First Chapter Unleashed
Seeing as I missed last week's creative writing class because I was seeing comedian Sarah Millican (seeing her stand-up show, not actually seeing her in the relationship sense, you understand…) there won't be a week #16 write up. How will you cope? Perfectly well, is probably the answer.
In its place I thought I'd be brave and post the entirety of chapter 1 of my work in progress, the project I am working on for the writing course. To be honest I only have a sketchy idea of where it's going. I have a synopsis for it, but I know that if I think hard enough about it I'll find a million plot holes and problems, so for the meantime I am not going to look too closely at the synopsis side of things.
The whole thing is subject to a ruthless edit at any point, but this is the first chapter as I envisage it right now. To give an overview, the novel is intended as a noir crime thriller, set in modern day London following the exploits of a police investigation into drug trafficking that gets embroiled in all kinds of double-dealing and shady exploits. I notice that the formatting is kind of lost in translation between Word and WordPress, but you'll get the idea.
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Chapter One
It was the fourth time that day Mitchell had seen the BMW X5 with the blacked-out windows. This time it was gliding past him on the eighth floor of the car park as he walked to his car. Mitchell could feel unknown eyes following him from its interior, even if he couldn't see them. He slowed his pace. He was almost at his car, but he'd shortened his step so much he'd almost stopped. This level was all but empty, cold dead concrete and harsh right-angles. The X5 moved on ahead, rolling at funereal pace until its brake lights lit red and came to a halt.
Mitchell stopped and stared. The passenger door opened. A large man wearing jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt stepped out. His hood was pulled up, shrouding his face as he turned toward him. Mitchell could feel his heart pounding, the adrenaline rush taking hold.
The man was now looking straight at Mitchell, as if to make doubly sure he had the right person. He raised his right hand, levelling the solid black outline of a machine pistol, and pulled the trigger just as Mitchell dived. The burst was wild and scattered, the rounds ricocheting off the concrete ceiling and pinging off the thick posts between car spaces. Mitchell dropped behind one of the pillars, his breathing ragged and harsh. His hand went to the waistband of his jeans and he pulled out his Glock 17, yanking the slide back, the hard dimpled rubber of the grip fitting neatly into his palm. He took a quick glance round the pillar and was met by another burst from the machine pistol, again wild and hastily fired, although a couple of rounds careened off the side of the post, sending chips of concrete across the empty parking bays. The abrupt, flat barking sound of the gun was amplified by the hard walls and floors of the car park, crashing back and forth around him, before dying on the wind, receding to nothingness.
Mitchell took a deep breath and snapped off a couple of rounds at the man before returning to the safety of the pillar. He'd tried to aim, using the split-second the brain allows between finding the target and firing, but there was no way to know the result without risking another look. He glanced around the post again, weapon raised, but saw the man lying on his back, the machine pistol dropped at his side. The BMW began to pull away but the driver stalled in his haste, the vehicle lurching to a sudden stop. Mitchell sprinted to the open passenger door, gun levelled at the driver, finger on the trigger. His initial sense of shock and terror had passed now, expelled along with the fatal shots he'd fired at his attacker. The familiar feeling of rage and power surged through him, owning him and dictating his actions.
The driver looked across at Mitchell, hands raised in surrender, eyes wide and fixed on the Glock. On the passenger seat was a small semi-automatic pistol, a cheap eastern European model by the looks of it. The driver didn't look like he was about to make a move for it, he was more concerned with staying alive.
Both men glanced down at the weapon and when their eyes met for the second time Mitchell fired twice. The rounds struck the chest, flinging the man against the driver's door, a fine mist of blood coating the leather interior and window glass. He slumped against the door, head lolling forward, mouth open. Pulling the cuff of his jacket over his left hand, Mitchell picked up the pistol and pushed it into the dead man's hand, careful not to leave any prints as he did so. Mitchell's ears were ringing. Every molecule of his body felt alive, as if something inside him was trying to break loose. Like a massive electric shock, but one that made him feel stronger.
Mitchell made a swift assessment. Both of the men looked Mediterranean – Turkish, or Greek perhaps, around their late thirties. He looked down at the attacker with the machine pistol. The rounds had found the chest area, so perfectly squared that Mitchell was glad the man wasn't wearing a bullet proof vest. He should have been. A pool of blood had gathered beneath him, a deep dark red against the bubblegum grey of the concrete floor. His weapon was a Tec-9, and judging by the bursts fired at him, it must have been converted to fire in full automatic mode. A poor choice, Mitchell thought. Cheap, inaccurate and prone to jamming, but with plenty of gangster appeal.
