THE FEARLESS ENVELOPE

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YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

FEARLESS

Fearless is a ridiculous word. It implies that a person can exist without fear. Certainly we can carry out acts that appear fearless, but if the person carrying out such an act really was fearless, they’d have been dead long ago.
Fear, you see, is an essential part of our make-up. It is a safety mechanism, essential for our survival. It is an impulse that keeps us safe, stops us from crossing that road. Reminds us of our limitations.

Sometimes fear can become too much.

When this happens, we have phobias, irrational feelings associated with something animate or inanimate. Phobias can totally overtake our life, and a phobia truly is something to fear.
Maybe we need to all have a phobia about phobias.
Fear can also be life-enhancing. It is a natural by-product of putting our life at risk. The daredevil often lives for moments like this – moments when he feels truly alive. But after the adrenalin rush?
Boredom – which is perhaps what the adrenalin junkie truly fears.
This inborn requirement in the daredevil exists in most of us, although watered-down. One expression of this is the love of horror fiction. Whether a book or film, we love to be scared to death in an otherwise safe environment.
Does such fiction have a real purpose in life? I think so. To keep our body trim, we exercise. And I think we need a similar form of exercise for the mind, and all its ideosyncracies. Approaching fear is essential exercise for the mind.
But next time you hear of someone doing an act ‘fearlessly’, don’t demean them by thinking they really are fearless. They are almost certainly scared to death. Yet still they do it. Which does, I suppose, make them even more heroic.

© Anthony North, April 2008

MYTHOLOGY

The sage, he writes from antiquity,
leaving myths for you and me;
Of tricksters, of wonders and Heroes, too,
to inspire, always, me and you;
The greatest stories ever told,
as adventures and miracles, do unfold;
Defining their world, making it real,
offering customs that will entail,
taboos that if broken, are beyond the pale,
so heed this glorious,
wondrous tale

But from where does the splendour of myth come from;
To whom do the tricksters and Heroes belong?
The greatest minds have fathomed deep,
reliving the myths even in their sleep;
The characters are similar from myths worldwide,
is this a hint to which we confide?
The story of the Hero is so like real life,
confusing youth, a mission, amid trouble and strife;
The trickster, that little Devil, the imp,
so similar to the voice that makes morals limp;
So maybe the Sage knew how to unwind,
the intricacies deep within that bind,
our beautiful,
wondrous,
mischievous mind

(c) Anthony North, April 2008

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THE ENVELOPE

A Cass Nova Detective Thriller

DI Cass Nova sat at the table in the café. To his left, Jim Myers, a young constable, just joined CID. And to his right, Pete Bass was drawing on the back of an envelope.
‘So the van will arrive here,’ said Bass, ‘and the armed gang will enter the bank through this door.’
Nova made only quick glances to the envelope. It was Bass’s eyes he was most interested in. He had been an informer for years and never let him down, but Nova knew eyes better than most.
Taking the envelope, he departed. Outside, Myers said: ‘So that’s wrapped up. Pretty easy this detective game, ain’t it Guv?’
Nova smiled. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’ And at that, the two of them jumped into the car and headed off to the scene of the up-coming armed robbery. The bank was on a corner, a yard to its side. Nova spent long minutes looking at each building facing the yard in turn – their doors, the gaps inbetween. ‘You look troubled, Guv.’ Said Myers.
He passed the young copper the envelope. ‘It’s all in the envelope,’ he said. But Myers could see it was empty.
The following morning, Nova positioned his team around the yard, he and Myers taking up position down an alleyway leading from the scene. Myers was troubled by this. It seemed away from the action, and he worried about missing out. However, the robbery was soon in progress, the arrests going just as planned.
It was at that moment that a single masked man exited the bank by a side entrance, hidden in the shadow of another building. A bag in hand, he slipped past the police and ran down the alley. Suddenly, a hand shot out, ripped the mask off him and spun him round.
‘Going somewhere, Pete?’ asked Nova.
‘I just don’t get it,’ said Myers, later. Okay, I realize you guessed Bass was double-crossing the gang, using them as a distraction while he escaped with the money, but what the hell has it got to do with the envelope?’
Nova smirked. Taking the envelope off Myers, he said: ‘Work out what’s got to go in, position your boys to allow the contents to slip in nicely, but don’t forget to cover all angles by sealing it with the flap.’
Myers laughed. He’d learnt a lot about policing that day. Especially DI Nova’s particular stamp on it.

© Anthony North, April 2008

THE PHOTO

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What’s on today: A story inspired by a Sunday Scribblings prompt. Have you had a go yet? … PLUS … Dr Illya Ness on the problem of diet.
YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

THE PHOTO

A Cass Nova Detective Thriller

The Guv took his eyes from the photo and said: ‘Well, Cass, that about wraps it up.’ He smiled. ‘DI Nova does it again.’
And I had. You see a photo can be a powerful thing. We don’t often appreciate this. We take a snapshot of something and don’t realize what’s in the background – what evidence it could contain; what clues it holds. And this photo had been essential to the case.

Of course, I’d always known who’d killed Sarah Johnson.

