For the A to Z Challenge this year my theme is going to be:
Taking a phrase, and turning it into a mini-story.
The first, as a small hint for the coming days, starting with A is:
A funny thing happened…
in which I have to use the phrase within the story.
Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.
“Are there? How many should I have?”
The only way he could know there was not a full complement as if he had been told by someone how many people were in our group from the outset. I looked at Jacobi, and he shrugged.
“This is not a good time to be playing games, Sergeant James.”
The guards gripped their weapons a little tighter and looked ready to use them.
“The only one playing games here would be you. It would be irrelevant if I had more or I had fewer people here because you have more than enough to cover us, and then some. But you would agree it would be imprudent for me to put all my eggs in one basket as it were, and yes, there are several others, but they are waiting for me to call them, further down the track. Not to put too fine a point on it, distrust works both ways. We don’t come back, I can assure you, your losses will be bigger than ours. Oh, and a word of advice, don’t go looking for them, not unless you want good men to die needlessly.”
Tough talk, and could get us killed, but I was hoping that until he had the diamonds in his hands, he would humor me. A minute or so passed where I assumed he was making a calculation on what the odds were, then he shrugged. There was merit in what I’d told him. Monroe and Shurl had plenty of ammunition and would have a foxhole that wouldn’t be over-run or penetrated.
“I think you might be right, so let’s not get bogged down in an argument that’s going nowhere. We have what you want, and you have what we want. Let’s go inside and talk.”
Was that a sigh of relief moment? Perhaps. But it was clear he needed us out of the way before his men could search the cars. I was happy to let him think he had the upper hand.
“Lead the way.”
We all filed into the building and sat down around a large table. There were bottles of water out, and we might have drunk from them but I could see the seal had been broken on min so it looked like we would be going thirsty.
The commander drank from his, no doubt as a gesture that the water was safe. None of my people were buying it.
“I’ll kick it off,” I said. “Are our people in good health?”
“Of course. Healthy enough to walk out of here of their own accord. Did you bring the compensation with you?”
“I did.”
“Can I see it?”
“Can I see our people.”
Friendly, and time-consuming double talk. I could see he was waiting impatiently. “All in good time. “Did you have any trouble getting here?” he asked casually. “I heard there were some local militias on the road collecting road taxes earlier today.”
“If there was, we didn’t see any. Smooth run, except for the state of the roads. I hope the road taxes those people are collecting are to fix the roads.”
He smiled. “It is what it is. This is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not the United States of America. Things are done differently here. We put the people first, and the roads second.”
There was a discreet knock on the door, followed by a cowering man coming into the room and walking up behind the commander. He took a few seconds to whisper into his ear, during which the commander’s expression turned very dark.
I had to assume that they had found all the weapons we had left for them to find, and not done a very close inspection to find those we did not want them to find. It was a bold assumption and could make a difference once we left, and if we were attacked. I was sure that was part of the message the man had relayed to his commander.
The man almost ran out of the building, slamming the door behind him.
The commander looked at me. “Where are the diamonds?”
That was as direct as he could get.
“At this point, that’s for me to know until I’m assured you intend to honor your part of the agreement. Searching our cars for the diamonds tells me you are not a man to be trusted, and, you should have realized in making that discovery, you’re not dealing with fools.”
The dark expression eased, and he tried to look like the man who held all the cards. He probably did, but it would be interesting to see to what extent he would press his advantage. We had nothing to lose, though it didn’t send a very good message to the team that I was willing to sacrifice them. This was after all supposed to be a suicide mission.
“What’s to stop me from just shooting your people one by one until you tell me.”
“The same reason I told you at the gate. You will lose a lot more than I will. Something you might not be aware of is that the people who sent me have control over satellites. You might not be familiar with satellite technology, but be assured that we are being observed, and have been on this little odyssey. It also means that they, sitting in a bunker somewhere in the world, also have access to nasty drones, you know, the sort that leaves craters where villages and settlements once were. This place would not withstand a direct hit, and there would be no one left alive after it. Killing any or all of us will incur wrath you really don’t want to deal with. Put simply, if I don’t drive out of here with my people within half an hour this whole area will become an uninhabitable crater.”
