…

Bryson and Worthey confer

…

Detective Worthey arrived at the Bergman residence at the same time as the first team of crime scene investigators.

He had come directly from interviewing Sandra Worsley, Bergman’s daughter.

“The list of suspects is getting longer and longer,” Worthey said, after joining Bryson by his car, having a cigarette, the first in a number of months.

“Why am I not surprised.”

“I thought you gave up smoking.”

“I thought I did too, but this case.  There’s something odd going on here, and I’m sure when I find out what it is, I’m not going to like it.”

“Odd, funny or odd, hairs on the back of the neck?”

“Why does an import/export trader have a rented house in an obscure location with a large basement and a dozen filing cabinets?”

“Can’t be too obscure if his scorned wife knows where it is.”

“She’s been having him followed by a private detective.  Met him just before.  There’s more to him than meets the eye.”

Bryson had dealt with a lot of Private Detectives in his time, and they usually fell into two categories, those that found missing pets, and the photographs of cheating spouses, and those that were proper investigators, ex police, ex FBI, even ex CIA.  Davidson was in the latter category, and he wasn’t simply investigating a cheating husband.

“Will I add him to the ever-growing list?”

“No.  I’ll look into him.  I have a feeling it’s going to end up above our pay grade.”

That was the other thing Bryson noted.  The dynamic between Stacy and Davidson.  It was more than just Investigator and client.  He was either a relative, or they were more than just friends.  Looks and words exchanged between the two were ‘noticeable’ to a trained eye.  How did it go with the daughter?”

“Sandra?  A father’s favorite daughter.  She did not speak badly of him.  Certainly, does not like the wife, Stacey, and speaks kindly of Wendy Anderson.  Appears she had known her for most of her life, in fact, I got the impression Wendy was her mother.  She certainly has some of her physical characteristics.”

“Interesting.  Another question we can put to James Anderson.  I’m willing to bet he knows nothing about her.  What does she do for a living?”

“Schoolteacher, up in Yonkers.  Comes to stay with her father once every few months.  She just happened to be here this week for a conference.  They were supposed to have dinner at her favourite restaurant on the night he died, but he called to cancel, saying he had an unscheduled meeting with a friend who needed to see him.”

“A friend?  Could be the person who shot him.  He didn’t happen to give her a name?”

“No.  We’re not that lucky, but she thought it might be a woman rather than a man.”

“Chances are she is totally unaware of his philandering, other women in his life, and the fact his business was going badly.  Did you ask her if she knew what his business was?

“I did.  She said he told her it was importing and exporting, but she thought that was a euphemism for something else, not necessarily illegal, but she did say he used to be in the army as a Quartermaster, she heard him mention it to another man in a conversation recently.  He never told her what he did, but she assumed that was because he’d been in Iraq or somewhere like that.  When she mentioned his service I did a quick check, and it hit a brick wall.”

“Classified?”

“Like there is no record of him being in the military.”

Bryson looked over at the entrance to the house and saw one of the crime scene investigators coming towards him.

He’d worked with him before, enough to be able to interpret the expression on his face as impending bad news.

“What have we?”

“The filing cabinets, John.”

“Weapons, contraband, or artifacts?”

“What look to be artifacts in several, weapons in another, what you might call the spoils of war.  Nothing earth-shattering, but definitely worthy of the real owners getting slightly upset.  Several of the items appear to match the descriptions of items that were supposedly destroyed by ISIS.”

“We’re dealing with black market artifacts then?”

“Quite possibly.  I’m getting an expert to come in and tell us exactly what the items are.  If you’re looking for a motive for his death, then these items would definitely fit that.  There’s a lot of foreign weaponry too, the sort collectors pay a small fortune for.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you know more later.”

Worthey sighed as he watched the man return to the house.  “Why couldn’t this be a simple case of a jealous husband shooting his wife’s secret lover?”

“Why indeed.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2023

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Chasing leads, maybe

 

Collecting the car was easy because it was not kept near my flat.  I could not afford to park nearby, and couldn’t get a permit to park on the street.  I had cursed my bad luck at the time, but now it was very useful.

I spend a few hours resting in the car, stopping along the way at a park, and then, well past nightfall, I drove to the block in Oakwood Avenue, easily recognizable from the exterior photo also provided by the realtor.

Twice around the block, I stopped around the corner, past the block, and noted that I could walk back and then take cover from the trees and shrubs growing in front of, and around the building.  To reach the right flat, I would have to pass down the inner side towards the rear where, hopefully, there might be a door.

Otherwise, it would have to be the hard way.

At 00:45, I left the car, and walked back to the block, keeping an eye out form people walking, or looking out their windows on either side of the street.  Then, satisfied I hadn’t been seen, I ducked through the trees and quickly walked the distance from the front to the side where I stopped and waited.  After a few minutes, and nothing had stirred, I started down the side of the building.

Several flats had lights on, but the curtains were drawn.  Being the ground floor, I doubted whether those curtains would be open at night.  It didn’t take long to be alongside the flat in question.

It was in total darkness, and the curtains had been drawn.

