I’ve been looking at the role of the policewoman, and her interaction with the shop’s participants.

I’m still working on whether she needs more or less of an introduction, but, for the time being, this is what I’m going with:

…

It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.

People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.

The one they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them the bad news.

That was her day.

So far.

At the end of the day, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over again.

Coming around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night.  It was not.  The lights were still on.

She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight, and long past closing time.  She looked through the window, but from the other side of the road, she could only see three heads and little else.

Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out. 

She was aware of the rumors, from her co-residents and also her colleagues down at the station, rumors she hoped were not true.

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

——

When Carlo heard the shot, he stopped his ‘interrogation’ and sent a soldier over to investigate.  To avoid getting shot inadvertently, I came out of the woods with my hands up, and, thankfully, was instantly recognized.

I went over to the barn and looked at the man on the ground.  “Do he have anything to say?”

“No.”

The other man, awaiting ‘interrogation’ was visibly shaken by the events.  Two dead including Leonardo, and one a bloody pulp on the ground, with a very angry Carlo standing over him, his outlook was very bleak.

“You speak English,” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“Alberto, sir.  I didn’t agree with anything Fernando did.  A few of us refused to kill any of the villagers.  That was Fernando.  He was the one who beat up the women.”

“You could have stopped him.”

“You know the bastard, Carlo.  Not even you could, and you tried.”

Carlo grunted.  To make sure the men on the ground were dead, he shot them again, and emptied his gun into Fernando, adding a curse with each bullet.

I glared at Alberto.  “Pick a side.”

“I’m with you.  There are several others, back in the castle.  We would be able to help if you were planning an attack.”

“The last person who told me that is out there in the woods with a bullet in his head.  I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you.”

“We can help.”

“And, you will.  When we decide to go, we’ll take you with us.  You double-cross us, the Carlo gets his five minutes.  You try to run away, Carlo will hunt you down and kill you.  Understood?”

He nodded.

“Fernando?”  The man sent to find the defectors had come back.

I shot him before he could make any sort of move, just as he realized what had happened.

I motioned to the soldiers to get the defectors, who, hearing the shots, had started to flee.  Two shots in the air stopped them.  Two of them were small children, who would not have survived if they’d been taken to the castle.

All four were visibly frightened by what they’d seen, and of what their fate might be.  I assured them, they were now in safe hands, and we were going not to the castle, but to a different place.  Desperate people in a desperate situation, I couldn’t imagine where they’d come from, or their journey from Germany with nothing on a promise of safety taken at face value.

“We go to the castle now,” Carlo asked/

“Soon.  We need a plan.  Let’s go back and make one.  But, yes.  We go to the castle now.”

Storming the castle might have worked if I had a hundred men, not about ten or

Granted Carlo would by the equivalent of another five, but in a hail of bullets, he would not last long.

I had to put myself in Wallace’s shoes and figure out how he would defend the castle once he realized Jackerby and the resistance members were dead.

Panic would be my first thought.  Then, when rational thought returned, block off all the known entrances and exits, and post sentries outside.  We had about twenty men to deal with, but a dozen were hardened battle soldiers, and that would make a difference.  The fact they were inside covering most of the entrance points would make the job harder.

If we had to use the known entrances/

When the time came, they were going to get a surprise because Carlo knew of two others no one but he, and the owners of the castle, were the only ones who knew about them.

But, first, we had to even the odds if possible.

For that, one of Blinky’s team was a sniper, and with him was a sniper rifle and suppressor which meant we would be able to pick off the sentries without anyone hearing the bullets coming for them.

We were only going to get one shot at it because once Wallace discovered the sentries, he wouldn’t post anymore, and would know of our intent.

But, in the end, none of that mattered. 

We just got a short communication that Meyer was in Florence and his arrival would be in two days time.  We were charged with making sure he arrived safely and passed into the pipeline.  The only issue with that was that we needed the castle to complete the process.

That meant we had to move up the plans  to retake the castle, and there were always problems when details were missed.  We had the advantage in our knowledge of the castle and its underground passageways, but would that be enough?

Then there was the surprise.  It had just been learned that a very high ranking Nazi officer was coming to the castle to personally take Meyer back to the fatherland.  That meant we had to be in the castle when he arrived, so he could be sent back home for interrogation.

Both men, it appeared, had the capacity to turn the tide of the war in our favor.

Blinky simply shrugged when he got the news, then said, “We could do with some more men.”

Stating the obvious.

“It’s the war, you know.  Shortages of everything.”

“Didn’t envisage this at Prep school, did we?  Seems the world was a different place, but my father said it couldn’t last.”

“Nothing ever does.  It’s going to be interesting when this ends if it ends.  There are days I wake up and I can’t remember what it was like, before all this.”

”Well, maybe we get this done, and it’ll be a step closer.  At least, we have to believe that.”

I nodded.  “Good pep talk.  As I remember, you were always trying to talk me into doing something stupid.”

Carlo had been listening to us was a puzzled look.  “Are all you English like you two?”

Blinky answered.  “No.  We’re unique.”

Clearly, he had no idea what that meant.  Blinky was going to try and explain but instead, shrugged.  “Let’s go kill some Germans.”

That Carlo did understand.

——-

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

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 the Jack, the girl, and the shopkeeper

 

Jack exchanged a look with the shopkeeper, who in return gave him a slight shrug as if to say he had no idea what this was about.

