Monthly Archives: August 2013

An extract from ‘The Gift of Rain’

The Gift of RainWe arrived in Port Swettenham late in the afternoon. I watched as Yasuaki was led away by the staff of the Japanese Embassy. I raised my hand in a small wave, but he never returned it.

I saw Kuala Lumpur through different eyes now. The last time I was here was ten months before, when we celebrated my father’s forty-ninth birthday in the Spotted Dog Club just in front of the cricket ground. The ground was busy now and the sun cast shadows across it. I heard the thock of the ball hitting the bat and then cheers as the batsmen ran. It was a typical afternoon in the biggest town in Malaya: the English would leave their sweltering offices, go to the Spotted Dog to have a gin and tonic, play some cricket, and then return home for a bath before coming back to the Club for dinner and then dancing. It was a good life, a rich life filled with ease and enjoyment.

The Japanese Embassy was a converted bungalow on a hill just behind Carcosa, the Governor’s Residence. The road leading up to it was cool and shady, the old angsana trees littering the way with leaves and pods and twigs which crackled under the tyres. The sentry at the gates saluted us through.

A youth in military uniform brought our bags to our rooms. The fan was switched on immediately. Then we went out on to the verandah where we were served glasses of iced lemon tea.

The Embassy looked down a wooded slope thick with flame-of-the-forest trees. I stood drinking my iced tea and thought about the concept of duty. It was so confusing and, it seemed to me at that moment, so pointless. Where was the freedom that each of us had been born with?

Endo-san had told me, at the beginning of my lessons how strong the duty of teaching, once undertaken, was. It was never offered freely or haphazardly. A prospective student had to provide letters of recommendation in order to convince a sensei to accept him. Teaching could never be accepted without all its burdens and obligations and I had come to understand this eventually. Yet in my mind I heard Yasuaki’s words, warning me about duty and generals and emperors. A moment of unease made me finish my drink in a single swallow.

“We must pay our respects to Akasaki Saotome-san, the Ambassador to Malaya” Endo-san said, and led me downstairs.

Although the bungalow was built in the typical Anglo-Indian style, with wide wooden verandahs and large airy ceilings, it had been decorated strictly by a Japanese hand. The rooms were partitioned by paper shoji screens, scrolls of calligraphy hung at well-lit positions and a faint smell of incense cleansed the air as we passed. Stark, skeletal flower arrangements stood on low tables. “These are Saotome-san’s personal arrangements,” Endo-san said. “His ikebana has won prizes in Tokyo.”

Another youth in uniform slid a door open and we placed our cotton slippers outside before entering. The room was bare, save for the photograph of a sullen-looking man. Endo-san knelt on the straw mats and bowed to it. I did not, but I presumed the portrait to be that of Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan. We sat with our buttocks on our heels and waited for Akasaki Saotome-san to join us. He entered and there was a flurry of bows before we were at last comfortable, sitting in front of a low wooden table.

The Ambassador was a handsome, almost haughty looking man, except when he smiled. Then he looked merely handsome and ordinary. In his dark hakama and black and grey yukata robe patterned with silver chrysanthemum blossoms he appeared much older than Endo-san, although his movements were just as graceful.

“Is this your student I have heard about?” he asked in English, smiling at me. His voice was as thin as rice paper. I could picture him as somebody’s grandfather.

“Hai, Saotome-san,” Endo-san replied, indicating to me to serve the hot sake.

“How is his progress?”

“Very good. He has made tremendous advances, physically and mentally.”

Endo-san had never once commented expressly on my studies. Now, to hear it before the Ambassador, was immensely pleasurable. It added to the warm glow left by the sake.

They switched to Japanese immediately, the older man looking intently at me to see if I could follow. His accent was slightly rougher than Endo-san’s but after a few sentences I sailed with the flow of their conversation.

We were served dinner, which came on little porcelain plates, each with just one or two pieces of food. I enjoyed the marinated eel, the sweetened chicken and the little rolls of raw fish wrapped in rice and seaweed. The Japanese ate daintily, examining their food in the chopsticks, commenting on the taste and colour and texture, almost as though they were making an artistic acquisition. I was famished and had to restrain myself from eating too much, too fast.

