Huka Falls is located in the Wairakei Tourist Park about five minutes north of Taupo on the north island of New Zealand.
The Waikato River heading towards the gorge
The water heading down the gorge, gathering pace
until it crashes over the top of the waterfall at the rate of about 220,000 liters per second. It also makes a very loud noise, so that when you are close to it, hearing anything but the falls is impossible.
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!
An excerpt from the book:
When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.
Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.
It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.
Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.
But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.
His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.
At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.
For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.
Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.
Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.
Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.
It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.
It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.
Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.
Except, of course, when it came to Harry.
He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.
So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.
There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.
So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.
There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.
She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.
Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.
Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.
Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.
Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.
Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.
© Charles Heath 2019
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 a story I’ve often thought about – the notion that you could be mistaken for someone else and that someone else was on the run and wanted by the police.
Of course, finding that first sentence that is going to drag the reader down the rabbit hole of the story to come takes longer than it does to write the first chapter and didn’t survive the editor’s critical eye
But, after a few hours of deliberation, I had to agree with him, and now the game’s afoot.
So, the MC is a travel agent, one who prefers to go on his own tours so that he can truthfully tell his clients what places, hotels, and travel services are really like.
I’ve noticed that when travel writers do reviews, they seem to get different rooms and experiences than us poor travellers, no more noticeable than when we stayed in San Gimignano. The hotel sounded wonderful, and the description of the room overlooking the town square was fantastic. Pity then we were shoved into a small room out the back, overlooking pigeon coops, and a shower that continually broke down.
It’s probably this disappointment that provided some inspiration for the book.
But rather than being a travelogue, I’m adding some mystery, and suspense to make it more readable.
I’m not a fan of romance novels but …
There was something about this one that resonated with me.
This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.
I’ve been guilty of it myself as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.
For the main characters Harry and Alison there are other issues driving their relationship.
For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.
For Harry, it is the fact he has a beautiful and desirable wife, and his belief she is the object of other men’s desires, and one in particular, his immediate superior.
Between observation, the less than honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.
When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, she realises only the truth will save their marriage.
But is it all the truth?
What would we do in similar circumstances?
Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.
And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, nothing is ever what it seems.
…
Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8
…
This is sometimes how we must feel when overlooked or ignored, like a nobody.
And some people will treat you like a nobody, i.e. someone who is just not important.
That’s just one use of the word.
Another might be…
Who did that to your room?
‘Nobody’ is the plaintiff’s reply. The infamous Mr Nobody. We’ve never met him, but he’s always there. And, what’s more, he seems to be able to be in more than one place at a time.
Then there’s that time when there’s nobody in the room, nobody agreed with me, hell, that happens all the time, and when I rang your phone nobody answered.
Nobody? Was I expecting Mr Nobody to answer? Surely the response should have been, ‘and you didn’t answer’.
Of course, let’s not delve too deep here, lest we might find out something we didn’t want to know.
I went to your house last night, but nobody was home.
How is it we refer to the people whom we know live in that house as ‘nobody’. Shouldn’t we be saying, ‘none of you was at home’?
It seems nobody is one of those words we often use in vain.
Available on Amazon Kindle here: https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4
…
With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction. He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.
That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.
He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.
I kept my eyes down. He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup. I stepped to the other side and so did he. It was one of those situations. Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.
Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic. I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone. I shrugged and looked at my watch. It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.
Wait, or walk? I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station. What the hell, I needed the exercise.
At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’. I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light. As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.
A yellow car stopped inches from me.
It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini. I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.
Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car. It was that sort of car. I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on. The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.
My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter. Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.
At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure. I was no longer in a hurry.
At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring. I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road. I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.
At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar. It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.
I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did. There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me. It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.
Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me. As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.
Now my imagination was playing tricks.
It could not be the same man. He was going in a different direction.
In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter. I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.
I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in. I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.
Just in case.
© Charles Heath 2015-2020
…
…
There is only one possible problem about starting a relationship in a city like New York, a melting pot of people from all over the country. It’s quite possibly the home of what could become long-distance relationships, mostly because in essence it’s a long distance between your hometowns.
But, for everyone, it’s never the first thing in your mind, that’s just trying to get through those first few weeks, then months, then the steps that get you to the point where it’s time to go visit either your or her parents and family.
It’s a thing that some stave off as long as possible, particularly if you know your family are going to be over-inquisitive or likely to make your life hell with precious little details you hope no one would ever bring into the light again.
And of course, you know that is utterly impossible.
Of course, if you haven’t been home for a while, it makes the announcement all the more poignant at home, especially if you’re bringing the new partner, the one you have been praising to the hilt.
