Category: Thriller

“Betrayal” – the penultimate final draft – Day 19

I’m sure I’ve been down this road more than once, and with the same novel, but whereas the last edit, which was probably the second or third, finished up in the pile, then forgotten.

I’m doing an active update to all my works in progress, and sending them to the editor, after going through the manuscript once again, with a view to publishing.  Hopefully, before the year is out.

…

As a result of a sit down with Chester, who has been keeping an eye on the progress of the project, or at least that’s what he thinks, we’ve decided that there’s going to be a slight change.

Plan or not, writing the story was always going to go the way the characters want to go, and I’ve decided that the two protagonists are not going to have a happily ever after.

They can’t.

It was a pie in the sky notion that they could given the nature of their professions. But it’s not only that, it comes down to the plans their employer has for them, and it certainly isn’t for them to be together.

So, the way it’s written they were about to have that intimate moment when commonsense took over, and instead of being together, they are apart in her apartment.

She wanted him to stay, he wanted to stay, but there are forces in play that dictate caution.

Then the plot twist no one saw coming.

I’m excited about the next ten days.

Stay tuned

The cinema of my dreams – It continued in London – Episode 30

Vittoria and Juliet

…

What was it that found me finding ways to run into a woman that I really didn’t want to run into or see again?  And yet, it seemed everything I did, since Rodby reappeared in my life, revolved around her.

And it crossed my mind, while I was trying to find where she was living in London, that having a mother like Vittoria might have contributed to her ‘downfall’.  The biography of Vittoria wasn’t that of a society angel, more the pretender who was little more than a petty criminal worming her way into a field of rich pickings.

She’d been in service in the count’s residence, and as much as I hoped wasn’t a continuation of the old practice of masters having their way with their employees, or servants back in the old days, he might have forced himself on her, but I suspect it was the other way around.

If she was a grifter then she would have made him aware of the girl he sired, and if he was good about it, would have adequately compensated her, if only to keep it quiet.  Very adequately and for a long time until he died.  I suspect the countess didn’t know, and like most women in those sorts of marriages, probably didn’t want to know.

The reason why there was no surveillance in Juliet was because no one had found a starting reference point.  In other words, no one knew where she was.  And Cecilia was right, London was a big place if I wanted to pound the pavement looking for her.

The file said an internet search on her was performed, but the only information relevant to her they found was her fall from grace and very little beyond that date range.  It seemed Juliet Ambrose only existed for three years before I first met her.

That meant she had been someone else before that, most likely Juliet, the name of her mother at the time.  That, of course, suggested one of two eventualities, that she wanted to escape her mother, or the Count’s family because of her mother, and changed her own name, or her mother had informed on some fellow criminals to leverage a free ticket and going into a form of witness protection.

Knowing Juliet as I did, the former was more likely than the latter.

Now there was a new possibility that wasn’t a scenario in the file.  Had the count told anyone about the daughter, and the mother’s no doubt incessant demands?  That could be a reason for a hitman to remove the problem or problems.

I looked at the biography for Vittoria Romano again and noted she had a number of aka’s, Gallo, Rossi, and her birth name Moretti.

A quick search told me the Italian version of Juliet was Giulietta, so I put Giulietta Moretti into the search engine and waited all of 35 nanoseconds to get the obligatory 20,000,000 hits.  Popular girl.

But…

There on page three of endless pages on a fading Italian Rock and Roll singer, there was a picture, albeit of Juliet in her younger days, taken on the grounds of a mansion in Sorrento.  The Count had a place in Sorrento, and I looked it up in the list provided.

Yes.  It still belonged to the family.  I tucked that away in the mental notes stored at the back of my mind.  It would be worth a visit when I went looking for the Countess.

A further search through 32 useless pages of items found another.

Giulietta Moretti published a paper in a medical journal about a year ago on the effects on the human body caused by car crashes, and it was getting recognition by her peers.  So much so, that she had been asked by a group of surgeons to talk about it at a conference in Blackpool.

