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…
We gathered up what food there was to take with us. There were no weapons left behind. Leonardo had assumed correctly we would have used them if they’d been left there.
Carlo had changed slowly into an automaton, and I guess if I could read his mind, I’d know exactly what he was thinking. Enrico had attached himself to Carlo, and I knew Carlo would look after him.
When I said that the burials would have to wait, Carlo agreed.
We had a short discussion on what we would be doing next, and in the first instance, we would be going back to the other soldiers and the church. There, with both of our knowledge of the castle, its entrances, secret or otherwise, and the internal passageways which I knew Wallace and the others there were not too familiar with, we would formulate a plan to go in and pick them off one by one.
It seemed a good plan when we first talked about it, but on the way back to the church, and I had time to consider how it would work, it seemed we would only get an advantage once, and we would have to kill or capture as many as we could in the first raid.
Then it was going to be difficult.
Unless Carlo knew of more places we could enter the castle without being seen or heard.
I only knew of three.
And the first post we had to hit, and silence, the radio room.
My war had not been as start or as terrifying as most of those whom I’d known or worked with. My part was more selective, finding and eliminating spies, informers, and enemy cells on home territory.
Sometimes that would extend into enemy territory, particularly France where, as one who could speak French fluently, I found myself working with the resistance, using intelligence gathered by a network of spies we had, not only in France but in all parts of enemy territory. That also meant, sometimes, accompanying weapons and other supplies into enemy territory.
It hadn’t included anything like what I’d just seen back at the underground cavern.
I’d been told, often, about the enemy executing whole villages, and large groups as retaliation for resistance operations that killed German soldiers, and particularly officers, but I’d not seen it first-hand.
Now I had.
I’d been told, along with the others who had been at the training camp way back at the start of the war, that we would inevitably see atrocities. Those instructors, men who had survived the first war, were speaking from experience. We were told it would make us angry. It had. I had this immediate thought of doing as much damage as I could to the perpetrators of that massacre.
But we had also been told that we had to harness that anger, and use it to drive our actions, bot in a reckless manner, but with a measured calm and with planning. Blind rage, which had been predicted, would only get us killed.
I had left the cavern at the blind rage stage, but the walk to the church wore some of that off, and I began to piece together the seeds of a plan to get our revenge. We were only a small group, but even so, we could work more efficiently than those at the castle.
Leonardo was not going to tell Wallace that he hadn’t captured or killed me in his ambush, but it might make Wallace think that my ability to retaliate would be weakened. Leonardo would know that Carlo and I were still alive. He would not know about Blinky and his men.
It would be interesting to see if Wallace would commit any of his men to hunt us down, send Leonardo back out to finish the job, or just wait until Meyer turned up. His contact in Gaole would know about the castle’s change of allegiance, but he would not know that Martina was not going to be there to greet them when they arrived in the village.
That was several days away. We would have to be there, but it was going to be dangerous unless we found a way to neutralize the castle. So far, in my head, we’d neutralized the radio and got as far as the dungeons before meeting enemy resistance.
The same had happened in the next six scenarios, after playing out the last we had arrived back at the church.
Chiara was resting as comfortably as the Sergeant could make her.
He had made a more thorough assessment of her injuries, and aside for the severe beating, she had sustained a few cracked ribs and several broken fingers. The broken fingers were a surprise. The sergeant had reset them as best he could.
Other than that, she would recover physically. Mentally, he said, would be something else. She was lucky, he said, her torturer was an amateur, and Italian. Had it been the German Gestapo, she would be dead.
She was lucid and I told her we would make Leonardo pay for what he’d done. I thought it best not to tell her about what had happened back at the cavern. She had enough on her conscience without adding the senseless deaths of the villagers.
Then we had a meeting, where I asked Carlo to draw a plan of the castle and the places where we could breach their defenses and give us an element of surprise.
He had one that I hadn’t known about, one that might give us a fighting chance.
If I had deliberately wanted to flush out the people following us, and eventually lose them, I would never have thought of renting a car at a suburban shop. I had to wonder what James Bond would have done in similar circumstances.
But it worked.
Driving out of the carpark onto the main street, it wasn’t difficult to see several people caught unawares. And on their cell phones making calls.
And it was Emily’s last-minute brainwave to cover the car’s registration plates so if they were to take a photo, they would not be able to track it. Well, not straight away. It was she who said London had a lot of CCTV cameras, but on the way to the carpark, she had checked out where they were, those that she could readily identify, and we could avoid.
Something I learned about Emily that I didn’t know; she was a computer nerd, and a hacker of sorts, not one of those dark web experts, but she knew enough to dig around in places most people wouldn’t go looking.
That skill might just come in useful.
And, for a few minutes, maybe an hour, we revelled in the thought we may have outwitted them, whoever ‘them’ was.