“How is the situation in Penang?” Saotome asked, placing his chopsticks on an ivory rest.

“Quiet and peaceful. Our people are contented, and there are no distressing matters,” Endo-san replied. “We have found a suitable house on The Hill to lease for our staff and their families. I will show you some photographs later. Apart from that, I have almost unlimited free time and we have been travelling around the island.”

Saotome-san smiled. “Ah, such splendid days, hmm?” he said in English. I stopped eating, knowing it was a direct reference to me. Suddenly the old man did not seem so benign. I felt like a mouse before a tiger.

“You seem to know a lot about me,” I said, disregarding all the lessons I had learned and facing him directly.

“We make a point of knowing our friends,” Saotome said. “I hear your father is the head of the largest trading company in Malaya?”

“Not the largest – that would be Empire Trading.”

“We have some businessmen interested in Malaya. Would your father be interested in collaborating with them? To be partners with these people? They are keen to obtain a share in your father’s company.”

I thought of what he wanted to know. Deep down, I suspected our future could depend on the answer I gave. I said carefully, “I think he would be willing to listen – after all, he has nothing against your countrymen – but I cannot speak for my father. You will have to ask him yourself.”

Saotome leaned back and said, “Oh. I suppose we would have to.” He picked up another piece of fish. “Would you consider working for us, once you have finished your studies? I understand you have only another year to go.”

I gave Endo-san a questioning look. “In what capacity?” I asked.

“As an interpreter, a person to liaise with the Malayan people. A goodwill officer, you might say.” Saotome saw my uncertainty. “You do not have to reply now. The work will be interesting, I can assure you.”

I promised Saotome that I would consider his offer and he smiled and said, “Now, would you like to have more of that eel? I saw you were quite, quite hungry.”

The shoji door opened, and a soldier knelt and bowed to Saotome. Next to him was a young Chinese girl in a robe, her hair tied into two lacquered balls.

No words crossed the space between the kneeling figures and us, until Saotome said, “Lift her face to me.”

The soldier put his fingers under the girl’s chin and brought it up.

“Open her robes.”

The same hand dropped from the girl’s chin and pulled her robes open to one side, revealing a single breast as yet uncertain of its shape, still breaking into womanhood.

Saotome studied her and gave a smile, tiny as a cut. His throat pulsed, and his tongue touched briefly the corner of his lip, an artist’s brush adding the final, perfecting stroke.

I found that the eel no longer tasted so sweet.

© Tan Twan Eng 2006

An extract from ‘Bulletproof Suzy’

Bulletproof SuzySo this guy with a dead bright white shirt starts running about on the stage hauling wires and tapping mikes and all that, then these others get up on the lorry. Joanne passes me a smoke but we don’t have a light so I ask this wee guy in front of me, who’s like a hundred and fifty or something, dead wee and thin and pure sweating and he takes out a lighter, all shaking hands and grunts and wheezing and all sorts. He’s got these big red blotches all over his face, but not like birthmark scars, so maybe he’s got cancer or somesuch and Joanne offers him a smoke as well which is maybe a bit dodgy if it is cancer that’s all over him, but he takes one and emits many more grunts and wheezes by way of thanks, then lights us all up and turns away.

Maybe it’s about ten minutes later, but not much more, and it starts getting really squashed, and it’s ending up that I’ve got my face practically in the old guy’s thin white hair, and I can hear him breathing, fast and shallow like he’s got asthma or something, and I’m almost getting the boak what with being able to smell his hair and his papery old skin and thinking that those reddy blotches might be able to sort of jump right off him and onto me and that’ll be me fucked with cancer.

There’s a couple of girls behind me and they’re getting really squashed as well, and it must be pretty bad cos one of them starts panicking and giving it gush and sob and I-want-to-go-home and all that to the other lassie, maybe her big sister, but it’s getting more and more packed all the time behind us and the two girls eventually sort of slip in between me and Joanne, then the old guy, and try to snake their way further to the front, maybe hoping to get out that way. I don’t really mind crowds and that but this is getting dodgy, and I can tell that Joanne’s not enjoying it much either.

Joanne pulls my arm again, and I can hardly turn, but when I do I see her on tippy-toes giving it big wave and shouting how-you-doing to someone I can’t see.

