| After parking my car in the busy Liverpool City Centre I walked over to the Passport office, which is an extremely beautiful building as I stepped out of the elevator the surrounding corridors were unusually empty. I entered the main room, thinking that it would be empty it was full to the brim. Just my luck I thought. There were people everywhere. I looked around for the shortest queue but they were all the same. I joined queue number four and there were about 24 people ahead of me I took a deep breath and sighed as I realized that was going to be there for a very long time. As I looked around a strange looking man was standing in another queue; he looked anxious as he scanned the area. I decided not to make any eye contact with him so I stared straight ahead at a wall that had plaster peeling off. I stayed that way until he moved away. After about five minutes or so I sensed someone standing behind me; thinking it was the strange looking man I turned around but it was not him thank god. Instead it was a young woman. She was strikingly beautiful of about 28, with an unruly mass of blonde curls, big bright blue eyes, a wide sensual mouth and a deep suntan. She had a lean lithe body and wore tight Levi jeans with a white shirt casually unbuttoned to the limit and a wide belt. From her ears hung plain gold loops and on her right hand was a square cut diamond so big it made me question if it was real. She seamed very anxious too, her eyes were darting from left to right. When she spotted the strange looking man she bent her head slightly as if to hide. It was at that point that I turned away because she made me feel very disconcerted. The line had moved forward somewhat this was when I found my self looking at an old lady in front of me. she had a bonny figure, not fat. She was a tall woman with steely grey hair combed back from her face and coiled in to a bun at the nape of her neck. Her old coat was frayed around the buttonholes and cuffs. It must have been blue when she bought it, but now it had faded so much it was hard to tell what colour it was supposed to be. My eyes travelled down to her scruffy shoes, for all the polish and elbow grease, they still looked like something the ragman would turn up his nose at. Still, it looked like they were all she owned. My gaze moved to her hand gripping the application form and other documents and the ring of white skin on the third finger of her left hand. I imagined she had pawned her wedding ring to help pay for the new passport. As if reading my mind she slid her ring less finger out of sight, took a deep breath and mumbled, � I don�t know what I�m getting all worked up about, everybody flies these days, they say it�s the safest way to travel�. The old lady started to make conversation with me. She was very pleasant. I learned that her daughter was thirty-four years old and an only child. There had been an accompanying photograph in a segment of her purse of a well-dressed woman with a handsome man and two young boys. She had auburn hair and looked about twenty-eight not thirty-four. She was very proud of her daughter, she worked for a publishing company in New York and she had done very well for herself. One of the reasons for the old ladies long wait in the queue was the wish to visit her daughter there. Her daughter had insisted that she come because she had not seen her in such a long time. She went on to talk about her son in law; I sensed that the old lady hadn�t liked her daughter�s choice of a husband. Given the closeness of their relationship, maybe the old lady would not have liked any man her daughter married. � I said NEXT�, the counter clerk interrupted our conversation. The old lady blushed and bid me goodbye and apologised to the clerk. I looked over at the counter clerk she had a narrow pasty face with a thin turned down mouth, and what could only be described as a bad smell under her nose; her hair was grizzled and hoary and she had very badly discoloured teeth. I felt sorry for the old lady who was dropping papers and apologising profusely. I wanted to say something but a couple on the far side of the room interrupted my thoughts. � I thought you said you had packed the birth certificates�. I heard the woman say. �Me, I don�t think so�. Which was followed by the two off them marching out of the room swearing and cursing. When they left I thought that I had better check that I had brought all the necessary papers. I looked in my bag, I could see the application form but no photographs. I started to panic so I looked again, I still could not see them so I took all the documents out of my bag. As I unfolded the form there they were, stuck inside. I was relived. I�d forgotten that I had bought the Echo so I took it out as the old lady was still being dealt with. On the front-page the headline read �Gino Garcia, notorious Italian gang leader found dead in renowned red light district of Liverpool. He was found dead at 2am yesterday. He�d been shot three times in the chest and in both legs�. As I read on I noticed in the bottom left hand corner an artists impression of the prime suspect. It was the woman behind me but she did not have blonde curly hair, it was short and