A Foreign Invasion

By Clive Webster

The callous murder of a young environmental protestor in a seaside resort provokes widespread condemnation, creating a highly-charged atmosphere.
Into the ferment walks Joe Brewster, ageing ex-New York cop, still stinging from his last job and ill-equipped to deal with local lore, sentiment and even the local dialect. He is soon caught up in a world of migratory geese, discoveries of ancient Viking settlements and the clandestine intentions of a foreign businessman.
Meanwhile, the discovery that someone has hired the services of a Russian hitman pushes Brewster further into the web of intrigue. When his own life becomes endangered Brewster realises that he will have to fight dirty if he is to survive in this foreign land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781326115418

Book preview

A Foreign Invasion

A FOREIGN INVASION

CLIVE WEBSTER

A Foreign Invasion

The callous murder of a young environmental protestor in a seaside resort provokes widespread condemnation, creating a highly-charged atmosphere.

Into the ferment walks Joe Brewster, ageing ex-New York cop, still stinging from his last job and ill-equipped to deal with local lore, sentiment and even the local dialect. He is soon caught up in a world of migratory geese, discoveries of ancient Viking settlements and the clandestine intentions of a foreign businessman. 

Meanwhile, the discovery that someone has hired the services of a Russian hitman pushes Brewster further into the web of intrigue. When his own life becomes endangered Brewster realises that he will have to fight dirty if he is to survive in this foreign land.

This is a work of fiction. All names, places and characters are entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to any living persons or organisations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © Clive Webster 2008. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-326-11504-8

Reprinted 2013. Binding by Lulu.com.

Recommended Price £9.99

Cover illustration: Front: Brent Geese arriving in Essex.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s permission.

PART ONE

‘The mind is but a barren soil, a soil which is soon exhausted and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it is continually fertilised and enriched with foreign matter.’

Discourses on Art

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Chapter 1

He had waited such a long time and now he stood on the threshold of immortality.

He positioned himself side on:  legs slightly apart, head erect, eyes sharply focused. He waited for several seconds and then he picked up the gun, feeling its cool, reassuring weight. He drew the gun in line with his eyesight and looked down the snub barrel. A figure appeared, stage left, in profile, seemingly unaware. He noticed the measured, calculating stride and then he saw her back, ramrod straight. Out of the shadows she emerged in a dark, body-hugging one-piece suit, her breasts like mountain peaks and her slim body supported by long, slender legs clad in shiny, black stiletto boots. His eyes narrowed with pleasure. This was going to be so easy.

Her long hair was scraped back ferociously, like a skull cap, but curiously what he noticed most of all were her fingers: long, bony and active. Actively moving towards the holster at her hip.  She turned to face him with the stare of someone who meant business.

He twitched involuntarily. Beads of sweat formed on his face as the stale, oppressive heat closed in on him. He swivelled quickly on his heels and brought his left hand across his right arm to steady himself. Now he faced the woman full on, her expressionless eyes like the dark holes of a lost soul. He watched her fingers and, as he narrowed his gaze, he detected the faintest hesitation in her movement - a weakness perhaps - and he seized the opportunity. He squeezed the trigger.

In a split second the woman stumbled, attempted to right herself and then fell more heavily. He fired again. Another hail of bullets pumped into her twitching, bloodied body. Her eyes rolled theatrically and she sank towards the ground. He watched every lingering spasm and death throe with undisguised joy until finally her ashen limbs became still, sucked clean of life.

The man stood back and wiped the stray dribble from his chin. Shaking, he put the weapon back in its holster. He breathed deeply, trying to calm his agitated state. The exhilaration had been high, maybe too intense, but his marksmanship had never wavered. Each and every shot had unerringly found its target and he had achieved his goal: a fatal attack.

As he stepped aside, Gretchen, The Wicked Temptress dissolved. From the smouldering ruins of the medieval castle, the score slowly appeared on the screen showing the blood-red figures 275,459. The highest score that month.

Congratulations! Grand Winner of Blood Sport 2: The Ultimate Revenge.