~ That’s Bobby down here. Come on, says Joanne, and I, of course, go follow her like some sad puppy, as is my usual form these days.

So it’s total murder getting through to the guy, but when we eventually do it turns out that he’s got a bit of a perch on one of the plinths holding the big black glossy statue of some long-dead horsebacked city-father type.

Joanne’s had a bit of a sweat for young Robert Harris, but she’s been quite cool on the subject for a while and I haven’t heard his name mentioned for some weeks. He’s a nice enough wee guy, quite thin and wasted like he maybe has some mild needle problem, but his gear is cool and he has a nice smile. He always looks at me and Joanne a bit funny, as if he thinks perhaps we’re an item. Or maybe it’s because I don’t smile too readily and he thinks I don’t like him, but whatever, he’s all big grins and can’t be nicer.

~ Come on up! he shouts, and he bends right down and grabs Joanne’s hand.

By the time she gets squeezed up there with the rest of them, all balancing on this like very thin ledge, there’s no space at all for me, especially with me being slightly broader of beam than the slender Joanne, but sundry youths perched alongside her and Bobby do a very considerate shuffle to create a further gap, and I am duly hauled up. And even on this slightly elevated position the difference in the view is amazing, and we’re even nearer the stage than before, maybe thirty feet or so away from it.

Atop the Council Halls there’s a team of camera-folk, all shoulder-strapped vidders and tripods and such, scanning the George. Bobby points out others on top of the higher office buildings. A helicopter passes over, quite high right enough, doing a big arc way above, and that’s maybe a radio copter doing the normal weather and traffic bumph, but then, a minute later, another copter comes in, lower and slower and this is certainly a rozz-copter, with bright stripes and numbers and letters, and that gets the biggest cheer of the day so far, all squinting upwards and roaring at it to fuck off and giving it the fingers, but it takes its time arching over the George before dipping out of sight, the noise staying a lot longer. And the mike is tapped along to the beat of the copter, which does eventually fade, and the guy with the big bright white shirt cracks a couple of limp jokes and introduces some suit or other.

I don’t know the speakers, but Joanne, who’s on the other side of Bobby, shouts over to tell me who’s who, and Bobby, also being interested in such things, tells me a bit of background. So-and-so isn’t a bad egg, but such-and-such is a brown-nosing two-faced fuck who’s a cheek showing her face and this other one is trapped in the past, and it’s all a bit dry for my liking but the last lassie is good, some housewifie from up our way, and she gets tore right in, suggesting that we might like to make a bit more space for ourselves by going into the Council Halls and making ourselves a cup of tea seeing as how it’s our hall and our tea and if we’re not going to be asked then we can be forgiven a one-off lapse in manners etc etc and that gets the crowd going good style. At first it’s like a joke, and I don’t know if maybe she’s had a wee bead in her or perhaps she’s one of those wifies who gets hammered into the tranquis as soon as she gets out of the sack, but she starts getting really sort of carried away and saying that we really should do it, that it’s our cally and our city and if the bastard councillors won’t turn up to do their job then why don’t we just team in there and do it ourselves, her claim being that at least we would do it right.

So there’s a few bodies down the front who do start actually making their way over towards the front of the Halls, but the rozzlings are thick in force and stay well-put, reinforcements strolling in cool-style from the side drags. The rozz-copter suddenly reappears, much higher than before, and starts making a circle, in view all the while.

So this woman’s really set the cat among the proverbials, and this suit has appeared and grabbed the mike off her and she’s giving it laldy, trying to get it back, it’s like something out of a bar brawl, and you can only hear snatches of what she’s saying and he’s saying, and it’s almost all abuse, and the drumming of the copter above makes it impossible, so then the other bodies are getting into it, and a few punters are trying to get onto the stage from the crowd.

The boos start up close and loud, and this head-bummer rozzer with mega-glistening bunnet and fluorescent stripes suddenly strides right up onstage, two underlings in tow, grabs the mike and passes it to one of his boys. It’s switched off. The heid-rozzer gets the woman and starts reading her the works, but she’s still game for him, maybe she’s gone into like hysteria or something, and even with the racket from the copter and the crowd you can hear her screaming fuck you, fuck off and all that, and every time she does the crowd gives it yoo-ha, so this burly underling rozzer makes a bid for her, gets her in like an arm-clamp and the other one helps and they all just march right off, dragging her in a fairly brutal manner which causes mighty upset, the cheers becoming very dark and angry and merging into a huge and rather scary thundery-type roar.