Bamfield had said as one option, not that he could order such a strike, was to threaten them with a drone strike. I hadn’t done that in as many words, but the commander looked as though he got the inference.
“You could do that anyway.”
“I could, but that’s not the way I work. For some odd reason. The people I work for seem to think you might be useful to them in the future, and Jacobi here will be happy to stay and talk about it. Now, the clock is ticking.”
He took a moment, then stood. “Let’s go meet your people then.”
Ⓒ Charles Heath 2020
Available on Amazon Kindle here: https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4
With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction. He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.
That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.
He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.
I kept my eyes down. He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup. I stepped to the other side and so did he. It was one of those situations. Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.
Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic. I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone. I shrugged and looked at my watch. It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.
Wait, or walk? I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station. What the hell, I needed the exercise.
At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’. I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light. As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.
A yellow car stopped inches from me.
It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini. I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.
Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car. It was that sort of car. I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on. The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.
My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter. Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.
At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure. I was no longer in a hurry.
At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring. I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road. I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.
At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar. It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.
I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did. There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me. It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.
Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me. As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.
Now my imagination was playing tricks.
It could not be the same man. He was going in a different direction.
In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter. I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.
I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in. I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.
Just in case.
© Charles Heath 2015-2020
Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?
For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself. It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.
Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.
Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.
A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone. To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.
But can love conquer all?
It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.
The cover, at the moment, looks like this:
This is currently available at Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz
I’d read about out of body experiences, and like everyone else, thought it was nonsense. Some people claimed to see themselves in the operating theatre, medical staff frantically trying to revive them, and being surrounded by white light.
I was definitely looking down, but it wasn’t me I was looking at.
It was two children, a boy and a girl, with their parents, in a park.
The boy was Alan. He was about six or seven. The girl was Louise, and she was five years old. She had long red hair and looked the image of her mother.
I remember it now, it was Louise’s birthday and we went down to Bournemouth to visit our Grandmother, and it was the last time we were all together as a family.
We were flying homemade kites our father had made for us, and after we lay there looking up at the sky, making animals out of the clouds. I saw an elephant, Louise saw a giraffe.
We were so happy then.
Before the tragedy.
When I looked again ten years had passed and we were living in hell. Louise and I had become very adept at survival in a world we really didn’t understand, surrounded by people who wanted to crush our souls.
It was not a life a normal child had, our foster parents never quite the sort of people who were adequately equipped for two broken-hearted children. They tried their best, but their best was not good enough.
Every day it was a battle, to avoid the Bannister’s and Archie in particular, every day he made advances towards Louise and every day she fended him off.
Until one day she couldn’t.
Now I was sitting in the hospital, holding Louise’s hand. She was in a coma, and the doctors didn’t think she would wake from it. The damage done to her was too severe.
The doctors were wrong.
She woke, briefly, to name her five assailants. It was enough to have them arrested. It was not enough to have them convicted.
Justice would have to be served by other means.
I was outside the Bannister’s home.
I’d made my way there without really thinking, after watching Louise die. It was like being on autopilot, and I had no control over what I was doing. I had murder in mind. It was why I was holding an iron bar.
Skulking in the shadows. It was not very different from the way the Bannister’s operated.
I waited till Archie came out. I knew he eventually would. The police had taken him to the station for questioning, and then let him go. I didn’t understand why, nor did I care.
I followed him up the towpath, waiting till he stopped to light a cigarette, then came out of the shadows.
“Wotcha got there Alan?” he asked when he saw me. He knew what it was, and what it was for.
It was the first time I’d seen the fear in his eyes. He was alone.
“Justice.”
“For that slut of a sister of yours. I had nuffing to do with it.”
“She said otherwise, Archie.”
“She never said nuffing, you just made it up.” An attempt at bluster, but there was no confidence in his voice.
