50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

And the story:

…

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discreet distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road we were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places, just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three-thousand-foot fall down the mountainside.

Good thing then, I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner, we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication of where he had gone.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2026

…

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”, available soon.

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

—

I had to almost restrain Carlo from going up to the castle and singlehandedly kill everyone in it.  I didn’t doubt he could do it, for a short time at least, until they realized what was going on.  There were too many of them to take on alone.

It would need a careful plan, and knowledge of the layout of the castle, and the likely spots where the soldiers were located.  It was a plan that had been slowly formulating in the back of my mind, especially after Carlo’s help with an internal map of the castle, some parts of which I hadn’t got to see in my brief stay.

I forgot that being built back in the middle ages, and the history of cities fighting against each other, there were ways in, out, and around, both inside and in the walls, so that soldiers could travel from one part of the castle to another without being seen, and not having to go inside the castle itself.

There were, also, tunnels, one of which I had inadvertently found, but there were more, and it seems only Carlo knew of those.  Some were useful, others would lead to an early confrontation, and give early notice of our intentions.  Those we would avoid, or use to escape.

We had set up a command center at the church ruins, having found several rooms off the cellar that had two exits.  I didn’t like the idea of being trapped, nor waiting in a location that Fernando was familiar with and was likely to return to.

Which, in a sense, I was hoping he would because we had set a trap and he and his men would be caught in the crossfire.  He was not going to get a chance to explain, nor would I ask any questions, or show him any mercy.

Especially when I found out what he had done to Martina.  If it was as bad as Chiara, he would be repaid in kind, if the opportunity arose.  I tentatively agreed to give Carlo five minutes in the room alone with him, but he knew that expediency might not give him that luxury.  Blinky was not happy about it, but he hadn’t been here long enough to know what the man or his people were like.

We’d also worked out the surveillance system so that we would know when anyone turned up in the village, particularly our prized defector Meyer, and whether anyone left the castle to come down to the village because it was possible there would be more defectors passing through, and they needed to be warned.

What was particularly useful was finding the radio that Martina had been using.  It was in the church grounds, which was not entirely unexpected, but one of Blink’s men had stumbled over it when looking to set up a latrine.

Blinky had brought a radioman, but his radio had been damaged in the parachute landing.  Now he had a new toy to tinker with, and got a connection back to Thompson, after some initial difficulty in translation.  That I could help him with, my Italian was marginally better than a schoolboy.

Thompson was relieved to hear from me, as I was to talk to him.

“It’s been difficult to get a clear picture with Martina, but I got the impression you had to be precise with your questions.”

“A case of getting lost in translation, perhaps.”  I had not had similar problems, but Thompson was from the aristocracy, and his version of English was sometimes quaint.

“The situation is bad, I understand.”

“It is.  The castle is over-run with British-German double agents.  The three you sent out, and reinforcements that followed.  I get the impression we have about 20 odd dead soldiers languishing in shallow graves somewhere on the Italian countryside.”

It hadn’t been hard to realize that while the officers were known British officers, the soldiers were substituted Germans whose English language and mannerisms were impeccable.  I had no doubt once they’d reeled in Meyer, they would move on, integrating into invasion forces and creating havoc from within, unless of course, we stopped them.

A sigh at the other end, perhaps a lamentation of such needless loss of life.  This war was getting tiresome for both of us.

“How close is Meyer?  We last heard he was in Gaole, waiting for a courier to take him to the village.  His arrival is anticipated to be any time from tomorrow onwards.”

“We’ve got men out keeping tabs on everyone.”

“Blinky arrive with his team?”

“All bar the radio, but as you can hear, we have access to one do it will not be a problem.  I think we might finish this and talk again tomorrow.  Don’t want the Germans tracking the radio waves.”

“Good.  Tomorrow, and hour before today.”

I’d almost forgotten that the Germans were good at tracking radio signals, especially when they thought the enemy was using them, as those at the castle would.  That radio unit could also be used to trace other radio signals, and no doubt they had picked up the signal.  Hopefully, we had not been on long enough for them to run the trace.

That was not going to be a problem.  One of Blinky’s soldiers on village reconnaissance was waiting for us as we approached the church ruins.”

“What is it, man?”

“There are four people at the village, looking for someone or something.”

“More defectors,” I said.  “We’d better get to them before Leonardo and his men get to them first.”

—

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

The expression of Boggs’s face told me he was down here for a reason, and that assumption was proved correct when he started walking towards the middle of the first row of carpark.  

He stopped at a pylon, surrounded by concrete blocks, tiles and broken bricks that looked like they’d been deliberately piled there.  Light on, he went around the back and emerged with a coil of rope.

I knew then what his intention was.

“You not going down there.  That’s too dangerous.”

