Can you find the words to describe what you think fiction means to you? Or even what it is for a particular novel?
One opinion, Russian, is that it’s aesthetic bliss. To me, most works by Russian writers tend to go on and on and on. Fyodor Dostoevsky is a case in point. I grant you that if you can sit through the novel, which is very good, your opinion might be a little different. Not so much Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and some of his works.
In my younger days of reading when a large book never fazed me, a thousand plus pages (And Quietly Flows The Don – War and Peace) to a few hundred (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) to mid-range five hundred pages (Doctor Zhivago) they all could tend to be tedious, though I have to say Doctor Zhivago as a book was fascinating, the film by David Lean, captivating, and the stage play, boring beyond words.
That is to say once you for past the Russians, there were British authors like Charles Dickens who could get up to that magic number of pages, and whose works could reach that lofty thousand. They were however perhaps more interesting, and most having been made into mini series for television, far more interesting as a spectacle than in reading the book.
And, of course, there is Jane Austen. Need I say more.
But there are times when you pick up a book and start reading the first page, and then stop. It tells a budding author that on the one hand it’s not going to be your genre, and on the other, that the opinion of the book is in the eye of the beholder.
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.
I had one myself once, whether it was a peek into my future, or whether it was just playing out a scene for one of my stories, it was rather intense.
That variation of the word vision is one that uses one’s imagination. I do it quite a lot, and I call it the cinema of my dreams.
But…
Vision, in the simplest sense of the word, is sight, what you see.
People can try to make it better, like movie studios, who have called it rather interesting titles such as VistaVision or Panavision, either of which sounds quite remarkable, and it may have been back in the day, but it’s probably quite ordinary these days.
A vision, in another sense, might be something like a dream as mentioned before, which might happen when we are asleep, but if awake, it might be because we are very bored with our job and we’re imagining what it would be like at Santorini or the Bahamas, or anywhere but where you are now.
It might also describe our particular slant on what else we would like to happen, whether at work or somewhere else, but it’s usually confined to our closest circle of friends. Bosses never invite nor want to hear plebs ideas of improving their lot.
Hence, I have a vision…
But no one will listen. Perhaps if I was Martin Luther King, things might be different.
Then, at the end of it all…
There are visions and then there are visions, like seeing something that no one else can see, whether driven by hallucinogenic drugs or magic mushrooms, or you just happened to be there to see what no one else could.
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.
What was it that found me finding ways to run into a woman that I really didn’t want to run into or see again? And yet, it seemed everything I did, since Rodby reappeared in my life, revolved around her.
And it crossed my mind, while I was trying to find where she was living in London, that having a mother like Vittoria might have contributed to her ‘downfall’. The biography of Vittoria wasn’t that of a society angel, more the pretender who was little more than a petty criminal worming her way into a field of rich pickings.
She’d been in service in the count’s residence, and as much as I hoped wasn’t a continuation of the old practice of masters having their way with their employees, or servants back in the old days, he might have forced himself on her, but I suspect it was the other way around.
If she was a grifter then she would have made him aware of the girl he sired, and if he was good about it, would have adequately compensated her, if only to keep it quiet. Very adequately and for a long time until he died. I suspect the countess didn’t know, and like most women in those sorts of marriages, probably didn’t want to know.
The reason why there was no surveillance in Juliet was because no one had found a starting reference point. In other words, no one knew where she was. And Cecilia was right, London was a big place if I wanted to pound the pavement looking for her.
The file said an internet search on her was performed, but the only information relevant to her they found was her fall from grace and very little beyond that date range. It seemed Juliet Ambrose only existed for three years before I first met her.
That meant she had been someone else before that, most likely Juliet, the name of her mother at the time. That, of course, suggested one of two eventualities, that she wanted to escape her mother, or the Count’s family because of her mother, and changed her own name, or her mother had informed on some fellow criminals to leverage a free ticket and going into a form of witness protection.
Knowing Juliet as I did, the former was more likely than the latter.
Now there was a new possibility that wasn’t a scenario in the file. Had the count told anyone about the daughter, and the mother’s no doubt incessant demands? That could be a reason for a hitman to remove the problem or problems.
I looked at the biography for Vittoria Romano again and noted she had a number of aka’s, Gallo, Rossi, and her birth name Moretti.
A quick search told me the Italian version of Juliet was Giulietta, so I put Giulietta Moretti into the search engine and waited all of 35 nanoseconds to get the obligatory 20,000,000 hits. Popular girl.
