…

The trouble with being told to ‘keep it to yourself’ I’d that quite often, later, and unexpectedly, it comes back to bite you.

I was put in that position, once, by my younger sister Josephine when she started dating this charismatic older boy she met when he came to her college as a substitute teacher.

I met him once and I didn’t like him.  He was the sort of person that you just know is bad, if not evil.  I told her so, but that didn’t seem to have any effect.  Perhaps it was only men who saw it because all her friends agreed with her; he was dreamy.

It was not as if we had any idea she would do anything silly, because at college she was away, and very lax at reporting back that everything was fine, so as far as we knew it was.  Our parents had cut her some slack after she complained they were smothering her.

I thought there was a good reason for that, but she persuaded them, like she always did, to loosen the shackles as she called them.  It seemed to work, six months passed, and everything was fine.

Until…

I was going home, and I had to pass the college so thought I would surprise her with a visit.  I went to the cafeteria where she and her friends spent every waking moment only to find two of the girls she was studying with.

Jo was not there.  Two of her friends were Debbie and Anne.  I’d met them once before when I’d dropped in.  “How is she doing?” I asked, not what I was going to ask, which was, where was she?

“Oh,” Debbie said hesitantly, “I thought you knew.  She dropped out and said she was going home.  Didn’t she tell you?”

She knew I wasn’t at home and was not as regular at communicating as I should be.  It also appeared to me she knew more but was reluctant to say more.

“No.  But I’m always the last to know.  I’ll call home and talk to her.”  I knew Jo’s aversion to cell phones, so I couldn’t call her directly.  “But she did say the last time I was here, she was losing interest.  Thanks anyway.”

Walking from the cafeteria to the car park, I had a thought and made a slight detour via the main office.

There was no one at the counter, so I pressed the button on the counter and heard a distant buzzing sound.  Three or four minutes later an elderly lady shuffled out from behind a half-closed door.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes.  I’m looking for my cousin, Albert Dmitri, he’s a teacher here.”

Her facial expression told me that she recognised the name, but her manner suggested that she didn’t like him.  She looked me up and down as people do when making an assessment.

“He no longer works here.”

The way she said it told me that there would be no further discussion, and that told me everything I needed to know, and probably not what I wanted to hear.  And the look she gave me, that being ‘tarred with the same brush’ made me shiver.

My initial assessment of him was right.

“Thank you for your help, ma’am.”

I don’t think I needed to ask any more questions.  I made it to the car and was just about to get in when I heard a voice calling my name.

I looked over the car roof to see Anne walking quickly towards me.  I waited until she arrived, slightly out of breath.

She took several deep breaths before saying, “She didn’t go home, not directly.  She had told me a week before she left that Albert had invited her to stay for a few days at his chalet in Banff.  She didn’t mention it again, just told me she didn’t like school anymore and was going home.  Nothing about Albert, which made me think she went.  She did say before she left that if anyone asked about Albert and her, I should keep it to myself, that it was nothing but a flirtation.”

‘You think it was more?”

“He was obsessed with her.  Certainly, he didn’t respect the boundaries between a student and a responsible adult, and she was not the only one.  I personally now think he’s a creepy guy.  You say you haven’t heard from her?”

“I haven’t, no, which is not exactly a red flag.  I’ll get home and see if she is there.  She probably is because our parents haven’t said anything otherwise.”

“I hope so. She hasn’t called or texted or written, which considering our friendship is unusual.  Let me know when you find out.  I’d hate anything to happen to her.  I told her once she was too trusting.”

“I’m sure everything will be alright.  And thanks. “

I always felt a sense of well-being the moment I walked in the front door of what I had always called home.  It was a house that had been handed down through the generations, and one day, it would be mine.

We had never known any other address, and I had grown up here, went to grade and middle school here, and had all my friends here, and family too.

Josephine and I were the only two who had strayed from town, seeking lives elsewhere as a part of the process of living our lives, but there was never any doubt we would come home.  Our brothers had always been content to stay, aspiring only to learn or work on the ranch, marry local girls, and start families.  My turn would come, one day.

The outside world, my father said, was just a distraction.  Everything we really needed was here.  I was inclined to agree with him.

