It happened 10 years before...
Friday, July 14th, 2000... Carla Walsh
Arranging to cover particular working shifts was an option beyond the reach of junior doctors. They had little or no say on working rosters, but Julia Sorensen, Carla’s closest friend was always on hand to stand-in for her when needed, and she was there for her again.
Junior Registrar Dr. Carla Walsh’s shift was to finish at midnight when John’s would start, and when Jules offered to cover for her and let her quietly slip away 20 minutes earlier to meet-up with John in the doctor’s parking zone, she gratefully grabbed the chance of spending a few extra minutes with her fiancé.
John Anderson was on A&E duty at midnight which meant that being on time was sacrosanct. The Accident and Emergency department on Friday nights was like the foyer of Bedlam where the inmates were running the show.
Twenty minutes were all that she had to spend with John and no time to change out of her drab ill-fitting doctor’s garments, but they were a long time past caring about appearances, their relationship had transcended such basics since they were both still in primary school.
With a head full of her “happy bubbles”, Carla ran through the rain towards her parked Polo, skipping over countless puddles with the ebullience of Gene Kelly in his classic rendition of “Singing in the Rain”, she got into her car, shook the rain out of her hair and turned the engine and the CD player on. She had texted John an hour earlier telling him to meet her at the car park at 11.40 and he should have been well on his way by then.
Carla turned her mind onto the wonderful weekend they had been planning for some time, since the kind Admin manager told them they could take the weekend off.
‘Wow... our last sinful weekend together as an unmarried couple..!’ she giggled.
‘You better not cook, if you still want us to get married...’ he teased.
‘But mum gave me a great French recipe in honour of the Bastille-Day weekend.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure there will be another French revolution if you cook it...’
‘Are you saying that I can’t cook, Doctor Anderson?’
‘I’m just saying that I’d rather you perform an appendectomy on me without anaesthetic, than cook for me Doctor Walsh...’
‘Oh well, I might just perform another kind of operation on you, while you’re eating a cold sandwich then...’
‘Hmm, cold sandwiches won’t be all that I’ve got in mind...’
It was the first time in many months that they had both managed to get the same weekend off-work. The hospital admin manager had moved mountains to give them the time off, and John’s parents had thoughtfully wangled a two-day visit to his grandma’s, at her seaside bungalow leaving the house to their only son and his fiancé.
Carla found herself giggling like an excited teenager anticipating a dream event. They were going to savour every moment of the next two days. Dine on some less than average meals, but who cares..? Sip on mediocre wine, but it’ll taste like nectar, and indulge in a lot of unrestrained love, and that never falls short of wow!
Her driver’s door was yanked open and she turned her head grinning and expecting to see the beaming smile that she adored ... she didn’t...
The rage-distorted face she saw; at first mystified... and then utterly terrified her.
Victims can often see murder in their killers’ eyes and once they saw that look, it was invariably already too late.
The steel-like grip which clamped around her neck compressed her larynx and windpipe in an instant. She couldn’t breathe, or produce any sound beyond a choked grunt as she was yanked out of her car like a rag-doll...
The last thing Carla felt before she died were the incessant rain-drops on her face...
Chapter (1)
Friday, July 16th, 2010
Leroy Brown was just about finished with setting-up the Leisure Centre room for the following day’s “Father John’s Saturday Workshop”. This was a commitment Leroy had volunteered for three years ago when he was 16. First out of gratitude to the man who had kept him out of jail and changed his whole life for the better, and then out of the deep self-gratification that he gained from doing something worthwhile.
Two men barged into the room without knocking, and they simply did not look like the types who would knock and wait to be bidden entry.
Leroy knew the types well, he had spent all the years of his earlier youth looking up to such stars of the ghetto and aspiring to rise to their heady social heights, until Father John Anderson came into his life, shook him awake and made him see that shit would always be what it was, bling decorated or bare.
The taller of the two was an Afro-Caribbean dude, who showed-off his heritage with tightly plaited dreadlocks and a traffic-stopping open-necked shirt. The top of the man’s shirt could never have been buttoned-up, because his neck was festooned with more gold chains than could be displayed in a single jeweller’s shop-window. With the weight of all that bling, the dude’s slim-build and upright posture were a testament to having a great sense of balance and an admirable ability to defy gravity.