mousy. I folded the newspaper and placed it back in my bag. I kept my eyes forward. My imagination started to run wild, was she the killer or was she so unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Just then the strange man came into view again, as he slowly walked over I could see something bulky in the pocket of his leather jacket, thinking it was a gun I stepped forward. He walked over to the woman behind me and said, "hello sweetheart going somewhere? There are a lot of people looking for you". Just as I heard those words in my ears I felt something pressing into the pocket of my leather jacket.As I turned around to see what had just been placed in my pocket I saw the lady behind me being quietly handcuffed and walked out the office through the grubby glass doors and out into the carpark without making anything of a scene. So it must have been the lady who had a picture in the paper I thought to myself, but then I suddenly remembered the object that had been inserted in my pocket just before the lady had been removed by the strange man. I quickly slipped my hand into the pocket of my rough leathery jacket and while trying to look inconspicuos to the rest of the people surrounding me and the droves of people that seemed to seap through the door like rows of zombies with their heads hanging down and their arms almost hanging down to the floor. The object was circular and had a very smooth surface and had a perfectly circular hole in the center of it. It could only be one thing, and as I pulled it out of my pocket just slightly and quickly glanced down at it to check, my suspicions were confirmed. It was a recordable CD that had a faded label slapped across one side of it which looked like it was blurred too much to read without a careful look. So I slipped it back into my pocket and had a quick glance around to check for anyone that may have seen the suspicious looking body actions i had just performed, there was no danger of that as most people didn't look like they seemed to know where they were at all. I saw the counter clerk looking at me as if she was loosing patience quickly and suddenly I realised that i was next in the que, I strived forward and attended to my business and then left swiftly for home. By the time I arrived home it was Birmingham City Vs Wolves on the T.V and being a brummie born and bred I was not missing this playoff final with local rivals Wolves. I swang my coat onto the hook and threw my shoes off into the ever growing pile of shoes that was mounting up in my hallway. Thank goodness for football. It wasn't untill the next morning and my rush to get out of the door in time for work that I remembered about the CD that had been dropped in my pocket in the suprising events that had happened the other day in the passport office. How could I forget, I didnt have an answer for that, I guess it must be the effects of following a 1st division team fighting for promotion. But I swept up my jacket and slammed the door behind me leaving the smell of burning toast behind me I jumped in my car and I was off to my job in the small local Estate Agents called 'Heavenly Homes'. "Morning mate" was the greeting I recieved from my boss and close friend as he burnt his toungue on the more than warm plastic cup of coffee from the offices life support machine, also known as the coffee vendor machine. I sat down at my desk and tried to make out what the CD said under the morning light that was spraying in through the overlooking window. The only letters I could make out from the label were an 'I' from the top line and 'P' and an 'R' from the second line on the label. It was time to see what this CD was all about. I ejected the disk tray from the PC on my desk and slid the shiny disk in. The screen suddenly fired itself up and launched into an auto-run program which scanned down the screen listing millions of entries of information with addresses flashing past my eyes, It was all going to fast to read so I leant closer to the screen to look more carefully and the screen stopped dead and went black with only three gray drop down menus at the top. I clicked cautiously on the grey box and a list came scrolling down the screen with a title saying "Goverment agent members". I almost fell off my chair backwards with the information that followed. I shuffled my eyes down the screen and my pupils flicked from side to side in my eyes. The list showed hundreds of agents files that worked for the government.A whole bunch of ideas flicked through my head at that very moment, but the only one that stuck fast was the conclusion that this was what the lady had killed the man in the paper for. In the wrong hands this information could be the downfall of the Governments secret services and many agents lives would be at risk. At that moment I heard the bell on the door ring and an elderly lady hobbled through the door and asked for some assistance. I minimised the program down and flicked the screen of my computer off. The lady was intersted in a house that she had senn advertised in the window of our office. After some discussion and a wealth of time spent raising my voice so that the lady could hear me and we had agreed a day for