No one will hear you scr.., p.1
No One Will Hear You Scream, page 1
No One Will Hear
You Scream
Ghost-writing has some dangers.
So does finding out the truth.
E J Goldberg-Phillips
Austin Macauley Publishers
No One Will Hear You Scream
About the Author
Copyright Information ©
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Chapter 1: Andromeda and the Blackhole
Chapter 2: Ruby and that Bloody Woman
Chapter 3: Ruby and her Writer’s Block
Chapter 4: Lizzie and the Art of Diplomacy
Chapter 5: Fun with Gretchen and Lucinda
Chapter 6: Arthur Meets an Aspiring Author
Chapter 7: Rumours in the Coffee Set
Chapter 8: Removal of Two Stiffs
Chapter 9: Lizzie and her Rude Awakening
Chapter 10: Walter and the Agent’s Office
Chapter 11: Ruby: Up, Up and Away?
Chapter 12: Life Begins at Forty
Chapter 13: The Publisher, an Agent and the Ticking Clock
Chapter 14: Craig and the Time of his Life
Chapter 15: Ruby Goes to Switzerland
Chapter 16: Oh Lars, You’re So Good with Your Hands!
Chapter 17: Ruby is All Done!
Chapter 18: Pennies from Heavenly Hell
Chapter 19: Bob the Builder and his Team
Chapter 20: Gretchen Loses her Raison D’Etre
Chapter 21: Lucinda Helps Unearth the Truth
Chapter 22: Professor Plum in the Library
Chapter 23: Empire Building in Orpington
Chapter 24: The Mouse and the Cat
Chapter 25: Lizzie – Her Search for the Truth
Chapter 26: Walter’s Healing Hands
Chapter 27: Kirsty Gets it On
Chapter 28: A Busman’s Holiday for Lizzie
Chapter 29: Massaging Out the Truth
Chapter 30: Slave to the Rhythm
Chapter 31: First of All, I’d Like to Thank…
Chapter 32: Lizzie Closes in on Her Prey
Chapter 33: Fun with Bob and Kirsty
Chapter 34: Lizzie Searching for Wild Geese
Chapter 35: From Orpington to Eternity
Chapter 36: Serving Up a Racquet
Chapter 37: Lizzie’s Third Close Shave
Chapter 38: What Lizzie Made Marion Do
Chapter 39: Unusual Business
Chapter 40: Autopsies
Chapter 41: Lizzie on a Mission from God
Chapter 42: Marion Goes on a White-Knuckled Ride
Chapter 43: Auld Reekie, Ruby’s Rubicon
Chapter 44: The Good, the Bad and the Desperate
Chapter 45: Connecting the Dots
Chapter 46: Sisters in Survival
Chapter 47: A Ghost-writer, There Definitely was
Chapter 48: Tying Up Loose Ends
About the Author
He may be new to readers, but E J Goldberg-Phillips has decades of writing and life experiences. World travel, politics and environmental activism have connected him with the good and the great including prime ministers, actors, musicians and writers.
Born in Australia, Eddie uses his fertile imagination and wealth of memories to conjure up sinister, at times disturbing, images of the seedier side of life—and death. For him, society divides itself and the fight for wealth competes with that for mere survival.
His debut book, Achilles Heel—Your Stalker Solution, is still available on Kindle and Amazon paperback.
Copyright Information ©
E J Goldberg-Phillips 2021
The right of E J Goldberg-Phillips to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528983860 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528983877 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2021
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®
1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf
London, E14 5AA
+44 (0)20 7038 8212
+44 (0)20 3515 0352
Acknowledgement
To Michelle Gray, without whose analysis and thought-provoking ideas this book would never have been as it is.
To Marieke Pingen, who kept me right and brought her analytical, scientist brain to spot inconsistencies.
To authors—Michael J Malone and Caro Ramsay—who unknowingly made such useful suggestions to help me improve the final product.
To my family: Edwina, my wife; sons, David and Joe and my mum, Nancy, for their support and encouragement. A million thanks.
