The devil takes many forms, and our protagonist has met quite a few. In his line of work, there are few opportunities to snatch a little rest and recreation between life-and-death missions.
Coming back from a mandatory rest period, to recover from the worst of disasters that nearly cost him his life, there is time for the mortality aspect to start doing a number in his head.
It is inevitable.
And as inevitable is the slow breaking down of those beliefs in his invincibility.
But worse than that, his handler started to think he was losing his edge, enough to send a backup just in case.
And why does it have to be an enigma wrapped up in a mystery? It’s not as if to say she is there for any other reason than help in the mission, but after getting shot, and taking a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, his mind wanders.
The woman in white, that apparition that appears to be too good to be true, is dancing on the edge of his memory. Who is she? Well, in a moment of finally doing his job, keeping a watchful eye over the conference delegate, a woman from his past, he sees them together, and their chemistry together tells him it is a daughter or a special relative.
It doesn’t explain why the woman in white is there.
So here’s the deal – you’re not as good as you think you are.
…
I can attest to that. I’ve been through a story a dozen times, and still there is something to be changed, or a detail or nuance missed. Our eyes play tricks on us, they seem to see what you eant them to see rather than what is there.
It’s why we have other people look at our work.
Everyone can get hold of a style manual, a thesaurus and a dictionary.
My biggest bugbear is continuity and names, plot timing, and making sure events happen when they’re supposed to, not just when you write about it and hope it fits the timeline.
I have a problem with that right now with a story I’m writing, where people are living the events in two different time zones, and I need to get it right.
This is where a spreadsheet comes in handy, because you can use a formula to work out the time in a different time zone and run the event timeline in both zones.
It’s always great when the pilot tells you just before you land what time it is at the destination. Scary too sometimes when you’re flying from Brisbane backwards through time to London and find you’re landing 13 or so hours before. I left at 10 pm, and I’m landing at 5:30 in the morning on the same day.
And a surefire way of discovering what your text sounds like, run it through an AI text-to-speech converter and listen. When it sounds really weird, and it will at least once, then you know where to fix it.
Contrary to the myth that all witches were hags or drones, the wicked witch of nnnn swooped into their principality on her broomstick, in the guise of a Cessna citation, the private royal plane, to be greeted by the new king’s sister.
It was a calculated manoeuvre to get her to take the front line, her old partner in crime, when meting out punishment to her younger siblings.
His older sister, for that matter, had been more of a mother to him than his real mother. But with that came the bad as well as the good.
It was always clear who the dominant one was, his sister, because he knew that she was more like her father than her mother, and she had inherited her father’s sadistic streak
When the Queen arrives at the castle for the proper greeting, she appears to be anything but what he remembered of her, and it scares him.
What had his sister and her conjured up in the car from the airport to the castle?
Formalities over and confusion settling in, it’s time for the brief private discussion in the green room.
Seeing her by the drinks cabinet pouring a drink takes him back to the days of hide and seek they played together in the castle, and that very room.
A look passes between them, and they remember.
Don’t forget that as a teen, he had a crush on this woman standing before him. Now a queen, not just a crazy girl, that look between them transcended everything.
The kiss, well, not planned, not avoided, but an expression of feelings that still burned, but every so lightly they could be embers and extinguished.
So this was the reason why he never tried to hide from her. Didn’t she know, or did she guess, but not want to think about?
Her sister had expressed feelings for the new king, her sister the one one shared his first kiss, the sister he wanted more than Eleanor, and the sister who told their father, and he nearly killed her for it.
Never, never, never will another princess from his domain marry a prince from the new king’s kingdom. Ever.
The deal made over the dowry between the new king’s mother and his father had been contentious and nearly started another war.
Old rivalries never died. They simply festered.
As for their feelings for each other, back in the box and stored away, never to see the light of day.
So here’s the deal – you’re not as good as you think you are.
…
I can attest to that. I’ve been through a story a dozen times, and still there is something to be changed, or a detail or nuance missed. Our eyes play tricks on us, they seem to see what you eant them to see rather than what is there.
It’s why we have other people look at our work.
Everyone can get hold of a style manual, a thesaurus and a dictionary.
My biggest bugbear is continuity and names, plot timing, and making sure events happen when they’re supposed to, not just when you write about it and hope it fits the timeline.
I have a problem with that right now with a story I’m writing, where people are living the events in two different time zones, and I need to get it right.
