Category: blogging

Writers need to have many alter egos, don’t they?

I have often wondered just how much or how little of the author’s personality and experiences end up in a fictional character.

Have they climbed mountains,

Have they escaped from what is almost the inescapable,

Have they been shot, tortured, or worse,

Have they been dumped, or divorced,

Have they travelled to dangerous places, or got locked up in a foreign jail?

We research, read, and I guess experience some or all of the above on the way to getting the book written, but it’s perhaps an interesting fundamental question.

Who am I today?  Or, more to the point, who do I want to be today?

Or it can be a question, out of left field, in an interview; “Who are you?”

My initial reaction was to say, “I’m a writer.”  But that wasn’t the answer the interviewer is looking for.

Perhaps if she had asked, “Who are you when you’re writing your latest story?” it would make more sense.

Am I myself today?

Am I some fictional character an amalgam of a lot of other people?

Have I got someone definite in mind when I start writing the story?

The short answer might be, “I usually want to be someone other than what I am now.  It’s fiction.  I can be anyone or anything I want, provided, of course, I know the limitations of the character.”

“So,” she says, “what if you want to be a fireman?”

“I don’t want to be a fireman.”

“But if the story goes in the direction where you need a fireman…”

“What is this thing you have with firemen?”  I’m shaking my head.  How did we get off track?

“Just saying.”

“Then I’d have to research the role, but I’m not considering adding a fireman anytime soon.”

She sighs.  “Your loss.”

Moving on.

And there is that other very interesting question; “Who would you like to be if you could be someone else?”

A writer in that period between the wars, perhaps like an F Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, in Paris, or if it is a fictional character, Jay Gatsby.

He’s just the sort of person who is an enigma wrapped up in a mystery.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 33

Space is the ultimate getaway…

…

Our mission, to explore other galaxies and find, if there was, new life forms, was one that we knew might be a life long mission. It was one of the reasons I signed on; put simply there was nothing back on earth to keep me there.

Everyone had signed on, knowing that it was possible they might never return home, and, indeed, at the start of the voyage, that had been a distinct possibility.

We had not known about the upscaled propulsion, nor the weaponry the ship had, but that, I worked out in the end, was more deliberate on the part of space command. The less people back home who knew of our capabilities, the better.

Having got past the attack, and the discovery of a base on Oberon, one of Uranus’s moons, we were free to go back to our primary mission.

To be honest, I was happy we’d been told to resume our mission. There was a lot of items on the ship that needed fixing, modifying, or upgrading, and it would take time, that time it would take us to get to the first stopover on a long voyage.

And perhaps a little relieved that the Admiral had confirmed my appointment as Captain, not his first choice, but that given experience and time in space, I was certainly the most qualified.

There was something else he was going to say, you know when people stop short, and I though about asking him, but in the end, decided it couldn’t be anything that was a deal breaker.

That first day after leaving Uranus, I gave the speech that the former captain was going to give, and whether he wrote it or not, it seemed fitting, and poignant.

Ftom the outset, it was going to be a voyage measured in years, and it still would be, though not quite as long as first thought.

At the speed of light, it was a four year journey from our planet, to the next known earth like planet in the next galaxy, a planet named Proxima b.

By all accounts it was unliveable, but making observations from 4 and a half light years away was hardly what I would call a thorough review.

Perhaps closer up it might have more redeeming features. It might even support life. We’d find out when we got there.

In that, there was a debate about the true speed of this vessel, and over the ensuing weeks, the subject of a guessing game that all crew members could participate in went from a rumour to reality, except the engineers.

As we approached what might be Pluto’s orbit, it was a strange feeling being so far out from home, and I had expected to see more than just the inky darkness outside the ship, but any impression we might have assumed we would see from watching old Scy Fy episodes of interstellar travel was far from the reality.

In fact, there were times when it hardly felt like we were moving. There were times when it felt like just like being back on earth, except the city was within the confines of a very large ship with no roads out of town.

A holiday was a trip to the virtual reality centre, where it was possible to go anywhere or do anything without leaving your armchair. There were theatres, restaurants, sporting facilities, even a mall. There was a library, a school, and a group of crew representatives who were there to work on issues any member of the crew had.

I played squash and tennis and the occasional game of basketball, and the rest of the time, meetings, inspections, and the watch. My favourite was the night shift, not that there was any distinction between day and night, but one of the crews concerns was that lack of a boundary that designated days, so we instituted a version of day and night, and Engineering marvel at creating a world based on New York’s standard time.

All that took three months before everyone had settled into a routine.

Of course, it couldn’t last.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

A photograph from the Inspirational bin – 33

This is countryside somewhere inside the Lamington National Park in Queensland. It was one of those days where the rain come and went…

We were spending a week there, in the middle of nowhere on a working macadamia farm in a cottage, one of four, recuperating from a long exhausting lockdown.

