Category: Books

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 76

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.

…

Boggs is not a happy man

…

I could feel the waves of hate emanating from Boggs as he was staring at Nadia, who was doing her best to ignore him.

The previous evening when I made the suggestion to her that we should do whatever we could to aid in his search, on the Cossatino’s beach head without involving the Cossatinos, and in an attempt to have a backup plan if they caught up with us, met the same stony silence as it had when I told Boggs.

Her response was a stony, ‘don’t expect me to go up against my father and Vince, I’m not that brave.”

All Cossatino’s were tarred with the same brush, he said, just short of telling me he was convinced she was working with them, trying to find out what he knew via me.  He didn’t believe me when I told him she had done anything but interrogate me.

I wanted to believe she was not on their side, but just in case he might be right, my idea was to keep the enemy, if she was playing me, close.  Certainly, if the family turned up to thwart us, then I’d be convinced she was against us.

But, at least we’d then know, and it would make little difference in the end.  What Boggs was planning, with or without me, was basically suicide.

And she had voiced exactly the arguments that I’d already expected, although stopping short of saying she would not be part of it.

What had surprised me, Boggs had actually come, knowing Nadia would be there.

I let the silence reign for a minute or so, then dived in.

“Right.”

Both heads turned towards me, and I could feel the temperature rise about 10 degrees.

“I had imagined this would go so much better when I planned it in my head, but I can see quite plainly there are trust issues on either side.  The point is, Boggs, you can’t do this on your own.  You tried once and failed.  You might get lucky a second time, but I suspect the Cossatinos know now what you’re trying to do, and will be waiting.”

“They tried to kill me,” he muttered.

That might be putting it a bit strongly, because he had said as much to the sheriff, and the Cossatino’s denied it, as expected, but the evidence was quite clear, Boggs’s rope had been severed with a knife, located when the sheriff had visited the site and found the rope still attached to the top of the cliff.

The Cossatinos had been sloppy in covering their tracks, and the excuse they had been rock climbing hadn’t been taken seriously since no equipment had been found at the house, and none of them could provide any details of doing so elsewhere.

Evidence or not, no charges had been laid yet, nor had the Cossatinos proceeded with a trespass charge, perhaps fearing a more detailed investigation might be too intrusive or prove Boggs’s case.  In turn,  Boggs had been forced to agree not to go back, but simple words on the paper he signed, meant nothing.

“Deter you, I’d say,” Nadia said, “because killing you would bring unwanted attention to their activities.” 

Nadia was probably right because Boggs’s quest was too well known, as was the theory that the treasure was still on The Grove.  Already, the story was on the front page of the local paper, and Lenny was trying to get interviews.

And it was attracting attention from other media.  If anything, the Cossatinos would want to hose it down, not throw fuel on the fire.

“Well, you’re not dead,” I said, “fortuitously we found you, and now if you are going to persist with this quest, there has to be a plan, and Nadia has to be part of it.”

“I’ve already told you I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“OK.  Then I’ll start my own quest, with Nadia’s help, and we’ll see who gets to the treasure first.  I told you I believe I know where it is, and I think you believe you know too.  Your problem will be getting back there, whereas, I have no such problem.  So,” I pointed to the door, “you can leave any time, but don’t call me again.  We’re done.”

I glared back at him, and while not exactly squirming in his seat, he appeared to be mulling over the ultimatum.  I hadn’t planned to give him one, but he was pushing all the wrong buttons.

It also elicited an interesting look from Nadia, because it was the first time she was hearing that I knew where the treasure was.  It was a calculated risk telling her, but I’d know soon enough whose side she was on.

“If you sign a document forfeiting any rights over the treasure you have a deal.  Both of you.”

So, it came down to the money, pure and simple.  I thought I’d made it clear long ago that I wasn’t interested in anything to do with the treasure because it was cursed.  “No problem.”

I looked at Nadia.

“God no, I want nothing to do with it.  I’ve seen what the obsession with wealth can do to people, and families, and it’s why I left.  I’m happy to sign anything you want.”

He pulled what looked to be sheets of folded paper from his pocket, unfolded them, and gave one to each of us.

“Call me when they’re notarized.”  With a final glare, he left.

That left Nadia looking at me with a curious expression.  “You know where the treasure is?”

“Maybe.  I just wanted to put the wind up him because I think he does.  There are clues that Boggs doesn’t know about, and I haven’t told him about.  I believe according to some of the information I’ve found, that he was in the right place when we found him.”

“I didn’t see any caves or tunnels, or any sort of hiding place, just rocks.”

“There are a few factors involved that make that area a likely spot and the reasons that spot was chosen.  One is that there doesn’t seem to be apparent access by land, other than the way we came, across the rocks, but at the time the pirates might not have had the time or the know-how to get there by anything other than the sea.”

“So, you’re saying they came by sea.  How did they get past the reefs?  And how the hell could they see a cave or tunnel in that rockface?”

“It’s been a couple of hundred years, and I think back then that shoreline would have been a lot different.  I’m not a geologist but that cliff face shows signs of rockfalls and slippage, so it’s possible it’s now concealed.  From what I’ve read, just in the newspaper archives alone, there’s been seismic activity occurring for the last seventy-odd years and maybe even during the last few centuries, just look at the fact there used to be a lake further inland.  Then, I suspect they came ashore by an abnormally high tide.  For an experienced seafarer, it has the pluses, and precise navigation through the reef, and it’s the hardest to get to spot on the Grove’s coastline.  An ideal spot that is to everyone other than a master mariner, an unlikely place to get to.

She looked like she was weighing up the pros and cons of what I’d told her.

“I’m surprised you’re telling me this.”

“The chances of the treasure still being there or that I’m right about the location is quite remote, so it doesn’t really matter.  Anyway, up to now, you haven’t given me a reason not to trust you, so if there’s anything you want to tell me, now would be the time.”

So, she had considered how it might look to me, the family name and reputation she had inherited.

“I’ve told you what my situation is.  To be honest, I don’t think there’s any treasure to be found either.  I once heard a discussion between family members, when I was very young and didn’t understand what they were talking about, involving putting a story out there that there was a treasure, and if they sold it well enough, people would pay plenty for maps.  In my opinion, the treasure story is a Cossatino special money-making scheme built off Ormiston’s and layer, Boggs’s obsession.  The myth has been perpetuated by articles in papers, and new maps surfacing from time to time.  I’d be surprised if you did find anything, but for Boggs’s sake, it’s better he learn the truth than hang on to false hope.”

“So you know it’s all a hoax?”

“On the face of it, you would think so, but Vince, not the sharpest of people, bought into it, especially when Boggs’s father came on board to draw the maps.  He was a cartographer you know, and worked for the county authorities in mapping the area.  I’m guessing that’s how he got started on this treasure thing.  That was another story my father liked to tell us, how Boggs had found a cave that was a pirates lair, only to see it destroyed not long after in one of the recent earthquakes.  That discovery turned him into a true believer and was happy to help the Cossatino’s so he could muddy the water while he searched for it.  There have always been rumors of treasure along this coastline.  It might be possible there was treasure somewhere, but don’t you think it’d be found by now?”

“Logic dictates that it would be, but anything’s possible.  Why did you take me on that coin-seeking exercise?”

“The truth Sam?  I heard Vince talking about Boggs snooping around, and I was hoping we’d find nothing.  Vince can be an ass most of the time, and I want to believe he wouldn’t do anything to seriously hurt Boggs, just put the wind up him.  Thankfully nothing happened, and it’s the best I could do in the circumstances.  I’m sorry.”

Was she by definition somewhere between a rock and a hard place?

“This time we were lucky.  Next time it might be a very different story.  I’ll understand if you want to quit now, because you may have to pick a side.”

“Let’s hope then it doesn’t come to that.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

The 2am Rant: When is it ever an easy flight home?

The course of plane travel can run like clockwork, or rapidly come apart at the seems.

Every time you go to the airport, it can become an adventure. Checking in, battling the airline’s kiosk, printing and attaching bag labels, going to bag drop, remembering that every airline does it differently.

