Paul Alkazraji's Blog - Posts Tagged "mystery"
A Superior brand of fiction
Interview with Tom Hilpert, author of the Lake Superior Mysteries.
By Paul Alkazraji, author of The Silencer
Tom Hilpert.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a missionary kid – I grew up in Papua New Guinea. I’ve always loved books, and I’ve always loved writing. It’s been a thrill these past few years to finally be able to express that.
Tell us a little about your books.
I have a little ‘series’ going: the Lake Superior Mysteries. You can read them out of order, but each book features the same setting and cast of characters. The first two are ‘Superior Justice’ and ‘Superior Storm’. My latest in the series is ‘Superior Secrets’. The main character is a pastor named Jonah Borden, who lives in a small town on the shore of the world’s largest freshwater lake (Lake Superior). Typically, he gets caught up in mysteries as he tries to help his parishioners.
In the first one (Superior Justice), a parishioner is arrested for murder. Borden talks to him about it, and hears his confession. Only the confession isn’t of guilt – it is the parishioner’s alibi. Now Borden knows he is innocent, but he can’t tell anyone how he knows, or what he knows. The adventures come as Borden tries to prove him innocent without revealing the secret confession. In the second (Superior Storm) Borden ends up in the middle of a mystery as he tries to help an elderly widow recover her stolen money. The latest (Superior Secrets) is a little more personal for Jonah Borden. His fiancée, Leyla Bennett, is a reporter who wants to do an investigative report on a local cult. She joins the cult ‘under-cover’, but after a while it looks as if she might have been brainwashed into really being a member. As Jonah tries to get her out, he uncovers something much bigger than he ever imagined.
Is there an aspect of it you are particularly pleased with?
These are strong, memorable characters who are also a little quirky. There tends to be quite a bit of humor peppered throughout the books. My readers seem to appreciate that, and I admit I am kind of pleased with it myself. I’m a pretty serious guy in person, but I enjoy writing witty and funny dialogue, and hearing from fans about it.
Share with us a paragraph of your choice from your new book.
[Well, in keeping with my answer above]:
‘On Sunday, in honor of my name, I preached a whale of a sermon. It was hard to tell how many people fell asleep, because it was cold out, and some people cheated by keeping their scarves on, but I bet it was less than six. My record was thirteen, but that time was a funeral, and there were a lot of old people attending who were worn out by grief and late nights of watching Wheel of Fortune. Of course, it was always hard to tell the sleepers apart from the Norwegian Lutherans, not to mention the dead people. They all tended to express the same amount of emotion. I consider myself an elite preacher, because I regularly inspire a few Lutherans to nod in agreement when I’m speaking.'
Tell us about something you like or dislike in one of your characters.
One of the ‘supporting cast’ of characters is Julie, the part time secretary. A lot of my fans seem to really like her, but she makes me just a little uncomfortable. She’s a little too literal-minded and a little too sarcastic, but I guess that makes her seem pretty real.
Fiction writers put characters in dramatic situations ultimately to ‘say’ something. What are you saying in your work?
I think I have an overall message for the series, and that is that Christians – even pastors – are real people. They aren’t perfect, but they aren’t what the media usually makes them out to be, either. The faith of the two main characters is real, and it makes a difference, but this isn’t a morality play. Faith comes into the story because they are people of faith, not because the story is ‘about’ faith, so to speak. One way I like to think about it is this: I do not write ‘Christian fiction’. I am a Christian who writes fiction. Spiritual things come up in the books because the characters are spiritual people, not because I’m trying to use the book as a platform to preach. Even though Jonah Borden (the protagonist) is a pastor, you will never find the content of one of his sermons in these books. I’ve had some positive feedback about this approach – from people who are not Christians, especially.
How does your faith influence your writing?
One of my hopes in writing is to let my faith shine through in a way that is real, not contrived. Mostly, these are fun mystery stories; they happen to involve people of genuine faith. As such, I try to be true in my writing to that aspect of the characters, just as I try to be true to the agnosticism of one of the supporting characters.
What aspect of the craft of writing do you find most enjoyable?
That’s tough. I enjoy dialogue, for sure. My characters often surprise me, and make me laugh.
What books or authors do you like to read?
I am voracious and omnivorous in my reading. I read mystery, historical adventure, Young Adult fiction, fiction classics, fantasy, western, non-fiction history, non-fiction psychology, non-fiction science, Christian classics, and contemporary Christian living.
Tell us about something you’ve read recently that moved you.
The Pressure is Off, by Larry Crabb (non-fiction); The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (fantasy fiction).
What are you most thankful for in life?
My wife and children.
Links:
Superior Justice:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003...
Superior Storm:
http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Storm-...
Superior Secrets:
http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Secret...
By Paul Alkazraji, author of The Silencer
Tom Hilpert.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a missionary kid – I grew up in Papua New Guinea. I’ve always loved books, and I’ve always loved writing. It’s been a thrill these past few years to finally be able to express that.
Tell us a little about your books.
I have a little ‘series’ going: the Lake Superior Mysteries. You can read them out of order, but each book features the same setting and cast of characters. The first two are ‘Superior Justice’ and ‘Superior Storm’. My latest in the series is ‘Superior Secrets’. The main character is a pastor named Jonah Borden, who lives in a small town on the shore of the world’s largest freshwater lake (Lake Superior). Typically, he gets caught up in mysteries as he tries to help his parishioners.
In the first one (Superior Justice), a parishioner is arrested for murder. Borden talks to him about it, and hears his confession. Only the confession isn’t of guilt – it is the parishioner’s alibi. Now Borden knows he is innocent, but he can’t tell anyone how he knows, or what he knows. The adventures come as Borden tries to prove him innocent without revealing the secret confession. In the second (Superior Storm) Borden ends up in the middle of a mystery as he tries to help an elderly widow recover her stolen money. The latest (Superior Secrets) is a little more personal for Jonah Borden. His fiancée, Leyla Bennett, is a reporter who wants to do an investigative report on a local cult. She joins the cult ‘under-cover’, but after a while it looks as if she might have been brainwashed into really being a member. As Jonah tries to get her out, he uncovers something much bigger than he ever imagined.
Is there an aspect of it you are particularly pleased with?
These are strong, memorable characters who are also a little quirky. There tends to be quite a bit of humor peppered throughout the books. My readers seem to appreciate that, and I admit I am kind of pleased with it myself. I’m a pretty serious guy in person, but I enjoy writing witty and funny dialogue, and hearing from fans about it.
Share with us a paragraph of your choice from your new book.
[Well, in keeping with my answer above]:
‘On Sunday, in honor of my name, I preached a whale of a sermon. It was hard to tell how many people fell asleep, because it was cold out, and some people cheated by keeping their scarves on, but I bet it was less than six. My record was thirteen, but that time was a funeral, and there were a lot of old people attending who were worn out by grief and late nights of watching Wheel of Fortune. Of course, it was always hard to tell the sleepers apart from the Norwegian Lutherans, not to mention the dead people. They all tended to express the same amount of emotion. I consider myself an elite preacher, because I regularly inspire a few Lutherans to nod in agreement when I’m speaking.'
