Month: June 2025

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 31

A meeting with a nuclear scientist

…

Tara Benson was not my idea of a typical nuclear physicist, but then I always had been a bad judge of matching occupations to personnel.

I had read her biography and service record, mainly the one-paragraph summary, and it said she was one of the best in the world.

Criteria indeed for anyone on this ship apparently, though I didn’t regard myself as fitting into the category, someone must have thought I had the potential.

On the way down I had a few moments to contemplate her ordeal, not only being taken prisoner, but being transported back in the manner we had used, when it was a means I would not willingly use on myself.

It was why the first thought I had when I saw her was to apologise.

She was sitting in one of the special chairs that could analyse everything about you, what ailed you, what diseases you had, the state of your body.

When I had my first medical examination, they put me in an earlier model of that chair and it picked up the missing anatomical parts, the fact I once had several broken bones, that I was slightly anaemic, and the reason why I sometimes had bouts of indigestion.

They fixed all that, and a slight imperfection in my eyesight which I didn’t know about.

The doctor was looking at the monitor when I arrived.

“How is she?”

“Better than we expected. Other than being exposed to radiation for longer than prescribed, and which we can fix, she is in perfect health.”

“Mentally?”

“You can ask her yourself. I’m about to sign off on her going back to work, after a good night’s sleep.”

He spoke to her for a minute or so, then helped her up out of the chair.

“I assume you are the new captain,” she said when she saw me.

“Not by choice, but for the time being, yes.”

“I have a few questions, if I may?”

“Now?”

“If it’s possible”

There was a consultation room free, so I escorted her inside and closed the door. It was odd, I thought, that she sat behind the desk.

I also felt like she was making a mental assessment of me, perhaps thinking that I was not what she might have considered Captain material. To a certain extent, I may have once agreed with her, because everyone expected a captain to be much older and therefore wiser.

It was an analogy I’d heard before.

“Whose idea was it to transport me across to this vessel?”

I had expected that the means might be questionable, but in the moment, and considered along with the course of action I’d taken, it was the right decision.

“Mine. After discussion, of course, with the relevant experts. The risk was acceptable, proven by the fact you’re here now, and relatively unharmed.”

“It was a surprise, I’ll grant you that, and a first. From what I managed to overhear, the plutonium was sent down to their bunker to provide power to the facility, under the surface of the moon, and only accessible by the transporter. Given the risks, it also surprised me they were so committed to using it.”

“Since most of that crew were escaped convicts from the Mars mining prison, any means would be acceptable.”

“Prisoners, not aliens?”

“Yes. The ships were old personnel transports, and the big ship, where you were being held, an old freighter.”

“The Orion.”

I knew it well and surprised that I’d not recognised it. They had managed to disguise it well.

“A ship, I’m sure, you might be familiar with,” she added.

Perhaps my captain’s bland expression was not so bland.

“Ancient history,” I said, “from a time that I would rather leave in the past.”

There was a story, and not a pretty one, of a voyage not so long after commissioning, where systems failed and crew members died, all part of the experience in those early years in space. The quest for profits had outweighed the necessity for proper testing, and we had borne the brunt of the ‘test as you go’ mentality that had reigned before Space Command had taken over.

“You must tell me, one day.”

Her expression was one of curiosity and not one to be mistaken for anything else.

“Is there anything else?”

“If you are considering retrieving the plutonium, let me know and I’ll be happy to help. I suspect the people on Venus would like to see it sooner rather than later.”

“You know where this base is?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I’ll let you know after I’ve spoken to the security people.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2023

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 31

This is rugged bushland not far from suburbia, though you wouldn’t know exactly where it is just by looking at the photograph

But, for the writer, this is an excellent setting.

For instance, once again we are out wandering in the bush, lost. It’s not hard to get lost, and stay lost if there are no recognizable landmarks, and given we all walk with a bias to one side or the other, and we have to avoid objects like trees, ravines, animals, and rocks, keeping a straight line is impossible.

But the question is, how did you get into the bush in the first place?

It’s not as if you would deliberately go there, just to if you can get lost.

No, my idea is that you have been kidnapped and drugged, then taken to a location either in the book of a car or just in the back seat with a hood, then dropped off and left to die

The criminals in this story are more efficient in getting rid of pesky witnesses.

Or maybe it’s something less sinister, like going out and counting the koalas in the bush, well, what’s left of the bush as the suburban spray takes more and more of the koala’s habitat.

