Today I’m joining the blog tour for The Chameleon Killer Mystery. I’m sharing an extract from the book with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for providing the extract.

Blurb:

Who is the Chameleon Killer?When you are having a really bad day, drink yourself legless, abuse everyone around you, pass out and try again tomorrow.
Trouble is; every day is bad in Rupert Fletcher’s world. He threatens his ex-wife, mocks his girlfriend, abuses his neighbours, and gets into a fight in the pub.
Next day, he is found dead.
Who’d want to kill him? Well, almost everybody, but it looks like only one person did. The police arrest his ex-wife’s therapist, Anthony.
Anthony’s family claim he is innocent and employ the SeeMs Detective Agency to find the real killer.
Cat, Miranda, and Stevie uncover clues that point them back to an intricate web of family injuries and an unexpected connection between the victim and his killer.
Could Rupert’s murderer be The Chameleon Killer, who has already killed before and is bent on revenge? They need to act fast before the killer strikes again.

Extract:

In this extract Cat is trying to do surveillance on a house in Chelsea which she thinks might help her find out who killed Rupert.

As Cat walked back towards the house, it occurred to her it was quite difficult to watch a house when there were no cafés or shops in the same street to sit in, whiling away time in an unsuspicious manner. A drone would be helpful, but then could you really have a drone flying down a London street without anyone noticing? In the Victorian era, you could pay small boys to hang around on the street and no one would notice. Nowadays they were more likely to be arrested as potential drug mules.

She could smoke a cigarette for a while, hanging about, but how long before that too attracted attention? Even a street sweeper, if such things still existed, was in perpetual motion. Was there anybody who could just stand on a street, watching a house, and get no attention?

Yes, there was, she thought suddenly. One group of people could be on the streets and never be seen: the homeless. If she sat in a doorway opposite the house, wrapped herself in old clothes and put out a cap, she could sit there all day and no one would even remember her.

Cat went back to a charity shop in Kensington High Street. However, it seemed the charity shop was at the higher end and there was nothing in them a homeless woman could afford. Instead, she bought some unmatching accessories and dropped them in a puddle. Then, suitably draped, with a cap out in front of her for donations, she sat in the opposite doorway and watched. And watched. And watched.

This, Cat thought, getting bored, was one of the less interesting parts of being a private detective. She shuffled about, trying to get comfortable, then looked at her watch, which had stopped. She pulled out her phone. Only a few moments had gone by.

After a few hours it started to get colder and colder. Slowly darkness descended on Kensington and Chelsea. The same darkness, thought Cat, now getting irritable, as that in Owly Vale. She wished she was down there, with Frank cooking her supper. She got out her phone again. Odd, really, that no one walked down this street. If she had been a real beggar, she’d be wasting her time here.

Just as Cat was about to get up and go, a woman walked by and dropped a pound into her cap.

‘Oh!’ said Cat, not sure that earning a pound from some valiant woman wasn’t a bit like stealing. ‘Thank you, how kind, but I don’t really think …’

The woman stopped and looked back at her. ‘What? If you beg, you must expect to get something.’

‘Miranda! What the …?’

Miranda laughed. ‘Honestly, Cat, I didn’t know you were in such dire straits. You could have asked for a loan.’

‘Very funny. How did you know I was here?’

Her friend laughed again, this time rather derisively. ‘Look all around you, my friend, and what do you see? Cameras! Did you really think you could sit here as a homeless woman and not be spotted? Especially as you keep pulling out your phone and checking the time!

‘The man opposite called the police. He said you were probably a burglar checking out the houses. He wanted a Black Maria to arrest you.’ Miranda giggled. ‘Fantastic, eh? I like the idea of a black coach and horses picking you up in the street. Do you think the horses were black as well as the coach?’ She stuck out her tongue thoughtfully.

‘Anyway, you are lucky. Agata took the call and when she looked at the CCTV, she saw it was you. She rang me and, as I was at my mother’s, I came over. Shall I take you home?’

***

The Chameleon Killer Mystery is available from Amazon.

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