Month: May 2022

The story behind the story: A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers

To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.

But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.

That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.

It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years.  Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?

My private detective, Harry Walthenson

I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.

But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modeled Harry and his office on it.  Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.

Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life.  I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.

Then there’s the title, like

The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I image back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello

The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister.  And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.

But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.

Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.

Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.

I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021.  It even has a cover.

PIWalthJones1

Searching for locations: The apartments at Greve in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy

When we first planned to stay in Tuscany for a few days, we wanted to be in a central area.  We had thought of staying in Florence and making daily treks, but the tour operator we selected told us it would be better if we stayed closer to Arezzo.

We picked Greve in Chianti, and a place called Antico Pastificio, we booked a standard apartment with two bedrooms, and it was about as authentic Italian you could get.  The building we stayed in was the yellow pasta factory, and the apartment named ‘Iris’.

It was only steps away from the main square, shops, restaurants, and at the opposite end, the quaint ringing of church bells at various times during the day.

Gaining access was through a very narrow arch which required some deft driving and then up the road.  There were villas and two large apartment blocks.

You can just see the archway at the end of the road. 
This was the entrance to our room,

 along a passage and up the stairs, turning left at the top.

 Going straight ahead through the gate to the car park, 

and access to the grounds behind the buildings.

This was the view from the lounge/living room.  The days were hot, and on several evenings it rained, breaking the heat and making the evenings sitting by the window cool and refreshing.

 And the last view is looking towards the town piazza and the church

“One Last Look”, nothing is what it seems

A single event can have enormous consequences.

A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.

A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?

A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.

A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.

After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.

From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

It is available on Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

A story inspired by Castello di Briolio – Episode 46

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…

——

When Carlo heard the shot, he stopped his ‘interrogation’ and sent a soldier over to investigate.  To avoid getting shot inadvertently, I came out of the woods with my hands up, and, thankfully, was instantly recognized.

I went over to the barn and looked at the man on the ground.  “Do he have anything to say?”

“No.”

The other man, awaiting ‘interrogation’ was visibly shaken by the events.  Two dead including Leonardo, and one a bloody pulp on the ground, with a very angry Carlo standing over him, his outlook was very bleak.

“You speak English,” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“Alberto, sir.  I didn’t agree with anything Fernando did.  A few of us refused to kill any of the villagers.  That was Fernando.  He was the one who beat up the women.”

“You could have stopped him.”

“You know the bastard, Carlo.  Not even you could, and you tried.”

Carlo grunted.  To make sure the men on the ground were dead, he shot them again, and emptied his gun into Fernando, adding a curse with each bullet.

I glared at Alberto.  “Pick a side.”

“I’m with you.  There are several others, back in the castle.  We would be able to help if you were planning an attack.”

“The last person who told me that is out there in the woods with a bullet in his head.  I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.”

“We can help.”

“And, you will.  When we decide to go, we’ll take you with us.  You double-cross us, the Carlo gets his five minutes.  You try to run away, Carlo will hunt you down and kill you.  Understood?”

He nodded.

“Fernando?”  The man sent to find the defectors had come back.

I shot him before he could make any sort of move, just as he realized what had happened.

I motioned to the soldiers to get the defectors, who, hearing the shots, had started to flee.  Two shots in the air stopped them.  Two of them were small children, who would not have survived if they’d been taken to the castle.

All four were visibly frightened by what they’d seen, and of what their fate might be.  I assured them, they were now in safe hands, and we were going not to the castle, but to a different place.  Desperate people in a desperate situation, I couldn’t imagine where they’d come from, or their journey from Germany with nothing on a promise of safety taken at face value.

“We go to the castle now,” Carlo asked/

“Soon.  We need a plan.  Let’s go back and make one.  But, yes.  We go to the castle now.”

Storming the castle might have worked if I had a hundred men, not about ten or

Granted Carlo would by the equivalent of another five, but in a hail of bullets, he would not last long.

I had to put myself in Wallace’s shoes and figure out how he would defend the castle once he realized Jackerby and the resistance members were dead.

Panic would be my first thought.  Then, when rational thought returned, block off all the known entrances and exits, and post sentries outside.  We had about twenty men to deal with, but a dozen were hardened battle soldiers, and that would make a difference.  The fact they were inside covering most of the entrance points would make the job harder.

If we had to use the known entrances/

When the time came, they were going to get a surprise because Carlo knew of two others no one but he, and the owners of the castle, were the only ones who knew about them.

But, first, we had to even the odds if possible.

For that, one of Blinky’s team was a sniper, and with him was a sniper rifle and suppressor which meant we would be able to pick off the sentries without anyone hearing the bullets coming for them.