But…
There on page three of endless pages on a fading Italian Rock and Roll singer, there was a picture, albeit of Juliet in her younger days, taken on the grounds of a mansion in Sorrento. The Count had a place in Sorrento, and I looked it up in the list provided.
Yes. It still belonged to the family. I tucked that away in the mental notes stored at the back of my mind. It would be worth a visit when I went looking for the Countess.
A further search through 32 useless pages of items found another.
Giulietta Moretti published a paper in a medical journal about a year ago on the effects on the human body caused by car crashes, and it was getting recognition by her peers. So much so, that she had been asked by a group of surgeons to talk about it at a conference in Blackpool.
The day after tomorrow.
And…
It had an address where she worked in London, a morgue in one of the larger hospitals. I now had a starting point.
My curiosity then switched to Alessandro.
I wondered if he knew the background of Vittoria. Surely his brother would have alerted him to the trouble she was causing him. Or, and this was a huge leap, had the Count not told anyone about her, thinking he had alone contained the problem.
If Alessandro knew then was he in cahoots with Vittoria in removing the Countess from the playing field.
What bothered me was that I saw Alessandro at the hotel at the same time as the countess, and I had no doubt he was the problem she needed to attend to. How had he managed to spirit her away, if he did? If not, why would she sneak out of the hotel and disappear?
Was it something to do with that meeting between her and Alessandro? All good questions for a Detective Inspector.
It was particularly troublesome that our surveillance on the main players managed to lose two of them for a lengthy period. No one had thought to stay in the hotel and were relying on the hotel’s own CCTV. That, of course, showed nothing other than the countess and Alessandro arriving, and nothing after that.
There were a dozen CCTV camera feeds and I had them sent to my phone and that afternoon went through all of them, looking for anomalies, people ridiculously disguised, large crates or cases that could hide bodies, anything to show she had left, albeit disguised.
What she would want to be seen was anyone’s guess, but it may have had something to do with Alessandro. What bothered me, though, was a report from the people who installed the CCTV system at the hotel. It was interesting that it found its way to the Department, but not as interesting as the fact the number installed, and locations, didn’t match the number that had returned video for the time. A second sheet noted that seven of the CCTV cameras were not in operation at the time, with no reason given.
As for Alessandro, he and I were going to have a talk sooner rather than later, and I was going to use my Detective Inspector warrant card for the second time.
Long ago, when developing guises, I got the chance to follow around a real detective inspector and learned the ropes. He was a good detective and a better teacher. It was my first item on the list for the next morning.
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 ordered breakfast to be brought to my room, then sat back and read the paper, culminating in a second cup of coffee and a half-hearted attempt at the crossword.
My mind was not sufficiently clear of all the implications of what I’d seen last night, and before that.
The first task was to go back to the office and get onto the computer to track down the address the car was registered to. It was not the flat. My guess that it was a sort of safe house. He may not have had reservations about Jan, or who she worked for, not until he became the prey.
Then it occurred to me that if Jan didn’t know where the USB was, then she had to realize he might have rumbled her perfidy. Maybe he was not as easily fooled as I first thought.
But it didn’t explain why Nobbin was in the dark over the USB’s whereabouts, as he had told me to give Nobbin a message. Perhaps there’s been a secret message behind that message.
Now, my mind was spinning out of control.
Like O’Connell/Quinley, and in accordance with more lessons on tradecraft, I too, had what I would like to have called a safe house, a small flat on the outskirts of Wimbledon.
I also had an off-site parking space that was a reasonable distance from the flat, so that if I was being hunted, the car would not lead them to my hiding spot.
There I had a shower, changed, and headed for the underground.
I took the train to Charing Cross, getting there around nine, to take the short walk to the hotel.
Not expecting to find her in the room, I used my key to let myself in.
I was wrong.
She was in bed, still asleep. Or was until I let the door slam shut.
She didn’t exactly come out from under the covers with a gun pointing at me, but I would be willing to be there was one under her pillow and her hand was on it.
“Sam?” It was uttered sleepily, the sort that would normally send a shiver down my spine. Not now.
“I hope you’re not intending to shoot me?”
“No.”
I could see her hand moving slowly withdrawing, and then watched her sit up and swing her legs over the side.
Still in basic clothes. Obviously, no time to go and get some pyjamas then.
“What happened to you?”
“Got side-tracked on what I thought might be a lead, and it wasn’t. Just a waste of time and a long night. Thought I’d come here and get some shuteye. Perhaps not. Are you going to order breakfast?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll have a pot of coffee and a paper, preferably one with a crossword.”