Someone close behind us, maybe on the next plinth, lobs a bottle. A glass bru bottle. It misses the rozzers, who by this time are dragging the woman off the back of the stage, but is almost immediately joined by a hail of other missiles, mostly empty cans. From where we are I can see the heid-rozzer talking into his jacket. The bottles are starting to fall atop the rozzers stationed afront the Council Halls, and the bunched yellow coats get closer together, bowing their skulls and turning their black round hats towards the crowd by way of paltry defence. But the missiles start to connect, and the roar of the punters is now a nasty thing altogether, filled with screams and the sound of genuine panic. Those below us start shoving forwards, but it’s hard to tell if they want to, or are just being forced to by those behind, and looking at them it’s impossible to say if they want to either. It’s like the crowd is getting sucked towards the Halls, and can’t stop, even if it wants to, and it’s like within a few seconds it’s turned into one of those mad surges you see on old football games, and thank fuck we were where we were and not down there.

But right then Joanne starts trying to get down. Bobby jumps, holds his hands up for her. She jumps, then they both help me, and right away I make for the nearest drag.

~ Where are you going? Joanne shouts to me, wide-eyed and flushed, and I’m amazed that she is actually enjoying this, which by her expression she surely is.

~  Where the fuck do you think? I shout back, home!

But I’m going nowhere fast cos the surge comes again and it’s a definite suicide shot to try and get across it to the side-drag, so I turn back and get myself in firm against the base of the plinth. The bodies pour past, like stones in a river, bouncing off each other, getting squashed for a few seconds against someone or something, then getting pushed around it or them and flowing on. I’ve got a good grip on the stone base of the statue. Joanne and Bobby have gone altogether now, and even though I know they can’t be that far away there’s no chance of seeing them unless I get back up on that plinth.

I stay put for a minute, hoping a gap might appear so I can make a bid for Glassford, but the bodies slow and start to get madly compact. Someone nearby must’ve fallen cos there’s a really blood-curdling scream that you can’t even tell if it’s a man or woman, and it’s so muffled and horrific, then suddenly stops and starts so you can tell that someone’s being trampled. And there’s folk screaming to stop, and trying to give directions, and then there’s another one down and howling and fights are happening and people are pulling at each other, holding their kids up in the air, climbing onto each other’s shoulders. The screams spread, and even the sound of the copter seems to fade even though it’s right overhead, and there’s no shouting any more, no roaring, no cans and bottles landing, no cheering, just screaming from the entrance to the Halls where the crowd has become a big solid unmoving lump.

The rozz copter suddenly veers up and back and away, but another comes in low to take its place, and it’s unmarked, maybe a news crew or suchlike, and at the same time you can see the roofs of a couple of the meat wagons pushing into the square, coming off the drag to the left of the Halls, and also I can see the assembled banners of all the folk who’ve not been let in, and they’re still coming forward. Maybe these other punters have taken the general rumble and screaming to be a sign of action and they want in on it, and it’s like the same thing is happening at the other three drags into George, so that everyone is trying to get in, but looks like no-one is interested in getting out, though by the screams it’s clear that this is not so. I know I want out and offsky but many others are not even in as fortunate as situation as me, and I’m staying well put.

I get myself up on the lowest of the plinth’s ledges, and even this is just a couple of feet off the deck but now I can see. No sign of Joanne and Bobby. The vans open and the riot rozz start jumping out, all black shininess and thick plastic shields, and the Halls’ massive black double-doors open right at the same time and a solid team of similarly clad riot rozz come belting out, giving it deep grumbly roar, banging their thick sticks on the shields and behaving in a tribal and beastly fashion which brings more shouts of fear in angry reply. The crowd tries to surge inside the Halls, but they only get a few feet before the sticks are extended and the shields are coming down on heads like dustbin lids and folk start going down and it’s soon like an invisible wall at the stairs into the Halls, and those who cannot get away tumble into the pile and are being severely seen-to if they get beyond it. I think I catch a glimpse of Joanne quite near the Halls entrance, but the brief flash of blonde is swallowed and I soon lose the place what with the seasick-inducing movements of the crowd.