It was late afternoon when we finally found a hotel with a carpark, a long way from Cecile’s flat in Earl’s Court, and on the other side of the Greater London region in Mile End Road, not very far from Stepney Green underground station, the result of Emily searching the web for a hotel with a carpark, and near public transport.
She also had our luggage delivered from the airport a little less than two hours from the moment she made the call. I think I may have remarked that I might just employ her as my travel agent when I started my European odyssey, but she had fallen asleep, way past exhausted.
I wasn’t far behind her. We had a long day tomorrow if today was anything to go by.
I woke to the smell of coffee and that more interesting aroma of burnt toast.
There were shopping bags on the table, and it looked as though Emily had been up and around for a while.
I looked at my watch, it was not much past seven, and not an hour I found myself up back home. I had an apartment in the city, and it was a ten-minute walk to the office, so early rising was not a necessity. My parents lived in the suburbs, and more than an hour by public transport, and two by car. It was the reason I moved. I didn’t want to spend a quarter of my life travelling to and from work.
Of course, London was so much larger than where I came from, and definitely not a place I would want to live, or work, despite the advantages that Cecile had tried to impress upon me. And don’t get me get started on driving around London. Yesterday had been harrowing, and left me, at times, shaken.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
Emily put a coffee plunger on the table, two cups, a plate of toast, bowls, and the cereal that was my favourite, though how she knew was anyone’s guess.
“You’ve been busy.”
“I like to get some exercise every morning, so I combined it with a shopping expedition
I had not attended this type of domesticity in a long time, at least not since I left home. I had grown accustomed to being on my own, and that might have contributed to Cecile and I drifting apart. It probably also had a lot to do with my awkwardness with girls, and rather than try to get over it, I just avoided them.
But, somehow, Emily was different, perhaps because she was younger and hadn’t been blunted by the vicissitudes of life. She had finished school, and as far as I was aware, didn’t have a real job, preferring to spend her time pottering in her father’s office.
I had thought, much like in an 18th century romance novel, she was waiting for the right man to marry, but there were not too many of those running around these days.
Something else I just realised; how well I seemed to like being at ease in her company, much more so than when I was with Cecile, always on my guard not to say or do the wrong thing.
“I find going to a grocery store a trial, which is why I eat out a lot.”
She shook her head. “You’re just lazy, like everyone else your age. Convenience over practicality. And you should think about doing some exercise.”
I could feel the eyes of the appraiser upon me and shivered. It was good that I could not read her thoughts, but if I could, perhaps some might be considering those extra pounds that had found their way onto my frame after I stopped playing tennis and squash.
“I promise I’ll think about it.”
“Better still, I don’t think it’s all that safe to be jogging the streets in this neighbourhood early in the morning, so you can come with me as my protector.”
She saw my look of disdain, or was it the thought of having to exercise.
“Cheer up, I don’t go very fast.”
The sound of the phone vibrating on the table interrupted that thought, and conversation.
It was a private number, so I assumed it was the man from the day before.
“Yes?”
“Trafalgar Square, by the column, 12:30 pm today.”
It was the man’s voice.
“We’ll see you there.”
The call was disconnected. Short and to the point.
“We have a lunch date.”
Before I could reach out to pick up my cup of coffee, the phone rang again.
Also a private number, I assumed it was the man ringing back with a change of plans.
“Yes?”
“We need to talk.”
A woman’s voice this time, not one that was familiar.
“About what?” I was surprised and didn’t have time to work on a better comeback.
“Your Cecile. She is over her head.”
Aside from stating the obvious, who was this woman, how did she know about Cecile, and more importantly, how did she know my cell number?
“Who the hell are you?”
“The London end of the team that recruited her. Time is of the essence, so we’ll come to you. We’ll be there in half an hour.”
That line went dead before I could ask another pertinent question, how did she know where we were?
“Who was that?” Emily had been oblivious to the turmoil I was feeling.
“Someone else who wants to talk about Cecile.”
“Who?”
“No idea, but the word reruited popped up, whatever that might mean.”
“Here? No one knows we’re here.”
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps we should leave, like, right now.”
“No. I have a feeling that we might find out what Cecile is up to.”
And, in the back of my mind, several small, associated details clicked into place. At the time they didn’t make any sense, but now, in a bigger context, and given the circumstances, I think I knew now why she had come.
And, more importantly, I realised she had been dropping breadcrumbs for me to follow long before she had left.
As we all know, writing by the seat of your pants is almost the same as flying by the seat of your pants, a hazardous occupation.
As it happens, I like writing this way because like the reader, I don’t know what to expect next.
And equally, at times, you can write your self into a corner, much like painting, and then have to go back, make a few changes and//or repairs and then move forward.
It’s part of the writing process, only in this case, the changes occur before you’ve finished the novel, if you finish. Quite often a lot of writers get only so far, then the manuscript hits the bottom drawer, to be brought out on a distant rainy day.