Introduction
No one will hear you scream is the second in a series of novels following my debut, Achilles Heel-Your Stalker Solution (available on Amazon, Kindle and in paperback), and follows the unfolding career of Lizzie Spector. Lizzie was an unexpected heroine in the first novel, a young researcher on “Squawk FM”, the local radio station. She manages to unravel an extraordinary involved criminal plot, assisted by a plethora of others, and as a result makes her name and is subsequently headhunted to a major TV company, Channel 8. The story develops as does her character, love life, ambition and truth seeking/exposing. I quite like this girl who I see as a young version of Stacey Dooley, or Hermione Grainger, though the comparison is only my own. Lizzie is the centre of this story but, as ever, she isn’t alone. The world she inhabits is full of huge egos, prima donnas, criminal types and charlatans. Lizzie Spector is anything but an excellent role model—headstrong, fiery, self-opinionated, a maverick when it suits her. Maybe I like her because I see similar qualities in myself at that age, ones that lead me to socialism, something I still find myself in complete sympathy with. The first book dealt with a stalker and how a secret organisation was able to ostensibly take him out. This book has an entirely different theme and ends with a twist I confidently doubt any of the readers would work out in advance. There is also a “whodunnit” thread weaved into a large part of the book. You’ll need to read on to find out who actually did it! Enjoy.
Chapter 1
Andromeda and the Blackhole
Andromeda Galaxy Smyth, you’re in a fucking blackhole. And she was! Who? How? Where? Why? Ann Smyth was in a situation not necessarily of her making or choice. It was more to do with being there in the line of duty. Her duty was finding out the truth. The truth could sometimes be secreted in the most unimaginable and excruciatingly difficult places—such as down a well. She would need to go wherever the truth lay. The truth lay at the bottom of this well. And the smell. That stomach-wrenching, awful smell. Indescribable but they all knew what was responsible for it. The aroma wafted up the twenty-foot funnel. The long-abandoned well, probably still with some water despite the dry period and due to the very wet time that had preceded it. Absolutely no one needed to be told what was at the bottom of it. Quite obvious. Not just a smell, but a hum. They knew what was making that as well.
Ann Smyth was one of the first from the Kent Police Forensics Team to arrive. America had made Crime Scene Investigation appear sexy, almost glamorous. The reality was anything but. It was something that was needed to be done. Having got her BA in biology, she had then spent time as a serving constable; Ann was now a reasonably new member of the Kent Police Forensics Unit. Her team leader, Jack Jordan, had done the job for nearly twenty years, her only a tenth of that time. Other members of the team were all a bit senior to Ann but the six of them were a team.
So what had happened to bring out their team, a dozen uniforms, including a Chief Inspector? It seemed that a report had been passed to them by an anonymous member of the public—no one ever seemed to want to own up to alerting the police to anything suspicious—of the smell that emanated from that long-abandoned well near Cobham in Kent. The caller said that he had to pull his lurchers away as they were both howling something awful. He described the pong as worse than a badger’s arse. He must have had some rubbish sense of smell. No living badger’s anus could have emitted that! A patrol car took a detour and confirmed the smell. A sergeant came up and confirmed the smell. At this point, it was obvious that something didn’t just smell in the State of Denmark! A van arrived and the uniforms decided to get the blue and white “incident” tape and wooden stakes out and do a perimeter of the well. They had noticed some other tyre tracks, some small, possibly dog, footprints and several shoe and boot prints. Clearly, something had happened there. It wasn’t up to them to speculate, just secure the area.
Next to arrive was a solitary forensics guy, Jack Jordan. The police knew Jack as he was always on the crime scene. It was to be determined if indeed it was a crime scene.
‘Jack, think this one’ s a real bad ’un,’ said Chief Inspector Gary Stevenson. The two had worked together on numerous cases in the past so the CI knew what he was talking about. They both bent under the tape and approached the well. Even at four feet, both of them were conscious of the putrescence. ‘I’d wear a mask, Jack, before you look down.’
It had just gone dusk on an early August night and it was light but fading. Jack took out a large torch and, ignoring the warning, turned the torch on and peered over the edge of the well, which had a rusty wrought iron grating screwed down that had clearly been opened recently. The top of the well still had a modicum of daylight for about four feet, then complete darkness. Jack was hit in the face by a thousand flies. He’d been too slow to close his mouth and got a mouthful of them, some up his nose, even one in an ear. He staggered back and spat out what he could and blew his nose. Nothing came out.
‘Fucking told you. Never listen, do you?’ CI Stevenson felt an “I told you so” moment but resisted the temptation. ‘Did you see anything then?’
‘Something’s down there and it ain’t moving.’ They both agreed that it was time to call in Kent Forensics—euphemistically nicknamed “The Heavy Team”.
Ann got the call and shouted to the others. ‘Case. Here’s the address,’ and they jumped in the van, her in her car. Henry, Lewis, Ralph and Richie plus her. More of a truck than a van, which was just as well because of the equipment and they would possibly require it all. They arrived at eight that night and Ann went up to see Jack. It wasn’t that she was second-in-charge or anything, just less jaded than the others who had been doing the job longer. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed was how Ralph had described her. Had she known; she’d have agreed with him. The team started to set up their equipment: forensics tent next to the well, arc lights and a lot of other equipment that would be required. The top of the well was covered. By ten, it was all done. They all called it a night and let the uniforms sort out guarding the scene until the next morning.