I held up the pipe. It had blood on it. Willy’s blood. “She may or may not have Archie, but Willy didn’t make it up. He sang like a bird. That’s his blood, probably brains on the pipe too, Archie, and yours will be there soon enough.”
“He dunnit, not me. Lyin’ bastard would say anything to save his own skin.” Definitely scared now, he was looking to run away.
“No, Archie. He didn’t. I’m coming for you. All of you Bannisters. And everyone who touched my sister.”
It was the recurring nightmare I had for years afterwards.
I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the thoughts, the images of Louise, the phone call, the visit to the hospital and being there when she succumbed to her injuries. Those were the very worst few hours of my life.
She had asked me to come to the railway station and walk home with her, and I was running late. If I had left when I was supposed to, it would never have happened and for years afterwards, I blamed myself for her death.
If only I’d not been late…
When the police finally caught the rapists, I’d known all along who they’d be; antagonists from school, the ring leader, Archie Bannister, a spurned boyfriend, a boy whose parents, ubiquitously known to all as ‘the Bannister’s, dealt in violence and crime and who owned the neighbourhood. The sins of the father had been very definitely passed onto the son.
At school, I used to be the whipping boy, Archie, a few grades ahead of me, made a point of belting me and a few of the other boys, to make sure the rest did as they were told. He liked Louise, but she had no time for a bully like him, even when he promised he would ‘protect’ me.
I knew the gang members, the boys who tow-kowed to save getting beaten up, and after the police couldn’t get enough information to prosecute them because everyone was too afraid to speak out, I went after Willy. There was always a weak link in a group, and he was it.
He worked in a factory, did long hours on a Wednesday and came home after dark alone. It was a half mile walk, through a park. The night I approached him, I smashed the lights and left it in darkness. He nearly changed his mind and went the long way home.
He didn’t.
It took an hour and a half to get the names. At first, when he saw me, he laughed. He said I would be next, and that was four words more than he knew he should have said.
When I found him alone the next morning I showed him the iron bar and told him he was on the list. I didn’t kill him then, he could wait his turn, and worry about what was going to happen to him.
When the police came to visit me shortly after that encounter, no doubt at the behest of the Bannister’s, the neighbourhood closed ranks and gave me an ironclad alibi. The Bannister’s then came to visit me and threatened me. I told them their days were numbered and showed them the door.
At the trial, he and his friends got off on a technicality. The police had failed to do their job properly, but it was not the police, but a single policeman, corrupted by the Bannisters.
Archie could help but rub it in my face. He was invincible.
Joe Collins took 12 bullets and six hours to bleed out. He apologized, he pleaded, he cried, he begged. I didn’t care.
Barry Mills, a strong lad with a mind to hurting people, Archie’s enforcer, almost got the better of me. I had to hit him more times than I wanted to, and in the end, I had to be satisfied that he died a short but agonizing death.
I revisited Willy in the hospital. He’d recovered enough to recognize me, and why I’d come. Suffocation was too good for him.
David Williams, second in command of the gang, was as tough and nasty as the Bannisters. His family were forging a partnership with the Bannister’s to make them even more powerful. Outwardly David was a pleasant sort of chap, affable, polite, and well mannered. A lot of people didn’t believe he could be like, or working with, the Bannisters.
He and I met in the pub. We got along like old friends. He said Willy had just named anyone he could think of, and that he was innocent of any charges. We shook hands and parted as friends.
Three hours later he was sitting in a chair in the middle of a disused factory, blindfolded and scared. I sat and watched him, listened to him, first threatening me, and then finally pleading with me. He’d guessed who it was that had kidnapped him.
When it was dark, I took the blindfold off and shone a very bright light in his eyes. I asked him if the violence he had visited upon my sister was worth it. He told me he was just a spectator.
I’d read the coroner’s report. They all had a turn. He was a liar.
He took nineteen bullets to die.
Then came Archie.
The same factory only this time there were four seats. Anna Bannister, brothel owner, Spike Bannister, head of the family, Emily Bannister, sister, and who had nothing to do with their criminal activities. She just had the misfortune of sharing their name.
Archie’s father told me how he was going to destroy me, and everyone I knew.