Andy Barnes, one of the farm hands, was outside tending the kitchen garden.  Coincidentally, he was Josephine’s first love, and she had promised him that when she returned, they would be married.

He would wait until the end of the world, which was how much he loved her, but with this new fellow she was smitten with, I was not sure where that plan was. I wondered if she had said anything but wasn’t going to bring it up unless he did.

He didn’t, just waving and getting back to work.

I dropped my bag in the front hall and went through to the back of the house where my mother would be, or should I say where she usually was.

On the way, I steeled myself for the expected barrage of questions, mostly centred around why I had not found a nice woman I would want to marry and start a family, and my mother was not the only one to get on that horse.

So much for the surprise, she was not there.  But there was bread in the oven, and jam bubbling on the cooktop.  She wasn’t very far away.

I went over to the jam pot and had a peek.

“Ah, there you are.”  My mother had come inside from the back doorway with a basket of vegetables.  “Andy said you had arrived.  Did you see Jo on the way?”

I had told her I would drop in.  Perhaps I should have kept that to myself and made a mental note for the next time.  “I did, and she wasn’t there.  I spoke to her friends.  Busy, busy, busy.”

“Then you didn’t find out if she was coming home for Christmas.”

“I didn’t see her, remember.  Maybe I’ll be luckier when I return.  I’ll call her but you know what she’s like.”

She looked me up and down as mothers do, checking to see if I was taller, heavier, lighter, or stressed.  Everything was stressful on the roads these days.

“I’ll leave that in your hands.  You haven’t changed.”  She said the final verdict.  “Are you still working at that dreadful place?”

I’d taken on employment in a private detective agency that seemed to only deal with divorces and scandalous affairs.  I was getting quite adept at covert surveillance.

“It’s just a job,”

“You should be doing more with your life with those three degrees and such.”

She dropped the vegetable basket on the kitchen bench and stirred the jam, then gave me a welcome hug.

The bread had a short time to go.  Fresh bread and jam were looking good.

It seemed that Jo had not told our parents anything, so she could be anywhere, but my best guess was that she had gone with Albert Dmitri.  The only lead was Banff.  I would stay a day or two, then go find her, before our parents found out what she’d done.

Before I left home, I called my boss at the investigation agency and told him my suspicions, and he agreed to do a search on Dmitri.  I had a photograph of him with Jo taken when he didn’t know I had.  The first time I tried, he got very defensive, and that was one of the red flags that started to bother me.

He said I could do it when I returned, but I told him I was in the Banff area where Dmitri had a cabin, and if that was the case, I would go there.

He asked if I needed help from one of their enforcers, men who did the hard tasks like bodyguard, or backup in certain investigations when they were dealing with violent targets.

I thought it would be a good idea.  I had no idea what to expect.  He would meet me in Banff.

I think by the time I left home, sooner than I intended, and no matter how hard I tried to hide it, my mother knew something was wrong and that it involved Jo.

She gave me one of those looks, the one that said I know you’re not telling me something, gave me a hug, and said, call me when you see Jo, and let her know we love her.

“I think she already knows that.”

“Maybe so, but since you’ve both grown up, we don’t say it often enough.”

“Then I will.  I’ll get her to call you.”

What I received in my email several hours into the trip to Banff didn’t fill me with confidence.

From the photographs, the investigation of his case uncovered four different names and employment in various provincial universities or tertiary education institutions where there were missing girls.

We might have uncovered a serial killer, or at the very least predator.

The investigation into relatives and property was ongoing, but they needed to find out his real name because all they had so far were aliases.

The Banff police had been notified of the investigation, and I was told to visit an RCMP officer who had been working on the theory that the university disappearances were connected.  He was very interested in speaking to me and was laying the necessary groundwork to make Jo an official missing person, though I had to ask him to hold off until we had more on Dmitri because we had the advantage of knowing about him and he not knowing we had that information.  Publishing it would spook him, and he would disappear.

There was more available when I arrived at the Banff police station, I had Dmitri’s real name, and the fact his father, now deceased, owned a cabin in Canmore near the Palliser Trail.  That was conveyed to me but the company agent that had been sent to help me, and we agreed not to tell the police yet.  The agent, Phillip Rogers, was going to conduct discreet surveillance on the cabin and see if he was there or anyone else.  At the very least, he was hoping to thoroughly check the cabin itself while I was talking to the Police.

