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…
We took the elevator down to one of the basement levels, and then along a long poorly lit passageway which in my estimation had taken us to another building.
It would not have surprised me if it had been part of a large underground complex used in the second world war, safe from the overhead bombing raids. Certainly, a lot of the fittings and paintwork looked very, very old, and I could imagine armed soldiers stationed along the length of the corridor each in his own little cutaway.
At the end, the building was a lot more modern and bright.
There was a large open space, and we headed towards one of the corners where the walls had wallpaper scenic views that if you didn’t know it was a photograph, it could almost be mistaken for a view overlooking the Thames.
It made that corner space more liveable.
There were two desks, more computers, and another girl who appeared like she had been waiting for us.
“I was told you wanted to view CCTV for the day of the recent street bombing.”
If the girl knew what I was looking for, then Monica would already have seen it and most likely had it analyzed by a team of experts. If it wasn’t for the fact I wanted to see it myself, I might have just gone to her for the official report.
“Yes.”
I sat down beside her, and Joanne remained standing, behind us.
“OK. There are seven cameras in that location, five of which were working at the time. There is one across the road from the café, and it provided a good view of the actual explosion.”
She brought it up on the screen and ran it from shortly before O’Connell passed the front. Then he came into view, walking as though he was purposefully going from one place to the next, almost stopping to look sideways into the café. A prolonged moment looking through the window told me he had seen the reporter.
We could not see the reporter from our viewpoint.
But it was clear that O’Connell had seen something else because his pace quickened.
Then the explosion happened, and he was caught up in the aftermath, as was I as I had just entered the frame, following diligently. My effort to look nonchalant, and not following O’Connell was not very good. If this was a training tape on what not to do, that was me.
Watching it was horrifying, watching myself being blown a short distance across the pavement, followed by rubble. Watching a dozen other people suffering far worse injuries were far worse.
I saw myself getting gingerly up off the ground, then seeing two men running past in the opposite direction, one of whom was McConnell. I hadn’t realized at the time it was him. Then we disappeared out of frame.
“Is there a camera farther along?”
She checked the list, picked a site, and brought up the feed for that timeframe, and just in from on the left-hand side was me, pinned to the ground by two men, and a street policeman, covered in dust walking up to us.
A discussion ensued, then the two men got in the car and drove off.
McConnell then suddenly reappeared from the right-hand side of the frame, walking past me and the policeman now on the ground.
Where had he come from? How did he manage to get back to the bomb site, if that was where he had gone?
“Can we go back to the bomb site from where we left off before?”
A few seconds before the footage recommenced.
A minute, perhaps a little longer passed as those who had survived were trying to get up, McConnell reappeared from an alley two shops along from café, almost untouched by the blast, and crossed the road.
A few seconds later another person came out of the alley and followed him.
“Can you focus on that person who came out of the alley?”
She stopped the feed, zoomed in, and then cleaned up the blurry image until it showed a woman’s face.
“Who is she?”
She brought up the comments that went with the footage. It had been already reviewed previously, as part of the investigation into the bombing.
“They couldn’t formally identify her.”
“Anyone hazard a guess?”
“No. She’s still a person of interest though.”
I gave the girl a piece of paper with a list of seven of the scientists from the laboratory. “See if you can find wives of the male scientists.”
Joanne had been intrigued the whole time we had watched the event unfolding.
“That was you caught up in the explosion, wasn’t it?”
The pictures had been grainy and indistinct, so all I looked like was an anonymous blob. Monica had obviously not told her of my involvement.
“Yes. And McConnell. I suspect McConnell did get the hand-off, but not from the journalist. The journalist was in the café with the wife of the scientist who stole the information, though it would only be speculation to assume they were together, or whether she was there to sell the information, and give it to McConnell.”
“Anna Jacovich, wife of Erich Jacovich. Microbiologist,” the girl said.
That notion of being down the beach, or wading out just a little further to dive into the incoming waves, on a very hot day, seems quite inviting.
It is here, on the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia, otherwise known as Surfer’s Paradise.
