Connor's Cabal

By Kev Richardson

A journalist's assignment in Thailand is compromised when his young tour guide is kidnapped. Despite a four day deadline to pay the ransom, else the lad's body would be found floating in a city canal, even the police refuse action! So could it be a 'rogue' police chief?

Could it be a hoax by the boy and his parents to gain easy riches from a foreign journalist? Or even the manager of Connor's hotel?

Or one of the country's notorious underground cartels at work? A cartel even with a plant in the Tourist Authority Office, who recommended this particular guide?

Or a hoax by a local tour-guide rebel just out after "easy money?"

Connor's cabal decides to take its own action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613093054

Book preview

Dedication

Many thanks to:

Californian Joan who critiques all my works, contributing stealth-like but welcome queries on dubitable comments or phrasing... and especially, of course, my many outright gaffes. I call her my face-saving angel.

Teerawat, the Thai writer I met when first visiting Thailand, who has become a life-long friend. He and his wife readily give nods, frowns or debatable opinions on the many Thai axioms or inferences expressed in my works... especially this work.

Yongyuth, who has spent many tedious hours helping me with translations, tenets of Buddhism and Thai customs during most of the now two decades I have called Thailand my home.

Rose and Mike in Australia’s Melbourne, who not only claim to have devoured every word I have written, but keep feeding me encouragement for more. We’ve read all these at least twice, they keep reminding me.

Clients like Heinz, a Swiss native, another of those treasured readers who still chooses the paper book for his reading. On the strength of reading one of my novels, he ordered ten further titles! And since devouring those, a further six.

Edgard of Rio de Janiero who, having met by chance on a flight from La Paz to Asuncion, another, has by now read my every word and responds with some stunning reviews.

All other folk in various corners of the world who have extended lasting friendships and proved the bases of many of my tales’ characters!

Preface

Dear Readers,

Connor Cope’s Cabal?

A quartet as different in style of life, career and impetus as one could find.

Oldest is Connor’s sister Valerie, only a teeny smidge older than darling Connor, she insists, happily married, mother, housewife and still an avid reader of sloppy romance novels. Third is Connor’s brother, Ryan, who insists he’s already made up for the difference in years, in common sense. Ryan is a psychiatrist with a practice in downtown Brisbane. He and wife still cogitate about starting a family. The fourth is Connor’s bosom buddy, Jamie, a mate since schooldays, confirmed bachelor and bridge-building engineer.

The four love playing social 500, a pastime enjoyed every Saturday night for years past... Saturday, because the frivolity oft-times carries on into the early morning hours and all like clear minds on mornings given to career work or domestic chores.

On each occasion, partners are chosen by drawing straws and should any be absent on business or sickness, Val’s husband Jason fills the gap. Connor and Valerie also enjoyed sitting together on other evenings, often during all the dinner-to-breakfast hours over a bottle or two of wine, testing each other in Bezique. That happy pastime bonds their sibling mateship even closer.

The cabal melded its own formation; Valerie and Connor were raised as ‘sibling partners,’ quickly converting to ‘sibling trio’ as Ryan grew older. All were always there to help with the others’ problems. Connor and Jamie had the same sort of relationship which, not unexpectedly, merged into the band of four helping each other in any hardship or difficulty.

When any such arose, it was common practice to see card-table enmity turn into huddling as if in a Rugby ‘scrum,’ each helping the other ‘win the ball.’

Conner, a journalist with Newscorp’s Sunday Mail, writes a column featuring interesting characters and/or occupations he’s rubbed-up-against while touring the world. It had begun as a weekly feature centred on the Mail’s home city of Brisbane, yet which proved so popular as to spread not only throughout all Australian states, but abroad.

God’s own country, cabal members called Brisbane.

One of the ten most liveable cities in the world, it had recently been awarded.

In his thirty-third year, Connor’s excitement in travel still found him unable to successfully share domestic life. The challenges of spending three or four months abroad during every year made lasting romances difficult to maintain. A marriage had failed because of it, yet the need to travel prevailed. Missing the thrills of pleasant little shivers up and down one’s spine in the marriage cot, he would tell the rest of the cabal, I’m beginning to realise is no greater penalty than missing the thrill of finding ten or twelve trumps in a deal.

Valerie’s natural yearnings for men in her life were for those considerably older. She began a short relationship with the Jason she had long known at a Brisbane Bridge Club, a widower with, as he termed them, a son and daughter both grown and flown. Happy in having moved into his St. Lucia home on a sharp bend in the magnificent Brisbane River, Val found her marriage as successful a partnership as the cabal. Jason’s small motor yacht serviced them for fishing, entertaining and sometimes even the cabal’s card evenings. A police inspector in Brisbane’s traffic office, Jason had learned to sum up the worth of wayward drivers as quickly as any new partner at his favourite Bridge Club. He’d learned to cope with all sorts of plotters and schemers in his work, as each ‘new hand’ presented its challenge. A quiet, yet heartily determined, fellow in plotting through every challenge, he and Valerie hosted the Saturday night Cabal fray in the ‘games-room’ as they called their sunroom.