The officer’s name was Hercule Benoit and was a specialist in finding missing persons.  He’d been working on what he called the university disappearances for two years and had uncovered 13 cases, some of whom simply left, for various reasons, without telling anyone, and later found alive.  Two were dead, not necessarily murdered, but there were six missing possibly dead.  For us to eliminate you from our enquiries, we will require you to tell us where you were for five specific periods in the past seven years.

Jo was one he didn’t have on his list, simply because she left after telling those closest to her what seemed to be the truth, and everyone took it for granted.  Other cases in his book had done the same, suggesting a pattern.

And yes, each could be assumed to be connected with the departure some weeks later of a teacher, young, and able, though the descriptions were different, the base details were the same, height, weight, and mannerisms.  The differencing details were hair colour and length, beard, moustache, eye colour, glasses, dress style, and speech patterns or language.

Dmitri spoke like a refined Russian immigrant.  Another had a French accent, and one had none.  To my mind, Dmitri had theatrical training and could disguise himself, and I suspect the girls he took with him altered their appearance too. I was expecting Jo to look very different.

The question would be whether she was under his spell or if she was coerced or threatened.

It was Benoit’s plan to visit the cabin where I believed we would find Dmitri.  I was not going to tell him and take Rogers with me, but I had second thoughts because it might prejudice any chance of getting the truth, or later justice if we made a mistake.

There was also the possibility that Dmitri would run once alerted we were on to him, and we’d never find him, or Jo, though right now I was more hoping that believing she would be unharmed.

So, the new plan Benoit and I would visit, and Rogers, whom I had not told Benoit about, would maintain surveillance, and if Dmitri tried to run, he would stop him.  I didn’t ask him how he would do it. It was best not to know.

Then, suddenly, we had stopped outside the cabin, next to a RAM 2500, which Rogers had texted belonged to the man in the photograph he had sent me, a man who looked like Dmitri but was externally different.

This time, he had very short blonde hair and was wearing thick glasses accentuating blindness and was about 20 to 30 pounds lighter.  Out of the business suit and dressed like a lumberjack, unless you could be positive, he was hardly recognisable.

That same man answered the door, taking in the police vehicle, the RMCP officer in uniform, which was quite daunting even for me, and then he looked at me, squinting through those glasses.

Perhaps he hoped that flicker of recognition would be hidden behind the layers of glass, but it was not.  I glared at him until she turned back to Benoit.

“Is there a problem, officer?”

“There might not be.  Do you mind if we come in, Mr Francois?”

The office had discovered that the photo of Dmitri was that of Antoine Francoise, originally from Montreal and the grandson of Albert Francoise, the heir to a fortune the family had made from the Railways and shipping.

Dmitri or Antoine didn’t need to work, and it appeared kidnapping and murdering college girls was his hobby.  Perhaps he had the belief that being rich, the laws didn’t apply to him.

“Not unless you have a warrant or evidence, I’ve done anything wrong.”

And the arrogance to go with it.  I saw Benoit’s expression change and not for the better.

“If that’s the way you want this to go, Mr Francois, so be it.” He pulled out his cell phone and started dialling a number.

Perhaps the notion of giving a dozen police crawling all over his property changed his mind.  “I’m sorry.  I can be a little prickly in the morning.  By all means, come in.” He stepped to one side, and we went in.

“Good choice.”

The cabin looked to have a main room with a kitchen, a dinner table, set for one, a fireplace and two chairs, one looking very used, the other less so, and a bedroom, door open, bed unmade, what one might expect of a single man living on his own.

“What’s this about?”

“A man with similar features to you has been identified as a suspect in a kidnapping case, well, more than one.  You are one of three men picked out of a set of photographs of male teachers who worked at various colleges and universities where girls have disappeared or been found dead.  For us to eliminate you from our enquiries, you will need to tell us where you were for five specific periods over the last seven years.”

I was watching Antoine carefully, and he was good, showing no emotional response to what was tantamount to an outright accusation.  Didn’t bat an eyelid, as the saying goes.

“That’s a particularly tall order, as you can imagine.  But, I’m sure you are well aware of who I am, and as it turns out, a philanthropist with an office and a gaggle of assistants running it, shouldn’t be too hard.  I will make a call and have that information on your desk tomorrow morning.  Is that all?”