***

He cowered as he walked out of the arcade, his eyes blinking rapidly at the sudden harshness of daylight. He hesitated, trying to hide his expression, but in the distorted reflection of a shop front window his pockmarked, unshaven face still held the euphoric expression of the kill. Too early. That was just a practice run…

He tried to pick his way through the crowds, following a tangled route. All around, people moved in waves, like a restless sea. He had never seen so many people: overweight geriatric types, families chaotically trying to keep together, glaring bare-chested youths and endless girls, all seemingly tall and razor thin.

His nostrils caught a whiff of something sweet and sickly. The sign nearby said ‘Candy Floss’. A sweet for cleaning the teeth?? A man bent over a vat of frothy pink gauze and whipped the substance onto a stick. A child grabbed it, took a great bite and crammed the whole feast into his mouth.

No time to stand around gaping. That arcade had made him late. What was the time? 2:15 p.m. Shit!

He crossed the road. His path was drenched by hot afternoon sun. Past a pub. More crowds - lurching towards strange demented faces, speaking in slurred tones, they made his head spin. Perhaps these were the drones, he thought, the workers of the establishment. No. These people wore neat clothes, flashed white unbroken teeth and sported ruddy complexions. These people were well off. Not drones, just drunk.

Drunk, yes but why? In his land, people drank to forget. People drank to escape the grim reality of their lives. These people were drunk and yet had no reason. They were behaving crazily. Maybe something to do with that strange western disease. Something called Stress?

Ah yes! The poor people were suffering from the pressure of their precious lives! Slowly a wave of utter contempt flooded over him. Had these so-called people, he wondered, ever had to deal with the icy stab of fear that came with a written summons to appear before unnamed courts, or the eerie clicks of wire tapping - or the deadly midnight knock? … No. These were pampered souls. His lips curled in a twisted smile. Oh, my drunken, pampered fools, if you only knew what was about to happen...

No time to think about what might happen. Just do it!

His watch showed 2:34…and twenty-five seconds. A sweltering afternoon gathering pace, racing him towards the appointed time and still he wasn’t sure of the route. Everything was starting to go wrong. What had he been told? Rendezvous with his contact by the amusement park…by the ‘Turtle’? He scoured the promenade, back and forth, hurriedly mapping out the area in his head. Too many people and too much happening. Then in the distance, he saw it.

A huge green and yellow plastic turtle. He walked briskly towards it. Twenty feet across at least; a great moony face; it was smiling as its enormous rolling eyes rotated dizzily. Swings suspended from each of its feet and fanned outwards with the centrifugal force. Children held on, screaming with joy. The joys of the fun fair. Soon there will be other screams.

His eyes darted along the pavement. He spotted someone away from the crowd, someone waiting by the roadside. He approached cautiously and gave the correct signal. The contact drew closer. They exchanged words, fleetingly. Done. Alone once more, the man hurried along the promenade towards the scaffolding…and his business appointment.

Here, the esplanade broadened. A gantry had been hastily erected and there was a small platform with a banner draped across the front. It read ‘Stop the Marina Project’. A small crowd of supporters had assembled in front of the stage, holding up placards. They began clapping.

A technician with a ponytail walked up to the podium and fiddled with a lone microphone. He leaned over a box and pulled out a tangle of writhing cables. He began the sound check, blowing into the microphone and repeating the same three numbers for almost a minute. Passers-by watched him; a crowd swelled. I will have an audience.

The man spotted a gap on one side of the crowd and sneaked in. His eyes roved across the platform. He’d made his business appointment.  Now the wait.

At last a young woman walked up the ladder and strode confidently onto the platform. She took the microphone stand in both hands and tapped the instrument twice.

‘Hello. My name’s Lisa James!’ she announced,  ‘and I belong to Greenshoots. I’m here today to put the record straight.’ She paused for effect. ‘I want to tell you, the people of Thamesmouth, the truth about Ricky Patel.’ She took the mike from the stand and began to pace the platform.