Today we are arriving at Hong Kong airport which is huge and there are endless boarding gates. Being dropped off in the zone that belongs to the airline you’re flying might lead you to think finding the check-in for your flights is going to be easy, but it’s not. The next stop is to find the aisle letter where your flight is checking in and then do the automated boarding pass and baggage label.

If it’s international travel which it is today, there’s the added stress of negotiating immigration, and the duty free stores. We followed the rules, got there early, had the usual problems at the kiosk requiring the assistance of two Cathay Pacific staff, and finally made it to the initial departure concourse.

Next there’s the temptation of overpriced airport food if you’re hungry which we are not. But we have a McCafe coffee to satisfy a caffeine fix before the flight.

The shops are all expensive at the initial departure concourse, so we decide to see if there are other shops near our departure gate. To get to it we descend to the train and get off at 40-80. It’s a short journey and then when we arrive there is a collection of more affordable shops where we proceed to buy every man and his dog a selection of sweets with our remaining Hong Kong dollars.

From there it’s a couple of travellators, which sounds ridiculously short, but are, in reality, very, very long, to our gate and we get there ten minutes before boarding is supposed to commence.

Today we are travelling on an Airbus A350-900, a relatively new plane so you would think there could not be anything wrong with it. We had the same plane coming to Hong Kong, and no trouble with it.

We find a seat in the gate lounge and wait, along with everyone else. I’m still surprised at the number of able bodied people who take the disabled seats for the sake of being closer to the start of the line, and worse the woman who not only took up one of the seats but also another seat for her cabin baggage which was extensive.

Boarding starts late, and routinely for the first and business, and disabled passengers. The rest now start to line up in the economy line. Some people haven’t moved, perhaps they know something we don’t.

We eventually join the line, and go through initial formalities while waiting. And waiting. As the minutes tick by and nothing is happening, other than what appears to be growing consternation by the gate staff. The tipping point for immediate concern is when the previously boarded passengers begin to come back through the boarding gate into the departure gate lounge.

One of those who had been on board came our way and said there was a problem with the plane. They were told it was due to technical difficulties, the official non scary description for your plane Is broken. In the face of growing consternation among the queued economy passengers, there was an official announcement that advised of the technical difficulties, and boarding would be delayed.

We all sit back down, but this time there were a number of disabled and elderly people who needed seats, and our able bodied lady and her baggage did not move. Shame on her. We are lucky that where we were in the waiting line was adjacent to nearby seats

Now we were able to watch the other passengers jockeying for position to race to be first in the economy class boarding queue the second time around. I think they don’t realise they have the same seat if they are at the front of the line or the back. Because we were all asked to sit down, those at the front of the queue would now find themselves at the end.

After a delay of about an hour and a half we are finally boarding. The worst aspect of this delay is losing our slot in the departures and I’m guessing this was going to have an effect on our actual takeoff time. It appears to be the case. Boarding does not take very long and shortly after the doors are closed we’re pushing back from the gate.

From there, it becomes a chess game when we get a slot. We are in a queue of planes waiting their turn, and on the taxi ramp before the main runway, planes are separated into two queues, and we are in the second. Since we are the only one, I suspect we’re in the delayed take off queue, and sit watching four or so other planes take off before we finally get on the runway.

On the plane we discover one of the toilets is out of action so perhaps that was the technical difficulty with our plane. It’s not full so one toilet down will have little effect. Leaving in the early afternoon will get us into Brisbane late at night. It was meant to be around 11 pm, but with the delays, and possibly making up time in flight, it will now be after midnight when we arrive. Fortunately we have a 24 hour airport in Brisbane.

The flight from Hong Kong to Brisbane is without event. Lunch after takeoff, then a few hours later, an hour of so before landing, we have dinner. Both of us are not hungry. As expected, we landed after midnight, tired but glad to be home.

,,,

I can’t say at this moment in time I miss travelling.

What I learned about writing: The murky art of plotting (2)

Truth is stranger than fiction

…

The Unseen Shadows: When “Not Suspicious” Hides a Deadly Truth

In the quiet hum of suburban life, where hedges are trimmed and routines are sacred, sometimes the most chilling stories unfold not with a bang, but with a whisper. A seemingly ordinary day, an ordinary house, and a tragedy that, on the surface, appears tragically straightforward.

This week, a news blurb, easily missed, caught my eye. It spoke of a man and a woman, new in their courtship, found deceased in an ordinary suburban home following a welfare call. Their bodies lay side-by-side on the floor. The initial report was stark, almost dismissive: police were not treating the deaths as suspicious.

And that, my friends, is exactly where our story truly begins.

Because what if “not suspicious” is merely the first layer of a far more intricate, and sinister, narrative? What if that seemingly benign conclusion is precisely the moment when a seasoned investigator should lean a little closer, peer beyond the immediate, and ask: “But what if…?”

In our hypothetical deep dive, the scene, initially dismissed as a tragic dual overdose, starts to sing a different tune – one of carefully orchestrated deception.

The Discordant Notes Begin to Play

For a keen eye, particularly one belonging to someone like Detective Chief Inspector Barnes, the “simple case” quickly unravels:

  1. The Implausible Overdose: The immediate assumption was drugs. Yet, friends of the deceased knew them as anything but recreational users. And even if they were, “lying on the floor at home” didn’t align with their known habits. Most tellingly? No drugs were found in the house, save for residual traces on the bodies themselves. Sniffer dogs confirmed this, finding nothing else. This isn’t just unusual; it suggests a planting of evidence, a narrative carefully constructed.
  2. The Selective Theft: In an upstairs office, a laptop was missing – not the charger or the mouse, just the computer itself. Both their cell phones were also gone. Yet, amidst this targeted disappearance, a significant sum of cash, around £500, was left untouched. If this was a robbery, it was remarkably selective, focusing not on valuables, but on information. A thief with a very particular agenda.
  3. The Silent Bruise: A preliminary examination of the woman’s body revealed bruising on her neck. A subtle mark, easily overlooked, but one that strongly suggested a struggle, a chokehold perhaps. This detail alone pushes the needle firmly away from “natural causes” or “accidental overdose” and towards something far more violent. The coroner’s report would confirm, but the suspicion was planted.
  4. The Ghost in the System: And then, the final, chilling piece of the puzzle. A routine check on the male victim’s name returned an “access denied” flag. In our interconnected world, such a block isn’t accidental. It screams of a hidden identity, a past carefully shielded, perhaps even a life lived undercover.

From Misadventure to Murder

For Detective Chief Inspector Barnes, these four seemingly disparate points converged into a single, inescapable truth. What began as a welfare check, initially deemed tragic but benign, was rapidly transforming into something far more sinister: a potential double murder. The scene, far from being straightforward, was a meticulously staged tableau designed to mislead, to funnel investigators down a path of false assumptions.

This fictional scenario, drawn from the briefest of news items and a “what if” musing, serves as a powerful reminder: appearances can be deceiving. The most unassuming details often hold the key, and sometimes, the loudest silence speaks volumes. It’s a testament to the fact that true investigation isn’t about accepting the obvious, but about questioning everything, about looking for the unseen shadows lurking just beneath the surface of the “not suspicious.”

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 230

Day 230 – Writing Exercise

…

The thing about a quiet neighbourhood – houses not built on top of each other, people next door near but far enough away not to be annoying; if they tended to be annoying, is that you could hear the silence.

We had lived there for nearly ten years, the last family to move into the estate that had about twenty families scattered over acreage.  It was one of those miracle moments, a house popping up in my search browser when I put in the parameters.

One house.  This house.  We came, we saw, we met the neighbours.  We bought.  It was like we were meant to live there.

…

Ten years on, our anniversary neighbourhood party had wrapped up at precisely 10 pm as all parties did, and the participants had dispersed, the last straggler just disappearing around the corner, a few hundred yards from home.

I was on the front verandah looking up at the sky filled with stars, some brighter than others, and then, one that appeared to be moving.

My eyes watered, straining to see it. I blinked several times to squeeze the moisture out, opened them again and whatever it was had gone.  Or blended in, so it was just another star.

I had a telescope out back and would go have another look before I turned in.

Edie poked her head out the door.  “You’re probably breaking some community regulation standing out there after 10pm. What are you doing?”

