BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS
Page 1
BOX SET SELECTION
of
TOP 10
MEDICAL THRILLERS
By
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IAN C.P. IRVINE
Including:
Haunted from Within
Murder Mystery and Eternal Youth
(Previously published under the title 'The Orlando File')
Crown of Thorns
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By
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IAN C.P. IRVINE
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Published by Ian C. P. Irvine
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Copyright 2013 IAN C.P. IRVINE
Others books by IAN C.P.IRVINE on Amazon.
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London 2012 : What If ? ( A Romantic Mystery Adventure )
Available in Paperback or Ebook
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The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Medical Thriller
..
Alexis Meets Wiziwam the Wizard
Box Set Table Of Contents
Haunted from Within
Murder Mystery & Eternal Youth
Crown of Thorns
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Haunted from Within
.
By
.
IAN C.P. IRVINE
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Published by Ian C. P. Irvine
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Copyright 2013 IAN C.P. IRVINE
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright observed above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the copyright owner.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
..
Dedicated to Linda and Ray, for their unquestioning help and friendship.
And to all the doctors, nurses, and receptionists who care for our families.
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Table Of Contents
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Part One
Prologue
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
Part Two
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 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Reviewing "Haunted from Within"
Other Books by Ian C.P.Irvine
Part One
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Prologue
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Maciek’s Story: Preparation.
England.
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A knife is a beautiful thing. Precise. Gleaming. Bewitching. An object of desire. Maciek had seven knives. Five had already been used. Once each. Proving their worth and earning their place in his collection. And tonight another one would lose its virginity and join its brothers in the display case above his bed.
He had bought it in Kraków on his last visit to his mother's grave in Poland. The moment he had seen it, he had fallen in love with it and he knew, instinctively, that this would be the one. Its blade was larger than the others, the hilt more ornate, the edges thinner and sharper. When he had held it for the first time, it balanced so perfectly in his hand that somehow he felt as if he had bonded with it. He had since wondered if he had chosen the knife, or the knife had chosen him.
When he had paid the ex-army officer the bargain price of 100 zloty...twenty pounds in his new money...he knew he had got a bargain. This was not a knife you could buy anywhere today. It was better quality. Heavier. Sexier. Maciek hated the Nazis, all Poles did, but he had to admit that the SS knives were some of the best. Wonderful killing machines. Pure. Perfect.
The owner had promised him that it had never been used, insisting that it had been taken from a prisoner seventy years ago only moments before they shot him, still gleaming from the factory. The history of the knife helped add to the sexual arousal that Maciek felt whenever he held it in his hands, polishing the blade, sharpening the edge. Preparing it. Imagining the moment.
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Maciek had never killed a man before. Until now, he had only ever killed women. Tonight would be his first time. It would be special. A moment that he would never forget as long as he lived.
He wanted it to be perfect. He needed it to be perfect.
Not only because men were stronger, and because potentially there was more risk, but simply because it wasn’t often in your life that you got the opportunity to do something like this for the first time. And once it was over, there would be no opportunity to repeat
it. The ‘first time’ only happened 'once'. It had to be worthy of the occasion and worth savouring.
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There was one little thing that worried Maciek. It had caused him to ponder and question what he was about to do and made him question the use of the knife, –not the act of killing-, but rather the choice of weapon.
He enjoyed killing. It aroused him. Knives aroused him. The combination was perfect.
What worried Maciek was whether or not he would get aroused when killing a man.
On reflection he had realised that whilst he did enjoy killing, perhaps it was not purely the killing he enjoyed, but rather the act of killing ‘women’. Each time he had done it, the sense of power, of dominance, the smell of fear from his victims,...the musk of death...he found it all intoxicating.
But when killing a man, he was not sure whether or not that was what he wanted. Maciek was not a homosexual. And it concerned him perhaps that holding and killing with the knife might arouse him.
He shook his head, blinked and focussed on the blade again. He ran the millstone along its edge one more time and listened to the whirl the action made...that slight, almost imperceptible sound that told him the blade was honed to perfection. Sharp as could be. Ready to take a life.
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Maciek breathed in deeply, and he felt his pulse quicken. He felt the first signs of arousal developing within his groin.
Then he smiled.
