Synopsis – It Never Rains
It never rains but it pours . . .
When a ruthless gang burgles the home of a Premier League football player, DCI Gavin Roscoe and DS Sunita Roy suddenly have a murder and a kidnap on their hands.
The footballer’s stepson, Marcel, is taken from the palatial property whilst it is being ransacked, and his bodyguard is shot, stone cold dead.
To help them with their task, DI Parkes from the National Crime Agency’s Kidnap Unit joins the investigation but he has very different ideas about how the operation should be run.
While rain lashes the surrounding countryside, tempers rise, as do the flood waters.
Can the police track down this dangerous gang, unmask its malevolent ringleader, and reunite the boy with his family before it’s too late?
IT NEVER RAINS is the sixth book in the detectives Roy and Roscoe crime fiction series by Tony Bassett.
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Author Bio
Tony Bassett is a former journalist who worked on regional and national newspapers in Britain for more than 40 years.
He mainly reported on crime, show business, human interest and consumer topics. Now retired, he writes crime fiction.
Tony is best known for his series of novels set in the West Midlands.
They feature Detective Chief Inspector Gavin Roscoe, an experienced detective and family man, and his sergeant, law graduate and resourceful problem-solver Sunita Roy.
The fifth book in the series, Heir To Murder, was judged first in the Mystery and Suspense (Police Procedurals) category in the American Fiction Awards in June 2024.
The novel concerns a peer of the realm’s son found axed to death after a row over loud music. Two years earlier, his older brother mysteriously disappeared while hiking in Spain.
Here is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CPFNJNQJ
The series is published by The Book Folks, an independent London publisher specialising in crime fiction.
Other books in the series (in order) are: Murder On Oxford Lane, The Crossbow Stalker, Murder Of A Doctor and Out for Revenge.
His stand-alone thriller Seat 97, about a man shot dead at a London concert hall, has also been published by The Book Folks.
Two further works (the crime novel Smile Of The Stowaway and the spy novel The Lazarus Charter) were published by The Conrad Press.
Tony first developed a love of writing at the age of nine when he produced a junior school magazine.
A few years later, his local vicar in Tunbridge Wells staged his play about the Biblical story of Naboth’s Vineyard.
At Hull University, Tony was judged Time-Life Magazine student journalist of the year in 1971.
Tony, who has five grown-up children, is a Life Member of the National Union of Journalists. He lives in South-East London with his partner Lin
Social Media Links –
www.facebook.com/tony.bassett.92505
Excerpt – It Never Rains
Chapter 24
Kidnapped French boy Marcel Dubois has tricked the gang who were keeping him prisoner in a West Midlands farmhouse and he’s managed to escape the building.
Desperate to flee the gang, Marcel had darted into the yard and crossed the road. He had nimbly clambered over a five-bar gate that led into the muddy field opposite. Then he had crouched down beside the hawthorn hedge and witnessed the two men quarrelling.
The main farmhouse was larger than Marcel had expected. In front of it was a yard surrounded by several outbuildings. A black Mercedes was parked by the open farm gate, which bore a sign saying, ‘Meadow Brook Farm’.
He gazed around at the wider location. He was dismayed to find he was in a remote area of rolling countryside. All he could see, for miles around, were fields speckled, here and there, by bushes or small clumps of trees. Apart from the angry voices of the men, the only sounds he could hear were birds singing in the trees and sheep bleating.
Marcel watched the two men. Within minutes, they ended their argument. The tall, muscular man slipped a mobile phone from his pocket and made a call – perhaps to alert his other companion – before leaping into the Mercedes and speeding off down the narrow lane to the right. His regular visitor, Tiggs, set off on foot in the opposite direction.
For a moment, the teenager remained concealed by the hedge, wondering what do to. He could try to stop a passing vehicle and beg a lift. At least that would whisk him right away from the gang’s orbit. But he had been there for around ten minutes already and there had been no passing traffic.
It would be dark in a few hours. The climate was too cold and the ground too damp for him to spend the night outside. Could he sneak into a deserted farm building to pass the night? Or could he walk to a village and find shelter? The problem was he didn’t know how far it was to the nearest village.
He decided he would go to the nearest house and plead for help there in contacting his mother or the police. But, instead of travelling along the lane in open view, he decided to trek through the field while following the line of the hedge. That would at least provide him with some cover.
After a few minutes of squelching his way through the mud, his spirits were enlivened by the roar of a vehicle travelling along the lane behind him. The clattering sound drew closer. He could see it was a tractor being driven by a middle-aged man with a peaked cap. Marcel hurried to another farm gate, a few metres ahead, vaulted over it and ran into the centre of the lane. He raised both his hands in a desperate effort to bring the tractor to a halt.
To his amazement, the driver hooted his horn and gestured with a wave for the teenager to move out of the road.
‘Stop!’ shouted Marcel. ‘Aidez-moi!’
But the driver ignored him and Marcel was forced to leap aside and let the tractor speed by.
Perhaps the man had taken a dislike to his sandy, uncombed hair and unshaven look? Or his olive skin? Or his crumpled green pullover?
He would never know the reason. But the gravity of his situation struck home with him even more. If his luck didn’t change soon, he might be forced to spend the night struggling to sleep beneath the stars. Or he might be recaptured by the men. Neither of these seemed an attractive proposition.
As he returned over the gate to the field, he heard the throb of a car engine in the distance. It was another vehicle heading towards him. He was concerned it might be a Mercedes. Sure enough, a black car was approaching at speed.
Marcel crouched down and remained motionless behind the hedge. He watched as the saloon car, with O’Shane behind the wheel, swept past.
With an uneasy heart, Marcel resumed his walk beside the hedge, hoping that, at any moment, he would see a house where he could seek help.
Twenty minutes later, darkness was beginning to fall and as he noticed a sign for the nearby hamlet of Monkswood, Marcel was overjoyed to find he was approaching a house.
On closer inspection, he realised the dark shape of the building, on the other side of the lane, was a traditional stone farmhouse surrounded by several barns, outbuildings and landscaped gardens. The main house was separated from an adjoining barn conversion with screen fencing and well-stocked borders with trees and shrubs providing privacy. A blue Porsche Panamera sports car was parked on the red-brick forecourt outside the front door.
Marcel opened one of two wrought-iron gates, beside a sign saying ‘Pinetree Farm’ and hurried along the short gravel drive to the front door. He rang the bell in the fading light. He wasn’t confident he would find anyone at home. All the lights were off.
He peered through a window into a sitting room with exposed beams, flagstone floor and an open-brick fireplace. Then he stepped back onto the forecourt and stared up at the first-floor windows.
As Marcel stood outside Pinetree Farm wondering what to do, a figure peered through the upstairs blinds, unseen by the frantic teenager.
They had heard the doorbell but had decided to ignore it. They were not really meant to be there. However, they recognised the boy from his appearance. It took them a few seconds to dial a number on their mobile phone.
When the call was answered, the figure in the window announced, ‘I think I’ve found the missing boy.’
