Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.
That was particularly true in my case. The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.
At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me. I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.
The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters. She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.
Routine was the word she used.
Her Sargeant was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible. I could sense the raging violence within him. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.
After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.
But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.
The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.
For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.
They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts. Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.
No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.
She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy. Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution. Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.
It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down. I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess. Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.
What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again. It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.
And it had.
Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe. I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.
We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee. It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.
She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.
I wondered if this text message was in that category. I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.
I reached for the phone then put it back down again. I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.
This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.
Everyone has one in them, possibly more, and me, well, it’s how I keep the wolves from the door.
Yes, I read my stories to them and they fall asleep.
Or maybe not, I’m never quite sure what effect anything I write has on anyone. And, reading a lot of the posts on how to handle bad reviews and rejection, such a recurrent theme, I don’t think I want to.
Ignorance is bliss, is it not?
Well, one day I’m sure something will happen. It’s probably in the seven stages of writing:
Euphoria
Planning
Research
Writing
Failure
Search for the guilty
Distinction for the uninvolved
I guess you don’t fail if you don’t put it out there. Searching for the guilty, well, there’s only one person to blame, the editor, and distinction for the uninvolved, didn’t your friend, relation, confidente, significant other, say it wasn’t going to work?
But, despite everything, I like writing short stories and try to produce one in a single sitting. I try to keep the word count down, but the stories, somehow they just evolve in my head and don’t want to end the main character’s story.
In reality, there is no end to the story unless they die, and then, of course, the story branches off, just like a family tree,
Some stories are so intricate, they need another story to fill in the gaps, and then another because the plot is running through your head at a thousand miles an hour and your fingers won’t stop typing, because if you do, it will all dissipate into thin air like smoke.
Stories can, you know, dissipate like smoke, one minute your mining a rich vein the next, you’ve hit a ton of worthless quartz.
Then all the constraints come into play, nagging at the back of your mind, and you find yourself waking up in a bath of sweat crying out, I didn’t do it, the crime that is, not lose the best 2,000 words you’ve ever written.
But that’s all of those words you write, isn’t it?
But I digress, and I’ll write some more on the subject, what was it again?
Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?
For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself. It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.
Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.
Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.
A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone. To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.
But can love conquer all?
It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.
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…
Jackerby came back and sat down. It was clear he was annoyed his lunch was interrupted.
“Atherton’s not among those Leonardo brought back.”
Johannsen silently breathed a sigh of relief. While he was still outside there was hope he would not get hurt. If he had the sense to keep his head down. Anyone else, Johannesen would not have cared.
“Who did Leonardo bring in?”
“Some woman called Martina, the one he says is in charge of the resistance. He said he raided their last stronghold, killed everyone except the three people he knew were in the resistance. They’re now in the dungeons.”
“We should be down there asking questions.” A pointed glare from Wallace carried the message, what are you doing here?
“No use. He nearly killed them, and it’ll take a while for them to recover.”
“To find out where Atherton is?”
“It seems that was the least of his concerns. Apparently, she apparently humiliated him so he was more interested in payback.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to humiliate a fool like him,” Johannsen muttered.
Wallace glared at him. “You should have more faith in our Italian friends, Richard.”
“My faith in him extends only to the fact he will drink the cellar dry.”
Wallace shrugged. “Once he’s served his purpose…” and left it at that. “Have you got onto London and asked them for further information on Mayer?”
“I think, by now, they would have tumbled to what’s going on here. Especially after I saw Atherton come out of the radio room just before Jackerby arrived. I asked the operator, and he gave me a coded message, but it’s not like any code I’ve seen.”
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“At least he didn’t smash it, which is what I would have done. We haven’t heard any more from High Command other than to say the traitor was thought to be heading for Innsbruck and coming over the mountains near the Brenner Pass. They’ve got people looking, but nothing as yet.”
“Now we’ve lost Carmichael, do we have a description of him?”
“Yes.”
“Good. At least something is happening.”
After lunch, Johannsson went down to the dungeon to check on the prisoners. Wallace had assigned their ‘welfare’ to him. It was a difficult assignment seeing they arrived both exhausted, weak, and then subjected to an initial interrogation that determined whether or not they got medicines or food.