The shorter of the two men was a lesser specimen altogether. He was a stark contrast to the dude, his blotchy white complexion was a tapestry of tattoos, old scars and newly acquired abrasions, his frame was heavily-built to a degree that his neck was about the size of an athlete’s upper thigh, and his head could’ve filled a coal-bucket.
The two gangster types sauntered over to where Leroy stood and loomed over him menacingly. The 19years-old youth had spent a lifetime clawing his way out of gutters and fighting for his place in the sunshine out of dark neighbourhood alleyways, but these two looked like a cargo of trouble on a runaway freight train.
‘Father John fella, where is this Father John..? He asked me to meet him here...’ the dude’s Caribbean accent seemed to begin and end with his fashion statement... His wise-guy Manchester accent though, was emphatic.
‘Ah... he’s still in the gym, do you want to wait here while I go and get him?’
‘I don’t wait for no fucking man pipsqueak, you’ll take us to him now.’
‘Yeah, we don’t wait for no one...’ echoed the stocky sidekick with a snarl.
Father John Anderson was a well-known face around the municipal Leisure Centre, and apart from his Saturday workshop, described by some as a garage for repairing damaged teenage engines, he was a regular physical fitness fanatic, or so he appeared to everyone.
On the one hand, Father Anderson was everything one could never imagine a priest to be, whilst on the other, he was also a medical practitioner with a doctorate degree in Pharmacology, but Anderson the man was tall, ruggedly handsome and with the muscular physique of a career athlete.
He regularly spent a good two hours per day working-out in the gymnasium, where none of the other regulars could understand what drove this 35 year-old professional doctor and parish priest to expend so much time and energy into the practice of kick-boxing, when he clearly had no ambition in pursuing that sport as a competitor. But none of the leisure centre regulars knew anything of the dark secret that drove this otherwise gentle and amiable man
into such a violent sporting pursuit.
Having worn-out two sparring partners in less than 30 minutes, Anderson was now doing battle with the only man he had ever truly wanted to pummel with his fists and feet, a sparring partner who was as elusive as he was invisible.
He shadow-boxed with a man whose frame was like his own, he was as fast as himself, and moved around the sparring ring with equal agility, but in all the years of fighting this shadow man, the man had remained a shadow that plagued his mind.
John Anderson had seen this man in his nightmares 10 years ago, nightmares which had insidiously attempted to creep into his subconscious mind over the years, but he had trained
himself to awaken just before they took hold, and in all of that time he could never put a face to this shadowy man.
He knew that this man actually existed, because his were the hands that went around Carla’s throat and choked the life out of her.
Father John Anderson didn’t hear them approaching the secluded sparring ring when they rounded the partition wall, but he heard them sniggering as they got closer. He stopped, picked-up his towel and dried his face as he looked at the two men being led over by his young assistant Leroy.
Still panting from his exertions, he leaned over the top rope with hand extended to be shaken, and spoke with an amiable smile.
‘You must be Mr Jerome, I am Father John Anderson and I want to thank you for coming all the way down here...’ he said addressing the dude.
Jerome looked down at the extended hand, snorted with derision, and tersely replied ‘I don’t see no eight hundred pounds in your hand bro and I only shake hands with money. You told me on the phone that you were settling that little shit Tyrone’s debt... You better not be yanking my chain now bro...’
Anderson didn’t appear in the least phased when he replied.
‘Settle the debt, I will, but pay it off..? No way bro... Now, the way I understand it, you give Tyrone’s older sister a five hundred pounds line of credit on the shit that you’ve been supplying her. She loses her job and asks for more time to pay. You generously give her time, provided that she pays you a hundred pounds a week in interest, and in lieu of that interest little Tyrone has had to work for you as a delivery mule for the last six months at the rate of one hundred pounds per week...’
Anderson then laughed aloud and added ‘... and I thought that slave labour and debt bonding were things of the past... so since Tyrone had decided to resign his position with your illustrious firm 3 weeks ago, they had incurred a further 300 pounds...’
