Tag: Fiction

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 60

Here’s the thing…

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

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

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

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

…

Three a.m. is meant to be so quiet; you could hear your heart beating.

Ten to, all hell had broken loose when one of the conveyor belts broke, and a replacement was needed, and the engineers were on the clock.

Ten past, the hullabaloo had died down, and back at the desk, I was contemplating a long scotch to calm the nerves.  Drinking on the job was not condoned, but not unheard of.  I opened the drawer and looked at the bottle, then thought the better of it.

And, when I looked up, Nadia was standing in front of the desk.

She was as quiet as a ninja, and just as dangerous.

“Never a dull moment,” she said, dragging a chair over and sitting down.  “I got her a half hour ago and all hell was breaking loose.”

“Conveyor broke.  No one wants to see production stop or slide.  Too many questions.”

“Fixed?”

“Of course.”  I made a note to order a replacement.  Better to have two in store, just in case.

“How did you get in?”

Security was tight, not like it used to be, especially after what happened to me.

“I know the guards, they know I’m not a threat.”

I could beg to differ, but I was glad to see her.  “Did you know Alex was a caver?”

“A what?”

“One of those people who go scrambling through caves.”

“I doubt it.”

“He used the word spelunking.”

“Which is?”

“Exploring caves.”

“He’s no explorer, I bet he’s looking for the treasure.”

“And so has a million others before him.  I seriously doubt the treasure will be in a cave in the hills, which is where all the known caves are.  Of course, that doesn’t necessarily include the so-called underground riven under the mall, but apparently isn’t.”

“You heard?”

“That the flooding was not necessarily the result of a flood of water from the mountains, yes.  A problem with the foundations, it has been suggested.”

“A fact Benderby is working overtime to cover up.”

Nadia seemed well informed.  I was guessing the Cossatino’s could see an opportunity to blackmail Benderby, if they had proof.  I wouldn’t put anything past them.

“You know something I don’t?”

“We always know something others don’t.”

“Have I got a dark secret?”

“That depends.” 

She smiled, and it worried me.

“Your mother and Joshua Benderby used to be very good friends when they were at school.”

Old news, well, not so old news, but if I hadn’t seen the flowers…

“What are you insinuating?”

“They had a fling before your mother realized what sort of a man he really was and picked your father instead.  But, from what I’m told, they were close, and there wasn’t a lot of time between the breakup and you coming along.”

Odd, but that was just the thought that entered my mind at the exact instant she said it.

“But, I look nothing like the Benderby’s.”

“Benderby didn’t look anything like his parents either, it’s a generational thing, so you might want to find a photo of his father and mother, you know, just to settle the nerves.  Or a DNA test.”

It was the last thing on my mind.  Imagine being a stepbrother to Alex.  Wouldn’t that get his nose out of joint, going from the only son and heir to sharing the mantle?  I was older than him, too, which gave me more of a claim on the fortune.

No.  Not a chance in the world.  There wouldn’t be enough money to assuage the horrors of that family.  It would be bad enough if they got together now, which wasn’t as unlikely as it sounded.  His wife had died, and he hadn’t remarried, or, for that matter, found someone else.  Yet.

“Have you come with any other news?”

“No.  Just a picnic basket.  I thought you might want a late, late supper.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

“Trouble in Store” – Short stories my way:  More on the policewoman

I’ve been looking at the role of the policewoman, and her interaction with the shop’s participants.

I’m still working on whether she needs more or less of an introduction, but, for the time being, this is what I’m going with:

…

It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.

People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.

The one they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them the bad news.

That was her day.

So far.

At the end of the day, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over again.

Coming around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night.  It was not.  The lights were still on.

She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight, and long past closing time.  She looked through the window, but from the other side of the road, she could only see three heads and little else.

Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out. 

She was aware of the rumors, from her co-residents and also her colleagues down at the station, rumors she hoped were not true.

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

Almost nonsensical descriptions we sometimes use without thinking

I found this explanation on the internet which seems to sum up what odd phrases like ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ mean: ‘a word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect.’

We, as writers, are constantly reminded that we should not use these in our writing because most people might not understand their use.

But, being that unconventional, never to be told, type, I honestly think that it sometimes adds a degree of whimsy to the story.

