Category: Mystery

“Bloody hell…” – a short story

The cell phone’s insistent and shrill ring dragged my mind away from the crossword, and after a fairly mild curse, I picked it up.

Sidney, my brother.  Odd he was calling me at this hour of the night.

“What,” I barked into the microphone.

“That’s no way to speak to your baby brother.”  His smooth tones rarely reached a screaming point, which was often the reason why mine did.

And who called the younger brother ‘baby’ brother these days?

“What do you want?”

A hesitation.  He was in trouble again, I could feel it.

“Can you come down to the bar?  I seem to have left my wallet at home.”  Sheepish, and just enough to stop me from yelling at him.  It was not the first time, nor would it be the last.

“I told you the last time was the last time.”

“Just this once, please?”

I shook my head.  That was probably my biggest fault, giving in to him.  After our mother had died, and our father had to work, it was left to me to bring him up.  He was going to be the death of me yet.  “Where?”

“The usual place.”

I was surprised because the last I’d heard they’d banned him from going in there.  It was only a twenty-minute walk from my apartment, but, late at night, and in winter, there was snow in the air.  And the odd snowflake falling, a prelude to much worse.

About a hundred yards from the bar I had a shiver go down my spine.  I’d not had that for a long time, not since school, and the trouble with Wiley, the school bully.  Wiley had graduated to the local thug, done a few stints in jail, and last I heard he had been sent down for a few years for an assault.

I stopped and took a moment.  Perhaps karma was trying to tell me something.

I shrugged.  Just in my imagination.  I reached the door, took a moment then went in.  He was standing by the bat looking a little apprehensive.  He was in more trouble than just not paying his bar bill.

Close up I could see the fear in his expression.  “Bloody hell, Sid, what have you done now?”

“A problem that he insists his older brother would be happy to pay for.”

I knew that voice and felt instant dread.

Wiley.

In the flesh, and not looking very happy at all.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

An excerpt from “Strangers We’ve Become” – Coming Soon

I wandered back to my villa.

It was in darkness.  I was sure I had left several lights on, especially over the door so I could see to unlock it.

I looked up and saw the globe was broken.

Instant alert.

I went to the first hiding spot for the gun, and it wasn’t there.  I went to the backup and it wasn’t there either.  Someone had found my carefully hidden stash of weapons and removed them.

Who?

There were four hiding spots and all were empty.  Someone had removed the weapons.  That could only mean one possibility.

I had a visitor, not necessarily here for a social call.

But, of course, being the well-trained agent I’d once been and not one to be caught unawares, I crossed over to my neighbor and relieved him of a weapon that, if found, would require a lot of explaining.

Suitably armed, it was time to return the surprise.

There were three entrances to the villa, the front door, the back door, and a rather strange escape hatch.  One of the more interesting attractions of the villa I’d rented was its heritage.  It was built in the late 1700s, by a man who was, by all accounts, a thief.  It had a hidden underground room which had been in the past a vault but was now a wine cellar, and it had an escape hatch by which the man could come and go undetected, particularly if there was a mob outside the door baying for his blood.

It now gave me the means to enter the villa without my visitors being alerted, unless, of course, they were near the vicinity of the doorway inside the villa, but that possibility was unlikely.  It was not where anyone could anticipate or expect a doorway to be.

The secret entrance was at the rear of the villa behind a large copse, two camouflaged wooden doors built into the ground.  I move aside some of the branches that covered them and lifted one side.  After I’d discovered the doors and rusty hinges, I’d oiled and cleaned them, and cleared the passageway of cobwebs and fallen rocks.  It had a mildew smell, but nothing would get rid of that.  I’d left torches at either end so I could see.

I closed the door after me, and went quietly down the steps, enveloped in darkness till I switched on the torch.  I traversed the short passage which turned ninety degrees about halfway to the door at the other end.  I carried the key to this door on the keyring, found it and opened the door.  It too had been oiled and swung open soundlessly.

I stepped in the darkness and closed the door.

I was on the lower level under the kitchen, now the wine cellar, the ‘door’ doubling as a set of shelves which had very little on them, less to fall and alert anyone in the villa.

Silence, an eerie silence.

I took the steps up to the kitchen, stopping when my head was level with the floor, checking to see if anyone was waiting.  There wasn’t.  It seemed to me to be an unlikely spot for an ambush.

I’d already considered the possibility of someone coming after me, especially because it had been Bespalov I’d killed, and I was sure he had friends, all equally as mad as he was.  Equally, I’d also considered it nigh on impossible for anyone to find out it was me who killed him because the only people who knew that were Prendergast, Alisha, a few others in the Department, and Susan.

That raised the question of who told them where I was.

If I was the man I used to be, my first suspect would be Susan.  The departure this morning, and now this was too coincidental.  But I was not that man.

Or was I?

