Burn In Heaven

By Brino Ghartornni

Maltese-born Detective Chief Inspector Tekka Stanford walks the hot summer streets of the City of London. If he fails to solve a strange crime, a new form of terrorism will bring the mightiest financial institution to its knees. Eight top financiers have died in bizarre circumstances, each one found in a state of ecstatic bliss. He meets Detective Sergeant John Harriot, working in the oldest police station in the world, on the banks of the River Thames. Working together they become friends.
Austerity riots have caused a ban on massed gatherings, subverted by the Educators, who transfer news impartially, face to face.
Tekka's wife Eve, gets caught in the middle of a spectacular demonstration outside the Bank of England. She is guided to safety by a mysterious woman with a fixation on the dragon statues that surround the City. Budget cuts and part privatisation of the police force have led to security being under the rule of an algorithm called Quex. Nothing is what it seems. Increasingly struggling to keep a grip on his sanity, Tekka discovers a mystery of his own, and is in a race to solve it before he too becomes one of the 'disappeared'. Russian dolls, hidden rivers, drones and dragons, a hallucinatory mix that sets London on fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brino Ghartornni
• Release date: May 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370854318

Brino Ghartornni

Born on Malta during a thunderstorm that flooded large parts of the island, Brino Ghartornni is the last of six children of Maltese and British parents. Educated at Bolgna University, he spent six months on a Japanese whaling ship as a spy for Greenpeace whilst writing a daily blog for The Coastal Fishermen Newspaper. Resuming his studies at UCLA, he was taught to play the bongos by Prof. Richard Feynman and went on to develop the theory of Relational Quantum Mechanics. He now divides his time between London and Malta.

Book preview

Burn In Heaven

Brino Ghartornni

Translated from Maltese by

Rob Harrington

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2017 Rob Harrington

All rights reserved.

Cover and Book design by the author

No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by written, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without written permission in writing by the author.

Observations

Title Page

Copyright

Quote

Observation 1 – Conversations With Dead Men

Observation 2 – Here He Is

Observation 3 – Further Conversations

Observation 4 – We Don't Talk About It

Observation 5 – They're Still Talking

Observation 6 – The New Boy of Amazon House

Observation 7 – Waves

Observation 8 – Particles

Observation 9 – A Day Out

Observation 10 – It's Up To You

Observation 11 – Nothing Much Going On

Observation 12 – An Empty Chair

Observation 13 – London's Burning

Observation 14 – Trying Too Hard

Observation 15 – London's Always Burning

Observation 16 – It's Easy To Get Lost

Observation 17 – Taking my own advice

Observation 18 – An Invitation

Observation 19 – Indiscretions

Observation 20 – Walbrook

Observation 21 – Being A Policeman

Observation 22 – River Found

Observation 23 – Buried In Sunlight

Observation 24 – Dolly Blues

Observation 25 – Left field

Observation 26 – A Full House

Observation 27 – Another Invitation

Observation 28 – Can't Stop Now

Observation 29 – Julie Blue

Observation 30 – A rose by any other

Observation 31 – Alone Too Long

Observation 32 – I could do with some help

Observation 33 – The Other Guy

Observation 34 – Out of the Window

Observation 35 – Classical Burglars

Observation 36 – There's a riot going on

Observation 37 – Dr.Weird

Observation 38 – The Brother brothers

Observation 39 – Dead End

Observation 40 – Aftermath

Observation 41 – Friendship

Observation 42 – End Dead

Observation 43 – Not what I wanted

Observation 44 – Entanglement

Observation 45 – Carried Away

Observation 46 – Between You and Me

Interleaf

Observation from – The Face of the Deep

Back Cover

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Robert Frost

Observation 1

–

Conversations With Dead Men

Angela Newton is in a privileged position.

From her seat by the window on the thirty-eighth floor she has a perfect view of the golden pyramid. Forty metres high, made of stainless steel and glass, it is catching the last rays of the summer sun. High above this, but seeming to her almost at eye-level, is a glint of a plane approaching the City airport, a short distance behind her.

No one on the ground nearby can see the pyramid. It is resting on the top of a very tall building officially named No.1 Canada Square.

Angela is employed by Instotech, one of a number of high-end companies occupying a complex in the City of London called the Citigroup Centre; her building is officially known as 25 Canada Square. Everyone knows it as part of a bigger complex: Canary Wharf.

