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TREVOR WOOD

The Angel of Death

The third book in the thrilling Newcastle-set police series with a twist as DCI Jack Parker confronts the one killer he can’t stop: early onset dementia.

Death is stalking the streets of Newcastle. An anonymous killer is offering the terminally ill a dignified escape. Mercy to some, murder to others.

DCI Jack Parker doesn’t want the case. He has a secret of his own – an early onset dementia diagnosis he’s desperate to conceal. But the signs are becoming impossible to ignore. As his mind begins to betray him, the city faces its own moral reckoning.
While politicians debate a contentious new law and the self-styled Angel of Death selects another victim, Jack’s world is shaken when the killings are traced to a carers’ support group that – one his wife, Helen, has been secretly attending.

Yet his deepest fear is also his darkest temptation. Because when his disease becomes unbearable, the Angel of Death may be exactly the kind of saviour he’ll be looking for.

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TREVOR WOOD

Praise for The Angel of Death

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You watch as the Angel loads up the syringe with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and places it on a tray next to a box of alcohol swabs. You’re so hazy from the sedative he gave you that you can barely keep your eyes open.
‘Are you ready?’ he asks.
Are you? You thought you were but now you’re not sure, though you can feel yourself nodding. It’s too late to turn back. You glance across the room to where your partner is standing to see if they say anything, but even if they do you can’t hear them over the strains of Andrea Bocelli singing ‘Time to Say Goodbye’. Music is the one memory you still somehow cling on to.
The Angel follows your gaze.
‘It’s time,’ he says, before turning back to you. ‘Any last words?’
You want to say something funny. Leave them laughing as you go. You used to like a song about that. What was it again? You can picture a woman, long straight hair singing the words. It’s on the tip of your tongue, it’s … no, it’s no use, it’s gone, like most of your other memories. You shake your head instead.
The Angel takes a swab out of the box and wipes your arm before putting it back on the tray and picking up the syringe.
‘You’ll be unconscious in seconds, and off on your next journey a few moments later.’
Someone should play a drum roll, you think, closing your eyes as the needle nears your skin. You’ve always hated needles. At least this will be your last one. You wait to see if your whole life flashes before your eyes, or at least on the back of your eyelids, but there’s nothing, just darkness. Another lie they told you.
You flinch and grunt quietly as the point jabs into your flesh and you imagine the poison entering your veins. You open your eyes again to stare into the Angel’s, hoping to see a final unspoken message of some kind, but you can’t focus. And he is looking down, gazing at your chest perhaps, waiting for the moment you stop breathing, his expression blank as far as you can tell. He removes the needle and wipes your arm again. You remember that he said it would barely leave a mark. No evidence.
Suddenly it’s dark again but you don’t recall shutting your eyes. Maybe you didn’t? Maybe it’s the closing of the final curtain? But you can still feel your breathing. It’s slowing down though.
Someone takes your wrist, checking your pulse.
‘Nearly there,’ the Angel says.
The music stops and the last thing you hear is a restrained sob from the other side of the room.
Then there’s nothing.

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