This is where a spreadsheet comes in handy, because you can use a formula to work out the time in a different time zone and run the event timeline in both zones.
It’s always great when the pilot tells you just before you land what time it is at the destination. Scary too sometimes when you’re flying from Brisbane backwards through time to London and find you’re landing 13 or so hours before. I left at 10 pm, and I’m landing at 5:30 in the morning on the same day.
And a surefire way of discovering what your text sounds like, run it through an AI text-to-speech converter and listen. When it sounds really weird, and it will at least once, then you know where to fix it.
The view from inside the small room was of four off white walls, a stained ceiling with a small camera and blinking red light in one corner, and the green metal door with a hatch and small closed window.
I was lucky to have a bunk with a thin vinyl cover to lie on so I could spend the time alternating between staring at the roof, the door, and the walls. Time now to contemplate my fate, a fate no one was sharing with me, at least not yet.
There were two thoughts uppermost in my mind right then.
The first, that cryptic phone call from an anonymous caller, no number displayed, no clue who it was, other than it was female, though these days even that could be manufactured, saying, “They’re coming for you. Run.”
That was it. Nothing about who was coming or why. My life up to that point had been probably the most boring on the planet. Janet had made that perfectly clear three years before when she left. And took every cent of our life savings, and sold everything else.
Everything.
So, having nothing, being that boring person, who on earth would want to come for me?
The second, the only question I was asked by the interrogator, and middle-aged, well-dressed man who had secret service written into his DNA, after my ‘arrest’ and the silence from all those involved, following the recitation of my so-called rights to the seat in the interrogation room.
I watched him come into the room, glance up at the blinking red light, probably a feature in every room in that complex, then sit down.
He glared at me in his most intimidating manner, which almost made me laugh, then asked, in a voice that sounded like the result of a fifty-cigarette-a-day habit, “Where is it?”
Of course, the only answer to that question was, “Where is what?”
Another minute of intimidating looks, he shook his head, stood, and left the room. Three minutes later, two big men came in and escorted me to my current residence, one ‘helping’ me through the door with a hefty shove.
So, I had two pieces of information relating to my fate. One, I had obviously, to someone at least, done something worthy of needing to escape, and having not heeded the warning, done something worthy of being arrested, imprisoned, and interrogated.
Something that no one was willing to share with me.
That meant I had to go over everything that had happened, at least since Janet left, because before that, I doubt the life of a lowly untended university tutor whose subject was eighteenth-century social history would interest anyone other than a Jane Austen enthusiast.
Perhaps the first day of the rest of my life was when I decided to go to see the pyramids in Egypt. That wasn’t a reason or anything significant in itself. It was just one of those things that happened on the spur of the moment.
It had been the usual scenario, I thought Janet, the love of my life, had suggested dinner, over which she was going to tell me some great news.
Being the eternal optimist, I thought she was going to formalise our relationship, but instead she said she had been offered a job in the United States, more money, more responsibility, and what’s more there was room for me.
It sounded like an afterthought, and as much as it sounded great, it wasn’t. She packed, gave me the option, I declined, and she left.
Relationship over.
Two days later, I was on a plane heading for Egypt, oddly enough, anything but heartbroken. It was like Janet never existed.
But…
I was staring at the slowly rotating fan regurgitating the already hot air in the room, and every movement made me feel hotter and more languid.
It was the fourth day of a five-day tour, with a group of twelve ancient Egyptian enthusiasts, on a lesser-known and cheaper tour. Cheap meant no air conditioning and enough time to regret not putting more thought into who I selected.
I’d seen as much of the pyramids as anyone could want, realising the reality was not quite on display in the tour brochures, and the heat, dust, and crowds were the final straw.
I had the airline page up on my cell phone and in the middle of checking the flights and costs involved in changing the dates, when there was a knock on the door.
Not being a five-star hotel, perhaps stretching the three-star self-rating, and the only other time was a concierge delivering a carafe of iced cold water and a glass that had seen better days.
Perhaps one of the hotel’s benefits was ice-cold water every four days. I dragged myself off the bed and over to the door. It didn’t have one of those spy viewers in the door, so it could be kidnappers, not unheard of, and one of the warnings given to us by the guide on day one
By that point, being kidnapped might have been a welcome distraction.
It was, unfortunately, an American girl, Mary Anne. I say unfortunately, because we had all had the benefit of her mother’s opinions, often loud and brash, and who took particular delight in humiliating her daughter.
