Tag: Reading

After a few days to consider the existing text – a new approach? – Part 3

It’s been a while since I looked at this story, and after reading the start through each iteration, it always seems the case that I’m never quite satisfied.

That said, I decided to come at it from a different direction.  It might not be better, but it might provide a different perspective, and lead to a more polished start in the next iteration.

Certainly this time, there are more words, and a totally different start.  It was needed bcause we need to get a little insight into the main character, just before the action starts.

And now we know our main character is a bit of a pessimist, something bad does happen.

…

There were five cars in the car park, three over the back, and one next to mine, closer to the entrance.  Perhaps it was one of the two new guards, though I thought they had left before me.  The three others belonged to the morning shift.

As I approached it, the door opened, and a figure well wrapped up in snow clothes got out.  My first thought, the detective who had said he would get back to me, though I doubted he would come to the factory site, or in this weather.

Someone else then?

I headed towards the other car, and seeing me approach them, the person stopped not far from the door.

“David?”

It was a voice I was familiar with, belonging to my sister Penelope.  She had pulled back the hood so I could just see her face and from what I could see, she didn’t look too well.  My second thought, how did she know where I worked.  We were supposed to meet a cafe in town, later in the morning.

“How did you find me?”

“I’m a lawyer, I can find anything or anyone.”

“What couldn’t wait a few hours.  I just finished a long shift and was hoping to freshen up before coming to see you.”

“Circumstances.”

A second, maybe two, after she took a step towards me, the windscreen of her car shattered.  Instictively, I dived towards her, pushing her to the ground between the cars just as there was a loud bang as something hit the front of the her car.

A bullet.  A sound I was familiar with, and hoped I wouldn’t hear again.

“What the…”

“Someone is shooting at us.”  The moment I said it, it sounded unbelievable.

A second shot, lower this time, not far from where my head had just been, told me we were being targeted by a sniper, a good one to get so close in these conditions.

It was cold, and cramped in that small space, and the sniper wasn’t going to wait around until we came out, he, or she, was going to come to us and finish the job.

“What the hell have you got me into,” I said, more than a little anger in my tone.

“I think my husband is trying to kill me.”

…

More on this tomorrow, enough time to get over the shock, and figure out what to do…

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

In a word: Might

We might have to use some might to beat the mite.  Confused?

Might is force, so expending might is much the same as what Thor does with his hammer.

We might expend some force, we this might is a maybe.  You’re never quite sure when someone uses the word might, whether or not they will actually do it.

I might do a lot of things, but somehow I never seem to get around to actually doing them,

Of and just for the record, it’s the past tense of the word may.  You know, you may do something, or you might not.

You might also use the word might when being polite, which seems to be a rarity these days because everyone is terse, tense, and it a hurry.

So might I go to the movie will aways get a resounding no if it means you get home late at night.   And you’re only 10 years old.

I might be interested, but I don’t think so.  Let me think about it.  Which also means no.

Of course, if you’re slack in doing homework, you might want to try a little harder next time.

What might have been if only you tried harder?

Then there’s that little pest called a mite, though it goes by a lot of other names, one of which is everywhere, a termite.

Or a dust mite.

It also could be used slangily for a child in distress, that is, look at that poor little mite, he looks so tired.

Or another word for slightly, for example, the girl seemed a mite embarrassed.

 

 

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 35

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

 

She gave me a minute to think about the situation, and then said what I was thinking, “So he could be anywhere?”

“He was dead.  I felt for a pulse.  There wasn’t one.”

I could interpret that expression on her face, ‘you’re not a doctor’.

She turned another page, read a few lines, then made a note at the bottom.

It read, if my deciphering was up to scratch, ‘doesn’t know if subject dead or not’.

She looked up again.  “It appears these documents are out there,” she waved her hand in the air, “somewhere.  Fortunately, they have not turned up, not has someone tried to sell them back or to the newspapers, so we’re lucky.  So far.  That isn’t going to last for much longer.  Every extra day out there is another chance for the government to be embarrassed.”

“You know what the contents are?”

“Don’t be silly.  That’s above my pay grade, and besides, you and I are better off not knowing.  So, what you need to do is find O’Connell and/or find the documents on this USB drive.”

