As we all know, writing by the seat of your pants is almost the same as flying by the seat of your pants, a hazardous occupation.

As it happens, I like writing this way because like the reader, I don’t know what to expect next.

And equally, at times, you can write your self into a corner, much like painting, and then have to go back, make a few changes and//or repairs and then move forward.

It’s part of the writing process, only in this case, the changes occur before you’ve finished the novel if you finish.  Quite often a lot of writers get only so far, then the manuscript hits the bottom drawer, to be brought out on a distant rainy day.

Or your cat has mocked your writing ability one too many times.

Therefore, we’re winding back to Episode 16, and moving forward once again, from there.

O’Connor seemed to be more affluent than I because he was living in a flat located in an upmarket building.  Getting into the ground floor required a passkey, one I suspect might also be needed to get in the front door of his flat, but I’d worry about that later.

My first problem was that front door, and it was not until a tradesman exited that I took the opportunity to appear to arrive at the same time, pretending to find my card, and brushing past him as he was exiting.  He ignored me, his hands full, being in a hurry.

It took a day and a half of watching the building, waiting for an opportunity.  His flat was on the third floor and although there was an elevator, I took the stairs, hoping that I wouldn’t run into anyone.

Quickly and quietly, and thankfully without seeing another resident, I came out into the passageway, and it was about ten steps to his front door.  Number 37.  Not far away, in one direction, the end of the passage, and numbers 38, 39, and 40.  In the other, four more flats and the end of the corridor.  Windows at either end, perhaps an escape route.  I would not use the elevator if I had to leave in a hurry.

There were two elevators and one staircase.  Both elevators were stationary on the ground floor.

I knocked lightly on the door to number 37.

No answer.

I knocked a little harder on the door.  It was quite solid, and I had to wonder if the knocking sound penetrated the solid wood.

I checked the lock.  Simple to open.  We’d been given instruction by a master locksmith, and I’d brought my tools.

I waited a minute, checked to see if the elevators were still on the ground floor, then picked the lock and was inside within a minute.

Silence.

I felt along the wall for a light switch, usually by the door, and found it, and flicked it on.  The sudden light was almost blinding, but then my eyes adjusted.

Trashed, much the same as my flat.

But, with a difference.

A woman was stretched out on the floor, unmoving.  I could see, from where I was standing, she had been hit on the back of the head and could see the wound, and a trickle of blood through her hair.

Five steps to reach her, I reached down to check for a pulse.

Yes, she was alive.

I shook her gently.  She didn’t react.  I shook her a little more roughly and she stirred, then, as expected, lashed out.

I caught her hands, saying, “I just found you.  I’m not your enemy.”

Of course, considering I was a stranger in what could be her flat without permission, I was not surprised she continued to struggle until I tried being reassuring.  Then she stopped and asked, “Who are you?”

“A friend of O’Connor.  I worked with him.  Something happened to him at work and he said if that happened, I was to come here.  He didn’t say anything about you, though.”

“I live here, in the flat next door.  I heard a noise and came to investigate.  That’s all I remember.”

I helped her up into a sitting position, and, holding her head in her hands, looked around.  “Did you do this?”

“No.  Just got here.  But it’s the same at my place.  The people who did this are looking for something.  By the look of it, they didn’t find it here either.”

“I’ll get a damp cloth for your head.  It doesn’t look serious but there might be a slight concussion that might need attention.”

She felt the back of her head, and, when she touched the wound, gasped, “It hurts though.”

I stood and went over to the kitchenette.  O’Connor was not much of a cook, the benches looked new, and there was nothing out.  I looked in a draw near the sink and found a cloth, still with the price tag on it.  So were several utensils in the drawer.  I ran it under the water, then went back to her, now off the floor and sitting on one of the two chairs.  I handed her the wet cloth and she put it against the injured part of her head.

I made a mental note, it didn’t look like O’Connor had been here long, if at all.  Something was not right here, and if that was the case, I should take care when saying anything to this woman.

“Who are you again?” she asked.

“I worked with him.  My name is irrelevant.  It’s unlikely that he mentioned me to you, or anyone.  It’s the nature of our work.”

“Why should I believe you?  You could be my attacker.”

“If that were the case, why would I still be here trying to be helpful.”

A good question that elicited a curious expression.

“What do you do, what did Oliver do?”

Alarm bells were going off.  Oliver was not O’Connor’s first name.

“Nothing very interesting, I can assure you, and definitely nothing that would warrant this happening.  If it had only been me, I would have not thought any more of it, but since we worked together, and this has also happened to him, it seems we are mixed up in something bad.”

“Where is he, by the way?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.  If you live next door and know him well enough to be here, he might have told you.”

“No.  He never spoke about work.”

She was trying to stand so I helped her up and held on when it looked like she was about to collapse.  Last time I had a knock to the head, I had dizziness for a minute of two.  Her knock had been a lot harder.”

“Are you alright?”  She didn’t look it.

“I will be, I’m sure.”