The day after tomorrow.

And…

It had an address where she worked in London, a morgue in one of the larger hospitals.  I now had a starting point.

My curiosity then switched to Alessandro.

I wondered if he knew the background of Vittoria.  Surely his brother would have alerted him to the trouble she was causing him.  Or, and this was a huge leap, had the Count not told anyone about her, thinking he had alone contained the problem.

If Alessandro knew then was he in cahoots with Vittoria in removing the Countess from the playing field.

What bothered me was that I saw Alessandro at the hotel at the same time as the countess, and I had no doubt he was the problem she needed to attend to.  How had he managed to spirit her away, if he did?  If not, why would she sneak out of the hotel and disappear?

Was it something to do with that meeting between her and Alessandro?  All good questions for a Detective Inspector.

It was particularly troublesome that our surveillance on the main players managed to lose two of them for a lengthy period.  No one had thought to stay in the hotel and were relying on the hotel’s own CCTV.  That, of course, showed nothing other than the countess and Alessandro arriving, and nothing after that.

There were a dozen CCTV camera feeds and I had them sent to my phone and that afternoon went through all of them, looking for anomalies, people ridiculously disguised, large crates or cases that could hide bodies, anything to show she had left, albeit disguised.

What she would want to be seen was anyone’s guess, but it may have had something to do with Alessandro.  What bothered me, though, was a report from the people who installed the CCTV system at the hotel.  It was interesting that it found its way to the Department, but not as interesting as the fact the number installed, and locations, didn’t match the number that had returned video for the time.  A second sheet noted that seven of the CCTV cameras were not in operation at the time, with no reason given.

As for Alessandro, he and I were going to have a talk sooner rather than later, and I was going to use my Detective Inspector warrant card for the second time.

Long ago, when developing guises, I got the chance to follow around a real detective inspector and learned the ropes.  He was a good detective and a better teacher.  It was my first item on the list for the next morning.

© Charles Heath 2023

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.

Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.

It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.

Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.

But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.

His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.

At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.

For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.

Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.

Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.

It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.

It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.

Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.

So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.

There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.

So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.

There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.

She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.

Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.

Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.

Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.

Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.

Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.

© Charles Heath 2019

“Betrayal” – the penultimate final draft – Day 19

I’m sure I’ve been down this road more than once, and with the same novel, but whereas the last edit, which was probably the second or third, finished up in the pile, then forgotten.

I’m doing an active update to all my works in progress, and sending them to the editor, after going through the manuscript once again, with a view to publishing.  Hopefully, before the year is out.

…

As a result of a sit down with Chester, who has been keeping an eye on the progress of the project, or at least that’s what he thinks, we’ve decided that there’s going to be a slight change.

Plan or not, writing the story was always going to go the way the characters want to go, and I’ve decided that the two protagonists are not going to have a happily ever after.

They can’t.

It was a pie in the sky notion that they could given the nature of their professions. But it’s not only that, it comes down to the plans their employer has for them, and it certainly isn’t for them to be together.

So, the way it’s written they were about to have that intimate moment when commonsense took over, and instead of being together, they are apart in her apartment.

She wanted him to stay, he wanted to stay, but there are forces in play that dictate caution.

Then the plot twist no one saw coming.

I’m excited about the next ten days.

Stay tuned

An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

…

With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction.  He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.

That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.

He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.

I kept my eyes down.  He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup.  I stepped to the other side and so did he.  It was one of those situations.  Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.

Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic.  I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone.  I shrugged and looked at my watch.  It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.

Wait, or walk?  I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station.  What the hell, I needed the exercise.

At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’.  I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light.  As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.

A yellow car stopped inches from me.

It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini.  I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.

Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car.  It was that sort of car.  I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him.  I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on.  The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.

My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter.   Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.

At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure.  I was no longer in a hurry.