A well-placed bullet between the eyes shut him up.
Archie’s mother cursed me. I let her suffer for an hour before I put her out of her misery.
Archie remained stony-faced until I came to Emily. The death of his parents meant he would become head of the family. I guess their deaths meant as little to him as they did me.
He was a little more worried about his sister.
I told him it was confession time.
He told her it was little more than a forced confession and he had done nothing to deserve my retribution.
I shrugged and shot her, and we both watched her fall to the ground screaming in agony. I told him if he wanted her to live, he had to genuinely confess to his crimes. This time he did, it all poured out of him.
I went over to Emily. He watched in horror as I untied her bindings and pulled her up off the floor, suffering only from a small wound in her arm. Without saying a word she took the gun and walked over to stand behind him.
“Louise was my friend, Archie. My friend.”
Then she shot him. Six times.
To me, after saying what looked like a prayer, she said, “Killing them all will not bring her back, Alan, and I doubt she would approve of any of this. May God have mercy on your soul.”
Now I was in jail. I’d spent three hours detailing the deaths of the five boys, everything I’d done; a full confession. Without my sister, my life was nothing. I didn’t want to go back to the foster parents; I doubt they’d take back a murderer.
They were not allowed to.
For a month I lived in a small cell, in solitary, no visitors. I believed I was in the queue to be executed, and I had mentally prepared myself for the end.
Then I was told I had a visitor, and I was expecting a priest.
Instead, it was a man called McTavish. Short, wiry, and with an accent that I could barely understand.
“You’ve been a bad boy, Alan.”
When I saw it was not the priest I told the jailers not to let him in, I didn’t want to speak to anyone. They ignored me. I’d expected he was a psychiatrist, come to see whether I should be shipped off to the asylum.
I was beginning to think I was going mad.
I ignored him.
“I am the difference between you living or dying Alan, it’s as simple as that. You’d be a wise man to listen to what I have to offer.”
Death sounded good. I told him to go away.
He didn’t. Persistent bugger.
I was handcuffed to the table. The prison officers thought I was dangerous. Five, plus two, murders, I guess they had a right to think that. McTavish sat opposite me, ignoring my request to leave.
“Why’d you do it?”
“You know why.” Maybe if I spoke he’d go away.
“Your sister. By all accounts, the scum that did for her deserved what they got.”
“It was murder just the same. No difference between scum and proper people.”
“You like killing?”
“No-one does.”
“No, I dare say you’re right. But you’re different, Alan. As clean and merciless killing I’ve ever seen. We can use a man like you.”
“We?”
“A group of individuals who clean up the scum.”
I looked up to see his expression, one of benevolence, totally out of character for a man like him. It looked like I didn’t have a choice.
Trained, cleared, and ready to go.
I hadn’t realized there were so many people who were, for all intents and purposes, invisible. People that came and went, in malls, in hotels, trains, buses, airports, everywhere, people no one gave a second glance.
People like me.
In a mall, I became a shopper.
In a hotel, I was just another guest heading to his room.
On a bus or a train, I was just another commuter.
At the airport, I became a pilot. I didn’t need to know how to fly; everyone just accepted a pilot in a pilot suit was just what he looked like.
I had a passkey.
I had the correct documents to get me onto the plane.
That walk down the air bridge was the longest of my life. Waiting for the call from the gate, waiting for one of the air bridge staff to challenge me, stepping onto the plane.
Two pilots and a steward. A team. On the plane early before the rest of the crew. A group that was committing a crime, had committed a number of crimes and thought they’d got away with it.
Until the judge, the jury and their executioner arrived.
Me.
Quick, clean, merciless. Done.
I was now an operational field agent.
I was older now, and I could see in the mirror I was starting to go grey at the sides. It was far too early in my life for this, but I expect it had something to do with my employment.
I didn’t recognize the man who looked back at me.
It was certainly not Alan McKenzie, nor was there any part of that fifteen-year-old who had made the decision to exact revenge.
Given a choice; I would not have gone down this path.