Like a scene out of an Agatha Christie murder mystery film, one of the other tourists said, failing to realise we all fit that description. All we lacked was the murder, though several had expressed their desire to murder Mrs Murgatroyd.
She smiled wanly, a prelude to an impossible request. “Mother is ill today and won’t be going. May I come with you? I do not wish to find my way to the office by myself.”
I should have noticed the less apprehensive expression. I had to say the request surprised me, and she had been cultivating a friendship of sorts with another single male passenger who was more her type.
“I was seriously considering staying in the hotel myself. I’ve seen enough pyramids, sand, and people, and the thought of going to the museum would only be to take in the air-conditioning.”
“Oh.”
She seemed disappointed, though I was surprised that anyone would be, but that might have had more to do with Janet’s rather abrupt departure, and if viewed very bluntly, abandonment.
“But in this case, I think I can make an exception. It’s the last day, and it would be a tragedy not to take in the last of the sights.”
“I don’t want to be an imposition.”
“Don’t take any notice of my disposition. It hasn’t been a great few weeks, and I’m not handling it very well. Just give me a few minutes to get ready, and I’ll see you down in the restaurant.”
That imaginary fan was still rotating in my mind, and those thoughts of Mary Anne had resurfaced, not because they were memorable, but because they were a catalyst for getting me out of the sea of self-pity I’d been unconsciously sinking into at the time.
She was the sort of girl no one would notice, not exactly a plain Jane but the sort who didn’t put herself out there, dressed unglamorous and didn’t follow fashion or makeup trends, not like Janet.
In fact, she was a polar opposite.
Perhaps that’s why she came back now. Once I dug deeper into those memories, I could see that she was, under that carefully constructed exterior for the rest of the world to see, she was very beautiful.
I’d not thought about that at the time, and now it was only because I was looking for answers. Surely, she was not part of the current predicament because our interactions were fleeting and insignificant. Perhaps, like any man, I was momentarily flattered by the attention of a woman.
Beyond that trip to Egypt, there had been little excitement in my life, just the usual stream of students looking to bolster their grades and the occasional cross-examination by a budding author who wanted background for their eighteenth-century romance novel.
There were no other romantic attachments, several dates set up by a dating app and those were monumental failures, leading to a somewhat half-considered study into becoming a monk at a remote monastery, and vacations at obscure and remote seaside towns out of season, where I was lucky to meet anyone else.
And yet I obviously had, whether consciously or otherwise, or was so forgettable that I could not remember them.
All this driving into the past had given me a headache, and I tried to get some rest. It was clear I was not going to be leaving my cell or the facility anytime soon.
Someone once told me there was little difference between a dream and a nightmare, only the outcome was different. You could wake up happy or scared half to death.
Others said that one or the other could be the result of a past experience, whether conscious or not, something that happened to you that you were unaware of at the time, or spooking a premonition of what might happen in the future.
On rare occasions, it might be the resort of a desire, like getting to be with the woman of your dreams, that was quite often totally unavailable.
I wish that were the case.
It was not. I woke, now screaming, but covered in sweat and yet cold as ice, absolutely terrified.
I was lying on a gurney in a very brightly lit room with two figures, dressed completely in green, faces covered by surgical masks and goggles, one of whom was standing over me, asking over and over, “Where is it?”
And it was very, very real.
Not a premonition, I had a feeling it had happened recently, and I could not remember anything about it.
It was then I realised what my mind had conveniently shovelled into the ‘I don’t want yo remember that experience’ basket. Three weeks ago, after going out for a drink with work colleagues, I woke up two days later in a hotelbroom, by myself, with no memory of anything that had happened, and when I asked my colleagues they simply said I’d had too much to drink, and one had helped me back to the hotel where I said od booked a room.
Why was I remembering this now?
Why hadn’t I thought more about it at the time?
Who was the colleague who helped me?
Suddenly, it felt like the walls in that small room were closing in on me. Then I could see someone was in the room, dressed in green, and I began to panic.
I could just hear a voice in the background or perhaps just above me.
You need a good first line, one that grabs your attention and makes you want to read on…
…
I woke up that morning believing it would be the first day of the rest of my life.
I stretched and luxuriated in the comfort and warmth of the bed, after a dozen years of suffering a very hard, uncomfortable, and cold cot, if it could be called that.