Most were left to starve. Any women were sent to the soldier’s barracks, where they were out of his control. None had ever come back, and he was ordered not to go check on them.
All told, there were 12 still in cells, with three due to be executed later that day. All had worked in an armaments factory and had admitted to having information about the bombs that were being dropped over England.
Another six had yet to say what information they had, and had been subjected to severe torture, the handiwork of two of Jackerby’s men, and who Johannsen thought had been trained by the Gestapo. In fact, he believed they were Gestapo, and that Jackerby, though he didn’t have the uniform, was a ranking SS officer.
Not a man to cross. Leonardo would find that out soon enough.
The most recent three, the resistance fighters were put in separate cells next to each other. The guards had been told to listen to any conversations they had, and report. As yet, none of them had spoken.
Considering the condition they arrived in, that was no surprise.
He stood outside the cell holding the woman they called Martina.
The leader.
She hadn’t moved from the moment she had been dropped there.
A guard appeared beside him.
“Nothing yet?” Johansson asked him.
“I doubt they’ll speak again. If that’s what Leonardo does to his so-called countrymen; I’d hate to see what he does to his enemies.”
“You let me know if she says anything.”
The soldier nodded, then went back to his station.
The other two were men, one old, one younger. An odd group to be part of the resistance. The woman he could understand and was the key.
He now believed Atherton would come to rescue her. Like any good British soldier, his empathy would be his downfall.
A long time ago, when I was 17 or 18, I used to do a lot of reading. It was a long ride in on the train from home to work, and back again, and I did, then, have the time to read.
Having my own money, I was able to buy my own books, and these generally ran to mysteries and thriller, and naval stories. The later took my interest for a while because I had notions of becoming an Ensign until I realized I needed better educational qualifications and a higher level of fitness.
So much for those aspirations, so I just read about what it would be like.
However…
I worked with a number of interesting characters, including one, a chap who was about 25, really old and wise to a 17-year-old, who deplored my reading choices.
It seemed Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Brian Callison, Hammond Innes, and Alistair Maclean didn’t quite fit the reading profile he thought I should follow.
Well, I hadn’t been to university, and I hadn’t realized there was such a thing as English, or any other, literature. He was adamant that if I wanted to call myself a ‘man of books’ I had to read ‘proper’ books.
So, what eventuated, was a reading list.
If I wanted to converse with him on literature, I had to read every book on the list.
And I wanted to appear, at least, slightly more sophisticated, that the reader of penny dreadfuls. I didn’t know what that meant, and in those days there was no internet, so it remained for a long time a phrase of mystery.
But, the reading list,
‘Hard Times,’ and ‘Bleak House’ by Charles Dickens
‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by T.E. Lawrence, yes, that famous man who was better known as Lawrence of Arabia
‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ by Thomas Hardy, which fuelled a desire to read most of Hardy’s books
‘The Day of the Triffids’, by John Wyndham, a rather strange addition to the list since it was science fiction. I suspect he was a closet Trekker.
‘To the Lighthouse’, by Virginia Wolff
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘And Quietly Flows the Don’ by Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov. I had great fears that I would have to learn Russian, but that wasn’t the only shock, so was the size of the book
‘War and Peace’, talking about long books, by Leo Tolstoy
‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and thereby concluding the Russian classics
Of course, your definition of literature can change, and as a result of reading all of these books, and it took quite some time, and this led to selecting a more interesting collection of books to read, which he, in some small measure, took the credit for.
I discovered R.F Delderfield, and the trilogy, ‘A Horseman Riding By’, which led to ‘The Headmaster’, ‘The Avenue’, and ‘God is an Englishman’
C.S. Forester and the Hornblower series, but who also wrote several mysteries
F. Scott Fitzgerald and ‘The Great Gatsby’ as well as several other classics
Eric Ambler, master of thrillers from the ’30s and ’50s, particularly spy novels, and was probably the one who introduced me to the world of espionage
and last but not least, Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’.
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 set up.
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 the pique his interest. Then, inexplicably, she disappears. That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.
Nothing like an offer that’s a double edged sword!
A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.
When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.
I never did take advice very seriously. Especially when they were issued by old man Taggard, a man of some mystery that we all, adults and children alike wanted to know about.
