‘Pier-Point’– A Full Synopsis

Set in Blackpool during the Stan James World Matchplay Darts Championship, taking place at the city’s Winter Gardens in July 2004, ‘Pier-Point is a contemporary thriller with a dark twist; it is also the first part of a trilogy involving many of the characters, some who live, some who don’t.
With its’ multitude of characters, the novel takes in the sights and sounds of the city with all of its’ supposed delights, and meets people suffering from strange sexual compulsions, stumbles across a number of dreadful murders and has an ending straight from a Hammer Horror film.

The three main characters within the novel are: the murderer – a twisted individual who infiltrates the world of darts as a means to appease the demons raging inside; Scott Harpic - a darts fan with a love of older-style horror films and other such gothic paraphernalia and Detective Inspector Ralph Richards, the man put in charge of stopping the killer before someone with a name similar to a character or actor from the Hammer Horror film series is horrifically slain.

The murderer is a butch woman who had been abused by a father who murdered his mother and beloved sister. Obsessed by memories filled with her father dictating her actions, she masquerades as a man to infiltrate the darts world – a world her father loved - and committing atrocities in the hopes of appeasing the dead man’s spirit. Her particular choice of slaughter is based on the horror films she used to watch with her father when she was a child; they represented a happier time – a time she is desperate to pervert.

Scott Harpic is an unfortunately named, married, delusional architect originating from Stoke-on-Trent, who is in Blackpool for the week with his three friends to watch the tournament, pay the strippers, and take part in as many drunken games any disenchanted thirty-year-old can get away with. He tells his story direct to the reader, letting the stranger with whom he is having a conversation with know all of his thoughts about those around him, his inklings and his desires. He reveals some but not all of his history, preferring to let the reader use their imagination when presented with little tit-bits about his past.

DI Ralph Richards is unlike most Detective Inspectors in that he has a happy home-life, spends time with his kids, enjoys his job and hasn’t ever considered having an affair behind his beautiful wife’s back. In fact, until the murderer inconsiderately kills an innocent bystander, his life is pretty happy – mainly because he and his wife have recently rediscovered their sex-lives and can’t get enough of each other. Positions, toys, films and outfits have all become a part of the detective’s everyday life, and it has made him a happy man who is respected by those he works with. The killings seriously upset his status quo.

The novel starts with the murderer talking about his first kill and his intentions to move from Bolton – where he killed a series of people yet to be discovered missing – to Blackpool, where she hopes to appease her deceased father’s memory with yet more blood. Over the course of the novel, the murderer talks to the reader, explaining her obsessions and her troubled past. She is fixated with the novel Dracula, and sees Whitby Abbey as her church – a place of solace where she truly feels at peace.

Within the first few pages of the novel, there are three murders, and it is these murders that bring the DI and Scott together after Scott hears about the murders and the victim’s names via Sky News. He realises that not only the people’s names are the same as Hammer Horror characters / actors, but also that their methods of execution are taken straight from the Hammer celluloid. Stumbling across and hooking up with a begrudging DI at one of the murder sites, they are in a race to stop any more killings from taking place – and failing miserably. Throughout their journey, they come into contact with an disillusioned Coroner, a missing member of the Professional Darts Council (a drunk who, as it turns out, is not a murder victim but a regular inhabitant of skips who shares the same name as a popular Hammer Horror film actor who sends Scott and Richards on a wild goose chase), a pair of Hoteliers with a strange taste in sex, and, eventually, the murderer who takes out taxi drivers, a police officer and a maid in an attempt to rid herself of the man who seems linked to her actions.

There are a number of twists in the novel, including the discovery of the murderer’s sex (which is kept secret until the end) but also the beheading of Scott Harpic when all has been deemed to be safe (for the murderer has supposedly killed herself in a local river) and the murderer’s lack of apprehension, thus creating an ending that will leave the reader wanting to know what happens next. In a parody of all that is Hammer Horror, the final chapter of the novel finds the murderer holding a conversation with Scott’s disembodied head and discussing their future plans together.
With a novel of this kind, there is always a danger of being too self-referential and insulting the reader’s intelligence. As someone who is continuously pissed off by authors who do this, I have done my utmost to ensure that I veer away from such a practice as much as possible. This novel incorporates the two pastimes I love most: darts and horror films, so I am writing about something that I know a lot of (plus I’m also a thirty-year-old disillusioned architect) but I never insult the reader’s intelligence – when explanation is required, it is presented, when it is not, it is not. Darts is rapidly gaining in popularity as it is now, thanks to Sky Sports, on television most of the year, and players such as Phil Taylor, are becoming more familiar faces to the public thanks to chat show appearances and starring in pop videos. The sport is once again fast becoming a new breed of celebrity. This novel mixes the public’s newfound love of darts with their need for something dark and disturbing.