Prison life had been harsh. Being unjustly imprisoned had been harsher, and the years of battling to have the evidence that finally exonerated me finally paid off.
Release.
Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the day I stepped out of the prison was the day the snow started, the first of the season, bringing with it the winter chill. I would not have survived another winter in that prison.
Perhaps it was also not a coincidence that the ex-girlfriend of the man I had supposedly murdered in a jealous rage arrived on my doorstep the same day I was released. It was her evidence, circumstantial at best, but convincingly relayed in the courtroom, a performance even the newspapers said was worthy of an Academy Award.
She still firmly believed I was guilty, evidence or not, and that I would be damned to hell.
That might be true, but not from the so-called murder of her ex-boyfriend, but the deeds I had to do to survive in what could only be described as hell on earth. I tried to tell her that I’d paid my dues, as unjust as they were, and that was the end of it. She had got her pound of flesh.
The parents of the ex-boyfriend were not as unforgiving and wished me well. They had never believed that I was guilty, no surprises because their son and I had been the best of friends from a very early age, when they moved into the house next door.
Those years were gone, as was the house, and everything else. It had been burned to the ground by a bunch of vigilantes riled up by Samantha, who marched on the house just before my arrest. Nobody was blamed for the deaths of my parents, caught in the fire, but the judge did admonish Samantha, in a monologue that all but handed the blame to her. It was, he said, going to be a battle for her conscience.
Now I had nothing.
My lawyer said it was a clean slate, and to put what I needed into a backpack, and get on the first train out of town. There was nothing for me, no reason to stay.
The very thought in my mind when I woke and looked out at the sea of white, and the steady downfall of snow drifting down from the sky. The forecast was snow for a day or so, then clearing. It would halt the trains, so I would be here for at least another day.
Enough time for Samantha to round up another mob and come burn down the hotel.
That was reason enough not to get out of bed.
Except…
The phone beside the bed rang, one that had a shrill insistence about it.
I slipped out from under the covers, shivered slightly in the cool morning air then picke dup the receiver.
“Yes?”
“There’s a Miss Andrews here to see you.”
Miss Andrews. It was a name that lurked on the fringe of my memory, in the life before prison section, and was not quite coming to me.
“Did she state her business?” I assumed it was a reporter here to get my story, one that they were hoping, no doubt, I would be suing the state for false imprisonment.
“No, but she is insistent she sees you.”
“OK. I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”
…
During the time it took to throw on some warm clothes, I ran the name through my recollection of people I’d met, and her name didn’t come up. I expect she was a reporter, or perhaps a junior from a law practice looking to get me to hire them for the law case against the state.
I took the stairs, it was only two flights of stairs, and I needed to warm up. For some reason, the passageways and then the foyer felt cold. The front desk clerk saw me step off the last stair and nodded over towards the fireplace, where some large logs were burning.
Sitting on one of the chairs was a woman, about my age, who looked like someone’s mother. I had no doubt she would appear to be disarming and polite, but then strike like a cobra. IT was how I came to view both Lawyers and reporters.
She had seen me coming from the stairs and stood as I approached.
“Mr Peverell?”
“You could hardly mistake me for anyone else.” Maybe not the first words I would have said, but I was tired, and steeling myself for a pitch.
I saw her mentally brush aside my attitude and smile. “How are you this morning, not that the weather is being polite.” I saw her glance outside through the large panoramic windows. The carpark was slowly disappearing.
“Not the sort of day to be out on a whim,” I said. I still couldn’t place her.
“No, indeed. Please,” she motioned to a chair by the fire, two together.
I sat. She sat, then arranged the layers. It had to be quite warm with the coat she was wearing. She had removed the fake fur hat. It actually looked good on her.
“What is so pressing that you had to see me?”
“I need your help.”
“How could I possibly help you or anyone with anything. You do realise I have just spent twelve years locked away from the real world. I’m lucky to remember my name, let alone anything else.”
Yes, the warden and his officers had tried very hard to take everything from me and all the other prisoners, some of whom would never get out of that prison.
“Of course. But left me to introduce myself. My name is Bettina Whales. I’m a private investigator, and I have been commissioned to find out who murdered David Lloyd-Smythe.”
Odd, but then, it just occurred to me that now I was exonerated, the real killer was still out there. It had been on my mind briefly the day before, but I decided I was over it. The murder had robbed me of 12 years of my life. Enough was enough.