I let her go, and she took several steps, then gave me a rather hard look.  “Why are you here again?”

“Trying to find my friend.”

“How did you get in here?”

Rather than make her disorientated, the knock must have sharpened her senses.  Time to test a theory. 

“I think we should call the police now, and report the break-in.”

I pulled out my phone.

“Look, I don’t want to get mixed up in this.  You go, and I report this when I get back home.  And, if you find him, tell him Josephine is looking for him.”

As I thought.  She was not able to explain to the authorities why she was in this flat, as I’m sure she believed I couldn’t either.

She started walking towards the door.  My staying any longer would raise her suspicions about me, and any search I was going to do would have to wait.  I opened the door, she walked out, and I followed shutting the door after me.

I left her standing outside the door and headed for the stairs.  A last glance back showed her still where I left her.  I went down to the first landing, then stopped.  It was part of the training, to treat everyone as suspicious.

Then I heard her voice, as she passed the top of the staircase, on her way back to her flat.  “He was here, looking for the files.  No, he’s gone.”  A minute’s silence, then “On my way.”

Another minute, I heard the elevator car arrive on the third floor.

I quickly ran down the stairs to the ground floor and waited at the door until she came out of the elevator, heading for the door.

Then as she passed through the front door, I came out into the foyer just in time to see a car stop out the front, and a familiar face out through the rear window.

Nobbin.

© Charles Heath 2019-2022

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

And the story:

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.

Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication where he went.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

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

It is hard sometimes to keep the lid on what might be called justification of your position in a company where there are many naysayers, and little support from those who are supposed to be working together towards a single conclusion.

Not work against you, or to have their own agenda, not only in furthering their career on the back of your mistakes but take the credit for all your hard work.

Every company has them.

I’ve worked in a few where this has happened, but the deciding factor of whether they’re successful or not is when they have to stand on their own two feet when the source of their reputed good work suddenly is unavailable, and the shit hits the proverbial fan.

What is it called?  Art imitates life.

Benton is the proverbial leader who takes credit, but when it comes to the crunch, can’t pull the rabbit out of the hat.

I guess in writing this little piece, I was subconsciously getting back at someone from a real, but now distant, past.

Perhaps there might be a little more about one of the places I worked cropping up from time to time.

It’s not so much writing about what you know, but writing about what happened, and what you might have wanted to happen.  Invariably it never did, because these credit takers are a cunning lot, and sometimes lay the foundations for getting out from under when there is a disaster.

Unfortunately, I’ve been there too.

It’s called cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Be that as it may, I let this little vent run and see where it goes.

…

It was my responsibility since I’d recommended it and then won the support of management over his objections, and following that it had become a point of continual contention, a petty war neither of us was going to win.

I tried to keep the joy out of my voice.  He’d also vetoed my recommendation for a full-time network engineer as my alternative, making my job become single-point sensitive.  There was no one to replace me if anything went wrong.

“Sounds like you’re having fun.”  I had to work hard to keep the amusement out of my tone.

“Fun nothing.”  His tone was reaching that exasperation point.  “There is no one else.”

“Why did you approve my holiday if I can’t have one?” I’d stretch his patience just a little more.

“You promised me the network was stable.”

“It is, and has been for the last six months.  I’ve said so in my last six-monthly reports.  You have been reading them, haven’t you?”

Silence.  It said all I needed to know.

I had a choice sentence to deliver, but an ignominious thought popped into my head.  He could probably use this against me, and would if I gave him the opportunity.  Perhaps I should shelve my differences with him for this morning.

Aside from that, there was a shooting, and we didn’t get one of those every day.  Not that it would probably amount to very much.  During the previous week, the office grapevine had been working overtime on the rumour Richardson was having a relationship with one of the ladies in the Accounts department.  It was just the sort of scandal the data entry staff thrived on.

A shooting and a network failure.  I didn’t know which was worse.  Perhaps if it was Benton they’d shot, there might be some justice…

I decided not to argue with him.  “Give me an hour.”

“Half.  Aitchison wants to see you.”

Werner Aitchison was head of Internal Security and a man who took his job seriously.  Enough, that is, to annoy my staff, and me.  He was ex-military intelligence, so ‘they’ said, but he appeared to me like a man out of his depth in this new age of communications.  Computers had proliferated in our company over the last few years, and the technology to go with them spiralling out of control.

We dealt in billions via financial transactions processed on computers, computers which, we were told often enough, were insecure, and easily taken control of outside their environment.  Aitchison was paranoid, and rightly so, but he had a strange way of going about his business.  He and I had butted heads on many occasions, and we may have had our disagreements, but we were good friends and colleagues outside work.

Just in case Benton was accusing me, I said, as sincerely as I could, “I didn’t do it.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.  He has requested a meeting with you at 10 am.  You will be there.”

“I said I would come in to look at the problem.  I didn’t say I was staying.”