I remember some years ago when I working with a Russian chap who’d not been in the country very long, and though he had a reasonable use of English, was not quite up with our figures of speech.

And made me realize when he kept asking me what they meant, just how many I used in everyday conversation.

Most of these figures of speech use descriptions that do not necessarily match the word being described, such as ‘I dance like I have two left feet’.

And that pretty much sums up how good I can dance.  But …

‘Like a bat out of hell’, not sure how this got into the vernacular, but it means to get the hell out of dodge quickly.  Hang on, that’s another saying, American, and the way Dodge city was in western American folklore, if you irritated a gunslinger, then best be on your way, fast.

Otherwise, yes, you guessed it, you were at the end of another saying, you would get a one-way ticket to boot hill.  In other words, the cemetery.

And while I’m digressing, again, Yul Brynner made a trip to boot hill very memorable in The Magnificent Seven.

Then,

‘Like a bull in a china shop’, describes a toddler let loose, not necessarily in a china shop, but I have seen it happen in reality and it wasn’t pretty

‘More front than Myers’, as my mother used to say, but in context, Myers is the Australian version of the English Selfridges or Harrods or Paris Galleries Lafayette.  It refers to the width of street frontage of the stores, and means that someone has the nerve to be so confronting

‘As mad as a hatter’, though not necessarily of the millinery kind, but, well, you can guess, it’s from Alice in Wonderland

‘As nutty as a fruitcake’, provided your fruitcake has nuts in it, we seemed to have coined the phrase nutty, or nuts for people who are a little, or a lot, eccentric

You can see, if you get the references, they are somewhat apt, and, yes, they sometimes creep into my stories.

 

Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 44

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on the 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

I leaned back in the chair and shuddered.  It was not so much the cold as the stark realization before me, well, before all of us really.

The USB was gone.

But it was going to be impossible to convince any or all of Severin, Maury, and Nobbin.  Or for that matter Monica.  None of them were going to believe the explosion in the café was a deliberate act.  

But it did raise a question.

“How did whoever placed the bomb in the café know you and your contact were going to be there, and, for that matter, that either of you might have the USB?”

O’Connell seemed lost in thought.  After prodding him, I asked the question again.  His hesitation seemed to suggest that what he’d told me might be a lie, or a half-truth because the more I thought about it, the more implausible it sounded.  The other side of that was, what did he have to gain by lying?  Of no doubt, there was more to this story.

“There are more people involved in this than what you know.  Dobbin had me looking into a biological laboratory, one that was reportedly doing research on cures for various coronaviruses, like SARS.  The thing is, they had a store of nasties they were using as candidates for finding cures.

“The laboratory had been getting funding from the military so that to me meant they’d been working on weaponizing one of those nasty viruses, but there had been containment breach leading to a review, and they lost their funding.

“That, in turn, leads to the head of the company seeking funding from elsewhere, and that it was going to be an overseas government institution, one which they claimed commercial confidence so the donor could not be released.  Of course, our intelligence services went into a spin, thinking the worst, that it was either Russia or the Chinese, or some other rogue regime, and if they got their hands on those candidates, well, you can imagine the paranoia.

“There was also the problem of hacking, where various countries and/or individuals are looking for information to use for their own benefit, or to sell to the highest bidder.  That as far as I can tell is what happened here; it was not a case of external hacking, this was internal by one of the staff, downloading sensitive information onto the USB and smuggling it out.

“As soon as the breach was discovered, it triggered an internal review, which had a member of the military on the panel, and it concluded it was one of three ex-employees.  Dobbin gave me the three names, and I tracked them down.  One of the three had stolen the data, but far from stealing it to sell to the highest bidder, he had stolen it to pass on to a newspaper reporter, the person I was going to see.

“He could see the information was not the sort to be disseminated to the general public and wanted it returned.  I was going to get it.

“So, in answer to your question, it was possible that someone else had done the same as I had after I had visited each of the three, and decided to deal with the problem decisively.  But it would have required planning and an organization with infinite resources to pull it off.  Top of my list is the owners of the laboratory, simply because, they were not interested in getting the copy back, and the fact they didn’t want to have any witnesses, which meant the reporter and had to be silenced.”

“And the person who stole the information?”

“Burned to death in a house fire.  The fire department concluded it was a gas leak.”