It was not cold, and we were able to sit out of the verandah for most of the day, watching the rain come and pass over on its way up the valley, listing to the gentle pitter-patter of the rain on the roof and nearby leaves.

But as for inspiration:

This would be the ideal setting for a story about life, failed romance, or a couple looking to find what it was they lost.

It could be a story about recovering from a breakdown, or a tragic loss, to be anywhere else but in the middle of dealing with the constant reminders of what they had.

It could be a safe house, and as we all know, safe houses in stories are rarely safe houses, where it is given away by someone inside the program, or the person who it’s assigned to give it away because they can’t do as they’re supposed to; lay low.

Then there’s camping, the great outdoors, for someone who absolutely hates being outdoors, or those who go hunting, and sometimes become the hunted.

Oh, and watch out for the bears!

Writing a book in 365 days – 140

Day 140

Writing exercise

…

She lost sight of him in the frozen food aisle.

That was the problem with casual surveillance. Take your eyes off the target for one second, and they’re gone.

Of course, you would think there wouldn’t be that many people in the aisle, but it wasn’t the number of people. It was the distractions.

The lady reaching into the freezer and the boy shutting the lid on her, the baby in the stroller screaming its head off, and the mother casually ignoring it, the three or four-year-old pulling stuff off shelves and throwing it on the floor in a temper tantrum.

Distractions that she was supposed to ignore.

“You do realise your target has left the building?”

Her training supervisor had just managed to sneak up on her and, at the sound of his voice, made her jump.

Nerves.

Fear of failing.

A God awful row at home with a husband who didn’t want her to work, and probably would be even more incensed if she told him what she was really doing.

What else could go wrong?

“I know.  I thought it would be easy, but you’re right, there are so many other factors involved.  But, if you say that’s why we have a team, another member would pick them up.”

“And if there was not?”

“I’d be going back and giving the person who organised the job and the team a serve.”

OK, she thought, that was not called for, but that smug, supercilious look was annoying her.

“Are you usually this rambunctious?”

“Do you after use words no one understands when you really meant pain in the ass?”

This girl was trouble.  She had the talent and the ability when she first started, but that had slowed and waned.  It wasn’t a lack of interest.  Something else was going on.

I looked around and realised this was not the place to be discussing her career prospects.

“I saw a cafe outside.  Let me treat you to a cup of coffee and talk about what’s going on.”

Her expression told me that, for her, it was not the time or place and that there probably wasn’t going to be one.

“Is that really necessary?”

“If you want to continue the training program, yes.”

…

From the supermarket to the cafe, I went over the aspects of her file that her training officer had used as justification for her retaining her place in the program.

It was not the first time her name had come up in the weekly meeting to decide which trainees to retire who were not making the grade.

Her name made the list the previous week and was the reason why I’d come out to observe the exercise and her performance.

Her training officer was adamant she should be retained, that whatever was affecting her performance was only temporary.  Of course, most trainees rarely discussed any outside factors that might be affecting them for fear it would get them where she was now.

I didn’t expect any candour now.

I waited until the coffee was delivered before bringing up work, and went straight to the heart of the matter.  “Do you really want to do this job.  It seems to me that you’ve lost interest.”

“I’m juggling stuff.  You know, in preparation for throwing myself into the job.”

“And your husband is on board.  You’ve told him that it will require you to go at any time and hour of the day, for weeks at a time, to places you can’t tell him about?”

It was better to accept single people with no ties and no permanent anchors like partners or residency, but laws ensured we had to take on everyone, irrespective of background.  They simply had to pass a security check.  Having a partner, particularly in the case of female recruits, came with its own particular set of problems

When she didn’t answer straight away. I knew the problem.  She hadn’t told him.

“It’s not a problem.”

“Until it is.  You haven’t told him.  What does he think you’re doing?”

“It wouldn’t matter.  We had this talk before we were married, and he would support me in anything I wanted to do.  He’s happy to see me behind a desk, nine to five, home to cook dinner.”

“That’s not what we do here.  This is anything but nine to five.  Was he like this before you got married?”

“Now I look back, I should have seen the signs.  I guess when you’re in those first initial throes, you are either not looking or choose to ignore anything bad or decide you can work on it later.”

“And now that it’s later?”

“Am I allowed to kill him?” 

I looked into her eyes, and I could see she was deadly serious.  I had no doubt that she could, she would.  My impression, if she channelled that rage into her world, even I’d be scared by her.

“Since that is off the table for obvious reasons, is there anything else that can resolve this problem?”  It was time for her to start thinking outside the box and prove she had the ability she said she had.

She sighed.

“Coffee’s nice for a mall cafe.”

No brilliant solutions.  “Go home and tell him, then decide what you want to do.  You sort that out, get your head back in the game, and there’s a place for you.  You come back, I will be asking him myself if you discussed it and what it means.  Am I understood?”

