Single Handed (Gareth Dawson Series Book 3) Read online

  Single Handed

  Nathan Burrows

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  A note from the Author

  1

  If John Bywater had known that it would be his last ever day out on the water, he would have stayed in bed and not bothered getting up.

  Every morning for the last forty years, he’d risen before any of the other residents of Cley-next-the-Sea on the North Norfolk coast. He’d been doing it for so long that he didn’t even need an alarm clock. If he overslept, or was sick, then he didn’t get any money that day unless one of the other fishermen hauled his pots for him. They all looked after each other that way, but every year there were fewer and fewer of them.

  When John had started out, leaving school at fifteen to work the pots, there had been over seventy fishing boats of all shapes and sizes all the way from Sheringham to Cromer. Now, four decades later, there were perhaps fifteen to twenty. Most of them were small inshore single handed boats like his, but there were some larger multi-crew boats about and a couple of catamarans. John had never fancied working with other fishermen. One of the things he appreciated about the job was the solitude.

  Not for the first time, John wondered if anyone would replace him when he eventually retired. The consensus among the fishermen was that they were the last generation, and when they went, so would the traditions they carried on. Their demise wouldn’t even be noticed, apart from perhaps by the crabs and lobsters they fished.

  It was the middle of May, and a glorious spring morning on the coast. The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east, and John was looking forward to watching the sun rise over the water. He walked from the village to the car-park where his small fishing boat sat on a trailer. No matter how tired John was or how awful the weather was, the daily twenty-minute walk never failed to invigorate him.

  Around him, the world was starting to come to life. Above his head in the vast open sky, swifts were darting about above the reed beds, and John could hear the familiar chatter of a warbler in the distance. A low fog hung over the top of the flat land, and John knew that the sea would be like a millpond.

  Bernie—the tractor driver who manoeuvred the boats into the water for the fishermen—was his usual dour self, barely saying two words to John even though they saw each other every day. John pushed his boat out into deeper water, his clothes protected by the waist-high bright yellow waders he wore, and he winced at the pain in his back as he swung himself into the boat. A moment later, the small inboard engine was chugging as it took him to his pots.

  The tide was low, and a few hundred yards to his starboard side, John could see the rusted masts of a shipwreck. It was the SS Rosalie, sunk by a German torpedo on a summer’s day in 1915, fortunately with no casualties. Every time John saw the wreck, it reminded him of how capricious the sea could be, and how cruel, even though the sea itself had nothing to do with the SS Rosalie’s demise.

  Twenty minutes later, with the sun just about to emerge above the eastern horizon, John had hauled the first of his pots. They were marked with coloured buoys which floated on the surface, depending on which fisherman had placed them. As one of the younger fishermen working the beds in the area, John had ended up with dark purple buoys.

  He grunted as he pulled the heavy pot over the side and laid it flat side down on the bottom of his boat. John was wearing a pair of thick blue rubber gloves to protect his hands from the rough rope and barnacled pots.

  The first pot was perhaps half full, which pleased John. It was an excellent start, and with another fourteen pots to empty, the chances were he would head back to shore with a full load. He reached into the pot and started pulling the crabs out, throwing the smaller ones back overboard to live for another day. He had a measuring gauge somewhere in the boat that he could use to make sure all the crabs were large enough to be caught, but John didn’t need it.

  John tipped the rest of the crabs out into the large rectangular plastic tubs that he had half filled with seawater. He looked into the tubs, happy that his haul was all the right sort of crab. There had been an influx of velvet crabs a few years ago, larger and more predatory than the local Cromer crabs, but a frigid blast nicknamed The Beast from the East had pushed them back to warmer waters the previous year.

  The second pot didn’t have as many crabs in, but it did have a couple of lobsters courtesy of the salted dogfish that John had baited the pot with. With a grin, John wrapped elastic bands around their pincers and placed them into a separate tub. That would be an easy twenty or thirty quid right there, plus a free pint for John from the chef at the Blakeney Hotel. It was the chef’s way of making sure that he got first dibs on the best of the catch, and it was an arrangement that John had enjoyed for years.

  John hauled up the third and final pot of the batch in this section. He had baited this one with mackerel, so was expecting crabs. When he tipped it into the tub, though, he saw that he had netted some rubbish. At the bottom of the tub, with several small crabs scuttling over it, was a glove. John tutted, annoyed at what people would throw overboard. He couldn’t remember the last time he didn’t catch some sort of crap in one of the pots.

