Deadly Friends By Stuart Pawson Synopsis: When Dr. Clive Jordan's dazzling (and lucrative) career is brought to an abrupt end by a fatal bullet, his colleagues are devastated especially the female ones. If the doctor hadn't been as discreet as an undertaker's cough, Detective Inspector Charlie Priest of Yorkshir's force would suspect a jealous husband, for Jordan was quite a Lothario. But it's not going to be that simple. Charlie's got another case on his hands that he'd give his eye teeth to solve. Janet Saunders' description of her attacker makes him easy to find, but his story doesn't quite gel with hers. She's a slag, he reckons, and enjoyed his attentions; she's only complaining now because he didn't want to go back for more. It's quite clear to the police which is the true story but who would take the word of a single mother who works in a pub over that of a confident, well-heeled young man? Charlie knows for sure there's a killer on the loose and almost certainly a rapist as well. With limited resources at his disposal, and a maze of legal restrictions to edge through, the chances of bagging both seem slim, but Charlie's a lot tougher and smarter than his affable manner indicates, and that's bad news for the villains on his patch "Priest's procedure is decidedly irregular the Inspector is a lively personality' Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph "Pawson's excellent debut, The Picasso Scam, is actually bettered in his second work [The Mushroom Man] There's plenty of flair in the plot, and it all gels magnificently in this tale of a serial vicar-murderer' Yorkshir Post "Priest is a welcome addition to the canon of fictional detectives' Yorkshir Evening Post "Very much an author to keep an eye on' Birmingham Post "A lively character....promising' Sunday Telegraph "An intellectual and earthy detective, Charlie Priest could become for Yorkshir what Wycliffe is for Cornwall' Publishing News Also by Stuart Pawson The Picasso Scam The Mushroom Man The Judas Sheep Last Reminder DEADLY FRIENDS Stuart Pawson HEADLINE Copyright 1998 Stuart Pawson To Doreen The right of Stuart Pawson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 1998 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING 10 98765432 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters is this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Pawson, Stuart Deadly friends 1. Priest, Charlie (Fictitious character) Fiction 2. Police Fiction 3. Yorkshire (England) Fiction 4. Detective and mystery stories I. Title 823.9'14 [F] ISBN 0 7472 2014 X Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent. HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING A division of Hodder Headline PLC 338 Euston Road LONDON NW1 3BH Thanks to the following for their unfailing assistance and encouragement: Kath Gibson, Dennis Marshall, John Crawford, John Mills. Prologue Clive David Jordan, FRCS, FRCOG, had it made, and he knew it. Aged thirty-five, he was at the height of his powers and his appetites. For four days each week he worked at Heckley General Hospital, his tall fair presence spreading brisk bonhomie through wards, corridors, offices and staff rooms as he dispensed medicine, expertise and cheeriness to employees and clients alike. A hand on an arm here to comfort a patient, his best boyish grin to a nurse there, to give her an adrenalin boost that would take her to the end of her shift, it was all the same to Dr. Jordan. Charm dripped from him like rainwater from a leaky gutter. One, sometimes two, days a week he worked at the White Rose Clinic, just outside town, on the affluent side. Set in extensive grounds, the clinic was concealed by the last stand of decent trees before the moors began and nibbling sheep and gnawing winds stunted their growth. Word in the town was that the White Rose Clinic set standards of opulence that were not equalled by any hotel this side of Harrogate. Nobody knew anyone who had actually had treatment there, but the postman delivered their mail and saw what he saw, and the staff were recruited locally. The clinic paid good money, and was able to poach some of the best nurses from the National Health hospitals. Nurses have mortgages and electricity bills, just like everybody else. So, on Wednesdays and the occasional Saturday Dr. Jordan's BMW 523i was parked outside the clinic while he doubled his income inside, ministering to the healthy. Strictly speaking, due to the perverse snobbery of the medical profession, he was Mr. Jordan, having achieved the