withcaroline2

Learning how to tie the marble lantern knot was life changing for Matt, a skinny ten-year-old adept games player, gambler and risk assessor. Useful skills for growing up in the back streets of Southsea. Before his dad Mike, had gone back to sea the last time, he’d spent his three week leave mostly in their loft, on a mission. Mike was used to order and had first built cupboards into the eaves for Christmas Decorations, Uniforms and Miscellaneous. All labelled of course in his beautifully...

‘I’ll pay whatever you ask, you have to help me.’ A distraught Aileen begged, tears trickling to her chin. I signalled gently with my arm for her to take a seat and nudged the  box of tissues closer to her. Taking a gentle deep breath in and out, I sat down on my  slightly more comfortable and marginally higher chair. Not wanting to break her flow,  and in the hope that she might be able to give me some insight as to why she was in my  office at 10.30 on a Wednesday morning, I tilted my head...

Alastor’s remaining eye opened wide as the blade sliced through his windpipe then pinned him across the tiller, separating two vertebrae of his thoracic spine. Lifeblood seeped from his throat into a hovering pewter bowl until it overflowed, dripping to the deck. A sail flapped as a fresh breeze began to stir the plate-glass sea.  As the moon slid out and up from the mist hovering over the water, Verity became visible, hazy like dust. A halo of light from behind her head lent her the...