Novels by briceblair1980

The old workshop behind Rothwell Motors had stayed locked for six years, ever since the winter morning Frederick Rothwell's heart gave out. Juliet had the only key. It had hung on her keyring all that time, bright and unused, a weight she carried everywhere and never touched.They crossed the dark yard just before midnight, past the spot where the builder's van had waited the night before. At the side door Juliet stopped with the key raised and stood there long enough for Grayson to wonder whether she would change her mind. Then she pushed it into the lock, and the lock fought her for a long moment before it turned.Grayson found the switch by feel. One after another, the old strip lights stuttered on along the beams.The workshop smelled of cold oil and dust. Tools still hung on their painted outlines along the walls, every spanner in its place, as if their owner had only stepped out for lunch. In the middle of the floor, a car-shaped hump lay under grey dust sheets. Juliet pulled ba

The Governor answered the loss of his men on Friday afternoon.Cressida Rothwell was driving home from her club with the radio low and her mind on the seating plan for Sunday lunch when her Sable died in the middle of the level crossing on Coldbrook Lane. There was no warning and no shudder. The engine simply stopped, the dashboard went dark, and the car rolled to a halt with its front wheels between the rails.The locks dropped with a heavy thud. She pulled the handle, then pulled it again, harder. Nothing happened. Somewhere ahead a bell began to clang, and the red lights on the crossing started to flash. The barriers came down on both sides of her, slow and deliberate, sealing her in.Then the dark screen on her dashboard lit up with four words."Call your car-washer, Cressida."She didn't have his number. In four years she had never once needed it. With shaking hands she called her daughter instead, and when Juliet answered, Cressida was already screaming.***Juliet's call reache

Juliet looked at the photograph for a long time. On Yannis's cracked screen, she sat halfway down her own dinner table in her green dress, glaring at someone out of frame. Somebody she had known her whole life had held a phone under the tablecloth that night and sent her face to the men who would put a knife to her ribs."Hayden or Camille," she said."Or neither." Grayson took the phone back. "A photograph tells me where the camera was. It doesn't tell me whose hand was holding it. I won't accuse anyone over the angle of a picture.""Then we make them show us." She said it so calmly that it took him a moment to understand. "We give each of them a different place to find me, and we watch where the men go."He didn't like it, and he told her so. She listened to every word, then told him she would do it with or without him. In the end they agreed on one condition. On Thursday night, Juliet would be at home behind a locked door with one of Renata's men outside it, nowhere near either of

Camille arrived at Rothwell Motors at nine on Tuesday morning because Juliet had sent her a two-word text. Come early.She found the first Sable Solace parked in the front window, deep blue under the spotlights, and Juliet standing beside it with a bucket of warm soapy water and a toothbrush still in its packet. The sales staff had already drifted toward the window, and most of them had their phones out."You made a promise on this floor," Juliet said, pleasantly and loud enough to carry. "If Sable renewed us, you'd wash the car in the front window with a toothbrush. Sable renewed us." She tore the packet open and held out the brush. "This is our display car, the first Solace in the country, so do be gentle with the paint."Camille glanced round the showroom for someone to rescue her. Nobody moved. "Jules, it was a joke.""So was the prison car-washer." Juliet held the toothbrush out a little further.Grayson stood by the service door with a mop he wasn't using. He hadn't slept. Yanni

Juliet set the toolbox on the bonnet of her mother's Sable, with the lid open and the little star facing the door, and waited.She didn't fetch a coat, and she didn't go back for the torch she had come out for. The kitchen could stay dark. She stood in the cold garage with her arms folded, listening to the house settle around her, and turned every year of her marriage over in her mind until none of it sat the way it had that morning.Just after midnight, the side door opened and Grayson came in out of the rain. He saw the toolbox first. Then he saw her, and he went very still, like a man who had reached for a step he'd climbed a thousand times and found nothing there.She didn't ask whether it was true. Somewhere in the last hour she had stopped needing to."Every Sable engine has that star cast into it," she said. "My father spent years trying to find out why. So tell me why every Sable engine carries a drawing from your toolbox."He closed the door behind him. For a moment she thoug

At 8:42 on Monday morning, twelve Sables stopped at the same moment in twelve different streets across Larkhaven.One died in the middle lane of the Harbour Bridge, and the traffic behind it backed up for a mile in the rain. One stopped halfway through the river tunnel, its hazard lights pulsing against the tiles while horns echoed off the walls. One stopped at the gates of a primary school with a father at the wheel and two children in the back seat, still in their school jumpers. In all twelve cars the engines cut out, and the locks dropped with a single heavy thud. The windows wouldn't move. The doors wouldn't open from inside or out.For eleven minutes, nobody inside could get out. Outside the school, teachers pressed their palms to the glass while the little girl in the back screamed for her mother and her brother tried to kick the window out. On the bridge, a fire crew had just reached the stalled car with cutting gear when, at 8:53, all twelve cars released themselves. The lock