Victimless Crime & The San Rafael Kidnap

Trev Hunt

Description

These 2 tales are from "Ibiza Shorts", the great collection of 14 short stories set on the holiday island of Ibiza which became a smash hit there when first published in 2005. Now revised and re-written as an eBook for the global market, they cover romance, comedy, crime and intrigue - all by a writer who literally 'knows the island backwards'.

Informations

• Publié par: Acorn Classics House Ltd.
• Date de parution: 25 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780954805869
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Victimless Crime The San Rafael Kidnap
Trev Hunt
A Few Comments and Kind Words on Trev Hunt's Writing.....
''Trev Hunt transports you to a world of love, comedy, drama and intrigue - brilliant!'' Guy Bellamy
''I have just read 'A Victimless Crime' from Ibiza Shorts with a glass of wine beside an open fire, and was gripped!'' Alastair Sawday
''Viva Trev Hunt - what a discovery his books are!'' John Hollands, MC - author of the 3-million best seller ''The Dead, the Dying and the Damned'' many other books
More comments are at the end of this book
Contents List of Stories
A Few Comments and Kind Words on Trev Hunt's Writing.....
Now let the fun begin.....
A Victimless Crime
The San Rafael Kidnap
About the Author
Also by Trev Hunt in eBook Format
'Tasters' - extracts from other Trev Hunt eBooks
A Virgin Bride
Love is Funny
Ibiza Shorts
A Variety of Verse
Four Play
More Comments and Kind Words on Trev Hunt's Writing
The Legal Bit.....
Now let the fun begin.....
A Victimless Crime

