Now read an exclusive opening excerpt from Noho, a full length Nick Valentine novel by James Davis, available in paperback and on Kindle now:
Prologue
Nick woke with a jolt, instinctively throwing himself to the floor, his reactions running a split-second ahead of his sleep-dulled mind as he clawed his way across the carpet towards the window. He lay still on the floor for a few seconds, listening, trying to hear over the racing of his own heart and calm the tremor in his hands. Another nightmare?
In his dreams he’d been back there, the front, in the mud and filth with the rounds popping round and the stench of the bodies rotting in the wire, but there was something else. Something had snapped him back to the present, to now. What?
He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm his hammering heart, trying to still the shaking adrenalin rush surging round his body. Gingerly he rolled over, he could feel dampness on his leg, for a moment he had the absurd thought that he’d been shot. He shook his head, how would he be hit, up here in his flat, above the quiet London street? Old habits died hard. He looked down at his leg. A bottle of Scotch lay rocking on its side next to a shattered crystal tumbler, the dark stain in the carpet seeping into the leg of his trousers.
Nick sat up, ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing back the fringe from his eyes, feeling the shaking subside, already replaced by the familiar nagging of fatigue and the thump of an imminent hangover. Clambering to his feet he kicked at the bottle of Scotch in annoyance, sending a spew of amber splashing over the threadbare carpet. The clock said it was just after five. He peered out of the window into the dying night. The dreams, the nightmares, he normally woke up shouting, bathed in sweat, he had a horrible feeling the sound had been real rather than phantasmal, a slightly uneasy moving of the gut, but that could be the drink. He couldn’t even remember getting home.
Outside the roads were dark and silent, the hissing gas lamps long since extinguished, the dawn not yet arrived. There was a not a soul to be seen, but the sound, had been close. A shot? He was almost sure. Familiar and close enough to register in his slumbering mind and for his body to react. One more legacy of his bitter experience. He looked down at the now empty bottle weeping its last upon the carpet, sighed and moving to the front door slipped a battered greatcoat over his athletic frame.
The stairs creaked in complaint as he negotiated their crooked tangle, stumbling against the wall as a dull rush of nausea swept over him. Shrugging it off with a deep breath he left the security of the house and moved to the middle of the empty road and listened. People said the city was never quiet, but they were wrong. In those long lonely hours from two until four there was barely ever a sound as seemingly the whole of London slumbered. An illusion in itself, as Nick knew too well; behind innocuous looking doors the jazz age was swinging towards what must surely be its last hurrah in an orgy of dance and drink. Nick’s street was quiet, but less than two streets over in any direction he knew a handful of places he could get a drink, and company, even at this hour.
He shivered, even in the heavy greatcoat the dampness of the night held a chill, and he felt another chill, the chill of a memory of first light stand to’s and imminent death, that he hurriedly pushed to the back of his mind. Just up ahead Newman Passage slipped from Rathbone Street beside a pub into a small courtyard, and as Nick gingerly approached he was already wondering why he hadn’t brought a weapon of some sort with him. He peered carefully down the claustrophobic darkness of the alley, but could see nothing beyond the empty cobbles. Stepping carefully along the passage with his back tight against the cold wall he stopped. In the shadow of a corner in the small courtyard ahead lay a bundle of rags he instinctively knew was a body.