• Author / Uploaded
• Marita Cristaldo

Citation preview

OFFICIALLY DEAD-ADVANCED II CHAPTER 1: THE MEETING Colin Fenton was in Brentwood to teach a computer software course to the administrative staff of Sutton Chemicals Company. Colin and his wife, Julie, were partners in business. They have a company called C.J.F. Software Solutions. Julie develops computer programmes and Colin sells them to larger businesses, looks after the company’s finances, its marketing and the training courses. That night, he went to have dinner to a restaurant that had a pub attached. After meal, he went to the pub. He bought a drink and he was looking for an empty seat when he saw a man on the other side who identical to him. Both of them were shocked. They were in their late thirties. They had the same hairstyle. Colin was a bit heavier. The other man’s name was John Bently. He was with his wife, Linda Bently, who was 33 and she was wearing a very short skirt. Colin liked her and he spent a good time with them. He drank a lot and he became very talkative. Colin went back to his hotel promising to go back to that town soon. Linda and John had an argument while they were going back home. Linda said that Colin would be useful for them as he could use him to do a big robbery so that they could be rich and John wouldn’t go to prison again because he would never be caught. CHAPTER 2: THE BUSINESS One Morning, Colin went to see to Mr. Booker, their accountant, who told him that they would go out of business if they went on losing money and that they needed to earn money quickly. Colin got back to his office and Maggie, his secretary, gave him some envelopes. He opened the smaller one. It was from Linda, inviting him to have dinner with them and let him her telephone number, which he put in his wallet and tore the rest of the letter. CHAPTER 3: THE PLAN Linda was an only child. She lived with her mother in a very small flat in Glasgow. They were very poor. When she was 12, her mother left her. An uncle and an aunt took care of her but when she was 18 she went to live alone in London. She worked in a pub where she met John, who was a lorry driver. He was an orphan. He used to spend a lot of money in presents for her and a year later they got married. A few months later, John was sent to prison and Linda discovered what he had done to have money. Linda started to work in a jewellery shop. When John was released from prison, he started to work with Linda. They moved near Brentwood, where they are still living. Some weeks after she had sent the letter, Colin called her to say her that he would be in her town the following week and they agreed to meet each other in the pub where they met the first time and after that they would go to have dinner to her house. They met in the pub. John wasn’t there because he went to see a football match and wouldn’t come until the next day. Then, they went to have dinner to Linda’s house. After that, Linda asked Colin if he wanted to earn 10.000 pounds. Colin got angry. Linda said she was joking and apologized herself for having spoilt the dinner when Colin took her in his arms and kissed her. Early in the morning, Linda took Colin to his hotel. Colin asked her about the money she talked him. She answered that as he was identical to her husband, he could provide him an alibi (if you are accused of a crime, you can prove to the police that you weren’t in the crime place or someone can tell the police that your information is correct, proving that your story is true) because they knew everything about the security systems of the jewellery where they worked. All Colin had to do was going far away from London and being in a hotel using John’s name. Colin said to Linda that he would think about it. CHAPTER 4: THE JOURNEY It was nearly Christmas when Colin phoned Linda to say her that he would help them and that they could arrange John’s alibi for the second week of January as he would be in Manchester at that time. Finally, they decided that the robbery th would be on January the 10 . One day, while Colin and Julie were talking about Jackman’s, Julie said she would go with him to Manchester as she had to explain them every technical details properly in order to get that company as their client. Colin insisted on going alone because that would be only a preliminary meeting. th On January the 10 late in the evening, Colin met the Bentleys in a lay-by (a place where vehicles can stop beside a road). Apart from giving him half of the money she had promised him, Linda gave him John’s documents and driving license. Colin gave his to Linda and they changed cars.