Everyone in the street knew him as he had lived in the almost derelict mansion at the end of the cul-de-sac forever, way longer than anyone else in the neighborhood had. In fact, it was rumored he had owned all the land around and sold it off bit by bit over time, the reason why there were so many houses of varying age in the estate.
Ours was one of the older houses, a few doors up from it. We were close enough to observe Taggard’s habit, like sitting gon the porch on an old swing chair in the afternoons, to the late-night wanderings in the street. Some said he was accompanied by the ghost of his long-dead wife, which led to stories being told of the house he lived in being haunted.
As children, we had been brought up on a diet of TV shows such as ‘The Munsters’ and ‘The Addams Family’, and had invented our own make-believe show called ‘The Taggard Mansion’, the house with ghosts, and the neighborhood center for strange goings-on.
And as children were wont to do, we had to ‘investigate’.
There was a ‘gang’ even though we didn’t refer to it as such, about seven of us who lived in nearby houses, and all of whom had very active imaginations. We also met in the cubby house out the back of our house to plan forays to find out whether the rumors were true. The thing is we never got very far as he seemed to know when we were sneaking in and scared us off, so for years, the rumors remained just that, rumors.
But as grown-ups, and by that I mean, middle teens, our plans became bolder and more sophisticated, based on a whole new breed of TV shows, where the seemingly impossible was no longer that. And Andy Boswell, my older brothers best friend, his father was a private detective, or so he told us, and he had managed to ‘secure’ some of his father’s tools of the trade; a camera on the end of a wire that could connect to a cell phone, a listening device that could hear through walls, and in-ear communicators. We could now, if we were close enough, see under doors, and hear if anyone was in. We could all keep in touch, though I couldn’t see how this would help.
But a plan was formulated. All seven of us had a role to play. My brother Ron and Delilah, his girlfriend, were taking point, whatever that meant, Andy and I were going to take point, while Jack, Jill, and Kim were going to run distraction. The theory was, they’d make enough noise to keep the old man occupied chasing them. No one had been inside the house, ever. Andy and I were going to be the first.
Andy had drawn up a plan and it was up on the wall. He had charted the house, and had a very accurate picture of the house’s footprint, where doors and windows were, likely entrance points, including a hatchway down into what he assumed was a basement, though he preferred to call it the dungeon, and a layout of the grounds. Apparently under the undergrowth were paths and gardens, even a large fountain that once graced the grounds of the three-story mansion made of sandstone, and built sometime during the middle of the 1800s.
Andy had done some research, mostly from old newspapers, and also discovered that the old man had once been married, they had a half dozen children, three of whom had died, the others scattered around the world. It explained why no one ever visited the place.
The distraction team would be going in through the front gate, easy enough because it had come off its hinges and just needed a shove to open. The old man usually emerged from the house via the driveway, or what was once a drive that cars could enter one side of the property, stop under a huge canopy, and emerge on to the road further along. But it’s overgrown stare, the width of the pathway was now about six feet. The fact it was once an amazing feature was the roadside lights, now all but disappearing behind the undergrowth.
Andy had found a photograph in the paper of it, and it had looked magnificent, as had the gardens, the overhanging canopy, and all the lights. To think such magnificence was now lost. And having seen it for what it once was, it was not hard to imagine any number of scenarios, my favorite, rescuing a damsel in distress from the tower. Yes, it even had a tower, two, in fact, at each end of the house. My brother always said I had an overactive imagination.
Andy and I would be going in by the less used car exit, and heading for the left side of the building where Andy said was several floor to ceiling windows that looked to him like French doors. Of course, none of us knew what French doors were, and my brother cut Andy short when he tried to explain.
Failing that, there was a door at the rear that seemed to be open, and we’d try that next. We would get into position, advise the distraction team, and the operation would be a go. The only debate was what time of the day were we going to do it. My brother preferred late in the afternoon. Andy said it was better at dawn, or soon after if we were looking for maximum confusion of the target.
Dawn, confusion, tactics, target, Andy was in his element. He was going to be a spy when he grew up. My brother said he would never grow up, but then, my brother said I was a dreamer and would never amount to anything. We ignored his advice, well, we pretty much ignored everything he said.
We were going in at dawn.