  He made his way aft in his boat to grab a bin liner that he kept for rubbish. Once he had finished this pot, he thought as he struggled to open it with his thick gloves on, he would stop for a smoke and cup of tea from his flask to watch the sunrise. Then he would move to the next batch of pots a few hundred metres further out over the chalk beds.

  When he picked up the glove, it was heavier than he was expecting, and a small crab was clinging onto the open end for dear l
ife. John dislodged the crab, flicking it back into the sea. That was when he saw the grey flesh and bone inside the glove. It wasn’t rubbish. It was a hand.

  John barely made it to the side of the boat before he vomited. He threw the glove into an empty tub and watched the remains of his breakfast floating away. Fingers trembling, he eased his hands out of his gloves and pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “Police, please?” John said to the woman who asked him which emergency service he required.

  2

  Gareth Dawson swore as he looked at his watch realising that, although it was first thing in the morning, he was already running late.

  It was just after seven in the morning. He hated Mondays at the best of times but, as he crammed a slice of toast liberally spread with Marmite into his mouth, this one was already shaping up to be a bad one. He had just been watching the morning news on the television when his mobile phone started buzzing. It was Laura, and her car wouldn’t start. The taxis were all caught up in the school runs, even at that early hour. Would he be able to give her a lift into Norwich city centre before he went to work?

  Gareth didn’t mind being asked for the favour. On the contrary, he was quite pleased to be asked. Laura knew that, as the boss of his own company, he could go to work whenever he liked. He swung the door of his flat closed behind him, double checking to make sure the lock had engaged properly. Gareth ran a security consultancy business on the outskirts of the city, advising businesses on how to prevent their premises from being turned over by local scallys. It wasn’t a bad line of work for an ex-burglar but, at the same time, he would be left with egg all over his face if he left his own front door wide open because he was in a hurry to rescue a damsel in distress.

  A moment later, he was sitting in his truck on the way to Laura’s flat. Any other time of day, it would be a ten-minute drive, but the rush hours were starting earlier and earlier as the population on the outskirts of Norwich grew—unlike the roads or the public transport system.

  “Morning, Tommy,” Gareth shouted into his car’s bluetooth system. Tommy was his second in command and had been since the days they’d both been part-time burglars together. There was no reply, and Gareth risked a quick glance at his phone’s screen to see if that call had connected. It had. Tommy was just being his usual self.

  “Morning, boss,” his gruff voice came through the speakers a moment later. “Thanks for waking me up. I was in the middle of a lovely dream, I was. You know that blonde woman off of Britain’s Got Talent? The one with the dogs. Well, she was–”

  “Thanks, Tommy,” Gareth said with a laugh, “but I’d rather not know if it’s all the same to you.” Tommy laughed as well, a deep throaty chuckle that soon turned into a phlegmy cough. Gareth heard the unmistakable sound of a lighter, followed by a deep inhalation that exacerbated the coughing. “Jesus wept,” Gareth said to himself, turning the volume on his stereo down until Tommy had finished hacking up part of his lung. “You need to quit, mate.”

  “What?” Tommy’s voice came through the speakers, and Gareth turned the volume back up.

  “I said, you need to quit.”

  “Why? It’s my only vice left.”

  “My arse, it is. Apart from the drinking and women.” He paused for a second before continuing. “Well, the drinking anyway.”

  “Hilarious, boss,” Tommy replied gruffly. Gareth could hear the smile in his voice, though. “So, what can I do for you this fine morning?”

  “Laura’s car’s broken down. I need to give her a lift to the courtroom. She’s got a case at ten.”

  “Okay, so you need me to open up?”

  “Please, Tommy,” Gareth said. “I’m not sure what’s in the diary for this morning, though.”

  “I don’t think there’s much, Gareth. Dave was whinging about something when he left last night, so he’s out and about somewhere.” Dave was the third of their small crew, and his girlfriend Charlotte made up the fourth and final member. Dave was an IT whizkid, while Charlotte kept them all organised.

  “Would his lordship like his breakfast prepared for when he graces us with his presence?” Tommy asked. Gareth could hear him shuffling around as he spoke. “Eggs Benedict, perhaps? Or how about a full English with an additional slice of black pudding?”