His laughter now appeared real and he couldn’t finish what he was saying.
Jerome the dude was now seething ‘Look fella, I don’t give a flying fuck if you are a priest or the son of God himself. I am here to collect one way or another...’
The bucket-headed thug echoed his boss’s sentiments in a series of expletives and incomprehensible grunts, as Anderson looked-on and laughed even louder.
He then turned to Jerome and asked ‘Would you translate what your handsome friend just said..? Only I don’t understand Neanderthal.’
Father John finally got the exact response he’d been expecting, the bucket-head Neanderthal leapt into the ring, looking ready to take the priest apart with bare hands that were bigger than a grave-digger’s shovel. He was a good two inches shorter than Anderson, but looked twice his girth as he charged with arms extended like tree-trunks.
Jerome started to smirk, knowing what “Kong”his minder and enforcer can do to other men, but his smirk didn’t linger long when he first heard and then saw Leroy sniggering behind a cupped hand.
The boy clearly appeared to know of a completely different scenario..!
Whilst still angrily glaring at Leroy, Jerome heard three rapid thuds accompanied by painful grunts and a final heavy thump, and by the time he turned around and his sight alighted back on the ring, “Kong” was the “King” of nowhere; he was sprawled on his back on the canvas and appeared to be taking an untimely nap.
Anderson casually examined his knuckles, clenched and unclenched his fists as he leaned over the top rope and he addressed Jerome again. ‘Your pal seems to have pissed his pants, so you better drag him out of here before he soils the floor-canvass, and then I’ll have to make you wipe it off with your nice shirt... Bro...’ and with that he turned and headed in the direction of the men’s shower room.
Jerome looked like a man in shock, he turned to Leroy and asked ‘what the hell kind of priest is that?’
Leroy grinned back at him as he replied. ‘I can only tell you what some people call him, but never to his face... Father John, the priest of hell’s parish...’
For orders or free samples, please follow these links :
For Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Telepath-Mike-Al-Amiry-ebook/dp/B00FU4C3CY/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394186637&sr=1-4
For all ebook formats and reading devices:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/366669
Friday, July 14th, 2000... Carla Walsh
Arranging to cover particular working shifts was an option beyond the reach of junior doctors. They had little or no say on working rosters, but Julia Sorensen, Carla’s closest friend was always on hand to stand-in for her when needed, and she was there for her again.
Junior Registrar Dr. Carla Walsh’s shift was to finish at midnight when John’s would start, and when Jules offered to cover for her and let her quietly slip away 20 minutes earlier to meet-up with John in the doctor’s parking zone, she gratefully grabbed the chance of spending a few extra minutes with her fiancé.
John Anderson was on A&E duty at midnight which meant that being on time was sacrosanct. The Accident and Emergency department on Friday nights was like the foyer of Bedlam where the inmates were running the show.
Twenty minutes were all that she had to spend with John and no time to change out of her drab ill-fitting doctor’s garments, but they were a long time past caring about appearances, their relationship had transcended such basics since they were both still in primary school.
With a head full of her “happy bubbles”, Carla ran through the rain towards her parked Polo, skipping over countless puddles with the ebullience of Gene Kelly in his classic rendition of “Singing in the Rain”, she got into her car, shook the rain out of her hair and turned the engine and the CD player on. She had texted John an hour earlier telling him to meet her at the car park at 11.40 and he should have been well on his way by then.
Carla turned her mind onto the wonderful weekend they had been planning for some time, since the kind Admin manager told them they could take the weekend off.
‘Wow... our last sinful weekend together as an unmarried couple..!’ she giggled.
‘You better not cook, if you still want us to get married...’ he teased.
‘But mum gave me a great French recipe in honour of the Bastille-Day weekend.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure there will be another French revolution if you cook it...’
‘Are you saying that I can’t cook, Doctor Anderson?’
‘I’m just saying that I’d rather you perform an appendectomy on me without anaesthetic, than cook for me Doctor Walsh...’
‘Oh well, I might just perform another kind of operation on you, while you’re eating a cold sandwich then...’
‘Hmm, cold sandwiches won’t be all that I’ve got in mind...’
