What a ‘thrilling’ opening evening to the new season our September 2023 meeting turned out to be with Murder Mystery writers Hannah Jameson and Heath Gunn speaking about their books and experience and sharing readings, rounded off by our crime writing competition, kindly adjudicated by Heath.
Hook your readers in 300 words with the opening crime scene of your novel.
And on the night, Heath’s winners were:
First Place: Brothers in Arms by Dave Sinclair
Second Place: Hard Bargain by Damon L. Wakes
Third Place: Bystanders by Lesley Bungay
Highly Commended: Rough Justice by Guy Caplin
Highly Commended: Jeannie McQueen and the Case of the Barking Dog by Lynn Clement
First Place: Brothers in Arms by Dave Sinclair
This piece set the scene so well, drew me in and built to a great twist in the final line that made me want to know more.
Heath Gunn
Chapter One – Brighton, August 1967
I had expected the hospital mortuary to be a grim place, perhaps in some run-down Victorian part of the hospital, cold, and full of unpleasant smells that were only partly hidden behind the ever-present disinfectant. Instead, the mortuary was in the basement of a modern block, a testament to the optimism of 1960s brick and concrete, well-lit, with warm cream decor and a spotlessly shining wall of stainless steel cabinets inset into one long wall. Four stainless tables occupied the centre of the room, each plumbed into a drainage channel in the floor. There was a certain ripeness to the air that the air conditioning could not quite overcome.
True to his word, D.I. Morgan was already there. His firm handshake belied his flabby, almost cherubic appearance. It occurred to me that the pink flush to his complexion was probably due to the regular worship of alcohol in his local pubs rather than any godlier activities on a Sunday.
“Thank you for coming, Major Granta,” he said. “These circumstances are never easy.”
“No, they never are,” I replied. I thought of all the people I had seen die in the Middle East – friends, terrorists and innocents – such things were never easy to see or be part of. Now, in this English Summer of Love, I would have to deal with one more.
“Harry Granta, please,” said Morgan to the mortuary assistant, who pulled one of the stainless refrigeration cabinets out. The assistant folded back the top of the sheet revealing the face of a man, about 40, with a thin face and sallow skin. A fracture to the left side of his face, and a broken eye socket were clear but messy evidence of the impact from the clifftop fall that had killed him. It was the face of a man I had never seen before.
“Is this your brother?” asked Morgan.
“Yes,” I said, “indeed it is”.
Second Place: Hard Bargain by Damon L. Wakes
I really enjoyed the imagery this piece created, with the mix of physical setting and music – K-pop ringtone – I want to know what the Officer decided to do.
Heath Gunn
As far as Officer Harris could tell, it was some kind of deal gone wrong. There was someone in a suit at the table by the far wall; she assumed someone important. She might have recognised his face if it hadn’t been splattered across the art print behind him. A phone in his limp hand began to ring—an incongruously upbeat K-pop chorus.
She turned her attention to the rest of the lounge. Face-down near the door was another man in a yellow tracksuit, still garishly bright despite the bloodstains blooming across his back. In one hand he clutched a semi-automatic pistol, the slide locked back—empty. In his other hand, there was a leather briefcase. Stooping for a closer look, she saw it had a combination lock.
The phone stopped ringing for a moment, then immediately started up again—the same K-pop song.
There were perhaps ten or twelve other bodies. It was hard to tell exactly how many as the ones by the floor-to-ceiling window—its glass now strewn across the floor—were in varying states of intactness. She had never seen a grenade go off, but her best guess was that someone on the losing side of the gunfight had brought one out to even the odds, and had evened them rather more thoroughly than intended.
The phone stopped and started once again.
Confident the room was clear, she stepped over it, hoping to catch the caller’s name. Instead, what grabbed her attention was a chat box on the shattered laptop screen. The same message, over and over:
COP PICK UP PHONE
So she did.
“Grab the briefcase and climb out the balcony.” Not even a hello.
“Why? What’s inside?”
“Leverage.”
Out front, a car skidded to a halt on the gravel drive.
“But only if you can get it out of there.”
Third Place: Bystanders by Lesley Bungay
So much crammed into 300 words with this one. It uses the senses to build on the descriptions and then the last line created an intriguing twist.
Heath Gunn
We are the onlookers. An amorphous crowd gathered behind the blue and white tape, placed to keep the inquisitive at a discreet distance. Our necks crane between uniformed sentries, while hands rise with mobile phone camera’s scanning the scene for a good angle, an image to share on Instagram, fodder for the morbidly curious. We covet the social media scoop, to feed our need for the “likes”, the heart emojis, the kudos.