At 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, we gathered at the cubby house ready for action. We all took a communicator and put it in our ears, and then had fun saying stupid stuff, and hearing it through the earpieces. It was weird but added an exciting element to the adventure. I know my heart was beating faster in anticipation. Andy was pretending to be cool and failing. I suspected my brother and Delilah had other plans when we left them alone in the cubby house. The distraction team was ready to go.
Shortly after the sun came up, it was cool and the air still. It was going to be a hot day, and that first hour, everything was almost perfect. It seemed a waste to do anything but let the early morning serenity settle over us. Not today. Andy and I went to our position, slowly feeling our way through the bushes, taking bearings from the light poles, and every now and then seeing the guttering and what looked to be a concrete path. Beyond that was once a garden, and I tried, more than once, to imagine what it was like.
In my ear I could hear the others in the distraction team setting up at the start of the driveway, ready to go. We reached our position, about twenty feet from the so-called French windows, the view into the house blocked by curtains, but beyond that, what we could see was darkness inside the house. Taking in the whole side of the house, there were no lights on behind any of the windows. If we didn’t know better, we could have assumed the house was empty.
I heard Andy say, “Ready. Start making noise.”
A minute later we could both hear the distraction team in the distance and through the communicators. It took two minutes before we heard the old man, yelling, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Their job done, getting him out of the house, all they had to do was retreat.
Time for Andy and I to go.
Working on the basis that no one else was at the house, and the fact we had no evidence there was, we were not overly worried about making a stealthy approach. I could hear in my earpiece, the gasping of those in the distraction team having just made it outside the gate, and to tell us the old man had stopped at the gate. I doubt he had been running, but his yelling was just as effective.
That had stopped, and a sort of silence fell over the area.
We were now at the French doors, and Andy produced another tool that he’d forgotten to tell us about, a lock pick. The fact it didn’t take long to unlock the door told me he was either very talented, or the lock was old and presented no problems. Either way, he opened the door and ushered me in.
I brushed the curtains aside for him to follow, then moved in as he followed, closing the door behind him.
I’d taken five steps before I heard a woman’s voice say. “Uncanny good luck shines upon me. My knights in shining armor. You’ve come to rescue me, no?”
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.
It is sometimes quite trashy and that’s saying something!
Having been a journalist in a previous lifetime, and one that always believed that the truth mattered, it didn’t take long to realize that journalists should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Newspapers, and all other forms of media, will only write what they believe will sell, or what they think the public wants to read. The truth, sadly, is not the first thing on the reader’s mind, only that someone is to blame for something they have no control over, and it doesn’t matter who.
And the more outlandish the situation, the more the public will buy into it.
This, I guess, is why we like reading about celebrities and royalty, not for the good they might do, but the fact they stumble and make mistakes, and that somehow makes us feel better about ourselves.
Similarly, if the media can beat up a subject, like the corona-virus, and make it worse than it is, then people will lap up the continuing saga, as it relates to them, and will take one of two stances, that they believe the horror of it, and do as they’re asked, or disbelieve it because nothing can be that bad, and ignore it and the consequences of disobedience. knowing the government will not press too hard against the non-compliers simply because of democracy issues it will stir up.
That is, then the media will get a hold of this angle and push it, and people will start to think disobedience is a good thing, not a bad one.
So, our problems of trying to get a fair and balanced look at what the coronavirus is all about is nigh on impossible. We are continuously bombarded with both right and wrong information, and the trouble is, both sides are very plausibly supported by facts.
And that’s the next problem we have in reporting. We can get facts to prove anything we want. It’s called the use and abuse of statistics and was an interesting part of the journalism degree I studied for. We were told all about statistics, good and bad, and using them to prove the veracity of our piece.
I remember writing a piece for the tutor extolling the virtues of a particular person who was probably the worst human since Vlad the Impaler, using only the facts that suited my narrative. I also remember the bollocking he gave me for doing so but had to acknowledge that sometimes that would happen.
The integrity of reporting only went as far as the editor, and if the editor hated something, you had to hate it too. This is infamously covered in various texts where newspaper publishers pick sides and can influence elections, and governments. It still happens.
So, the bottom line is, when I’m reading an article in the media, I always take it with a grain of salt, and do my own fact-checking, remembering, of course, not just to fact check to prove the bias one way of the other, but then get a sense of balance.