“Helped by a person or persons unknown.”

“Given the distribution list of that final report, unless Dobbin has been moonlighting as an assassin, there’s only one other name on the list.”

No need to say it out loud.  That left one question, and probably a hundred others that wouldn’t get answers.

“What’s it to do with Severin and Maury?”

“That’s not their names.  Severin is really David Westcott, and Maury is Bernie Salvin.  Both used to be in the security detail at the company about three years ago when several biological entities were being researched, both of whom were assigned by the military to keep an eye on their investment.

“When the accident occurred, they were reassigned, but I suspect, at the time, they knew exactly what had happened, and what is involved.  It’s not a leap to come to the conclusion they had a shift in allegiance and may have helped the person who stole the information because there was no way the person who stole it had the knowledge to get it out.

“It was not something he would tell me.  That, he said, if he told me, would sign his death warrant.”

Which it did.  Was the original thief killed before or after the explosion?

“Do we Assume Severin is the man in charge?”

“No.  They’re basically blunt instruments, giving orders, and doing what they’re told.  We all are, to a certain extent.  This operation had someone else, someone far more clever, and connected.”

“But they did create a whole unit and train them in an existing facility without anyone knowing.”

“Is that you they told you?  And you believed them?  Nothing goes on in that place with an official sanction.  No.  Your operation was created on the books, but on the quiet so if anything went wrong, they could disavow any knowledge of it.  It went south and what happened?”

“They disavowed any knowledge of it.”

“And kept you on, only reassigned?”

“Those of us who survived, yes.”

“Then I suggest you watch your back and keep all of them at arm’s length.  You’ll only be useful until the USB is found, so you have to keep them believing it’s missing.”

“We’re not going to be able to do that forever.”

“No.  Which makes it imperative we find out who Severin and Maury’s bosses are and chop of the head.”

All while pretending he was dead.  Easier said than done.

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 24

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

 

My next call was to Severin, also a number on a card.

It rang five times before he answered.  “Yes?”

No name, but I recognized the voice.

“It’s Sam Jackson.”

“You have found the USB?”

“No.  But I did find the flat he was supposedly living in, and it’s a front.  And so clean you could eat off the floor.  Nothing there.  And nothing to indicate where his real residence is.”

“That’s a shame.”

“So is the discovery that you are less than trustworthy.  Explain why I should continue to help.  I assume Maury is your attack dog, so if you’re sending him after me, then you don’t trust me.”

“I don’t trust anyone.”

No hesitation, this was a man to be very careful around.

“That’s fine, you obviously don’t need my help.  And one more thing, if I see Maury again, you won’t.”

I disconnected the call.

“That was brave,” Jan said.

“No.  Just a test to see how desperate they are.  I’ll give it another minute before he calls back.”

It took two minutes.

“Perhaps I didn’t think through the consequences.  Let’s take a step back and reconsider the situation.”

“If you’ve got Maury trying to trace this call, then it’s going to be a series of twenty-second calls.  If I find O’Connell’s second residence or even the USB, and you continue to act in this manner you will be the last to be told.”

I hung up the phone again.  Not enough time to trace the call.

“Are you deliberately trying to piss him off?”

“Do you think it’s working?”

“Why?”

“Angry people make mistakes.  They made one huge mistake of killing O’Connell before they knew where the USB was.  I’m sure they were hoping he would have it on him.  He didn’t.”

My phone rang again.

“You forget I know where you live.”

Bold move.

“Where I used to live.  It was getting a little cramped anyway.  Call your attack dog off and give me some room to do my job.  This phone is in the bin at the end of this call, so don’t bother tracing it.  I’ve got your number.  Just hope I decide to call you again.”

Call terminated, and a minute later sim removed and tossed down a drain.

“Do you want to call anyone?” I asked.

“Not yet.  I’ve got nothing to report.”

“Your people might have an investigation going that might involve cyber currency, and O’Connell’s name might pop up.  After all, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you were living next door”

She was trying to keep a neutral expression, but it didn’t work.  She was next door for a reason, and it didn’t include looking after his cat.  In fact, I was beginning to think that cat belonged to the building, and just stayed with whoever fed it.

“Despite what you might think, it was a coincidence, because after I moved in, I did a few background checks and his was too squeaky clean.

“Meaning?”

