Helms opened his eyes.

It was dark.

So he sat up.

The loud metallic thud and crunching pain in his forehead reminded him of his whereabouts.

He was in the boot of a car. Helms supposed that this being Los Angeles, it should be the trunk of an automobile. But he was determined to cling on to his Britishness, even in the midst of a kidnapping.

The pain in the front of his head gave way to the more persistent pain in the back of it. There was a blurred memory of being koshed, then stuffed in here like a child’s resented violin.

Helms could smell his knees.

One arm was pinned down by his whole body, and his legs were bent double into his chest. A slight ethereal scarlet glow was leaking in from the taillights, and the dull monotonous rumble of tires on tarmac provided a white noise that fought hard to silence his mind.

Helms blinked.

His free hand snapped to the left side of his face so hard it hurt.

His eye was missing.

It must have popped out when they hit him on the head.

Great.

The tip of his index finger probed under the dropped and loose lid, feeling the orbital implant beneath. No, it hadn’t slipped back over it. That meant the glass eye was either on a pavement somewhere outside, or in here with him.

Limited by the confines of the trunk, he patted his hand about him, hoping he might happen upon it. It wasn’t anywhere in front of him. Helms heaved himself over slightly, jamming his shoulder against the boot lid, then feeling it slip free, allowing him to search about behind him.

An hour ago he’d watched Dances With Bloody Wolves stealing the Best Picture statue, and now he was rooting around in the boot of a car for his ocular prosthesis. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

And he’d been kidnapped.

He planned on getting quite indignant about that some time soon.

But only after …

His fingers alighted on the little disc of glass, and he struggled to pick it up. It would’ve been even more difficult had it not dried. It took an act of contortion he’d never managed outside of the bedroom to get his hand back to his face.

He put the glass eye in his mouth.

It was covered in carpet fibres. He worked them clean with his tongue, then plopped the eye back into his fingers. With his thumb, he opened his loose eyelid, then slipped the eye back in place. Blinking moisturised it further while he spat out strands of nylon like a cat with a gob full of fur.

Now about this kidnapping.

His bellow of ‘motherfuckers’ was given an even deeper resonance by the acoustics of the trunk. It made his head vibrate so much that he had to check his eye hadn’t fall out again.

Helms thumped his knee up into the underside of the boot lid. A sharp pain chastised that decision, and added another layer of sweat to the sheen that was already clinging to his skin. He would have loosened his bow tie if he could.

It was hot, and the air felt thin. Breathing harder through panic was hard to avoid.

A tire iron might allow him to pop open the trunk from inside. Or maybe there was a release cable somewhere that went to a lever in the front of the car. Maybe he could pry open the locking mechanism, or clamber through the back seats somehow.

His good eye stared at the soft red glow by his head as his mind grasped at impractical solutions. With a crinkle of the brow, Helms reached out with his fingers and found the wiring plugged into the back of the brake light. It came loose with little effort, and the red light died.

Great.

Now all he needed was for the goons to pass a bored policeman.

Helms blinked.

Then he began slamming his foot into the housing of the opposite light, kicking at it until he felt it smash loose.

Another gymnastic effort let him free his trapped arm, and he stretched out his newly liberated hand and pushed it into the exposed hole at the back of the taillight. It was hot, but he ignored it, working his middle finger through and wiggling it about.

His moment of triumph gave way to the realisation that he was simply performing a bad shadow puppet show at the following traffic, his one shape being the bird.

The car hit a bump and he felt his finger crack. With a yelp he pulled it free and bent it over to make sure it wasn’t broken. It wasn’t, but that was little comfort. No doubt those squat-nosed henchmen would be crunching his digits before the sun was up.

Helms didn’t think he could command any sizeable ransom, and knew there were better targets on Academy Awards night. Why hadn’t they kidnapped Costner? Well, given a choice, he didn’t blame them.

Urgh.

Maybe it was some psychotic fan hell bent on making him direct endless remakes of his low-budget sci-fi debut. Helms swallowed back the acidic taste of bile. The memory of lines of them queuing at conventions made him a little queasy.

The heat wasn’t helping either. Helms was finding it harder and harder to breathe properly, and the more he noticed it, the more he struggled. Nausea and panic were rising in equal measure now.

How much was his life worth to anyone, let alone her? She was the only person they’d approach for a ransom, and Helms wasn’t even sure she’d pay up.

It would be the ultimate ignominy, as he felt the sand falling on him in the desert, knowing that she had finally got her hands on the house. It’s all she’d ever wanted, he knew it from the time he was seven and she became a part of his life.

Helms didn’t want to die.