Or your cat has mocked your writing ability one too many times.
Therefore, we’re winding back to Episode 16, and moving forward once again, from there.
Why didn’t it surprise me that Nobbin was playing all ends against the middle if that was the expression? What really bothered was that he wasn’t prepared to tell me the truth or trust me to help find the missing information. But he had known I might become interested and do some investigating of my own.
Perhaps Nobbin feared Severin might track me down, as he had, and if I had found the USB, run the list of losing it to his foe.
Nor was it a surprise that someone else, namely Severin, was after the information, and he would have access to everything Nobbin did, and he was equally disadvantaged. It was either Severin or one of his agents, that was caught in O’Connell’s flat and found ‘Josephine’ there.
I didn’t believe her name was Josephine, or that she lived in the flat next door. And I didn’t think Severin had found anything going by the way the flat had been turned over, and the fact it looked like no one had lived there.
Having now dealt with both men, I was still on the fence about who was on the right side and who was on the wrong side, or whether they were both of questionable character. What made it difficult to understand was how Severin could run an operation inside the organisation. Surely someone knew about it, or from a high level, sanctioned it?
Knowing I would not be interrupted this time, I went back up to the third floor, and into O’Connell’s flat, a simple job since the front door was still unlocked. The girl had assumed it was no value to them which told me she had already searched the place before being attacked.
Just in case anyone was likely to return, or there was another party interested in O’Connell, I locked the door from the inside. At least no one had yet crashed through the door, smashing the lock and timber.
I stood in the middle of the main room, and did a slow 360-degree turn, looking at everything intently. The thing with searches like this, it was more likely the object of any search was hidden in plain sight. The usual places, such as the freezer, sections of fridges, stashed in bottles or packets in the pantry, under beds, inside mattresses, pillows, or under blankets, or with a form of glue on the inside of televisions or computers would prove fruitless.
We were taught to hide things such as USB sticks where they would be least expected to be found, such as a toy on a keyring, tossed in a bowl of pens, pins, clips, or other small insignificant items that all looked uninteresting.
My first thought was in the pocket of a coat in the closet, but all his clothes were strewn over the floor in the bedroom showing signs of being turned out. Perhaps the searcher or searchers had thought like me.
There was no keyring in the kitchen or the bedroom, no was there any sort of stand inside the door, a place to put mail, and other items such as keys. If there were any, they would have been on him when Severin had him killed. I had not found, not felt, any in his pockets, not unusual for an agent in the field. If you were captured or killed, you wanted nothing on you that could identify you or what you were doing.
Next I thought, a hidden compartment. I was not going to predict he had a safe in the flat, but just in case, I did search thoroughly where one might be located. The cheap watercolour on the wall hid nothing but some discoloured wallpaper.
I checked all the skirting boards, and inside walls of the robes, but there was nothing. I also checked the robes thoroughly for false backs, or sides, or compartments hidden in the roof. The floor was made from wood, so I checked to see if there were any loose boards, but in the end, considered that was a ruse used only in the movies and on television.
An hour later, I was no wiser as to where it could be, if at all, in the flat, but, looking around, it was certainly now a little more organised because in checking everything in case the previous searchers had missed anything, I’d put everything neatly in stacks.
And, no, there was nothing under the bed. The previous searchers had thought of that too.
But, in one corner of the main room, there was a desk that had been completely turned out, papers were strewn everywhere. There had been a computer, now missing, because there was a cable running from the printer, and a power cable in the wall, both running into thin air.
The papers yielded nothing of interest, other than he was researching a holiday to Russia and Poland.
For two.
A break. There was a significant other. I made a more serious search of the papers that I’d gathered up off the floor and found a shred of a quickly torn up piece of paper, of which only this piece remained. A name: Jan, scribbled on it, with half another word ‘ord’.
Did this Jan also live in this block? Did she work at the same place? There were a hundred variations of that theme, but it was a start. He might have trusted the USB to her safekeeping without telling her what it was, and it was possible she didn’t know he was dead.
I’d noticed that O’Connell’s death had been reported as a John Doe on the wrong end of an alleged mugging, the small dismissive paragraph on page seven reported the body was missing when police went to investigate a pool of blood in an alley, along with several other crimes of which police were seeking further information. That alley hadn’t any CCTV cameras, so Severin knew he could easily shoot O’Connell without anyone knowing it was him.
There was nothing else of interest in the documents, other than the holiday, if it was a holiday, was to be in a month’s time.
My work was done. I had a lead. It was time to leave.
Except for one small problem. Someone was knocking on the door.
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!
John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.
If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.
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…
…
Neither of us knew what to expect, and I had tried to steel myself for the worst. It was war, and I’d seen some awful things, but when it had happened to people you knew, and to a certain extent civilians that were nothing to do with the war, it was all that much harder to both understand why, and see.