And it could also be like the planet of the apes, the koalas start fighting back.

Stranger things have been known to happen.

Writing a book in 365 days – 137/138

Days 137 and 138

A story written in the form of … a police interview

…

The preliminaries out of the way, I was sitting on one side of the desk with a lawyer, provided because I didn’t have one, and the two detectives on the other.

Good cop, bad cop.

The woman detective, obviously the lead, had dropped a thick folder on the desk to emphasise the weight of evidence that was against me.

Before that, there had been a meaningful glance between the two, one that said, ‘we’ve got him bang to rights’.

Detective Rogers:  Can you describe your relationship with the deceased, Madeleine Blair?

Alistair Blair:  Madeleine was my wife.  We have been married 22 years.  Last month, she advised me that she had been having an affair with an associate at her place of employment for a few months and that she had terminated it.  She said that it had been a mistake, and rather than find out from someone else, she told me.  She said that she had hoped it would not affect our relationship, that it was the first and last time.

Detective Rogers:  When did you first learn of the affair?

Alistair Blair:  When she told me that night.

Detective Wilson:  You did not know that she was having an affair before then.  She told you, you said in an earlier statement, that you thought something was wrong.  People usually know when their spouses are sleeping around.

Detective Rogers:  A minute outside Detective.

Interview suspended.

Conversation between Alistair Blair and the Lawyer.

Alistair Blair:  Aren’t you supposed to stop that sort of intimidation?

Lawyer:  They can make accusations and inferences, but if they can not prove them, it’s just grist to the mill. If it is not true, then simply ignore them. 

Interview resumed.

Detective Rogers:  I apologise for my partner’s outburst, but to me, it seems a valid point.  Did she show any changes in behaviour for, say, a month before the event?

Alistair Blair:  She appeared to spend more time at work, and the excuses for doing so were odd, but she had a rather interesting, shall we say, occupation.

Detective Rogers:  Explain.

Alistair Blair:  She worked for an organisation that, in part, had made a decision to create a new branch that employed a group of private detectives as a trial investigation unit.  Madeleine had transferred to that division when it was set up as an administrator.  She had expressed to me more than once that she would like to train to become a private investigator.  I assumed she was secretly training to be one, not sneaking about having an affair.  In over 20 years, I never got the impression she was unsatisfied with me.

Detective Rogers:  How did you feel about discovering she was having an affair?

Alistair Blair:  I think I would have preferred if she were learning to become a private investigator rather than the alternative.  But I was willing to take her at her word that it was over.

Detective Rogers:  But it wasn’t over, was it?”

Alistair Blair:  Unfortunately, no.  I was disappointed, but I think I knew our time together was done.  She tried, but there was always going to be an invisible elephant in the room.  She told me the night before she died that she was leaving.

Detective Wilson:  Did it make you mad enough to want to kill her?

Silence.

Alistair Blair:  It depends on whether you believe my ego would have been mortally wounded by the notion that she could or would leave me.  It wasn’t, by the way.  I carried her bags to the car, and I wished her well and promised I might add that I wasn’t going to fight her in the divorce.  Too many of my friends have, and it’s brought them nothing.  You have proof of that with the CCTV footage.  Then I didn’t leave home.

Detective Wilson:  You expect us to believe you didn’t go anywhere from the moment you saw her leave until the moment we arrived to tell you the news of your wife’s murder?

Alistair Blair:  I can not make you believe anything that you don’t want to believe, but that’s the truth.

Detective Wilson:  You have no alibi.  Just your word that you were at your residence the whole time.  The thing is, we did a thorough analysis of the security system, and there is a path you can take that is not covered.  It’s well worn, and the last boots used on it were yours.

Alistair Blair:  No surprise there.  I do go out the back.

Detective Wilson:  When was the last time, after you saw your wife leave for the last time?

Alistair Blair: The morning you arrived to tell me the bad news.  To get some more wood for the fire.  We’ve already talked about this.  It rained earlier that morning, and it was muddy.

Detective Rogers: The thing is, we found footprints near the edge of the property, unaffected by the rain and very clear footprints that match your boots.  Going and coming back.

Alistair Blair:  That path does go to the shed where the dry wood is stored.  But you know that.

Detective Rogers:  I’m showing the suspect a photo of the man we believe killed Mrs Blair.  Would you say that’s a likeness of yourself, Mr Blair?

