Dan Matlock is out of jail. He’s got a choice. Stay or leave. Go back to where it all went wrong, or just get out of the county. Disappear. Start again as someone else. But it’s not as simple as that.There’s the matter of the man he killed. It wasn’t murder, but even so. You tell that to the family. Especially when that family is the Mintons, who own half of what’s profitable and two-thirds of what’s crooked between the Wolds and the coast. Who could have got to Matlock as easy as you like in prison, but who haven’t touched him. Not yet.Like Matlock found out in prison, there’s no getting away from yourself. So what’s the point in not facing up to other people?It’s time to go home.
East of England by Eamonn Griffin was published by Unbound Digital on 24 January 2019
As part of the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour, I'm delighted to share an extract from the book with you today.
In this short excerpt from East of England, the just-released Dan Matlock reflects on the two years in jail, and on having time to come up with a plan – if needed – for when he gets out:
Having two years to think about something was more of a curse than a boon. Two years of lying on the bottom bunk, staring up at the slats supporting the upper bed’s mattress. Two years of counting the bricks in the exercise yard walls. Two years of weak tea, indifferent carbohydrates three times a day and no visitors. Two years of not rising to the baiting of the screws, facing down thugs, not getting involved.
No visitors. That had been his choice. He’d been adamant.
That wasn’t to say it didn’t hurt.
The first week was important. Matlock let a big kid pick a fight just so he could beast him in public.
It wasn’t the kid’s fault. He didn’t know any better. A head full of lies about what it was to be a man inside. Set up to prove himself, so he could attach himself to some clique or other.
Pale skin, cropped hair on the ginger side of blond. Sunken cheeks. Six inches taller but three stone lighter than Matlock. He had reach but no power. And as it turned out, no heart.
Matlock took the first punch so the kid would have something to show. Maybe it would be enough for his lieutenant to take him on anyway. A hard blow, but nothing special. Deep under the ribs, intended to make him buckle.
A jab into the face broke the kid’s nose. A fast left, round onto the ear, took his knees away. Before he could buckle over, a right. Piledriver into the eye socket. There was no way that the bone didn’t break.
The kid went to his knees. Some idiot shouted something about finishing him off. Later, someone else tried to start a meal queue conversation about how he’d have grasped the kid by his ears and kneed him in the face until his jaw broke.
Two years. Prison was all talk. Big plans and schemes, lies about innocence.
Matlock was left alone after that.
Two years and one idea. Over time, that idea took form. Grit in an oyster slowly becoming a pearl.
Eamonn Griffin was born and raised in Lincolnshire, though these days he lives in north-east Wales. He's worked as a stonemason, a strawberry picker, in plastics factories (everything from packing those little bags for loose change you get from banks to production planning via transport manager via fork-lift driving), in agricultural and industrial laboratories, in a computer games shop, and latterly in further and higher education.
He doesn’t do any of that any more. Instead, he writes fulltime, either as a freelancer, or else on fiction.
Eamonn has collected a PhD, an MA, an assortment of teaching qualifications, and a BSc along the way. He really likes biltong, and has recently returned to learning to play piano, something he abandoned when he was about seven and has regretted since.
Find out more at the website
Twitter @eamonngriffin
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