#ChooseThePlot Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Authors

  Title Page

  The Brief

  1 The Elimination Bureau by Christopher Fowler

  2 A Hard Offer to Refuse by James Oswald

  3 Dead Man’s Buff by Jane Casey

  4 Cut and Print by Christopher Fowler

  5 Things Fall Apart by James Oswald

  6 The Invisible Man by Jane Casey

  7 The End of an Empire by Christopher Fowler

  Copyright

  About the Book

  There is a murder.

  There is a victim.

  But are you reading to be complicit in the crime?

  Three top crime authors teamed up to tell a story, but one vital contributor was missing: you. Christopher Fowler, James Oswald and Jane Casey had the challenge of unraveling a tale of murder and vengeance, but they weren’t making all the decisions. Vital story elements and plot developments were decided by those reading the story and following the action. When they came to the cliffhangers would they make the right choice?

  #ChooseThePlot

  Ian, a three-time loser, is suddenly offered a chance to leave all his troubles behind. But is the deal too good to be true? One character won’t make it out of the first chapter alive. Who did the readers decide would live… and who would die? And how will their choices alter the destiny of the story?

  If lives were in your hands, would you make the right choice?

  About the Authors

  CHRISTOPHER FOWLER is a Londoner born (in Greenwich) and bred. For many years he jointly owned and ran one of the UK’s top film marketing companies.

  He is the author of many novels and short story collections, from the urban unease of cult fictions such as Roofworld and Spanky, to the horror-pastiche of Hell Train and the much praised, award-winning Bryant and May series of detective novels – and his two critically acclaimed autobiographies, Paperboy and Film Freak.

  He lives in King’s Cross.

  JAMES OSWALD is the author of the Detective Inspector McLean series of crime novels. Currently there are four available, Natural Causes, The Book of Souls, The Hangman’s Song and Dead Men’s Bones. He has also written an epic fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro, as well as comic scripts and short stories.

  In his spare time he runs a 350 acre livestock farm in North East Fife, where he raises pedigree Highland Cattle and New Zealand Romney Sheep.

  Visit James’s website at http://jamesoswald.co.uk/

  For JANE CASEY, crime is a family affair. Married to a criminal barrister, she has a unique insight into the brutal underbelly of urban life, from the smell of a police cell to the darkest motives of a serial killer.

  This gritty realism has made her books international bestsellers and critical successes, while D.C. Maeve Kerrigan has quickly become one of the most popular characters in crime fiction.

  Four times shortlisted for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award as well as the Mary Higgins Clark Award, Jane has also been longlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award.

  The home of killer crime books, drama and film.

  Discover the very best crime and thriller books and get tailored recommendations to help you choose what to read next.

  And it’s not just about books. Whether you’re mad for Sherlock, crazy for Poirot or bonkers for Wallander we have the latest news and features on your favourite crime dramas and films.

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  Sign up now for our free newsletter to be in with a chance of winning the latest books from Christopher Fowler, James Oswald and Jane Casey.

  www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/choosetheplot

  Join the conversation on:

  The Brief

  When Dead Good and Specsavers asked crime fans on Facebook and Twitter to decide which direction this crime thriller should take, which route would they choose? Would they kill off the main suspect in the first chapter, or would they send the detectives to meet a grizzly end before they had a chance to solve the case?

  And how would three very different crime authors react to sudden twists in the plot, chosen by votes from thousands of crime and thriller enthusiasts on social media? Would they be sending characters along the pathways they had envisaged themselves, or would they need to think fast and rescue our heroes from an unforeseen impending demise?

  To answer these questions, we approached Christopher Fowler, James Oswald and Jane Casey, hoping they would participate in the #ChooseThePlot experiment and accept the challenge of writing a crime thriller novella over four weeks, taking their cues from the public.

  How could they say no?

  Christopher explained, ‘I thought it would be great fun to play “consequences” with the online community, but had a feeling we would be dropped into the most difficult situations possible. It seems I was right… Getting out of the plot-knots created by James, Jane and the reading public was a real test of ingenuity. I hope the results have proven fun to read.’

  #ChooseThePlot was born, and we were thrilled by the response from readers. Over 4,300 interactions on social media and 1,000 votes helped choose exactly which direction the finished crime thriller should take. Each author had just one week to write the latest chapter of the novella and submit it to the crime reading community for another public vote. As the story grew, our authors also penned an ‘alternative’ version of each chapter to show what would have happened if fans had voted the other way!

  We think the results are fantastic: a finely crafted crime thriller with the plot chosen by you. Now you can read the finished story and explore the different paths that the story could have taken at the end of each chapter. If you pick the same route as those who cast their votes, you’ll get to the end and solve the mystery – but take an alternative route and things might end up very differently indeed! Will you get to the end unscathed?

  We hope you enjoy the chapters that follow. Let us know what you think, using #ChooseThePlot.