But we know there’s more going on under the surface…
For instance:
My first thought is, what if there is a shark lurking just beyond the surf line – not unimaginable even now where we seem to be having more shark attacks than ever.
Then there’s the scenario where we are stuck on a desert island, and I’m guessing there have to be a few left somewhere out there when someone could get washed ashore after their boat gets smashed by a huge storm.
Or, more than one if it’s a large boat, and the people aboard don’t have to get along, with unfinished business, or the uncovering of funny business.
Or it could be a beside-the-sea setting of a romance that is about to blossom or bomb. It could be make or break time for a marriage when along comes a beach body that is more than a distraction, and more than makes up for the shortcomings of the partner.
Another and one I might yet explore: Invasion
A resource rick island nation with a fledgling army gets invaded by a larger country. What happens next could be the start of the third, and most likely last, world war.
In another variation, does this sound like a familiar scenario?
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.
I guess there was more to be worried about than a few scorch marks on the side of a ship.
It did beg the question, in those milliseconds I had to pull myself together, that the agreement everyone was a party to on Earth was that we were not going to have ships with weapons, and the ability to attack one another in space, was just that, between nations on Earth.
What if there was life other than on Earth?
The person I was looking at didn’t look like an alien, or at least not one of our endless stereotypes, but what if there was life other than us, and this was a representation of it?
I guess it was time to take the first step.
“I’m assuming this is some sort of dispute over cargo, or perhaps interstellar freight lines, and if it is, there are proper channels to resolve your issues, not at the end of a laser.” I looked at the weapon in the person’s hand and it looked nothing like anything I’d seen before.
Well, not outside our weapons lab, our there on the edge of space where the occupants were not likely to get snooping visitors.
The helmet with the reflective glass panel gave no indication who was behind it.
“It is not an issue over freight.”
OK. A humanised voice, spoke slowly as if by one feeling their way around the language. Yes, English, but why didn’t they pick French or Spanish, or even Japanese? English was not exactly universal, and the translators in our ears reduced everything to our native tongue. Myrtle’s language was Italian, so she would not be hearing this in English.
“Space lane violation?”
Yes, there were lanes in space so ships didn’t crash into each other. There was some degree of civilization out her in no man’s land.
Time for a different tack.
“Just exactly where are you from?”
In that same moment I heard the Captain’s voice coming over my private communicator, in a very uncaptain like manner. “What in God’s name is that?”
There’s more than one way … er, perhaps it’s better to say, there are many ways to use the word bar, which is not bad for a three letter word.
Bar, the one you associate with drinks, in hotels, restaurants and we’ll, just bars.
Probably the best type of bar you might find me in is a Sports Bar, where you can snack on buffalo wings a tall glass of beer and watch with ice hockey in winter or baseball in summer.
It’s one I use from time to time when asked, what will we do, and the reply is often let’s go to a bar. The best bars are underground, dark and dingy, full of eclectic people, with a band playing almost passable music or better still jazz
Bar, as in the legal variety
There are so many legal references to using bar, that the one that I am most familiar with is being admitted to the bar which means that you can now practice law.
Raising the bar, if that’s possible, where the bar is that imaginary level which offers sinks very low. When someone says they’re going to try and raise the bar, you may be assured there will be a long battle ahead, simply because people generally find it hard to change.
Bar, as in we are not going to let you in here. Yes, this is the irksome one where you find yourself, often for reasons unknown, barred from somewhere or something. This may also be referred to by saying everyone may enter bar you.
Bar, as in an iron bar, the sort that is sometimes used as a blunt force object by villains to remind the victim they owe any one of a loan shark, bookie or the mafia. God help you if it is all three.
There are also iron bars of a different sort, those that are set in concrete outside a window most likely in a prison where the objective is to prevent escape.
It gives rise to an old expression, that person should be behind bars.
Then there is just a bar, such as a bar of gold, which I’m sure we’d all like to have stashed away, but not necessarily in the mattress, or the more common variety, a chocolate bar, which I have one now. What’s your favorite?
And just to add to the list of meanings you can always refer to sashes or stripes as bars.
Confused? Well, there’s still music, and the bane of yachtsmen, sand bars but I think we’ll leave it there.
