| SIGNS
OF LIFE |
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SIGNS
OF LIFE
MEET LEE ENFIELD…
South African, Mother City. Zeus
Publications’ latest contributor.
But Lee Enfield isn’t the name
in his passport. He chose it because it still carries echoes of a bark that
stopped the wicked dead in their tracks. And it’s about wickedness that Lee
writes. An ancient unseen virulence; a malignant affliction of the soul it takes
insight to recognise, resolution to challenge, resourcefulness to defeat.
And Lee's characters have it. All
of it. Like Adam Walker: international civil servant by profession and a
planetary policeman preceded by a legendary reputation. And Adam's much younger
outriders. Find them in Lee’s first tale, SIGNS OF LIFE, an
adventure that opens in the middle of a violent tempest whose malevolent eye is
about to rain evil into the streets of England’s capital. Join Adam and his
allies in their transcontinental quest for victory over a conspiracy to end the
life of a young girl, deaf, and oblivious to the clamour of approaching
catastrophe. Hold your breath or breathe silently, while the one good hand of a
wounded warrior inches towards friendly thunder itching for lift-off into a very
unfriendly storm.
These,
are Lee’s people. Look for their debut. In this imprint.
If you miss them - be patient: they'll be back.
So will the wicked.
And so will justice: Lee Enfield justice.You
can count on it.
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In Store Price:
$AU29.95
Online Price: $AU28.95
Clearance price $2.50
ISBN:
1-9208-8483-1
Format: A5 Paperback
Number of pages: 425
Genre: Fiction
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Author: Lee
Enfield
Imprint: Zeus
Publisher: Zeus Publications
Date Published: 2004
Language: English |
AUTHOR’S
FOREWORD: fact or fantasy – your choice.
SIGNS is fiction and it is fantasy. Fiction, to measure
up, should be able to stand as fact - be plausible - and it must entertain.
Fantasy, to be good fantasy, has only to entertain.
Readers are going to encounter a
contradiction in SIGNS: it contains an overlay of factual lore in
its narrative, capable - to those intrigued - of being researched and verified.
It also makes a revelation, historically factual, but with provenance that may
not be established from the accessible record. It concerns Zambia, and in SIGNS
it provides the background to a decades-old life debt owed by the older male
principal to a benefactor living in Cape Town, and who, though unaware of the
reality, is in dire need of calling the note in. The contradiction readers must
resolve in their own minds, is whether the revelation is the fact SIGNS
claims it to be in Chapter 8 or simply part of the fantasy. Invention.
Author’s license? Read on.
Zambia owns-up to four attempted coups in
its four decades of statehood. But there was a fifth plot. And it predated the
first to be acknowledged. Why it was suppressed remains a mystery. All right, in
1971 tribal politics provided a partial explanation for withholding all news of
a coup plot that a capable and loyal patriot extinguished. But Zambia continues
to suppress the incident from the record to this day and with the apparently,
willing support of countries privy to the conspiracy and the act that defused
it.
One such is an African Commonwealth country
whose then, deputy high commissioner to Zambia is the author's source of
explanation for the presence of a convoy of darkened, military trucks heading
east from the capital at the same early-morning hour, and on the same road, an
eye-witness was making his way back to the suburb bordering Lusaka's
International Airport.
The identity of the commander who
frustrated an attempt to derail Zambia’s constitutionality is not revealed in SIGNS.
Neither his battalion. Perhaps shortly, the record will be set straight
and the hero of that occasion will stand up, speak up, and take his place in his
country’s history.
In the second tale in the Adam Walker
library, The Death Manager, readers can look forward to learning
the name of that battalion. And other, connected pieces of buried,
delayed-detonation explosive from an earlier page of modern, political history
are wired into the narrative for conspiracy theorists and when-wes.
By publication date the commander's name
and his accomplishment may already be public knowledge.
And that’s the hope: SIGNS
as a catalyst. A lot of readers are going to want to know for sure. And today,
we keep hearing it from the information media: knowing is the public’s
right. So, who out there will defend it? My editor is waiting for your call.
The truth is out there. And when you've
found it, think hard about these other revelations The Death Manager
promises, when he's made them.