As he stared at the body, taking in the whole surreal scene, he became aware he wasn't alone. At the other end of the parking level was the door from the staircase he'd used himself only moments before. Standing in the doorway was a man, shopping bags in hand, staring open-mouthed at Mitchell. They locked eyes across the cold, empty space. Then the man fled, dropping his bags and heading fast up the ramp to the next level.
Mitchell bolted after him, gun in hand. The next floor was almost empty too, just a few cars dotted in isolated spaces. The man was running hard, fleeing in sheer panic. As Mitchell chased he could see the man was fishing in his coat pocket for something. Ahead of them, the lights of a Ford Mondeo flashed. The man had pulled his keys from his jacket and was hoping to get to the car and make an exit before Mitchell caught up with him. He was older than Mitchell, probably mid-fifties, and didn't look a man accustomed to sudden bursts of sprinting. He managed to get the driver's door open but couldn't get behind the wheel before Mitchell piled into him, pushing him against the side of the car, the door slamming shut.
Mitchell hauled him to the floor and put a knee on his chest, gun in his face. The man put up no resistance, ready to accept his fate, whatever it turned out to be. He was clearly terrified, but not in the same way the driver of the BMW had been. This man had no idea what he had walked into, unlike the two lying dead on the level below them.
"What were you doing back there?" Mitchell demanded, the gun pressed into the man's forehead, pulling the skin taut around his temple.
"I was coming back to my car. I heard shots I – I opened the door and saw you and the dead man, then more shots," the man gasped, swallowing hard.
Mitchell was silent, the gun still held on the man. He had hold of his jumper, balled up into his left fist as he held him down. He could feel the man shaking beneath him.
"Those men attacked me," Mitchell said, not sure why he was offering an explanation. The man just nodded and gulped.
"Just don't don't hurt me."
Mitchell slotted the Glock back into the waistband at the small of his back and pulled the man upright, pushing him against the side of the car. The man had brown hair, shot through with grey, combed into a rough left-to-right side parting. He was wearing sensible black trousers and beneath his waterproof Gor-Tex jacket was a navy blue sweatshirt which held back a moderate sized paunch. He was soft and rounded, the edges smoothed by a loving family and a comfortable suburban life. This was someone unfamiliar with acts of extreme violence. He reached into the man's jacket and retrieved his wallet, flipped it open and pulled out his driving licence. Mitchell memorised the details and shoved it back into the man's pocket.
"This is what you're going to do, Brian Whitaker, you're going to drive away. This never happened. The police will call you soon, they'll have you on CCTV leaving the car park minutes after the shooting. You'll be the prime suspect. Just tell them you took the stairs to this floor. As you drove away you heard what might have been a car backfiring, but you weren't sure. Got it?"
The man nodded.
"Stick to that story. If you deviate, or tell anyone else, anyone at all, about this or me, I'll come after you and your family, and you'll wish I'd put a bullet in your head right now."
The two of them stared at each other, faces centimetres apart, both breathing hard. Mitchell let go of him and stepped back, an unmistakable signal that the conversation was over, that Brian Whitaker's life had been spared. He watched the man's clumsy fumbling at the door handle followed by the multiple attempts to slot the key into the ignition. The Ford lurched forward, sped down the centre of the car park and down the ramp, wheels squealing as he disappeared out of view.
Mitchell ran back to the BMW and the bodies, stopping on the way to pick up the carrier bags the man had dropped in his haste to escape. As he opened the boot of his Audi saloon and threw them inside he pulled his mobile phone from his jacket and made a call.
"This is D.I Tim Mitchell. Get me DSI Winters."
There was a pause, just a second or two, but it stretched into eternity for Mitchell.
"Tim?"
"Someone just tried to take me out."
"What? Who?"
"Don't know. Don't recognise them."
"Are you OK?"
"Yeah, fine. But we'll need body bags for these two." He heard Winters take a deep breath, could almost feel the air being sucked in from the other side of London.
"Stay put. I'll be in touch."
The call ended.
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Wow – you made it to the end of the post? I thought a 1k+ word post would be too much for most people to complete, but maybe I was wrong. Of course, you may have just skipped to the end, but I prefer to think you read all the way to here. 
