Month: June 2023

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.

Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.

It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.

Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.

But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.

His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.

At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.

For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.

Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.

Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.

It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.

It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.

Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.

So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.

There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.

So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.

There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.

She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.

Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.

Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.

Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.

Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.

Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.

© Charles Heath 2019

“Do you believe in g..g..ghosts…?”, a short story

Inside the old building, it was very quiet and almost cold.

Strange, perhaps, because outside the temperature was bordering on the record hottest day ever, nearly 45 degrees centigrade.

The people who’d built this building nearly a hundred years before must have known how to keep that heat at bay, using sandstone.

Back then, the sandstone would have looked very impressive, but now after many years of being closed off and left abandoned, the outside was stained by modern-day pollutants giving it a black streaky look, and inside layers of dust, easily stirred up as we walked slowly into the main foyer.

It was huge, the roof, ornate, with four huge chandelier lights hanging down, and wood panelling, giving way to a long counter with brass serving cages highlighting its former use; a bank.

In its day it would have conveyed power and wealth so that its customers could trust their money to. Of course, that was before the global economy, online banking, and a raft of new and different institutions all vying for that same money.

Then it was a simple choice of a few, now it was a few thousand.

“How many years had this been closed up?” I asked.

“Close to twenty, maybe twenty-five. It was supposed to be pulled down, but someone got it on the heritage list, and that put an end to it. “

Phil was the history nut. He’s spent a month looking into the building, finding construction plans, and correspondence dating back to before and during the construction.

Building methods, he said, that didn’t exist today and were far in advance of anything of its type for the period. It was the reason we were standing in the foyer now.

We were budding civil engineers, and the university had managed to organize a visit, at our own risk. The owner of the building had made sure we’d signed a health and safety waiver before granting access.

And the caretaker only took us as far as the front door. He gave us his cell number to call when we were finished. When we asked him why he didn’t want to come in with us, he didn’t say but it was clear to me he was afraid of something.

But neither of us believed in ghosts.

“You can see aspects of cathedrals in the design,” Phil said. ” You could quite easily turn this space into a church.”

“Or a very large wine cellar.” I brought a thermometer with me, and inside where we were standing it was the ideal temperature to store wine.

Behind the teller cages were four large iron doors to the vaults. They were huge, and once contained a large amount of cash, gold, and whatever else was deemed valuable.

They were all empty now, the shelves and floor had scattered pieces of bank stationery, and in a corner, several cardboard boxes were covered in even more dust.

Behind the vaults were offices, half-height with glass dividers, the desks and chairs still in place, and some with wooden filing cabinets with drawers half-open.

Others had benches, and one, set in the corner, was very large, and looked like the manager’s office. Unlike the other office which had linoleum tiles, this one had carpet. In a corner was a large mirror-backed cabinet, with several half-empty bottles on it.

“Adds a whole new meaning to aged whiskey, don’t you think.” Phil looked at it but didn’t pick it up.

“I wonder why they left it,” I muttered. The place had the feel of having been left in a hurry, not taking everything with them.

I shivered, but it was not from the cold.

We went back to the foyer and the elevator lobby. They were fine examples of the sort of caged elevators that belonged at that time, and there were very few working examples these days.

The elevators would have a driver, who would pull back an inner and outer door when the car arrived on a floor, and close both again when everyone was aboard.

Both cars were on the ground floor, with the shutter doors closed, and when I tried to open one, I found it had been welded shut. The other car was not sitting level with the floor and the reason for that, the cable that raised and lowered it was broken.

Restoring them would be a huge job and would not be in their original condition due to occupational health and safety issues.

The staircase wound around the elevator cage, going up to the mezzanine floor or down to the basement.

“Up or down?” He asked.

“Where do you want to go first?”

“Down. There’s supposed to be a large vault, probably where the safety deposit boxes are.”

And the restrooms I thought. Not that I was thinking of going.

As we descended the stairs it was like going down into a mine shaft, getting darker, and the rising odour of dampness, and mustiness. I suspect it would have been the same back when it was first built being so close to the shoreline of the bay, not more than half a mile away.

The land this building and a number of others in a similar style, was built on was originally a swamp, and it was thought that the seawater still found its way this far inshore. But the foundations were incredibly strong and extensive which was why there’d been no shifting or cracking anywhere in the ten-story structure.

At the bottom, there was a huge arch, with built-in brass caging with two huge gates, both open. It was like the entrance to a mythical Aladdin’s cave.

There was also an indefinable aura coming from the depths of that room. That, and a movement of cold air. Curiously, the air down there was not musty but had a tinge of saltiness to it.

Was there a natural air freshener effect coming from somewhere within that vault?

