I wandered back to my villa.

It was in darkness.  I was sure I had left several lights on, especially over the door so I could see to unlock it.

I looked up and saw the globe was broken.

Instant alert.

I went to the first hiding spot for the gun, and it wasn’t there.  I went to the backup and it wasn’t there either.  Someone had found my carefully hidden stash of weapons and removed them.

Who?

There were four hiding spots and all were empty.  Someone had removed the weapons.  That could only mean one possibility.

I had a visitor, not necessarily here for a social call.

But, of course, being the well-trained agent I’d once been and not one to be caught unawares, I crossed over to my neighbor and relieved him of a weapon that, if found, would require a lot of explaining.

Suitably armed, it was time to return the surprise.

There were three entrances to the villa, the front door, the back door, and a rather strange escape hatch.  One of the more interesting attractions of the villa I’d rented was its heritage.  It was built in the late 1700s, by a man who was, by all accounts, a thief.  It had a hidden underground room which had been in the past a vault but was now a wine cellar, and it had an escape hatch by which the man could come and go undetected, particularly if there was a mob outside the door baying for his blood.

It now gave me the means to enter the villa without my visitors being alerted, unless, of course, they were near the vicinity of the doorway inside the villa, but that possibility was unlikely.  It was not where anyone could anticipate or expect a doorway to be.

The secret entrance was at the rear of the villa behind a large copse, two camouflaged wooden doors built into the ground.  I move aside some of the branches that covered them and lifted one side.  After I’d discovered the doors and rusty hinges, I’d oiled and cleaned them, and cleared the passageway of cobwebs and fallen rocks.  It had a mildew smell, but nothing would get rid of that.  I’d left torches at either end so I could see.

I closed the door after me, and went quietly down the steps, enveloped in darkness till I switched on the torch.  I traversed the short passage which turned ninety degrees about halfway to the door at the other end.  I carried the key to this door on the keyring, found it and opened the door.  It too had been oiled and swung open soundlessly.

I stepped in the darkness and closed the door.

I was on the lower level under the kitchen, now the wine cellar, the ‘door’ doubling as a set of shelves which had very little on them, less to fall and alert anyone in the villa.

Silence, an eerie silence.

I took the steps up to the kitchen, stopping when my head was level with the floor, checking to see if anyone was waiting.  There wasn’t.  It seemed to me to be an unlikely spot for an ambush.

I’d already considered the possibility of someone coming after me, especially because it had been Bespalov I’d killed, and I was sure he had friends, all equally as mad as he was.  Equally, I’d also considered it nigh on impossible for anyone to find out it was me who killed him because the only people who knew that were Prendergast, Alisha, a few others in the Department, and Susan.

That raised the question of who told them where I was.

If I was the man I used to be, my first suspect would be Susan.  The departure this morning, and now this was too coincidental.  But I was not that man.

Or was I?

I reached the start of the passageway that led from the kitchen to the front door and peered into the semi-darkness.  My eyes had got used to the dark, and it was no longer an inky void.  Fragments of light leaked in around the door from outside and through the edge of the window curtains where they didn’t fit properly.  A bone of contention upstairs in the morning, when first light shone and invariably woke me up hours before I wanted to.

Still nothing.

I took a moment to consider how I would approach the visitor’s job.  I would get a plan of the villa in my head, all entrances, where a target could be led to or attacked where there would be no escape.

Coming in the front door.  If I was not expecting anything, I’d just open the door and walk-in.  One shot would be all that was required.

Contract complete.

I sidled quietly up the passage staying close to the wall, edging closer to the front door.  There was an alcove where the shooter could be waiting.  It was an ideal spot to wait.

Crunch.

I stepped on some nutshells.

Not my nutshells.

I felt it before I heard it.  The bullet with my name on it.

And how the shooter missed, from point-blank range, and hit me in the arm, I had no idea.  I fired off two shots before a second shot from the shooter went wide and hit the door with a loud thwack.

I saw a red dot wavering as it honed in on me and I fell to the floor, stretching out, looking up where the origin of the light was coming and pulled the trigger three times, evenly spaced, and a second later I heard the sound of a body falling down the stairs and stopping at the bottom, not very far from me.

Two assassins.

I’d not expected that.

The assassin by the door was dead, a lucky shot on my part.  The second was still breathing.

I checked the body for any weapons and found a second gun and two knives.  Armed to the teeth!

I pulled off the balaclava; a man, early thirties, definitely Italian.  I was expecting a Russian.

