Summary

Ex-Firearms specialist Paul Storey takes a job looking for two missing guitars belonging to a pop group who were big fifteen years ago. In a world of amateurs, he’s a professional.

So how hard could it be?

But soon there’s a murder, and a connection to large-scale drug smuggling, and to a pair of Albanian crooks who are looking to expand their operations and don’t care how they do it.

In addition he finds himself drawn to the beautiful singer Geneva Chance, who has secrets of her own.

What seemed a straight-forward detective story becomes both complicated and dangerous..

Extract

+++The man nodded at Storey and smiled, showing one gold tooth. Storey thought he was probably in his mid-thirties, though his eyes were hooded and had the jaded look of someone who’d seen everything there was to see.

+++‘Can I help you?’ the man said. ‘Are you looking to buy or to sell?’ He spoke with an accent Storey couldn’t place. Something East European, he thought, not as heavy as Russian, not as obvious as German or Scandinavian.

+++He said, ‘Who’s Odeta?’

+++The man’s expression didn’t change except a sharpness came into his eyes.

+++‘You see my tee-shirt and you want to know who owns me? Nobody owns me. Is not my idea.’

+++Definitely Eastern European, Czech or Yugoslav, somewhere around there.

+++‘I was thinking of the name of the shop. I don’t mind who owns you.’ Smiling back at the man, telling him he’s not serious.

+++The man standing up straight now, showing he had a good six inches on Storey. The smile had gone.

+++‘So, you want buy something? What you looking for? Laptop computer? Watch? We have lots of things, you can go look.’