Some things are built with love. ST/1/KIL was built with hate. She was built with hate, and absolute precision, by a very old man who had been, in his time, the best goddamn mechanic in the country. She was built to an exacting specification in the back lot behind a run-down truck dealership smack in the middle of Bible Belt USA. When she was finished her creator broke her down and crated the parts, sending the crates one-by-one to various accommodation addresses across England.
When the final crate left his hands, the man took a photograph out of his wallet and kissed it.
“They gonna suffer too my boy,” he mumbled.
Then he went and sat in the last remaining truck where he put the muzzle of his Colt 45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It was six months before anybody even thought to look for him.

In the meantime, an even older man drove a vintage Volkswagen campervan the length and breadth of England collecting crated parts. It took him the best part of a year to amass them all, but he was in no hurry. Better to potter along looking aimless and harmless than to attract the notice of the authorities. If you are planning a murder, it’s a very bad idea to draw attention to yourself.
When he had collected the final piece of the jigsaw it was time to contact the assembler. A carefully nondescript message was sent to an address in Spain and when the recipient flew into London, there was a hire car and a map awaiting him. The assembler drove carefully through the green countryside, stopping punctiliously at checkpoints and presenting his travel documents for examination. He arrived at his destination crumpled and travel worn and his host fed him and showed him a comfortable bed.

The next morning the Spaniard began opening packing cases. It took him three months to open all the crates and reassemble the American’s master work. When he was done, he kissed his fingertips.
That was the last thing he did in this life, as his host slid a knife through his ribs into his heart.
“Loose ends, amigo. Loose ends…”
When he had tumbled the body into a pre-dug grave and filled it in, the killer made a very short phone call.

In the dead of the night a helicopter landed in a broad meadow a mile or so from the house. It took just seconds to upload one item of cargo and the ‘copter was gone long before anyone even realised it had landed. Once the aircraft was safely in the sky, the old man took himself back to his comfortable home where he sat beside the fire and poured himself a special drink. He raised his glass in an ironic toast.
“You are avenged my darling daughter. Wait for me at the pearly gates, I’m on my way.”
He tossed off the drink in one gulp.
The next morning when his housekeeper arrived she found him in his favourite fireside chair, with a faint smile on his face, quite dead.

In London, the precious cargo was delivered to a specialist dealer in Soho. The man examined the goods then smiled unpleasantly.
“She really is a work of art. Now we just wait for the client.”

It was actually more than half a year before the American ambassador walked into the premises. After the normal courtesies, the dealer led the way to a back room, where three androids stood. Deactivated. The ambassador smiled thinly. He pointed to one.
“Not that. Activate the other two.”
One droid was rolled out on its trolley and the trader activated the other two. One was a lush-bodied six-foot blonde with a slightly trailer trash look, the other was smaller and slighter and somehow a pale reflection of its larger sister.
The ambassador spoke to the smaller doll first.
“Name?”
“Annabelle sir.”
She cast down her eyes with proper modesty.
“Strip!” he ordered and the doll slowly disrobed. She was perfectly formed and pink skinned and the ambassador nodded just once.
“Deactivate.”
The doll stood stock still.
The American turned his eyes on the taller doll.
“Name?” he barked.
“Bella, sir.” The voice was husky, throaty, sexy, and distinctively southern, sounding for all the world as if Scarlett O’Hara had stepped down from the silver screen to tempt a man to his fate. There was no modest casting down of the eyes here. The doll looked at the burly ambassador and dropped him the ghost of a wink.
He felt himself reacting, even though he knew ‘she’ was no more than some circuitry and a great many plastic components.
“Strip,” he snapped and Bella obliged him. She drew her clothes off slowly and with every evidence of a sensuality there was no way she could actually possess. When she was naked under his gaze she pulled back her shoulders making her large breasts stand out even further from her narrow ribcage. As he watched, her nipples hardened and extended. He exhaled swiftly and opened his fly with shaking hands.
“Mouth!” he ordered harshly.
The doll moved towards him with undulating grace, before dropping to her knees in front of him and doing precisely as he ordered. He fisted his hands in her hair as he ground his crotch into her face. When he achieved his orgasm he pushed her away roughly.
Reassembling his clothing, he turned to the trader.
“Stocks. Whip,” he grated.
When Bella was fixed firmly in the wooden whipping frame, the ambassador smiled and laid the whip across her firm rounded buttocks with a will. He was grimly pleased to see the red welts form on what looked like unblemished skin. After six strokes, the dealer grasped his wrist.
“Enough, I think. You have tested the merchandise past what would have been allowed for anyone else.”
It took the red-faced American some several minutes to collect his scattered wits. When his breathing had evened out enough for him to speak collectedly he spoke in a gravelly whisper.
“Battery life?”
“Fifty years. Minimum.”
The ambassador snorted. “Yeah right. And I suppose she eats and drinks too…”
“Doesn’t eat. That will come in the next model. But she does drink. Needs liquid for lubrication. In various areas. No alcohol though.”
The red-faced man cleared his threat. “Okay. How much?”
“Five million.”
The American swallowed. “Dollars?”
“Pounds.”
For a moment the two men glared at each other, then the dealer motioned his men to cut the doll down and disassemble the whipping frame. The crew worked in silence, and the owner of the shop examined his expensively manicured fingernails. The American broke first.
“I don’t have the authority to spend that much.”
“Then you’d better get authorisation. That’s the price. Including your boss’ discount as a valued customer.”
“Okay. I hafta make some calls. How long do I have?”
“I can give you twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll be in touch.”