Silence.

Alistair Blair:  I would.  Except for one small detail.  This is a remarkably clear photo, and yes, it does.  But it is not me.  It is my brother, in fact, my twin brother.  When we were younger, it was impossible to tell us apart.  Then, about three years ago, he was in a car accident and got a severe head injury.  Left a nasty scar that plastic surgeons tried to hide, but the last operation didn’t quite go as planned.  If you look closely, you can see the start of the scar just before it recedes into the hairline.

Detective Wilson:  You gave a twin brother?  Why didn’t you tell us?

Alistair Blair:  Because I believed he was dead.  Now I understand what Madeleine was talking about.  She said she’d seen me out with another woman, and I kept telling her it wasn’t me.

Detective Rogers:  You actually have a twin brother?

Alistair Blair:  I didn’t want one, but yes.

Sound of phone vibrating.

Detective Rogers:  You are not supposed to have your cell phone on.

Alistair Blair:  Answer it.  If you want to talk to a ghost.

Ringing stops.

Inspector Rogers:  Who is this?

Voice:  Ask Alistair, or had he told you already?  I told you I’d get a payback, Ally.

Alistair Blair:  Give yourself up, Sylvester.

Voice:  Why.  The cops have got you on the hook for your wife’s murder, and I don’t exist.  I’m dead, remember.

Alistair Blair:  They’ve got you on CCTV.

Voice:  They’ve got you on CCTV, Ally.  Dressed up to look like me.  He did it.  If he couldn’t have her, no one could.  You’d better arrest him because he will be gone if you let him go.  Poof.

Laughter, then silence.

Detective Rogers:  What sort of elaborate hoax did you think you could try and get away with, Mr Blair?

…

©  Charles Heath 2025

Searching for locations: Hohensalzburg Castle, Salzburg, Austria

Hohensalzburg Castle sits atop the Festungsberg, accessed by a cable car.

The castle itself dominates the Salzburg skyline.

thecatle

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.

salzburg1

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.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 34

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

When I woke the next morning, it was to the sound of voices in the front of the house.  One of the voices was my mothers.  The other I had trouble placing, and I initially thought it was Benderby, calling in on the way to work.

When I threw on some clothes and came out, still a little bleary-eyed, I found it was the Sherriff.  It seemed, all of a sudden, my mother had become the most popular girl in town.

The thing is, I knew little of the history of what went on in my mother’s time in a city where she had been born, raised, and remained.  Married and divorced her high school sweetheart, there was talk of her being one of the popular girls at school, coincidentally the same school I went to, and there was evidence everywhere of her there.

I had not lived up to the family name.

Not that she expected me too, nor did she acknowledge those wild and hazy days where she had not been weighed down by a useless drunken husband, and struggle to pay the bills, hold onto the house, and both work and be a mother.  Life had not gone the way she had expected.

But curiously those times were also those of Sherriff Johnson, in the same grade, along with Benderby, a few years ahead, and both Boggs’ mother and father who were contemporaries along with others including Nadia and Vince’s mother.  They had been friends once until she married Cossatino and she ‘changed’.

Now they were an ocean apart on the social or any scale.

“Ah, Sam.  How are you now?”

“Better.  I’ll be more careful next time.  Got any leads on who it was?”

“Ghosts.  We have a few.  Some of them are Cossatino’s, the others Benderby.  Pity no one is willing to name names.”

“I didn’t see them, Sherriff.  They wore masks.”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything more about the Frobisher case?”

“You seem very interested in police matters Sam.”

“He was an antique dealer, according to the papers, and there’s a lot of talk going around about the infamous treasure maps and you can’t help but put two and two together.  Especially when Rico is related to Boggs whose father was the one responsible for creating those treasure maps.  You think Rico was trying to get some answers out of him?”

“Hardly the sort of thing that any sane man would kill for, don’t you think?”

I doubted he would tell me if he knew anything, but he had taken more interest in what I was saying.  It was stuff he’d know, or at least should know, since he had been the one to investigate Boggs’ father’s disappearance.

“Who said Rico was sane.  He was a terrifying sort of guy when he lost his temper which I’ve seen him do in front of Boggs.  But you have to agree, Rico had to know about Boggs’ father’s role in creating the maps for the Cossatino’s.”

The sheriff shook his head.

