Back to the explosion at what was first thought to be at a takeaway.  Certainly, it had been levelled, but so had several other buildings in the near vicinity, but we haven’t got to that part yet.

The boredom of the flight is still giving me an opportunity to explore the opening sequence a little further, where we left our man on the scene under tight police guard.

In five minutes, perhaps less, the whole scene had turned into countless vehicles with red and blue flashing lights, screams from the victims, and yelling from the rescuers.

I was still under police guard, but coming from the other side of the scene, a rather battered and bleeding street policeman came running towards us, stopping short of the man standing back, the one I assumed was in charge.

“Tell me you’ve got them,” he gasped, then looking from the man in charge to me and then back again, looking very concerned.

“We have.” He looked very calm and pleased with himself.

“What?  Him?” He nodded in my direction. “He was blown up in the blast and from what I saw was chasing the real culprits, two men covered in dust, one of whom was carrying a large duffel bag.”

“This guy was caught running from the scene.”

I decided to add my bit to the discussion.  “Your car drove straight past them.  I can’t see how you missed them.”

He was starting to look worried.  “We were given your exact description from an anonymous tip.”

The battered policeman bent over and then collapsed to the ground.  Two of my captors went towards him, but he motioned them away.  “Of course you did, by the two men escaping.  Get after them, before it’s too late.  And free this guy.  He’s got nothing to do with the blast.”

After removing the cuffs, they jumped back in their car and headed back in the direction they came.  Too late now, the two men would be long gone.

I went over to the policeman on the ground just as another ambulance pulled up and as the paramedics got out, I motioned to them to come and attend him.

“What happened,” I asked him

“A bank robbery, the clowns used far too much explosive and almost brought the building down on them.  Not so lucky for the neighbours.”

He was looking around, then stopped, looking at the place where I’d just been held down. I followed his gaze and then saw what he saw.  The cuffs were still on the ground where the man who removed them had obviously dropped them.

His expression changed, and for a moment I thought he was going to explode.

“What’s wrong.”  Obviously, something was but I couldn’t see it.

“The cuffs.  We haven’t used those for years now.  They weren’t real police.”

My mind clicked into gear at the same time as he uttered the words.

They were there to help the others escape whilst holding us both up with a phony arrest.  I wonder what they would do if they hadn’t been sent after their fellow robbers.

The battered policeman just sighed and lay down on the pavement and let the paramedics work on him.

Only then did we notice he had a piece of an iron bar sticking out of his side.

Then, of course, people just don’t happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or do they?

© Charles Heath 2025

So there are words on paper, and three times I’ve tried to fix it, or, perhaps just make it sound better because reading it in my head, there’s too little background and too many questions.

The flow of the story isn’t working for me, so I guess it’s time to sit down and work out what it is I’m trying to say.

The notion that our main character, Graham, is a loser seems to shine through, and that’s not what I’m trying to portray him as.  No, far from it, it’s been a lifetime of bad choices that have put him where he is, and he knows it.

So, in part, this is about owning your mistakes, and it’s my job to make him come across as a hero in waiting.  There’s good in him, perhaps too much, but there is also that attitude that led to all those bad choices, the one that can get him into trouble, and a sort of intransigence inherited from his father, that has more or less got him ostracised from the family. 

I want this character to be a chop off the old block, both of whom are the type not to back down, not to say sorry, and, to quote a rather apt allegory, would cut their nose off to spite their face.

Graham’s intransigence led to his refusal to follow his father into business, refusal to go to University despite having the necessary qualifications, and just to round out the defiance, his choice of women whom he knew would meet with family disapproval.

And these factors, over a period of time, saw him bounce from a low-paying job to jobs with no prospects, and a string of failed relationships, until this moment in time, where he was basically on his own, working the graveyard shift as a security guard.  The sort of job where qualifications weren’t looked for and workmates looked like and probably were ex-cons.

There are a few more details like the older brother, Jackson, politician and schemer, the same as his father before him (the seat was passed down through the family), like the younger sister who is a highly successful surgeon, married into immense wealth.  His brother had been less successful in the marital stakes but what he lacked in a wife was more than made up with a string of highly eligible and beautiful women.

