Storm Clouds

By Carter Seagrove

In Storm Clouds, the theft of a batch of lethal radium E catapults Alfred and Adam into the world of the industrialist, William Hartselle - a despicable monster, hell-bent on killing millions. Their search for the radioactive material takes them first to Corvo in the Azores where they find not the radium but a man, Salvatore, enslaved by Hartselle, who gives them a nightmarish glimpse into the maniacal and sadistic brain of the man whom governments bow to. Salvatore unwittingly provides the crime-busting duo with the vital clue to the whereabouts of the radium and the showdown stage is set. Recruiting Antonio Borelli to the cause, they rush to Badenweiler in Germany to prevent mass-murder.

Time is always against the pair as they race from Corvo to Badenweiler, dodging assassins, never sure where the next bullet is coming from.

Storm Clouds is the sixth story from the series, The Inspector Fenchurch Mysteries. It follows The Blakely Affair, Black Veil, Stradler’s Game, The Helios Protocol and The Fanshawe Scroll. Storm Clouds also marks the end of Series One.

There will be a second series of The Inspector Fenchurch Mysteries.

We hope that you thoroughly enjoy the story and feedback is always welcome. We hope that you thoroughly enjoy the story and feedback is always welcome. Please visit our website to find out what we’re working on next.

Thank you!
Carter Seagrove

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: May 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9783959263009

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Author’s Note

Storm Clouds is the sixth story from the series, The Inspector Fenchurch Mysteries. It follows The Blakely Affair, Black Veil, Stradler’s Game, The Helios Protocol and The Fanshawe Scroll. Storm Clouds also marks the end of Series One.

Carter Seagrove is the pseudonym of authors Alp Mortal and Chambers Mars. The Inspector Fenchurch Mysteries series is the first output of the union following the experimental project Dust Jacket ... and there will be others!

In Storm Clouds, the theft of a batch of lethal radium E catapults Alfred and Adam into the world of the industrialist, William Hartselle - a despicable monster, hell-bent on killing millions. Their search for the radioactive material takes them first to Corvo in the Azores where they find not the radium but a man, Salvatore, enslaved by Hartselle, who gives them a nightmarish glimpse into the maniacal and sadistic brain of the man whom governments bow to. Salvatore unwittingly provides the crime- busting duo with the vital clue to the whereabouts of the radium and the showdown stage is set. Recruiting Antonio Borelli to the cause, they rush to Badenweiler in Germany to prevent mass-murder.

Time is always against the pair as they race from Corvo to Badenweiler, dodging assassins, never sure where the next bullet is coming from.

There will be a second series of The Inspector Fenchurch Mysteries.

We hope that you thoroughly enjoy the story and feedback is always welcome. Please email us or visit the websites to find out what we’re working on next.

Thank you!

Carter Seagrove

Contact Information

www.carterseagrove.weebly.com

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www.alpmortal.weebly.com

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Chapter One – Cough Mixture

Alfred …

Yes, Adam …

"If Absalonsen was – as suggested by Yves – a privateer and not the assassin-"

Yves believes that the intelligence was compromised; a calculated manoeuvre designed to see whose hares were set running – in this case, his … please don’t worry.

"He used the word paymaster; that suggests Black Veil."

"There is no Black Veil, Adam – you saw to that … please come and lie with me."

There is something amiss; did you not hear the missed beat of the engine not five minutes ago?

I did and accounted for it by too much water seeping into the engine room – the storm will not abate any quicker for your fretting.

I don’t like it …

No encouragement will elicit anything further. Heightened apprehensions or anxieties do not usually characterize Adam’s behaviour; normally I am the one who is chewing his nails down to the quick.

We are bound for Biarritz to investigate the theft of this radium E. Yves suggests it was stolen by a renegade troop of Spanish Republicans, who scooted over the border in a daring raid. However, things don’t quite add up and it’s possible that the deadly substance is still in Biarritz.

This has nothing to do with the original plan to meet Yves in Biarritz at Easter this year. The background intelligence and our orders – like Yves and Webb - await us at the Plaza Hotel.

All I know is that radium E can now be created from Bismuth 210 and it is dangerous – fundamentally my brain is not wired to store such facts as these; perhaps if Donne had written a poem about it, I might understand it. I question Adam who reads science fiction and his explanation is more bewildering than Wihtgar’s Lament – though I am on to something with the reference to our spectral queen which I believe refers to a wreck of a ship which may have been mistaken for the Madeira. Coincidentally, the ship left San Sebastian at roughly the same time as the Madeira left Lisbon. I am hopeful that during our brief stopover in San Sebastian, I shall have time to visit the library.

Fly high above the shore to soar in exaltation of St Catherine's virginity; the lonely queen whom Wihtgar failed to win. To brew dull autumn’s soil takes a song as light and wide and fast as Wihtgar’s sword. Tell me if you dare to be somebody; the pirate beneath and the priest above plot vainly but all soft, sweet scattering beetles doth shine in their eyes. Dawn’s hoary breath frosts the lenses. Fate is silted up so step lightly to the cave. Our spectral Queen from ague died but her ceaseless temper wrought from crystal chain is forever prized. I lived in fragments of song, doing no wrong but paid in senses finer than silk and golden thread; still I died and here and there trod, leaving imprints of my mind ...[1]

There it is again!

Would you be happier if I went to investigate?

