29

How far would you go for justice? When is justice just revenge, and when does revenge become evil?

(Beginning piece of a longer story)

"The highest achievement of human ingenuity is justice."

Dr Hall looked round the lecture theatre to gauge the reaction to this assertion, so lacking in equivocation. This was the third lecture in the module, The Psychology of Morality, and so far it had been pretty regular stuff. Pretty regular reaction – note-taking, yawning, wandering gaze. Which were paying attention, which were thinking, which might want to debate with him in tutorial later in the week? Which might anticipate what he was going to say next?

"And the ingenuity of the achievement lies in the way we humans deceive ourselves that it exists."

Did he detect a faint murmur in the ranked tiers of his audience? He held up his pen, a plain, ordinary ballpoint. "Supposing this was yours, and I stole it – what would be justice? Suppose, on the way out of this lecture someone picks the loose change out of your pocket? Not very serious. But suppose that was the only money you had for your bus fare to get home this evening, or to buy food for the weekend. What would be justice then?

"Suppose your change included your keys. Someone gets into your bed-sit and steals your hi-fi? Or you live at home with your parents – someone breaks in, rapes your mother, kicks your father to death. How would you feel if a court said, ‘But the attacker didn’t mean to kill the man – he was sick and the illness, aggravated by the assault, was the cause of death.’ Your mother suffers trauma for the rest of he life, can’t go outdoors. What would be a suitable sentence from a court in this country?

"Would you take justice into your own hands, perhaps? It’s against the law in this country, but if the victims were your own flesh and blood, would you feel entitled? Obligated? Forced to take action? Justified?

"We equate justice with punishment. But how do you make punishment as great as evil and are we in the right even to try? And wouldn’t we be committing evil ourselves?

"This pen I am holding up was sent to me through the mail. It was from Amnesty International, a well-know, world-wide charity that campaigns for fair trials and just treatment of prisoners, and the stopping of torture. They were asking for funds for their cause. They pointed out in their leaflet that a pen such as this, in the hands of a secret policeman, could be used as an instrument of torture. To blind somebody. I will leave you to imagine the fundamental details.

"It is often said that the best person to define what is just response to a wrong-doer’s act is the victim. Let the victim decide what is just. If you’ve just had your eye gouged out, what do you think you might say?"

Terry felt distinctly uncomfortable in his seat. He was a mature student, which meant that he was a good fifteen to twenty years older than most of the other students on this course. He had chosen psychology because he wanted to know more about people, and, being a social science, he had been led to believe there would be lots of women on the course. He thought it might be a positive thing, to start looking around for someone to start a relationship with, since his wife had died. And, since he had also been made redundant with a fair settlement, and had no other responsibilities, he felt he should do what he liked. There was some doubt he’d get another job at his age anyway. He could re-skill… or he could just go and be a carefree student doing what he wished. He looked round at the other students and wondered what they were thinking. When he’d picked this particular module, "The Psychology of Morality," he hadn’t known what to expect. Maybe dry and dull. This was turning out to be neither.

Dr Hall, the lecturer, was continuing. "You see, it’s not just a question of ‘who is qualified to make decisions about justice?’ It’s also about what would satisfy the unjustly treated." He paused. "There was some work done at the Psychology Department of Freedom University in The States back in the Sixties. It was very controversial, and could never be repeated now, certainly not in this country, in this university. The usual guinea pigs were students, and they were locked in cells for long periods, then shown films of people undergoing torture, and told they would have similar things done to them unless they confessed to some crime none of them had committed. To make up for the fact that this was not a real prison – and to spice things up a bit, because – after all, experimenters love to push the parameters – the subjects were given adrenaline beforehand, so they would have a fear-reaction guaranteed. Then – when they had identified with and empathised with the victims – they were asked what sort of punishment the torturers should get. The results were surprising.

"A lot of the students actually came up with suggestions that were even worse than the things they had been shown – and believe me, they were bad enough. But in some instances, the pseudo-victims couldn’t say anything. They became hysterical. They started to scream. Some carried on screaming for several hours, until the adrenaline wore off or they were given barbiturates to calm them down.