All her colleagues have gone home. During the day the tide of workers rises up to her desk right next to the window, but now she sees a vast open plain with the scattered flotsam of tall palms, shelf units and comfortable sofas. Angela Newton can claim that at twenty past nine, she has the largest office of any employee in the company. She will stop working when the lights on the outside of the pyramid roof come on, all four thousand of them.

When she arrived six months ago she was told that inside the pyramid nearly a million litres of water are pumped around every day, for cooling and the toilets. Angela remembered studying at the Faculty of Economics and Politics at Cambridge and seeing a MONIAC hydraulic economic computer. It reproduced the flow of capital with water moving through valves and pipes between various tanks representing the Treasury, Interest Rates, Employment, Taxation and other factors important to a nation's wealth. She found all this sloshing about rather disturbing and prefers to think of the pyramid's burnished exterior catching the light or acting as a beacon to be seen over 30k away.

Her position by the window took some getting used to. It was partly the extreme height and partly being surprised by seagulls looking her in the eye as they took advantage of the up-draught on the other side of the glass.

Angela is tapping out a report for her project leader's boss. His department will slice it up for use in Power Point graphics, movies and animations. She is well aware that by the time they have finished there will be little left of her original work. She is reconciled to this knowing that her project leader's boss will go through it with her over a very nice lunch in his office. There is also a reward she gives herself. Every time she achieves an end of chapter, she sets a timer for five minutes, then turns round from her view of the pyramid to look at what else may be seen from the 38th floor.

Dominating it will be the River Thames, a great big lazy 'S' dividing the city North and South, sometimes East and West. Angela will smile at Tower Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral on her right, Southwark Cathedral on her left; further into the West she will see the backlit form of the Houses of Parliament; beyond, she will make out the spire of the Albert Memorial. Waiting for her in the twilight haze will be the four chimneys of Battersea Power Station. Soon she will regard these landmarks as rocks in a gigantic garden, the city lights entrancing her like fireflies flashing and shimmering in the dark.

Angela lives alone but has company. A few moments after closing the door to her Barbican flat, a Blue point Siamese cat called Jack, although probably out all day, will appear. She loves saying 'Jack!' and hearing him reply with a long wail that can alarm those not accustomed to the breed. Then she will sweep him up in her arms and bury her nose in his smell.

'Sandalwood.'

She performs some swift sub-editing to finish the chapter before starting a new page. She is pleased with this and presses 'save' with a flourish. Sitting back in her padded leather chair with its high neck support and adjustable arms Angela Newton leans her body to the window, swivelling round to find a man blocking her view.

It's not her boss checking up on her, not that he would do such a thing, nor is it that creep from Development or his 'friend'; it's not the security guard, he won't be around here for another twenty minutes, besides, she would have seen any of them sidle up to her from her left having a clear view of the office all the way to the lifts; this man isn't in her office, he is on the other side of the glass, hanging in the air.

Angela is surprised how little surprised she feels. Maybe it's because the man seems to be relaxed inside a very expensive suit and enjoying the panorama below. There is a passive ventilation grill at the top of the window frame, Angela reaches up and slides it back. '...What can I...not 'are you all right? - how did you get here? -don't move till I get help...Can't move...held...by his jacket...'

A light evening breeze turns the man towards her and his face lights up in delight. He waves a tight little wave. He is suspended less than a metre from her and his voice is calm and clear. 'Hello.'

'...that's what I will say...' 'Hello.'

'Working late?'

She presses herself against the window. 'Yes.'

'I was too.'

'Oh.'

'Had to get out.'

'Yes.'

She has had time to see that the man is caught and held by a cleaning rail that runs under the spine of his jacket and protrudes at the collar next to his right ear.

'...Somehow it caught him, could have been impaled...what are the chances?'

'Lovely air out here- and the view!'

'Yes.'

'Much cooler. Was getting very warm up there.'

'...where's 'there'..? How on earth did he get out..?'

Angela is aware of sweat on his brow and chin.

'I see.Are you on the-'

'-Bank of New York. Sorry, should have- my name is Bill Seaton, I run the EMEA section.'

'Angela. Angela Newton.'

Bill looks out across the river, his arms held slightly behind him by the tension in his jacket.

'So peaceful, should have done this days ago.'

She can see the seams along the back are very strained.

