Ghost in the Machine: An edge-of-your-seat serial killer thriller (DC Scott Cullen Crime Series Book 1)

by Ed James

  Cullen sat in the A&E ward, a few hours later. He'd just had another x-ray. Assuming the results were clear he could go home.

  McNeill had accompanied him to the hospital. She came over with two cups of coffee from the machine and handed him one. "I got a call from Bain."

  "And?"

  McNeill bit her lip. "Keith Miller didn't make it."

  Cullen looked at the floor and felt a tear in his eye. "Stupid bastard."

  McNeill rubbed his shoulder. "He wasn't the brightest."

  Cullen looked up at her. "I meant me."

  "It's not your fault," said McNeill.

  "Feels like it is. I'm responsible for his death. I took him there. I should have stayed with Wilson in the living room."

  "Scott, you can't think like that." She blew on her coffee. "You caught the bad guy and rescued a damsel in distress. You saved an innocent man from prison. Who knows how many others Wilson might have killed before he got caught?"

  "I got a colleague killed in the line of duty," said Cullen.

  McNeill shook her head at him. "I know it's hard but, really, it's not your fault."

  "I ordered him to come with me." Cullen rubbed at his forehead. "I was running around like Billy Big Balls, off on my mental hunt for the real killer."

  "And you got him."

  "I upped the body count by one. Almost by two."

  "Keith was just doing his duty, though," said McNeill. "He died being a proper copper for once, you know that. Most of Keith Miller's career, he just pissed about and got away with it. That was the first real piece of police work he'd done."

  "I guess." It was all he could think of to say. He tasted the coffee. "I drank this brand when I worked in life insurance, all those years ago. They'd installed a machine upstairs and a few of us would go and get a coffee. I used to get totally wired, but nowadays I drink so much coffee it barely touched the sides."

  She smiled and rubbed at his shoulder.

  He looked at her, a tear slicking down his cheek. "Keith worked in financial services, too. If he'd stuck at it, he'd still be alive."

  "You can't think like that."

  "Can't I?"

  "What's the story with this Alison girl?" said McNeill.

  Cullen evaded her look. "There is no story."

  "Come on, there must be. She put on her Schoolbook account she's going out with you."

  "That was Wilson's doing," said Cullen.

  "She must have got the idea from somewhere."

  He looked her in the eye. "I pulled her on Friday night, okay? A one night stand."

  "I see."

  "She meant less than nothing to me," said Cullen.

  They sat looking at each other for a while, Cullen trying to think of things to say that didn't revolve around Alison Carnegie or Keith Miller.

  In the end, it was McNeill who broke the silence. "Well, this is some drink."

  Cullen frowned. "Eh?"

  "We were supposed to go for a drink after work tonight," said McNeill.

  "Well, once I've got my x-ray back, we could..."

  SCOTT CULLEN WILL RETURN IN

  "DEVIL IN THE DETAIL"

  OUT NOW

  Amazon link - http://mybook.to/edjamesdevil

  Other territories and formats are available.

  DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

  - Excerpt -

  Four slices of toast smoothly emerged from the polished steel Dualit toaster and Elaine Gibson tossed them into the clean, white ceramic toast rack. She put another four slices on then put the rack on the dining table. She sat down with her mug of coffee and set about spreading crunchy peanut butter on the wholemeal toast.

  She yelled upstairs. "Thomas! Mandy! Can you hurry up?"

  She took a bite of toast and sat looking out of the kitchen window, across the lawn at the Hopetoun Monuments perched on one of the hills overlooking Garleton, ominous rainclouds looming in the west.

  Her husband, Charles, came into the room, tying his necktie. "Morning," he said.

  "There's coffee in the pot," she said.

  "Ah, toast today. Good. I'm starving."

  He poured a cup of coffee and started whistling. He sat down and buttered the toast, reaching for the jar of Marmite. The second batch of toast slowly emerged from the guts of the machine.

