Month: August 2025

Searching for locations: Oreti Village, New Zealand – No two sunrises are the same – 1

Oreti village, Pukawa Bay, North Island, New Zealand

On the southern tip of Lake Taupo

Our first morning there, a Saturday.  Winter.  Cold.  And a beautiful sunrise.

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This was taken from the balcony, overlooking the lake.

The sun is just creeping up over the horizon

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It gradually gets lighter, and then the sun breaks free of the low cloud

It lights up the balcony

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And the trees just beyond, a cascade of colorful ferns.

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It looks like its going to be a fine day, our first for this trip, and we will be heading to the mountains to see snow, for the first time for two of our granddaughters.

Whatever happened to free websites?

There’s nothing more certain than a favourite website you go to and use often, sooner or later starts charging a subscription ‘fee’.  I guess nothing in this life is free, they have to raise advertising to make it so, but…

The alternatives that charge do not give you the facilities you need unless you pay an exorbitant monthly or yearly charge.  And, if you accept the minimum charge, you get nothing other than a visual display of your books, and that’s about it.

And what author starting out can afford the $200 a month for the premium site to get all the bells and whistles, which coincidentally is the stuff the author needs just to sell.

Anyway…

I remember when the NANOWRIMO site had been updated, and the changes looked good.  At that moment the site was free, but you do get a lot of emails and requests to purchase products, which I think is a reasonable way to raise money for keeping the site free.

But, how long is this going to last before a ‘fee’ is introduced, and then a ‘fee’ to enter your book?

It’s the airline principle, it was a flat charge for the ticket, now you pay for this tax, that tax, fuel tax, baggage tax, tax on the tax, and then if that’s not enough, a charge for the food and water.  Soon it will be a charge for toilets, and then the air you breathe.

It’s inevitable, and once these charges start they don’t stop and only get higher with each passing year.

A lot of the sites I use are free.  Some have since started to charge and have put up a firewall to stop you from getting any free information.

I’m not a rich author, so sadly I have to discontinue using these sites.

Perhaps the problem is that the owner of the site has come up with a good idea, thousands of people sign up, and suddenly a small website becomes a big one, and hosting costs suddenly go through the roof.

Like airlines, it’s the user that pays.

Often I see or get an email from, various people with what looks to be a useful site.  Some start out by giving you a month free to have a look and use the facilities.  In some cases they are quite good, in others, well, there are a dozen others like it that are still free.

But, after a month, you have to pay.  What gets me with some of them, they are asking somewhere between 50 and 200 US dollars a month, you heard that right, a month, which you can basically double that for me after the exchange rate and a dozen bank fees.

Sometimes there are different levels, but basically, if you look at the fine print, the lowest level set, which gives you very little, is set low deliberately.  Say it’s 10 dollars a month.  It’s no different to the free version except they probably don’t have annoying ads and advertise, what for many, is non-existent 24/7 help (via an email, no guarantee they look at it more than once a week, if at all).  Money for jam for the site owner, as the saying goes.

Why can’t there be a more reasonable option?

But I get it.  Everyone wants to get rich quick, it’s an objective that’s built into all of us, but it seems I missed the inoculation given the day after you’re born.

I also get it that these people worked hard on coming up with the websites and facilities, and they deserve a reward for that hard work, but to me it would make more sense if they sold the service for 10 dollars or even 20 dollars a month if the systems were available and they worked.  And flowing from that wouldn’t 20,000 sales at 20 dollars, be better than 2000 at a 100 dollars?

The same seems to go for the so-called decent website hosts, like WordPress, Wix and GoDaddy.  The free option is good but just for show and tell, but I’m sure they deliberately nobble it so it’s slow and kludgy just the sort of attributes that turn potential visitors off.

I thought if I paid a monthly charge for Wix, and reading the inclusions for what my site could do over the free one was very persuasive, so I signed up.  The site was no better than it was before and half the options that were on the list weren’t available, and still aren’t.  But I suspect if I paid them 100 plus dollars a month or more for their premium package I’d get it.

But, to pay for it I would have to be selling a million books a month, and I doubt, no matter how good my web site is, it wouldn’t attract that kind of business.

Not one of the basic packages, read affordable for me, has the ability to allow downloads after sales.  You can’t even have a sales page where you can actually sell books to people like you were a bookshop.  That’s in all of the premium packages, so they say, and that costs far too much.

