Disappearing Overnight E-Book

Ken Tracey

• Herausgeber: Grosvenor House Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 211

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Disappearing Overnight is a dramatic collection of short stories. Featuring; a Soviet spy, a faded rock star, a sister's ghost, a scared vet and some ordinary people forced into abnormal situations. These stories are set in places around the world from London to the African bush and from Liverpool to Chicago. Spanning time from the days of the Wild West to the 1920s through the 1960s to the present. Some tragic, some comic; all entertaining.

Leseprobe

To

Tilly, Kyle, Jake, Mathew, Sam, Adam, Liam and Daniel.

The Author

Ken Tracey writes short fiction with a sting in the tail. He is a chartered quantity surveyor, born in Liverpool, and has worked in Africa, Europe and around the UK. His interest in people and the astonishing situations that they create, inspire his stories. His Northern humour and contact with the wacky world of construction, combine to create interesting characters. He is the author of feature articles and memoir published in magazines and newspapers. He blogs on his website www.kentracey.co.uk A keen walker, who seldom passes a country pub, he lives in Kent with his wife and seven goldfish.

Contents

Dedication

The Author

1Disappearing Overnight

2A Man of our Time

3Back in Tennessee

4Hat Trick

5Paradise Lost

6Shot in the Dark

7Happy Hunting Ground

8An Inspector Calls

9The Last Game of Basketball

10Neighbourhood Botch

11Rani’s Time

12Illegal Entry

13Home Truths

14Beyond the Sea

15The Catch

16Cartoon Graveyard

17Amigos

Copyright

Disappearing Overnight

The man who despised capitalism chose to meet me in the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria. A sign that he was unlike the other defectors I had helped and a sign that this night would be different. He was to carry out his day’s business as usual, until he entered the lounge with his fiancé and joined me for a drink. Then his life would change forever.

It was dark outside and each bus that wheezed along Buckingham Palace Road displayed its top deck passengers slumped in a haze, with fags dangling from their mouths. I knew that they would achieve nothing, and never share in the wealth that they were crippling themselves to produce. Now it would get worse with petrol at fifty pence a gallon and the effects of inflation and strikes.

If only I could leave it all behind too and go with this Felix fellow tonight, to live in a fair society. Leave these pre-dinner drinkers in their double-breasted penguin suits and their maxi-skirted wives.

The waiter paused with a raised eyebrow, so I ordered another vodka. The grandfather clock and my Sekonda agreed that Felix was ten minutes late. I would have expected more accuracy from a scientist.

Two gulps of my fresh drink had gone and I’d taken to cracking my knuckles, when a gangerly young man walked in. ‘I’m meeting someone;’ I heard him answer the waiter’s enquiry.

Immediately I discounted him as my contact. He was alone anyway, and wore a black overcoat that almost swept the floor. His hair was shoulder length beneath a black fedora and he squeaked along in those new training shoes. More like Mick Jagger than a scientist. But he kept coming, and next thing I was standing up and shaking his outstretched hand.

‘Felix.’ His mischievous grin revealed tombstone teeth.

‘Alex,’ I replied. He’d dispensed with the safety of code words. I told him to sit down.

He removed the coat with a flourish and draped it over a chair, where it did touch the floor. The fedora was cast on the table and he stretched back in an arm chair.

‘Don’t get comfortable, we have to leave soon.’ Already this job was different.

‘Sh.’ He was about to speak and the waiter was at my shoulder. I ordered a whiskey.

‘Thanks for that,’ he chuckled. ‘How did you know my tipple?’

‘We know everything.’ I lied; in fact, I’d smelt it on his breath. All I really knew was that he worked on some clever stuff that valued him highly with the Soviets, and I would deliver him and his fiancé to an address in Kensington Palace Gardens.

‘Where is Sandra?’

He slid back a crumpled sleeve and studied a diver’s watch. ‘She should be here.’

‘But she isn’t. Where can she be?’

‘She’s coming after work, must have been delayed.’

‘You should have brought her with you. Where does she work?’ I was disappointed.

‘It’s only five minutes from here. She’s a nanny in a family house.’

‘OK, we’ll finish our drinks and go get her.’

The lounge was filling up; sparkling glasses were being raised along with the volume of chatter. We would need to be discreet; Harold Wilson’s election victory was enough for the elite to suspect reds everywhere.

