Price of Freedom Read online

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  Price of Freedom

  ISBN # 978-1-78430-843-8

  ©Copyright Helena Maeve 2015

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright October 2015

  Edited by Sue Meadows

  Pride Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2015 by Pride Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

  Pride Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  Shadow Play

  PRICE OF FREEDOM

  Helena Maeve

  Book two in the Shadow Play series

  Some stories just aren’t meant to be told.

  From warzones to domestic scandals, Ulysses has built a career as a high-profile journalist at the expense of both family and relationships. Now his dogged pursuit of the truth has cost him credibility and job security. Discredited and depressed, he hunts for the story that will re-establish him as a trustworthy name in British journalism.

  Stumbling across a string of mysterious murders that spans the breadth of the continent may prove a godsend. Yet catapulted into a world of spies and outstanding blood debts, Ulysses finds himself collaborating with elusive Robin, a man on the run whose past is as dark as the desires he awakens in Ulysses. Their chemistry is incendiary, breathtaking, unlike anything Ulysses has ever known. And chances are the fallout will prove proportional.

  As Robin’s dealings land him in the crosshairs of the British intelligence services, Ulysses is faced with a choice that may cost him his life.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Ford Focus: Ford Motor Company

  Rambo: Studio Canal

  Artful Dodger: Charles Dickens

  The Economist: The Economist Group

  iPhone: Apple, Inc.

  WikiLeaks: Sunshine Press

  Citroën: PSA Peugeot Citroën Group

  Downton Abbey: Carnival Films

  Tony Soprano: Chase Films, Brad Grey Television

  iPad: Apple, Inc.

  Land Rover: Tata Motors

  The Voice: Wall to Wall, Talpa Productions

  MasterChef: Shine TV

  Waitrose: John Lewis Partnership

  Honda: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

  The Show Must Go On: Brian May, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Roger Taylor

  WWE: World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.

  Stratfor: Strategic Forecasting, Inc.

  Aqua di Gio: Giorgio Armani S.p.A.

  Red Bull: Red Bull GmbH

  The Guardian: Guardian Media Group

  Big Brother: Endemol

  Tesco: Tesco PLC

  Google Maps: Google, Inc.

  James Bond: Ian Fleming, Eon Productions

  McDonald’s: The McDonald’s Corporation

  Viagra: Pfizer, Inc.

  UPS: United Parcel Service, Inc.

  Chapter One

  “What do you mean ‘the body is gone’?” Ulysses pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re kidding, right? I came in yesterday and you said—”

  “I know what I said,” Malika shot back, lips pursed around the filter of her unlit cigarette. Her hands shook around the plastic lighter. A cold front had settled over Gatinau in the late evening hours, after Ulysses had found his hotel but before he realized he’d misplaced his cell phone. By morning, the chill was entrenched, hostile.

  His on-the-ground contact was no kinder.

  After a good minute of trying to ignite her cigarette, Malika pried it from her mouth and threw up her hands. “Look, some guys came during the night. Must’ve been around midnight, maybe a little later… Next thing I know, I’m told to take a walk. When I come back, he’s gone. That’s all I know.”

  “Told by whom?”

  “One of the doctors.” Malika pressed her thin lips together. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Everything’s been very hush-hush since last night.”

  Ulysses’ fingers itched. He wanted to grab his notepad, jot down every word in case he mistranslated them later. While he spoke it well enough to make his way through the country largely undetected, French wasn’t his mother tongue. He’d missed nuances before.

  “Okay… Do you know who they were? These men who came to take the body, could they have been undertakers? Or family?” he asked, stabbing in the dark.

  “Not unless the guy had five brothers built like Rambo.” Malika knuckled absently at the gleaming stud in her nose. “We need authorization from the police before we can release a body to the family. Sometimes, if there’s any hint of foul play…”

  As there is in this case?

  “And you haven’t received one.”

  Malika shook her head. “Gets weirder, though.” She glanced around the empty parking lot as though to check that no one was listening and curled her lower lip between her teeth. The perfect oval of her face elongated when she sucked her cheeks in. No matter how round and baby-soft her features and how often her scratchy voice cracked, there was a hardness to her, a no-nonsense attitude that Ulysses had appreciated when her cousin had first put them in touch.

  Yet unlike the cousin from Marseille, Malika was slightly more attuned to the dangers of collaborating with the press.

  Ulysses knew he should have found her wariness reassuring—he didn’t trust the cowboy-anarchist types and the ink on her neck was hard to miss—but he was weary of chasing false leads. His patience had just about run dry. “What?” he snapped, pushing his glasses up his nose. “What else is there? Aliens? The Illuminati?”

  “This morning, we have no record of a Monsieur X.”