GoDaddy was by far the worst, telling me if I signed up for the 60-dollar-a-month package I could have sales and downloads.  I tried to add it to the web page, which I might add was as difficult to create as all hell, and when it didn’t work, rang up to ask why I couldn’t have downloading after sales and was met with silence.

No, that’s not available at the moment, I was told, and not likely in the future.  What am I paying all this money for?  I don’t have a GoDaddy site any more.  I had a Wix site that I paid for, and I don’t have that any more.  They don’t offer anything useful, and they too, make it virtually impossible to create a useful site, so it sits out there in the ether with disappointment written all over it.

Perhaps others have had better luck, or things have changed in the last few years but I won’t be going back.

Maybe one day someone might understand the needs of the majority who can afford to pay exorbitant monthly charges but just not as much as we are expected to, for very little in return.

What’s that saying, hope springs eternal.

PS Sorry about the rant!

Coming soon – “Strangers We’ve Become”, the sequel to “What Sets Us Apart”

Stranger’s We’ve Become, a sequel to What Sets Us Apart.

The blurb:

Is she or isn’t she, that is the question!

Susan has returned to David, but he is having difficulty dealing with the changes. Her time in captivity has changed her markedly, so much so that David decides to give her some time and space to re-adjust back into normal life.

But doubts about whether he chose the real Susan remain.

In the meantime, David has to deal with Susan’s new security chief, the discovery of her rebuilding a palace in Russia, evidence of an affair, and several attempts on his life. And, once again, David is drawn into another of Predergast’s games, one that could ultimately prove fatal.

From being reunited with the enigmatic Alisha, a strange visit to Susan’s country estate, to Russia and back, to a rescue mission in Nigeria, David soon discovers those whom he thought he could trust each has their own agenda, one that apparently doesn’t include him.

The Cover:

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Coming soon

 

Searching for locations: Turangi, New Zealand, it’s an interesting town

Located at the bottom of Lake Taupo, in New Zealand, staying here would make more sense if you were here for the fishing, and, well, the skiing or the hiking, or just a relaxing half hour in the thermal pools.

I saw a sign somewhere that said that Taurangi was New Zealand’s premier fishing spot. I might have got the wrong, but it seems to me they’re right. On the other side of town, heading towards Taupo, there’s a lodge that puts up fly fishermen, and where you can see a number of them in an adjacent river trying their luck.

It’s what I would be doing if I had the patience.

But Taurangi is a rather central place to stay, located at the southernmost point of the lake. From there it is not far from the snowfields of Whakapapa and Turoa. Equally, at different times of the year, those ski fields become walking or hiking tracks, and the opportunity to look into a dormant volcano, Ruapehu.

It is basically surrounded by hills and mountains on three sides and a lake on the other. Most mornings, and certainly everyone is different, there is a remarkable sunrise, particularly from where we were staying on the lake, where it could be cloudy, clear, or just cold and refreshing, with a kaleidoscope of colors from the rising sun.

I don’t think I’ve been there to see two days the same.

However, Taurangi, on most days we’ve visited, is even more desolate than Taupo, both on the main street and the central mall. The same couldn’t be said for the precinct where New World, the local supermarket, a Z petrol station can be found. There it is somewhat more lively. The fact there’s a few more shops and a restaurant might help traffic flow.

There is also a mini golf course, and in the middle of winter, it is a bleak place to be, especially in the threatening rain, and the wind. It had also seen better days and in parts, in need of a spruce up, but it’s winter, and there are no crowds, so I guess it will wait till the Spring.

In the mall, there’s the expected bank, newsagent, gift shop and post office combined, and a number of other gift shops/galleries. But the best place is the café which I’ve never seen empty and has an extended range of pies pastries and cakes, along with the fast food staples of chips and chicken.
Oh, and you can also get a decent cup of coffee there.

There are two other coffee shops but we found this one the first time we came, we were given a warm welcome and assistance, and have never thought to go anywhere else, despite two known change of owners.

But despite all these reasons why someone might want to stay there, we don’t.

We have a timeshare, and there’s a timeshare in Pukaki called Oreti Village. That’s where we stay.

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

The novel ‘Echoes from the past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The birthday’.

My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.

Thus the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.

So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.

So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.

I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.

And like all re-writes, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.

There was motivation.  I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample.  I was going to give them the re-worked short story.  Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’

Originally it was not set anywhere in particular.