Make a date with history: learn more of its
sinister secrets. That's why they're secret…
~ PROLOGUE ~
The bar was
crowded and noisy with late-evening serious drinkers. When the mobile phone
vibrated against his ribcage Detective Sergeant Paul Grogan decided against
taking the call inside, even though an early summer thunderstorm threatened a
dual obstacle to easy communication. He pulled heavily at the neat double Johnny
Walker, almost untouched since the similar measure he’d downed minutes
earlier. Then he put the empty glass on the bar and pushed through the jostling
knots between him and the nearest door.
Outside, under what little shelter the building’s eaves offered, he
listened intently to the caller and spoke tersely back into the microphone. He
disconnected, keyed in a number, waited, then issued an abrupt command.
Several minutes later an unmarked white Audi pulled up alongside the kerb
and the detective sergeant yanked open the driver’s door and inclined his head
sharply. When the driver obediently climbed out he withdrew close-fitting
pigskin gloves from windcheater pockets, pulled them on and eased himself into
the vacated seat.
The constable chose his words carefully. ‘I’m not sure this is a good
idea, sir.’ Close to his superior and in a confined space, the evidence of
recent alcoholic excess was plain.
‘I don’t have time to argue or to give directions. We’ve less than
an hour to get in position. This time we’re going to pull Roper and he’s
going down. You can make the arrest.’
The sergeant’s tone put an end to any discussion. But the weather
worsened, and the first fifteen minutes of the ‘less than an hour’ dissolved
inexorably into the storm, whose thunder all but drowned out the warning the
vehicle’s siren broadcast of its approach. Of its closing proximity.
The tall figure could easily have been male but the calves visible beneath
the hem of the raincoat suggested otherwise. Her stride was urgent, and the
black labrador showed his age as he struggled against arthritic joints to keep
up with his mistress. Minutes short of the house that would give them both
refuge from the weather, the dog became agitated and pulled back on his harness
as the siren grew louder, its source ever closer. But the woman’s
determination to make headway was stronger than his ability to slow her pace.
They were barely halfway across the flooded road when the white Audi took
the intersection at speed and aquaplaned uncontrollably towards them. The dog
made one last desperate attempt to pull his mistress back, but she resisted,
urging him forward and out of the danger that bore down on them both.
Milliseconds before impact she released her grip, and dog and human – freed
from their respective counter-pulls – jerked precipitately in opposite
directions, he backward and towards safety, she forward and into eternity.
Thoughts of their quarry expired with the woman’s life, and the
constable was in deeper shock than his superior.
Grogan, perhaps sustained as much as betrayed by alcohol, was thinking
very clearly. ‘Get over there, Lucas. Now!’ he barked, as the constable
turned a stunned expression towards him. The other man was barely clear of the
passenger door before Sergeant Grogan threw himself, hand brake and other
impediments regardless, into the vacated seat.
Constable Lucas’s exit was accelerated by his sergeant’s left
shoulder, and he finished almost prone on the flooded road. He raised himself
and turned to hurl an involuntary imprecation towards the Audi.
In near panic Grogan screamed, ‘Now!’ for the second time, and the
protest died on the other man’s lips, stilled by an automatic disciplined
response. Then, drawing a deep breath, the sergeant radioed their situation.
First on the scene would be an ambulance. It would be slowed by weather but any
medical help on its arrival, regardless, would be manifestly unneeded. A platoon
of police vehicles would arrive some minutes later, including the mobile traffic
incident laboratory and a crane truck.
Sergeant Grogan had his ground prepared even before getting out of the car
to join his subordinate, bent futilely over the pedestrian they both knew was
dead. He had, he calculated, precious little time before a lot of angry men in
uniform got between him and Lucas. If he was too late, or if he failed, he would
pay a double penalty: his intemperance would cost him his career and he would
forfeit his freedom.
The
seriousness of the incident called for rank and the officer dispatched was a
Chief Inspector. Clifford Conner was strictly business: whatever anger the scene
provoked in him stayed in him.
All streets meeting at the junction were temporarily closed to traffic and
the paraphernalia of detailed data acquisition sprouted.
