Why is it ideas come at the least expected and most inconvenient time?
I thought I’d trained my thoughts to assemble when I was having a shower.
Then there’s that quiet spot down in the lounge, by the window, away from everything. But now it seems that will not work all that well because the telephone rings regularly with scammers, threatening to cut off my internet, my telephone, just about every wire that comes into the house.
Don’t you hate that?
I wasn’t considering a new idea for yet another book; I have so many on the go already. But, the sad truth is, you have no control over it.
When I sit down, listening to Ravel, or some other classical music, I close my eyes and drift along to the music, waiting for the imagination to kick in.
Can’t force it, can you?
But, five minutes to three, after a frantic call announcing yet another storm in a teacup, I’m racing out the door, setting the alarm, locking the door, and …
… bing …
The idea is there, out of left field, in front of me.
Good thing my phone is now a recording device enabling me to speak and drive and solve all manner of crises on the go.
This is rugged bushland not far from suburbia, though you wouldn’t know exactly where it is just by looking at the photograph
But, for the writer, this is an excellent setting.
For instance, once again we are out wandering in the bush, lost. It’s not hard to get lost, and stay lost if there are no recognizable landmarks, and given we all walk with a bias to one side or the other, and we have to avoid objects like trees, ravines, animals, and rocks, keeping a straight line is impossible.
But the question is, how did you get into the bush in the first place?
It’s not as if you would deliberately go there, just to if you can get lost.
No, my idea is that you have been kidnapped and drugged, then taken to a location either in the book of a car or just in the back seat with a hood, then dropped off and left to die
The criminals in this story are more efficient in getting rid of pesky witnesses.
Or maybe it’s something less sinister, like going out and counting the koalas in the bush, well, what’s left of the bush as the suburban spray takes more and more of the koala’s habitat.
And it could also be like the planet of the apes, the koalas start fighting back.
As soon as I stepped off the shuttle in the cargo bay, the third officer was waiting for me.
“The captain asked me to escort you up to his day room.”
Unusual. The captain could have just called me on the private communicator if there was a need for secrecy, if that was what this was.
“Any reason why he would send you?”
“Didn’t want you getting lost, sir.”
I knew I should not have admitted to him that I had got a little confused finding my way around, but that was because the dockyard people had blocked off several passageways.
“No. I guess not.”
The Third was a man of little humour, and particularly didn’t think any of my jokes were funny. On station, he was all serious and unamused.
Now, he had his serious face on, and I thought it best not to ask what to expect.
He took a different route to the bridge than what I would have taken, a much shorter and more direct route. It was obvious he had studied the plans of the ship and knew it backwards. I on the other hand, was not that prepared, but it meant I would have to.
He went as far as the door to the day room, and left me there. I didn’t need to announce myself, the doors just opened, whisper quiet, showing me the room I could expect one day when I got my own ship.
Or at the very least, I could dream.
The doors closed behind me, and I walked forward into the room proper, and first saw the captain sitting at his desk, and then a figure standing beside and back a step, behind him.
There was a weapon in his hand, but it was by his side.
And something else I noticed, the figure looked just like the three I’d seen on the other ship.
The captain saw me looking at him.
“This is the captain from the vessel that just arrived as those assailants on the cargo ship were ‘rescued’.
He, or she, looked human under the clothes and helmet, but could be almost anything.
“Does he…”
“Speak our language, yes, and a lot of others. And he would like our help.”
Often Radly his friend from the ship had regaled him with stories of his exploits in the red-light district. Henry never quite believes most of it, but he was prepared to accept that he might know enough to be of some help.
Henry didn’t want to be visiting the parlours on his own.
But it does mean he has to tell him the true nature of the girl he met and wanted to go after.
Radly is honest, knowing a lot of the girls in the area, most either were not worth the effort, or more likely content with their lot and didn’t want to be rescued. Poor souls who tried often ended up on the wrong end of a bouncer’s fist.
Exactly what Henry wants to avoid.
So, is Radly up for the challenge.
To find her, yes, but if she is trouble, or in trouble, or likely to cause trouble, then no.
Henry has to be prepared to walk away.
He accepts the conditions, and the quest begins after dark.
There are a lot of words in the English language that can strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of men and women.
