Here’s an excerpt from the opening chapter of The Second Coming, my new novel following the adventures of hack actor and sometime detective, Billy Vehement.
‘The helicopter hung level with the cliff edge, riding against air streams and holding its thrust, resembling a rogue dragonfly confused by the sight of the sea. The thud of its rotors broke the air in a steady, heavy beat. Billy Vehement stood with his toes at the very limit of the ledge, watching the sea breaking beneath him. The water and rock shared the same iron colour and flexed texture, like a common substance in separate states. The snout of the camera loomed darkly from the rear of the helicopter and, for a second, Billy saw himself as others would see him. A pair of black-framed glasses. Black socks and ankle suspenders. A vest and a pair of oversized Y-fronts. Look on my works ye mighty and despair.
The pilot gave Billy the thumbs up from the cockpit. He was a tall, bearded, boisterous Dane. They had met the previous evening in Reykjavik, where they shared a couple of beers in the hotel bar. The pilot boasted of low sweeps across Stonehenge while blazing on hallucinogens, of giving up aid work with UNICEF to join the dark side, of filming Vietnam B-movies in the Dominican Republic. He had a tattoo of Jim Morrison on his shoulder, faded and wrinkled to resemble nothing less than a morose portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Billy pointed that detail out to him, mocking him in a way that he thought was acceptable after a few glasses of Einstok. The pilot shrugged it off, insulated in an air of cocksure arrogance. Now, Billy realised the source of his attitude. Anything could be thrown his way, because he would witness the last few moments of Billy Vehement’s life.
The rock of the ledge was oily and slick, the cliff cold and sharp against the bare skin of Billy’s shoulders. The thock of the helicopter blades resonated in his chest. He and the pilot both waited for the call. When the word came, the pilot would ease the helicopter gently away, to execute the tracking shot about which the whole circus had been organised. And Billy would act.’
Buy The Second Coming here.
Absence Club 