You'll Get Yours (The Derry Murder Mysteries Book 1) by Gerald Hansen
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Subgenre: Derry Noir, Crime, Murder
About You'll Get Yours
Middle-aged Regina might have kept herself to herself, but she always had a smile for everyone she came across. Who could possibly have wanted to do her harm? Was she just unlucky, the victim of a deranged killer striking at random?
But as the team delve deeper into her checkered past, they uncover shocking truths Regina Steps kept well hidden under that bad perm of hers. As the list of suspects grows, so too does the notion the murders might have only begun.
Excerpt:
She’d deal with Kyle when the film was over. She needed a few hours alone to think things through. She’d been counting down the days until this film was released; she loved sci-fi, always had. She’d seen the first two on some streaming service online, and now the third had come out two weeks ago. It had taken her that long to work up the nerve to go to the cinema.
Cramped and dingy her flat might be, but at least it was safe. And ever since she had come back home to Derry, she was supposed to be keeping her head down.
She
didn’t want anyone to know she was back. There was work, of course, but the
bills had to be paid somehow. The easiest thing would have been to get
something online, but she couldn’t stick the thought of being holed up in her
flat alone in front of the computer. She wanted to avoid certain people, but
she wasn’t a hermit.
When
she was working a shift she literally kept her head down, thankful for the big
caps they had to wear. Those caps had been a deciding factor in choosing the
job. Of course here at the cinema she wasn’t wearing her work cap, but nobody
knew who she was, who she had been. She’d taken steps to avoid detection.
She
took her place in the queue to the snack bar a few steps behind a young teen
bathed in cheap scent. The lobby was heaving. When she’d thought of coming to
the cinema, she’d envisioned lurking in the darkness in some seat far away from
others, safe and alone. She hadn’t thought about the throngs she’d have to push
through in the lobby to reach that solitary seat.
Maybe
just skip the popcorn and scurry down the hall towards the comforting darkness?
But
no sense depriving herself of a simple pleasure. She was going to enjoy herself
if it killed her.
She
hadn’t been able to help coming back home. The moment she’d left Derry, the
city had kept calling to her like the song of a
siren calling sailors to their death on the rocks.
Now
she was skulking around her hometown incognito, dead to those she’d loved,
those she loved now dead to her. She’d come home, she had no home anymore. They
say home was not necessarily where you come from, more where you are wanted.
But nobody wanted her here.
Ungrateful
bastards! They were in the past. She wasn’t like them. There was Kyle, of
course, but now he had—
It was like a punch in the gut when the brash girlish yells of that
song burst from the sound system surrounding her.
Hey!
You! Yeah, you!
It
was a song of its time, and the time wasn’t now.
The
past had come back to haunt her.
She
gasped in her mind, feeling like a spotlight was suddenly focused on her in the
queue.
She
clutched her handbag to her side, wrapped her cardigan more firmly around her
bulky frame. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Her eyes darted from one
cinema goer to the other. Punters were laughing and chatting, enjoying their
night out. Nobody was paying her any mind.
And
why should they? She was nothing but an unremarkable middle-aged woman with a
too-tight perm and large red-framed glasses. Lumpy and starting to sag. Decades
older than most of the cinema goers.
Heart
pounding against her breastplate, she closed her eyes and forced slow breaths
in and out. Her fists relaxed. She tried to blank out the frenetic synths and
the boom of the drum machine, the half-yelled, half-sung vocals.
She’d
only heard the song once before since returning to Derry, at work a year or so
ago. That had been torturous, especially as it had forced her to stare down at
the price gun in her hand and realize how much had changed, how low she had
fallen.
She
tried to ignore all the song brought up, focusing on the long dark hair of the
girl before her, the hunch of the teen’s shoulders as she texted furiously on
her phone, the plush carpeting beneath her slightly sticky and strewn with
spilled popcorn. She glanced towards the door.
A
man stood there grinning inanely at her. He lifted his hand and gave her a
little wave. She snapped her head away. She dared not look at him directly,
couldn’t be recognized. Not after all this time, all the effort. She chanced a
little glance out of the corner of her eye. Looked behind her, relaxed. She
couldn’t be sure, but the smiles were just fading on those two over there. The
man must have been waving at them. She was embarrassed she had almost reacted,
almost waved back out of reflex.