I slapped his face, waking him up.  Blood was leaking from several slashes on his face when his head had hit the stairs on the way down.  The awkward angle of his arms and legs told me there were broken bones, probably a lot worse internally.  He was not long for this earth.

“Who employed you?”

He looked at me with dead eyes, a pursed mouth, perhaps a smile.  “Not today my friend.  You have made a very bad enemy.”  He coughed and blood poured out of his mouth.  “There will be more …”

Friends of Bespalov, no doubt.

I would have to leave.  Two unexplainable bodies, I’d have a hard time explaining my way out of this mess.  I dragged the two bodies into the lounge, clearing the passageway just in case someone had heard anything.

Just in case anyone was outside at the time, I sat in the dark, at the foot of the stairs, and tried to breathe normally.  I was trying not to connect dots that led back to Susan, but the coincidence was worrying me.

A half-hour passed and I hadn’t moved.  Deep in thought, I’d forgotten about being shot, unaware that blood was running down my arm and dripping onto the floor.

Until I heard a knock on my front door.

Two thoughts, it was either the police, alerted by the neighbors, or it was the second wave, though why would they be knocking on the door?

I stood, and immediately felt a stabbing pain in my arm.  I took out a handkerchief and turned it into a makeshift tourniquet, then wrapped a kitchen towel around the wound.

If it was the police, this was going to be a difficult situation.  Holding the gun behind my back, I opened the door a fraction and looked out.

No police, just Maria.  I hoped she was not part of the next ‘wave’.

“You left your phone behind on the table.  I thought you might be looking for it.”  She held it out in front of her.

When I didn’t open the door any further, she looked at me quizzically, and then asked, “Is anything wrong?”

I was going to thank her for returning the phone, but I heard her breathe in sharply, and add, breathlessly, “You’re bleeding.”

I looked at my arm and realized it was visible through the door, and not only that, the towel was soaked in blood.

“You need to go away now.”

Should I tell her the truth?  It was probably too late, and if she was any sort of law-abiding citizen she would go straight to the police.

She showed no signs of leaving, just an unnerving curiosity.  “What happened?”

I ran through several explanations, but none seemed plausible.  I went with the truth.  “My past caught up with me.”

“You need someone to fix that before you pass out from blood loss.  It doesn’t look good.”

“I can fix it.  You need to leave.  It is not safe to be here with me.”

The pain in my arm was not getting any better, and the blood was starting to run down my arm again as the tourniquet loosened.  She was right, I needed it fixed sooner rather than later.

I opened the door and let her in.  It was a mistake, a huge mistake, and I would have to deal with the consequences.  Once inside, she turned on the light and saw the pool of blood just inside the door and the trail leading to the lounge.  She followed the trail and turned into the lounge, turned on the light, and no doubt saw the two dead men.

I expected her to scream.  She didn’t.

She gave me a good hard look, perhaps trying to see if I was dangerous.  Killing people wasn’t something you looked the other way about.  She would have to go to the police.

“What happened here?”

“I came home from the cafe and two men were waiting for me.  I used to work for the Government, but no longer.  I suspect these men were here to repay a debt.  I was lucky.”

“Not so much, looking at your arm.”

She came closer and inspected it.

“Sit down.”

She found another towel and wrapped it around the wound, retightening the tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

“Do you have medical supplies?”

I nodded.  “Upstairs.”  I had a medical kit, and on the road, I usually made my own running repairs.  Another old habit I hadn’t quite shaken off yet.

She went upstairs, rummaged, and then came back.  I wondered briefly what she would think of the unmade bed though I was not sure why it might interest her.

She helped me remove my shirt, and then cleaned the wound.  Fortunately, she didn’t have to remove a bullet.  It was a clean wound but it would require stitches.

When she’d finished she said, “Your friend said one day this might happen.”

No prizes for guessing who that friend was, and it didn’t please me that she had involved Maria.

“Alisha?”

“She didn’t tell me her name, but I think she cares a lot about you.  She said trouble has a way of finding you, gave me a phone and said to call her if something like this happened.”

“That was wrong of her to do that.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.  Will you call her?”

“Yes.  I can’t stay here now.  You should go now.  Hopefully, by the time I leave in the morning, no one will ever know what happened here, especially you.”

She smiled.  “As you say, I was never here.”

…

© Charles Heath 2018-2022

…

Just who is this Alexander Bergman?

…

Bryson was fully aware that you can only get answers to the questions according to what you know about a victim.  It’s why no one told him about Bergman having any military service or anything that might be relevant outside his usual business, and affairs.

