Breaking Waves: Phil Tyler Thriller Series Book 1 (Phil Tyler Thrillers) Read online

  Breaking Waves

  Phil Tyler Thrillers Book 1

  Barry Litherland

  Bleaknorth Publishing,,,United Kingdom

  Copyright © 2022 by Barry Litherland

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  25. Chapter 25

  26. Chapter 26

  27. Chapter 27

  28. Chapter 28

  29. Chapter 29

  30. Chapter 30

  31. Chapter 31

  32. Chapter 32

  33. Chapter 33

  34. Chapter 34

  35. Chapter 35

  36. Chapter 36

  37. Chapter 37

  38. Chapter 38

  39. Chapter 39

  40. Chapter 40

  41. Chapter 41

  42. Chapter 42

  Please leave a review

  Sign up to the mailing list

  About the Author

  Also By Barry Litherland

  Chapter 1

  ‘See him? See that guy over there? The bastard’s staring at me – the guy drinking red wine at the table by the window. See him?’

  ‘Sit down, Wayne. No one’s staring at you. Look at the girl he’s with. Why would he look at you?’

  ‘See that! He looks this way, then starts smirking and laughing with his mates; now they’re all laughing.’

  ‘Sit down and finish your drink. No one’s looking at you.’

  Wayne sits down for a minute, but his eyes slip back to the group by the window. The landlord glances at me. I know what he’s telling me. Get him under control or get him out of here. Through the mirrors behind the optics and the glass shelves, I watch the scene as if I’m outside looking in – which is pretty much where I want to be right now.

  For a moment, Wayne is calm, and I think maybe we’re okay, but then up he chirps again.

  ‘He’s wearing a waistcoat.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Wayne is loud now, and people are staring at us. A couple move towards the end of the bar, near the door, just in case. Two young guys watch and grin. Sitting alone, a familiar-looking, heavy guy with tattoos and stubble glances up from his Daily Mail. He has the Neanderthal look of a man whose lips move as he reads; he’s not a man you’d want to sit too close to.

  The barman leans over and speaks: ‘Get him out of here,’ he mutters.

  Easier said than done; Wayne is a limpet.

  ‘Come on, Wayne, let’s get out of here, get a game of snooker maybe, or a Chinese?’

  ‘He’s wearing a waistcoat, and he thinks he can laugh at me.’

  ‘It’s a waistcoat, not a City top, and he’s not laughing.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  Now he stands up, swaying a little, holding the edge of the bar.

  ‘You,’ he yells, ‘fucker in the waistcoat, are you a City supporter?’

  He lurches aggressively forward towards the table. The pretty girl looks anxious, the guy in the waistcoat bewildered and, unsurprisingly, embarrassed. The rest of the party inch back, the men gathering space to move if they need to. The women are ready to shout abuse or leave. Everyone is staring.

  ‘Are you looking at me?’

  The guy looks at his friends, maybe for reassurance.

  ‘I am now,’ he says, with a nervous, half laugh.

  I wince. That was a mistake. Humour goes right over Wayne when he’s in this mood, stratospheric. His eyes are heavy and bleary and he’s swaying back and forth, but he’s fixed the waistcoat with a stare, and he won’t let go.

  ‘Why the hell,’ he grunts, ‘are you wearing a waistcoat?’ He snorts a strangled laugh and looks around the bar for support. There is none. Mostly people turn away, find something they urgently need to talk about, and avoid eye contact.

  The door closes behind the nervous couple. Others are reaching for their coats.

  ‘Come on, Wayne.’ I drag at his arm, but it’s like trying to weigh an anchor. He pulls away and stumbles against the table, and a drink slops onto the pretty girl. She screams and the guy clambers to his feet, defensive mode, protecting what’s his, alpha male, which is pretty much what Wayne wants.

  Nothing ever goes well from here.

  Wayne assumes an aggressive stance.

  ‘Guy in the waistcoat thinks he’s tough,’ he slurs and snorts.

  Trouble is that anyone is a tough guy compared to Wayne in this condition. Anyone who can stand upright and focus for long enough to throw a punch is a tough guy. This one is tall and athletic, and, to make matters worse, the landlord has thrown a towel on the bar and is coming over. He looks seriously pissed. Anyone who isn’t Wayne can see how this will end.

  The trouble with Wayne is he doesn’t know when to stay down. No matter how many times he gets hit, he always stands up again. He’s had a lot of practice, even back in primary school when I first met him. Nobody could ever really beat him because he always came back until his opponents got bored and walked away.

  ‘They’re too scared to fight me,’ he would crow, eyes bruised, lips cut and swollen. ‘They can’t beat me,’ which was true, after a fashion.

  Twenty minutes later, Wayne and I are limping along the town street towards Wayne’s flat. He’s bleeding from nose and mouth, but he’s laughing too. I’m not laughing. That’s another pub from which I’m temporarily barred on account of Wayne. There aren’t many left, and this is a seaside town with a lot of bars.

  ‘You’re going to get yourself killed,’ I mutter.

  ‘I beat the fucker though, didn’t I?’ he laughs.