“Clearly.”

…

That discussion was a whole lot worse than simply losing a target in the freezer aisle.

Losing targets she could get past, at least for a while, but telling Jimmy that his ‘possession’ had a mind of her own and a way cooler job than he ever would, wasn’t going to stoke his alpha male ego.

It was a question of what she wanted.

He did say that he wanted her to pursue whatever career pleased her, but that was back in the days when the only options were law school, architecture, or scientific research.  Jobs that brought in very good salaries that would keep Jeremy in the lifestyle he wanted to become accustomed to.  His joke about her working and him staying home to look after the children was wearing a little thin.  Particularly since he wasn’t ready for children, yet. 

And what did he do?

Plod along in a nine-to-five paper shuffle with sickies once a week so he could have long weekends boozing at home or boozing away with the lads while she worked two jobs and trained.

He’d carefully hidden that trait until after she overheard him tell one of his friends, he landed the fish.  Then he could do what he liked.

Sitting on the train, going back to the flat where they agreed they would live until her studies were over, she had to ask herself why the only things about her marriage were bad memories.

Was her inner self trying to tell her something?

Once home, the trail of clothes running from the bathroom to the bedroom was waiting for her to clean up, after which there were yesterday’s dishes to clean before preparing the evening meal

She looked in the refrigerator and closed it again.  Normally, if she wanted something, she would send him a text of what she needed or to suggest eating out.  Tonight felt like an eating-out night.

Except, she was feeling the first stirrings of rebellion.

She threw everything unwashed or lying around in the kitchen into the bin.  There were two plates left, with chips in them.  She put them on the table, along with a can of beans and a can opener.

Then she tossed his mess of papers and magazines out of what had been her seat and threw it in the corner of the room.  A quick look around, then went into the bedroom and put what she considered essential items into a backpack she had recently bought and put it by the front door.

A plan was forming in her mind, one that might have been unthinkable a week ago.  Well, perhaps a month ago, to be honest.

Then she sat down, facing the door, and waited.

….

It was an hour later than usual.  It didn’t surprise her, because several times in the last month he had gone to a bar with his friends and come home half drunk.  Wisely. 

The door opened, and he burst in, with Walter, one of his friends, in tow.  Yes.  A shade more intoxicated than usual.

“Hi, honey, I’m home.  Brought Wally, didn’t want to go home to his parents, yet.  What’s for dinner?”

And then stopped when he saw her sitting with her arms crossed.

Wally said, “Hello, Agnethe.”

“Hello, Walter, goodbye Walter.”

“But…”

“Get out!”  It was almost as rapid as a bullet.

“See you tomorrow, Jeremy.  Whatever you did, I’d apologise.  Very humbly.”  Walter patted him on the back and left, closing the door very quietly behind him.

Jeremy looked shellshocked, but only for a few seconds until he realised this was his place and therefore his rules.

“You can’t talk to my friends like that. And why aren’t you cooking dinner?”

Belligerent. 

She slowly stood and walked over to him, seeing him for the first time for who he really was.  How the hell had she fallen for a guy like him?  Easy.  He had been someone completely different then.

No.  He acted like someone completely different then.  This is who he always was.

What did that say about her?

“You’re lucky I don’t get what I was going to make and shove it down your throat.”

He looked puzzled for a few moments, then smiled.  “Oh, I get it.  This is a new thing, acting all tough, making me all hot and sweaty.  Things were getting boring in the bedroom.”

She shook her head.
¹
“It’s over, Jeremy.  I’m done.  When I walk through that door, I never want to see you again.”

He finally got it, and the accompanying expression wasn’t nice.  He grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pushed her harshly up against the wall.

“You aren’t going anywhere, bitch.  I own you, and you do what I tell you.  Now, when I let you go, you’re going to make me my dinner.  Then I’ll decide what else you can do for me.”

She relaxed under his grip and put on a compliant expression.  How many times had she been in this position in training, the scenarios far more dangerous than this?

He let her go, and in five seconds, he was on the floor, face slammed into the floorboards with such a crack, she hoped she hadn’t killed him, but just to make sure, she rammed her knee into his back and elicited a grunt. 

Not dead yet.

Hands immobilised, she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to get up and walk out of here.  You decided, stupidly, to retaliate; I will kill you.  That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise.  What I just did then, that’s me being nice.  Trust me when I say you do not want to see me mad.”

…

I’d seen the same expressions on people who had been through the same experience.  Resentment of the people who were holding them back.

Her psychological profile made interesting reading, and it had been a calculated risk sending her home.  So far she hadn’t hurt him too severely, but if he was as dumb as the report on him said, then he was an inch away from becoming a statistic.

Not a good one.

I knocked on the door to her apartment, two offices, armed, ready to go through the moment she opened the door.