She slid a card across the table.  It had a name and a telephone number.  Monica Sherive.  A mobile number, a burner no doubt that couldn’t be traced back to her.

“You find either, you tell me first.”

“Nobbin?”

“Second, and when I tell you.”

“So you don’t trust him either?”

“At the moment, for both you and I have to be careful who we trust.”

I added her to the list of people I couldn’t trust, not that she had told me I could trust her.  Yet.

“And if I get contacted by Severin again?”

“Have you?”

I had thought about not telling her about that brief meeting where he told me about the USB drive, but it couldn’t do any harm.  At least she hadn’t asked me if I knew about the USB, which was something, I suppose.

“Yes.  Once.  Told me to keep my head down.  And asked me if O’Connell had time to talk to me.  It was the same answer I gave him back in the alley.  No.  I’d just managed to corner him when he was shot.”

“By Severin, or this other fellow,” she shuffled back several pages, then said, “Maury?”

“No.  That was what was odd about it.  The shot came from somewhere else.  A sniper I would have thought.”

And, my brain suddenly moving into overdrive, piecing together what might be a coincidence, but in our business, they were rarely coincidences.  A sniper shot him., say Nobbin or one of his people, he looks dead, waits for a call to the cleaners, intercepts it, and collects the so-called dead O’Connell.  It was a good conspiracy theory.

And as far-fetched as one.

Severin had to have the body somewhere, trying to figure out how to bring O’Connell back to life so he could torture the USB location out of him.

Hell, that was as twisted as the conspiracy theory.

Time to change the subject.  “Do you have any idea who Severin and Maury are?”

She went to the back of the file and pulled out some photographs, mug shots perhaps of staff members.  She put five faces in front of me and asked me if the two were there.

They were.  The first, with the name of David Westcott, and the fourth with the name of Bernie Salvin.

“Who are they?”

“They used to work in the training department for ten or so years ago.  Westcott was also a handler for several years.  They both requested a transfer to operations, and we give a mission.  Six agents were assigned, and all six were killed, an investigation after the fact found that their identities had been leaked to the enemy before they reached the target.”

“They gave them up?”

“Nobody knows for sure.  There were others in that group, but in the end, the department retired them all.  All their years in training served them well.  We found the place where you were trained.”

Another photograph of the main building.  I nodded.

“It was an old training facility closed down five years ago.  It was just sitting there waiting for an enterprising crew.  It won’t happen again.  Needless to say, we haven’t been able to find either of them, only the people they employed, who believed it was in good faith.  A mess in other words.  Now, go.  Find me answers.”

She stood.  The meeting was over.

© Charles Heath 2020

Short Story writing – don’t try this at home! – Part 7

Putting it all together: the short story

…

I had once said that Grand Central Station, in New York, was large enough you could get lost in it.  Especially if you were from out of town.

I know, I was from out of town, and though I didn’t quite get lost, back then I had to ask directions to go where I needed to.

It was also an awe-inspiring place, and whenever I had a spare moment, usually at lunchtime, I would go there and just soak in the atmosphere. It was large enough to make a list of places to visit, or find, or get a photograph from some of the more obscure places.

Today, I was just there to work off a temper. Things had gone badly at work, and even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, I still felt bad about it.

I came in the 42nd street entrance and went up to the balcony that overlooked the main concourse. A steady stream of people was coming and going, most purposefully, a few were loitering, and several police officers were attempting to move on a vagrant. It was not the first time.

But one person caught my eye, a young woman who had made a circuit of the hall, looked at nearly every destination board, and appeared to be confused. It was the same as I had felt when I first arrived.

Perhaps I could help.

The problem was, a man approaching a woman from out of left field would have a very creepy vibe to it, so it was probably best left alone.

After another half-hour of watching the world go by, I had finally got past the bad mood and headed back to work. I did a wide sweep of the main concourse, perhaps more for the exercise than anything else, and had reached the clock in the center of the concourse when someone turned suddenly, and I crashed into them.

Not badly, like ending up on the floor, but enough for a minor jolt. Of course, it was my fault because I was in another world at that particular moment.