‘Sounds like an interesting job you have.’ I knew that he’d be cautious about his work, but we needed to warm up.

‘We’ve made progress,’ he smirked.

Would I learn why the Soviets wanted this odd ball, or would I be left guessing?

‘What’s your specialty?’ I tried again.

It took a wrinkled brow and several seconds for him to reduce his reply to my level. ‘Basically, it’s Physics. You’ll know of Einstein and Planck?’

One out of two would have to do, I nodded.

‘Well our work stems from their theories, but we’ve had a breakthrough with the transference of matter. That’s why I must share my research for the benefit of the people.’

Admirable, but he’d lost me, ‘transference of matter,’ sounded really Sci-Fi. He drained his glass and glanced around the room. It was clearly a full stop to further explanation.

‘We are going to collect Sandra now.’ I pushed my glass away. ‘While we’re on the street you must be alert for danger. Watch me at all times and do as I say without question.’

‘OK,’ but the student of Planck hadn’t convinced me.

With a grip on his arm, I steered my prize through the traffic jamming Buckingham Palace Road. He directed me into Belgravia where Sandra worked and fortunately where I had parked.

‘When we have Sandra, we’ll be travelling by car. I’m parked just past that pub on the right.’ Ahead light splashed the pavement.

‘The house is beyond the pub’, he answered.

We quickened our pace, if Sandra wasn’t there, I would have to cajole Felix into leaving without her. The procedure was to tell them that their loved ones would join them later, and sometimes they did.

The drone of beery conversation and the tang of cigarette smoke greeted us. Felix cupped his hands to his eyes to see through the pub window. I made for the shadows and waited at the steps of a neighbouring house.

When he caught up, the shoulders of the great coat shrugged. ‘She might have gone in there by mistake.’ I doubted that a physicist’s fiancée would confuse The Plumbers Arms with the Grosvenor, but said, ‘Let’s try the house first.’ We were losing momentum.

We passed my car sandwiched between a Mini and a Ford Corsair, lots of space, I could get out easily.

Suddenly, footsteps clattered ahead. I strained to see through the dark. A woman in a mini dress ran toward us.

‘Felix, is this her?’ I hissed.

‘Can’t tell yet.’ We stopped a few feet apart.

‘Help me,’ she cried as she ran.’ She didn’t pass between us but dropped sobbing into Felix’s arms. ‘He’s killed her.’

She was too close to my prize. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her to me. The tears on her face glistened in the street light. She was about my own age, thirty, skinny with long hair and her dress was stained with blood.

‘Is this your friend?’ I was sure she didn’t match the picture I’d seen of Sandra.

‘No. No but she’s bleeding, Alex. We’ve got to help.’

‘Get away from her. Look you’ve got blood on your coat now. Get in the car’

I held her wrist with one hand and threw him the keys with the other.

‘Do you want the police?’ My face was close to hers.

‘He’s killed her’, she bleated.

‘Who has?’

‘My husband.’

A murder on the street would foul up my operation. ‘Go to the pub. They’ll call the police for you. Quick, quick.’ I shoved her away and she scurried off.

‘Hold on, Alex.’ It was Felix

‘Get in the fucking car. Now.’ He scowled and shuffled away. ‘What’s the number of the house where Sandra works?’

‘Forty-six,’ he mumbled,

‘Keep off the street until I get back.’ I took off and didn’t slow down until twin columns with the house number on came into view. Lights glowed on the upper floors. At the top of the steps I beat on the door and stood back. I noticed a man on the opposite side of the road his face toward me, he didn’t stop. I hoped that a servant would open the door I didn’t want to confront the family.

There was no answer. The woman would cause a stir at the pub and they would be quick to call the police and the response to this prestigious address would be pretty damn quick. The thought of the street sealed off and blue lights slicing the night made me beat the door with both fists.

Nothing and it was 10 pm already. There was a dim light on in the basement. Back at street level, I pushed open an iron gate to the basement area, then clattered down the steps. An open door brought me to a halt. Surely this was where the staff would be. I’d give Sandra just two minutes to leave with me.

‘Anyone home,’ I called. Nothing, I would have to go in.

Two steps along a corridor, I called out again. ‘Sandra, I need to speak to you.’ The smell of coffee and the pop of a percolator greeted me. Was the open door too helpful?