“Are we going in?”

I checked my torch beam, still very bright. I pointed it into the blackness and after a minute of checking, I said, “We’re here, so why not.”

We had to walk down a dozen steps and then pass under through the open gates into the room. There was a second set of gates, the same as the first, about thirty feet from the first, and, in between, a number of cubicles where customers collected their boxes.

Beyond the second set of gates was a large circular reinforced safe door high enough for us to walk through.

This cavernous space stretched back quite a distance, and along the walls, rows, and rows of safety deposit boxes, some half hanging out of their housing, and a lot more stacked haphazardly on the floor.

I checked a few but they were all empty.

I shivered again. It felt like there was a presence in the room. I turned to ask Phil, but he wasn’t there. I hadn’t heard him walk away, and there were only two sets of footprints on the floor, his and mine, and both ended where I was standing.

It was as if he had disappeared into thin air.

I called out his name, and it echoed off the walls in the confined space. No answer from him.

I went further into the room, thinking he might have ventured towards the end while my back was turned, but he hadn’t. Nor had he left because there were only footprints coming in, not going out.

I turned to retrace my steps and stopped suddenly. An old man, in clothes that didn’t belong to this era, was standing where Phil had last been.

He was looking at me, but not inclined to talk.

“Hello. I didn’t see you come down.”

Seconds later the figure dissolved in front of me and there was no one but me standing in the room.

“Joe.”

Phil, from behind me. I turned and there he was large as life.

“Where were you?”

“I’ve been here all the time. Who were you just talking to?”

“There was an old man, standing just over there,” I said pointing to somewhere between Phil and the entrance.

“I didn’t see anyone. Are you sure you’re not having me on?”

“No. He’s right behind you.” The old man had reappeared.

Phil shook his head, believing I was trying to fool him.

That changed when the man touched his shoulder, and Phil shrieked.

And almost ran out of the room. It took a few minutes for him to catch his breath and steady his palpitating heart.

“Are you real?” I asked, not quite sure what to say.

“To me, I am. To anyone else, let’s just say you are the first not to faint, or run away.”

“Are you a ghost?” Phil wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying.

“Apparently I am and will be until you find out who killed me “

Ok, so what was it called, stuck in the afterlife or limbo until closure?

“When?”

“25 years ago, just before the bank closed. It’s the reason why it’s empty now.”

“And you’re saying we find the killer and you get to leave?”

“Exactly. Now shoo. Go and find him.”

We looked at each other in surprise, or more like shock, then back to the man. Only he was no longer there.

“What the…” Phil sail. “It’s time to go.”

“What about the man and finding his killer?”

“What man? We saw nothing. We’re done here.”

I shrugged. Phil turned to leave, but only managed to take three steps before the gates at the entrance closed with a loud clang.

When he crossed the room to stand in front, he tried pulling them open.

“Locked,” he said. Flat, and without panic, he added, “I guess it looks like we have a murder to solve.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2020

Inspiration comes from the most unlikely sources

And this was one of those times.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a time that is rapidly disappearing in our collective memories, we came down from Brisbane to Melbourne for a wedding, perhaps the last for this family for quite some time, this being my wife’s brother’s last daughter to tie the knot, so to speak.

And like someone said, as with births, weddings and funerals, it turned into a family reunion on my wife’s side of the family.

But there were extra benefits…

We got to meet the extended family of the groom.

And, we got an insight into their friends, the thirty-something, footloose and fancy-free acquaintances that had been off and on a part of the bride and groom’s life for about 15 or so years, and most of who had been to London, for various stints, and who are now scattered across Australia, and other international destinations.

I have to say that these people were quite interesting.

As an older person, I didn’t have much in common, so I followed one of my father’s old adages, if you’ve got nothing to say, shut up and listen.

And as a writer, I did something else, observe.

It was an eye-opening experience if nothing else, and a rather interesting look into what it might be like as an unmarried reasonably well-off thirty-something. For starters, you didn’t have to worry about the price of drinks, or how much you drank. You can just up and go anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat. For a few minutes there I was starting to feel envious.

It was sometimes overindulgence, but I noticed it was never to the point of becoming what some refer to as legless. Noisy perhaps, crude at times, yes, but in reminiscing, it was a curious phenomenon that they had all “hooked up” at some time or other.

Aside from learning what appeared to be a new “language”, there was also a running theme that at one time or another nearly all of them had lived with the groom in London for a period.

It got me thinking.

It would make a good story.

It was just trying to find a context, other than a wedding, that would bring them together, one where a series of vignettes that involved each of them, in turn, could bring the story of that person to life.