Tell us about something you like or dislike in one of your characters.
One of the ‘supporting cast’ of characters is Julie, the part time secretary. A lot of my fans seem to really like her, but she makes me just a little uncomfortable. She’s a little too literal-minded and a little too sarcastic, but I guess that makes her seem pretty real.
Fiction writers put characters in dramatic situations ultimately to ‘say’ something. What are you saying in your work?
I think I have an overall message for the series, and that is that Christians – even pastors – are real people. They aren’t perfect, but they aren’t what the media usually makes them out to be, either. The faith of the two main characters is real, and it makes a difference, but this isn’t a morality play. Faith comes into the story because they are people of faith, not because the story is ‘about’ faith, so to speak. One way I like to think about it is this: I do not write ‘Christian fiction’. I am a Christian who writes fiction. Spiritual things come up in the books because the characters are spiritual people, not because I’m trying to use the book as a platform to preach. Even though Jonah Borden (the protagonist) is a pastor, you will never find the content of one of his sermons in these books. I’ve had some positive feedback about this approach – from people who are not Christians, especially.
How does your faith influence your writing?
One of my hopes in writing is to let my faith shine through in a way that is real, not contrived. Mostly, these are fun mystery stories; they happen to involve people of genuine faith. As such, I try to be true in my writing to that aspect of the characters, just as I try to be true to the agnosticism of one of the supporting characters.
What aspect of the craft of writing do you find most enjoyable?
That’s tough. I enjoy dialogue, for sure. My characters often surprise me, and make me laugh.
What books or authors do you like to read?
I am voracious and omnivorous in my reading. I read mystery, historical adventure, Young Adult fiction, fiction classics, fantasy, western, non-fiction history, non-fiction psychology, non-fiction science, Christian classics, and contemporary Christian living.
Tell us about something you’ve read recently that moved you.
The Pressure is Off, by Larry Crabb (non-fiction); The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (fantasy fiction).
What are you most thankful for in life?
My wife and children.
Links:
Superior Justice:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003...
Superior Storm:
http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Storm-...
Superior Secrets:
http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Secret...
Those dangerous mountain roads
Driving over the mountain roads in Albania recently, the tops dusted with fresh snow, reminds me of warmer days depicted in Chapter 1 of The Silencer, and evoked here in photographer Peter Wilson’s beautiful photo.
Chapter 1
South of Tirana, Albania.
Pic. P.Wilson.
Away to the west the view opened out before him. The ridgelines of mountains, light brown and then deep brown into shadow, rose beyond each other for over fifty kilometres fading into the blue haze. The sun was falling lower over them tingeing the dust with an orange-pink. Jude leant forwards to see and felt pleasure well up. There was an eruption of birdsong from beneath the old man’s jacket. He reached inside it methodically and Jude watched half-expecting him to draw out a canary in a protective caress. He lifted a mobile phone to his ear.
“Alo. I’m on the Krrabë road! What? Wait, I said. I’m coming!” he shouted. All eyes turned to glower at him. He sniffed and seemed oblivious to it.
Jude turned around to drink in the view through the rear window. A dark blue ‘90s Mercedes with a broken headlight was drawing up behind them. The van driver now began to accelerate as the road levelled out along the top of the ridge. He tapped out a cigarette from a pack on the dashboard and slipped it into the corner of his mouth, glanced in his side mirror, and squared himself at the wheel. The Mercedes pulled out to the left and began to draw alongside. A sign with white arrows on black indicating a sharp turn left was coming closer. An old, Chinese truck came rasping around the bend with its horn on. Jude tightened his grip a little on the seat in front. The Mercedes braked and swung back sharply in behind them. He could see a faint grin of pleasure on the van driver’s face in the rear-view mirror as he touched the lighter to his cigarette. He manoeuvred the gears upwards.
A line of pylons marched up the mountain’s flank and across the road ahead of them. In seconds, the wires few over their heads. A white stony riverbed snaked away on the valley floor, perhaps five kilometres away, the water catching the sun and flashing its message. The driver’s mobile phone rang with the Nokia tone and with one hand on the wheel he put it to his ear.
“E, mo!” he shouted. ”What’s up?” As they took the bend the van tires began to sing on the road surface. He dropped the phone and the cigarette into his lap and gripped the wheel. Jude ran his hand through his hair and felt his heart beat quicken. The driver began beating the burning tobacco off his lap.
“O, zoti Schumacher? Take it easy there!” Jude called to him. The youth turned around and grinned. The Mercedes pulled out to the left for another attempt to pass and began to pull up level. Jude looked down at the two men sitting in the front. Both wore clean, blue shirts and sunglasses. The passenger looked up at Jude, and then seemed to nod to his driver. The road swung to the left over a narrow bridge and the Mercedes was forced back again in behind the van beating on its horn.
Whitewashed, stone walls, holding back the mountain dirt behind them, streamed past stencilled with logos and sprayed with graffiti: ‘Albanian Exhausts’, ‘Geri’, ‘LSI’… Then came a café plastered with Nescafe posters, a man selling ice cream from a scratched refrigerator, and an old man bobbing sidesaddle on a mule laden with white sacks, flicking its rump with a stick. The old man in the cloth cap called something to the driver but he didn’t respond. Jude could feel touches of cold sweat on his palms. He took his glasses off and cleaned the condensation with his T-shirt.
“Lord, keep us on the road!” he prayed under his breath. He glanced backwards. The Mercedes was right up to the van’s bumper. It swung back to the left and pulled parallel, the driver hammering his horn. Then it touched the side with a metallic grate.
“Zot i madh! God!” shouted the driver, jerking his head to the left and back to the road ahead. The youth pressed his face to the glass angrily waving the car to pass. The road forced the Mercedes back.
Old concrete telegraph poles flashed past, tilted, fallen and then gaps, some with scraps of wire hanging down. Below them were short white posts topped with a red tip that looked to Jude like cigarette sweets. A policeman standing in a dirt lay-by vainly lifted his traffic lollipop and then stood back, hands on his hips and cap pushed back. Jude leant forward to see if he could catch the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. The speedometer was past 120 km/h…
From Chapter 11
With his cheek pressed deeply into the pillow Jude lay on his front. He could not get into a comfortable position. He reached for his mobile phone on the bedside cabinet and checked the time. It was 4.08am. He held its lit face over Alex and saw she was sleeping deeply. He slid it under the pillow and dropped his head. He thought about how the culture had worn her down as she tried to help the women economically as well as spiritually. His mind moved to Spiro: would Mehmed’s book be ready for the biennial conference? It drifted to Valon’s daughter, Kela, in Shënvogël and if the local doctors would really help her. He spun over and lay on his back. He heard a man singing drunkenly down in the stairwell, and somewhere the raised voices of a couple rowing. A taxi van rumbled down May 5th Street, hunting for passengers for its early morning Tirana run.