I crept the rest of the way into a kitchen. I saw her feet first. Then bare legs beneath a mini skirt. A girl lay sprawled out. Her blood swam across the floor from a crater in the back of her head, her brown hair was matted. I covered my mouth with my hand and pinched my nose. Thankfully the smell of coffee was thick on the air. I knew the blood would match that on the frantic woman’s dress and now on Felix too. There was a stab in my heart; the girl’s face matched my picture of Sandra.

Worse still, when the police answered her call, the woman would lead them straight to this room. I turned and ran, stumbled on the steps and grazed a shin, picked myself up and scurried onto the street.

No police, but further down the street, beyond my car, there was a huddle of people outside the pub. Damn, the woman had done just as I’d told her. How come Felix was involved with these crazy people? Was I being set up for a murder?

I ran to the car. A man appeared ahead of me, much stouter than Felix. Closer I could see that he had the boot of the Corsair open. I slowed and advanced. Please Felix, have the sense to stay put, with the fedora pulled well down.

The man jerked upright on hearing me. His hair was slicked back and he had a moustache. His tie was askew and he had a wide-eyed look. Definitely some local toff.

I stubbed my fingers on the car door handle. Felix was already reaching across to unlock it.

‘Where have you been?’ I looked in at Felix but he shook his head. It was the toff who had spoken. No time for pleasantries, I ducked to get in. The door was torn from my grasp.

‘I asked where you had been,’ he stood above me.

‘Just leaving, good night,’ I fobbed him off.

‘Where is she?’ It was Felix.

‘Not now,’ I hissed. She’ll follow on.

Who were these people? They could send this job to hell; the hysterical woman, the aggressive toff and Sandra dead on the floor.

The big man held the door so it wouldn’t close.

‘Clear off, or we’ll get rough,’ I tugged the door. Then he grabbed my arm. To stop falling sideways, I swung my feet out, and stood up fast.

‘Get away.’ When I shoved him his grip tightened on my wrist. Then I saw a length of pipe in his free hand. I tore at him and threw myself to the ground. It broke his grip and I rolled away. A clang told me that his blow had hit the car.

There was enough light to show a crazy grimace on his face. ‘You were in my house.’ He growled and advanced still holding the pipe. I pushed up and found my feet. Then with a shudder, I realised that I was fighting Sandra’s killer. Her head had been burst open by this man. I was braced to tackle him when Felix appeared. ‘Keep out of it, he’s a killer,’ I raged.

Felix had torn off his coat. I froze as he leapt and pulled it over the man’s head and hung on. The pipe clanged to the ground as the man struggled to get free but Felix held on.

‘Leave this to me.’ A stern Felix dragged the man to the ground. I picked up the pipe and stood ready.

‘Don’t kill him,’ I ordered. Two corpses on the same street could bring my mission to a nasty end.

He was kneeling on the man, totally in control. I glanced ahead to where the group of people muttered by the pub. Still no police, we’d been lucky but not for much longer.

When I turned back, Felix was standing on the bundle, his eyes ablaze.

‘You are a most privileged spy to see this,’ he announced. The coat settled a little beneath him.

‘What the hell’s going on, Felix?’

The breath whistled from his mouth as he pressed down. The bundle had ceased to struggle. Felix kept one foot in place. He pressed and his foot went lower, the bundle had shrunk.

The sweat ran down my back and I was panting but I couldn’t take my eyes of the black shape on the ground. Felix turned to face me, his head like a statue staring, lifeless. Then he stood tall and stepped onto his coat with both feet.

‘What’s happening?’ I croaked.

Suddenly he stepped back, bent and seized the coat with both hands. A matador’s swish brought the coat over his shoulders and I followed his gaze back to the gritty paving stones... The toff had disappeared.

A Man of our Time

I felt like I was about to be attacked, but all I’d done was turn up for work late. Herman chatted to a blonde customer; heads bowed over a tube of tattoo goo. It looked like he’d inflicted his first work of the day on her shapely canvas. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice me, on my toes.

‘Ere, Stewart, you can take for this.’

I’d reached the till and had to do his bidding. It whirred as I ran a finger down the price list on the wall.

‘What was it, Herman?’

‘A butterfly.’

Another free spirit flutters into suburbia. ‘Shoulder blade or arse?’

‘Same price now.’ He didn’t pause from his patter about the healing powers of goo.