Nothing. 

My assistant was holding an iPad, with infrared imaging.  His hand indicated she was still holding him down.

I knocked again.  No urgency.  All her exits were cut off.

I heard a muffled voice from behind the door.  “It’s not locked.”

I looked at the others.  “Wait here, but be ready.”

The two beside me closed up and would remain at the door.  I would go in and not close it.  A voice behind me said, “We’re getting attention.”

“Sort it.”

I opened the door, went in, then left it only slightly ajar.  When I looked down, I could see the man under her was unconscious, and she was getting up slowly, hands outstretched.

When fully upright, hands outstretched, she backed up to the wall.”You’ve been busy.  Is he…?”

“Simply unconscious.  Do need to make things worse with him screaming like a stuck pig.”

“What happened?”

“I told him I was leaving.  He didn’t take it well.  I want the job more than I want him.”

She looked down at him with a look of pure malice.  Then back up at me.  “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“In three months, you might regret saying that.”

“In three months I could be in a shit arse jail cell.  I’d prefer not to be.  Why are you here anyway?”

Perhaps it finally dawned on her that my presence was an anomaly.

“Our conversation.  You had to think that at some point, we were watching you and your husband.”

“You could have just asked me.  He’s a scumbag lowlife, him and his mates.  Surveillance for practice.  If you were at it you’d know what I know.  I was about to kill him when you arrived.”

“Wouldn’t help your cause.  We’ll take it from here.  If you want to join the group, the real group, then once you say “yes”, Agnethe ceases to exist, and a cover story is created to cover that disappearance.  You will leave here ostensibly under arrest, my team will clean the site, and poof, you’re gone.  You cannot come back, you cannot see any of your old friends, family or acquaintances.  Ever.  Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Searching for locations: Paris, France: Place de la Republique

Whilst a rather important place for the French, for us visitors, it has a convenient hotel located just behind the square, and an underground, or Metro station, underneath.

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Added to that was equally convenient cafes, one of which, The Cafe Republique, we had dinner every night.  The service and food were excellent, and we had no problems with the language barriers.

At the top of the monument is a bronze statue of Marianne, said to be the personification of France.

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Surrounding Marianne is three more statues, representing liberty, equality, and fraternity.

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At the base is a lion guarding what is said to be a ballot box.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 36

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.

 

“How long have you been working on this?”

“A week. Lying in bed is boring, so I decided to look at everything I’ve got again, and then again. There were some old maps of the coastline stored with the treasure maps, so I think my father was trying to find the actual location his treasure maps were based on and came up against the same problem. Physical landmarks on the treasure maps are no longer there, and if you didn’t know any better, I would think you were looking in the wrong place.”

“So, in actual fact, what you’re saying now is that your father had no idea where the treasure was buried, that he was just producing maps for the Cossatino’s’ to sell.”

That, of course, could be looked at from a different angle, one that I wasn’t going to suggest right then because Boggs was not ready to hear it. I think the real maps Boggs had found with eh treasure maps were the basis for the treasure maps, that is, his father had to give them real-life elements to keep the punters interested.

“No, not necessarily. I think he knew it was somewhere along this coastline give or take a hundred miles, because of its proximity to the Spanish Maine, but essentially you’re right. He probably had no idea.”

So, he hadn’t come to the same conclusion I had. Yet.

And if I could come to that conclusion, surely Cossatino also would, after all, he was the one who got Boggs senior to make the maps. Why all of a sudden did he think that there was a real treasure map. It couldn’t be simply because Boggs had said there was one. He’d have to know that anything Boggs junior found was an invention commissioned by him,

Or hadn’t Vince told his father what he was doing? Surely the father would have told the son about the treasure map scam.

As for Benderby, senior could base his assumption of the fact that he’d found some old coins off the coast nearby that could be part of the trove. Alex then may have decided to usurp his father’s search with one of his own, conveniently forgetting the treasure maps were an invention of the Cossatino’s. IT was a tangled web of lies deceit and one-upmanship, one that was going to leave a trail of human wreckage in its wake.

Boggs and I were two of the first three. We had lived to tell about it, Frobisher was the first casualty.

But what I suppose was more despairing was how taken Boggs was with the notion that the treasure was real, hidden out there somewhere, and that his father had ‘the’ map. I was loath to label him delusional, but his pathological desire to prove his father’s so-called legacy was going to not end well, especially when we found nothing.

And, yet, I had to admire the lengths he had gone to, to prove his case. Even now, looking at the overlaid maps, there was no guarantee we’d find anything, but at first look, the evidence was compelling.

Except I had a feeling Boggs had something up his sleeve. I had to ask the question. “Where did you get the idea of matching the treasure map to the real map?”