But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself.  We were there for New Years, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.

One evening we were out late, and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow, it was cold and wet, and there were apartment buildings shimmering in the street light, and I thought, this is the place where my main character will live.

It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected.  I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.

I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.

Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller center is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.

The original main character was a shy and man of few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party.  I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble.  No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.

Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule, and begins a relationship?

But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul, as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

newechocover5rs

Writing a book in 365 days – 207/208

Days 207 and 208

Writing exercise – A locked room mystery

…

Don’t you just love a mystery?

I don’t, but not one that is impossible to solve. 

Impossible?

I was told that nothing is impossible, and there is always a logical answer to every problem.

I was also told there will always be people who will maintain that the impossible is because of the unexplainable, and we had to look more closely at things that were not of this world.

Those people, the logical people, call crackpots or charlatans. 

There is the unexplainable, but in the end, when we look at all of the facts surrounding a situation, we always find an answer.

But…

We do have unsolvable crimes committed by real people who got away with it.  We do not like to think there is such a thing as the perfect crime.  It is preferable to believe the criminal was very lucky

The crime I was called to, on a dark day and in a sinister house, had all the hallmarks of a perfect crime:  a dead body in a locked room that had only one exit, the door, locked from the inside.

At least, that was the first report I was given by my partner Detective Sargeant Wilson, newly promoted to the detective branch, enthusiastic, and it came out in an explosion of words.

At least she had arrived properly and hadn’t blundered around the crime scene like my last partner had when he first started.

Downstairs in the living room, occupying six of the seven lounge chairs set around the fire, warming those within a range of about twenty feet. Beyond that, there was a chill in the air, not all from the cold.

Outside, a shard of bright light was followed by a crack of rolling thunder, after which the rain became torrential.  I half expected the roof to be leaking.

I was introduced to the six, each including the victim part of a group who paid a small fortune to stay the night in a “genuine” haunted house.  The group were all from the same family: the grandfather, Anton Giles; the father, William Giles; his third wife, Lucy; William’s eldest son, David; his eldest daughter, Winnie; Oliver, and Bertie.

The family get-together was the grandfather’s idea.  William Giles’ current wife was younger than all his children, and the animosity from those children could be felt in the room.  It was obvious the grandfather had a reason, and looking around at the group, finding out what that was would be the same as extracting teeth.

It was also clear, from the venue’s management, of which the manager and two assistants were present, that the murder, mock or otherwise, was not part of the “entertainment.”

An inspection of the room, opened with a spare key by the manager when a preliminary search for Anton had failed to locate him, showed the other key was in the room; then the door was locked from the inside, the victim had been shot at point-blank range by someone he knew because there were no defensive wounds.  The gun was next to the key, and Anton’s watch and wallet were missing, suggesting robbery with violence.

There were no secret doorways or entrances to the room other than the normal door.  The cupboard, full of clothes, didn’t have a secret back.  There was no trapdoor under the carpet, and there was no vent in the walls or roof big enough to take an escapee.

There were no guests or staff on the site or in the house; the caterers had left after dinner, and would not be back until morning, if the rain stopped, because my car was the last to get over the causeway.  If it rained much more, we would be lucky to leave in the morning.  I arrived alone, and my partner arrived a half hour earlier with three constables, one each at the exits.

No one was leaving.

One of the six, or one of the three staff members, could be the murderer.

When I came into the room,  Wilson was standing by the fire, notebook at the ready. The six were seated by the fire, the three staff in the background.  It was a large room, and it took a few seconds to reach the fireplace and get a first look at the family, as Wilson introduced them.

When that was done, I was about to speak when William Giles’ eldest son, David, said, pointing at his father’s latest wife, Lucy, “She did it.”

William glared at the son and said, “Don’t start this again.  It’s clear you don’t like her, but she is not a murderer.  You obviously, on the other hand, must have after he wrote you out of the will.”

“I did nothing of the sort.  And we have only your word on that; he never said he had changed his will.  Unless, of course, you have a newer will, but it would have to be a fake.  He said he was not leaving anything to a paedophile.”

A clear reference to the father marrying a young girl.  She didn’t look very old, but a quick ID check Wilson had called for would soon sort that out.  Appearances were always deceptive.

“Let’s not forget how mortgaged to the hilt you are, Davey.  Hopeless with money, always asking Gramps to bail you out.  I heard home tell you there was no more in that well.  No wonder you killed him.  You got your own version of the will?”

