Flight from Dubai

By Charles Lemon

With his lift stuck in a rut, it took a breakup to make
Chris realised he had not been in control of his life
for the last forty years.

Now living the life he had spent so long dreaming about,
suddenly he was the prime suspect in a double murder
that he couldn’t have committed.

Should he stay to defend himself or spend the rest of his
life on the run, hoping that the police would someday find
evidence that pointed to someone else.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665592253

Book preview

Book 1

Chapter 1

Three years ago

Chris knew exactly when his life had changed—the moment when, at age forty, life had given him the jolt he needed to leave his disappointing life behind and launch himself towards his dreams.

Chris had come home from yet another long boring day at the dead-end job he hated so much. He could never understand why other people who worked there enjoyed it so much. He walked through the front door and hung his keys on the hook, and as he looked into the kitchen, he saw Becky sitting at the dining table.

Just another day in paradise he said as he walked into the kitchen.

Becky didn’t move or say anything for several seconds.

I think I need a beer after today.

I’m leaving you, Becky said

In that case, I definitely need a beer he joked, thinking she was as well.

Then he saw the engagement ring on the table next to her. She seemed so cold, like a stranger sitting in his home.

He felt empty, like someone had drained all the air from his lungs; he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He stood there. Had she said what he thought she had? Had he misheard her? But no; she stood up.

She’d been out with her friends on a Thursday evening the week before and had apparently met someone else—just like that.

Chris asked her, How could she be so sure if you only just met this other man? Isn’t it easy to just think you want to be with someone when you first meet them, the excitement of that new relationship?

She hadn’t answered that question, saying instead, I’ve already packed my bags and put them in the car. So, there’s no reason for me to come back here anymore. And with that, she walked down the hallway, opened the front door, and left.

He stood in the kitchen and just stared down the hallway, his arms heavy by his side. He felt bolted to the floor, unable to move. He stood there for what seemed like eternity, and then the weight of his body became too much; his knees buckle, and he fell to the floor.

He lay there, and his mind drifted back.

They had met one Friday night in a pub while she was out with her friends and he was out with his best mate, Pete.

Pete had asked if Chris wanted to go out and catch up, as they hadn’t seen each other for a month or so, with work commitments and other plans always getting in the way. They’d picked the pub because a live band was playing. The place was packed, and getting a drink took some time. The atmosphere was buzzing, and everyone was in good spirits. There was a mix of ages—from early twenties up to, he would guess, late fifties. He preferred places like this, rather than a bar where everyone was the same age. Despite how busy the place was, so far as he stood there watching the band, he had gotten away with people not spilling their drink on him as they danced or made their way past him on the way to the bar or toilet or going outside to smoke.

Pete had started talking to a couple of girls while Chris was watching the band and the crowd as they sang and danced along to Mr. Brightside. He made a mental note to try to learn the song himself, as it seemed he was the only one in the pub who didn’t know the words.

Pete and Chris had been friends since they were sixteen. They had met at their very first job. They were the same age, in fact born only twelve days apart, Chris being the older. They had the same stupid sense of humour and had shared many nights laughing over the craziest things.

Pete had joined the army at eighteen and, after training, had been posted out in Germany. He was in the first Gulf War and had also completed a couple of tours of Ireland. He had seen his fair share of death and misery and now didn’t take life too seriously. He’d never married— couldn’t find the right one who he could commit to. He enjoyed life as a singleton, and Chris couldn’t say he blamed him. Pete could go up to any girl and just chat to her, and it never seemed to bother him if they blanked him or not. In the former case, he would simply find another one to talk too.

Chris, come over here, Pete shouted. This is Becky and her friend Nicky.

Once their eyes met, Chris’s gaze never left Becky’s, and hers didn’t leave his either. She had hazel eyes, blonde shoulder-length hair, and a beautiful smile. She was dressed casually and had a natural beauty; she wasn’t covered in make-up; apart from eyeliner it didn’t look like she had any on at all. The right side of her mouth rose slightly higher than the left when she smiled; he liked that. He couldn’t have picked her friend out of a line up for a million pounds as he said a feeble hi to both of them.

Pete went back to working his chat-up lines on both girls. Chris was in awe when people could just go up to a complete stranger and start talking to the person. He never knew what to say. Truth be told, he was surprised he’d ever gone out with anyone, so limited were his skills in that department.