“My father’s journal. It was tossed in the bottom of a box of his other stuff. There are about ten boxes stacked in the shed, stuff my mother just couldn’t be bothered sorting through after he disappeared. Again, boredom pushed me into going through everything over and over just in case I missed something.”

He reached in under the mattress of his bed and pulled out an old leather-bound notebook. It had a strap that bound it together, and by the look of it had extra papers inserted or glued to pages, as well as papers at the start and back of the volume, making it look about twice the original size.

He handed it to me. The leather was old, cracked, and had that distinctive aroma of the hide. I loosened the strap and the top cover opened. The first page was a newspaper cutting, a small piece about some old coins being found about a hundred yards offshore by some surfers. Were these the same coins that Benderby had claimed were part to the trove?

“Benderby was getting that antiquarian that was murdered to identify some coins,” I said after a quick glance through the article.

“I spoke to one of the surfers the other day,” Boggs said. “He told me he came off his board on a big wave and as he was going down saw something glinting on the seabed. He managed to pull up three coins. There were more but he had to come up for air. When he went down again, he realized he’d been dragged away by the current.”

Tides and currents along this part of the coast were particularly bad, and the undertow, at times could get surfers and swimmers alike into a lot of trouble. I’d been caught out once in a dinghy myself, finishing up ten miles further down the coast that I expected to be.

“Then, I take it he can’t remember the exact spot so he could go back.”

“He tried, but alas no. Said he sold the coins to old man Benderby for a hundred apiece and told him approximately where he thought the others were, but nothing’s been found since.”

Not that Benderby would tell anyone if he did. But it explained where the coins came from that he gave to Frobisher.

“Except we can assume that it’s off our coastline somewhere, right?”

“Five miles of coastline to be precise. He and his mate always had a few reefers before they went out, made the ride more interesting he said. He could have been off the coast of Peru for all he knew.”

Surfers, drugs and a colorful story.

“It explains why Benderby and a team of divers have been out in his new boat,” Boggs added, “probably trying to either find the location or line up landmarks on his map from the seaward side at the same time. But he doesn’t know what we know.”

What did we know? I leafed through a few more pages of the diary, but the scrawled notes were almost illegible. I picked up various words, like a marina, underground river, dry lakebed, but none of it made any sense.

“Which map did we give to Alex?”

Boggs went over to a drawer in the wardrobe and leafed through the papers in it and pulled out one and gave it to me. Like the rest it showed the shore, the hills, the lake, and two what looked to be rivers flowing into the sea. Each of the maps had those same features but in different places.

I didn’t want to say it, but it seemed to me we were playing a very dangerous game. The maps might look different in some respects, but the chances were, if Alex was smart enough to hire an expert, that we might run across him out there, and, to be honest, he would be the last person I’d want to see.

“You do realize our paths are going to cross at some point.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

A shiver went down my spine, an omen I thought. Boggs has something up his sleeve, and I really didn’t want to know.

Not right then.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

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

Searching for locations: At large in Paris, France

We have been to Paris a number of times over the years.

The last time we visited Paris we brought the two eldest grandchildren.   We took the Eurostar train from St Pancras station direct to Disneyland, then took the free bus from the station to the hotel.  The train station was directly outside Disneyland.

We stayed at the Dream Castle Hotel, rather than Disneyland itself as it was a cheaper option and we had a family room that was quite large and breakfast was included every morning.  Then it was a matter of getting the free bus to Disneyland.

We spent three days, time which seem to pass far too quickly, and we didn’t get to see everything.  They did, however, find the time to buy two princess dresses, and then spent the rest of the time playing dress-ups whenever they could.

In Paris, we stayed at the Crown Plaza at Republique Square.

We took the children to the Eiffel Tower where the fries, and the carousel at the bottom of the tower, seemed to be more memorable than the tower itself.  The day we visited, the third level was closed.  The day was cold and windy so that probably accounted for the less than memorable visit.  To give you some idea of conditions, it was the shortest queue to get in I’ve ever seen.

We traveled on the Metro where it was pointed out to me that the trains actually ran on rubber tires, something I had not noticed before.  It was a first for both children to travel on a double-decker train.

The same day, we went to the Louvre.

Here, it was cold, wet and windy while we waited,  Once inside we took the girls to the Mona Lisa, and after a walk up and down a considerable numkber of stairs, one said, “and we walked all this way to see this small painting”.

It quickly became obvious their idea of paintings were the much larger ones hanging in other galleries.

We also took them to the Arc de Triomphe.

We passed, and for some reason had to go into, the Disney shop, which I’m still wondering why after spending a small fortune at Disneyland itself.

Next on the tour list was the Opera House.

 where one of the children thought she saw the ghost and refused to travel in one of the elevators.  At least it was quite amazing inside with the marble, staircases, and paintings on the roof.

Sadly, I don’t think they were all that interested in architecture, but at the Opera House, they did actually get to see some ballet stars from the Russian Bolshoi ballet company practicing.  As we were leaving the next day we could not go and see a performance.