As the girl rooted in her handbag, my mind tripped over my years of work at uni. The disappointment tightened my stomach and my breath came in short bursts. Then a credit card was thrust in my face.

‘It was my shoulder blade, actually.’ She lent so close that I expected her forehead to butt my nose. I must have annoyed her. It’s not often that my social skills are tested in the tattoo studio. When I handed her card back, I said. ‘Try not to lie on your back for a few nights, it might hurt.’

She snatched her stuff, lasered me with blue eyes and bolted at the speed of a shop lifter.

Herman shook his head and muttered something about the Diplomatic Corps. I went to make coffee and left him to his needles and pins.

Herman’s kitchen wasn’t a place that cultivated every bacterium known to man; it was far worse than that. I flipped the kettle on and assessed my life. Here I was a qualified solicitor, struggling on the minimum wage. I thought about my sister, also skint, working for a church in Africa. At least she had sunshine. Perhaps we’d inherited the skint gene from our parents.

Herman, the creative, had given me the title, Admin Manager. A more accurate role would have been, ‘Barista,’ but that wouldn’t look good on my CV.

‘You out again tonight?’ He asked as I handed over his ‘Black Sabbath’ mug.

I couldn’t say - ‘yes, I’m taking Magnolia out for dinner’, without him thinking that he paid me too much.

‘No, probably go around to Magnolia’s place.’

He slurped his flat white, causing a wave to spill onto his scraggy trousers.

Truth was that Magnolia and I had to dig into our savings for nights out now. I switched on the computer and slumped in the chair with a shiver. How long would it take to get back to my world?

*

Magnolia and I skipped the starter, ordered the main course and started an argument.

‘It’s a publicity stunt,’ I scoffed. The local builder was running a raffle for one of his new houses. ‘It’s to get everyone excited about the houses. Then the losers will be so disappointed that they’ll buy one anyway.’

She rested her elbows on the table. ‘You always knock everything. That’s why you never get anywhere, you’re a cynic.’

‘Can’t you see that you don’t have a chance? He’ll need to sell thousands of tickets to cover the price of a house? You’ve more chance of marrying Matt Damon than winning.’

‘Thank you.’ She took a gulp of wine and looked around the half empty place. ‘Do you realise that you could get out of your stinking room and own your own home, for twenty pounds?’

‘Twenty quid for a raffle ticket. You won’t catch me throwing that sort of cash away. I could buy four bottles of wine for that.’

‘I thought you wanted us to live together?’ The waiters around the bar turned to stare at us, like a pride of alley cats.

‘I do, and I’ve got that interview tomorrow. If I get the job, I’ll be OK for a mortgage and we can move in together.’

She put her glass down on some precise spot on the tablecloth. ‘This had better work Stewart. We’ve stood still for a year now, since you lost your last job.’

I put my glass down without precision, a drop of red wine fanned out on the linen. ‘If you hadn’t thrown up in the senior partner’s Aston Martin, I’d still have a job.’

She gasped as if Matt Damon had walked in. The truth was that I was driving away from a party at the boss’s manse, when Magnolia opened the window and thrust her head out. I braked, we were still in his drive and she chucked up his oysters and champagne into his Aston, parked with the hood down. I drove off in a panic but not before the office snitches had seen us.

‘Don’t blame me,’ she snorted. It was your idea to get into his Jacuzzi earlier. If he hadn’t caught us it wouldn’t have been so bad.’ Her teeth were bared, tainted red by the wine, but her eyes were tainted by her spirit.

‘You didn’t have the embarrassment of negotiating a reference.’ It hadn’t been an offence serious enough for dismissal, but it was better all round that I parted company with the practice. Our raised voices had stirred the alley cats by the bar. I smiled and nodded to them. Suddenly Magnolia’s chair crashed to the floor and the wine bottle toppled. It gently rocked back and forth spewing red on the linen. She’d gone.

I held my head in my hands. Was it better to have loved and been caught in the Jacuzzi, than not to have loved at all?

*

At Parks Law, I was shown into the office of Melvin Park. A corner office with glass walls on two sides. Melvin looked like a lone guppy in an aquarium. If a giant be-speckled eleven-year-old had tapped on the glass outside, I would have gulped to please him.

‘Stew...art, good to meet you.’ He shook my hand while he faced the water cooler. Then he filled a real glass with spa water and presented it to me like it was a Golden Globe.