On the dressing table was a photo in a clip frame that Alex had taken of light shafts on the grey sea off the cliffs of Bournemouth, where her parents had run a bed and breakfast establishment. Streetlight came through a gap in the curtains and reflected off its glass surface giving a point for the eye to fix on. In that moment, the noises around seemed to fade down. The curtain fluttered by the open window. The particles of air seemed almost charged with something. Alex turned over and sat upright.
“Jude… I just had a dream,” she said breathily. “It was very vivid. Can you get me a glass of water?” Jude kicked off the sheet on his side and felt the floor with his feet for his slippers. He switched on the side lamp and watched Alex push herself back against the wall. She wiped her face with her hands, her magnified shadow moving against the orange glow on the wall. He felt his way through to the kitchen in the darkness and fumbled for a glass in the cupboard. He filled it from the tap and returned. He handed it to her and sat down on the edge of the bed. “So what was it?” he said.
“Wait,” she said. She was breathing heavily. She drank several gulps and then caught her breath. “There was a man trying to wrap himself in a flag… as the breeze seemed to lift it off him. It was a red one… but not the Albanian flag. It had a white crescent and a star on it.”
“It’s the Turkish flag,” said Jude.
“I also saw one of those blue glass ‘evil eye’ charms they sell in the market here. Only it was big, like a moon… and it was riding through the night as it passed over the lights of towns below it… Alexandroupoli, Xanthi…” She seemed to pause mid-sentence.
“Those are Greek towns,” he said.
“There was a man looking at a name on a computer screen… It was your name Jude.”
“The same man with the flag?”
“They had no clear form. I don’t know.” Jude ran his hand back through his hair. “And what do you make of it?” he said as he looked at her. She held her gaze forwards as if looking beyond their bedroom. She cast him an anxious glance sideways.
“Let me pray. That’s all I can recall of it,” she said. She lowered herself under the sheet and closed her eyes. Jude lay down on the bed beside her. He felt her reach for his hand and he slid it to her. He turned off the side lamp and looked up at the ceiling. He knew that God had used dreams to speak to Alex in the past. He remembered her ‘Clapham Junction’ dream when she came to faith, but what did this one mean? Did it mean anything at all? How on earth was he to know? When he fell asleep, before Alex, sometime around 5am, the dawn light had crept into the room.
From Chapter 27
Shpetim fastened the buttons of his white shirt, took his mobile phone and a slate grey suit jacket, and left the house immediately after Jude’s phone call. It was now urgent, he felt, to find and confront this Sheref Dushman. In a town of 30,000 people, he knew he could locate him given time, maybe not too much, unless he chanced upon him quickly. He decided he would check out the three main hotels, though he knew there were dozens more and some that didn’t even sign in their guests. He made some calls to local contacts. Then he walked repeatedly between Shënomadh County Police Directorate and the high street watching.
At 10.55am he took a phone call from his SHISH director ordering him to return to operations monitoring the civil disturbances. He rubbed his temples lightly with his thumb and middle finger. The consequences for him if he delayed would be very serious. He walked out into the centre of the high street and looked both ways searching. His phone vibrated in his hand. He took the call.
“Alo,” a man shouted. “Bledi Shehu jam. You came yesterday? My grandmother just told me. She’s not as she was… her legs, her ears, her head… you know.”
“Bledi… police. You brought a man up from the border on Tuesday morning. Where did you drop him?”
“Po. By the hotels on Rruga e Gështenjave… what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I’ll be in touch.” Shpetim hung up. He looked down the high street to the top of the avenue of horse chestnut trees around 200 metres away. He began to jog towards it.
He turned the corner and ran on until he came to the side street. A woman in a white cleaner’s jacket sat on a chair outside the first hotel. He took out the folded print out with an enlarged, grainy passport photo of Sheref on it and showed it to her.
“I’m looking for this man. Have you seen him?” he said authoritatively.
“Yes… he checked out about two hours ago.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“He paid his bill… what can I say?” she shrugged. She smoothed back her tight, purple-black hair considering something. “He had strange eyes, though… when he took his sunglasses off… cold, cloudy… huh, like a fish left too long out of the water.” Shpetim stood thinking as he stared at her. She began to shuffle uneasily. Maybe he had just moved on to another town, he thought. Or maybe this is his final day?
He spun on the ball of his foot and walked back onto the avenue. He began to walk quickly past the trees as a wind started to churn their leaves. A shower of chestnuts drummed down onto the tarmac scattering as he crossed over. He jogged past the sliding doors of Banka Alpha where an LCD clock read 11.30 am. He lifted his phone to his ear and pressed a speed-dial option.
“Luan, can you get over to May 5th Street, Jude’s block,” he said. “Yes… I know Burim’s got the Mercedes!” He slung his jacket over his shoulder and the holstered pistol wrapped inside it thudded into his back as he moved. He jogged along the pavement of the main road clipping a café chair with his hip knocking it over. He stopped and ran back to pick it up apologising to an angry waiter. He jogged quicker now breaking into a run along the edge of the road.
Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Highland Books Ltd. 2012. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silencer-...
Taken from:
Chapter 1
South of Tirana, Albania.
Pic. P.Wilson.
Away to the west the view opened out before him. The ridgelines of mountains, light brown and then deep brown into shadow, rose beyond each other for over fifty kilometres fading into the blue haze. The sun was falling lower over them tingeing the dust with an orange-pink. Jude leant forwards to see and felt pleasure well up. There was an eruption of birdsong from beneath the old man’s jacket. He reached inside it methodically and Jude watched half-expecting him to draw out a canary in a protective caress. He lifted a mobile phone to his ear.
“Alo. I’m on the Krrabë road! What? Wait, I said. I’m coming!” he shouted. All eyes turned to glower at him. He sniffed and seemed oblivious to it.
Jude turned around to drink in the view through the rear window. A dark blue ‘90s Mercedes with a broken headlight was drawing up behind them. The van driver now began to accelerate as the road levelled out along the top of the ridge. He tapped out a cigarette from a pack on the dashboard and slipped it into the corner of his mouth, glanced in his side mirror, and squared himself at the wheel. The Mercedes pulled out to the left and began to draw alongside. A sign with white arrows on black indicating a sharp turn left was coming closer. An old, Chinese truck came rasping around the bend with its horn on. Jude tightened his grip a little on the seat in front. The Mercedes braked and swung back sharply in behind them. He could see a faint grin of pleasure on the van driver’s face in the rear-view mirror as he touched the lighter to his cigarette. He manoeuvred the gears upwards.
A line of pylons marched up the mountain’s flank and across the road ahead of them. In seconds, the wires few over their heads. A white stony riverbed snaked away on the valley floor, perhaps five kilometres away, the water catching the sun and flashing its message. The driver’s mobile phone rang with the Nokia tone and with one hand on the wheel he put it to his ear.