And,
just as the song was ending and she could relax, she saw the three lads
approaching from the right, fifteen years of age or so.
Trouble.
She
saw it in their hairstyles, in their piercings, in their gray sweatpants,
tracksuit bottoms and matching hoodies, in their goggled and glazed eyes, saw
it in their nudges, heard it in their snickers.
They
barged into the queue before the teen.
“Oi!”
yelled the girl. “Can’t you see there’s a queue? Get to the back of it and wait
like everyone else, you mingers!”
“Did
you hear something, lads?” sneered one.
“Aye,
I did,” smirked another. “Sounded like a cow in heat to me.”
“Needs
a good rogering up against a wall, sounds like.”
“Aye,
on the end of my knob.”
“You’re
joking! I wouldn’t touch that scabby mare with the tail end of my bollocks.”
“What’s
that even meant to mean, you gobshite?” sneered the teen, shaking her head in
disbelief. “You’re as thick as you look.”
“Aye,
I’m thick indeed. You’ll feel every throbbing—”
She couldn’t let these lads humiliate
the girl like this.
“Give
it a rest, would you!” she called out to her own surprise. It must have been
the gin she’d downed before leaving the flat. “You’ve had your fun. Now clear
away off out of here.”
She
had no fear of them. She’d dealt with the likes of them all her childhood,
growing up as she had on the mean streets of the Moorside, Derry’s toughest
neighborhood. Indeed, they were like the new generation of her three younger
brothers. And as she had always put her brothers in their place, she did so
now, all the while her brain yelling at her, “Don’t! Don’t!”
“You
can't cut in line like that, you cheeky wee gits!”
The
girl scowled at her—I can fight my own battles, you know—as the hooligans
looked at her in surprise, their grins widening at having found a have-a-go
hero. Their next victim. Two of the thugs flipped her off.
“Och,
wind your neck in, granny.”
“Give
over. Bloody pensioner.”
She
seethed. “Granny? Pensioner? Sure, I'm young enough to be your ma.”
“Your
ma? She's probably shagging the whole town.”
She
teemed with rage, her face hot. “You flimmin little scutters. I ought to box
your ears in.”
“Go
on then, granny. Give it your best shot.”
She
took a deep breath and stepped back. And then it was the hooligans’ turn at the
concession stand, so the altercation petered out as they ordered their popcorn
and nachos.
“Bloody
do-gooder,” muttered the old woman behind her. “Sticking her nose in where it’s
not wanted.”
She
deflated. Nobody in the lobby dared look at her now. In a way, it was a result.
Clutching a box of popcorn, which would be
the last thing she ever bought, she made her way down the aisle of screen
three, marveling at the state of the cinema. She’d read the plush leather seats
actually reclined. All very different from when she and her group of
girlfriends had gone to the Savoy decades before. But, no. She couldn’t think
of her friends back then.
As
she was choosing a row, she felt like someone was watching her. She turned
around, but nobody was there. Not many people were in the cinema hall as the
film was so old. Suited her fine. She sank down in a seat, a few corkscrew
curls visible over the back of the seat.
Halfway
through the film, her mind started to wander. It wasn’t as riveting as the
critics had made out. She was aware of some commotion behind her, but
disregarded it. Until she felt the breath on the back of her neck. The kicks on
the back of her seat. The snickers of the—she whipped her head around—those
three yobs from the lobby.
Her
hands curled into fists. Calm yourself down, she said to herself. Don’t
give them any ammunition.
“What
are you watching this film for, hi?” said one.
“It’s
a bit too violent for grannies, I would’ve thought,” said another.
“Give
us some of your popcorn, hi. Christ knows you don’t need it. Looks like you’ve
shoveled enough fast food down that gawping beak of yours through the decades,
like.”
“Is
she not giving you any of her popcorn, mate?”
“Why’s
she not giving you any?”
“Fat
cow wants it all for herself. Selfish slag.”
“Why
don’t you give her some of yours, then?”
“Aye,
right you are.”
She
stiffened as she felt something land on the back of her head. They were
throwing popcorn at her. She simmered with rage for a moment, refusing to turn
around. Then she stood up, walked down the row and took measured steps towards
the cinema door.
“Don’t
go, hi!”
“More
entertaining than this crap film, so you are.”
They
jumped from their seats as she pushed through the door. They followed her out.
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