“Oh, I am sorry.” A woman’s voice, very apologetic.

I was momentarily annoyed, then, when I saw who it was, it passed. It was the lost woman I’d seen earlier.

“No. Not your fault, but mine entirely. I have a habit of wandering around with my mind elsewhere.”

Was it fate that we should meet like this?

I noticed she was looking around, much the same as she had before.

“Can I help you?”

“Perhaps you can. There’s supposed to be a bar that dates back to the prohibition era here somewhere. Campbell’s Apartment, or something like that. I was going to ask…”

“Sure. It’s not that hard to find if you know where it is. I’ll take you.”

It made for a good story, especially when I related it to the grandchildren, because the punch line was, “and that’s how I met your grandmother.”

…

© Charles Heath 2022

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 34

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

…

She had brought a file.  It looked the same as the last one she brought with her, the one with my name on it.

This time it was thicker.

Intelligence gathering at its finest.  There’d be stuff in there that even I didn’t know about me.

She didn’t open it, just looked at me.

“What have you been doing?”

“Working?”

“For whom?”

“Nobbin, of course.  I am now assigned to his section.  Did you do that?”

“He did.  He tells me you’re working on the O’Connell investigation.”

“Is that what it’s called.  He never told me that.  And I had to find out where I’d been assigned by logging onto a computer.  An email or a letter would have made my life a little easier.”

“You’re just lucky you’re still working here.  Now, tell me more about this Severin character.”

“I told you everything I knew the last time you spoke to me.  Apparently, you seemed to know who it was.  Perhaps you might tell me, too.”

“It’s…”

“And,” I interrupted, “don’t tell me it’s above my pay grade.  I was potentially working for traitors and could have finished up in jail for treason.”

“You might still get there.”

Then why hadn’t she had me arrested and thrown in a dungeon the last time we met?  There was an easy answer to that question.  She needed me out in the field.  Nobbin needed me in the field.  They presumably needed me to remain available to Severin for whatever reason.

“What do you want?”

She opened the file, turned a few pages, and stopped at a yellow sheet of paper.  I wasn’t able to read it upside down, but it had very small spidery writing on it.

Then she looked at me again.

“Some secret documents appear to have gone missing.  We believe that is to say Director Dobbin thinks these may have been on a USB drive that was in the possession of O’Connell at the time of his death.  You were there at the time of his death.  You can see where this is going…”

No matter which answers I gave it was the wrong one, which led to do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars, or pounds as the case may be.

“I haven’t got it, and he didn’t tell me where it was, and I saw him die.”

“If you say so.”  She went back to the file and turned some more pagers.

“What do you mean?”

She looked up.  “So far, there’s no body been recovered, or any evidence there was a shooting where you said it was.”

“Are you trying to tell me he’s alive, because if you are, then I must be a very poor judge of people who have no pulse.  He was not about to get up and walk away.”

“Did you see the body removed?”

Now there’s an interesting point.  I had done as I was told and left when told to.  I assumed Severin would sort the problem out, in fact, hadn’t he called in the cleaners?  I saw a white van.

Actually, when I thought about it, I had no idea what happened after I left.  And, now that I remember, I didn’t see anyone get out of the white van.

Could bodies get up and walk?

I was beginning to think they could.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

Searching for locations: Hutongs, Beijing, China

What are Hutongs?

In Beijing Hutongs are formed by lines of traditional courtyard residences, called siheyuan.  Neighborhoods were formed by joining many hutongs together. These siheyuan are the traditional residences, usually occupied by a single or extended family, signifying wealth, and prosperity. 

Over 500 of these still exist.Many of these hutongs have been demolished, but recently they have become protected places as a means of preserving some Chinese cultural history.  They were first established in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)Many of these Hutongs had their main buildings and gates built facing south, and lanes connecting them to other hutongs also ran north to south.

Many hutongs, some several hundred years old, in the vicinity of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower and Shichahai Lake are preserved and abound with tourists, many of which tour the quarter in pedicabs.

The optional tour also includes a visit to Shichahai, a historic scenic area consisting of three lakes (Qianhai, meaning Front Sea; Houhai, meaning Back Sea and Xihai, meaning West Sea), surrounding places of historic interest and scenic beauty and remnants of old-style local residences, Hutong and Courtyard.  