I reached the start of the passageway that led from the kitchen to the front door and peered into the semi-darkness.  My eyes had got used to the dark, and it was no longer an inky void.  Fragments of light leaked in around the door from outside and through the edge of the window curtains where they didn’t fit properly.  A bone of contention upstairs in the morning, when first light shone and invariably woke me up hours before I wanted to.

Still nothing.

I took a moment to consider how I would approach the visitor’s job.  I would get a plan of the villa in my head, all entrances, where a target could be led to or attacked where there would be no escape.

Coming in the front door.  If I was not expecting anything, I’d just open the door and walk-in.  One shot would be all that was required.

Contract complete.

I sidled quietly up the passage staying close to the wall, edging closer to the front door.  There was an alcove where the shooter could be waiting.  It was an ideal spot to wait.

Crunch.

I stepped on some nutshells.

Not my nutshells.

I felt it before I heard it.  The bullet with my name on it.

And how the shooter missed, from point-blank range, and hit me in the arm, I had no idea.  I fired off two shots before a second shot from the shooter went wide and hit the door with a loud thwack.

I saw a red dot wavering as it honed in on me and I fell to the floor, stretching out, looking up where the origin of the light was coming and pulled the trigger three times, evenly spaced, and a second later I heard the sound of a body falling down the stairs and stopping at the bottom, not very far from me.

Two assassins.

I’d not expected that.

The assassin by the door was dead, a lucky shot on my part.  The second was still breathing.

I checked the body for any weapons and found a second gun and two knives.  Armed to the teeth!

I pulled off the balaclava; a man, early thirties, definitely Italian.  I was expecting a Russian.

I slapped his face, waking him up.  Blood was leaking from several slashes on his face when his head had hit the stairs on the way down.  The awkward angle of his arms and legs told me there were broken bones, probably a lot worse internally.  He was not long for this earth.

“Who employed you?”

He looked at me with dead eyes, a pursed mouth, perhaps a smile.  “Not today my friend.  You have made a very bad enemy.”  He coughed and blood poured out of his mouth.  “There will be more …”

Friends of Bespalov, no doubt.

I would have to leave.  Two unexplainable bodies, I’d have a hard time explaining my way out of this mess.  I dragged the two bodies into the lounge, clearing the passageway just in case someone had heard anything.

Just in case anyone was outside at the time, I sat in the dark, at the foot of the stairs, and tried to breathe normally.  I was trying not to connect dots that led back to Susan, but the coincidence was worrying me.

A half-hour passed and I hadn’t moved.  Deep in thought, I’d forgotten about being shot, unaware that blood was running down my arm and dripping onto the floor.

Until I heard a knock on my front door.

Two thoughts, it was either the police, alerted by the neighbors, or it was the second wave, though why would they be knocking on the door?

I stood, and immediately felt a stabbing pain in my arm.  I took out a handkerchief and turned it into a makeshift tourniquet, then wrapped a kitchen towel around the wound.

If it was the police, this was going to be a difficult situation.  Holding the gun behind my back, I opened the door a fraction and looked out.

No police, just Maria.  I hoped she was not part of the next ‘wave’.

“You left your phone behind on the table.  I thought you might be looking for it.”  She held it out in front of her.

When I didn’t open the door any further, she looked at me quizzically, and then asked, “Is anything wrong?”

I was going to thank her for returning the phone, but I heard her breathe in sharply, and add, breathlessly, “You’re bleeding.”

I looked at my arm and realized it was visible through the door, and not only that, the towel was soaked in blood.

“You need to go away now.”

Should I tell her the truth?  It was probably too late, and if she was any sort of law-abiding citizen she would go straight to the police.

She showed no signs of leaving, just an unnerving curiosity.  “What happened?”

I ran through several explanations, but none seemed plausible.  I went with the truth.  “My past caught up with me.”

“You need someone to fix that before you pass out from blood loss.  It doesn’t look good.”

“I can fix it.  You need to leave.  It is not safe to be here with me.”

The pain in my arm was not getting any better, and the blood was starting to run down my arm again as the tourniquet loosened.  She was right, I needed it fixed sooner rather than later.

I opened the door and let her in.  It was a mistake, a huge mistake, and I would have to deal with the consequences.  Once inside, she turned on the light and saw the pool of blood just inside the door and the trail leading to the lounge.  She followed the trail and turned into the lounge, turned on the light, and no doubt saw the two dead men.

I expected her to scream.  She didn’t.

She gave me a good hard look, perhaps trying to see if I was dangerous.  Killing people wasn’t something you looked the other way about.  She would have to go to the police.

“What happened here?”

“I came home from the cafe and two men were waiting for me.  I used to work for the Government, but no longer.  I suspect these men were here to repay a debt.  I was lucky.”

“Not so much, looking at your arm.”

She came closer and inspected it.

“Sit down.”

She found another towel and wrapped it around the wound, retightening the tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

“Do you have medical supplies?”

I nodded.  “Upstairs.”  I had a medical kit, and on the road, I usually made my own running repairs.  Another old habit I hadn’t quite shaken off yet.