Two are renovations and editing.
We are currently deep in the first and it’s running something like this:
Firstly, we are updating the ensuite, and this has been relatively painless.
Secondly, we are fixing up the outside of the house. The intention was to put in a retaining wall and build a stone garden with succulents.
Ah, the best-laid plans!
This led to, let’s render the walls, get rid of the unsightly bricks.
Fine.
But before that, we need to repaint the roof an appropriate colour to match the walls.
Fine.
Got the roof done, got the walls rendered.
Now we need a carport. Fine.
Back to the garden, and so on, and so forth. Much is still to be done.
It’s like editing, a chore that I’m beginning to like less and less because it’s taking on the dimensions of a renovation.
It isn’t a matter of correcting spelling mistakes, sentence structure errors, or badly place punctuation.
It’sd a matter of weeding out the superfluous text, cutting and more cutting, taking out anything that does not propel the story to a logical and unexpected end, let alone having to rewrite at the beginning because of an afterthought later on.
Starting to sound like the garden, rendering, roof scenario?
It’s harder editing than writing.
So many words, so much brilliance, ending up on the cutting room floor.
Perhaps it’s time to go back to the renovations. They seem more fun than editing.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
“So, how do you know your way around this place?”
We walked slowly and carefully because there was a lot of rubbish in the alleyway, mostly from cracks in the walls where the concrete lining had broken away. At times there were mounds of rubble, and we had to carefully walk over these.
The ground was dusty and signs of footprints from past visitors, but it had been a long time, they had almost disappeared. There was also a dank, musty aroma, just short of being nauseating.
“The result of a misspent youth. Not many people know there’s a passageway around the whole perimeter of the mall, with only four entry points from outside, and two inside. This was how we escaped when we came along for some shoplifting.”
“Did you ever think of going straight?”
“Wasn’t much chance of that. There were expectations, and when I did try to give it up, I got ostracised, and ended up having to commit bigger follies to regain acceptance.”
We reached the end of the passage, where it turned right. At a guess, I would say we were in one of the corners of the mall, near the front entrance.
She turned left and then stopped. I could see the bottom of the steps leading up.
A stopped next to her and we shone both torches up the stairs. The light only went as far as a landing.
“What’s up there,” I asked.
“Offices. A holding cell. It’s where the security team used to be. It was separate from everything else. The security guys used to shake down the teenage girls up there, and not in a nice way.”
“You?”
“Once, but I told Vince and he sorted the bastard out. Didn’t happen again.”
A small sidebar to life in a mall.
She started up the steps. “If anything is going to be anywhere, this will be the place. The front of the mall was the safest part, built properly on solid foundations. As work continued, heading sideways and back, corners were cut. It’s not the only shoddy building there is in this area.”
The Benderby’s construction company had built most of the buildings in the county, always coming in at the lowest price. The only place not cracking or falling to pieces was the town hall.
At the top of the stairs, there was another wide passage with rooms branching off it.
It was a little less dusty and musty up here, but the rooms were quite messy, with papers scattered everywhere. It looked like someone had been looking for something. The first room didn’t look like it had been used since everyone left, nor the second.
The third was a different story. It was reasonably clean, a large desk in the middle of the room, and several boxes on the side with rolled-up papers, probably blueprints or plans.
I went in. Nadia kept going up the passage to check the other rooms.
I pulled out one of the rolls and laid it on the table.
It was a map, one that stretched a hundred miles in each direction and giving a very clear view of all the river systems, lakes, mountains, and coastline. Our town was almost in the middle of the chart.
I pulled out another and it was almost the same.
I looked at the writing at the bottom. One was dated 1972, the other dated 1956.
I kept rummaging through the rolls until I found one that was dated 1935. Our town wasn’t a town back then, nor did Patterson’s Reach exist.
And carefully examining the inlets, bays, and coves, given the parameters of what remembered from Boggs’s map, it could be any one of a dozen locations. I didn’t take that much notice when I’d been looking at Boggs’ collection.
“Hey, Smidge,” Nadia yelled out.
I wished she wouldn’t call me that.
I went out of the room and down the passage, past about four other offices, until the second to last. She was standing outside an office with a shut door. I tried it, and it was locked.
