The DI Jake Sawyer Series Box Set by Andrew Lowe

Author:Andrew Lowe [Lowe, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781999729073
Publisher: Redpoint Books
Published: 2019-11-30T22:00:00+00:00

26

Simon Brock directed the taxi into the drive of his stone-built cottage on the edge of Hollinsclough. The driver parked in front of the single-storey annex and got out to retrieve the luggage from the boot. Simon sighed and looked out of the window at the former farmhouse: a rugged construction of charcoal-grey stone with incongruous refitted windows. The building shimmered in the morning mist. Home, sweet home.

It was too large for one man, even one who had grown as large as Simon. But he filled the space with regular—and legendary—‘soirées’. Mostly gatherings of local literary types, old colleagues and students from Cambridge, and friends from his previous life, when the house had been the ideal homestead for a couple in early retirement.

He had bought the place ten years earlier, after his agent had sold the TV rights to his first series of five novels. In the end, only two of the stories were filmed, but the money funded the restoration, and the publicity had boosted his profile. He now enjoyed a comfortable life on sales royalties, with a new title added to the mix every year.

With difficulty, he climbed out of the car and looked over the annex building, catching his breath. He had converted the old calf shed into a writing workshop, and had settled into a rhythm of bashing out his first drafts in there over winter. It was a womb-like haven of splendid isolation, with blissful underfloor heating. He often worked deep into the night, usually ending the sessions with a short stagger from his chair and a flop down into the double bed. His son had pestered him to rent the place out on Airbnb over summer, but the very idea was a violation, and he was in no need of either the company or the money.

Simon took his small case from the driver, paid him—including a generous tip—and shuffled towards the main house. He was a conspicuous figure, always impeccably dressed in tailored suit and Paisley tie, Full Windsor. He had a vast bald head with a grey beard tightly trimmed around a bear-trap jaw, and stood at six foot five, with immense, jutting shoulders which often carried his two young granddaughters during his son’s Christmas and summer visits. It was a tradition: he would greet the girls in a crouch, and they would take a shoulder each, giggling as he rose to his full height, and bore them indoors, perched like parrots. He would perhaps enjoy that at least one more time.

He was a rugby man at Cambridge—a prop, of course—and he had briefly played the sport semi-professionally, before a knee injury had drawn him to the sedentary pleasures of storytelling. But his hedonistic appetites had always been at odds with the self-denial of sporting endeavour. He had been an unfailing epicurean. A drinker, an eater, an imbiber and inhaler of all. An arch consumer of the full tasting menu of life. He had been a two packs a day man—no filter—until his respiratory system had finally rebelled at the end of his fifties.

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