Tag: Fiction

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 54

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.

…

A dark room, a dark woman, and a dark desire.

A very, very bad combination.

But in a moment where my brain must have switched off for at least ten seconds, I kissed her back, and that was a fatal mistake.

I closed my eyes and went with it.  Until one or other or both of us decided this was not the time or the place.

And then she said something that really worried me.

“I’m sorry.”

She unbolted the door, opened it and we stepped out.  Instantly the temperature dropped forty degrees.

And sanity returned.

I tried getting my mind back onto realistic matters, like leaving.  “Do you think they might be waiting, just in case there is someone here, like us?”

“Then we have to go another way.”

“There is only one way, the way we came.  It was a dead-end where the torture room is, and, apparently, where there’s a safe.”

“WE’RE not staying to find out, maybe another day.  It’s time to leave before they possibly come back. There’s a back way in here.”

I followed her out of the room, up two offices, and then into what would be the middle office.  It looked like a reception area, with dusty seats along the wall, under peeling wallpaper.  At the back there was another door, shut.  She opened it, and it led to a passage.

“The cells.”

“Like a jail?”

“Like rooms for the shoplifters awaiting their punishment.”

She stopped at a doorway and looked in.  I saw her physically shudder, before moving on.

“Bad memories?” I asked.

“It might not have happened if I’d acted my age, but you know what it’s like.  When you’re sixteen, you want to be twenty-one, and when you’re twenty-one, you want to be sixteen again.  Trouble is, you can’t get back what you’ve lost.”

I wondered briefly if that something was innocence.  Some people seemed to think I still had mine, but I wasn’t so sure.

The passage didn’t go very far before it turned right, and then to the top of another staircase.  We went down, and then to the left again.  From what I could remember, we were on the other side of the mall.

There was another door, and we went through it, and out into the mall itself.  It was the second level, near the center where the garden was, and moments later we were at the railing looking down to the ground floor.

And a faint glow of light, moving around as if it was being carried by someone moving slowly towards the pond.

And voices.

“Look, Alex, there’s no one here.  We’ve just done a circuit of this creepy place and found no one and nothing else to show there is anyone here.”

“I can feel it.

“That’s the coke you had, Alex.  Turns you paranoid.  Let’s get the hell out of here, before the guards get back.”

We moved back from the edge just in time as a stronger beam of light swept past just where we had been standing.

She had held my hand as we moved backward, and I could feel a tremor in it.

After another sweep of the beam, he said, “I swear someone’s here.”

“It’s a ghost.  There are supposed to be a few.  Ask your father.  He’s responsible for at least three of them.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“Just shut up and let’s go, before I shoot you myself, and then you can talk to your friends.”

We waited ten minutes until there was a boom, the sound of a door slamming shut.  They had left by the front entrance where there was a large, heavier door, beside the large main entrance.

“Time for us to go too, Smidge.”

Even so, she didn’t let my hand go, not until we got back to her car.

And when we were back, safely inside her room, she asked me to stay.  She said nothing on the way back.  The bravado she had shown was just that, and the last encounter, at the mall center had shaken her.

Perhaps I would stay until her nerves had settled.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

In a word: needle

…

In the current times, the word needle is very polarising.

Will you have the vaccine, or not.  Is one of the reasons simply because you hate needles?

I know I do and have a fear factor of 100%.  Fortunately, I got very sick a few years ago and spent 10 days in the hospital, and was forced to have multiple needles every day.

Now it’s not so hard

But, I digress.

A needle is one of those things used in the medical profession mainly to deliver vaccines and medicine.  It is a very small cylinder.

A needle can be used to sew up a garment or make repairs.  This is a smallish piece of metal with an eyelet.

A needle can also be used to stitch up wounds, though it’s best you have a local anesthetic first.

Another way of using needles is to describe tiny icicles which hurt when they hit your face or your eyes.  It is called a needle effect.

Then, another use of the word, is to needle someone, that is to say, bombard them with questions, or annoy them.

It’s a pointer on a dial, like that of a fuel gauge, which for me, always seems to hover just above empty.  It can also be on a compass, where heading north is not always clear especially where magnets are nearby.