“A locked door in an abandoned Mall. What are the odds?”
“That there’s something in there that someone wants to keep secret. This has to be Alex’s lair. What was in that other room?”
“Maps.”
“Any use?”
“Perhaps. Boggs probably had the same, but I never took much notice of his. Trouble is, I was having difficulty believing there is a treasure buried out there somewhere.”
“A lot of people seem to be looking for this non-existent treasure, so there must be something in it.”
“Any of your keys fit?”
She tried the first, no, the second, the same one she had used to get in, and it worked. A skeleton key perhaps, that oped every lock in the place.
The door swung open and we shone the torch lights inside.
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.
I could not remember even the dreams started, it seemed it had been almost forever, but lately, they had taken on a new intensity.
They always started the same, I was standing at the bottom of a hill looking across a lawn, bordered by rose bushes, looking towards a very large manor house, three stories tall, with wings.
It was larger than anything I’d ever seen before, a house that was fit for a king or queen, or perhaps a lord.
For someone who lived in a village, son of the flour miller, and among the lower classes, it was a place I could never expect to see inside, nor walk about the grounds, only to look upon and wonder.
At first, the dreams had me looking at the house, whether in awe or dread, I could not say. I didn’t venture forth, just stood there.
In some dreams it was a bright sunny day, others overcast and cold, then others again, in pouring rain. Always the same place, and likely the same time.
Then, after a while, the dreams changed slightly. I was looking at the manor house at night. The windows had lights, and shadowy forms moved back and forth in those windows. Once a carriage arrived, but I couldn’t see who it was in it. At night the house looked more majestic, but also it had an air of foreboding.
But underlying every vision I had, I felt there was something familiar about it; that I had been inside, that I knew who the people were who lived there, and that for no particular reason, something awful had happened there.
After the first few dreams, I made a concerted effort to try and locate the place, venturing as far from my village as I could in a day, and could not find it. It was not within the limits of my world.
When older, and was able to learn about manor houses, and the Lords and Gentry that lived in them, I ventured further afield but always with the same result. It was as if it existed only in my imagination.
Then, when my mother died suddenly, the dreams stopped and it all faded from my memory.
It was then I learned from my father, that he was not my father. He told me that my mother had been a lady in waiting for a wealthy family in one of the counties near the Scottish border when her family lived and that he was sending me to live with them. There was more to that story, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. He packed my few possessions and put me on the coach.
That trip took many days, and when I finally reached the village where my mother’s sister lived, her eldest son Jacob came to get me and take me to my new home. It didn’t take long to realize in a small house with six other children, I was just adding to my aunt’s problems.
That first night, banished to an outhouse with two of the other boys, the dreams came back, only different.
I was still looking at the manor house, but it was from a rotunda in the middle of a newly planted rose garden, only a short distance from the house. I was sitting, waiting. At first, I was just waiting, and no one came. I had no idea how old I was or what I looked like, but it seemed I was dressed in child’s clothes. Was it an early memory of mine?
That didn’t explain why I was sitting in the rotunda. I could not be a child belonging to the manor house, so I had to wonder if I was the child of a servant. Several days after arriving, I overheard an argument between my Aunt and her husband, who was angry about me being sent to live with them, his point, there were too many of them to support as it was. He then said that if my mother hadn’t been so stupid to take their little bastard as her own and they looked after their own problems, this wouldn’t be his.
I had no idea what that meant. My mother had been my mother, not someone else. She had always been my mother for as long as I could remember. But it did make sense why my father, who was not my father, had sent me away. But they never mentioned it again.
This lasted for a week, and then a new element was introduced.
A young woman. She was not a servant, but smartly dressed, and appeared to belong to the family who lived in the house. She was accompanied by a woman I assumed to be her mother or a guardian. They arrived in a carriage, and I wondered if it was the same carriage I’d seen previously in another dream. I was close enough to I could see her face, and she was very beautiful but looked very sad. It was the same each night, reaching to point of her arrival, and no more.
Being old enough to work, I was sent to work in the fields surrounding a manor house some distance from the village. There were about a dozen boys of my age in the group, supervised by one of the manor houses stewards. It was hard and physical work, much more than helping my father in the mill.
It took several weeks before we reached a field that was close to the manor house, in fact, just over a hill, and on a break I climbed the hill to have a look.