Or so I kept telling myself each time a little more of my soul was sold to the devil.
I was Barry Gamble.
I was Lenny Buckman.
I was Jimmy Hosen.
I was anyone but the person I wanted to be.
That’s what I told Louise, standing in front of her grave, and trying to apologize for all the harm, all the people I’d killed for that one rash decision. If she was still alive she would be horrified, and ashamed.
Head bowed, tears streamed down my face.
God had gone on holiday and wasn’t there to hand out any forgiveness. Not that day. Not any day.
New York, New Years Eve.
I was at the end of a long tour, dragged out of a holiday and back into the fray, chasing down another scumbag. They were scumbags, and I’d become an automaton hunting them down and dispatching them to what McTavish called a better place.
This time I failed.
A few drinks to blot out the failure, a blonde woman who pushed my buttons, a room in a hotel, any hotel, it was like being on the merry-go-round, round and round and round…
Her name was Silvia or Sandra, or someone I’d met before, but couldn’t quite place her. It could be an enemy agent for all I knew or all I cared right then.
I was done.
I’d had enough.
I gave her the gun.
I begged her to kill me.
She didn’t.
Instead, I simply cried, letting the pent up emotion loose after being suppressed for so long, and she stayed with me, holding me close, and saying I was safe, that she knew exactly how I felt.
How could she? No one could know what I’d been through.
I remembered her name after she had gone.
Amanda.
I remembered she had an imperfection in her right eye.
Someone else had the same imperfection.
I couldn’t remember who that was.
Not then.
I had a dingy flat in Kensington, a place that I rarely stayed in if I could help it. After five-star hotel rooms, it made me feel shabby.
The end of another mission, I was on my way home, the underground, a bus, and then a walk.
It was late.
People were spilling out of the pub after the last drinks. Most in good spirits, others slightly more boisterous.
A loud-mouthed chap bumped into me, the sort who had one too many, and was ready to take on all comers.
He turned on me, “Watch where you’re going, you fool.”
Two of his friends dragged him away. He shrugged them off, squared up.
I punched him hard, in the stomach, and he fell backwards onto the ground. I looked at his two friends. “Take him home before someone makes mincemeat out of him.”
They grabbed his arms, lifted him off the ground and took him away.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a woman, early thirties, quite attractive, but very, very drunk. She staggered from the bar, bumped into me, and finished up sitting on the side of the road.
I looked around to see where her friends were. The exodus from the pub was over and the few nearby were leaving to go home.
She was alone, drunk, and by the look of her, unable to move.
I sat beside her. “Where are your friends?”
“Dunno.”
“You need help?”
She looked up, and sideways at me. She didn’t look the sort who would get in this state. Or maybe she was, I was a terrible judge of women.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Nobody.” I was exactly how I felt.
“Well Mr Nobody, I’m drunk, and I don’t care. Just leave me here to rot.”
She put her head back between her knees, and it looked to me she was trying to stop the spinning sensation in her head.
Been there before, and it’s not a good feeling.
“Where are your friends?” I asked again.
“Got none.”
“Perhaps I should take you home.”
“I have no home.”
“You don’t look like a homeless person. If I’m not mistaken, those shoes are worth more than my weekly salary.” I’d seen them advertised, in the airline magazine, don’t ask me why the ad caught my attention.
She lifted her head and looked at me again. “You a smart fucking arse are you?”
“I have my moments.”
“Have them somewhere else.”
She rested her head against my shoulder. We were the only two left in the street, and suddenly in darkness when the proprietor turned off the outside lights.
“Take me home,” she said suddenly.
“Where is your place?”
“Don’t have one. Take me to your place.”
“You won’t like it.”
“I’m drunk. What’s not to like until tomorrow.”
I helped her to her feet. “You have a name?”
“Charlotte.”
The wedding was in a small church. We had been away for a weekend in the country, somewhere in the Cotswolds, and found this idyllic spot. Graves going back to the dawn of time, a beautiful garden tended by the vicar and his wife, an astonishing vista over hills and down dales.