He wasn’t nearly well-known enough to warrant a mention on the boulevard.

Even his idiot Father had one of those, albeit one directly underneath Lassie’s star. An arsehole monument to a monumental arsehole.

Helms lashed his foot out, kicking at the wheel arch. The pain jolted through his leg and he screamed another expletive, venting his fear along with enough pent up anger to make a mountain quiver.

The sound of the tires changed pitched, dropping an octave as the weight shifted towards the front of the car. It was slowing down. Helms fumbled about as best he could, searching for a heavy tire iron to use as a weapon. As soon as the trunk opened, he would come out swinging. They might think twice with a broken jaw.

There was no way he was going to die tonight. He had something important to finish, and not even a goon hell-bent on his demise could stop him.

Helms felt the car coming to a halt now. His hands flashed about in a panic, trying to find something, anything, to grab and use to fend them off. As the car stopped and he heard the driver’s door opening, he felt his fingers grab. He had no idea what it was, but it was better than nothing.

His own breathing echoed in the chamber of the trunk, his chest heaving with fear, but he could hear footsteps. Then a clunk and the boot opened.

Helms sat up and violently heaved his prize towards his kidnapper. It swished limply in the air. The high visibility vest drooped. Helms looked at it impotently, then looked at the face of his aggressor.

“Mum?”

She slapped him.

“Sorry yes,” he automatically snapped, grabbing his stung cheek out of habit. “Paula.”

“Get out,” she instructed without emotion.

“What the fuck?”

“Come on, out.”

“No, hang on – OW!”

Her nails dug into his lobe as she dragged him out of the trunk by the ear.

“Sit.”

By his feet, Helms saw a wheelchair. Being upright with a proper air supply was making him a little dizzy, and he was glad of a seat. He watched his stepmother digging around in the trunk, unable to do anything himself but blink gormlessly.

When she emerged she had a roll of duct tape, which she preceded to wrap around his chest and the back of the chair.

“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” she said so softly it scared him.

The tape was binding him tight, squeezing his lungs a little, and it made him put his arms up on the rests for some respite. When Paula saw this, she tore more tape from the roll, and quickly bound his wrists tight.

Then, without another word, she stepped behind Helms and began wheeling him up a ramp.

“This isn’t the desert.”

The stupidity of this exclamation was apparent even to Helms. Deserts don’t have automatic sliding doors for one. Nor do they have public address systems that page Doctor Corday.

It was the smell of hospitals that always affected him. It was Pavlovian, and he began to struggle against his restraints, as much from muscle memory as any actual fear.

Paula pushed her knee into the canvas seat back, pushing Helms forward, meaning his chest was being crushed slightly against the taping. It was enough to stop his spasms of indignation.

The signs passed over his head, and Helms realised where she was taking him. He took a deep breath, ready to make a loud protest.

“Don’t make me tape up your mouth,” she whispered, pushing her knee a little deeper into the crook of his spine. It pushed that breath right out of his lungs.

All Helms could do was stare forward as she wheeled him down an endless corridor, inextricably towards his doom. He swallowed back the taste of iron from the excess adrenaline in his system, wrinkling his nose in disgust, not at the taste, but at the impending fate.

Behind him, his stepmother’s heels clacked on the hard floor a little slower now. She turned Helms into a room and left him there.

In front of him a cyborg lay on a hospital bed. The man’s body was hidden by so many tubes and wires he wasn’t recognisable. A machine beeped, then a pump exhaled some air. Another beep, and the pump inhaled.

Helms watched it do this five times before the door opened behind him.

“Talk to him you little shit,” Paula hissed.

The door closed. The machine continued to breathe.

Helms shifted against his restraints, not looking at the bed any more. He clenched his jaw, feeling the muscle twitch, and imagined himself stoic and reserved.

“Hello Dad.”

Want more? Why not buy In The Can in paperback or for your Kindle?

Out Now

If you’re given this chance, you need to grab it.

No matter what the cost.

When the director Helms gets the opportunity to make the movie of his dreams, and step out from his Father’s long shadow, he snaps it up. But what he doesn’t know is that Debra Spencer, the studio boss, has commissioned it for her own dastardly needs.

Can he wrangle his over-inflated Hollywood star, a fresh-faced co-star, a legendary movie icon, and deal with a hedonistic movie-mogul, a money-grabbing tyrant, a pregnant mob boss, and an army of latex pig men?

And will he get it in the can before it all hits the fan?

Available now in paperback and for your Kindle.

Out Now

Here’s the opening of my new novel In The Can, coming soon to a book or book reading device near you.

Helms opened his eyes.

It was dark.

So he sat up.

