Short Stories

It’s been a while since I last wrote but to be honest, nothing of interest has happened recently. But that all changed when a guy wanted to use my services to keep my eyes on a guy who they said had been scamming them, and others, out of large amounts of money. It wasn’t my normal type of work, and I usually prefer to meet my clients – this one had done it all by email - but he was very convincing, as was the money he paid up front. All I was supposed to do was know where the guy was during the day - in other words, follow him - and report back once a week with details of his movements and who he met with.

At first it was easy enough. It was obvious that he didn’t know he was being followed so I was able to keep closer to him than I would normally risk. I also made use of a colleague of mine, Jenny, to follow him on alternate days so he wouldn’t get used to seeing me. To be honest, it got a bit boring after a few days and by the end of the first week I was beginning to regret taking the job. But there are millions of people across the globe doing boring jobs to pay the bills, and I was being paid well.

At the end of the week, Saturday evening, I emailed over a list of where he had been, times, places, and descriptions of people he was seen with. Nothing special, he seemed just an ordinary guy going about an ordinary life. He went to an office building in the morning, out for lunch, home for dinner then out to a pub or a club in the evening. As far as I saw, he didn’t meet anyone in particular and from what I could gather, he lived alone. All very normal and rather boring, and I began to doubt the reason I had been given for following him, so I decided I should get to know him a little.

On the next Monday evening I went early to one of the pubs he most often visited, leaving Jenny to follow him, just in case he went elsewhere. I needed to make sure I was OK with my client and not missing anything. Right on 8pm in he walked and headed to the bar to order a drink. I had made sure I was sitting by the bar so when he had ordered and was waiting for his pint, I said hello to him. He was friendly enough and we sat and talked about the usual things, the weather, corrupt governments, difficult employers, the usual casual small talk between two people who had only just met.

He told me his name was George and he was in insurance, property mainly, and was tired of his job. But there was nothing to suggest he might be a scammer, taking unwary people’s money. I began to have serious doubts about the reason I was following him. I told him I was a senior software engineer and gave him every chance to believe I was made of money, but nothing came in the way of an invite to invest in some dodgy company or magic share deals. I decided I might see if I could do some investigation on my client and hopefully find out what was really going on.

My client had given me an email address but not a physical one, so I needed some help to find out who he might really be. A friend of mine is a genius in computers and he had written some kind of tracer email that would reveal the recipient’s IP address. Now I am not into all this but he explained that he might be able to get a location for my client, at least a country and possibly an area if he was lucky. So at the end of another boring week, I sent off the email as usual, but this time with the tracer in it. My friend helped me because I had no idea what I was doing. Once it had gone, he told me he would receive a reply to the tracer which would help us locate him. So we sat and waited and sure enough, after a few minutes his phone bleeped. According to the software, my client was in Swindon.

I knew nothing about Swindon apart from roughly where it was, but it was a piece of data which could prove useful as I unravelled the mystery. I decided that I needed to spend more time with George, see if he might actually know my client, or maybe have some connection with Swindon. Monday came again, and I sat myself in the pub, at a table this time, hoping he would come as usual. Eight pm on the dot and he walked in and came over to where I had sat to say hello. He seemed pleased to see me which was a little surprising and once he had his drink he came to sit with me.“I think I am being followed,” he told me after taking a drink from his glass. I was surprised if he had spotted Jenny, she was the best in the business, but he continued. “It was last week after I left the pub on Monday. I took my usual way home and I had this feeling that someone was watching me. I put it down to having a little too much to drink but on Tuesday it was the same so I went into an all night shop I know and watched as a man hurried past the front door.”

“Surely he might just be someone hurrying home?” I suggested.

“Possibly, but I decided to get my friend who owns the shop to watch for me as I walked home on Wednesday and sure enough, there he was again. It could be a coincidence but I deliberately left the pub earlier that night. The next night, I went a different way and there he was again.”

I asked him to describe the man, but he had only seen him in the darkness and the description was not brilliant. It didn’t match anyone I knew, but that was not surprising. I asked him if he knew any reason why someone might want to follow him.

“No, I live on my own and don’t really do anything interesting,” he paused. “Unless it has something to do with a group I belong to. We gather material on UFO sightings around the world. All rather nerdy, I’m afraid but recently we have come up with some data which seemed to connect with an engineering company out towards Stroud.”

“What kind of engineering,” I asked him. “Any government connections? And what sort of data?”

“I really don’t know anything about the company, that’s more Malcolm’s area, he’s the one who found the data. I’m just the guy who analyses it, something I must admit I’m quite good at. I love analysing data and finding patterns in it. I should be a cryptographer I think, more in my line.”

"And this UFO group you are in, do you meet up somewhere?” I asked him.