''I think, sir, that you must actually live on Ibiza?''
The old man turned in surprise to the young girl on the adjacent table, to confirm that the question had indeed been addressed to him. He was seated at his favourite place in the relaxed elegance of La Casagrande terrace, directly overlooking the Sea Front in Santa Eulalia.
La Casagrande is a classy bar-restaurante created on two levels, the lowest of which consists of chairs and small tables unprotected from the sun. A few steps up brings the visitor to the smart covered terrace, with the featured fawn colour carried through from the awning, or 'toldo', to the coverings on the round and oblong tables and their matching chairs. Marble pillars are each set in an ornamental flower basin, from which vines climb lazily to encircle them, whilst the quiet and gentle background music intrudes not at all on the general ambiance. Should the visitor venture further inside, to the building itself, they would find bamboo barstools matched by similar chairs grouped around the various dining tables. And lest it be thought that the more basic needs were not cared for, immaculate 'servicios' with automatic lighting and washing water are gender denoted by original paintings, the whole worthy of the London Savoy or Ritz.....
Though old - he himself preferred the term 'elderly' - he was still enough of the male animal to appreciate the beauty of the questioner. She was in her early twenties, with a naturally pretty, rather than made up, face, brown eyes and short auburn hair cut into a sort of pixie look in the manner of Brigette Bardot when she was eighteen. She wore, instead of the modern young person's denim in its various forms, a simple floral dress which emphasised her youthful figure without in any way exaggerating it.
Politely, as was the habit of his age group and class, the old man raised his immaculate panama hat before replying, ''Yes - yes I do, and have for a great many years. But how did you know?''
The girl shrugged her shoulders before replying. ''That is easy. Your suntan is deep, real, not from just a few days on holiday. The waiter clearly knows you and what you like - your coffee arrived without the necessity of an order. And you spoke to him in what I imagine is very good fluent Spanish - at least good enough to enjoy a little joke, for he laughed at your words.''
The old man smiled and removed his panama, placing it neatly at the back of his table, behind his coffee and the newspaper he had been about to read. Although he himself would not even notice the fact, he was truly a picture of sartorial elegance - tall and slim, wearing an immaculate hand-tailored linen suit, a pale maroon shirt, and the famous 'egg and tomato' tie of the MCC. At his feet, a metre long brown paper parcel indicated that prior to his arrival at La Casagrande, he had been shopping.
''You are indeed a good detective,'' he said with a kindly smile, ''may I now attempt my own appraisal, although it will doubtless be a very poor effort compared to the powers of observation you have just demonstrated, Mademoiselle.''
Again he smiled, this time at her surprise at being identified as French. ''Oh yes, your English is very good,'' he said, ''but your soft pronunciation cannot hide the proud country of your birth. So where in that great land do you come from? Not the north - again the softness is too great. Nor, I think, Paris, for whilst I am sure Parisians are perfectly charming people, they do have a certain capital city arrogance about them.'' He paused for a moment before continuing, ''It would of course have been easier had you spoken in French, which I suspect would have been in the accent of the south west - Bordeaux, Biarritz - perhaps even as far east as Toulouse.''
She was visibly shaken by his accuracy, and talk of her own country made her slip back just for a moment into her native tongue. ''C'est incroyable! That is incredible - I live in the wine shipping town of Libourne, and a few months ago, graduated from the University of Bordeaux!''
''So what do you do, my confident Mademoiselle?'' The old man posed the question as much to himself as to the girl. ''The obvious answer is that you will become an English teacher - your pronunciation really is very good indeed. But then the way you were watching me, observing and deducing as would, for instance, a detective. But somehow I don't think you are with the gendarmerie - there would not be the need for such excellent English. I think you might just be a writer - possibly a reporter, with an ambition to move on into television.''
''I am a trainee journalist with the 'Sud-Ouest','' she replied flatly, bemused. What she didn't say was that in her first day's training, she had been taught there was no such thing as a 'newsworthy story' - a newsworthy story was merely a collection of facts presented in an interesting way by a skilled reporter. Although of course, if the facts themselves were interesting, then half of the reporter's job was done for them.....
And another thing she had been taught is that there was a collection of facts sufficient to create a 'story' anywhere and everywhere - the paper had to be filled with copy even if no-one had got out of bed that day, which of course itself would be a story. And in the quest for the ability to conjure a story from nowhere, she had also been taught to not ignore the older generation, for most of them had one if not several stories to tell which could make good feature articles on a slow news day. Instinctively she had thought that the elegant Englishman had something to tell her that she could turn into copy.
There followed an amiable silence before the girl posed her next question, or really two questions. ''How long have you lived here, and why Ibiza?'' she asked.
The old man smiled before answering. ''I suppose I've been here nearly fifty years now. But why Ibiza, you ask? Ibiza for me represented the end of a long journey.''
''Would you like to tell me about it?''
Again the smile, before, ''Tell my life's story to an ambitious young journalist, so it can be plastered all over the front page of her newspaper? No, I think not, Mademoiselle. You see, it has and could become again a matter of life or death - and in the latter event it might so easily involve myself.''
The words were spoken in such a matter-of-fact way that at first the girl thought she had not heard correctly, or if she had, then mis-translated a crucial word.
For a while, she found herself stunned into silence, before she managed, ''A dramatic answer, Monsieur, but in reality is there much crime on Ibiza?'' she asked eventually, groping for a way forward, although to use the generic word 'crime' when he had been much more specific was, she thought, rather lame.
''Crime, Mademoiselle? I think you must first explain your concept of crime.''
She thought for a while before replying, ''I suppose I see crime as where some-one physically hurts another or steals something that doesn't belong to them.''
But the old man shook his head. ''That's far too simplistic,'' he said. ''Let me put it to you that there is victimless crime and victim led crime.''
''Victimless crime? I do not understand - how can you have victim less crime?''
He smiled and laughed gently. ''I suppose that many would argue that victimless crime is not really crime at all, although technically it of course is. Take for example bank or insurance companies, both having wealth beyond even the wildest dreams of avarice, the morals of the gutter, and such a diversity of owners - mainly other similar institutions to themselves. But they still were not content, and blew billions on wild gambles, leaving the ordinary tax-payer to pick up the pieces. Allow me to suggest that these so-called institutions do not suffer in any measurable sense if an individual manages to slightly get the better of them, whether by something as simple as an exaggerated insurance claim, or defaulting on a loan, or a more calculated and comprehensive scam.''
He paused to allow the girl to comment, which she did. ''I think I see what you mean,'' she said, ''though if everyone.....''
''.....Then there is the biggest institution of all,'' the old man added, preventing further objection, ''the government, whether it is French or British or Spanish, or that of any other country. A government, Mademoiselle, will steal with the full weight of the law ten units of currency to return just one in value.''
''But surely, if everybody refused to pay tax, a government would have no money for old people, or hospitals or.....''
Again the old man cut her short. ''.....Oh quite so. But the major crime, the theft, is actually by the government, with their criminal inefficiency, yet in law, administered by the self-same government, it is the individual who tries to retain his or her wealth to obtain ten currency units of value for a cost of ten who is deemed to be the