We were only going to get one shot at it because once Wallace discovered the sentries, he wouldn’t post anymore, and would know of our intent.

But, in the end, none of that mattered. 

We just got a short communication that Meyer was in Florence and his arrival would be in two days time.  We were charged with making sure he arrived safely and passed into the pipeline.  The only issue with that was that we needed the castle to complete the process.

That meant we had to move up the plans  to retake the castle, and there were always problems when details were missed.  We had the advantage in our knowledge of the castle and its underground passageways, but would that be enough?

Then there was the surprise.  It had just been learned that a very high ranking Nazi officer was coming to the castle to personally take Meyer back to the fatherland.  That meant we had to be in the castle when he arrived, so he could be sent back home for interrogation.

Both men, it appeared, had the capacity to turn the tide of the war in our favor.

Blinky simply shrugged when he got the news, then said, “We could do with some more men.”

Stating the obvious.

“It’s the war, you know.  Shortages of everything.”

“Didn’t envisage this at Prep school, did we?  Seems the world was a different place, but my father said it couldn’t last.”

“Nothing ever does.  It’s going to be interesting when this ends if it ends.  There are days I wake up and I can’t remember what it was like, before all this.”

”Well, maybe we get this done, and it’ll be a step closer.  At least, we have to believe that.”

I nodded.  “Good pep talk.  As I remember, you were always trying to talk me into doing something stupid.”

Carlo had been listening to us was a puzzled look.  “Are all you English like you two?”

Blinky answered.  “No.  We’re unique.”

Clearly, he had no idea what that meant.  Blinky was going to try and explain but instead, shrugged.  “Let’s go kill some Germans.”

That Carlo did understand.

——-

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

An excerpt from “Sunday in New York”

Now available on Amazon at:  https://amzn.to/2H7ALs8

 

Williams’ Restaurant, East 65th Street, New York, Saturday, 8:00 p.m.

 

We met the Blaine’s at Williams’, a rather upmarket restaurant that the Blaine’s frequently visited, and had recommended.

Of course, during the taxi ride there, Alison reminded me that with my new job, we would be able to go to many more places like Williams’.  It was, at worst, more emotional blackmail, because as far as Alison was concerned, we were well on our way to posh restaurants, the Trump Tower Apartments, and the trappings of the ‘executive set’.

It would be a miracle if I didn’t strangle Elaine before the night was over.  It was she who had filled Alison’s head with all this stuff and nonsense.

Aside from the half frown half-smile, Alison was looking stunning.  It was months since she had last dressed up, and she was especially wearing the dress I’d bought her for our 5th anniversary that cost a month’s salary.  On her, it was worth it, and I would have paid more if I had to.  She had adored it, and me, for a week or so after.

For tonight, I think I was close to getting back on that pedestal.

She had the looks and figure to draw attention, the sort movie stars got on the red carpet, and when we walked into the restaurant, I swear there were at least five seconds silence, and many more gasps.

Even I had a sudden loss of breath earlier in the evening when she came out of the dressing room.  Once more I was reminded of how lucky I was that she had agreed to marry me.  Amid all those self-doubts, I couldn’t believe she had loved me when there were so many others ‘out there’ who were more appealing.

Elaine was out of her seat and came over just as the Head Waiter hovered into sight.  She personally escorted Alison to the table, allowing me to follow like the Queen’s consort, while she and Alison basked in the admiring glances of the other patrons.

More than once I heard the muted question, “Who is she?”

Jimmy stood, we shook hands, and then we sat together.  It was not the usual boy, girl, boy, girl seating arrangement.  Jimmy and I on one side and Elaine and Alison on the other.

The battle lines were drawn.

Jimmy was looking fashionable, with the permanent blade one beard, unkempt hair, and designer dinner suit that looked like he’d slept in it.  Alison insisted I wear a tuxedo, and I looked like the proverbial penguin or just a thinner version of Alfred Hitchcock.

The bow tie had been slightly crooked, but just before we stepped out she had straightened it.  And took the moment to look deeply into my soul.  It was one of those moments when words were not necessary.

Then it was gone.

I relived it briefly as I sat and she looked at me.  A penetrating look that told me to ‘behave’.

When we were settled, Elaine said, in that breathless, enthusiastic manner of hers when she was excited, “So, Harry, you are finally moving up.”  It was not a question, but a statement.

I was not sure what she meant by ‘finally’ but I accepted it with good grace.  Sometimes Elaine was prone to using figures of speech I didn’t understand.  I guessed she was talking about the new job.  “It was supposed to be a secret.”

She smiled widely.  “There are no secrets between Al and I, are there Al?”

I looked at ‘Al’ and saw a brief look of consternation.