She went upstairs, rummaged, and then came back.  I wondered briefly what she would think of the unmade bed though I was not sure why it might interest her.

She helped me remove my shirt, and then cleaned the wound.  Fortunately, she didn’t have to remove a bullet.  It was a clean wound but it would require stitches.

When she’d finished she said, “Your friend said one day this might happen.”

No prizes for guessing who that friend was, and it didn’t please me that she had involved Maria.

“Alisha?”

“She didn’t tell me her name, but I think she cares a lot about you.  She said trouble has a way of finding you, gave me a phone and said to call her if something like this happened.”

“That was wrong of her to do that.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.  Will you call her?”

“Yes.  I can’t stay here now.  You should go now.  Hopefully, by the time I leave in the morning, no one will ever know what happened here, especially you.”

She smiled.  “As you say, I was never here.”

…

© Charles Heath 2018-2022

strangerscover9

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 84

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

I’m leaving town and not looking back

…

Three days later, after Nadia had disappeared, I was cleared to leave the hospital, almost fully restored.

It had been a strange three days, time enough to consider what happened to Nadia, and in the end, I had to conclude that she needed to get away from everyone and everything.

I wanted to believe she was back in Italy; among people she could trust.  That notion of living a simple life in the vineyard that she proposed was now more appealing than going back to my old life working for the Benderby’s.  There was no doubt in my mind that I would never be going back to that warehouse, or anything else to do with the Benderby’s.

Three days to finally come to the painful conclusion that I had done nothing with my life, and staying in town, it would just be more of the same, only lonelier now that Boggs had gone.  Not even the prospect of seeing Nadia made it any better, not that was going to stay longer than she had to.

Boggs’s mother finally came to visit me, and, when I saw her, I had the awful feeling she was going to blame me.  Perhaps I had already blamed myself because it was me who took him there, and if I had not, he would still be alive.

Nor did I believe he died in a fall, he was too good a climber for that to happen.  Alex or Vince must have found him, and silenced him the only way they knew.  He hadn’t deserved that, but, then, neither had we, but I guess when you try to keep a secret, it was the only way to ensure silence.

I knew the secret, and it was a question of how long I would survive before I was next on the list. Alex would never believe I could keep it to myself, and I had been safe in the hospital, but now I was leaving, it was only a matter of time before he made a move.

That gave me the impetus to make a decision that was in my best interests, to leave and never come back.  That meant leaving my mother too, as hard as it would be, and for reasons she would never understand.

I told her that the day before.

She visited twice a day, and each time I tried to find the courage to tell her of my decision, and each time it was not possible.  She was too happy that I was alive, and was making plans for the future, coming to the conclusion that life was too short, and putting things off until another day might mean they may never happen.

It was the same conclusion I’d come to, but with different ideas as to what it was I should not put off.

It took until the day before my discharge, and made easier with her news of a proposal from Benderby.  Both had been cool to the idea of taking their relationship to the next level, but now it seemed he had a change of heart.

My devious mind found another reason, and it was not because he cared about her.  It was more to do with silencing me, and her, putting us under his ‘protection’.  It told me he knew about his son’s involvement, and it would be interesting to see what he did about Alex.  My guess: nothing.

And was it wrong of me to hope Nadia would drive a stake into Alex’s heart?

She had just finished telling me about the second piece of news, my promotion, being in charge of the warehouse, rather than just being a clerk, a job I suspected normal people would have to wait years to attain.  It cemented my suspicions of his motive.

“That’s Alex’s domain,” I said.  “What’s he going to do?  The last thing I need is him being resentful.”

“He’s going to be your stepbrother, Sam, and we’re hoping the two of you will play nice.”

“Did Alex get the memo?”

“It doesn’t sound to me like he will be the problem “

It was a recipe for disaster.  And surprising that she should take Benderbys side.  My mother seemed to have forgotten all those years of angst at school, and the fact Alex was little better than a bully.  I guess, after the years of struggling after my father left us, she had to look out for herself. 

It was my cue.

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore.  I can look after myself.”

“I have no doubt you can.  But you have to get along with others, Sam.”

“I will.  But it won’t be here.  When they finally let me go, I’m leaving town.  There are just too many bad memories here now.”

I thought, while she was still wrapped up in the romance with Benderby, she’d just nod and move on.

Wrong.

She was genuinely upset with my decision.  “Are you leaving with that dreadful girl?”

“She is not a dreadful girl.  If that’s what Benderby is saying, he’s wrong.  I got to know her, those days in the cave when hope was fading.  That’s where you find the real person.  But, no, I’m not.  I don’t know where she is.  I’m disappointed, but not surprised.  By the way, Alex treated her very badly when she was his girlfriend, and back in school.”

“She would say that being a Cossatino.”

“And I’m sure the Benderby’s have nothing nice to say about them.  Irrespective of the Benderby’s and the Cossatino’s hatred for each other, they are more the reason to leave rather than stay.  But, more importantly, when time was running out in that cave, I realized all the things I hadn’t done, and why.   I’ve wasted opportunities and years of my life and lost a very good friend, who, if I’m to be judged one day, let down terribly.  That alone makes it impossible to stay here.”