“We’d like to have a look around?”

I watched Antoine very carefully as Benoit asked the question, and had I not been carefully watching his eyes, which flicked to a carpet square under the dining table for a fraction of a second, I would have missed it.

“Here?  There’s only two rooms, what you see is all there is.”

Benoit shrugged and perhaps conveyed the fact a demolition team could beg to differ in his expression because a moment later Antoine waved his hand, “Search away.”

Benoit missed the inference, but I didn’t.  Why use the word search when there was no reason for us to, if he was not guilty.  I would mention it to Benoit after we left.

The search took all of a minute.  There was nothing to confirm anyone, but Antione lived there, and then only temporarily.  There was a half-filled suitcase on a corner and a few items hanging in a closet.  He had not been there long nor apparently staying.

“Thank you, Mr Francois.  I will be expecting your communication tomorrow.  We will speak further on this.”

Antoine was eager to get us out the door, but she didn’t push it.  He was, in my opinion, slightly agitated and definitely guilty of something.

Of course, it might be my imagination, or simply that I wanted it to be him, inventing in my mind those two tells, but it felt like it was him because I had that creepily feeling when I saw him after opening the door, and initially reactions were usually right.

He remained on the doorstep watching us leave.  I watched him watch us.

“It’s him,” I said. “I’m sure of it.  Innocent people don’t ask for search warrants.”

“You’d be surprised. If it is, he’s long practised at being what I would call detached.  And he’s had a string of assault charges, all dismissed.  Money talks, especially lots of it.”

“What’s the next step?”

“Wait for his alibi.  He’ll already have one for each of the dates with photographic evidence.  Mark my words.  People like him have alibis before they need them.  The thing about that cabin is that it’s a manufactured scene, everything in its place, and a place for everything.  In other words, staged.  He knew we were coming.”

…

©  Charles Heath 2024

…

…

I stood on the edge of the cliff and took in the view, which on any given day could be either magnificent or the equivalent of Dante’s inferno.

Today, while being majestic, it was also like being in hell.

It was day 37.  I didn’t think I’d last the first week, yet here I was, having survived the worst that could be thrown at me.  I was one of six out of the original intake of fifty.

People who were stronger than me, smarter than me, better educated, better physically, full of confidence, and some full of themselves, unexpectedly failed.  As they fell, one by one, all shocked at being cut, and as each day passed, I was always last to go look at the list of survivors.

Every time I expected to see my name and surprised, like many others, that I was not on the list.

They wanted four, there were six of us left.  The odds were not good, not after one of the instructors told me I had to up my game, that I’d barely made the last cut.

“Hell is on earth they said,” a voice in my head, or…

I turned, Kerrilyn O’Connor.

She was my choice to succeed.  I selected her on day one as the most likely to succeed.  She looked ordinary, but under that banal exterior was the fire and brimstone, the guts and determination needed to succeed.

“Been there already, and compared to this place, it was like Shangri-La.  No, it’s what you make it.  I came with no expectations, I’ll leave with no regrets.”

“You sound like you’ve given up?”

“I’ve been paired with Wally in the final test.  We’re the two bottom candidates, and I suspect they want us to fail.”

She smiled.  It was an ongoing subject of discussion, how Wally made it past day one, let alone to the final six.  Popular belief was that he was related to some director. Yes, that was how bad he was.

“You haven’t been to the notice board, have you?”

“Is there any reason to?  I was told yesterday what my fate would be.”

“Then I suggest you pay a visit.  You might be surprised.  I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

There might have been more, but relationships with other candidates were strictly forbidden.  It still didn’t stop the more adventurous from trying, and over the weeks, I guess some didn’t handle the isolation very well, nor the penalty for breaking the rules.

An island you couldn’t get off.  Fifty candidates and twenty staff, and a very long swim if you wanted to escape.  The only communication was a boat, every night at six, to take away the candidates who failed.

Kerrilyn and I had an on-off thing, and if it happened, it happened.  Other than that, I was under no illusion it was anything other than dalliance.  Once she became an agent, there would be no room in her life for relationships.  Mine, either if I managed to get through.

