Welcome to your exclusive sneaky peak of my newest release UNTIL DEATH - Out 27th February 2026.

I hope you enjoy...

Prologue

Stella West lies twisted at the bottom of the stairs, her cream silk nightgown dark with blood. Her pale, delicate hand caught between the carved newel post, her wrist snapped at a cruel angle. She tried in vain to fight gravity. It didn’t work.

Detective Chief Inspector Sarah Halton stands on the parquet flooring, looking at the body, her breath misting in the pre-dawn chill. People bustle around her, doing their jobs, gathering evidence and clutching cups of takeaway coffee. Some obviously gleeful to be caught up in such a high-profile case.

Sarah closes her eyes, the bustle around her fading as she reconstructs the night in her mind’s eye. She sees the mahogany staircase and tries to envision the incident.

The house would have been silent at that time of night. The West mansion is so desolate, there is no distant sound of traffic to punctuate the quiet. Then what? Footsteps on the landing, treading carefully over the Persian rug.

An altercation. Stella’s nightgown rips up the front. Her knees reveal carpet burns—she went down fighting. Good for her.

Stella calls out, shocked. Her voice shrill in the darkness. Then she falls. Or was pushed. Most probably the latter. But then Sarah knows she has a tendency to see the worst in situations. That’s what ten years in the police force does to you.

As she falls, her head strikes each step with dull, repetitive force. Her skull fractures midway, releasing a sudden flow of blood that marks every tread and streaks the walls in vivid red. Stella is dead before she even reaches the bottom.

The perpetrator looks on. Smiling? Stunned? Breathing heavily or holding their breath? Their gloved hands and socked feet careful not to leave a trace of evidence.

Sarah opens her eyes. A young lad dressed in white is crouched over the body, carefully photographing the angle of the victim’s broken wrist. The scene-of-crime photographer, barely out of university and trying not to look as green as he feels. Poor lad will get used to it in no time; there’s no shortage of bodies in Manchester to photograph.

The camera embedded into the crown moulding above her head catches her attention. She scowls. The cameras failed to capture the incident. No footage exists whatsoever.

How convenient. How clean.

She grips the elbow of PC Luscombe who’s rushing past looking determined though no doubt just on the hunt for a snack.

Halton is working with Luscombe on another case. Even battered victims with faces caved in cannot chase off this guy’s appetite. “Have you found her husband yet?” she asks him.

He looks at her with tired eyes, his cleft lip trembling. “Not yet.” His hair is greying at the temples, a sign of the stress gifted to him when joining the force, or maybe just bad genes. Halton neither knows, or cares. She turns away, still grasping his elbow.

The infamous William West mysteriously cannot be found at four in the morning. His car is gone; his pyjamas are still tucked into his side of the bed. Where would an old man be at this time of the day? An affair maybe?

Tainted by her past mistakes, she wouldn’t put it past him, he might be old but he’s still a bastard, and bastards cheat. She should know, she was married to one for thirteen years.

Besides, she’s seen William West in the news. His business acumen is allegedly ruthless, his morals grey at best. He has a dark look in his eye that has always made her nervous, and not once has she seen a picture of him smiling.

Is William closer than they think? Is he nearby, waiting to make his entrance? To feign shock and grief as he sees his dead wife lying at the foot of their stairs.

But is he really capable of such brutality? She doesn’t know for sure but if she was a betting woman she’d bet her last ten pounds on him doing this.

“We need to find him,” she barks at the startled PC Luscombe, who pulls away and scurries off to reiterate the order to the other Constables scattered around the front door of the West’s Edwardian mansion. They speak into radios, make notes, glance at each other; looking busy. Not one of them really knowing what to do with themselves.

Useless. The lot of them.

A whimpering sound catches her attention, and she spins to find the housekeeper weeping into a WEST embroidered handkerchief, being held back by a woman dressed in white overalls who Sarah has never seen before. She looks mortified at the thought of the Housekeeper seeing the body. Even though she was the one who discovered her boss sprawled in a mangled heap and made the call to the police.

Sarah marches over. “Patricia Lyon?” The middle-aged woman nods, her hair wild from disturbed sleep. She feels for this woman, she remembers the first time she saw a dead body; Duncan Forsythe, twenty-two, a bust vein from a few too many needles. It’s something you never forget. It haunts even your deepest thoughts and dreams.

She clears her throat, shaking off the horror of those memories, and looks at Patricia with what she hopes is compassion. “I know my officers have spoken to you already, but I would like to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”

She shrugs and looks away. “Do I have a choice?” Patricia looks exhausted, her posture is stooped in a way that doesn’t suit her, like she’s usually board straight. Her dark skin is ashy, showcasing the purple semi-circles under her eyes.

Poor woman. Working with William West can’t be easy. And now to have to deal with this…

“Did you see anyone on the property before the incident?”

“I went to bed at nine o’clock. I have an early start, so I retire early.” After the cameras failed.

“Did you see anyone prior to going to bed?”

“Only Mr and Mrs West. But they live here. That’s hardly unusual.”

“No one else?”

She shakes her head, tears dancing along her lower lids.

“And how was Mrs West when you last saw her?”

“Normal. Tired after a long day, but happy enough I suppose.”

“And Mr West?”

Patricia looks Sarah in the eye for the first time, like she wants Sarah to really listen. “Stressed, I reckon. But then when isn’t he stressed? He has so much to manage. Big decisions to make every day. I don’t know how he does it. But he didn’t do this I f that’s where you’re heading. He’s a good man, really. The press, they present him in a bad light. It’s cruel.”

Sarah ignores the last remark. How the press portray William West has no impact on this case. She’s just interested in the facts. “What does stress look like on Mr West?”

Patricia watches an officer stroll past clutching a stack of evidence bags, frozen in place by her thoughts.

Eventually she says, “I know what you want me to say. That he’s an angry man. Cruel. But he isn’t. He’s just a man under pressure. Never nasty though and he loved his wife dearly.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

She shrugs again; it’s starting to get on Halton’s nerves. “I was asleep, but his car isn’t on the drive, so he must’ve gone out in that.”

This isn’t news to Halton; she already made that connection the second she arrived and saw the driveway empty. William West’s Bentley often features in the news.

“Do you have any idea where he could’ve gone?”

“How should I know? I’m just the housekeeper, I’m not privy to his nighttime goings-on.”

Halton turns around, dismissing the housekeeper. This might be a high-profile case, but it’s clear; find the husband, find the murderer.

There’s a rush behind her, like the atmosphere has been sucked into a vacuum.

A harsh, husky voice calls loud over the hubbub. “What the fuck happened here?!”

And here he is the man himself, cheeks pink as if he’s been out in the cold for a long period of time.

Mr William West.

Remember, if you preorder Until Death, you get it for a mere 99p / 99c.