Last but not least was Notre Dame with its gargoyles and imp[osing architecture.

All in all, traveling with children and experiencing Paris through their eyes made it a more memorable experience.

The first we visited Paris was at the end of a whirlwind bus tour, seven countries in seven days or something like that.  It was a relief to get to Paris and stay two nights if only to catch our breath.

I remember three events from that tour, the visit to the Eiffel Tower, the tour of the night lights, not that we were able to take much in from the inside of the bus, and the farewell dinner in one of the tour guides specially selected restaurants.  The food and atmosphere were incredible.  It was also notable for introducing us to a crepe restaurant in Montmartre, another of the tour guide’s favorite places.

On that trip to Paris, we also spent an afternoon exploring the Palace of Versailles.

The next time we visited Paris we flew in from London.  OK, it was a short flight, but it took all day.  From the hotel to the airport, the wait at the airport, departure, flying through time zones, arrival at Charles De Gaulle airport, now there’s an experience, and waiting for a transfer that never arrived, but that’s another story.

I can’t remember where we stayed the first time, it was somewhere out in the suburbs, but the second time we stayed at the Hilton near both the Eiffel Tower and the Australian Embassy, notable only because the concierge was dating an Australian girl working in the Embassy.  That was our ticket for special treatment, which at times you need to get around in Paris.

It was the year before 2000 and the Eiffel Tower was covered in lights, and every hour or so it looked like a bubbling bottle of champagne.  It was the first time we went to Level 3 of the Tower, and it was well worth it.  The previous tour only included Level 2.  This time we were acquainted with the fries available on the second level, and down below under the tower.

This time we acquainted ourselves with the Metro, the underground railway system, to navigate our way around to the various tourist spots, such as Notre Dame de Paris, The Louvre, Sacre-Coeur Basilica, and Les Invalides, and, of course, the trip to the crepe restaurant.

We also went to the Louvre for the express purpose of seeing the Mona Lisa, and I came away slightly disappointed.  I had thought it to be a much larger painting.  We then went to see the statue of Venus de Milo and spent some time trying to get a photo of it without stray visitors walking in front of us.  Aside from that, we spent the rest of the day looking at the vast number of paintings, and Egyptian artifacts in the Museum.

We also visited the Opera House which was architecturally magnificent.

The third time we visited Paris we took our daughter, who was on her first international holiday.  This time we stayed in a quaint Parisian hotel called Hotel Claude Bernard Saint Germain, (43 Rue Des Ecoles, Paris, 75005, France),  recommended to us by a relation who’d stayed there the year before.  It was small, and the elevator could only fit two people or one person and a suitcase.  Our rooms were on the 4th floor, so climbing the stairs with luggage was out of the question.

It included breakfast and wifi, and it was quite reasonable for the four days we stayed there.

It was close to everything you could want, down the hill to the railway station, and a square where on some days there was a market, and for those days when we were hungry after a day’s exploring, a baguette shop where rolls and salad were very inexpensive and very delicious.

To our daughter we appeared to be experienced travelers, going on the Metro, visiting the Louvre, going, yes once again, to the crepe restaurant and the Basilica at Montmartre, Notre Dame, and this time by boat to the Eiffel Tower.  We were going to do a boat rode on the Seine the last time but ran out of time.

We have some magnificent photos of the Tower from the boat.

Lunch on one of the days was at a restaurant not far from the Arc de Triomphe, where our daughter had a bucket of mussels.  I was not as daring and had a hamburger and fries.  Then we went to the center of the Arch and watched the traffic.

Our first time in Paris the bus driver got into the roundabout just to show us the dangers of driving in an unpredictable situation where drivers seem to take huge risks to get out at their exit.  Needless to say, we survived that experience, though we did make a number of circuits.

‘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

…

Writing a book in 365 days – 140

Day 140

Writing exercise

…

She lost sight of him in the frozen food aisle.

That was the problem with casual surveillance. Take your eyes off the target for one second, and they’re gone.

Of course, you would think there wouldn’t be that many people in the aisle, but it wasn’t the number of people. It was the distractions.

The lady reaching into the freezer and the boy shutting the lid on her, the baby in the stroller screaming its head off, and the mother casually ignoring it, the three or four-year-old pulling stuff off shelves and throwing it on the floor in a temper tantrum.

Distractions that she was supposed to ignore.

“You do realise your target has left the building?”

Her training supervisor had just managed to sneak up on her and, at the sound of his voice, made her jump.

Nerves.

Fear of failing.

A God awful row at home with a husband who didn’t want her to work, and probably would be even more incensed if she told him what she was really doing.

What else could go wrong?

“I know.  I thought it would be easy, but you’re right, there are so many other factors involved.  But, if you say that’s why we have a team, another member would pick them up.”