“E, mo!” he shouted. ”What’s up?” As they took the bend the van tires began to sing on the road surface. He dropped the phone and the cigarette into his lap and gripped the wheel. Jude ran his hand through his hair and felt his heart beat quicken. The driver began beating the burning tobacco off his lap.
“O, zoti Schumacher? Take it easy there!” Jude called to him. The youth turned around and grinned. The Mercedes pulled out to the left for another attempt to pass and began to pull up level. Jude looked down at the two men sitting in the front. Both wore clean, blue shirts and sunglasses. The passenger looked up at Jude, and then seemed to nod to his driver. The road swung to the left over a narrow bridge and the Mercedes was forced back again in behind the van beating on its horn.
Whitewashed, stone walls, holding back the mountain dirt behind them, streamed past stencilled with logos and sprayed with graffiti: ‘Albanian Exhausts’, ‘Geri’, ‘LSI’… Then came a café plastered with Nescafe posters, a man selling ice cream from a scratched refrigerator, and an old man bobbing sidesaddle on a mule laden with white sacks, flicking its rump with a stick. The old man in the cloth cap called something to the driver but he didn’t respond. Jude could feel touches of cold sweat on his palms. He took his glasses off and cleaned the condensation with his T-shirt.
“Lord, keep us on the road!” he prayed under his breath. He glanced backwards. The Mercedes was right up to the van’s bumper. It swung back to the left and pulled parallel, the driver hammering his horn. Then it touched the side with a metallic grate.
“Zot i madh! God!” shouted the driver, jerking his head to the left and back to the road ahead. The youth pressed his face to the glass angrily waving the car to pass. The road forced the Mercedes back.
Old concrete telegraph poles flashed past, tilted, fallen and then gaps, some with scraps of wire hanging down. Below them were short white posts topped with a red tip that looked to Jude like cigarette sweets. A policeman standing in a dirt lay-by vainly lifted his traffic lollipop and then stood back, hands on his hips and cap pushed back. Jude leant forward to see if he could catch the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. The speedometer was past 120 km/h…
From Chapter 11
With his cheek pressed deeply into the pillow Jude lay on his front. He could not get into a comfortable position. He reached for his mobile phone on the bedside cabinet and checked the time. It was 4.08am. He held its lit face over Alex and saw she was sleeping deeply. He slid it under the pillow and dropped his head. He thought about how the culture had worn her down as she tried to help the women economically as well as spiritually. His mind moved to Spiro: would Mehmed’s book be ready for the biennial conference? It drifted to Valon’s daughter, Kela, in Shënvogël and if the local doctors would really help her. He spun over and lay on his back. He heard a man singing drunkenly down in the stairwell, and somewhere the raised voices of a couple rowing. A taxi van rumbled down May 5th Street, hunting for passengers for its early morning Tirana run.
On the dressing table was a photo in a clip frame that Alex had taken of light shafts on the grey sea off the cliffs of Bournemouth, where her parents had run a bed and breakfast establishment. Streetlight came through a gap in the curtains and reflected off its glass surface giving a point for the eye to fix on. In that moment, the noises around seemed to fade down. The curtain fluttered by the open window. The particles of air seemed almost charged with something. Alex turned over and sat upright.
“Jude… I just had a dream,” she said breathily. “It was very vivid. Can you get me a glass of water?” Jude kicked off the sheet on his side and felt the floor with his feet for his slippers. He switched on the side lamp and watched Alex push herself back against the wall. She wiped her face with her hands, her magnified shadow moving against the orange glow on the wall. He felt his way through to the kitchen in the darkness and fumbled for a glass in the cupboard. He filled it from the tap and returned. He handed it to her and sat down on the edge of the bed. “So what was it?” he said.
“Wait,” she said. She was breathing heavily. She drank several gulps and then caught her breath. “There was a man trying to wrap himself in a flag… as the breeze seemed to lift it off him. It was a red one… but not the Albanian flag. It had a white crescent and a star on it.”
“It’s the Turkish flag,” said Jude.
“I also saw one of those blue glass ‘evil eye’ charms they sell in the market here. Only it was big, like a moon… and it was riding through the night as it passed over the lights of towns below it… Alexandroupoli, Xanthi…” She seemed to pause mid-sentence.
“Those are Greek towns,” he said.
“There was a man looking at a name on a computer screen… It was your name Jude.”
“The same man with the flag?”
“They had no clear form. I don’t know.” Jude ran his hand back through his hair. “And what do you make of it?” he said as he looked at her. She held her gaze forwards as if looking beyond their bedroom. She cast him an anxious glance sideways.
“Let me pray. That’s all I can recall of it,” she said. She lowered herself under the sheet and closed her eyes. Jude lay down on the bed beside her. He felt her reach for his hand and he slid it to her. He turned off the side lamp and looked up at the ceiling. He knew that God had used dreams to speak to Alex in the past. He remembered her ‘Clapham Junction’ dream when she came to faith, but what did this one mean? Did it mean anything at all? How on earth was he to know? When he fell asleep, before Alex, sometime around 5am, the dawn light had crept into the room.
From Chapter 27
Shpetim fastened the buttons of his white shirt, took his mobile phone and a slate grey suit jacket, and left the house immediately after Jude’s phone call. It was now urgent, he felt, to find and confront this Sheref Dushman. In a town of 30,000 people, he knew he could locate him given time, maybe not too much, unless he chanced upon him quickly. He decided he would check out the three main hotels, though he knew there were dozens more and some that didn’t even sign in their guests. He made some calls to local contacts. Then he walked repeatedly between Shënomadh County Police Directorate and the high street watching.
At 10.55am he took a phone call from his SHISH director ordering him to return to operations monitoring the civil disturbances. He rubbed his temples lightly with his thumb and middle finger. The consequences for him if he delayed would be very serious. He walked out into the centre of the high street and looked both ways searching. His phone vibrated in his hand. He took the call.
“Alo,” a man shouted. “Bledi Shehu jam. You came yesterday? My grandmother just told me. She’s not as she was… her legs, her ears, her head… you know.”
“Bledi… police. You brought a man up from the border on Tuesday morning. Where did you drop him?”
“Po. By the hotels on Rruga e Gështenjave… what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I’ll be in touch.” Shpetim hung up. He looked down the high street to the top of the avenue of horse chestnut trees around 200 metres away. He began to jog towards it.
He turned the corner and ran on until he came to the side street. A woman in a white cleaner’s jacket sat on a chair outside the first hotel. He took out the folded print out with an enlarged, grainy passport photo of Sheref on it and showed it to her.
“I’m looking for this man. Have you seen him?” he said authoritatively.
“Yes… he checked out about two hours ago.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“He paid his bill… what can I say?” she shrugged. She smoothed back her tight, purple-black hair considering something. “He had strange eyes, though… when he took his sunglasses off… cold, cloudy… huh, like a fish left too long out of the water.” Shpetim stood thinking as he stared at her. She began to shuffle uneasily. Maybe he had just moved on to another town, he thought. Or maybe this is his final day?