“There’s a lot of good you can do here, Sam.  And all of the Boggs’s spent too much of their time having after that non-existent pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  You can’t feel sorry for them, father and son alike.”

Given what I knew, her admission was probably parroting the same sentiments as everyone else, and it was a fruitless search only in the fact that the treasure had been removed.  I had no doubt it had been there once, and moved, or discovered many years before.  Boggs’s father had found the resting place, and would have found the treasure.  Ormiston had too.  But would I tell anyone the truth, probably not?

But when I should have let it go, I didn’t.  “There’s so much you don’t know, that no one knows and probably never will.  You are entitled to your own opinion, I’m entitled to mine, and we’ll agree to disagree.  All the more reason to leave, because all it’s going to do is upset me every time someone mentions Boggs or the treasure.”

She stood.  I could see her ‘I don’t want to hear this’ face, and knew she’d long stopped listening to me.  As far as she was concerned, I would come around in the end.  There was no point arguing, I was just going to leave and worry about the consequences later.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

Skeletons in the closet, and doppelgangers

A story called “Mistaken Identity”

…

How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.

In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.

I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.

Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.

There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.

Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.

It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.

For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.

It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!

And a great idea for a story.

That story is called ‘Mistaken Identity’.

Read an extract tomorrow.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 11

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 in what happened during the second worlds 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…

 

There were tyre tracks leading up to the doorways from trucks that had recently made deliveries, or taken people away, maybe.

It was a short lane leading to another narrow roadway which I could see led away towards the front of the castle and the main road.  It was not part of the original castle and the track had been made recently, no doubt because of the need for secrecy.

We went across the laneway and continued into the trees where we would have enough coverage to reach the stream, it was a stream now but in winter I was sure it would be a river and able to allow a boat to navigate. 

Jack seemed to know where he was going, but he, like me, probably just wanted to get as far away from the castle as we could.  The undergrowth was denser as we approached the stream bank, and I had to pick my way carefully, and as quietly as I could.

It had sounded like a herd of elephants passing by.

At the stream edge, I looked at the water level.  Not very deep, and in places just thinly connected pools of stagnant water.  A boat could not be launched, not even a small rowboat.

I had previously committed a map of the area to memory, and I remembered the stream lead towards the village, veering off in two directions about half a mile before it got there.  I wanted the right branch, which I was hoping had more water in it, and hoping I might find a house with a boat.

Jack seemed nervous, coming up to me and moving his head, as if to say, let’s get moving. 

He was right.  I had no doubt it wouldn’t be long before they found me missing.

I had no idea who my saviour was, or why he had helped, but I was sure he was one of the men who’d parachuted in the day before.  How had my superior, if it was him, manage to get a man to infiltrate that group?

Or was it something else?

Had this been orchestrated so they could let me lead them to the other members of the resistance, and take care of that problem.  I doubted, with the compartmentalisation that ? would have insisted on, that the whole resistance in this area had been caught and neutralised.

Damn.

I hadn’t thought that far, or consider the possibility.

I would have to be careful.

I stopped, and immediately Jack came over to me.  His eyes were telling me, no stopping.  

Unfortunately, I would have to, and, worse, might have to backtrack to test my theory.

I knelt down beside him.  “Sorry.  I have to go back a little to see if we’re being followed.  You stay here and keep an eye open.”

He just looked at me.  Perhaps he only understood German.

I started moving back the way I had come, and he followed.  I stopped, he stopped.   Then I heard it, a laugh, and the cracking of a dry branch.  I’d been trying to avoid them.

There was a sort of track beside the stream we’d been following.  It wasn’t very distinguishable because I didn’t think it had been used in years, and it was hard to say if it was one that led from the castle to the village, but if I was to guess, it probably was the means for the castle owner to take a shortcut, as the crow flies.

No point going back now, we headed in the opposite direction, with haste, until we reached a small offshoot of the stream that leads into the woods, but there was no path beside it, so obviously there was nothing of interest along it.  I slid down into the stream and walked on the rocks in the water along the offshoot.

I hoped it covered my tracks.

Jack and I managed to get about twenty yards along, having in the last five, pick our way through the undergrowth, to a point where it stopped at the side of a hill.  Water ran down the hillside into the stream, but not today.  It was dry, but it would be a different story if it was raining, and with the rocky outcrop I suspected there might be something akin to a waterfall.

At least it proved cover and my pursuers would have to climb through the undergrowth to get to me, and then they would have to contend with Jack.

I could only hope they just kept on going.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 26

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.

Maury drops in for a search

 

I moved to the doorway and switched off the light, sending the room back into inky darkness.  Not good for the eyes, going bright light to instant dark.  We stood together behind the door as it opened inwards, Jan ready with her gun.

The door opened slowly, at the same time letting light in from the corridor, making it easier to see.