“And if there was not?”

“I’d be going back and giving the person who organised the job and the team a serve.”

OK, she thought, that was not called for, but that smug, supercilious look was annoying her.

“Are you usually this rambunctious?”

“Do you after use words no one understands when you really meant pain in the ass?”

This girl was trouble.  She had the talent and the ability when she first started, but that had slowed and waned.  It wasn’t a lack of interest.  Something else was going on.

I looked around and realised this was not the place to be discussing her career prospects.

“I saw a cafe outside.  Let me treat you to a cup of coffee and talk about what’s going on.”

Her expression told me that, for her, it was not the time or place and that there probably wasn’t going to be one.

“Is that really necessary?”

“If you want to continue the training program, yes.”

…

From the supermarket to the cafe, I went over the aspects of her file that her training officer had used as justification for her retaining her place in the program.

It was not the first time her name had come up in the weekly meeting to decide which trainees to retire who were not making the grade.

Her name made the list the previous week and was the reason why I’d come out to observe the exercise and her performance.

Her training officer was adamant she should be retained, that whatever was affecting her performance was only temporary.  Of course, most trainees rarely discussed any outside factors that might be affecting them for fear it would get them where she was now.

I didn’t expect any candour now.

I waited until the coffee was delivered before bringing up work, and went straight to the heart of the matter.  “Do you really want to do this job.  It seems to me that you’ve lost interest.”

“I’m juggling stuff.  You know, in preparation for throwing myself into the job.”

“And your husband is on board.  You’ve told him that it will require you to go at any time and hour of the day, for weeks at a time, to places you can’t tell him about?”

It was better to accept single people with no ties and no permanent anchors like partners or residency, but laws ensured we had to take on everyone, irrespective of background.  They simply had to pass a security check.  Having a partner, particularly in the case of female recruits, came with its own particular set of problems

When she didn’t answer straight away. I knew the problem.  She hadn’t told him.

“It’s not a problem.”

“Until it is.  You haven’t told him.  What does he think you’re doing?”

“It wouldn’t matter.  We had this talk before we were married, and he would support me in anything I wanted to do.  He’s happy to see me behind a desk, nine to five, home to cook dinner.”

“That’s not what we do here.  This is anything but nine to five.  Was he like this before you got married?”

“Now I look back, I should have seen the signs.  I guess when you’re in those first initial throes, you are either not looking or choose to ignore anything bad or decide you can work on it later.”

“And now that it’s later?”

“Am I allowed to kill him?” 

I looked into her eyes, and I could see she was deadly serious.  I had no doubt that she could, she would.  My impression, if she channelled that rage into her world, even I’d be scared by her.

“Since that is off the table for obvious reasons, is there anything else that can resolve this problem?”  It was time for her to start thinking outside the box and prove she had the ability she said she had.

She sighed.

“Coffee’s nice for a mall cafe.”

No brilliant solutions.  “Go home and tell him, then decide what you want to do.  You sort that out, get your head back in the game, and there’s a place for you.  You come back, I will be asking him myself if you discussed it and what it means.  Am I understood?”

“Clearly.”

…

That discussion was a whole lot worse than simply losing a target in the freezer aisle.

Losing targets she could get past, at least for a while, but telling Jimmy that his ‘possession’ had a mind of her own and a way cooler job than he ever would, wasn’t going to stoke his alpha male ego.

It was a question of what she wanted.

He did say that he wanted her to pursue whatever career pleased her, but that was back in the days when the only options were law school, architecture, or scientific research.  Jobs that brought in very good salaries that would keep Jeremy in the lifestyle he wanted to become accustomed to.  His joke about her working and him staying home to look after the children was wearing a little thin.  Particularly since he wasn’t ready for children, yet. 

And what did he do?

Plod along in a nine-to-five paper shuffle with sickies once a week so he could have long weekends boozing at home or boozing away with the lads while she worked two jobs and trained.

He’d carefully hidden that trait until after she overheard him tell one of his friends, he landed the fish.  Then he could do what he liked.

Sitting on the train, going back to the flat where they agreed they would live until her studies were over, she had to ask herself why the only things about her marriage were bad memories.

Was her inner self trying to tell her something?

Once home, the trail of clothes running from the bathroom to the bedroom was waiting for her to clean up, after which there were yesterday’s dishes to clean before preparing the evening meal

She looked in the refrigerator and closed it again.  Normally, if she wanted something, she would send him a text of what she needed or to suggest eating out.  Tonight felt like an eating-out night.

Except, she was feeling the first stirrings of rebellion.

She threw everything unwashed or lying around in the kitchen into the bin.  There were two plates left, with chips in them.  She put them on the table, along with a can of beans and a can opener.