‘It goes back two years, to the days of the Tory council. They employed Patel to set up a chain of restaurants in the area. We know them as East End Eateries. Patel likes to tell everyone how wonderful he is.’ Another deliberate pause. ‘But I’m here to tell you what he’s really like.’

There were a few ironic jeers. The man moved uneasily and scratched his rough chin. Not yet. Patience.

‘Please. Friends. I am here to offer my services to the people of Thamesmouth. Perhaps we can all learn something today. Were you aware that Patel operates sweatshops? He exploits immigrant labour from third world countries and then pays them well below the national minimum.’

There was a mixture of encouraging cheers and disruptive heckles.

‘It’s true. I can prove it,’ she insisted passionately. ‘Mr Patel doesn’t want to conform to modern society; he wants to import his own little part of Hinduism to Thamesmouth. Out-dated work practices and management, Bombay-style.’

Some of the crowd were restless; they felt it was too hot a day for all this.

Lisa ignored their movement. ‘Do you know what he is planning to do?’

The man’s face broadened. Do you know what I am planning to do?

She stopped and gazed around the crowd. Most people looked blankly back at her. They really hadn’t a clue what was going to happen to their town.

‘Let me tell you, then. Just further along the coast you have a unique bird sanctuary.’

Lisa pointed to an island just off the coast, a mile or so away. A sea of heads swivelled round to where she was pointing.

‘Over there, you have geese. They arrive from thousands of miles away. Well, Patel wants to stop all that. He wants to build a so-called ‘factory of fun,’ yet another amusement complex. He wants to rip the heart out of this area, bring lots more trippers back.’

One heckler spoke out, ‘so what? That’s what this town is all about.’

‘That is not what this town is all about,’ Lisa snapped. ‘The day-trippers only come here three months of the year. They throw their litter around, get drunk and vomit in our streets which we then, the townspeople, are left to clear up.’

There were a few nods of agreement.

‘Let me tell you more, fellow residents. I’ve seen his plan. Patel is planning to acquire ten square kilometres of shoreline. He intends to turn the area into a concrete wasteland. No trees, no open spaces, just acres of concrete.’

‘Who cares,’ said the heckler again, ‘as long as it’s going to bring jobs to the area.’

She rounded on him.

‘Who cares? Everyone should care and if you let me finish then you will care.’

There were some more mumbles of discontent. People in Thamesmouth weren’t used to being talked to like this, but Lisa James was driven.

‘I was brought up in this town. I was taught that there are some things here that are sacrosanct. One of them is the sea. We are a sea-side town and we all feel it’s part of us. Even if we don’t use it we know that it’s always there. It’s ours. Isn’t it?’

Some of her supporters shouted their agreement.

‘Now Patel wants his so-called marina complex to be three storey’s high, rising to one hundred feet.’ 

A curious silence now fell. Suddenly, everyone was mentally creating an image of the proposed building in his or her fearful minds, one hundred feet…stretching towards the sky.

‘One hundred feet high.’ Lisa repeated softly, soothing the crowd now she had caught their attention. ‘That means it will obliterate the sea from view. It means that in late summer, the sun will be obscured from the sea front. All you will see is concrete. It will be environmental vandalism…on a huge scale.’

Still a stony silence. She was spoiling their sunny day at the seaside. Now she played her trump card.

‘But that’s only half of it. To finance this, Patel is going to privatise the beaches. He’s going to buy them from the council. And what do you think he’s then going to do?’

No one responded.

‘He is going to charge you, fellow residents, to use them. You will have to pay to sunbathe. You will have to pay to use the sea.’

She had touched a raw collective nerve: paying for something that was rightly theirs. Around the crowd came a more vocal reaction, with scattered howls of disapproval and disbelief.

‘It’s true! Patel isn’t just here for a holiday or for his dubious restaurant chain. He’s here in Thamesmouth to exploit you all. He doesn’t give a damn about the sea, or the geese or the beaches, least of all the people who live here.’

More discontented cries.

‘What can we do??’ shouted a woman.