"And that is my point. The only justice some victims get is to scream. All they can do is scream. They get nothing else. When you are hurt, you can scream intermittently for hours. But how long can you make a single scream? How long could you scream for, if you were in pain and believed you were about to die?

"I’m going to tell you a number. It’s a number that I promise you that you will never forget. Not when you leave this lecture theatre, not when you go home, not when you finish the term, nor the course. Not ever. The only justice these people got was to scream. And the longest single scream any of them made was for just 29 seconds."

(To be continued, possibly...)

Home From Home

A death in the family - a tragedy, good fortune, a coincidence? Or even more?

#

(This story was originally published in Chorley and District Writers' Circle magazine, Aware, issue 3, November 2007, on the theme Home and Away.)

I stepped into the familiar hallway over a dune of junk mail circulars and free-sheet newspapers. The air was at once familiar yet cloyingly strange – the house had been shut up for many weeks. It was tomb-like, yet I breathed the air I knew from childhood. So different from the boiled cabbage, urine and disinfectant soaked atmosphere I had had to tolerate recently.

I entered the living room. Brown wallpaper, some faded floral pattern whose colour scheme seemed to be based on recycled teabags. The fusty armchair, seat bellowed inwards. Dull books on the shelf, dull ornaments and pictures. All this would have to change. Not a problem now. This chair would be first to go. This was where my father died.

At least, that is to be assumed. That is where they had found him. It was a fair assumption. It’s where I had last seen him alive.

‘What am I going to do?’ he had asked. ‘Everything was going to come to you. And I’ve tried to keep going on my own, but it’s too much.’

‘You are very ill, father,’ I had agreed.

‘But I can’t look after myself anymore.’

‘I look after you, father.’

‘I know you do.’ He tried, painfully, to readjust himself in his chair, and grimaced. ‘Pass me one of my little friends, will you.’

I handed him the book-sized bag – it had been a sort of pencil case, I think. But, instead of pencils, it contained spliffs of cannabis, papers, lump of ‘substance’ wrapped in Clingfilm. He took one, lit it, and drew deeply on it. Hot tiny cinders fell from the end and burned pinprick holes in his old shirt – I was surprised the health visitor never picked up on this. ‘If I go into a care home, this is the one thing I will miss,’ he said at length, hoarsely. ‘You know, this is the only thing that gives me any relief from the pain?’

‘Yes, I know, father. You’ve told me many times. Many times. You forget, don’t you?’

‘Do I?’

I reached for his other medical kit, the one with the insulin, and, as I did so, I couldn’t help feeling how life could be so unfair, inflicting a man with two severe illnesses, diabetes and MS, either of which could, if left untreated, kill him. I checked his blood sugar tester and absent-mindedly looked up the dose – I already knew the table pretty much by heart.

‘The thing is, I can’t go into care unless I sell up the house. I will need the money to pay for the home.’

‘Not on medical grounds,’ I reminded him, patiently, for the umpteenth time.

‘But I will need the residential care – I need somewhere comfortable where I’ll be properly looked after.’

I passed him his syringe. ‘The Health Service will look after you.’

‘No they won’t,’ he insisted, as always. He equated National Health Service care as being in hospital, incarcerated, waiting out his days.

‘Here you are.’

He started to cough intermittently, the smoke irritating his lungs. God help us, I thought, if he also ended up getting cancer. However, I noticed that, apart from the shaking from each minor spasm, the tremor in his hands had eased. I wondered if he would make the injection himself. It would be easier.

‘You do it, son. My little friend is making me a bit woozy.’

‘You can do it, Dad,’ I reassured him. ‘Your hand’s much steadier now.’

I had left shortly after and that’s how they found him. When the post-mortem showed he had died from a pulmonary embolism, that there was air in the injection fluid and my fingerprints on the syringe, I was arrested and charged with murder. I had means, opportunity and, with the chance of being bequeathed an entire house, the motive. They made it sound like I had almost been sloppy. Some rising star was picked by the CPS to make the prosecution case just for the practice, so sure were they of winning, of sending me away for a long time. I should get used to my prison cell. It would be my home for many years to come.

I had my own hot-shot lawyer, however. While I was on remand, waiting interminably for the case to come to court, we went over my defence. Counsel is not allowed to coach a witness, even one speaking in his own defence. There is no law against doing things the other way around, however.