By now the noise is totally unreal, like it just keeps getting louder and can’t be turned down at all, and then, I josh not, this team of horsebacked rozz appears from the goods entrance to the train station, which is like a normally quiet and rather decrepit looking ramp which slopes into the building housing the north-bound rail traffic, and the horses are stiff-eared and rearing and giving it loud and frightening horse noises as their riders urge them into the crowd, and just at his time a siren goes off somewhere and I’m sure my ears will burst, like someone is stabbing knitting needles right inside them, so I turn, pure panicking now, mercury aslop, and start clawing my way up the plinth, trying to get back to where we were earlier.

Someone tries to pull me down as I start hauling up to the highest ledge, but there’s no way I’m staying down there, and it’s this older guy who’s grabbed me and he’s screaming as well, but I just let one arm go, turn half-way and elbow him a cracker right in the face and he sort of howls and drops onto the bodies below. Someone else grabs at my leg as I’m almost up, but I kick and kick and connect with something softish, get free, and right away I look to see if there’s any way of getting further up, there being nothing further to mount bar the statue itself. I manage to get a hold of the horse’s tail, and I’m surprised that it’s actually quite hot to touch, what with the black metal absorbing the bright sun, but it’s a good shape to get a hold of, and with a mighty haul, then another, I get on the back of the thing, shimmy along then grab the city-father’s coat-tails, then another serious haul and I’m up and astride the shoulders of this long-dead bastard and I sit with arms wrapped about his head, legs fastened about his chest, and I can see it all, hear it all, and closing my eyes doesn’t help, and it’s like hell is happening right there below me.

Maybe it’s about an hour before I get back down. I wait until I’m sure I can make a clear run to the Glassford. By now the ambulances have managed to get through and the corpses are being loaded into the meat wagons. Bodies everywhere, mostly in a long heap covering the half-dozen steps up to the Halls entrance, but dozens of others scattered throughout the square like so much rubbish among all the cans and bags and empty sweet-pokes and fast food boxes, and dozens of green-clad paramedic types go round the bodies as fast as they can, checking who’s alive and signalling when they find someone who is. The dead are loaded into the vans pronto, and there’s a few camera-snappers moving about. And the helicopter’s still buzzing over every few minutes. 

The van nearest me, with doors open, must have at least ten, twelve bodies piled inside, and at the bottom of the pile is the old guy, and I can’t see his face but I can make out the large strawberry blotches, not as red as they were before, on his white-grey scalp.

© Ian Brotherhood 2006

Every Dark Place

Every Dark PlaceCraig Smith

The new thriller from master storyteller Craig Smith, shortlisted for the CWA Best Thriller Award in 2011.

I’ll say it was always dark. I never saw your face.’ ‘Is that a promise? Are you going to keep your word, if I trust you?’ ‘YES!’ Will Booker stood up. ‘You know, I think I believe you, Missy. Just so you believe me…’ The gunshot came as a surprise. Missy heard the echo crackling back from the trees as she was gasping at the incredible pain in her cheat. She tasted mud, her scream strangling in her throat. The next bullet jolted her, hitting below the ribs. She heard the second echo from the trees. She saw the smoke rising oddly from Will’s jacket pocket.

Ten years ago, sleepy Shiloh Springs was shaken as five teenagers were clubbed and shot to death and a sixth left for dead. But now the killer’s conviction has been overturned after allegations that his rights were violated on his arrest. Rick Trueblood is a careworn private investigator working for the Shiloh County prosecutor’s office; a veteran loner still grieving for a daughter murdered eight years ago – a crime he has never been able to solve. The judge has allowed just sixty days for the prosecutor’s office to find enough evidence to retry the case. But as Rick struggles to re-investigate a trail long gone cold he starts to uncover a rat’s nest of intrigue and duplicity with ramifications that lead closer to home than he could have possibly imagined. Booker in the meantime is out on bail. All he wants with his freedom is to kidnap and murder the two adolescent daughters of the minister who brought him to faith. When Booker finally snatches the girls, the local authorities follow procedures and file reports. Rick, on the other hand, has learned something about the way Booker thinks. In the desperate hours that follow, Rick recovers his instinct for the hunt, and with it, quite unexpectedly, a renewed passion for life.