I was not sure Alison liked the idea of being called Al.  I tried it once and was admonished.  But it was interesting her ‘best friend forever’ was allowed that distinction when I was not.  It was, perhaps, another indicator of how far I’d slipped in her estimation.

Perhaps, I thought, it was a necessary evil.  As I understood it, the Blaine’s were our mentors at the Trump Tower, because they didn’t just let ‘anyone’ in.  I didn’t ask if the Blaine’s thought we were just ‘anyone’ before I got the job offer.

And then there was that look between Alison and Elaine, quickly stolen before Alison realized I was looking at both of them.  I was out of my depth, in a place I didn’t belong, with people I didn’t understand.  And yet, apparently, Alison did.  I must have missed the memo.

“No,” Alison said softly, stealing a glance in my direction, “No secrets between friends.”

No secrets.  Her look conveyed something else entirely.

The waiter brought champagne, Krug, and poured glasses for each of us.  It was not the cheap stuff, and I was glad I brought a couple of thousand dollars with me.  We were going to need it.

Then, a toast.

To a new job and a new life.

“When did you decide?”  Elaine was effusive at the best of times, but with the champagne, it was worse.

Alison had a strange expression on her face.  It was obvious she had told Elaine it was a done deal, even before I’d made up my mind.  Perhaps she’d assumed I might be ‘refreshingly honest’ in front of Elaine, but it could also mean she didn’t really care what I might say or do.

Instead of consternation, she looked happy, and I realized it would be churlish, even silly if I made a scene.  I knew what I wanted to say.  I also knew that it would serve little purpose provoking Elaine, or upsetting Alison.  This was not the time or the place.  Alison had been looking forward to coming here, and I was not going to spoil it.

Instead, I said, smiling, “When I woke up this morning and found Alison missing.  If she had been there, I would not have noticed the water stain on the roof above our bed, and decide there and then how much I hated the place.” I used my reassuring smile, the one I used with the customers when all hell was breaking loose, and the forest fire was out of control.  “It’s the little things.  They all add up until one day …”  I shrugged.  “I guess that one day was today.”

I saw an incredulous look pass between Elaine and Alison, a non-verbal question; perhaps, is he for real?  Or; I told you he’d come around.

I had no idea the two were so close.

“How quaint,” Elaine said, which just about summed up her feelings towards me.  I think, at that moment, I lost some brownie points.  It was all I could come up with at short notice.

“Yes,” I added, with a little more emphasis than I wanted.  “Alison was off to get some study in with one of her friends.”

“Weren’t the two of you off to the Hamptons, a weekend with some friends?” Jimmy piped up, and immediately got the ‘shut up you fool’ look, that cut that line of conversation dead.  Someone forgot to feed Jimmy his lines.

It was followed by the condescending smile from Elaine, and “I need to powder my nose.  Care to join me, Al?”

A frown, then a forced smile for her new best friend.  “Yes.”

I watched them leave the table and head in the direction of the restroom, looking like they were in earnest conversation.  I thought ‘Al’ looked annoyed, but I could be wrong.

I had to say Jimmy looked more surprised than I did.

There was that odd moment of silence between us, Jimmy still smarting from his death stare, and for me, the Alison and Elaine show.  I was quite literally gob-smacked.

I drained my champagne glass gathering some courage and turned to him.  “By the way, we were going to have a weekend away, but this legal tutorial thing came up.  You know Alison is doing her law degree.”

He looked startled when he realized I had spoken.  He was looking intently at a woman several tables over from us, one who’d obviously forgotten some basic garments when getting dressed.  Or perhaps it was deliberate.  She’d definitely had some enhancements done.

He dragged his eyes back to me.  “Yes.  Elaine said something or other about it.  But I thought she said the tutor was out of town and it had been postponed until next week.  Perhaps I got it wrong.  I usually do.”

“Perhaps I’ve got it wrong.”  I shrugged, as the dark thoughts started swirling in my head again.  “This week or next, what does it matter?”

Of course, it mattered to me, and I digested what he said with a sinking heart.  It showed there was another problem between Alison and me; it was possible she was now telling me lies.  If what he said was true and I had no reason to doubt him, where was she going tomorrow morning, and had she really been with a friend studying today?

We poured some more champagne, had a drink, then he asked, “This promotion thing, what’s it worth?”

“Trouble, I suspect.  Definitely more money, but less time at home.”

“Oh,” raised eyebrows.  Obviously, the women had not talked about the job in front of him, or, at least, not all the details.  “You sure you want to do that?”

At last the voice of reason.  “Me?  No.”

“Yet you accepted the job.”