The evening ended with Becky asking Chris if he wanted to go out for a drink. They exchanged numbers and met a couple of days later. That was the first time he had arranged to go out with someone he’d just seen or met in a pub.

They had fallen in love, or so he’d thought, and she had moved in a couple of months later. They had their ups and downs, as most couples do. But on the whole, they rarely argued much and talked things through, whatever was on their minds. Both had been in relationships where the arguments had become a regular occurrence, and neither wanted to go through that again.

So, on the fourth anniversary of their first date, Chris had taken her to the pub where they’d first met. And after the meal, they’d sat in a corner to have a drink. The place was half full, with diners and couples there just for a few drinks. There was no band playing that evening.

As Chris wasn’t one to bring too much attention to himself, the corner table was perfect, out of the way of other eyes and ears. He leaned towards Becky and asked her to marry him.

She laughed nervously. Where’s the ring then?

He looked down at his hand, and her gaze followed.

She saw the ring tucked discreetly in his hand and said yes. She told him later that she had laughed because she’d thought he was joking.

The memory faded as he decided to get up off this cold tiled floor.

He had messaged her most of the day on the Friday, but his messages had just been ignored. When he returned home from work that Friday evening, the place seemed empty, even though all the furniture was still there.

She had just taken her clothes and personal belongings; everything else remained. There was no evidence of her having ever been in his life, apart from the hollowness in his stomach and the inability to be able to breathe and the sick feeling in his throat that just wouldn’t go away.

She was gone and out of his life in less than twenty- four hours.

That Friday evening, he was restless, agitated, and very fidgety. He sat down on the sofa to watch Silent Witness and then a stand-up comedy show, programmes that would normally keep him glued to his seat whilst he sat there relaxing with a drink.

That evening, they were not even giving him any form of entertainment. The programmes he would religiously record if he was out now seemed meaningless. They couldn’t hold his attention for more than a minute before he was up again, making himself another drink or just walking around the bungalow like a zombie.

He would walk around the kitchen or back garden drinking, just to be on his feet and moving around. It was as if his body needed to be moving to charge his heart— like a shark that needed to swim to allow the water through its gills. With his breathing laboured, he felt marginally better if he was moving around. He was hot and sweaty and must have showered two or three times that night.

Lying on the bed didn’t help him. The bedroom seemed to be spinning as if he was drunk or the walls seemed to be closing in on him, making him feel more claustrophobic than it did in the lounge. It was even harder to breathe when he was lying down.

The hours passed slowly that evening. Chris hoped that sleep would be his friend that Friday night. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the case. He couldn’t sleep, so he got up and just wandered around the bungalow again like a lost soul. Standing in the doorways, he would just stare into each room and imagine her sitting at the dressing table doing her make-up, in the lounge watching TV, or even in the bathroom having a bath or brushing her teeth.

The feeling of claustrophobia was getting worse. The walls were closing in, and just breathing normally seemed like a chore; he had to think about taking each breath. It reminded him of a scuba lesson he’d had on holiday the lesson had been in the swimming pool, the unusual sound of the air being exhaled from his mouth and watching the bubbles of air escaping from the respirator. The feeling of not being in control and needing this thing in his mouth to help him try to breathe underwater, when his body was trying to stop him from doing just that, didn’t seem natural. It must be the self-preservation kicking in, trying to stop you from doing something the body wasn’t designed for.

That was a shame because he would have loved to be able to scuba dive. When he went on holiday, he loved to snorkel to see all the fish, coral, and wildlife. And to be able to dive down and stay down there for thirty to forty minutes would be amazing. Unfortunately, he was no good at it and panicked during the lesson. It happened at the moment when you had to remove the respirator and let it drop to the right side of your body and then sweep your arm back in a half circle to relocate it, before putting it back in your mouth and continuing to breath. Well, if he couldn’t do that in a pool that was only three feet deep, he wasn’t confident he’d perform the technique if it happened to be needed twenty metres underwater. So, he had resigned himself to snorkelling for the rest of his life if he ever went on holiday again.

This was how he was feeling now—the unnatural way he had to think about taking a breath, in and out, rather than never really giving it much thought from one day to the next.