It was the manor house in my dream. A different aspect, but the exact house, the lawns, the roses, and the Rotunda.
How could it be possible I knew this place?
One afternoon the steward picked me to deliver a message to the manor house housekeeper, telling me I had to go to the back of the house and avoid being seen. There was an arch, and passageway that led to a quadrangle where I would find her.
Up close the manor house was huge. I remained in the gardens skirting the rose gardens to the rear of the house where there were stables and outhouses. I found the arch, and then a passageway, wide enough for a wagon to make deliveries. For some odd reason, I knew exactly where to go.
It led to a quadrangle inside the manor, at least I think that was what it was called but I was not sure how I knew. Once there you could see inside. At one end a door was open, but no one was about. As soon as I stepped into the open, a vision came to me.
It was at night, but the quadrangle was lit by many torches. A carriage and four black horses were waiting, and then I came out with a woman, my mother. There were two other ladies, one old and the other the housekeeper, Mrs Giles. The old lady referred to her as that. After the old lady spoke to my mother, we got in the carriage, and then I looked out to see the woman in white, looking out the window, looking very forlorn. I could never forget that look of utter despair on her face.
The quadrangle was different now, in daylight. An empty wagon was sitting not far from the door having no doubt just been unloaded with the weeks’ supplies from the surrounding farms.
I could hear voices, so I put my head in the door and said, “Is there anyone here?”
I waited until a lady came up the passage and saw me. It was Mrs Giles. How did I know that?
“Are you the housekeeper?”
“I am.” She came out the door into the square. And stopped suddenly, looking at me curiously. “Why are you here?”
“The steward sent me with a message.” I took the piece of paper out of my pocket and held it out.
She took it but didn’t read it. “Where are you from?”
“The village. I live with the Halls.” I realised after I said it she probably had no idea who they were.
“Her sister was Josephine, your aunt?”
I remembered my father called her Jo, rather than Josephine. “Jo, yes. She was my mother. She died a while back and I was sent here.”
“My. That’s a story, isn’t it? Well, off with you. Message delivered.”
A shake of the head and she went back inside.
That day the dreams stopped. Perhaps now that they all made sense, there was no need for me to see them again.
There was no doubt the manor house was a place I had been to before, my mother had come from these parts and might have worked there at one time before she came down to marry my father, which meant now I was old enough to understand, my father was not my real father. The only part I didn’t understand was what the lady in white represented.
I continued to work in the fields for another month, when I came home, as I always did, at sundown. It had been a long, hot day.
When I turned onto the lane that led to our house, I saw there was a carriage parked out front. It looked familiar with the livery of the two men sitting up front, and the four black horses. It looked a lot different in daylight.
The men paid no heed to me as I looked at the horses, patted one, and then went on to the house.
Inside, the housekeeper, Mrs Giles, was there with another lady, not in white, but pale blue. She looked a lot happier than I’d seen her before in my dreams, but it was the woman in white.
She gasped when she saw me.
My aunt looked from her to me, then to Mrs Giles. “This was not supposed to happen. My sister up and died, and her no-good-for-nothing husband sent the boy here.”
The woman in white spoke, “That is irrelevant now. He is here, and he will come to live with his family.”
“Who might they be Miss,” I asked. This conversation was a little hard to follow or understand.
My aunt looked at the housekeeper, “If I may explain to the boy. It might be better coming from me.”
The housekeeper nodded.
“My sister, Jo, whom you knew only to be your mother, was, but she was not your real mother. A few years after you were born it was necessary to take you away and be raised. It was never intended that you were to return here, but you have. Your real mother is that lady in blue, the Lady Westmoreland, now the owner of the manor. Since the circumstances that required your departure no longer exist, you are free to return. If you want to. I know it’s a lot to understand Leonard, but in my opinion, you would be better off going to live in the manor.”
I looked at the lady in blue. “I know you, but I don’t know how or why. I have seen you in my dreams.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you. You were sent away without anyone telling me where or who or with who. That you have come back to me is a miracle, an answer to many prayers.” She held out her hand and I went over to her and took it in mine. I looked up into her eyes and knew instantly that she was my real mother.
