Hunter Hunted, Jack Gatland [good story books to read .txt] 📗

Copyright © 2021 by Jack Gatland

All rights reserved.

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the author, unless for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, places of learning, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Hooded Man Publishing

DI Declan Walsh Books

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LETTER FROM THE DEAD

MURDER OF ANGELS

HUNTER HUNTED

WHISPER FOR THE REAPER

(Coming April 2021)

TO HUNT A MAGPIE

(Coming June 2021)

BEHIND THE WIRE

(Coming August 2021)

A RITUAL FOR THE DYING

(Coming October 2021)

To Mum.

Prologue

Of all the Livery Companies in London, Charles Baker reckoned that the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers was the most pointless.

Usually known as the Stationer’s Company, they formed it way back in 1403, although it had to wait until 1557 for its Royal Patronage. Many people claimed it was an Elizabethan patronage, and this was the start of the Elizabethan ‘Golden Age’, but the fact of the matter was that 1557 was still very much in the time of her sister, Mary I. She was better known as Bloody Mary, a nickname given mainly because of her persecution of Protestant heretics, burning hundreds at the stake during her reign, and therefore this long established printing and stationer guild’s ‘Royal Patronage’ had been bathed in infamy from the very start.

Charles was a fan of the earlier versions of the guild; illuminated manuscripts were beautiful things, and Charles was very much a fan of beautiful things. It was just that once technology (in this case the simple printing press) replaced the art of calligraphy, a kind of crassness came into the industry. The stationers stopped non-members from having the right to copy texts; that’s where the term copyright came from. And from the printers came the publishers, and then the publishers created the newspapers.

And Charles Baker hated the newspapers.

Nowadays, though, the Stationer’s Company represented more of the content and communications industries. This included digital media and software, and worse still, advertising and PR. Probably not what the poor buggers who created the guild over six hundred years ago had ever envisioned; that their beautiful, artistically designed manuscript guild would one day be filled with bloody Instagram influencers, science fiction authors, and people like Rupert Murdoch and William sodding Hague.

But as much as he despised many of the members, he couldn’t fault the fact that they threw a damn good party.

In fact, it was a party that they threw that Charles Baker now found himself at, standing at the head table in the Livery Hall, with dozens of guildsmen watching him as he prepared to speak. It was an amazing location for a speech; deep mahogany wood panelling covered most of each wall, with a variety of hand-lettered members lists, portraits of liverymen, flags or even coats of honour adorning each one, with the top third of the wall (and the ornate ceiling above him) painted cream and gold, with guild flags hanging above heraldic shields. And when the windows weren’t looking out into London, they were replaced with beautiful stained glass windows of ancient printers such as William Tyndale or William Caxton, given the same reverence that a church might give to a saint. It felt religious. It felt as if he was giving a sermon.

Which, in a way, he was.

‘Thank you, Master of Company,’ he said to the wizened old man in the tuxedo who now sat to his left, ‘for that wonderful introduction. And thank you,’ this was to the hall itself, ‘for giving me such a warm welcome.’

There was a small smattering of applause at this. Charles forced a smile.

‘As a Member of Parliament, I have had an interesting history with the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers,’ he said. ‘In fact, I think that all Members of Parliament have, at times, had a similar situation.’

There was a low rumble of polite laughter. Charles allowed it to build and fall before he continued.

‘When I was a child, printing fascinated me,’ he continued. ‘To be able to place words onto paper and change a single mind in the process was nothing short of a miracle to me, and it probably was the one thing that set me off on the career path that I chose.’ He paused for a moment, allowing the silence to fill the room. ‘But although it set me on my journey, it hasn’t been that kind to me.’

The room was still silent, but now the atmosphere had changed, as if the other invited guests had realised that this wasn’t the speech that they had been expecting.

‘As many of you know, a few weeks ago my beautiful, wonderful wife, Donna, passed away,’ Charles continued, allowing a hint of emotion to creep into his voice. ‘She had suffered from mental issues for much of her life, including clinical depression. And when the national press started attacking me, started commenting on a child I’d had out of wedlock a life ago, before we even met, a child that I hadn’t known that I was the father of, it proved too much for her. And she took her own life.’

There was a muttering in the hall after this. Charles had never publicly spoken about how Donna had died. They had believed it was because of illness, not because of an overdose, or a noose in the Baker house’s underground garage. Charles carried on.

‘It’s true,’ he continued. ‘And I will never forgive you, the ones that did this. I will hunt you down and I will destroy you.’

He was enjoying this.

‘I look up and