Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.
That was particularly true in my case. The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.
At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me. I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.
The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters. She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.
Routine was the word she used.
Her fellow detective was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible. I could sense the raging violence within him. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.
After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.
But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.
The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.
For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.
They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts. Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.
No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.
She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy. Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution. Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.
It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down. I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess. Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.
What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again. It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.
And it had.
Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe. I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.
We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee. It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.
She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.
I wondered if this text message was in that category. I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.
I reached for the phone then put it back down again. I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.
Yes, I’m drawing a blank, which means I have no idea
It seems that I do this a lot these days, perhaps one of the perils of being a writer
But…
Using blank in a story doesn’t necessarily convey the antagonist is clueless, more likely he or she just used one in a gun, put there by a person who didn’t want to get shot.
No, still drawing a blank on this one.
A blank space means there’s nothing in it, and you see a lot of these in crosswords and sudoku, even when the user has been toiling for hours
I’m thinking anyone who met me might misinterpret my blank expression, well, it’s not too expressive in the first place
Perhaps before the coin becomes a coin; it is a piece of blank metal to begin with. How good would it be to get a one-sided coin, that’d be worth a lot?
And the very worst description of blank; having a blank piece of paper in front of you, and you really are drawing a blank!
There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?
A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.
But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.
And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.
Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
“What the hell?” Amelia asked her grandmother, somewhat exasperatedly, after suddenly waking, and finding her missing.
Despite any misgivings that briefly passed through her mind, Amelia threw on some clothes and went looking for her. If this was home, she would not be caught dead outside without the proper preparation, a half-hour system at the very least for makeup application and clothes selection.
Her instructions from her parents were quite clear. Don’t let her grandmother out of her sight. It was not that she couldn’t be trusted. It was just that she didn’t see the evil in people, and Italy was a whole different world than she was used to.
“Breakfast. I did give you a shake, then tell you where I was going?”
“You should have tried harder.”
Her grandmother gave her one of those looks, one that bordered on disdain with a tinge of incomprehension, one she was getting used to because of the generation gap, and things were getting lost in translation
“Who was he? Some rando imposing on you?”
There was that look again. “What is a rando?”
“Some guy who comes up and tries it on.”
“In the restaurant over coffee? I should be that lucky a guy would be interested in me that way. I think your imagination is a little too fertile, young lady. He’s just another tourist, and I imposed on him, not the other way around.” She looked her granddaughter up and down. “You look a mess.”
“Well, I was worried you might have gotten into trouble.”
“Your father has so little faith in me, I see. This isn’t going to work if you’re going to stress out every time I go for breakfast and you’re still asleep. You need to change your habits and be ready when I am. I’ll wait here until you get yourself together. And now you’ve enlightened me about randos; I’ll try to avoid them if possible.”
Amelia simply shook her head. She was between that proverbial rock and a hard place and regretted volunteering to chaperone her grandmother. Of course, the alternative was equally impossible.
She needed to get away from her so-called friends and that weasel of an ex-boyfriend. The idea of enduring the summer holidays with any of them was painful enough, but this gig was probably going to be worse.
She compromised on her morning routine, going with the minimal makeup look and a summery dress that she wouldn’t wear back home. It was not likely she was going to run into anyone she knew.
Back down in the foyer almost fifteen minutes after she left her grandmother in one of the lounges, she spilled out of the elevator and quickly strode into the foyer where … no one was sitting in any of the chairs.
“Damn,” she muttered under her breath. “Now, where is she?”
Her grandmother was going to be a nightmare to supervise. Her father said as much, not exactly denigrating a woman for being independent and also having a mind of her own, but he seemed to be bordering on a man who had definite ideas about a woman’s place. She was surprised her mother put up with it.
The one conversation she had with her grandmother on serious stuff like her life, was about how she had spent more of her time trying to fight against the strict social norms of her day, that she be a dutiful wife and mother, and not entertain any of those nonsensical ideas of going to work or going places, and worse still doing it on her own.
It was everything that Amelia had now without questioning how it came to pass; just that it was a right she had. Like most girls her age, she knew nothing about how hard it had been just to get some of those rights.
She went over to the door and looked out. Out by the dock where the Vaporetto came to collect and drop them off, she saw her talking to that same man and an Italian woman in a very smart suit.
She dashed out and almost ran into several people who made an unpredictable turn outside the entrance.