A conversation between Worthey and Bergman’s daughter raised the possibility of military service, most likely in the Army, and equally likely somewhere in the Middle East, but a follow-up conversation between Worthey and her over the phone produced no further results.

It did yield one more interesting fact, that the daughter was from an earlier rather brief marriage and that Sandra had remained with the mother and had known nothing about her father until the mother had died and left his details in a letter to be given to her.

Her acquaintance with him had been relatively brief, six months at most, and in that time, she had failed to find out anything about him other than he was selfish and inconsiderate, and that it was no surprise her mother had not told her about him.

She was surprised to learn that he had made her a beneficiary of his will, not that it would amount to much.

Bryson then moved on to his most recent spouse, Stacy.  She had been number four.  The most she could say about the other three was that the first was a mistake, the second lasted exactly six weeks, and the third was to an older woman, a rich widow, Stacy said, who died in suspicious circumstances.

It was where Stacy said, Bergman got the funds to set up his business.

Stacy had first met Bergman in a night club where she was a dancer, no, not an exotic dancer, and he had been with wife number three at the time.  She should have realized that Bergman was not trustworthy when he asked to date her on the pretext that he and his current wife were estranged and were in the process of divorcing.

She hadn’t realized at the time that her death might have been suspicious, just that she had conveniently died so she and Bergman were free to marry.

She knew nothing about any military service, he did not mention it.  He said he had once worked for an international aid organization and had often travelled and remained overseas for months at a time, but those visits had been curtailed once he married her.  However, he frequently made flying visits to both suppliers and clients, but these, she was assured, were all in America.

She had never seen him with a passport, had seen his travel arrangements from time to time in the form of itineraries, and on several occasions had asked her to go with him, but she had declined.  She did not travel well in aeroplanes.

Wendy Anderson proved to be a more difficult case to get information out of.

It was clear from the outset she knew a lot more than she admitted to.  The call on the telephone started badly and ended abruptly.  He sent Worthey and several officers to arrest her and bring her back to the station.

Once in the interview room, a lawyer by her side, Bryson told her, “At the moment I’m half inclined to charge you with obstruction.  I asked a simple question, do you know whether Alexander Berman was in the military/  It isn’t a difficult question.”

“It is as if what he did was something he was not supposed to mention or talk about.”

“He obviously told you.”

“I can keep a secret.  I made a solemn promise never to repeat to anyone what he told me.”

“He’s now dead, that hardly seems relevant.  What is relevant is the fact that whatever it is he did might have some direct effect on why he’s dead.”

“It wasn’t that spectacular.  If you’re looking for a murderer look no further than James.”

‘So you keep saying, but the facts say otherwise.  I assume you knew he had four wives, the most recent Stacy, and that he has a daughter, Sandra.”

“Did he?”

“You mean in all of the thirty-odd years you have known him he never mentioned it?  Or the fact he was briefly married to one Annabelle Bentley, shortly after he graduated from University?”

Bryson was observing Wendy Anderson very carefully and when he mentioned the daughter, she showed genuine surprise.  That wasn’t the same when he asked her about military service.

“If he did have a daughter, I’m sure it was a surprise to him as well.  Perhaps they had parted, and she was pregnant and forgot or deliberately didn’t tell him. 

It was a logical assumption, Bryson thought.

“And as far as I was aware, Alex was in the National Guard for a brief period, arising from his time in a cadet corps when he was much younger, something his father made him do.  I had no idea if he carried that forward, and he never mentioned it.”

“How do you explain the obvious absences?”

“The charity work involved staying overseas for long periods.  From time to time I would visit him in various locations.  Not one was he in uniform, or anywhere near military action.  If he was, he hid it well.”

Or she just wasn’t all that observant.

“You have other matters you wish to ask me about?: she asked.

Perhaps it was time to throw the car among the pigeons.

“We have managed to get access to the text messages on one of Bergman’s cell phones, and there is a considerable exchange of sometimes very explicit tests between yourself and the deceased, as well as some attached photographs which suggest that your relationship is not what you are portraying it as.  That phone is currently missing.  Now, I will ask you once again, what was the nature of your relationship with the deceased.”

An almost priceless expression on her face, surely she had some idea if anything happened to her boyfriend the police would be looking at his phone records.

“And you were not the only woman he was conducting this type of relationship with.  We have, so far, found three others, equally as intense, shall we say.  The nature of the text messages and the tenor of one of the last he sent you, which I’m sure you are aware of, where he said he would have no hesitation in showing your husband those photographs, gives you a clear motive.  And, if you say your husband has a gun, I’m assuming you know where it is, and how to gain access to it, if you follow my meaning.”