Of course, squeaky clean meant only one possibility, he had a cover identity made, and it only went back so far.  Depending on the job, the background could be months old, or a year at the most.

“He was working undercover and didn’t exist three years ago.  So the thing is, maybe he wasn’t investigating cyber currency, maybe he was stealing it, and someone took offense.  But I never saw a computer in his flat, and you definitely need one of those if you’re a cryptocurrency trader.  All I got to talk about was the cat.”

Since it’s hardly the subject you’d talk about with a neighbor, it was not surprising their discussions were mainly of domesticity.

“Was it his cat?”

She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I think he said he found it in the flat when he arrived, and in feeding it, it just stayed.  Cat’s don’t belong to people; you do realize that don’t you?”

“Never had one.  And I didn’t see a cat there or signs of one.”

“I was looking after him while O’Connell was away, so he’s been in my flat.”

“Only it probably got tossed about the same time as they visited his, and if the cat had any sense, he’d run.  Maury’s the sort who’d shoot the cat, just because it was there.”

“Perhaps we should go back and check.  Why the sudden interest in the cat?”

“It’s the only tangible thing he owned.  Sorry, he was attached to.”

“And you think the cat might be the clue?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

Not answering the question, was the answer.

“It might not be safe.”

“Then stay at the hotel and I’ll see you when I get back.”

She shook her head.  “No, I’m going with you.  Besides, you’ll need someone to watch your back.”

Or stab me in it if we found something.

 

© Charles Heath 2019-2020

“Trouble in Store” – Short stories my way:  Editing becomes re-writing (4)

I’ve been looking at the role of the policewoman, and her interaction with the shop’s participants.

I’m still working on whether she needs more or less of an introduction, but, for the time being, this is what I’m going with:

It had been another long day at the office for Officer Margaret O’Donnell, or, out in the streets, coping with people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the law.

People who couldn’t cross the road where there were crossings and lights to protect them, silly girls shoplifting on a dare, and boys who thought they were men and could walk on water.

The one they scraped of the road would never get to grow up, and his mother, well, she was not doing another call on a family to give them the bad news.

That was her day.

So far.

At the end of the day, she was glad to be getting home, putting her feet up, and forgetting about everything until the next morning when it would start all over again.

Coming around that last corner, the home stretch she called it, she was directly opposite the corner shop, usually closed at this hour of the night.  It was not.  The lights were still on.

She looked at her watch and saw it was ten minutes to midnight, and long past closing time.  She looked through the window, but from the other side of the road, she could only see three heads and little else.

Damn, she thought, I’m going to have to check it out. 

She was aware of the rumors, from her co-residents and also her colleagues down at the station, rumors she hoped were not true.

© Charles Heath 2016-2020

What do they call it? A busman’s holiday?

It has any number of names, from Leave of Absence to Vacation, but it is meant to be a time where you can rest and relax.

And by the time you finally get to go away, preferably somewhere as far from home as possible, you are sure ready for it.

Those long days at the office, the decisions, the deadlines, the endless pressure of having to achieve the impossible all melt away when you walk out the door, and what a feeling it is when you tell everyone, ‘I’m off on holidays, see you when I get back.’

As anyone will tell  you, it’s not wise to travel the next day if at all possible, because you need some time to decompress before tackling what sometimes can be an arduous getting to the final destination, especially if it is at a peak holiday period, or on planes where anything and everything can go wrong very quickly.

Been there done that.

We traveled the next day, nothing went wrong, and all is fine.

Except …

As a writer and having spent the last few months finishing off my last novel, I was looking forward to some down time.  The editor has the final draft, and I’m happy.

Then, as it always does, the best laid plans of mice and men …

It all comes unstuck.

Inspiration often comes out of left field; something happens, a piece in a newspaper, an item on TV, or just lying down staring at the ceiling, when ‘bang’  it hits you.

The start of a story, a theme that you can run with.

Damn.

I’ve been away for four days now and written seven chapters and the words will not stop.

If only …

Hey, what a great title for the story.

Sorry, got to get back to work!

 

 

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 59

Here’s the thing…

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

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

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

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

…

Did it upset me that Boggs was a little snarky?  Yes, a bit.