…
“Ah,” her grandmother said, “just in time. Jay, this is one of my four granddaughters, Amelia. She was the one I was telling you about.”
I looked at her, making out the similarities between the generations. Same eyes, same amusement lurking there. “I’ve never been called a rando before, but in any case, it has a slightly different meaning in my generation, which I was just telling your grandmother about.”
Amelia glared at her grandmother. “Did you have to mention that? Really?” Scratch that idea she was not going to suffer embarrassment.
The grandmother added, “She generally speaks in riddles, and I can never understand a word of it. This new teen language…”
“Oddly enough, I know what you mean. I have a few teens and a few older grandchildren who, as you say, talk in riddles if they talk at all.”
“Gran, we should be getting on the boat. We have places to see.”
The Vaporetto was just pulling into the dock.
“About that, Jay here has a private guide, and it seems to him overkill for just one person to benefit. He thinks we might benefit from Conchetta’s experience and knowledge. I’m inclined to agree, just for today, until we get our bearings. Unless, of course, you want to do battle with the guidebook and impress me with your Italian language skills?”
Put that way, how could Amelia refuse. Her Italian was awful, and the last thing she wanted was to take charge of going to see old buildings and boring museums. And don’t get her started in the number of churches…
“Just for today then, as you say.”
Rather than take the hotel’s vaporetto, Conchetta had arranged for a private water taxi that also had catering. It was going to be a warm day, and we would need water.
I was right when I suggested that having such a knowledgeable guide all to myself was almost criminal, and when I’d ascertained from Millie that she had no other plans than getting the Vaporetto to St Mark’s Square and wandering around, it seemed simple.
To me, anyway. I hadn’t factored in the possibility of a somewhat truculent granddaughter, but then I got the impression she had been sent against her will. It was a surprise she was not at home with her friends.
It seemed there was a little tension between the two, which made me think that the granddaughter might have been co-opted as a nursemaid, and this trip was punishment.
Or perhaps she was a little suspicious of me and whatever my motives were. There were none, but given time to think about it, it did seem like a pickup line, though given my age, that would be almost ridiculous.
But that notion of being called a rando did bring the matter back to a level of reality. A foreign country and a foreign tourist, was anyone really safe?
I assured them both that I had no other intentions other than to share my good fortune, and she seemed to accept it. After all, it was never my intention to seek out a female company or anything like that. I was quite content to be on my own.
We took a roundabout route and covered a few canals and sightseeing points, which Conchetta was quite happy to mark on the map, along with a chart of the route we were taking.
She also gave us a history lesson, because nearly everything was as old as the hills, as my mother used to describe old stuff. Of course, my idea of questions, when prompted, was more relatable to the topic.
Amelia had a more fertile imagination, like I’d expect of a teen, and asked about how many bodies were fished out of the canals and did the mafia run everything in Venice. I was sure they didn’t, but it was not a question Conchetta was going to answer definitively. In fact, she seemed amused at how Americans and the English thought.
She was very patient without being condescending. In her place, I might have been more so. It was just another painful reminder of how our children had abandoned their responsibility to bring their children up properly.
After the canal exploration, the morning was spent in St Mark’s Square, and then the Palace of the Doges. My highlight was the Whispering Bridge and the story behind it. Along with a lot of very old paintings. Amelia, predictably, was bored witless.
When it came to lunch, I politely suggested they might like to join me, though, at the time, I was not sure what Concetta had organised.
To Amelia, it signified the end of a morning of looking at boring stuff and asked if we could have lunch at a real Italian restaurant, and I could see Conchetta roll her eyes, slightly before her grandmother did, so in a quiet moment I asked Conchetta if such a venue existed given the touristy nature of the island, and melting pot of cuisines and visitors tastes.
Fortunately, she did, and I paid her extra to be our culinary host.
It was a divine lunch for many reasons, to have the authentic food, completely dissected and described with the history behind it, the authentic wine to match the food, and the company despite the youthful brashness.
At the end of the day, when the taxi was taking them back to the hotel, Millie was sitting in the cabin looking like she was having a nap, not very far away from Amelia, who seemed lost in thought.
“A penny for those thoughts, Am.”
The girl turned and smiled. “It was not as bad as I thought, even if I had to endure all that old stuff.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, dear. Tomorrow, we’re going to visit churches.”
“Really?”
“You might not be interested, but I am. And the food and wine. It certainly pays to have someone like Conchetta along for the ride.”