© jane jago

With frosted flakes and crystal glaze
Swathes of snow and chilling haze
Crunching ice on hard pathways
Coldly creep the winter days.

Grey the colour of the season
Grey the skies above the trees and
Grey the mist and fog that’s freezing
No one’s without without good reason

Time of coldness, time of dearth
Time to measure life’s true worth
As suspended stands the earth
All awaiting spring’s rebirth

E.M. Swift-Hook

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

It’s the morning after.
You stagger from bed at 6am, with a bladder like a Harrods’ carrier bag, a face like a badly folded napkin, a mouth like the bottom of Primrose’s loose box, and a headache of the sort that screams like a toddler on a sugar high.
The rest of the household still slumbers, but you know there’s no more sleep for you – although you have yet to recall quite why that is the case.
It isn’t until you are halfway down a restorative Bloody Mary that you remember today’s the day when the Hon. Rodney and his chums are to be out about the moor on a shoot. Your loathing for the man you were foolish enough to marry reaches epic proportions as you grapple with the concept of driving a Land Rover out across the frozen wastes, laden with lunch for a bunch of red-faced townies – most of whom couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo – all toting shotguns and large appetites.
Opening the refrigerator your eye falls on the obscenely naked bones of a goose, the scrag end of a once noble ham and several plastic containers of assortedly repulsive vegetables. That part of your brain which hasn’t be atrophied by three days of conversation with the wives of Rodney’s work colleagues recognises the makings of game soup, and, more immediately, a bubble and squeak breakfast.
Undaunted, you grasp the largest saucepan the kitchen can provide muttering ‘bloody soup’ as you throw every bone and scrap of unwanted meat into said receptacle and haul it over to the range. Just before you drop the whole thing onto the hot plate and walk away, your brain adjusts sufficiently to the vertical state of your body to understand that liquid of some sort may prevent a conflagration.
Water seems tame and unfestive and you remember a gallon container of truly awful red wine that some oik brought along for the festive bar. It fits the bill without a doubt and you chuck it into the pan alongside a dozen or so onions and the same number of large peeled potatoes.
Leaving that to do its worst you move swiftly onto the bubble and squeak which is comprised of every leftover vegetable you can find, shoved into grandmother’s huge cast iron frying pan and bulked out with a large packet of repulsive instant mashed potato. Add a large knob of butter and turn the vegetables over. Get a drinkie. Add more butter and turn again. Eat something or you will be too pissed to get breakfast on the table. Add more butter to the frying pan and turn some more. Stir soup pot and add any of the following that may be found in the refrigerator: cranberry sauce, gravy, fruit salad, stuffing, bread sauce. Add more butter to the frying pan and turn over the vegetables – you should by now be getting lots of ice crisp brown bits. If you aren’t. Turn on the hot plate and have a nice cry.
Stir both pans and contemplate cooking bacon. Decide you can’t be arsed and shout up the stairs to the effect that breakfast will be on the table in ten minutes.
Make neat depressions in the top of the bubble and squeak and break an egg into each depression. Liberally sprinkle with bits of whatever cheese is still lurking and shove the whole thing into the oven to cook the eggs.
When the men arrive, dump the pan on the table and let them help themselves.
Into the soup pot add a couple of handfuls of pudding rice, a tetra-pack of passata, and about half a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Leave to simmer.