It was never going to be a problem for me, my parents were always on a cruise to somewhere or other and never home, and my brothers, quintessential men of the world, were scattered around the globe and it had been ages since we’d all been together.
But that first Christmas together, I knew Gabby was going to ask me to go home with her. Like myself, she came from small-town America, a picturesque small city where opportunities were not as varied as those in the larger cities, where many migrated if they wanted better opportunities.
A lot often forget their origins, or more likely due to the pressures of establishing themselves in a new job, it took a while before going home. Gabby had let three or so years slip by, and after being, as she put it, implored by her mom to come home, she had relented.
And since my office has decided to close for the holidays, she knew I didn’t have an excuse not to go with her. And for better or worse, I turned up at the airport at the appointed time, and she was waiting. I didn’t know until later that she had fully expected me not to go, the result of the last trip she had organised with what had been ‘the one’.
On that occasion, she had told the now ex that there was only one thing he had to do once they arrived home. What she told me once the plane was in the air, “You will be meeting on various occasions my maternal grandmothers, Faith, Hope, and Charity. They are, how should I say, somewhat strange, but they’re harmless.”
Usually, the mother-in-law was the leader of the Inquisition, and the father-in-law was the one that’s happy to tell you what he would do to you if you hurt his ‘little girl’. Three essentially quirky old ladies were a new twist, and it was going to be interesting
I have always been a cautious fellow and very rarely dived into the unknown without a little investigation first. I mean, that’s what an investigative journalist does, isn’t it?
Of course, that could be construed as uncool when it came to your hired friend, but I wasn’t very good at relationships, and this one with Gabby was a surprise. She was different, but I knew that initial expectations were quickly dashed and over time completely shattered, or it could go the other way.
I had not expected she’d think our relationship was at the point where we would be meeting the parents, but to refuse would not be a good idea.
So, being the person I was, I wanted to know everything about her town, simply because it had a web page, the council, the sheriff, and upcoming Christmas activities.
It also had a sidebar about a certain Prom King and Queen, the town’s two most popular teenagers, and their plans, which were not the least of which was a long happy life together. Gabby Saunders and John Prince.
It wasn’t hard to see why they were the golden couple. John was the star of the football team; Gabby was the captain of the cheerleaders, and both families were prominent in the town.
Her father was the mayor and rancher, and John’s father was a farmer and agricultural industrialist. She had said little about her father other than he ran a ranch, and her brothers and sister were ranch hands
I asked why she thought she needed to chase a career in the city when there was a perfectly good job at home, all it got was a pout and and a mumbled reply about being something more than a cowgirl.
I did a quick scan of the local paper’s digital back copies with her name and found two very interesting items. The first, a month after the prom, was an incident involving Gabby and John that was remarkably short in detail, and it told me just how much pull each of their fathers had in that town.
The second, the prodigal daughter was leaving to go to New York to seek a career in fashion design, being a notable up-and-coming designer who designed and made clothes for her Aunt Faith to sell in her dress shop. That raised a question: Why was she now simply a personal assistant to a crabby old lady?
John, in the meantime, had stayed home and was actively working in the management of his father’s business, with no inclination to join his bride-to-be. He was happy enough, he was quoted, to bide his time whilst she shook off the desire to see what life was like on the other side. The other side of what, I wondered.
Was this the reason why she had stayed away from home so long?
I thought about that whole scenario, and it was going to be a fascinating dynamic when I turned up with what he believed was his girl. I came from a town like hers, and I knew how those ‘most likely’ scenarios worked. He still carried a torch, as the saying goes. She, apparently, was not.
I searched for a bed and breakfast to stay at if or when things started going south, and they would, no matter what she thought I felt about her. When I rang up, I got a charming young lady by the name of Pricilla, and when I mentioned Gabby, there was a sharp intake of breath. That was followed by a warning. The last chap Gabby brought home to meet the parents was virtually hounded out of town. He lasted two days.
I smiled to myself. This might just be fun. I asked her to be at the airport, just in case, and she said she wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Gabby was strangely subdued for most of the flight, unusual because she normally had what I called an effervescent personality.
I put it down to nerves, returning after so long away; and perhaps what lay ahead. I had not told her that I knew a little about her former life and planned to keep it that way.
She had said that her mother was coming to get us, but I fully expected to see John in his dilapidated pick-up where only two could sit in the front. Yes, Hollywood romance movies had a lot to answer for.
It was one of those airports where the steps went down the front of the plane, and you walked across the tarmac to a small building that served as the airport terminal. Alongside, a fence where people could line up to see who got off the plane.