‘We must do everything in our power to stop him,’ replied Lisa. ‘We must mobilise our forces, demonstrate and lobby the civic authorities. We must make them change their minds. Only then will we rid this town of this project.’

She was coming to the end of her speech. She made sure she drew out her final words with care and precision. She wanted to hit the mark.

‘Fellow residents, these matters affect us all, not just me and a few of us here today. I have a young daughter. It will affect her and all-future generations. This project will affect every one of you out here today…directly. You and you.’ She pointed repeatedly at people in the crowd and each time they cheered. ‘We’ve got to stop this crazy project once and for all.’

There was a spontaneous outbreak of hand clapping and cheering. Lisa raised one hand briefly and the applause gradually subsided. She blew a kiss and, in seemingly modest acknowledgement, she bowed and made her way off the stage.

A few cameras clicked as Lisa walked purposefully along the sea front. On either side of her, walked her two environmentalist friends; they too were infused with the same zeal. Allen Shaw was an animal biologist and technologist and Sally Butcher was the leading member of the local ornithology society. All three had been determined to stop Patel’s project, all three had been undoubtedly united with one common aim - but Lisa was the undisputed leader.

For Lisa was the one who had made things happen. She had been the first to discover the proposal, had subsequently got into the offices of the local council and obtained a copy of the secret plan, and it was Lisa who had alerted all local branch members of Greenshoots.  She was hoping that this impromptu gathering would be the start of some of the biggest demonstrations ever seen in Thamesmouth.

Now she was leading again, walking along the broad pavement. As the group moved along, some of her keenest supporters stopped and cheered.

‘You’ll do for us, Lisa. Together we’ll stop this thing.’

‘You were great,’ gushed another admirer as he came up and squeezed her arm affectionately. Allen steered the man judiciously to one side. He was nervous.

‘Yeah, really cool, Lisa,’ said Sally, ‘I was proud of the way you just got up and told it like it was. No bullshit.’

Lisa turned and blushed. ‘Look you guys; don’t start going soft on me. It’s only round one, we’ve got a tough fight ahead of us.’

She afforded herself a rare smile. Maybe she had exaggerated a little and been somewhat economical with the truth, but Lisa reasoned to herself, the end often justified the means. Getting people on side was all about pressing the right buttons.

Behind this group, the man followed.

Lisa kept on walking at an unnaturally fast pace: she wanted to see if her acolytes could keep up. Solidarity was all about keeping close to one another. ‘Patel is not going to take this one lying down,’ she muttered to Allen. ‘We’ve just been sparring so far.’

The man’s pace quickened.

Lisa and her followers came to the main entrance of the Fairyland Amusement Park. Outside, and away from the rattle and hum of switchbacks and bumper cars, excited children, wearing their daily orange armbands were milling around.  Their presence forced Lisa’s group to slow down. The pavement narrowed. Her group and the children could not occupy the same space; it meant one of the two groups walking onto the pedestrian crossing…in front of the oncoming traffic.

Lisa stopped and looked anxiously around: her group had converged with the young children into an unruly crowd. The Greenshoots protest march was rapidly losing all momentum. Lisa saw that the pedestrian crossing light showed red; soon it would change to green. She stood up on her toes and waved urgently for her people to prepare to follow her across the road.

A large container lorry approached from the direction of the town centre. It’s wheel axles clattered and shook as they went over a traffic-calming hump - the lorry was going too fast. The driver began to decelerate and the lorry’s air brakes wheezed as it came into the busiest section of the sea front. But it was still going too fast to stop.

The lorry was nearly upon the pedestrian crossing, preparing to pass through the now amber light as the thunder of its engine momentarily drowned the babble of the crowd. People looked up, apprehensive all of a sudden.

In a split second the lorry was on the crossing, parallel with the demonstrators. It coated them with a black belch of acrid smoke and then a blast of the hot and stale rushing air of its wake. For a few seconds there was almost a suspension of time…the lorry passed…the crowd waited and then it had gone. The air cleared, the engine noise subsided.

