The Plato Club: The Agatha Witchley Mysteries, #2
By Stephen Hunt
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About this ebook
Part 2 of The Agatha Witchley Mysteries: THE PLATO CLUB
As an ex-spy rumoured to have gone insane after being held captive by the KGB and tortured for a decade, Agatha Witchley has seen her share of strange cases over the years. But none compares to the faked autoerotic asphyxiation of billionaire Simon Werks, and the sudden trail of death tracking after the American industrialist's family.
Now that Agatha and her friends from the security services are being targeted hard to stop the investigation, she's taking it personally. Unfortunately for the British agents in peril, so are the ghosts Agatha Witchley's convinced are helping her – Churchill, Elvis and Groucho Marx.
The woman who can solve the murder might be lethal, she might half-insane and drawing a pension, but it's amazing how you can forgive that in a genius when it's a genius's help you need.
The assassins on Agatha Witchley's trail have really made her mad now. What they don't know is how totally deranged she was to begin with!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE SERIES SO FAR...
SEASON ONE
Episode #1 - In the Company of Ghosts.
Episode #2 - The Plato Club.
Episode #3 - The Moon Man's Tale
THE SEASON ONE OMNIBUS (#1 & #2 & #3)
Secrets of the Moon - in print and ebook.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
REVIEWS
Praise for Stephen Hunt's novels:
'Compulsive reading for all ages.'
- GUARDIAN
'Studded with invention.'
-THE INDEPENDENT
'Hunt has packed the story full of intriguing gimmicks… affecting and original.'
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
'An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels.'
- THE TIMES
'Hunt's imagination is probably visible from space. He scatters concepts that other writers would mine for a trilogy like chocolate-bar wrappers.'
- TOM HOLT
'Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension.'
- TIME OUT
'A swaggering, eye-filling, brain-swizzling extravaganza!'
— KIRKUS REVIEWS
'Readers will be entertained and captivated.'
- BOOKLIST
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
FORMAT
Novella - part 3 of a continuing, linked series.
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Related to The Plato Club
Titles in the series (4)
In The Company of Ghosts: The Agatha Witchley Mysteries, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Plato Club: The Agatha Witchley Mysteries, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Moon Man's Tale: The Agatha Witchley Mysteries, #3 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Secrets of the Moon: The Agatha Witchley Mysteries, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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The Plato Club - Stephen Hunt
The Plato Club
#2 in the Agatha Witchley Mysteries
Stephen Hunt
image-placeholderGreen Nebula
THE PLATO CLUB
Book 2 in the Agatha Witchley Mysteries series.
First published in 2014 by Green Nebula Press
Copyright © 2014 by Stephen A. Hunt
Typeset and designed by Green Nebula Press. Distributed by Smashwords.
The right of Stephen Hunt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the Parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.
- Little Dorrit. 1856. Charles Dickens.
Praise for Stephen
‘Mr. Hunt takes off at racing speed.’
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘Hunt’s imagination is probably visible from space. He scatters concepts that other writers would mine for a trilogy like chocolate-bar wrappers.’
- TOM HOLT
‘All manner of bizarre and fantastical extravagance.’
- DAILY MAIL
‘Compulsive reading for all ages.’
- GUARDIAN
‘An inventive, ambitious work, full of wonders and marvels.’
- THE TIMES
‘Hunt knows what his audience like and gives it to them with a sardonic wit and carefully developed tension.’
- TIME OUT
‘Studded with invention.’
-THE INDEPENDENT
‘To say this book is action packed is almost an understatement… a wonderful escapist yarn!’
- INTERZONE
‘Hunt has packed the story full of intriguing gimmicks… affecting and original.’
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
‘A rip-roaring Indiana Jones-style adventure.’
—RT BOOK REVIEWS
‘A curious part-future blend.’
