Carrion Kisses [Paperback]

'A searing book about a four-year relationship with a psychopath', Telegraph --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Romance, passion, obsession, deception, murder, Dangerous Love combines all of these elements to create a gripping true-life tale far more disturbing than any fiction --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Carrion Kisses is a riveting and disturbing story of passion, murder and obsession, with undertones of a real-life Barbara Vine. When Kate Lock first met Tim Franklin she was a na-ve undergraduate, and he a charismatic mature student. One night in the pub he casually revealed that he was a 'lifer'. A domestic dispute had taken a tragic turn, an accidental death, he said- It was the start of an explosive relationship - which began in passionate union and ended in emotional cruelty. But it was only when Kate tried to leave him that she discovered how potentially dangerous he really was. And only when he died, leaving her a legacy of murder to investigate, did she understand the Machiavellian deception of the man and the pathological pattern of his love. Carrion Kisses is a stunning memoir of a true romance that became a living nightmare and ended with the discovery of a Christie-style murder that rocked the North.

A gripping, beautifully written memoir of love and murder

Kate Lock was born in Oxford and began her career as a journalist on the Oxford Star. She has written extensively about television for Radio Times and has published eight TV novelisations and one non-fiction book. She now lives in Yorkshire with her husband and daughter.

I'd known Tim for less than two hours when he told me he was out of prison on licence. Then he offered to walk me home.

'Look,' he said. 'It's late and it's dark. You can't go back by yourself. It's not safe.' He took my coat off the chair and held it open, waiting. I remained in my seat, weighing up the odds. The footpath ran along a bank above the road, and it was narrow and badly lit. Which was riskier: going it alone and chancing being attacked by some unknown rapist, or letting a lifer I'd met in the pub walk me through the shadows? Dawdling over the dregs of my glass, I avoided his eyes, focusing instead on his wrists in front of me, labourer's wrists, brown and muscular and broad at the knuckle. Earlier, I'd found myself wanting to touch them, without knowing why. He extended his arms, offering the coat. A droplet of sweat inched a snail trail down my side. I wanted to bolt, but he was standing in the way. I heard him exhale steadily through his nostrils and sensed he was controlling impatience. Torn between politeness and panic, I told myself he couldn't be dangerous or they wouldn't have let him out. Tim gave my coat an insistent shake. 'Well?' he said. 'Are you coming?'

I met Tim through Mike, a post-graduate I had become friendly with. Mike helped out with our biology practicals and flirted with all the authority that a white lab coat can lend. He had tight fair curls, crinkly blue eyes and a teasing manner, but, most importantly, he was older. At twenty, I was finding it hard to fit in with the other freshers: too young to be a mature student and too old to put up with puking school-leavers. With Mike, at least, there was some common ground - I'd worked with male scientists and could match the banter - so when he invited me to a Biology Society's cheese-and-wine party, I leapt at the chance. 'The others'll be there,' he announced casually, as we tidied up the desks.

'Who? Your harem?'

He flicked agar-agar at me. 'My housemates.'

'Are they nice?'

He grinned. 'They're completely insane.'

I often wonder what Tim saw in me. Youth, mainly, I suspect. Rawness, naiveté. I was so obviously malleable. Like a shark scenting a drop of blood in a vast expanse of ocean, he sniffed out my vulnerability the first time he laid eyes on me. Furthermore, I was wearing a red jumpsuit unzipped to reveal a great deal of cleavage, which demonstrated a willingness to be exploited. (I overheard him joking about this years later - 'There she was, damn thing undone to her bellybutton and pissed as a newt - well, I ask you' - and was dismayed by his coarseness.) It was true that I was drunk, so drunk I could scarcely see, but if all he'd wanted was an easy lay, he could probably have had me that night. It was Freshers' Week, an induction into university life for new students that consisted mainly of trial by alcohol, and Mike and his friends had dragged me to the Philosophy Society's party after we'd drunk the Biology Society's cheese-and-wine dry. He had then abandoned me for a brunette and I had consoled myself with several more glasses of vinegary red, which the cubes of dry cheddar had no hope of absorbing. I remember pouncing on an owlish young man in a sports jacket, who seemed to want to talk about A. J. Ayer rather than dance to Adam and the Ants, and there being some confusion over our interpretations of New Romanticism, but the rest is a blur. I was whisked back to my hall of residence by a couple of sober academics, staggered into my room and was sick in the basin, unaware that Tim had already exerted his influence over me.

Despite my two extra years in the 'real' world (one gap year had segued into another) university life was proving harder to adjust to than I'd imagined. Having survived comprehensive-school bullying - where I'd been picked on for being 'square', a swot and talking 'posh' (the threat of elocution lessons with Auntie Gertie, a retired mezzo-soprano, had done its job) - I had expected students to be more egalitarian. Not so. Exeter University in 1981 turned out to be much more class-driven than my mother, or at least its undergraduates were, and being a police sergeant's daughter, I was now Not Posh Enough. A large proportion of the students were privately educated; Oxbridge rejects from wealthy families with ruddy cheeks and loud voices. They had a nickname, 'Wellies', and a uniform that both sexes adhered to rigidly. The girls wore velvet Alice bands, pearl necklaces, navy pumps and Laura Ashley blouses with the collars turned up; the boys, rugby shirts and brown cords. They were also extremely rude, pushing into the coffee-bar queues and acting as if us comprehensive-school kids were invisible. This created a sense of alienation that drove me further to the political left: I palled up with Matt, a softly spoken Irish Marxist; Lizzie, a lesbian who campaigned tirelessly for the removal of VAT from tampons; and flirted with the Socialist Worker Student Organization (or 'Swizzo' as it was known), mainly, I confess, because I fancied Roger, who was running it. We spent a night drinking Polish vodka and discussing Lech Walesa's Solidarity union, twisting cold tongues and fumbling beneath each other's T-shirts, but we'd climaxed with our mutual hatred for Margaret Thatcher too early, and by the time we climbed under his thin sheets, our passion was spent. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.