  “He’s a…” Ulysses waved a hand. He couldn’t think of the French word. “A John Doe? You misidentified the remains?”

  “No. It’s as if we never registered the body, never entered it into the system…”

  His jaw slackened. “But that’s not possible.” Foreign nationals who died on French soil couldn’t simply be misplaced. “Must be a glitch. Mister X didn’t just get up and walk off the slab.”

  It was to no avail, Malika was already looking away. Like all astute mercenaries, she knew their collaboration had come to a close. “Is there someone else I can talk to?” Ulysses pressed. “Losing a body strikes me as a pretty big deal.”

  “And if your l
ittle magazine wants to print it, be my guest. But you’re not using my name,” Malika said, gesturing with her unlit cigarette. “Are we clear?”

  Ulysses drew himself up a little straighter. He was going to let the mocking comment about his magazine slide. He was going to be an adult about this, no matter how it wounded him to hear a labor of love dismissed as a vanity project. “I won’t mention you if you tell me who else I can speak to about this… Maybe the pathologist who performed the autopsy?”

  Malika narrowed her eyes. For a beat, Ulysses thought she might refuse. He had lost sources to fear before, but this wasn’t the Balkans in ’93. This was France and Paris was just a couple of hours away by car.

  Stories like this weren’t supposed to happen here.

  “I can give you a name,” Malika said after brief deliberation. “But it will cost you.”

  * * * *

  Two hours later and eighty euros lighter—a figure agreed upon after a little negotiation—Ulysses shoved through the glass doors of the Hôpital Saint-Damien of Gatinau with a splinter of annoyance stuck deep in his belly. He’d heard of locals closing ranks before and employees being cautioned against rocking the boat, but getting threatened with legal action if he didn’t cease and desist was new.

  The last time it had happened, he’d been researching the Ernust scandal back home.

  And look how well that turned out.

  A fine, misting rain had settled over the town since he’d ventured into the morgue, bringing with it the salt-and-brine perfume of the Channel.

  Ulysses pulled up the collar of his trench coat and hurried across the deserted parking lot.

  Unsurprisingly, he had forgotten his umbrella back at the hotel. His shoes slapped through one puddle after another, splashing the cuffs of his trousers with runoff. He wanted nothing more than to drive back to the bed and breakfast, and burrow under the covers until he worked up the nerve to call London.

  Claudia would be thrilled to hear that he’d come to his senses, that he was finally throwing in the towel. She would press him to come home.

  The stoplights of a lone, olive-green Ford Focus blinked on and off as Ulysses unlocked the car. It was a vile little thing. Manual transmission, teal leather seats and a radio that only functioned intermittently. The interior harbored the ghost of stale cigarette smoke and, oddly enough, a grandmotherly hint of lavender. Still, it was dry and it was his, for however long he remained in Normandy.

  Ulysses raked a hand through his hair. The rain had done a number on it. Wispy blond strands stood on end, greasy like some hair gel commercial. He made a brief attempt to comb them into order, squinting into the rear view mirror as he did so.

  I’m getting too old for this shit.

  The dark circles under his eyes had yet to fade after a night spent poring through patchy evidence. A persistent twinge had sunk talons into his lower back, making him yearn for the massage parlors back home.

  He could have been there right now, getting worked over by some twink with lush lips and soft hands. Professional integrity—what little he had left of it—was a terrible thing.

  The engine rumbled to life when he slid the key into the ignition. Despite its many flaws, the rental car had been reliable so far. It got him from point A to point B even as the chassis vibrated worryingly and the exhaust sputtered with the occasional cloud of billowing dark smoke. If only it could help him make sense of the story, it would have been the perfect machine.

  Ulysses reached for the folded map on the passenger seat as he slowly eased out of the parking lot. In London, multitasking behind the wheel could make all the difference between getting home safely and a lifetime of physical therapy, but out here, on the back roads of northern France, in the rain, he might as well have been the only motorist in the world.

  The road back to the hotel was simple to retrace. Take a right at the church, avoid the market square, struggle through narrow cobblestoned roads, and Villa Brigitte should be easy to spot between the tight press of turn-of-the-century townhouses. Ulysses swerved left, deviating toward the seaside.

  Rain pelted the windshield as he let the car settle onto the potholed tarmac. It was a good idea. It was his only idea, short of embracing defeat. You can’t investigate a murder if you don’t even have a body, he imagined Claudia sighing. Come home.

  How could he, when that man’s unmoving, ashen face was printed onto his retinas?

  Ulysses flexed his hands around the steering wheel and lowered his foot to the accelerator. The Ford zoomed down the barren road, spraying rainwater as it sped along the washed out landscape. Somewhere between Gatinau and the coast, the radio crackled to life with the dull whisper of French rock. It wasn’t a band Ulysses recognized, but he turned up the volume anyway.