Alternatively, look in the fridge. Feel sick. Find cornflakes and milk. Surreptitiously open six cans of Baxters Game Soup.

Look out for more tips on how to cook like a toff next week!

If Antonia’s boss hadn’t been an asshole she’d have caught her usual train home, and she would never have met George.

But he was, and she wound up in the grotty little station cafe, drinking awful coffee and laughing like she hadn’t laughed in years.

It seemed natural to climb into a taxi at his side, and to laugh breathlessly in the lift to his hotel room. 

When the door closed behind them she melted into his embrace

If Antonia’s boss hadn’t been an asshole she’d have caught her usual train home, and she would never have met her killer…

©Jane Jago

The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Private eye and augmented android. Me and my holographic sidekick, Sugar, operate out of an office on the fifty-fifth level of The Last City. We do okay. But some days are a bit bumpier than others…

When a dame whose everyday walk is as smooth and studiedly sexy as a big jungle cat, and whose make-up is as immaculate as a well-pressed designer suit, arrives in your office at a shambling run with her face all over tears and snot it’s a safe bet that something pretty bad is wrong.
I was lost in thought, with my feet propped on my desk and my hat tipped way down over my eyes, when my office door was thrown open in a dramatic fashion. I barely had long enough to wonder why in the hell my holographic door was now making an eldritch shriek, when Katie Scarlett O’Halleran and her exceptional bosom landed almost in my lap. She was crying, and her face was a mess.

She grabbed me by the lapels and tried to shake me.
“Sam. Sam. You have to come. Somebody has taken Daddy.”
I sat bolt upright and squared my shoulders. Anybody brave enough to mess with Mister Aitch was certainly a big fish, and I guessed I was about to go shark fishing. I grasped the sobbing girl by her slender shoulders.
“Calm down Katie Scarlett, and tell me what happened.”
“I already told you,” she all but screamed, “somebody has taken Daddy.”
“Details Katie, details.”

I gently compelled her to sit down, and held onto her until her chest stopped heaving and she took two steadying breaths. Then I got the bottle out of my drawer and poured her a stiff one. Her teeth chattered against the side of the glass, but the act of drinking calmed her almost as much as the bourbon.
“Daddy’s personal alarm sounded about an hour back. Me and the twins ran, but his office door was locked. When we broke the door down he was gone, and there was blood all over.”
“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t think anything was okay. “Where are the twins now?”
“Flirting with your holographic floozie. We set droids to watch on the office and came straight here.”
I decided now was not the time to react to the slur on Sugar’s character. Instead, I reached into the locked drawer of my desk and pulled out two extra weapons, a mini blaster that I stuck in my sock, and a weighted sap that slipped into my pocket.
“Let’s go then.”

The twins and Sugar were in animated sign language conversation.
“Sugar,” I said, “if anybody comes looking…”
“I don’t know where you are, and I certainly never saw these folks.” She flashed me that empty-headed smile that I knew hid a mind like a steel trap and wiggled her assets. I gave her the raised eyebrow and we left.

