Front cover of With Time to Kill: Book One by Scottish speculative fiction writer Frank Ferrari

WITH TIME TO KILL

BOOK ONE

Everyone deserves a second chance, but how far would you go for one?

In the gritty streets of Edinburgh, Garry Plumb is about to find out. Living life on the periphery, never fitting in and always on his own, Garry’s world opens up when he meets Billy, the peculiar bus driver who has been watching him. Billy knows exactly how it feels to be ignored and his influence on Garry is immediate.

For the first time, Garry knows what it means to have his very own best friend. But this friendship is unlike any other, as Billy reveals how Garry can fix his entire life by changing his past.

But when the DCI John Waters, a relentless detective hunting a clever serial killer, enters Garry’s life, their friendship is put to the ultimate test.

Garry is willing to do anything for a second chance at life but, after meeting Billy, he has to ask himself: would he kill for it?

This dark and captivating tale of self-discovery, murder and redemption will keep readers on the edge of their seats. With Time to Kill: Book One, a perfect blend of Scottish crime and sci-fi thriller, will leave you wanting more.

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Crime drama and Sci-fi fantasy collide in this twisted tale about second chances.

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Very well written, and such a clever, quirky storyline which made laugh out loud at times 

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Could not put this book down. Had me hooked from the very first chapter. Dark and humorous.

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Wasn’t sure what to expect as a new author. Pleasantly surprised by the characters and the plot. An enjoyable and quirky read!

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A psychological thriller that became part science fiction. I was so annoyed as I do not like sci fi, I almost stopped reading. Glad I stuck with it.

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A gleefully dark mash-up of police procedural, serial-killer horror, and high-concept time travel. Clear an evening—you’ll race through this and immediately want the sequel.

SAMPLE CHAPTER

Something incredible happened to Garry Plumb last summer. For the first time in his life, he made a friend, and it changed everything.
Until the first half of last year – stretching back all twenty-eight years of his existence – Garry had failed to connect with a single other human being, something everyone else seemed to achieve without effort.
He was the kind of man who would go unnoticed in a busy cafe, bar, or even a small meeting room. The sort of presence waves of people would course around without seeing.
He wasn’t odd to any great extreme. Admittedly, he liked computers more than the average man his age, but numbers and algorithms were his job. Besides, throughout his life, he watched on from the sidelines as others like him – and even those several notches along on the nerd scale – found kindred spirits, both in the platonic sense as well as romantic.
Garry also wasn’t repulsive. Although he hunched, he stood at five feet ten inches, which was bang-average for an adult male in Scotland. He walked most places, and while he was a little softer around the middle than he would have liked, he wasn’t overweight, and he kept good personal hygiene.
Location wasn’t the reason, either. He had grown up in the town of Falkirk, surrounded by one hundred and sixty thousand other individuals trying to find their way in the world. He didn’t live in some rural outpost hours from civilization.
His school classes averaged thirty-six kids, and with each new school year and each new group of classmates, he saw an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. To start over. Every intervening summer, he subtly reinvented himself, hoping to make a friend that year. For young Garry, however, such dreams never materialised.
Later in life, he moved to Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city, where he jostled for position amongst half a million connection-seeking humans, working in close quarters with twenty-five of them.
Those who had encountered Garry before last year’s summer described him using words like ‘shy’, ‘meek’, or ‘timid’. The word they really meant, but wouldn’t say because humans are generally compassionate beings, was ‘uninteresting’.

At a young age, Garry became aware of the view others had of him and, in one of the many attempts to offset his inability to impress, he adopted the name ‘Garry’. On his birth certificate, he was an average single-r – Gary Alan Plumb – but since leaving home, everything he signed declared him as the marginally less common and, in his mind, quirkier ‘Garry’.
It changed nothing, of course. Nor did the night classes he had dragged himself to in his early twenties in an effort to develop common interests with those who coasted by him in daily life.
Ballroom dancing had been a poor choice. It was impossible to wow someone with a reverse fleckerl or a cross-body lead when the thought of dancing a Viennese Waltz together never even crossed the mind of anyone outside the class. Inside the class, Garry was, without exception, across each one of the fourteen sessions he slogged through, left to dance with the instructor, Jaime.
Amateur dramatics had been just as disappointing. Despite his hopes that the friendship demanded by the performance would translate to the real world, the reality was that the actors never became the friends that their characters were. He stuck with the acting classes long enough to see out a live show – Made in Dagenham, where he landed the role of Barry, despite auditioning for Eddie – and when the curtain fell on the last night, the entire cast went for drinks at a nearby pub.
Everyone except Garry.
There was no malice in the cast’s failure to invite him. Rather, it was as though a collective amnesia enshrouded them, and they simply forgot Garry Plumb existed.
And on it went deep into Garry’s twenties. By this time, he had resigned himself to a life of solitude. He accepted he would never fuse a wounded palm with a blood-brother. Would never wreak havoc during a ruckus-filled sleepover. Would likely die with his only romantic encounter coming at the age of twenty-three, when an unknown drunk woman several years his senior had hauled him into an unwanted wet kiss as he shuffled home from the local corner shop with a frozen pizza and a share-size bag of Doritos he would consume alone. She had been staggering in the opposite direction, bar-hopping for hours, and had mistaken him for an ex-boyfriend.