“We could never afford that. This guy must be very wealthy.”
Millie looked back into the cabin. Not in the normal sense perhaps, she thought, because not once did he make mention of anything that gave an indication he was rich, unlike so many of his compatriots. Big, loud, brash, and demanding.
There was more to that story, but this was a one-day thing. She had been reluctant at first to agree to his proposal, perhaps a little suspicious of his motives, but as the day progressed, it was clear to her there were none.
“Perhaps, but it is none of our business.”
The girl came back to sit next to her grandmother. “Perhaps,” she said in almost a whisper, “you could cosy up to him, and we could ride his coattails around Europe.”
Millie put on her most shocked expression. “I thought you said he was a rando trying it on.”
“I might have been a little hasty. I don’t mean, you know, just if he offers, I’m sure it would be better than us two trying to muddle through.”
“I won’t ask you to explain ‘you know’, but I don’t think we can impose on him. If he suggests it, I’ll think about it, but this is about you and I going on what your father described as the trip of a lifetime.”
“Yeah. Dad says a lot of stuff, but none of it belonging to this century. As you wish.”
I woke when the boat gently bumped against the dock, and Conchetta gently shook my shoulder.
“We are here,” she said.
“My goodness. What did I miss?”
“Nothing of any consequence. It has been a long day, even for me.”
“Perhaps less formal clothes tomorrow?”
“If only I could.”
At the front of the boat, Millie and Amelia were about to get off. I looked over time the pontoon and gasped.
A surprise. Jasper, second son to my daughter Samanthan was waiting, that usual lopsided grin and shock of red hair making him stand out.
That and the fact he was wearing a suit and looked every bit the formal figure like his father.
I could see that Amelia had seen him too and had that effect he had on women of any age.
I came up behind them. “I see you’ve seen my grandson, Jasper, though why he’s here is a surprise, and hopefully not because something has gone wrong.”
“You have to be kidding, he’s your grandson? He’s like in every magazine on the planet. He is that guy that does those ads isn’t he?”
The red hair sometimes gave it away, but yes, his mother was one of those stage mothers. The movie world shunned him, but the advertisers didn’t.
“Sometimes. He has better things to do with his time.”
We were helped off the boat, and he came over and gave me a hug. I then introduced him to the two women. Amelia all of a sudden couldn’t speak.
“Dumb question,” I said to Jasper to break the moment, ” but why are you here?”
“I had to get away from mom. She was making all these plans, none of which included my input, so I got on a plane and came here. Boring churches seemed so much better than modelling gigs.”
“Then just in time. That’s our tomorrow. Oh, sorry, Millie, if you want to that is.”
“We’d love to, “Amelia said before her grandmother could take a breath.
I looked at her, and she smiled. “Of course, we’d love to.”
In that moment both Jasper and Amelia were heading towards the hotel looking almost like they’d been together forever.
Millie watched them with an amused expression, then headed up the ramp towards the hotel. “This morning, Amelia was telling me this was going to be the most boring month of her life.”
“That might also be the case for Jasper. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone, but my daughter pretends to worry about me. You’ll be glad to know Jasper is the sanest of the seven. Perhaps I am glad he’s here. And I don’t mean to put you in an awkward position. If you have other plans for tomorrow…”
“I have not, and today was a good day. One day at a time, I’ve been saying for a while. I’m sure it’s a philosophy you can understand.”
She smiled, and I held out a hand to assist her in going up the ramp. “Very much so. Now, any particular churches you want to see?”
I have reworked the first part of the story with a few new elements about the characters and changed a few of the details of how the characters finish up in the shop before the policewoman makes her entrance.
This is part of the new first section is the one that involves Annalisa, and her boyfriend, Simmo:
Annalisa looked at the two men facing her.
Simmo, the boy on the floor, had told her that the shopkeeper would be a pushover, he was an old man who’d just hand over the drugs, rather than cause trouble for himself.
Where Simmo had discovered what the shopkeeper’s true vocation, dispensing drugs to the neighborhood addicts, she didn’t know, but it was not the first place like this they had visited.
She had always known Simmo had a problem, but he had assured her he had it under control. Until a month ago, when he had tried something new.
It had changed him.
The breaking point came earlier that day when, seeing how sick he was, she threatened to leave. It brought out the monster within him, and he threatened to kill her. Not long after he had changed into a whimpering child pleading with her to stay, that he hadn’t meant anything he’d said before.