“Those are not the sort of rumors you want to be spreading around town, not unless you want an army of Cossatino’s layers on your doorstep.  They are just that, rumors.  Nothing was ever proven, and there was no evidence that the Cossatino’s had anything to do with Boggs’ father’s disappearance.”

“And Rico?”

“Rico is a harmless fool who talks big and that’s all.  He did his time for running a map scam that he claims was run by Boggs senior.  No one could prove it so he copped it sweet.  Now, he should know better.  But I will say this, Frobisher was not here to see Rico, but Benderby.  Benderby apparently had some old coins he’s scooped up off the ocean floor on a dive and thought they might be worth something.  Frobisher took them to be assessed and valued but got no further than Rico’s boat.  And the coins are now missing.”

“Sounds to me like there’s going to be another treasure hunt.”

There’d been another some years before fuelled by news an authentic treasure map had been found, showing the location of Captain Markaby’s plunder stashed away for another day somewhere on our shores.

It all ended with Boggs senior’s disappearance.

“It might, but we can only hope what happened to the father in the last one, doesn’t happen to the son in this one.  It’s why I called in.  Your mother tells me you have some influence on young Boggs.  Please tell him to stop stirring the pot with this notion he has the real map.  He doesn’t.  No one does.  The plain truth is, there isn’t one.  Someone needs to get through to him before something really bad happens to him.  He’s already had one close shave.  I’ll deal with the Cossatino’s and the Benderby’s.  I expect you to deal with Boggs.  Am I clear?”

Put to me in that authoritarian voice, it was very clear.  But to Boggs, it was going to be like a red rag to a bull.

I nodded and went back to my room.

How did I manage to get in the middle of this mess?

© Charles Heath 2019-2020

Inspiration, Maybe – Volume 2

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:

Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?

Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave.  Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.

But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision.  She needed the opportunity to spread her wings.  It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.

She was in a rut.  Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.

It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper.  I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.

And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere.  Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication.  It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.

So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock.  We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.

It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one.  Starting the following Monday.

Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.

I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.

What surprised her was my reaction.  None.

I simply asked where who, and when.

A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.

A week.

It was all the time I had left with her.

I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.

She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.

Is that all you want to know?

I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.

There’s not much to ask, I said.  You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place,  and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.

Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would.  And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.

One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.

So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.

Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology.  It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you.  I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.

Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.

I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me,  you can make cabinets anywhere.

I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job.  It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.

Then the only question left was, what do we do now?

Go shopping for suitcases.  Bags to pack, and places to go.

Getting on the roller coaster is easy.  On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top.  It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.

What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.

Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.

There was no question of going with her to New York.  Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back.  After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind.  New friends new life.

We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.

Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever.  I remember standing there, watching the taxi go.  It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.

So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.

Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.

People coming, people going.

Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was.  Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.

As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.

Perhaps it was.

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

Coming soon.  Find the above story and 49 others like it in:

Searching for locations: Salzburg, Austria

Along with My Fair Lady, another of my favorite musicals was Sound of Music and having seen it a number of times over the years, it had conjured up a number of images of Salzburg in my mind, and with them a desire to go there.  We had been to Salzburg once before, an overnight train stop between Vienna and Innsbruck, an afterthought, but what we saw then was reason enough to come back later and spend several days.

A pity then the day we arrived, and for much of our stay, it rained.  But, like hardened travelers, very little stops us from doing anything, and particularly sightseeing.

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza – The Pitter in a very well-appointed room.  Breakfast included, it was a great way to start the day.  The afternoon we arrived we went for a short walk to the old city passing through the Mirabelle gardens with the Pegasus Fountain, Rose Garden, and Dwarves Garden.  Later we discovered that the archway had been used in part of the filming of Sound of Music.

We took the Festungsbahn funicular railway up to the Fortress Hohensalzburg, dating back to 1077, and the largest fortress still standing in Europe.  We spent a pleasant afternoon wandering through the rooms and exhibits and then 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.

It led us to search for the product which we eventually found in a confectionary store, Holzemayr in the Alter Markt.  Not only sis we find the Gold liqueur there was also a dark chocolate variety as well.  We bought a whole box to bring back with us, as well as a number of other chocolates including Victor Schmidt Austrian Mozart Balls, a delicious chocolate and marzipan combination.