All this talk of a will.  Sometimes, it was useful to let the suspects banter.

But then, time for a question.  “Was this gathering for another reason, other than bonding?”

Oliver snorted.  “Bonding.  Every time we get together, it’s a surprise one of us isn’t murdered, and now it’s happened.  Greed, that’s what this family thrives on.  We were here for an important announcement, and I’m guessing Anton was going to tell us if he was leaving us anything.  Worth billions, he was.  If you are looking for a motive detective, there it is.”

Whilst Wilson hadn’t contaminated the crime scene, the rest of the family had, once the door had been opened, and everyone would have fingerprints all over the room, and Winnie had fainted on seeing the body.  It was, Wilson said, a dog’s breakfast.

It was a family accurate assessment.  And worse, we could not get forensics in until the flooding subsided.

I noticed that Wilson collected all paperwork from the grandfather’s room, locked with the key in his pocket, odd because of the other missing items, and then after a quick search of the other rooms, but no will or anything to do with inheritances was found.

Equally odd, even though Wilson at the time was unaware of what she was looking for.  Clearly, the old man had brought something with him, and the murderer may have taken it.

A call to the old man’s lawyer was next on the list.  A change in the will would make things interesting.

“I did not kill Anton.  He didn’t like me, true, but none of you do either, and none of you are dead if that’s your criterion.  The rest of you children, well, I’d be disgusted to call you my own.”

It sounded weird to hear from a girl younger than all of them, sounding more mature than her years.  It’s probably not.  They all looked and sounded like they had a privileged upbringing.

I had wealthy parents and a boarding school education, but my parents made me work, starting at the bottom and earning my keep and respect the hard way.  There was no free ride for any of us in our family.  Whatever bias I might have had was left at the door.

“If this were a gathering to discuss inheritance, where are your grandfather’s papers?  They were not in his room and were not stored in a house safety deposit box with other valuables, as management requested.”

I looked at each of the six faces, and the only one that didn’t bear intense scrutiny was Lucy.  It might be that she had a guilty conscience or just that she squirmed under intense observation.

Or it was an indicator.

Wilson just returned and motioned for me to join her outside.

She handed me a carefully folded document that had ‘Last Will and Testament of Anton Giles’ dated two days before.  I unfolded the pages and went to the last.  It was unsigned.

A quick scan showed it was short and to the point.  None of the family was going to inherit.  Bottom line, there was nothing to inherit, the total sum up for grabs, a little more than ten thousand pounds.

“Where did you find it?”

“In Lucy’s underwear drawer.”

I sighed.  “We’re not going to get one grain of truth out of any of them.  How long between the murder and your arrival?”

“About three hours.”

“Long enough for all of them to search the house, his room, find out the truth, kill him, and get their stories straight.”

“Even the house staff?”

“All of them.”

“Do you think it was Lucy?”

“Because of this?”  I held up the will.  “No.  I bet there are about twenty of them hidden around this place, and not one is the real will.  The old man was playing with them, failing to realise how it would affect one of them.  One of them may have the real will.”

“How will we know?”

Uf or when the next person dies.”

I might not have come to that conclusion if we had not found the fake will.  This was more than a family bonding. This was a weekend deliberately designed to torment his child and grandchildren before delivering the bad news.

I should not have answered the Superintendent’s call. 

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

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

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

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2024

In a word: state

I think it’s stating the obvious, we are expressing something definitively and clearly.  I stated my case, but it was not good enough to save me from the hangman’s noose.

Or, they stated their case, but with an unforgiving government, it didn’t save them from being deported.

Or maybe not, maybe a state is a territory or nation under one government, though sometimes we might think that governance is not all that great

But it could also mean a subdivision within a single country, like the 52 states of the US, and the 5 states in Australia

And woe betide you if you become a state-less person, it means living in the international transit lounge for the rest of your life.

Or it might be how I feel at the time, you know, I’m not in a fit state of mind to be writing this post, or that I might be agitated, with someone else saying ‘he’s in a state’, or having said something quite odd, it might be said that my state of mind is clouded by grief.

If I was an important person, such as a king or prince, and had the unfortunate luck of dying, I could lie in state, though I could never understand why you’d want to hang around after you died.