I wasn’t going to look, but something dragged me to the noticeboard, perhaps an unconscious death wish.  It explained the odd look on her face when she said I should.  The pairings had changed, and now I was with her.

I shrugged.  I just hoped I didn’t drag her down with me.

Sitting in the briefing room, once bustling with a lot of eagerness, some over-eager recruits, waiting to learn what the task was for the day or days, there was only silence.  It was not a companionable one. If anyone could read our minds, it would be to learn that we were taking a good, long, hard look at our competition and going over their strengths and weaknesses. We all knew this was it, the end of the line.  Fail this, and you were out

We had been paired with all of them several times, times we had been told if we cared to listen, to learn everything we needed to know about them because one day we would be pitted against each other.

Today was the time to put what we learned from the instructors and what learned about each other into practice.

Three days.  It was going to be the longest test we had participated in.  We would be taken to different parts of the island, and working as a team, we had to capture the other two teams.  By any and all means at our disposal.

One pair would be safe if they fulfilled mission parameters.  It was a big island, and there was not a lot of time, as we were told; in real life, the time we had now was a luxury.

No one asked what would happen if no one succeeded.

We were blindfolded and given noise-cancelling headphones, so trying to determine where we were being taken was almost impossible.

The helicopter landed and we were hustled out, the camp commander jumping out too.  He went with us to the point beyond the rotating propeller, the stop being brief.  We didn’t know if we were first, or last.

He pointed in a particular direction and then had to yell to be heard about the helicopter’s engine.  “One mile in that direction.”

“What’s there?” I asked.

“A boat.  You get on it and don’t look back.”

“Have we washed out, sir?”  Kerrilyn knew the value of respect, unlike some of the others.

“No.  You two are the best recruits we’ve had in years.  The assessment is that you’re ready, so we’re giving you a fortnight to get over whatever it is you’re doing and report to GHQ at 06:00 on the 21st.  Congratulations.”

He shook each of our hands and then went back to the helicopter.   A minute later it was lifting off, and after three more, it was gone.

I looked at her.  “What was that about?”

“You don’t believe him?”

“That we’re the best, yes, that we’re leaving this place, no.”

“A test?”

“After 38 days I think you have the same deep-seated distrust of anyone on this island.  What was the first lesson we learned?”

“Trust no one, and let your paranoia guide you.  He said gut, but to me, it could only be one thing.  The might be a boat waiting, but we have to get to it first, and I suspect four very willing candidates will do nothing to stop us.”

“That’s a bit cynical.  Why?”

“Because they can’t make up their minds who the other two are, and they’ve left it for us.”

She shrugged.  In time she’d come around.  in the meantime, we had a boat to find.  “OK.”

Before we’d taken three steps, four bullets had thwacked into trees near us.  It was clear they’d dropped the other four near our location, and, interesting development, they were using live ammunition.  Clearly, this was a do-or-die mission, a true simulation of what it was like in the field. 

“Bastard,” she muttered.  “But if that’s the way they want to play it, it’s game on.”

…

©  Charles Heath 2024

…

…

You know how you see these people on the street selling raffle tickets for unbelievable prizes?  The ones that you decide are a scam because the prizes quite simply are unbelievable or because the person looks suspect.

Or you know that it’s an email address gathering exercise, but still, everyone gets sucked into it because of the unbelievable prizes, only realising later that the people will sell the address a hundred times over, which is why you should give them a throwaway email address.

And then you make that decision that, what the heck, the person might be getting something out of it, and you’re feeling charitable that morning.

After all, what is $5 these days in the greater scheme of things?

Then, instead of throwing the ticket away, you put it in a dark corner of your wallet, thinking the next time you see it, years will have passed.

It was Wednesday morning, the train arrived on time, and I was feeling charitable.

It wasn’t a year. It was a few months.  An email arrived in my inbox, one of which was a few of very few because it was the throwaway email that usually was filled with scams.

It was from the name of the charity.  I’d pulled out the ticket when I saw the email and checked.

The subject line said, “You are a winner.”

There was the first red flag.  I never won anything.

On the back of the ticket was the list of prizes.  The first prize was a holiday house in the Caribbean, worth $500,000.  I doubted you could get a house in the Caribbean worth that unless it was a shack.