Opened fully, the visitor tentatively stepped into the room, and once the shape moved past the door, I slammed it shut and Jan lunged with the gun.  

I was not sure what result she was expecting but the person fought back, and as they turned to wrench the gun out of her hand, I let loose a punch, aiming for the head, and as hard as I could.  I head a cracking sound followed by a thump as the body hit the ground.

When I turned the light back on, there were two surprises.  The first, that I’d managed to knock someone out, and the second, Maury was back for a second look.

Why?

It didn’t matter.  He wasn’t going to be unconscious for very long.  Jan had some twine in her room, I wasn’t going to ask why, and she tied his hands and legs together, trussed almost like a turkey.

We left him on the floor when he’d fallen.  Unconscious, he was too heavy to move, or lift.

“Is this man Severin, Maury or Nobbin?” she asked.  She’d saved the questions until after he’d been neutralized, and we’d taken his gun off him.  Also, a knife.  She’d also look through his pockets to see if he carried any identification.  He didn’t, and I wouldn’t expect to find anything.  At the moment I was the same, and since I threw the phone’s sim card, I was now completely anonymous.

“Maury,” I said.

“The attack dog?”

“Not able to attack us at the moment, but yes.  I wonder why he came back?”

“We should ask him,” she said, “when he wakes up.”

We were sitting in the chairs, turned around to face Maury lying on the ground.  He had wriggled, and realizing he was tied up, tried harder to escape the bonds, and then relaxed when he realized he couldn’t.

His eyes turned to us, and it felt like a death stare.  

“This is a mistake,” he said.  “untie these ropes and I might make an exception for you.

“Why are you here?” I asked him.

“That’s none of your business.”

“But it is mine.  This is my flat, and you’re trespassing,” Jan said.

He switched his death gaze to her.

“I’m not here to cause trouble.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To ask you if your next-door neighbor left anything here with you to collect at a later date.”

No doubt with a menacing attitude, which would end in violence because Maury was not the sort to take no for an answer.

“Most people would knock on the door, and politely wait until it was answered.”

Most people.

“I was told there would be no one at home.”

“And it couldn’t wait until I returned?  I’m sorry, but you have broken into my flat and I’m going to call the police.”

He looked at me.

“That’s not a good idea.  Tell her, Jackson.”

“I don’t work for you, or Severin, anymore.  In fact, when I went back into the office, I got dragged aside and interrogated.  No one seems to know who you and Severin are.”

“That’s because our operation was on a need to know basis.  How do you think our business works?  Not by telling everyone what you’re doing.  Now untie me, and I’ll be on my way.”

“No,” Jan said.  “Not until you tell us exactly who you are and who you work for, and why you deemed it necessary to murder O’Connell.”

Maury looked at me again, and there was no mistaking the anger.

“You do understand what the Official Secrets Act means, don’t you Jackson?”

“More or less.  But it depends on who it is you speak to whether that’s relevant or not.”

Back to Jan.  

“Who are you, then?”

“As you keep pulling out of your hat, it’s on a need to know basis, and, of course, we just tell everyone what we’re doing either.  But one thing I’m sure of, we do not go around killing agents.  As far as I can tell, O’Connell was working for an agency, possibly yours but I don’t think so, and in the course of his investigation, he came across some valuable information.  Information, I’m told, you want.  What is it and why?”

“Are you serious?”

He shifted his glare back to me.

“Seriously Jackson, who is this person?”

“Someone, I fear, who is going to cause you a great deal of grief if you don’t answer her questions.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  I don’t have to tall you or anyone else the nature of my business.”

I saw her shake her head.  “I take it, that’s a no.”  She shrugged and pulled out her phone and dialed a number.  “Always the hard way with you people.”

“Sir,” she said when the call was answered.  “I’ve got a character named Maury tied up in my flat.  Breaking and entering for starters.  Yes, I’ll be here.”

She put the phone back in her bag.  “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

All we had to do was hope that Maury didn’t have a backup.

© Charles Heath 2020

Still social media

I’m back to writing, sitting at the desk, pad in front of me, pen in hand.

The only thing lacking, is an idea.

It’s 9:03 am, too early to start on a six-pack.

I need a distraction.

Blogging, websites, Twitter and Facebook, all of these social media problems are swirling around in my mind.

The more I read the more it bothers me that if I don’t have the right social media presence if I do not start to build an email list, all of my efforts in writing a book will come to naught.

Then I start trawling the internet for information on marketing and found a plethora of people offering any amount of advice for anything between a ‘small amount’ to a rather large amount that gives comprehensive coverage of most social media platforms for periods of a day, a week or a month.  I don’t have a book so it’s a bit early to be worrying about that.

I move on to the people who offer advice for a cost on how to build a following, how to build a web presence, how to get a thousand Twitter followers, and how to get thousands of email followers before the launch.

The trouble is I’m writing a novel, not a non-fiction book, or have some marvellous 30-page ebook on how to do something, for free just to drive people to my site.