Ryan Cope had married his Emma only some three years before the beginning of this history. One commitment Emma was inveigled into accepting, was either allowing Ryan Saturday nights ‘out,’ or accompanying him on occasions, to converse with Jason, watch television or read or take Jason’s pooch, Ruffian, a well-named German Shepherd, for walks. Or was it that it took her?

Jamie Murdoch and Connor had been the closest of buddies since day one at high-school. Headed for such different careers, even at one stage finding themselves in opposed universities, it seemed amazing that the friendship could persist. An only child in his own family, Jamie, in terms of brother and sister relationships, ‘adopted’ the Copes. A bridge-engineer designing and overseeing construction, Jamie also had periods of working abroad.

From the moment of the toss for partners each Saturday evening, however, all seemed to put their loving spirit on hold...

From that moment, and for the rest of this evening, everyone agreed, it’s bloody war!

Even wars, however, were modest in comparison to the energy expended in seeing the Connor’s Cabal prosper.

Kev Richardson

One

Red Hill, Brisbane , March 2005

How bloody annoying!

At maybe three or four year intervals, I found myself in a summing up mood.

And here it is a-bloody-gain.

Yes, I frequently talk to myself out loud. It seems to accentuate whatever is bugging my mind.

All through bachelor life, I’d often been called on to review what my life had become and, since the divorce, my apartment in the Red Hill block was at last my own again.

Despite a difficult decision, the split from Mitzi was amicable. The ‘sharing’ life that young lovers dream about simply hadn’t worked for us. Shortly after marriage, my extended trips began souring things. Each year we began realising more and more, what different lives we really wanted. Both independent types with careers largely calling for working at home in peace and quiet, we kept falling over each other’s feet. Mitzi was in partnership with a girlfriend, also married, doing home secretarial work for a string of people in their respective businesses. The partner’s husband, however, was lucky enough to have his own job and office in the city.

Mitzi and I began getting on each other’s nerves. Each, it seemed, spent more hours realizing that things weren’t going to improve unless one conceded a compromise to the other... literally renting an outside office, which could only lead to one of us feeling that we’d got the most time-wasting and costly side of the arrangement. We realised that in the long run, it could never work, either way.

I persistently surveyed how the Connor Cope image in my mirror was looking more haggard than happy, and Mitzi complained of the same thing. Each began feeling we had lost the sense of having our lives under control, a situation bringing the inevitable separation closer.

Both realised that nothing could change except one or the other adopting a different career. That, in turn, would mean one must always feel it was he or she who made the unwanted compromise.

So there was each of us feeling guilty that our loving dreams could not materialise.

The day I big-heartedly offered to pay all divorce costs, I handed over the $25 for having the rubber stamp affirm the ‘state of no return’ on each other’s copy of the divorce document. We marked the occasion by sharing a final dinner at our favourite restaurant.

Since then, I’ve had the ease of solitude, facing whatever schedules seemed appropriate at the time; things like mealtime or concentrating on work. I could again jump up in the middle of the night if my dreams triggered some folly or sleuthing skill worthy of noting, the time of night no problem. I could again breakfast at my desk at either midnight, three a.m. or whatever other time convenient, grab fruit for lunch three or four hours later, then whatever time it may be, snatch a dinner-reheat of some casserole from the fridge.

A fortunate side-hobby was cooking and when my writing brain was stuck for inspiration I would spend a day or two shopping and cooking, filling the fridge and freezer with tasty snacks for re-heated meals. Or simply turning out a salad.

Time was again no longer an element in my working life... a wonderful sense of freedom!

Journalism was a demanding career.

With my own column in the Sunday Mail and whilst with considerable license in respect of my movements around the world, one must also respond to a boss’s whim. He was often the first acquainted with many news items like someone reporting a known artist was painting some new masterpiece, or that some general had decided to force a ‘coup’ in some country, or again, it could be that some well-known personality was caught up in a nasty scandal.

Quickly, I would be told on my phone, get yourself to London and interview this or that politician about this or that rumour. Or, if having already wangled an invitation for a representative, Get yourself to Johannesburg... Australian military historians are visiting to ensure our representation in the Boer War gets a fair hearing. I want you with them.

Such were examples of me being asked to drop everything else and take up such newsy matters for my Sunday Mail column.

Overall, however, I tried spending two or three months of every year gathering my own interesting articles. Most of my reading followers were those who enjoy international travel. If I gave airlines plugs in my columns, several responded by granting me upgrades and some hotels offered discounts. Once home from each sojourn, another three or four months were needed writing up Sunday columns for the next several months. Then I turned to making travel experiences over the years backgrounds for writing my own action-adventure novels, characters based on acquaintances made.

That side of journalism was an exciting pastime, particularly taking the thousands of photographs to accompany the various columns.