We’d been friends for a long time, the sort who had stuck together at school to keep arm’s length from the bullies and work together on projects and homework.  That friendship had become more important after his father disappeared, and I had believed he appreciated it.

Until this treasure thing.

It hadn’t been there, looking over everything.  The fact of the matter was he had been too young to understand any of it, and his mother wisely kept the extended details of her husband’s obsession away from him, and it was quite by chance he stumbled over his father’s effects in the attic.

Had she destroyed that stuff then perhaps we’d all not in this position?

Life had been more predictable, we avoided Alex and Vince, Nadia was nowhere to be seen, and life just rolled along in unemployed heaven.  Of course, that would have had to change, as it had, because my mother couldn’t continue to support a son in his late teens, and at that age, I should have been looking for both work, and to move on with my life.

The state of the economy, and the town’s fortunes, made that difficult, and I guess it would have been a matter of time before I left, like nearly all of my contemporaries had to the bigger towns and cities for more opportunities.

Benderby and the factory had staved that off, for now.

Other than that, I was rather pleased with the job I had, not too taxing, amenable hours so I could do other stuff, and although the only downside was working with Alex, all I had to do was avoid him, and the warehouse was a large building.

I went home to change and found my mother there, sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee.

“You’re home early,” I said when I saw her.

“On a break.  Had to go to the bank, and it wasn’t much further to come here.  Muriel tells me you’ve been talking to Nadia Cossatino.”

Talking to Nadia to her was the same as spending time with her.  And to my mother, the Cossatino’s were public enemies, close to the number one.

“You taught me to be polite and speak when spoken to.”

It was always good to quote her rules back to her when she was trying to admonish me.

“You know what the Cossatino’s are, Sam.”

“She doesn’t act like one, not now.”

“You know why they sent her away, don’t you?”

Sent away?  That was not what I heard, but then, as a so-called child, what we were told and what was reality were two entirely different things.

“I thought I did, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me the grown-up reason?”

“She stabbed a girl, and instead of going to juvenile detention, they sent her home to Italy where she couldn’t get into any more trouble.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did she stab another girl?”

“Do the Cossatino’s need reasons for what they do?  She’s not a very nice person, nor are the family very nice people.  Remember that the next time you see her.”

“She’s nice to me, and I prefer to be polite.  But I’ll take what you said and be careful.”

That said, I was dismissed, lecture given.

I changed and came back to pack a meal for the evening break.  Mother was still sitting at the table.

“I thought you’d be on your way back to work.”

“Not going back today.  I’m not feeling very well.  How is the job going?  I never get to see much of you these days.”

“I’m helping Boggs when I can.”

“Isn’t he on that treasure trail his father started?”

“Yes.  He found a box of his stuff in the attic, and we’ve been trying to make sense of it.”

“There is none.   There was no treasure, just a bunch of maps Boggs’s father made for the Cossatino’s to con people out of their money.”

“What about Ormiston?”

“He was a bigger fool than Boggs.  You don’t want to be humoring Boggs with such nonsense.  You concentrate on doing your job properly and let him follow his father down that rabbit hole.  I feel sorry for Muriel, having two of her family sucked into that mess.”

“And what if it is real?”

She gave me a look that told me the only thing that was real would be her wrath if I persisted with it.  “OK,” I said.  “I’ll try and reason with him, and get him to give it up.”

It was then I noticed the flowers over by the window, a very expensive-looking bouquet in an ornate vase.

“Do you have a secret admirer?”

She looked a little puzzled, then realized what I was talking about.

“Joshua sent them over, thought it might cheer me up.”

Joshua was Alex Benderby’s father, my employer.  Odd that he would be sending my mother flowers.  We were not anywhere near his social circle.

“He’s a kind man, Sam, and we have been friends since school.  I could do with some cheering up.”

I was not sure what she meant by that, but I hope it didn’t mean he would come visiting.  Knowing Benderby was a curse, not a benefit, and I hoped my job wasn’t contingent on her being nice to him.

I shuddered at the thought, said no more, and left for work.

My job was supposed to be my sanctuary, where I could get away from home, the depressive nature of living in the town, and Boggs and his treasure hunt.

It wasn’t an escape from Alex, and not only did he work in the same building, but treated it as his fiefdom, and resented the fact I’d ‘wormed’ my way into his domain.

