Author: Luke Gilfedder. Luke is a writer from Manchester, set to launch his debut novel, The Venatio, in 2025. Previously, he worked as a playwright, with scripts produced at The Royal Exchange Manchester, the Lyric Hammersmith, and in London’s West End. He has recently completed a  PhD on the life and work of Wyndham Lewis. 

THE VENATIO TEASER SYNOPSIS

Playwright Edan Quarrier suspects that his long-lost school friend and former leading actor, Falin Mac Naught, is a serial killer. When Edan spots Falin in the company of Sir Rafael Snithan, Cheshire’s wealthiest baronet, he fears he has identified Falin’s next victim. 

But as Edan races to gather evidence against his old friend, he begins to question whether any murders have, in fact, occurred. Instead, Falin may be involved in an even more sinister plot—one that ensnares Edan in a tangled web whose fatal threads cast further than he could ever have imagined, yet whose source lies deep in the heart of Alderley Edge… 

Inspired by Colin Wilson’s thriller Necessary Doubt, The Venatio is the first book of a planned trilogy, to be followed by Sophomaw and The Phoenix Feasters. 

CHAPTER ONE: THE START OF THE HUNT

Late one Childermass, a black-suited, redheaded six-footer descended the steps of Manchester Victoria Station. He twitched his Celto-Lancastrian nose like a rabbit. A storm was coming—one of those Pentecostal storms native to these hills and neo-gothic spires, tall as obelisks—when dams burst, roofs are torn away, squares flood, and every lead pipe becomes a fountain. He hailed a taxi and gave an Alderley Edge address. They drove south through Moss Side and Hulme, the angry red-brick terraces darkening to purple. Sure enough, after a few hours of winter sun, Manchester was creaking back into its rainy groove like a tram proudly regaining its rails. The mazy streets of Hulme soon ravelled out into semi-suburbia and the open road of Princess Parkway; the man reclined, watching the skyline of his youth recede in the rear-view mirror, blurring to a Lowry-like thickening of twilight itself.

Nightfall brought them to the summit of the Edge. Bronchial trees soared high in the darkness, and mediaeval-ish lampposts held aloft wavering haloes of golden drizzle. The driver said, “People think Cheshire is as flat as a pancake, but it sure ain’t here.” The detached mass of the Edge stood alone on the Cheshire Plain, six hundred feet high and three miles long. It was tall, sombre, and dark. Estates crept down its slopes, stepping on their shadows.

The taxi descended through a yellow fog, and the village of Alderley emerged below, looking like a child’s toy town at the foot of the Edge. It was the “best” postcode in Cheshire: Cheshire’s Kensington, its Linlithgow, its Sandycove, its Charlottenlund, and (to the Welsh at least) its Cowbridge. Alderley had that aura of old halls, fallen fortunes, and county families familiar to so many of too many English autobiographers—something much rarer in the North than the South, the redheaded man knew, though he found it only mildly less intolerable. During the day, the village hummed with Range Rovers and Rolls-Royces, chattering café-goers, and cashmere-draped ramblers trampling down the dead leaves. But at dusk, such life withered in a moment. Then, the sounds became those of the Ed age: the crystal tongues of water and nightingale, and the heathen murmurings of Roman mines and druid’s bones lay beneath the marl.

Their foglamps glowed as the fog thickened down the steep of Woodbrook Road. The cobbled decline soon levelled onto Mottram Lane, and the taxi, finally shaking off the shadow of the Edge, made for the village. Sleet lashed against their windows, tearing the streetlight into golden shrapnel. The driver said,

“Can’t make up its bleeding mind: rain one day, snow the next. Be pissing down again tomorrow.”

Edan Quarrier did not reply. He did not mind the cabbie’s familiarity, but he wasn’t the type to answer a curt ‘yes’ to such observations, nor to reply with the same hackneyed phrase. The driver, sensing Edan’s silence was not meant as a snub, went on:

“Still, if it sticks, be nice for the kids to get some snow finally…”

They slued onto the festive-lit high street. A few Bruegel-like figures, necks swathed in mufflers, stalked about like plump wraiths. The sight reminded Edan of Bruges last winter, and he shivered. He wasn’t thinking about the snow falling in the Markt, nor of the belfry tolling its black and Catholic chimes, but of that eerily familiar figure slipping through the mist and silhouettes. He shivered again. The driver continued:

“Not being nosy, but I’ve seen you before somewhere, haven’t I?”

