This word, where I live, had taken on a new meaning. We have telephone scammers who ask your name when you answer the phone, and when you say yes, they hang up.
It doesn’t take much imagination to consider how they can use that recording.
So, I now answer the phone with ‘maybe’, which confuses the real callers who want to know if it is you.
Of course, ‘maybe’ is one of those words that can have so many meaning, but the best one is to use it while you have time to think of a proper answer.
For example, did you get the potatoes? You haven’t been out, it slipped your mind, or you just plain forgot, but run with a ‘maybe’ so you can judge the reaction.
Angry face, you know no matter what, you’re in trouble.
Genial face, you know that it didn’t really matter and all is forgiven.
Then there’s the person who doesn’t know you and comes up to you in a crowded room. Are you [put name here]?
Maybe. We want to know if we’re in trouble, or if it for something good, or that it is the husband or wife of the person you’ve3 just spent the last twenty minutes in animated conversation with.
Using ‘maybe’ in writing probably isn’t the best word to us, but I like defying the experts. You can always find a ‘maybe’ or two in any of my books.
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?
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?”
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.
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.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
…
The afternoon and evening passed quickly, once again I found myself having to sift through a pile of outstanding orders that had finished up in the too hard basket for my morning shift counterpart.
There was no use complaining because it would fall on deaf ears and going over Alex’s head would only bring a pile of unwanted scorn on my head. At least it kept me busy, so the time passed quickly.
And in the midst of rummaging around at the back of the shelving in an older part of the warehouse, I’d unearthed an old laptop computer that was probably running a very old version of Windows, or perhaps not even that. It would keep until my next shift, so I buried it where no one else would accidentally find it, and clocked off.
Once again, I wasn’t going straight home. I rang my mother earlier when I knew she would be home before dinner to tell her I would not be home until late. In the end, I had decided to tell her a version of the truth, that I’d met a girl and was in the throes of trying to get to know her. I gave her the name Bethany, not one she would know, and said as much when she asked if she might know her.
I promised I’d bring her home if I thought things were moving in the right direction. She knew my track record with girls so didn’t proverbially hold her breath.
This time, leaving the warehouse I was on full alert, looking for the check shirt man, though I was not expecting him to be wearing the same clothes. I did assume that he knew I worked for the Benderby’s, and where, so he had that advantage.
So began a game of cat and mouse.
It took about an hour to cover the same distance it usually took fifteen minutes, but when I reached the straight stretch of road into the town from the factory site, he had to show himself, and once he did, it was a simple but lengthy task timewise, to lose him. In fact, my route was so convoluted, I nearly got lost myself.
Nadia was waiting, opening the door to the room that was shrouded in darkness. Both of us were dressed in black, I had changed into dark clothes when I came home at lunchtime. Once inside she only used a small light beside the bed, and we looked rather like shadows casting even more sinister shadows.
“I assume we’re going to the mall for something other than just a guided tour?”
I’d been thinking about it off and on, and I wasn’t really interested in looking at stuff she had found poking around in the wreckage as an alternative to being bored.
“I told you, I reckon there’s a torture chamber down there somewhere. The archaeologist is not the only chap the Benderby’s have shaken down.”
“A Cossatino or two?”
“There is a rumor, but that uncle won’t say for sure, otherwise he might find himself in hot water spilling his guts to the Benderby’s. We know someone did.”
“You do realize that it makes me think there’s a morbid side to you.”
“There’s more than that if you want to find out.”
There was something about her, in those close-fitting black clothes she was wearing, accentuating curves in places where they were normally lost in some mindless creation called Haute couture. I wondered, if only for a minute or so, whether she was deliberately trying to catch my attention.
“Perhaps later. I’m not sure whether getting too close to you might be bad for my health.”
Vince was always uppermost in my mind when I was with her. Even though I was a lot older and not the skinny weakling I had been in school, I didn’t think I could take him in a fight and win. Besides, Vince was the sort who always traveled with friends. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him alone. He, like Alex, was the typical bully.
She took a step closer and I could feel the warmth emanating from her.
“You’re close to me now.”