The trip down the glides was tense and silent. Katie had herself together but she was only holding by a thread, while the twins obviously looked to me for a lead. I’ll admit it. I was worried. So much so that I didn’t even bother to exchange words with the young chancer who thought it would be a good idea to put his hands on Katie Scarlett; I just broke his wrist before I threw him off the glide. Myk gave me the thumb, and Zig grinned a tight grin.

At Hood’s Bar, everything looked smooth on the surface, the booths were full, the bar droids were just about run off their feet, and the holographic pianist was playing that damned song. Again. The undertones of worry were there if you had the eyes to see them, though. The droids were jittery, and every security guy had a hand on his weapon. Oh yeah. It was tense and they were all looking to Sam Nero for a lead.

“Office,” I said and followed Katie Scarlett’s long legs down the familiar corridor. She signalled to a guard droid, who opened the door.
“You all wait here.”
I strode into the office then stopped in my tracks. The blood was wrong, it smelled wrong. I rolled back the plastic ‘skin’ from my fingertip and bent to touch the red fluid. It was blood all right, but not human blood. It was rat blood. Somebody had recently killed one of the rats that inhabit the tunnels that honeycomb The City. So why was that blood artistically splattered all over O’Halleran’s office?

From ‘Sam Nero and the Case of the Dutiful Daughter’ one of the stories in Sam Nero PI by Jane Jago

Alejandro had lived all his life in north west Columbia, so when he arrived at a top British university, as well as being incredibly proud and excited he also had some trepidation about making the move.
In the event, he settled in, made friends, did well on his course and became a very successful student.
But at the end of his first year he told his tutors he wouldn’t be coming back. “It’s seasons,” he explained. “Back home we have the same temperatures all year around. I just can’t get used to it changing so much. Does my head in.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

They had taped her mouth for the trial.
“The woman may not speak. Let a man speak for her,” the judge decreed. “What is the charge in full?”
“The woman committed the crime of questioning something a man said as being offensive.”
“Was it offensive?” The judge asked, determined to be fair and just.
“Exhibit A.” The prosecutor showed all the men of the jury and they knitted their brows in puzzlement. “As you see,” the prosecutor went on, “it was something no man would see as offensive, but this, this woman, said she found it so.”
A rumble of contempt and anger was heard through the jury.
“How dare she?”
“Who is she to say?”
“What difference does it make what she thinks anyway?”
“No one cares what she thinks. She’s only a woman after all.”
The judge banged his gavel to bring order to the courtroom.
“So, who speaks for this woman?”
A man stood up looking a little nervous and cleared his throat.
“Your honour, this woman wanted to say that she found this offensive and degrading to women.”
The judge frowned and the man sat down quickly.
“Degrading?” The judge gave a snort. “Who else wants to speak for the woman?”
Around the courtroom, here and there a woman tried to rise to speak, but each was pulled down and her mouth taped shut by the men – and women – around her.
“So how does the jury find this woman?”
“Guilty!”
“Guilty!”
“Guilty!”
The word echoed around like a chanted orison.
The judge brought the gavel down again.
“Let all her words be struck forever from the record so none may see. They might offend the men or encourage other women to speak out.”
Around the courtroom, most of the men nodded at the wise judgement and some of the women did too. Those who did not were left too afraid to speak up, too afraid to say, in case their taking offense at the fate of the woman was seen as an offensive thing.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The ocean wars saw small fish cowering in any shelter they could find while the leviathans of the deep cruised in search of things to kill.

What they found was each other.

The waves bloomed red and the sea foam blew pinkly in the breeze. 

For a while, the kings and queens of the deep ignored the carnage.

But even they had to awaken to the disaster that stalked above their heads and broke the silence of millennia to agree this must stop before the great predators made themselves extinct.

The killing stopped, but not before whole families died, unmourned.