With another afternoon to spare we visited the Salzburg Residence which previously housed Salzburg’s ruling prince-archbishops.  We visited the reception rooms and living quarters, as well as the Gallery.  It is as ornate as any of the palaces in Austria, resplendent with furnishings and paintings.  After that, the visit to Mozart’s birthplace was something of an anticlimax.

But, what we were in Salzburg for, the Sound of Music tour, and the places we visited:

The Mirabelle gardens, where Maria sang Do Re Mi in front of the gates to the gardens.  We spent some time here before and after the tour, and also has a look inside the Mirabelle Palace, which is not open to the public as it is the city administrative offices.

Leopoldskron Palace where the boating scene was filmed as well as exteriors.  They were not allowed to film inside the place and were only allowed to use the exterior.  An interesting tidbit of information, one of the children nearly drowned.

Heilbrunn palace is now home to the gazebo where Rolf and Leisl sang their song, ‘16 going on 17’.  The interesting part of this was the fact the Gazebo used to film the scene was much larger than the actual Gazebo on display.

The walkway from the fortress back to the old city passes Nonnberg Abbey where Maria was a novice, and where the opening scenes were filmed.  A number of scenes were filmed here, including the song ‘Maria’ in the courtyard.  The tour only showed the exterior of the Abbey.

Salzburg lake district where panorama and picnic scenes were filmed.  Even on the dullest of days, during which throughout our tour in continually rained, the scenery was still magnificent.

Mondsee church, where the wedding scenes were filmed.  It was surprising just how small the church really is.  It was also a stop to have afternoon tea or some ‘famous’ apple strudel.

Needless to say, we watched Sound of Music straight after the tour and managed to pick out all of the places we had been to.  The only downside to the tour, singing along to the songs.  I’m sorry, but I do not sing, and some of those that were, well, I say no more.

‘The Devil You Don’t’ – A beta reader’s view

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

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

…

Writing a book in 365 days – 137/138

Days 137 and 138

A story written in the form of … a police interview

…

The preliminaries out of the way, I was sitting on one side of the desk with a lawyer, provided because I didn’t have one, and the two detectives on the other.

Good cop, bad cop.

The woman detective, obviously the lead, had dropped a thick folder on the desk to emphasise the weight of evidence that was against me.

Before that, there had been a meaningful glance between the two, one that said, ‘we’ve got him bang to rights’.

Detective Rogers:  Can you describe your relationship with the deceased, Madeleine Blair?

Alistair Blair:  Madeleine was my wife.  We have been married 22 years.  Last month, she advised me that she had been having an affair with an associate at her place of employment for a few months and that she had terminated it.  She said that it had been a mistake, and rather than find out from someone else, she told me.  She said that she had hoped it would not affect our relationship, that it was the first and last time.

Detective Rogers:  When did you first learn of the affair?

Alistair Blair:  When she told me that night.

Detective Wilson:  You did not know that she was having an affair before then.  She told you, you said in an earlier statement, that you thought something was wrong.  People usually know when their spouses are sleeping around.

Detective Rogers:  A minute outside Detective.

Interview suspended.

Conversation between Alistair Blair and the Lawyer.

Alistair Blair:  Aren’t you supposed to stop that sort of intimidation?

Lawyer:  They can make accusations and inferences, but if they can not prove them, it’s just grist to the mill. If it is not true, then simply ignore them. 

Interview resumed.

Detective Rogers:  I apologise for my partner’s outburst, but to me, it seems a valid point.  Did she show any changes in behaviour for, say, a month before the event?

Alistair Blair:  She appeared to spend more time at work, and the excuses for doing so were odd, but she had a rather interesting, shall we say, occupation.

Detective Rogers:  Explain.

Alistair Blair:  She worked for an organisation that, in part, had made a decision to create a new branch that employed a group of private detectives as a trial investigation unit.  Madeleine had transferred to that division when it was set up as an administrator.  She had expressed to me more than once that she would like to train to become a private investigator.  I assumed she was secretly training to be one, not sneaking about having an affair.  In over 20 years, I never got the impression she was unsatisfied with me.

Detective Rogers:  How did you feel about discovering she was having an affair?

Alistair Blair:  I think I would have preferred if she were learning to become a private investigator rather than the alternative.  But I was willing to take her at her word that it was over.

Detective Rogers:  But it wasn’t over, was it?”