“An article about me in the papers, perhaps. Or rather,” Edan clarified with haste, “about my play. It’s opening at the Exchange this week.”

 “That’s it, the playwright!” the driver answered with raised (or over-raised) eyebrows. A young man who lived on his WITS — what! — a label which, harmless as it may sound to foreign ears, somehow in England imputes upon a person a moral ambiguity. “I knew I’d seen your face before—you were in Cheshire Life, weren’t you? The missus reads it. How old are you, son, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Just turned twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight…” he let out a low whistle. “You’re doing well for yourself, then. If I were twenty-eight again—and thank Christ that I’m not because I simply couldn’t afford it, I’d— “

The cabbie kept talking, but Edan stopped listening. The rain was provoking memories, too many memories, encouraging them to unfold like those Japanese flowers which open in water. The taxi’s foglamps glanced the long, dark drive of Legh Hall Grammar, and Edan was suddenly that bursary boy again, stood alone in his drenched blazar, stifling a gasp as the gates swung open, his life dividing before him as neatly as Roald Dahl’s Boy and Going Solo…

After passing the school, they took a sharp left but got stuck in traffic by Station Bridge. The driver swore, lit a cigarette, and resigned himself to watching the windscreen wipers battle the sleet. Edan leaned against the window, listening to the swish of tyres on the wet road. He saw the horseshoe of a crowd outside the De Lynn Hotel, admiring a Daimler Limousine parked before the steps, its mirror-black body agleam in the golden light spilling from the lobby. The driver said, following his gaze,

“That’ll be old money. It ain’t all footballers ‘round here…”

From the lobby, two men emerged. The younger one strode forth, slim and defiant, while the elder hunched, Nosferatu-style, in his dark raincape. They might have been grandfather and grandson. The young man eased the elder into the Daimler, but as he closed the door, he noticed Edan’s taxi and froze, poised like a stag at bay. Edan felt a stab of recognition and was about to leap out and shout, “Wait!” when the youth vanished into the Daimler. All things thawed to action—the Daimler swept out of the driveway, cleared its throat, and, with a tremendous purr, glided off toward the lofty manors of Nether Alderley.

The traffic lights remained mulishly red. To the driver, Edan said:

“Would you pull into that hotel, please?”

“But we’re almost at Davey Lane!”

“Do it. It’s urgent.”

The taxi did a slick one-eighty into De Lynn’s driveway. Above the Tudor-gabled roof, smoky clouds swirled in triskelions. Edan jumped out and, realising he had left his satchel on the back seat, called,

“Wait for me here. I shan’t be long.”

He strode up the steps and into the lobby before the concierge even had a chance to curtsy. With a quick smile, he approached the brunette at the desk.

“Excuse me; the young man who just left—have you seen him before? Is he staying here? He’s… he’s an old school friend.”

She flicked hair from her pentathletic brow. “Gosh, I couldn’t say. We’ve been super busy tonight; it’s our Christmas banquet. We’ve got Potted Pigeon, sir, Fidget Pie, Michaelmas Goose,Chester Pud—”

 “Sounds lovely,” Edan put in, “but could I just see a guest list?”

The girl ruched her eyebrows and said she’d get it. Edan waited, tapping his foot and cursing his redhead’s impulsivity. After all, he’d only seen the man thirty yards away through a rain-spattered window. It couldn’t possibly be him… could it? The receptionist returned with the list. Edan scanned it but shook his head. In a conciliatory tone, she added,

“We did have a last-minute booking from an older gent— he might not be on that list. I guess he was with his grandson; I think he called him Calvin?”

“Calvin? Might you have misheard— could it have been Falin? Falin Mac Naught?”

“Maaaybe? I’m not sure. But if you leave your number, I’ll let you know if they come again. It’s Edan, isn’t it?”

“You know my name?”

Insincerely grinning, she said, “Yeah, of course! I read about your play in the paper. The one that rhymes with…” she blushed. “Oh, how do you pronounce it again?”

“Vi-nay-she-oh,” Edan said, quickly dashing off his number. “Do call me if you find anything.”

He left the lobby, thoughts of Falin obscuring the anonymous farewells of women that pursued him down the steps. Taxis idled before him, their keen patches of light wavering across the slush. His own was waiting. He slid in. The driver asked,

“Find what you were looking for, sir?”

“Perhaps,” Edan replied, as ‘vi-nay-she-oh’ rebounded in his mind. Vēnātiō: the hunt. They taught Latin well at Legh Hall Grammar.