For once the air smelled of nothing more than the oils and spores released by wet earth and turned soil, and it reminded Watson of travelling briskly down the Surrey lanes in the aftermath of a rainstorm on a spring day, the hedgerows dotted with green shoots, ploughed fields steaming in fresh su...
Sayer was there, stuck and bleeding out in no man’s land, as if he were a genuine casualty of war. Fantasy. But as he came back to reality he recalled clearly the sight of him crumpled on the ground at a godforsaken roadside. Murdered in cold blood. All too factual. ...
He had headlined it: ‘Some Medical Observations on the Conditions Inside the Landships’ and ‘Most Confidential’. He wasn’t sure he would get a decent hearing, but it had to be said. Not because of his own behaviour and collapse, but because of the atrocious atmosphere within the ‘bus’ or ‘car’, a...
They were in a Hotchkiss tourer, another of Maurice’s recent acquisitions, with the hood down, as they headed north to the picnic site at the Forest of St Germain. Williams and Maurice were in the front, Eve and Robert in the rear. Williams had suffered a restless night, because inside he wasn’t ...
The sky was still grey and troubled, but there were hints of blue in the south and the fiercesome wind had abated. It was ten in the morning when they were ready and the group looked, thought Scott, like a Caravanserai from another age. Again, the pennants that Markham had made for each officer, ...
Separation They sped through streets. The people nearby shot them curious looks; but their intrigued expressions soon turned to ones of fear when the charred-man lumbered into view. And for all his monstrous lurching and twitching, he ran at a fast and steady pace. “Doesn’t it tire?” Lanrik g...
The Ancient Past Gilhain did not expect a let up in the battle. Nor was there one. The horde came again, hurling itself against the Cardurleth, spending its life at the command of the enemy leadership. And the enemy leadership spent life cheaply. But the horde seemed near endless; no matter h...
'And we're fuckin' on to it!' The Lion was the Squad's designated pub, an act of apartheid that was respected by lesser coppers, who tended to use the Gate or the King Edward. It was also acknowledged by Squad chief Ernest Millen, who might come in to celebrate a good collar with a half, but gene...
Against the backdrop of gathering storm clouds in the darkening sky, the jagged brown limbs of the leafless trees looked like the decomposing skeletal fingers of giants, reaching out from beyond their graves to drag unwary souls from the land of the living into the land of the dead. Max stood dir...