I saw her scanning that fence line for her mother and not seeing her.
We went into the terminal, a modernised and extended interior, because of increased passenger numbers, or perhaps because a congressman lived nearby. That always helped.
I saw John before he saw her. I also saw Priscilla, who, catching sight of me, hung back.
We passed through the arrival gate into the main floor where about 30 people were waiting to greet arriving passengers, and the look on her face went from an impending smile to a scowl, and a mutter under her breath, “What the fuck?”
She never, ever swore.
“I hope that’s not directed at your mother,” I said.
She glared at me. “This is not what I hoped would be your first look at my hometown.”
Just as that was said, John loomed all six foot six two hundred and forty pounds of a devilishly handsome cowboy. It was not hard to see what she had seen in him. But appearances were deceptive.
He tipped his hat. “Hello, Gabby. Welcome home!”
She switched the glare from me to him. “Where’s my mother?” It was not the politest of tones.
“She was unavoidably detained. I offered to come in her place, and here I am.”
He had noticed but chose to ignore me.
In her annoyance, Gabby had forgotten to introduce me, so I just leaned against the handle of my suitcase and waited to see how this was going to play out. Since I was not supposed to know anything about her and him, I couldn’t say or do anything. Yet.
She had her phone out, calling her mother I guessed. I heard an answer on the other end, then, “Where the hell are you?”
A moment later, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. This is exactly why I haven’t been home in years, and if you have any more of these surprises in store, I will get back on the next plane out, and I will never come home again.”
There was a minute when her face made various contortions, and then she disconnected the call.
She looked like she was going to scream, but didn’t, just counted to ten under her breath, then looked at me. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. These things happen.”
“I’m afraid there’s another problem?”
“No room at the inn?”
Her face changed to one of surprise. “How…”
“Good hearing; your mother has a loud voice. Storms are unpredictable, and I did check last night to see what the weather conditions were going to be, and I was surprised we were allowed to fly in. That’s why I took the punt I might need somewhere to stay until your accommodation issues are sorted.”
Priscilla took that to be her cue. “Hello, Gabby.”
“Prissy.” It wasn’t a term of endearment.
“I told you I had no part in that.” Straight on the defensive. There was a mountain of issues that needed to be resolved, and I was now wondering if this trip was going to have a few unexpected surprises.
Even so, I knew despite everything I was witnessing now; Gabby was everything I could want in a partner, but she had issues. And if I could help…
Awkward silence. I broke it. “So, instead of becoming the next hot news item for the Gazette, if we stand here much longer, I suggest, John, you take Gabby home. Pricilla will take me to the B and B for a day or so, and I will get myself out to your place tomorrow.”
“This is not… “
“What you planned for. No. I fear the best-laid plans of mice and men can easily be waylaid in a small town like this. I suggest you take the time to reunite with your family, I’m sure John will be happy to drop you off and give you some space. He has the look of a boyfriend who hasn’t accepted that you’ve moved on.” I looked at him. “And I’m sure before the holiday is over you and I will have a chat about that. In the meantime, I expect you to be a gentleman.”
That look of surprise on her face deepened. “You knew?”
“I had an inkling. I come from a small town too, as you know, that had a similar situation. You are a gentleman, aren’t you John, not some creepy stalker?”
He was going to say something, but Gabby cut him off. “I bet you brought that shitty little truck?”
His expression told the story. “Best laid plans of mice and men, as you say David. There would have been no room in the cabin, and I would not expect you to sit out back with the pig shit.” She shook her head. “I truly feel sorry for you, John. I do. You and I will be having words on the way to my house.” Then a final glare in my direction, “I expect to see you tomorrow morning, David.”
In the end, I don’t think John wanted to be there. And I did see an enterprising young lady taking various photos of us. A reporter or photographer for the local newspaper? Or would our encounter go viral on the internet? I couldn’t wait to find out.
Priscilla had stood back and watched the fun. So did a dozen or so others who probably knew exactly who they were. We both waited until they had left the terminal building before moving on ourselves.
“You should just get back on the plane,” she said. “You still can. I know the airline staff.”
“It might seem a little rocky at the moment, but the test of a couple’s relationship is to be thrown from the frying pan into the fire. The whole episode feels like a hiccup moment in a romance movie. I’m guessing for a while that they were the star attraction given their school graduation and parents standing.”
“What did you read?”
“Nearly all of the back copies of the newspaper for a hundred years. Might as well be prepared.”