A fir tree’s leaves are more like needles.

You need one to play a record on a gramophone, not that they exist anymore.

Paradoxically it can also be used to describe a pointy rock or an obelisk-like “Cleopatra’s Needle”

It is also an etching tool.

And then I woke up

One minute I was sitting out in my office, working on some tweets, and the next I woke up, staring at a black screen.

I thought we’d lost power.

No, I’d been asleep for a long time.

To be honest, I’m worn out.  It’s the end of the year and when it’s supposed to be a time to relax, go on holidays, do something else, I find life is getting more and more hectic.

Yes, I’m going on holiday, but it will be a time when I’m subconsciously looking for new locales for stories, the people, the places, what goes on, all different to my usual humdrum.

So, not a holiday in the true sense of the word.

What put me into this trance-like state was writing the next line, yep, it was as simple as that.  I stopped at a particular point where I had something else to say, and it just felt like the train had come to the end of the track, out there, in the middle of nowhere.

I wrote that line in my mind, and it sounded good, much the same as we sometimes say something in our mind before we speak, and when we finally do, it sounded better in my head than out loud.

Perhaps I’m losing my touch.

Perhaps that ability to sum up everything I want to say in less than 200 characters is beginning to desert me, and old age and decrepitude is setting in.

Which reminds me, pills before bed.

Perhaps I’m just tired and it’s time to go to bed.

I keep putting it off because sometimes I can’t go to sleep and I’m just lying there staring at the ceiling, sometimes the cinema of my dreams.

I imagine I’m somewhere else, someone else, doing something else.

But not in a helicopter.  Not tonight.

Tonight it’s a sinking ship.

Gotta run!

 

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 10

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 prioritising.

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

An interrogation continues

 

“So, take it from the top, give me a detailed rundown on the operation, from the briefing to coming here.”

That was an interesting request.  My usual report would not go into so much detail, and I had been compiling it on the go because if left until the end, crucial details were always omitted.

And, with the explosion, a lot of details had been mislaid in my mind, with more important or over-arching problems, getting a more prominent place in my memory.  It was a valuable lesson learned on reporting, we’d received from a man who most of my classmates thought odd, to the point of paranoid.

“I received the text message the night before to report to the midtown office for the briefing.  The code word was Chancellor and it was recognised at the security station.  If it was bogus I would not have made it in the building.”

“You go there for all your briefings?”

“Yes.”

“Same team?”

“For the previous five, yes.  This last one, a different team.  “One of us asked what happened to the previous team and we were told that it was none of our business.  We were given orders and sent out into the field to do a job.  That job, we were reminded, was not to ask irrelevant questions.”

“The leader told you that?”

“In no uncertain terms.”

“Go on.”

“We were given a photograph of the man that I have just given to you.  No mention was made of what he had done to warrant surveillance, only that we were to not lose him and to note everything he did.

“We were told where he might be found at a particular time, and a particular place, information that was correct.”

“Your team members?”

“Fiona Davis, Jack Venables, Walter Arbon, and me.”

“I take it you had the target under surveillance, ready to hand off to the next team member?”

“Before the explosion, yes, it was my leg.”

“You’re referring to the explosion in Church Street?”

“Yes.  I’d just past it when there was an explosion, and I was caught in the aftermath, and narrowly avoided the shrapnel raining down.  Others were not so lucky.”

“That’s where you lost him?”

“He was in front of me, thus avoiding the fallout.  It took a minute or so to get my bearings, and even then it was very hazy with the dust and carnage around me, but I did manage to see him in the distance heading towards the next person’s tag point.”

“You didn’t resume surveillance?”

“Couldn’t.  Too disoriented.  I put out an alert on the comms, but no one answered, not straight away.”

“You didn’t suspect anything?”

“Not then.,  I put it down to a malfunction from the blast.”

“You said ‘not straight away’?”

“About five minutes had passed when a voice came in my ear, asking for an update.  I didn’t think much about it at the time, because of the temporary disorientation, but it was about the time for the next team to take over.  There were two rolling teams of four.”