It was the first time in many months that they had both managed to get the same weekend off-work. The hospital admin manager had moved mountains to give them the time off, and John’s parents had thoughtfully wangled a two-day visit to his grandma’s, at her seaside bungalow leaving the house to their only son and his fiancé.
Carla found herself giggling like an excited teenager anticipating a dream event. They were going to savour every moment of the next two days. Dine on some less than average meals, but who cares..? Sip on mediocre wine, but it’ll taste like nectar, and indulge in a lot of unrestrained love, and that never falls short of wow!
Her driver’s door was yanked open and she turned her head grinning and expecting to see the beaming smile that she adored ... she didn’t...
The rage-distorted face she saw; at first mystified... and then utterly terrified her.
Victims can often see murder in their killers’ eyes and once they saw that look, it was invariably already too late.
The steel-like grip which clamped around her neck compressed her larynx and windpipe in an instant. She couldn’t breathe, or produce any sound beyond a choked grunt as she was yanked out of her car like a rag-doll...
The last thing Carla felt before she died were the incessant rain-drops on her face...
Chapter (1)
Friday, July 16th, 2010
Leroy Brown was just about finished with setting-up the Leisure Centre room for the following day’s “Father John’s Saturday Workshop”. This was a commitment Leroy had volunteered for three years ago when he was 16. First out of gratitude to the man who had kept him out of jail and changed his whole life for the better, and then out of the deep self-gratification that he gained from doing something worthwhile.
Two men barged into the room without knocking, and they simply did not look like the types who would knock and wait to be bidden entry.
Leroy knew the types well, he had spent all the years of his earlier youth looking up to such stars of the ghetto and aspiring to rise to their heady social heights, until Father John Anderson came into his life, shook him awake and made him see that shit would always be what it was, bling decorated or bare.
The taller of the two was an Afro-Caribbean dude, who showed-off his heritage with tightly plaited dreadlocks and a traffic-stopping open-necked shirt. The top of the man’s shirt could never have been buttoned-up, because his neck was festooned with more gold chains than could be displayed in a single jeweller’s shop-window. With the weight of all that bling, the dude’s slim-build and upright posture were a testament to having a great sense of balance and an admirable ability to defy gravity.
The shorter of the two men was a lesser specimen altogether. He was a stark contrast to the dude, his blotchy white complexion was a tapestry of tattoos, old scars and newly acquired abrasions, his frame was heavily-built to a degree that his neck was about the size of an athlete’s upper thigh, and his head could’ve filled a coal-bucket.
The two gangster types sauntered over to where Leroy stood and loomed over him menacingly. The 19years-old youth had spent a lifetime clawing his way out of gutters and fighting for his place in the sunshine out of dark neighbourhood alleyways, but these two looked like a cargo of trouble on a runaway freight train.
‘Father John fella, where is this Father John..? He asked me to meet him here...’ the dude’s Caribbean accent seemed to begin and end with his fashion statement... His wise-guy Manchester accent though, was emphatic.
‘Ah... he’s still in the gym, do you want to wait here while I go and get him?’
‘I don’t wait for no fucking man pipsqueak, you’ll take us to him now.’
‘Yeah, we don’t wait for no one...’ echoed the stocky sidekick with a snarl.
Father John Anderson was a well-known face around the municipal Leisure Centre, and apart from his Saturday workshop, described by some as a garage for repairing damaged teenage engines, he was a regular physical fitness fanatic, or so he appeared to everyone.
On the one hand, Father Anderson was everything one could never imagine a priest to be, whilst on the other, he was also a medical practitioner with a doctorate degree in Pharmacology, but Anderson the man was tall, ruggedly handsome and with the muscular physique of a career athlete.
He regularly spent a good two hours per day working-out in the gymnasium, where none of the other regulars could understand what drove this 35 year-old professional doctor and parish priest to expend so much time and energy into the practice of kick-boxing, when he clearly had no ambition in pursuing that sport as a competitor. But none of the leisure centre regulars knew anything of the dark secret that drove this otherwise gentle and amiable man
into such a violent sporting pursuit.