 

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters Harry and Alison there are other issues driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact he has a beautiful and desirable wife, and his belief she is the object of other men’s desires, and one in particular, his immediate superior.

Between observation, the less than honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, nothing is ever what it seems.

…

Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

A long short story that can’t be tamed – I never wanted to be an eyewitness – 4

Four

It was like a Hollywood script.

It was a friend of a friend of a friend, more an acquaintance really, that came up with a plan.  A plan that, if I’d been given a million years to think up, still wouldn’t

But in an odd way, I’d seen it all before.

I was dressed in a prison guard’s uniform, in a room with two others similarly dressed, and a woman who looked definitely in charge.  It was a detail, part of a plan to remove Latanzio from his prison cell at the police station where he was being held for the duration of the arraignment.

My disappearance, and that of Amy, the leader of my security detail, had sent the police into a frenzy particularly when after sifting through the human wreckage of the hotel, they found five dead police officers, and nine unnamed gunmen, all without any identification.

The police were not naming names, but the media were.  A blatant act of attempting to silence a witness and the most positive indication yet that Latanzio was guilty.

But the problem was, there was no evidence the witness was dead, and this being the case, the trial was put on hold until the witness was found, dead or alive.  The only lead they had was a man and a woman matching our description who had been seen landing in and leaving a helicopter in a carpark in lower Manhattan.  No one knew where they went after that.

It was now a day and a half after the event, and rumours were rife as to where the witness was, and who was to blame for the attack on the hotel.  Latanzio’s brother was quick to blame a rival family with whom they were locked in a territorial battle.  The rival family blamed the [name] family, and neither was backing down.

But for the innocent bystanders, there were two takes on these events, the first, a smiling [name] being escorted out of the court, and when a voice cries out ‘did you have the witness killed?’ he replied, ‘What witness?’.  The other, because of the seriousness of the situation, the police decided to move him from his current holding facility to a more fortified jail on fears that members of his organization, or their rivals, might stage a similar shootout attempting to break him out.

They were, of course, right, but it wasn’t going to be his organization or any other for that matter, nor was it going to be a break-in.

We just got the call to say that the real transfer crew was going to be delayed and that the call had not reached the police station but was intercepted by another friend of a friend.

Our mission was a go.

We walked out of the room and into a large warehouse where there were four motorcycle police and a van, the van an exact replica of that to be sent to transfer the prisoner from the police station to a real jail.  Everything looked very, very real.  We had all studied actual tapes of prisoner transfers, enough to know precisely how to act, remarkable given the time we’d been given.

It was a tense moment, there in the warehouse.  Then Amy said, “Mount up.  Time to go.  I’ll see you back here soon.”

There were more rooms, several set up for what was to come.  We had several guests, waiting in other rooms, waiting to be reunited with [name] knowing only that he was being rescued and they would be leaving for a non-extradition country.  It had been easy.  The arrogance had been staggering.

I was on autopilot, having snapped into a mode where at times I felt like I was looking down at myself.  I think it was the same for the others, having studied those tapes so many times, we became them.

The transfer went smoothly, no one suspecting we were not the real crew.

It was curious to observe [name] close up and feel the confidence, the arrogance of the man.  He was in no way intimidated by the fact he was being transferred, in fact, if I was not mistaken, he looked as though he knew he was being broken out.

And for a moment when he looked me directly in the face, I thought he might recognize me, but he didn’t.

The station police escorted him to the back of the van, we escorted him into the van, chained him up, and the doors closed, just as I heard, “He’s your problem now.” 

They would have to be relieved that he was no longer on their premises, and they would not have to fend off any attack.  But from the expression on the officer in charge, I got the distinct impression we would not make our destination, at least, not with the prisoner.

However, that had been accounted for in the master plan.

It was why the warehouse we were going to use as the ‘studio’ was not far away.

I was surprised that they had found a place that was part of a rabbit warren of interconnected buildings at the basement level and that it had two entrances, one at the front, and one at the back so it would appear the prison van was taking a shortcut.

The plan was to stop, briefly in the building, offload the prisoner, and then drive on, heading for the jail.  In that part of the city, there was no easy place to attack the van, that would, if it happened, come several miles from the building.

There were tracking devices on the van so anyone tracking would note the minor change to the route, and think it was an avoidance tactic.

Now, all we had to do was execute the plan, and hope anyone tracking us wouldn’t notice the subterfuge.

…

© Charles Heath 2024