All he needed was one more ‘score’ to get his ‘shit’ together, and he would do as she asked, and find help.
She believed him.
He said he knew a place not far from the apartment, a small shop where what he needed was available, and said he had the money.
That should have been the first sign he was not telling the truth because she had been funding his habit until her parents cut off the money supply. She suspected her father had put a private detective on to find her, had, and reported back, and rather than make a scene, just cut her off so she would have to come home or starve. Her father was no better than Simmo.
And, as soon as they stepped into the shop, Simmo pulled out the gun,
Instead of the shopkeeper cowered like Simmo said he would, he had laughed at them and told them to get out. Simmo started ranting and waving the gun around, then all of a sudden collapsed.
There was a race for the gun which spilled out of Simmo’s hand, and she won.
That was just before the customer burst into the shop.
It had been shortly before closing time. Simmo had said there would be no one else around.
Wrong again.
Now she had another problem to deal with, a man who was clearly as scared shitless as she was.
This was worse than any bad hair day, or getting out of the wrong side of bed day, this was, she was convinced, the last day of her life.
She heard a strange sound come from beside her and looked down. There was a trickle of blood coming out of his mouth and Simmo was making strange sounds like he was choking.
Any other time she might have been concerned, but the hard reality of it was, Simmo was never going to change. She was only surprised at the fact it took so long for her to realize it.
As for the man standing in front of her, she was safe from the shopkeeper with him around, so he would have to stay.
“No. Stay.”
Another glance at the shopkeeper told her she had made the right decision, his expression said it all. Gun or no gun, the moment she was alone with him, he would kill her.
This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.
The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Things are about to get complicated…
“You’re not a target. Yet.”
“Severin?”
“A loose end who was a rather bad blunt instrument, like his friend Maury. They learned of a plan to steal some military secrets, tried to stop it and in the end almost destroyed 12 months of painstaking undercover work. O’Connell had it within his grasp, and therefore in safe hands when those two wrecked a perfectly good retrieval. Four potential agents dead and then there’s you, persistent I will admit, and one other, Jennifer, I believe her name is.”
“But you don’t have O’Connell, do you?”
“My, you have been working hard. My first mistake was to trust O’Connell. My second was to underestimate you, Jackson. I don’t intend to make a third. You don’t trust me, do you?”
Was it possible I’d get some version of the truth?
“Apparently he didn’t for some reason.”
“You found him. Jan said you were being all secretive. There was something you found in that flat in Peaslake.”
“No. He told me that in the alley.”
I sensed he knew way more than I did, but I had a missing piece, and he was going to play nice to get it. The thing is, I didn’t know what that was. Not the whole truth from me.
“Yes. Of course, he did.”
“Perhaps it was self-preservation, not that it did much since someone did shoot him.”
“Not with the intention of killing him. It was all arranged.”
“You knew he would be at that alley?”
“One of three escape routes. Neither of us anticipated you would be good enough to follow him. Severin got lucky with you, probably why he made you the lead.”
Severin hadn’t said as much when he told the group before the exercise began, that I would take point. I thought it was simply because in the prior five tests, I’d only failed one. Everyone else had varying results.
“Have you seen the CCTV footage of the explosion?”
“Several times. It must have been harrowing for you to relive that and see how close you came.”
“It did. But it did afford a view that I missed while preoccupied. McConnell and the wife of the scientist I believe stole the formulas.”
“Yes, Anna. What do you make of her?”
“From a single glimpse?”
“A good agent doesn’t need much to form an opinion. As you know, that opinion could be the difference between life and death.”
He was starting to sound like Severin. He said we had to be able to judge a book by its cover and make the right decision based on it. What did I think of Anna?
“Capable, determined. She survived an explosion that might well have been directed at her. Not your average scientist’s wife. “
“Did you check her out?”
“Not yet. I had this thing with Severin.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know. Jan killed him before he could tell me.”
“A guess?”
“He wanted to come in from the cold before he ended up like Maury. He knew his days were numbered. It also means that he knew something that someone didn’t want to be repeated. You, perhaps? I mean, you can help make the connection. Your idea for Jan to get his confidence?”
“Hers. She’s a good agent, so don’t worry about her. Find O’Connell. When you do, you will find Anna, and perhaps, a copy of that USB.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then the department has lost five million pounds.”
