Tim Heath Thriller Boxset
Tim Heath Thriller Boxset
4 Full-Length, Stand-Alone Thrillers
Tim Heath
Happy Content publishing
Copyright © 2018 by Tim Heath
All rights reserved.
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 written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
The Tablet
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Want A Sequel?
Cherry Picking
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
The Last Prophet
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
The Shadow Man
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
The Hunt Series
The Penn Friends Series
A Boy Lost Series
The Importance of a Review
Acknowledgments
Mailing List
The Novels by Tim Heath
The Boxsets––Tim Heath
The Boxsets––T H Paul
About the Author
The Tablet
The #1 Best Seller
For Mia & Anya – my precious daughters
1
It was one of those overcast days that St Petersburg seemed to live under at that time of year. The leaves were already falling from the century-old trees that graced the Summer Gardens, the last of the boats were seen passing on the Neva just fifty metres away. Those ships would soon stop for the ice would come. Now, in the grounds of the park, there were just a few patches of snow, piled up on the edges of the path. There would be more. It was only mid-November after all. The real snow fell in December and stayed until April. The temperature was dropping by the day, already around zero. It would cut to around minus twenty, give or take before winter was through.
People walked quickly through the gardens on this day––most using the park as a shortcut, saving a few minutes’ walk on their long commute across this vast, urban jungle. The tourist season was long past, the summer months when cruise ships brought tens of thousands of people to the impressive city that Peter the Great once imagined then made a reality. Still, on this chilly day, there were a few people in less of a rush. Most were walking, usually in pairs, but few were stopping. Not on a day like this. Apart from one man.
Sitting on a bench in the centre of the park, next to a large fountain, sat a man in his fifties. What struck those passing by was that he should be there in the first place. It was apparent he didn’t fit. He wasn’t dressed for the part––and Russians knew how to dress in colder weather. That marked him out as being a foreigner straight away. He was smartly covered, however, so that he couldn’t be one of the thousands of homeless people in the city. Usually, these people stayed further away from the centre. They were not welcome in these main, central attractions. No one stopped to speak to the stranger. That was just not the done thing. Russians still had this inbuilt fear of anyone unknown––a deep-rooted suspicion going back to the days of communism, where even your closest colleague couldn’t be trusted. Still, that legacy continued.
The man on the bench sat working away on a device, a tablet that he had resting on his legs as he typed. He wasn’t a speedy typist. Several people gave him a glancing look, but no one stopped. It was not that kind of day. Traffic on the surrounding roads was as busy as ever. If there were road laws, you wouldn’t have known it, looking at the way people were driving. Days were drawing in, light fading. It was as if this made everyone hurry even more. Wedding parties came and went, and as it was a Friday, this was the big day for yet another twenty or so couples in the city. Russians loved to have wedding photos taken at various city spots, and the reopened Summer Gardens were undoubtedly on that list. One party had already been and gone, as another was just arriving at the park’s north entrance where the gates opened onto the busy road; beyond that was the swelling river Neva which dominated the city. The bride got out of the car, standing with the other women in the party and they all posed for the photographer in the way that comes instinctively to Russian women.
Coming through the same gate walked a man, and he was holding something inside his jacket so that one hand was not visible. The wedding group parted, instantly wary of the stranger, as he hid behind the first large tree, before making his way along the side fence. People stood and watched. His arm came free of his jacket, and a gun was visible. The wedding party
started getting back in the cars, and a few photos snapped as the man continued along the tree line. He crouched low for a moment, before crossing another path, frightening two passers-by as he jumped behind a giant statue. People froze, but instinct got them moving away from the man. Still, they kept a watchful eye on him.
He moved in towards the centre of the park, closer to the fountain and the bench where the smartly dressed man sat working on his tablet, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. All around the Summer Gardens there stood stone statues, carved heads of various famous people. These acted as partial shields as the man with the gun weaved in and out, now within just ten metres of his victim. Still, no one in the park shouted, no one called out, but the eyes of all were firmly fixed on this scene happening before them.
The man with the gun approached the bench from behind before coming around to stand in front of it, only now making the man working on the tablet stop and look up. Still, he remained seated, looking into the eyes of the man standing just metres in front of him, the gun in his left hand now raised, no emotion showing on either man's face. The gun fired. Two shots in quick succession hit the victim square in the forehead. His body fell back over the bench, his head thrown back by the impact. A clean kill.
Those who had been standing to watch were startled by the sound of the gunfire and now started to run for cover. Even the photographer, the wedding party long gone, turned and ran, having been snapping away right until just before the gun fired.
In the middle of the park, the previously slow actions of the man holding the weapon now changed. He went over to the blood-soaked body on the bench, reaching forward to touch the victim’s head, but it was clear he was dead. There was blood everywhere. The attacker now turned and ran from there, the weapon still in his hand, but when he got to the side of the park where there was a canal, he threw the gun into the water and kept running. Once outside the park and into the regular city traffic, he quickly lost himself in the crowds, moving through streets and alleys, getting as far away from the park as possible, struggling to think through his next move.