  Anything would do, even white noise. Five victims and he still had no leads. He couldn’t get a single quote. Claudia was quite rightly adamant that they wouldn’t go to print until Ulysses had solid evidence. Ulysses was adamant that he wouldn’t abandon the story.

  The era of Cold War assassinations was over.

  The Economist told him so. Apparently Europe needed Russia and vice-versa. So why were British and American spies winding up dead all over the continent?

  If that’s even the link between them. MI6 had been justifiably reluctant to answer any requests for comment. He’d expected nothing less, though he was somewhat surprised they hadn’t paired their refusals with the threat of prosecution.

  Perhaps they thought he didn’t have anything, so they didn’t trouble themselves.

  They weren’t wrong.

  Ulysses passed the Criel-sur-Mer sign so fast he barely noticed the rust-bitten metal, let alone the graffiti etched onto it. Probably best to ease off the gas, he reasoned. Criel-sur-Mer had been his first stop last night, but the only decent hotel around was completely booked on account of a wedding party. He’d been wary of trying the hostel. He had only just bought his current laptop.

  Like most resort towns in the off-season period, Criel-sur-Mer was a place built with the expectation of visitors. Shadowed shop windows advertised beach towels and swimming gear, a plethora of sunscreen and post-exposure creams to guarantee a consequence-free tan. Beachside eateries brandished Closed signs through lowered blinds.

  All but the local pub seemed intent on repelling potential customers.

  Ulysses jerked the Ford onto the curb and cut the engine. Having pored over maps on the flight from Rome, he felt like more or less knew the basic layout of the town. The sandstone cliffs echoed with the crash of waves. Decrepit, tightly packed houses rubbed shoulders with newer builds, square edges misaligned. The gray band of the Channel put a damper on his enthusiasm.

  So much for unearthing the secret of what happened here, and why.

  He shivered under his trench coat. The Ford’s heater worked, if blowing out eddies of tepid, cigarette-tinged air counted. Ulysses couldn’t bring himself to turn up the dial. He thought about the boardwalk and the circuitous path to the theater, where John Doe—or Monsieur X, as Malika had called him—may or may not have been murdered.

  The initial autopsy report left little doubt on that score, but that report was now gone, vanished along with Mister X himself. Just like the others.

  A harsh wind rattled the car, making Ulysses’ mind up for him.

  He slammed the car door shut in his wake and locked the Ford without a second glance. It was the kind of night that called for a stiff drink or two.

  Minding his steps, he negotiated the puddles that pocked the sidewalk up to the pub door with a mincing gait. It did nothing to stop him from becoming thoroughly drenched, nor wrinkling his nose when he pushed past the pub door into a cloud of stale liquor and cheap cigarettes.

  That kind of day, that kind of trip.

  Ulysses shrugged out of his trench coat and made a beeline for the bar. There was nothing he could do about tracking rainwater into the pub.

  “Beer,” he told the bartender. “Whatever you have on tap.”<
br />
  Much to his consternation, something of the request was lost in translation. Moments later, beer bottle in hand, he found the table farthest from the door and dropped into a chair, too weary to fuss.

  “Rough day?” a voice asked from the bar.

  Ulysses mustered a vaguely acquiescing noise.

  “You’ll need something stronger than beer to make it go away, then.” Footsteps thumped against the floorboards, wood creaking with warning shots.

  Despite himself, Ulysses glanced up. “Look…” ‘I’m not looking for company’ died on the tip of his tongue.

  The man was somewhere in his early thirties, maybe a little younger. If Ulysses had a type, he would gladly have revised his position to include a smattering of stubble along the broad shelf of a square jaw, and a long, dark fringe that drooped just right into eyes the color of baked clay.

  “This seat taken?”

  “Your English is better than my French.” It took Ulysses a moment of staring at the other man’s indulgent smile to realize that he hadn’t answered the question. “No, it’s not.” But it should be. He was here to work, albeit on a story with no leads and fast vanishing evidence.

  Ulysses looked down at his sweating bottle, peeling up a corner of the label. He couldn’t afford distractions.

  His new companion seemed to take no notice. “Robin,” he offered.

  “Charmed.” A deep breath and Ulysses tried again, “Look, I appreciate the interest, I do, but—”

  “I hear you’ve been asking questions about the dead guy.”

  That snapped his head up. The pub listed a little at the corners of Ulysses’ vision, where his glasses gave way to the blur of failing eyesight.

  “Did you know him?”

  Robin didn’t have a drink. He swiped Ulysses’ with a quick flick of the wrist and helped himself to a meditative sip. His throat bobbed.