He spun on the ball of his foot and walked back onto the avenue. He began to walk quickly past the trees as a wind started to churn their leaves. A shower of chestnuts drummed down onto the tarmac scattering as he crossed over. He jogged past the sliding doors of Banka Alpha where an LCD clock read 11.30 am. He lifted his phone to his ear and pressed a speed-dial option.
“Luan, can you get over to May 5th Street, Jude’s block,” he said. “Yes… I know Burim’s got the Mercedes!” He slung his jacket over his shoulder and the holstered pistol wrapped inside it thudded into his back as he moved. He jogged along the pavement of the main road clipping a café chair with his hip knocking it over. He stopped and ran back to pick it up apologising to an angry waiter. He jogged quicker now breaking into a run along the edge of the road.
Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Highland Books Ltd. 2012. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silencer-...
Taken from:
'The Silencer' Reviewed
The Silencer by Paul AlkazrajiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
They said...
‘Paul Alkazraji's novel conveys a vivid and atmospheric impression of life in the Balkans. His characters are believable and real, some of them loveable and slightly eccentric. This is a thriller in the old style, building up a picture with skill and dexterity, and as the plot becomes tense towards the end of the book, it is a real page-turner. Highly recommended!!’
Grace Turner. Author of ‘The Kings Gold’, Monarch Books.
---
Great holiday read
‘I enjoyed this read while taking time out; it was easy to recognize the Balkan attitudes, the dangers in that area of the world, and the fundamentalist mindset. A great read for a journey or the beach, with a tea or a Raki.’
Ian Loring, subject of ‘Christ and the Kalashnikov’, Zondervan. Amazon.co.uk
---
Great story by a master creator of images
‘The Silencer does a wonderful job of bringing to life the culture, climate and topography of the Balkans, especially Turkey, Greece and Albania. I've been living in the Balkans myself for 24 years and I instantly recognized the place descriptions in Paul's book. And it's not a bad tale, either. Paul gives an excellent portrayal of Albanian culture, both its positive and negative aspects. He tells an inspiring story of selflessness, sacrifice, and love overcoming evil. Highly recommended.’
Dan Truitt. Amazon.co.uk
---
A gripping read from start to finish
‘The Silencer is a gripping, edge-of-your-seat thriller set in Albania and Turkey. It captures the atmosphere and characters of Albania very well, and the plot carries you along at a great pace. Full of suspense, I found it hard to put the book down. I rarely read books more than once but am about to read The Silencer again!’
Andrew Avramenko. Amazon.co.uk
---
‘Portraying faith in fiction is a major challenge. Believers tend to do it badly, and unbelievers find it hard to believe in! But faith is a huge part of life for millions of people... why shouldn't it surface in good-quality fiction? Paul Alkazraji's 'The silencer' is an excellent example of a whole new genre: stories that take faith seriously without seeking overtly to 'convert'. Faith-based without being faith-biased, The Silencer is a fast-moving tale that beautifully captures the landscapes and cultures of Albania. This is an author who has found a new home; has fallen in love with it, and is not afraid to let that love shape his writing. The book offers particular insight into the small but growing Albanian evangelical community: a faith-group that was officially non-existent until the Iron Curtain came down. The attempt to grow church in the nation once declared as the world's first fully atheist state; the pressures of corruption and opposition; the raw beauty of the place and its people - these are the threads that weave together to form this intriguing tale.’ This review also appears on my blog, lovethewords.com
Gerard Kelly, author.
---
A very Albanian murder
A Christian novel to be enjoyed at your leisure! This is a ‘who-dun-it’ set in Albania, and while the characters and the intrigue are completely fictional it is not difficult to understand how they could be so real in the political climate of the area. The blurb states that ‘mission is no Christian monopoly’ and as the story unfolds we see the ‘political’ and fanatical groups that endanger the work of the gospel today. A good, easy read for the lengthening evenings or a good stocking filler if this is the genre of books that you enjoy!
Val Maidstone, pastor’s wife from Dorking. Evangelicals Now, UK. November 2013.
---
‘The book is a fitting tribute to Berti (Dosti)... and thousands of other brave Albanian Christians whose testimonies helped the Church survive a difficult rebirth...” “...keeps the reader on a knife-edge until the final page.’
John Butterworth. Author of ‘God's Secret Listener’ reviewing for ‘Inspire’ UK.
---
A clear picture of the struggles, joys, and areas for prayer facing all missionaries…
‘First of all, let me say that if I was a missionary in Albania, I would want every one of my friends, family and supporters to read this book. It gives a clear picture of the struggles, joys, and areas for prayer facing all missionaries living and working with Albanians. It's done in an honest, but not sappy or overly-spiritualizing way, and I was so pleased to see such an excellent treatment of the realities of life there. It's given me new avenues for prayer. Well done.
We worked and lived in Eastern Europe and Russia for some years, so I'm familiar with a lot of the issues presented in the book. I love that it's fiction, so no one is 'implicated'. Yet, it gives the picture very clearly and without bias.’
Name withheld.
All photos. Peter Wilson.
View all my reviews
New by Paul Alkazraji.
New excerpts from 'The Silencer' (2).
Chapter 19
(Thessaloniki to Kastoria).
The coach’s hydraulic brakes let out stuttering hisses
to accompany the high beeps of its reversing alarm.
Sheref watched the silver dome of the Macedonia
Coach Terminal glint in the sun and slip away on
his right behind him. The ‘KTEL’ ticket office there
had informed him that the journey to Kastoria in
northwest Greece would take around four hours.
He knew that it would then be only a short taxi
ride to the nearby Albanian border. He reflected
momentarily on the morning. He had woken just
after 7.00am, paid cash and collected his passport
from the Hotel Persephone receptionist: she with
the cherry lipstick, who had again maddeningly
avoided eye contact with him. He had then waved
down a dark blue Mercedes taxi on Monastiriou
Street for the short drive to the terminal. He checked
his watch: it read 9.06am, Sunday, August 24th. The
coach was half full with passengers, all Greeks he
thought, and he had taken a seat over the rear left
wheel arch with no one immediately to his front or
right for removal from close contact with them. The
sun was already burning the left side of his head. He
drew the pleated orange curtain halfway across the
window for shade, and to psychologically fortify his
private enclosure.
Sheref took out the road map and guidebook
from his backpack and tossed them on the empty
seat beside him. The coach began to accelerate past
tall cranes angled in the city’s port before the hazy
blue Gulf of Thermi, and billboards for concerts with
silver-moustached musicians, before filtering onto
the Via Egnatia Motorway. He slunk a little lower in
the seat and watched the oncoming flow of traffic to
his left.