We were standing eye to eye, and it was hard to divert my eyes.
“You can’t tell me we don’t have a little chemistry going here,” she said, smiling.
A cat who ate the canary sort of smile.
“Don’t forget you’re a Cossatino, and a bad, bad girl. I could never take you home to my mother.”
“It‘s not your mother I would be trying to impress.”
Alright, enough. My heart had skipped a beat just thinking about what I could never have. It was wrong on so many levels.
“Are we going to talk, or are we going to get moving?” A tone that broke the moment. She could also have used the name Smidge to have exactly the same effect.
She sighed.
“Let’s go then before I change my mind.”
Interesting. The room had a back door. I wondered if she knew I was being followed.
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.
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’.
It was in darkness. I was sure I had left several lights on, especially over the door so I could see to unlock it.
I looked up and saw the globe was broken.
Instant alert.
I went to the first hiding spot for the gun, and it wasn’t there. I went to the backup and it wasn’t there either. Someone had found my carefully hidden stash of weapons and removed them.
Who?
There were four hiding spots and all were empty. Someone had removed the weapons. That could only mean one possibility.
I had a visitor, not necessarily here for a social call.
But, of course, being the well-trained agent I’d once been and not one to be caught unawares, I crossed over to my neighbor and relieved him of a weapon that, if found, would require a lot of explaining.
Suitably armed, it was time to return the surprise.
There were three entrances to the villa, the front door, the back door, and a rather strange escape hatch. One of the more interesting attractions of the villa I’d rented was its heritage. It was built in the late 1700s, by a man who was, by all accounts, a thief. It had a hidden underground room which had been in the past a vault but was now a wine cellar, and it had an escape hatch by which the man could come and go undetected, particularly if there was a mob outside the door baying for his blood.
It now gave me the means to enter the villa without my visitors being alerted, unless, of course, they were near the vicinity of the doorway inside the villa, but that possibility was unlikely. It was not where anyone could anticipate or expect a doorway to be.
The secret entrance was at the rear of the villa behind a large copse, two camouflaged wooden doors built into the ground. I move aside some of the branches that covered them and lifted one side. After I’d discovered the doors and rusty hinges, I’d oiled and cleaned them, and cleared the passageway of cobwebs and fallen rocks. It had a mildew smell, but nothing would get rid of that. I’d left torches at either end so I could see.
I closed the door after me, and went quietly down the steps, enveloped in darkness till I switched on the torch. I traversed the short passage which turned ninety degrees about halfway to the door at the other end. I carried the key to this door on the keyring, found it and opened the door. It too had been oiled and swung open soundlessly.
I stepped in the darkness and closed the door.
I was on the lower level under the kitchen, now the wine cellar, the ‘door’ doubling as a set of shelves which had very little on them, less to fall and alert anyone in the villa.
Silence, an eerie silence.
I took the steps up to the kitchen, stopping when my head was level with the floor, checking to see if anyone was waiting. There wasn’t. It seemed to me to be an unlikely spot for an ambush.
I’d already considered the possibility of someone coming after me, especially because it had been Bespalov I’d killed, and I was sure he had friends, all equally as mad as he was. Equally, I’d also considered it nigh on impossible for anyone to find out it was me who killed him because the only people who knew that were Prendergast, Alisha, a few others in the Department, and Susan.
That raised the question of who told them where I was.
If I was the man I used to be, my first suspect would be Susan. The departure this morning, and now this was too coincidental. But I was not that man.
Or was I?
I reached the start of the passageway that led from the kitchen to the front door and peered into the semi-darkness. My eyes had got used to the dark, and it was no longer an inky void. Fragments of light leaked in around the door from outside and through the edge of the window curtains where they didn’t fit properly. A bone of contention upstairs in the morning, when first light shone and invariably woke me up hours before I wanted to.
Still nothing.
I took a moment to consider how I would approach the visitor’s job. I would get a plan of the villa in my head, all entrances, where a target could be led to or attacked where there would be no escape.
Coming in the front door. If I was not expecting anything, I’d just open the door and walk-in. One shot would be all that was required.
Contract complete.
