Backyard Bones

By Thore Staff

She could not know the mystery of the bones buried in her backyard. Not even Mattie could guess what she would face next. From this battle, there is no escape, and still the war rages.

A young woman, just beginning to live, leaves all that is home and heads out to take the world by storm. What awaits her in the city is nearer an end than a beginning. Fate takes Maddie Morgan full circle from being loved to being hated, to being hunted, and no one could imagine how the past would play into her future as she teeters on the edge of what is good and evil.

Good battling evil is as old as the beginning of time. Coming out of a small farming town on the river, Maddie Morgan never thought evil would touch her life. She wasn’t that important. Escaping back to her hometown on the river, young Maddie fears certain retribution is on her heels. A move to a new beginning in a city, a strange love affair, a flight from certain death hadn’t been in her plan. She could not know the fury of a homeless woman from France who lives in a discarded refrigerator box.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528957953

Thore Staff

Thore Staff was born in Norway to a family working internationally for generations, which he has also done; meeting wonderful people, scheming bastards and quite likeable people, like you and him. This book makes his experiences yours and entertains you as well.

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Mine

About the Author

Thore Staff was born in Norway in a family working internationally for generations, which he also has done, meeting wonderful people, scheming bastards and quite likeable people, like you and him. This book makes his experiences yours and entertains you as well, like he did with his last book – Flashes in the Wake and Light Ahead.

About the Book

This Scandinavian sailed through life in his previous book of short stories Flashes in the Wake and Light Ahead.

Many readers enjoyed his observations along wonderful coasts and a few choppy stretches.

You might not have chosen the same harbours as him, but you’ll enjoy his company in this book of new challenges and experiences in the turbulent world of international trade. Getting there, but not always the easy way

Copyright Information

Copyright © Thore Staff (2019)

The right of Thore Staff to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528905329 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528957953 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

All the stories here are true in the sense something like them happened to the author or close friends, but disguised here to not embarrass anyone, or to claim that there cannot be other interpretations of what took place! Historic facts are not tampered with and happenings without any seen consequences are not changed either.

With an open mind and a ready smile, we can expect more wonders as we stumble ahead in the direction we choose.

Thore Staff

Adjusting Wrong Which Was Right

I am the Director in charge of investment regulations at the Finance Department, said the voice on the telephone, and mentioned his well-known name.

What can I do for you? was my somewhat mystified response.

Let us see what we can do together, he said. I am calling you concerning a mortgage you have brokered between the largest pension insurance company in the country, and a company wanting to build a large warehouse just outside Oslo.

I accepted that this transaction had been agreed, adding that he probably also knew that it was the first of a completely new type of lease back loans – the legality of which had been thoroughly checked by the probably most respected tax specialist law firm in the country. Well, that is the issue, he continued. There are very strict rules as to how insurance companies can invest the moneys entrusted them as premiums for future claims, especially concerning pensions. But there is another side to this, not much discussed – and that is that the regulations also give governments control over much of the credit market, really making these important actors in the finance market to invest in low yield projects, keeping them out of the higher risk market. And your system even introduces an inflation bonus on top of a low basic interest.

So, you are suggesting that our financing method will advance inflation in our country?

No, but it is logical that any influence it might prove to have on the market, most probably will be in the direction of unwanted, increased inflation.

Theoretically, I had to agree. Our lawyers had found a loophole in the laws of company structures, investment controls and taxation, the size of a barn door. The single regulations were from different periods of time and really unrelated, but what was left of texts after numerous changes, together made sense of the interpretation of our lawyers. And the end result was that the insurance companies could spend a higher percentage of their investments on what the authorities considered higher risk projects, not listening to the trade’s guaranteed protest to come, that they would never invest in anything that could endanger the clients’ (future) money, no matter which financing system was to be used.

I can see the way this conversation is drifting, I said. But you surely understand we already have invested and paid quite a lot of money for this project, which looked so promising.

That is why I am calling you, and not the lawyers, said the Director. They would have protected their findings, with some good reason, and might even have an economic interest in dragging your project through all the levels of courts, if my people decided to go that route, after having instituted new laws and regulations making your project illegal. As a lawyer with a doctorate in this field, I am not too sure of what the Supreme Court would decide, when they could be ready in three or four years. But it should be stressed that in cases where a losing government would be obliged to pay out enormous sums due to the court decisions, the government usually wins in the end – without too much attention to the finer points of law.

OK, what is the deal, which I of course have to discuss with our shareholders?

We’ll let you go through with this financing deal, making the commissions you have earned. You will sign a letter to us and your lawyers, which I’ll send you, where you declare this is a one off due to your understanding of this being in the interest of the country and the authorities, with no admittance of any own wrongdoing. If nothing goes wrong with this, we’ll not change the regulations and laws your lawyers refers to right now, but have them adjusted as necessary with other legal requirements, over time. I won’t see you in court – will I!

End of story, after internal considerations, and a teeth-grinding conversation with our lawyers.

André

He was unique. Nobody was like him and nearly everybody loved him. I met him two days after I moved to my Spanish village. He just relieved me of some of the things I was carrying, and when he had deposited his part of the burden inside my new home, he told me that his name was André, and that he was French Canadian who for many years had been living next door with his wife Beatrice.

She was an equally helpful and wonderful person, also a superb cook, good for me staying without family or any catering knowledge, while refurbishing the house. Their only fault was that they did not drink proper whiskey, only something to do with gin, so I furnished them continuously with a bottle of good whiskey, and kept a bottle of their plunk in my house.

André had in Québec been sales manager of a paint company, and was the master of selling his goods to architects and builders – often while testing the golf courses. His grandfather came from Scotland as a regimental medical doctor, whereas Beatrice descended from a French shipping family. She had run several haut couture shops before retiring to Spain.

When we were together, you never knew what would happen next. They would always be on the lookout for helping somebody with something, which I often could not even imagine to be an issue. And so, they always met new people, delighted by being interesting to Beatrice and André. We met an awful lot of nice people this way, and some very queer ones! He had the gift of the gab, meaning that there was no limitation to the arguments he could muster for whatever cause he chose to promote. If he had a complaint about some communal service, the department heads would notice him approaching the entrance, and they would all be well out of the building rear door, before he entered. This was the only way they knew how to avoid agreeing to whatever he had decided was necessary.

They had an extremely old Citroen, which even André had to have