me to go and show her round her property to be maybe. I ran back over to my desk to find Mike, one of my other colleagues playing solitaire on it with his feet up on my desk, "Damn it, lost again" he shouted."Did you close my program" I asked and was lucky to find out that he hadnt touched it.Though the fact of him actually being able to start solitaire amazed me as Mike wasn't exactly one that liked to move with the times. I swept his highly polished shoes off my desk and pointed him in the direction of his own desk. I browsed the rest of the CD and got the general impression that this was far from normal and if someone had killed for this they were bound to have an organisation behind them. As that thought flashed across my brain, I was made to jump by the sudden ringing of my mobile. I picked it up and flicked down the cover. "Hello James Strachan, Heavenly Homes,How may I help you ?" I answered. A sinister sounding voice replied and grumbled "We know you have what we want", "I dont know what you mean", I tried to pretend I didn't have an idea about what they were talking about. It obviously hadn't worked when he replied "Dont lie, we will get it off you if you want to co-operate or not !". I was not going to hang around to find out any more, I hung up my phone flipped the disc out the tray and pushed it deep into my leather jacket as I ran out the back door of the office towards the carpark shouting backwards to Mike to tell the boss that I was not going to be in today. I jumped into my small but nippy hatchback and started the engine up. But something was obvioulsy not right, instead of ripping off across the baron car park and out across the streets towards the police station my car made some churningf noises and I could feel my normally slick tyres dragging and turning across the tarmac. I hopped out and looked round the car, Someone had let all my wheels down. Whoever was after me, they were organised, I had to give them credit for that. As I started my run across the next couple of streets to arrive back at my house I couldnt help but feel like a younger James Bond, except this wasn't quite as exciting, more scary. How did I get myself into this I thought I am just an Estate AGENT not a secret AGENT. As I got close to my house I realised some dark blue coloured Jaguars rolling up behind me. I ran round the back of the newsagents which just had some big Biffa bins scattered around the little confined area, over the wall at the end of it and into my back garden. There deffinately are advantages to living in the area that I had grown up in and those were the shortcuts I had taken as a kid. I ran through my garden up the steps and through the backdoor. No sign of the cars outside my window yet, I had time. I phoned the police and explained the events of the last few days to a less than happy man working on the reception desk. Soon I was put through to another opperator who then put me through to some kind of Government Organisation who told me to stay put and they would send assistant to protect me and the CD which was more likely to be their incentive. Literally two minutes later I heard a window smash in the back and as I tried to scramble up the narrow stairs to hide from the mob of people that I could hear racing through my house. I flew into my spare room which still had a rather musty smell about it as I was half way through decorating and then left it and the paste had started to give off huge amounts of fumes when the sun was heating it up. Anyway this was no time to worry about a musty smell. I ducked into the wardrobe and tried to slow down my breathing. A few minutes later and all I could see through a tiny gap in the bottom of the cupboard were dark suede shoes and about four pairs of them. Seconds later and the door flew open leaving me exposed to some very sinister looking men wearing black masks. Next I saw a beer bottle heading for my head that had been left in the room while I had been decorating. I slumped down even lower after the first swing and then all I saw was It hurtling towards me again. It was a few days later when I can remember my first things."Hello son, how are you ?", my Dad asked me as I lay in an immaculately white hospital which is probably a near miracle in English hospitals today. I had supposedly been beaten repeatedly by the bottle then kicked multiple times and they had broken quite a few ribs and had damaged my face badly. I was just drifting off to sleep again when the young blonde nurse came in and dropped the paper on my bed and said "You might want to read the headline", she smiled, brushed her hair from her face and walked out. I pushed myself up on the concrete feeling hospital bed and read the headline in full blown double vision. But it didn't stop me from feeling the relief when there was a huge article titled "Liverpool Mob Plan For Goverment Takeover Foiled !" and the article explained in painstakingly small writing how the mob had been apprehended by Goverment Officials at a local Liverpool house. When I returned home from hospital a few days later my passport had arrived and was lying on my hall table. I would never have thought a passport could lead to so much trouble. |