Across the road, the experts work under our scrutiny, shrouded in white suits, their faces impenetrable behind masks. Emotionless eyes focus only on the job to be done, gathering the facts. Their cameras flash as numbered tags are placed beside anything of interest: a size ten footprint in the unmown grass; a snag of red fibre on an overgrown rose bush; a strand of blonde hair trapped in a spider’s web. Nothing is dismissed. Everything is documented. All evidence is bagged and labelled for futile analysis in their sterile lab.
We shuffle forward in synchrony as the body bag emerges, trolley wheels jostling over the rough path. The passenger is slid into the back of the unmarked van, like a carcass onto the butcher’s block. The vehicle moves away at a respectful pace, some heads bow, a few cameras lower. Oh the desire to observe the pathologist’s fruitless scrutiny.
The figures continue to drift ghost-like in and out of the house where he lived. If living is what you could call the squalor. The stench of rotting food, sweat and urine, mingled with the alcohol. A sorry end, the papers will say, another victim of a society grown weary from austerity and disease.
The coroner’s verdict will be suicide or misadventure as it always is. They will find nothing suspicious. I made sure of that.
Highly Commended: Rough Justice by Guy Caplin
A great descriptive piece that had me in the scene. It could maybe have stopped without the need for last sentence and still hooked me in.
Heath Gunn
Shaking fingers prised open the window. Easing his body over the sill, the black-clad figure slid silently into the house. Breaking in must be nerve-racking for a criminal: for Truman, who had never even incurred a parking ticket, illegally entering the property was tantamount to torture. The stress pushed his heart-rate into overdrive. The pounding in his chest seemed so loud that he feared someone might hear.
‘Get a grip,’ he told himself. ‘Breathe deeply.’
He switched on the penlight to guide him.
The young man knew his actions were irrational, but seeing the gang boss, Nicholas Stamper, swagger from the court with that contemptuous smirk, which said, I can get away with murder, enraged him. The case had collapsed when the two key witnesses failed to testify: they never found the old man; however, the police fished the young woman’s mutilated body out of the Thames. The witness’s sickening fate convinced the young man: if the law was powereless, he needed to dispense justice with his own hands, and the punishment should fit the crime.
He listened outside the master bedroom. Hearing nothing, he turned the handle. The door opened noiselessly to his touch. Drawing his weapon, he stepped inside. His foot encountered something sticky. Truman hesitated.
The smell. That overpowering smell.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
His torch illuminated the pool of blood into which he had stepped. The beam followed the crimson stain to the bed. The unseeing eyes of the late Nicholas Stamper stared back at him. A dagger protruded from his throat. Justice had been done, but by whom?
At that moment, the light came on. ‘And what have you got to say for yourself, Detective Sergeant Truman?’ said the voice of his superior officer.
Highly Commended: Jeannie McQueen and the Case of the Barking Dog by Lynn Clement
Poor Claire, what happened to her? The use of the dog to set the scene was great. How did Jeanine feel seeing the body of her neighbour? What did it do to her gut, her senses?
Heath Gunn
Prevaricating again. My late mother’s voice digs deep into my psyche.
It’s been two months since I retired, and I have done none of the things I’d planned. I was going to completely fill my days, after raising my children and finally divorcing, ‘knob-head.’
‘Museums, art galleries, maybe Open-University,’ I’d said when people asked… but what will you do?
Next door’s dog is yapping loudly again. That’s annoying, as there I was, about to be productive and sit outside to read my book on Zen but I won’t be able to if that dog keeps on. I’ll give Claire, my neighbour, a knock and see if she can keep him quiet. He’s not normally this bad.
Claire’s door is open, which is unusual. I knock but walk in after she doesn’t answer.
‘Claire! Hello, Claire!’
No reply. Maybe she’s outside with Toby.
‘Claire, are you in the garden? It’s me, Jeannie.’
I see the back door is open so make my way towards it, intending to be polite but firm with Claire about Toby’s incessant barking. But I don’t get as far as the back door.
Claire is in a heap on the kitchen floor. She’s clutching what looks like a flan dish and Toby is licking off the remnants of whipped cream and… blood.
‘Claire?’
Toby looks at me with big brown eyes that say, ‘don’t think you’re having any of my freebies.’ I manage to shoo him away. He putters off to the garden and begins barking again.
I touch Claire on the neck. Nothing.
Well, do something, – mother again.
A mirror. That’s what they do in films, they get a mirror to see if it mists-up.
Claire’s handbag is on the kitchen table. I reach in and fish around, not taking my eyes off Claire in case she moves. Finding a small round shape, I pull out her compact and hold it towards her mouth and nose… Nothing!
Oh my God, Claire is dead.
Hampshire Writers' Society 