Chapter 1

James had documentation that certified him to be a citizen of the United Kingdom and he had an identity card from an obscure office in Brighton that was connected in some tenuous way with MI-5 if one believed the cash receipts and the printed background sheets that traced the origins of Bentley Investments located in a converted Bed and Breakfast on Royal Street. It was located near the upscale shops recently opened mostly for the tourist trade and professional people that flocked to Brighton as a supposed low-crime area with great sea air and clean streets.

His landlady in the small townhouse where he had his living quarters was on the far side of eighty and she was of the opinion that he was a “charming fellow”.

There was a lot of truth in the fact that James generally had a nice smile on his face for the entire human race. The only exception to that oddity was when he came unexpectedly on some villains at the courthouse where he spent most of his working hours as a researcher for a defense lawyer with a high percentage of wins in criminal trials on his record.

One of the strange things about James that fascinated Mandy Collins, the press representative from the Belfast court recordings pool was that he was known in Belfast as plain old Harry Smith, the retired court reporter from London that spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland and who had absolutely no connection to the “James” fellow in Brighton. She had found him interesting in the tea shop on the ground floor of the courthouse building and had resolved to “look him up” on the internet and other new tech ways of snooping into other people’s lives.

She wished that she had his prints from the orange juice cup but at the time she didn’t expect it to be the sort of information gathering that would lead into other directions.

Mandy was an enterprising young lady with unusually strict upbringing and a modesty seldom seen in these hedonistic times.

Sometimes, her sense of sexual deprivation drove her to extremes in searching out proper bedmates and she had latched onto poor James Weston aka Harry Smith as a suitable substitute for her deplorable stuffed teddy that had definitely seen better days before hard use between her shapely legs.

The sight of the elusive “James” fellow in the courthouse or the nearby pub often pushed her into a state of wet knickers and rapidly beating pulse in a way that she could only describe as “simply marvelous”.

She discovered that he had appeared on the London scene without any fanfare and that he tended to screw complete strangers recruited in out of the way places not connected to the courthouse or the neighborhood in any way whatsoever. His choices seemed a little odd because he preferred more mature types with some sort of flaw like a gimpy foot or a scar on the face or in one case a nice looking young lady missing one arm. He could have his pick of the fashion model types with their skinny bums but pounded out his passion on the rejects instead.

As a sort of experimentation, Mandy applied a cosmetic scar to the side of her face and wore her hat down low as she sat at the table next to his during a Friday afternoon “happy hour” for TGIF inspired patrons. He noticed her imperfection and brought her a refill without even asking her permission. She smiled and it was all downhill after that with her hiding her face in shame in his pillow as he plowed her private places without even taking time to remove her clothing. In retrospect, she had to admit it was the most exciting taking she had ever experienced and she was confused as to the exact reason why that was the case.

Her hope that her experiment would turn into something a little more permanent never did come to fruition although the “James” person would buy her a drink occasionally and chat her up when things were slow and laid back. She couldn’t fault his politeness and consideration but it was supremely frustrating because she really wanted that “tingle” of being taken like that again and again.

In that way, they became strange drinking buddies and their coupling efforts were put on a back burner because it was more interesting to have a friend one could depend on to always say something nice and never ridicule or criticize you in front of others. The fact that they were of opposite gender let most to think they were still getting it on in private and neither of them found it necessary to correct people’s impressions because it was mutually an advantage in social gatherings.

James, at times, would show his linguistic side by conversing with various strangers in exotic languages in matters unknown to those around them not only because it was a foreign language but because they generally used a code of sorts that described certain facts with a hidden meaning. Somewhere, there existed a book with the transliterations listed for verification but James and his associates were familiar enough with the system to know instinctively the correct meaning and it was not necessary for any of them to depend on a later translation to decipher the true sense of the word. It was not unlike the way drug dealers devised codes to talk on phones or the e-mails to arrange meetings or to distribute their illegal wares without the danger of being overheard.