This book has finally reached the Final Editor’s draft, so this month it is going to get the last revision, and a reread for the beta readers.
…
It’s been a long, hard day, and working on both the A to Z blog challenge, and writing this book is taking its toll.
I’m surprised one lot of writing hasn’t impinged on the other.
Meanwhile, back on novel land where Jack is still reeling from the threats being issued by his real father, and torn between the idea of hunting him down, and getting to know more about him, he feels he should be more interested in knowing how and why his mother got involved with a man who eventually went to prison.
To try and further enlist Jack’s help in procuring the diary back, for the forces of good, she is taking him to see her handler, who maybe can shed some light on what is in the diary and how it can help them.
The trouble is, he still doesn’t trust her, and is worried that it might be a ploy to take him into ‘protective’ custody as leverage to get Marjorie to hand the diary over. That’s why he insists it’s in Trafalgar Square, a large open space where rules will have to be observed.
Tomorrow will bring about the rescue of Jack’s mother, some investigation gives rise to a lead that could be the possible place where she is being held.
But is she being held by McCallister, her twin sister, Jacob, or a cabal of all three?
This morning started with a visit to the car rental place in Vancouver. It reinforced the notion that you can be given the address and still not find the place. It happened in Washington where it was hiding in the back of the main railway station, and it happened again in Vancouver when it was hidden inside a hotel.
We simply walked straight past it. Pity there wasn’t a sign to let people know.
However…
We went in expecting a Grand Jeep Cherokee and walked out with a Ford Flex, suitable for three people and four large suitcases. It actually seats 7, but forget the baggage, you’d be lucky to get two large suitcases in that configuration.
It is more than adequate for our requirements.
Things to note, it was delivered with just over a quarter of a tank of gas, and it had only done about 11,000 km, so it’s relatively new. It’s reasonably spacious, and when the extra seats are folded down, there is plenty of baggage space.
So far, so good.
We finally leave the hotel at about half-past ten, and it is raining. It is a simple task to get on Highway 1, the TransCanada Highway, initially, and then onto Highway 5, the Coquihalla Highway for the trip to Kamloops.
It rains all the way to the top of the mountain, progress hampered from time to time by water sprays from both vehicles and trucks. The rain is relentless. At the top of the mountain, the rain turns into snow and the road surface to slush. It’s 0 degrees, but being the afternoon, I was not expecting it to turn to ice very quickly.
On the other side of the mountain, closer to Kamloops, there was sleet, then rain, then nothing, the last 100kms or so, in reasonably dry conditions.
Outside Kamloops, and in the town itself, there was evidence of snow recently cleared, and slushy roads. Cars in various places were covered in snow, indicating the most recent falls had been the night before.
We’re staying at the Park Hotel, a heritage building, apparently built in the later 1920s. In the style of the time, it is a little like a rabbit warren with passages turning off in a number of directions, and showing it is spread across a number of different buildings.
It has the original Otis elevator that can take a maximum of four passengers, and a sign on the wall that says “no horseplay inside the elevator” which is a rather interesting expression that only someone of my vintage would understand. And, for those without a sense of humor, you definitely couldn’t fit a horse in it to play with.
The thing is, how do you find a balance between keeping the old world charm with modern-day expectations. You can’t. Some hotels try valiantly to get that balance. Here, it is simply old world charm, which I guess we should be grateful for because sooner rather than later it’s going to disappear forever.
In my writer’s mind, given the importance of the railways, this was probably a thriving place for travelers, and once upon a time, there were a lot more hotels like this one.
It’s not Adria or her daughter. No one could be more distressed at the turn of events than both of them.
It’s not Genevieve, though there is a long-standing jealousy that could have been construed as a motive, but there was no means or opportunity.
It’s not either of the personal assistants.
It’s not any of the board of trustees.
It might be one of the workers, but their sentiments were not enough to deem them viable murderers.
This was a long and calculated attack, aimed at disabling not killing the victim. This was someone close to her and had been given cause to embark on such an operation. Or perhaps for some other reason, quite unrelated, on someone else’s behalf.
The police are still chasing the most convenient suspects.
Michael on the other hand was not looking at those close to her.
Howard Joffs, her father, and her personal staff in her London residence, because the only other place the poison could be administered was at home.
A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.
A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Who was this man? Why was she having dinner with him?
A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required. Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.
A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.
After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.
From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.