Perhaps it may not be so bad after all. He knew he was going to enjoy it.
Chapter One
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Peter’s Story
ASBO Land
Edinburgh, Scotland
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Six Months Before
Tuesday, 7 p.m.
March
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In comparison to how it was ten years before, the housing estate on the edge of the city was now almost unrecognisable. The council had done a wonderful job of transforming the run down and derelict council houses into homes that the residents could be proud of.
Every time Peter drove around the Craigmillar Housing estate just on the edge of Edinburgh, he had flashbacks to his youth, and how it used to look. There was simply no comparison. Outwardly the council appeared to have done a wonderful job.
But appearances were deceiving.
Unfortunately, where as fresh paint and new roof tiles had transformed buildings, social funding from the Eurozone had done little to transform the hearts and minds of some of the inhabitants. Outwardly they may appear different, but inwardly, a small group of undesirables remained rotten to the core.
Peter turned a corner, drove ten metres down the road and parked outside the bright green door. Mr Wallace, the seventy year old pensioner who lived inside was a good man. Not like his young neighbours. Mr Wallace had dedicated his life to the army, had fought for his country in Korea, and served his fellow man. Now old and infirm, the youths that lived in the street and terrorised his life had no idea who he was or how brave a life he had lived. To them he was just 'an old wee gadgy' and they took great pleasure in making the remainder of his days hell.
“Scum,” Mr Wallace described them over coffee. “Pure bloody scum! It duzzny matter how many times I call the coonsel, naebidy cares.”
And sadly, Mr Wallace was probably right. For some, joy riding stolen cars around the estate on Friday and Saturday nights had once again become the ‘coolest thing’ to do on the planet, and the local police never did anything about it.
To be fair, it wasn’t that the police didn’t care. They did. But resources were finite, and other parts of the city which were more visible to Edinburgh’s billion pound tourist industry simply demanded more attention.
Until recently the police even had a fully manned police station on the outskirts of the estate, but government cutbacks recently forced the station to close.
So the decent folk of Craigmillar were left to fend for themselves, and fight a losing battle with the new generation of unemployed youths and designer drugs.
A story being told in almost every city in Scotland and England.
A war which few had the resources to fight, but a plight which the Evening News and Peter, a local reporter, had chosen to highlight. Which is why, over the past few months, Peter had been getting to know the local inhabitants and writing a series of articles which focused on their lives, the struggles they faced, and the potential that existed for and within their community, if only the council and the police would finally sort the problem out.
“Bastards!...Every fucking night...ye cannie get a wink o’sleep ‘cos of them wee shites!” Mr Wallace said, starting to describe the latest mayhem that the ‘wee bastards’ had been wreaking on the estate.
As a reporter Peter felt that it was his job to report the facts. Unlike some other reporters that quite consciously put a spin on their copy so that it biased the reader into a suggested opinion, over the past twelve years Peter had until now managed to maintain his journalistic integrity and impartiality. But events on the Craigmillar estate in recent months were testing him to the limit. Joy riding, especially when done by a ‘wee shite withoot a driver’s licence or any insurance’ had always made Peter mad. Peter simply could not understand the lenient sentences that magistrates repeatedly handed down to first and second offenders who were caught red-handed behind the wheel of a stolen car. Some even driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. To Peter the case was clear cut: a car is a potential killing machine, and when not operated correctly, ...it kills. Any person caught driving a car illegally, without insurance, or found in a state not fit to drive, should automatically receive the toughest sentence available. Which, to Peter, meant that when a joyrider hits someone else or another car, that the charge should automatically escalate to ‘attempted murder, manslaughter, or murder’. Why could no one else see that?
Two weeks ago a joyrider had stolen a car from just outside the estate, driven down to Portobello, gone through the barrier and driven it along the promenade beside the beach.
A boy cycling in the opposite direction was hit, propelled from his bike into a wall, and had broken his back. He died thirty minutes later in an ambulance.
The joyrider, or joyriders, hadn’t stopped, and had driven back to Craigmillar where the car was found burning an hour later.
No one had yet been charged.