Click here to read an extract from this book


Reviews 

‘An intelligent noir crime thriller in the mould of Smith’s previous novel Cold Rain. Will appeal to fans of John Grisham, Scott Smith, Harian Coben and James Lee Burke.’ Guardianbookshop

‘A dark and terrifying crime becomes the unlikely catalyst for one man’s redemption and another’s ruin in another stylish noir thriller from the author of Cold Rain. Goodreads.com

 

Paperback 356 pages
B Format
ISBN 978-1-905802-53-1
Release Date 23rd October 2008
Price £7.99
Ebook 978-1-905802-74-6

God Emperor of Didcot

God Emperor of DidcotToby Frost

The second instalment in the chronicles of Isambard Smith – Captain in the service of the British Space Empire.

Tea… a beverage brewed from the fermented dried leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis and imbibed by all the great civilisations in the galaxy’s history; a source of refreshment, stimulation and, above all else, of moral fibre – without which the British Space Empire must surely crumble to leave Earth at the mercy of its enemies. Sixty per cent of the Empire’s tea is grown on one world – Urn, principal planet of the Didcot system. If Earth is to keep fighting, the tea must flow.

When a crazed cult leader overthrows the government of Urn, Isambard Smith and his vaguely competent crew find themselves saddled with new allies: a legion of tea-obsessed nomads, an overly-civilised alien horde and a commando unit so elite that it only has five members. Only together can they defeat the self-proclaimed God Emperor of Didcot and confront the true power behind the coup: the sinister legions of the Ghast Empire and Smith’s old enemy, Commander 462.

Click here to read an extract from this book


Reviews

‘Toby Frost writes books that seem to fill a specific niche: that is books for the commuter or the frequently interrupted (system administrators I’m looking at you). You can pick up his books, read a few pages and put them down again without losing the thread of the story and still enjoy an amusing diversion.’ Fantasybookreview

 ‘Set in a universe where the suns never set on a stiff upper lip, this warm-hearted and funny interstellar romp gives the sacred cows of sci-fi a good kicking before racing home in time for tea.’  Dirk Maggs, director of BBC Radio 4’s The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

 

Paperback 320 pages
B Format
ISBN 978-1-905802-24-1
Release Date 2nd September 2008
Price £7.99
Ebook 978-1-905802-44-9

 

 

 

Wrath of the Lemming Men

Wrath of the Lemming MenToby Frost

The third instalment in the chronicles of Isambard Smith – Captain in the service of the British Space Empire.

From the depths of Space a new foe rises to do battle with mankind: the British Space Empire is threatened by the lemming-people of Yull, ruthless enemies who attack without mercy, fear or any concept of self preservation. At the call of their war god, the Yull have turned on the Empire, hell bent on conquest and destruction in their rush towards the cliffs of destiny.

When the Yullian army is forced to retreat at the battle of the River Tam, the disgraced Colonel Vock swears revenge on the clan of Suruk the Slayer, Isambard Smith’s homicidal alien friend. Now Smith and his crew must defend the Empire and civilise the stuffing out of a horde of bloodthirsty lemming men – which would be easy were it not for a sinister robotics company, a Ghast general with a fondness for genetic engineering and an ancient brotherhood of Morris Dancers – who may yet hold the key to victory. . .

 

Click here to read an extract from this book


Reviews

‘What I enjoyed most about Wrath of the Lemming Men was the fact that we’re now on the third novel and following the crew of the John Pym again through their adventures. I know this sounds simple – and it is – but I feel that when I start reading these characters I’m not only whole heartedly enjoying reading about them, but I’m also running through my mind just what they’ll say and do in the situation they’re in. I feel at home when they come on page – Smith, Carveth, Suruk, Rhianna, they all feel like old friends now.’ Walkerofworlds.com

 

Paperback 320 pages
B Format
ISBN 978-1-905802-35-7
Release Date 15th June 2009
Price £7.99
Ebook  978-1-905802-45-6