Yes please, Alfred …

Our ship is a merchant vessel which we picked up in Le Havre, bound for San Sebastian, carrying aviation parts. I would have been happier to drive but time is of the essence and some element of stealth is required; not afforded by my beautiful Lancia Astura motorcar suggests Yves. When we arrive in San Sebastian we are to be met by an operative – Pierre Carcanet – who will drive us back over the border into France.

As habit dictates, I pocket the Beretta, and step out of our cabin and head towards the bridge to find the captain to ask him why our engine is behaving so erratically.

I am expecting to be bawled out for wasting his time but Adam will not relax, and what else can I do?

On my way to the bridge, I encounter none of the crew – which is odd. The bridge is empty.

Who is steering this blessed thing?!

A cold tongue licks my spine as I descend to the engine room to seek out Jock, the engineer – a Scot from Dundee with whom Adam and I have struck up something of a friendship.

Despite the icy chill of the night, sweat is pouring off of me by the time I arrive at the engine room; and there I find Jock, not tending to his precious valves and beloved fly-wheels but sprawled out over his makeshift desk with a wrench buried in his skull. And not only that, the cause of the erratic beat of the engine is also now apparent; a leak in the fuel line, which is spraying fuel in an irregular pulse, soaking everything in fuel-oil. A storm lantern hangs precariously from a hook on the wall above Jock’s desk and I estimate that as the wind picks up as we pass La Rochelle, the swell will increase, we will suddenly lurch into one of the gargantuan troughs and the lamp will be displaced and smash apart, igniting the fuel-oil, blowing us to smithereens-

ADAM!

Just at that precise moment, we lurch and I know there can only be minutes, maybe only seconds, before the lamp swings off of the hook and ignites the fuel. I dare not risk retrieving it; as it is, I am sloshing about in fuel.

Risking my head, which is under threat of being smashed like an egg shell, I dart out of the room, ducking and diving to avoid all manner of obstacles and extrusions, making the foot of the metal stairway which, now wet, is lethal and I slip, banging my shins more than once on the treads as I fly up to the main deck.

ADAM!

My scream is swallowed up by the roar of the sea which now resembles some kind of mythological beast. The tops of the waves are being ripped apart and sent like broken glass to lash my face like a tiger with glossy, tourmaline-coloured skin, slashing with its paws.

Insensible to the maelstrom, I battle through the salon which now resembles some bizarre kind of carousel as furniture and fittings which were not nailed down, tumble this way and that. I make the head of the short stairway that leads to the cabins.

ADAM!

Practically leaping the full height of the stairway, I then barrel along the passageway to our cabin. Just as I reach the door, Adam appears and we grapple for each other and in the process, fall and roll along the corridor to finally come to rest in a heap.

Adam, no time!

Somehow we manage to right ourselves and find the temporary sanctuary of our room where we grab the knapsack which contains our essential kit.

What’s going on? Adam screams above the cacophony; his voice just the right side of panic.

Sabotage! We have to get off the boat!

Scrabbling, lurching and tossed like buoys, we make the deck to see the life-raft ripped from its gantry and flung overboard as if it were made of paper. The doors of the lifejacket store are flapping madly and its contents are being blown around like leaves.

Grab a lifejacket!

In fact, we manage to grab several but it is impossible to put them on. Desperation is taking hold and in the final moments of sanity before the boat is capsized, Adam grabs my sleeve and pulls me like some stubborn mule along the deck to the prow. It’s a miracle we are not garrotted by the various lines or break our legs against the deck-mounted cleats and vent housings.

One final dip catapults us forward and into the bank of water which is rolling over the prow. We are picked up and carried over the side and away from the ship which then begins to roll over. The wave which tore us from the deck pushes us further away from the emerging hull. In quick succession, three loud explosions rip the hull apart and we are showered in a flaming rain of ignited fuel.

When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead

And that thou think’st thee free

From all solicitation from me,

Then shall my ghost come to fly to thy bed,

And thee, feign’d vestal, in worse arms shall see ...[2]

oOo

Miraculously, we held on to three of the lifejackets and they provide us with our only hope of survival. The squall which blew up in the space of five minutes disappeared almost as quickly but it is now pitch-black. I would speak were it not for the fact that I am numb with cold and though I know I am afloat, I cannot feel my hand wrapped around the strap of the jacket. If I lose my grip, I will probably not be aware of the fact and maybe it is a blessing not to know how imminent death truly is …

ALFRED!

Strange, despite being numb, I see my life melting away. When we were boys, languishing in the summer sunshine, my mother would give us a glass of her homemade lemonade, and always with an ice cube floating in it. We’d watch as the cubes melted and wager whose would melt first. The loser was the one whose cube melted fastest. If I lost, then I had to carry Adam to the pond. If he lost, he cried.

ALFRED!

There’s a light but it can’t be the moon because it is a new moon tonight; could it be the gates of Heaven? I feel sure I must have lost my grip because the water is moving further away from me; but shouldn’t I be sinking? I am rising so perhaps I am ascending to Heaven. Where is Adam; didn’t he win the wager; mustn’t I now carry him to the pond and jump in with him still clutching to my back so that when we hit the water, the splash wets the jetty; and if Jacques is standing too close, his feet get soaked and he bellows at us but I know he is smiling too.

ALFRED!

The ice cube melts and as the last molecule dissolves, something hard is forced between my teeth and then my mouth is full of fire and I have to swallow to avoid choking. As soon as that fire