The crowd began to gather themselves once more. They heard the crossing bleep; they saw the light flash green.  They prepared to cross...but something wasn’t right and in that split second, a subtle shift took place. The crowd’s natural apprehension became widespread horror. Someone lay crumpled in the road.

Chapter 2

A veil of black hair hid the face from view. It was a woman’s body and her head was pinned against the concrete. Blood seeped from beneath her hair; a crimson trickle that gathered pace as it flowed into the road’s camber. Behind, a young girl screamed, shrill and piercing; elsewhere people barely dared to speak, their faces pale and shocked.

Allen Shaw edged forward and leaned over the body.

‘Christ, it’s Lisa. She’s been hit! For God’s sake, someone get an ambulance! Quick!!’

‘Oh my God, no!’ screamed Sally, behind him.

Within minutes the wailing sirens announced the arrival of an ambulance. Doors flung open and the crew rushed to the body. They were dealing with their third accident that day.

‘This one looks bad,’ said the technician shaking his head.

‘How’d it happen?’ asked the paramedic.

‘A lorry this man said,’ raising his eyes towards Allen Shaw. ‘What have we got?’

‘Multiple bruises from a head wound and heavy blood loss.’ replied the paramedic, after snapping on his surgical gloves. ‘A lorry, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Massive internal haemorrhaging, as well...See this?’  The paramedic had noticed a tear in the back of her jacket.

‘Mmm.’

‘No movement.’

‘Is she alive?’

The medic placed two fingers on the victim’s carotid.

‘…Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Not a trace.’

The paramedic carefully lifted up the body and, with the technician supporting her head, turned her slowly on her back in a log roll. The technician fixed up the cardiac monitor.

A continuous green line spilled across the screen.

The paramedic attempted AR but soon abandoned the task. A police car pulled into the kerbside, siren blaring. The sound stopped abruptly and young Officer Briars got out and went to see the crew.

‘What’s the situation?’ he asked, his eyes scanning a scene of confusion. 

‘She’s dead.’

‘Ah, no. How did it happen?’

‘Could be a hit and run, but it’s too early to be certain. We’ll cover her. I suggest you get these people back.’

A sheet shielded the body and tape was swiftly extended to cordon off the area. There was now a distance between the dead woman and the stunned crowd. Silence was broken by a low moan from much of the crowd. Somebody wailed calling out Lisa’s name in a plaintive cry.

‘God, I can’t believe it.’

‘One minute she was just standing here. Now…she’s dead.’

‘Only seconds ago, she was smiling.’

Some people in the crowd became more animated. They had already begun to draw their own conclusions.

‘I saw what happened,’ said one woman, angrily thrusting out her hand towards the eastward approach. ‘The lorry came from that direction.’

‘That’s right. The lorry must have been doing at least fifty.’

‘Dirty great juggernaut. They should be banned from places like this.’

Some onlookers were pushing, trying to get closer. Lisa’s followers reacted angrily, shoving them back.

‘Get back!’ screamed Sally. ‘Haven’t you seen enough?’

‘What’s happened, we just wanted to know -,’ 

‘It was Lisa James!’ shouted one of the Greenshoots people, angrily. ‘She was leading the demonstration. Now clear off and leave us alone!’

More police arrived, their vehicles zigzagging the street, doors flung open and radios blaring. Officers fanned out, asking people what they had seen and herding all the sightseers away from the incident while others proceeded to seal off the whole sea front.

Detective Travis, the Scene of Crime Officer arrived; he spoke quickly to Officer Briars and the paramedic and approached the body. He removed the sheet. The face was already ghostly pale and set in a contorted expression. Her eyes stared, bulging and distended and her mouth was open in a gruesome rictus.

Travis grimaced. The sight made him slightly nauseous but he quickly pushed back the feeling. He opened her jacket and found that blood had also soaked into the white material of her blouse - it was too far from the facial injuries to be related. He undid the blouse and carefully teased away the material from the warm, sticky blood. He drew his fingers across the sternum to her chest and into the eye of the blood. There he found an open entry wound, a star-shaped aperture, and not more than half a centimetre across. Within this soft cavity, his finger felt the hollow depression left by a cold steely object. She’d been shot.