I sidled quietly up the passage staying close to the wall, edging closer to the front door. There was an alcove where the shooter could be waiting. It was an ideal spot to wait.
Crunch.
I stepped on some nutshells.
Not my nutshells.
I felt it before I heard it. The bullet with my name on it.
And how the shooter missed, from point-blank range, and hit me in the arm, I had no idea. I fired off two shots before a second shot from the shooter went wide and hit the door with a loud thwack.
I saw a red dot wavering as it honed in on me and I fell to the floor, stretching out, looking up where the origin of the light was coming and pulled the trigger three times, evenly spaced, and a second later I heard the sound of a body falling down the stairs and stopping at the bottom, not very far from me.
Two assassins.
I’d not expected that.
The assassin by the door was dead, a lucky shot on my part. The second was still breathing.
I checked the body for any weapons and found a second gun and two knives. Armed to the teeth!
I pulled off the balaclava; a man, early thirties, definitely Italian. I was expecting a Russian.
I slapped his face, waking him up. Blood was leaking from several slashes on his face when his head had hit the stairs on the way down. The awkward angle of his arms and legs told me there were broken bones, probably a lot worse internally. He was not long for this earth.
“Who employed you?”
He looked at me with dead eyes, a pursed mouth, perhaps a smile. “Not today my friend. You have made a very bad enemy.” He coughed and blood poured out of his mouth. “There will be more …”
Friends of Bespalov, no doubt.
I would have to leave. Two unexplainable bodies, I’d have a hard time explaining my way out of this mess. I dragged the two bodies into the lounge, clearing the passageway just in case someone had heard anything.
Just in case anyone was outside at the time, I sat in the dark, at the foot of the stairs, and tried to breathe normally. I was trying not to connect dots that led back to Susan, but the coincidence was worrying me.
A half-hour passed and I hadn’t moved. Deep in thought, I’d forgotten about being shot, unaware that blood was running down my arm and dripping onto the floor.
Until I heard a knock on my front door.
Two thoughts, it was either the police, alerted by the neighbors, or it was the second wave, though why would they be knocking on the door?
I stood, and immediately felt a stabbing pain in my arm. I took out a handkerchief and turned it into a makeshift tourniquet, then wrapped a kitchen towel around the wound.
If it was the police, this was going to be a difficult situation. Holding the gun behind my back, I opened the door a fraction and looked out.
No police, just Maria. I hoped she was not part of the next ‘wave’.
“You left your phone behind on the table. I thought you might be looking for it.” She held it out in front of her.
When I didn’t open the door any further, she looked at me quizzically, and then asked, “Is anything wrong?”
I was going to thank her for returning the phone, but I heard her breathe in sharply, and add, breathlessly, “You’re bleeding.”
I looked at my arm and realized it was visible through the door, and not only that, the towel was soaked in blood.
“You need to go away now.”
Should I tell her the truth? It was probably too late, and if she was any sort of law-abiding citizen she would go straight to the police.
She showed no signs of leaving, just an unnerving curiosity. “What happened?”
I ran through several explanations, but none seemed plausible. I went with the truth. “My past caught up with me.”
“You need someone to fix that before you pass out from blood loss. It doesn’t look good.”
“I can fix it. You need to leave. It is not safe to be here with me.”
The pain in my arm was not getting any better, and the blood was starting to run down my arm again as the tourniquet loosened. She was right, I needed it fixed sooner rather than later.
I opened the door and let her in. It was a mistake, a huge mistake, and I would have to deal with the consequences. Once inside, she turned on the light and saw the pool of blood just inside the door and the trail leading to the lounge. She followed the trail and turned into the lounge, turned on the light, and no doubt saw the two dead men.
I expected her to scream. She didn’t.
She gave me a good hard look, perhaps trying to see if I was dangerous. Killing people wasn’t something you looked the other way about. She would have to go to the police.
“What happened here?”
“I came home from the cafe and two men were waiting for me. I used to work for the Government, but no longer. I suspect these men were here to repay a debt. I was lucky.”
“Not so much, looking at your arm.”
She came closer and inspected it.
“Sit down.”