Under that boastful and arrogant exterior, he really was just an insecure little boy.

But very, very dangerous.

He was leaving when I arrived, having switched from night shift to day, a blessing.  His alternate for the night shift was an uncaring old man who was approaching retirement and didn’t want anything to screw up his exit.

He let me do whatever I wanted so long as it didn’t blow back on him, and I took extra care not to cause offense, or raise any flags.  Stuff came in, stuff went out, the stock register was up to date, and nothing ran out.

It was as simple as that, and even so, Alex still couldn’t get it right so we covered for him.

Alex stopped at the door on the way out, a bad sign.

“You want to tell that clown of a friend, Boggs, to stop poking around the caves.  They’re not a place for amateurs.”

“I didn’t know he was poking around the caves.  Nor that you were.  Any particular reason?”

“It’s called spelunking, dimwit.”

I knew that but wasn’t going to make an issue of it.  He was lucky he could pronounce it let alone know what it was.

“They’re just caves, Alex, with nothing more than a few limestone pinnacles, and bat shit on the floor.  Unless, of course, you think the pirate captain hid his treasure in one of them.  I can’t see how, or why.  They’re a long way from the coast.”

“We’re not looking for treasure.  It doesn’t exist.”

“Then why warn Boggs off?”

He shook his head.  “You’re as daft in the head as he is.  Just tell him not to get in my way.”

With that, he was gone.  A huge sigh of relief, and a long peaceful night ahead of me.

Until the phone rang.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

An excerpt from “If Only” – a work in progress

Investigation of crimes don’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 very careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rules 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 Inspector Gabrielle Walters.  She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.

Routine was the word she used.

Her Sargeant was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible.  I could sense the raging violence within him.  Fortunately, common sense prevailed.

Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.

After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.

But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.

The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.

For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.

They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts.  Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.

No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.

She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be a very 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, 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 2018-2021

Using Hollywood as a source of inspiration

I’m not one for writing Western, I’ll leave the honours for that to Louis L’Amore, whose acquaintence I made when I saw How The West Was Won on the big screen, then read the book.

That led to reading a few more by Zane Grey, but it was not in the reading of the stories, but in the visual splendour of the west depicted in these films that made the actors almost secondary.

But my interest in watching Westerns had been fuelled by the fact my parents watched them on TV, though back on those days, they were in black and white, and starred John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd and, later on, Clint Eastwood among a great may others.

But the mainstay of my interest in the archetypal Western centred on John Wayne whose movies may have almost the same plot line, just a substitution of actors and locations.

Often it was not so much that John Wayne was in it, but the actors he surrounded himself with, like Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan, and Robert Mitcham, all of whom made the experience all the better.

Films like The Sons of Katie Elder, True Grit, Rio Bravo, and El Dorado.

Who can forget the vast open spaces, the dry dusty stresses lines with wooden buildings and endless walkways that substituted for footpaths. Bars in hotels, rooms overlookinf street, havens for sharpshooters, when bad guys outnumbers the good guys, and typically the sherrif who always faced insurmountable odds.

Or the attacks staged by Indians who were routinely killed, in fact there was not one film I saw where they ended up winning any battle. Only in recent years did they get a more sympathetic role, one film that comes to mind Soldier Blue, which may have painted then as savages, but a possible reason why they ended up so.

But for those without Indians, there were plenty of others whose intentions were anything but for the good of the settlers.

A lot of films ended in the classic gun fight. High Noon, 3:10 to Yuma are two, or where the story led to gun fights between good and bad in unlikely places like El Dorado or Rio Bravo.

There are countless others I could name, like Shane, or became to be called, the spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood, or last but not least, The Magnificent Seven, or Once Upon a time in the west.

All have contributed to a picture in my mind of how the American West was, fearsome men, beleaguered sheriffs, people with good intentions, and those driven by greed and power. All of this playing out in the harshest of conditions where life and death could be determined by a wrong word or a stray bullet.

And let’s not forget the role of the guns, Colt, Winchester, Remington. And Smith and Wesson, and the gunslingers of the day. Some were good, most according to the film world were bad.

So, against the lifelong interest of watching and reading about the archetypal view of the old West, shall I attempt to put pen to paper. Thank God it will be a work of fiction, because I don’t think there’s many who knew what it was really like.