First, we had a short walk through the more modern part of the Hutong area and given some free time for shopping, but we prefer just to meander by the canal.  

There is a lake, and if we had the time, there were boats you could take.

With some time to spare, we take a quick walk down one of the alleyways where on the ground level are small shops, and above, living quarters.

Then we go to the bell and drum towers before walking through some more alleys was to where the rickshaws were waiting.
The Bell tower

And the Drum tower. Both still working today.

The rickshaw ride took us through some more back streets where it was clear renovations were being made so that the area could apply for world heritage listing.  Seeing inside some of the houses shows that they may look dumpy outside but that’s not the case inside.

The rickshaw ride ends outside the house where dinner will be served, and is a not so typical hose but does have all the elements of how the Chinese live, the boy’s room, the girl’s room, the parent’s room, the living area, and the North-south feng shui.

Shortly after we arrive, the cricket man, apparently someone quite famous in Beijing arrives and tells us all about crickets and then grasshoppers, then about cricket racing.  He is animated and clearly enjoys entertaining us westerners.

I’m sorry but the cricket stuff just didn’t interest me.  Or the grasshoppers.

As for dinner, it was finally a treat to eat what the typical Chinese family eats, and everything was delicious, and the endless beer was a nice touch.

And the last surprise, the food was cooked by a man.

After a few days to consider the existing text – a new approach? – Part 1

It’s been a while since I looked at this story, and after reading the start through each iteration, it always seems the case that I’m never quite satisfied.

That said, I decided to come at it from a different direction.  It might not be better, but it might provide a different perspective, and lead to a more polished start in the next iteration.

Certainly this time, there are more words, and a totally different start.  It was needed bcause we need to get a little insight into the main character, just before the action starts.

This iteration puts the main character squarely in the frame, gives a few small details about him, and context leading into the next part

…

I was woken abruptly from an uneasy sleep by an unusual sound coming from my cell phone.

It was late afternoon, and the night shift had extended into the morning after an incident that required a report, and a statement to the police.  As a security guard in a dormant factory in an abandoned industrial estate, this was the worst incident I’d been involved in since starting there, a deliberately lit fire, no doub to hide a body, and what looked like wholesale theft of a factory’s machinery, and the police had hinted it was an inside job.  As the new guy, I had been interrogated rather than questioned, and it had been rough, my past being dragged up, and not the good aspects of it.  I was very tired and still angry.

The phone was on the floor, just out of reach, and I was tempted to ignore it.  I might have, if it hadn’t made the same sound a minute later.

It was a simple phone, one that stored numbers, sent messages, and took photos.  I purposely didn’t get the internet connected, and disabled the GPS.   There were seven numbers stored on it, the only people I wanted to make contact with, or had to, and none had a unique message tone.

I pressed a button and the screen came to life.

Two notifications were displayed, two missed calls from Penelope Bryson.  Definitely not one of the seven stored numbers.  Penelope was my sister, and Bryson was her married name.  But the bigger question here was, how did she get my cell number?

She had also left a message, and I played it out loud.

“David, long time.  I am somewhat disappointed you didn’t tell me you were back, or for that matter, whether you were dead or alive.  You’re a hard man to find, for obvious reasons, but don’t be a stranger, at least not to me.  I need to see you for some advice and I will be in Wilmington next Monday.  Let me know where and when and I will be there.”

I rang the number but it went to message bank, and then I remembered she rarely answered the phone first time, waiting to see who it was, and then decided if she would call them back.  Perhaps it was a lawyer thing.

I tossed the phone back on the floor and lay down again.  I tried to put it out of my mind, but kept going back to the phrase ‘I need to see you for some advice’.  I was the last person a high flying lawyer would want advice, unless she wanted to become a soldier, or a get away driver, the only occupations I had since leaving school.  I doubted she was looking to become a secuirty guard, but she could hardly know that I was one.  I hadn’t spoken to her since our father died, just before I served my final tour.