I sucked in a breath or two while I considered whether I could trust him.  Even if I couldn’t, I could see my ship was sinking, so it wouldn’t matter what I told him, or what Elaine might find out from him.  “Jimmy, between you and me I haven’t as yet decided one way or another.  To be honest, I won’t know until I go up to Barclay’s office and he asks me the question.”

“Barclay?”

“My boss.”

“Elaine’s doing a job for a Barclay that recently moved in the tower a block down from us.  I thought I recognized the name.”

“How did Elaine get the job?”

“Oh, Alison put him onto her.”

“When?”

“A couple of months ago.  Why?”

I shrugged and tried to keep a straight face, while my insides were churning up like the wake of a supertanker.  I felt sick, faint, and wanting to die all at the same moment.  “Perhaps she said something about it, but it didn’t connect at the time.  Too busy with work I expect.  I think I seriously need to get away for a while.”

I could hardly breathe, my throat was constricted and I knew I had to keep it together.  I could see Elaine and Alison coming back, so I had to calm down.  I sucked in some deep breaths, and put my ‘manage a complete and utter disaster’ look on my face.

And I had to change the subject, quickly, so I said, “Jimmy, Elaine told Alison, who told me, you were something of a guru of the cause and effects of the global economic meltdown.  Now, I have a couple of friends who have been expounding this theory …”

Like flicking a switch, I launched into the well-worn practice of ‘running a distraction’, like at work when we needed to keep the customer from discovering the truth.  It was one of the things I was good at, taking over a conversation and pushing it in a different direction.  It was salvaging a good result from an utter disaster, and if ever there was a time that it was required, it was right here, right now.

When Alison sat down and looked at me, she knew something had happened between Jimmy and I.  I might have looked pale or red-faced, or angry or disappointed, it didn’t matter.  If that didn’t seal the deal for her, the fact I took over the dining engagement did.  She knew well enough the only time I did that was when everything was about to go to hell in a handbasket.  She’d seen me in action before and had been suitably astonished.

But I got into gear, kept the champagne flowing and steered the conversation, as much as one could from a seasoned professional like Elaine, and, I think, in Jimmy’s eyes, he saw the battle lines and knew who took the crown on points.  Neither Elaine nor Jimmy suspected anything, and if the truth be told, I had improved my stocks with Elaine.  She was at times both surprised and interested, even willing to take a back seat.

Alison, on the other hand, tried poking around the edges, and, once when Elaine and Jimmy had got up to have a cigarette outside, questioned me directly.  I chose to ignore her, and pretend nothing had happened, instead of telling her how much I was enjoying the evening.

She had her ‘secrets’.  I had mine.

At the end of the evening, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I was physically sick from the pent up tension and the implications of what Jimmy had told me.  It took a while for me to pull myself together; so long, in fact, Jimmy came looking for me.  I told him I’d drunk too much champagne, and he seemed satisfied with that excuse.  When I returned, both Alison and Elaine noticed how pale I was but neither made any comment.

It was a sad way to end what was supposed to be a delightful evening, which to a large degree it was for the other three.  But I had achieved what I set out to do, and that was to play them at their own game, watching the deception, once I knew there was a deception, as warily as a cat watches its prey.

I had also discovered Jimmy’s real calling; a professor of economics at the same University Alison was doing her law degree.  It was no surprise in the end, on a night where surprises abounded, that the world could really be that small.

We parted in the early hours of the morning, a taxi whisking us back to the Lower East Side, another taking the Blaine’s back to the Upper West Side.  But, in our case, as Alison reminded me, it would not be for much longer.  She showed concern for my health, asked me what was wrong.  It took all the courage I could muster to tell her it was most likely something I ate and the champagne, and that I would be fine in the morning.

She could see quite plainly it was anything other than what I told her, but she didn’t pursue it.  Perhaps she just didn’t care what I was playing at.

And yet, after everything that had happened, once inside our ‘palace’, the events of the evening were discarded, like her clothing, and she again reminded me of what we had together in the early years before the problems had set in.

It left me confused and lost.

I couldn’t sleep because my mind had now gone down that irreversible path that told me I was losing her, that she had found someone else, and that our marriage was in its last death throes.

And now I knew it had something to do with Barclay.

 

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

Sunday In New York

 

In a word: Wall

There’s nothing like ‘hitting the wall’.  It’s a rather quaint expression used when you have used up all your energy and there’s nothing left.  A lot of sportspeople are very familiar with this expression.

But it doesn’t have anything to do with hitting a real wall, you know the sort, made out of plaster, or bricks, or timber.  Some people hit the wall in this case too, and soon find out what it’s like to have a broken hand.

There’s wall street, you know the one, it has a bull in it, and it’s in New York, down that end of the city where the Twin Towers used to be.  It’s rumoured lots of ‘jiggery-pokery’ goes on there.