A stretch of water flashed by below the roadside
fence and he checked his map. It was probably the
River Axios Vardaris, he thought. The coach shortly
began to slow and he sat up to peer forwards. Lanes
of traffic were queuing ahead into a wide row of
booths. Above them was a line of blue signs, each
with a white outline of a man wearing a flat-topped,
peaked cap like a French gendarme. He felt his
backpack pockets hastily to locate his passport. He
hunched his shoulders around himself a little and
pressed his fingers into the palms of his hands. As
the traffic edged closer to the row of rising and
falling barriers, he reassured himself that it was just
a road toll station. As they passed through, on the
right side there were parked lorries, and Kantina
vans smoking from griddle meat with chairs set
out on decks for customers. A Greek policeman
slouched on the front wing of his white car drinking
from a polystyrene cup. He rose and lifted his
mobile phone to his ear closely watching the coach
pass. When Sheref released his clench, rows of white
dimples were imprinted on his palms.
He took a gulp of mineral water from a small,
plastic bottle and splashed some over his face to
ease the heat. He ran his finger and thumb around
the edges of his top lip to clear off the sweat. He
watched the bushes blooming with pink flowers in
the lay-bys pass, and soon he was looking out across
orchards of peach trees dotted with the pulsing
sprays of water sprinklers. Away to the south, above
lower slopes darkened by forest, a high ridge of
jagged peaks rose up still tipped with snow. That,
I think, must be Mount Olympus, he observed
flicking through his guidebook: Greece’s highest
mountain, chosen by the ancients as the abode of
their gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. A pang of
yearning seemed to escape from some cavern deep
within him. His thoughts moved to Hanife and her
submission to the religion of his land, but he? Who
did he follow? Well, he had his path now with its
own motion and trajectory. Where was that coffee
shop hag’s guide: remote with Zeus, or with him?
“Haydi!” he whispered. She’d cheated him of two
good lira and laughed at his back! He took out his
camera, pointed it roughly at Olympus, and pressed
the shutter button a few times. He circled it with a
pen in the book. He glanced over the nearby entry
for the Royal Tombs of Vergina, the first capital of
Macedon, thought to house the remains of Alexander
the Great’s son, and where King Philip II was
assassinated. He circled that too for good measure.
He noticed a road sign for the town of Veria pass
on his right, and then the motorway began to climb.
The coach’s engine growled against the incline and
they passed into the shade of a road tunnel and then
another one. When they entered the third one he
began keeping count. His eyes passed over the green
lights and arrows above the lanes, the signs to turn
on headlights, and those with the tunnels’ length.
Still they kept coming and he saw that the tenth one
was 2.2km long. Here in the extended darkness he
watched the wall lights, white on his left and red
on his right, streaming past. Fans, like jet turbines,
fastened to the roof, seemed to him to be propelling
him forwards like a bullet down a barrel. Before the
thirteenth tunnel, he saw a sign saying ‘Call 1077 in
an emergency’.
The coach rocked along past a row of unmanned
tollbooths and the motorway began to descend
gradually into a wide, flat valley. They passed
under a line of pylons crossing the plain, their heads
horned and arms hanging at the elbows clutching
cables as they filed towards a distant power station.
He stared ahead. There detachments of them converged
to fetch and carry electricity. High red and
white striped chimneys rose among them, and from
a cooling tower a cloud of steam arched into the sky
like a giant question mark.
A rocky outcrop with a pinnacle like some
straying child below it passed by close to the motorway’s
edge, and soon it swept through a pass in a
range of hills running left to right. As the driver drew
off the slip road at Siatista, a squat factory chimney
made of bricks caught his eye. He checked the time: it
was just before mid-day. They now took a main road
that wound through woods and open country with
mountains, dry, brown and bare, to his right, and
hills lower and undulating to his left. He thought
he felt something like the brushing of silk pass over
the skin of his right arm. He touched it. Road works
and yellow earthmoving vehicles parked by a wide,
empty stretch of pristine tarmac came into view. A
strange new lightness of heart had come over him.
It was a feeling of wellbeing, an inner warmth not
sensed since childhood. He became aware that he
had been feeling like this for perhaps ten minutes.
He turned to see a man sitting in the aisle seat
on his right. His arms flinched slightly into his chest
with the shock. How long had he been sitting there?
How could it be that he had not seen nor heard him
come? The man was staring straight ahead and did
not look back at him. He wore a plain white T-shirt
and light fawn trousers. His black hair flowed onto
his shoulders thick and fragrant with a sweet aroma
that Sheref now breathed in. He found himself
staring at the man’s face: a strong and shapely nose
and eyes with a beauty that was almost feminine.
His nationality was not apparent: Greek, Turk or
Albanian, nor his age. Then he thought he heard the
words: “Go back to your father.” A feeling of cool
air being blown onto his cheek made him touch it.
He lifted his head to check the air-con valve but it
was off. As he did so it was as if he rose outside of
himself. Questions about what he was undertaking
seemed suddenly to touch him. Where am I going?
What is this I’m doing? Light, like the reflection of
the sun flashing off a mirror or window, caught his
eyes and dazzled him momentarily. He covered
them with his hand and then removed it. He turned
his head again to the man. He was no longer there.
He yanked himself up by the seat in front to see if
he was moving down the coach. There was no one
in the aisle.
He saw a sign with ‘Kastoria’ written on it, and
soon the road was skirting the shore of a lake on his
right-hand side. A couple of smart hotels passed by
and a warehouse with an illuminated sign above it
where a model pressed a thick fur coat to her neck.
Through gaps in the buildings he caught glimpses
across greeny-blue water to a peninsular of land with
white houses stacked up its steep sides. He scanned
the guidebook entry for the town. Kastori was Greek
for beaver, once central to the local fur trade. He
took out a pen but somehow did not follow through
in circling it.
The coach pulled up in a car park by a taxi
rank and a row of quiet shops and cafes. He looked
keenly for the man with the feminine eyes as he
disembarked, but he did not see him. He bought some
pastries from a baker’s and ate them as he stared
across a children’s playground to the lake. A couple
of swans skimmed over the water’s surface as they
landed by a patch of reeds. Wooden rowing boats
bobbed at their moorings there, one striped with the
blue and white colours of the Greek flag, with green
fishing nets draped across them.
Sheref walked to a cafe and sat in the shade of its
canopy on a low, leather sofa. The waiter set down a
bottle of mineral water, cool with condensation, on
the glass coffee table before him and he ordered an
iced latte. His mind kept returning to the man on
the bus. An odd, yet pleasant, bemusement lingered
from the incident that he was trying to process. He
took out his mobile phone and turned it on. He then
fiddled with it a little; the back light was now flickering
and the 7 button was functioning only intermittently.
He shook it and tapped it. Why had he not
fixed it? The latte was brought and he sipped it a
little and drank a glass of water. His phone began
to vibrate, rattling loudly on the coffee table glass.
It was Hanife! He looked at it for a few seconds and
then picked it up.
“Sheref! Where are you?” he heard her say anxiously.
“Why was your phone off? I’ve been trying to call you!”
“I’m in Greece…” An answer came to him: “You
know what roaming rates are like!”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just drinking a coffee. There’s a… nice lake
here.”
“Don’t be angry with me… I told baba that you
were going to Albania.”