“Testing them.”

It was a running joke.  The neighbourhood had some rather quirky rules, but nothing that caused us concern.  The lady in charge of community watch, as she called it, was due to retire this year, and everyone was waiting for the new guard.

And new rules.  More lenient rules.

“Come in.  It’s cold out there.”

It had got cold, especially in the last few minutes.  I shivered, took a last look out at the sky, then went in.  The auto light switched off.  All was well again.

“What were you doing out there?”

She was closing the shutters on the front windows, and the moonlight that had been seeping through the open blinds disappeared.  Except for the passage light, the house was in darkness.

We had streetlights, but they were so low that the light didn’t reach the ground.  Normal street lights put out a lot of light, enough to see the road, but these were deliberately subdued.

Another quirk produced by our fearless Community Watch leader, who seemed to hold such sway with city hall.

“I’m just going out back to check on a shooting star.  I’ll make a wish.”

“I need a new vehicle “

A quick kiss, a touch of hands, she headed towards the bedroom.  I would be back before she got into bed.

The auto lighting lit the way along the passage floor to the back door.  I went out onto the back patio and saw Jake, youngest son and the family astronomer, had left the telescope pointing in the direction of Mars.

He was obsessed with the belief that Martians were coming to Earth, and was adamant he had seen a ship land nearby last year, just before it switched on its cloud of invisibility.

Jake had an excellent imagination.

He was in the middle of writing his first Sci-Fi novel and had asked me to read some of it.  It was quite good but technical.  I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was so boring it put me to sleep.

I peered into the lens up at the sky and focused on the last position.  It was a bright star among many. And something else.  It seemed to be flashing, or a whole lot of stars were passing it, which made it seem like it was flashing.

Or maybe not.  Nothing was happening.

Just before I went in, I looked up, in time to see a shooting star, or what looked like one, light a path across the sky.

I made a wish, and went to bed.

…

I usually slept like a log.  It had been said that a bomb could go off next door and I’d sleep through it.  While no bombs had exploded, there were a number of events I had missed.

Tonight?  There was no reason why I should be awake, and yet I dozed off the moment my head hit the pillow.  I remember seeing the time on the digital clock beside the bed.  11:03.

I looked now, and it said 1:07.  What felt like five minutes later, it said 1:16.  I did not feel sleepy in the slightest.

Edie was sound asleep, her breathing regular.  It always surprised me how easy it was for her to get to sleep.  Perhaps it was because of the early years with the children and the constant care they needed; she had taught mt herself to get what rest she could, no matter how short it was.

It had never been that easy for me.

It wasn’t the first time I had lain awake for hours, searching for that elusive moment.  I tried counting sheep, green sheep at that; I tried emptying my mind, but that was impossible.

1:38.

I slipped out into the cool night air and padded quietly across the room.  The door made a slight squeak as I opened it a fraction, the noise sounding very loud in that silence that came with the middle of the night.

I stepped into the passage, and the first of the footlights came on to guide the way.  I headed down towards the kitchen, where what I assumed was moonlight came through the open slats of the kitchen windows, filling that room with a pale whitish light.

On the tight hand side, the kitchen being on the left, was the dining room, with floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out onto the veranda that wrapped around the back of the house.

Outside the dining room was where the BBQ sat.

On that side, sitting on the veranda, the view stretched across a number the neighbours back yards that stretched down the the stream that divided pur properties from those on the other side, mostly ranches running either cattle or sheep.

Sometimes you could hear them at night, but mostly during the day.  When they were down in the lower pastures.  At the moment, they were higher up in the hills. 

Come Christmas, the vista from the back verandah would look like a Christmas card scene, one I could never get tired of.

Suddenly the dining room was filled with a very bright light, and it was almost as bright as day.  It lasted a few seconds before it just snapped off like someone had flicked a switch.

I had been almost blinded and couldn’t see anything for at least a few minutes before the inky blackness transformed into blurry shapes.

I crossed to the room and looked out the windows to see what I thought was some sort of vehicle, only it couldn’t be one because it was hovering above the ground.

My eyes were sore from the bright light before, and I think I must be hallucinating.  Under the craft were five figures, not human, and yet human-like, and walking towards them were the five members of the Richards, our next-door neighbours.

I just watched in utter fascination.

They stepped into the pool of very subdued light coming from under the floating vehicle, one by one, touched the hands of the newly arrived people and exchanged shapes.

Then the Richards went back to their house; the other creatures, human or otherwise, held hands and then disappeared.

Seconds later, the searing light reappeared and then was gone.  A second dose of light on my poor eyes looked a few minutes longer, and by the time my sight had returned, it was as if nothing had happened.

What had I just seen?

…

I woke up, and it was light.  Edie was already up and about, and it was just another day.

It didn’t feel like I had been awake for an hour or so, and in my head it felt like something had happened, only I couldn’t remember what.

I wasn’t tired, not like I had been awake half the night because I knew what that was like.

Something had happened.  Something significant, but it was just there, on the fringe of my memory, lurking, or waiting for me to find the right key and unlock that door.

“You going to stay in bed all day?”

Edie put her head in the door, on her way from the front door where she had collected the newspaper, to the kitchen where breakfast would be well underway.

It was just another normal day.

“Coming,,” I muttered.

“You snore.  I never realised it until last night.  You woke me.  Normally I can sleep through anything.”

“I don’t snore.”

“You do.  And talk in your sleep.”

I sat up and faced her.  That was frightening if it was true.  I often dreamed I was having strange conversations with people who were basically strangers, but only once.

“What did I say?”

“Something about old man Richards.  Not surprising you think he’s daft.  He hasn’t been the same since the accident.  Don’t hang about.  We have that appointment at the bank this morning.”

Then she was gone.

Richards.  There was that thing in my mind again, that memory that refused to come out of the vault.  Did it have something to do with Richards?

I shrugged.  It would return when it wanted to.  In the meantime, places to go and people to see.

…

Surprises were good, when they were surprises.  We had decided that after Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, got married, we would buy them a house.

With one thing and another, their six-month jaunt through Europe turned into a five-year work-and-play plan; they only decided to return when she fell pregnant.  Twins and a bot later, the place they were living in was too small, hence the house.

Everything was on track until Elizabeth saw us talking to the bank manager; she just happened to be in the neighbourhood and feared the worst: we had to downsize, or worse.

I was never very good at lying. Edie thought she had it under control, but what mother does with that first daughter.  The secret was barely intact.

Then we ran into the Richards, Bill and Betty.  It wasn’t a usual thing, and I couldn’t remember the last time.  Coming after the Elizabeth thing, I was a little shaken.

That nagging thing in the back of my mind got a bit of a shake.  Both the Richards seemed a little distracted, and Bill didn’t seem to recognise me.  Not at first, and I could see he was trying to cover it like people did when they have forgotten your name.

Betty was chatty, which was a change from her usual surly self; the reason she gave me many years ago was that Bill had dragged her out to this godforsaken place as punishment, though she never said what it was for.

Betty confused me with one of the other neighbours who looked a little like me, which I thought odd, but it wasn’t a thing.  Edie thought they were just the same as usual, vague and borderline rude.

Driving home, my head had got as far as deciding whatever was trying to get out had something to do with the Richards.

…

Once again I spent some time out with the telescope, studying the moon surface, and wondering if I’d live long enough to go there.  Every now and then a billionaire comes up with this idea of a weekend on the moon in a lunar hotel, and I dare to believe it might be possible in my lifetime.

The other day it had moved to Mars.  I’m sure the Martians wouldn’t mind, though I had no idea why I would think that.  It was like the day someone asked me what the Martians looked like, and I said, like us, only with synthetic bodies, so they could live in the atmosphere there.

It got me some very strange looks.

The sky was less crowded with stars, and there were clouds drifting by blocking the view.  It was a full moon, and I had a momentary thought of werewolves.  Not that they existed, but they were a part of folklore.

Then when the cloud cover was too thick, and the first spits of rain came, I went inside, made coffee and went to stand over by the patio windows.

A shard of lightning lit up the back yards of a number of the neighbours’ yards, as bright as day before darkness returned.

