Opening paragraphs excerpt. As yet unedited.
Murder Night
Preamble
The three-day winter storm had passed, leaving in its wake a bad-tempered wind that sent gusts of up to seventy miles an hour through the narrow streets of the estuary towns of Kent.
On Spinton High Street, men and women struggled head down into the wind, their coats and headscarves flapping behind them as they trudged along the narrow pavement. Others were propelled along the dirty flagstones in an enforced half-run with the gale behind them. Hair whipped across the faces of the hatless pedestrians as they hurried along beneath the creaking, rattling hanging shop signs. On the corner, at the junction of High Street and Main Street, a newspaper seller, offering the lunchtime edition of the Evening Post, and having already lost half a dozen copies to the wind, grabbed his pile of papers, stuffed them into a slatted wooden crate, flipped it upside down and sat on it waving a single rolled-up copy in his hands as he announced the mid-day headline.
‘Post, get your Evening Post. Blackout clampdown. Read all about it.’
In the middle of the road, an open double sheet that had escaped the vendor a few moments before, flapped its way up the street, twisting and gyrating as it performed an ethereal, aerial dance. After wrapping itself around a lamppost, it suddenly broke free and hurtled into the road, flapping like a pair of printed swan’s wings. After opening to its full extent, it spread itself across the windscreen of a small Austin Seven that had just pulled out to overtake a parked army lorry. The car’s brakes squealed as the vehicle shuddered to a halt. The driver got out, removed the sheet of paper, took a quick glance at the headline, then screwed it into a ball and threw it into the air, where it was held, suspended in time, before being launched through the open door of the newsagents.
The remains of the fallen autumn leaves danced in mad circles in the gutter, intertwined with dropped sweet wrappers and discarded cigarette butts as the wind rattled a manic snare drum beat between the branches of the few skeletal trees, that stood looking naked and forlorn on the grass verge in front of the Town Hall and Carnegie Library.
At twelve forty-five, Amy Rowlings, a pretty, blonde,twenty-one-year-old, walked through the doorway of the London Connection fashion store before stepping back to avoid a woman scurrying blindly along the pavement, her head down, one hand on her hat, the other desperately gripping a torn, brown paper bag that was about to spill its contents onto the flagstones.
When the woman had passed, Amy took a deep breath, put her head down and stepped into the wind. Lifting her head for a moment, she saw the green, number fifteen, Spinton and District bus pull up at the stop on the other side of the road. The short queue waited impatiently as the passengers alighted. Taking a quick look up and down the street, Amy hurried across the road, holding her bag in front of her thighs in an attempt to stop her knee-length dress from being whipped into the air. As she reached the opposite side of the road, a long gust blew the back of her dress up against her short woollen jacket. Screaming, she twisted and desperately tried to pull it down again. A dark Morris car slowed to a crawl, and the driver beeped his horn in appreciation at the sight of her stocking tops.
A few seconds later, a grey trilby hat flew past her eyes and settled on the pavement a couple of yards behind her. A cursing man left his place in the queue and followed it along the road. As he bent to pick it up, the wind took it again and hurled it twisting and spinning across the street, where it came to rest in a mass of soggy leaves and litter.
Still cursing, he scurried after it.
A skinny-looking woman wearing a check-patterned coat swooped down to pick it up. Waving it towards the man, she shouted unnecessarily, ‘Got it.’
The man took it from her without a word of thanks and turned back towards the bus as he attempted to brush the worst of the gunk from the brim of his hat.
‘You’re welcome,’ the woman sighed before dipping her head and stepping back into the wind.
On the bus, Amy sat by the window and eased her bottom across the seat as an elderly woman plonked herself next to her with a grunt. Two minutes later, the bus pulled away from the stop and drove slowly to the junction, where it turned onto Middle Street and drove down the hill towards the Gillingham Road.
As it passed the Roxy cinema, Amy, a movie buff who religiously visited the picture house with her best friend Alice every week, noticed a new poster that had been placed in the glass display case on the wall facing the road. The poster had a black background and showed the image of a screaming woman, holding her hands to her face in shock. The words Murder Night stood out in large red letters. The i in the word night was made from a picture of a blood-dripping dagger. Below were the words: Saturday Night Shivers.
‘OOH!’ Amy blurted excitedly. ‘I can’t wait for this.’ She turned sideways and looked towards the old lady with a look of excitement on her face.
The woman gave her a disparaging look. ‘Some people are easily pleased.’ She said.
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