Next morning, Ann was the first of the team to arrive in her car and about ten minutes later came the others, including Jack, in the van. It was a fairly wide well, a good seven or eight feet in diameter at the top but narrowed to five or six feet halfway down. Probably a medieval construction, Jack thought it might be useful to get the old plans for the area to check out what was down there. They duly arrived from the parish council; it had been abandoned since before the First World War.
They took the cover off. It was now after 10 am and light. Another flurry of insects escaped. Jack, Ralph and Ann came over with large industrial flashlights and facemasks to try to see what was at the bottom causing such a stink, as if they didn’t know. They shone their lights down for about twenty seconds each then stepped back. Even in that small amount of time, the smell was overpowering. They could make out a fairly large object, or objects, but it wasn’t at all clear. They tried again with no more vision of it than the first time.
‘Drone?’ said Jack, and they all agreed. Richie was the “drone boy”; it wasn’t just his job, but he’d one of his own at home. Richie went back to the van where they had four drones of various sizes. He selected the Mini Quadcopter Drone. Small, manoeuvrable, just what was required. It even came with a VR headset so that the operator could be wherever the drone was. Nevertheless, this would be tricky.
The team set up a monitor connected to the drone so that they could watch, and if anything was spotted, Richie would be alerted to it and could take a closer look. It was radio-controlled and whilst normally that would be fine, in the confines of a well with thick stonewalls, it could present problems if the signal was interrupted at all. Control would require finesse and dexterity. They were all just about ready. The drone—the size of your hand—was actioned, given a test run and all was ready to “rock and roll”. The first thing they wanted to do was get some pictures of what was down there before deciding any further action. The drone, its four tiny rotor blades and minute light and camera hovered at the top of the well. Very slowly, Richie had it descend inch by inch down the centre, noticing that the further down it went, the damper the well walls became, with moss and lichen everywhere. In some places, the vegetation was missing as if it had been disturbed by something, possibly by whatever was down there. Ten feet down and still nothing, still searching. Richie was becoming aware of slight control difficulties. He said to Jack, ‘Anyone out there on a radio?’
Jack spotted a uniform using his phone. ‘Hang up now. You’re disturbing our signal,’ at which the officer did exactly that.
‘Thanks, getting something now,’ and with that, he gasped, and the drone went offline. The picture became static. The drone had joined the contents of the well. Bummer. Ralph was so pissed off at losing his toy.
During coffee, the team viewed what the drone had recorded before disappearing. It had recorded several seconds of clear vision before either hitting something, the wall or who knows what, or possibly just losing the signal. It was always going to be tricky; Richie was good, but everyone had their limitations. They all discussed what they thought they were looking at.
‘Is that a head?’
‘Possibly. Right shape.’
‘I think it’s more than just one head.’
They ran it back and re-examined the footage frame by frame. Clearly, they did seem to be looking at remains. ‘Stop!’ Ann had noticed something. ‘Where’s the arm?’
‘Arm?’
Ann pointed to the screen. ‘There! That’s a body but it’s lost an arm.’
Lovely! Meanwhile, Jack was back at the van on the phone to the office. It was clear to him that there was reason for suspicion of felony but they needed to now treat the well as a major crime scene. He wanted to get the perimeter extended as well as get another piece of equipment to be able to examine what was at the bottom of the well. It was lunchtime and given that they could do little until it arrived, they stopped for lunch. For at least one of them, holding on to that lunch in the afternoon could be a challenge.
‘Send down another drone maybe? What about a light and camera on a pole?’ suggested Jack, clutching at straws. They all knew what the answer was.
‘Sorry but there’s no other way. Someone will need to go down, record, take photos and tissue samples,’ said Ann. Immediately, the entire team looked at her and she just knew what they were thinking.
‘Me? Fuck!’
Jack then pointed out that, given the narrowness and restrictiveness of the lower part of the well, the size of the team members as well as their weight might be a problem, and with her dexterity, she was the ideal person. Ann had never been asked or “volunteered” for such a task before. It wasn’t that she wasn’t up to it, she fitted the bill in terms of size, nimbleness and ability; it was just…well, she suffered from claustrophobia, something she fought to control but nevertheless, it might be an issue. Ann thought maybe she should have mentioned this when she had applied for the job but it was far too late for that now. Jack took her aside and explained what they needed to do.