I merely suggested that my father had increasingly relied on illicit drugs for pain relief. It was perhaps no surprise that he had graduated from just cannabis to intravenous heroin. And the post-mortem also concluded that my father had enough of the stuff in his bloodstream to anaesthetise a horse. Certainly that would have been enough to kill him. I often gave him his insulin injections because of his hand tremor. Of course my fingerprints would be on the syringe. It would not be possible, with his prints and mine both present, to say who handled the little glass tube last.

Why, if I had wanted to kill my father, would I use two different methods to finish him off, especially one that was so easily detectable?

This was sufficient to sew doubt in the mind of the jury. Much more reasonable to assume the old man had been ham-fisted in preparing the injection for himself, before I even arrived for my daily visit. That I’d already left before took it. The simplest explanation is always thought the most likely.

And so, the case had collapsed. I was discharged, a free man, not put away to rot out the remainder of my life, any more than my father had needed to be put away to see out his own.

I stood in the house I had grown up in, and had now inherited, without a stain on my character, nor, for that matter, on my conscience.

The fact that I had prepared the fatal injection containing both heroin and the bubble of air that had formed a clot in my father’s lungs, swiftly and painlessly killing him, was irrelevant. I was in the clear, I was home free.

I was home.

The end

The Valletta Deal

What not to do on your holidays - short story with a mystery-thriller tinge

The taxi that dropped me off in the late afternoon sunlight at Malta International Airport at Luqa took just about the last of my Maltese money. Some places would still accept Sterling, after all these years, but with no greater preference than other European currencies. It was all a bit academic, seeing as I had no money in other currencies either, and, in any case I was leaving. The job that I’d flown out to Malta for had fallen through, I was broke, and all I wanted to do was get home. At least I had my return ticket. Resigned to being processed like a piece of cargo, I shuffled up to the departure desk and dropped my ticket on the counter. The flight attendant, in her prim, Air Malta uniform, flicked through it.

"Mr Bishop?" said the slightly accented voice.

"Yes?"

"This ticket is for the six o’clock flight to London Gatwick."

"Yes. That’s right."

"Oh-six-hundred hours. The flight was at 6 a.m. this morning."

I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t believe it. All the years I’d been travelling to various corners of the world, some of them loosely describable as flesh-pots, some of them not even loosely describable, and never once had I confused the 24 hour clock for normal, "What time do you make it?" and glance-at-your-watch time. I understood perfectly the difference between a.m. and p.m. and zero hours through to 23 hundred and fifty-nine hours and I had never got them mixed up. Until now. I had arrived expecting to catch a flight at 6 p.m. that had left twelve hours earlier at 6 a.m.

I could only put it down to exhaustion. Exhaustion and frustration. Frustration at having come all this way for a job, when I so desperately needed money, and the job had fallen through – if it had ever existed, and I had felt utterly at a loose end. Exhaustion, frustration, and bonehead stupidity.

The flight attendant evidently could read my thoughts from the expression on my face. "Don’t worry, Mr Bishop. Providing there is room, we can move your ticket to tomorrow morning. All you need to do is to find a place to stay for the night."

She consulted some kind of computer terminal, and, after some tapping of keys and fiddling with bits of paper, she printed me a fresh ticket. As she handed it to me, she said, with an encouraging smile, "Don’t forget – tomorrow morning."

I tried to smile back, but I felt like I’d just stepped out of a dentist’s with a face full of Novocaine. Where could I spend the night? I could not go back to my hotel in Valletta, the capital, as I had no money left, and the rows of airport bench seats looked like instruments of torture. I had just about enough money for one bottle of Hopleaf and that was it.

"Your name is Bishop, yes?" said a voice by my shoulder. A small, middle-aged man, with receding black greasy hair, was talking to me. "You are English?"

"That’s right."

"Good. I like English very much. I hear what happened. You go to England in the morning."

"Yes."

"You have no place to stay?"

"No."

"It will be my pleasure to offer you a place for the night. If you wish. I like English."

"I’m afraid," I could hardly talk, I was so embarrassed, "I’m afraid I have no money."