- KIRKUS REVIEWS
‘A ripping yarn … the story pounds along… constant inventiveness keeps the reader hooked… the finale is a cracking succession of cliffhangers and surprise comebacks. Great fun.’
- SFX MAGAZINE
‘Put on your seatbelts for a frenetic cat and mouse encounter... an exciting tale.’
- SF REVU
Contents
1. The Dead Billionaire’s Club
2. Brunel’s Toy Box
3. Bobby Kennedy Could Be Your Lawyer
4. Do I Taste of Smart?
5. Pensions for Spies
6. The Stealth Villa
7. The mystery deepens...
Chapter 1
The Dead Billionaire’s Club
It wasn’t easy for Agatha Witchley to watch her colleague arguing with the London Air Ambulance service helicopter pilot. This wasn’t due to her advanced years and the state of her eyes. It had a lot more to do with the waves of oily black smoke still billowing out from their car. Doyle’s vehicle, a classic 1969 Chevrolet Nova, hadn’t required quite as much high explosive as had been packed into the car bomb slipped under her hood to wreck her. But there is a value in thoroughness, and the people trying to kill us certainly possess it in spades. Just a pity that the car thieves had selected Doyle’s pride and joy to steal from outside the smart London club where Agatha and Doyle had been investigating the dead billionaire’s murder . If I had got to the car before it was taken, I would have spotted it had been tampered with. I could have defused the bomb. That the young joyriders in question had been punished by being atomised in an explosion meant for Agatha and her partner was, judging by the purple tinge to Gary Doyle’s features since his muscle car’s destruction, largely irrelevant to the senior officer. Doyle was a bear of a man with brutish manners to match, and he was clinging to the side of the recently settled helicopter as though he was about to shake its fuselage, eject the pilot and personally pilot the air ambulance to the Werks family’s country mansion, where, Agatha suspected the killers they sought were shortly about to claim their second victim – the dead man’s twin. To have one billionaire North American business mogul die in Britain is bad luck; to permit a second to be murdered will probably appear to the Home Secretary like the grossest incompetence. Agatha attempted to focus on Doyle’s vain attempts to convince the ambulance pilot to fly them out; tried to suppress her anger at the casualties scattered down the street – collateral damage paid in innocent blood and flesh. That someone could think maiming innocents was a price worth paying to remove Agatha Witchley’s meddling presence from the chessboard. Every time she looked at the wounded bodies, all she could see were the absent faces of her husband and children. An earlier bomb and earlier casualties.
‘Here’s how it is, Helicopter Harry,’ snarled Doyle, flourishing his warrant card – the fake police inspector’s badge, rather than his warrant card from Section Seven of the British Circumlocution Office. ‘You’ve got two copters here—’ he pointed to the second McDonnell Douglas Explorer, landed down the street, first responders stretchering the worst of the wounded pedestrians on board, ‘—and I only need one to catch the people who’ve been blowing off legs in London before they cause more carnage.’
‘And I don’t care if you’re the Chief of Scotland Yard,’ protested the pilot. ‘My duty is to the people bleeding-out here. If you want to re-route us, have your higher-ups put in a call to the head of the Ambulance Flight and order a diversion. Otherwise, I’m loading up with casualties and flying onto the Royal London. ’
‘These people have already been hit! I can stop more people dying before it happens,’ roared Doyle.
The pilot leaned out, pointing towards the police cars’ rotating lights, vehicles drawn up behind the stalled traffic. ‘Then I’d get driving, chum.’
Agatha walked forward, clutching tightly onto her hat to stop the rotors’ downdraft blowing it along the street. ‘I’m afraid this young man is quite correct, Mister Doyle. His duty is to the medical service, not the police.’
Doyle rounded on Agatha and looked as though he was about to release one of his legendary shouting fits in her direction – but the man’s anger was interrupted as Agatha leant forward and slapped the handle of her umbrella against the pilot’s neck, the exposed lowest cervical vertebra below his helmet. The pilot slumped to the side, Doyle quick enough to catch the limp unconscious body before it spilled out of the open cockpit door onto the street’s tarmac.