At the end of this leave, Henry has to go home. He promised his sister. They have lunch before going there, and she questions whether he has a girlfriend and a reminder of Jane.
After enduring his sister’s driving, he’s back home.
First, his mother, second his brother, Harry, who’s changed, third, his father, who seems to accept they agree to disagree. Lastly, he meets Amanda, Harry’s long-suffering girlfriend, and she tells him Harry has changed.
It’s too good to be true, but he stays.
Everyone is walking on eggshells.
Here’s the thing. Henry has always used his family as an excuse to leave, rather than have to face their constant nagging, that he give up the sea, that he get over Jane, that he get a proper job and stop wasting his life.
It seems like forever that he had to endure his father’s disappointment. Harry had once shouldered that responsibility until he went to war and came back broken. It was just another excuse for Henry to leave because Harry had made life hell for him, simply because Henry was wasting opportunities he could now not have.
Until he realised that wasn’t the case, but he had to emerge from the sea of self-pity first.
Now Henry resents him because he has. It’s an odd situation.
“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.
When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.
From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.
There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.
Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.
Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?
Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?
Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?
Nothing I write makes any sense, it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t progress the story, they are just words on a piece of paper. Perhaps it’s those moments of despair that are holding me back, those thoughts that begin to swirl in your head when the dream you had in your head becomes very different from what happens in reality.
And this is the problem, there are so many people out there that say, ‘dare to dream’, or ‘today its a dream tomorrow it is reality’.
Is it?
For some, those with the state of mind, the drive, and the confidence to pull it off, it might be, but for the rest of us, and that’s a lot of people trying to head down that same path f success, it’s a lot harder.
And you can bet those seminar or conference speakers have pocked the thousands of dollars they got for the gig, and have moved on to the next group of … well, let’s not give them a name.
I wish I could stand up in front of 200 budding authors and tell them, in the same bright breezy manner that they are on the way to success, just follow the ten proven steps, but I can’t. I know how hard that road is.
Like starting a farm, you don’t just walk onto the land, say you’re going to be a farmer, and magically everything happens. It doesn’t. It’s bloody hard work, and a lot of it, with heartbreak, and setbacks, and sometimes even a disaster.
It’s the same with writing.
You don’t sit at the typewriter, in front of a notebook, or computer screen, and it all just comes together. It doesn’t.
For some, it might, but for the rest of us, it’s a long hard road, just to get some form of recognition. And even then, like in the movies, fame can be fleeting, gone in the blink of an eye.
You have to produce, trying to produce creates pressure, pressure creates depression, and well. you get the picture, it’s a bit like the cycle of life.
Michelle is dreaming about the many ways she can dispose of her boss, Emile, and equally ticking them off the list when reality sets in.
It’s another long night, and a customer, one with a difference, and he has this strange request, that she try a concoction he’s invented to embarrass the boy who stole his girlfriend.
It’s an opportunity and another brink in the wall.
Despaired that Henry hasn’t discovered her hidden missive, she starts staking out the Henshaw house to see when he returns, and he does not turn up. She cannot keep going there lest Felix gets suspicious. She calls on the phone but gets no answers.
Next time she arrives at his house Harry is there waiting and they talk.
It’s not the conversation she wants to have, or hear, and realises that it’s going to be a lot more difficult to get Henry back.
A talk with Emile, she tries to set his mind at rest that she wants to escape again, and he leaves unsatisfied.
She realises that she has to deal with Felix first. But, on the other hand, she would be testing the drops given to her by a client, and if it works, another part of the plan might come to fruition.
She also knows she needs another way to communicate with Henry.
For the last week before retirement, it was almost unmemorable.
I think I preferred it that way because the company was nothing like when I started, forty-five years ago. People said I should have been General Manager by now, but the truth was, I liked my ‘behind the scenes’ role better than taking on the responsibility of management.
Now, my role was obsolete. We no longer ran our own packing, dispatch and delivery service, each component of the department was slowly stripped away and outsourced, to the point now where we threw stuff into boxes and a couple of ruffians and a dilapidated truck came at the end of the day to take it all away.