There were dead, I counted at least ten, villagers who were innocent of any crime other than the fact they didn’t like Leonardo. They had no chance, shot and left to die in almost the same positions I’d seen them when I’d left earlier.
But, after checking everywhere, I could not find Martina.
Then Jack appeared. He came up to me and tugged on my trouser leg. “So this is where you got to?” I said. Why had he come back, though?
He headed back further into the cavern near where we had been earlier, a doorway I had not seen. It was ajar. Jack simply stood still, looking at it.
I pulled out my service pistol, not wanting to be caught unaware, and moved quietly towards the door, then slowly pulled it open.
At first, I saw nothing, then, looking down, I saw a figure on the floor. I knelt down to see who it was. The boy, Enrico. I’d seen his parents earlier, both dead. He must have escaped and hidden in the room, and, luckily, no one had followed him.
Except for Jack. Or had Jack come back, having sensed something awful had happened?
I checked him but there didn’t seem to be any wounds, and, when I shook his shoulder, he jolted, and jumped up ready to attack me, until he saw who it was, then grabbed hold of me. He was shaking, and suddenly sobbing. He had seen what had happened, and it was not something he was going to forget.
And he was going to want to exact revenge.
He was not the only one.
It took ten minutes before he had calmed, and managed to sit, leaning back against the wall. The room was where empty bottles were stored on wooden boxes, and he must have hidden among the crates. Anyone searching quickly wouldn’t venture much past the doorway.
It had saved his life.
Then, when I asked, he related what happened.
It was over very quickly. There had been a pounding on the door, and Martina had assumed it was Chiara returning. Chiara, he said, had said she had a small errand to run before locking herself in with the others.
When Martina opened the door, Leonardo was there, and they captured her, then set about killing everyone else. Enrico had been in the rear of the cavern looking for extra places for the others to camp when he heard the shots being fired.
Instead of going back to see what was happening, he hid in the bottle room, afraid for his life. Afraid for his parents and the others, but he had quickly realized there was nothing he could do. Leonardo had used the act of surprise.
One of Leonardo’s men had come back to where he was hiding, and just as he put his head in the door, Leonardo had called him back. They had to leave before Carlo and I returned. One of his men suggested they remain and capture us when we came back, but Leonardo said we’d come to him as soon as we saw what had happened.
He was right.
Carlo had made up a list of the dead and found that not only Martina was missing, so was Giuseppe and Francesco.
I told him Chiara was still alive, but barely, that Leonardo and his men had almost killed her, extracting the other’s whereabouts.
Martina and the others were most likely receiving the same punishment Chiara had received, up at the castle in one of the dungeons.
We were going to have to rescue them if they were still alive.
In fact, now that Thompson had sent reinforcements, the fight was going to be a little more in our favor with six of us, instead of two. Perhaps seven, if I could not persuade Enrico not to come, but that was going to be difficult. In his place, I would feel exactly the same.
When Enrico was ready, we went back out to the main cavern where Carlo was sitting, head in hands. It was probably the only time he would get to mourn his fellow villagers/
Jack was seeking forgiveness for deserting me, but I was not mad at him. That he was able to give some form of companionship to Enrico probably saved him from making a mistake thinking he could exact revenge on his own.
I told him Leonardo would pay for this, and, predictably, he told me that he would be coming with us. I promised myself that I would find some way of keeping him safe.
I was about to tell Emily not to open the door but for some reason, I simply stood there unable to do anything. It was not shock or fear, but a hesitation.
Emily looked at me, perhaps for approval, then looked through the peephole in the door.
“Who is it,” I asked, finally finding a voice.
“I can’t see him clearly but it looks like the man in the pin-striped suit, that chap who got in the elevator with us.”
Why wasn’t I surprised.
“What should I do?” she asked when I hadn’t said anything.
I was not sure what to think, but from first appearances, he didn’t look like an assassin, or very dangerous, but what did I know about assassins? Or dangerous people? “Let me answer the door. You stand just out of sight until we find out his intentions.”
“You don’t think…”
“I’m trying not to think right now, but please, just stand out of sight of the door, and have your phone set to call emergency, just in case.”
Another knock on the door, not impatient but nonetheless insistent, motivated her to do as I’d asked, and I took her place at the door. When she was in place, I took a deep breath, exhaled, and then opened the door.
It was, indeed, the man from the elevator. I decided attack was the best form of defence. “You were in the elevator. Give me one reason why you couldn’t speak to us then?” It came out exactly as I’d intended, a harsh tone from someone who was annoyed.
“Forgive me, but I wasn’t sure that I had the right person.” A placatory tone.
“How did you know what room to come to?” He hadn’t followed us, or at least I didn’t think so, but he could have discreetly kept an eye on us.