Alistair Blair:  Unfortunately, no.  I was disappointed, but I think I knew our time together was done.  She tried, but there was always going to be an invisible elephant in the room.  She told me the night before she died that she was leaving.

Detective Wilson:  Did it make you mad enough to want to kill her?

Silence.

Alistair Blair:  It depends on whether you believe my ego would have been mortally wounded by the notion that she could or would leave me.  It wasn’t, by the way.  I carried her bags to the car, and I wished her well and promised I might add that I wasn’t going to fight her in the divorce.  Too many of my friends have, and it’s brought them nothing.  You have proof of that with the CCTV footage.  Then I didn’t leave home.

Detective Wilson:  You expect us to believe you didn’t go anywhere from the moment you saw her leave until the moment we arrived to tell you the news of your wife’s murder?

Alistair Blair:  I can not make you believe anything that you don’t want to believe, but that’s the truth.

Detective Wilson:  You have no alibi.  Just your word that you were at your residence the whole time.  The thing is, we did a thorough analysis of the security system, and there is a path you can take that is not covered.  It’s well worn, and the last boots used on it were yours.

Alistair Blair:  No surprise there.  I do go out the back.

Detective Wilson:  When was the last time, after you saw your wife leave for the last time?

Alistair Blair: The morning you arrived to tell me the bad news.  To get some more wood for the fire.  We’ve already talked about this.  It rained earlier that morning, and it was muddy.

Detective Rogers: The thing is, we found footprints near the edge of the property, unaffected by the rain and very clear footprints that match your boots.  Going and coming back.

Alistair Blair:  That path does go to the shed where the dry wood is stored.  But you know that.

Detective Rogers:  I’m showing the suspect a photo of the man we believe killed Mrs Blair.  Would you say that’s a likeness of yourself, Mr Blair?

Silence.

Alistair Blair:  I would.  Except for one small detail.  This is a remarkably clear photo, and yes, it does.  But it is not me.  It is my brother, in fact, my twin brother.  When we were younger, it was impossible to tell us apart.  Then, about three years ago, he was in a car accident and got a severe head injury.  Left a nasty scar that plastic surgeons tried to hide, but the last operation didn’t quite go as planned.  If you look closely, you can see the start of the scar just before it recedes into the hairline.

Detective Wilson:  You gave a twin brother?  Why didn’t you tell us?

Alistair Blair:  Because I believed he was dead.  Now I understand what Madeleine was talking about.  She said she’d seen me out with another woman, and I kept telling her it wasn’t me.

Detective Rogers:  You actually have a twin brother?

Alistair Blair:  I didn’t want one, but yes.

Sound of phone vibrating.

Detective Rogers:  You are not supposed to have your cell phone on.

Alistair Blair:  Answer it.  If you want to talk to a ghost.

Ringing stops.

Inspector Rogers:  Who is this?

Voice:  Ask Alistair, or had he told you already?  I told you I’d get a payback, Ally.

Alistair Blair:  Give yourself up, Sylvester.

Voice:  Why.  The cops have got you on the hook for your wife’s murder, and I don’t exist.  I’m dead, remember.

Alistair Blair:  They’ve got you on CCTV.

Voice:  They’ve got you on CCTV, Ally.  Dressed up to look like me.  He did it.  If he couldn’t have her, no one could.  You’d better arrest him because he will be gone if you let him go.  Poof.

Laughter, then silence.

Detective Rogers:  What sort of elaborate hoax did you think you could try and get away with, Mr Blair?

…

©  Charles Heath 2025

An excerpt from “Betrayal” – a work in progress

It could have been anywhere in the world, she thought, but it wasn’t.  It was in a city where if anything were to go wrong…

She sighed and came away from the window and looked around the room.  It was quite large and expensively furnished.  It was one of several she had been visiting in the last three months.

Quite elegant too, as the hotel had its origins dating back to before the revolution in 1917.  At least, currently, there would not be a team of KGB agents somewhere in the basement monitoring everything that happened in the room.

There was no such thing as the KGB anymore, though there was an FSB, but such organisations were of no interest to her.

She was here to meet with Vladimir.

She smiled to herself when she thought of him, such an interesting man whose command of English was as good as her command of Russian, though she had not told him of that ability.

All he knew of her was that she was American, worked in the Embassy as a clerk, nothing important, whose life both at work and at home was boring.  Not that she had blurted that out the first they met, or even the second.

