Traces of Tracy

Attn: [Somebody. Anybody]:

Buckle up and get ready for the most dangerous ride of your life as a lethal pair of Romeos are turned mortal enemies when a secret wedding goes wrong, ensuing murder, heartbreak, and an explosive thread of chaos lasting fifteen years throughout the quiet county of Oxfordshire!

You’ve never read any like this! TRACES OF TRACY is a suspense thriller with heavy strokes of contemporary romance and a delicious dabbing of erotica. 350,000 words long, this EPIC NOVEL dives into the partnership and rivalry between a priest and a detective, both nurturing a broken marriage and an insatiable lust for blood.

Bartholomew slammed the laptop shut.

Silence weighed heavily in the dusty apartment. The stink of abandonment and rotted upholstery paid compliments to the sallow man’s nausea. Dust mites tickled his dry throat and creased the jaundiced folds of his forehead. Flies buzzed around the kitchen sink. A dead man sat in the armchair by the mantlepiece.

At least, Bartholomew thought he was dead.

Yesterday’s outburst should have seen to that, but the corpse would occasionally twitch, expressing a sardonic wink or a sigh. Even the flies were sceptical. They wouldn’t go near the body. The longer Bartholomew stared into his glazed eyes, the more convinced he’d become that, somewhere deep down, the landlord was still alive.

Rent’s overdue, Mr. Bartholomew. Where’s my money?

Sickly sunlight fondled the dirty windows, illustrating the room in a pale monotone teal. Mould decorated the walls like scabs on a wound where the paint had peeled away. Bartholomew promptly re-opened his laptop and continued reviewing the book manuscript. His life’s work. “You’ll get your rent when I get published, Regi.”

When?

“Soon. Very soon. I just need to get that damned query letter finished. Once they see my work, they’ll fall head over heels! I’ll show them a sample, and they’ll be begging for the whole thing! Oh yes, they will. Yes, they will! I just need to get this damned letter right.”

Bartholomew opened the file and gazed at the dreaded document summarising his beloved book into one page. The book he’d spent the past thirty years perfecting. It was nothing short of agony.

“This is impossible! How can a father sell his beloved child?” he asked his dead landlord. “Can you even fathom what this means to me? Three long decades I’ve been working on this story. That’s not even the worst part.” Bartholomew leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Can you keep a secret? You can’t repeat this to anyone.”

Go on.

“It’s not even done. I have one chapter left to write and I can’t bring myself to finish it. It’s almost as if I’m afraid to finish it.” A fly wandered absently beneath Bartholomew’s desk and began perusing a fine gallery of gnarled toenails. The dead man grunted.

“Don’t laugh at me, you sick bastard!” Bartholomew let out a long, mournful groan and rubbed feverishly at his eyes. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s impossible to write a book whilst holding down a normal job. Impossible! A man’s masterpiece needs his full attention. It’s been fifteen years now since I quit working at the local church, but the situation never improved. As it turns out, living without money as actually quite hard. Again, you wouldn’t understand.”

You’ll have plenty of time to write in prison.

Bartholomew laughed. “Oh, that’s a good one! Go ahead. Call the police. I’ll be long gone by the time they arrive. Nothing will get between me and my book! I’ve sacrificed everything. I’ve abandoned everyone. My family and friends are all gone. Even the dog! I could barely afford to feed myself, let alone that greedy chihuahua. Little John starved to death, and for what? Other distractions piled up none the less. God never failed to provide new tribulations for me to endure while I carried out this burden, but the end is in sight. My ticket to Heaven is almost printed in full. All the suffering will have been worth it! Yes, Little John won’t have died for nothing. The world will know my name. I’ll be a rich man, I tell you. A filthy rich man! I’ll afford to pay off my debts. I’ll even afford to pay the rent. Ha!”

You’ll never afford to pay for your sins, Mr. Bartholomew.

A sharp knock shuddered the front door. The dull yawn of a police siren resounded from the distance. Bartholomew tensed. Who could that be? Holding his breath, he stared wide-eyed at the doorway. The distant siren grew louder.

“Hello!” A man’s voice called from beyond the door. “Hello! Is anybody in there?” Again, three sharp knocks stilled Bartholomew’s heart.

“Hello! Hello! Anybody home?”

Right outside the apartment, the siren blared, loud and piercing, but it passed by in a brief flash. The noise faded. The knocking stopped.

Bartholomew waited another minute in silence before releasing his breath. “Oh God, I think they’re onto me,” he confided in the dead landlord. “I don’t have the money to move again, Regi. Not really. My luck has finally depleted. If they’ve found me, it’s over.”

Good. You deserve to burn in Hell for all you’ve done.

“Stop judging me. Yes, I’ve done evil things to survive, but they were necessary evils! It’s all been for the sake a greater cause. My novel is bound to change the world. Really, the things I did weren’t so bad. So what, I robbed a few liquor stores and stole a few purses? Maybe a few people died along the way, but it’s their own bloody fault.”

It’s my fault that you killed me, is it?

“You’re a landlord. You had it coming, anyway. If anyone’s knocking on the Gates of Hell, it’s you.” Bartholomew huffed and buried his gaze once more in the extensive paragraphs of his debut novel. How many times had he read through each line? Every word, every syllable had to be perfect. His yellowing fingernails scraped furiously over the dirty keyboard as he switched words and letters around, persistently rearranging every character, every note, so the symphony sounded fresh in his mind and looked pleasing to the eye.