“I was told you would be here.”
“By whom?” The only person who knew we would be here was Cecile, though she could not know when.
“Your friend said you would be here.”
“Which friend?”
I could see that he was now getting impatient, his expression changing from genial to annoyance.
“We should not be discussing this in the hotel corridor.”
“Perhaps not, but I don’t trust you, and until you tell me what this is about, the hotel corridor is where you’re staying. I’ll ask again, which friend?”
“Cecile Battersby of course.”
Right name, but it could still be a bluff. Her name would be in the hotel computer system, information that could be bought by a clever adversary.
“Describe her.”
“Alas, I have not met her. I have been sent as an intermediary. This is a rather delicate matter, and not one that I wish to discuss in the hotel corridor.”
“Then I suggest you call me when you are in the open in plain view with other people place, but it will not be here, in this room until I’m satisfied I can trust you.”
I could tell by his expression it was not the answer he was looking for.
He took out his cell phone. “I assure you, you are in no danger from me, but if you insist.”
I gave him my number and he put it into his phone.
“You will be hearing from me soon. Let’s hope she does not suffer because of this.”
With that cryptic remark, he left, and I closed the door.
“What do you think he meant by saying she might suffer? Suffer what?”
“It’s just a means to try and scare us into doing something we might regret. We have no idea who he was, or what he wanted, and I was certainly not going to let him into the room. I’m sure we’ll soon find out.”
He might have been a public servant. Don’t they wear pin-striped suits and carry umbrellas?
A stereotype, I thought, that everyone had of the British, but this one was lacking the third element, a bowler hat.
“Let’s wait and see. But, in the meantime, since whoever he represents knows where we are, let’s get out of here, just in case.”
Her face registered the exact same fear level I was feeling.
Once again, I found myself asking the impossible question, what had she got herself mixed up in?
I looked through the peep hole and saw that our section of the passage was clear. I was taking a gamble that he’d left, and if the coast was clear, we would be leaving via the fire escape, just in case he had the elevators monitored.
I opened the door and looked up and down the corridor. Clear.
As we all know, writing by the seat of your pants is almost the same as flying by the seat of your pants, a hazardous occupation.
As it happens, I like writing this way because like the reader, I don’t know what to expect next.
And equally, at times, you can write your self into a corner, much like painting, and then have to go back, make a few changes and//or repairs and then move forward.
It’s part of the writing process, only in this case, the changes occur before you’ve finished the novel if you finish. Quite often a lot of writers get only so far, then the manuscript hits the bottom drawer, to be brought out on a distant rainy day.
Or your cat has mocked your writing ability one too many times.
Therefore, we’re winding back to Episode 16, and moving forward once again, from there.
O’Connor seemed to be more affluent than I because he was living in a flat located in an upmarket building. Getting into the ground floor required a passkey, one I suspect might also be needed to get in the front door of his flat, but I’d worry about that later.
My first problem was that front door, and it was not until a tradesman exited that I took the opportunity to appear to arrive at the same time, pretending to find my card, and brushing past him as he was exiting. He ignored me, his hands full, being in a hurry.
It took a day and a half of watching the building, waiting for an opportunity. His flat was on the third floor and although there was an elevator, I took the stairs, hoping that I wouldn’t run into anyone.
Quickly and quietly, and thankfully without seeing another resident, I came out into the passageway, and it was about ten steps to his front door. Number 37. Not far away, in one direction, the end of the passage, and numbers 38, 39, and 40. In the other, four more flats and the end of the corridor. Windows at either end, perhaps an escape route. I would not use the elevator if I had to leave in a hurry.
There were two elevators and one staircase. Both elevators were stationary on the ground floor.
I knocked lightly on the door to number 37.
No answer.
I knocked a little harder on the door. It was quite solid, and I had to wonder if the knocking sound penetrated the solid wood.
I checked the lock. Simple to open. We’d been given instruction by a master locksmith, and I’d brought my tools.
I waited a minute, checked to see if the elevators were still on the ground floor, then picked the lock and was inside within a minute.
Silence.
I felt along the wall for a light switch, usually by the door, and found it, and flicked it on. The sudden light was almost blinding, but then my eyes adjusted.
Trashed, much the same as my flat.
But, with a difference.
A woman was stretched out on the floor, unmoving. I could see, from where I was standing, she had been hit on the back of the head and could see the wound, and a trickle of blood through her hair.
Five steps to reach her, I reached down to check for a pulse.
Yes, she was alive.
I shook her gently. She didn’t react. I shook her a little more roughly and she stirred, then, as expected, lashed out.
I caught her hands, saying, “I just found you. I’m not your enemy.”
Of course, considering I was a stranger in what could be her flat without permission, I was not surprised she continued to struggle until I tried being reassuring. Then she stopped and asked, “Who are you?”
