TONY GLOVER

Chapter One

You wake at six, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. 

You dress without thinking, drive on autopilot. For the first hour you keep busy. On the outside, everything looks the same. Your face is a mask. Inside your head, it’s quite different. Your mind is miles away, dwelling on this other matter. 

You’re just not the kind of person who can allow something like that to happen. You have too much pride. If a problem can be fixed, then you do that. You take control. You feel the fear then do it anyway.  Feel the fear and do it. 

Just do it.

So you pull on your gloves, the Madovas.  You get in the car and drive out to her house in suburban dreamland, the bitch’s kennel. You park on the side of the road, in front of her mansion. Switch off the engine. 

The sun beats down on the windscreen. You close your eyes. For a moment there is a chance you will change your mind. Then you think about the two of them together. 

You breathe. In and out, filling your lungs. Thinking about your happy place, seeing the pictures, little clips of the times when you loved and felt loved. 

When you open your eyes the first thing you see is a squirrel. The creature watches from the trunk of a Scot’s Pine. It skitters down the tree and bobbles across the road. It stops, tilts its head, turning one eye, a button of black glass. You think about her. How it has always been the same. When you climb out of the car, everything changes. As you walk across the drive, you glance down, watch your feet crunch gravel. Every stone, every pebble shifts beneath your feet. Everything is so far away, shimmering in the heat of the sun.

This isn’t you. 

You reach out your hand and ring the bell.

If you enjoyed this excerpt you can buy 'The Luxury of Murder'' in these stores:

Amazon