It was just thirty minutes since the call was received about a shooting in the Summer Gardens, and the police had shut down the whole park and detained everyone there. They were looking for clues. An ambulance came and prepared the body for transportation, his possessions still with him, including his wallet, cards, phone and the tablet. They’d quickly ruled out a robbery.
Looking at the victim’s passport, it was clear he was a British citizen, which would complicate things a lot more––relations were not at their best in the current climate. The FSB was called, the Russian secret service, due to the international nature of the crime.
Anya Lubova, an agent with the FSB for four years already, was on the scene before five. It was already dark now in the city, and some temporary lights were put up, the body taken away before she got there, which was far from ideal. She showed her badge as she entered the park, her ID routinely checked, but they all knew who she was. No one forgot a pretty face like hers. Anya was formerly based in London and had good connections there, helped in no small part by her English father, though it was her Russian mother who had mainly brought her up.
“Tell me,” Anya said, walking over to the main officer in charge, a balding Russian chunk of a man named Dmitri. “What do you know?”
“Victim appears to be British, an Anthony Fernandes, aged fifty-three. He was sitting on this bench, when another man walked up to him from behind, before coming and standing in front of him, then he raised the gun and fired two shots. He apparently checked the victim quickly, before running that way,” he said while pointing along a path. “Witnesses say he threw the weapon in the canal. We’ve got a team looking for it now.”
“Where are the witnesses?” Anya said
“They are all over here, let me show you. There were quite a few people here, and the attacker didn’t seem to make much effort at not being seen. It’s as if he didn’t care.” He led Anya to a group of people, all of whom wanted to be somewhere else, all frustrated at being detained in this way.
“Any idea of the motive?” Anya said, just before Dmitri was about to walk away.
“No idea, though it wasn’t a robbery. Everything is still on the victim, and even his tablet was on his lap as we found him. We took lots of photos before the body was taken away. We’ll get these passed to your office.”
She didn’t respond to that, and the officer walked away, leaving Anya with the crowd of about twenty people. She quickly worked through the group, getting details of what they saw, rating them as witnesses in her head, should she need to contact anyone in the future. Getting to the photographer, he said he had some shots of the incident, and he ran through the photos for her on his device. There were some of the man as he first entered the park, and finally, there was one of him standing in front of the victim, arm raised with a gun in hand, just before he shot him.
“These are excellent,” Anya said, a smile on her face at the rare piece of clarity she had in an investigation. “Print these out in a large format and bring them to me here,” she concluded, giving him her business card. Everyone in the city knew where ‘Big House’ was, the ten-storey headquarters of the FSB in St Petersburg. It was rumoured to go as far underground as it did above, and in the height of the Cold War it was a listening station for the nearby British and American consulates––and maybe it still was.
Anya dismissed the crowd, and they were all eager to go their separate ways. Crime in Russia was nothing new, but none of them had ever seen something of this nature first-hand before. She’d promised to call them if she needed anything more, but with the photos and the victim’s ID known, she already had enough to go on.
She had paced around the park, recalling the attacker’s route, as described by the witnesses, ending at the crime scene. She’d been standing there for five minutes, studying it all, thinking through what she’d been told, when Dmitri came back over with a confidence in his step.
“We’ve found the weapon,” he said smugly. It was long thought that real policing was only done by the FSB, who had far higher power than the corruption-plagued police force did, so anything that challenged this image was a good thing for an old timer like Dmitri, who had been relatively clean. He passed her a sealed bag, a firearm inside it.
“This is very good, Dmitri,” she said to him. She’d seen the importance of decent policing from her time in London and knew her job got a lot easier if those that were on the ground were competent. While the crime scene had been ransacked before she’d even got there, she did now have the victim’s ID, a photo of the attacker and the murder weapon. Christmas had come early.
“I’ll let you know if I need anything more, officer,” she said, dismissing him for the time being. With everything as it was she already had a considerable head start on this one. The race was on. The attacker had fled but was maybe only about two hours ahead of her. Out there, somewhere, he was hiding. It was her job to find him. And that was where she put her brain to good use.
“Get a notice to the airports and port,” Anya called to her base. She would wait there for another twenty minutes but soon realised there was enough for her to go on to get the manhunt started.
The captain of the British Airways flight came on the loudspeaker to announce they were making their final descent to London. The noise was enough to wake the man who had been sleeping since take-off. No one was sitting next to him, and he’d actually had the entire row in business class just to himself.
He awoke dazed, as if from a nightmare. He looked around, assessing his situation. He was on a plane, that was clear. No one was around him to ask, but the captain came on again and gave the local time and ground temperature for London. So at least he knew where he was about to land.
He grabbed his bag, which was sitting on the seat next to him, his passport and documents all there. He picked up his passport. It fell open to the visa page for Russia, its fresh stamp showing
his exit that day. He couldn’t read the name on the visa but flicked through the passport until the ID page––it wasn’t his passport. Mild panic ran through him like a low current. The photo was him. The hair was different, but it was him for sure.