It was very clear by her expression she did.  “I did not kill him.  He did not tell me what he was about to do, though I did ask him to destroy those photographs.  Equally, if Bergman intended to use those photographs to get my husband to sign the divorce papers, for whatever reason, then would that equally give James motive?”

It would, or it might have been a case of good riddance, but Bryson could not allow his snap judgement of wither to interfere in an unbiased investigation.

Yes, the expression had changed again, he thought, having realised what she’d said.  It was apparent to him she was truly angry at a husband, but for different reasons, none of which were attached to Bergman, but she had been handed a perfect opportunity to set him up for the murder.

And one thing was certain about her.  She was making it noticeably clear to him that she wanted her husband to take the fall for the murder.

“Just so you know, we believe there is another phone, the one that he received a message to meet him at the Zoo carpark at 10pm.  There was evidence in the car and on his person of perfume, Mrs Anderson, not unlike what you are wearing now.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2023

Back on the alien vessel

…

The ‘ooh’ from Nancy was unmistakable the moment we rematerialized in the alien’s ship’s bridge.  It could be one of those awe-inspiring moments, had it not been for the circumstances.

The second time on the bridge, I realized that it was a little more sparse than it had been before, with a wall of control panels missing, along with a panel that stretched across the front of the Captain’s chair, but with no crew members present.

It was now a blank space.  The whole space could have been a large empty room with windows overlooking empty space, except in the distance, our two ships.  Beyond that, there seemed to be a thin streak of light, or colored lights, flickering.  At a guess they might be a long, long, long way away, but whether it was in the direction we had come, or where we were going, or somewhere else, I couldn’t tell.

On the other side of the bridge, the female alien was still holding the Russian Captain, some sort of weapon at his throat.

I was still feeling the tingling sensation that was the effect after re-materialization.  The first time it was disorientating, I was prepared this time.

I was also not sure what to expect, now that it was clear the aliens were not what they portrayed themselves to be.  Of course, it was naive of me to expect that others in the galaxy would be better than us.

“An explanation of what this is really about might go a long way towards preventing tragic consequences.”  I thought I’d throw out the opening gambit.

“Agreed.  I had hoped the problem could have been resolved before your arrival.  As you might be aware, we have the ability to transport our people, and I had hoped to recover the missing citizens that were taken by this,” he pointed to the Russian, “captains ship.”

“They asked for asylum, we did not take them.”

Another piece of the puzzle, the female must be one of the Aliens crew, and had beamed aboard, taken the captain hostage, and demanded the release of the citizens.

Question: why hadn’t he simply beamed them back?

To the Alien, “Is this true?”

“Semantics “

Note:  this alien had a very good grasp of the nuances of the English language.

“Semantics or not, if you know anything about earth culture, it’s that we look after those who need help, and if people come to us asking for asylum, we generally give it.  You will also be aware that those who ask for asylum generally are in fear of their lives.  The question is, why would these people ask for asylum.”

“The people aboard that ship are criminals who were serving their sentences in one of our remote facilities.  Your captain apparently came across this remote facility and assisted in setting the criminals free.  When we sent a ship to apprehend them, they were taken aboard the earth ship and it attempted to leave.  We were going to stop the earth vessel from leaving when your ship appeared, and it seemed prudent not to display hostility.  There was also the possibility you were working together.”

“We are not, as you are now aware.  Nor would I be willing to interfere with your internal matters, except that it involves another of our ships, one I didn’t know about, which only complicates matters.

Why do you have the captain.”

“He refused to set the prisoners.”

“If you could beam your operative and the captain here, why not just beam the criminals too.”

“They are currently protected in a special part of the captain’s ship that does not allow us to bring them back.  They obviously told him what our capabilities are.”

Criminals, if they were criminals, seeking asylum.  If it was me, I would be happy for someone else to take away the criminal element and make it someone else’s problem.  The unfortunate truth in our world is that criminals didn’t go to jail anymore, they were shipped off to remote mining planets where they spent the rest of their days working in very harsh conditions.  Over time it had proved to be a very good deterrent, so much so, that off plant mining operations now had to pay large sums of money to get people to work there.

“Number One.”

“Sir?”

“Find the so-called criminals the captain has stowed on his vessel and ask them what their side of the story is.  Quick as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

I looked over to the Russian Captain.  “You might want to tell your second in command to make things easier for my crew.”

A look from me to the alien, and back, time to consider my request, then gave the order.

“On my way, sir.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2022