“Why did you think it odd?”

“Because they would know about the explosion.  Everyone within a mile radius would.  But at the time I simply said I was caught up in the aftermath and that the target was last seen heading towards the takeover point.  Then I was told the target was sighted.”

“I assume you then considered your role had ended?”

“Yes.  I’d been told to follow the advice of the medical staff on site.”

“Which was?”

“Go to the hospital for a check-up.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.  I was heading away from the blast site when I saw the target again.  I stopped, watched, got out of sight, and waited.  He was coming back in my direction.”

“Was that an expected scenario, that he might backtrack?”

“No.  In the briefing we were told it was possible he would be moving from the point where we found him, to another for a clandestine meeting, away from the blast site.”

What did you do then?”

“Checked the position of the next member of the surveillance team. C I found him, and he was dead.  I made an assumption that the other two may have suffered a similar fate, and resumed surveillance on the target.”

“Did you report it?”

“Over the comms, yes.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, no one answered.”

“Not even the director?”

“No.”

She made a note, crossed it out and wrote another with an underline.  A thick black line repeatedly, expressing her anger.

“You maintained surveillance?”

“Yes.”

“Until?”

“I’d cornered him in an alley, near a railway station.  I suspected he might head for it.  He’s seen me, and nearly dispatched me in the same manner as the others.  Luckily it was only a scratch.”

It was more than that and required 12 stitches but they didn’t need to know that.

“Then, Severin arrived, and out of nowhere, he was shot dead.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Only to ask what he had done with the other members of my team.  He never answered.”

“Did you report that you’d caught him?”

“No.  Didn’t have to.  Severin arrived just after I had.”

“And that’s all of it?”

“In my report.  Yes.  When I get to write it, but I’ll need my phone.  It has the relevant details, except for the last part where I’d found him.”

“No name?”

“No.”

“You didn’t know he was one of ours?”

“No.  That fact only came to my attention when he told me.  When you’re given a target, you don’t ask what the relevance is, or what he’s done.  I’m sure you’re fully aware of the current practices and procedures.”

That last sentence slipped out, and by the look on her face, wasn’t well received.  I’d forgotten the golden rule.  Stick to the facts.  No embellishment, no emotion.

She made another note, closed the book, and got up.  “I’d like you to stay, just for the time being while we sort through the details.”

Then she left.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

Bloody hell… – a short story

The cell phones insistent and shrill ring dragged my mind away from the crossword, and after a fairly mild curse, I picked it up.

Sidney, my brother.  Odd he was calling me at this hour of the night.

“What,” I barked into the speaker.

“That’s no way to speak to your baby brother.”  His smooth tones rarely reached a screaming point, which was often the reason why mine did.

And who called the younger brother ‘baby’ brother these days?

“What do you want?”

A hesitation.  He was in trouble again, I could feel it.

“Can you come down to the bar.  I seem to have left my wallet at home.”  Sheepish, and just enough to stop me from yelling at him.  It was not the first time, nor would it be the last.

“I told you the last time was the last time.”

“Just this once, please?”

I shook my head.  That was probably my biggest fault, giving in to him.  After our mother had died, and our father had to work, it was left to me to bring him up.  He was going to be the death of me yet.  “Where?”

“The usual place.”

I was surprised because the last I’d heard they’d banned him from going in there.  It was only a twenty-minute walk from my apartment, but, late at night, and winter, there was snow in the air.  And the odd snowflake falling, a prelude to much worse.

About a hundred yards from the bar I had a shiver go down my spine.  I’d not had that for a long time, not since school, and the trouble with Wiley, the school bully.  Wiley had graduated to the local thug, done a few stints in jail, and last I heard he had been sent down for a few years for an assault.

I stopped and took a moment.  Perhaps karma was trying to tell me something.

I shrugged.  Just in my imagination.  I reached the door, took a moment then went in.  He was standing by the bat looking a little apprehensive.  He was in more trouble than just not paying his bar bill.

Close up I could see the fear in his expression.  “Bloody hell, Sid, what have you done now?”