The loud metallic thud and crunching pain in his forehead provided a timely reminder as to his whereabouts.

He was in the boot of a car. Helms supposed that this being Los Angeles, it should be the trunk of an automobile. But he was determined to cling on to his Britishness, even in the midst of a kidnapping.

The pain in the front of his head gave way to the more persistent pain in the back of it. There was a blurred memory of being koshed, then stuffed in here like a child’s resented violin.

Helms could smell his knees.

One arm was pinned down by his whole body, and his legs were bent double into his chest. A slight ethereal scarlet glow was leaking in from the taillights, and the dull monotonous rumble of tires on tarmac provided a white noise that fought hard to silence his mind.

Helms blinked.

His free hand snapped to the left side of his face so hard it hurt.

His eye was missing.

Coming Spring 2013

Keith was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

That’s what the voice in his head was telling him. And it was hard to ignore. Not least because it had taken on the nagging cadence of his long dead mother.

In an effort to disregard the self-doubt, Keith pulled his collar tight around his neck and looked out across the street. It always looked different at night, bathed as it was in the sick orange glow of overhead lighting.

He checked his watch.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Keith looked up at the lamppost, still stubbornly vomiting its phosphorescence. Maybe his watch was wrong.

Just then, the streetlights began to turn off one by one, causing a wave of darkness to flow up the street towards him. The one above him popped off, and Keith let his eyes slowly adjust.

Only an insomniac would know what time the council shut down the lighting in these days of austerity.

Or anyone who read the local paper.

Which was no-one.

Keith liked to pretend to himself that he was privy to privileged information, even though he knew he wasn’t. Another little game he played to add some drama to his mundane existence.

But tonight was a much bigger game, and as his foot dropped from the kerb to the road, Keith narrated his actions in his head. The first step towards a new, more dynamic life.

Dressed head to toe in black, including a stupid woollen hat, Keith actually felt more conspicuous moving through the shadows of the night. If anyone saw him like this, it would be hard to explain away. He looked like an urban ninja, except with a ratty old bomber jacket and lace-less skate shoes. The white flashes on those had been a problem easily remedied with a black marker pen.

When a car back-fired in the distance, it made him run the rest of the way across the road and up onto the pavement.

He ascended the three steps outside of number 34. The navy blue door looked sturdy in spite of the delicate net curtains dangling in its windows, and the lock seemed formidable.

But Keith had been practicing.

Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he retrieved a small leather wallet. It fell open in his palm and he picked his implements. Lock picks look a lot like dental tools, except the ones that look like throwing stars.

Keith knelt down, bringing the deadbolt lock to his eye level. He’d purchased a few of these at the ironmongers and had become quite adept at shearing them with just the torsion wrench and half-diamond pick. The nomenclature of it all was as fun as actually doing it.

There was an easier way to bump the lock with a hammer, but the crude nature of that left Keith cold. He wanted this to be more elegant. He was a gentleman thief now, not a common burglar.

The pins slowly, but easily separated, and within two minutes Keith had the door open. The grin on his face was so big it actually hurt his cheeks. He looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being watched, then stood up, slipping the leather wallet of picks back into his pocket.

It was almost unreal.

Skulking around at two in the morning in a quiet suburban street, casually breaking in to a house, now this, THIS, is what insomnia is for. With a triumphant sniff, Keith stepped into the hallway and let the door close behind him. The gentle click hardly echoed at all, but he looked up the stairs just in case.

He hadn’t expected to see or hear movement up there, but it was wise to double-check. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, but the alien layout of the house threatened to prove a hindrance. Must take it slowly, one step at a time.

The loud, antique ticking of a Grandfather clock imbued the whole caper with just the right ambience, as Keith almost tiptoed across the black and white stone tiles.

It was a nice house actually. Victorian, with many of the original features, and high, corniced ceilings. Or so it seemed, as much as he could make out in the shadows.

But as he wandered slowly past the ageing clock, the volume of its inner workings startled him slightly, and Keith somehow managed to slip and lose his footing.

With an automatic reflex, Keith threw his arm out for balance, and found his fingers curling around a baluster on the staircase. His leg kicked up from under him, and he was left dangling on one foot, his grip tested for strength as he inelegantly regained his balance.

Back upright, he strained his ears, but heard nothing above the incessant tocking of the clock. He examined it for a moment, half-tempted to open it up and give it a wind, but he decided against it. He was here for more nefarious purposes.

The door at the end of the hall was closed, so he pressed his ear against it, listening again for any tell-tale signs of life beyond. Aside from the mechanical hum of a refrigerator, he heard nothing of concern.