Try stonewalling, you know, give answers to questions that don’t answer the questions, or find something else to do and put off being questioned.  I’m not sure, however, that’s how Stonewall Jackson got his name.

We can climb the walls, metaphorically speaking, but it is something we don’t actually do when we’re bored.

And, I’m sure everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China.  Even those who travel in space have seen it, from a long, long way away.  I’ve tried walking along it, and up it, yes, parts of it go up the sides of mountains, and it’s challenging.  Maybe you should try it sometime.

Perhaps a few others, just to finish with, like

I got hit by a wall of water – yep, watch out for them tidal waves

There’s a wall between us, nope, not gonna talk to you

His stomach wall is failing, which means he’s in very bad shape, and

He couldn’t get through the wall of players, oh, well, maybe we’ll win the FA cup final next year!

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 19

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 in 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…

 

Marina drove the truck slowly and carefully, without the benefit of headlights on a night that have become very dark when cloud cover moved in.  A good night to be out on foot, but not in a few tons of metal.

It seemed to take longer to go back to the old factory, if that was what it was, or it may have just been my imagination.  Certainly, it was rather tense in the cabin.

I wondered if what Chiara had said about not trusting me had made Marina have second thoughts of taking me back.  From where we were, I would have no idea where it was, and if she dropped me off, I could not find it again.

And that fear came true a few minutes later when she pulled off to the side of the road, near some trees, and stopped, turning off the engine.

The silence crept over us like a fog.

Such was the atmosphere I found myself whispering, “What’s wrong.”

“Lights.  Appearing briefly and disappearing.  Like someone is following us.”

She sat still for about five minutes, looking intently at the rear vision mirrors, and at times turning around to stare of the small window at the back of the cabin.

I did too, but I couldn’t see anything, nor had I, but I hadn’t thought to look in the rear vision mirrors because I thought we were safe.  How wrong I was, to assume that.  If there was one lesson I should learn from what I was doing, was that I should know what’s going on around me and that at no time could I ever believe I’m safe.  The moment I did and let my guard down, I would be dead.  I’d been told that in London, and in a relaxed moment, I’d forgotten it.  How many others had done the same and died?

A shake of her head, she got out of the truck, and quietly closed the door.  I did likewise and joined her at the rear.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m going to check back over the road, see if there’s anyone following us.  There have been too many instances of lights for it to be coincidental.”

“Since we left the church?”  In thinking that, it meant that either Chiara or Enrico may have inadvertently, or deliberately, told someone about the meeting.

I hope it’s just my imagination, but it was shortly after we left I saw the first light.”

“Could be a local farmer stumbling around at night.”

“It could, but no one is that silly to be caught out after dark.  There was a curfew, and most of us like to believe there still is.”

She looked back down the road, but all I could see was inky blackness.  The moon was still hidden by dark clouds above, and it looked like there was going to be rain.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You’d be better off staying here.  The last thing I need is a soldier stomping around in the dark.”

Thanks for the compliment, I thought.  “Then I’ll have to be quiet, and try not to stomp.”

Even in the darkness I could feel rather than see the scowl on her face.

“As you wish, but don’t get in my way, and don’t make me shoot you.”


Short and wiry, she was built for stealth and speed, unlike the bulky soldier I was.  Not that I was overfed and fat, but I was still a larger target than she was.  I could just see her outline in front of me, and she was moving very quietly.

I was trying very hard to emulate her.

Then I saw it.  A light going on briefly, then off, definitely in the direction we had just come from.

She had stopped and I nearly ran into her.

“You were right,” I said quietly.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t be.”

So had I.  The last thing we needed was trouble, trouble that would have to be eliminated.  She couldn’t have anyone else knowing about their hiding places, and meeting points.

A few minutes further along, we both heard a strange sound at the same time.

A wheel scraping against a fender?  There was no engine noise.  It became louder, then we saw what it was.  Someone riding a bicycle.  Close to the edge of the road so as to remain hidden from view because of the turns in the road, which would account for seeing the light at odd times.  At the front, there was a light that was taped to show only a thin slit of light.

I saw her look around, then take hold of a long branch that had recently fallen off one of the trees, pared it down, and then waited.  I could see what she was going to do.

When the bike came alongside, moving slowly because it was up a hill, and the rider was labouring hard, she poked the stick through the spokes of the front wheel, the rider just seeing her at the last moment, and not being able to avoid her.

The result was predictable, the rider went flying over the handlebars and crashed into the hard ground with a thud and a loud grunt.  

My role was to jump on the rider so he, or she, couldn’t escape.  Marina was right behind me and jammed a dirty rag in the persons mouth as I held them very tightly under me.