And, no, he doesn’t resent the fact they’re rich, or that his parents were, too, just that they treated him with contempt.

It was almost five years since the last time he had seen any of them, that last time he attended the family Christmas in Martha’s Vineyard, the ‘Stockdale Residence’ an ostentatious sprawling fifty-room mansion that, in a drunken rage, he’s tried to burn down.

Once again, he had not received an invitation to the next, due in a few days, and it was not entirely unexpected.

Graham has his faults, but that even, five years ago, had pulled him off the road to self-destruction, helped along by a year stint in jail where he learned a great many lessons about life itself, and survival.

The four years since?

A lot of regrets, and a lot of repentance.  Life after jail was a lot worse than life trying to defy the family and the system.  There were two roads he could have gone down, and thankfully for him, it was not the wrong one.

So, he’s back on the path, a whole lot wiser, a whole lot tougher.

That might not have been exactly what I was thinking for him over the first three attempts.  I don’t think any character really begins to shine until halfway through, as you find him meeting various challenges in ways even you, as the writer, find quite unexpected.

Is that the end result of being a pantser over being a planner?

I don’t think, even as a planner, you can create a character that’s not going to change, or even surprise you, as the story evolves.

And somehow I don’t think I’m about to change from one to the other.

Well, not completely.

But there’s more, and no, it’s not steak knives!

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2024

The main character, like all main characters, has a very interesting, deep, and very complicated background story, some of which will be played out later when the story develops.  Needless to say, at the start, we need to know as much as the story needs so that there are no real surprises.

So that’s why I’m still working on Bill’s backstory, and how he got mixed up in the war, and as a general background to his situation, and life before Davenport.

His story, of course, will be told told in the first person, over a series of flashbacks each necessarily preceding part of the action that requires a lead-in:

 

But whether we were stupid or naive, or completely mad, we were all eager to get into battle, filled with the sort of hate only Army propaganda films could fill you with.  They were our enemy, and they deserved to concede or die.

A fresh face in a hardened platoon, I was eager to get on with it.  They looked knowingly, having seen it all before.  No idea of the reality, and no time to tell us.  Have a few beers to celebrate, and then, the next morning, go out on patrol.  No problem.

There was camaraderie, but it was subdued.  We walked single file, the seasoned campaigners in front and at the rear, treading carefully, demanding quiet, and a general cautiousness.  In the middle of nowhere, where only the sound of rain, or the animals and birds for company, we were naive enough to think this was going to be a doddle.

Then it happened, six hours out, and just before we reached a small clearing.  I thought to myself it was odd there should be such a clear space with jungle all around it.  There must be a reason.

There was.

We had walked into an ambush, and everyone hit the ground.  I was bringing up the rear with another soldier, a veteran not much older than myself whose name was Scotty, a little farther back from the main group.  Bullets sprayed the undergrowth, pinging off trees and leaves.  I buried my face in the dirt, praying I would not die on my first patrol.

We became separated from the others, lying in a hollow, with no idea how far away help was.  He was muttering to himself.  “God, I hate this.  You can never see the bastards.  They’re out there, but you can never bloody well see them.”  Then he crawled up the embankment, gun first.

He let off a few rounds, causing a return of machine-gun fire, spattering the dirt at the top.  Next thing I knew he was sliding down the hill with half his face shot away.  Dead.  I threw up there and then.  What an initiation.

Then one of the enemy soldiers came over the hill to check on his ‘kill’.  I saw him at the same time he saw me and aimed my gun and shot.  It was instinct more than anything else, and I hadn’t stopped to think of the consequences.  He fell down, finishing up next to me, staring at me from black, lifeless eyes. 

Dead. 

I’ll never forget those lifeless eyes.  I just got up and ran, making it back to the rest of the group without getting hit.  No one could explain how I made it safely through the hail of gunfire, from our side and theirs.

Back in the camp later, the veterans remarked on how unlucky Scotty was and how lucky I was to shoot one of the enemies, and not be killed myself.  They all thought it was worth a celebration.

Before we went out the next day to do it all again.

I spent the night vomiting, unable to sleep, haunted look on his face, one I finally realized that reflected complete astonishment.

 

There will be more, as the story develops.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020