That first time, at a function in the Embassy, was a chance meeting, a catching of his eye as he looked around the room, looking, as he had told her later, for someone who might not be as boring as the function itself.

It was a celebration, honouring one of the Embassy officials on his service in Moscow, and the fact he was returning home after 10 years.  She had been there once, and still hadn’t met all the staff.

They had talked, Vladimir knew a great deal about England, having been stationed there for a year or two, and had politely asked questions about where she lived, her family, and of course what her role was, all questions she fended off with an air of disinterested interest.

It fascinated him, as she knew it would, a sort of mental sparring as one would do with swords if this was a fencing match.

They had said they might or might not meet again when the party was over, but she suspected there would be another opportunity.  She knew the signs of a man who was interested in her, and Vladimir was interested.

The second time came in the form of an invitation to an art gallery, and a viewing of the works of a prominent Russian artist, an invitation she politely declined.  After all, invitations issued to Embassy staff held all sorts of connotations, or so she was told by the Security officer when she told him.

Then, it went quiet for a month.  There was a party at the American embassy and along with several other staff members, she was invited.  She had not expected to meet Vladimir, but it was a pleasant surprise when she saw him, on the other side of the room, talking to several military men.

A pleasant afternoon ensued.

And it was no surprise that they kept running into each other at the various events on the diplomatic schedule.

By the fifth meeting, they were like old friends.  She had broached the subject of being involved in a plutonic relationship with him with the head of security at the embassy.  Normally for a member of her rank, it would not be allowed, but in this instance it was.

She did not work in any sensitive areas, and, as the security officer had said, she might just happen upon something that might be useful.  In that regard, she was to keep her eyes and ears open and file a report each time she met him.

After that discussion, she got the impression her superiors considered Vladimir more than just a casual visitor on the diplomatic circuit.  She also formed the impression that he might consider her an ‘asset’, a word that had been used at the meeting with security and the ambassador.

It was where the word ‘spy’ popped into her head and sent a tingle down her spine.  She was not a spy, but the thought of it, well, it would be fascinating to see what happened.

A Russian friend.  That’s what she would call him.

And over time, that relationship blossomed, until, after a visit to the ballet, late and snowing, he invited her to his apartment not far from the ballet venue.  It was like treading on thin ice, but after champagne and an introduction to caviar, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl.

Even so, she had made him promise that he remain on his best behaviour.  It could have been very easy to fall under the spell of a perfect evening, but he promised, showed her to a separate bedroom, and after a brief kiss, their first, she did not see him until the next morning.

So, it began.

It was an interesting report she filed after that encounter, one where she had expected to be reprimanded.

She wasn’t.

It wasn’t until six weeks had passed when he asked her if she would like to take a trip to the country.  It would involve staying in a hotel, that they would have separate rooms.  When she reported the invitation, no objection was raised, only a caution; keep her wits about her.

Perhaps, she had thought, they were looking forward to a more extensive report.  After all, her reports on the places, and the people, and the conversations she overheard, were no doubt entertaining reading for some.

But this visit was where the nature of the relationship changed, and it was one that she did not immediately report.  She had realised at some point before the weekend away, that she had feelings for him, and it was not that he was pushing her in that direction or manipulating her in any way.

It was just one of those moments where, after a grand dinner, a lot of champagne, and delightful company, things happen.  Standing at the door to her room, a lingering kiss, not intentional on her part, and it just happened.

And for not one moment did she believe she had been compromised, but for some reason she had not reported that subtle change in the relationship to the powers that be, and so far, no one had any inkling.

She took off her coat and placed it carefully of the back of one of the ornate chairs in the room.  She stopped for a moment to look at a framed photograph on the wall, one representing Red Square.

Then, after a minute or two, she went to the mini bar and took out the bottle of champagne that had been left there for them, a treat arranged by Vladimir for each encounter.

There were two champagne flutes set aside on the bar, next to a bowl of fruit.  She picked up the apple and thought how Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden, and the temptation.

Later perhaps, after…

She smiled at the thought and put the apple back.

A glance at her watch told her it was time for his arrival.  It was if anything, the one trait she didn’t like, and that was his punctuality.  A glance at the clock on the room wall was a minute slow.

The doorbell to the room rang, right on the appointed time.

She put the bottle down and walked over to the door.

A smile on her face, she opened the door.

It was not Vladimir.  It was her worst nightmare.

…

© Charles Heath 2020