“Not usually, it is all done online. We have a private online group and people post information and sightings, that kind of stuff.”

“But Malcolm came across this data you said. Have you discovered anything from analysing it?”

“Not yet,” he told me. “But I haven’t done much with it yet, too busy at work and, to be honest, too worried about whoever is following me.”

I suggested that he should put all his efforts into analysing the data. If he found something then he would be in a better position to know what to do. He reluctantly agreed and I then cheered him up a little by saying I would follow him home when he left, just to see if I could spot his follower. We also exchanged phone numbers, I gave him my private phone number, so he could let me know if he found out anything from the data. I suggested that I would leave before him and hide somewhere on his route. Then, when his follower appeared, I would follow him and see where he went. There is an alleyway near the shop he mentioned and I decided that this would be a good place to hide, so once I had finished my drink, I headed off. There were a few men hanging around outside the pub, some of them smoking, but that was normal for this place, and none of them paid me any attention. We had agreed that George would leave the pub about ten minutes after me, and just a few minutes after I had hidden myself in the alleyway, he walked past, followed soon after by a man who was obviously following him.

There is a street light just outside the alley which lit up the pavement well while leaving the alley in the shadow of a neighbouring wall so I could see him clearly. It was a face I knew well, that of a man who I had dealings with before. He was called Jonathan and was a man who would do more or less anything for money, but not violence fortunately. I knew he wouldn’t realise he was being followed, far too stupid for that, so I left the alley and tagged along behind him at a discreet distance. It was obvious he was following George, and doing it very badly, you would need to be very stupid to not pick up he was following you. Once George reached home, Jonathan was soon on his phone. I couldn’t get near enough to hear anything but presumably he was reporting in. I didn’t want to confront Jonathan then, but decided I would pay him a visit the next day, while George was at work.

In the morning, I headed over to the part of town where Jonathan was usually to be found. It was a scruffy area, mainly full of drug addicts and drunks. Jonathan didn’t hold with drugs and I don’t think I have ever seen him drunk, but he fitted in well with the low-life. I found him in Sid’s café nursing a mug of tea. I ordered a coffee and sat down beside him. “Busy?” I asked him.

He turned when he heard my voice, obviously recognising me. “What’s it to you?” he grunted.

“Just that I might have a job for you if you are free,” I lied.

“Well, as it ‘appens I do ‘ave a job on.”

“OK,” I replied. “Not a problem, I’ll find someone else.” I sipped my coffee. Sid does make a good cup of real coffee, not the instant you normally find in these places.

“So what’s this job then?” Jonathan asked me after a few minutes.

“I thought you had a job on?"

"It's not much of a job, just following someone. Boring as 'ell as all he does is go to work and pubs in the evening. Doesn't even meet anyone much."

"Well the job I have for you could pay more," I tempted him. "I want to know who is paying you."

Jonathan was quiet. "You want to know who is paying me to follow this geezer?" He was never very quick on the uptake.

"Yup, just that, And it's worth two hundred quid."

"If I knew, I'd tell you, but I don't. I got a call the other night. This voice on the phone said he had a job for me, told me what it was, and that he would send me the cash. All I had to do was follow this bloke and phone a number and report if he ever went near the Paradise Club. I found the cash shoved through me door the following day, wrapped up in an old envelope."

"OK, then I will pay you for the phone number you have to call him on," I told him. "Fifty quid just for the number, and you can get the other hundred and fifty if you can find out who he is."

I gave him five ten pound notes and headed out of the café. I had a phone number now, and the name of a club of interest. The fifty pounds I gave him was well worth it, and only a tiny drop out of what I had been paid. But what was the connection with The Paradise Club? It was a club with a reputation for drugs and prostitution, somewhere I just couldn't see the George I had got to know, going anywhere near. But it could be a front for some other activities, and the data that Malcolm had found could maybe expose it. To tell the truth, I was unsure what my next step should be. In the end I decided that my best option was to carry on following George and reporting back. Either my client would get bored and that would be the end of it, or George might turn something up from the data.

Knowing that Jonathan had been following George made me wonder if anyone else was. Had my client employed Jonathan as well? Or was someone else interested? I decided that I shouldn't meet up with him again, at least not anywhere where we might be seen together, it was just too risky.

That evening I called George and told him that it would be safer if I wasn't seen with him. I told him that the man who was following him was probably also following me and it would be easier for me to keep an eye on George if I stayed in the background. He bought the tale quite easily and it reinforced the idea that finding what the data meant was now the best way to make any danger go away. Jenny had taken over the job of following George for now, and I even suggested that she might like to meet him and befriend him. Who knows what might develop from that.I also sent an email to my client, telling him I had that found someone else was also following George. I had hoped to get some reaction, but the reply I received simply suggested that George was scum and I shouldn't be surprised if others were after him as well. Clearly my client was sticking to his story. I just had to wait for George to perform his magic with the data he had.