  ‘Yeah, I could see the look of defeat on his face as he stepped over you on his way out.’

  ‘He couldn’t keep me down, though,’ he says, which again is true enough.

  ‘Let’s go to the new Thai restaurant.’ He stops in the middle of the road and grabs my arm as if he’s just had the best idea in the world. ‘Let’s celebrate.’

  ‘Celebrate what?’

  ‘My victory!’

  Now he dances drunkenly in the street, shadow boxing. A car swerves past him and the driver swears. He turns and feigns a punch or two at me. I duck and get an arm round his shoulder so I can direct him towards the pavement.

  I talk him out of the Thai restaurant with the offer of a pizza when we get back. He’s compliant now he’s got out of his system whatever was in there.

  So, I’ve got my arm round Wayne and I’m half dragging him up the stairs to his flat. The lift is out of order again, but that’s no surprise. The surprise is when it’s working. I don’t use it even then. That lift is broken or about to break, and about
to break is worse.

  The flat is on the second floor, which is not so bad unless you’re lumbering up there with a drunk on your shoulder. He stops to urinate. I glance down the concrete stairs and then up ahead. This might not be a select neighbourhood, but people still don’t want you urinating on the stairs.

  They’ve got standards.

  Well, some of them have.

  Wayne’s flat is tidy. I’ve never been able to understand that. There are no clothes scattered on the floor and there’s no unwashed crockery in the sink. The carpet is clean and recently vacuumed, and the furniture, albeit sparse, is spotless. How come an aggressive binge drinker like Wayne has the energy or the commitment to clean and tidy? I just don’t get it. And there are books, lots of them. I wonder when that started. It was probably when Tina Oldfield entered our lives.

  It’s the same with his work. I don’t think Wayne has missed a day in four years. It’s nothing special, just a factory job, food processing, but he started off part time, then they took him on full time, quite an achievement during times of austerity when the best you can hope for is a sixteen-hour contract.

  Politicians are bastards. Conservative politicians are the biggest bastards of all.

  I drop him on the sofa and go through to make coffee. The cups are on a rack, and they gleam. I’m fussy when it comes to cups. There are lots of places where I’d rather die of thirst than use the crockery, but I wouldn’t at Wayne’s. The worktop is wiped clean, there are no teaspoons lying by the sink, and there are no coffee granules in the sugar.

  By the time I get back, he’s sitting watching rugby as if nothing had happened. Congealed blood on his nose and lips, swollen eye, bruising, and he’s watching the rugby. And that’s how we spend the rest of the evening, watching rugby like two normal guys after a night out.

  This is how it is about once every couple of months. I wish I could see it coming, but I can’t. There are no tell-tale signs, at least not until the fifth pint, when something like a black cloud descends. Then I know alright. But by then it’s too late.

  I wonder why Wayne and I are friends. I’m always wondering about that. It’s not as if we have much in common except a long history and a death, though I suppose a death is a strong sort of bond when you think about it, especially a death like that.

  Still, our friendship goes way back, like the beginning of this story.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Philip,’ my mother calls. ‘Philip, it’s time for lunch. Tell your friends to go home and come back later.’ She stands in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a floral, cotton tea towel. She’s smiling. She always smiles, my mum. I turn and wave to Stevie and Wayne, and I run in from the garden.

  Stevie is my friend, but not Wayne. I don’t like Wayne; nobody does. Whenever we go out to play, he appears among us, following us like an ugly shadow. His thin, wiry body and narrow, pinched face and shifty eyes lie between us like a disease, something to drive us home in case we become infected.

  Wayne doesn’t go home when my mum calls.

  ‘Why don’t you go home?’ I ask.

  ‘No point,’ he shrugs, ‘there’s no one there.’

  He hangs around the lane at the end of the garden, idly throwing handfuls of gravel from the drive towards the trees or at passing birds. Occasionally, he straddles the fence or swings over the gate, but mostly he throws stones.

  ‘There’ll be no drive left, the way that boy carries on,’ my mum says, watching him from the kitchen window which overlooks the garden. ‘Still, what can you expect with his background? Poor love.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he go home?’ I grumble. ‘I don’t even like him. He spoils everything. My friends go home when he turns up. Only Stevie stays. Stevie feels sorry for him. I don’t.’

  ‘We could invite him in for some lunch,’ Mum says doubtfully. ‘He looks like he could use a good meal.’

  ‘No!’ I explode. ‘No. He stinks. We’d never get rid of him. He steals things too,’ I add. ‘He took my car and my tennis racket and my football. He stole money from Stevie’s house. He steals from everyone.’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t have much of his own.’

  ‘I don’t care. He fights too, and he spits, and he swears. He’s cruel to animals. The other day, he found a frog and he...’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’ Mum holds a hand up and turns away. She looks out of the window. ‘Oh, what is that boy doing now? I do believe he’s urinating on the lawn.’ She knocks on the window and gestures him away. He turns immodestly towards the window, then grins, and casually drifts towards the fence. He takes out a penknife and begins chipping away at the wood. Mum knocks again. ‘I feel sorry for him, but there’s a limit.’