He lost himself once more in the rhythm of his narrative prose. The noise of Oxford’s busy traffic outside the window quietened down. The tick of Bartholomew’s weakening heart slowed like a lethargic stopwatch, growing tired as the seconds reached closer to zero.

How does it end for the protagonist? Does Tracy Baskerville deserve a good ending, or a bad one? Such an evil man surely has a special seat reserved in Hell, right next to the devil. Then again, God was never a saint either.

Perhaps Heaven and Hell wouldn’t be so different.

Aren’t you forgetting something, Mr. Baskerville?

Bartholomew blinked and peered closely at the corpse. Daylight waned as clouds passed across the sun and the pale teal staining the apartment’s dusty floorboards aged to a brittle grey. The flies in the kitchen stopped buzzing.

“Excuse me?” The dead man’s judgemental glare twisted Bartholomew’s guts.

Your priesthood. You’ve forsaken your religion.

In silence, they stared each other down. Bartholomew’s eyes began to sting. His landlord’s spiteful gaze was far too cold and unnerving to hold. The dead man knew something. “What are you talking about?”

The wedding, Mr. Baskerville.

“Stop calling me that!” Bartholomew shifted uncomfortably and stretched his clerical collar with a withered finger. “Listen, it wasn’t my fault. That wedding was supposed to be a secret. All the attendees swore an oath of secrecy, yet word got out anyway. Nobody was supposed to know!”

Bartholomew glanced nervously at the door again. He could feel somebody’s presence behind it. “You don’t know what it’s like, falling in love with a man when you’re in the brotherhood. Least of all when you’re already a fugitive, and your fiancé is a goddamn DCI with the Thames Valley Police! We were a pair of star-crossed lovers. Two Romeos. Our tale was one of forbidden love.”

None the less, you accused him of betrayal.

“I know! It’s blatant paranoia, but paranoia is the only reason I’ve survived this long. It’s also the reason I’d stashed an M60 machine gun under the altar. I know now that Jason wasn’t involved in the plot to arrest me. I’ve forgiven him, but he’ll never forgive me. Fifteen years, he’s been out for revenge for my assumptions.”

Along with the violent death of his family.

“That’s hardly relevant,” Bartholomew retorted. “Jason never cared about—”

He stopped. A familiar look in the dead man’s gaze had snatched his breath. An evil glimmer bleeding white death. Sitting completely still, Bartholomew watched the crust of inertia peel away from his landlord’s corpse. A grin cracked his cheeks, and his glassy fingers snapped out of shape, itching. Itching insatiably. His neck twitched and slithered from its waxy mould. Those pale, pale irises glared at Bartholomew with teal triumph.

The dead man straightened up.

Surprised, Tracy?

Bartholomew blinked and rubbed his eyes, but the horrifying vision remained. Before him sat his nemesis. His lover. “Jason Singer,” Bartholomew whispered, breathless. “I should have known.”

A harsh knock pounded on the door.

“Hello! Hello! This is the police! Open up! We know someone’s in there!”

Bartholomew’s cantering heart broke into a gallop. He closed the laptop and held it close to his chest as he scuttled across the room and took position behind the armchair. From the upholstery, he pulled a handgun and held it to the corpse’s head. “I have a hostage!” Bartholomew shouted at the door. “Don’t come in here!”

There’s nothing you can do.

“How did they find me?”

Footprints made with bloody soles aren’t so hard to follow.

“You called them, didn’t you?”

The door pounded again. “Last warning, sir! Please, open the door.”

“I have a gun to your informant, you filthy pigs!” Bartholomew lost his patience. He pointed his pistol at the door and let off five shots. Wood fragments and sawdust fogged the air. Shouts of panic ensued from the hallway. Bartholomew gripped the laptop tight with sweaty fingers.

You’re a dead man.

“I know that, Jason.” Bartholomew gazed upon his lover. Moisture glazed his eyes. “I know now that this is how our story ends. We’ll die together! Nothing could be more romantic. Our souls will live on in Heaven or Hell. It doesn’t matter which. After all these years, I never stopped loving you, Jason. Even now, when you’ve finally caught up to me, but that’s precisely how it was meant to be. It was meant to be, Jason. It was meant to be!”

Bartholomew threw his gun away and started ferociously kissing the corpse in the armchair. With a loud crack, the police kicked down the door and opened fire on Bartholomew. Under a hail of bullets, his story was written to completion.

Police officers rushed inside and cleared the apartment. Their noses crinkled at the stink. Inspector John inspected the bodies. Constable Barclay blanched. “Oh no. Did we kill the hostage?”

“No.” The Inspector peered closely at the landlord’s bloodless face. “That man’s been dead at least 24 hours.”

“He was already dead? But I swear I heard him talking to the guy.”

Inspector John shook his head and sighed heavily. “He must’ve been a paranoid schizophrenic, or something. He pulled a gun on us, for Christ’s sake. We were only here for a complain about a leak. The idiot must’ve left the bathroom tap on.”

“Who do you think the dead guy is?”

“God knows.”

The officers arranged forensics for the crime scene and made plans to query the neighbours. Perhaps someone could identify the day-old corpse. Inspector John spied the laptop still cradled close to Bartholomew’s chest. The Constable approached. “Maybe we could search his laptop for clues.”

“Try taking a closer look, Barclay. I doubt we’ll find anything useful on there.”

“Why?” Constable Barclay leaned forward. “Oh, right.”

The hard drive was riddled with bullets.