“A friend of O’Connor. I worked with him. Something happened to him at work and he said if that happened, I was to come here. He didn’t say anything about you, though.”
“I live here, in the flat next door. I heard a noise and came to investigate. That’s all I remember.”
I helped her up into a sitting position, and, holding her head in her hands, looked around. “Did you do this?”
“No. Just got here. But it’s the same at my place. The people who did this are looking for something. By the look of it, they didn’t find it here either.”
“I’ll get a damp cloth for your head. It doesn’t look serious but there might be a slight concussion that might need attention.”
She felt the back of her head, and, when she touched the wound, gasped, “It hurts though.”
I stood and went over to the kitchenette. O’Connor was not much of a cook, the benches looked new, and there was nothing out. I looked in a draw near the sink and found a cloth, still with the price tag on it. So were several utensils in the drawer. I ran it under the water, then went back to her, now off the floor and sitting on one of the two chairs. I handed her the wet cloth and she put it against the injured part of her head.
I made a mental note, it didn’t look like O’Connor had been here long, if at all. Something was not right here, and if that was the case, I should take care when saying anything to this woman.
“Who are you again?” she asked.
“I worked with him. My name is irrelevant. It’s unlikely that he mentioned me to you, or anyone. It’s the nature of our work.”
“Why should I believe you? You could be my attacker.”
“If that were the case, why would I still be here trying to be helpful.”
A good question that elicited a curious expression.
“What do you do, what did Oliver do?”
Alarm bells were going off. Oliver was not O’Connor’s first name.
“Nothing very interesting, I can assure you, and definitely nothing that would warrant this happening. If it had only been me, I would have not thought any more of it, but since we worked together, and this has also happened to him, it seems we are mixed up in something bad.”
“Where is he, by the way?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. If you live next door and know him well enough to be here, he might have told you.”
“No. He never spoke about work.”
She was trying to stand so I helped her up and held on when it looked like she was about to collapse. Last time I had a knock to the head, I had dizziness for a minute of two. Her knock had been a lot harder.”
“Are you alright?” She didn’t look it.
“I will be, I’m sure.”
I let her go, and she took several steps, then gave me a rather hard look. “Why are you here again?”
“Trying to find my friend.”
“How did you get in here?”
Rather than make her disorientated, the knock must have sharpened her senses. Time to test a theory.
“I think we should call the police now, and report the break-in.”
I pulled out my phone.
“Look, I don’t want to get mixed up in this. You go, and I report this when I get back home. And, if you find him, tell him Josephine is looking for him.”
As I thought. She was not able to explain to the authorities why she was in this flat, as I’m sure she believed I couldn’t either.
She started walking towards the door. My staying any longer would raise her suspicions about me, and any search I was going to do would have to wait. I opened the door, she walked out, and I followed shutting the door after me.
I left her standing outside the door and headed for the stairs. A last glance back showed her still where I left her. I went down to the first landing, then stopped. It was part of the training, to treat everyone as suspicious.
Then I heard her voice, as she passed the top of the staircase, on her way back to her flat. “He was here, looking for the files. No, he’s gone.” A minute’s silence, then “On my way.”
Another minute, I heard the elevator car arrive on the third floor.
I quickly ran down the stairs to the ground floor and waited at the door until she came out of the elevator, heading for the door.
Then as she passed through the front door, I came out into the foyer just in time to see a car stop out the front, and a familiar face out through the rear window.
It was the first time in almost a week that I made the short walk to the cafe alone. It was early, and the chill of the morning was still in the air. In summer, it was the best time of the day. When Susan came with me, it was usually much later, when the day was much warmer and less tolerable.
On the morning of the third day of her visit, Susan said she was missing the hustle and bustle of London, and by the end of the fourth she said, in not so many words, she was over being away from ‘civilisation’. This was a side of her I had not seen before, and it surprised me.
She hadn’t complained, but it was making her irritable. The Susan that morning was vastly different to the Susan on the first day. So much, I thought, for her wanting to ‘reconnect’, the word she had used as the reason for coming to Greve unannounced.
It was also the first morning I had time to reflect on her visit and what my feelings were towards her. It was the reason I’d come to Greve: to soak up the peace and quiet and think about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
I sat in my usual corner. Maria, one of two waitresses, came out, stopped, and there was no mistaking the relief in her manner. There was an air of tension between Susan and Maria I didn’t understand, and it seemed to emanate from Susan rather than the other way around. I could understand her attitude if it was towards Alisha, but not Maria. All she did was serve coffee and cake.
When Maria recovered from the momentary surprise, she said, smiling, “You are by yourself?” She gave a quick glance in the direction of my villa, just to be sure.
“I am this morning. I’m afraid the heat, for one who is not used to it, can be quite debilitating. I’m also afraid it has had a bad effect on her manners, for which I apologise. I cannot explain why she has been so rude to you.”