I’m a novelist, not a handyman so those ideas while good are not going to help me.

Yet another problem to wrestle with along with actually creating a product to sell in the first place.

Except I’m supposed to be writing for the love of it without the premeditated idea of writing for gain or getting rich quick.

What am I missing here?

So should l be writing short stories and offering them for free to drive people to my site?  These would have to be genre specific so it needs time and effort and fit into a convenient size story that will highlight or showcase my talent.

Or should I create a website for the novel and set up pages for the characters and get some interaction going that way?

It will be difficult without giving the whole plot away so if I do it will have to be carefully managed.

I don’t think I will have a good night’s sleep again with all of these social media problems I’m going to have.

Oh well, back to the book.  It’s time to have a nightmare of a different sort!

From typewriters to computers to distraction

I first started writing by longhand, still do, in fact, then graduated to my mother’s portable typewriter, right down to the sticking keys and overused ribbon, then moved upwards into the electric world having a pair of IBM electric typewriters I bought from one of the places I worked as second-hand cast-offs.

Just remembering those days gives me the shudders, from the tangled ribbons and messy hands to using carbon paper, how many times before they were useless?

Then the age of the electric typewriter went the same way as the manual ones, simply because I could no longer buy ribbons for my IBM Selectric, so it, too, had to go the way of the dinosaurs.

It was a good thing, then, that computers and word processing software started at about the same time.   Word Perfect, to begin with, and then, in the early days of Windows, Word, and others.  Sometimes it was easier just to use the text editor, and for convenience, it’s often by choice to get ideas down, quick and dirty.

This was before the days of the internet, where you physically had to do something about finding inspiration.  And that, sometimes, was more difficult that it seems.  I do not have a writing room with large windows looking out on a rural or urban panorama.  The window looks onto a fence, and the house next door.

So much for my dream of owning a castle and having a writing room on the second or third level, with astonishing views.

Which leads me to today.  Enough with the reminiscing.  I have all the tools I need to get on with the job, but that isn’t enough to switch on the brain and start typing perfect prose.  I have to go in search of some inspiration.

It’s just that in that short distance, from, say, the couch where you were reading the latest blog posts in the WordPress reader, and the writer’s chair, your preparation for writing ends up getting confused at some of the blogger’s points because it’s hard to find anything relevant that backs up their assertions, or how things work for them.

I guess success form anyone’s standpoint, is what worked for them.  In relaying that to others, two things come to mind.  It worked for them, but in telling a million others, and they all take the same approach, no, sorry, it ain’t going to work no how.  The other, there’s usually a fee attached to gain the knowledge, and, yes, the same proviso applies.  If everyone does it, it ain’t going to work no how.

But, there you are, my attention has been distracted, and unless I’m about to indulge in writing a version of how to achieve success myself, which I haven’t so I’m not, I’m off track, with an out of balance mindset, and therefore unable to write.

Perhaps I should not read blog posts, but the newspapers.

Or not, because they all have an editorial policy that leans either and one way or another, which means their views are not necessarily unbiased.

I was a journalist once and hated the idea of having to toe the editorial line.  Or as luck would have it, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  It lends to the theory that you can never quite believe anything the media tells you, which is a very sorry place to be when there are no external influences you can trust.

I’m coming around to thinking that it’s probably best left to the dark hours of the night when you would think all the distractions are behind you.  After all, isn’t that what daytime is for?

Except that’s when the ghosts come out to play.

I think.

Was that the lounge room door opening?

An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

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

newechocover5rs

“Oh, my God!” – a short story

I was one of six people who answered a house-sitting ad.  What stood out was the money, as was intended.

When I arrived at the interview, held in an accountant’s office downtown, there was no suggestion that it was a trick, or there were ulterior motives.

Just $5,000 for a week’s work.  Move-in, act as a security guard, and check all entrances and exits, and all rooms that had windows to the outside every four or so hours, particularly at night.

The reason?

The owner had to maintain residence in the house for the week, as he was going away, under a clause in the sale contract.  The reason for hiring civilians, that it was too expensive to get live-in people from a security company.

The owner freely admitted he was a cheapskate.

But for someone like me, the $5,000 was a lot of money and would help pay beck everyone I owed money to.

I earnestly pleaded my case, submitted myself to a background check, and then waited to hear back.

When I didn’t hear anything by the due date I figured some other lucky person had pleaded a better case, then, exactly a week later I got the call.

The next day a courier delivered the keys to the house and the address.  My week started at exactly 9am the next morning.

…

The cab dropped Mr off at the front gate of the house, only it wasn’t a house so much as a mansion, and one that had seen better days.

It was at the end of the street, behind two large gates, and a high brick fence.  I could see the driveway on the other side, and just make out the house behind the unkempt shrubbery.

I had a bunch of keys, and it took a few attempts to find the one that fitted the lock and chain preventing the gates from opening.

I just unlocked it when another car pulled up in the same place my can had, and a young woman got out.  She rescued her sports bag from the trunk and paid the cabbie.