I clutched it and sat on an upright chair like a yoga teacher. Melvin settled in comfort and then we were off on script. My 2:1 law degree delighted him, and the fact that I’d completed the Legal Practice Course made him ooze. He slipped off script to tell me that Katherine Palmerstone-Smyth, Head of Negligence Claims, was in court, but her team would pulverise the other side, in time for her to join us.

I batted back my responses to him without touching the net. Beyond the windows an ambulance wailed through the streets and I wondered if Park’s lawyers were already chasing it. I won my points and sipped his water but the big one was still to come. My hands were fluttering like butterflies, so I put the glass down and clutched them together.

‘Why did you leave your last practice? I see it was over a year ago.’

I let a breath go by. I could have handed him the prepared script from my pocket, but I hung my arm over the back of the chair and said. ‘It was a personal matter.’ I could say anything I liked now. My previous employer would produce the brief reference that we’d agreed on. I went on, ‘My sister was working for her church in Sierra Leone, handing out texts in the street. At the same time an anti -government group came along passing out leaflets. The police clashed with the politicos and my sister and friends were arrested along with them.’

Melvin leant forward; my sister’s supposed plight etched into his brow.

‘Well, our parents and I decided that I should go out there to help. So, I resigned my job.’

His mouth hung open. My performance was worthy of a Golden Globe.

‘What happened,’ he gasped.

‘I managed to get her released.’

‘What part did you play, Stewart?’

‘I negotiated alongside the church leaders.’

‘Is your sister home now?’

‘No, she’s still working out there, dedicated, you know,’ I gave a nod.

‘Well done.’ He looked happy. Good result, Stewart-1, World- Nil.

Then there was a rap on the door.

‘This will be Katherine.’

We both stood and I straightened my tie, arranged a smile then turned to meet my next boss.

The sight of her sucked the breath from me. What was she doing here? The job, the house and Magnolia fluttered through the windows and away over the roof tops. It was the shapely blonde with the butterfly tattoo. On her shoulder blade as I recall. The aquarium was full of water; I couldn’t hear what Parks was saying. I forced a heavy step toward Katherine and watched my hand float toward her.

Her mouth was open and her eyes wide, like she was drowning. When we touched, her hand recoiled like a turtle’s head. Then I exhaled and my body weight came back with a thud.

‘What’s your current job?’ Fresh from court, her blood was still at interrogation level.

I gulped and managed to keep the game going. ‘I’m Admin Manager with a small organisation, Artistic Enterprises.’ I blessed Herman for his creativity.

She turned down her volume and groped for a chair.

Perhaps it wasn’t her. I looked for a small lump on her back but as she faced me, I couldn’t see. It was wishful thinking; the scowl and laser blue eyes were unmistakable.

‘Have you been involved in any work, other than legal?’

Parks tidied his papers and frowned.

Why should this happen to me? I nearly shouted hell I just want to work. Then I decided that I’d lost the job anyway, so if she wanted to talk tattoos, then she could bring it up. My head cleared and my thoughts became sharper.

‘Actually, I did do something else. I resigned my last job to go to Africa. Then I repeated the story I’d told Parks. Katherine stared, hardly moving, except when she reached back to scratch her shoulder blade.

I finished, and left space for them to fill. My hands thought it was summer and wanted to flutter off and seek pollen. The creases left Katherine’s brow and I realised that without them, she was quite a looker. Shame about the tattoo.

There was a noise in my head. Finally, they both shook my hand and smiled. I got out. End of story. She knew it was me but I had saved face. Magnolia would bounce off the walls if I told her what had happened. I needed to find another interview before I told her that this one had crashed.

*

Herman opened the shop door and sent a freshly pierced Goth on her way. He buried himself in the back room with the radio tuned to some ‘long time ago station.’

I was engrossed with his junk computer when the door opened again, but instead of the graveyard Goth, I faced Magnolia. What did she want?

‘Sorry about the other night,’ she mumbled.

She obviously wanted to make up.

‘I’ve been thinking. What’s the latest on that job?’

‘Still waiting to hear.’ I shrugged, like this was normal.

‘Well I’m not.’ I thought she might stamp a foot. Could she be going to ...dump me?

‘What?’ I tried.

‘It’s over, Stewart. I’ve had enough. We’re not going anywhere and you mess up all the time.’

Her mess on the Aston’s soft, supple upholstery had been forgotten.

‘Do you understand, Stewart?’