'Is there anything I can get you? Bill?'

'No, I don't think so...How are you?'

He sways away from her for a moment and she notices a slight gap in the material by the right shoulder. He sways back to her.

'Not worried about anything, Angela?'

'Er...no. I was just finishing a report.'

'That's good.'

'Yes.'

Bill Seaton smiles at her and looks down at the ground thirty-eight storeys below.

'What a long way down.'

The gap in the shoulder widens, he lurches forward. Angela steps back in alarm.

He smiles and turns his head as if he has a rather stiff neck.

'Good tailoring.'

'Don't!'

'Oh dear, don't worry. Angela- you go home. I'm sure your boss won't mind.'

'No.'

Bill becomes entranced by something beyond her vision.

'Well it's up to you. Just look at that.'

'Please!'

The split runs halfway down his back. He tilts some more.

'Ah, that's better. Well good luck.'

It's so quiet.

'This one's mine.'

With that he dives away.

Angela puts her hands to the window and cries out. Her bare arms squeak and sneer as she slides down the glass to the carpet thinking of her cat, Jack.

Bill and Angela come to rest at about the same time.

* * *

Hakeem Obi trundles his rubbish cart towards the pedestrian bridge that spans the A12.It is twenty past eight in the morning and he has ten minutes, ten precious minutes before he starts work.

He selects 'Mama's Gun' album by the Soulquarians on his player and wriggles the buds deeper into his ears. The noise of the traffic deadens a little then disappears under the explosive psychedelic guitar in 'Penitentiary Philosophy'. Hakeem feels his blood being pumped round his body by the bass heavy riffs and he gives himself up to the music. Then 'Bag Lady' walks him to work over the bridge. The sun has been up for three hours but spider webs are still shimmering on the safety net lining the sides of the walkway. Hakeem admires them for a moment and then sees something that makes the music intolerably loud. He wrenches off his earbuds.

'Fuck! What is he doing there!'

Hakeem scuttles his cart to the other side of the bridge and slithers down to the edge of the A12. On the crash barrier separating the dual carriageway sits a man watching the traffic, spellbound. Hakeem presses himself against the concrete embankment of the bridge and shouts out, 'Hey!'

The stocky man in early middle age turns round at the cry and calls out in a high tenor voice, 'Hello to you!'

Hakeem waits for a gap in the traffic before continuing. 'Are you injured?!'

'No.'

'How did you get there?!'

'I walked. The cars were so kind. They let me through...So kind...'

Another phalanx of lorries rushes past. The man's thinning fair hair is lifted off his forehead by the slipstream.

'What the hell are you doing there! Are you crazy?! You could be killed at any moment!'

'Don't think so. It's so smooth.'

Hakeem notices the man is hypnotised by the passing of the vehicles. Each one holds his complete attention, his smile increases as it approaches, he blinks as it goes by, then he looks out for the next one with equal delight.

'What! Is your! Name?!'

'Martin! Andrew Martin! What's yours?!'

'Hakeem.'

'What?'

'Hakeem!'

'Is that all, just Hakeem?!'

'I'm Nigerian.'

'Well, is it unpronounceable or don't you want to tell me?'

'It's Obi, Hakeem Obi.'

'Now that wasn't very hard was it?'

The morning commute is increasing and there are hardly any gaps between the trucks and the cars but Hakeem and Andrew have become attuned to each other's voices.

'What- are you- doing there?'

'Just- watching- It's not what it- looks like really- not what you- first see- and hear.'

'How long- have you been there- sitting on- the crash barrier?"

'Oh, that I can't tell you.'

'Why?'

'It's a- secret.'

'Why?'

Andrew Martin laughs. 'I- don't- know.'

'Nutter!'

'Aren't-we- all?'

Hakeem slumps a little against the concrete. 'May have a point.'

The man drags his gaze away from the traffic for a moment. 'Where were you going- before you stopped to talk to me?'

'Me? I was off to work- what- about- you?'

'I work- Canary Wharf- never see- the traffic.'

'What do you do?'

'What do- you do?'

'I sweep rubbish- what do you do?'

'Make money- you know- the usual.'

'No- I don't.'

'Right- otherwise- you wouldn't be-'

'No- I wouldn't.'

'What- time- do you- start- work?'

'About- now.'

'I normally work- all the time- this- is why- I love this- Speed is the masturbation of space.'