“Who are you,” she said.

“The caretaker for the next week.  I might ask the same question.”

“The ex-wife with nowhere to go.”

No one mentioned an ex-wife that was part of the deal.

“I wasn’t told anyone else would be here, so it would be best you left.”

I slipped the lock back in place and stood my ground.  She could be anyone.

She pulled out her phone and rang a number.

A heard the voice on the other end say hello.

“You can tell your deadhead caretaker that I’m staying for a few days.”

Then I watched her expression turn very dark, and then the words, “I have nowhere else to go, and it will only be a few days.”  Then silence and an accompanying ground, ending with, “You don’t want me to come after you because you know how that will end”.

She listened, then handed the phone to me.

“Hello.”

“I’m the owner requesting the service.  You are not responsible for her, but if she becomes a problem, lock her in the basement.”

Then he hung up. It was not the best of answers to the problem.

“Are you going to open the gate?”

I shook my head and then pretended to fumble through the keys looking for the right one.  “You know this place,” I asked without turning around.

“No.  The bastard didn’t tell me about a lot of the stuff he owns.”  Her tone bristled with resentment.

I ‘found’ the key and opened the lock and started pulling the chain through the fence.  I could feel her eyes burning into my back.

When I swung open the gate, she barged past and kept walking.  I stepped through, and immediately felt the change in the temperature.  It was cold, even though the sun was out and I could feel an unnatural chill go through me.

By the time I closed and relocked the gate she had gone as far as, and round a slight bend in the driveway.  I thought about hurrying to catch up, but I didn’t think it mattered, she didn’t have a key.  Or perhaps I hoped she didn’t have one.

I headed towards the house at a leisurely pace.  I didn’t have to be there in the next instant, and I wanted to do a little survey of the grounds.  If I was checking windows, then I needed to know what the access might be like through any of them.

As I got closer to the house, the overgrowth was worse, but that might have been because no one could see it from the roadside, or through the iron gate.

Accessibility via the gardens would-be problematic for anyone who attempted it because there was no easy access.  It was one less immediate problem to deal with.

The driveway widened out into a large gravel-covered square outside the front of the house.  It had an archway under which cars could stop and let out passengers undercover, ideal for ball goers, which meant the house had been built somewhere during the last century.

There were aspects that would warrant me taking a look on the internet about its history.

She was waiting outside the door, showing some exertion, and the mad dash had been for nothing.

“I take it you have a key?”

I decided to ignore that.  I hoped she would disappear to another part of the house and leave me alone.  I had too much to do without having to worry about where she was, or what she was doing.  It seemed, base on the short time I spoke to him, that the owner had a mistake marrying her if they were in fact married.  Ex could mean almost anything these days.

Again, I made a show of trying to find the right key, though in the end it was hit and miss, and it took the fourth of fifth attempt to find it.

The door was solid oak, but it swung open easily and silently.  I had expected it to make a squeaking sound, one associated with rusty hinges.  This time she was a little more circumspect when she passed by me.  I followed and closed and locked the door behind me.

Inside was nothing like I expected.  Whilst the outside looked like the building hadn’t been tended to for years, inside had been recently renovated, and had that new house smell of new carpets and painted walls.

There was a high vaulted roof, and a mezzanine that was accessed by a beautifully restored wooden staircase and ran around the whole upper floor so that anyone could stand anywhere near the balustrading and look down into the living space, and, towards the back, the kitchen and entertaining area.

The walls had strategically placed paintings, real paintings, that looked old, but I doubted were originals, because if they were similar to those I’d seen in a lot of English country estates they would be priceless, but not left in an empty building.

I had also kept her in the corner of my eye, watching her look around almost in awe.

“What do you think these paintings are worth?”

Was she going to suddenly take an inventory?

“Not a lot.  You don’t leave masterpieces in an abandoned house.  I suspect nothing in here would be worth much, and really only for decorative purposes so the owner can have a better chance of selling the place.  Empty cavernous buildings do not sell well.”

“What are you again?”

“No one of any particular note.  I’ve been asked to look after the place for the next week until it is handed over to the new owners.  Aside from that, I know nothing about the place, nor do I want to.  According to the note I got with the key, there are bedrooms off that mezzanine you can see up there.”  I pointed to the balustrading.  The kitchen has food, enough for the few days I’ll be here, but I’m sure there’s enough to share.”

“Good.  You won’t see me again if I can help it.”

I watched her walk to the staircase and go upstairs.  The mud map told me there were bedrooms up of the mezzanine, and also across from this area.  There was another large room adjacent to this, a games area or room big enough to hold a ball, a part of the original house, and which led out onto the side lawns.  I’d check later to see what the access was like because I suspected there would be a few doors that led out from the hall to the garden.

When she disappeared along the upstairs passageway, I headed towards the next room.  IT was large, larger than that next door, and had another grand staircase leading down to the dance floor.  I guess the people used to stay in rooms upstairs, get dressed, then make a grand entrance down those stairs.