On a spring afternoon with the sun, the flowers, and the peacefulness of the country.
I had two people at the wedding, the best man, Bradley, and my boss, Watkins.
Charlotte had her sisters Melissa and Isobel, and Isobel’s husband Giovanni, and their daughter Felicity.
And one more person who was as mysterious as she was attractive, a rather interesting combination as she was well over retirement age. She arrived late and left early.
Aunt Agatha.
She looked me up and down with what I’d call a withering look. “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” she said enigmatically.
“Likewise I’m sure,” I said. It earned me an elbow in the ribs from Charlotte. It was clear she feared this woman.
“Why did you come,” Charlotte asked.
“You know why.”
Agatha looked at me. “I like you. Take care of my granddaughter. You do not want me for an enemy.”
OK, now she officially scared me.
She thrust a cheque into my hand, smiled, and left.
“Who is she,” I asked after we watched her depart.
“Certainly not my fairy godmother.”
Charlotte never mentioned her again.
Zurich in summer, not exactly my favourite place.
Instead of going to visit her sister Isobel, we stayed at a hotel in Beethovenstrasse and Isobel and Felicity came to us. Her husband was not with her this time.
Felicity was three or four and looked very much like her mother. She also looked very much like Charlotte, and I’d remarked on it once before and it received a sharp rebuke.
We’d been twice before, and rather than talk to her sister, Charlotte spent her time with Felicity, and they were, together, like old friends. For so few visits they had a remarkable rapport.
I had not broached the subject of children with Charlotte, not after one such discussion where she had said she had no desire to be a mother. It had not been a subject before and wasn’t once since.
Perhaps like all Aunts, she liked the idea of playing with a child for a while and then give it back.
Felicity was curious as to who I was, but never ventured too close. I believed a child could sense the evil in adults and had seen through my facade of friendliness. We were never close.
But…
This time, when observing the two together, something quite out of left field popped into my head. It was not possible, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought she looked like my mother.
And Charlotte had seen me looking in their direction. “You seem distracted,” she said.
“I was just remembering my mother. Odd moment, haven’t done so for a very long time.”
“Why now?” I think she had a look of concern on her face.
“Her birthday, I guess,” I said, the first excuse I could think of.
Another look and I was wrong. She looked like Isobel or Charlotte, or if I wanted to believe it possible, Melissa too.
I was crying, tears streaming down my face.
I was in pain, searing pain from my lower back stretching down into my legs, and I was barely able to breathe.
It was like coming up for air.
It was like Snow White bringing Prince Charming back to life. I could feel what I thought was a gentle kiss and tears dropping on my cheeks, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Charlotte slowly lifting her head, a hand gently stroking the hair off my forehead.
And in a very soft voice, she said, “Hi.”
I could not speak, but I think I smiled. It was the girl with the imperfection in her right eye. Everything fell into place, and I knew, in that instant that we were irrevocably meant to be together.
“Welcome back.”
© Charles Heath 2016-2019
This is Chester. Did someone use the word ‘vet’ out loud?
It is odd how some animals can recognise some words and remember what activity is attached to it.
Chester knows the word vet, and his memory attaches a great deal of seemingly horrible experience, not the worst of which is being transported in a pet basket.
Yes, we have just tried carrying him, but there is a sixth sense in every cat that tells them when they’re nearing a vet. Within 50 metres of the front door, the hair stands up, the cat starts hissing as he would face off against a formidable opponent.
We only carried him once, never again.
But the histrionics start in the house where we have to mound a search party to find hi, There are innumerable hiding places, and we have to be organised.\
Invariably, each time something like this happens, he finds somewhere new to hide. We keep forgetting he can use his paws to open sliding doors, and close them again, a talent he had learned.
We’ve also learned to start looking a half-hour earlier than we used to. The vet is only three minutes away, and we used to leave it to the last minute, but being late for the appointment happens only once.
Vets are worse than doctors when you miss appointments. PErhaps Chester knows this and tries to use it to his advantage. It no longer works.