The rain became torrential.  The lightning was sporadic, and each time it lit up a different part of the countryside. 

There was a huge rumble just about overhead, followed by a bolt of lightning which, in the fraction of a second as it lit up the scene in front of me, I saw it land on Bill Richards, who had been standing out in his yard.

Another bolt hit our house, and there was a huge explosion.

That was all I remembered.

…

I was lying down in a brightly lit room; on one side, a man in a white coat was looking down at me.  On the other side, Edie was looking concerned.

“He’s been forgetting things, and talking in his sleep.  He hasn’t done that before.”

“It might be the settling process.  Sometimes it takes a few days.  The last upgrade was a little bigger than usual.”

“It worked for me.”

“You’re a 6AZ model.  More sophisticated algorithms because you are female.”

“You’re saying the male units are not as smart.”

What were they talking about?  Models, smart, sophistication.  I was just another person who was suffering from lack of sleep and hallucinations.

At least I think that was what I was there for.  This was a hospital?

Edie glanced at me.  “Oh, you’re awake?”

“That might be a matter of opinion.  I think I just woke in the middle of a nightmare.”

She smiled.  It didn’t fill me with confidence.

“You can’t go around telling people you saw aliens, Sam.  People get antsy when you say stuff like that.”

“I never said I saw aliens. When did I see aliens?”

“You said the Martians had landed next door and took the Richards away.  I mean, Sam, we saw them just a few hours ago.”

I was confused.  I could see in my head the spacecraft that was hovering next door and the body exchange of the Richards family.  I could remember meeting the Richards at the cafe, and how disoriented they had been.

The transfer process had still not been perfected.

Then I realised the truth.

“There it is,” the doctor said.  “It just needed a tweak.”

The doctor stepped away from the console, and I could see the twin flat lines running across the screen.  Memories and reality aligned.

I closed my eyes; everything went dark, and then opened them again.

Edie was looking concerned but relieved.  “How do you feel?”

“About sixty-four, give or take a week.  Getting old is not what it’s cracked up to be.”  I could feel something had happened, but couldn’t quite remember what it was.  “Another fall?”

“You need to remember to use your cane, Sam.  You are not as spry as you used to be.”

“No.  I guess not.”  I slowly got off the bed and stood.  I felt steady.

“Doc?”

“You’ll get there, Sam.  We all do in the end.  Just take care out there.”

“I will.”

Edie took my hand.  “Come on.  Places to go; people to see.”

Funny.  I was thinking that myself.  It was like I was reading her mind.

She opened the door and glared at me as I went past her.

“Don’t,” she said, not in words but in her thoughts.  “I don’t want to go home, so stop being difficult.  Earth is so much better than Mars.”

I looked at her as she followed me out and closed the door.

That doctor was our supervisor and had been assessing me.  The Richards had cracked the week before, and he had them replaced.  We’d be next if I didn’t appear ‘fixed’.

She was right.  Back home we’d be in a factory, chained to a production line.

“Understood.”

“Good.”  Then out loud, for the benefit of those around us.  “I need you because we have a housewarming to plan.  The bank just approved the house purchase.  Elizabeth is going to be so surprised.”

In more ways than one.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

An excerpt from “Mistaken Identity” – a work in progress

The odds of any one of us having a doppelganger are quite high. Whether or not you got to meet them or be confronted by them was significantly lower. Except, of course, unless you are a celebrity.

It was a phenomenon remarkable only for the fact that, at times, certain high-profile people, notorious or not, had doubles if only to put off enemies or the general public. Sometimes we see people in the street who look like someone we knew and make the mistake of approaching them like a long-lost friend, only to discover an embarrassed individual desperately trying to get away from what they perceive as a stalker, or worse.

And then sometimes it is a picture that looms up on a TV screen, an almost exact likeness of you. At first, you are fascinated, and then, according to the circumstances and narrative that is attached to that picture, either flattered or horrified.

For me, one turned to the other when I saw an almost likeness of me flash up on the screen when I turned the TV on in my room. What looked to be my photo, with only minor differences, was in the corner of the screen, the newsreader speaking in rapid Italian, so fast I could only translate every second or third word.

But the one word I did recognise was murder. The photo of the man on the screen was the subject of an extensive manhunt. The crime, the murder of a woman in the very same hotel I was staying, and it was being played out live several floors above me. The gist of the story, the woman had been seen with and staying with the man who was my double, and, less than an hour ago, the body had been discovered by a chambermaid.

The killer, the announcer said, was believed to be still in the hotel because the woman had died shortly before she had been discovered.

I watched, at first fascinated by what I was seeing. I guess I should have been horrified, but at that moment it didn’t register that I might be mistaken for that man.

Not until another five minutes had passed, and I was watching the police in full riot gear, with a camera crew following behind, coming up a passage towards a room. Live action of the arrest of the suspected killer, the breathless commentator said.

Then, suddenly, there was a pounding on the door. On the TV screen, plain to see, was the number of my room. I looked through the peephole and saw an army of police officers. It didn’t take much to realise what had happened. The hotel staff identified me as the man in the photograph on the TV and called the police.

Horrified wasn’t what I was feeling right then.

It was fear.

My last memory was the door crashing open, the wood splintering, and men rushing into the room, screaming at me, waving guns, and when I put my hands up to defend myself, I heard a gunshot.

And in one very confused and probably near-death experience, I thought I saw my mother and thought what was she doing in Rome?

…

I was the archetypal nobody.

I lived in a small flat, I drove a nondescript car, had an average job in a low-profile travel agency, was single, and currently not involved in a relationship, had no children, and, according to my workmates, no life.

They were wrong. I was one of those people who preferred their own company; I had a cat, and travelled whenever I could. And I did have a ‘thing’ for Rosalie, one of the reasons why I stayed at the travel agency. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but one could always hope.

I was both pleased and excited to be going to the conference. It was my first, and the glimpse I had seen of it had whetted my appetite for more information about the nuances of my profession.

Some would say that a travel agent wasn’t much of a job, but to me, it was every bit as demanding as being an accountant or a lawyer. You were providing a customer with a service, and arguably, more people needed a travel agent than a lawyer. At least that was what I told myself as I watched more and more people start using the internet, and our relevance slowly dissipating.

This conference was about countering that trend.

The trip over had been uneventful. I was met at the airport and taken to the hotel where the conference was being held with several other delegates who had arrived on the same plane. I had mingled with several other delegates at the pre-conference get-together, including one whose name was Maryanne.

She was an unusual young woman, not the sort that I usually met, because she was the one who was usually surrounded by all the boys, the life of the party. In normal circumstances, I would not have introduced myself to her, but she had approached me. Why did I think that may have been significant? All of this ran through my mind, culminating in the last event on the highlight reel, the door bursting open, men rushing into my room, and then one of the policemen opened fire.

I replayed that last scene again, trying to see the face of my assailant, but it was just a sea of men in battle dress, bulletproof vests and helmets, accompanied by screaming and yelling, some of which I identified as “Get on the floor”.

Then came the shot.

Why ask me to get on the floor if all they were going to do was shoot me? I was putting my hands up at the time, in surrender, not reaching for a weapon.

Then I saw the face again, hovering in the background like a ghost. My mother. Only the hair was different, and her clothes, and then the image was going, perhaps a figment of my imagination brought on by pain-killing drugs. I tried to imagine the scene again, but this time it played out without the image of my mother.

I opened my eyes and took stock of my surroundings. What I felt in that exact moment couldn’t be described. I should most likely be dead, the result of a gunshot wound. I guess I should be thankful the shooter hadn’t aimed at anything vital, but that was the only item on the plus side.

I was in a hospital room with a policeman by the door. He was reading a newspaper and sitting uncomfortably on a small chair. He gave me a quick glance when he heard me move slightly, but didn’t acknowledge me with either a nod or a greeting, just went back to the paper.

If I still had a police guard, then I would still be considered a suspect. What was interesting was that I was not handcuffed to the bed. Perhaps that only happened in TV shows. Or maybe they knew I couldn’t run because my injuries were too serious. Or the guard would shoot me long before my feet hit the floor. I knew the police well enough now to know they would shoot first and ask questions later.