We have state elections coming up where I live, but it does not sink to the personal sniping level as it does in the US, we haven’t sunk that low yet, but we haven’t got past the sniping about all the wrongs and failed promises of the government of the day, or the endless tirade against the opposition and how bad a job they did when they were previously in government.
You can see, no one is talking about what they’re going to do for us, no one is telling us what their policies are. It’s simply schoolyard tit for tat garbage speak. What happened to the town hall meeting, a long and winding speech encompassing the policies, what the government plans to do for its people in the next three years, and then genuinely answering questions?
Perhaps we should ban campaigning, and just get each party to write a book about what they intend to do, and keep them away from the papers, the TV, and any other form of media, in other words, don’t let them speak!
And don’t get me started about the drivel they speak in the parliament. Five-year-olds could do a better job.
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…
Jackerby came back and sat down. It was clear he was annoyed his lunch was interrupted.
“Atherton’s not among those Leonardo brought back.”
Johannsen silently breathed a sigh of relief. While he was still outside there was hope he would not get hurt. If he had the sense to keep his head down. Anyone else, Johannesen would not have cared.
“Who did Leonardo bring in?”
“Some woman called Martina, the one he says is in charge of the resistance. He said he raided their last stronghold, killed everyone except the three people he knew were in the resistance. They’re now in the dungeons.”
“We should be down there asking questions.” A pointed glare from Wallace carried the message, what are you doing here?
“No use. He nearly killed them, and it’ll take a while for them to recover.”
“To find out where Atherton is?”
“It seems that was the least of his concerns. Apparently, she apparently humiliated him so he was more interested in payback.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to humiliate a fool like him,” Johannsen muttered.
Wallace glared at him. “You should have more faith in our Italian friends, Richard.”
“My faith in him extends only to the fact he will drink the cellar dry.”
Wallace shrugged. “Once he’s served his purpose…” and left it at that. “Have you got onto London and asked them for further information on Mayer?”
“I think, by now, they would have tumbled to what’s going on here. Especially after I saw Atherton come out of the radio room just before Jackerby arrived. I asked the operator, and he gave me a coded message, but it’s not like any code I’ve seen.”
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“At least he didn’t smash it, which is what I would have done. We haven’t heard any more from High Command other than to say the traitor was thought to be heading for Innsbruck and coming over the mountains near the Brenner Pass. They’ve got people looking, but nothing as yet.”
“Now we’ve lost Carmichael, do we have a description of him?”
“Yes.”
“Good. At least something is happening.”
After lunch, Johannsson went down to the dungeon to check on the prisoners. Wallace had assigned their ‘welfare’ to him. It was a difficult assignment seeing they arrived both exhausted, weak, and then subjected to an initial interrogation that determined whether or not they got medicines or food.
Most were left to starve. Any women were sent to the soldier’s barracks, where they were out of his control. None had ever come back, and he was ordered not to go check on them.
All told, there were 12 still in cells, with three due to be executed later that day. All had worked in an armaments factory and had admitted to having information about the bombs that were being dropped over England.
Another six had yet to say what information they had, and had been subjected to severe torture, the handiwork of two of Jackerby’s men, and who Johannsen thought had been trained by the Gestapo. In fact, he believed they were Gestapo, and that Jackerby, though he didn’t have the uniform, was a ranking SS officer.
Not a man to cross. Leonardo would find that out soon enough.
The most recent three, the resistance fighters were put in separate cells next to each other. The guards had been told to listen to any conversations they had, and report. As yet, none of them had spoken.
Considering the condition they arrived in, that was no surprise.
He stood outside the cell holding the woman they called Martina.
The leader.
She hadn’t moved from the moment she had been dropped there.
A guard appeared beside him.
“Nothing yet?” Johansson asked him.
“I doubt they’ll speak again. If that’s what Leonardo does to his so-called countrymen; I’d hate to see what he does to his enemies.”
“You let me know if she says anything.”
The soldier nodded, then went back to his station.
The other two were men, one old, one younger. An odd group to be part of the resistance. The woman he could understand and was the key.
He now believed Atherton would come to rescue her. Like any good British soldier, his empathy would be his downfall.