At the other end of the scale, 100 prizes of a ticket in the next raffle.  That was more my speed.

So, I opened the rest of the email.  I read and read until I got to the bottom where it said, your prize.  ‘Congratulations, you are the lucky winner of the Caribbean holiday house’.

That’s when I decided it was a scam, particularly after it said that I would soon receive an email telling me how to claim the prize.  No doubt it would end up with me paying a large sum of money to secure the prize.

Me and about a hundred others.

The next day, the second email arrived from the charity, and it was a debate whether I bothered.  I left the inbox on the screen, and the message was left unread while I had a cup of coffee.

Then, curiosity got the better of me.

The email was simple.  Attached was a boarding pass and a voucher for a 3-day hotel stay in Kingston Jamaica.  The plane was leaving in three days.

I went onto the airline site and, using the booking code, checked to see if it was real.

It was.

I also checked the hotel and called them.

It, too, was real.

It simply made me very wary.  In three days, when I turned up at the airport, I fully expected to be told it had been cancelled.

When I handed over the boarding pass document, the lady behind the counter gave me one of those looks, the sort that told me she knew what this was about.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re a prize winner.  There are a few this morning.  You’re going to be surprised, and then you’re not.”

“Can you tell me if this is a scam or not?  It’s not much point going if it’s a scam.”

“Go for the three-day stay in a great hotel.”

“Were you a winner?”

“No.  But I know someone who was.  Go, lap up the stay.  It’ll be worth the $5 you paid for the ticket.”

That’s all she would say.

At the gate waiting for boarding, I wondered if there were any other ‘winners’ in the hundreds waiting to get on the plane.  That conversation with the boarding clerk had not filled me with confidence, and more than once, I almost got up and walked away.

But when the boarding call was announced, I joined the queue to get on the plane, and when I reached the gate, I got the first surprise.

“You do realise you’re travelling business class and didn’t have to wait in this queue.”

I said I didn’t, that I didn’t fly very often, and certainly not business class.  I was usually down the back of the place with the families with miscreant children.

This would make a pleasant journey.

When I reached the plane, I was directed in the opposite direction, to a cabin where there was plenty of space and a bright welcoming smile.  I could get used to travelling in business class.

Could.  I shuddered to think what it was costing.

I sat in my seat, in what was like my only little world.  Yes, there was another passenger next to me, but she was behind a wall that made her appear as though we were completely independent.

Or would be when the plane took off.

In the meantime, she looked up as I flopped into the seat and gave me a cursory glance, one that told me I was a pretender and didn’t belong there, which was probably true.

And then, if I thought I was going to ignore her, I was wrong.

“It’s rather good up this end of the plane, don’t you think?”

“What makes you think…”

She smiled.  “The look on your face.  Don’t worry, I had the same gobsmacked look when I got here.”

The steward offered me a drink, either of water, orange juice, or champagne.  It wasn’t a hard choice.

“See,” she said, after the steward moved on, “the pretenders always go for the champagne.  I’ve been on long enough to realise the real people drink orange juice.”

I shrugged.  It was French champagne, not the bubbly I usually had.  I knew the difference, as I also knew I could not afford it.

She left me alone to savour the drink and settle.  The rest of the cabin filled up, and then, with everyone on board, the main door was closed.

There was time for one more drink, and the glasses were collected.

Once the plane was in the air, I noticed from time to time that she glanced sideways at me while I was immersed in the entertainment system.  When the plane had levelled out, the steward was asking for lunch orders.

It was a hard choice.  Usually, I avoided airline food like the plague, but the choices in this class were interesting enough to want to try them.

When he moved on, she took a moment to ask, “What are you having?”

I looked over to her side of the seating.  Her cubicle was a mess.  And now I took the time to look she had messy hair, and rather interesting if not matching clothes, though that might have been a trend I missed.

“Fish.”

“Me too.  Safest option.  I’ve never travelled in this class, and I guess it shows.  Even the posh kids give me funny looks. “

“Then they’ll grow up missing out on discovering what wonderful and diverse people there are out there.”

She smiled again, and it made a difference.  “Wow.  No one has called me wonderful, let alone diverse.  My name is Judy, by the way.”

She held out her hand, and I shook it.  I hope she was not expecting anything else.