In this case, but not so much the reminiscing, it was the wedding.

What if it was an untimely funeral?

Trying to find joy in the midst of a very sad occasion.

I’m sure this has been done to death many times, but after hearing a lot of happy memories, it seems to me that in this case, it could be uplifting.

Yes, the ideas need a little work, but it’s firmly there in my mind.

Perhaps when I get back home, I might just start writing.

The cinema of my dreams – It all started in Venice – Episode 2

An old acquaintance

…

I had three questions that needed answers.

First, how did Larry find out I was the one behind his brother’s death?

It begged the question of whether there was a leak in Rodby’s organization because he was the only one other than the logistics team that knew anything about that mission.

It could be that he assumed that being part of the team sent to neutralize a problem, that I was the perpetrator or I knew who was.  Either way, I didn’t like my chances of surviving an interrogation.

Or someone had been taking photos of the crime scene, even though I’d taken precautions not to be recognized, slipped up, but that would assume he had photos of everyone on the team.  I made a note to ask about the health of the other team members.

I would have to compile a list of questions to ask Larry when we finally met, what one might call a fly on the wall moment.

The second, how did Larry know of my association with Juliet.  She was a respected doctor in a respectable hospital when I last saw her.

To be known to Larry, she had to have fallen from that pedestal.  Given what the Waterville organization was known for, all of the branches of crime seemed far removed from who and what she was.

Some investigation was needed, and I sent a message to Alfie on the burner phone he left me.  It had a few other tricks up its sleeve like recording conversations and taking photos that were automatically sent back to base, and an app that detected recording equipment like those used by the security services.

If Juliet was wired, I’d know.

And speaking of Juliet, the third question was how she going to orchestrate a casual meeting between us, and could I muster the necessary surprise when we finally crossed paths.

When a message arrived later in the day in response to my query, it had a current photo and an abbreviated resume of her life since the last time I saw her.

The first sentence that caught my eye was that she was no longer a doctor.  Well, not a practicing doctor.  It seemed the stress of working endless hours in the hospital led to an accident when she had been overtired, which led to an addiction to painkillers when led to self-medicating to making a mistake.

That led to seeking other means of fulfilling the addiction, and that was a slippery slope.  Without reading the fine print, it was a simple connection from ex-doctor to addict to a soul depended on a person the likes of Larry.  To him, a doctor of her caliber would be useful in patching up criminals who couldn’t go to hospitals to be patched up after committing a crime and getting injured if not shot in the process

Now, Larry had another use for her.

The current photo of her showed a woman who had aged more than normal, perhaps as a result of drug abuse, thinner than I remembered her, and with straw blonde hair replacing the rich burgundy she used to have.

Her recent resume was more of a horror story than the life she may once have expected for herself, but desperation often led people down paths the least desired, and saying they had choices was not always true.  It would be interesting to learn if she would be willing to tell me about any of it.

There was also a footnote that told me where and when would be arriving, the airport, the following day, and I decided to go and check her out, to make sure I’d recognize her when the time came.  As she was now, I didn’t think, without the photograph Alfie had sent me, I would have recognized her on the street.

…

© Charles Heath 2022

A score to settle – The Editor’s draft – Day 2

I have the story, the editor is asking for it, and I’m putting the final touches to it

…

The story, in the planning stages, has a secondary theme running, that of the players involved in the events leading up to the assault on our main character, one that his handler was not aware of.

Why was he marked for execution, along with his previous partner?

That’s another story, one that will be teased out in this secondary theme and will run full circle and have some bearing on what happens at the end of the story.

Or not.

I’m not sure I will include any of this, and it might just become part of a novella that will stand on its own. For the most part, a lot of this story is about, and driven by, people he’s never met, but know of him, and his work.

It would be too easy to say he saw something he shouldn’t, because that’s not the case. It has to do with people he has worked with and been responsible for in the past, and whether or not there had been a conversation, without understanding the relevance of what might have been discussed at the time.

That part is nebulous at best, and you can see why it might not make the final cut.

It simply depends on how the main story goes, and the word count at the end. The rough plan calls for about 80 chapters and about 70,000 words, but I’m not one for sticking to plans.

Today’s work centres around the partner his handler has chosen for him, one that he’s not going to like when he finds out, the target he’s been tasked to watch over, and the location of the conference.

Of course, getting back to work after what happened to him is not as easy as saying he’s fine, but getting him to admit it’s anything but fine will be like getting proverbial blood from a stone.

…

Today’s word count: 1,990 words, for a running total of 4,164.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 56

Would a Mexican standoff work?

…

I couldn’t help thinking just how far behind the technological ball we were, and that even if we had to ability to travel far into space, we were always going to find people more advanced than us.

