A small piece of Native Shore

So, this is where book serialisation meets new media.

My publisher thought it an excellent idea to let my readers have a peek inside Native Shore and I’m in agreement with him.

We intend to use this place to show some excerpts from the earlier chapters of my latest novel.

Here is the first in an occasional series.

Enjoy.

 

For the first time in nearly four years, Ian Turnbull felt alive as the doors of the Tube train slid open at Baker Street. As he ascended to street level, he knew he wanted to have that vital purpose back again. The Scotsman found the address without difficulty and buzzed the intercom. Then he was in the renovated building. The Otis elevator took him to the top of the building silently and swiftly. The door opened and tall, lean Frank Pritchard smiled and beckoned him inside. He was all business, and that felt good for Ian Turnbull.

“You clean?” asked Pritchard.

“Totally. Phone in the apartment. Nothing on me.”

“Excellent.”

“Tradecraft?”

“Well, I bounced all over the Circle and City lines. If I was tailed here, then they’re fucking good”, said Turnbull firmly.

“Nice one,” smiled Pritchard.

“It doesn’t leave you,” said Turnbull, in a way that suggested he was looking for affirmation.

Pritchard didn’t react.

“Cuppa? Something stronger?”

“Nah, I’m OK, thanks.”

“Nice place,” said Turnbull, looking around the well-appointed Marylebone apartment. “When did you move in here?”

“Nothing is as it seems, Ian. Nothing is as it seems.”

“Always.”

“Airbnb. I have it for a week. Booked through a third party. I had it swept by a contractor yesterday. We’re OK here, Ian.” 

Frank Pritchard walked out of the kitchen carrying a tray with a teapot, milk jug and two cups. He put it down on the small round table where Ian Turnbull was sitting.

“Brought an extra mug in case you change your mind, mate.”

“Ah, OK then.”

“I’ll be mother then,” smiled Frank as he picked up the pewter teapot and started to swirl it round before pouring into the matching mugs.

Although Frank Pritchard had taken all professional precautions to ensure that this meeting with his one-time colleague was not under any form of surveillance, if it had been, the snooper could only have come to one reasonable conclusion. This was that nature had not dealt Turnbull and Pritchard an equal hand. Indeed, Frank Pritchard at six-foot three and fifty-five years of age, looked many years younger than the forty-nine year-old Turnbull. The Scotsman looked even shorter than his five foot seven. He had a stooped, crushed posture when he walked. Bald and overweight, he was the west of Scotland stereotype of the broken middle-aged man with a heart attack just waiting to happen.

Pritchard approached life with a calm confidence that had been instilled in him at Harrow and Balliol. In many ways, the senior MI5 man was culturally much more an MI6 type of chap. Turnbull, on the other hand, was off the drawing board for Five. One of the Empire’s dependable NCOs. Quintessentially Scottish. As a result, he had taken the “Services No Longer Required” missive after the Leeds disaster particularly hard. Pritchard handed him over the mug, picked up his own and took a sip. He nodded silently to himself that the tea was OK. 

He put the mug down, looked over at the bald Scotsman and said, “It’s really good to see you, Ian. After all that fucking business in Leeds. Before we start, I just want you to know that you’ve still got a lot of goodwill in the service…”

“Goodwill, but not a job,” said Turnbull firmly.

“Well, that could be about to change,” said the Englishman.

At this point, Turnbull was focused like a laser, in a way that he couldn’t remember having been since he’d left Thames House for the last time nearly four years ago. He didn’t ask Pritchard to expand, he just sat there silently waiting for the MI5 Assistant Director to further explain himself.

 

Well, I hope you enjoyed that.