©Jane Jago

Imagine waking up one day unable to recall who you are or where you came from – only to find you are serving a sentence as a convict conscript for crimes you have no memory of ever committing…

The individual who had been observing the interview from behind the holofacade stalked across the room towards him and through the non-existent wall. Under any other circumstances, Vane would have appreciated the sight. This woman was certainly worth looking at – a heart-shaped face, perfect skin, and trim physique. Added to which Vane was between relationships and had been for much of the last year, the demands of his work making it close to impossible to fit in any kind of personal life. But he had already decided from their short acquaintance that he disliked this woman. He disliked her arrogant attitude and he disliked the agency she worked for. Anger raised the colour in her face and set a blue flame in her eyes, she held her slender body taut, breasts thrust out towards him like weapons of war.
“What the hell happened there? What do you think you are playing at, Commodore?”
The question was snarled at him, her lack of professionalism appalling.
“I’m not playing at anything. This is a very serious issue I am required to bring under my consideration, not any kind of game – uh -” her security badge was unhelpful: ‘C. Tyran, CSF’, so he used the polite form of address: “ – Var Tyran.”
The woman smouldered in front of him, shoulders squared up as if in a fighting stance, whilst the sheer, clinging, fabric of her outfit left little of her feminine outline to the imagination. Vane found it hard to focus for a moment, and to his irritation that allowed her to seize the initiative.
“I thought I made it clear to you before the interview, Commodore. The process needed nothing more than pure formality on your part – just ask the questions and grant the discharge. In fact,” and here she paused to stab in the air towards him with an accusing finger, “you, agreed. Now we have questions raised and if this runs as far as the CRD it could take forever to get the process completed – if indeed it ever is.”
Vane felt his jaw tightening again. Something about this woman seemed to have an extra cut through on his emotions.
“I am not,” he said, “prepared to put my name to any discharge. I know what kind of man Revid is and in my professional judgement, it would be a huge mistake to allow him to exist anywhere other than my Legion. The facts show he is utterly unsuited to civilian life.”
“The facts?” The woman sounded dismissive “I’ll give you the facts Commodore, they are very simple. It is in the interests of the Coalition Security Force for this man to be discharged into the community. And that means it is in the best interests of all who are responsible for the security of Central to comply with whatever is required to facilitate the process. Knowing that you don’t need any other facts – only obedience to orders and duty. And I am ordering you to cancel any further inquiry, declare yourself satisfied, and recommend the discharge.”
Vane bit back the retort he wanted to make, furious at himself for letting her get to him. He forced calm into his voice – calm and command.
“You have no authority to give me orders.”
Her mouth opened to reply and, for a moment, he thought she might argue against the inarguable. Instead, she looked abruptly away from him, allowing her hair to swing forward and hide her expression from view. One hand moved to brush the hair aside, exposing her face in profile, like a cameo, each feature highlighted in perfect proportion. When she looked back at him, her expression had changed utterly, as if he were facing a different person. For a moment the shadow of something cold, hard and calculating seemed to linger, then it was gone, softened into a small rueful smile. She inclined her head apologetically.
“You are, of course, quite right Commodore. I don’t have that authority and I regret implying that I do. Please accept my apology. I fully accept the ultimate decision in this matter is yours and I shall report so to my superiors.”
She looked almost forlorn as she turned away and walked across the room, leaving Vane uncertain what to do or say in the face of her capitulation. So he said nothing as she collected her things from the desk she occupied during the interview. He watched her lean over to grab something that was rolling out of reach. The fabric of the stylish suit she wore, pulling tight around her hips as she did so. For some unaccountable reason his victory, whilst just and essential in this case, was not a comfortable one. He wondered if there was some way to offer a less bruising outcome from her perspective.

From Trust A Few – book one in Haruspex, the second Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Five years before Agatha had sat in that chair and made a decision that affected the rest of her life.
“It would be to our mutual advantage,” he had said. “Your contacts, my capital. What’s not to like?”
And on paper he was right. It was just she could not dismiss that odd nagging sensation deep inside – an irrational unease. But it was indeed irrational, so she had brushed it aside and signed the deal.
Today she sat in the same chair and finished filling in the forms that would cripple her life for years to come through bankruptcy proceedings.

E.M. Swift-Hook