I remembered back to the time, before this mission was to get underway, an almost finished spacecraft waiting for a crew, the round table discussions that were held to talk about what we might expect and how we would react.

I said then that we would not be able to treat them like we would other nationalities on our own planet, which seemed to be the consensus for first contact.

Some thought it unlikely we’d run into anyone else.

And where we were right now was largely uncharted territory.  Of course, there was a whole team aboard whose job was specifically to handle alien encounters, and all of them had been huddled in their meeting room since day one of our first encounter with the Foroi, taking extensive notes, analysing every aspect of each encounter, and contributing information I would find useful in my dealings with them.

It was there I headed now.

I had already been admonished by their leader, Emile Jacques, over my handling of certain situations, particularly when I chose what he called the ‘death or glory’ option.

I told her it was like the nuclear option, where each side held an Armory of weapons at the ready, threatening to use them, but never with intention of doing so.  The old ‘Mexican standoff’.

I told her I based my decision on the fact we were simply dealing with more evolved human beings who’d moved beyond the corporeal life we were still stuck with.  But, for all their advances, the notion of creating a nuclear wasteland still held respect.

I doubted anyone no matter how advanced could get past the finality of a nuclear attack on a home planet.

And if they had been on ours and seen the effect of the one time our leaders had decided on pre-emptive and retaliatory attacks would see the wastelands of what London, New York, and Moscow looked like.

How much we hadn’t learned from our mistakes, beggared belief.

The table was full, a dozen experts with a lot of books, papers, and computers, all talking at once, a half dozen conversations, each trying to be heard above the others.

I came, and the noise subsided.

The leader of the team, Emile Jacques, was down the other end of the table.

I looked at each one of them, experts in fields that related to humans, and not one had any idea what an alien might be like.  They were trying to apply the human factor to the aliens and every decision they made had been based on flawed theory.

The aliens were nothing like us.

We knew nothing about them, but they knew everything about us.

When I looked at Emile, he said, “The consensus is that we should let her people take her back to her homeland.”

“What if she doesn’t want to go?”

“Is it worth possibly sacrificing this ship and crew just to make a stand?  We want to make friends with these people, not enemies.”

“Did you consider the possibility that if we let her people take her, the other group might object?  I get the impression that no matter what we do, it is going to end badly.”

Was that a possibility they hadn’t considered?

“What do you think we should do?”  Alexandra was the crew representative, and not formally a member of the team, but a person who should have a seat at the table when matters were discussed that concerned the crew.

It was a position I had insisted on before we left on this odyssey, with far-reaching authority to make decisions that would resolve crew issues in a fair and balanced manner.  That included discipline and punishment when warranted.  I did not want the crew to think that their fate rested in the hands of the ship’s officers.  I had ultimate authority but rarely intervened in any decision she made.

“She had offered to become a mediator so that we can sit down and discuss their intentions.  She has also requested what back on earth we would call asylum, she wants to not be taken by either group.  Did anyone back on earth before this began ever consider the possibility that we might be asked for asylum?”

“No.”  Jacob was the international law expert, well versed in all matters that related to problems back home, and was sent with the possibility of him learning or creating a set of rules for intergalactic relations.  “My superiors didn’t think we’d meet any alien races, but now we have, all I have as a basis is earth’s international law, and it has provisions for asylum, and as such, we should be able to extend it galactically, I can’t believe I actually said that, but we may have problems in getting these people to agree to anything we propose.”

“But there’s no reason why we can’t grant her asylum if she formally requests it.  Something that might help, these people as I understand it, have spent time on our planet, which means that aliens have been walking among us for a very long time.”

“Did she tell you that?  It might just be a ploy to gain your trust.”

“She’s not the only one.  The captain of the first vessel we encountered said the same.  They know of us, and our ways, and they’ve been watching our evolution over a very long period.”

“Why didn’t they just invade us, then.  We’re obviously technologically inferior.”  The technological expert, the person who was charged with getting his hands on alien technology, if we found any, asked.

“It explains the UFO’s then,” said another.

“You know what we would have done the moment their ships arrived.  Shoot first and ask questions later.  It’s probably what they’re expecting from us now.  We have to be better than that.” To the lawyer, I said, “Start drafting some intergalactic rules for asylum.  Everyone else, start formulating questions to ask the Princess about anything and everything.  I’m going to see the Chief Engineer.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2023

Driving in suburbia

It was one of those beautiful Autumn mornings, blue sky with a smattering of clouds but a sunny day all the same.  It’s Sunday so there is not as much traffic on the road.

