Book Three in the Gabriel series.
The third book in the Amazon Bestselling series by award-winning author David Hickson.
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About this premium eBook
A series of brutal murders. A hunt for the thieves behind the Gold Heist. Both trails lead to the same man.
Ben Gabriel was once a soldier in the elite British Special Forces, but that was before his dishonourable discharge and subsequent descent into a life of crime.
Now he is on the run from a wealthy gold mining magnate – determined to hunt him down and reclaim the gold taken from him in the biggest gold heist in living memory.
And Gabriel’s life is about to become more complicated – when prominent South African society members are brutally murdered, the police discover a link between the murders and Gabriel.
But is Gabriel responsible, or is his connection to the murders more complicated than guilt?
Can he escape the clutches of his pursuers?
And where is all that gold?
Vengeful is the third book in the Gabriel series of thrillers set in the turbulent political landscape of South Africa. If you like stories of the underdog who questions authority, and the daring capers of those who break the law to find the truth, then you’ll love this breathtakingly fresh thriller from David Hickson.
"Great characters, great story, great setting."
"The quality of the writing shines through on every page."
"Captivating from the very beginning!"
"From cover to cover, the quality of the writing never wavers. Powerful and evocative."
"I do love Gabriel. He’s a little dark and devious, but overall his heart is in the right place. Or maybe not entirely."
"Ben Gabriel continues to be the new thriller hero on the block."
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Enjoy a sample from VENGEFUL
Justice Francois Rousseau – as a man of the law – might have been expected by most people to speak the truth.
But I am not like most people, which was why I had broken into his house this Sunday morning to ask my questions in person. And I was finding that Justice Rousseau was reluctant to speak anything, let alone the truth.
“Disappeared?” he said, in a voice tight with anger.
“She disappeared,” I confirmed.
Justice Rousseau grunted. He was a short man with a balding head, wisps of grey hair straggling in all the wrong directions because he had woken unexpectedly upon discovering that there was an intruder in his house, and had not taken the time to comb his hair into place. The body beneath the head was substantial, and although he had his back to me, he contrived to have his heavy shoulders broadcast his sense of superiority.
I had asked my questions about the missing journalist gently, almost kindly, but he had not taken it at all well. He stood in a gesture of dismissal and gazed out through the tinted glass wall at the infinity pool, which reflected the azure sky above a sleepy Johannesburg.
“What does this journalist have to do with me?” he asked, his eyes still fixed on the view offered by his modern monstrosity of a mansion, which was perched high on Northcliff Ridge. Beyond the carefully tended garden, we could glimpse buildings between the trees of the world’s largest man-made forest that sheltered the sprawling metropolis of the business capital of South Africa.
“I believe she came to see you,” I said. “Interviewed you, perhaps?”
“Believe!” scoffed Justice Rousseau. “Perhaps! What would she have come to see me about?”
We had gone through his sneering rejection of the idea that he knew anything about Sandy or her disappearance, and then he had played the outright denial card. Now we were doing the harder ‘why me’ stuff. This was harder, because Justice Rousseau knew very well why him. I had already explained that his name was on a list of men that the journalist had been investigating before her disappearance.
“She came to see you about the girls,” I said.
Justice Rousseau turned, his silk dressing gown fluttering open beneath his corpulent belly, revealing for an unfortunate moment his shrivelled manhood. The silk gown was black with yellow and orange dragons, a Japanese kimono made for a less substantial person. His face, now that I could see it clearly, was not the most attractive I have encountered. A pockmarked ball of greasy clay with a bulbous nose pinned on the front and two small seashell ears below the halfway level.
“Those girls are here of their own free will.”
He gave a twitch of the head to indicate the three young women lounging in the early morning sun beside the pool. Three slender beauties who represented the range of ethnic diversity in the country, from the pale-skinned descendant of European colonists, to the sculpted dark chocolate of the Masai warrior. The cultural link was a toffee-brown girl of mixed race. I had noticed, when waiting for Justice Rousseau to join me, that there was a distinct lack of clothing between the three young girls. Only a couple of thongs, a modest set of briefs, and they all seemed to have forgotten to pack anything to wear on the upper part of their bodies. Which was probably how Justice Rousseau liked his girls to dress on the morning after a night of satisfying his appetites.