Having worn-out two sparring partners in less than 30 minutes, Anderson was now doing battle with the only man he had ever truly wanted to pummel with his fists and feet, a sparring partner who was as elusive as he was invisible.
He shadow-boxed with a man whose frame was like his own, he was as fast as himself, and moved around the sparring ring with equal agility, but in all the years of fighting this shadow man, the man had remained a shadow that plagued his mind.
John Anderson had seen this man in his nightmares 10 years ago, nightmares which had insidiously attempted to creep into his subconscious mind over the years, but he had trained
himself to awaken just before they took hold, and in all of that time he could never put a face to this shadowy man.
He knew that this man actually existed, because his were the hands that went around Carla’s throat and choked the life out of her.
Father John Anderson didn’t hear them approaching the secluded sparring ring when they rounded the partition wall, but he heard them sniggering as they got closer. He stopped, picked-up his towel and dried his face as he looked at the two men being led over by his young assistant Leroy.
Still panting from his exertions, he leaned over the top rope with hand extended to be shaken, and spoke with an amiable smile.
‘You must be Mr Jerome, I am Father John Anderson and I want to thank you for coming all the way down here...’ he said addressing the dude.
Jerome looked down at the extended hand, snorted with derision, and tersely replied ‘I don’t see no eight hundred pounds in your hand bro and I only shake hands with money. You told me on the phone that you were settling that little shit Tyrone’s debt... You better not be yanking my chain now bro...’
Anderson didn’t appear in the least phased when he replied.
‘Settle the debt, I will, but pay it off..? No way bro... Now, the way I understand it, you give Tyrone’s older sister a five hundred pounds line of credit on the shit that you’ve been supplying her. She loses her job and asks for more time to pay. You generously give her time, provided that she pays you a hundred pounds a week in interest, and in lieu of that interest little Tyrone has had to work for you as a delivery mule for the last six months at the rate of one hundred pounds per week...’
Anderson then laughed aloud and added ‘... and I thought that slave labour and debt bonding were things of the past... so since Tyrone had decided to resign his position with your illustrious firm 3 weeks ago, they had incurred a further 300 pounds...’
His laughter now appeared real and he couldn’t finish what he was saying.
Jerome the dude was now seething ‘Look fella, I don’t give a flying fuck if you are a priest or the son of God himself. I am here to collect one way or another...’
The bucket-headed thug echoed his boss’s sentiments in a series of expletives and incomprehensible grunts, as Anderson looked-on and laughed even louder.
He then turned to Jerome and asked ‘Would you translate what your handsome friend just said..? Only I don’t understand Neanderthal.’
Father John finally got the exact response he’d been expecting, the bucket-head Neanderthal leapt into the ring, looking ready to take the priest apart with bare hands that were bigger than a grave-digger’s shovel. He was a good two inches shorter than Anderson, but looked twice his girth as he charged with arms extended like tree-trunks.
Jerome started to smirk, knowing what “Kong”his minder and enforcer can do to other men, but his smirk didn’t linger long when he first heard and then saw Leroy sniggering behind a cupped hand.
The boy clearly appeared to know of a completely different scenario..!
Whilst still angrily glaring at Leroy, Jerome heard three rapid thuds accompanied by painful grunts and a final heavy thump, and by the time he turned around and his sight alighted back on the ring, “Kong” was the “King” of nowhere; he was sprawled on his back on the canvas and appeared to be taking an untimely nap.
Anderson casually examined his knuckles, clenched and unclenched his fists as he leaned over the top rope and he addressed Jerome again. ‘Your pal seems to have pissed his pants, so you better drag him out of here before he soils the floor-canvass, and then I’ll have to make you wipe it off with your nice shirt... Bro...’ and with that he turned and headed in the direction of the men’s shower room.
Jerome looked like a man in shock, he turned to Leroy and asked ‘what the hell kind of priest is that?’
Leroy grinned back at him as he replied. ‘I can only tell you what some people call him, but never to his face... Father John, the priest of hell’s parish...’
For orders or free samples, please follow these links :
For Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Telepath-Mike-Al-Amiry-ebook/dp/B00FU4C3CY/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394186637&sr=1-4
For all ebook formats and reading devices:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/366669