“You do not have to apologise for her, David, but it is of no consequence to me. I have had a lot worse. I think she is simply jealous.”
It had crossed my mind, but there was no reason for her to be. “Why?”
“She is a woman, I am a woman, she thinks because you and I are friends, there is something between us.”
It made sense, even if it was not true. “Perhaps if I explained…”
Maria shook her head. “If there is a hole in the boat, you should not keep bailing but try to plug the hole. My grandfather had many expressions, David. If I may give you one piece of advice, as much as it is none of my business, you need to make your feelings known, and if they are not as they once were, and I think they are not, you need to tell her. Before she goes home.”
Interesting advice. Not only a purveyor of excellent coffee, but Maria was also a psychiatrist who had astutely worked out my dilemma. What was that expression, ‘not just a pretty face’?
“Is she leaving soon?” I asked, thinking Maria knew more about Susan’s movements than I did.
“You would disappoint me if you had not suspected as much. Susan was having coffee and talking to someone in her office on a cell phone. It was an intense conversation. I should not eavesdrop, but she said being here was like being stuck in hell. It is a pity she does not share your love for our little piece of paradise, is it not?”
“It is indeed. And you’re right. She said she didn’t have a phone, but I know she has one. She just doesn’t value the idea of getting away from the office. Perhaps her role doesn’t afford her that luxury.”
And perhaps Alisha was right about Maria, that I should be more careful. She had liked Maria the moment she saw her. We had sat at this very table, the first day I arrived. I would have travelled alone, but Prendergast, my old boss, liked to know where ex-employees of the Department were, and what they were doing.
She sighed. “I am glad I am just a waitress. Your usual coffee and cake?”
“Yes, please.”
Several months had passed since we had rescued Susan from her despotic father; she had recovered faster than we had thought, and settled into her role as the new Lady Featherington, though she preferred not to use that title, but go by the name of Lady Susan Cheney.
I didn’t get to be a Lord, or have any title, not that I was expecting one. What I had expected was that Susan, once she found her footing as head of what seemed to be a commercial empire, would not have time for details like husbands, particularly when our agreement made before the wedding gave either of us the right to end it.
There was a moment when I visited her recovering in the hospital, where I was going to give her the out, but I didn’t, and she had not invoked it. We were still married, just not living together.
This visit was one where she wanted to ‘reconnect’ as she called it, and invite me to come home with her. She saw no reason why we could not resume our relationship, conveniently forgetting she indirectly had me arrested for her murder, charges both her mother and Lucy vigorously pursued, and had the clone not returned to save me, I might still be in jail.
It was not something I would forgive or forget any time soon.
There were other reasons why I was reluctant to stay with her, like forgetting small details, an irregularity in her character I found odd. She looked the same, she sounded the same, she basically acted the same, but my mind was telling me something was not right. It was not the Susan I first met, even allowing for the ordeal she had been subjected to.
But, despite those misgivings, there was no question in my mind that I still loved her, and her clandestine arrival had brought back all those feelings. But as the days passed, I began to get the impression my feelings were one-sided and she was just going through the motions.
Which brought me to the last argument, earlier, where I said if I went with her, it would be business meetings, social obligations, and quite simply her ‘celebrity’ status that would keep us apart. I reminded her that I had said from the outset I didn’t like the idea of being in the spotlight, and when I reiterated it, she simply brushed it off as just part of the job, adding rather strangely that I always looked good in a suit. The flippancy of that comment was the last straw, and I left before I said something I would regret.
I knew I was not a priority. Maybe somewhere inside me, I had wanted to be a priority, and I was disappointed when I was not.
And finally, there was Alisha. Susan, at the height of the argument, had intimated she believed I had an affair with her, but that elephant was always in the room whenever Alisha was around. It was no surprise when I learned Susan had asked Prendergast to reassign her to other duties.
At least I knew what my feelings for Alisha were, and there were times when I had to remember she was persona non grata. Perhaps that was why Susan had her banished, but, again, a small detail; jealousy was not one of Susan’s traits when I first knew her.
Perhaps it was time to set Susan free.
When I swung around to look in the direction of the lane where my villa was, I saw Susan. She was formally dressed, not in her ‘tourist’ clothes, which she had bought from one of the local clothing stores. We had fun that day, shopping for clothes, a chore I’d always hated. It had been followed by a leisurely lunch, lots of wine and soul searching.
It was the reason why I sat in this corner; old habits die hard. I could see trouble coming from all directions, not that Susan was trouble or at least I hoped not, but it allowed me the time to watch her walking towards the cafe in what appeared to be short, angry steps; perhaps the culmination of the heat wave and our last argument.
She glared at me as she sat, dropping her bag beside her on the ground, where I could see the cell phone sitting on top. She followed my glance down, and then she looked unrepentant back at me.