She found another towel and wrapped it around the wound, retightening the tourniquet to stem the bleeding.
“Do you have medical supplies?”
I nodded. “Upstairs.” I had a medical kit, and on the road, I usually made my own running repairs. Another old habit I hadn’t quite shaken off yet.
She went upstairs, rummaged, and then came back. I wondered briefly what she would think of the unmade bed though I was not sure why it might interest her.
She helped me remove my shirt, and then cleaned the wound. Fortunately, she didn’t have to remove a bullet. It was a clean wound but it would require stitches.
When she’d finished she said, “Your friend said one day this might happen.”
No prizes for guessing who that friend was, and it didn’t please me that she had involved Maria.
“Alisha?”
“She didn’t tell me her name, but I think she cares a lot about you. She said trouble has a way of finding you, gave me a phone and said to call her if something like this happened.”
“That was wrong of her to do that.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Will you call her?”
“Yes. I can’t stay here now. You should go now. Hopefully, by the time I leave in the morning, no one will ever know what happened here, especially you.”
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…
I thanked the CCTV operator and left with Joanne to go back to the third floor and Monica’s office. Joanne had called her the moment we made the discovery, and she was there to make sure I made it.
It was a passing thought I leave, but I would not get past the soldier at the front door.
We waited for a few minutes in the outer office where an efficient personal assistant was typing faster than I could think.
A buzzing sound broke the steady keyboard sounds, and she said we could go in.
I could imagine another page and a half being entered in the time it took for us to get from the chairs to the door.
Inside, the office had wooden panelling, shelves lined with books, a minibar, benchtops covered in trinkets picked up in many travels, and strategically placed in a corner, four chairs and a coffee table.
Monica was sitting on one, and she motioned for us to sit in two others.
Was a fourth person expected?
If there was we were not waiting for them. As soon as I was seated, she asked, “What did you find?”
She already knew, via Joanne, but perhaps this was a test.
“There were two people at the café, or perhaps one, the intermediary that O’Connell was looking for inside, and another nearby, like out the back of the café.
“I’d been too wrapped up in surviving the aftermath of the bomb to see O’Connell head for an alley near the café. I thought it might be to check on the intermediary, but apparently, it was to meet someone else who obviously survived.”
“Anna Jacovich.”
Of course, Joanne had briefed her. No secrets among friends.
“What do we know about her?”
Joanne answered that one, “She’s a fugitive, and Interpol is looking for her, as are the local police.”
“And she’s here?”
“If she hasn’t run. A bomb nearby can do that. She has to know people are out there actively trying to kill her like they did her husband.”
“He originally created the USB?”
“It looks like it. And my guess, Dobbin was using O’Connell to act as a journalist and buy the information off her before it went to the highest bidder. If we were to throw hypotheses out there, it’s not a stretch to believe Severin and Maury, as Westcott and Salvin, supposedly ex-department, were charged to get inside the lab and investigate the data breach, found out who it was, followed them here, and then set up an off-book surveillance group to watch the players culminating in the botched operation I was just on. Severin wasn’t working for Dobbin but someone else, which means someone else in this department has an active interest in the breach, and who was running his or her own operation. That wouldn’t be you would it?”
“That would be someone in a corner office. I can barely see daylight here. In other words, not high enough up in the food chain. Like you, I’m staggering around in the dark. Dobbin has a corner office.”
“Who’s in charge of matters concerning biological weapons?”
“The MOD. Not us.”
“But you have experts. You must come across credible threats from time to time, and I doubt you just hand it over.”
“We’re supposed to. There is a chain of command you know. It’s not like the movies.”
The way this operation had been running, that was exactly what I thought.
“That’s what I think I know. Still no indication O’Connell is alive, but I suspect Dobbin does know, and just not telling. Might also know where he is. Perhaps while I’m trying to find him, you go over Dobbin’s head and find out.”
“Easier said than done. You need help?”
“No. Everyone I work with has their own axe to grind, so I’m better off alone.”
“That Jan woman?”
“Especially her.”
“OK. Keep me, via Joanne, informed. If you need anything, tell Joanne.”
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 