  "Kids not up yet?" he said.

  Elaine shook her head. "It's your turn today."

  "I'll have my breakfast then I'll get on to them."

  "Fine."

  She finished her toast then added the new slices to the rack. She refilled her mug with coffee.

  Thomas wandered in, mumbling something that might have been "Morning." He immediately set about the toast, gulping through two thickly buttered slices. Elaine almost castigated him again for not chewing but decided it would just fall on deaf ears.

  "Have you seen your sister?" she said.

  "No," said Thomas, through a mouthful of slice three.

  "Charles..."

  Gibson raised his hands as he stood up. "Fine, I'll get her." He left the room, heading upstairs.

  "Won't be back till seven tonight," said Thomas. "Got ATC."

  "Okay." Air Training Corps was Charles's idea to get some discipline into the boy. They, like many of their friends, had decided to send their children to the local comprehensive, the best in the area and at least equivalent to the private schools in Edinburgh, but they were determined he would get the same standard of extra-curricular activity.

  "Any more toast?" said Thomas.

  She reached over and put another two slices into the machine.

  Gibson burst into the room. She turned to face him.

  "She's gone," said Gibson, locking eyes with her.

  "You're sure?" she said.

  Thomas looked up at them.

  "Yes," said Gibson. "I checked all the rooms upstairs. Nothing. And the front door's locked." He went over to the back door and tried it.

  "I'll look in the conservatory," she said.

  She rushed into the hall then into the conservatory, pulling her dressing gown tighter as the bitterly cold air hit her arms. She tried the French doors. Locked.

  She checked the large cupboards in the hall, stuffed with shoes and coats but not hiding her daughter. She went back into the kitchen.

  "It's locked," she said.

  "Same with the back door," said Gibson. "The utility room is empty, too."

  She let out a deep sigh. "Not again," she said, her voice a murmur.

  Gibson held her shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm sure she'll be fine."

  "Do you think she's gone to Susan's again?" she said.

  Gibson nodded. "I'll check."

  ***

  Morag Tattersall opened the gate beside the gatehouse at Balgone Ponds and walked through as though she owned the place. She led her greyhounds, Meg and Mindy, along what she still considered a public footpath.

  The owners of the place - the new owners - had unilaterally taken the decision to block off the path and turn it into their garden. This irritated Morag and her neighbours in the cottages around the corner.

  Every day she used the path to walk a series of dogs around the ponds, until they moved in. The only other way was through the hedge behind the gatehouse but she didn't want to cut her jacket or the dogs' paws on the hawthorn.

  She thought about leaving the gate open but decided against such pettiness. Besides, it looked like they were away. She closed it and marched on.

  She breathed in the fresh early morning air and powered on down the path. The dogs were pulling on their leads - she tugged them to the side and they obeyed. The sun was just beginning to rise from its winter slumber, appearing over the slight hills in the middle distance. The trees were bare and the path damp underfoot as it led down to the ponds.

  She came to the downward slope and let the dogs off, putting their leather leads in her jacket pocket. They set off slowly - tails raised, heads combing the ground for trails, their muscular thighs bouncing along like they were sha
dowboxing before a fight, occasionally stopping and sniffing at a patch of ground.

  As she overtook them, her thoughts turned to her itinerary - a yoga class in North Berwick in an hour and a half, then meeting Liz for lunch afterwards. She was looking forward to both.

  Morag continued down the path descending to the level of the ponds. She walked on for a minute or so, lost in thoughts of getting around to Andrew's laundry and taking Meg to the vet for her boosters.

  She couldn't see the dogs. "Meg! Mindy!"

  She looked back the way she'd come. There was no sign of them. They'd no doubt seen a rabbit and run off after it. They'd only caught one once - she'd had to pull Mindy away from the squealing animal - but they'd given chase countless times. She turned back and retraced her steps.

  She climbed the rise back to where she let them off. To the left, away from the pond, another path ran along the higher ground. She could see movement through the trees, grey like Mindy.