Pier-Point
By
Shaun AJ Hamilton

“Blackpool – where the art of variety has been nurtured and preserved”
BBC Breakfast News, 25th March, 2005. 09:46am

“Variety is dead”
BBC Breakfast News, 4 minutes later

1 – No Score
Bolton was easy. So, so easy.
And soon, Blackpool will be the same. Hell, surely a place like that should prove even easier? With its seemingly infinite number of the wasted and the puerile, no one will notice if a few of them disappear – not before their decaying corpses turn up on the town’s shitty beach!
100
It really is spooky how easy Bolton proved to be: three dead and not even a mention in the local newspaper. Perhaps, perhaps they’re still waiting to be discovered; locked away, hidden. Each one collapsing under a month’s worth of decay; waiting to be found by someone out on their Sunday morning stroll; that someone walking their dog or pushing a pram, happy and oblivious; happy until they’re diverted by the smell coming from the bushes…
So easy.
But you were before Bolton. You started the madness.
80
Even now, I’m still amazed that you climbed into the car. In a world where every other news item is informing the public to beware of people like me, you stepped into the car’s confines like you were my best friend! Without even a second thought, you slipped in beside me; filled the vehicle with your presence.
Your innocence was intoxicating!
121
It was so frighteningly easy! Surely it’s not supposed to be that simple? To pull a random girl in off the street and string her up like a piece of meat hanging in a butcher’s window! A wasted life drained, bleeding warm puddles, deep and crimson, onto a concrete floor, attracting flies and filth.
Oh so easy – and now, even after all this time, even after Bolton, you’re still the one I remember. Still the one. You were the first; you took my virginity, snatched it away from me with your body and soul – you took it, oblivious of your effect.
137
And you deserved it. With a name like that, what did you expect!? It was so unusual, so odd, and yet so, so perfect. Justine… Justine Gaunt.
120, second throw hits the wire.
You were beautiful; tall, slender, voluptuous; your dark hair, almost black, threw a reflection across the room towards me, sunlight dancing in the darkness of your mane. Long strands stroked the pale skin of your shoulders, your fringe masked your face; it took time to register your wonder; time to wallow in your power…
140
Your eyes, dark with magic, your lips, full and red, inviting me in, offering me a taste of the pleasure inside. Your breasts were full and soft, the pale skin and deep aureoles filling me with a desire I’d not felt in years – not since that moment with the video. Even after you’d died they held a touch of life, tasting ever sweeter as your dead heart started its fateful journey towards decay.
180 – The Holy Grail.
I didn’t want to kill you, but you had to die. You were the start of the program. You made yourself a part of the plan; I… I had… I had no choice! The impulsion, the need, it got… it just got too much! I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t close my eyes without seeing the pictures… the television. Every time I tried to rest, the images would dance in my head; taunting me, driving me crazy, driving me…
60
You had to die… your name… it was just too much… the hands of fate had manipulated our existences and brought us together. Somebody, somewhere wanted us to meet, meet so I could take your life. Justine. Justine Gaunt.
The day you were given that name, that sweet, innocent, joyful name by your parents, it would have been impossible for them to know. Impossible to know about the implications it would bring in only a few, incandescent years. Impossible for them to know about me.
41
When we met, it was almost comical. I was there for the darts tournament: a competition worth thousands, being shown to millions around the world as a means of entertainment. But for me, the entertainment meant nothing. I was resolved to perform my duty, to live the lie and execute - yet I was nervous. In the bright June sun, I walked the streets, fighting with my thoughts, trying to banish my demons to a world I have no idea as to the name of. I didn’t know you, you didn’t know me. I didn’t see you…
I didn’t see the tree.
With my head down, eyes watching the tarmac, refusing to leave my feet, it comes as no surprise that I walked into the immovable trunk of the oak tree. The pace I was walking at was close to a run and with the impact, my legs collapsed; I fell back, slamming the back of my head into the pavement.
With the growing lumps at the back and front of my head, you said I worried you.
80
You saw me fall.
Pushing past those ignorant of my injury, you rushed to my aid, fighting to suppress your laughter. I wanted to laugh with you, but the blood seeping from the matted nest of my hair stopped me from finding anything more than a grin. You asked me if I was okay and if I needed help. Your kindness to an individual who has rarely seen any was immeasurable. I was grateful, truly grateful for your offer. Your sympathy at my predicament and your struggles to hide your smile went someway to help me forget about my throbbing head.
But you ruined it, ruined it all.
You sat me to one side, asking me if I wanted to join you for a coffee. You were concerned because you thought I’d suffered, ‘a nasty bang’ and you wanted to be sure I wasn’t suffering from ‘concussion or something’. You wanted to be certain.
To comfort me, you told me your name.
And now you’re dead.
26
Justine Gaunt.
You died having no idea as to the significance of your name. I could have told you; I could have told you why I opened your skin; I could have told you my reasons for taking you away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. If I had told you, the moment would have been lost, my courage destroyed. If I had put sound to my thoughts, relayed them to you, then the whole absurdity of the situation would have become clear to me. The insanity would have formed itself into a living, breathing entity, misshapen and deformed.
But I didn’t, and so everything is beautiful and serene.
Justine Gaunt.
The TV is on, Justine and it’s playing our film. But you have no idea.
I can tell you now Justine, you deserve to know.
Your Christian name. It is the same, Justine. The same as Baron Frankenstein’s mistress in the Hammer Horror film, ‘The Curse Of Frankenstein’; Gaunt is the surname of the actress who played her.
I had no choice.
Justine. You were the start; you were the trigger. You died at my hands, lost and bewildered as to why such a cruelty could happen to you… and now, so have others.
Bolton was easy; Blackpool will be easier.
Two treble twenties, finish with double twenty.
Warm-up complete.

 

If I’ve whetted your appetite and you’re desperate to read more of my work, then get in contact via the contacts page. For the tiniest of tiny fees (certainly a lot less than you’d expect to pay on certain auctioning websites) I’ll email the requested manuscript across in a .pdf format – complete with spelling and grammar mistakes!! Then, if I do make to the big time, you’ll have a collector’s item – and as I said, all for the tiniest of tiny fees!! (Did I make the bit about the fees clear? They really are tiny.)