“Let me know when you get in.”  That was it.  No ifs.  No buts.  Just a simple, ‘Let me know…’

I seriously considered ignoring him, but somewhere within me, there was that odd sense of loyalty.  Not to Benton, not to the Company, but to someone else, the man who had given me the job in the first place, who had given me every opportunity.

I was doing it for him and would tell him.

When I found out who it was!

…

© Charles Heath 2016-2023

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 that piqued 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.

I’ve been told there’s a sequel in the works.

Bring it on!

…

The book can be purchased here: http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

…

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.

Was I working for a ghost?

Training sometimes was one of those things that went in one ear and came out the other.  That accounted for the boring bits, but our instructors called it tradecraft. 

I guess I should have taken more notice at the time.

Home was a bedsit in Bloomsbury, Not far from the Russell Square underground station, on the ground floor overlooking the small park.  Sometimes, in summer I would sit there and watch the world go by, thinking there had to be more to life than waiting for an opportunity.

To do what, at the time, I didn’t know.  But, when this opportunity presented itself, oddly as a rather strange ad in the help wanted pages of the newspaper, I guess the people who put it there were looking for the curious sort, with a sense of adventure.

My first impression of the job was that of a courier who would be required to travel a lot.  It said, in part, “must be prepared to travel to different locations worldwide, understand the requirement of confidentiality, and must be able to respond to emergencies that might occur in the carrying out of your duties.”

To me, it spelled courier, though I rather hoped it wasn’t the briefcase handcuffed to a wrist sort and no guns.

After the first interview, I think I had guessed correctly, though, in subsequent training, the word tradecraft put a slightly different slant to the job.  That, and the surveillance module, sold to us as “you need to know if you are being followed, recognise hostiles, and be able to deal with them.”

But, it was the notion that we should get out of any habits we had, those that made us predictable to an enemy, yes, they actually used the word, enemy.  Like for instance, if we caught the same train, or bus, into the city.  If we went to the same cafe for coffee, restaurant for lunch or dinner, met people in a pub on the same day, same time, each week.

Before all this, I found comfort in a regular schedule.  I hated being late, except when the transport system let me down.  I had a regular stop off on the way to the office for coffee, and usually went to the same cafe for lunch at the same time.

Inevitably I would leave home at the same time and quite often return home at the same time.  OK, I was boring and predictable.  Now it was a little different, with some variation in departure and arrival times, as well as the places I stopped for coffee, and lunch or dinner.

This day I was very late, after dark in fact, getting back to the flat.

I went in after checking for mail, not that anyone ever sent letters these days, unlocked my door, went in and switched on the light.

The whole of the living space had been trashed.  Well, more to the point, someone had checked everywhere it was possible to hide anything, which I didn’t, and hadn’t bothered cleaning up after them.

Had they been interrupted?

If that had happened the landlady would be down in a flash the moment I walked in the door, not to commiserate on my bad luck, but to issue me with an eviction notice.  Very little was tolerated in her establishment.

That she hadn’t told me that whoever did this had done it very quietly, and without anyone knowing.  We had been taught the same procedures which is why I recognised the signs.  This had to be done by my previous employers.  The only question I had was why?

I had nothing they could possibly want.

I took a few minutes to clean up the mess so that instead of a thorough trashing, it just looked like the aftermath of a wild party, then went out to get a coffee and think about why this had happened.

Not far up the road was a cafe I went to for dinner if I wasn’t doing something else, and, lo and behold, the minute I walked in the door, there was Severin, sitting at the back half disguised by the evening newspaper.

Obviously, he’d been waiting for me.

Yes, now I understood the implications of being someone who did the same thing over and over.

There was no mistaking the invitation, and, after briefly considering ignoring him, realised that was not going to work.  After seeing what happened to O’Connor at their hand, I didn’t want to join him.

I sat down.  “I have to say this is an unexpected surprise.”

He put the paper down.  “For both of us, I can assure you.  I’ll get straight to the point.  I want the USB.”

“What USB?”

“That your target was carrying, it wasn’t on him, so by elimination, not being anywhere at the crime scene, you must have it.  He either gave it to you, or you took it from him.  Where is it?”

I took a minute to process what he was saying.  I had not seen a USB, not had he given me one, not was there one nearby.  I would have seen it.  No need to pretend to be surprised.  I was.

“I haven’t got it.”

“He didn’t give you anything?”

“How could he, you were there just about the same time as I was.  And after you shot him, he had nothing on him.  Whatever you’re looking for, it must still be in the alley, or he hid it somewhere else.  And since you shot him, I doubt whether you’ll ever find out.”

He shook his head and folded his paper.  “If you’ve got it we’ll find out. and it will not bode well for you.  And if you accidentally find it, here’s my card.  Call me.”

He dropped a card on the table as he got up.

I picked it up just as he stopped and turned to give me a last look before walking out the door.  There was no mistaking the intent, if they thought I had it, I’d be dead now.”

And it meant that the evidence O’Conner was referring to was on a USB.  All I had to do was find it.  Or Nobbin did.

© Charles Heath 2019