"It does not matter. I like English. My name is Camilleri. Come. You stay the night. Perhaps you can do some time something for me."

I wondered what he had in mind.

Mr Camilleri was a perfect host. He drove me in a blue Vauxhall Cavalier that seemed to have dusted embedded into its paintwork. We headed past Valletta to his flat in Sliema, on the northern side of the Grand Harbour opposite the city, where he got me a light meal of salad and fish, mercifully finished off with a bottle of Asbach Uralt brandy. He showed me to a small, clean room that had a bed made up ready and waiting as if he had been expecting me. Next morning, he woke me very early with some incredibly strong coffee, and some toast and marmalade. Then we set off back to the airport.

In some countries they drive on the left, in some on the right. In Malta, they drive in the shade. It was not yet five in the morning and a Mediterranean dawn was just preparing to launch itself into a riot of colour. With some light and little traffic, Mr Camilleri, with typical Maltese zeal, drove like a man possessed, even though there was plenty of time to spare.

He waited while I checked in, this time with no problems. I was so relieved to be going home, yet I had enjoyed my evening with this stranger. I was grateful but didn’t know how to thank him, and I said so.

Again, it was almost as if he had been ready for this moment. "You will be passing through London?"

"Of course?"

"Then I was wondering if you would be so kind as to drop off this postcard?" He pulled a small picture postcard from his inside pocket.

"Don’t you have a stamp?"

"The post!" he turned up his hands in a mild gesture of dismissal. "So slow. A small detour? You can do this for me? There is some money to cover your fares." He also handed me an envelope. Inside was a small collection of £20 notes.

I took the card. It was a picture of Valletta harbour. On the reverse was an address in Belgravia, in slightly shaky capitals. I could not read what was written on the correspondence side of the card, which appeared to be in Greek. It would mean a couple of Tube journeys, nothing more, a lot less than the cash. How could I refuse?

My flight was called and I said goodbye to Mr Camilleri. On the other side of the boarding pass gate were some shops. I bought some overhead projector marker pens. My only souvenir.

At Gatwick, I was diverted, as if by random, by a customs official as I went through Nothing To Declare. He went through my one bag nonchalantly yet thoroughly, as if following a practised routine. He found nothing – there was nothing to find – but he noticed the picture postcard of Valletta harbour. He studied both sides of it with more interest than I felt it warranted. "Forget to post this?" he said.

"I ran out of stamps. Guess I’ll just have to hand it over in person."

He seemed to read the back of the card. Then he lost interest and let me go.

In the toilets, with a damp tissue, I wiped off the English I had written in large print, with the water-soluble overhead marker that I had used to cover the original message. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t like the idea of carrying a message in a language I couldn’t understand. I took the card to the Belgravia address, handed it personally to a man who could have been Mr Camilleri’s younger cousin, and went home.



Mehmet Ertegun – known as "the banker" by those who had dealings with him – was delighted with the picture postcard. It told him just what he wanted to know, and that was the number of a safety deposit box that contained $500,000 in Kruger rands. He used his own method of communicating with his colleague that payment had been received and delivery of the merchandise could go ahead. Duly, thirty-four Kalashnikov AN-94 "Abakan" assault rifles, with a maximum fire rate of 1,800 rounds per minute, and 22,000 rounds of 5.45 calibre ammunition left Piraeus in Greece by ship for Marseilles. They had been moved from Russia, through Chechnya to Albania and on to Greece, and this was probably not the end of their travels.

No banking system in the world had handled any part of the financial transaction. No radio, telephone call, email, or telex had been transmitted that could be picked up at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. No mail intercept had taken place. The deal might never had existed.

Face-recognition software attached to the surveillance cameras at Malta International Airport had spotted Mr Camilleri, and soon had a host of other names for him. Mr Bishop’s face the software did not know. Still, MI6 put Bishop’s name and description on a watch-list at airports around the world.

The next time Mr Bishop showed up late for a flight on which he was booked, he would have a lot of explaining to do.

THE END.

Echo of the Mind

Short story about a young man who has everything - it seems - except the girl of his dreams - a girl whose biggest thrill is deadly.