But there was an element of curiosity. “By who?”
“Your wife, of course.”
I shook my head. She had dumped me so fast once I was arrested, it made my head spin. Of course, her parents had probably kidnapped her and kept her prisoner from the day she was arrested until yesterday, but I thought if there was a way she could just tell me why she had abandoned me, it might have been tolerable, but she didn’t.
I had decided long ago that she was gone and I would never see her again.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. You are here for some other reason, one I’m not going to like.”
She smiled. “She said you’d say that. And I’ll admit when she explained why you would, I had to say I agreed with you. But she can tell you herself. She’s right over there, coming in the door.”
I stood, faced her, and watched mesmerised. Twelve years had not aged her, not like they had me, and she still had that ability to take my breath away. And she still could command a room simply by walking through it. All eyes, and particularly the men, were on her.
Then she was in front of me. That loose way of standing, the smile, the disarming manner.
“You thought I had forgotten you?”
“I didn;t know what to think, other than a part of me had died.”
“And I am sorry about that, but you know my parents. I had to disappear, lest shame be brought upon the family. Been in Europe, in a castle no less. It took me an age to find the people running your case to get out, and then I had to surrupticiously hire an army of lawyers. The lady behind is the one who found the evidence that got you off. She’s the best of the best. Now we’re going after the person that put you there, the real killer.”
Just like in the old days, the take-charge girl, even if you didn’t want to do anything. She, like her father, had no ‘off’ button.
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Don’t be silly, Pev.” She looked at the private investigator. “Get yourself a room if you haven’t already. Pev and I had things to talk about.” She looked back at me. “I can see you threw something on, so we can go back to your room and talk. Or whatever.” She took my hand. “We have twelve years to catch up. Then we’re going to hunt down the bastard that took you away from me. Miss me?”
There is no doubt in the new King’s mind that Ruth is the one, but all the old feelings are being stirred up now that he is back home, and it’s not just being home again.
In a castle that he grew up in, there is a memory both good and bad in every corner, every nook and cranny, in the paintings on the walls, in the rooms he used to play, weather, lounge, and entertainment in, and the people.
Talking about the summer palace long since shuttered, though no reason was ever given, was the place he stole his first kiss, with a girl he was soon to meet again.
She was as horrible to him as she was nice, and it was a short period that he could never reconcile in his mind and had never left but remained in the depths, waiting for the opportunity to resurface.
He was hoping it wouldn’t.
He’d got past Eleanor.
Now he had to get past Isobel. Standing in the green room because of the green tapestries depicting the valley before the castle, when there were no village roads or farms, quite literally a sea of green.
The green room was the private reception room where the king met privately with other very senior dignitaries, and the first would be Queen Isobel of the other principality.
Isobel was a mystery to him and quite unlike any girl and later woman he ever met, and he put that down to the eccentricities of Royal blood.
You need a good first line, one that grabs your attention and makes you want to read on…
…
I woke up that morning believing it would be the first day of the rest of my life.
I stretched and luxuriated in the comfort and warmth of the bed, after a dozen years of suffering a very hard, uncomfortable, and cold cot, if it could be called that.
Prison life had been harsh. Being unjustly imprisoned had been harsher, and the years of battling to have the evidence that finally exonerated me finally paid off.
Release.
Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the day I stepped out of the prison was the day the snow started, the first of the season, bringing with it the winter chill. I would not have survived another winter in that prison.
Perhaps it was also not a coincidence that the ex-girlfriend of the man I had supposedly murdered in a jealous rage arrived on my doorstep the same day I was released. It was her evidence, circumstantial at best, but convincingly relayed in the courtroom, a performance even the newspapers said was worthy of an Academy Award.
She still firmly believed I was guilty, evidence or not, and that I would be damned to hell.
That might be true, but not from the so-called murder of her ex-boyfriend, but the deeds I had to do to survive in what could only be described as hell on earth. I tried to tell her that I’d paid my dues, as unjust as they were, and that was the end of it. She had got her pound of flesh.
The parents of the ex-boyfriend were not as unforgiving and wished me well. They had never believed that I was guilty, no surprises because their son and I had been the best of friends from a very early age, when they moved into the house next door.
Those years were gone, as was the house, and everything else. It had been burned to the ground by a bunch of vigilantes riled up by Samantha, who marched on the house just before my arrest. Nobody was blamed for the deaths of my parents, caught in the fire, but the judge did admonish Samantha, in a monologue that all but handed the blame to her. It was, he said, going to be a battle for her conscience.
