“Who’s Charles Galloway?” asked Lewis.

“He’s the criminal mastermind who made Adrian steal that egg,” said Kelly.

“And made my life a misery for four years, don’t forget that part. He’s also the bastard who’s been having it off with my wife,” Adrian added darkly. “Which in itself is odd for a man who normally goes for teenage girls… I figure he was using her to check up on me. But more pertinently, he’s a very old friend of Randolph.”

“Why was your boss chummy with a crime lord?” Kelly asked. “He seemed like such a sweet old man.”

“Oh, he thought Galloway was in the pharmaceuticals industry. They came together because of their passion for astronomy – they had a friendly rivalry for years, outdoing one another with the size of their telescopes. That observatory you jumped off houses a twenty-four inch Ptolemy Instruments carbon truss Ritchey-Chrétien.”

“Is that a good one?”

“Just a bit. He was immensely proud when he got it – the only one of its kind in the country, and probably the most powerful telescope owned by an amateur astronomer. Of course as s Read more...

For Adrian and Kelly, it was difficult to see how the situation could get much worse: they’d inadvertently framed themselves for murder, they’d fallen out, and they were about to be shot. Kelly recalled her first night sleeping on the street, feeling her life had reached a new low that would take quite some beating. It hadn’t taken as long as she’d expected.

“Before you die,” said the gunman, “perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me what you’ve done with the astrolabe?”

Kelly threw a perplexed look at Adrian, expecting him to return it: but his face instead expressed enlightenment.

“The astrolabe! That’s what you’re after! Yes, I know all about that.”

“Er… I’ve got a bit of a confession to make actually,” muttered the younger of the two new arrivals to his gun-toting associate.

“Just a second…,” said his friend, squinting at Adrian. “Is it… my god, it is! It’s you!”

“Me? Who me?” asked Adrian, but Kelly had worked it out.

“It’s them!” she cried. “The guys who chased us at the Robotron factory!”

� Read more...

A proper blog entry that isn’t part of my novel (though part of it is part of one of my other novels)

Despite Kelly’s almost fanatical need to learn Adrian’s secret, they both agreed that sustenance should be their first priority and explored the shelves for anything that might have retained its flavour through the decades. Having reviewed the available options, they decided honey on crackers was their safest bet, but the large drums of water were the most welcome find. They filled a couple of mugs, sat down at the table and tucked in.

“Let’s hear it then,” said Kelly. Adrian swallowed a mouthful of cracker and began.

“When I was nineteen I got involved, through friends, in a movement which at that point was so new it didn’t have a name, but would later be christened parkour. These days the kids call it free running.”

“I’ve seen that on YouTube. It’s where they do unbelievable gymnastics across buildings, isn’t it? Climbing shear walls and leaping impossible distances… the sort of thing you were doing tonight, in fact.”

“Essentially,” Adrian nodded. “But whereas free running’s more about the performance – showing off, if you wanted to be cruel – parkour’s only conce Read more...

Kelly stood helplessly watching Dick dig Adrian’s grave. It was clear now that he was out for the count, and her attempts to make Dick see sense had come to nothing.

“Why don’t we just leave him? No one will know it was you,” she reasoned.

“They might,” he insisted, not looking up from his spadework. “I went on the evening news saying what an evil man he is, now he’s dead with my fist print embedded in his cheek bone. I don’t want to go to jail, Kels. If we bury him that buys us time.”

“You have a responsibility!” she insisted, but she knew it was fruitless. She couldn’t understand his change in attitude, but their argument was going round in circles. “What would Jesus think?”

“Jesus can think what he likes.”

“He suffered for our sins!”

“Well then there’s no point in me suffering for them too, is there?” Dick snapped, contradicting the view he’d expressed to Kelly many times over the years. Whatever had brought on this crisis of faith, it really was very inconvenient timing.

*

Lewis watched the figures digging their hole from beh Read more...

It had taken Vern nearly two hours to walk across town to the Kingfisher Hotel. It wasn’t that far, but he didn’t know the way and kept getting lost. As he tramped the streets, all he could think of was how he should never have gone to that wretched pub. He should have stayed at home, messing about on the Internet. He was happy on the Internet. He tried to cheer himself up by reflecting on his greatest triumphs.

He thought fondly about Sasha Fox, a persona he’d once adopted to ensnare horny guys. A few losers couldn’t resist her feminine wiles and engaged Vern in some hilarious bouts of cybersex. Vern would then Google his conquests and learn what he could of their personal lives. Half the time they were married, and more often than not he managed to track down the wife’s email address.

He always cc’ed the transcript of their cybersex session to the husband. It was funnier that way.

It turned out that replaying past glories in no way made his current situation more tolerable. It only served to emphasise how far he’d fallen.

When he finally located the hotel he made for room 246 and knocked until Lewis ans Read more...