  1

  The Elimination Bureau

  Christopher Fowler

  One of the lunchtime customers at the Over Easy Diner in Glasgow’s Barrowlands was driving Ian McFarland crazy. His beer was too warm, his burger too raw, his apple pie too chilled, his coffee too weak. It wasn’t the Ritz; they sold deep-fried Mars Bars, for God’s sake.

  Ian tried to maintain his cheerful demeanour through the increasingly fractious demands. He smiled, apologised, replaced the meal and served a free beer, to no effect. The customer, a florid-faced, stubble-headed bully with small, dull eyes, a Liverpudlian accent and an unpleasantly suggestive T-shirt, eventually informed Ian that he would not pay for the meal at all.

  That was when Ian lost his cool and tried to bodily throw the customer out of the door. Not acceptable behaviour, even in a dump like the Over Easy. Not only was it not the Ritz, it was one of the least classy dining spots in the Barrowlands, an area which defied description in terms of class at all, existing beneath any social stratum it was possible to name. Where else in Scotland could you see drunks fighting on the street at nine in the morning? Or barter with desperate people selling their last few belongings at the edge of the kerb? Where else would you find a pub that had a hanged Irishman on its sign?

  The Over Easy had windows that were so greasy they might as well have been made of plywood (and sometimes were), but it was a job, and after his stint in prison Ian had needed something that paid him a bit of cash-in-hand to supplement the rubbish career opportunity his assistance officer had found for him, planting trees in an area where the kids tore them out of the ground before they’d
had a chance to take root, stuffing them through their enemies’ letterboxes.

  Ian had handled two tours of duty in Afghanistan, only to return and find his wife and his home gone. Depressed, he’d started drinking a little hard, and had made the one small slip-up that had blotted his record and dumped him at the back of the queue. Before Afghanistan he had always considered himself a sanguine, balanced individual; he knew that life wasn’t fair, and that you had to face its depredations with resigned good humour, but losing his job on that Monday morning was the last straw. The customer had called the manager over to complain about his waiter and demand that he be fired. Even in a dump like the Over Easy, the last thing the manager wanted was some Merseyside thug overturning tables and coming back to smash more windows, so he’d taken the cheaper option and let Ian go.

  Now the lad found himself walking the mean, trash-filled streets of Barrowlands with anger eating his heart and no prospects of any kind in sight. Worse still, the Liverpudlian was waiting for him in the alley around the corner. In the fight that followed, Ian loosened one of his front teeth but retained his dignity, repeatedly slamming his antagonist into a dustbin until he was unconscious. It was a lousy way to start the week.

  As he limped from the passageway, trying to see if his torn jacket could be repaired, he realised that the day ahead held absolutely nothing for him. It was a terrible thing to feel like you were no longer wanted or even noticed by the city in which you had grown up. He had always thought he would amount to something here. Glasgow was a tough climb but if you could make it into a decent job, you were set up to handle life in most other cities.

  He thought back to the moment when he realised that Mandy was seeing someone behind his back, that it was serious, and that he’d lost her. The memory made him chew at the inside of his mouth until it was filled with blood. The worst part was, she hadn’t even bothered to hide her infidelity. She had siphoned out their joint account, leaving him with nothing but debts and a note filled with such cruelty and venom that he had torn it to shreds before his eyes could finish blurring. No one had the right to call anyone else a loser. He was not a man of hatreds, but he hated his wife for that. The letter didn’t feel as if it was written by her. He wondered if her new man had put her up to it.

  Sooty rain had begun to sift down across the glistening grey streets. Checking his pockets, he found that he didn’t even have enough for a bus fare. At the end of the great market shed that signified the entrance to the Barrowlands, he crossed the road to a graffiti-spattered ATM and inserted his debit card, already knowing what it was going to tell him – that he was nearly a thousand pounds overdrawn. The machine did exactly that and ate the card in the process, confiscating it as if he was a schoolboy caught with a stolen Batman comic.

  That was it, then. His life, over at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. No skills, no future, no point in going on. He returned to his basement flat to try and get his belongings out before the old cow who owned the house confiscated the lot in lieu of back-rent.

  On the mat behind the door was another handful of bills which he resolved to put straight into the bin – except that he felt the tell-tale rectangle of a credit card inside one slender white envelope bearing his name. Ripping it open, he found a letter which began,

  Dear Valued Customer,

  As a Priority Account holder your continued custom means a great deal to us. Please remember to sign the back of your new credit card before using it. Our 24-hour concierge service can be accessed by quoting the last four digits of your account number, and may be used for any service at all. Your new credit limit is:

  £250,000.00

  The faintly sinister black and silver card was attached to the letter with two tiny blobs of transparent rubber cement. Ian checked the name:

  Ian Charles McFarland

  His name, his address, but clearly not his card. Unusually, there was no name of a holding company or financial institution attached. It was either a dodgy advertising tactic or a mistake – a ludicrous, wonderful error made by an outsourced computer in his favour. What if he tried to use it? Would a fraud flag go up somewhere? Would he find the manager of the shop appear with a pair of police officers, ready to charge him with theft?