Maria came back at the exact moment she was going to speak. I noticed Maria hesitate for a second when she saw Susan, then put her smile in place to deliver my coffee.
Neither spoke nor looked at each other. I said, “Susan will have what I’m having, thanks.”
Maria nodded and left.
“Now,” I said, leaning back in my seat, “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation as to why you didn’t tell me about the phone, but that first time you disappeared, I’d guessed you needed to keep in touch with your business interests. I thought it somewhat unwisethat you should come out when the board of one of your companies was trying to remove you, because of what was it, an unexplained absence? All you had to do was tell me there were problems and you needed to remain at home to resolve them.”
My comment elicited a sideways look, with a touch of surprise.
“It was unfortunate timing on their behalf, and I didn’t want you to think everything else was more important than us. There were issues before I came, and I thought the people at home would be able to manage without me for at least a week, but I was wrong.”
“Why come at all. A phone call would have sufficed.”
“I had to see you, talk to you. At least we have had a chance to do that. I’m sorry about yesterday. I once told you I would not become my mother, but I’m afraid I sounded just like her. I misjudged just how much this role would affect me, and truly, I’m sorry.”
An apology was the last thing I expected.
“You have a lot of work to do catching up after being away, and of course, in replacing your mother and gaining the requisite respect as the new Lady Featherington. I think it would be for the best if I were not another distraction. We have plenty of time to reacquaint ourselves when you get past all these teething issues.”
“You’re not coming with me?” She sounded disappointed.
“I think it would be for the best if I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“It should come as no surprise to you that I’ve been keeping an eye on your progress. You are so much better doing your job without me. I told your mother once that when the time came I would not like the responsibilities of being your husband. Now that I have seen what it could possibly entail, I like it even less. You might also want to reconsider our arrangement, after all, we only had a marriage of convenience, and now that those obligations have been fulfilled, we both have the option of terminating it. I won’t make things difficult for you if that’s what you want.”
It was yet another anomaly, I thought; she should look distressed, and I would raise the matter of that arrangement. Perhaps she had forgotten the finer points. I, on the other hand, had always known we would not last forever. The perplexed expression, to me, was a sign she might have forgotten.
Then, her expression changed. “Is that what you want?”
“I wasn’t madly in love with you when we made that arrangement, so it was easy to agree to your terms, but inexplicably, since then, my feelings for you changed, and I would be sad if we parted ways. But the truth is, I can’t see how this is going to work.”
“In saying that, do you think I don’t care for you?”
That was exactly what I was thinking, but I wasn’t going to voice that opinion out loud. “You spent a lot of time finding new ways to make my life miserable, Susan. You and that wretched friend of yours, Lucy. While your attitude improved after we were married, that was because you were going to use me when you went to see your father, and then almost let me go to prison for your murder.”
“I had nothing to do with that, other than to leave, and I didn’t agree with Lucy that you should be made responsible for my disappearance. I cannot be held responsible for the actions of my mother. She hated you; Lucy didn’t understand you, and Millie told me I was stupid for not loving you in return, and she was right. Why do you think I gave you such a hard time? You made it impossible not to fall in love with you, and it nearly changed my mind about everything I’d been planning so meticulously. But perhaps there was a more subliminal reason why I did because after I left, I wanted to believe, if anything went wrong, you would come and find me.”
“How could you possibly know that I’d even consider doing something like that, given what you knew about me?”
“Prendergast made a passing comment when my mother asked him about you; he told us you were very good at finding people and even better at fixing problems.”
“And yet here we are, one argument away from ending it.”
I could see Maria hovering, waiting for the right moment to deliver her coffee, then go back and find Gianna, the café owner, instead. Gianna was more abrupt and, for that reason, was rarely seen serving the customers. Today, she was particularly cantankerous, banging the cake dish on the table and frowning at Susan before returning to her kitchen. Gianna didn’t like Susan either.
Behind me, I heard a car stop, and when she looked up, I knew it was for her. She had arrived with nothing, and she was leaving with nothing.
She stood. “Last chance.”
“Forever?”
She hesitated and then shook away the look of annoyance on her face. “Of course not. I wanted you to come back with me so we could continue working on our relationship. I agree there are problems, but it’s nothing we can’t resolve if we try.”
I had been trying. “It’s too soon for both of us, Susan. I need to be able to trust you, and given the circumstances, and all that water under the bridge, I’m not sure if I can yet.”
She frowned at me. “As you wish.” She took an envelope out of her bag and put it on the table. “When you are ready, it’s an open ticket home. Please make it sooner rather than later. Despite what you think of me, I have missed you, and I have no intention of ending it between us.”
That said, she glared at me for a minute, shook her head, then walked to the car. I watched her get in and the car drive slowly away.
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 fellow detective 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.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 