Within minutes, the police had mounted a major operation. All the roads leading from the sea front were set up with roadblocks; every vehicle without a family was stopped and questioned. The public were asked to be on the lookout for an off-white Volvo truck with part of the registration letters WEV. The vehicle was thought to be heading westwards and supposedly emblazoned with a multi-coloured logo: ‘Fresh Foods from the East’.

***

The figure dodged a path of slow-moving cars and bikes winding their way along the jumbled sea front. All the traffic had been held up by the accident up ahead. He made it across the road to the promenade and stopped, catching his breath. It was very hot and oppressive now. With that burst of adrenaline - real adrenaline this time - that clutch of raw emotion that can never be matched - he now found himself overreached. His head pounded and his clothes stuck to his body. Slow down.

Behind him, strident sounds of electronic bleeps, clanging bells and hooters. The amusement park. In the distance, the faint cries of people. An electrical hum cut into all this as a train passed close to the sea front, heading westward towards London. So many noises.

He found the telescope and fumbled for the small coin in his side pocket. He squeezed it into the tiny slot: it fitted. The telescope began to whirr.  He waited forever for the shutter to flick open. He heard the click and quickly lowered his line of vision into the eyeglass.

Ahead, a grainy horizon, misty grey and indistinct. The lenses were smeared with dirt. He wiped them clean and looked once more. He tracked the sky down to the line of the horizon. He thought at first it was the sea but then realised it was fuzzy grey land rising beyond the sea, on the other side.  Further down there was a second horizon, where the far shoreline met the sea. This time he was in the right area.

A couple of super tankers loomed large, floating along the estuary like sleeping giants. They seemed almost stationary through the telescopic sight, but when he drew away, his own eyesight noticed they were moving deceptively quickly as they slid gracefully across the horizon. He swivelled the telescope across the broad reach of channel. A couple of other vessels, further inshore, brightly coloured with rigs and nets. Fishing smacks, he assumed. Nothing else. Where is it, where is my rendezvous?

More noise; this time much louder, the discordant sound of screeching sirens and people screaming. It was all happening now, people were rushing around, things were starting to get busy. He looked anxiously at his watch, 3:18 p.m. It was too early; the cargo ship was not expected for another fifty-five minutes. Relax, stay calm.

He pulled the telescope down, closer to the near shoreline, passing the creeks and sand banks until it spanned across layers of mud. He blinked and then recoiled in horror. Not possible…surely! The tide had gone out, peeled cleanly away from the coast like the coat from a skinned sable. Except here, no pinkie flesh. All he saw were the muddy entrails and mottled veins of the riverbed. No one warned me about this. No one fucking warned me about this!

The sun was now shining so brightly that the reflected glare from the mud was almost dazzling him. He ran the telescope once more to the lower horizon; water, glittering in the sunshine winked elusively at him. It was almost two miles away. A hundred yards or so he’d expected, he’d checked it was low tide, but not this. This wasn’t happening. He slammed the telescope away in disgust so that it spun around and crashed against its cradle. 

***

At 3.30 p.m. twenty miles north, a tourmaline-blue Aston Martin DB7 was moving swiftly through the countryside with Ricky Patel behind the wheel. He had the roof back and windows down as he drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the window frame. The soft creamy leather interior adjusted to suit his posture.

He eased the car down to second and listened to it growling, like a big cat. He steered a path effortlessly through a maze of winding country turns feeling the low chassis and steel alloy wheels hug the contours of the road. Up ahead a stretch of open road - time to give it one more spin. He ripped through the gears; third, fourth, fifth and each time the engine rose like a biplane in a dogfight. He opened the throttle and the V6 engine kicked into life, thrusting the vehicle forward and propelling him back with the force.

‘Whooweee!’ he shouted. 

The wind fanned his wavy hair. Hedges and trees passed by, in a blurred corridor of green. The car sped up the road, skimming over bumps and potholes with breathtaking ease.