The mystery lady would have no idea that her intrusive tongue and her fumbled grope of Garry’s crotch represented his entire life’s sexual experience. Prior to this, he had come to terms with remaining a lifelong virgin. He hadn’t had much interest in sex and, up until that point, had never even pleasured himself. What the experience of that night taught him was that he was, in fact, not asexual. An electric tingle had jolted through him as the woman’s fingers delicately cupped his balls through his joggers, and it had sparked a new era in the life of Garry in which his favourite pastime was frantic sexual exploration. Solo, of course.
Garry grew certain that his inability to connect with others was because some part of normal childhood development had passed him by. After spending years wondering whether it was a nature thing, he eventually believed that the reason for the empty part of himself was rooted in nurture.
All the shit stuff was because of an event in your childhood, wasn’t that what the psychologists said? Garry’s life was peppered with so many episodes that even Erikson and Piaget, despite all their influential theorising in developmental psychology, would have struggled to pinpoint a singular cause.
He got bullied in school, but then so did lots of kids. He belonged to none of the usual target groups. He had no distinguishing features. He was clever enough to be at the smart end of the spectrum, but not so obviously clever as to be an outlier. He played sports when the curriculum demanded it and, while no athlete, he was not so inept as to warrant attention.
White. Scottish. Religiously unassociated. Socioeconomically, he was slap bang in the middle of the road for the area he lived in, which was towards the lower end nationally. He was a stock representation of the majority. In adulthood, he would come to consider that his bullying resulted from being entirely unremarkable.
He was the only child of occasional-barmaid/often-on-benefits Stacey Plumb, who raised him in a rented two-bed terraced bungalow provided by a local housing association. Garry knew nothing about his father. Once, when he was eight years old, he had asked his mother about dear old Dad.

And once had been enough. Most of what followed he could never recall – he was unconscious for some of it. Other parts were just gone, like a thick fog had replaced the time – but he remembered that Stacey had said no words.
Her right hand found the handle of the pan she had been frying cheap, greasy burgers in and snapped it up with such speed that Garry couldn’t react. It had connected with the left side of his face, and the fog had come rushing in.
The parts from that episode he would always remember were the pain he endured as his fractured eye socket healed, and the sling he had worn for six weeks after the doctors reset his dislocated shoulder.
As he grew, both in height as well as his comprehension of the world around him, he began to doubt his mother even remembered which of the unpleasant, grotesquely abusive relationships had sired him. Some hung around for as long as a season. Most were flings which began when she was working nights at the bar and lasted the length of the average British family summer holiday.
He couldn’t really remember the relationships, but some deep pocket inside of him housed a feeling that the ones who hung around for a season or more were the most awful to him.
One thing Garry had figured out far too young was that Stacey Plumb did not love her son. She didn’t even like him. This much was clear from the constant put-downs and frequent bouts of violence. But he came with financial benefits, and so she kept him around.
She collected the government Child Payment while he was at school, and when he was old enough to work part-time jobs, she took what money he made.
Into his teens, he brought in a decent sum from cleaning out the council’s dogshit bins for two hours every morning before school, then picked litter for three hours after. On top of her government payments and council-tax reductions, Garry was lucrative to Stacey, and there was no way she would ever let a steady stream of profit slip through her claws. Garry sensed her plan was to trap him even after he had outgrown the support payments because, by then, he would be of an age to command a higher hourly rate, and that would help plug her income gap.

As such, when the time came to explore further education, Garry contacted his favoured university without her knowledge. Having developed an infatuation for numbers and data and code – things which possess no emotion nor capacity to pass judgement – his preferred destination was Abertay University in Dundee. There, he hoped to gain a Bachelor’s degree in Computing Science from the same institution that birthed the Grand Theft Auto series of video games, but perhaps the most attractive aspect of studying in Dundee was that it was far enough away that he would need to move into student accommodation.
Mr Kinning, a good man who was Garry’s IT teacher at school – and the closest anyone had come to being his friend – had encouraged him to call the admissions office to discuss his chances of acceptance. He even allowed Garry to use his mobile phone.
The call was brief, as was Garry’s elation when they assured him he would be accepted. That night, he had told Stacey that Abertay would accept him.
After a tirade of verbal abuse – by this time she had stopped hitting him, afraid that his greater strength might one day be used against her – Garry had relented, although he had won a concession.
Stacey had agreed to his studying computing, but only at the community college within walking distance of their shabby little bungalow. He wouldn’t get a degree, but it was still something.
After two years, Garry earned a diploma in computing. And he was exhausted.
The study was fine – easy, even. Having discovered a talent for code in his early teens, Garry had taught himself most of the college curriculum by the time he was fifteen. The problem was the need to work every evening and weekend to generate income for Stacey. Throughout those two years, she spent more time drunk and unemployed than she did at work. The silver lining around that cloud was that Garry rarely had to hear her getting fucked by some undiagnosed alcoholic from the bar through the paper-thin walls of his bedroom.
Two wonderful things happened in the same week Garry turned twenty. A hardware manufacturer with an Edinburgh-based distribution centre hired Garry as a data analyst.
And Stacey Plumb died.