Now I had nothing.
My lawyer said it was a clean slate, and to put what I needed into a backpack, and get on the first train out of town. There was nothing for me, no reason to stay.
The very thought in my mind when I woke and looked out at the sea of white, and the steady downfall of snow drifting down from the sky. The forecast was snow for a day or so, then clearing. It would halt the trains, so I would be here for at least another day.
Enough time for Samantha to round up another mob and come burn down the hotel.
That was reason enough not to get out of bed.
Except…
The phone beside the bed rang, one that had a shrill insistence about it.
I slipped out from under the covers, shivered slightly in the cool morning air then picke dup the receiver.
“Yes?”
“There’s a Miss Andrews here to see you.”
Miss Andrews. It was a name that lurked on the fringe of my memory, in the life before prison section, and was not quite coming to me.
“Did she state her business?” I assumed it was a reporter here to get my story, one that they were hoping, no doubt, I would be suing the state for false imprisonment.
“No, but she is insistent she sees you.”
“OK. I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”
…
During the time it took to throw on some warm clothes, I ran the name through my recollection of people I’d met, and her name didn’t come up. I expect she was a reporter, or perhaps a junior from a law practice looking to get me to hire them for the law case against the state.
I took the stairs, it was only two flights of stairs, and I needed to warm up. For some reason, the passageways and then the foyer felt cold. The front desk clerk saw me step off the last stair and nodded over towards the fireplace, where some large logs were burning.
Sitting on one of the chairs was a woman, about my age, who looked like someone’s mother. I had no doubt she would appear to be disarming and polite, but then strike like a cobra. IT was how I came to view both Lawyers and reporters.
She had seen me coming from the stairs and stood as I approached.
“Mr Peverell?”
“You could hardly mistake me for anyone else.” Maybe not the first words I would have said, but I was tired, and steeling myself for a pitch.
I saw her mentally brush aside my attitude and smile. “How are you this morning, not that the weather is being polite.” I saw her glance outside through the large panoramic windows. The carpark was slowly disappearing.
“Not the sort of day to be out on a whim,” I said. I still couldn’t place her.
“No, indeed. Please,” she motioned to a chair by the fire, two together.
I sat. She sat, then arranged the layers. It had to be quite warm with the coat she was wearing. She had removed the fake fur hat. It actually looked good on her.
“What is so pressing that you had to see me?”
“I need your help.”
“How could I possibly help you or anyone with anything. You do realise I have just spent twelve years locked away from the real world. I’m lucky to remember my name, let alone anything else.”
Yes, the warden and his officers had tried very hard to take everything from me and all the other prisoners, some of whom would never get out of that prison.
“Of course. But left me to introduce myself. My name is Bettina Whales. I’m a private investigator, and I have been commissioned to find out who murdered David Lloyd-Smythe.”
Odd, but then, it just occurred to me that now I was exonerated, the real killer was still out there. It had been on my mind briefly the day before, but I decided I was over it. The murder had robbed me of 12 years of my life. Enough was enough.
But there was an element of curiosity. “By who?”
“Your wife, of course.”
I shook my head. She had dumped me so fast once I was arrested, it made my head spin. Of course, her parents had probably kidnapped her and kept her prisoner from the day she was arrested until yesterday, but I thought if there was a way she could just tell me why she had abandoned me, it might have been tolerable, but she didn’t.
I had decided long ago that she was gone and I would never see her again.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. You are here for some other reason, one I’m not going to like.”
She smiled. “She said you’d say that. And I’ll admit when she explained why you would, I had to say I agreed with you. But she can tell you herself. She’s right over there, coming in the door.”
I stood, faced her, and watched mesmerised. Twelve years had not aged her, not like they had me, and she still had that ability to take my breath away. And she still could command a room simply by walking through it. All eyes, and particularly the men, were on her.
Then she was in front of me. That loose way of standing, the smile, the disarming manner.
“You thought I had forgotten you?”
“I didn;t know what to think, other than a part of me had died.”
“And I am sorry about that, but you know my parents. I had to disappear, lest shame be brought upon the family. Been in Europe, in a castle no less. It took me an age to find the people running your case to get out, and then I had to surrupticiously hire an army of lawyers. The lady behind is the one who found the evidence that got you off. She’s the best of the best. Now we’re going after the person that put you there, the real killer.”