For everyone, including potential witnesses lurking behind locked doors,
the night was going to be a long one. The capital’s serious press would invest
an ocean of ink debating the value of a long-delayed arrest against an innocent
life, and its tabloids would agonise over the irony of a policeman’s wife
being accidentally killed by another policeman's haste. Both would soon forget
and move on.
And so would their readers.
But for one man, and two strangers to him, the accident would set the
stage for a second fateful collision. It would force confluence, merge destinies
and shatter patterns.
And for the life-taker that second collision would signpost the path to
justice.
It was June.
Six months of the twentieth century left and England’s northern counties were
held in the hazy grip of a near-stationary high pressure cell. The sun beamed
down an endless and aggressive stream of ultra-violet radiation, emptying the
air of all movement.
Summer lunchtime in Oldcaster’s Plane Tree Park meant queues around the
symmetrically arc-shaped teahouse close by the boating pool. There, the still
energetic rowed their way to exhaustion rather than wait for the sun to do the
job for them.
A young girl not yet out of her primary school years sat at an outside
table alone, claiming traditional right of occupancy for herself and her mother
by her presence. Her blond hair shaded to auburn and the two ponytails it was
gathered tightly into showed the transition. She seemed an unexceptional part of
the human matrix she was woven into. But life had made an exception of her.
Her eyes scanned the queue that desultorily melted into the much hotter
serving area inside, and locked with another pair. The woman was in her
mid-twenties, with a spare, boyish figure. She had shoulder-length hair pulled
back from a face that was well shaped but with a lean and angular profile that
disdained claim on any other attractions.
Eight years earlier Karen Richardson had brought into the world the child
now waiting for her, and almost immediately been cast in the lead role of a
family drama, a role that she had embraced with religious fervour. It was one
that demanded daily rededication to an endless cycle of learning, teaching,
demonstrating, encouraging and sharing.
Hannah Richardson had chosen for her mother, someone whose inflexible
commitment was to bringing the real essence of human existence, an ability to
share in its pool of accord and discord, into her daughter’s everyday
expectations.
It was a commitment that had forged a deep relationship between the two of
them.
Closer to the door into the serving area, Karen struggled to get a more
informed view of what was being offered. Then she turned back to her daughter
and made a series of rapid signs, and a silent, brief, but lively exchange
ensued on the relative merits of cheese and fish.
Some short distance away and also occupying a table by himself, a young
man sat watching the signed exchange intently while abstractedly engaged by the
now-silent mobile telephone in his hand. He was of average height and with a
build and complexion that suggested outdoor pursuits. His hair was dark and his
momentarily puzzled eyes were also dark.
The dog beside him was old and black and thirsty, and his apparent
weariness accentuated the sense of dislocation his master broadcast around him.
Contritely noting the dog’s lack of water, the young man stuffed the
telephone into his belt and refilled the big glass ashtray at a nearby
standpipe. The dog lapped appreciatively, but his owner continued to show little
enthusiasm for the ploughman’s lunch in front of him.
As the young man bent to scratch the dog’s ear he became aware that the
young girl was smiling at him, and instinctively he returned her smile while
simultaneously raising one hand and signing a greeting. Her response was a
delighted flurry with both hands and she was rewarded by a blur of movement
explaining that the dog was tired because he was quite old now.
Moments later, the girl’s mother appeared with their meal. The silent
conversation ended and the young man felt a renewed sense of loss.
He took out the mobile phone again and placed it on the table in front of
him. His face held a look of authority as he willed the instrument to reveal the
purpose behind the convergence of two linked strangers. No. Three, he corrected
himself. People with a place in a different sort of world, where an invisible
disability ruled. A disability that could kill.
But the telephone had already spoken, and if the message hadn’t been
received there was no repeating it. Understanding would come when the time was
right. And that would be soon.
Trying to avoid directly pointing the young man out to her mother, the
girl described what had just happened, but was interrupted by the appearance of
the labrador at their table. A hesitant hand reached out to pat his head and he
lowered it to expose a folded piece of paper lodged in his collar. The girl took
it, and he immediately sat down on his haunches while she read the note: I
can do much more than that human fool who thinks he’s MY master back there.
Hold out your right hand.
