GRAVE PASSION Phillip Strang BOOKS BY PHILLIP STRANG DCI Isaac Cook Series MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS MURDER HOUSE MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE MURDER IS THE ONLY OPTION MURDER IN NOTTING HILL MURDER IN ROOM 346 MURDER OF A SILENT MAN MURDER HAS NO GUILT MURDER IN HYDE PARK SIX YEARS TOO LATE GRAVE PASSION MURDER WITHOUT REASON DI Keith Tremayne Series DEATH UNHOLY DEATH AND THE ASSASSIN’S BLADE DEATH AND THE LUCKY MAN DEATH AT COOMBE FARM DEATH BY A DEAD MAN’S HAND DEATH IN THE VILLAGE BURIAL MOUND THE BODY IN THE DITCH Steve Case Series HOSTAGE OF ISLAM THE HABERMAN VIRUS PRELUDE TO WAR Standalone Books MALIKA’S REVENGE Copyright Page Copyright © 2020 Phillip Strang Cover Design by Phillip Strang All rights reserved. No part of this book 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 written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All Rights Reserved. This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service. Author’s Website: http://www.phillipstrang.com Dedication For Elli and Tais, who both had the perseverance to make me sit down and write. Contents Title Page Copyright Page 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 1 Brad Robinson was about to break the law, not that he knew it, and he was in too much of a hurry to worry anyway. He was a bright child, his mother would say, but then she had a soft spot for him, seeing that he was the only one of her three children who wasn’t taking drugs, incarcerated in prison, or, in the case of her daughter, selling herself. To the sixteen-year-old’s mother, it looked as though he might make his way in the world without resorting to crime, even becoming a worthwhile member of society, which she had aspired to but had failed to achieve. Jim, the eldest of her three children, had at twenty-two seen the inside of more than a few prison cells. He had had to grow up hard; his father was a criminal as well as a drunk, and on many a night, he had beaten his mother senseless. At the age of fourteen, Jim, strong for his age, had taken on the bane of the Robinson household and thrashed his father mercilessly with a cricket bat. The upshot was that Jim, the saviour of his family, spent time in a young offender’s institution, and his father, once the wounds had healed, had briefly returned to the family home, a squalid council house with little charm, picked up his clothes, packed them in a suitcase and had left; not a word of farewell to anyone in the house, other than a pat on the shoulder for the eight-year-old Brad. The second eldest, Janice, was an attractive blonde-haired child until puberty hit. After that, she had discovered boys, and then men, and then drugs. She was now twenty-one and living a transient life, moving from one place to another, eking a living by selling herself, injecting when she could, eating whatever food she could afford. Brad tried to see her every couple of months, but it wasn’t easy. He was sixteen, and his life should have been a time for exams and sport and chasing girls. Not that he tarried on the latter, as he had grown up a good-looking lad, and the genetic traits that had made Jim violent and Janice a tart hadn’t touched him. He was more like his mother, except that he had tried alcohol on a couple of occasions and never found a love for it. He was glad of that. The house wasn’t somewhere you took Rose Winston. Brad didn’t want to destroy her impression of him. She lived not far away in a better house and her parents owned it; her father was a professional man and her mother was a schoolteacher. Rose had made it clear that sex was the next step in their relationship; after all, they had passed through passionate kissing and heavy petting. The next stage was the final act, where he, the over-eager Brad, and Rose, the expectant female, would come together in a crescendo of drums, the sound of waves lapping on the shore, an abandonment of themselves as they became one. That was how Rose, an avid reader of love stories, saw it. Brad, sensitive as only a sixteen-year-old male could be, knew that wasn’t how it was, but he wasn’t about to tell her the truth, not just yet. It was messy, he could have told her, over far too quickly, and if she wanted banging drums and the music, then she’d better take a radio with her. The best he could hope for was a balmy summer’s night, a secluded spot in Hyde Park. He had purchased a cheap bottle of wine and taken a blanket from home, the cleanest one he could find. His mother wasn’t strong on cleanliness, although she was on vodka. Brad, in his reflective moments, wondered about his parentage. His mother was a short woman, whereas he was tall for his age and slim, although her facial features showed in him, as they did in his brother and sister.
