Creatures of the Chase - Yusuf. L. M. Ollie
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Creatures of the Chase
BOOK TWO
Yusuf
by
L.M. Ollie
Author’s Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
eBook published in 2011
ISBN: 978-0-473-18464-3
Copyright © 1996-2011 by L. M. Ollie
Email : [email protected]
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by Taheke Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
L.M. Ollie has asserted her right under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act to be identified as the author of this work.
Also by the same Author
Thirteen at Dinner
A play about King Richard the Third of England 1452-1485
ISBN: 978-0-473-18356-1
On the Trail of King Richard III
ISBN: 978-0-473-18310-3
Reputed to be the most concise and historically accurate rendering of the life and times of King Richard III set within the confines of an intelligently written, exciting and frequently amusing storyline.
Creatures of the Chase
Book One – Richard
ISBN 978-0-473-18463-6
Creatures of the Chase
Book Three - Mikail
ISBN: 978-0-473-18462-9
*****
Creatures of the Chase
Book Four - Sarah
Dedication
To my Mother
How she would have loved Yusuf
Part One
Man is the hunter; woman is his game:
The sleek and shining Creatures of the Chase,
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins;
They love us for it, and we ride them down.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson – The Princess
1
I will find where truth is hid
‘Though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.
Shakespeare - Hamlet
BOSTON, Massachusetts
August 14th, 1981
‘Goddamn it!’ Victor Yakinchuk growled as the unmistakable stench of canned tuna fish wafted upwards from the depths of his lunch bag, assaulting and insulting him simultaneously. He hated tuna fish but his wife Carol kept packing it and he kept throwing it out.
‘You’d think that after twelve years of marriage you’d have learned by now.’
He tossed the sandwich into the waste container beside his desk. It landed at the bottom, producing a dull squishing thud. He frowned. Twelve years - thirteen in November. Nearly thirteen years into a life sentence married to a woman he no longer loved, if indeed he had ever loved her. ‘Marry in haste, regret at leisure,’ he muttered aloud, thankful that he was alone in his office.
He looked hopefully back inside the brown paper bag only this time he didn’t bother pulling the contents out. A dead-ripe banana and store-bought cookies quickly followed the sandwich.
For some inexplicable reason he thought of his wedding day, conjuring up the image like a rabbit out of a hat. Abracadabra, please and thank you.
Carol was halfway up the aisle when near panic set in. Dreamlike he imagined himself plunging out of the vestry door into the cold of a November morning and running like hell, hoping that her father would never find him to remind him, yet again, that Carol was pregnant by him and what was he going to do about it. Instead he had stood there trapped inside one of the oldest and most successful snares known to mankind or to be more precise, womankind.
She had smiled at him as she came ever closer, her condition exaggerated by the twenty-five pounds she had already put on in preparation for forty more before Kenny was born. Victor assumed of course that she would lose the weight, but she didn’t. By their fifth wedding anniversary Carol had nearly doubled her original size and was pregnant again. That was a mistake on Vic’s part since the act had more to do with need than want although he wasn’t cruel enough to tell her that. He had sat and listened politely as her doctor described in detail her compulsive personality, while wondering all the while why she was compulsive towards food while leaving housekeeping, clean kids and a proper meal on the table out of the equation.
Strikingly attractive, slender and athletic with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, Victor Yakinchuk’s easy-going extroversion cloaked a darker side which was particularly useful in his line of work - homicide. So expert was he at solving murders that he was beginning to formulate one of his own and guess who the victim would be?
At thirty-five he was beginning to think that life was passing him by but at that precise moment it was about to take a very sharp detour into a world beyond imagining.
He looked up to find his partner Neil Perry leaning against the doorframe, smiling that ludicrous smile Yakinchuk hated almost as much as his wife’s sandwiches.
‘Tuna fish again, eh?’
‘Piss off Perry.’
‘I’ve got some news for you Vic.’
‘Yeah, what?’
‘Remember that Irishman you had a run in with awhile back?’
‘Develin?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. Thought you’d like to know, Maggie O’Shea just told me he’s dead.’
Yakinchuk blinked. ‘What?’
‘Natural causes apparently. She’s got a copy of the obit so why don’t you go and have a chat with her. Be in for a surprise though when you mention the name because according to Maggie, Develin’s old man murdered her brother.’
*****
Yakinchuk watched as Maggie O’Shea pushed the last slice of pie into place behind the glass doors. ‘Neil said you might be popping in Victor.’ She turned and offered him a ghost of a smile set in a face that had known more sadness than anything else in her fifty-eight years. Slowly she pulled the obituary out from inside the pocket of a cheap cotton import of a dress almost lost behind a starched white apron. ‘He’s dead and I’m not one bit sorry for the hearing of it.’
‘Did you