“Ian.”

“Going to Jamaica for a holiday?”

“A three-day adventure.  Perhaps.”

“So am I.  In a manner of speaking.  I won a raffle, a holiday house, but my dad says it’s a con and I should’ve stayed home.  He’s fretting that I’m going to be kidnapped or worse.”

Another winner.  There couldn’t be more holiday houses than one, so it was a scam.

“As it happens, so am I.  I don’t believe it either, but three days in a posh hotel and this flight.  I nearly didn’t come.”

“Neither did I, but you’re right about the hotel.  Post isn’t the word.  Perhaps you and I should stick together until we find out what this is about.  More people are so-called winners on this flight.  I heard them talking back in the lounge.  I didn’t see you in the lounge.”

“Didn’t know about it.  I don’t fly business class, or very often at all, and when I do, it’s down the other end.”

“We must have that sort of face.  It’s where I end up with the naughty children.”

The steward arrived with the food, brought individually to us and not on a trolley or with the possibility our choice was no longer available.  ‘If I were rich, this would definitely be the way I would travel.

They just managed to clear away the dishes when it was time for the plane to come in for a landing.  It was a relatively short flight, and time seemed to pass very quickly.  Judy had something to do with that.

We didn’t say much after lunch was served.  I got the impression she might have decided talking to strangers on planes was a possible health hazard, and I didn’t push it.  After all, the notion we would find out about the scam together made sense, but then how did I know if she was an axe murderer or not?

She smiled at me before joining the queue to get off the plane.  Being in first and business, we were first off before the others, but when I came out into the terminal heading for immigration and customs, I couldn’t see her.  I decided against buying some duty-free alcohol on the way past. It would be too much to carry.

I thought I saw her at the head of the immigration line but was probably mistaken.  Then it was my turn, a pleasant welcoming expression from the officer and the return of my travel documents.  Then it was straight to customs because everything I needed was in my backpack, which I had brought on the plane with me.  A few minutes while an officer decided to search my bag, I didn’t ask why, just waited patiently until it was done, and they sent me on my way.

It was, in a way, far smoother and less painful than arriving back at JFK.  Fewer people, I suppose.  I wandered out of the terminal building in search of a bus that would take me to the hotel. 

I heard my name, probably for someone else with my name, but I turned anyway.  Judy.

How did she, with a suitcase, get through immigration and customs so fast? 

She caught up.  “Sorry, I had to see a man about getting immigration sorted.  My dad knows people everywhere.  I’m sorry I didn’t wait, but I didn’t want the guy telling my dad I was with a guy off the plane.  And that sounds as bad out loud as it did in my head.”

“I get it.  My mother, on the other hand, would be astonished if I got off a plane with a girl, so I guess that makes us even.”

She used her smile to smooth the waters.  She seemed very happy to be here.  “Share a taxi?  My Dad hates buses.”

I shrugged.  Why not?  “OK.”

The taxi ride took about half an hour, and I think we got the almost grand tour getting there.  Again, Judy thought it was our faces that got us into trouble.  I could also see that her father had weighed her down with endless instructions on what and what not to do, and it wasn’t going to be fun.

The hotel was the Terra Nova, and I had been reading up about it.  Old world charm, which to me, made it more interesting than staying in the concrete and glass Hilton or Marriot.  I’d also see several of the reviews that said to get as far away from the nightclub as possible.  Somehow, I got the impression that would be high on Judy’s to-do list.

When we arrived, there was no one from the plane, and I suspect we managed to get there before the others.  We gave our names, and then spent ten minutes convincing the desk clerk that we were not together, and eventually got our rooms, as it turned out, next to each other. 

When the porter tried to wrest the case from her, she resisted.  Another of her father’s rules is never to let your case out of your sight.

She went to her door, I went to mine, and we disappeared into our rooms at the same time.

The hotel did not disappoint, nor did the room as it was in a remote place from the nightclub.  I had three days of this, after whatever was going to happen tomorrow, and, of course, so long as my continued stay wasn’t dependent on having to spend wads of money for something that was supposed to be a prize.

I guess I’d find out in the morning.

An hour passed before two things happened.  The first, an envelope appeared from under the door from an invisible delivery boy, or girl, because when I opened the door just after it appeared, there was no one in the passage.  The second, ten minutes later, Judy knocked on my door rather than using the bell.