She rang down a breakfast order, full English, then said she was having a quick shower. I heard the water running and wondered if she was giving Severin a short report. Old trick, running water hides conversations.
Breakfast arrived at the same time as she came out of the bathroom, hair up in a towel, and in one of the hotel dressing gowns. My imagination got a five-second workout before I grabbed the paper and the coffee and sat in the corner.
She could have the desk.
“Do we know where Maury is?” I asked suddenly.
“Who?”
She hesitated before answering, a moment to give herself time to process the question, and if there were any hidden meanings.
“You know? You dropped a tracker on him.”
“Oh, him. He must have found and dumped it. It was pinging about 100 yards from the flat.”
Of course. There probably wasn’t one in the first place.
“Pity. I’d like to turn up unannounced, give him a bit of a scare.”
I went back to the crossword, keeping an eye on her, noticing every now and then giving me a sideways glance.
“Did you go anywhere after the flat?” Again sudden, out of left field.
“No. Just come straight back here. Do you want to keep the room for a few days? See what happens.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Look, I have to run an errand this morning, unfortunately, it’s not a work matter, so I’ll give you a call on my way back. You must want to talk to your people and let them know what’s happening if you haven’t already.”
I finished the coffee, folded the paper, and stood.
“At the very least,” I added, “I have to go back into the office and report to Nobbin. I’m sure he’ll be impressed with the lack of progress.”
“Won’t you run into that other fellow, what’s his name?”
“Severin?”
“Him, yes.”
“I don’t think so. His name will probably be very high on the ‘we’d like to talk to you’ list if he shows his face. Anyway, I’ve got your number.”
I deliberately waved the phone where she could see it, and the implication she could probably use it to track my movements. That might have been the case if there was a sim card in it, and it was similar to the phone she last saw me with.
It was not.
Where I was going, no one was going to follow me or find me.
Huka Falls is located in the Wairakei Tourist Park about five minutes north of Taupo on the north island of New Zealand.
The Waikato River heading towards the gorge
The water heading down the gorge, gathering pace
until it crashes over the top of the waterfall at the rate of about 220,000 liters per second. It also makes a very loud noise, so that when you are close to it, hearing anything but the falls is impossible.
So, today’s seeming straightforward news event that didn’t make the front page, nor the next three, is about the death of a man and a woman who had just begun dating, their bodies being found in an ordinary suburban house.
The police received a call regarding their welfare and upon visiting the house, found the man and woman lying side by side on the floor, deceased.
The police were not treating the deaths as suspicious.
So …
What if …
The first thing that leaps off the page is the fact the police are not treating the deaths as suspicious.
That’s exactly the moment that investigators should be looking at the situation a little more closely because, in our scenario, the scene has a staged look about it, and on the surface, it appears to be a simple case of a dual drug overdose.
Firstly, the friends of the two were not aware they were ‘doing drugs’ and if they were, lying on the floor at home was the last place it would happen.
No drugs were found in the house, and the sniffer dogs could find no trace of any except on the bodies.
Secondly, in the upstairs office, a laptop computer was missing, only the cable and mouse were still sitting on the table. Curiously both their cell phones were missing, but nothing else. Between them, they had about 500 pounds, which meant, if there was foul play, the perpetrator had very specific items to take.
Nothing else was disturbed.
Thirdly, a quick examination of the bodies showed the woman had bruising to her neck, a sign that someone had held her in a choke hold perhaps, but the coroner would have a closer look.
Fourthly, a simple check on the names comes back with an access denied flag on the male.
That, as far as Detective Chief Inspector Barnes was concerned, was enough to change the investigation from death by misadventure, to a suspicious, possible murder.
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.
Queenstown Gardens are not far from the center of Queenstown. They are just down the hill from where we usually stay at Queenstown Mews.
More often than not we approach the Gardens from the lakeside during our morning walk from the apartment to the coffee shop. You can walk alongside the lake, or walk through the Gardens, which, whether in summer or winter, is a very picturesque walk.
There’s a bowling club, and I’m afraid I will never be that sort of person to take it up (not enough patience) and an Ice Arena, where, in winter I have heard players practicing ice hockey.
I’m sure, at times, ice skating can also be done.
There is a stone bridge to walk across, and in Autumn/Winter the trees can add a splash of color.
There is a large water feature with fountain, and plenty of seating around the edge of the lake, to sit and absorb the tranquility, or to have a picnic.
There are ducks in the pond
and out of the pond
and plenty of grassed areas with flower beds which are more colorful in summer. I have also seen the lawns covered in snow, and the fir trees that line the lake side of the gardens hang heavy with icicles.
