This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.

The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, 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.

Things are about to get complicated…

The Detective Inspector came back twenty minutes later.

“Latest news that I can tell you, is both the bodies belong to older people, we think the owner and one other.  They were not in the fire, but some distance from the house.”

“Murdered?”

“People don’t shoot themselves in the back.  They were trying to escape.”

The mother and a friend perhaps.  Anna or someone else cleaning up?  Was she getting ready to leave or gone already?

“No other body?”

“You think someone else was here?”

“Our agent, male, mid-thirties.  He was here the last time I saw him.”

“Not so far, but I’ll tell them to widen the search.”

Had O’Connell escaped, or was he with her, and he was not simply a means to an end?  The facts, as I knew them, didn’t seem to fit that scenario.

What worried me was that Dobbin hadn’t shown up yet.  Could it be he was finally one step behind?  I could only hope so.  I didn’t want to run into him if and when I found Anna.

If Anna and O’Connell were about to leave, it would be reasonable to assume they’d go home, pack then leave.  O’Connell’s flat at the same block where Josephine lived.

When we arrived at the front entrance to the block I had that sensation of being watched.  It was possible Dobbin had the place under surveillance and I cursed myself for not checking to see if there was a back entrance.

I tried to see where the surveillance would be, places I would hide, if not in plain sight, but nothing was readily apparent.  Of course, it could be the paranoia setting in.

If this was what the spy’s life was like, I was beginning to like it less and less.  There were so many lies told by so many people it was impossible to tell what the truth was any more.

But it beat being a clerk in an office any day of the week.

And I didn’t get to work alongside people like Jennifer either.

“You sure we can get into this place.  I’m starting to feel exposed out here.”  She was shivering, because of the cold.

The temperature had dropped considerably in the last half hour.

I entered the code and the door opened.  “Yes.”

I ushered her in and followed, taking a last look outside.  Yes.  Just caught a glimpse of a man on the corner almost out of sight.  He was on his phone, so that would mean we would have minutes rather than enough time to do anything before someone arrived.

Would it be Dobbin, Jan, Monica or Joanne?

The list of interested parties was getting longer.

We almost jogged up the three flights of stairs, then on the landing, I went first, and Jennifer stayed back, gun in hand, ready for anything.

At least I hoped she was.

We were taught how to pick almost any lock in the shortest [possible time.  Of course, in practice, when not under pressure, you could do it in seconds.

Now, because of the cold, my hands were slightly numb, and the pressure was mounting so things didn’t quite work the way they should, it took longer.  A minute whereas in practice, seconds.

I drew my gun and opened the door carefully.

Nothing but darkness.

We had prearranged that Jennifer would wait outside until I gave her an all-clear, or if I didn’t come back in two minutes she should come in after me.

I went in but left the door ajar.  Closed, fumbling to open it in a panic would get me killed.  Little details.

Silence.

There didn’t appear to be anyone in the flat.  Remembering the layout, I headed towards the passage leading to the bedroom, and about half way across the room, I kicked my foot into something.

A body?

I went back and switched on the light.

A body indeed.

O’Connell.

Dead, a bullet to the head.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2023

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!

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