'Oh.' '...won't forget that in a hurry...'

'I think- now that I'm here- I will- stay here.'

Hakeem has run out of things to say. Andrew Martin is content to watch the traffic as if he was following shoals of goldfish in a pond. After a few more minutes just standing there beside the rush and thunder of the A12 Hakeem becomes overwhelmed. The sounds of the blaring horns from the drivers who have noticed Andrew are even more immersive than those from his music player. '...I can't stay here...this is a world I don't want to be in...'

'Andrew! Andrew! I don't think- you realise- how- lucky- you've been-you could be-'

At that moment a particularly impatient lorry blunders past and Andrew is lifted off his feet and spun into the path of the next pantechnicon and he falls under its second set of wheels and disappears. Part of him comes out at the top and part of him comes out the bottom. The third set of wheels crushes the rest.

Hakeem says out loud, 'Told him.'

Later he feels bad about that.

Observation 2

–

Here He Is

It was pulling the door towards him to be startled by the open shutter of the hide framing a bright clouded sky above swaying reeds in rippling water that did it. Tekka stepped into a hot, blinding darkness, an overwhelming smell of wood, and his world turned under him.

'...Omm Alla! Dak li huwa dan..?'

He grips a handrail yet already the moment is slipping away like an assassin in the night leaving a rendered or poisoned heart. Tekka Stanford collapses his big frame onto the oak bench. He aches. Squeezing his eyes shut, he searches inward for any hold on it, for some evidence of the origin of the blow. Nothing forms in his numb mind but a feeling he has been invited to an important event, yet without a place or date on the card. Exhausted, he waits like an animal. When time returns it brings one thought, ‘...who shall I be when I have recovered?’

Just a few miles away from the nature reserve on his desk lies an appointment diary, a calendar and five box files. If he was in his office, he would barely notice the phone ringing, the e-mails stacking up, the fan sweeping cool draughts across the room. If he was sitting there, he would have his back to the framed certificates and awards his assistant has placed on his filing cabinet, next to a computer and a little red leather case. This contains the Queen's Police Medal for Distinguished Service. Detective Chief Inspector Tekka Stanford attended the presentation a month ago. Every time he opened the case since then the sight of the gold medal made his scar itch. Eventually he put the thing in a drawer but when Jonas Silverman found it he gave it pride of place in the middle of a stark and bare room not much bigger than the bird-watching hide.

If he was in his office Tekka would probably be staring out of the window. It is his private space. No one who comes into the room gives it a second glance, or believes Tekka does either, yet it is a view he turns to for solace and inspiration. If he was there what he would see would be only ten feet from the glass and fill the entire window frame: a wall made from Edenhall Coastal Range Graphite Grey bricks.

Tekka Stanford is not there. He is leaning heavily into rough wood, his close-cropped head brushing the ceiling. He stares down into the dark earthen floor and concentrates on breathing slow, regular breaths.

'...was that someone entering next door?'

He prays no one will join him in the hot confinement of this hide. He would have to summon the energy to account for himself and knows he would fail to do so.Tekka inhales more of the wood's intensity until its smell disappears and he claims one small victory. After a while, after a long while, he is aware of the extravagant washing of ducks, the soft piping calls of a reed warbler, then a coot, and way, way off, the burr of a micro-light high over the river.

At this moment, if he had been in his office, he would have turned from meditating on his wall to the alert of a triple-flagged priority-message from the mail inbox. He would have saved it, entered his password and waited for the decryption bar to crawl across the screen. He would then have been acquainted with the news of the death of Genevieve Matteusin. Wife of, and money behind, entrepreneur Bernard Matteusin, she was found by her cleaner earlier this morning, drowned in her bath. Tekka would have deleted the decryption, stared at the desktop background for a moment and then asked his wall, '...what are the chances..?'

But the hide holds a different question.

'What do I know about déjà vu?'

Tekka’s voice sounds thick and heavy against the wood. His attempt to gather his thoughts fails and the slipping, the dissolving returns.

He gives a shout: 'What does anyone know!?'

The hide absorbs it without effort. Tekka coughs and laughs and tries again.

'Edward Titchener..?' '...a brief glimpse of a situation before conscious perception...'

'Perhaps a similar occurrence reviving a forgotten memory?'

He rubs his face roughly with his big hands. '...improper electrical discharge in the brain? A stroke? Bad food? More than one cause..?'