A cool breeze was just starting to lift off the Atlantic to give some relief at the end of a hot New Jersey afternoon. This was invitation enough to bring out the early evening drinkers to the Ocean Club down the avenue from Point Pleasant. Guy loved this time of day. He knew, as he rolled his Ferrari F430 Spider into the parking lot, that the women’s heads would turn. He would leap out over the door without opening it, and the gentle wind would just catch his expensively-coiffured shock of straw-coloured hair, ruffling it and making him look even more interesting. If that was possible, with his tan good looks, Versace jeans and the fact that he’d arrived in a diamond-graphite coloured car that cost more than some people paid for an apartment.

Dino had his Long Island Iced Tea, mixed just the way he liked it, with extra Sour, by the time he reached the bar. He raised the glass, already steamed with condensation, and took a long, satisfying drink before he spoke.

"How’s it hanging, Dino?"

"Just fine, Mr Richards, just fine. How’s things with you?"

"You beat me to it, Dino." He put his glass down carefully on the bar and pushed his Ralph Lauren shades up into his hair. "Just fine." He cast his gaze round the bar. "Usual crowd in here this evening?"

"One bit of class out there on the veranda. I thought you’d have already noticed her."

"I certainly did, my man," he said, with a twisted grin. "Just wanted to check I wasn’t dreaming. I didn’t want to ask you to pinch me." He collected his drink and set off towards the striking woman standing out on the veranda, sipping a cocktail and staring out over the breakers.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey yourself."

Guy hesitated, as if tangling with a problem. "I know you must get this all the time, but – has anyone ever told you that your God’s own spitting image of Julia Roberts?"

"Happens all the time," she said, over the rim of her glass. She was weighing him up, he sensed.

"You’re not Julia Roberts, are you?"

"Ssh!" she grinned. "No-one’s supposed to know. I’m incognito."

He held out his hand. "Guy Richards."

Her long eyelashes fell and rose slowly before she placed a delicate hand in his. "Evelyn Turner."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Evelyn."

"Nice car you got there."

"I like to think so." Guy realised the parking lot was not visible from this side of the club-house. "You noticed when I drove up?"

"Yeah." There was a tiniest flash of her tongue as she took another sip of her drink. "I like fast cars."

"Maybe you’d like to get better acquainted with it?"

"Maybe I would."



That was the trouble with Ocean Avenue. It ran along the New Jersey coast which, at that point, was dead straight. So the road was dead straight. No reason to slow down, hold the car back.

"Faster," Evelyn breathed.

Guy liked to open up the Spider whenever he could – he loved the thrill of the wind dragging at his hair as much as anyone could. But there was a time and a place. Now late at night was one thing. But Ocean Avenue was not the place, with the local townships nearby and all, and after a long evening drinking. If a blue-and-white caught them, he’d get more that a ticket for speeding. DUI and he’d be in jail.

He nudged the accelerator downwards then eased back a little.

"Faster!" Evelyn demanded.

"We’re doing one hundred and ten now," he grimaced, trying to still sound calm.

Evelyn was laughing now. "Is that all? Surely this thing can go faster?" It was like a lover’s request.

Guy pounded down on the accelerator and the Italian engineering roared with delight. "There’s a red light!" Guy yelled into the slipstream.

"Jump it!"

There was no traffic, either approaching or crossing. Guy decided to go for it.

Just as they reached the point of no return, a car pulled out in front of them.

Guy would have hit the horn if hadn’t been wrestling with the wheel. He also toe-poked at the brake. The anti-lock would not have given up traction easily but he wanted all the control he could hang on to, and not to turn the vehicle into a sliding one-fifty mile an hour coffin. Rubber screamed. The car slammed into the sidewalk and tipped at a crazy angle, tires off the tarmac, before crashing back down. It careered on, snaking this way and that as Guy strangled the speed out of his mechanical pet, lest it turn and roll and bite him, and it finally slued to a halt almost half a mile beyond the intersection.

He was dazed, exhausted, soaked in icy sweat, when he realised the beautiful woman next to him was laughing.

"You enjoyed that." He wasn’t sure whether he intended it as statement or a question.

She was panting like a race horse, just coming down, her own spittle on her cheek. "That was magnificent," she gasped, and huddled against his shoulder, closed her eyes.