“A problem that he insists his older brother would be happy to pay for.”

I knew that voice and felt instant dread.

Wiley.

In the flesh, and not looking very happy at all.

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

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

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

The novel ‘Echoes from the past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The birthday’.

My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.

Thus the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.

So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.

So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.

I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.

And like all re-writes, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.

There was motivation.  I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample.  I was going to give them the re-worked short story.  Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’

Originally it was not set anywhere in particular.

But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself.  We were there for New Years, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.

One evening we were out late, and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow, it was cold and wet, and there were apartment buildings shimmering in the street light, and I thought, this is the place where my main character will live.

It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected.  I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.

I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.

Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller center is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.

The original main character was a shy and man of few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party.  I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble.  No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.

Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule, and begins a relationship?

But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul, as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

 

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

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The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 53

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.

…

There was blood spatter along one wall, and more underneath a chair just out from the wall. On the other side of the room was a table with some rather gruesome instruments on it.

I immediately felt sorry for the archaeologist. He must have endured serious pain before dying. It would be interesting to see a copy of the Medical Examiners report. The room had another overlying aroma other than the mustiness.

What did death smell like?

“Do you think this is where Alex and his cronies hang out?”

“Well, I can tell you for sure it’s not Vince’s lair. He has a house back at Patterson’s Reach. Besides, this mall is Benderby’s territory. It’s his security people who look after this place.”

Then that meant Alex or one of the Benderby’s was responsible for the murder of the archaeologist. Clearly, they were trying to get information out of him, not kill him.

“You think we should tell the cops?”

“You’re asking a Cossatino that question. I thought you knew better.”

“I happen to be in good with the Sheriff. It might make a difference.”

“No, I can assure you it won’t. Too much water under that bridge I’m afraid.”

Perhaps I was hoping she was not like the rest. Of course, if I actually stopped for a minute to think about it, it was probably a lot wiser not to say anything, simply because of the questions it would raise, and the grief the Benderby’s, and particularly Alex, would rain down on me.

We had a piece of evidence we couldn’t do anything with.

For now. That might change in the future.

There were also several filing cabinets and a cupboard in the room, but there was nothing of interest in any of them. It was simply a torture chamber. I had to hope I’d never finish up in here.

“Let’s get out here,” Nadia said, “It’s giving me the creeps.”

I’d felt a shudder or two go down my spine too. If it belonged to the Benderby’s and Alex in particular, he had already passed the point of no return. Alex was a bastard, but I didn’t think he could stoop to this sort of behavior. Vince? Maybe. Like the other members of the Cossatino family, excluding Nadia, he was as psychopathic as the rest.

It just goes to show you couldn’t judge a book by its cover. Alex’s boyish good looks hid something far more sinister underneath.

Just as we stepped out of the room and Nadia pulled the door shut, relocking it, we heard a sound coming from downstairs. The acoustics in the passage and stairwells was quite good, enough, at least, to alert us that someone else was in the building nearby.

“Someone is coming?” Nadia muttered.

“Here?” It was obvious where they were coming to, it was just the surprise anyone else would be around at this hour of the morning.

She glared at me. “Where else would they be going, shopping?”

Annoyance.

We quickly moved towards the next room, the door open, and stepped inside, taking a quick look around. There was another room running off it, and we went in there and closed the door. It had a manual lock, not using a key, and she put it in place.

A quick look around the room showed it to be a bathroom and didn’t exactly have the best of aromas. Perhaps stagnant water.

We stood side by side near the door. We could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, it sounded like two people, and then voices, slightly muffled.

“What did you say we’re here for?”

A male voice I hadn’t heard before.

“A map.”

Alex. I’d know that voice anywhere.

A few seconds later I heard him speak again, “Who the hell left these maps out? Who’s been here? They know the rules.”

“No one. I’m sure of it.” The other voice had a tremor in it.

Alex probably left them out himself, but he was not one to take the blame for anything.

“Someone’s been here. The footprints on the floor. They look fresh.”

We could then hear him coming up the passage. Had we left footprints into the other room and possibly this one? I was almost at the stage of holding my breath.