  He finished reading the letter.

  To activate your card, call your concierge now and provide him with your account digits and the passcode we have sent you (mailed separately).

  He dropped to his knees and tore open the rest of the envelopes – damn it all to hell! There was nothing. He’d been offered a final chance only to have it snatched away again.

  But wait – there was one more envelope wedged between the mat and the door, behind the circus-coloured flyers for takeaway pizzas. The packet was so light that there seemed to be nothing in it at all. But as he tore it open, he saw the grey patch on one side that always came with pin-codes and passwords to prevent thieves from reading them.

  There it was – the six-digit figure to be quoted to the concierge. Digging out his phone, he rang the number on the back of the card.

  ‘Mr McFarland,’ said an oddly accented voice. ‘How can I help you today?’

  ‘I’d like to activate my card.’

  ‘Please give me the last four digits on the front of the card.’

  ‘6823,’ said Ian without hesitation.

  ‘And now, your passcode.’

  ‘908773.’

  ‘That’s fine. Would you like to change your code to something more memorable?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very well. How can I help you today?’

  ‘I don’t know what kind of service you offer,’ he admitted hesitantly. ‘I’ve not used this … particular service before.’

  ‘I fully understand,’ said the concierge. ‘Well, there are the usual services of course. Car hire, theatre and concert tickets, sporting events, dinner reservations, nightclub tables. We can book flights for you, or hire a yacht. I see you have the highest priority limit, which entitles you to use our special Platinum Service.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘It’s an exclusive private arrangement with our selected partners offering you a range of the more restricted personal needs.’

  ‘Can you give me an example of something I would be able to buy?’

  ‘Well, perhaps you are visiting a city you don’t know and require companionship.’

  ‘You mean a woman.’

  ‘The gender is of course up to you.’

  ‘And what do I get for £250,000?’ he asked.

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. He fancied he could hear the wind ticking in the wires but that was absurd; there were no wires anymore. What he heard was the beating of his own heart.

  ‘We could kill your wife,’ came the reply.

  The restaurant was filled to its stripped-oak rafters, as it had been every night since the glowing reviews first broke in the Sunday papers. Of course it helped that a Hollywood legend had been seen dining there with someone other than his wife, and had returned several times while he was filming in the city. Now the bookings were full until January, four months away, and those same Sunday papers were running articles containing instructions on how to beat the restaurant’s obstructive booking system.

  The Water House was an old converted municipal swimming pool which Jake Finnegan and his business partner had bought for an absurdly low figure from the town council on the condition that they restored its Arts and Crafts exterior. Having done so, they hired a celebrity chef fresh out of rehab and set about turning it into the most exclusive restaurant in Scotland. Almost too exclusive, it turned out. The quiet backstreet which Jake and his team had colonised was now the subject of much furore in the press, as the residents were kept awake every night except Sunday by drunken soap stars, revving Ferraris and swearing paparazzi.

  Mandy loved every second of her new life. It was the one she had always dreamed of, but somehow she had been side-tracked into marrying a loser. Ian had survived his army ye
ars only to end up with a bad case of PTSD and a stint in jail for fencing stolen goods right across the road from a police surveillance spot. She had dumped him by text, and when that message bounced back, with a good old-fashioned letter. She had applied for the job of greeter long before Jake’s restaurant hit the headlines, and was firmly installed behind her low-lit mahogany counter by the time the journalists arrived. She was good at her work, but found she had more respect from the staff now that they knew she also occupied Jake’s art-filled bedroom overlooking the Clyde, a few streets from the restaurant.

  Tonight had been typically demanding. Lindsay Lohan had lost her coat, and her minders were blocking the restaurant’s entrance so that photographers couldn’t get a direct shot of her waiting while Mandy searched the racks. She found the coat and handed it over, but not before the other diners had got a good look at the celebrity in their midst. Mandy brushed a long curl of blonde hair back behind her ear and gave Lohan the biggest, most sincere smile she could fake before the actress swept out to her waiting limo, every inch a star.

  It was raining hard again, but nothing kept the paps at bay. They huddled in the doorway of the building opposite, grabbing shots as the vehicle sped past, yelling and following on foot, hoping to catch it at the traffic lights.

  Mandy checked her watch: 11:45pm. Thank God. The kitchen had shut at eleven, and now all she had to do was divorce the diners from their credit cards and then ease them out into the storm-swept night.

  The man in the hall must have slipped in after Lohan’s entourage had parted. He was wearing a black suit and raincoat – virtually a uniform among the Water House’s male diners – but it was topped with a black satin Venetian carnival mask. For a moment she wondered incredulously if he was part of a stag party looking for a late drink, but surely not – his shoes were far too expensive, and his left hand held a glove shucked from the right. He had removed it because it was hard to fire a shot with his fingers clad in leather.