When things like break-ups happen, no one seems to be around. Chris’s mum was away visiting her brother over in Kent. She had spent a lot of time doing this since his dad had passed away some five years ago. He could have called his mum and asked if he could go over there, but he didn’t want to go. It was bad enough feeling restless in his own home. But at someone else’s, it would be much worse. At least here he could get up and walk around without disturbing anyone. But to be in someone else’s house and be restless, well that would not be an option, especially at night when they had all gone to bed. The thought of not being able to get up and walk around just in case he disturbed them ensured him he wouldn’t feel comfortable there.

Plus, you always want to stay where your ex-partner knows where you are—just in case they ring or want to come round to say, Sorry. It was a mistake. Please take me back. They never do, well not the ones that should.

He needed to take his mind off the situation and think about something else. So that was the weekend that changed his train of thought, and he would now focus his mind on him and his life.

The anger stage started quite early and hit him out of the blue. He was pouring himself a drink, and from nowhere, he threw the glass of Brandy and Coke against the wall, and it smashed into pieces against the wall and dining table.

FUCK, he shouted.

He stood there looking at the liquid that had splashed all over the wall and was now running down onto the floor. What a waste of a brandy, he thought to himself, and a decent brandy glass.

He realised that all his life he had given to the person he was with and always put them first and himself second, just to make them happy even if it made him miserable. And now he was standing there, miserable, angry, and watching the residue liquid run down the wall, leaving a trail as it did so. Now he needed to clear up the mess he’d made.

He got a cloth and walked over to the table. Ah, fuck’s sake. He had forgotten he didn’t have any socks on and had stepped onto a broken piece of glass that had somehow bounced back off the wall and was now firmly buried in his foot. I don’t fucking believe this.

He made his way to the bathroom, blood dripping on the kitchen floor and along the hallway carpet as he hobbled, trying his best without causing more damage to his foot. He sat on the edge of the bath, his foot overhanging the side as he watched the blood drip into the bath from where cut flesh met the glass shard that was sticking out.

He sat there and watched the blood running down the side of the bath. Should he wait for the blood to slow before he removed the glass? No. He grabbed it and pulled it out. The blood flow increased. He turned the cold tap on and, without much thought, put his foot under the cold running water.

Shit. He winched as the cold water hit the cut flesh but didn’t pull his foot away. This had been the least pain he had felt in the last few days.

Once the colour of the diluted blood running down the plug had faded from scarlet to transparent, he wrapped his foot in a towel and dried it before returning to the kitchen to put a bandage around his foot. He swept the floor, something he probably should have done in the first place and made sure all the glass was gone before wiping the residue of brandy and coke from the wall, table, and floor.

He was now going to do what he wanted to do and not worry about someone else. All he had to do was come up with a plan on what he wanted and how he was going to achieve it.

He put a pen and pad on the coffee table in the lounge, and throughout the weekend, he would write down his thoughts and the goals he wanted to achieve. He might be making a drink, having something to eat, or washing up when he would get an idea; he would stop what he was doing and just make a note of it. This also helped his restlessness subside and got his breathing back to normal, as his brain was now thinking about something else.

The weekend went slowly for him. But on the upside, Saturday he finished the housework. The sofas were pulled away from the walls, which had never been done since they’d been placed there a few years before. Needless to say, hoovering was required behind them. Solo socks were reunited with their partners after weeks or even months of separation; at least something was that weekend.

Clothes he hadn’t worn or didn’t fit him anymore—as for some reason they’d shrunk whilst just hanging in the wardrobe or at the bottom of some drawer—were thrown away. And now the wardrobe looked like it had been on a crash diet. It was only half full, rather than clothes piled high, just gathering dust and making up the numbers. In truth, most of the clothes were there just to make it look like he had more clothes than he actually used. Everything now had its own hanger. And as much as it looked like he had hardly any clothes, in truth, these were the only ones he wore anyway.

It was amazing how much dust he found under the bed and behind the sofa.

That weekend, he had the overwhelming urge to take back control of his life, rather than letting life take control of him. Now as he looked around the bungalow, he could see how spotless everything was. Pictures on the walls not only had the dust wiped from the tops of the frames but were now also hanging straight, rather than just slightly hanging down on one side. The glass was clean, and now he could see his reflection.

