With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction. He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.
That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.
He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.
I kept my eyes down. He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup. I stepped to the other side and so did he. It was one of those situations. Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.
Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic. I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone. I shrugged and looked at my watch. It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.
Wait, or walk? I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station. What the hell, I needed the exercise.
At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’. I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light. As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.
A yellow car stopped inches from me.
It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini. I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.
Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car. It was that sort of car. I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on. The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.
My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter. Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.
At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure. I was no longer in a hurry.
At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring. I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road. I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.
At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar. It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.
I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did. There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me. It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.
Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me. As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.
Now my imagination was playing tricks.
It could not be the same man. He was going in a different direction.
In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter. I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.
I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in. I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.
Hohensalzburg Castle sits atop the Festungsberg, accessed by a cable car.
The castle itself dominates the Salzburg skyline.
Below is a view down into Salzburg from the castle walls.
We had lunch at a café, the Salzburg Fortress Café, that overlooked the countryside. This was where we were introduced to Mozart Gold Chocolate Cream added to our coffee.
The square below featured in the Sound of Music.
Among the more interesting objects to be seen, the gun below shows what some of the castle’s armaments might have been. These cannons, in the ‘Firing Gallery’ date back to the thirty years war in the early 1600’s.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And the story:
It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.
The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.
He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.
The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent. We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.
There was nowhere for him to go.
The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on. Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.
Where was he going?
“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter. He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.
“What?”
“I think he’s made us.”
“How?”
“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing. Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain. He’s just sped up.”
“How far away?”
“A half-mile. We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”
It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”
“Step on it. Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”
Easy to say, not so easy to do. The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.
Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.
Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster. We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.
Or so we thought.
Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.
“What the hell…” Aland muttered.
I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility. The car was empty, and no indication where he went.
Certainly not up the road. It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit. Up the mountainside from here, or down.
I looked up. Nothing.
Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”
Then where did he go?
Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.
“Sorry,” he said quite calmly. “Had to go if you know what I mean.”
I’d lost him.
It was as simple as that.
I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.
I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.
It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.
This book has finally reached the Final Editor’s draft, so this month it is going to get the last revision, and a reread for the beta readers.
…
What’s the best way to recover from being shot by the police? Go on an all-expenses paid holiday.
Within reason, of course.
Of course, he was on holiday, not quite all expenses paid, but for the duration of the conference. Getting shot and having a prolonged stay in hospital put paid to that, but there is an upside.
The police, in exchange for silence and an indemnity, are happy to send our intrepid conference goer on a tour of Italy. There are benefits on either side, the police don’t get a lawsuit, and he gets to spend a few days touring.
Of course, Maryanne decided to tag along. She had been filling in for him at the conference, unbeknownst to him, and lined up a couple of free venues. In exchange for favourable reviews.
But what is the real reason Maryanne is along for the ride, or she might put it, ‘carry the bags’?
That saying ‘if it’s too good to be true, it probably is’ sticks in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t discourage her from coming with him.
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.”
The first meaning that comes to mind is a cue is a prompt, often from someone standing behind the camera in a television studio.
That is to say that a cue is some form of signal, a wave, a nod, or verbal.
A cue can also be where a tape or recording is set to a certain place, ready to play. One could assume, if playing tracks off an album of songs, and you wanted to play the fourth track, then you would cue it up, ready to go on, of course, the moment you got a, yes, cue to play it.
Then there is a cue used in a game of pool or snooker, that is a long thin tapered piece of wood with a felt tip.
Not exactly my favourite game, but it’s always the cues fault, not mine.
This is not to be considered with Que which is a shortened form for Quebec, in Canada.
Or que, which for some reason, only in California, is short for barbecue.
Or Queue, as in a long line, or a short one, of people waiting to get on a bus, or waiting to get tickets
In my experience every queue I get in is always a long one, and then suffer the frustration of waiting hours only to be told the tickets have all been sold.
Almost as bad as being stuck in a traffic jam, which is technically a queue of cars, never to get through the first set of lights, and sometimes not the second.
And don’t get me started on phone queues.
Queues are for people who have a lot of time on the hands.
“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.
When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.
From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.
There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.
Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.
Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?
Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?
Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?
The trouble with being told to ‘keep it to yourself’ I’d that quite often, later, and unexpectedly, it comes back to bite you.
I was put in that position, once, by my younger sister Josephine when she started dating this charismatic older boy she met when he came to her college as a substitute teacher.
I met him once and I didn’t like him. He was the sort of person that you just know is bad, if not evil. I told her so, but that didn’t seem to have any effect. Perhaps it was only men who saw it because all her friends agreed with her; he was dreamy.
It was not as if we had any idea she would do anything silly, because at college she was away, and very lax at reporting back that everything was fine, so as far as we knew it was. Our parents had cut her some slack after she complained they were smothering her.
I thought there was a good reason for that, but she persuaded them, like she always did, to loosen the shackles as she called them. It seemed to work, six months passed, and everything was fine.
Until…
I was going home, and I had to pass the college so thought I would surprise her with a visit. I went to the cafeteria where she and her friends spent every waking moment only to find two of the girls she was studying with.
Jo was not there. Two of her friends were Debbie and Anne. I’d met them once before when I’d dropped in. “How is she doing?” I asked, not what I was going to ask, which was, where was she?
“Oh,” Debbie said hesitantly, “I thought you knew. She dropped out and said she was going home. Didn’t she tell you?”
She knew I wasn’t at home and was not as regular at communicating as I should be. It also appeared to me she knew more but was reluctant to say more.
“No. But I’m always the last to know. I’ll call home and talk to her.” I knew Jo’s aversion to cell phones, so I couldn’t call her directly. “But she did say the last time I was here, she was losing interest. Thanks anyway.”
Walking from the cafeteria to the car park, I had a thought and made a slight detour via the main office.
There was no one at the counter, so I pressed the button on the counter and heard a distant buzzing sound. Three or four minutes later an elderly lady shuffled out from behind a half-closed door.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes. I’m looking for my cousin, Albert Dmitri, he’s a teacher here.”
Her facial expression told me that she recognised the name, but her manner suggested that she didn’t like him. She looked me up and down as people do when making an assessment.
“He no longer works here.”
The way she said it told me that there would be no further discussion, and that told me everything I needed to know, and probably not what I wanted to hear. And the look she gave me, that being ‘tarred with the same brush’ made me shiver.
My initial assessment of him was right.
“Thank you for your help, ma’am.”
I don’t think I needed to ask any more questions. I made it to the car and was just about to get in when I heard a voice calling my name.
I looked over the car roof to see Anne walking quickly towards me. I waited until she arrived, slightly out of breath.
She took several deep breaths before saying, “She didn’t go home, not directly. She had told me a week before she left that Albert had invited her to stay for a few days at his chalet in Banff. She didn’t mention it again, just told me she didn’t like school anymore and was going home. Nothing about Albert, which made me think she went. She did say before she left that if anyone asked about Albert and her, I should keep it to myself, that it was nothing but a flirtation.”
‘You think it was more?”
“He was obsessed with her. Certainly, he didn’t respect the boundaries between a student and a responsible adult, and she was not the only one. I personally now think he’s a creepy guy. You say you haven’t heard from her?”
“I haven’t, no, which is not exactly a red flag. I’ll get home and see if she is there. She probably is because our parents haven’t said anything otherwise.”
“I hope so. She hasn’t called or texted or written, which considering our friendship is unusual. Let me know when you find out. I’d hate anything to happen to her. I told her once she was too trusting.”
“I’m sure everything will be alright. And thanks. “
I always felt a sense of well-being the moment I walked in the front door of what I had always called home. It was a house that had been handed down through the generations, and one day, it would be mine.
We had never known any other address, and I had grown up here, went to grade and middle school here, and had all my friends here, and family too.
Josephine and I were the only two who had strayed from town, seeking lives elsewhere as a part of the process of living our lives, but there was never any doubt we would come home. Our brothers had always been content to stay, aspiring only to learn or work on the ranch, marry local girls, and start families. My turn would come, one day.
The outside world, my father said, was just a distraction. Everything we really needed was here. I was inclined to agree with him.
Andy Barnes, one of the farm hands, was outside tending the kitchen garden. Coincidentally, he was Josephine’s first love, and she had promised him that when she returned, they would be married.
He would wait until the end of the world, which was how much he loved her, but with this new fellow she was smitten with, I was not sure where that plan was. I wondered if she had said anything but wasn’t going to bring it up unless he did.
He didn’t, just waving and getting back to work.
I dropped my bag in the front hall and went through to the back of the house where my mother would be, or should I say where she usually was.
On the way, I steeled myself for the expected barrage of questions, mostly centred around why I had not found a nice woman I would want to marry and start a family, and my mother was not the only one to get on that horse.
So much for the surprise, she was not there. But there was bread in the oven, and jam bubbling on the cooktop. She wasn’t very far away.
I went over to the jam pot and had a peek.
“Ah, there you are.” My mother had come inside from the back doorway with a basket of vegetables. “Andy said you had arrived. Did you see Jo on the way?”
I had told her I would drop in. Perhaps I should have kept that to myself and made a mental note for the next time. “I did, and she wasn’t there. I spoke to her friends. Busy, busy, busy.”
“Then you didn’t find out if she was coming home for Christmas.”
“I didn’t see her, remember. Maybe I’ll be luckier when I return. I’ll call her but you know what she’s like.”
She looked me up and down as mothers do, checking to see if I was taller, heavier, lighter, or stressed. Everything was stressful on the roads these days.
“I’ll leave that in your hands. You haven’t changed.” She said the final verdict. “Are you still working at that dreadful place?”
I’d taken on employment in a private detective agency that seemed to only deal with divorces and scandalous affairs. I was getting quite adept at covert surveillance.
“It’s just a job,”
“You should be doing more with your life with those three degrees and such.”
She dropped the vegetable basket on the kitchen bench and stirred the jam, then gave me a welcome hug.
The bread had a short time to go. Fresh bread and jam were looking good.
It seemed that Jo had not told our parents anything, so she could be anywhere, but my best guess was that she had gone with Albert Dmitri. The only lead was Banff. I would stay a day or two, then go find her, before our parents found out what she’d done.
Before I left home, I called my boss at the investigation agency and told him my suspicions, and he agreed to do a search on Dmitri. I had a photograph of him with Jo taken when he didn’t know I had. The first time I tried, he got very defensive, and that was one of the red flags that started to bother me.
He said I could do it when I returned, but I told him I was in the Banff area where Dmitri had a cabin, and if that was the case, I would go there.
He asked if I needed help from one of their enforcers, men who did the hard tasks like bodyguard, or backup in certain investigations when they were dealing with violent targets.
I thought it would be a good idea. I had no idea what to expect. He would meet me in Banff.
I think by the time I left home, sooner than I intended, and no matter how hard I tried to hide it, my mother knew something was wrong and that it involved Jo.
She gave me one of those looks, the one that said I know you’re not telling me something, gave me a hug, and said, call me when you see Jo, and let her know we love her.
“I think she already knows that.”
“Maybe so, but since you’ve both grown up, we don’t say it often enough.”
“Then I will. I’ll get her to call you.”
What I received in my email several hours into the trip to Banff didn’t fill me with confidence.
From the photographs, the investigation of his case uncovered four different names and employment in various provincial universities or tertiary education institutions where there were missing girls.
We might have uncovered a serial killer, or at the very least predator.
The investigation into relatives and property was ongoing, but they needed to find out his real name because all they had so far were aliases.
The Banff police had been notified of the investigation, and I was told to visit an RCMP officer who had been working on the theory that the university disappearances were connected. He was very interested in speaking to me and was laying the necessary groundwork to make Jo an official missing person, though I had to ask him to hold off until we had more on Dmitri because we had the advantage of knowing about him and he not knowing we had that information. Publishing it would spook him, and he would disappear.
There was more available when I arrived at the Banff police station, I had Dmitri’s real name, and the fact his father, now deceased, owned a cabin in Canmore near the Palliser Trail. That was conveyed to me but the company agent that had been sent to help me, and we agreed not to tell the police yet. The agent, Phillip Rogers, was going to conduct discreet surveillance on the cabin and see if he was there or anyone else. At the very least, he was hoping to thoroughly check the cabin itself while I was talking to the Police.
The officer’s name was Hercule Benoit and was a specialist in finding missing persons. He’d been working on what he called the university disappearances for two years and had uncovered 13 cases, some of whom simply left, for various reasons, without telling anyone, and later found alive. Two were dead, not necessarily murdered, but there were six missing possibly dead. For us to eliminate you from our enquiries, we will require you to tell us where you were for five specific periods in the past seven years.
Jo was one he didn’t have on his list, simply because she left after telling those closest to her what seemed to be the truth, and everyone took it for granted. Other cases in his book had done the same, suggesting a pattern.
And yes, each could be assumed to be connected with the departure some weeks later of a teacher, young, and able, though the descriptions were different, the base details were the same, height, weight, and mannerisms. The differencing details were hair colour and length, beard, moustache, eye colour, glasses, dress style, and speech patterns or language.
Dmitri spoke like a refined Russian immigrant. Another had a French accent, and one had none. To my mind, Dmitri had theatrical training and could disguise himself, and I suspect the girls he took with him altered their appearance too. I was expecting Jo to look very different.
The question would be whether she was under his spell or if she was coerced or threatened.
It was Benoit’s plan to visit the cabin where I believed we would find Dmitri. I was not going to tell him and take Rogers with me, but I had second thoughts because it might prejudice any chance of getting the truth, or later justice if we made a mistake.
There was also the possibility that Dmitri would run once alerted we were on to him, and we’d never find him, or Jo, though right now I was more hoping that believing she would be unharmed.
So, the new plan Benoit and I would visit, and Rogers, whom I had not told Benoit about, would maintain surveillance, and if Dmitri tried to run, he would stop him. I didn’t ask him how he would do it. It was best not to know.
Then, suddenly, we had stopped outside the cabin, next to a RAM 2500, which Rogers had texted belonged to the man in the photograph he had sent me, a man who looked like Dmitri but was externally different.
This time, he had very short blonde hair and was wearing thick glasses accentuating blindness and was about 20 to 30 pounds lighter. Out of the business suit and dressed like a lumberjack, unless you could be positive, he was hardly recognisable.
That same man answered the door, taking in the police vehicle, the RMCP officer in uniform, which was quite daunting even for me, and then he looked at me, squinting through those glasses.
Perhaps he hoped that flicker of recognition would be hidden behind the layers of glass, but it was not. I glared at him until she turned back to Benoit.
“Is there a problem, officer?”
“There might not be. Do you mind if we come in, Mr Francois?”
The office had discovered that the photo of Dmitri was that of Antoine Francoise, originally from Montreal and the grandson of Albert Francoise, the heir to a fortune the family had made from the Railways and shipping.
Dmitri or Antoine didn’t need to work, and it appeared kidnapping and murdering college girls was his hobby. Perhaps he had the belief that being rich, the laws didn’t apply to him.
“Not unless you have a warrant or evidence, I’ve done anything wrong.”
And the arrogance to go with it. I saw Benoit’s expression change and not for the better.
“If that’s the way you want this to go, Mr Francois, so be it.” He pulled out his cell phone and started dialling a number.
Perhaps the notion of giving a dozen police crawling all over his property changed his mind. “I’m sorry. I can be a little prickly in the morning. By all means, come in.” He stepped to one side, and we went in.
“Good choice.”
The cabin looked to have a main room with a kitchen, a dinner table, set for one, a fireplace and two chairs, one looking very used, the other less so, and a bedroom, door open, bed unmade, what one might expect of a single man living on his own.
“What’s this about?”
“A man with similar features to you has been identified as a suspect in a kidnapping case, well, more than one. You are one of three men picked out of a set of photographs of male teachers who worked at various colleges and universities where girls have disappeared or been found dead. For us to eliminate you from our enquiries, you will need to tell us where you were for five specific periods over the last seven years.”
I was watching Antoine carefully, and he was good, showing no emotional response to what was tantamount to an outright accusation. Didn’t bat an eyelid, as the saying goes.
“That’s a particularly tall order, as you can imagine. But, I’m sure you are well aware of who I am, and as it turns out, a philanthropist with an office and a gaggle of assistants running it, shouldn’t be too hard. I will make a call and have that information on your desk tomorrow morning. Is that all?”
“We’d like to have a look around?”
I watched Antoine very carefully as Benoit asked the question, and had I not been carefully watching his eyes, which flicked to a carpet square under the dining table for a fraction of a second, I would have missed it.
“Here? There’s only two rooms, what you see is all there is.”
Benoit shrugged and perhaps conveyed the fact a demolition team could beg to differ in his expression because a moment later Antoine waved his hand, “Search away.”
Benoit missed the inference, but I didn’t. Why use the word search when there was no reason for us to, if he was not guilty. I would mention it to Benoit after we left.
The search took all of a minute. There was nothing to confirm anyone, but Antione lived there, and then only temporarily. There was a half-filled suitcase on a corner and a few items hanging in a closet. He had not been there long nor apparently staying.
“Thank you, Mr Francois. I will be expecting your communication tomorrow. We will speak further on this.”
Antoine was eager to get us out the door, but she didn’t push it. He was, in my opinion, slightly agitated and definitely guilty of something.
Of course, it might be my imagination, or simply that I wanted it to be him, inventing in my mind those two tells, but it felt like it was him because I had that creepily feeling when I saw him after opening the door, and initially reactions were usually right.
He remained on the doorstep watching us leave. I watched him watch us.
“It’s him,” I said. “I’m sure of it. Innocent people don’t ask for search warrants.”
“You’d be surprised. If it is, he’s long practised at being what I would call detached. And he’s had a string of assault charges, all dismissed. Money talks, especially lots of it.”
“What’s the next step?”
“Wait for his alibi. He’ll already have one for each of the dates with photographic evidence. Mark my words. People like him have alibis before they need them. The thing about that cabin is that it’s a manufactured scene, everything in its place, and a place for everything. In other words, staged. He knew we were coming.”
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some years ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester.
We are in the middle of a philosophical debate.
No, it’s not about whether the world is flat, though sometimes I think he has that notion, as well as all humans are basically stupid.
I’ve been thinking about the pandemic and how it might meld into a plotline for a story.
Chester is not happy that I should use China as the country with global ambitions, after using the term ‘global domination’ and got a very silky retort.
He doesn’t seem to think that by causing a pandemic, making each of the G20 nations basically launch themselves into insolvency in order to maintain some semblance of economic stability, that China, who miraculously recovers, becomes the nation who saves the world?
It sounded quite good in my head.
Particularly when you see nations like the USA, the only other country that could tackle China as a ‘savior’ state, is going slowly down the gurgler. Or so it seems, and it’s only a matter of time before something gives.
Chester and I now have mandatory viewing every morning, the Donald Trump show, where we lay bets as to whom he’s going to fire or lambast.
Chester thought the Doctor was gone for all money on Monday.
My money was on the reporter, who wouldn’t stop asking questions.
But today, it might be about Joe Biden and the Democrats, and the ramping up of the Republican’s political campaign. Who said the COVID briefings had to be about that mundane virus?
Still, it’s back to the drawing board. The overall plot is good, creating a virus that brings almost every nation to its knees, and one that rises out of the ashes to ‘save the world’. It’s like you don’t need bullets and arms to fight a war, just a hell of a sneaky virus; you know, infecting people when you don’t know you’ve got it and infecting others.
Hang on, Chester’s calling. It’s time for the Donald Trump show.
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on the back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, 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.
Chasing leads, maybe
—–
“You left a paper trail, a car registration form at the flat in Bromley.”
I saw him shake his head. “I thought I’d removed any evidence.”
“Good thing then, that I found it, and not Severin who was next through the door.”
He nodded towards Jennifer. “What’s she doing here, she was one of your surveillance team.”
“She came with me. The department threw her out, I found her and asked her if she wanted to find out what was going on. Apparently, she did. Everyone can put their guns down now. We are, believe it or not, all friends here.”
Jennifer put her gun back in a pocket I hadn’t seen before.
Adam lowered his, but it was still ready to shoot if either of us made the wrong move. The old woman’s aim hadn’t changed; she was still intent on shooting me if I moved.
“Mother, give it up.”
A few seconds later she lowered the weapon, but it was still ready. To fire if I moved.
“Can we sit,” I asked. Having a gun aimed at you tended to make you feel week in the knees. I was.
There were three chairs in front of the fireplace, this room also having a fire ready but not lit, and one chair by the writing-table. We sat in the three chairs, the old woman over by the table. She put the rifle down on the desktop, within easy reach.
“My first question,” I said, “has to be, how are you still alive?”
“You left when Severin’s crew arrived to clean up. He left at the same time. Luckily. Then two of Dobbin’s agents arrived and cleaned up the cleaners, as it were, and took me to a safe place where it was discovered my injuries were not fatal.”
“You were hit by a sniper, that’s hard to believe he, or she, aimed to miss.”
“They didn’t. I think I moved slightly because of you, so I have you to thank for my life. Something else to remember, Dobbin doesn’t know I’m here, and I think the only link was that registration certificate. No one actually knows me by Adam Quigley, except, of course, my mother.
“And the USB everyone is after?”
A few seconds of silence, then, “It’s missing.”
“Were you the only one who knew where it was?”
“No, but as far as I’m aware, that person is dead, killed by the explosion you witnessed. We were due to meet there, just before the explosion which is why I was heading there.”
“You walked past it, as I recall.”
“Standard procedure. I walk past, check to see if the contact is there, then come back a few minutes later. I was running late, just got past when it went up. We would have both been in there, and dead.”
“And the USB gone with it?”
“Yes. My friend had it with him at the time. I was going there to pick it up.”
“No copies?” It was too much to expect there would be, even if it was worth more than life itself.
“No. That sort of information needs to be in as few places as possible.”
“You knew what it was about?”
“Yes.”
“And…”
“It’s above all our pay grades. But something I can tell you; I know why your Severin and Maury wanted it back.”
“It was theirs?”
“Yes. They originally stole it. I stole it from them and trying to return it to whom it belonged.”
“Nobbin?”
“God, no. I’ve since discovered he’s as crooked as all the rest. But now that it’s gone, it doesn’t matter who the owner of the information is. Just staying one step ahead of the jackals, that’s the job in hand.”
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 