He could see the girl was not strung out on drugs; if she was it would be a good bet both would be shot or dead by now.  She was just the unfortunate partner of a boy who was on drugs and had found herself in a dangerous position.

Beth, his wife, had told him she didn’t like nor trust the shopkeeper and that her friend in the same apartment block had told her he had been seen selling drugs to youths who hung around just before he closed.  She had warned him it would not be safe, but he had ignored her.

It was a bit late to tell her she was right.

He took a half step towards the door, judging the distance and time it would take to open the door and get out.

Too far, and he would be too slow, his reward for running; a bullet in the back.

Perhaps another half step when she wasn’t looking.

 

The shopkeeper changed his expression to one more placatory, and said quietly to the girl, “Look, this is not this chap’s problem.”  He nodded in the direction of the customer.  “I’m sure he’d rather not be here, and you would glad of one less distraction.”

He could see she was wavering.  She was not holding the gun so steadily, and the longer this dragged on, the more nervous and unpredictable she would become.

And in the longer game, the customer would sing his praises no matter what happened if he could get him out of the shop alive and well.

This could still be a win-win situation.

 

The girl looked at Jack.  The shopkeeper was right.  If he wasn’t here this could be over. 

But there was another problem.  It didn’t look like Simmo was in any shape to getaway.  In fact, this was looking more like a suicide mission.

She waved the gun in his direction.  ‘Get out now, before I change my mind.’

As the gun turned to the shopkeeper, Jack wasn’t going to wait to be asked twice and started sidling towards the door.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

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

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

——

A second report from Blinky’s surveillance of the castle had Leonardo on the move, and a second shadowy person following them.

It had to be Jackerby, Atherton thought.  Jackerby would be the only one who didn’t trust anyone, or, perhaps, he had more murderous intentions.  Maybe he had worked out that Leonardo was rapidly becoming a liability.

Or he had some other agenda.

“How many of resistance are waiting at the barn?” Atherton asked the soldier.

“Four.  The fifth went to find them.”

“OK.  Carlo, take some of the soldiers and stop them.”

He grinned.  At last.

“I’ll deal with the other man.” I whistled and Jack came over.  “We have a job to do, Jack.”  He had no idea what I was saying, but his enthusiasm was obvious.

“Taking any prisoners,” Blinky asked.

“If the situation warrants it, but if the fire on us, we fire back.”

“And, once that’s done?”

“We retake the castle.”

“Sounds a bit like a story out of a Boys Own annual.”

“It does.  It’ll certainly make a good story to tell your grandchildren one day.”

“If we make it back.”

“We will.  If we’re careful and don’t take unnecessary risks.  I won’t be bringing a prisoner back.  If it’s Jackerby, I have a score to settle with him.”

“Don’t let revenge cloud your judgment.”

“I won’t.  See you soon.”

When we reached the woods, on the opposite side of the castle, I planned to come at Jackaby from an angle he would not be expecting anyone.

From the moment we entered the woods, Jack went into what I would call stealth mode as if he was hunting.  In a sense he was, and perhaps he knew instinctively what we were looking for.

It took about a half-hour of carefully moving through the woods to get to a point where I could just see Jackerby, sitting beside a tree, watching the barn.  I moved a little closer, and the change of angle brought Leonardo and two other men of the resistance, sitting behind the barn, and one of sentry duty, waiting for the fifth to return.

I turned back to see where Jack was, but he had gone off.  A rabbit perhaps, or something else.

I moved closer; Jackerby’s attention was fully on the resistance members, so he would not hear me coming.

What was he doing?  He was taking an enormous risk coming out of the castle alone or did he think that if I was clever enough to have the castle under surveillance, he could assume I might be stupid enough to follow him.

It was an interesting thought, broken by the sudden rustling through the undergrowth, and then a yelp, as Jack launched himself at Jackerby, taking him completely by surprise, then, when Jackeby tried to get a gun in hand, Jack attacked that hand.

Long enough for me to get there, gun in hand.  “Stop resisting, or I’m sure Jack will do some serious damage to that hand.”

It looked serious enough to me.

“So, this is where you’re hiding?”

“Enough, Jack.”

Curiously, the dog stopped, but remained menacingly close, growling.

“I should have shot that dog when I had the chance.”

Jack moved forward and growled in his face, baring his teeth, and Jackerby shrank back.

“Don’t upset him.  He obviously doesn’t like you.”

Our attention was interrupted by gunfire, and a glance over to the barn saw two men with their hands up against the wall, and the two on the ground, including Leonardo.   Carlo was in the process of ‘interrogating’ the other two.

“Carlo is not a happy man, Jackerby.  And I promised him five minutes alone with you.”

Another glance over at the barn, Carlo was kicking one of the men who had fallen on the ground, with enthusiasm.  I didn’t rate the man’s chances of surviving.  “You really shouldn’t have let Leonardo mistreat Chiara or Martina, wherever you’ve got her.”

“She is still alive.  We can do a deal here, Atherton.”

“The trouble I have with anything you say is that I can’t believe you.  I’m sure you’d say or do anything to stay alive and renege the moment you got back to the castle.”

“I give you my word as an officer.  We are, like you, men of honor.”

I shook my head.  “You’re Gestapo, or worse, Jackerby.  And they, as far as I’m concerned, are the lowest of the low, little more than murderous thugs.  No.”

I aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.

The only way Jackerby was leaving the woods was as dead weight.

——-

© Charles Heath 2020-2022