One Under
Authors: Graham Hurley
| One Under |
| Faraday & Winter [7] |
| Hurley, Graham |
| Hachette UK (2004) |
A man, chained inside a tunnel and then dismembered and scattered along
the tracks by the early morning train from Portsmouth to London. The
beginning of DI Joe Faraday's most gruesome case yet. A bizarre suicide?
The cruelest of murders? Checking the list of missing persons as the
police attempt to identify the body DC Winter comes across a missing
man, someone who stepped out of their ordered life with no hint of
leaving. He's not the man in the tunnel, he's simply disappeared. The
only person he can find who knew him works in the city morgue. Once
again Graham Hurley has taken his forensic skill to the lives of people,
victims, criminals and police, struggling to survive life in a modern
British city. With his trademark realism and his focus on two very
different policeman; one awkward and by the book, the other bolshy and
walking the thinnest of lines, Hurley's Faraday and Winter novels are
earning ever more spectacular reviews, and building readership. One
Under: two deaths, two tangles of emotions and thwarted love, one
brilliant microcosm of Britain today.
Table of Contents
Critical acclaim for Graham Hurley
ONE UNDER
‘There is no one writing better police procedurals today than Graham Hurley. He gives an almost cinematic quality to the narrative, creating a convincing sense of watching a team of real detectives at work’
Daily Telegraph
‘Hurley is one of the great talents of British police procedurals. Every book he delivers is better than the last and
One Under
is no exception. I can’t recommend it highly enough’
One Under
is no exception. I can’t recommend it highly enough’
Independent on Sunday
‘
One Under
is a majestic book. It’s immaculately plotted, has a strong character to anchor it, and shows police work in all its graft and frustrations’
One Under
is a majestic book. It’s immaculately plotted, has a strong character to anchor it, and shows police work in all its graft and frustrations’
‘A wonderfully plotted yarn’
Sunday Tribune
BLOOD AND HONEY
‘Hurley’s decent, persistent cop is cementing his reputation as one of Britain’s most credible official sleuths, crisscrossing the mean streets of a city that is a brilliantly depicted microcosm of contemporary Britain … The unfolding panorama of Blair’s England is both edifying and shameful, and a sterling demonstration of the way crime writing can target society’s woes’
Guardian
‘There is no doubt that his series of police-procedural novels is one of the best since the genre was invented more than half a century ago’
Literary Review
DEADLIGHT
‘I officially declare myself a fan of Graham Hurley. His attention to detail (without slowing the pace of the novel) and realistic display of police work mark him as a most accomplished purveyor of the British police procedural’
Deadly Pleasures
‘Graham Hurley’s
Deadlight
is excellent modern British crime writing. Hurley demonstrates great attention to detail in regard to police procedure, as well as highlighting the conflicts of ideology that exist within the police force’
Deadlight
is excellent modern British crime writing. Hurley demonstrates great attention to detail in regard to police procedure, as well as highlighting the conflicts of ideology that exist within the police force’
Independent on Sunday
Graham Hurley is the author of the critically acclaimed D/I Faraday and Paul Winter series.
Blood and Honey
and
One Under
have been shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Award for Best Crime Novel. A one-time award-winning TV documentary maker and a committed competitive open-water rower, Graham writes full time. He lives with his wife, Lin in Exmouth.
Blood and Honey
and
One Under
have been shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Award for Best Crime Novel. A one-time award-winning TV documentary maker and a committed competitive open-water rower, Graham writes full time. He lives with his wife, Lin in Exmouth.
One Under
GRAHAM HURLEY
Orion
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Orion Books
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books
Copyright © Graham Hurley 2007
The moral right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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 permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 1 4091 2351 4
This ebook produced by Jouve, France
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
For Kate and Tom
with love
with love
I like the consistency of the dark. It keeps me safe
- Don McCullin
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the following for their time and advice: John Ashworth, Steve Beards, Derek Bish, Dorothy Bone, Martin Chudley, Roly Dumont, Andy Edwards, Norman Feeriat, Woody Fisher, Pat Forsyth, Diana Franklin, Jason Goodwin, Andy Harrington, David Horsley, Jack Hurley, Lisa John, Richard John, Bernard Knight, Barbara Large, Neil Maxwell, John Molyneux, Kevin Monks, Susan Newcombe, Ray Odell, Liz Oliver, Tim Pepper, Dave Sackman, Sally Spedding and Tara Walker. My editor, Simon Spanton, has piloted the series through occasionally rough waters while my wife, Lin, has remained the keeper of the charts. Thanks is too small a word.
Prelude
Monday, 11 July 2005, 04.30
Every driver’s nightmare.
Assigned to the first train out of Portsmouth, he’d checked in at the Fratton depot before dawn, double-locking his Suzuki 900, stowing his helmet in the crew room, and then making his way upstairs to glance through the emergency speed restrictions and confirm his station stops. This time in the morning, the five-car set would be virtually empty. A handful of staff hitching a ride to stations up the line, maybe a dozen or so City-bound commuters, plus occasionally a drunk or two, slumped in the corner of the carriage, unconscious after a night in the Southsea clubs.