Online. That was the catchword. There was no one over 21 in the company, except for me and the receptionist, who was also slated for retirement a week after me.
She, too, was obsolete. As an online store, there was no need to have a human interface, so I had no idea what she did with her day. I was meaning to ask, and that opportunity might just come sooner than I thought.
She just wandered into the tea room.
When she saw me sitting at the same table I had for the last forty-five years, she smiled. There was a spot for the dispatch teams, a spot for clerical, and once upon a time, the boys and girls had to sit at separate tables. Now, well, times have changed. Once, we all had uniforms, and everyone looked like they belonged. Now, it was difficult to tell the boys from the girls, and dress sense and decorum had long since disappeared. I wore mine, and Elsie wore hers, the last acts of defiance before we moved on.
She made her tea, the same as she had for many years, resisted the temptation of a doughnut, and then wandered over. She nodded to an empty chair opposite me, “May I?”
I nodded. She had more manners than all the others put together.
“Looking forward to retirement,” she asked.
“No. I have a big empty house that I’d rather not live in, and no one to share it with.” Mary, the woman I’d married, a company girl, and I had the privilege of living with had lasted forty-four of those years before succumbing to cancer, a year shy of beginning what we were calling our second life together. We had such plans, but plans were always destined to go awry.
“A shame,” she said. “Harry decided he didn’t want to wait to have a good time. Took off with a younger woman. A week later, he was dead. Bad heart, I’ll let you make of that what you will. Probably dodged a bullet, though.”
Pragmatic? Certainly practical.
“Do you have anything planned?” I asked.
“I’m going around the world in 80 days. Steam trains, steamships, hot air balloons, camels, elephants, and maybe even the proverbial slow boat to China. I saw a TV show, and even though you can probably do it in a day, even two, I like the idea of the longer the better. You?”
“We were going to Paris, Rome, Capri, but I can’t see the point of it now.”
“Well, there’s room for one more on our tour. You should come. It’s going to be wildly unpredictable, and at least there would be one familiar face. Give it some thought.”
I was giving it thought on the way back to my office, so much thought I bumped into Rodney, the boy who was about to take over my space.
I’d been asked to train him, but he told me quite emphatically there was nothing he could learn from an old fossil like me. Quite blunt and quite obnoxious. He was no different from the rest of them. Old people were simply the object of their scorn. It was not only me; Elsie also got her share of derision too. We were the dinosaurs.
I apologised, but that didn’t seem to placate him.
“Thank God you will be gone soon enough.”
“Yes, I will, and I’ll have plenty of time on my hands.”
He looked at me oddly. “You’re barking mad, you old geezer.” He gave me a sneer, then walked off.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said to his retreating back.
Rodney was typical of that younger generation that took everything for granted. His life was wrapped up in his cell phone, like many others, and once when he thought he lost it, he almost went to pieces.
Not that I had anything to do with what happened, but it did give me ideas.
I made it back to the loading dock just in time for the boss’s special delivery, a half dozen paintings worth nearly twenty million dollars, paintings that were going to be hung in his new house if it ever got finished. He had been forced to take delivery of them early and decided to use the walk-in safe the previous owners of the building, a bank, had installed.
Not that it had been used in a long time, other than a place where the younger employees went to ‘play’. They thought no one saw them, but it was obvious what they were doing. Not that it was any of my business, it was more or less the same some forty years before, only a little more dignified.
It was a fascinating anachronism from a bygone age, and reputed to never been cracked, although several had tried. Now, though, it would be a doddle for a master safecracker. If they knew what was in there, which no one but the boss, and several staff members, namely me and Rodney, did.
But I did warn the boss that he should have made better arrangements, but he was tight with his money, which seemed at odds with the way his wife spent it. The safe, like me, was also obsolete, and I hoped he understood it was no substitute for having them stored in a proper facility.
About a half hour before I was due to leave, I saw Rodney with two men in the alley behind the loading dock. There was a white anonymous van parked not far from them, and it must be one of the suppliers dropping off a late delivery.
There were several cartons sitting on the edge of the dock.