She had got too greedy, and her pimp, Dwane Davis, couldn’t stand that. But how to prove it? Infact, every time I seemed to get close, the avenue seemed to melt away.
I said this to my colleague, DS Sharp. ‘And I reckon it’s because we’ve got a bent copper on the team.’
He looked at me, a look of amazement on his face. ‘You’re joking.’
I flashed him my serious stare. ‘No, I’m not. And that’s why I’ve been following Davis for over a week now, taking photos of everywhere he goes. I’ve got hundreds at home, and every night I study them, ‘cos at some point he’s meeting his guardian angel, and there’s a clue in one of those photos – a place I recognize where a colleague goes, something. I WILL crack this case.’

That night, in my flat, I took out the photos.

Spread them out on the table. But I did so with a kind of sixth sense – somehow I knew I was being watched. Eventually, I left the flat, headed for the take-away on the corner. But of course, I did nothing of the sort. Rather, I back tracked and entered the flat by the back door.
DS Sharp was bent over the photos, shocked. He looked up at me. ‘How did you know?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I’ve had the same conversation with half a dozen at the station before you. But eventually I knew I’d smoke out the rat.
He threw down one of the photos he had in his hand. It was a nice one of me as a kid, holding my mum’s hand. ‘So there isn’t a photo to incriminate me at all, is there?’
I picked up my camera and snapped. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ I said.

© Anthony North, April 2008

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Sin is what you’ve done once you’ve been caught

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DR ILLYA NESS

Stuff diets. Stuff yourself. But with the right stuff.

Okay, how many diets have you tried? Add them up. Now add up how many diets you’ve tried that have failed. Is the number the same? Well, surprise, surprise. Diets don’t work. Period.
The reason why is obvious. A diet is a short term measure designed to deny yourself something whilst the weight falls off. So it is obvious that when you stop, you’ll want what you denied yourself and the weight will be straight back on.

So is a large percentage of the population destined to be obese?

Not necessarily. There is a way, but it isn’t a diet. It is a total change in the way you eat food. Infact, you can eat the same food, only different.
Most people eat three times a day, waiting until they’re hungry, and eating ‘til they’re full. This makes your metabolism go haywire on a daily basis. Far better to split your food into five smaller meals.

In this way you don’t wait until you’re hungry …

… and you don’t eat until you’re full. Instead, you eventually learn to feel neither hungry or full, and your metabolism settles down so you don’t need to feed it.
Do this for long enough and another thing happens. Your stomach shrinks. So if you try to stuff yourself too much, you can’t. Ad hey presto! You’ve lost weight and you won’t put it back on because you haven’t dieted. You’ve changed the way you eat. Forever!

Copyright © Protected, April 2008

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If we indulged in self-help, why do we need a book to help us?

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CASS NOVA AND THE DANCING GIRLS

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Me and the girls? One day they’ll be the death of me. One day I just won’t come back, that’s for sure.
Take Julia, for instance. Gorgeous – in every way. She was a dancer in a local club. I met her through one of the other dancers, Natalie.
Now there was another gorgeous girl. But when Julia turned it on, I’m afraid Natalie took a step back. And wow! Did she turn it on!
It began during her act. That move! She called it the Sidewalk, ‘cos hips weren’t supposed to go in that direction, and when she did it, everyone stopped. And after that, a few drinks, then an invite back to the flat. Well, I didn’t have to be asked twice.

The next morning I felt terrible.

The Guv noted it first thing when I arrived in the office.
‘DI Nova,’ he said, ‘you look ill.’
Then he smirked. It was a copper’s illness – too much booze, too late a night, too much … Which must have been right, even though, as normal, my memories of the night were a bit hazy, except, of course, for those sharp nails. What was it with girls and nails?
I felt like packing it in by lunchtime – go home for a rest - but that’s when we got the call.
The body was in a flat. Forensics were all over it by the time I arrived. Murder was obvious, some time during the night. When I got to see the body, it was bloody. She’d been stabbed several times.

But that was the lesser shock. The body was Natalie.

‘Well you’re out of it,’ the Guv said.
‘But Guv …’
‘But nothing. You’re involved.’
So that was it. A murder to investigate, and nothing I could do. Except to see that Julia was alright.
Predictably, she was upset. And as I held her, different emotions flooded through her, eventually centring on: ‘What if it’s a head case? What if I’m next?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after you.’

Later that day I saw one of the Sergeants on the case. Asked how things were going. He gave me a quick run down.
There was no DNA of the murderer at the scene, but there were indications of motive. For instance, a flatmate confirmed that a lap top and digital camera had gone missing. Now, when someone is murdered and only two items are stolen, leaving lots of expensive goodies a burglar could have taken, then it’s a good bet it was those things the person was after. And a lap top and camera suggest the murderer was getting rid of photo evidence of something. Silence the person who took them, and it was obvious Natalie was blackmailing someone.

The ‘someone’ was the puzzle – and, of course, why the blackmail.