Then she tossed his mess of papers and magazines out of what had been her seat and threw it in the corner of the room.  A quick look around, then went into the bedroom and put what she considered essential items into a backpack she had recently bought and put it by the front door.

A plan was forming in her mind, one that might have been unthinkable a week ago.  Well, perhaps a month ago, to be honest.

Then she sat down, facing the door, and waited.

….

It was an hour later than usual.  It didn’t surprise her, because several times in the last month he had gone to a bar with his friends and come home half drunk.  Wisely. 

The door opened, and he burst in, with Walter, one of his friends, in tow.  Yes.  A shade more intoxicated than usual.

“Hi, honey, I’m home.  Brought Wally, didn’t want to go home to his parents, yet.  What’s for dinner?”

And then stopped when he saw her sitting with her arms crossed.

Wally said, “Hello, Agnethe.”

“Hello, Walter, goodbye Walter.”

“But…”

“Get out!”  It was almost as rapid as a bullet.

“See you tomorrow, Jeremy.  Whatever you did, I’d apologise.  Very humbly.”  Walter patted him on the back and left, closing the door very quietly behind him.

Jeremy looked shellshocked, but only for a few seconds until he realised this was his place and therefore his rules.

“You can’t talk to my friends like that. And why aren’t you cooking dinner?”

Belligerent. 

She slowly stood and walked over to him, seeing him for the first time for who he really was.  How the hell had she fallen for a guy like him?  Easy.  He had been someone completely different then.

No.  He acted like someone completely different then.  This is who he always was.

What did that say about her?

“You’re lucky I don’t get what I was going to make and shove it down your throat.”

He looked puzzled for a few moments, then smiled.  “Oh, I get it.  This is a new thing, acting all tough, making me all hot and sweaty.  Things were getting boring in the bedroom.”

She shook her head.

“It’s over, Jeremy.  I’m done.  When I walk through that door, I never want to see you again.”

He finally got it, and the accompanying expression wasn’t nice.  He grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pushed her harshly up against the wall.

“You aren’t going anywhere, bitch.  I own you, and you do what I tell you.  Now, when I let you go, you’re going to make me my dinner.  Then I’ll decide what else you can do for me.”

She relaxed under his grip and put on a compliant expression.  How many times had she been in this position in training, the scenarios far more dangerous than this?

He let her go, and in five seconds, he was on the floor, face slammed into the floorboards with such a crack, she hoped she hadn’t killed him, but just to make sure, she rammed her knee into his back and elicited a grunt. 

Not dead yet.

Hands immobilised, she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to get up and walk out of here.  You decide, stupidly, to retaliate; I will kill you.  That isn’t a threat, it’s a promise.  What I just did then, that’s me being nice.  Trust me when I say you do not want to see me mad.”

…

I’d seen the same expressions on people who had been through the same experience.  Resentment of the people who were holding them back.

Her psychological profile made interesting reading, and it had been a calculated risk sending her home.  So far, she hadn’t hurt him too severely, but if he was as dumb as the report on him said, then he was an inch away from becoming a statistic.

Not a good one.

I knocked on the door to her apartment, two officers, armed, ready to go through the moment she opened the door.

Nothing. 

My assistant was holding an iPad with infrared imaging.  His hand indicated she was still holding him down.

I knocked again.  No urgency.  All her exits were cut off.

I heard a muffled voice from behind the door.  “It’s not locked.”

I looked at the others.  “Wait here, but be ready.”

The two beside me closed up and would remain at the door.  I would go in and not close it.  A voice behind me said, “We’re getting attention.”

“Sort it.”

I opened the door, went in, then left it only slightly ajar.  When I looked down, I could see the man under her was unconscious, and she was getting up slowly, hands outstretched.

When fully upright, hands outstretched, she backed up to the wall.

“You’ve been busy.  Is he…?”

“Simply unconscious.  Don’t need to make things worse with him screaming like a stuck pig.”

“What happened?”

“I told him I was leaving.  He didn’t take it well.  I want the job more than I want him.”

She looked down at him with a look of pure malice.  Then back up at me.  “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“In three months, you might regret saying that.”

“In three months, I could be in a shit arse jail cell.  I’d prefer not to be.  Why are you here anyway?”

Perhaps it finally dawned on her that my presence was an anomaly.

“Our conversation.  You had to think that at some point, we were watching you and your husband.”

“You could have just asked me.  He’s a scumbag lowlife, he and his mates.  Surveillance for practice.  If you were at it, you’d know what I know.  I was about to kill him when you arrived.”

“Wouldn’t help your cause.  We’ll take it from here.  If you want to join the group, the real group, then once you say “yes”, Agnethe ceases to exist, and a cover story is created to cover that disappearance.  You will leave here ostensibly under arrest, my team will clean the site, and poof, you’re gone.  You cannot come back, you cannot see any of your old friends, family or acquaintances.  Ever.  Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025