The laundry was close and stifling, even at this time of night. It stank of cheap washing powder and sweat. The sheets were never quite clean. They all smelt of some hairy bastard’s crotch.
LC didn’t put on the light. He flicked on a torch, and in its glow Nick saw his face for the first time, the scar on his eyebrow, the snake tattoos on his thick neck. He always felt there was something familiar about LC, but he couldn’t place him. He’d probably seen his ugly mug in coverage of the man’s trial, although he didn’t know what he was in for. In here, you didn’t ask that kind of question.
Not that Nick would have had a hope of keeping quiet what he himself had been convicted for, even if he’d wanted to. Trial of the decade, they’d called it. But he had no problem with that. Being a serial killer carried a certain cachet. It would have been different if he’d killed kids, but all his victims had been adults. Dean had been nineteen. Perfectly acceptable.
LC was looking at his watch.
There was a diversion organised for 2:30 am exactly. Nick glanced at his own watch. Two minutes to go. He had to hand it to LC, he was a fine aide de camp.
‘Okay,’ LC grunted. ‘Soon as the alarm goes, I’ll open the fire escape and you leg it. There’ll be a rope ladder over the wall approximately fifty metres from the east side of C Wing. Over there.’ He pointed.
Nick nodded. ‘Thanks, LC. Who knows, if this goes smoothly, there might be a little something extra for you in your account.’
LC grunted. ‘’Preciate it.’
Silence, as Nick watched the minute hand of his watch move around the dial.
‘I knew your old man,’ LC said suddenly. ‘I was one of the young offenders he tried to rehabilitate.’
So that was why he looked familiar.
In the eerie light of the torch, LC grinned reminiscently, revealing a gold-capped tooth. ‘He was onto a loser there, right enough.’
‘Evidently.’ Nick laughed. ‘Stupid bastard. I thought your face was vaguely familiar, but I don’t remember you. I suppose it was over twenty years ago.’
LC walked to the fire door and eased it open, standing just inside it. The night air rushed in. ‘I was Liam then. Changed to LC when I came inside. Sounds harder, you know? Aye, Duncan and Maggie were amazing. I thought the world of them. They were the only folk in my life who ever actually cared about me – them and Pam, Maggie’s pal who worked in the coffee shop when she was on maternity with Isla.’
Oh fuck.
‘Maggie and Duncan were like the mum and dad I never had.’
Before Nick could step back, LC had grabbed his jumper.
‘I let them down, but at least I can do this for them, eh?’
Nick felt a sensation like a punch to his chest, but as he looked down he saw the man’s tattooed fist holding a knife. A knife with blood all over the blade. A knife he’d just pulled out of Nick’s chest.
‘You piece of shit!’ LC spat in his face.
All the strength suddenly seemed to leave Nick’s body.
As he collapsed to the hard concrete floor, LC leant over him. Brought his mouth close to Nick’s ear. Spoke three words, clearly and succinctly.
‘Maggie says hi.’
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
They dreamed of a peaceful life in the country. Now they’re fighting to survive.
The Hendriksen family, Bram, Kirsty and their two kids, have left the rat race of the big city and moved into a gorgeous, custom-built house in the beautiful Scottish Highlands. They are living the dream, loving the peaceful slow-paced life.
But then a dead crow appears on their washing line, their vegetables are weedkilled and someone shoots at Bertie, the family's gentle guide dog.
The police say it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just bored local teenagers hanging out in the woods. But Bram is sure that more sinister forces are at work, that these events may be connected to a terrible secret in Kirsty’s past.
As the campaign against them escalates, the family is pulled down into a relentless spiral of terror and violence until the home they always dreamed of becomes a nightmare from which they may never escape.
GET NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Please enjoy this sneak preview of No Place Like Home
PROLOGUE
They had wrapped nylon twine around his wrists and then around his ankles to hog-tie him, so he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t use his arms or legs to brace himself as the van swerved, rolling him around like a pinball, flinging him against its metal sides. And every time he slid across the floor he slid, naked, through the rotting vegetables and pig shit they’d got from somewhere and piled in the middle of the otherwise empty space. There was shit on his face. In his eyes.
He could hear them in the cab, laughing.
And then one of them shouting: ‘You okay back there, Owen?’
He tried to shout back through the gag, over the whine of the engine: ‘Please! Please, let me out of here!’
And maybe they’d heard him, maybe they thought they’d made their point, because suddenly the van braked and there was nothing he could do to stop himself flying forward and crashing into the divider panel between the cab and the back of the van, his head cracking off it.
The next thing he knew there was cool air on his bare skin and one of them was saying, ‘Here we are. Out you come.’
He managed to open his eyes. He could see one of them, silhouetted against the bright white light of a torch moving in the dark beyond the open rear doors. He could see them as they jumped up into the van, hear them complain, raucously, about the stink. He tried to wriggle away, to slide himself around so his back was turned to them.