“It is not those girls that I am speaking about,” I said.
Justice Rousseau considered me, his capillary-veined nose scrunched up as if I had a foul smell, although I was fairly clean this morning, and fully clothed, which he was not. But that was my fault. I had bypassed his security by arriving shortly after dawn with the team of garden workers, and had surprised him with my presence when he had stumbled into his entertainment room, pulling the inadequate kimono about his naked body, just moments after being woken by the strains of ‘Parigi, o cara’ from Verdi’s La Traviata, which I had found in his wall of musical entertainment. I had increased the volume a little more than might have been necessary because I had grown weary of waiting for him. We had been building to the second chorus when Justice Rousseau stumbled through to find me enjoying the view from the embrace of his reindeer-leather couch.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked now, avoiding the question that would clarify which girls I was speaking about, and choosing instead a return to aggression. “How dare you threaten me?”
“I know who you are, Justice Rousseau.”
He was one of the most senior judges in the country, a man who had built an impeccable career over the past forty years, starting way back in the apartheid years.
“I also know about a club you belong to.”
“Club?” said Justice Rousseau, and his tongue came out of his mouth like a deep sea creature emerging from a cave. It squeezed itself across his upper lip, and then retreated, leaving the lips damp enough for the denials that he would need to make.
“One which provides young girls to men with particular appetites. The club that you are a founding member of.”
“I have no idea what you are saying. I haven’t founded any clubs.”
But if he had ever been a convincing liar, it was a skill that he had lost as his sense of his own importance had grown to match his swelling body.
“Admittedly, your name is not to be found on the club documents,” I said. “But I suspect that is because of the nature of its activities.”
“Who the hell are you?” demanded Justice Rousseau.
“Gabriel,” I said. I had told him before, but that had been when he was recovering from the shock of finding me in his entertainment room so early on a Sunday morning. “Like the angel,” I added.
“Angel?” he said, as if I had insulted him.
“The Archangel Gabriel.”
“I'm calling security,” said Justice Rousseau.
“I wanted to give you the chance to speak off the record. Unofficially, before the law gets involved.”
“I am the law!” declared Justice Rousseau. He strode across the deep pile carpet of his entertainment room, his silk kimono opening regrettably in the rush, and he pressed a button on an intercom in the wall. His eyes stayed on me, a moment of panic appearing behind them as it occurred to him that I might have gained entrance to his property by disabling his security with extreme violence. But his press of the button was responded to a moment later by the squawking of a man’s voice.
“There's a man in my house,” complained Justice Rousseau, the tension squeezing his voice several tones higher. “Come and remove him. Now.”
The intercom uttered a surprised squawk, and Justice Rousseau gave me a look of cruel satisfaction.
“They are armed,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it,” I replied. “I am not.”
Justice Rousseau’s eyes narrowed, as if he might better spot hidden weapons in that way. But only a fool would break into a house with armed security carrying a weapon. He stayed with his back against the wall beside the intercom, his false bravado dissipating.
We stood in silence for a moment, and then I said: “Is this considered art?”
I indicated the framed illustrations of exotic sexual poses and moody erotic photography that adorned the walls of his entertainment chamber. “Or is it simply pornography?”
Justice Rousseau's tongue came out of its cave again and licked his upper lip, but he did not deign to reply. There was no time anyway, because a door opened at the far end of the room, beyond the grand piano, and a security guard followed his Sig Sauer through the opening.
“This the man, boss?” he asked, unnecessarily, it seemed to me. I raised my hands to identify myself as the man to be removed.
“You can tell your coloured journalist,” spat Justice Rousseau, his confidence restored by the presence of his armed protection, “that if she has accusations to make, she will need to make them personally, not send some out-of-work gun-for-hire.”
I said nothing in response to that. When I reached the door, I turned back to find his frightened eyes on me, gave him a farewell nod, and left the room.
Justice Rousseau might not have answered my questions, but his fear provided me with answers more clearly than any words could have. And he had – unintentionally – spoken a word of truth in that last moment. Because I had not mentioned the colour of Sandy’s skin, and there was no way he could know she was of mixed race, unless he knew who she was, and perhaps also knew what had happened to her.