Now I had two issues on my mind, whether the police would assume I was the guilty party so they could wrap up the case, even if I could prove it was not me, and what Penelope could possibly want, and it was odd that it was the latter that caused me the most concern.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 33

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

 

Monica, from the last interrogation, had brought a file.  It looked the same as the last one she brought with her, the one with my name on it.

This time it was thicker.

Intelligence gathering at its finest.  There’d be stuff in there that even I didn’t know about me.

She didn’t open it, just looked at me.

“What have you been doing?”

“Working?”

“For whom?”

“Nobbin, of course.  I am now assigned to his section.  Did you do that?”

“He did.  He tells me you’re working on the O’Connell investigation.”

“Is that what it’s called.  He never told me that.  And I had to find out where I’d been assigned by logging onto a computer.  An email or letter would have made my life a little easier.”

“You’re just lucky you’re still working here.  Now, tell me more about this Severin character.”

“I told you everything I knew the last time you spoke to me.  Apparently, you seemed to know who it was.  Perhaps you might tell me, too.”

“It’s…”

“And,” I interrupted, “don’t tell me it’s above my pay grade.  I was potentially working for traitors and could have finished up in jail for treason.”

“You might still get there.”

Then why hadn’t she had me arrested and thrown in a dungeon the last time we met?  There was an easy answer to that question.  She needed me out in the field.  Nobbin needed me in the field.  They presumably needed me to remain available to Severin for whatever reason.

“What do you want?”

She opened the file, turned a few pages, and stopped at a yellow sheet of paper.  I wasn’t able to read it upside down, but it had very small spidery writing on it.

Then she looked at me again.

“Some secret documents appear to have gone missing.  We believe that is to say Director Dobbin thinks these may have been on a USB drive that was in the possession of O’Connell at the time of his death.  You were there at the time of his death.  You can see where this is going…”

No matter which answers I gave it was the wrong one, which led to do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars, or pounds as the case may be.

“I haven’t got it, and he didn’t tell me where it was, and I saw him die.”

“If you say so.”  She went back to the file and turned some more pagers.

“What do you mean?”

She looked up.  “So far, there’s no body been recovered, or any evidence there was a shooting where you said it was.”

“Are you trying to tell me he’s alive, because if you are, then I must be a very poor judge of people who have no pulse.  He was not about to get up and walk away.”

“Did you see the body removed?”

Now there’s an interesting point.  I had done as I was told and left when told to.  I assumed Severin would sort the problem out, in fact, hadn’t he called in the cleaners?  I saw a white van.

Actually, when I thought about it, I had no idea what happened after I left.  And, now that I remember, I didn’t see anyone get out of the white van.

Could bodies get up and walk?

I was beginning to think they could.

© Charles Heath 2020

You learn something new every day (2)

I got a call this morning from my brother who has been delving into the places we have lived over the years, including those before we were born.

My recollection, hazy at best, is that my father’s parents lived in Camberwell, a suburb of Melbourne, and the boys, those that survived the war, lived there too. He had three brothers, I think, and a sister. From what I’ve read, his older brother was a sensible chap and the peacemaker between him and his parents.

Later one of his brothers went to Sydney, his sister lived among orchards our Ringwood way, and another, much later, moved to Queensland. We very rarely, if ever, saw them, and the last time I did with most in one place, was after my Grandmother died. I do remember Dora, the site, visiting us once, and being young at the time, she seemed a very forbidding woman.

But, this is about where they lived.

My father, presumably before and immediately after the war, at home, and my mother at her home in Pakenham. There her father ran a service station and motor mechanic shop and was well known. Their house, at the time, was built over the road, just a short walk from home to work. The place, the first time I saw it, was a mechanics dream, with old cars and car parts outside and inside garages, and a woodworking shop with every tool imaginable.

Once the place had very elegant gardens, but by the time I got to stay there, in the 1960s, it was all overgrown, and the house was in disrepair. My mother’s brother lived there with my grandmother, and he was a fearsome, huge man who said little. All I knew about him was that, a) he was the one who found his father after he had killed himself, b) he liked fishing and went to a place called Corinella, and c) he was a mechanic like his father.