She ignored my greeting, walked over to the bed, and sat cross-legged on the end, almost as if it was her room, not mine.

She had brought the envelope with her, but hers was open.  Mine was still sitting on the bench.

“You got anything in the bar?”

I shrugged.  I hadn’t looked.  She got off the bed, opened the door, pulled out a bottle of beer, and after removing the lid went back to the bed.

Thanks for the offer of one of the others I thought.

“It’s a fucking timeshare.”

I knew she would tell me what she had on her mind, eventually.  I’d heard of them but hadn’t quite put two and two together.  Perhaps by morning, I would have.  I also wondered if she had realised she swore.  Perhaps, because it seemed to roll naturally off a lot of younger people’s tongues.

“Damn,” I said, after a minute.  “Here I was thinking it was a ticket to a portal to another world.”

She looked long and hard at me, perhaps to see if I was joking or telling the truth.  People told me I had a warped sense of humour, and it wasn’t a good thing.

She looked at me oddly, then curiously.  “You a science fiction freak?”

“Not sure about the freak part, but I do like a good story with a scientific background.  Mostly though I just wish I could step through a portal to a better place.”

She got off the bed, went to the bar, took out another bottle of beer, took the lid off it and handed it to me.  “Sorry.  I can be a little self-absorbed.  And it is your beer, I should have asked.”

“I should be flattered that you would feel safe enough to come into a room with a man you’ve never met before and feel that comfortable as to sit on his bed and drink his beer.  Just exactly who are you?”

That look of curiosity just got a little more wide-eyed and elicited another smile.  “I can be a little too forward, my father says.  You seem a nice guy.  Besides, we’ve got a situation.”

“Not really.  I’ll admit it’s an odd way to get customers to look at a timeshare, but I’m guessing if the people who brought us here get a ten per cent hit rate, then it pays for the airfares and accommodation, and they get the ongoing benefits.”

“You know about timeshares?”

“I went to a hotel once, and it was a timeshare.  When you check in they try to stitch you up for a permanent week, and use of the resort facilities for an annual fee.  It can be quite expensive, but I’m guessing some of the resorts might be quite exotic.  This is the Caribbean so it might be quite good.”

“I can’t afford it.”

“Neither can I, which means you and I might be out on our asses this time tomorrow.  Or not.  Maybe if we can pretend that we’re interested until the three days have passed…”

“And act like we’re a couple, then we’d only have to listen to one pitch.  We could act all bratty and ask ridiculous questions.  I mean you just about told me everything that was in the envelope, which is not bad since yours is still sealed.  It didn’t have a fee, but it did say I would get a week which I could use at this resort, or another anywhere in the world, once a year.  it’s at Montego Bay and sounds impressive.  We’ll know tomorrow.  Tonight, there’s a bar downstairs, and interesting cocktails to be had.  I don’t want to go on my own, so if you have nothing else to do…”

How could I refuse after being asked so nicely?

If I was one of those people who attached labels to their fellow humans, I would have called Judy crazy.  More than once in the ensuing five hours I was with her, she showed plenty of signs that she could be trouble and could also be very easily misunderstood.

She drank too much and got tipsy, but not drunk.  Although it was not my problem, I thought it was a good thing to keep a close eye on her in case she got into trouble.  She liked talking about herself, and several of her friends, who, if the truth was known, were not friends as such.  She didn’t travel much outside her hometown and was not inclined to live in a big city. 

She said her mother left when she was younger, she had two sisters, older and restrictive, and a father who tried to let her live her own life.  It was no surprise to learn her father was a policeman.

I tried not to tell her about my non-existent life, the boring job I had, or the miserable circumstances of where I lived.  Better she just thought I was a nice guy.  I bought her drinks and watched her dance, and once or twice tried not to make a fool of myself.  The noise was very loud and followed us along the passageways on our way back to our rooms at an ungodly hour of the morning.

At the door to her room, she kissed me on the cheek, told me I was nice to make sure she was safe and then disappeared.

I shrugged.  It was easy to be with her, better than any other girl I’d known and remembered that come the end of the three days she would be gone, and life would go back to the way it was.

…