At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.  A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring.  I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road.  I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.

At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar.   It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.

I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did.  There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me.  It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.

Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me.  As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.

Now my imagination was playing tricks.

It could not be the same man.  He was going in a different direction.

In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter.  I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.

I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in.  I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.

Just in case.

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

newechocover5rs

Inspiration, maybe – Volume 1

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

lookingdownfromcoronetpeak

And the story:

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.

Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication where he went.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

InspirationMaybe1v1

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 5

My mind will not rest.

Down here, it is summer, and the last few days have been rather hot, well, it is summer after all, but tonight it is particularly hot.

So, as I can’t sleep, I’m lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, otherwise known as the cinema of my dreams.

Where am I?

Well, the location is in keeping with the weather, hot, humid, and cold drinks are mandatory.

I’ve got one now!

…

A sleepless night did nothing to make the idea of going on a treasure hunt and more palatable. I couldn’t say I didn’t see it coming, because Boggs had been hinting he’d found something of his father’s when poking through his old stuff.

I was hoping it was money.

And visiting the bar, I thought that he had found a lead in his quest to find some information about his parents, two people he realized now, he knew very little about.

In that quest, I was only too willing to help.

When he finally told me about the treasure, I didn’t think he was the sort to believe in fairy tales, because everyone knew it was little more than that.

I didn’t flat out debunk the myth, but I could see I was going to have to carefully get him off this track.  Real or not, we were hardly equipped, mentally or physically, to deal with whatever this quest might throw up.

Yes, in my mind’s eye I had a Raiders of the Lost Ark scenario running through my head, from large rolling stones, through to a snake pit.  I hated snakes too.

In fact, with the addition of Boggs uncle Rico in the mix, it seemed to me we would be better off spending our time looking for work rather than using any excuse to not, but that was the problem with our neighborhood, too many people looking for work and not enough jobs.  Prosperity seemed to be everywhere else.

“No lounging around in bed, Sam.”  My mother’s voice came from the kitchen where she would be throwing food into a container for her lunch.

She was suffering from the lack of employment too, being a qualified accounts clerk, but for the time being, working check out at the local supermarket.

A job was a job, but it barely paid the bills.

I made it to the kitchen just as she was about to leave.

“You need to try harder,” she said.  “Walter said they’re looking for people in the warehouse again.  Promise me you’ll go see them.”

I could see the strain of the odd shifts she worked, the fact she didn’t want to be there, but unlike my father, she accepted responsibility, no matter what it cost.

“I promise.”

A kiss on the forehead and she was gone.

The jobs at the warehouse were little more than slave labor, minimum pay, very hard work, and ungratefully supervisors.  Most of those like Boggs and I lasted a week, or less because that way they didn’t have to pay you for the few days you worked.

But it was a job, and it was time I stepped up.

The treasure hunt would have to wait.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

“Betrayal” – the penultimate final draft – Day 18

I’m sure I’ve been down this road more than once, and with the same novel, but whereas the last edit, which was probably the second or third, finished up in the pile, then forgotten.

I’m doing an active update to all my works in progress, and sending them to the editor, after going through the manuscript once again, with a view to publishing.  Hopefully, before the year is out.

…

The problems of the day before are gone, and I get back to the plan.

Today I have concentrated on the side excursion I’d come up with the other day and thought it could wait, but I’m at a point, further on, where I need to have this written in order to feed into the main story.

I’m in two minds about how this should be written because I had two sketched out two possible outcomes, and one leads to quite a different ending.

The plan, son, the plan!

I edit it as it should be, and the other outcome gets crossed out, and the outline is sent to the ‘to be written sometime in the future’ pile.  It’s a strong enough ending to power its own story.

I might even become a sequel.

Hang on, don’t get carried away.  Get this one finished first.

‘The Devil You Don’t’ – A beta reader’s view

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

‘The Devil You Don’t’ – A beta reader’s view

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…