The following day, George called me. The data was nothing of any real interest. It did show some dodgy deals that had been done by the company in Stroud, but nothing that looked that important. I asked him for the name of the company so I could do some checking, but I knew I needed to work out what else could be going on. George was an ordinary bloke apart from the UFO hunting. And then it hit me, had he seen something when out looking for aliens? Something that he was not supposed to see.

"I know you said you passed round sightings of UFOs," I asked him. "But do you, yourself, go out looking or investigating such things?"

"Not very much," he replied. "I did go out to Rendlesham Forest a few weeks back. That's where there was a sighting of a crashed spaceship back in 1980. It was covered up by the authorities, but I was due a holiday so I thought a trip to Suffolk sounded like a good idea."

"Did you see anything?" I asked him. "Or photograph anything?"

"There's nothing much to see there nowadays. There's a UFO trail that was set up for tourists, but that's more of an attraction than anything really connected to what might have happened there. I had a good break from work, and the scenery was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary."

I had heard of Rendlesham before. There's an RAF base nearby I remembered. "Did you go and take a look at the RAF airfield?" I asked him.

"No, I had been told it wasn't worth it, nothing much to see there."

"Did you talk to anyone on your trip?"

"Only one man," George suddenly looked like he remembered something. "He was in military uniform but I couldn't tell you what type it was, I'm not much up on those things. I had wandered of the path and had gone well into the woods, thinking that if I was to see anything out of the ordinary it wouldn't be in plain sight. There was a track of some sort, probably made by an animal, and I simply followed it. I guess I had walked about a mile, winding in and out through the trees, when I came to a derelict cottage. It was odd because although it was clearly not habitable, I thought I saw some smoke coming from its chimney. Not a lot, but I was sure I saw some. I put it down to my imagination and carried on along the track. It was soon after then that I met this military gentleman coming the other way. He said hello and asked me why I was there, which I thought was a bit strange. I told him I was just out enjoying the forest and fresh air, to which he told me that the trail I was following led only to some dense undergrowth which I would find hard to get through. He said he had reached it himself and was returning the way he had come and suggested I did the same. We walked back together but he was not very talkative, neither was I, I suppose, and we parted ways when we got back to the main pathway. I headed back to the town and he followed the path in the other direction where it turned a corner and he was out of sight."

"Strange the smoke from the chimney," I replied, "And what was this military man doing walking along the trail I wonder, seems like a bit of a coincidence. Still, it might be nothing to do with why you are being followed."

"I'm still not sure I saw the smoke," George told me again. "It could have been a fire somewhere in the distance and just looked like it was coming from the chimney. Or maybe some homeless folk were in there. It was a warm day, but they might have been cooking something on an open fire in the hearth."

"Ever been to the Paradise Club?" I asked him. I hoped it might catch him out if he was doing anything dodgy.

He paused for a second before replying, possibly a bit embarrassed. "I went there once a good few years ago with some friends from college. The girls were nice but I had a steady girlfriend back then and I wasn't really very interested. And the price of beer was ridiculous. Why do you ask?"

"The guy who was following you has some connection with the club. But in all honesty I didn't think it was your kind of place."

"I might be single, but I don't need to waste my money in places like that."

"I will keep digging," I told him. "See if I can find why you might be followed. But call me if you think of anything or if anything unusual happens."

I was at a loss as to what the connection might be between Rendlesham Forest and The Paradise Club, if there even was one. And why was the military guy interested in why George was there? And had he seen smoke from the cottage? There were just too many unknowns and I didn't like it. It felt like I was getting nowhere. But at least I was still getting paid.

I decided to do some research on the company that George had the dodgy data from. At first I could see nothing that would make me suspicious of them, but they were an arms manufacturer so maybe there was a connection after all. Maybe with the guy in Rendlesham Forest. I called George back. "What was the data about? Can you tell me anything more about it?" I asked him.

"It was to do with sales of some equipment, I don't know what since it was just model numbers, but they were being sold for prices which didn't match what was going on their accounts," he told me."I would like to meet again and learn more about the data if you don't mind. I know a way you can lose your follower." I told him about a shop I knew the owner of and explained how it had a rear fire exit which he could use while his follower was waiting out the front. I said I would talk to the owner and perhaps I could meet him at a pub that wasn't far from the rear entrance. We agreed on 8pm and after giving him directions and the name of the pub, we rang off and I went back to my research into the company. Something was telling me that this was where the clue to it all would be found.