Anyone with any sense would be going to their favorite coffee place and settling down to your choice of coffee and perhaps a toaster or muffin to accompany the conversation.

This is what’s happening at the cafe we go for coffee.  9:00 in the morning it is packed.  But great coffee is hard to find, and this is apparently great coffee.

It’s that in-between time before it gets windy, cold and wet, with the sort of chill you can feel in your bones, rather it’s the time when you have a barbeque in the mid-afternoon and get home before the cold sets in, or take the kids to the park for some healthy exercise.

Today I have to take a drive from one side of suburbia to the other, taking a network of main roads with rather anonymous names such as North and South

We travel through the older suburbs, those with a collection of red or white bricks and timber dating back to the fifties and sixties.  They are not, for the most part, in a good state of repair, and rather than looking ramshackle, it’s more like they are slowly decaying.

Fences are rotting or falling over, extensions like they have been glued on rather than added by an architect, and paint either fading or missing.  For the most part, people are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, and too busy to worry about maintenance.

Some have been bulldozed and replaced, blocks are cleared awaiting new development, others are being renovated.  Any way you look at them they are still worth a great deal of money being relatively close to the city.  Nut it’s a double-edged sword, worth a lot, but costing more to keep.

It’s a location we could never afford.  Because we were not affluent we were pushed out to the less expensive outer suburbs.  This was of course 50 years ago, and now those outer suburbs are now the new inner suburbs and people are buying up to 50 km further out in the new estates.  When I was young these suburbs were farms and open land.

It also surprises me that people would want to live on the main road because with traffic as it is heading into the city, it would be difficult to leave or return by car.  At least for these people, public transport is better than in the outer suburbs.

Because it’s Sunday my trip takes a lot less time, except for those unpredictable traffic lights, some of which I missed and took a while to cycle through the other traffic before it was our time to move.  It’s the only disappointment of the modern era, the fact roads were never made to handle the traffic, and the fact they now have to bulldoze homes to make way for roads.

Pity they didn’t lay down the foundations of a proper transport system, much like they have in major European cities.

The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 3

Dreaming I was in the desert…

But it was just another episode of the helicopter story, we’re back on the ground after that fateful jump, things are not going quite as planned.

Do they ever in life or death situations?

…
Yards were like miles, and I didn’t have the time to reach the weapon.  I could see the pickup going around the burning wreck as he of the helicopter and approach me.

But, being the optimist I was I had to try.

And fail.

The pickup was on me before I’d made it halfway, stopping about a foot from me.  Any further and it would have run me over.

I got to my knees and put my hands on my head not giving them any immediate reason to kill me.  The man who had fired the rocket got out of the vehicle moments after it stopped.

A man in military garb, not very old.  And not a foreigner.  I was expecting South American, but not ostensibly one of us.  A glance inside the vehicle showed the driver was a woman, in civilian clothes.

A surprise, yes.

“Mr. James I presume.”  English, well spoken.

Another surprise or more than one, that he spoke English and knew who I was.

“We were expecting you but not be quite so dramatic entrance.  Please stand.”

Kneeling had been difficult; I was not quite sure how standing was going to work.  I was still recovered from the impromptu exit from the helicopter.

I tried and fell back on the ground.  I looked up at him.  “Sorry, the legs are still a little rubbery.”

He simply shook his head, leaned over and dragged me to my feet, then slung me over his shoulder, carried me to the rear of the pickup and tossed me in.  I just managed to avoid hitting my head on the floor.

The man climbed in the back and then slapped the back of the cab.

Crunching gears, an over-revving engine, then a jerky start.  It was not going to be a comfortable journey.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2022

An excerpt from “The Devil You Don’t”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

By the time I returned to the Savoie, the rain had finally stopped, and there was a streak of blue sky to offer some hope the day would improve.

The ship was not crowded, the possibility of bad weather perhaps holding back potential passengers.  Of those I saw, a number of them would be aboard for the lunch by Phillippe Chevrier.  I thought about it, but the Concierge had told me about several restaurants in Yvoire and had given me a hand-drawn map of the village.  I think he came from the area because he spoke with the pride and knowledge of a resident.

I was looking down from the upper deck observing the last of the boarding passengers when I saw a woman, notable for her red coat and matching shoes, making a last-minute dash to get on board just before the gangway was removed.  In fact, her ungainly manner of boarding had also captured a few of the other passenger’s attention.  Now they would have something else to talk about, other than the possibility of further rain.

I saw her smile at the deckhand, but he did not smile back.  He was not impressed with her bravado, perhaps because of possible injury.  He looked at her ticket then nodded dismissively, and went back to his duties in getting the ship underway.  I was going to check the departure time, but I, like the other passengers, had my attention diverted to the woman in red.