So, at some point in 1948, my father must have up and left, perhaps after an argument with his parents, and moved to Keiwa House, Bogong, where the Snowy River Hydro-Electric Scheme was being built, as a projectionist, bringing films to the workers in Town Halls.

As I’ve said, my mother stayed in a boarding house for ladies during the week and went home on weekends. I have the first letter that my father wrote to her and references the fact he went calling on her, and she was not there. We’ll never know what she thought, but there’s a second letter, after she wrote back, so a friendship was struck. He told her, almost in minute detail, what he was doing, and presumably, she told him about hers.

A year later, they married.

Now it gets interesting. We both thought that their first house, after getting married was in Carrum. It wasn’t. In the pile of letters were references to the family staying in a rented flat in Camberwell.

Sometime after that, there is a contract for a war service loan in relation to a property in Carrum, which turns out to be the first house they lived in, and where my brother, born in 1950) lived, and where I lived after I was born in 1953. I have interesting if vague memories of this house, and of the people who lived behind us because we could climb through the fence into their property. We knew them during, and after living in Carrum.

Now, today, some interesting new facts came to light about the Carrum house. We always assumed we owned it, but it seems that we didn’t. A copy of the title for that property never had the name Heath on it, so did we rent it? More information is required, and we need to dig deeper. Let’s hope there are no skeletons there.

And something else came out of a discussion with the daughter of my mothers sister, that it was believed my mother’s parents bought them a house in Chelsea, but my father, apparently, refused to live in it and sold it.

OK, I never claimed that my father was the sort that might have accepted charity, so perhaps in a moment of madness, he lost the plot. The question is, what happened to the money?
Recycle bin(0)Empty

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 33

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

 

Monica, from the last interrogation, had brought a file.  It looked the same as the last one she brought with her, the one with my name on it.

This time it was thicker.

Intelligence gathering at its finest.  There’d be stuff in there that even I didn’t know about me.

She didn’t open it, just looked at me.

“What have you been doing?”

“Working?”

“For whom?”

“Nobbin, of course.  I am now assigned to his section.  Did you do that?”

“He did.  He tells me you’re working on the O’Connell investigation.”

“Is that what it’s called.  He never told me that.  And I had to find out where I’d been assigned by logging onto a computer.  An email or letter would have made my life a little easier.”

“You’re just lucky you’re still working here.  Now, tell me more about this Severin character.”

“I told you everything I knew the last time you spoke to me.  Apparently, you seemed to know who it was.  Perhaps you might tell me, too.”

“It’s…”

“And,” I interrupted, “don’t tell me it’s above my pay grade.  I was potentially working for traitors and could have finished up in jail for treason.”

“You might still get there.”

Then why hadn’t she had me arrested and thrown in a dungeon the last time we met?  There was an easy answer to that question.  She needed me out in the field.  Nobbin needed me in the field.  They presumably needed me to remain available to Severin for whatever reason.

“What do you want?”

She opened the file, turned a few pages, and stopped at a yellow sheet of paper.  I wasn’t able to read it upside down, but it had very small spidery writing on it.

Then she looked at me again.

“Some secret documents appear to have gone missing.  We believe that is to say Director Dobbin thinks these may have been on a USB drive that was in the possession of O’Connell at the time of his death.  You were there at the time of his death.  You can see where this is going…”

No matter which answers I gave it was the wrong one, which led to do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars, or pounds as the case may be.

“I haven’t got it, and he didn’t tell me where it was, and I saw him die.”

“If you say so.”  She went back to the file and turned some more pagers.

“What do you mean?”

She looked up.  “So far, there’s no body been recovered, or any evidence there was a shooting where you said it was.”

“Are you trying to tell me he’s alive, because if you are, then I must be a very poor judge of people who have no pulse.  He was not about to get up and walk away.”

“Did you see the body removed?”

Now there’s an interesting point.  I had done as I was told and left when told to.  I assumed Severin would sort the problem out, in fact, hadn’t he called in the cleaners?  I saw a white van.

Actually, when I thought about it, I had no idea what happened after I left.  And, now that I remember, I didn’t see anyone get out of the white van.

Could bodies get up and walk?

I was beginning to think they could.

© Charles Heath 2020