The two men had baseball caps pulled down to obscure their faces, to avoid being clearly seen by the CCTV camera facing up the alley. Of course, it was only my suspicious mind that thought they were deliberately trying to avoid being identified.
Rodney saw me approaching the end of the dock and finished his business with them and they turned and headed towards their van.
“Late delivery,” I asked, as he came up the steps beside the dock.
“None of your business, Richards. Isn’t it time for you to go home?”
“Another half hour. Paperwork to be done.”
“I can finish up for the day. You can go, I’ll cover for you.”
Very generous, but he’d never done it before, why start now? If there wasn’t twenty million dollars worth of paintings in the safe, I might have taken up the offer. I just muttered a ‘thankyou’; and went back to the office.
A few minutes after that, I called a friend who worked for the police and told him what I’d seen. It might be nothing, it might be something. I just thought someone should know, just in case we were robbed.
At office closing time, I got a phone call from Elsie, a rather strange call, asking me to come to the front reception area. It was no longer used because we never got visitors, and if there were customer issues, they had to complain ‘online’. She was insistent, so I went.
I could see Elsie at her desk, and five others, three girls and two boys, all dressed to leave for the day. Had the time clock failed again?”
When I reached the desk, I saw what the problem was. Three men in balaclavas holding guns pointed at the group. They were understandably frightened.
The nearest gunman looked at me. “You Richards?”
That was Rodney’s surname. My suspicious mind first identified two of the masked men as possibly the two Rodney had been talking to in the alley, and if they were looking for him, was he going to open the safe? Or simply help them?
“He’s out back, quite possibly gone for the day.”
A look passed between two of the men.
“You’ll do then.”
“For what?”
“Move,” he motioned for all of us to go back the way I had just come, towards the rear. “And make it snappy. We haven’t got all day.”
No one moved.
He aimed his gun at the roof and pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun was deafening, and part of the roof fell down.
“I won’t ask again.”
Elsie went first, the five others next, and then me, but not with several prods from one of the gunmen. I was hoping it wasn’t a hair trigger, or I’d get accidentally shot.
When we got to the safe door, he stopped us, put the others to one side with one of the gunmen watching them, and said to me, “I want you to open the safe.”
“It needs a key.”
“It’s in the top drawer over there. Get and it no funny stuff.”
Rodney, or someone, had told them everything they needed to know. It was the only reason he could know about the paintings. Rodney was conspicuous by his absence, though, and has asked me to go early, could not have envisaged I’d still be there to help them.
Had he planned it this way to absolve himself of blame?
“If I refuse.”
“That would be dumb. We’ll start shooting the hostages. Make no mistake, we will kill them if we have to,” he turned the gun on one of them, then just a fraction wider and pulled the trigger. Two girls screamed.
“OK, OK. I get it.” I did as I was told.
The door was very heavy and needed two people to move it. When the lock was open, I turned the wheel to disengage the bolts then stood back so two of the three could pull the door open. From there it took only five minutes to take the paintings.
When the operation was over, the leader motioned towards the inside of the safe. “Everyone inside.”
“Not a good idea,” I said. “Shut the door and lock it, there’s no oxygen. We won’t last longer than two hours.”
“Then pray someone comes to find you. In, or die prematurely out here.”
No one wanted to die so we all went into the safe. As he closed the door, one of his friends yelled out to wait, then a few seconds after that Rodney was pushed in, and the door closed The lock then made that clunking sound when it was engaged and that was it. Six juniors and two seniors in a dark space. The girls were close to hysteria. The boys were not far behind them.
Then a torch light, from one of the cell phones lit up a small space. We were all gathered just inside the door, but there was a lot of room inside, about the size of the kitchen. There were boxes sitting against the wall, too heavy to clear out when I had cleaned and swept the inside in preparation for the paintings.
Janine, one of the girls, said, “Is it true we’re going to run out of air?”
“Eventually. I suggest none of you goes into hysterics, it will use up the air far quicker than if we just sit still and wait.”
Elsie had already found a box to sit on, and I sat next to her. She didn’t have a cell phone, so I gave her mine after I put the torchlight on. She seemed oddly unfazed by the turn of events.