He stands up and stamps his feet. '...but why the overwhelming sensation, why the intensity? Vulnerable... Just before I opened the door...I had not a thought in my head. Not a thought in my head...not a...it's no good, I'm not going to get anywhere...’

Tekka looks out over the ruffled grey water. On the horizon he can make out a little fishing dinghy and a man with a rod. The man looks ten thousand miles away.

‘...what's the opposite of déjà vu?...Jamais vu! Never seen.... Wake up in a strange room and find yourself staring at arrangement of light and dark and... shapes...'

He frowns at his splayed-out fingers.

'...just abstract patterns with no reference....no perspective...then...familiarity floods in like a balm, or is it deception- the familiar? The cat...not just a cat, a magician's assistant, my assistant, Jonas...' As he moves about Tekka is conscious of the intimacy of the sounds he makes within the hide. They seem to be occurring out of sync with his actions.

'...it's just me adjusting...'

They nauseate if they drag behind his movements and are alarming, even threatening, when they occur slightly ahead of them.

'...mercury...treacle...'

He is grateful the darkness has swallowed his shadow, dreading it might move independently of him.'...Omm Alla...Dak li huwa dan..?' Again Tekka asks what it was that overcame him.

'...grandson of a lapsed Catholic...there will be no answer...'

He dare not move or ask any more questions. Slowly, a stillness comes and without effort he rests there.

'...dejjem il-silenzu...' Silence is the one thing he does believe for it comes wether he asks or does not.

'...when I wait...in a room...a car...a stakeout...waiting for someone to come out...a light to go on...sometimes...hours...people...pass by...all with their colours, rhythms...stories...I wait, watch, become still and the...the silence...grows...'

The scar on his chest itches. He lets memory in as a salve.

'...nationwide hunt...two weeks...waited...we waited...knew he would come, the bastard...and she knew...she knew...staked out in that house facing her back garden...'

He stares at the rippling water, but he can see vividly laundry waving on a long washing line.

'...led to his sister...we waited...and we missed him...missed him...how did he get in?'

A cormorant lands on a navigation post and spreads its wings.

'...two weeks...looking through binoculars for a sign- anything...nothing...then... then she came out...stood there...must have persuaded she needed to act normally... take out the washing...'

The bird shuffles round on the post to present its back to the sun.

'...what could be more normal...reassuring...washing on a line...don't see it so much these days...Omm...My mother in Malta...large billowing sheets...towels... shirts, underwear, socks, pillow cases...'

Tekka allows himself to sit down on the bench.

'...she stood there...his sister, tall woman in white cardigan...full skirt...at the end of the line...long time she stood there...looked across...arranging pegs, spare pegs on the line...'

He closes his eyes.

'...then she went back inside...empty basket on her hip...turned back...turned back to look at the washing...before she went inside...'

He looks at his binoculars on the bench.

'...turned back...we watched and saw nothing...looked and saw nothing...'

The billowing laundry was mesmerising.

'...drifted...started to drift off...a dream...lemon yellow skirt...shadows crumpling on waving sheets...no sound through the binocular view...'

Then he had the feeling that comes to him occasionally, when he realises that he is looking and that there is something extra, something he is missing, as if there is a blind spot and he needs to give a sidelong glance to it, get a different perspective.

'...or...really, really...look. See the whole picture and then see everything clearly in it.'

Tekka went in shortly after that. With two men but he was first. First to get shot.

'Bruised! Oh that hurt! Hospital...going to operate...remove bullet...wound looked like a bullet wound...matter what I said...hurt...till I showed them the vest...bullet pushed vest material into my chest...ooh...left a hole, but stayed in the vest...not so bad...not so bad as having a bullet in you...'

He overpowered the man.

'...must have been adrenaline...'

She was very calm.

' ...seemed very calm...lemon yellow...stared at me...shot but standing...didn't take my shots...playground games...cowboys and Indians...people who get shot don't fall down, unless they remember the movies, then they do...it's astonishment-'I've been shot' and then, later the pain...stared at her brother on the ground...he had become something else...not a desperate, violent man...on the run for three weeks...not an escaped criminal, not even...her brother...just a...thing...like a...lobster or...an arrangement...'

They asked him in the ambulance. He knew they were trying to distract him, trying to keep him awake, they thought he'd been shot.