“Did it tell you that neither of them wanted to become a spectacle? That was Gabby’s mother, who had to take a simple childhood romance and turn it into headline news. It might have worked had John not believed the story. Yes, Gabby liked him, yes, they were cute together, but no, Gabby didn’t love him. After it was broadcast far and wide and their friendship was put under such a large microscope, it became too much. The only place for Gabby to go was as far away from here as she could get.”
“And he still doesn’t get it?”
“To be honest, John is not a man of the world. He lacks sophistication, he is a hopeless scholar but is a good football player. Good enough, but not that good. He played college football but not NFL as such and just faded into obscurity. He married twice, but his heart is not in it. He thinks the only girl for him is Gabby.”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough if she is or isn’t. I’m not going to force her to choose.”
“Do you love her?”
“Would I be here if I didn’t? The girl I know from New York, that’s not her who got off the plane. It’s like we stepped through a portal into another world with another Gabby.’
“For a lot of people, it’s hell. if you come from a small town like this, you’ll know what it’s like. We keep getting told it’s going to get better.”
“It isn’t much better in the big cities, just more people and more problems. If I hadn’t met Gabby, I would have been going home myself permanently.”
“Farmer or rancher?”
“Ranch, though my older brother runs it while my parents see the world from a cruise ship, one long endless cruise, it seems. Still, it could be worse.”
“You’re right. That will be tomorrow morning when you meet the three witches.”
…
© Charles Heath 2024
…
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some years ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester. He’s having a hard to trying to understand the notion of a day happening only once every four years.
I try to explain to him that it’s the fault of the Romans getting the calendar wrong.
He tosses that aside and mutters, Time is irrelevant.
How so? OK, I have to bite, because I’m sure I’m about to get a catlike pearl of wisdom.
It comes and it goes, and if it wasn’t for the fact there was night and day, you’d have absolutely no idea what time it is.
About to dismiss it as crazy, I stop to think about it.
And, damn him, he’s right.
Of course, one could argue semantics, and say if I was outside, I could approximate the time by the sun, or at night by the stars, but that’s a little beyond the cat’s imagination.
So, in a sense, you might be right, but I can usually guess what the time is.
Chester shakes his head.
You’re retired, time is irrelevant for you too. You can sleep all day and work at night if you want to. Or not do anything at all.
Like you?
Another shake of the head.
What is the point in having a serious discussion with you? But just one question before I go?
That’ll be interesting.
Was I born on the 29th of February?”
No. Not that lucky, I’m afraid. Why?
If I was I would have no reason to feel every one of those 18 human years I’ve had to put up with your nonsense. It would only be 4 and a half.
He jumps off the seat and heads out the door.
Where are you going now?
To bed. It’s been a long morning.
You’ve only been here 10 minutes.
In your time. In cat time, it feels like hours. Only call me if you see a mouse.
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 prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Chasing leads, maybe
She gave me a minute to think about the situation, and then said what I was thinking, “So he could be anywhere?”
“He was dead. I felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.”
I could interpret that expression on her face, ‘you’re not a doctor’.
She turned another page, read a few lines, then made a note at the bottom.
It read, if my deciphering was up to scratch, ‘doesn’t know if subject dead or not’.
She looked up again. “It appears these documents are out there,” she waved her hand in the air, “somewhere. Fortunately, they have not turned up, not has someone tried to sell them back or to the newspapers, so we’re lucky. So far. That isn’t going to last for much longer. Every extra day out there is another chance for the government to be embarrassed.”
“You know what the contents are?”
“Don’t be silly. That’s above my pay grade, and besides, you and I are better off not knowing. So, what you need to do is find O’Connell and/or find the documents on this USB drive.”
She slid a card across the table. It had a name and a telephone number. Monica Sherive. A mobile number, a burner no doubt that couldn’t be traced back to her.
“You find either, you tell me first.”
“Nobbin?”
“Second, and when I tell you.”
“So you don’t trust him either?”
“At the moment, for both you and I have to be careful who we trust.”
I added her to the list of people I couldn’t trust, not that she had told me I could trust her. Yet.
“And if I get contacted by Severin again?”
“Have you?”
I had thought about not telling her about that brief meeting where he told me about the USB drive, but it couldn’t do any harm. At least she hadn’t asked me if I knew about the USB, which was something, I suppose.
“Yes. Once. Told me to keep my head down. And asked me if O’Connell had time to talk to me. It was the same answer I gave him back in the alley. No. I’d just managed to corner him when he was shot.”
“By Severin, or this other fellow,” she shuffled back several pages, then said, “Maury?”