Just like in the old days, the take-charge girl, even if you didn’t want to do anything. She, like her father, had no ‘off’ button.
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Don’t be silly, Pev.” She looked at the private investigator. “Get yourself a room if you haven’t already. Pev and I had things to talk about.” She looked back at me. “I can see you threw something on, so we can go back to your room and talk. Or whatever.” She took my hand. “We have twelve years to catch up. Then we’re going to hunt down the bastard that took you away from me. Miss me?”
V is for – Valhalla, where the souls of those who died bravely in battle go
…
For some, death comes when you least expect it.
I was not a soldier. I was never meant to be on a battlefield. I had no interest in slaying the enemy, whoever that enemy might be.
And yet there I was, trying to figure out how it came to be.
Six hours earlier, I was asleep on a cot in a tent, one of about a hundred scattered back from the river in a valley that belied the fact that it was near a contentious border being fought over.
Two facts I learned before crawling exhausted into that cot, religion, and disputed borders were in the top three reasons to start a war against your neighbour.
It started out with two men, one on either side of the river, stating the river belonged to them and the other paid ‘rent’. Then shots were fired.
In three months, it escalated, turning the river and valley surrounding it into a killing field and two previously friendly countries into bitter enemies.
I had been sent over by my media company to report first-hand on the effect it was having on the people, international relations, and responses by the rest of the world.
The latest report, not by me but one of my brethren, was that we were heading inevitably towards World War three. Given the rhetoric I had just heard, I was almost convinced he was right.
I managed to get three hours before being woken by my army liaison officer, the leader of a small group of soldiers who were charged with surveillance. I had been attached to them, mainly because they did not approach the front line.
They were simply there to observe enemy locations and report back. Their position gave me a very good view of the battlefield, the destruction of mortars, cannons, air force strafing, bomb runs, and snipers.
To a layman, it was terrifying and horrifying. To the hawks of war, it was a proving ground for their new weapons.
“Were up. Sorry about the short notice. There’s going to be an offensive in a few hours. Want to join us?”
My first instinct was to say no, but being embedded with this group afforded me an excellent view of the war and the uselessness of it all.
The two men could have sat down and worked it out. But no, they had to settle their differences with guns. Both were dead, as were their families, and most of the valley’s inhabitants. Now, it was extending beyond the valley and into the bigger cities and infrastructure like power stations and refineries. Bullets had gone to mortar bombs to cannons to drones to missiles.
Thousands had been killed, and negotiations for peace had failed. The only people winning in this war were the arms manufacturers.
How could I say no? “Of course. When?”
“Fifteen minutes. Outside the mess tent.”
The two trucks carrying the men slowly crawled over the rough ground that led up to our lookout. The road was constantly bombed to stop troops’ movements in and out, and was pockmarked with bomb craters.
The trip was a mile, but in the time it took, three mortar shells exploded in front and behind us, the last showering us in dirt and rubble. Missiles passed overhead and exploded some distance on the enemy side. A prelude to the new offensive. War didn’t stop at night or at weekends.
We made it in one piece and offloaded, the last shift climbing into the truck. They looked exhausted. There were three sets of men who manned the lookout 24 hours a day. Invariably, at least one man died each shift. This had two, stretched out and put in the truck.
The leaders exchanged paperwork, and he saluted and left with his men.
The replacements had taken up their positions. We had two anti-aircraft guns and three snipers who tried to take out the drones. Every change of shift, a surveillance drone would come and check us out.
I wore my neutrality vest, but that wouldn’t necessarily save me. I would not be the first media representative to be killed in battle.
As I went into the bunker, I heard a loud crump of a bomb exploding and turned. At first, I thought it had missed the truck because I couldn’t see it behind the wall of rubble.
Then it cleared, and there was nothing, no wreckage, no people, nothing. It was as if it had just disappeared.
I shrugged. There was nothing we could do.
I just shut the door when there was another loud crump, so close and so loud it was deafening. The bunker could withstand several direct hits, and this one had hit the roof.
Eight feet of concrete on top of six-inch steel plating.
The bunker was filled with dust and grit, and men were on the ground. It’s not the best way to start a shift.
The morning was given over to watching the missile attack, one that involved more missiles than ever before, targeted strikes on allegedly military targets on the other side, and the observers charting the hits and misses
Most notably, the gun that targeted the truck and our bunker had fallen silent, and it was written down as a possible success.