“Why did you do that?” he shouted curtly.
“He’s here.”
“What? No I don’t want to...”
“Sheref?” The sound of his father’s voice made
him screw up his eyes tightly. He’d said his name
softly, without accusation or reproach, for the first
time in so long. Sheref lowered the phone to his
chest for a moment. He swallowed. A tear welled
up and it fell with a ‘pat’ onto his thigh. He could
hear his father saying his name repeatedly, anxious
they’d been cut off.
“Yes?”
“I have… this fine new samovar… at the Bazaar.
It makes good tea… that is to say… when you have
seen those Arnavutlar.” Sheref understood what he
was trying to say.
“Yes baba,” he said. A few moments of silence
passed and Sheref pressed the red button to end the
call. He lowered his head and his shoulders shook as
he sobbed. He brushed his cheeks quickly with his
fingers, checked the receipt, and left his unfinished
latte and three euros on the table.
He walked over a patch of dry grassy ground and
then across a road to a pavement along the water’s
edge. He followed it thinking. The trees by the shore
had been painted with skirts of whitewash. There
were more cafes here with their tables arranged
under the shade of canopies, mobiles tingling above
them in the mild breeze. He passed a small boy with
a face smeared with pink ice cream rocking happily
on a child’s ride. White, timbered mansions rose
up the hillside on his left, and conifer trees clung to
the rocky hillsides around. He sat down on a bench
affected by the peace of the place. There he watched
a man casting his rod and line out across the water
and he thought of the Galata Bridge and the waters
of the Golden Horn. The high, afternoon sun blazed
off the surface, and a white sail turned slowly in
the shimmering glare and moved back towards
land. He had made a decision. He would stay here
tonight. Tomorrow, yes, let it be so, he would return
to Istanbul.
Paul Alkazraji.
Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Highland Books Ltd. 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Find ‘The Silencer’ on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...
Also by this author.
(Thessaloniki to Kastoria).
The coach’s hydraulic brakes let out stuttering hisses
to accompany the high beeps of its reversing alarm.
Sheref watched the silver dome of the Macedonia
Coach Terminal glint in the sun and slip away on
his right behind him. The ‘KTEL’ ticket office there
had informed him that the journey to Kastoria in
northwest Greece would take around four hours.
He knew that it would then be only a short taxi
ride to the nearby Albanian border. He reflected
momentarily on the morning. He had woken just
after 7.00am, paid cash and collected his passport
from the Hotel Persephone receptionist: she with
the cherry lipstick, who had again maddeningly
avoided eye contact with him. He had then waved
down a dark blue Mercedes taxi on Monastiriou
Street for the short drive to the terminal. He checked
his watch: it read 9.06am, Sunday, August 24th. The
coach was half full with passengers, all Greeks he
thought, and he had taken a seat over the rear left
wheel arch with no one immediately to his front or
right for removal from close contact with them. The
sun was already burning the left side of his head. He
drew the pleated orange curtain halfway across the
window for shade, and to psychologically fortify his
private enclosure.
Sheref took out the road map and guidebook
from his backpack and tossed them on the empty
seat beside him. The coach began to accelerate past
tall cranes angled in the city’s port before the hazy
blue Gulf of Thermi, and billboards for concerts with
silver-moustached musicians, before filtering onto
the Via Egnatia Motorway. He slunk a little lower in
the seat and watched the oncoming flow of traffic to
his left.
A stretch of water flashed by below the roadside
fence and he checked his map. It was probably the
River Axios Vardaris, he thought. The coach shortly
began to slow and he sat up to peer forwards. Lanes
of traffic were queuing ahead into a wide row of
booths. Above them was a line of blue signs, each
with a white outline of a man wearing a flat-topped,
peaked cap like a French gendarme. He felt his
backpack pockets hastily to locate his passport. He
hunched his shoulders around himself a little and
pressed his fingers into the palms of his hands. As
the traffic edged closer to the row of rising and
falling barriers, he reassured himself that it was just
a road toll station. As they passed through, on the
right side there were parked lorries, and Kantina
vans smoking from griddle meat with chairs set
out on decks for customers. A Greek policeman
slouched on the front wing of his white car drinking
from a polystyrene cup. He rose and lifted his
mobile phone to his ear closely watching the coach
pass. When Sheref released his clench, rows of white
dimples were imprinted on his palms.
He took a gulp of mineral water from a small,
plastic bottle and splashed some over his face to
ease the heat. He ran his finger and thumb around
the edges of his top lip to clear off the sweat. He
watched the bushes blooming with pink flowers in
the lay-bys pass, and soon he was looking out across
orchards of peach trees dotted with the pulsing
sprays of water sprinklers. Away to the south, above
lower slopes darkened by forest, a high ridge of
jagged peaks rose up still tipped with snow. That,
I think, must be Mount Olympus, he observed
flicking through his guidebook: Greece’s highest
mountain, chosen by the ancients as the abode of
their gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. A pang of
yearning seemed to escape from some cavern deep
within him. His thoughts moved to Hanife and her
submission to the religion of his land, but he? Who
did he follow? Well, he had his path now with its
own motion and trajectory. Where was that coffee
shop hag’s guide: remote with Zeus, or with him?
“Haydi!” he whispered. She’d cheated him of two
good lira and laughed at his back! He took out his
camera, pointed it roughly at Olympus, and pressed
the shutter button a few times. He circled it with a
pen in the book. He glanced over the nearby entry
for the Royal Tombs of Vergina, the first capital of
Macedon, thought to house the remains of Alexander
the Great’s son, and where King Philip II was
assassinated. He circled that too for good measure.
He noticed a road sign for the town of Veria pass
on his right, and then the motorway began to climb.
The coach’s engine growled against the incline and
they passed into the shade of a road tunnel and then
another one. When they entered the third one he
began keeping count. His eyes passed over the green
lights and arrows above the lanes, the signs to turn
on headlights, and those with the tunnels’ length.
Still they kept coming and he saw that the tenth one
was 2.2km long. Here in the extended darkness he
watched the wall lights, white on his left and red
on his right, streaming past. Fans, like jet turbines,
fastened to the roof, seemed to him to be propelling
him forwards like a bullet down a barrel. Before the
thirteenth tunnel, he saw a sign saying ‘Call 1077 in
an emergency’.
The coach rocked along past a row of unmanned
tollbooths and the motorway began to descend
gradually into a wide, flat valley. They passed
under a line of pylons crossing the plain, their heads
horned and arms hanging at the elbows clutching
cables as they filed towards a distant power station.
He stared ahead. There detachments of them converged
to fetch and carry electricity. High red and
white striped chimneys rose among them, and from
a cooling tower a cloud of steam arched into the sky
like a giant question mark.