“Now what?”

This was not going to work for very long as the person under me was beginning to kick and thrash about.  In a few seconds, the gag would be spat out and the silence would be shattered.

I heard the gun before I saw it, a whooshing sound near my ear just before it hit the head of the captive, and suddenly there was no more movement or sound.

“A moment’s silence.”

We rolled the figure over, and looked at the face, just visible in the near darkness.  We had just been blessed with a shard of moonlight for a few seconds.

A man.

“You know him?” she asked.

Another look, just as the clouds shut off the light, and I thought so.

“One of the soldiers from the castle.  How would he know we were meeting at the church?”

“He might not.  Nor might he be following us, but just unlucky.”

“How so?”

“Chiara sometimes entertains men from the castle.  Part of our eyes and ears.  She was not part of the resistance when Fernando was in charge so they would just use her like any other enemy soldier would.”

“So this was a mistake.  If he doesn’t return, then they’ll get the wrong idea.”

“Unfortunately.  He has to be dealt with.”

“Killed?”

“No time to get squeamish on me.  He’s an enemy soldier.”

An enemy I preferred to be some distance away from before shooting to kill.  Up close and personal makes it so much harder.

“Come on.  Grab his shoulders.  There’s a gully over there, so we can make it look like he ran into a tree, tipped off the bike and hit his head on a rock.”

“Or a gun.”

“A few hits with a rock will fix that.  I’m sure there’s no one up there that can do autopsies on bodies.”

No, there wasn’t.  I just hoped I was not going to be the one that had to hit him.


Ten minutes later it was done.

We carried him to the gully, and at a suitable place laid the body as if it had landed off the bike and onto the rocks, where Marina picked up a large one and hit him several times with a lot of force the last making a sickening sound, and the blow that killed him.

I went back and collected the bicycle and staged it to meet the crash criteria, and then left.

For all intents and purposes, he had died falling off his bike after wandering off the road in the dark.

Both of us hoped it would not cause Chiara any trouble.

And, it was the first person I’d seen killed up close, and I doubted, in the coming days it would be the last.  It was not a sight I was going to forget in a hurry.

© Charles Heath 2019

Searching for locations: The remnants of the wall that surrounded Beijing, China

The fortification walls, both an inner wall and an outer wall, surrounding Beijing city were built from the early 1400s to 1553.

The dimensions of the Inner city wall are:
          Length: 24 kilometers or 15 miles
          Height: 25 meters or 49 feet high
          Thickness, at ground level: 20 meters or 66 feet
                            at the top: 12 meters or 29 feet

It had nine gates.  The fortifications included gate towers, archways, watchtowers, barbicans, barbican towers, sluice gates, sluice gate towers, enemy sighting towers, corner guard towers, and a moat system.

The outer city wall had a length of 28 kilometers or 17 miles.

From 1911, after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, the dismantling of the fortifications began.

In 1965, major deconstruction of the fortifications was commenced to allow for the construction of the 2nd wrong road, and Line 2 or the Beijing underground railway.

 In 1979, the government called off the demolition of the remaining city walls and named them cultural heritage sites. By this time, the only intact sections were the gate tower and watchtower at Zhengyangmen, the watchtower at Deshengmen, the guard tower at the southeast corner, the northern moats of the Inner city, the section of the Inner city wall south of the Beijing railway station, and a small section of Inner-city wall near Xibianmen.

For more reading, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_city_fortifications

As for our guide’s explanation of the fortifications: Leaving the Square to go to the Golden Mask Dynasty Show, we pass remnants of the wall that used to surround Beijing.

This wall was built in the early 15th century and was about 24 km long, up to 15 meters high and about 20 meters thick, and had nine gates, one of which still exists today.  In 1965 most of it was removed so that the second ring road and an underground railway line could be built.

NaNoWriMo – April 2022 – Day 16

First Dig Two Graves, the second Zoe thriller.

…

I’ve been looking back at what’s been written, something you shouldn’t do when trying to get 50,000 words written in 30 days, but I’m ahead of the count, and a little checking is needed, just to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Not that any book written on the fly like this runs smoothly.

There are three themes to this story:

1 – Worthington, now head of the Intelligence agency, seeking revenge for Zoe killing his brother by mistake, a mistake that he caused

2 – Alistair’s mother deploying a collecting of agents, some being Zoe’s colleagues once, to assassinate the woman who assassinated her son

3 – John’s ever-growing fear that Zoe is tired of him, and, after she leaves, and even though she promised to come back, he doesn’t want to wait to find out he’s been dumped.

4 – Sebastian is always lurking in the background, ostensibly to recruit her as an assassin, but really because he’s jealous of John’s good fortune.