His latex-clad fingers curled around the doorknob. These gloves stank like stale condoms, but the woollen ones he preferred were too clunky for lock picking and risked leaving fibres.

He’d thought it through. There was plenty of time in his day of monotony to do so, his mind easily able to wander with the mechanical process of checking tax returns. He could do that on auto-pilot as he planned his new life in his head.

But now he was actually doing it.

With a gentle twist, he turned the knob and let the heavy door click open. It swung easily on its hinges, not once squeaking its discontent, revealing an open-plan kitchen lit by the cool green glow from the oven clock.

Rooms by night always fascinated Keith, but none more so than the kitchen. Any insomnia-ridden nocturnal walk about his own house always ended in the kitchen, listening to the gentle drone from the fridge, maybe munching on a bowl of cereal drenched in ice cold milk.

Keith smacked his lips like Pavlov’s best friend. He really fancied some cornflakes. Being a cat burglar was hungry work.

No, that would be daft.

He was on the clock. The longer he spent in this person’s house, the more likely he was to be discovered. And being caught with a gob full of breakfast would be really stupid. By his reckoning, Keith had been inside for over a minute now.

A Tupperware container sat on the surface, proudly taunting Keith with its contents.

Were those Honey Nut Loops?

No. He had a mission. And only Sugar Puffs could distract him now.

His feet were carrying him inextricably towards his goal. Or so he hoped. People’s personal preference for the layout of their kitchen always perplexed Keith, but their choices often gave away subtle clues.

Anyone who kept an open topped container of salt next to a kettle was clearly an idiot, and one who never drank hot beverages. Anyone who stored their plates as far from the dishwasher as possible was a masochist, while anyone who had a drawer full of plastic carrier bags was a lazy asshole.

Keith stopped.

Positioning himself in the natural place to begin making a pot of tea, he tried to ascertain the optimum positioning for everything. The cups would be in that cupboard, the one with the glass front. Check.

The tea bags would be in a pot along the wall by the sockets. Check.

A pivot and a step would take him to the sink one way and the fridge the other.

So that meant the only logical place for what he was after was …

He stepped to a drawer and pulled it open, noting the pleasing way it moved on its runners. Nice.

His nose wrinkled in annoyance. Who kept all their unopened bills tucked away with their tea towels? And what sort of person only has two tea towels?

But Keith wasn’t after paperwork. He was after something much more valuable. The drawer closed with a soft, slow-moving motion that prompted a nod of approval. This was a quality kitchen. And one that was subtle enough not to give any clues as to where it was purchased.

Irksome.

Keith now wanted to price one up.

With a soft sigh, he picked another drawer, and tried to yank it open. The mechanism was ready for that, and just yawned the drawer out. Keith was greeted by the sight of phone chargers and laptop leads, all coiled up together in an orgy of electronic lust. It sickened him to see cables treated with such indiscipline.

He wanted to slam it shut, but knew the build quality wouldn’t allow it, so he decided to test a theory instead. With the lightest of nudges, almost feather-like in its daintiness, he brushed the front of the drawer, and watched with delight as it slowly closed itself.

That really was first class.

Why spend all this money on a great kitchen and then abuse it with such poor positioning choices? He half suspected he’d find spice jars aligned across the lip of the extraction hood, drying out and clumping up with the steam and heat from the oven. But then he realised there was no extraction hood, nor a hob. Just the oven, looking to all intents and purposes like it had ever been used.

Made sense now.

This was the kitchen of an aesthete.

A poseur’s kitchen.

No cooking would ever be done in here. Just the warming up of takeaways and foil containers sent in by the caterers on special occasions like dinner parties.

It made him sick.

They deserved everything they were about to get.

Keith picked another drawer, and took no pleasure in opening it this time. He was too angry for that now. But as it slipped open slowly, he was greeted with his prize.

With a manic grin, he scooped them up in his gloved hand and held them aloft, watching them glint in the moonlight streaming in through the blinds. They were beautiful.

Well worth the effort.

Half a dozen forks.

Read the rest of the novel, available from Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

Who is Keith?

Rotten Apple has a lovely new review over on Goodreads, which I’m arrogantly going to re-post here in full:

Don’t read this in a public place, you won’t be able to stop yourself laughing out loud. It reminds me of Douglas Adams, the careful plotting mixed with those absurdities and jokes that sneak up and make you snort tea through your nose. Hilarious.

So, if that doesn’t make you want to buy it now, I don’t know what will. It’s available in paperback and Kindle versions from Amazon in the UK and the USA (and all around the world).

Buy it on Amazon UK.

Buy it on Amazon USA.

Just buy it.

Doesn’t that look delicious?