Chris had been quite conscious of cleanliness before he’d met Becky. But he’d become lazy after she’d moved in, as going around tidying up after her had become too much of a chore. And he’d fallen into the same lazy routine as her and not cleaned as often as he should have.

He threw away any knick-knacks and ornaments they had collected that Becky hadn’t taken with her. He wanted to declutter the place and make life very simple when it came to cleaning up again. Books that he had read and just sat on the bookshelf were bagged and taken to the local charity shop, along with anything else he could find that wasn’t broken or wasn’t required.

Looking back, he saw that the clear-out that weekend had been quite brutal in terms of the possessions he’d thrown away. But it had helped him at the time and needed to be done.

Having spent no time focusing on his fitness in the last year or so, Chris decided he needed to start some type of fitness training. Up until he’d met Becky, he’d always tried to stay fit. But over the last year or so this had gradually slowed and come to a complete stop. Healthy body, healthy mind—and that was what he needed right now. So, if nothing else but to get him out of the bungalow, he started running that weekend.

It was strange, as he had always felt more comfortable at home than going out. But that weekend, he needed the fresh air of the streets, rather than sitting in the garden. This helped battle the claustrophobic feeling of the walls closing in on him.

His urge to take back control of his life forced him to run faster and farther than he should have. His body was an unhealthy one, lack of exercise having taken its toll. Fighting the pain and exhaustion that his body was telling him it was feeling, his mind, now more powerful and Focused, ignored its plea to stop. However, when he got back to the bungalow, his body took back control to such an extent that he had to rush to the bathroom and vomited down the toilet. Then he passed out on the bathroom floor.

Half an hour later, he opened his eyes, the floor tiles cold on the side of his face but welcome, as it cooled him down. Becky was in his thoughts whether he wanted her to be or not. He definitely needed a shower.

Chris had always been happy with his own thoughts and company, never someone who needed noise in the background, like the TV or radio, as some people do to make them feel there were more people around. But this weekend was different. He needed that noise. He needed to hear something to try and stop the bombardment of thoughts racing around inside his head. So, the radio was playing via sky TV in the background, or he was listening to his iPod through his headphones whilst running or cutting the grass.

He smiled to himself, dreading to think what he must have sounded like to the neighbours or any passers-by as he sang along to the songs. Bollocks to it, he thought. He already felt like a fool. So singing out of tune and what people thought wasn’t going to make any difference to him.

That Sunday evening, after a busy weekend with chores around the bungalow and garden, a well-deserved Chinese takeaway was ordered; the realisation that he hadn’t eaten all day had suddenly become apparent.

With the coffee table prepared for his small, well deserved banquet, plates for the meal and side orders set out, he placed the paper and pen on the side of the table with a plan. He would review everything that had been written down during the day. And he would then work out how the dreams were going to be achieved.

Laying the special fried rice onto his plate, he then poured the Chinese-style pork and juice over the mountain of food, slowly allowing the sauce to find each little crevice and moisten the individual pieces of rice. He then sprinkled the seaweed over the top. He left the prawn crackers in their bag and put them to one side before he put the prawn toast onto the side plate. He would enjoy this, as he wasn’t sure when he would be able to buy another takeaway. Funds were going to be very tight from now on. In between mouthfuls of prawn crackers or the prawn toast, he would wipe his hands with a kitchen roll to stop the pen or the paper from getting greasy.

As he read through the list of dreams and goals that had grown from the pages of the notepad during the day, the decision was set. A five-year plan would be put in place. He had no idea how he was supposed to get there but he knew it was now only himself stopping him from doing it.

There wasn’t going to be anyone else to focus on or to worry about—no one else he had to make happy. If he wanted to work twenty hours a day, seven days a week, then that’s what he would do, without having to explain himself or argue about there being no spare time to go out.

He would be delaying a social life until he had fulfilled his dream. If he could spend the next five years trying to achieve what he wanted, then he would spend the rest of his life having fun and doing exactly what he wanted to do. If he didn’t try, then the rest of his life would be spent doing something he hated. Working at the call centre, his life was controlled from the time he sat at this desk to the time he finished. The company he worked for monitored when you were on a call or not. And if you weren’t, they wanted to know why. Even if you were trying to resolve an issue from a previous call, that didn’t matter; they wanted you back on the phones. It had to be worth trying to achieve his goals, as this alternative life was no