From what I could see there was something about her.  It struck me when the light caught her as she turned to look down the deck, giving me a perfect profile.  I was going to say she looked foreign, but here, as in almost anywhere in Europe, that described just about everyone.  Perhaps I was just comparing her to Phillipa, so definitively British, whereas this woman was very definitely not.

She was perhaps in her 30’s, slim or perhaps the word I’d use was lissom, and had the look and manner of a model.  I say that because Phillipa had dragged me to most of the showings, whether in Milan, Rome, New York, London, or Paris.  The clothes were familiar, and in the back of my mind, I had a feeling I’d seen her before.

Or perhaps, to me, all models looked the same.

She looked up in my direction, and before I could divert my eyes, she locked on.  I could feel her gaze boring into me, and then it was gone as if she had been looking straight through me.  I remained out on deck as the ship got underway, watching her disappear inside the cabin.  My curiosity was piqued, so I decided to keep an eye out for her.

I could feel the coolness of the air as the ship picked up speed, not that it was going to be very fast.  With stops, the trip would take nearly two hours to get to my destination.  It would turn back almost immediately, but I was going to stay until the evening when it returned at about half eight.  It would give me enough time to sample the local fare, and take a tour of the medieval village.

Few other passengers ventured out on the deck, most staying inside or going to lunch.  After a short time, I came back down to the main deck and headed forward.  I wanted to clear my head by concentrating on the movement of the vessel through the water, breathing in the crisp, clean air, and let the peacefulness of the surroundings envelope me.

It didn’t work.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before I started thinking about why things hadn’t worked, and what part I played in it.  And the usual question that came to mind when something didn’t work out.  What was wrong with me?

I usually blamed it on my upbringing.

I had one of those so-called privileged lives, a nanny till I was old enough to go to boarding school, then sent to the best schools in the land.  There I learned everything I needed to be the son of a Duke, or, as my father called it in one of his lighter moments, nobility in waiting.

Had this been five or six hundred years ago, I would need to have sword and jousting skills, or if it had been a few hundred years later a keen military mind.  If nothing else I could ride a horse, and go on hunts, or did until they became not the thing to do.

I learned six languages, and everything I needed to become a diplomat in the far-flung British Empire, except the Empire had become the Commonwealth, and then, when no-one was looking, Britain’s influence in the world finally disappeared.  I was a man without a cause, without a vocation, and no place to go.

Computers were the new vogue and I had an aptitude for programming.  I guess that went hand in hand with mathematics, which although I hated the subject, I excelled in.  Both I and another noble outcast used to toss ideas around in school, but when it came to the end of our education, he chose to enter the public service, and I took a few of those ideas we had mulled over and turned them into a company.

About a year ago, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse.  There were so many zeroes on the end of it I just said yes, put the money into a very grateful bank, and was still trying to come to terms with it.

Sadly, I still had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  My parents had asked me to come back home and help manage the estate, and I did for a few weeks.  It was as long as it took for my parents to drive me insane.

Back in the city, I spent a few months looking for a mundane job, but there were very few that suited the qualifications I had, and the rest, I think I intimidated the interviewer simply because of who I was.  In that time I’d also featured on the cover of the Economist, and through my well-meaning accountant, started involving myself with various charities, earning the title ‘philanthropist’.

And despite all of this exposure, even making one of those ubiquitous ‘eligible bachelor’ lists, I still could not find ‘the one’, the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  Phillipa seemed to fit the bill, but in time she proved to be a troubled soul with ‘Daddy’ issues.  I knew that in building a relationship compromise was necessary, but with her, in the end, everything was a compromise and what had happened was always going to be the end result.

It was perhaps a by-product of the whole nobility thing.  There was a certain expectation I had to fulfill, to my peers, contemporaries, parents and family, and those who either liked or hated what it represented.  The problem was, I didn’t feel like I belonged.  Not like my friend from schooldays, and now obscure acquaintance, Sebastian.  He had been elevated to his Dukedom early when his father died when he was in his twenties.  He had managed to fade from the limelight and was rarely mentioned either in the papers or the gossip columns.  He was one of the lucky ones.

I had managed to keep a similarly low profile until I met Phillipa.  From that moment, my obscurity disappeared.  It was, I could see now, part of a plan put in place by Phillipa’s father, a man who hogged the limelight with his daughter, to raise the profile of the family name and through it their businesses.  He was nothing if not the consummate self-advertisement.

Perhaps I was supposed to be the last piece of the puzzle, the attachment to the establishment, that link with a class of people he would not normally get in the front door.  There was nothing refined about him or his family, and more than once I’d noticed my contemporaries cringe at the mention of his name, or any reference of my association with him.