“We could use the phone and call the police, or someone to come and get us out.” James, I think. He was new. He had his cell phone in his hand. “Hell, no. No signal. What the…”
“The walls are two feet thick, with metal padding, and the door is eight inches thick steel, I’m not surprised there’s no signal,” I said.
“You’ve been here forever; you should be able to get us out of here.” Janine was probably the brightest of the six.
“That would be normally the case if we used the safe, but we don’t and haven’t, and this is the first time I’ve seen inside it for a long time. Not unlike some of you.”
They all put on their innocent faces. I didn’t really care.
Rodney had been trying to get a signal on his cell phone, walking around the inside, constantly checking for a signal. He would not get one.
“Did you read the induction manual like I asked you, Rodney,“ I asked him as he sidled past me?
“What induction manual?”
“The one that I said had instructions on how to get out of the safe if you got accidentally locked in. It apparently happened a lot to the previous owners.”
“You didn’t say anything about a safe.”
No, I probably didn’t, but dropping Rodney into the collective dismay would take their minds off their predicament.
“Anyone got a signal,” He yelled out.
No one had.
Half an hour passed, and it was interesting to watch people who had no practical experience in problem-solving. Nor did they understand, as a group, they had a better chance of survival, than individually.
The girls cried for a few minutes, the shock of their situation, and what might happen finally dawning on them. They were certainly critical of the boys who didn’t know what to do, other than twirl the locking wheel one way then the other, a waste of time unless the key had been used. Two and three of them tried to push the door, though I was not sure what they were hoping to achieve.
By the end of that half hour, they were all sitting, conserving oxygen, and silently analysing how they were unlucky enough to get into this mess.
I looked at Elsie. She had the right idea, she was asleep, or pretending to be. It was a good idea if we ran out of air. It wasn’t going to be pretty when it happened. I remembered one of two times we had sneaked in here ourselves, all those years ago.
Then, suddenly Janine asked, “How did the thieves know there were paintings here?”
Time was one of those enemies, you were able to think, over and over, on a single topic.
Rodney said, “Someone told them. It could be any one of us. I doubt the boss would tell anyone.”
I was not so sure. He was having liquidity problems and the insurance on those paintings would solve a lot of those problems.
We went through all the ‘it wasn’t me’s’, until it got to Rodney who was quite emphatic it wasn’t him.”
“So, those men out in the alley before, Rodney, the two who looked exactly like two of the thieves, you didn’t tell them everything they needed to know?”
“I can see what you’re doing. Took the opportunity to top up your retirement plan, and now we’re all going to die because of your greed.”
It sounded plausible, and it got the desired result, the others were not looking at him as the guilty one.
I shrugged. “Well, we’ll soon find out.”
An hour and a half after being locked in, the air was getting depleted, and breathing was getting more difficult.
I was floating on the edge of consciousness, and Elsie had dozed off which would help her rather than hinder her.
The others were in various stages of panic, but to their credit, there were no histrionics.
Other ten minutes, I heard the key in the lock, and the bolt being moved. A minute after that the door opened accompanied by a whistling sound as the air was sucked out, and more breathable air replaced it.
Everyone was too weak to move.
My friend, the policeman, came in and surveyed the bodies, all now in various stages of recovery. Rodney was getting up off the floor when he took him by the arm. “I have a few questions,” he said, then escorted him outside.
Elsie woke and looked at me, then the open door. “What happened?”
“A rescue.”
“Good. Didn’t want to end my days in this room.”
When we exited the safe, the boss was there. He apologised to each of the five, Elsie, them me. He said the thieves had been caught, and identified Rodney as the informant, and they were all under arrest.
The paintings were on their way to a more secure location.
He pulled me aside, and asked, “What made you call the police? No one else noticed anything.”
“It’s an old fossil thing. We notice things because our noses are not buried in technology. We don’t trust everybody, and certainly, anyone new hanging around a fortune in paintings. I guess I’ll never change.”
“Don’t. And thanks. I’ve made arrangements for a supplement to your final payment in appreciation.”
“Thank you, sir”
It turned out to be enough to join Elsie on what I discovered was called the ‘obsolete tour’.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 