visited Diamonds because a group of friends were going. While he regularly supplemented his salary with online poker winnings, he hadn’t expected to make money at the casino. Chance was against him, as he had explained to the attentive Kat. To his surprise, he had pocketed several hundred pounds during the evening, as well as enjoying a free bar. He grinned to himself. He would definitely be back.
It was annoying that the coffee machine next to his desk was out of order, all the more because the dreary girl had decided to join him at this one.
“Hi,” she said.
He gritted his teeth. “Hi.”
“I’m Amy from Marketing,” she said, extending a hand.
He didn’t take it. “Ross,” he said, curtly.
“Where do you work, Ross?”
He gazed around the open plan area. “What do you think? I’m here at Veritable, like you.”
“I mean, which function?” She seemed to be sensing his reluctance, because she said, “Oh, I remember. You’re an actuary. Kat told me.”
He stared at her, open-mouthed, flattered that Kat would talk about him but wondering why she’d chosen to do so with Amy. “How do you know her?” he asked.
“She’s my flatmate,” Amy said.
Ross laughed. In an effort to hide his excitement, he remarked, “Two of you? There’s barely room to swing a kitten in there.” He recalled visiting the small basement flat when a caretaker had lived there, before the freeholder for the block realised how much money could be made by renting it out. If Amy shared the flat, that explained how she could afford to rent in Fitzrovia. Even so, she might have a trust fund, or rich parents. He’d heard rumours that the CEO had given a junior marketing job to a young relative. Perhaps it was her.
Ross could imagine himself as CEO one day. Like David Saxton, he would be a commanding presence, strolling through the office as if he owned it, driving a Jag, giving interviews to the Financial Times. “I hear Davey Saxton has a niece in the marketing department,” he said to Amy.
She shrugged. Maybe it wasn’t true, then. It certainly couldn’t be her. Her voice had a common edge, betraying state school origins in London, or more likely a dull dormitory town nearby. Saxton’s family would doubtless send their offspring to be privately educated, as Ross had been himself. He opened the small fridge next to the coffee machine and made a pretence of looking for milk, so he no longer needed to make eye contact with Amy and she would see their conversation was at an end.
Chapter 3 Shaun
The day had started well for Shaun. He’d visited the old factory unit in Tottenham, and found the builders had nearly finished. They were excessively polite and he caught a couple of sharp glances fro
m them. Jeb had obviously been round to motivate the lads. Whether Jeb had roughed them up or merely threatened it, he neither knew nor cared.
His sons were still in bed when he arrived home in Wanstead. Shaun shook the older one awake. “Time you were up and doing something useful,” he said.
“I went to bed late.” Ben’s tone was injured innocence. “I’ve been practicing for the gaming tournament.”
“Why can’t you use that computer productively?” Shaun felt his cheeks flush, his fists clench. At Ben’s age, he had done over a hundred burglaries. At least, that was the number to which he’d admitted the first and only time he was sentenced. “Clone some credit cards, hack into a bank, or,” he racked his brains, “close down one of those shopping sites your mum liked, and hold them to ransom.” He wished he knew the first thing about cyber-crime such as this; he was simply aware that younger men were doing well from it. Men in their early thirties; Jeb’s age, but with more brains. Shaun remained surprised when Jeb, perhaps by pointing to a newspaper or programming a satnav, revealed that he could read.
“Meh,” Ben said, yawning. For an aching, fleeting moment, he looked like Meg.
Shaun’s anger dissipated. He harrumphed and retreated downstairs to heat a ready meal. Meg had wanted the boys to study, to go to university, a novel concept for Shaun but one that he was prepared to entertain for his wife’s sake. She usually had her way, and she was always proved right. At least, Ben had spent a shiny-eyed year at London Metropolitan, rising early, reading books and using his laptop to pursue interests other than video games. It had all gone wrong three years ago, with Meg’s death from cancer. Everything had gone wrong, except his business. He had poured all his energy into it, neglecting his sons but numbing his grief.
Buying and selling was the secret of his success. His father had been an expert burglar and had taught Shaun everything he knew, but Shaun always had wider ambitions. As thieves, you were at the mercy of the middleman who bought from you. Far better to be that middleman yourself, taking a commission here and a profit there, dealing in drugs, stolen goods, bodies; anything that could be sold. Shaun shook his head. Thanks to eBay and car boot sales, he now believed there was nothing that couldn’t be sold. Everything had a price; everybody too, come to that.