lofty rank of consultant. He was in a relationship. Natasha Wilde "That's Wilde with an e' was an actress who'd achieved a kind of fame playing a bimbo of doubtful sexuality in a Yorkshire soap opera called Dales Diary, known throughout the county as Mrs. Dale's Dairy. Confident that her role in the show was secure, she had recently demanded more money, inspiring the producers to promptly write-in a dying sister in Australia and send her character off to the antipodes for six months. Clive Jordan didn't mind. It meant they could spend more time together, either in her rented cottage at Appletreewick, in Wharfedale, or at his modern executive-style penthouse apartment close to the centre of Heckley. Dr. Jordan was stage-struck. Natasha's friends, who he met regularly at parties, were often seen in a variety of hospital dramas. Sometimes applying the resuscitation electrodes to a stricken victim's chest with a terse: "Stand back!" as the current was applied, sometimes gazing thoughtfully at an old x-ray of someone's kneecap while saying: "It looks like pre-haemorrhoidal subcutaneous laparotomy to me. We'd better go in." But he, Clive Jordan, was the real thing. That was how he earned his living. Often he found himself taken to one side at a party and asked how a certain situation might be handled. He helped where he could, and once received a credit for technical assistance, but he knew they could never play the part as effectively as he did himself. He should really have been the one up there, in front of the cameras. He certainly had the looks, and his own life would T1VF have provided enough material for a couple of mini-series. Wednesdays he didn't start at the White Rose until eleven a.m." which gave ample time for the wife of one of his colleagues at the General to pop round and cook breakfast for him. She dressed up or down as a French maid, which was totally unnecessary as far as he was concerned, but she seemed to derive an extra fris son of pleasure from it. Thursday nights, during term time, he had sex with one of the clinic's receptionists in the back seat of the BMW. Her husband thought she was at a pottery class. Occasionally he found the time and energy for a game of squash. He wasn't serious about his acting ambitions, but found a more realistic way of melding his two worlds together in a sort of symbiosis. He always carried a couple of the clinic's glossy pamphlets in his pocket, and more than one of Natasha's friends found herself studying it, propped up against the cornflakes packet, after discussing her 'problem' with him. It was useful having an actress as a girlfriend, as well as being fun. He enjoyed it. When Natasha was in London, seeing her agent, she said, he enjoyed her friends, too. But it all came to an end. One rainy evening, as the shoppers dashed from one tinsel-draped store to another, looking for that last elusive present before the shutters came down for two blessed days, someone gave Clive Jordan, FRCS, FRCOG, an injection. In the ear. With an Enfield 0.38 calibre revolver. Chapter One Christmas Eve we had a rape. The woman didn't report it until the day after Boxing day, so hers was the only Christmas it wrecked. We were having a social evening in the canteen when she walked into the station. Highlight of the celebrations was a bulls eye quiz; the idea stolen, I am told, from television. The CID A-team, captained by' yours truly, Charlie Priest, tied with the Angels for first place so we had a sudden-death play-off to decide the winners. "Mr. Priest, of the CID, has won the toss and put Agnes of the Angels in to bat first," Gareth Adey, my uniformed opposite number informed the crowd. "Select a category please," he ordered Agnes. "Pop music," she announced, predictably, and lined herself up with the dartboard. Pop music was the twenty. If she hit it the question was worth double points, and so far she hadn't missed. Plunk! "Number one," Adey pronounced. "Television. And here is your question." Short pause while he shuffled his papers He likes to do things properly, but he can be a bit of a prat at times. "For five points, who played the part of Steed in the Aven ' "Patrick MacNee!" Agnes interrupted, thumping the air with a calloused hand. A m T1VT7 "Correct. Would Inspector Charlie Priest now approach the oggy?" I pulled Agnes's dart from the board and ambled to the line. If I threw well and knew the answer, we'd win. If I missed but still knew the answer, we'd draw. "General knowl...
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