I hadn’t expected this house to be anything like the old country estates, and it was a little like icing of the cake.  I would have to explore, and transport myself back to the old days, and imagine what it was like.

…

She was true to her word, and I didn’t see her the next morning.  I was staying a world away from her.  I was in the refurbished old section and she was staying in the newly renovated and modernized part of the house.

I did discover, on the first day of getting my bearings and checking all of the entrances and windows ready for my rounds, that above the bedrooms on the second floor of the old section, there was a third floor with a number of smaller rooms which I assumed were where the servants lived.

I stayed in one of those rooms.  The other main bedrooms, with ornate fireplaces and large shuttered windows, smelled a little too musty for me, and I wasn’t about to present someone with an open window.  The views from the balconies were remarkable too or would have been in the garden had been kept in its original state.

In the distance, I could see what might have once been a summerhouse and promised myself a look at it later.  A long day had come to a tiring end, and I was only destined for a few hours’ sleep before embarking on my first-midnight run.   I was going to do one at eight, after eating, another at midnight, and another at six in the morning.  I’d make adjustments to the schedule after running the first full night’s program.

…

I brought my special alarm with me, the one that didn’t make a sound but was very effective in waking me.  It was fortuitous, because I had not been expected someone else to come along for the ride, and didn’t want them to know where and when I would be doing the rounds.

It had taken longer than I expected to get to sleep, the sounds of the housekeeping me awake.  Usually a sound sleeper, perhaps it was the first night in different, and unusual surroundings.

I shuddered as I got out of bed, a cold air surrounding me, a feeling like that when I walked through the gate.  I had the sensation that someone was in the room with me, but in the harsh light after putting the bedside light on, it was clearly my imagination playing tricks.

I dressed quickly and headed out.

The inside of the house was very dark, and the light from my torch stabbed a beam of light through what might have been an inky void.  The circle of light on the walls was never still, and I realized that my hand had acquired a touch of the shakes.

Creaking sounds as I walked across the flooring had not been discernible the previous night, and it was odd they only happened at night.  A thought that the house may be haunted when through my mind, but I didn’t believe in ghosts or anything like that.

The creaking sounds followed me as I started my inspection.  I headed downstairs, and once I reached the back end of what I was going to call the ballroom.  Before I went to bed the previous evening, I drew up a rough map of the places I would be going, ticking them off as I went.

The first inspection was of the doors that led out onto the lawns.  The floor-to-ceiling windows were not curtained, and outside the undergrowth was partially illuminated by moonlight.  The day had been warm, that period in autumn leading into winter where the days were clear but getting colder.  Outside I could see a clear starry night.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the flash of a torchlight in the gardens.  I stopped and looked more carefully, but there was nothing.  I waited for about ten minutes, but there was still no movement.

I was going to have to park my imagination before starting rounds or I’d never get the job done.

I went out of the room and into the living area.  There seemed to be lights all around me, those small pilot lights that told you appliances were on standby.

I was heading towards the stairs when suddenly there was a blood-curdling scream, followed by what sounded like a gunshot, a sharp loud bang that, on top of the scream, made me jump.

The woman.

I raced as fast as I could up the stairs.  The sounds had come from there, but when I reached the top of the stairs, I realized I had no idea in which direction it came from.  Pointing the torch in both directions, there was nothing to see.

I could see a passage that might lead to the bedrooms on this level, and headed towards it, moving slowly, keeping as quiet as I could, listening for anything, or if someone else was lurking.

I heard a door slam, the echo coming down the passage.  I flashed the light up the passage, but it didn’t seem to penetrate the darkness.  I moved quickly towards the end, half expecting to see someone.

Then I tripped over, and as I tried to get to my feet, realized it was a body.  I flashed the torch on it, and it was the woman.

Dead, a gunshot wound in the chest, and blood everywhere.

I scrambled to my feet, and ran towards the end of the passage, and stopped at what appeared to be a dead end.  With nowhere to go, I turned.

I wasn’t alone, just hearing before seeing the presence of another person, but it was too late to react.  I felt an object hitting me on the back of the head, and after that, nothing.

…

I could feel a hand shaking me, and a voice coming out of the fog.  I opened my eyes and found myself in completely different surroundings.

A large ornate bedroom, and a four-poster bed, like I had been transported back to another age.  Then I remembered I had been in a large house that had been renovated, and this was probably one of the other bedrooms on the floor where the woman had been staying.

Then I remembered the body, being hit, and sat up.

A voice beside me was saying, “You’re having that nightmare again, aren’t you?”

It was a familiar voice.

I turned to see the woman who I had just moments before had seen dead, the body on the floor of the passage.

“You’re dead,” I said, in a strangely detached tone.

“I know.  I’m supposed to be.  You helped me set it up so I could escape that lunatic ex-husband of mine.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Don’t worry.  The doctor says your memory will return, one day.  But, for now, all you need to do is rest.  All you need to know is that we’re safe, thanks to you.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021