As an arms manufacturer, it was difficult to get any real information through the usual channels, so I decided to call in a favour from a friend I had at GCHQ, called Graham. I didn't really expect much when I called him, but when I mentioned the name of the company I could detect an intake of breath. "I cannot give you any information regarding arms companies," he told me. "Sorry, but it would be good to meet up some time. I'm over your way this afternoon, how about meeting up this evening, I will be free by 6." I told him the name of the pub where I was meeting George at 8 and we agreed to meet their for dinner at 7. Hopefully my friend could say more when he was not at work.

I got to the pub early and chose a table in an alcove where we could talk more freely. Graham arrived just before 7 and we ordered food before returning to the table. "I'm sorry about earlier," he said as we sat down. "I was in a crowded office. But there is a lot you should know about this company.

I told him about George and that I was supposed to be following him. I also mentioned the Paradise Club.

"When I was a copper, before I joined GCHQ, I had dealings with that place. They were laundering money for a drugs dealer, but I didn't see any connection with arms companies."

"Maybe the issue is still with drugs," I suggested. "The arms company might be just a blind alley, but George also had that incident in Rendlesham Forest with the man in military uniform just before all this kicked off. It could be coincidence, but I doubt it. George will be here before long, hopefully you might be able to get some more from him perhaps."

Our food arrived then and conversation stopped for a while. George arrived just before 8 and I introduced him to Graham before heading to the bar to order some drinks for us all. When I got back to the table, Graham had a laptop open on the table with some mapping software showing on the screen. It was showing an aerial view with amazing detail, I assumed that it was some GCHQ software he was using. George was showing him the path he had walked on when he met the military man just past the abandoned cottage. George scrolled on past the place they had met and it was clear that the path, far from becoming impassable, reached an open clearing with views across open farm land. The cottage was also visible on the screen when Graham scrolled back away from the open field. They could see part of the roof was missing, but they could also see what looked like smoke visible by the chimney.

"So the guy was lying when he got me to turn round and head back to the main path," George said when he saw the clearing. "I knew there was something not right with him. And there is smoke there, I didn't imagine it."

"I will do some checking on that cottage and also the location," Graham told us. "I am sure there is something gong on that we need to know about. And can you check with your colleague and find out any more you can about the data he retrieved. Is there any more? Where did he get it? Anything at all." He stood up to leave. "I will be back in touch as soon as I have anything, but let Paul know if you find out anything more."

When I got home I decided to do some research into the Paradise Club. My first step was to see who were the directors or other interested parties in the business. According to companies house, there was just one director and one company secretary. And it was the secretary that interested me, he was named as Major Ian Foster. He could be a retired major who just liked to keep the title, but it was a connection to the military, even if it was a tenuous one. I did some more searching on social media and found him, he had his location as Stroud, the same as the arms company. I really felt I was getting somewhere at last.

I called George. "Can you talk to your colleague Michael and see if there is any way he can find out who these items were sold to?" I asked him.

"I've just talked to him, and asked him to see what else he can find," George told me. "I'll call him again and ask."

I slept well that night, knowing that I was getting somewhere to finding what was really going on. The following day George called me. "The sales were all to a company called Butley Holdings. He couldn't get an address, sorry."

A search produced the company as based on a farm in Butley. I checked on the map and Butley was on the edge of Rendlesham Forest. At last, a real connection, but what was really happening was still unknown. My phone rang, it was George again. "Michael has found out that the items on the list were small missiles, ones that could be launched from a simple hand held device."

This was getting out of my league now. We had missiles being sold at cut price to a company in Suffolk and heaven knows what they were doing with them. I decided it was time to see if Graham could take over so I called him and told him what I had found. "We have traced the email address you are using to send your report and we have an address for him now," he told me. "We have also being carrying out surveillance on the cottage in the woods. It is very far from being deserted, but they were careless with the smoke. A bit more care and George would never have paid it any attention. I will alert the appropriate authorities and get some raids organised. I will let you know what happens."

A few days later, Graham called me. It was all over. Someone in the Stroud company was making sales to the company in Suffolk, changing the prices in the accounts department so they paid very little for them. In Suffolk, the missiles were being stored in a cellar hidden under the derelict cottage, before being hidden in farm machinery which was then being exported at high prices to terrorist nations. The whole thing was being managed and directed from the Paradise Club.

I called George and told him. It was a relief for him to know, but he admitted to me that he might miss the excitement. "My life is really pretty boring," he told me. "But I met a young lady in the pub the other night, her name is Jenny and she is really nice. So maybe my life might be getting more interesting now." I congratulated him and made a note to call Jenny later to see how the budding relationship was going. I hoped it worked out for them, they would make an interesting couple.