Then, once we find him, the next exercise is to get him into the basket. I’ve never seen so many tricks on how not to let the humans put him in it.
But, over time, we’ve learned, and sometimes it’s easy, others, I have the scars to prove it.
Then, once we get to the vet, it’ss a completely different cat, not Chester, but some other cat disguised as him. Chester has never given the vet an ounce of trouble.
Perhaps we should become vets.
Chester is fine, just a little off-colour perhaps from something he ate. Not all pet food is agreeable, and we’ve been trying to get his to have something different. I even specially cook fish for him, and maybe that was the problem.
What is off-putting is the ease in which he goes back into the basket for the vet.
But all is well, and he will be glad to get out…
Like leg, arm is a word that is mostly associated with a body part.
Like being legless, another description for being drunk, being rendered ‘armless’ means you are no threat, in a rather awful but funny way by saying it.
I guess we all have a dash of ‘sick’ humour in all of us.
However, arm can also be used to describe a part of a structure too.
It could also describe the arm of an ‘armchair’.
But…
Arm also means to give people weapons like guns, usually from an armoury.
I’m guessing that a whole lot of people with arms is an army!
You can also say that taking those weapons away would be to disarm them.
It might take the long arm of the law to do it, too.
And to disarm someone doesn’t necessarily mean to take away their arms, but to ‘charm’ them with your wit and humour.
An arm can also be a river or streams tributary, so I could say instead of staying on the main river, I’ll take the ‘named’ arm, but just remember, sometimes this can be dangerous, getting off the main route.
On a boat, there is a yardarm, and this was once used to hang seamen who committed serious crimes such as mutiny.
A call to arms was to declare war,
And lastly, an arm of the defence services could be any one of Army, Navy, Marines or Airforce.
Just steer clear of the Navy for the aforementioned reasons.
On special, now only $0.99 for the next few weeks.
What happens when your past finally catches up with you?
Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.
Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment Will’s life slowly starts to unravel and it’s obvious to him it’s time to move on.
This time, however, there is more at stake.
Will has broken his number one rule, don’t get involved.
With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.
But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved there is going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.
This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
See below for an excerpt from the book…
Coming soon!
An excerpt from the book:
When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.
Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.
It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.
Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.
But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.
His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.
At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.
For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.
Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.
Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.
Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.
It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.
It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.
Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.
Except, of course, when it came to Harry.
He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.
So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.
There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.
So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.
There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.
She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.
Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.
Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.
Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.
Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.
Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.
© Charles Heath 2019
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Chasing leads, maybe
It was rather an anti-climax to see the cat, Herman, come slinking out of the bedroom, down the passage, and then stop just at the edge of the room to look at the visitors.
He must have been hiding in her room all this time, and when he’d heard the door close, he thought it was safe to come out.
Jan saw him and held out her hand, “Come on, Herman, you’re safe now.”
He didn’t seem to agree and sat down just back of that invisible line in the sand that he wasn’t, yet going to step over.
But he did meow a few times, just to let us know he wasn’t pleased.
“Now that you’ve seen the cat, what were you thinking might be of significance?”
“I don’t know. The fact he considered the cat his might have been significant in some way.”
Herman was back on his paws and taking tentative steps towards Jan. Each time he stopped, he looked sideways at me, waiting. Perhaps he thought I might attack him. It would be the other way around.
“Doesn’t trust me, does he?”
He took a step back at the sound of my voice.
“Don’t listen to him Herman, you’re safe here with me.”
He looked at her, the same expression on his face he gave me. Talk about the original poker face. I doubt anyone could guess what he was thinking.
A few more steps, then about a yard away he stopped again and sat. He then spent the next few minutes looking at me. Was this a test to see who blinked first? I knew who would win that contest. Not me.
Jan moved slightly and he jumped, and moved back several steps, looking warily at us both now.
“We’re not going to win him over, are we?”
“Maybe, maybe not. There are a bowl and some food in the other room. Put some in the bowl and bring it to me.”
Ah, the way to a cat’s heart is through his stomach. I think the only thing relevant to that statement was that he was male. I did as she asked, and handed her the bowl, and resumed my position, far enough away for him not to consider me a threat.