He went to the end, that last room that had been used as a torture chamber.

“You got the key to this room?”

“No. You know that’s not where we’re allowed to go. Your father’s orders remember.”

“What about this room?”

He was standing in the doorway, and I could see the torchlight from under the door.

“There’s nothing here, no one here. No one had been here, Alex. No one knows about this place. You said so yourself.”

“Except Vince. Mall cops dragged him up here one and beat him up. That was a good day.”

Once more he flashed the light around the room, and along the floor, and it seemed our footprints weren’t showing a path to this door. If he was to come in and start pounding on it, I’d have a heart attack.

“Perhaps no one has been here then, except Ed. We’ll talk to him later.”

The light disappeared, and the footsteps receded.

There were no more voices for a few minutes, then Alex said, “Got it. Now let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

The footsteps and voices receded quickly as they retraced their steps, leaving us, once again, in silence.
Except I swear I could hear my heart beating very rapidly.

“Wow,” She said. “That was exciting.”

“What? We nearly got caught.”

“No matter. I could have used my charms on him.”

She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Instead, I have you.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

The cinema of my dreams – It’s a treasure hunt – Episode 51

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.

—-

We took her car.  It wasn’t a limousine of the sort I’d seen the other Cossatino’s driving around in, but a shabby old compact that had seen better days.  Perhaps it was selected for its camouflage qualities, it fitted in with a lot of other old cars that the general population drove.

No one in this town could afford any better.  Not unless you were a Cossatino or a Benderby.  Alex, for instance, had been given a Porsche on his 18th birthday.  By comparison, I was given a new, but second hand, bicycle.

She had parked in a back street some distance from the hotel, and the several times I checked, we were not being followed.  She had noticed me looking over my shoulder a few times but hadn’t commented.  Not until we had driven several miles.

“Alex has one of his mates following me,” I said by way of an explanation.  “Alex seems to think I might lead them to the treasure, which is about as daft as it can get.”

“He’s clutching at straws.  His old man had found out what he’s doing, not that he has told him he knows, and he’s going out of his way to distract Alex.  Old man Benderby doesn’t think there is any treasure.”

“How do you know what the old man is doing?”

“Talks to my father.  They might be sworn enemies, but that doesn’t mean they don’t talk.  It amuses them to see Alex and Vince go head to head.  It’s a waste of time trying to impress their respective fathers.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not trying to impress anyone.  At the right time, I’m packing my bags and going back to Italy to live with the other branch of the family, the ones who are not interested in being master criminals.  I just want to soak up the Tuscan sun and drink wine.”

“I’m sure your father would have something to say about that.”

“He has, but I’m not interested in using my ‘wiles’ as he calls them to get men to spill their secrets.  I’ve seen what it’s done to my mother and my sisters.  I’m not a criminal.”

Not now perhaps.  But back in school, she used every asset to get what she wanted.  It won over Alex, and a few others, particularly those who did her schoolwork for her.  She had nearly every boy at school dangling on a puppet string.

I was lucky she never gave me a second look.

“Well, I’m sure you made a lot of boys happy.”

A sidelong glance told me that wasn’t the wisest of statements to make.  Despite the fact it was true, I guess it was a time she’d rather forget.

I changed the subject.  “So when you went away, I’m thinking you went over to Italy?”

“For a while.  My father thought I was getting a little too close to Alex and sent me to what he thought would be purgatory.  I loved it.  Pity I had to come back.”

We’d reached a small area behind a row of shrubs that shielded us from being seen from the mall.  Something else I’d noticed, it was a cloudy night, and off and on the moon would disappear behind a bank of scudding clouds, and then just before we arrived, the moon had completely disappeared.

When we got out of the car, the darkness closed in around us, and it took a minute or so for my eyes to adjust.  The black clothes almost made us invisible.

I watched her as she wrapped her hair up into a bun and secure it with a band.  Dragged back off her forehead, it made her look older.  It also accentuated the fact she had carefully applied makeup, an odd thing to do when about to go running around in a very dirty place.