Yet could I truthfully say I really wanted to go back to the obscurity I had before Phillipa?  For all her faults, there were times when she had been fun to be with, particularly when I first met her when she had a certain air of unpredictability.  That had slowly disappeared as she became part of her father’s plan for the future.  She just failed to see how much he was using her.

Or perhaps, over time, I had become cynical.

I thought about calling her.  It was one of those moments of weakness when I felt alone, more alone than usual.

I diverted my attention back to my surroundings and the shoreline.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman in the red coat, making a move.  The red coat was like a beacon, a sort of fire engine red.  It was not the sort of coat most of the women I knew would wear, but on her, it looked terrific.  In fact, her sublime beauty was the one other attribute that was distinctly noticeable, along with the fact her hair was short, rather than long, and jet black.

I had to wrench my attention away from her.

A few minutes later several other passengers came out of the cabin for a walk around the deck, perhaps to get some exercise, perhaps checking up on me, or perhaps I was being paranoid.  I waited till they passed on their way forward, and I turned and headed aft.

I watched the wake sluicing out from under the stern for a few minutes, before retracing my steps to the front of the ship and there I stood against the railing, watching the bow carve its way through the water.  It was almost mesmerizing.  There, I emptied my mind of thoughts about Phillipa, and thoughts about the woman in the red coat.

Until a female voice behind me said, “Having a bad day?”

I started, caught by surprise, and slowly turned.  The woman in the red coat had somehow got very close me without my realizing it.  How did she do that?  I was so surprised I couldn’t answer immediately.

“I do hope you are not contemplating jumping.  I hear the water is very cold.”

Closer up, I could see what I’d missed when I saw her on the main deck.  There was a slight hint of Chinese, or Oriental, in her particularly around the eyes, and of her hair which was jet black.  An ancestor twice or more removed had left their mark, not in a dominant way, but more subtle, and easily missed except from a very short distance away, like now.

Other than that, she was quite possibly Eastern European, perhaps Russian, though that covered a lot of territory.  The incongruity of it was that she spoke with an American accent, and fluent enough for me to believe English was her first language.

Usually, I could ‘read’ people, but she was a clean slate.  Her expression was one of amusement, but with cold eyes.  My first thought, then, was to be careful.

“No.  Not yet.”  I coughed to clear my throat because I could hardly speak.  And blushed, because that was what I did when confronted by a woman, beautiful or otherwise.

The amusement gave way to a hint of a smile that brightened her demeanor as a little warmth reached her eyes.  “So that’s a maybe.  Should I change into my lifesaving gear, just in case?”

It conjured up a rather interesting image in my mind until I reluctantly dismissed it.

“Perhaps I should move away from the edge,” I said, moving sideways until I was back on the main deck, a few feet further away.  Her eyes had followed me, and when I stopped she turned to face me again.  She did not move closer.

I realized then she had removed her beret and it was in her left side coat pocket.  “Thanks for your concern …?”

“Zoe.”

“Thanks for your concern, Zoe.  By the way, my name is John.”

She smiled again, perhaps in an attempt to put me at ease.  “I saw you earlier, you looked so sad, I thought …”

“I might throw myself overboard?”

“An idiotic notion I admit, but it is better to be safe than sorry.”

Then she tilted her head to one side then the other, looking intently at me.  “You seem to be familiar.  Do I know you?”

I tried to think of where I may have seen her before, but all I could remember was what I’d thought earlier when I first saw her; she was a model and had been at one of the showings.  If she was, it would be more likely she would remember Phillipa, not me.  Phillipa always had to sit in the front row.

“Probably not.”  I also didn’t mention the fact she may have seen my picture in the society pages of several tabloid newspapers because she didn’t look the sort of woman who needed a daily dose of the comings and goings, and, more often than not, scandal associated with so-called celebrities.

She gave me a look, one that told me she had just realized who I was.  “Yes, I remember now.  You made the front cover of the Economist.  You sold your company for a small fortune.”

Of course.  She was not the first who had recognized me from that cover.  It had raised my profile considerably, but not the Sternhaven’s.  That article had not mentioned Phillipa or her family.  I suspect Grandmother had something to do with that, and it was, now I thought about it, another nail in the coffin that was my relationship with Phillipa.

“I wouldn’t say it was a fortune, small or otherwise, just fortunate.”  Each time, I found myself playing down the wealth aspect of the business deal.

“Perhaps then, as the journalist wrote, you were lucky.  It is not, I think, a good time for internet-based companies.”