Our two intrepid heroes go off to save her in Marseilles where she learns of the identity of who is ostensibly looking for her, and sets her off on a lone hunt for him.

We then deploy two new characters, Rupert and Isobel, who along with John will create a private detective agency, that John uses to locate Zoe by any and all means.

Isobel soon finds out that searching for Zoe on the internet brings risks, both at home and abroad, bringing her in contact with another hacker who seems to know where Zoe’s past is hiding. But can they be trusted?

John heads off to Vienna, after being supplied a file on Zoe, full of information he had not known about her. What he learns in Vienna leads him to Bratislava, when a photo identifying where she suddenly arrives on his phone.

John locates her, she realizes he is being used as bait, and they leave, but not before the hit team almost completes their mission, and leave behind a trail of bodies as they get away, but not without injury.

John gets the answers he is seeking, that if he wants a life of looking over his shoulder, by all means, tag along. She is quite pleased to see him, not so much that he brought ‘friends’ but she might yet get to train him.

Sebastian, feeling left out, grills Isobel and Rupert, gets sidelined by Worthington because anywhere Sebastian goes, trouble follows, and then convinces Isobel that John is in over his head and needs their help.

He’s not wrong because Worthington has dispatched another hit team to the main railway stations in Vienna where John and Zoe are looking to escape, only another shootout occurs as they once again escape when all the station’s exits are not covered.

The story has now reached a point where everyone is converging on Vienna.

Along with another person who Juhn knows, and will least expect to arrive on his doorstep.

…

Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 3,999 words, for a total of 47,066.

The A to Z Challenge – N is for – “Now I understand”

My brother only had one job.

To arrive on time with the envelope.

It was a test.

He failed.

…

At that moment, when my expectations were completely trashed, and there was a great deal riding on it, words could not express my disappointment.

Michael had the better end of the deal.  Being second-born meant that avoided all of the family’s hopes and expectations that fell on me, that I would carry on the business, as our father had, his father before him, going back six generations.

Without any of the expectations loaded on his shoulders, he got to live a free and easy lifestyle, one with little responsibility, some of which o would have liked to have myself.

Then there was the problem where my father, not quite the businessman as those before him, had made a number of dubious decisions, leading us down the path that almost closed the business down, and had only just found the financing to keep it afloat when he died suddenly.

It left me in charge of what could have been a sinking ship, but, as I unraveled the complexities of the deal he had made, it soon became clear he had made a deal with the devil himself.

And fort eight hours before that missed drop-off, I had finally discovered all of the connections through countless shell companies to arrive at the person from whom he had secured the funding.

Walter Amadeus Winthrop.

A man whom my father had hated because he had stolen away the only woman he had ever loved, a man who was in the business of stealing other people’s companies, ideas, products, and people because he could.

And he wanted our company, simply so he could destroy my father a second time.

There was no doubting the reason why my father had died.  He had found out who had supplied the funding.

I had the evidence that linked Winthrop to dirty dealings and promised to get it to the DA’s office by a particular time, but a previous and more pressing appointment meant I couldn’t be in two places at once, so I sent Michael on my place.

It had been time-sensitive and having missed the deadline to tender the documents in court, the case lapsed, and Winthrop, who had been arraigned many times before and got away for lack of evidence, or witnesses, survived yet again.

…

It wasn’t out of the question that Michael had been kidnapped by Winthrop’s people, but I didn’t think it was possible they knew about him, simply because as part of his distancing from the family he had taken our mother’s birth surname.

I rang his cell phone, and it went to his voice mail.  That was not really a concern because he rarely answered the phone the first time, especially if I was calling him.

Next, I called his latest girlfriend, not the usual sort of girl he dated, and quite a surprise given her sobriety and work ethic.  She was, I thought more than once, the sort of girl I’d like to meet.

When they introduced thirty-hour days, perhaps.

“Good morning, this is Katherine Willoughby.”

“Good morning, Katherine, it’s Michael’s brother, Jake.”

“He’s not here.  I assume he made it to the meeting?”

“He didn’t.”

“But that can be possible.  I went with him until outside the front door of the building.  I saw him go in, talk to the reception, and then get taken up in the elevator.”

“Then we have a mystery on our hands.  He hasn’t called me to say it’s done, and as usual not answering his phone.”

“That’s just for you.  If I call…  I’ll call you back.”

I waited for five minutes, then my phone rang.  Katherine again.

“He’s not answering for me either, and that is very unusual.  Did you talk to others at the meeting?”

“Yes, they just said he didn’t turn up, but I have another thought.  Leave it with me.”