The young girl passed the note to her mother and proffered her right hand
to the dog, who put out his own right paw and rested it on her palm. Mother and
daughter laughed, and the girl squeezed the paw and patted the dog’s head, her
hesitation now gone. The old dog showed his approval with a short lick, then
pushed himself up onto all four legs and ambled back to his own table.
By the time Hannah had finished eating and wiped the excess milk from her
lips with the back of her hand, the intervening tables had become crowded with
lunchtime patrons and the young man was no longer visible. When she finally
found a gap to peer through, to her disappointment, both dog and owner were
gone.
Her mother leaned forward and tapped Hannah’s shoulder. ‘I think your
friend may be waiting to say goodbye to you,’ she said, when Hannah faced her,
and nodded in the direction of the boat-house.
When the girl saw the two of them, dog and master, she threw up both arms
in unconcealed delight and he dropped the dog’s lead, to use both hands in a
last signed exchange.
‘He said he thought my mother was very pretty,’ the young girl
declared happily, after he’d gone.
‘I know. I saw,’ her mother replied, colouring faintly. ‘Perhaps he
has an eye problem too.’
‘Maybe he’ll come by again tomorrow,’ Hannah speculated, her
mother’s irony lost on her.
‘We’ll see,’ Karen responded, briskly, disconcerted by the hope
Hannah’s expression projected, ‘but for now I have to drop you at school and
get back to the shop. You can spice up your afternoon by making the others
envious, telling them you’ve found another grown-up who can sign.’
But for Hannah the enjoyment was entirely in the experience, not even
partly in the telling. She had a new friend. He could be her secret as well.
The next day came and went with no hoped-for reunion with the young man
and his dog. Neither was there one in the days that followed, and by the end of
the week the young girl had, reluctantly, almost stopped thinking about them.
Karen was alive to her daughter’s need, and her own, for widened contact
and she was unsettled. Something about the young man had struck a chord within
her, one that continued to resonate for days afterwards. Like her, he had a
place in that other world, not because he was deaf, but because he wasn’t. He
shared Karen’s defining need: to add value to another life. Through sharing
himself. And that sort of sharing was Karen’s second need, at times an
overpowering one. But one that demanded in her circumstances, an impossible
degree of compatibility.
Each night Karen took out the sketch her daughter had pencilled of the man
and looked at it, looked beyond it, through to the other side of the eyes the
way Hannah was able to. Without realising it, Karen absorbed her daughter’s
instinctive understanding of the man behind the lines and smudges.
When she slept, her own sent out despairing calls to a soul interpreted
for her by her daughter, an eight-year-old child whose eyes saw everything.
Because her ears could hear nothing.
Hannah already knew that these two souls matched. The impossible had
yielded to a miracle.
The young man hadn’t stopped thinking about the girl and her mother
either. And he had his own conflicts to resolve. But just as Hannah had given
her mother a window into his soul, so she had also revealed her mother’s to
him. Each night as he tried to sleep he found new and convincing reasons for not
returning to the park.
They were obviously pleased to find someone who knew the language. Why
can’t we just enjoy each other’s company? part of him protested,
defensively.
She’s a child, you fool. Do you want the press putting Maureen McRae’s
widower down as a pervert? the cynic rejoined.
That’s not fair. There’s her mother...
And wouldn’t that look really good on the front page! Recently widowed
policeman trips over his hormones.
The young man sighed and shifted to a new position, and eventually sleep
came.
One particular night it brought no relief. He yelled out a warning and no
sound left his lips. He wanted desperately to get his legs to move. To close the
gap. To be there. But it was as if he
didn’t have legs. He looked down and found he didn’t have a body either.
Sweet mother of Mary, what did he have apart from eyes?
And then mercifully everything returned to its proper place. He had a
whole body again and it was covered with perspiration. Lots of it. He sat up,
his pyjamas saturated. The perspiration wasn’t imagination.
The cynic started on the fool again and he told them both to shut up. What
the hell did it matter if it was real or not? He knew what he had to do.
Outside in his kennel the old dog rested his head on stretched-out front
legs and went back to sleep. The light had come on and gone off in his
master’s bedroom, and he knew his patient wait was over. He was going to see
again the young girl his mistress was so concerned about.
His contented snores echoed around the still night.
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