The parking spot was a long way from where Boggs and I had last gained entry, so did she have a different entry point.

“Ready?” she asked.

“As ever.”

She took off at a quick pace and I found myself almost jogging to keep up.  She was very fit.  I was not.  We cut across another carpark, one of several surrounding the mall, this one giving some cover because originally there had been landscaping.  It was now overgrown and out of control, and we could move through it and no one could see us.

Not that there was anyone else there.

We came out of the garden, crossed a road, and into an inset where there was a door.

The rusting sign on the door said that the outside should be kept clear as it was a fire exit.

The lock, from what I could see, looked reasonably clean, unlike patches of rust on the door itself, and around the edges of the lock.

“I presume you have a key?”

She pulled a keyring out of her pocket with several keys on it, selected one, and inserted it in the lock.

Nothing.

She tried the next key.  Same result.  She tried the last key.

It turned, and the door swung open.  For a door that showed the rust it did, it moved easily and silently.

She stood to one side as I passed through, then she followed me in, closing the door behind us.  A sign on the back said the door was not to be used, except for fire emergencies, and was alarmed.  No power, no alarm.

“Don’t suppose I should ask where you got the key?”

“Best not.”  She handed me a small torch and turned hers on.  I followed suit.  There was not a lot of light in front of us.  It was, however, quite dark.

“Follow me,” she said, and we set off down a long narrow passage.

—-

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 9

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 prioritising.

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

An interrogation and a revelation.

 

I think I just about reached that same conclusion just seconds before she uttered it.  But, I didn’t think this was the time to air my own thoughts on the matter.

The question I did ask was, “It appears our service has been compromised.”

She glanced at me almost condescendingly.  “It appears so.  Have you got your cell phone?”

I had it with me and gave it to her.  I had it ready because I knew they would ask for it.  It had a record of orders given, and phone conversations made, before, during, and after the operation.

For a review, or in this case, a search for the guilty.

I watched her put in the passcode, and go to the messages, and bring up the one sent to me, to attend the briefing.  It was all in order, no different to the previous five, with all the right designations and protocols.

“There was no reason to suspect it was anything but a real callout.”

Another glance at the screen, she put it on the desk next to the file.  “No, it looks real enough.”

Thought best kept to myself; how the hell did someone outside our organisation, know so well our inner workings?  I wanted to ask the question but refrained from doing so.

It also explained, now that I thought about it, the reason why the target had said he was one of us.  We had been hunting him so someone else, and enemy organisation perhaps, so they could kill him.  The question was, why?  Had he made a discovery, the evidence he was referring to that a certain Alfred Nobbin might have.

Perhaps a good idea, for the time being, to keep that snippet of information to myself.  After all, this new person in front of me could be one of Severin’s people.

Where I was sitting was not a familiar place to me, though I had been to the building before, which is why I knew where to go for this interview.  AS for the people, everyone I’d met so far, other than the other team members, bar one, I’d known from training.

So, now another expected question from me, or at least, if I was on the other side of the table, it’s one I’d expect to be asked.  “Just who was I working for, if it was not for us?”

Assuming she was one of us.

“That’s what we intend to find out.  Who was the target?”

I gave her the description we’d been given, and a copy of his photograph that had been circulated at the briefing.  I’d kept one of them, and luckily no one noticed it missing.  It was fortuitous that’s I’d copied the photo before I had to give it to her, which was right then.

There was not a flicker of recognition in her eyes.

“So, not one of us?” I asked.

For an interrogation, she wasn’t asking many relevant questions.

She looked up.  “Why would you say that, if your mission was to keep him under surveillance?”

“Which we now know was not sanctioned, so we have to assume that we had been persuaded to find and track one of our own agents.  You look as though you didn’t recognise him?”

“I don’t try to remember every agent we have in the field, here and overseas.  There a few too many for that.  But I’ve got a request out for his identity.  He didn’t say who he was?”

“No.”

“Anything at all that might be useful?”

“That he was one of us, who’d made a mistake, and feared we’d set the dogs on him.”

“Yes.  Someone definitely did that.”

 

© Charles Heath 2019