Everything had fallen silent on the other side of the river, and we were relaxing in that euphoria of not waiting for the next bomb to fall. Anticipation was a terrible thing.
I went up the ladder to the lookout, temporarily unmanned due to the silence, for the first time in a year.
There was nothing but desolation, bomb craters, little vegetation, and once or twice the scene also had the bodies of men who had charged at the enemy and mown down.
Worse than any scene from World War One in France. We had learned very little from that or any other war.
I then saw movement, like a rabbit in the thicket, and then a bang.
Then nothing.
Last thought: you do hear the bullet that has your name on it. You just don’t see it coming.
I was standing in a hall, well not so much a hall but a huge building that had statues on either side evely spaced and which armour, weapons and heraldry.
High up windows allowed the daylight to shine in such a way that it illuminated the statues.
They were not all men, but those there were of strong, muscled, tall, and bearded who would have no trouble holding the swords that were next to them lying across the statue base.
I don’t think I could lift one, let alone use it.
I turned slightly, and the man beside me was almost an exact relica of that on the statue.
“Welcome to Valhalla, sir.”
“Where?”
“It is where hero’s stand for eternity.”
“I am no hero.”
“Not in the sense these people might be but a hero none the less. Words and actions, there are many forms heroism can take. You will write a document that will bring peace to an unsettled land when men have temporarily forgotten what it is to be men.”
Was her speaking in riddles? Was I dead, and just dreaming about a place my mind had taken me because it couldn’t deal with the reality of my death?
I doubted any of my work here would stop anything other than a draught under the door. My grandmother used newspapers in many novel and interesting ways. She never cared much for the news that was in them.
“Am I dead?”
“That depends on you. If you don’t fight, then it will be the end, but you will not be coming here. As I said, you have a job to do, and when you do, here I will be to welcome you.”
“These are all genuine heroes if this is Valhalla.”
“Semantics, but your time is up. You must go back.”
I opened my eyes and saw three men standing at the end of the bed.
The platoon leader, the camp commandant, and my editor.
The room was in a hospital.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You were shot by a sniper from the other side. Near killed you.” My editor, with an undertone of outrage in his tone.
I took a moment to take in what he said, then to realise I was lucky to be alive. It had been a shot to the head.
“I should not be here.”
“No, but you were lucky. The bullet missed everything useful, though you might suffer a little amnesia and inbalance from time to time. We’re glad you survived. Quite a few didn’t.”
The platoon leader came over and shook my hand, and did the commandant. Then they left, leaving me with my editor.
It seemed odd that he came all this way out to see me, injured or not. He sat beside the bed.
“Damn fine piece you wrote.”
“When?”
“After you were shot. You insisted that they get what you had to say down. They reckon you being mad as hell was what kept you alive.”
“I don’t remember…”
“Possibly not. But it’s there down in black and white, and it was enough to precipitate a ceasefire, and you being shot, well, that wasn’t taken lightly. Stupid men who could have sat down over a glass of wine and simply agreed to share the bounty Mother Earth had granted them all. It was the clarity that all of them had lost. The pen truly is mightier than the sword.”
I shook my head. Where had I heard similar words said? Somewhere lost in my imagination I guess.
“The war over?
“Yes. The one person who could stop the madness read your piece and decided to stop supplying weapons if the other side agreed. Perhaps they might not have listened had you not been shot, but there it is. You are now in the history books, like it or not. I just thank God you were working for us.”
OK, I know some of you do, and lock yourself away until the next bestseller is written, but that’s only an option if you saved up a million dollars so you could take the year off.
And if you are like me, I’d probably be out partying every day rather than put words on paper. Sometimes it is easier to just party.
However, for the more serious of us, our day job could work in our favour in several ways. Firstly, it gives us time away from the project so that we can dwell on how the story might progress the moment we get back in the door at home.
Besides that, the job may be so utterly stultifying that you can have the time to work through plotting and planning during the day, and writing by night.
There again you might have exactly the job that provides the inspiration for writing the story, and it is very useful.
That aspect worked for me because I was in the exact place that was a company like the one I was writing about, in a remote location, on an island with isolation and native people. And I had photos of the operations running since 1898.
All the more reason to seriously consider whether or not to give up your day job.
Oh, and there is one other thing. If you’re not living with your parents, you still need to pay the bills.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 