I turned to look at my aunt. “I will go with them if you don’t mind. I can always come back and see you.” Another glance at my mother, “Can’t I?”
“Yes, you can.”
The housekeeper said, “WE will complete the arrangements we agreed to earlier. Does the boy have any possessions?”
“None that would be of use to him.”
“Then you should keep them. We should be on our way.”
Once in the carriage, on the way to the manor, my mother said, “Your name isn’t Leonard, by the way.”
“I know,” said. “It’s James. And your name is Harriet Montague, is it not?”
“How do you know that?”
“My other mother, Jo, told me one day but said never to tell anyone else. Ever. Unless Harriet came for me. She knew you would, one day. Either that or I would find you. Now, it no longer matters.”
Stranger’s We’ve Become, a sequel to What Sets Us Apart.
The blurb:
Is she or isn’t she, that is the question!
Susan has returned to David, but he is having difficulty dealing with the changes. Her time in captivity has changed her markedly, so much so that David decides to give her some time and space to re-adjust back into normal life.
But doubts about whether he chose the real Susan remain.
In the meantime, David has to deal with Susan’s new security chief, the discovery of her rebuilding a palace in Russia, evidence of an affair, and several attempts on his life. And, once again, David is drawn into another of Predergast’s games, one that could ultimately prove fatal.
From being reunited with the enigmatic Alisha, a strange visit to Susan’s country estate, to Russia and back, to a rescue mission in Nigeria, David soon discovers those whom he thought he could trust each has their own agenda, one that apparently doesn’t include him.
This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.
The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, 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.
Things are about to get complicated…
“Turn around and head towards the trees, we’re not very far from you,” the voice in my head said.
I turned, saw the trees and moved towards them.
“Straight ahead.”
Then I could just see her, beside one of the tree trunks, under the cover of the canopy.
For the moment we would not be seen, but if someone was looking intently, we would be seen.
Jennifer was kneeling, her knees and weight keeping the assailant on the ground. She handed me the gun, a silenced Baretta, with the distinct aroma of a discharged bullet.
Jennifer had pulled off the balaclava. Jan.
Not working for Severin, but Dobbin. Or someone else?
“Who ordered the hit?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Not entirely unexpected.
I pulled out my phone and dialled the number for the Detective Inspector that had been at Maury’s crime scene. I knew there was going to be a need to call her in the not-too-distant future. And Jan needed to be in a safe place where she couldn’t be got at.
“Who is this?”
My number would have come up as a ‘private number’.
“We met at the hotel where Maury died.”
“The spy?”
“Of sorts. I’m sorry to say that his companion, Severin, is also now very dead in the rotunda at the Italian Gardens at Hyde Park. I’d get someone down here before the body is removed or found by a member of the public.”
I heard a scream and deduced it came from the rotunda.
“Too late. Hurry before the crime scene is contaminated.”
“Where are you?”
“Nearby. And if you’re especially quick, we have a surprise for you.”
Two constables arrived in four minutes, most likely nearby for another reason. The Detective Inspector and her Sergeant arrived within 20 minutes, but by that time Jennifer and Jan had retreated to the car, parked away from the gardens.
Anyone seeing us heading away would have picked us for three drunken fools escorting a friend who had passed out. Jan had struggled to get free, and it had been necessary to subdue her.
I had wanted to ask further questions, but circumstances didn’t allow it. Not yet.
Leaving Jennifer with Jan, securely tied up, but looking like she was sleeping of a long drinking session, I went back to the crime scene just as the Detective Inspector was coming out of the rotunda.
She recognised me and called me over to the tape that separated the public from the scene. The forensic team had just arrived and was setting up. I doubted she would let me into the crime scene area, but I had seen enough when I’d been there with Severin.
“Why are you here, and give me a good reason not to take you into custody.”
“He called me earlier and wanted to talk. I think he found out Maury was dead, and he was next. I didn’t kill him, but I know who did, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to prove it.”
“That weedy little man that saved your ass the last time?”
“Richards or Dobbin? Either or together or one of their henchmen. Not sure, to be honest. All I knop is it’s possible Maury was killed during an intense interrogation. I suspect Severin was killed to silence him.”
“Because of what?”
“I believe it is about the existence of a formula for a biological weapon.”
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 