Since then Peter’s interest in the social problems of Craigmillar had intensified. Events had made it personal. And now, more than ever, he wanted to weave his way into the world within the estate and learn about its problems and issues, and uncover everything he could about the gangs or ‘teams’ or ‘crews’ who were destroying the lives of the other decent residents. He was going to do his best to help get the correct level of political focus on the estate and its issues from the Scottish parliament. What had started out just as a story had grow in personal importance, and he was determined to help make a difference.
All he needed was to find a local who was willing and brave enough to talk. To tell him what he knew. To expose and name the ringleaders and help justice take its course.
Perhaps Mr Wallace, an ex-army infantry man, would be just that man.
Chapter Two
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Big Wee Rab's (stolen) car
Craigmillar, Edinburgh
Six Months Before
March
7.15 p.m.
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Big Wee Rab sat outside in the stolen Saab, watching the green door further down the street. There were four others from his crew sitting in the car with him, all shouting their suggestions of what they should do with the reporter from the News when they caught him.
"Stick him," suggested Tam for the hundredth time tonight. It wasn't the most original idea, but one which Tam seemed to be quite sure would be the solution to the problem. "Fucking bastard deserves it....I say we fucking knife the bastard. Tonight. Right here...We'll fair show the rest of the e
ggits frae the News that naebady, an' I mean naebady, should fuckin shaw their faces roond here again!"
Big Wee Rab was inclined to agree with him...not about the knifing part, but about making an example.
"It's nae a bad idea, Tam. Ne'er mind 'boot the knifing though. I mind there's a better way...C'mon boys, what's our 'Team' called? Think, you morons. Think!"
Big Wee Rab turned in his car seat, puffing deeply on the spliff and blowing the smoke into Tam's face. He looked at the others sitting in the back seat, watching how they automatically leaned towards him in expectation of his next words and a show of leadership. Most of the ‘Craigmillar Motorised E. Crew’ could not easily be described as the brightest of the bunch. A better description would probably be 'as thick as pig-shites', but fate and poverty had drawn them all together, and Rab was doing his best to turn them into something half decent and make their Team the most feared in South-West Edinburgh.
"You know what we're called Rab. You gave us the name! Why are you asking?"
"Cos. Think about it ya we twally. We're the ‘C.M.E Team’! ... And what's the 'M' stand for?" Rab prompted them again. Slow at the best of times, it didn't help now that they were all stoned.
"Motorised?" Tam suggested, " 'M' is fir 'Motorised', on account o' the fact that 'We're the Team wi' the driving machines!' "
"Smart fart," Rab praised Tam. "Exactly... so why would we knife the cretan when we can get him wi wan o' oor motors?"
"Ye mean, like drive o'er the bastard?" asked Jamsie enthusiastically.
"Bingo! We'll kill him wi wan o' oor motors. Squash the bastard, or something."
"Or push him and his car in tae the birn or the loch. Let the bastard droon in his car."
"Nae bad. Good thinking, Tam. I like that."
"Sae lang as we dinnie end up in there too. I canna swim," Wee Eck added. Undoubtedly the thickest pig-shite of them all.
Davie, the quietest member of the CME Team said nothing. He never did. Mainly on account of the fact that he was always the most stoned of all of them.
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Big Wee Rab turned back to concentrate on the green door. The reporter had been inside now for over an hour. Long enough for the old man to spill the beans and grass them all up. Rab knew it was only a matter of time before someone broke the code on the estate and gave their names to the police or the press. He also knew that if he was to make any headway in gaining some ground on the 'Boys frae Porty" gang, he would have to make a big example of someone, and soon. The Boys crew had recently been accredited with the smash-and-grab in the jewellers in Princes Street, which according to the Evening News must have netted them more than £200,000. The Big Time. An escalation in the war rankings. And Rab also knew that if he was to truly make his mark on the estate he would have to increase the level of threats and violence within Craigmillar. In spite of all the fights and the assaults, miraculously no one had yet been deliberately killed by either the Boys frae Porty...or the BFP as they liked to be called...or any of the new gangs from Meadowbank, Pilton or Seafield. The egit that had stolen a car and killed a boy while joyriding was not in his gang, even though people probably assumed he was. Strategically it was time to up the game, to make a serious impression and do some serious damage to one of the local inhabitants, and make sure that everyone knew it was done by the CME-Team.