  ‘I wish he’d go away. He’ll expect me to take some food out, too. Why doesn’t he go home for lunch, like Stevie?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s particularly well cared for. His mother is out a lot, when she’s not asleep in bed. His brother... well... there’s not much good to say about him. Wayne seems to look after himself, mostly. Maybe there’s nothing for him to eat.’

  ‘His house is a tip. No one ever washes pots or clothes. We don’t go in there. It’s filthy.’

  ‘Perhaps you should feel sorry for him too, like Stevie.’

  ‘I’ve tried that; it doesn’t work. He spoils it by stealing sweets or toys or fighting someone or breaking something. I hate him.’

  By now, Wayne is halfway up the beech tree at the corner of the drive. He’s struggling from branch to branch, close to the trunk, stretching a leg one way and an arm the other, twisting his body into impossible shapes until he sits in a fork between thick branches, swinging his legs. He sees us looking and waves and then clambers out on a branch and drops suddenly backwards until suspended only by his calves and the crook of his knees. Mum can’t repress a cry of alarm. Her hand flies to her lips. I don’t flinch. Wayne climbs trees like a monkey. He never falls, even when I wish he would. He turns his head upwards towards his feet and waves his arms, then he swings back around and pulls himself up, sliding across into the fork of the trunk. He drags himself to his feet and continues his ascent.

  ‘I can’t look,’ mum says. ‘He’s bound to fall.’ She raises a hand to knock on the window, then hesitates. ‘He might be startled and fall, and it would be my fault,’ she says.

  ‘He won’t fall.’ I turn back to my lunch, scrambled egg, hot and steaming, on thick, buttery toast. ‘If he did,’ I say between bites, ‘he’d land on his feet.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone so supple. You have to admire him. He’s so fearless too’.

  ‘I suppose so.’ I think of the games of chicken he tried to teach us, running across the road in front of approaching cars. We were all pathetic and cowardly. We’d be across the road before Wayne stepped off the pavement. Wayne wasn’t happy unless he heard the squeal of brakes, the blaring of a horn, and the oaths of angry drivers.

  ‘What is that boy going to do with his life?’ Mum fretted. She’s like that, my mum. Waifs and strays are her speciality; she collects them without compromise, injured birds, stray cats, and dogs. She gives Wayne some of my clothes when I outgrow them, and she gives him sandwiches and biscuits when he has no lunch. It just makes him worse. He comes back for more, and he comes back again and again.

  ‘He says he’s going to be a burglar when he grows up, or maybe join the army. He wants to have adventures and kill people.’

  ‘What a noble ambition,’ Mum says. ‘Perhaps he’ll grow out of it. I’m not sure giving him a weapon is a good idea.’

  ‘He has a catapult and a ball bearing gun and a baseball bat he stole from a shop in town. He hunts cats and birds. He stalks them like a sniper and then...’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’ Mum looks anxious. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you’d be better not to play with him this afternoon. I’ll tell him.’

  I shake my head. ‘He won’t listen. He’ll wait for a chance to break our windows just to show he doesn’t care.’ I gla
nce up. ‘I’ll need to take some food for him. He’ll ask and he’ll keep asking.’

  ‘I’ll make up a few sandwiches and some fruit and biscuits.’

  I finish my lunch and go outside.

  ‘Why do you have lunch when everyone else has dinner?’ Wayne asks sharply. ‘And why do you have dinner at teatime? Are you posh or something?’

  That’s another problem with Wayne. He’s always asking questions, annoying questions, personal questions, the sort of questions you don’t want to hear, let alone answer.

  ‘It’s just words, different words to describe the same thing.’

  ‘I have dinner and tea. Everyone I know has dinner and tea, except you. Have you got something for my dinner? I’m hungry.’

  ‘You’re always hungry.’ I hand him the neatly wrapped bag my mum prepared, and he tears it open without ceremony. He stuffs the first sandwich between pointed, predatory teeth and chews open-mouthed.

  ‘Crisps and biscuits and an apple too,’ he says. ‘I like your mum. She’s always good to me, not like the others. She smells nice, too. She has soft skin. My mum’s hands are as rough as a dog’s paw. I like your garden. It’s better than a yard. Do you have your own room?’

  I nod.

  ‘You must be dead rich. I share with my brother.’

  For a fleeting moment, I feel sorry for Wayne. His brother is Tyrone. He’s nine years older than Wayne and has all the charm of a bee sting. It’s like having to share a room with a deranged psycho, which is what he probably is.

  Perhaps that’s why we really are friends, despite my protestations. Feeling sorry for someone is the first step, I guess. Imagining what it’s like to be them is the second.

  Tyrone is well known to the police. He’s pretty well known to everyone, come to that, and not in a pleasant way. My friends and I steer well clear. He’s the sort of person you don’t want to meet, even in a group. He makes Wayne’s misdemeanours look like the errant foibles of an excitable pixie. He enjoys hurting things, animals, people, and Wayne, especially Wayne.

  I notice the fading bruises above Wayne’s eyes and the small, round scars on the backs of his hands. I don’t ask. There’s no point. The answer is always the same – our Tyrone.