A rocky outcrop with a pinnacle like some
straying child below it passed by close to the motorway’s
edge, and soon it swept through a pass in a
range of hills running left to right. As the driver drew
off the slip road at Siatista, a squat factory chimney
made of bricks caught his eye. He checked the time: it
was just before mid-day. They now took a main road
that wound through woods and open country with
mountains, dry, brown and bare, to his right, and
hills lower and undulating to his left. He thought
he felt something like the brushing of silk pass over
the skin of his right arm. He touched it. Road works
and yellow earthmoving vehicles parked by a wide,
empty stretch of pristine tarmac came into view. A
strange new lightness of heart had come over him.
It was a feeling of wellbeing, an inner warmth not
sensed since childhood. He became aware that he
had been feeling like this for perhaps ten minutes.
He turned to see a man sitting in the aisle seat
on his right. His arms flinched slightly into his chest
with the shock. How long had he been sitting there?
How could it be that he had not seen nor heard him
come? The man was staring straight ahead and did
not look back at him. He wore a plain white T-shirt
and light fawn trousers. His black hair flowed onto
his shoulders thick and fragrant with a sweet aroma
that Sheref now breathed in. He found himself
staring at the man’s face: a strong and shapely nose
and eyes with a beauty that was almost feminine.
His nationality was not apparent: Greek, Turk or
Albanian, nor his age. Then he thought he heard the
words: “Go back to your father.” A feeling of cool
air being blown onto his cheek made him touch it.
He lifted his head to check the air-con valve but it
was off. As he did so it was as if he rose outside of
himself. Questions about what he was undertaking
seemed suddenly to touch him. Where am I going?
What is this I’m doing? Light, like the reflection of
the sun flashing off a mirror or window, caught his
eyes and dazzled him momentarily. He covered
them with his hand and then removed it. He turned
his head again to the man. He was no longer there.
He yanked himself up by the seat in front to see if
he was moving down the coach. There was no one
in the aisle.
He saw a sign with ‘Kastoria’ written on it, and
soon the road was skirting the shore of a lake on his
right-hand side. A couple of smart hotels passed by
and a warehouse with an illuminated sign above it
where a model pressed a thick fur coat to her neck.
Through gaps in the buildings he caught glimpses
across greeny-blue water to a peninsular of land with
white houses stacked up its steep sides. He scanned
the guidebook entry for the town. Kastori was Greek
for beaver, once central to the local fur trade. He
took out a pen but somehow did not follow through
in circling it.
The coach pulled up in a car park by a taxi
rank and a row of quiet shops and cafes. He looked
keenly for the man with the feminine eyes as he
disembarked, but he did not see him. He bought some
pastries from a baker’s and ate them as he stared
across a children’s playground to the lake. A couple
of swans skimmed over the water’s surface as they
landed by a patch of reeds. Wooden rowing boats
bobbed at their moorings there, one striped with the
blue and white colours of the Greek flag, with green
fishing nets draped across them.
Sheref walked to a cafe and sat in the shade of its
canopy on a low, leather sofa. The waiter set down a
bottle of mineral water, cool with condensation, on
the glass coffee table before him and he ordered an
iced latte. His mind kept returning to the man on
the bus. An odd, yet pleasant, bemusement lingered
from the incident that he was trying to process. He
took out his mobile phone and turned it on. He then
fiddled with it a little; the back light was now flickering
and the 7 button was functioning only intermittently.
He shook it and tapped it. Why had he not
fixed it? The latte was brought and he sipped it a
little and drank a glass of water. His phone began
to vibrate, rattling loudly on the coffee table glass.
It was Hanife! He looked at it for a few seconds and
then picked it up.
“Sheref! Where are you?” he heard her say anxiously.
“Why was your phone off? I’ve been trying to call you!”
“I’m in Greece…” An answer came to him: “You
know what roaming rates are like!”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m just drinking a coffee. There’s a… nice lake
here.”
“Don’t be angry with me… I told baba that you
were going to Albania.”
“Why did you do that?” he shouted curtly.
“He’s here.”
“What? No I don’t want to...”
“Sheref?” The sound of his father’s voice made
him screw up his eyes tightly. He’d said his name
softly, without accusation or reproach, for the first
time in so long. Sheref lowered the phone to his
chest for a moment. He swallowed. A tear welled
up and it fell with a ‘pat’ onto his thigh. He could
hear his father saying his name repeatedly, anxious
they’d been cut off.
“Yes?”
“I have… this fine new samovar… at the Bazaar.
It makes good tea… that is to say… when you have
seen those Arnavutlar.” Sheref understood what he
was trying to say.
“Yes baba,” he said. A few moments of silence
passed and Sheref pressed the red button to end the
call. He lowered his head and his shoulders shook as
he sobbed. He brushed his cheeks quickly with his
fingers, checked the receipt, and left his unfinished
latte and three euros on the table.
He walked over a patch of dry grassy ground and
then across a road to a pavement along the water’s
edge. He followed it thinking. The trees by the shore
had been painted with skirts of whitewash. There
were more cafes here with their tables arranged
under the shade of canopies, mobiles tingling above
them in the mild breeze. He passed a small boy with
a face smeared with pink ice cream rocking happily
on a child’s ride. White, timbered mansions rose
up the hillside on his left, and conifer trees clung to
the rocky hillsides around. He sat down on a bench
affected by the peace of the place. There he watched
a man casting his rod and line out across the water
and he thought of the Galata Bridge and the waters
of the Golden Horn. The high, afternoon sun blazed
off the surface, and a white sail turned slowly in
the shimmering glare and moved back towards
land. He had made a decision. He would stay here
tonight. Tomorrow, yes, let it be so, he would return
to Istanbul.
Paul Alkazraji.
Copyright Paul Alkazraji. Highland Books Ltd. 2012. All Rights Reserved.
Find ‘The Silencer’ on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...
Also by this author.
My book @ bedtime ‘The Silencer’
Watch out for bed-time tweets from this story beginning Sunday for a week. Travel from Albania to Istanbul and back across northern Greece as a deadly danger approaches on the ‘Friendship Express’…
https://twitter.com/paul_alkazraji
Love Books tour comments on ‘The Silencer’
Readers’ comments for ‘The Silencer’ from the Love Books tour.
‘I love the cover for this book. It definitely drew me in.’ Lozzieloves.
‘A gripping read from the first page. Paul has a way of describing things so vividly, you can almost see it as if it was on TV.’ Redhead_reviews1.
‘A really enjoyable thriller that was well-written with a compelling storyline and well-developed characters that all brought something to the plot. I loved the formatting of the book and how we get the perspective of multiple characters, as that always makes me feel like I really know them.‘ Fiction Vixon18.
‘The author manages to place you amongst the pages… I love being transported between the pages of a book.’ Donna.
‘I loved this book. As it's so detailed, you can really imagine it all. Jude and his wife Alex are lovely characters, not too good to be true... ‘ Maressa.
‘The story is a journey of Jude and Alex, their struggles, challenges in order to publish a book (about) how a man turned Christian. That was the main reason I wanted to read the book, as religions and spirituality is kind of an interesting topic for me…’ Edyta.
On Goodreads:
