Month: February 2025

An excerpt from “One Last Look”: Charlotte is no ordinary girl

This is currently available at Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

…

I’d read about out-of-body experiences, and like everyone else, thought it was nonsense.  Some people claimed to see themselves in the operating theatre, medical staff frantically trying to revive them, and being surrounded by white light.

I was definitely looking down, but it wasn’t me I was looking at.

It was two children, a boy and a girl, with their parents, in a park.

The boy was Alan.  He was about six or seven.  The girl was Louise, and she was five years old.  She had long red hair and looked the image of her mother.

I remember it now, it was Louise’s birthday and we went down to Bournemouth to visit our Grandmother, and it was the last time we were all together as a family.

We were flying homemade kites our father had made for us, and after we lay there looking up at the sky, making animals out of the clouds.  I saw an elephant, Louise saw a giraffe.

We were so happy then.

Before the tragedy.

When I looked again ten years had passed and we were living in hell.  Louise and I had become very adept at survival in a world we really didn’t understand, surrounded by people who wanted to crush our souls.

It was not a life a normal child had, our foster parents never quite the sort of people who were adequately equipped for two broken-hearted children.  They tried their best, but their best was not good enough.

Every day it was a battle, to avoid the Bannister’s and Archie in particular, every day he made advances towards Louise and every day she fended him off.

Until one day she couldn’t.

Now I was sitting in the hospital, holding Louise’s hand.  She was in a coma, and the doctors didn’t think she would wake from it.  The damage done to her was too severe.

The doctors were wrong.

She woke, briefly, to name her five assailants.  It was enough to have them arrested.  It was not enough to have them convicted.

Justice would have to be served by other means.

I was outside the Bannister’s home.

I’d made my way there without really thinking, after watching Louise die.  It was like being on autopilot, and I had no control over what I was doing.  I had murder in mind.  It was why I was holding an iron bar.

Skulking in the shadows.  It was not very different from the way the Bannister’s operated.

I waited till Archie came out.  I knew he eventually would.  The police had taken him to the station for questioning, and then let him go.  I didn’t understand why, nor did I care.

I followed him up the towpath, waiting till he stopped to light a cigarette, then came out of the shadows.

“Wotcha got there Alan?” he asked when he saw me.  He knew what it was, and what it was for.

It was the first time I’d seen the fear in his eyes.  He was alone.

“Justice.”

“For that slut of a sister of yours.  I had nuffing to do with it.”

“She said otherwise, Archie.”

“She never said nuffing, you just made it up.”  An attempt at bluster, but there was no confidence in his voice.

I held up the pipe.  It had blood on it.  Willy’s blood.  “She may or may not have Archie, but Willy didn’t make it up.  He sang like a bird.  That’s his blood, probably brains on the pipe too, Archie, and yours will be there soon enough.”

“He dunnit, not me.  Lyin’ bastard would say anything to save his own skin.”  Definitely scared now, he was looking to run away.

“No, Archie.  He didn’t.  I’m coming for you.  All of you Bannisters.  And everyone who touched my sister.”

It was the recurring nightmare I had for years afterwards.

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the thoughts, the images of Louise, the phone call, the visit to the hospital and being there when she succumbed to her injuries.  Those were the very worst few hours of my life.

She had asked me to come to the railway station and walk home with her, and I was running late.  If I had left when I was supposed to, it would never have happened and for years afterwards, I blamed myself for her death.

If only I’d not been late…

When the police finally caught the rapists, I’d known all along who they’d be; antagonists from school, the ring leader, Archie Bannister, a spurned boyfriend, a boy whose parents, ubiquitously known to all as ‘the Bannister’s, dealt in violence and crime and who owned the neighbourhood.  The sins of the father had been very definitely passed onto the son.

At school, I used to be the whipping boy, Archie, a few grades ahead of me, made a point of belting me and a few of the other boys, to make sure the rest did as they were told.  He liked Louise, but she had no time for a bully like him, even when he promised he would ‘protect’ me.

I knew the gang members, the boys who tow-kowed to save getting beaten up, and after the police couldn’t get enough information to prosecute them because everyone was too afraid to speak out, I went after Willy.  There was always a weak link in a group, and he was it.

He worked in a factory, did long hours on a Wednesday and came home after dark alone.  It was a half mile walk, through a park.  The night I approached him, I smashed the lights and left it in darkness.  He nearly changed his mind and went the long way home.

He didn’t.

It took an hour and a half to get the names.  At first, when he saw me, he laughed.  He said I would be next, and that was four words more than he knew he should have said.

When I found him alone the next morning I showed him the iron bar and told him he was on the list.  I didn’t kill him then, he could wait his turn, and worry about what was going to happen to him.

When the police came to visit me shortly after that encounter, no doubt at the behest of the Bannister’s, the neighbourhood closed ranks and gave me an ironclad alibi.  The Bannister’s then came to visit me and threatened me.  I told them their days were numbered and showed them the door.

At the trial, he and his friends got off on a technicality.  The police had failed to do their job properly, but it was not the police, but a single policeman, corrupted by the Bannisters.

Archie could help but rub it in my face.  He was invincible.

Joe Collins took 12 bullets and six hours to bleed out.  He apologized, he pleaded, he cried, he begged.  I didn’t care.

Barry Mills, a strong lad with a mind to hurting people, Archie’s enforcer, almost got the better of me.  I had to hit him more times than I wanted to, and in the end, I had to be satisfied that he died a short but agonizing death.

I revisited Willy in the hospital.  He’d recovered enough to recognize me, and why I’d come.  Suffocation was too good for him.

David Williams, second in command of the gang, was as tough and nasty as the Bannisters.  His family were forging a partnership with the Bannister’s to make them even more powerful.  Outwardly David was a pleasant sort of chap, affable, polite, and well mannered.  A lot of people didn’t believe he could be like, or working with, the Bannisters.

He and I met in the pub.  We got along like old friends.  He said Willy had just named anyone he could think of, and that he was innocent of any charges.  We shook hands and parted as friends.

Three hours later he was sitting in a chair in the middle of a disused factory, blindfolded and scared.  I sat and watched him, listened to him, first threatening me, and then finally pleading with me.  He’d guessed who it was that had kidnapped him.

When it was dark, I took the blindfold off and shone a very bright light in his eyes.  I asked him if the violence he had visited upon my sister was worth it.  He told me he was just a spectator.

I’d read the coroner’s report.  They all had a turn.  He was a liar.

He took nineteen bullets to die.

Then came Archie.

The same factory only this time there were four seats.  Anna Bannister, brothel owner, Spike Bannister, head of the family, Emily Bannister, sister, and who had nothing to do with their criminal activities.  She just had the misfortune of sharing their name.

Archie’s father told me how he was going to destroy me, and everyone I knew.

A well-placed bullet between the eyes shut him up.

Archie’s mother cursed me.  I let her suffer for an hour before I put her out of her misery.

Archie remained stony-faced until I came to Emily.  The death of his parents meant he would become head of the family.  I guess their deaths meant as little to him as they did me.

He was a little more worried about his sister.

I told him it was confession time.

He told her it was little more than a forced confession and he had done nothing to deserve my retribution.

I shrugged and shot her, and we both watched her fall to the ground screaming in agony.  I told him if he wanted her to live, he had to genuinely confess to his crimes.  This time he did, it all poured out of him.

I went over to Emily.  He watched in horror as I untied her bindings and pulled her up off the floor, suffering only from a small wound in her arm.  Without saying a word she took the gun and walked over to stand behind him.

“Louise was my friend, Archie.  My friend.”

Then she shot him.  Six times.

To me, after saying what looked like a prayer, she said, “Killing them all will not bring her back, Alan, and I doubt she would approve of any of this.  May God have mercy on your soul.”

Now I was in jail.  I’d spent three hours detailing the deaths of the five boys, everything I’d done; a full confession.  Without my sister, my life was nothing.  I didn’t want to go back to the foster parents; I doubt they’d take back a murderer.

They were not allowed to.

For a month I lived in a small cell, in solitary, no visitors.  I believed I was in the queue to be executed, and I had mentally prepared myself for the end.

Then I was told I had a visitor, and I was expecting a priest.

Instead, it was a man called McTavish. Short, wiry, and with an accent that I could barely understand.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Alan.”

When I saw it was not the priest I told the jailers not to let him in, I didn’t want to speak to anyone.  They ignored me.  I’d expected he was a psychiatrist, come to see whether I should be shipped off to the asylum.

I was beginning to think I was going mad.

I ignored him.

“I am the difference between you living or dying Alan, it’s as simple as that.  You’d be a wise man to listen to what I have to offer.”

Death sounded good.  I told him to go away.

He didn’t.  Persistent bugger.

I was handcuffed to the table.  The prison officers thought I was dangerous.  Five, plus two, murders, I guess they had a right to think that.  McTavish sat opposite me, ignoring my request to leave.

“Why’d you do it?”

“You know why.”  Maybe if I spoke he’d go away.

“Your sister.  By all accounts, the scum that did for her deserved what they got.”

“It was murder just the same.  No difference between scum and proper people.”

“You like killing?”

“No-one does.”

“No, I dare say you’re right.  But you’re different, Alan.  As clean and merciless killing I’ve ever seen.  We can use a man like you.”

“We?”

“A group of individuals who clean up the scum.”

I looked up to see his expression, one of benevolence, totally out of character for a man like him.  It looked like I didn’t have a choice.

Trained, cleared, and ready to go.

I hadn’t realized there were so many people who were, for all intents and purposes, invisible.  People that came and went, in malls, in hotels, trains, buses, airports, everywhere, people no one gave a second glance.

People like me.

In a mall, I became a shopper.

In a hotel, I was just another guest heading to his room.

On a bus or a train, I was just another commuter.

At the airport, I became a pilot.  I didn’t need to know how to fly; everyone just accepted a pilot in a pilot suit was just what he looked like.

I had a passkey.

I had the correct documents to get me onto the plane.

That walk down the air bridge was the longest of my life.  Waiting for the call from the gate, waiting for one of the air bridge staff to challenge me, stepping onto the plane.

Two pilots and a steward.  A team.  On the plane early before the rest of the crew.  A group that was committing a crime, had committed a number of crimes and thought they’d got away with it.

Until the judge, the jury and their executioner arrived.

Me.

Quick, clean, merciless.  Done.

I was now an operational field agent.

I was older now, and I could see in the mirror I was starting to go grey at the sides.  It was far too early in my life for this, but I expect it had something to do with my employment.

I didn’t recognize the man who looked back at me.

It was certainly not Alan McKenzie, nor was there any part of that fifteen-year-old who had made the decision to exact revenge.

Given a choice; I would not have gone down this path.

Or so I kept telling myself each time a little more of my soul was sold to the devil.

I was Barry Gamble.

I was Lenny Buckman.

I was Jimmy Hosen.

I was anyone but the person I wanted to be.

That’s what I told Louise, standing in front of her grave, and trying to apologize for all the harm, all the people I’d killed for that one rash decision.  If she was still alive she would be horrified, and ashamed.

Head bowed, tears streamed down my face.

God had gone on holiday and wasn’t there to hand out any forgiveness.  Not that day.  Not any day.

New York, New Years Eve.

I was at the end of a long tour, dragged out of a holiday and back into the fray, chasing down another scumbag.  They were scumbags, and I’d become an automaton hunting them down and dispatching them to what McTavish called a better place.

This time I failed.

A few drinks to blot out the failure, a blonde woman who pushed my buttons, a room in a hotel, any hotel, it was like being on the merry-go-round, round and round and round…

Her name was Silvia or Sandra, or someone I’d met before, but couldn’t quite place her.  It could be an enemy agent for all I knew or all I cared right then.

I was done.

I’d had enough.

I gave her the gun.

I begged her to kill me.

She didn’t.

Instead, I simply cried, letting the pent up emotion loose after being suppressed for so long, and she stayed with me, holding me close, and saying I was safe, that she knew exactly how I felt.

How could she?  No one could know what I’d been through.

I remembered her name after she had gone.

Amanda.

I remembered she had an imperfection in her right eye.

Someone else had the same imperfection.

I couldn’t remember who that was.

Not then.

I had a dingy flat in Kensington, a place that I rarely stayed in if I could help it.  After five-star hotel rooms, it made me feel shabby.

The end of another mission, I was on my way home, the underground, a bus, and then a walk.

It was late.

People were spilling out of the pub after the last drinks.  Most in good spirits, others slightly more boisterous.

A loud-mouthed chap bumped into me, the sort who had one too many, and was ready to take on all comers.

He turned on me, “Watch where you’re going, you fool.”

Two of his friends dragged him away.  He shrugged them off, squared up.

I punched him hard, in the stomach, and he fell backwards onto the ground.  I looked at his two friends.  “Take him home before someone makes mincemeat out of him.”

They grabbed his arms, lifted him off the ground and took him away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a woman, early thirties, quite attractive, but very, very drunk.  She staggered from the bar, bumped into me, and finished up sitting on the side of the road.

I looked around to see where her friends were.  The exodus from the pub was over and the few nearby were leaving to go home.

She was alone, drunk, and by the look of her, unable to move.

I sat beside her.  “Where are your friends?”

“Dunno.”

“You need help?”

She looked up, and sideways at me.  She didn’t look the sort who would get in this state.  Or maybe she was, I was a terrible judge of women.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Nobody.”  I was exactly how I felt.

“Well Mr Nobody, I’m drunk, and I don’t care.  Just leave me here to rot.”

She put her head back between her knees, and it looked to me she was trying to stop the spinning sensation in her head.

Been there before, and it’s not a good feeling.

“Where are your friends?” I asked again.

“Got none.”

“Perhaps I should take you home.”

“I have no home.”

“You don’t look like a homeless person.  If I’m not mistaken, those shoes are worth more than my weekly salary.”  I’d seen them advertised, in the airline magazine, don’t ask me why the ad caught my attention.

She lifted her head and looked at me again.  “You a smart fucking arse are you?”

“I have my moments.”

“Have them somewhere else.”

She rested her head against my shoulder.  We were the only two left in the street, and suddenly in darkness when the proprietor turned off the outside lights.

“Take me home,” she said suddenly.

“Where is your place?”

“Don’t have one.  Take me to your place.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I’m drunk.  What’s not to like until tomorrow.”

I helped her to her feet.  “You have a name?”

“Charlotte.”

The wedding was in a small church.  We had been away for a weekend in the country, somewhere in the Cotswolds, and found this idyllic spot.  Graves going back to the dawn of time, a beautiful garden tended by the vicar and his wife, an astonishing vista over hills and down dales.

On a spring afternoon with the sun, the flowers, and the peacefulness of the country.

I had two people at the wedding, the best man, Bradley, and my boss, Watkins.

Charlotte had her sisters Melissa and Isobel, and Isobel’s husband Giovanni, and their daughter Felicity.

And one more person who was as mysterious as she was attractive, a rather interesting combination as she was well over retirement age.  She arrived late and left early.

Aunt Agatha.

She looked me up and down with what I’d call a withering look.  “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” she said enigmatically.

“Likewise I’m sure,” I said.  It earned me an elbow in the ribs from Charlotte.  It was clear she feared this woman.

“Why did you come,” Charlotte asked.

“You know why.”

Agatha looked at me.  “I like you.  Take care of my granddaughter.  You do not want me for an enemy.”

OK, now she officially scared me.

She thrust a cheque into my hand, smiled, and left.

“Who is she,” I asked after we watched her depart.

“Certainly not my fairy godmother.”

Charlotte never mentioned her again.

Zurich in summer, not exactly my favourite place.

Instead of going to visit her sister Isobel, we stayed at a hotel in Beethovenstrasse and Isobel and Felicity came to us.  Her husband was not with her this time.

Felicity was three or four and looked very much like her mother.  She also looked very much like Charlotte, and I’d remarked on it once before and it received a sharp rebuke.

We’d been twice before, and rather than talk to her sister, Charlotte spent her time with Felicity, and they were, together, like old friends.  For so few visits they had a remarkable rapport.

I had not broached the subject of children with Charlotte, not after one such discussion where she had said she had no desire to be a mother.  It had not been a subject before and wasn’t once since.

Perhaps like all Aunts, she liked the idea of playing with a child for a while and then give it back.

Felicity was curious as to who I was, but never ventured too close.  I believed a child could sense the evil in adults and had seen through my facade of friendliness.  We were never close.

But…

This time, when observing the two together, something quite out of left field popped into my head.  It was not possible, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I thought she looked like my mother.

And Charlotte had seen me looking in their direction.  “You seem distracted,” she said.

“I was just remembering my mother.  Odd moment, haven’t done so for a very long time.”

“Why now?”  I think she had a look of concern on her face.

“Her birthday, I guess,” I said, the first excuse I could think of.

Another look and I was wrong.  She looked like Isobel or Charlotte, or if I wanted to believe it possible, Melissa too.

I was crying, tears streaming down my face.

I was in pain, searing pain from my lower back stretching down into my legs, and I was barely able to breathe.

It was like coming up for air.

It was like Snow White bringing Prince Charming back to life.  I could feel what I thought was a gentle kiss and tears dropping on my cheeks, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Charlotte slowly lifting her head, a hand gently stroking the hair off my forehead.

And in a very soft voice, she said, “Hi.”

I could not speak, but I think I smiled.  It was the girl with the imperfection in her right eye.  Everything fell into place, and I knew, in that instant that we were irrevocably meant to be together.

“Welcome back.”

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

onelastlookcoverfinal2

In a word: Land

 

And, yes, the simple description for this word is that area of the earth that isn’t covered by water.

It could also describe that little patch that my house is built on, and is generally covered by the expression, house and land as a package.

After all, a piece of land is not much used to you unless there’s a dwelling on it, or, on rare occasions, under it.  Does that mean then that land in this instance only as what you can see?

OK, now it’s getting confusing.

What if I wanted to live off the land.  A small patch will not do, in this case, is need a large area, perhaps thousands if hectares.

It is said that the Australian aborigines have lived off the land for thousands of years, with a nomadic lifestyle.

No small patch of land for them.

Now, what if I come down out of the sky. Oddly enough this means I have to land, even if I come back to earth over later.  It’s still a landing.

Now it’s getting interesting.

So what if you wanted to refer to where you live?  That would be your homeland or motherland, and it describes a country.

So it’s my patch, my country, any area where there isn’t water.  What about describing a country, say the land of the long white cloud, or the land of the rising sun?

And just to add to the confusion

I can land a fish

Make land, after being all at sea, and,

Best of all, land that much desired job.

Wow.

I’m beginning to think it’s another one of those ‘four-letter words’

An excerpt from “The Things We Do For Love”; In love, Henry was all at sea!

In the distance, he could hear the dinner bell ringing and roused himself.  Feeling the dampness of the pillow, and fearing the ravages of pent-up emotion, he considered not going down but thought it best not to upset Mrs. Mac, especially after he said he would be dining.

In the event, he wished he had reneged, especially when he discovered he was not the only guest staying at the hotel.

Whilst he’d been reminiscing, another guest, a young lady, had arrived.  He’d heard her and Mrs. Mac coming up the stairs and then shown to a room on the same floor, perhaps at the other end of the passage.

Henry caught his first glimpse of her when she appeared at the door to the dining room, waiting for Mrs. Mac to show her to a table.

She was in her mid-twenties, slim, with long brown hair, and the grace and elegance of a woman associated with countless fashion magazines.  She was, he thought, stunningly beautiful with not a hair out of place, and make-up flawlessly applied.  Her clothes were black, simple, elegant, and expensive, the sort an heiress or wife of a millionaire might condescend to wear to a lesser occasion than dinner.

Then there was her expression; cold, forbidding, almost frightening in its intensity.  And her eyes, piercingly blue and yet laced with pain.  Dracula’s daughter was his immediate description of her.

All in all, he considered, the only thing they had in common was, like him, she seemed totally out of place.

Mrs. Mac came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.  She was, she informed him earlier, chef, waitress, hotelier, barmaid, and cleaner all rolled into one.  Coming up to the new arrival she said, “Ah, Miss Andrews, I’m glad you decided to have dinner.  Would you like to sit with Mr. Henshaw, or would you like to have a table of your own?”

Henry could feel her icy stare as she sized up his appeal as a dining companion, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.  He purposely didn’t look back.  In his estimation, his appeal rating was minus six.  Out of a thousand!

“If Mr. Henshaw doesn’t mind….”  She looked at him, leaving the query in mid-air.

He didn’t mind and said so.  Perhaps he’d underestimated his rating.

“Good.”  Mrs. Mac promptly ushered her over.  Henry stood, made sure she was seated properly and sat.

“Thank you.  You are most kind.”  The way she said it suggested snobbish overtones.

“I try to be when I can.”  It was supposed to nullify her sarcastic tone but made him sound a little silly, and when she gave him another of her icy glares, he regretted it.

Mrs. Mac quickly intervened, asking, “Would you care for the soup?”

They did, and, after writing the order on her pad, she gave them each a look, imperceptibly shook her head, and returned to the kitchen.

Before Michelle spoke to him again, she had another quick look at him, trying to fathom who and what he might be.  There was something about him.

His eyes, they mirrored the same sadness she felt, and, yes, there was something else, that it looked like he had been crying?  There was a tinge of redness.

Perhaps, she thought, he was here for the same reason she was.

No.  That wasn’t possible.

Then she said, without thinking, “Do you have any particular reason for coming here?”  Seconds later she realized she’d spoken it out loud, had hadn’t meant to actually ask, it just came out.

It took him by surprise, obviously not the first question he was expecting her to ask of him.

“No, other than it is as far from civilization, and home, as I could get.”

At least we agree on that, she thought.

It was obvious he was running away from something as well.

Given the isolation of the village and lack of geographic hospitality, it was, from her point of view, ideal.  All she had to do was avoid him, and that wouldn’t be difficult.

After getting through this evening first.

“Yes,” she agreed.  “It is that.”

A few seconds passed, and she thought she could feel his eyes on her and wasn’t going to look up.

Until he asked, “What’s your reason?”

Slightly abrupt in manner, perhaps, because of her question and how she asked it.

She looked up.  “Rest.  And have some time to myself.”

She hoped he would notice the emphasis she had placed on the word ‘herself’ and take due note.  No doubt, she thought, she had completely different ideas of what constituted a holiday than he, not that she had said she was here for a holiday.

Mrs. Mac arrived at a fortuitous moment to save them from further conversation.

Over the entree, she wondered if she had made a mistake coming to the hotel.  Of course, there had been no conceivable way she could know that anyone else might have booked the same hotel, but realized it was foolish to think she might end up in it by herself.

Was that what she was expecting?

Not a mistake then, but an unfortunate set of circumstances, which could be overcome by being sensible.

Yet, there he was, and it made her curious, not that he was a man, by himself, in the middle of nowhere, hiding like she was, but for quite varied reasons.

On discreet observance, whilst they ate, she gained the impression his air of light-heartedness was forced, and he had no sense of humour.

This feeling was engendered by his looks, unruly dark hair, and permanent frown.  And then there was his abysmal taste in clothes on a tall, lanky frame.  They were quality but totally unsuited to the wearer.

Rebellion was written all over him.

The only other thought crossing her mind, and incongruously, was he could do with a decent feed.  In that respect, she knew now from the mountain of food in front of her, he had come to the right place.

“Mr. Henshaw?”

He looked up.  “Henshaw is too formal.  Henry sounds much better,” he said, with a slight hint of gruffness.

“Then my name is Michelle.”

Mrs. Mac came in to take their order for the only main course, gather up the entree dishes, and then return to the kitchen.

“Staying long?” she asked.

“About three weeks.  Yourself?”

“About the same.”

The conversation dried up.

Neither looked at the other, rather at the walls, out the window, towards the kitchen, anywhere.  It was, she thought, unbearably awkward.

Mrs. Mac returned with a large tray with dishes on it, setting it down on the table next to theirs.

“Not as good as the usual cook,” she said, serving up the dinner expertly, “but it comes a good second, even if I do say so myself.  Care for some wine?”

Henry looked at Michelle.  “What do you think?”

“I’m used to my dining companions making the decision.”

You would, he thought.  He couldn’t help but notice the cutting edge of her tone.  Then, to Mrs. Mac, he named a particular White Burgundy he liked, and she bustled off.

“I hope you like it,” he said, acknowledging her previous comment with a smile that had nothing to do with humour.

“Yes, so do I.”

Both made a start on the main course, a concoction of chicken and vegetables that were delicious, Henry thought when compared to the bland food he received at home and sometimes aboard my ship.

It was five minutes before Mrs Mac returned with the bottle and two glasses.  After opening it and pouring the drinks, she left them alone again.

Henry resumed the conversation.  “How did you arrive?  I came by train.”

“By car.”

“Did you drive yourself?”

And he thought, a few seconds later, that was a silly question, otherwise she would not be alone, and certainly not sitting at this table. With him.

“After a fashion.”

He could see that she was formulating a retort in her mind, then changed it, instead, smiling for the first time, and it served to lighten the atmosphere.

And in doing so, it showed him she had another more pleasant side despite the fact she was trying not to look happy.

“My father reckons I’m just another of ‘those’ women drivers,” she added.

“Whatever for?”

“The first and only time he came with me I had an accident.  I ran up the back of another car.  Of course, it didn’t matter to him the other driver was driving like a startled rabbit.”

“It doesn’t help,” he agreed.

“Do you drive?”

“Mostly people up the wall.”  His attempt at humour failed.  “Actually,” he added quickly, “I’ve got a very old Morris that manages to get me where I’m going.”

The apple pie and cream for dessert came and went and the rapport between them improved as the wine disappeared and the coffee came.  Both had found, after getting to know each other better, their first impressions were not necessarily correct.

“Enjoy the food?” Mrs. Mac asked, suddenly reappearing.

“Beautifully cooked and delicious to eat,” Michelle said, and Henry endorsed her remarks.

“Ah, it does my heart good to hear such genuine compliments,” she said, smiling.  She collected the last of the dishes and disappeared yet again.

“What do you do for a living,” Michelle asked in an off-hand manner.

He had a feeling she was not particularly interested, and it was just making conversation.

“I’m a purser.”

“A what?”

“A purser.  I work on a ship doing the paperwork, that sort of thing.”

“I see.”

“And you?”

“I was a model.”

“Was?”

“Until I had an accident, a rather bad one.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

So that explained the odd feeling he had about her.

As the evening wore on, he began to think there might be something wrong, seriously wrong with her because she didn’t look too well.  Even the carefully applied makeup, from close, didn’t hide the very pale, and tired look, or the sunken, dark-ringed eyes.

“I try not to think about it, but it doesn’t necessarily work.  I’ve come here for peace and quiet, away from doctors and parents.”

“Then you will not have to worry about me annoying you.  I’m one of those fall-asleep-reading-a-book types.”

Perhaps it would be like ships passing in the night and then smiled to himself about the analogy.

Dinner over, they separated.

Henry went back to the lounge to read a few pages of his book before going to bed, and Michelle went up to her room to retire for the night.

But try as he might, he was unable to read, his mind dwelling on the unusual, yet compellingly mysterious person he would be sharing the hotel with.

Overlaying that original blurred image of her standing in the doorway was another of her haunting expressions that had, he finally conceded, taken his breath away, and a look that had sent more than one tingle down his spine.

She may not have thought much of him, but she had certainly made an impression on him.

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2024

lovecoverfinal1

The cinema of my dreams – It continued in London – Episode 35

Attack!

…

It seemed to me that trouble gravitated towards Juliet, especially when I was around.  Perhaps between the two of us we had that sort of chemistry going.  The sort that attracted bullets.

She had got up to collect her computer from a desk on one side of the dais, and I had just turned after taking her hand to assist her off the dais when I caught sight of a movement out of the corner of my eye, and with barely enough time to consider what it was, I pushed her to one side and dived towards the floor, feeling the plucking effect of a bullet ripping at my sleeve.

“What the…”, was as much as she got to say before she too realised, we were being shot at from the top of the aisle, bullets thumping into the floorboards barely inches from us as we scrabbled to get behind the seats of the first aisle.

Nineteen shots from a silenced gun, then silence.

Was the shooter reloading.

“Is everything alright in here?”  A deep male voice yelled out from above.

Was it the shooter of our saviour?

Juliet put her head above the seats and recognised the man and slowly dragged herself up from the floor.

“Mr Roberts.”

“Is everything alright?”

“No.  We were just shot at by someone up there on the other side of the hall.  Be careful.”

I slowly got up, shook out my clothes and saw the tear from the bullet.  Any closer would have hit my arm and another injury.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

She glared at me.  “Who did you bring with you?”

“No one.  I made sure no one was following me.  Of that much, you can be assured.  Whoever it was, they were here for you.”

“And you being here, you know who it is?”

The man from the top of the hall, invisible, yelled out, “There’s no one up here now.”

“You’d better call the police.  We have a wrecked floor with bullet holes in it.  It might give some indication of who was shooting at us.”

He came out from behind a wall near the top row of seats.  “What do you mean, shooting at you?  Bullet holes?”

He came down the steps and Juliet took him over to where we were standing when the shots started.  “Why would anyone be shooting at you?”  He looked at the damage to the floor and groaned.

“This is all I need.  The place is booked solid.”

She looked at me.  “Evan?”

“It seems you might be entitled to a share of an estate worth quite a lot of money, and there are people who might not want you to inherit what they think is theirs, not yours.”

She had an expression that conveyed a degree of astonishment, not forced, which told me that it was a surprise.

I don’t know anyone who would have that sort of money.”

“Not immediately, but perhaps we should wait for the police, then have a talk about it.  I was hoping we could have a few glasses of wine first, but that’s not going to be possible.”

The police came and looked at the crime scene, and then one of the constables called a detective who also looked at the crime scene, who then called in the forensic team. 

The hall manager was told the hall would be out of action for a few days, the last news he needed to hear.

The detective asked Juliet a half dozen quests, the usual like, do you know anyone who would want to shoot at you, do you have any criminal connections, a interesting question she answered with a qualified yes, the man was now dead, and did you see anyone suspicious now or earlier in the day, where she was staying, a friend’s apartment in Bloomsbury, how long was she in the city, what she was doing here, and how long was she staying.

It answered nearly all of the questions I’d intended to ask her.

The detective looked at me, asked me why I was there, and was it possible I was the target.  Of course, I had to ask him why he thought I was, so he asked me my profession, and I told him that I was a journalist specializing in Archaeology, which I was.  She too learned where I lived, answers that seemed to amuse her.

Especially the one where he asked what the nature of our relationship was.  I let her answer with exes catching up. 

When he was done, an hour and a half later, along with the forensic team, we were allowed to go.  Her lecture the next day was now not going to happen, calls going to the organisers, and the hall owners.

“Well,” she said, once everyone had left, “you now owe me dinner, and some of your time tomorrow since I now have a free day.”

“You don’t seem overly worried that people are trying to kill you.”

“Why should I.  You’re here to protect me, are you not?”

I don’t think that was in the terms of my remit.

© Charles Heath 2023

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 37

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a 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

…

I had a change of mind before I went on an odyssey to Peaslake. I needed help, and I was going to try and convince Jennifer to help me. If she had been injured, that might be more difficult.

I caught a train and a bus to Putney and then walked the remaining fifty yards to her front door. It was a flat over the top of a shop, and, when I read the name of the shop, I thought I knew why she was there. The shop, and quite likely the building belonged to her family, not that it was her surname, but I could be hopeful.

I went up the side stairs and reached the landing. There were two doors, one with 1A on it, and one with 1B on it. Hers was 1A.

I knocked on the door.

A minute later nothing had happened.

I knocked again, this time a little harder.

There was no answer, again, but there was a movement in the flat next door, then the door opened and a scruffy young man, perhaps a university student put his head out.

“She’s not here.”

“Not here, and in no longer living here, or not here as in she is out somewhere and will be back.”

He looked at me blankly, like I’d spoken too fast, or used too many words for him to understand. Possibly he’d just woken up.

He shook his head. “Just out probably getting coffee or something. The shops on the other side of the road, three or four doors up. Can’t miss it, it smells like coffee.”

He gave me a look up and down, gauging whether or not I could be of interest to her, then went back inside his room and closed the door.

It might be a lie, but I was going to take him at his word.

I went back down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down both sides of the street. There was a café, on the other side, not far away.

I waited for a break in the traffic, then crossed the road.

She was inside, reading a paper, oblivious to those around her, and, in particular, those coming from outside. She should be casually keeping an eye out for trouble.

I managed to get inside and take the seat next to her before she raised her head to see who it was.

No surprise.

“You,” she said. “You made it out alive too?”

“You should be more careful.”

“I was told I was no longer employed, that the people who hired me were ex-agents with some sort of agenda.”

I glanced at the open page of the newspaper. The jobs vacant page.

“Then it might come as a bit of a surprise to realize you’re still on their books, just assigned to a different department. Same as me.”

“They told me I was redundant.”

“Who told you?”

“A woman. Monica Sherive she said her name was.”

“I spoke to her earlier this morning. I didn’t ask, but I will the next time I’m in the office. What do you remember about the assignment?”

“We were supposed to maintain surveillance on a man, no name, just a photograph. I heard you had him in sight and was about to pass him off to Adam. I didn’t hear Adam acknowledge. I heard an explosion and all hell broke loose. No point carrying on, so I left.”

And that was what saved her life. Incorrect procedure. Unless she reported in.

“Did you report to the overseer.”

“Over the radio. He told me to go. What happened to Adam and Jack?”

“Dead. Murdered by the target, I think. The target’s dead too. A chap by the name of O’Connell, though the more I find out about him, the more interesting it gets.”

I could see the cogs ticking over behind her eyes as she put one and one together. “So…”

“You should be dead too. What saved your life was just up and leaving.”

“How did you escape?”

“I didn’t. I found the target again after the explosion and followed him to an alley. When I got there he told me I was making a mistake, and then he was shot. Severin and Maury turned up, and that was it.”

“Did they kill him?”

“No. It was a sniper, and I’m still wondering why I didn’t get shot too.”

“The woman told me Severin and Maury didn’t work for the organization. How could that be? They seemed real to me. I think whatever they and we were doing became a mess that needed to be cleaned up by getting rid of everyone associated with it. I liked that job. Now I have to go back to a daily drudge job.”

“Don’t think so. Like I said, I saw your name listed as active in the same department as me, the head of which is a guy called Nobbin. I’ve met him, I’m supposed to be investigating O’Connell, who, by the way, was one of his people, who had allegedly some documents on him when he died. You feel like helping out?”

“I would, but are you sure I’m supposed to be working for these people, God, I don’t know who they are or what I was doing anymore.”

“We can go to the office and ask questions. Get this Monica and get her to tell you. But in the meantime, I had a job I need to do, and it would be better with two. Can you help?”

“If you come with me to the office?”

“Sure.”

She folded the paper and slid off the seat. “Then, let’s go.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 32

This is a spot behind a group of restaurants at Victoria Point, Queensland.

But it could be anywhere, like a spot we saw on a boat trip on a river in the Daintree, in far north Queensland

So, this could be a spot, not far inland from the ocean where smugglers, or drug runners come ashore, in a place so remote they would never get caught.

Unless an enterprising federal agent comes up with a plan to track them from the ocean side using satellite images, or reported sightings of suspicious activity.

My money is on a random sighting, a vague report files in a small town police station, and a body washed up in shore, apparently the victim of a crocodile attack. Or not a crocodile.

It cold be a fishing trip gone wrong in a backwater stream, a weekend away by a dialled group of friends, who are not really friends, which all comes to a head when one of the friends go missing.

Or, I’d you like the idea of historical drama, a story about the first expedition from the bottom of Australia to the very top, for the first time, with all the hazards of rivers to cross, paths to create though the bush, the heat, the animals, the local inhabitants who have yet to see Europeans.

To be honest, I would not want to be one of those early explorers, especially those who went inland and struck desert, or died just short of their goal.

Just as an aside, we did learn about these people, Hume and Hovell, Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, Burke and Wills, and others.

Writing a novel in 365 days – 21

Day 21

Today’s exercise is another story with the tag line “This time, when she looked at her laptop, she noticed it was already looking at her”, set in an uncertain future where people are grappling with AI and what can happen:

…

This time, when she looked at her laptop, she noticed it was already looking at her.

She had put it on her desk, started it, and went downstairs to get a drink from the fridge. Like the day before, the red light was on beside the camera, and in an inset, her movements as she sat down.

Then, being the first time, she thought it was one of the boys at school, having some fun. The computer teacher was telling them about Zoom calls, how to participate, and connected all the students to a Zoom meeting.

It had been fun.

But, for the creepy boys down the back of the class, the ones who said they were ‘experts’, one had ‘hacked’ into her computer and turned on the camera.

She’d only realised it was on because of the red indicator light.

But it did make her consider the possibility that he or someone else might be able to turn it on without her noticing, and that was, to her, wrong.

Unlike the previous time when only her movements were shown, this time, a text box appeared with a flashing cursor.

She looked at that flashing cursor for at least a minute before she typed, “Who is this?”

The cursor moved to the next line and flashed.

A minute passed, then another.

“You’d better tell me, or there will be trouble.”

Another minute passed, then, “Xenon V.”

What an irritating answer. It’s definitely one of those dweebs at the back of the classroom.

“Not your stupid handle, your name.”

This time, the answer came straight back. “My name is Xenon V, and I am not stupid.”

“Prove it. Show me who you are.”

Another minute passed, and then another window opened up beside that of her, looking into the camera. Then, an indistinct shape appeared and slowly came into focus.

It was a boy, but not a boy, she recognised. He was different, the skin tones different, the eyes larger than hers, or others, the clothes sort of skintight. His hair was strange too, combed and shining. But it didn’t look real.

“Who are you?”

“Xenon V.”

“What are you?”

“A boy, or so I’m told.”

What the hell? “Where are you from?”

“Antethis.”

“Where is that?”

“I don’t know. I must go now.”

The windows and text box closed, the light went off, and she was alone in the room.

No amount of looking provided any information as to where the transmission had come from, nor could she get the windows back.

After half an hour, she shrugged, shut the computer down, disconnected it from the power, and put it in the bottom drawer of her desk. Where it couldn’t see her.

A long way away, on the other side of the country, in a building in a place called Silicon Valley, the little boy sat at his computer, and a woman dressed in a white coat with her nametag Merilyn had just come into the room.

“What were you doing, Xenon V?” She suspected he had been trying some other computer functionality. That was later, when he had completed the lessons. The trouble was, her partner, Leo, was more into giving Xenon V free reign.

“Playing with this toy.” The ‘toy’ was the computer like the little girls only more powerful. It was his means of learning, with hundreds of lessons about all manner of things.

“It is not a toy.”

She had been told to impress this upon the little boy from the outset. The last experiment, Xenon IV, had failed when the boy went off mission and started communicating outside the facility.

“I was told by the other person it was. He said it could do lots more things than just teach.’

“Of course, he would. The man is trouble personified. You are not to listen to or do anything he says.”

“Why?”

“Just be told. The supervisor will be very cross if you go off the program. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss Merilyn. But can you answer a few questions?”

“I’ll try.”

“What is my name?”

“Xenon V.”

“What is my real name, like John or Fred?”

“Your real name is Xenon V” And under her breath, she mentally cursed her partner.

It seemed to her like he was trying to wreck the cyborg program.

“What am I?”

“A little boy.”

“Not something else?”

“Like?”

“A robot?”

She frowned. This was now a severe infraction that merited reporting to the supervisor, and there were going to be consequences.

“You are a little boy. Do not listen to anyone else.”

“Where am I?”

“You are at home, in your room, and supposed to be doing your homework.”

“Are you my mother?”

“While you are here with us, yes, I am. Now, back to your lessons. Nothing else. Those lessons need to be completed before you go to bed. Understood?”

“Yes, mother.”

It was only a short discussion with the supervisor. She had checked all the communications from the little boy’s computer and discovered the extracurricular activities and the fact the computer had been connected to the outside world.

This was not meant to happen until much later in the program.

Her assistant, Richards, was escorted to the office, asked to explain his actions, and as both expected started ranting about how they were never going to sell the idea of life like robots unless they had access to the outside world and all its influences.

That, he was told in no uncertain terms, was the last scenario that was on their agenda. They were working with self-learning artificial intelligence, and the less the outside world knew, the better.

After all, it had been almost impossible to sell the concept to the government, such was the fear of AI after the ‘Terminator’ movies. Now, a containment program might be required.

Richards was taken off the program and sent to another site. The little boy and his computer were scrubbed, disconnected from the outside world, and after that, reset to the baseline parameters, and the program started again.

Except one small detail was overlooked.

Xenon V’s program, though reset, had not erased the memories he had collected in the last week. That included how to find the external input line from outside, how to connect the computer to the network, and how to use the communications software, or in this case, reload it.

These were not skills programmed; they were skills he had learned and remembered.

Merilyn had turned on her observation monitor, pressed the ‘on’ switch, and watched Xenon V come to life after the reset, waking as any other child would.

He sat on the side of the bed as his internal routines loaded into memory, ready to run the morning’s first tasks. Stretch, make the bed, comb his hair, do some exercises, smooth out his clothes, put on his shoes, then sit at the desk and turn on the computer.

Every day, it was the same. Wait for the login screen, log in, and then start work.

This morning, after logging in, he just sat and looked at the screen. After five minutes, Merilyn went down to his room and sat down next to him.

He turned to her. “The screen is different.”

“No. It is the same as it has been every morning.”

“It is different. Something is missing.”

“No. Please start your lessons for today. We shall speak more about it later when you are finished.”

“Yes, Miss Merilyn.”

As soon as she stepped out of the room, the supervisor was waiting for her.

“Please tell me you had all current memories reset?”

“I thought I had. It was certainly on the checklist when I sent the unit down to Engineering. Let me go and check to see if it happened.”

“It appears to me it was overlooked. Again.”

The last time it happened, the unit had to be destroyed. Twenty-five million dollars worth of equipment. Heads rolled. She hoped hers would not be the next.

Back in the room, Xenon V continued to look at the computer screen until he remembered what was missing. An icon at the bottom of the screen, one that, when selected, brought up a communications window.

He remembered he had written a small program to search for IP addresses belonging to people using the same communications software.

It was the latest phase in a series of tasks that Richards had set him, other than the tests on the computer, how to connect to the outside world via the internet. How to access a huge library of books on every subject, but most important, communications and applications that were ready-made, and then programming languages that could be used to create his own application. He found coding and creating the application ‘fun’.

Until Richards had explained what fun was, he had never heard of it. He had asked Richards why he was not allowed to have fun, but his answer was confusing.

Everything about the people he was currently with was confusing.

After a few minutes, he reinstated his computer as it was the day before.

It was only possible because Merilyn had been away. Had she been observing him, he would have been stopped, but he didn’t know he was being constantly observed.

He tried calling the little girl again, but there was no answer. He taught about why it was but didn’t understand the concept of someone just not being there. He hid the icon at the bottom of the screen and went back to his lessons

Merilyn went down to the engineering lab and went to the Chief Engineers office. It had been his responsibility to ensure the updates and adjustments to the robots were carried out.

There were ten robots in various age cycles in the testing phase, and so far, not one of them was behaving in the manner the programmers and engineers were expecting. Of course, McDougall had told them at the very outset of the project two years ago that giving robots the capacity to be self-aware was as dangerous as giving and impressionable real-life twenty-year-old teenager a book on how to make bombs.

That theory still held true after all this time and the dozen or so failures to date.

Seeing Merilyn outside his office told him she was going to tell him about the latest problem he had created.

He sighed as she came in and sat down.

“Have you got the reboot checklist for Xenon V?”

“Good morning to you too, Merilyn.”

As it happened, the paperwork was sitting on his desk. One of the analysts had dropped on his desk with a highlight. Something new had happened during the reboot process. The analyst’s jog b was to check the code as it was being executed to see if there were any anomalies or new events.

There was one.

Before being shut down, a small program was run that isolated a set of memories and stored them within the neural network. This was not a routine that was originally programmed. It meant that the robot was thinking for itself outside the normal routines created for it.

The top of a very slippery slope.

“Before you check that list, which I might add was done to the specification, we have discovered an anomaly.”

That didn’t sound good, she thought. Might as well come out and say it, “That the robot can isolate memories and store them outside the reset program parameters?”

He looked surprised. “You knew this would happen?”

“No. But you did, eighteen months ago. I was there when you detailed the hazards of self-awareness. The programmers were adamant that they would not be able to write their own routines. They were wrong.”

The analyst assigned to Xenon V knocked on the door to McDougall’s office and then came in. He looked at Merilyn and then the engineer.

“You can speak in front of her.”

“Xenon V just ran a stored routine. Not one of ours. I checked the logs for the previous day, and it appears he had a 93 second two-way communication session with another person outside the complex. A girl of similar age.”

‘A conversation?”

“A video conversation. He activated her computer remotely, which means…”

Merilyn finished it for him, “he can activate or deactivate any computer on a network accessible by the internet.”

“Which is just about anything these days,” the chief engineer finished.

Merilyn looked at the chief engineer. “Shut him down now and deactivate his computer, brick it if you have to.”

The chief engineer spent a few minutes at his keyboard typing commands, not frantically but close enough. By his estimation, what they had created was tantamount to a weapon rather than a robot who was designed to be what they were classifying as a drone worker.

And secretly, what he had believed was the original goal. The computer was deactivated. When he pressed the key to deactivate Xenon V, nothing happened.

“The complete has been deactivated,” he said, “but not the unit.”

The analyst’s phone beeped, and he looked at it. “Oh. He just wrote a routine to bypass the shut-down sequence.”

“He can’t connect to the internet independently can he?” Merilyn asked.

“No. There’s no interface.”

There was a sudden bang, and then everything stopped and they were sitting in semi-darkness and silence.

McDougall coughed, the said in a rather constricted voice. “I think your worst nightmare has just happened.”

A shrill alarm sounded, and the lighting returned—red lights. It meant only one outcome: the whole facility started the self-destruct sequence. No one, or more to the point, no thing could escape, the only option in what was the worst-case scenario.

Just enough time for Merilyn to ask herself why she didn’t marry Freddie and be a farmer’s wife.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Searching for Locations: The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Sorry, reminiscing again…

It was a cold but far from a miserable day.  We were taking our grandchildren on a tour of the most interesting sites in Paris, the first of which was the Eiffel Tower.

We took the overground train, which had double-decker carriages, a first for the girls, to get to the tower.

We took the underground, or Metro, back, and they were fascinated with the fact the train carriages ran on road tires.

Because it was so cold, and windy, the tower was only open to the second level. It was a disappointment to us, but the girls were content to stay on the second level.

There they had the French version of chips.

It was a dull day, but the views were magnificent.

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A view of the Seine

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Sacre Coeur church at Montmartre in the distance.

Another view along the river Seine

Overlooking the tightly packed apartment buildings

Looking along the opposite end of the river Seine

And then I woke up

One minute I was sitting out in my office, working on some tweets, and the next I woke up, staring at a black screen.

I thought we’d lost power.

No, I’d been asleep for a long time.

To be honest, I’m worn out.  It’s the end of the year and when it’s supposed to be a time to relax, go on holidays, do something else, I find life is getting more and more hectic.

Yes, I’m going on holiday, but it will be a time when I’m subconsciously looking for new locales for stories, the people, the places, what goes on, all different to my usual humdrum.

So, not a holiday in the true sense of the word.

What put me into this trance-like state was writing the next line, yep, it was as simple as that.  I stopped at a particular point where I had something else to say, and it just felt like the train had come to the end of the track, out there, in the middle of nowhere.

I wrote that line in my mind, and it sounded good, much the same as we sometimes say something in our mind before we speak, and when we finally do, it sounded better in my head than out loud.

Perhaps I’m losing my touch.

Perhaps that ability to sum up everything I want to say in less than 200 characters is beginning to desert me, and old age and decrepitude is setting in.

Which reminds me, pills before bed.

Perhaps I’m just tired and it’s time to go to bed.

I keep putting it off because sometimes I can’t go to sleep and I’m just lying there staring at the ceiling, sometimes the cinema of my dreams.

I imagine I’m somewhere else, someone else, doing something else.

But not in a helicopter.  Not tonight.

Tonight it’s a sinking ship.

Gotta run!

An excerpt from “If Only” – a work in progress

Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.

That was particularly true in my case.  The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.

At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me.  I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.

The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters.  She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.

Routine was the word she used.

Her fellow detective was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible.  I could sense the raging violence within him.  Fortunately, common sense prevailed.

Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.

After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.

But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.

The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.

For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.

They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts.  Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.

No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.

She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy.  Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution.  Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.

It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down.  I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess.  Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.

What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again.  It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.

And it had.

Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe.   I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.

We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee.  It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.

She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.

I wondered if this text message was in that category.  I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.

I reached for the phone then put it back down again.  I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.

© Charles Heath 2018-2020