I asked Julia, but she had no idea, and the other detectives seemed to draw a blank. But as I held Julia’s hand, I got an idea …

I raced out of her flat. I had somewhere to go, sure that I’d cracked the case.
Two hours later I was racing back to the flat as soon as I could. Minutes from Julia, I rang her. ‘Get out of there,’ I said. ‘Natalie had another friend who she told everything. Not sure what’s going on, but I think your life’s in danger. I’ll be with you soon. Natalie may have hidden something in your flat that the killer wants.’
I did, of course, get there in ample time to see Julia racing off from the flat on foot, a heavy bag on her back, and several in her hands.
‘Going somewhere?’ I asked.
Among her things I found the lap top and camera. They would later implicate her in a delicate love triangle, and a gang boss is not the kind of guy to cheat on. I wasn’t, it seems, the only one in her life. Infact, I didn’t ‘enter’ it at all. I’d already been to the lab, had my blood tested – even the drug she’d used on me had been identified.

So there it was.

She’d seen the possibility of a perfect alibi and used me as a stoodge.
She spat venom when she spoke to me, of course. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘so you tricked me into exposing myself. But how did you know it was me in the first place?’
You girls and your long, sharp nails – you really should learn how to scrub up well.
Especially when there’s blood involved.

© Anthony North, March 2008

This is a post inspired by a Three Word Wednesday prompt. Have you had a go yet?

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TIME CRIME

This is a post inspired by a Sunday Scribblings prompt. Have you had a go yet?

It seemed a straight forward kind of case when I was first called. ‘Detective Inspector Nova,’ the Guv had said. ‘Get over to the Aldridge Estate. I think we’ve got a strange one for you.’

Well, ‘strange’ wasn’t in it.

Normally, missing persons don’t get to me; especially when it’s a sixteen year old from a sink estate. Runaways were frequent there. But as the uniforms advised when I arrived at the address, this was a ‘nice’ girl – even went to school without being chased.
I introduced myself to the mother: ‘DI Cass Nova,’ I said. And for the next hour I found out all about the girl. And I had to admit, there was something in it.

You can smell such cases – that feeling, deep inside.

It was as if a detective is really a time traveller, reliving what happened, working it out. And as I exited the flat, I felt the menace of this place – the gangs, the drugs, the guns. How could people live like this?
There was a typical gang across the street as I approached my car. Five of them, obviously headed by the Hoodie. He was staring at me, but I only saw the arrogance, then. The inquisitiveness – the sense of edginess – was missed.

My destination was a flat at the other end of the estate.

The girl’s mother had talked of Pete – a friend of her daughter’s. Well, not really a friend. More a ‘mission’. And as I knocked on the door, even I was unprepared for what greeted me.
Pete was obviously a paranoid schizophrenic. He peeked, tentatively through the crack in the door – perused my ID for an age.
He was lanky, pasty, and as he sat on his unmade, dirty bed, you couldn’t help notice the tin-foil cap he had fashioned on his head. ‘To keep the aliens out?’ I asked.
He looked at me as if I was stupid. Eventually, he said: ‘No, they come from the future in their time machine. I don’t want to help them, but they make me.’
I mentioned the girl. Pete was immediately on edge. I gave him a moment or two to collect his thoughts. Moved to the window. Looked out. Was that the same gang outside? And this time, I did notice the edginess.
‘So what about the girl?’ I eventually asked ….

Well, Pete told me about the girl, alright.

About how she’d been the only one who’d talk to him, how she’d befriended him, and recently come to him, in trouble, after witnessing a severe beating by a gang.
And then, what the ‘voices’ had told him to do …

My intention had been to race to the old derelict house Pete had mentioned, but as I radiod in the location, I noticed the gang was still outside. The Hoodie wasn’t with them, which I found intriguing. Hence, I drove around the corner and parked – doubled back on foot and watched.
The Hoodie eventually emerged from a back entrance to the flats. When they’d gone, I went in, followed his most likely route, and came across the vacant flat, a tiny hole drilled into a wall, Pete’s flat on the other side.

They found the body of the girl in the derelict house.

She’d been badly beaten. Forensics did their own job going back in time. That’s what forensics did – reconstruct the past, telling a story of what happened before. And Pete’s DNA was all over the girl, and the blooded baseball bat close by. But if only that had been the whole story …

It was the next day I approached a Hoodie as he came out of his parent’s flat. The whole story had been pieced together now, not that I could prove it, though. The girl had seen the Hoodie and his gang beat someone up. They had seen her and followed her – realized who she was friends with.
So he’d worked out the plan – make the hole in the wall to talk through, to give him ‘instructions’, claiming he was from the future, like the other voices. And Pete had done as he was told. After all, the voices knew, didn’t they?
‘You can’t prove nothing,’ the Hoodie said as I grabbed him by the collar – squeezed.

Which was true. There were no witnesses – no forensics in the room.

‘But don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll get you for something. Eventually.’
As for Pete, he was deemed mentally unfit to face trial. And it was doubtful it would be murder, anyway. Which was the real tragedy, here. For she had not died straight away. He had locked her in a room and left. Where she came round, and for twelve hours before she eventually died, she was trapped in her own time machine of hell.

© Anthony North, February 2008

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