One could not, of course, undo anything when it came to time. I had to simply admit that my marriage was the biggest failure in my life. Mitzi told me that she too, had trouble swallowing that same disappointment.

Breaking up taught me that my marriage had simply been one of those adventures ruined by unfortunate side-issues that couldn’t be avoided... a lesson I needed to somehow consider it, too, one of those adventures ruined because I did not do my homework well enough. Fortunately there were no children to further complicate things, so both were free to begin lives anew.

Travelling taught one to seek out all sorts of traps in life and, over the years. I’ve had this pointed out by people who’ve been either taxi-drivers, school-teachers, housewives in market queues, building workers, monks and missionaries, beach-bum hippies, business executives, farmers, stall-holders, government officers, fishermen, hotel clerks and cleaners, students, bus drivers, restaurateurs, factory workers, policemen, touts and pimps, ticket-sellers and tramps... every one convinced of being victim of some bad luck or other.

When travelling, life was never boring.

Nor was it a lonely life. All types of people and personalities had to be confronted, lies expected and truths recognised or at least weighed. My alter-ego, however, was the friend I most admired. Ego had ever proved himself the best of good friends, watching me and most often, steering my mind along sensible lines. I’ve learned that everybody has found nemeses creating argument in their reasoning, and that trying to crack them could be downright frustrating. Every community had its Mafia of some description, be it simply someone with a smudge of gypsy in their make-up, to downright scoundrels breathing down our collars. Having such a sensible guide as Ego had ever proved a great advantage.

I found in many communities, victims of those demanding ‘protection,’ active in the soliciting of drugs or prostitution or blackmail in its various forms.

Here was I then, for instance, off to Bangkok, a huge city in a hugely shameful grip of graft and corruption, to then be on my way to experience a carnival as ‘innocent’ as chucking water over someone who’d been warned.

So all travel had to be put in the ‘risky’ basket. Even the most careful traveller often found himself victimised in what he’d considered innocent venture. One needed to keep alerting himself against being found scapegoat, naïve, gullible or simply artless.

Oh, ain’t it but the story of the world? There are always underground forces operating, no matter where or in what capacity!

Discovering them and handling them was what made travelling so worthwhile.

COME ONE MONDAY, OVER her garden luncheon table, Valerie reached a hand to clasp mine. Whenever both had spare lunch hours, I would visit her. We played social cards every Saturday night, of course, yet Sis and I made time to lean on each other’s shoulder, helping the other over worrisome stiles.

I’m going to miss you, little brother. Two months this time?

Maybe. You know I bring my departure dates forward near as often as extending them. It all depends on what I hear that I feel is worth taking a ‘look-see.’ Journalism is an elastic sort of life. Giving whatever time is called for, until the full-time whistle is blown, is just part of it.

We will all miss you. But then, she added with a sly grin, with Jason taking your place at table, your absence might not be all that sad a loss. What has Helen to say about it?

Unseen by me, the fingers of her other hand reached towards the flagstones, waving a teasing morsel of fried bacon at Tiger.

Valerie adored her six-month old Siamese kitten, yet I insisted that a table where I ate wasn’t a cat’s place. It should be my choice to decide which morsel I would next attack, not finding a cat snatching what it liked the smell of and racing off with it. I had always been a dog man; Val the ‘shilling each way’ girl when it came to pets. As kids, we had always been able to get along with whatever the family had at the time, oft-times both.

With parents lost, we three Cope kids, all in our early thirties, stuck even closer, especially Valerie and me. We were each other’s ‘shoulder’ to cry on in any crisis and could read each other like books. In a crisis for either, we had always just ‘been there’ for the other.

She took her new kitten to heart, seemingly just as much as Jason.

Right at that moment, however, her mind, as well as on Helen, was on the cat... The poor little dear can’t resist the aroma of my cheese and bacon casserole.

She let me see the smile on her face, however. I could see what she was doing, yet didn’t want to spoil her sense of winning at sheer duplicity.

Valerie was currently under the testing situation of having to find a peaceful path in Tiger’s sudden intrusion into what Ruffian considered his personal territory, to be safeguarded against intruders.

They say cats and dogs will never closely relate, she insisted, yet I’m going to somehow prove that they can reach the stage of wanting to protect each other!

Helen? I answered. Who is Helen?

She left her other hand on mine, but let her shoulders sag.

Oh, like that, is it?

Helen was a girl I’d been sort of dating, yet who had begun trying to put handcuff on me. Nice girl, but!

Helen isn’t happy about it at all and I don’t care a whisker. She is using me. Yes, sister dear, she’s great in bed, but I know that as soon as she realises I’m serious about wanting an independent life, she’ll quickly find someone else. I wouldn’t mind betting she’s already getting it organised; she daily asks if I’ve made my booking yet.

Val, Tiger now busy chewing his bacon, put her spare hand to mouth and sighed.

"Oh pet, is