The latter statement was an interesting fact, one she read in the Financial Times which had made that exact comment recently.

“But I am boring you.”  She smiled again.  “I should be minding my own business and leaving you to your thoughts.  I am sorry.”

She turned to leave and took a few steps towards the main cabin.

“You’re not boring me,” I said, thinking I was letting my paranoia get the better of me.  It had been Sebastian on learning of my good fortune, who had warned me against ‘a certain element here and abroad’ whose sole aim would be to separate me from my money.  He was not very subtle when he described their methods.

But I knew he was right.  I should have let her walk away.

She stopped and turned around.  “You seem nothing like the man I read about in the Economist.”

A sudden and awful thought popped into my head.  Those words were part of a very familiar opening gambit.  “Are you a reporter?”

I was not sure if she looked surprised, or amused.  “Do I look like one?”

I silently cursed myself for speaking before thinking, and then immediately ignored my own admonishment.  “People rarely look like what they are.”

I saw the subtle shake of the head and expected her to take her leave.  Instead she astonished me.

“I fear we have got off on the wrong foot.  To be honest, I’m not usually this forward, but you seemed like you needed cheering up when probably the opposite is true.  Aside from the fact this excursion was probably a bad idea.  And,” she added with a little shrug, “perhaps I talk too much.”

I was not sure what I thought of her after that extraordinary admission. It was not something I would do, but it was an interesting way to approach someone and have them ignoring their natural instinct.  I would let Sebastian whisper in my ear for a little longer and see where this was going.

“Oddly enough, I was thinking the same thing.  I was supposed to be traveling with my prospective bride.  I think you can imagine how that turned out.”

“She’s not here?”

“No.”

“She’s in the cabin?”  Her eyes strayed in that direction for a moment then came back to me.  She seemed surprised I might be traveling with someone.

“No.  She is back in England, and the wedding is off.  So is the relationship.  She dumped me by text.”

OK, why was I sharing this humiliating piece of information with her?  I still couldn’t be sure she was not a reporter.

She motioned to an empty seat, back from the edge.  No walking the plank today.  She moved towards it and sat down.  She showed no signs of being cold, nor interested in the breeze upsetting her hair.  Phillipa would be having a tantrum about now, being kept outside, and freaking out over what the breeze might be doing to her appearance.

I wondered, if only for a few seconds if she used this approach with anyone else.  I guess I was a little different, a seemingly rich businessman alone on a ferry on Lake Geneva, contemplating the way his life had gone so completely off track.

She watched as I sat at the other end of the bench, leaving about a yard between us.  After I leaned back and made myself as comfortable as I could, she said, “I have also experienced something similar, though not by text message.  It is difficult, the first few days.”

“I saw it coming.”

“I did not.”  She frowned, a sort of lifeless expression taking over, perhaps brought on by the memory of what had happened to her.  “But it is done, and I moved on.  Was she the love of your life?”

OK, that was unexpected.

When I didn’t answer, she said, “I am sorry.  Sometimes I ask personal questions without realizing what I’m doing.  It is none of my business.”  She shivered.  “Perhaps we should go back inside.”

She stood, and held out her hand.  Should I take it and be drawn into her web?  I thought of Sebastian.  What would he do in this situation?

I took her hand in mine and let her pull me gently to my feet.  “Wise choice,” she said, looking up at the sky.

It just started to rain.

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2023

newdevilcvr6

Searching for locations: The Bund, Shanghai, China

The Bund

The architecture along the Bund or Waitan is a living museum of the colonial history of the 1800s.  The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road within the former Shanghai International Settlement.

The word bund means an embankment or an embanked quay.   It was initially a British settlement; later the British and American settlements were combined in the International Settlement.

The Bund is a mile-long stretch of waterfront promenade along the Huangpu River. There are 52 buildings of various architectural styles, including Gothic, baroque, and neoclassical styles. The area is often referred to as “the museum of buildings”.

Building styles include Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, Baroque Revival, Neo-Classical or Beaux-Arts, as well as a number in Art Deco style.

Having seen these buildings initially the night before, mostly lit up, our viewing this morning was from the land side, and particularly interesting in that the colonial architecture was really fascinating considering their location, but not surprising given Shanghai’s history.  A lot of these buildings would be more at home in London, that out in the far east.

The Bund waterfront is about two kilometers long and impossible to cover in the time allowed for this part of the tour.

There was just enough time to get photos of the waterfront and the old buildings.

Some of these buildings had odd shapes, like one on the far right that looks like a bottle opener.

And, for some odd reason, a bull.

On the other side of the water, the sights that had been quite colorful the night before, were equally impressive though somewhat diminished by the haze.