When lunchtime arrived on that Sunday in spring, and Stacey hadn’t yet emerged from her room at the end of the dank corridor, Garry went to check if she’d spent the night elsewhere. Arriving home late from work the previous night, he had assumed she was already in bed. It was possible she had gone out for the night, hooked up with a random drunk, and would drag herself back home when she’d grown tired of him.
He tapped the door a few times and wished he had held onto the handle at the same time. As each tap eased it open a fraction further, the putrid stench of vomit and faeces hit him. After stepping back into the hallway to gag, he pulled his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose and ventured into the room.
‘Mum?’ he whispered. ‘You OK, Mum?’
There was no response. The curtains were drawn, but Garry could make out her shape on the bed. It looked like she was lying on her back, arms and legs spread wide. In the dim light, he couldn’t see if she was under the sheets or lying on top of the bed.
Clicking on the ceiling light, he saw a thin duvet curled up at the foot of the bed. Stacey lay spread-eagled on top of the mattress, her glassy eyes gazing at something unseen on the ceiling. Her mouth hung open, and the puddle of vomit that had likely ended her life was visible at the back of her throat. His eyes followed the trail down to where what little had spilled out had pooled between her exposed breasts, each one pointing towards opposite walls.
Beneath her rear-end, Garry saw a pool of thick faeces and was thankful she’d been wearing shorts, otherwise the sight might have been enough to cause a mental breakdown.
He stood frozen and indecisive, unable to peel his gawping eyes away, each passing second etching the revolting scene deeper into his brain.
The investigation hadn’t lasted long. Toxicology reports highlighted an extreme quantity of alcohol had been consumed. The officers attending the scene had uncovered seven empty one-litre bottles of vodka, rum, and whisky lying around the room, and concluded that Stacey had drunk herself to death.
The absence of any kind of note indicated it was unintentional, but Garry was already certain she hadn’t purposely killed herself. After all, his wages had been due the following Thursday and she would have wanted to spend those before kicking the proverbial bucket.

The housing association had allowed Garry to remain in the bungalow – rent-free, no less – for three months while he arranged his next step. It took him only a fortnight to find a flat on the north side of Edinburgh, just in time before rent and property prices there skyrocketed. Packing up the few belongings he wanted to keep into a single Aldi bag-for-life, Garry said goodbye to Falkirk.
He soon settled into life in Scotland’s capital. In fair weather, he rose early and walked the couple of miles into the city centre business complex where he worked. On other days, he hopped on the bus that conveniently ferried him between a nearby shopping centre and a stop a few hundred yards from the office.
Garry enjoyed his work. It was both well paid and easy, given his extensive coding skills. He performed well, had never taken a sick day, and attended all company events and excursions. Despite this, he remained on the periphery. His colleagues at least knew who he was, but no one knew him.
When it came to relationships, all Garry’s move into working life had achieved was an additional twenty-five people whose description of him contained those same words: shy, meek, timid. Uninteresting.
But all of that has changed, starting last summer.
Ask those around Garry today, and they’ll say the opposite.
Confident. Assertive. Bold. A man with unwavering faith in his principles. Someone whose every decision is rooted in moral virtue, who perfectly straddles the border between persuasive and manipulative to get the right outcome, but makes sure others want it, too.
People trust Garry Plumb. Today, he is seen as a mentor, a leader, and a protector. Those reliant on him feel absolutely secure under his charge. Outside of his professional life, those who meet Garry find him enthralling, charismatic, and interesting. When he engages someone, they feel like the only person in the room.
The people in Garry’s life feel like he knows them, and they know him.
What they don’t know is that Garry Plumb is one of the most prolific serial killers no one has ever heard of.

Title: All God's Creatures set above the line 'A Short Story'. The writer's name, Frank Ferrari, is at the bottom of the image. The background is an aerial view of a desolate forest

What would you do if all the animals vanished?

What started as just another mundane morning soon turned sinister when Hannah, a nursing graduate and community carer, realises that none of the usual animals she sees on her daily route are present. 

Then, when she arrives at her first appointment of the day with Steven Prinder, a blind alcoholic with a bad temper and a chip on his shoulder, the news reports emerge.

Soon, Hannah realises something cataclysmic is going on. Something that was foreseen centuries ago, and from which there appears to be no escape…