  "Mindy!"

  There was a rustling. Mindy raced through, coming right up to Morag. She grabbed her collar and put her back on the lead.

  "Meg!"

  Morag marched through the trees in the direction Mindy had come. She spotted Meg sniffing at a spot between two trees a few metres apart, in front of a row of rhododendrons.

  "Meg, stop that."

  Meg turned around, looked at Morag then went back to her sniffing.

  Morag paced over to her and grabbed her collar. "Bad girl."

  Mindy started pulling on her lead while Morag fiddled with Meg's collar.

  Mindy lurched forward, almost pulling Morag's arm out of the socket, digging with her front paws at a patch of loose earth.

  "Stop!"

  The dog ignored her.

  Morag saw some pink cloth. She gasped, letting go of the leads. Kneeling down, she joined in digging.

  She scraped around the cloth, revealing an arm.

  Morag rocked back on her heels, reaching into her pocket and fumbling with her mobile phone.

  AVAILABLE NOW -

  "CULLEN YEAR ONE"

  Collects season one of DC Cullen -

  1GHOST IN THE MACHINE

  2DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

  3FIRE IN THE BLOOD

  4DYED IN THE WOOL

  Afterword

  Thanks for reading this. I hope you enjoyed it.

  Many of the settings in the book are entirely fictional. There is no Alba Bank - the head office is still a derelict sixties monstrosity and the mortgage centre now has a Premier Inn on the site. Leith Walk Station doesn't exist and is still wasteland. Most of the pubs and clubs don't exist either. Most of the websites don't exist either, especially Schoolbook.

  The behaviours of the police are entirely fictional.

  I published this in April 2012 and it exploded, with over 210,000 downloads. Since going full-time as an author, I decided to redraft it.

  Why?

  In the first scene, there's a reference to a band called New Order. They're fascinating for so many reasons, but one of the key ones is their repeated remastering and reworking of their back catalogue.

  Take Temptation for example - one of the two songs in the opening scene to this novel. They recorded it in 1982, when they were just finding their sound after the resurrection of the band in the wake of Ian Curtis' tragic suicide. They reworked it in 1984 (I think), starting again from scratch and that's the version that features on the Trainspotting soundtrack that Caroline hears before her death.

  The second version is astonishing - the flaws of the previous version had been eradicated and the songwriting and technological prowess they'd developed over a few albums allowed the pop genius to come out.

  They did it again - most notably with the 1994 reworkings of True Faith, Bizarre Love Triangle and 1963, the latter of which had the most interesting genesis, by moving from a b-side to a top twenty single.

  Again, why did I do it?

  The important thing is that the new world of eBooks allows and enables this reworking - this evening I'll upload this file to Amazon and this remastered version will be the canonical GHOST IN THE MACHINE.

  My style has crystalised over the last two years - some of the text in this goes back to 2007 and 2009 when I started writing it. I hired a professional editor for Cullen 4, DYED IN THE WOOL, and I developed my style a lot, even more so since completing BOTTLENECK, Cullen 5.

  Fixing GHOST has been itching at the back of my skull. It's a major redraft, losing 15,000 extraneous words in the process and really tightening up the flow. There's a new start to the book but, really, it's nothing drastic.

  Reading it back, I'm pretty proud of the novel - my memories of the book had been confused by the twelve or so drafts I'd done over five years and now I've got my head straight with it.

  One final thing, if you liked this, then please leave a review on the site you bought it from - it really helps aspiring indie authors like me.

  -- Ed James

  East Lothian, March 2014

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  OTHER BOOKS BY ED JAMES

  THE SCOTT CULLEN SERIES

  1GHOST IN THE MACHINE

  2DEVIL IN THE DETAIL

  3FIRE IN THE BLOOD

  4DYED IN THE WOOL

  5BOTTLENECK

  6WINDCHILL

  Writing as Edwin James -

  SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, a standalone supernatural thriller