On the physical side, I had a large bandage over the top left corner of my chest, extending over my shoulder. A little poking and prodding determined the bullet had hit somewhere between the top of my rib cage and my shoulder. Nothing vital there, but my arm might be somewhat useless for a while, depending on what the bullet hit on the way in or through.

It didn’t feel like there were any broken or damaged bones.

That was the good news.

On the other side of the ledger, my mental state, there was only one word that could describe it. Terrified. I was looking at a murder charge and jail time, a lot of it. Murder usually had a long time in jail attached to it.

Whatever had happened, I didn’t do it. I know I didn’t do it, but I had to try to explain this to people who had already made up their minds. I searched my mind for evidence. It was there, but in the confused state brought on by the medication, all I could think about was jail, and the sort of company I was going to have.

I think death would have been preferable.

…

Half an hour later, maybe longer, I was drifting in and out of consciousness. A nurse, or what I thought was a nurse, came into the room. The guard stood, checked her ID card, and then stood by the door.

She came over and stood beside the bed. “How are you?” she asked, first in Italian, and when I pretended I didn’t understand, she asked the same question in accented English.

“Alive, I guess,” I said. “No one has come and told me what my condition is yet. You are my first visitor. Can you tell me?”

“Of course. You are very lucky to be alive. You will be fine and make a full recovery. The doctors here are excellent at their work.”

“What happens now?”

“I check you, and then you have another visitor. He is from the British Embassy, I think. But he will have to wait until I have finished my examination.”

I realised then she was a doctor, not a nurse.

…

My second visitor was a man, dressed in a suit, the sort of which I associated with the British Civil Service.  He was not very old, which told me he was probably a recent graduate on his first posting, the junior officer who drew the short straw.

The guard checked his ID but again did not leave the room, sitting back down and going back to his newspaper.

My visitor introduced himself as Alex Jordan from the British Embassy in Rome, and he had been asked by the Ambassador to sort out what he labelled a tricky mess.

For starters, it was good to see that someone cared about what happened to me.  But, equally, I knew the mantra, get into trouble overseas, and there is not much we can do to help you.  So, after that lengthy introduction, I had to wonder why he was here.

I said, “They think I am an international criminal by the name of Jacob Westerbury, whose picture looks just like me, and apparently, for them, it is an open and shut case.”  I could still hear the fragments of the yelling as the police burst through the door, at the same time telling me to get on the floor with my hands over my head.

“It’s not.  They know they’ve got the wrong man, which is why I’m here.  There is the issue of what had been described as excessive force, and the fact that you were shot had made it an all-around embarrassment for them.”

“Then why are you here?  Shouldn’t they be here apologising?”

“That is why you have another visitor.  I only took precedence because I insisted on speaking with you first.  I have come, basically, to ask you for a favour.  This situation has afforded us an opportunity.  We would like you to sign the official document, which basically indemnifies them against any legal proceedings.”

Curious.  What sort of opportunity was he talking about?  Was this a matter that could get difficult and I could be charged by the Italian Government, even if I wasn’t guilty, or was it one of those hush-hush type deals, you do this for us, we’ll help you out with that?  “What sort of opportunity?”

“We want to get our hands on Jacob Westerbury as much as they do.  They’ve made a mistake, and we’d like to use that to get custody of him if or when he is arrested in this country.  I’m sure you would also like this man brought into custody as soon as possible, so you will stop being confused with him.  I can only imagine what it was like to be arrested in the manner you were.  And I would not blame you if you wanted to get some compensation for what they’ve done.  But.  There are bigger issues in play here, and you would be doing this for your country.”

I wondered what would happen if I didn’t agree to his proposal.  I had to ask, “What if I don’t?”

His expression didn’t change.  “I’m sure you are a sensible man, Mr Pargeter, who is more than willing to help his country whenever he can.  They have agreed to take care of all your hospital expenses, refund the cost of the Conference, and travel.  I’m sure I could also get them to pay for a few days at Capri or Sorrento, if you like, before you go home.  What do you say?”

There was only one thing I could say.  Wasn’t it treason if you went against your country’s wishes?

“I’m not an unreasonable man, Alex.  Go do your deal, and I’ll sign the papers.”

“Good man.”

…

After Alex left, the doctor came back to announce the arrival of a woman, who had announced herself as the publicity officer from the Italian police. When she came into the room, she was not dressed in a uniform.

The doctor left after giving a brief report to the civilian at the door. I understood the gist of it: “The patient has recovered excellently, and the wounds are healing as expected. There is no cause for concern.”

That was a relief.

While the doctor was speaking to the civilian, I speculated on who she might be. She was young, not more than thirty, conservatively dressed, so an official of some kind, but not necessarily with the police. Did they have prosecutors? I was unfamiliar with the Italian legal system.

She had long, wavy black hair and the sort of sultry looks of an Italian movie star, and her presence made me more curious than fearful, though I couldn’t say why.

The woman then spoke to the guard, and he reluctantly got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. She checked the door and then came back towards me, standing at the end of the bed. Now alone, she said, “A few questions before we begin.” Her English was only slightly accented. “Your name is Jack Pargeter?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You are in Rome to attend the Travel Agents Conference at the Hilton Hotel?”

“Yes.”

“You attended a preconference introduction on the evening of the 25th, after arriving from London at approximately 4:25 pm.”

“About that time, yes. I know it was about five when the bus came to collect me, and several others, to take us to the hotel.”

She smiled. It was then that I noticed she was reading from a small notepad.

“It was ten past five to be precise. The driver had been held up in traffic. We have several witnesses who saw you on the plane, on the bus, at the hotel, and with the aid of closed-circuit TV, we have established you are not the criminal Jacob Westerbury.”

She put her notebook back in her bag and then said, “My name is Vicenza Andretti, and I am with the prosecutor’s office. I am here to formally apologise for the situation that can only be described as a case of mistaken identity. I assure you, it is not the habit of our police officers to shoot people unless they have a very strong reason for doing so. I understand that in the confusion of the arrest, one of our officers accidentally discharged his weapon. We are undergoing a very thorough investigation into the circumstances of this event.”

I was not sure why, but between the time I had spoken to the embassy official and now, something about letting them off so easily was bugging me. I could see why they had sent her. It would be difficult to be angry or annoyed with her.

But I was annoyed.

“Do you often send a whole squad of trigger-happy riot police to arrest a single man?” It came out harsher than I intended.

“My men believed they were dealing with a dangerous criminal.”

“Do I look like a dangerous criminal?” And then I realised if it was mistaken identity, the answer would be yes.

She saw the look on my face and said quietly, “I think you know the answer to that question, Mr Pargeter.”

“Well, it was overkill.”

“As I said, we are very sorry for the circumstances you now find yourself in. You must understand that we honestly believed we were dealing with an armed and dangerous murderer, and we were acting within our mandate. My department will cover your medical expenses and any other amounts for the inconvenience this has caused you. I believe you were attending a conference at your hotel. I am very sorry, but given the medical circumstances you have, you will have to remain here for a few more days.”

“I guess, then, I should thank you for not killing me.”

Her expression told me that was not the best thing I could have said in the circumstances.

“I mean, I should thank you for the hospital and the care. But a question or two of my own. May I?”

She nodded.

“Did you catch this Jacob Westerbury character?”

“No. In the confusion created by your arrest, he escaped. Once we realised we had made a mistake and reviewed the closed-circuit TV, we tracked him leaving by a rear exit.”

“Are you sure it was one of your men who shot me?”

I watched as her expression changed to one of surprise.

“You don’t think it was one of my men?”

“Oddly enough, no. But don’t ask me why.”

“It is very interesting that you should say that, because in our initial investigation, it appeared none of our officers’ weapons had been discharged. A forensic investigation into the bullet tells us it was one that is used in our weapons, but…”

I could see their dilemma.

“Have you any enemies that would want to shoot you, Mr Pargeter?”

That was absurd because I had no enemies, at least none that I knew of, much less anyone who would want me dead.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then it is strange, and will perhaps remain a mystery. I will let you know if anything more is revealed in our investigation.”