  Gareth grinned. The two of them had one version of this joke or another pretty much every morning.

  “That sounds great, Tommy. Thanks,” he replied before waiting for the punchline.

  “Well, can you grab me a cheese and ham toastie from the cafe when you get it?”

  It took Gareth a good thirty minutes to get to Laura’s flat. She had a two-bedroom place in one of the new housing estates on the outskirts of the city. The estate was called Dussindale after a battle between a Norwich rebel and the King of England’s men in the sixteenth century. Not surprisingly, the King’s men had won the battle which apparently took place where the estate stood now, but the exact location was debatable. Gareth vaguely remembered learning about it at school but he couldn’t remember what the rebels were rebelling about, other than it was something to do with sheep.

  Gareth thought it was a bit of a toy-town estate full of new builds with identical layouts and no gardens, but Laura liked it. He’d not seen her for a couple of days and was looking forward to seeing her again. Their relationship was, as he’d tried to explain several times to Tommy, complicated. Except it couldn’t really be called a relationship. Gareth knew that Laura wanted more than just a friendship but, at the same time, she was reticent about taking it further until he was ready. The fact that Gareth’s wife had only been buried just over a year previously didn’t help. For his part, Gareth liked Laura a lot. But for some reason, he couldn’t cross that line. Not yet.

  When he pulled up outside Laura’s flat, he leant on the horn before remembering that it wasn’t even eight in the morning. Whoops, he thought as he looked at the door of the block. A few seconds later, Laura came hurrying out, juggling with her coat and briefcase. She stopped halfway down the path, put the briefcase on the ground, and folded her coat over her forearm before continuing toward his truck.

  “Morning,” Laura said as she climbed into the cab, placing the briefcase between her feet and coat on her lap. Gareth turned to face her. She smelt of shampoo and toothpaste and was dressed in a sharp navy-blue business suit that he thought showed off her curves very well. Laura wasn’t particularly curvy. She had the sort of figure that his mother would have said needed fattening up to get some meat on those hips. “Thank you so much for coming to get me.”

  “It’s no problem, Laura,” Gareth replied, putting the truck into gear. “What’s up with the car?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, pulling a compact mirror out of her coat pocket and using it to inspect her eyes. “Heap of shit, so it is. It won’t start.”

  “Has it got petrol in it?” Gareth said with a smile. Laura turned to him and fluttered her eyelashes.

  “Oh, silly little me,” she said, grinning back at him. “I never thought to see if it needed some go go juice.” She returned her attention to her mirror. “Of course it’s got petrol in it, you big oaf.”

  “So, is the starter motor ticking over but not catching?”

  “Gareth Dawson,” Laura said, pouting at the mirror to check her lipstick. “Stop pretending you know anything about cars. You know about as much as I do.” She flashed him a quick smile. “Which is bugger all.”

  “Guilty as charged, Your Honour,” Gareth replied. “Speaking of which, what have you got on this morning?”

  “One breaking and entering, one taking without consent, and a resisting arrest.”

  “Nice.”

  “All guilty as sin, of course,” Laura said. “But then, they normally are.”

  Gareth smiled as he manoeuvred his way around a bus with its hazard lights on that was stuck on the road, remembering the first time he had met her. When he had been in prison for murder. If it hadn’t been for her and her boss,
Paul Dewar, he would probably still be there.

  “That’s a crap place to break down,” he said, nodding at the bus as he drove past it. “Maybe he’s run out of go go juice.”

  “Very droll,” Laura replied. She glanced at her watch, and Gareth reflexively looked at the clock on his dashboard. She put a hand on his forearm. “Don’t worry, I’ve got loads of time. Force of habit, that’s all.”

  “What time do you think you’ll be done?” he asked her.

  “I can’t see them going on for too long, to be honest,” she replied. “Like I said, all three are pretty much cut and dried. What are you thinking?”

  “Lunch, maybe?”

  “Are you paying?”

  “I put it to you, my learned friend, that I paid last time. And the time before that.”

  “And I put it to you, my not very learned friend, that the course of action which you describe is, according to, inter alia, the laws of the land, an entirely appropriate course of action for a reasonable man under the unusual circumstances in which he finds himself.”