Accused: Ann Perkins Detective Agency #2
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Accused. An Ann Perkins Detective Agency Novel by Richard Underwood.
Accused is a gripping Manchester based crime thriller with a touch of Northern humour, and the second book in the Ann Perkins Detective Agency Series.
A client of the Ann Perkins Detective Agency is wanted for a murder he didn’t commit, and Ernie Wright is tasked with finding the real killer.
What should be routine case takes a turn for the worse when Ernie himself is accused of a different murder. The evidence is damming, and the police believe they have an open and shut case.
Two murders, two arrests, two innocent people.
SAMPLE
Ernie Wright was a man in a hurry. A potential client had asked to meet at a city centre café and he was already late. Although he had finally mastered walking in women’s shoes without wobbling, experience had taught him running was best left to those with a lifetime of practise. He was pretty comfortable disguised as a woman in every way apart from his shoes, which he’d generally found to be both higher and narrower. They were pinching his feet, and walking in them still didn’t come as natural as when he was in his own trainers. He was concentrating more on his feet than on his environment, and the parked van barely registered as he passed it. Ernie didn’t notice the two men until they grabbed hold of him.
“What the…?” He struggled as hard as he could, but they pinned his arms on each side and propelled him forwards.
He didn’t know who the men were or what they wanted, but the way they forced him towards the side door of the van door left him in no doubt he was in trouble. The van itself offered no clues. An old, white, battered Transit, with no names or logo on display. It could be anyone’s van. They could be anyone, but they certainly weren’t friends.
“Help me!” he shouted, and a man about fifty yards away started running towards him in a gallant response to the lady in distress.
They were holding his arms tightly, but his feet were free. He stamped on the foot of one of his captors to slow them down, but made no discernible impression on the Doc Martens the man was wearing. His heart sunk as he realised they would have him in the van before his potential rescuer could reach him.
“Get in the fucking van.” It wasn’t a request. Both men hurled him into the side of the van, smashing both shins against the bottom of the door as they bundled him inside. They forced a hood over his head and he heard the door slide behind him as the van drove away.
“Out the fucking way.” The driver swerved to avoid the man running towards him.
“What the hell’s going on?” Ernie could no longer see, but he could hear the heavy breathing of the two men who had got into the back of the van with him. Their silence only intensified his fear.
“What do you want?” Apart from the sound of heavy breathing, the only other sound he could hear was the roar of surrounding traffic.
“Who are you?”
“Where are you taking me?”
The near-silence was as oppressive as the darkness, and Ernie could hear the tremor in his voice as he called out.
He could see nothing straight in front of him through the hood. There was some light coming from the bottom where it flapped loose around his neck, but whenever he looked towards the light it disappeared as the material of the hood folded around his chin. He moved his head to one side, and he could just make out the unpainted ridges on the floor of the van on which he was sitting, but there were no other clues.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” he asked again, but again there was only an ominous silence.
He wondered if the men had abducted the wrong person by mistake, but disguised as Ann Perkins, the private detective, he thought it unlikely they’d mistaken him for someone else. Ann had been responsible for the arrest of several high profile members of Manchester’s criminal fraternity in the past, and Ernie feared his abduction was the start of the gang’s revenge.
They had been waiting for him. The phone call from the potential client asking to meet in the city centre was obviously a set-up, but he didn’t know why they had grabbed him, where they were taking him, or what they intended doing with him once they got there.
Accused. An Ann Perkins Detective Agency Novel by Richard Underwood.