He watched me leave the room and return again, and I think he recognized the bowl, and that we were about to trick him into submission.
She put the bowl down next to her and patted the floor.
“It’s your favorite, Herman.”
Yes, head movements, and was he sniffing to see if he could recognize what was in the bowl? Maybe he was hungry after being hidden away. Would starvation overcome a fear of strangers?
A minute later we had the answer. He was hungry and tentatively came over before smelling what was in the bowl before starting to eat.
Jan patted him.
“Works every time,” she said.
Both of us realized at the same time that Herman had a collar, slightly lost in the fur. And she had the same idea as I did, that the collar might be significant.
She removed it as gently as she could without startling him, and then looked at it, around the outside, and then on the inside, and a sudden change of expression told me she found something.
“VS P4 L324. What do you think that means?” she asked?
“Whatever it is, it’s a reminder that’s significant to O’Connell, or it is a message to someone if anything happened to him. I expect that might mean it was a message to you. You shared the cat so, clearly, he thought at some point in time you would look.”
“If he was expecting me to decipher it, then he must have seen something in me that I can’t.”
“You would work it out in time. The point is if he hid that in plain sight, believing that if anyone came, they would take no notice of the car, then what else might he have hidden. Does the cat have a bed?
“Not at his place, he used to sleep at the end of his bed. But I put out an old blanket.”
How did she know the cat slept on the end of O’Connell’s bed? I wasn’t going to ask, but if they were more than just friends, perhaps he had confided some details of what he was doing.
“In your room?”
“In the spare room where you found the food.”
I went back to the room found the blanked tossed in a corner, put there by the person who searched her flat no doubt, because I couldn’t see the cat doing it, not unless he was extremely bad-tempered and had super cat powers to move objects multiple times heavier than he was.
I picked it up and immediately had cat hair on my clothes. Good thing then I wasn’t allergic to cats.
Then, I had a feeling someone was watching me. I was right, Herman had come back to see what I was doing.
“Just straightening it out for you,” I said.
The death stare didn’t change. He just stood there looking at me. Or was he looking through me at something else, like a ghost? It was slightly un-nerving.
I felt around the edges and suddenly, in the middle of one side, where the manufacturer’s label was, it felt like something was under it. On closer examination, I could see the stitching had been removed for several inches in length and then crudely sewn it back together. Inside what would be a pouch, I could feel something under the material, and with a little more twisting I thought it might be a tag.
I’d seen a pair of scissors in the kitchen and came back to get them. Jan was busy trying to position the wet part of the towel over her head. After I’d finished with the blanket, I would fetch her some Panadol.
I gently cut the crude stitches and then wriggled the item out. It was a card with a number on it, 324. That was all that was printed on the card. Not what it was, who it belonged to, or what it represented. I went back into the room where the cat was now sitting on her leg.
“There was a card sewn into the blanket. It has the number 324 on it. That would make it…”
“… a check for a post box, or safety deposit box, or a storage locker.”
Not exactly what I was going to say, but close enough.
Then she said, “It’s the same number on the collar. L324. Locker 324. Somewhere defined by VS and P4.”
“Do you have a computer?”
“Not here. Do you?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll go into the office and use one of theirs. I assume you can do the same?”
I could, but I wasn’t quite sure what or who would be waiting for me,, now that I knew I couldn’t trust Nobbin.
“To be honest, I don’t think it’s safe for me. It’s probably better if I don’t, not until I can find out who is who.”
Either of the two, Nobbin or Severin could be on the wrong side, maybe even both of them. I was surprised that Severin didn’t drag me off when he came for Maury. Perhaps I was still useful to him in the field as a second-string to finding the USB.
I helped her to stand.
“No time like the present. I’ll let you know what I find if anything. Are you going to stay here?” she asked.
“No. Severin knows about this place and might come back. We’re done here. I’ll make sure the cat gets out. I don’t think you should come back here unless you have to.”
“Then I’ll see you at the hotel.”
© Charles Heath 2020
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 