‘What the bleeding hell have you done to him?’
‘The nerve cluster around the cervical vertebra is a wonderfully susceptible thing,’ said Agatha, slapping the umbrella’s lead-lined handgrip against her palm.
Doyle dragged the unconscious pilot from the cockpit and laid him out across the pavement. ‘And how the hell are we going to get to the mansion in time to stop Curtis Werks ending stretched over a mortuary slab next door to his brother?’
Agatha removed the pilot’s helmet and used the tread on the outside of the fuselage, pulling herself into the vacant cockpit. ‘I thought I would fly us there, Mister Doyle.’
‘You’re having a laugh?’
‘The ghost of Igor Sikorsky taught me how to fly these. What was it he called them . . . Ze old iron whirlybird
.’ But only after Amelia Earhart gave me lessons and failed. She was always more competent with fixed wing aircraft.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you at the flight stick, love. If I do, the main ghosts in the neighbourhood are going to be the two of us.’
Agatha felt a ripple of frustration at the head of Section Seven. ‘Would it help you rationalise the situation if I told you I used to date a Pan Am pilot, or I was in the RAF, or I was taught to fly as part of the security service’s special training programme in the sixties?’
‘Are any of those true?’
Agatha tapped the fuel gauge and examined the instrument panel in front of her. The Explorer was a new model, digital indicators and pilot assist through a very expensive computer system. She sighed in annoyance. The current breed of helicopters . . . really just autopilots and silicon chips with rotors attached. It made her feel old. Reliance on machines was a corrosive habit. Making people willing slaves to the system. Just part of the general infantilism of humanity that frequently drove her to despair. ‘As true as you might wish to believe, Mister Doyle.’ She patted the empty seat by her side. ‘The best view is up front.’
‘Oh Jesus wept,’ Doyle moaned. He climbed through the open side hatch, sliding the door shut behind him. Agatha’s superior clambered over the empty stretch positions, ducking under a dangle of saline drips to sit beside her. ‘I’ll have my eyes closed for most of the flight. How long until we reach the house?’
‘A little over twenty minutes,’ said Agatha, accelerating rotor gyration to flight speed. Outside, the air ambulance’s medical crew sprinted towards the helicopter, shouting and waving the arms of their bright neon yellow high visibility jackets in her direction. She shrugged at them from behind the clear sweep of cockpit glass. ‘Apologies, my dears. Needs must, you know.’
Agatha rode the engine’s lift hard to escape the narrow confines of Mayfair’s shops and apartments, dirty grey pigeons scattering around them in a storm of boutique shopping bags and fallen leaves. As roofs and air conditioning towers disappeared below them, Agatha tilted the air ambulance forward and began skimming south, the dark clock tower of Big Ben looming to her left as they passed the sliding green snake of the River Thames. Somewhat reluctantly, she took the pilot’s helmet and fitted it over her bob of silver hair. Her visor flickered with tracking icons and flight information, and she muted its sound when London Air Traffic Control started querying her route. It took a couple of minutes more to override their GPS homing signal, hugging the rooftops to avoid Gatwick Airport’s radar system. It certainly won’t do to get shot down as suspected terrorists making a suicide run. And Agatha needed her attention focused on the journey – it had been a while since she had flown one of these contraptions, and the chimneys and wind turbines of London weren’t anything like skimming the tropical treeline of Vietnam. She found the railway line of Vauxhall Station and fixed it as her landmark to fly south. From the tight grip Doyle’s fingers kept to the side-rail on the co-pilot’s chair, she guessed he wasn’t a comfortable flier. A typical man, though. As soon as Doyle realized Agatha wasn’t going to leave the air ambulance as a burning wreck in the middle of Brixton, he pulled out his phone and started jabbing at its touch screen. Trying to reassert some small measure