Marine Moments

This is the second journal of Clara Day and follows her deeper involvement with The Marsdon Corporation, a special arm of the secret service.

After convalescing at home, in the isolated rural farm with her parents, she is desperate to cleave herself from their iron grip, and strive to carve out a new future on her own. She flees to London, but she cannot escape her family ties, nor the Corporation; whichever way she turns she is held in their firm grasp. For the answers as to why they cling so tight, Clara is forced to face her deeply buried past and re-evaluate who she is and who she can trust. Gradually she comes to understand the horrific choice she must make to survive.

Clara learns the ropes as an operative and to slowly trust her team. Their task is to uncover a group of arms dealers and the stash of hidden weapons before the deal can be completed and the arms shipped out to Iran and the profits to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. But as she adjusts to her new life and builds trust and friendship within Camden Locks, North London, that trust is tested and challenged. They cannot identify the arms dealer, nor find the stash, and as time runs out, the measures to snare them become more desperate. Clara realises the costs to which the Corporation are willing to pay for success, and the answers to the identity of the arms dealer lies closer to home than she would ever have imagined, challenging everything she knew about her life.

Sample:

December 1986

Dr Reynolds was washing his hands after finishing an autopsy when he was aware of someone standing at the open door. He glanced over his shoulder and then threw his hand towel down with some passion.

“If I’d known he was one of yours, I wouldn’t have bothered!” he growled at the man in shadow, waving one hand towards the cadaver on the slab. “I could’ve put my feet up and waited for you to bring your own report on cause of death,” he muttered, going over to his desk.

The man finally entered the room.

“Ah, but I want to know what you think cause of death is first,” he said, “And I always make it worth your time,” he added, dropping a thick envelope onto the surgeon’s desk in front of him. The envelope was quickly scooped into a drawer out of sight, and in exchange a sheet of paper was passed over. The visitor glanced at it briefly.

“Tell me,” the visitor commanded, waving the paper at the body of the dead man.

“Well,” said Reynolds getting to his feet again and circling the slab, “someone wanted to make sure he was definitely dead. He was killed three times, by three different hands. Obviously only one killed him, but they all could have.”

“Three!”

“Three. The first got him in the heart, a bullet from a Smith and Wessen. That’s the one that did the deed. But followed very closely by a second bullet – it must’ve been fired a split second after the first one. It was lodged beside the first bullet. At first, I thought the two bullets were from the same hand, but the second was from a different pistol, a Beretta .92. They were fired so close in time, you could almost argue that they both killed him, although the first one did. Then as if he wasn’t dead enough, he was slashed across the throat, truncating is oesophagus – it was done with some violence, almost beheaded him. But he was dead by then.”

“And you are absolutely sure there were two bullets, from different weapons?”

The pathologist picked up an enamel dish and rolled the bullets around in answer to the question.

“And the first bullet would have killed him, from the Smith and Wessen?”

“Absolutely. Clean hit, professional job at a guess, perfect precision to get the job done – but then the second bullet showed the same precision, just came a few seconds later – can tell by the very faint congealing of the blood around the first that the next bullet came a split second after death.”

“Right, thanks,” his visitor said, clearly distracted by the news. He pulled a folder from his case and handed it over.

“Ah, how do you want me to report it?” The pathologist read the new autopsy report. “I see, this has that he died from a single bullet wound to his chest. Not very precise, makes me look bad at my job…”

“What’s the temperature of your pool these days?” snarled his visitor.

Dr Reynolds shrugged, “yeh, yeh, alright.” He threw the new report on his desk and picked the relevant bullet out of the dish and handed it to the man with him. “You’ll be wanting this then.”

The surgeon covered over the cadaver.

“Very dead,” was his summary, “Thrice killed.”

The visitor gave a short bark of a laugh,

“Four, actually. He was also killed in 1973 in a bomb blast, poor guy. Very dead indeed.”