"I used to come here when I was a boy," he told her. It was the latest of a number of dates they’d been on in quick succession after that first night and slept together. Always she wanted him to push the Spider to the edge of its capabilities. Artfully, for a change, after picking her up from the Ocean Club, he’d headed inland east of New Brunswick to some woods. He thought if he could get her out of the car and maybe just walk, she would calm down a little. Not that her excitement wasn’t infectious. On the contrary, it seemed to seep from her into him. Just that, sometimes, a little quiet was also nice. The woodland was a favourite place from his childhood. At the end of a path there was a clearing with a high, rocky point, from which it was easy to see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, clustered like blue-grey shapes, more than twenty miles away. He took her there now, and showed her the view.

"D’you ever go to the Big Apple?"

"I used to," she said. "I used to love going up the WTC, to the observation deck, and tell myself, ‘Hey – I’m a quarter of a mile off the ground.’ It was such a thrill. I always thought it was a shame you couldn’t lean right out over the edge, because of all the fences and everything. To stop the jumpers."

"Well, you don’t want to go too crazy jumping round here. The cliffs here are only about fifty feet but you’d do bad things to yourself if you stepped off one."

"Really?" She seemed to find the place more interesting.

"I used to come here with my Dad," he said. "He was more like a big brother to me than a father. We used to play a game in the Fall. Just a silly game. We’d try and catch the leaves as they were falling. One at a time. It was crazy. Such a simple game. But we’d have hours of fun playing it."

"What happened to him?"

"He died when I was a kid." Suddenly, he couldn’t say anymore. He wanted to say that his Dad was his best friend. He wanted to say after he’d gone, he was all on his own and nothing made much sense for a while. He even remembered how lonely he he’d felt back then. In his mind’s eye, he saw a solitary kid, quiet and abandoned with no toys and no friends and nowhere he belonged. But it just sounded corny so he kept silent, pushed it all back down inside.

"I can think of a game," she said, suddenly animated. She pulled her silk scarf from around her neck and abruptly tore it in half, giving two long strips, "Come here."

He was standing right next to her anyway but he moved closer. She took one of the strips, folded it over then placed it across his eyes, and tied it behind his head.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Hey!" She suddenly spun him round, several times, then let go. "What gives?"

"Hold on," she said. "I’m just putting my blindfold on too… There. Neither of us can see!" She took his hand and started dancing him around. "Don’t take it off," she sang out, "don’t take it off."

"What are you playing at?"

"Know which way your facing?"

"Not a clue!"

"Run!" She screamed, "Run!" She grabbed his hand again and dragged him into a stumbling trot. "Come on, come on, come on, faster, faster!" she kept yelling at him.

He staggered trying to keep up with her. "It’s dangerous!"

"I know. But it makes you feel alive! Run!"

He plunged headlong in total blindness, the ground constantly leaping up to hook at his feet. He could feel she was tripping and bumping into him but still upping the pace, laughing wildly. Something snagged his foot and he fell full length, she landed on top of him. Winded, he tugged off the silk blindfold, just in time to see her do the same.

They had fallen at the very edge of the cliff.



After that, Guy didn’t know where to go out with Evelyn. He had been really scared after the woods episode. He called in at the Ocean Club without making a prior arrangement to meet her. He was just beginning to relax, thinking he would have his evening to himself, when she arrived, carrying a purse, ordered a drink. "Come walk with me on the beach," she said. He followed her down the wooden steps from the veranda onto the sand. There was nothing much of any threat down there. Unless she planned taking a swim, in which case he’d certainly not join in.

It had been a blast knowing her though. He wanted to please her. By the time they had walked fifty yards and she’d said nothing, he found himself wishing she’d suggest something. Eventually, he spoke.

"You like danger, don’t you?"

"It’s a turn-on, isn’t it?"

He surprised himself by laughing. "Yeah. Yeah it is."

"I knew you did. That’s why I do it."

"Do what?"

"All of it. For you. To give you a thrill. You like a thrill, don’t you?"

"But somebody could get hurt."

"Of course they could. It wouldn’t be a game without all the parts."

"What game?"