He spotted a speed check up ahead. Shit!  He slammed on the breaks: the vehicle decelerated from eighty down to thirty in five seconds with a great roar of engine noise. He got through the check just inside the limit. One more offence and he faced a ban.

He came to a village and switched on the radio. The disk jockey’s hyperactive babble jolted him back to reality.  His car radio was tuned these days to Radio Thames, the local station and not out of any appreciation for its intrinsic quality - indeed, its programmes were only ever an endless diet of prattle and anaemic music - but simply because he needed to get closer to the moods and events of the people of Thamesmouth.

Suddenly the disc jockey’s programme was interrupted by a news flash. ‘Reports are just coming in of an incident on the Thamesmouth sea front. Over to Fiona Stephens…’

‘Yes, thank you Jack. I’m standing just outside the Fairyland Amusement Park in Thamesmouth. I understand that a woman has been killed. The incident happened right here on the sea front as a minor demonstration was breaking up. Observers say she may have been hit as she prepared to cross the road. The police have not yet confirmed the cause of death but the woman has been named as Lisa James. Ms James had been an active member of the community and was involved in a number of high-profile conservation projects in the area, most noticeably the campaign to stop the -’

The radio transmission stopped abruptly, as Ricky Patel jammed a tape into the tape deck. A stomping drum beat and a snarling monologue filled the car, as his favourite gangster rap singer blasted from the eight-speaker system. He pounded the dashboard and glanced in the rear mirror. Then he applied the hand brake, wrenched the wheel and in one rapid movement spun the car round violently, so that he was heading back towards the local district council offices.

He began to join in to the final track playing in his car, shouting out the words and then listening to the refrain. As he did so a small tear formed in the corner of his eye.

***

The man’s mind raced, trying to resolve all the awful possibilities. Stranded, marooned, shipwrecked on this island with no escape route. He slumped onto the seawall, listening to the nagging bleat of sirens. It only took a few seconds for him to realise he had no choice; he had to move on. His rowing boat was lying stranded on the beach, limp and useless. Nothing could be done about it; he would have to meet the cargo ship another way.

He made his way down to the shore, removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. Then he walked out onto the mud. He kept on walking, further out through the oozing mud. Another nervous glance, 3: 20; still time.

He was almost a hundred yards out, past the sand and pebbly beach. The surface got trickier. Each foot splayed against soft mud which sprouted between his toes, slowing him down. Soon his feet were pasted in an oily black substance. Shit!

At almost two hundred yards, the sounds fell away, as the mud slime gave way to banks of hard-baked mud. He moved quickly across a surface that had been scooped by the waves into thousands of brown mounds. Underfoot, it looked like the aerial shot of a mountain range. The Urals?

Now he walked easier, he could run, even. He felt better now, amid the fresh air and the space opening up in front of him. He glanced again at his watch, 3:30. He began running, leaping the mounds. He skipped past tiny creeks, pouring through clefts, still draining the mudflats of the last vestiges of water. How far out does this tide go?

He kept running, straight towards the horizon. His lungs began to ache and he slowed to a trot. The sun was reflecting off the glistening mud, dazzling everything in front of him. He raised his arm to shield his eyes when suddenly, breaking the line of the horizon, he saw a figure. He squinted and realised it was an old man coming towards him, waving a stick.

The man tried to change direction but the old man was deceptively close and soon he was within earshot.

‘Afternoon,’ the old man shouted, attempting a smile, through a row of broken and blackened teeth.

The man slowed but said nothing. He was unwilling to even attempt his thin vocabulary of English. Soon the old man had walked up to him. The man’s hand went instinctively across his chest, to his shoulder holster. No one else was about. He would eliminate him too, if he had to.

‘Hello,’ the old man said, this time more enquiringly. He looked extraordinary; shoulder length white hair, a pair of long white flannel trousers and a sunburnt face glowing like a cooked lobster. His bare feet were caked in mud and his open shirt flapped in the breeze.  Under one arm he carried a large pad of white paper.

The man grunted a return greeting. He was going to run