First problem.  There was no back door.  The traditional entry point would be the front door, and no doubt there was a communal back door as well.  Next, I checked the windows, and those that I could see were complete glass and non-opening.  Worse still they had a metal grilled across them to deter thieves.

Near the corner, leading to the rear of the building was a window, higher up and ajar.  By its location, I guessed this was the bathroom or the toilet.  I was hoping for the former.

It took a few minutes to unlatch the window and several more to scramble up the wall, and it through the window opening, which wasn’t much wider than me.  I had to be careful not to drop any of the bottles on the inner ledge.

Once down of the other side, inside the room, it was a narrow bathroom, without a bath, and almost impossible to see.  I fixed the window and put everything back on the ledge, just in case someone did a circuit of the building at a security measure.

Once inside, and after one in the morning, little stirred.

I could just faintly hear the flat owners above, hardly enough noise to be concerned about, and bringing a thought; shouldn’t they be asleep like everyone else.

It was certainly a quiet neighborhood.

I brought a small torch from the car with me and sparingly used it to find my way around.  When my eyes got used to the semi-darkness, I found that the flow from small lights of appliances adequately lit the rooms.

It had two bedrooms, one empty and being used as a storeroom, a lounge room, a dining area, and the bathroom, and kitchen area.  It was big enough for a couple, or even a couple with one child.

Inside what I assumed was the front door, I found several letters shoved under the door.  They were addressed to Mr. Adam Quinley.

I hoped that I’d not made a mistake and broken into a flat belonging to another person.  O’Connell didn’t see to me to be a Quinley, because it was an unusual name.

The dates on the letters went back a week and told me whoever the flat belonged to, they hadn’t visited it for a while.  I went back to the lounge room and over to a desk.  There were the familiar cords leading to no computer, but there was a printer.  It meant he had a laptop he carried with him.

A laptop that no one had found.  It suggested to me that he had it somewhere near him, perhaps in a car, which may be still parked in a garage, or parking station somewhere.

I searched through the neat pile of documents on the desk, and in a folder marked ‘Accounts’ and found one for the car registration, in the name of Quigley.  I noted the registration and type of car, and just in case I forgot it, folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket.  It would be the subject of my next search if nothing showed up.

The next half hour I made a thorough search of the flat and found nothing of use.  I checked for all the spots he might have hidden the USB, but it was not there.  He had kept it somewhere else.

Done, I left the flat by the front door, and for good measure, checked his mailbox, outside, and found a number of letters.  I took them and would look at them back in the car.  Just as I made the tree line to walk back, a car stopped outside the building.

The door opened and I watched the driver get out of the car, stop and look up and down the street, then walk towards the front door,

By chance, the occupant of the flat above the door switched on a light in the room which, uncurtained, spilled out to shed light on the person now at the front entrance.

I recognized her immediately, just before the light was switched off and darkness took over.

It was Jan.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

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.

© Charles Heath 2018-2020

There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?

A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.

But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.

And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.

Susan is exactly the sort of woman to 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’ve been told there’s a sequel in the works.

Bring it on!

…

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

…

To write a private detective serial has always been one of the items at the top of my to-do list, though trying to write novels and a serial, as well as a blog, and maintain a social media presence, well, you get the idea.

But I made it happen, from a bunch of episodes I wrote a long, long time ago, used these to start it, and then continue on, then as now, never having much of an idea where it was going to end up, or how long it would take to tell the story.

That, I think is the joy of ad hoc writing, even you, as the author, have as much idea of where it’s going as the reader does.

It’s basically been in the mill since 1990, and although I finished it last year, it looks like the beginning to end will have taken exactly 30 years.  Had you asked me 30 years ago if I’d ever get it finished, the answer would be maybe?

My private detective, Harry Walthenson

I’d like to say he’s from that great literary mold of Sam Spade, or Mickey Spillane, or Phillip Marlow, but he’s not.

But, I’ve watched Humphrey Bogart play Sam Spade with much interest, and modelled Harry and his office on it.  Similarly, I’ve watched Robert Micham play Phillip Marlow with great panache, if not detachment, and added a bit of him to the mix.

Other characters come into play, and all of them, no matter what period they’re from, always seem larger than life.  I’m not above stealing a little of Mary Astor, Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet, to breathe life into beguiling women and dangerous men alike.

Then there’s the title, like

The Case of the Unintentional Mummy – this has so many meanings in so many contexts, though I imagine that back in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, this would be excellent fodder for Abbott and Costello

The Case of the Three-Legged Dog – Yes, I suspect there may be a few real-life dogs with three legs, but this plot would involve something more sinister.  And if made out of plaster, yes, they’re always something else inside.

But for mine, to begin with, it was “The Case of the …”, because I had no idea what the case was going to be about, well, I did, but not specifically.

Then I liked the idea of calling it “The Case of the Brother’s Revenge” because I began to have a notion there was a brother no one knew about, but that’s stuff for other stories, not mine, so then went the way of the others.

Now it’s called ‘A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers’, finished the first three drafts, and at the editor for the last.

I have high hopes of publishing it in early 2021.  It even has a cover.