“No. That was what was odd about it. The shot came from somewhere else. A sniper I would have thought.”
And, my brain suddenly moving into overdrive, piecing together what might be a coincidence, but in our business, they were rarely coincidences. A sniper shot him., say Nobbin or one of his people, he looks dead, waits for a call to the cleaners, intercepts it, and collects the so-called dead O’Connell. It was a good conspiracy theory.
And as far-fetched as one.
Severin had to have the body somewhere, trying to figure out how to bring O’Connell back to life so he could torture the USB location out of him.
Hell, that was as twisted as the conspiracy theory.
Time to change the subject. “Do you have any idea who Severin and Maury are?”
She went to the back of the file and pulled out some photographs, mug shots perhaps of staff members. She put five faces in front of me and asked me if the two were there.
They were. The first, with the name of David Westcott, and the fourth with the name of Bernie Salvin.
“Who are they?”
“They used to work in the training department for ten or so years ago. Westcott was also a handler for several years. They both requested a transfer to operations, and we give a mission. Six agents were assigned, and all six were killed, an investigation after the fact found that their identities had been leaked to the enemy before they reached the target.”
“They gave them up?”
“Nobody knows for sure. There were others in that group, but in the end, the department retired them all. All their years in training served them well. We found the place where you were trained.”
Another photograph of the main building. I nodded.
“It was an old training facility closed down five years ago. It was just sitting there waiting for an enterprising crew. It won’t happen again. Needless to say, we haven’t been able to find either of them, only the people they employed, who believed it was in good faith. A mess in other words. Now, go. Find me answers.”
She stood. The meeting was over.
© Charles Heath 2020
Here’s the thing.
Ever had an itch you can’t scratch; that’s a part of what you’ve written, you have reservations, and you’re not sure what to write in its place.
For a few days now the start, or maybe the end, has been swirling around in my head. To be honest, I don’t like the start, and I can’t get a feel for it. I have about five different starting points, but none of them feels right.
I’ve been thinking of writing it from John’s perspective, but there are so many peripheral characters that need to be drawn in, people he doesn’t really know much about, or some who have a vested interest in his current girlfriend if she could be called that.
So I thought I’d throw a few words down and see how they sit:
…
You would not know by looking at MaryAnne that she was probably one of the best assassins in the world. You would be more inclined to consider she was just another spoilt American brat on the loose on holiday.
She was certainly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met.
And she was certainly one of the most deadly. I could personally attest to that having seen her in action.
I could also attest to the fact that somewhere under that hard, conscienceless exterior, there was a heart, and sometimes it was visible. After all, I was a target, her target, once, and I’m still alive thanks to her.
It was a small detail I omitted when I introduced her to my parents, but that was one little step on a long road that I thought was going somewhere.
Perhaps, after all this time, I’d misinterpreted the signs, and I was wrong.
We were sitting on the balcony of our hotel room on the 45th floor of the hotel we were staying in downtown Surfer’s Paradise, a mecca for holidaymakers from the rest of Australia, and overseas.
It was perfect for tourists.
The champagne was cold, and although it was a hot 35 degrees Celsius out in the sunlight, the mood on the balcony was as decidedly cool as the champagne.
Today was the six-month anniversary of the first day we had spent together as, well, I was not sure, now, what we were.
She turned to look at me. She was nothing like the Zoe of old, and I had finally gotten used to Mary Anne. It was an amazing transformation, but with it, I had thought she had finally shrugged off the Zoe persona.
She hadn’t. That hardened expression that I had hoped would be gone forever, had returned.
“It’s time to go back home, John.”
It was also that tone, the one when she spoke, that sent shivers down my spine, not the good shivers, but the one that told me trouble was ahead. Deadly trouble.
“I need to do something. Don’t get me wrong, this had been a delightful rest, and I could not ask for a better companion, but it is time. We both knew this was going to happen.”
I noticed her features had softened a little when she mentioned my name, but the message was the same. We had talked about this moment at the outset. There was always going to be a use-by date on this adventure, for me at least.
It was also the time when she would, she said, decide where I would fit, if I fitted, in her future. When we originally spoke about it, she was still unsure of her feelings towards me. Over time, I had also hoped that they would be the same as mine for her.
Perhaps I had been expecting too much.
“When did you decide?”
“About thirty seconds ago. That’s when I realized it doesn’t matter where we are in the world, I still want to be with you. So, how do you like the idea of going into the assassination business?”
…
I’m not sure what John might think of this development, but I think you will agree with me, so long as he is with Zoe, he’s happy.
…
© Copyright, Charles Heath 2018-2024
