Excerpt: The Daughters Of Men

Sheila was pronounced dead when the ambulance arrived, a river was formed from her blood snaking darkly between the paving stones, spilling onto the street where it was noticed by the first of those to return out of the people who ran away. The whole section was cordoned off by the police, but there were no leads. Christine became the prime witness, vouching for Robert’s guilt as she had seen them arguing that day, and the fact that fourteen people, including her, had seen him running away from the scene of the crime.

As Robert ran, the police immediately began to close in around him. Somehow, though, he slipped through their fingers. He got to his house before they did, managed to grab some key possessions and throw them into a rucksack, leaping over the garden wall just as they pulled up in the street outside and disappearing into the night.

At the memorial service for Sheila held exactly one week later, Sheila’s father, Oliver DuPont called for him to come forwards and give himself up to the police, adding that only the guilty run, and that the guilty are always caught, one way or another. Unanimously the student body agreed with him, there were no friends left for Mr Average in Ell Point.

Seven months after the incident, Oliver DuPont was arrested for grievous bodily harm, inflicted on a young man who had the unfortunate affliction of from behind looking exactly like Robert. The young man later died in hospital, and Oliver’s jail sentence stretched out for 20 years. In all the time he was inside, he never lost the bitter thoughts of how one teenage boy had ruined his life in more ways than he thought possible.

And in that time, he hatched a plan to track down Robert Johnston and, somehow, make him pay.