She took an envelope out of her briefcase and opened it, pulling out several sheets of paper.

I knew what it was. A verbal apology was one thing, but a signed waiver would cover them legally. They had sent a pretty girl to charm me. Perhaps using anyone else would not have worked. There was potential for a huge litigation payout here, and someone more ruthless would jump at the chance of making a few million out of the Italian Government.

“We need a signature on this document,” she said.

“Absolving you of any wrongdoing?”

“I have apologised. We will take whatever measures are required for your comfort after this event. We are accepting responsibility for our actions and are being reasonable.”

They were. I took the pen from her and signed the documents.

“You couldn’t add dinner with you on that list of benefits?” No harm in asking.

“I am unfortunately unavailable.”

I smiled. “It wasn’t a request for a date, just dinner. You can tell me about Rome, as only a resident can. Please.”

She looked me up and down, searching for the ulterior motive. When she couldn’t find one, she said, “We shall see once the hospital discharges you in a few days.”

“Then I’ll pencil you in?”

She looked at me quizzically. “What is this pencil me in?”

“It’s an English colloquialism. It means maybe. As when you write something in pencil, it is easy to erase it.”

A momentary frown, then recognition and a smile. “I shall remember that. Thank you for your time and cooperation, Mr Pargeter. Good morning.”

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2021

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 230

Day 230 – Writing Exercise

…

The thing about a quiet neighbourhood – houses not built on top of each other, people next door near but far enough away not to be annoying; if they tended to be annoying, is that you could hear the silence.

We had lived there for nearly ten years, the last family to move into the estate that had about twenty families scattered over acreage.  It was one of those miracle moments, a house popping up in my search browser when I put in the parameters.

One house.  This house.  We came, we saw, we met the neighbours.  We bought.  It was like we were meant to live there.

…

Ten years on, our anniversary neighbourhood party had wrapped up at precisely 10 pm as all parties did, and the participants had dispersed, the last straggler just disappearing around the corner, a few hundred yards from home.

I was on the front verandah looking up at the sky filled with stars, some brighter than others, and then, one that appeared to be moving.

My eyes watered, straining to see it. I blinked several times to squeeze the moisture out, opened them again and whatever it was had gone.  Or blended in, so it was just another star.

I had a telescope out back and would go have another look before I turned in.

Edie poked her head out the door.  “You’re probably breaking some community regulation standing out there after 10pm. What are you doing?”

“Testing them.”

It was a running joke.  The neighbourhood had some rather quirky rules, but nothing that caused us concern.  The lady in charge of community watch, as she called it, was due to retire this year, and everyone was waiting for the new guard.

And new rules.  More lenient rules.

“Come in.  It’s cold out there.”

It had got cold, especially in the last few minutes.  I shivered, took a last look out at the sky, then went in.  The auto light switched off.  All was well again.

“What were you doing out there?”

She was closing the shutters on the front windows, and the moonlight that had been seeping through the open blinds disappeared.  Except for the passage light, the house was in darkness.

We had streetlights, but they were so low that the light didn’t reach the ground.  Normal street lights put out a lot of light, enough to see the road, but these were deliberately subdued.

Another quirk produced by our fearless Community Watch leader, who seemed to hold such sway with city hall.

“I’m just going out back to check on a shooting star.  I’ll make a wish.”

“I need a new vehicle “

A quick kiss, a touch of hands, she headed towards the bedroom.  I would be back before she got into bed.

The auto lighting lit the way along the passage floor to the back door.  I went out onto the back patio and saw Jake, youngest son and the family astronomer, had left the telescope pointing in the direction of Mars.

He was obsessed with the belief that Martians were coming to Earth, and was adamant he had seen a ship land nearby last year, just before it switched on its cloud of invisibility.

Jake had an excellent imagination.

He was in the middle of writing his first Sci-Fi novel and had asked me to read some of it.  It was quite good but technical.  I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was so boring it put me to sleep.

I peered into the lens up at the sky and focused on the last position.  It was a bright star among many. And something else.  It seemed to be flashing, or a whole lot of stars were passing it, which made it seem like it was flashing.

Or maybe not.  Nothing was happening.

Just before I went in, I looked up, in time to see a shooting star, or what looked like one, light a path across the sky.

I made a wish, and went to bed.

…

I usually slept like a log.  It had been said that a bomb could go off next door and I’d sleep through it.  While no bombs had exploded, there were a number of events I had missed.

Tonight?  There was no reason why I should be awake, and yet I dozed off the moment my head hit the pillow.  I remember seeing the time on the digital clock beside the bed.  11:03.

I looked now, and it said 1:07.  What felt like five minutes later, it said 1:16.  I did not feel sleepy in the slightest.

Edie was sound asleep, her breathing regular.  It always surprised me how easy it was for her to get to sleep.  Perhaps it was because of the early years with the children and the constant care they needed; she had taught mt herself to get what rest she could, no matter how short it was.

It had never been that easy for me.

It wasn’t the first time I had lain awake for hours, searching for that elusive moment.  I tried counting sheep, green sheep at that; I tried emptying my mind, but that was impossible.

1:38.

I slipped out into the cool night air and padded quietly across the room.  The door made a slight squeak as I opened it a fraction, the noise sounding very loud in that silence that came with the middle of the night.

I stepped into the passage, and the first of the footlights came on to guide the way.  I headed down towards the kitchen, where what I assumed was moonlight came through the open slats of the kitchen windows, filling that room with a pale whitish light.

On the tight hand side, the kitchen being on the left, was the dining room, with floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out onto the veranda that wrapped around the back of the house.

Outside the dining room was where the BBQ sat.

On that side, sitting on the veranda, the view stretched across a number the neighbours back yards that stretched down the the stream that divided pur properties from those on the other side, mostly ranches running either cattle or sheep.

Sometimes you could hear them at night, but mostly during the day.  When they were down in the lower pastures.  At the moment, they were higher up in the hills. 

Come Christmas, the vista from the back verandah would look like a Christmas card scene, one I could never get tired of.

Suddenly the dining room was filled with a very bright light, and it was almost as bright as day.  It lasted a few seconds before it just snapped off like someone had flicked a switch.

I had been almost blinded and couldn’t see anything for at least a few minutes before the inky blackness transformed into blurry shapes.

I crossed to the room and looked out the windows to see what I thought was some sort of vehicle, only it couldn’t be one because it was hovering above the ground.

My eyes were sore from the bright light before, and I think I must be hallucinating.  Under the craft were five figures, not human, and yet human-like, and walking towards them were the five members of the Richards, our next-door neighbours.

I just watched in utter fascination.

They stepped into the pool of very subdued light coming from under the floating vehicle, one by one, touched the hands of the newly arrived people and exchanged shapes.

Then the Richards went back to their house; the other creatures, human or otherwise, held hands and then disappeared.

Seconds later, the searing light reappeared and then was gone.  A second dose of light on my poor eyes looked a few minutes longer, and by the time my sight had returned, it was as if nothing had happened.

What had I just seen?

…

I woke up, and it was light.  Edie was already up and about, and it was just another day.

It didn’t feel like I had been awake for an hour or so, and in my head it felt like something had happened, only I couldn’t remember what.

I wasn’t tired, not like I had been awake half the night because I knew what that was like.

Something had happened.  Something significant, but it was just there, on the fringe of my memory, lurking, or waiting for me to find the right key and unlock that door.

“You going to stay in bed all day?”

Edie put her head in the door, on her way from the front door where she had collected the newspaper, to the kitchen where breakfast would be well underway.

It was just another normal day.

“Coming,,” I muttered.

“You snore.  I never realised it until last night.  You woke me.  Normally I can sleep through anything.”

“I don’t snore.”

“You do.  And talk in your sleep.”

I sat up and faced her.  That was frightening if it was true.  I often dreamed I was having strange conversations with people who were basically strangers, but only once.

“What did I say?”

“Something about old man Richards.  Not surprising you think he’s daft.  He hasn’t been the same since the accident.  Don’t hang about.  We have that appointment at the bank this morning.”

Then she was gone.

Richards.  There was that thing in my mind again, that memory that refused to come out of the vault.  Did it have something to do with Richards?