He was two minutes late off Portsmouth Harbour, waiting for a lone punter from the Isle of Wight Fast Cat, but made up the time before the miles of trackside terraces began to thin and the train clattered over Portsbridge Creek, leaving the city silhouetted against the fierce spill of light to the east.
The station at Havant looked deserted. Coasting to a halt, he waited barely fifteen seconds before the guard closed the doors again. Picking up speed, heading north now, he wondered whether the promised thunder-storms would really happen, and whether his partner would remember to close the greenhouse door in case the wind got up.
Beyond the long curve of Rowland’s Castle station, the gradient began to steepen. Ahead lay the dark swell of the South Downs. He added more power, watching the speedo needle creep round towards seventy. These new Desiros knocked spots off the old stock. German kit, he thought. Never fails.
Minutes later, deep in a cutting, came the sudden gape of the Buriton Tunnel. He slowed to 40 mph and sounded the horn, raising a flurry of wood pigeons from the surrounding trees. Then the world suddenly went black, the clatter of the train pulled tight around him, and he peered into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Moments later, still enfolded by the tunnel, he had a sudden glimpse of something ahead on the line. In the dim throw of light from the front of the train, the oncoming shape resolved itself into a body spreadeagled on the nearside rail, then - for a split second - he was looking at a pair of legs, scissored open, and the unmistakable whiteness of naked flesh.
Instinctively, a single reflex movement, he took the speed off and pushed the brake handle fully forward, feeling his body tensing for the impact, the way he might on the bike, some dickhead stepping out onto the road. Then came a jolt, nothing major, and he knew with a terrible certainty that his eyes hadn’t betrayed him, that what he’d seen, what he’d felt, was even now being shredded in the roaring darkness beneath the train.
The cab began to shudder under the bite of the brakes. The tunnel exit in sight, he pulled the train to a halt and reached for the cab-secure radio that would take him to the signalman back at Havant. When the signalman answered, he gave him the train code and location, asked for power isolation, declared an emergency.
‘What’s up then?’ the man wanted to know.
The driver blinked, still staring ahead, aware of the guard repeating his question on the internal comms.
‘One under,’ he managed, reaching for the door.
One
Monday, 11 July 2005, 07.53
This time, Faraday knew there’d be no escape.
He’d taken to the water an hour or so earlier, finning slowly out of the bay, scanning the reefs below, enjoying the lazy rise and fall of the incoming swell. An evening with a reference book he’d picked up in Bangkok let him put a name to the shapes that swam into view.
Beneath him, he could see yellow-ringed parrotfish, nosing for food amongst the coral; half a dozen milky white batfish, stately, taking their time, slowly unfurling like banners; even, for a glorious minute or two, the sight of a solitary clownfish drifting over the underwater meadows of softly waving fronds. The head of the clownfish was daubed with a startling shade of scarlet but it was the huge eyes, doleful, disconsolate, that had Faraday blasting water from his snorkel tube. The little fish reminded him of an Inspector he’d once served under in his uniformed days. The same sense of tribulation. The same air of unfathomable regret. Laughing underwater, Faraday discovered, wasn’t a great idea.
Further out the colours changed, and with the blues and greens shading ever deeper, Faraday became aware of the schools of fish beginning to thin. He’d never been out this far, not by a long way, and a lift of his head told him that he must have covered nearly a mile since he’d slipped into the water. He could see the tiny wooden bungalow clinging to the rocks above the tideline. A line of washing on the veranda told him that Eadie must have finally surfaced. Shame.
Adjusting the mask and clearing the snorkel again, Faraday ducked his head. It was hard to judge distance underwater but twenty metres down, maybe more, he could just make out a tumble of boulders on the seabed. This, he imagined, would be the point where the coral shallows suddenly plunged away into something infinitely deeper. In the beachside bar, only yesterday, he’d heard a couple of French lads describing a dive they’d just made. Faraday was no linguist but his French was adequate enough to understand
profondeur
and
requin
. The latter word came with a repertoire of gestures and had raised an appreciative shiver in one of the listening women.
Requin
meant shark.
profondeur
and
requin
. The latter word came with a repertoire of gestures and had raised an appreciative shiver in one of the listening women.
Requin
meant shark.
Floating on the surface, barely moving, Faraday was overwhelmed by a sense of sudden chill. A mile was a long way out. There were no lifeguards, no rescue boats. Trying to slow his pulse rate, he scanned the depths below him. A thin drizzle of tiny particles was drifting down through the dapple of surface sunlight, down towards the inky blue nothingness. Then, way off to the right, he caught a flicker of movement, the briefest glimpse of something much, much bigger than the carnival of cartoon fish he’d left in the shallows.
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