"Like playing with your Dad. But it’s not a game unless there’s danger. Didn’t your Dad like danger?"

He saw a shy little kid in his head, without a Dad. "You didn’t know my Dad. Nobody did."

"Wouldn’t you like to play another game right now?"

"What sort of game?"

"With two friends of mine." She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun. "With my two friends, Mr Smith and Mr Wesson." He stopped in his tracks. She handed him the revolver and paced out ten steps. "How good a shot are you?"

"What?"

"How good a shot? You could hit me at this distance, right? Then I’ll go a little further." She took another ten paces.

"I haven’t fired a gun since I was a kid."

"Don’t worry. I don’t want you to hit me! I want you to miss. But you got to see how close you can get."

He held the dull metal object in his hand.

"I can’t."

"Go on," she begged. "Think of the thrill. You don’t have to aim all that near to me."

"I can’t," he said again.

"But I want you to. It excites me. And I know it excites you. Look how we make love afterwards. Isn’t it always great? Because you feel so alive?"

He hesitated, lifted the weapon, then lowered it again. "But not like this, Evelyn. I can’t do something like this. This is too much."

She stood a second, as if waiting to see if he might still take the challenge. Then she came over to him. "If you can’t give me a thrill, then how can you expect me to do anything for you?"

Something stirred in the far reaches of his mind but he pushed it deep back down. "I can’t," he said, as much to himself as to her.

"Maybe you and I should call it a day," she said. "It was fun for a while. But you’re not alive anymore." She reached out for the gun. It was as if she had already made up her mind. He didn’t want to lose her. Suddenly, another idea seemed to occur to her. "I tell you what. I’ll give you one more chance. If you’re too scared to shoot at me, shoot at them!" She indicated the gathering of people on the veranda at the Ocean Club. "Do you think you could hit anybody at this distance?"

Before he could stop it, an image leapt up like vomit from his inner being. A young man, standing outside a sleazy dive, his clothes worn to rubbish, knees through on old jeans stiff with dirt, his yellow hair greasy and matted with neglect. Inside the bar it was noisy and bright with neon, people having fun, friends enjoying each other’s company. Outside, the scruffy young man, alone, in the dark, and shivering with cold, his skin pale and ingrained with dirt. How he longed to have someone to talk to, how he longed to have enough money to share a beer with someone – anyone – and if he could make contact with female company, that would be wonderful. He’d feel alive. All he had, in the pocket of his rough jacket, was the Smith and Wesson.

"Go on," she said. "You can’t hurt them. They can’t even feel you. Go on."

The yellow-haired man raised the gun and took aim at the crowd.

He could feel himself squeeze the trigger.

The End

Ice

(Beginning of story about a modern day mystery to track down a large amount of money left behind after World War 2 to spy on the Soviets, and still around today after the fall of the Berlin Wall)

I got off the Tube and stepped out into the summer heat of the Brompton Road. I strolled slowly, not wishing to work up a sweat in my Saville Row suit, passed Harrods and turned on to Hans Crescent and approached the big house. I climbed the stone steps and rang the bell labelled, "Strategic Research Consultants." No voice responded, the door lock simply buzzed and I let myself inside.

Cadwallader was standing at the balustrade of the first landing and beckoned me up. I often wondered whether this was his real name. But surely, if he was going to pick a fake one, he would have chosen something less conspicuous than Cadwallader. He led me into a lounge with Chesterfield sofas, that was noticeably cooler than the sultry day outside. He invited me to sit down. His only concession to hospitality was to give me, without speaking, a glass of iced water, instead of offering me something from the laden drinks tray on a table by the far wall. To be fair, he took only a glass of iced water for himself and, to be fair, the water was welcome.

He settled down opposite me and suddenly his steel-blue eyes fixed on me and the rest of the room ceased to exist.

"What do you know about the SOE?" His voice was quiet, but deadly serious. I wasn’t expecting a history test. Or maybe he was reminiscing, about to write his memoires.

I cleared my throat. "Well, SOE stood for ‘Special Operations Executive.’ They carried out raids and supplied the various resistance forces against the Nazis in Europe during World War Two."