I shrugged.  It would return when it wanted to.  In the meantime, places to go and people to see.

…

Surprises were good, when they were surprises.  We had decided that after Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, got married, we would buy them a house.

With one thing and another, their six-month jaunt through Europe turned into a five-year work-and-play plan; they only decided to return when she fell pregnant.  Twins and a bot later, the place they were living in was too small, hence the house.

Everything was on track until Elizabeth saw us talking to the bank manager; she just happened to be in the neighbourhood and feared the worst: we had to downsize, or worse.

I was never very good at lying. Edie thought she had it under control, but what mother does with that first daughter.  The secret was barely intact.

Then we ran into the Richards, Bill and Betty.  It wasn’t a usual thing, and I couldn’t remember the last time.  Coming after the Elizabeth thing, I was a little shaken.

That nagging thing in the back of my mind got a bit of a shake.  Both the Richards seemed a little distracted, and Bill didn’t seem to recognise me.  Not at first, and I could see he was trying to cover it like people did when they have forgotten your name.

Betty was chatty, which was a change from her usual surly self; the reason she gave me many years ago was that Bill had dragged her out to this godforsaken place as punishment, though she never said what it was for.

Betty confused me with one of the other neighbours who looked a little like me, which I thought odd, but it wasn’t a thing.  Edie thought they were just the same as usual, vague and borderline rude.

Driving home, my head had got as far as deciding whatever was trying to get out had something to do with the Richards.

…

Once again I spent some time out with the telescope, studying the moon surface, and wondering if I’d live long enough to go there.  Every now and then a billionaire comes up with this idea of a weekend on the moon in a lunar hotel, and I dare to believe it might be possible in my lifetime.

The other day it had moved to Mars.  I’m sure the Martians wouldn’t mind, though I had no idea why I would think that.  It was like the day someone asked me what the Martians looked like, and I said, like us, only with synthetic bodies, so they could live in the atmosphere there.

It got me some very strange looks.

The sky was less crowded with stars, and there were clouds drifting by blocking the view.  It was a full moon, and I had a momentary thought of werewolves.  Not that they existed, but they were a part of folklore.

Then when the cloud cover was too thick, and the first spits of rain came, I went inside, made coffee and went to stand over by the patio windows.

A shard of lightning lit up the back yards of a number of the neighbours’ yards, as bright as day before darkness returned.

The rain became torrential.  The lightning was sporadic, and each time it lit up a different part of the countryside. 

There was a huge rumble just about overhead, followed by a bolt of lightning which, in the fraction of a second as it lit up the scene in front of me, I saw it land on Bill Richards, who had been standing out in his yard.

Another bolt hit our house, and there was a huge explosion.

That was all I remembered.

…

I was lying down in a brightly lit room; on one side, a man in a white coat was looking down at me.  On the other side, Edie was looking concerned.

“He’s been forgetting things, and talking in his sleep.  He hasn’t done that before.”

“It might be the settling process.  Sometimes it takes a few days.  The last upgrade was a little bigger than usual.”

“It worked for me.”

“You’re a 6AZ model.  More sophisticated algorithms because you are female.”

“You’re saying the male units are not as smart.”

What were they talking about?  Models, smart, sophistication.  I was just another person who was suffering from lack of sleep and hallucinations.

At least I think that was what I was there for.  This was a hospital?

Edie glanced at me.  “Oh, you’re awake?”

“That might be a matter of opinion.  I think I just woke in the middle of a nightmare.”

She smiled.  It didn’t fill me with confidence.

“You can’t go around telling people you saw aliens, Sam.  People get antsy when you say stuff like that.”

“I never said I saw aliens. When did I see aliens?”

“You said the Martians had landed next door and took the Richards away.  I mean, Sam, we saw them just a few hours ago.”

I was confused.  I could see in my head the spacecraft that was hovering next door and the body exchange of the Richards family.  I could remember meeting the Richards at the cafe, and how disoriented they had been.

The transfer process had still not been perfected.

Then I realised the truth.

“There it is,” the doctor said.  “It just needed a tweak.”

The doctor stepped away from the console, and I could see the twin flat lines running across the screen.  Memories and reality aligned.

I closed my eyes; everything went dark, and then opened them again.

Edie was looking concerned but relieved.  “How do you feel?”

“About sixty-four, give or take a week.  Getting old is not what it’s cracked up to be.”  I could feel something had happened, but couldn’t quite remember what it was.  “Another fall?”

“You need to remember to use your cane, Sam.  You are not as spry as you used to be.”

“No.  I guess not.”  I slowly got off the bed and stood.  I felt steady.

“Doc?”

“You’ll get there, Sam.  We all do in the end.  Just take care out there.”

“I will.”

Edie took my hand.  “Come on.  Places to go; people to see.”

Funny.  I was thinking that myself.  It was like I was reading her mind.

She opened the door and glared at me as I went past her.

“Don’t,” she said, not in words but in her thoughts.  “I don’t want to go home, so stop being difficult.  Earth is so much better than Mars.”

I looked at her as she followed me out and closed the door.

That doctor was our supervisor and had been assessing me.  The Richards had cracked the week before, and he had them replaced.  We’d be next if I didn’t appear ‘fixed’.

She was right.  Back home we’d be in a factory, chained to a production line.

“Understood.”

“Good.”  Then out loud, for the benefit of those around us.  “I need you because we have a housewarming to plan.  The bank just approved the house purchase.  Elizabeth is going to be so surprised.”

In more ways than one.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally, it was not set anywhere in particular.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

…

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

newechocover5rs

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 19

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 prioritising.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Nothing good ever comes of snooping

 

I jumped down from the first level of the fire escape, halfway down an alley which was empty.  Keeping close to the wall so I couldn’t be seen, I headed back towards the main street, and then to a café not far from the front of the building.

Would Fred call in the police?  Surely at the very least, he would have to call an ambulance, finding an unconscious woman on the floor of a trashed flat.  He would also have to report the break-in, so I waited.

And waited.

No ambulance came.  If she had been unconscious and he’d reported it, there would be an almost instant response.  Unconscious bodies were given high priority.

After an hour passed, and no sign of a police car, or any police on foot, I thought there might be a crime wave going on, and it was taking time for the police to get there.

The fact no ambulance had turned up told me she must have regained consciousness, obviating the need for medical help.

Two hours, still nothing.

Three hours, I was left with the assumption, Jan didn’t want Fred to call the police.  It would be interesting to know what those reasons were.

My plan was to wait until she came out and follow her.  Beyond that, I would be making it up as I went.  After three hours, I had to switch cafes because of the looks the girl who made the coffee was giving me.

Apparently, people didn’t spend three hours drinking four cups of coffee unless they were working on their computer or reading a book, or paper, none of which I had.

It forced a move to another café further away and with an indistinct view of the front door, so I had to be extra vigilant.

As dusk was falling, a man nearer the doorway accidentally dropped his cup, and, when I looked up to see what the commotion was about, I saw what looked like Jan leaving, and, lucky for me, heading my way on the opposite side of the street.

Time to go back into surveillance mode.

She had changed into different clothes, and something else, though I wasn’t quite sure what it was that made her look different.  It almost made me think I’d got it wrong, and it was someone else.

Then, when she walked past me, not 20 feet away, I knew it was her.

What was different, she had suddenly become a brunette with long hair than the original shoulder-length blonde hair.  A change in persona.  Not the sort of thing a normal person did.  Unless, of course, she had a night job, one which she didn’t want anyone to recognise her.

I followed from the other side of the street.

Around a corner, past an underground station entrance, which was a huge bonus because she wasn’t going anywhere by train, not that it would matter to me.  It would if she caught a taxi.

Once or twice she looked behind her, on the same side of the street.  She looked over the other side too, in a careless sort of manner, but I was well hidden in plain sight because she wouldn’t recognise me as her assailant.

Around the corner, down another street, then stopped at a bus stop.  Still not a problem because there was no bus in sight.  On the way, I’d bought a copy of the evening paper and strolled up to the stop and sat down.  She gave me a once over and then ignored me.