A call to the DA’s office sent an assistant down to the front desk, where it was established, that Michael had signed in, and the officer that remembers him could recall the name of or describe the person who came and collected him.

But he had gone there as I’d requested and was beginning to look like Winthrop obviously had someone in the DAs office keeping him informed on what was happening.

Which meant, Winthrop’s people had taken him.

It was a development I hadn’t entirely unexpected.

…

This was my first time on what was known as a superyacht.  Really, it was slightly smaller than an ocean liner, and the grand tour showed fifteen staterooms, a dining room, a games room, a ballroom, well a small one, and various other rooms that were as remarkable as they were mysterious.

For a laugh, I said it was missing a library.

I was promptly corrected.

My host, the owner’s daughter, Sylvia, no last name given or asked for, had promised a visit and passing by after picking up the vessel after some repairs, she collected me by helicopter, and took me straight to the ship.

I was taking in some sea sir, trying to make sense of what just happened, and get some sea air.

“You look unhappy, Jake.”

“My brother has gone missing.  He was delivering some documents for me and never arrived.  While it’s like him not to finish anything he starts, this time I know that, at the very least, he made it to the building.”

“That seems very strange.”

“Not when you factor in who the documents were about.”

I’d told her some of the history over a few drinks, perhaps more than I should.

“I’m sure you’ll discover what happened soon enough.  Chef tells me lunch is ready.”  She held out her hand, “come, dine with me.”

We went into the dining room and sat.  Two waiters in full livery attended us, serving champagne and hors d’oeuvres.

That’s when my phone rang.

And Sylvia said, quietly, “put it on loudspeaker, on the table.”

The tone was insistent and worried me.  The call was from Michael’s phone.  He was simply calling me back.  Just the same, I did as she asked.

I said, “Michael?”

“Is that Jake?”

“Put my father on the phone, Ari.”  Sylvia looked as though she knew who it was.

I looked over at the woman I knew as Sylvia.  She was supposed to be a representative of another company in the same business we were, and I’d met her at a business conference in Miami, a few months back.  That she would turn out to be something else wasn’t the surprise I thought it would be.

It wasn’t long before I began to think I’d been seeing the daughter of the man who I believe killed my father.

“He’s not here.”

“Tell him I’ll sink this tub he sent me to get if he doesn’t get his ass on the phone now.”  Not angry but laced with intent.

Silence.

I was going to say something, but I think words failed me.  What could I say, if she was a Winthrop, his success in destroying us was complete?

I just sat in silence.

Then, “What are you doing Sylvie?”

I assumed that voice belonged to her father, the infamous Winthrop himself.

“You shouldn’t have let me go to explosives school.  Oh, that’s right, you did know.  So much you don’t know about me.  I’ve wired this yacht Dad, and I will sink it.  I’m sure mom will be impressed.”

I heard a sigh.  Was he trying to deal with an errant daughter?  Was she crazy?  She certainly had a lot of talents, piloting helicopters, and making bombs; was there a stint in the military somewhere in her resume.

“What do you want, Sylvie.”

“Stop pissing off my boyfriend.”

“Jake?  Have you been dating Jake,”

“In a manner of speaking.  Since he hates the family so much and given what you just did, I’m not surprised, and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell him.  But kidnapping his brother?  Not a way to impress him Dad or give me a usable Segway.”

“You do know Jake is helping the authorities put me in jail.  That’s not going to happen.”

“I don’t care what your issues are with the authorities, but if you’re worried that the evidence Michael had will have you prosecuted, then you have lied to me, and I told you what would happen if I found out you lied to me.”

“You’re just a child.”

“Whose got a penchant for blowing up things.  I’ll start with this boat, then I’ll move on to bigger and better things, like your car collection.  I’m thoroughly pissed off myself now.”

Silence.

“What do you really want?”

“Give them their company back.  You don’t need it.  Get Ari to take Michael home and apologize for making a mistake.”

“And the documents?”

“Burn them for all I care.  You’re going to make a very generous investment in their company, and then never bother them again.”

“And the ship?”

“Just hope I’m in a good mood in a few hours’ time after lunch, and Jake doesn’t jump overboard to get away from me.”

“OK.  Your mother is waiting for you in Venice.  Don’t upset her.”

“Why would I?  I’m her favorite.”

The line went dead.

“So, Jake, didn’t I tell you I’d fix everything.”

She had, and I’d foolishly thought no one could handle Winthrop.  “Would you sink this ship?”

“Hell yes, just to piss him off.  Now, where is lunch?  Negotiating makes me hungry.  And,” she smiled wickedly, “there’s a stateroom with our name on it.  You are coming to Venice?”

I guess it really was a matter of who you know, not what you know. 

“Of course.”

© Charles Heath 2022