“It was, once.  Not anymore.”  He tied one end to the pylon and then unraveled it as he approached me, then three the remainder over the edge. 

I watched it fall, reaching the bottom, conveniently over a rock.  The section that was over the side was knotted at intervals.  Anti-slip knots.  He had come prepared.  OR had come earlier to prepare for this.

“You’ve been here before.”

“Several times.  I was looking for a way to get down to below the second level carpark and would have found this wall had those overzealous security guards not come down at the wrong moment.  Aside from that, I had to wait to do this with you, just in case there was a problem.”

“What sort of a problem?”

I think his definition of a problem was a lot different from mine.  This whole scenario was a problem.  Was he thinking we could get down, take a look at whatever he was looking for, then get back up again?

“The guards might come back while I’m down there.  I might need you to pull me back up.  I don’t know, anything could go wrong.”

“And yet you still intend to do it?”

“Of course.”  

He had a second rope, thinner, that I hadn’t seen till the other went over the side.  He tied that around his waist, pulled on it a few times to check the strength of the knot, then looked over the side.

To me, 30 feet looked like 30 miles.

“Wish me luck.”

I simply shook my head and took the rope when he handed it to me, then, after a minute. Perhaps saying a silent prayer, he went over the side, hanging grimly onto the rope.

“Keep your phone handy.  I may have to call you.”

Then he was gone.  It took a minute for me to gather the courage to look over the side again, and by that time, he was almost to the rock.  Two more knots, I saw his feet touch down.  There was no moss on it, and it looked worn smooth from a lot of water over a long period.

He looked up at me.  “It’s like a huge cave.”  Phone in hand, he disappeared under the carpark floor.

A closer look at the gap he had just walked through looked like it once had a wall there, but it had been broken away, leaving only the skeleton of reinforcing steel under to floor lip.  There were also traces of the reinforcement anchors drilled into the rock below.  It was obvious the force of the water had built up like flooding into a dam, and if the pressure was too much, the dam wall broke.

Well, that was never meant to be a dam, just a retaining wall for filling upon which the bottom carpark was built.

I think we could now positively identify this site as one of the two rivers that had existed back when the pirates worked this part of the coast.

Boggs was gone for about half an hour, so I found a spot to sit down and wait.  He signaled me by yanking on the rope.

I stood up by the edge and pulled the rope in as he came back up, then, after a few minutes, he clambered over the side.

“We have to get going,” he said.  “I think we can safely say this is the first of the rivers.”

He untied the rope around his waist, pulled the knotted rope up, coiled them and put them back behind the pylon.

As we headed back up to the mall level, he said, “I took some pictures of the body in the water.  It looked like someone had tossed a mannequin in there, perhaps back before they sealed off the parking area. That’s only been there for a few years, judging by the rust on the latch, and hinges.”

“And down in the cave-like area?”

“The river, now only a stream, but running water none the less.  Where it goes from there to the ocean, is not necessarily a requirement to discover.  I thought it fed the marina pool directly, but it doesn’t.  They actually have a pump house and pumped the water into the pool which is why it had to be treated to keep it clean.”

So that was the odd smell that came from it.  It had been a constant battle to keep the water clean and fresh and keep the fish in it from dying.  There had also seemed like a child screaming at the sight of a dead fish floating among the water lilies.

Approaching the pond we both heard what sounded like a brick dropping on the floor, and turned to look behind us.  It was like peering into the gloom of a foggy night.

Boggs shrugged.  “Must be a ghost.”  Then he kept on walking.

I might have agreed with him, by back at the stairs where we had just come from, I thought I saw a splash of bright yellow move very quickly out of sight.  It could have been my imagination, but I also thought I saw a light for a second before it was extinguished.

Ghosts didn’t carry lights.  Someone else was down here, perhaps kids exploring.  Despite the hazard signs, that meant little to kids who had nothing better to do.

I waited for a minute so so, until Boggs flashed his light in my direction, and asked, “You coming?”

There was no more movement, so it had to be my overactive imagination at work again.

“Yep, coming.”  I ran to catch up.

We quickly passed the pond and overgrown garden and made it back to the hole in the wall, with an hour to spare before I had to get to the warehouse and start my shift.

“Did you find what you’re looking for?”

“Yes.  We’re on the right track.  Next, we have to find the other river.”

 We made it back to the bikes and headed back towards the town.  On the way, we were overtaken by a van with Benderby Security Services on the side of it, going too fast, and nearly knocked both Boggs and me off our bikes.

In the struggle to stay on the bike, I happened to see the man on the passenger side.  It was one of the two men who had been down by the pond, earlier.  If there were any bodies down there, they belonged to Benderby.  Good to know.

© Charles Heath 2020