'Because I looked...through the binoculars and she was...standing there, looking up at the sky...pushing...all the unused...pegs to the end of the line...a long time...then I saw what she saw...clever...the line...a line of code...maybe insurance... show later she was unwilling.'

They shook their heads and laughed a little too loud as the ambulance shrieked through the winding streets.

'Pegs at the end...put all same colours 'gether....'

Tekka rushed to get the words out.

'Looked at the washing...blowing...in wind...sheets, pillows...then saw the pegs the last three items on the line...where she was standing...smart...A towel...then a sheet and then another towel...the first towel...three pegs holding it, one at each end and one in the middle, like the towel at the end...and the sheet...the sheet had two pegs at each corner and two in the middle...the towel pegs were all red ones, the sheet pegs in the middle were all blue...stenna sakemm tara il...'

He started to fade into unconsciousness.

'All others pegging the laundry, random colours.'

' You're rambling!' his mates shouted at him.

Then the words just slipped out without effort, like the blood slowly travelling down his leg and onto the stretcher.

'Three red, three lots of two blue, three red...Dot,dot,dot, dash,dash,dash...'

His mates finished for him as he passed out, 'Dot,dot,dot!'

Tekka palms the area of his shirt over the healed wound, resisting the desire to scratch.

'Omm...'

He remembers watching his mother hang out the washing before they went off to school together. In Malta, in Zurrieq, in summer, the laundry would be dry in half an hour, but she thought the clothes and sheets would be made extra clean by the south wind blowing through them all day. Tekka often thought of the linen on the line catching the breezes from the sea whilst he was sweating in the classroom on the first floor of Saint Benedict College.

This was his first experience of living in different worlds. He and his mother would walk from one side of the town to the other, a short journey with their backs to the sun. When they arrived she would leave him in the garden that fronted the school. Whilst he settled in the shade of the trees she would enter the building by a door on the right. He can still recall the smell of the drains. He had got accustomed to it before he understood that it was regarded by many as unpleasant. He liked the sourness, a lonely smell that went with wet dogs, old clothes, junk shops and rarely attended churches. After half an hour a bell was rung and all the assembled pupils would file through a door on the left. When Tekka went into a classroom often the teacher in charge would be his mother, but they gave no sign of recognition to each other. The trick of being someone else was held lightly between them. His schoolmates knew who his mother was, but they quietly followed his example. It was different if one of them visited him at their house, then they didn't know how to react on seeing her. Was she Mrs. Stanford, the teacher from school, or had she been at home like their own mothers all along? Only Tekka was certain that she was both.

'Omm tieghi...mia madre...my mother...ma mère...'

And now he thinks of the last time he saw her sitting at the kitchen table in the 'new place', the little farm house she moved to twenty-three years ago, twenty minutes drive from Zurrieq, to the little village of upside-down locks. He knows it isn't the same, the phone calls once a week. His mother would like him to be in the same room, breathe the same air, to be at arm's reach and stroke his finely-cropped hair on his round, round head. Eve knows this. When she visits, she sits close to Omm as if her mother-in-law might wish to see her by sensitive fingers trembling over her wide forehead, across the generous brow, the epicanthic folds of her eyelids, trace down her long fine nose, brush against her wide lips and a confident chin, with perhaps a little caress around the earlobes to discover studs or pendant jewellery, but all the while it is Tekka who looks at his wife as if his eyes were curious, innocent and urgent hands.

'...Eve is more like them than me...that's why I love her so...

On Eve's key ring is her most treasured possession, more valued than any fine stone or faceted crystal.

'...my wife's a thief..!'

On their last day he spied Eve standing in the garden looking out at the fields that slope down to the 'ghadira' , a rare patch of open water where some cattle had gathered for a drink. She stood there for quite a while, content to watch the wind ruffle through the pale grass, lift the washing on the line and flutter her thin cotton dress. Then she turned around to confirm she was on her own, unclipped one of the laundry weights from the bottom of a bed sheet and slipped it into her purse.

When Eve has hung her keys on the back of the kitchen door at home he can see the dull glint from the rough casting of a sunflower with a smiling face.

Tekka could have sworn he was the only witness to this petty crime and it was more probable that Omm's strong intuitive powers, bordering on the psychic, prompted her farewell gift. The front doors of his mother's village were hardly ever used, blocked as