The bus came and we got on.  She went upstairs I stayed downstairs, easier to get off at the same stop without raising her suspicions.

It was heading into the city, via Putney.  I had time to read the news, nothing of which was interesting, and keep one eye out for her.  She got off the bus without glancing in my direction at Putney and walked to the railway station.

After she headed for the platform, I checked where she might be going, and the service ended at Waterloo station if she went that far.  I waited a few minutes, then went down to the platform just as a train arrived.

She got on about halfway along, and I remained at the end.  I resisted the urge to move closer to her carriage where I could maintain visual contact, but since there was only one in this surveillance team, I had to be careful she didn’t see me.

The train terminated at Waterloo, and everyone had to get off.  For a few minutes, I thought I’d lost her among the other passengers.  Then I just managed to catch a glimpse of her going through the platform exit gate out into the station.

By the time I had got there, she was gone.

When you lost sight of the target, don’t panic.  And don’t act like someone who just lost a target because that will bring attention to yourself.  Take a long careful look in every direction, then move in the last direction you saw the target heading.

I did everything in accordance with my training.

The problem with Waterloo station?  There are several exits, and an entrance to the underground in the direction she had been heading.

Anyone could lead me in the wrong direction.

I went upstairs to a café, and looked down on the station floor, taking advantage of the height.

Until I felt something prodding me in the back, and a voice behind me saying, “Who are you, and why are you following me?”

Jan.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

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 were several 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 a 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 that 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, it literally 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 recurrence. 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 that 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 that 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 romanticised 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

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 75

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.

…

The sheriff calls

…

It’s not often a patrol car stopped outside your residence without a reason for doing so.

I just happened to be looking out the windows when it pulled up, and I first thought it was the sheriff here to visit my mother.

It was hard to imagine my mother being the object of men’s attention, particularly one the top lawman in the county, and the other, a top criminal.

Both were charming in their own way, but it was the baggage both brought with them that bothered me.  I tried not to think of the ramifications if she married either one.  At worst, I could not see Alex as a brother, nor Charlene as a sister, not after what we had done at the last school summer camp

The pounding on the door interrupted that thought.  I heard my mother’s muffled voice from upstairs telling me to see who it was, and when I opened the door, it was one of the sheriff’s deputies, Anderson, big brother to a school friend, and the most unlikely to become a lawman.  I guess he turned his life around.

“Sam.”

“Joel.”

“The sheriff would like to see you.”

“He could have rung.”

“He likes the personal touch.”

It must be serious if he sent a deputy.  “When?”

“Now.”

“And if I can’t come now?”

He took a pair of handcuffs out of his belt.  “There’s the hard way and there’s the easy way.”

Serious enough then.  “Why?”

“I learned a long time ago to follow orders, not question them.  I don’t know, and I don’t care.  Did you do anything wrong?”

“No.”

I heard my mother coming down the stairs behind me.  “Who is it?”

“Deputy Joel.”

“What can we do for you?” She asked.

“The sheriff would like a word with your son, ma’am.”

“Why?”

Was that a look of exasperation on his face?

“He didn’t confide in me, ma’am, just asked me to escort him down to the station.”

“This’ll be to do with that Nadia,” she muttered.  “I told you she is trouble.”

I shrugged.  “Let’s go.”  Time to escape a lecture.

I had time to think why the sheriff would want to see me, and remembered that I’d spoken to Charlene, and it had to be that she had as I suggested, spoken to her father and it must have something to do with that.

Anyone outside the sheriff’s office seeing Deputy Joel and I arrive might have got the impression I’d just been arrested, except I was not in handcuffs.  There was no doubt Joel had wanted to use them, all the more reason to be co-operative.

We walked through the foyer towards the rear where the sheriff’s office was, and he sat me down on an uncomfortable bench.  At the other end was a girl in a party dress looking hungover.  The foyer was a hive of activity.

The sheriff put his head out the door.  “Sam, come in.”

It was the first time in his office, not the first time in the station.  My father had a few run-ins with the law, in the early years of the current sheriff’s tenure, as part of the alumni group of my mother, father, the sheriff, and Benderby.  It was the fact he was a friend of and worked with Benderby that he found himself under suspicion so often, and my memories of him were when my mother and I came to bail him out.

It was probably one of the reasons why I couldn’t understand why she let Benderby in the door.

The room was small and it felt crowded surrounded by files and papers.  His desk was a mess, with two half-drunk mugs of coffee sitting to one side.

He looked like a man under great stress.

He picked up the phone and pressed a number, then said, “Can you join us?”

A minute later Charlene came in and closed the door behind her.  She then sat in the chair next to mine, and rather close.

Was it a form of intimidation?

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and it creaked under his weight.  “Charlene tells me you think young Benderby is involved in what happened to the professor.  How did you come to this conclusion?  You should realize that making accusations such as this against a member of an influential family such as the Benderbys could afford you some unwanted attention, and not only from their lawyers.”

I had considered that but had expected the sheriff would be more proactive in his investigation.  It seemed he was taking a more cautious approach.

“You said you overheard Alex at work,”  Charlene added a nail in the coffin. 

“It seems unlikely that Alex would be that stupid, Sam, so it leads me to believe you either have some other means of identifying him as being involved, or it’s just a petty act of revenge, which, knowing you as I do, is unlikely.  Which is it?  The fact you know about this so-called room where mall cops were located, the location of a safe, and where the combination is, is very specific.”

Was this a version of good cop bad cop?  I hadn’t thought it through, thinking Charlene might want to take a win.  It didn’t take in the possibility the sheriff would be overly cautious in taking on a Benderby.

Except that I forgot it was an election year, and there were a few younger and more qualified candidates in the mix.  Age and experience were not going to cut this year.  He was going to need a win and taking down a Benderby would put him firmly in the public eye.

“You can’t tell me that Rico was responsible for the professor’s death.  He wasn’t killed on that boat, despite the way the body was left.  I was there, that crime scene was staged.”  Time to come out fighting.

“So you’re a crime scene expert now?”

“Keen observation, no indication of blood spatter from the look of the wounds, which to me looked like torture.  I did some research, and the professor apparently had a diary that belonged to the pirate that everyone believes hid the so-called treasure somewhere along this coastline.  Did you think to find out why the professor was here, certainly his last movements, and whether or not Alex Benderby contacted him?”

I’m sure they did, not that they would probably tell me.

Charlene glared at me.  Perhaps insulting her ability put an edge to her tone.  “A timeline of the victim’s last movements was done.”

A reproving look from her father, she should not be discussing case details with the public.

She glared back at him.  “Damn it, I will not be insulted.”

The sheriff gave me a rather curious look.  Perhaps I was not so off the mark, so I said, “He’s been here before, you know when those coins were pulled out if the cove.  He came down to identify them.  I think he had the diary then, which was why he came back.”

“How is it you know so much about this professor?”

“Unlike Boggs, I have an interest in historical detail, perhaps Boggs should not have asked for me to help him, but if I’m going to do something I like to be thorough.”

“Yes, it’s been noticed.  A session at the library, and surprisingly, a stash of documents scooped up from Ormiston.  I know you read his diaries.  Then you hit the newspaper office and looked at back issues of the paper.”

She or one of the deputies had been following me around.  I wondered briefly whether they’d been following Boggs around too.

“And we know you went to the mall with Nadia Cossatino.  So, your information was not gleaned from overhearing conversations, you’ve actually been in that room.”

Guilty as charged, but silence might be the better option here until their objective came clear.

“Knowing you as I do, Sam, I doubt it was your idea to go sneaking about that mall.  Your association, for want of a better word, with Nadia is going to lead you down a dark path, and I know your mother is worried about you.  The Cossatinos and Benderbys are sworn enemies, and you do not want to get caught in the crossfire.  She was obviously motivated by causing trouble for the Benderbys.”

Possible, but unlikely, yet what had she hoped to gain by taking me there?  And it was clear my mother was using the sheriff to get me to stay away from Nadia.

“I’m not interested in charging you with trespass, or lecturing you on the dangers of wandering around a place like that, but there may be something to the allegations.  We managed to get a stay on the demolition for that room, and it’s now an active crime scene.  How long have you known about this.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022