"Absolutely," he said, levelly. "They were the covert British force during the war." He took a sip of his water. "And what was the Secret Intelligence Service’s role during this period?"

I felt like I was at a job interview and I had just been caught out. "MI6? I’ve no idea."

He put his glass down on the rosewood table in front of him. I noticed there wasn’t a coaster – condensation would run on to the table top. "Exactly," he said. His voice was still quiet, but it was as if he had spoken with sudden forcefulness. "And what happened," he continued, "when the war ended and the Soviets took control of Eastern Europe? Where was the SOE then?"

Again I had to admit I didn’t know. "Didn’t MI6 take over then?"

"And what happened to the SOE?" I couldn’t help feel he was harping on about this. "I thought they were disbanded."

"Indeed," he sighed. "They were disbanded. Despite, as Churchill predicted, that an Iron Curtain would descend over Eastern Europe."

"What does it matter?" I tried to stand my ground. "We had intelligence services watching the Soviets. What’s in a name?"

"You are right. What’s in a name? Many former SOE operatives eventually moved over to MI6."

"That’s what I thought," I offered.

"But what you don’t know was that SOE had plans for when the Russians arrived."

"That seems reasonable."

"SOE had plans," he emphasised the word, "to stay back, behind the Iron Curtain. Stay back! They knew the contacts. They knew the territory. They knew what was needed. They were not pleased at being closed down, and the scraps that were left to be assimilated into the SIS."

"I can imagine." I sipped my ice water.

"They also had the funds in place, in certain instances, to support stay-back groups."

I felt he had finally reached the true point of this meeting he had called with me. "Funds?"

"Yes. Funds. You can’t run a spy cell without something to pay your people. The SOE put funds in place to support a number of groups. They had to hand all this over to MI6 when they were closed down."

"I see," I said. Even though I did not. At least, I didn’t see what his interest was in all this.

"Sometimes it wasn’t always possible to keep track, in some cases, just where support of this nature had gone. Especially when a stay-back group had already been up and running for a while… before the war ended and the Soviets arrived."

"You mean," I felt I was being encouraged to guess, "not all the funds were accounted for."

"Why should the SOE hand on a plate, chapter and verse, an account of everything they had worked so hard to achieve, to an organisation that was about to move on to their turf and have them shut down?"

"But surely," I found myself sipping my water again, "any money involved would have been spent within months – years at most – of any cash put forward to run a covert group behind the Iron Curtain?"

"Normally, yes, you’d be right," He nodded. Everything seemed to hinge on that word, ‘normally.’ "But in one particular case, they was a virtual treasure trove set in place, but was never used for any purpose. It was not, how might you say? – ready!"

"But SOE still told MI6 – the SIS – about it, all the same?" It was a dumb question. I already knew the answer.

"SOE had just started to create one of its most ambitious stay-back groups in Belgrade, to infiltrate the entire Balkan region, when it took a bullet in the head from His Majesty’s Government, and MI6 – the Secret Intelligence Service – took over. But one of the many secrets they did not pick up on in those early post-war, Cold War days, was the money SOE had left behind to spy on the Russians in defence of the realm, the job they assumed but had been so absent from during the fight against the Nazis."

I felt this was getting needlessly didactic. "But what does that matter today? Here in the 21st Century?"

I could see Cadwallader bridle at this remark. "I’m not talking about politics," he hissed. His voice had dropped even more, and yet was more malevolent. "I am talking about the money."

"What money?"

"The money. Taxpayers’ money that was sent abroad to pay for a spy network that never came into existence."

"Fine. Right. Taxpayers’ money." I drained my glass and was prepared to hit the streets outside. I stood up.

"The money is still out there. In toto, as they say, if you’ve had a classical education. In a form that has kept – nay, appreciated in value."

"Yeah?"

"In today’s terms, we are talking a lot of money. It’s all still there, nobody knows about it. It’s just waiting for someone to go and pick it up."

"In what form?"

"Diamonds. Round, uncut."

"Worth how much?"

"At today’s prices? One hundred million dollars."

I don’t remember sitting down again. I do remember thanking him for the brandy he handed me from the drinks tray. "And," he added, "I want you to go and fetch them. For a share. Interested?"

To be continued (possibly…)