CHAPTER 5: THE ACCIDENT The motorway to Manchester was very busy so Colin decided to take a narrow curved road where there was no light and it was dark and icy. Suddenly, Colin lost the control of the car which rolled over and crashed into a huge tree. Another car driver, Mark Ashwood, saw the accident and stopped to help. The driver was still alive but couldn’t free him. Then a lorry driver got there and called an ambulance and left. Mark stayed with the injured man who said to him to say Julie that he was sorry. When the ambulance and the police arrived, the man had died. Mark wanted to know the dead man’s name and address to talk with his wife but the police told him that they couldn’t give him that information until the body was recognized by his relatives and the policewoman gave him her telephone number so he could call her in a week and she could inform him what he wanted. Then Mark left. CHAPTER 6: THE NEWS The Bentleys were nervous in their house waiting for Colin’s phone call when the police arrived to their house to say Linda that her husband had died in a car accident and that she had to identify the body. When the police left, Linda decided that she would do robbery as they planned and then they would move to Spain where her aunt lived. CHAPTER 7: THE WIFE The following afternoon, Jim Slater, at Jackman’s called Julia to ask for Colin. After apologizing for her husband, she put the phone down and started to call Collin but she couldn’t contact him so she phoned to the local police station to report a missing person. Half an hour later, the police went to her house to ask her when her husband went missing and about his personal details (age, clothes he was wearing, etc), type of car and its plate number. The police told her that if her husband had abandoned her, it wasn’t a crime. CHAPTER 8: THE FUNERAL John Bently was alone in his room and he has a lot time o think about what had happened. He didn’t have an identity and he was a prisoner in his house. Late in the afternoon, Linda got home with Colin Fenton’s suitcase. She opened it and threw all the papers in a bin because she was looking for the money she gave him. She found them. That night, Linda went to leave Colin’s car in Heathrow Airport car park so when it is found the police would think that he had left. The next day was the funeral day. The body was cremated and the ashes was scattered in the crematorium garden. When Linda went back home, John was waiting for her with a gun in his hand. He was very angry with her and told her that he made him a prisoner. Linda calmed down him, telling him that in two weeks he would be free. She added that she was going to tell the jewellery owner that she was going to move to Scotland at the end of that month because she couldn’t live there without her husband. During that time, John would rob the shop because his best alibi was that he was officially dead and all she had to do was acting normally after the robbery. CHAPTER 9: THE ADVERTISEMENT As Colin hasn’t come back yet, Julie had to learn about the company finances so she went to see to Mr. Booker who told her that the company had serious financial problems and that he told that to Colin who told him that they were on the point of confirming a very important contract with a company from Manchester. Julia answered him they had lost that contract. Mr. Booker said to her that her husband ran away because he couldn’t accept failure. Julia replied that her husband wasn’t that kind of person and that he didn’t know about the failure contract because she had the news that morning. At night, she was alone in her house, thinking about her husband and she decided to put an advertisement with Colin’s photo in the national newspapers because somebody may have seen him and could help her to find him. CHAPTER 10: THE SEARCH A week after the accident, Mark Ashwood decided to go to Brentwood to say to the widow her late husband message. It was very late in the evening and he rang the front door bell. He heard movement sounds in the house. There was a light in a room so he thought there was somebody in the house and rang the bell again. The light from the back room went off and it seemed as the house was empty but he drove a long time to get there and he didn’t want to come back another day. That was why; he went to have dinner so he could pass again later. That afternoon Linda told her boss that she was moving. After work she went to see Frankie Simpson to ask him to sell the stolen jewellery. Frankie agreed to sell them. Linda would give him 100.000 pounds.

When Linda arrived home, Mark was waiting for her. When they entered into the house, Mark saw a man whose face was exactly like John Bentley’s who called her Linda not Julie. Mark was trembling with shock. Linda told him that a friend was staying with her to make her company for a while. Mark told her the message and said to her that her husband said Julie not Linda but he may have misunderstood him. When Mark got home, he felt worried. He couldn’t understand how Mrs. Bentley wasn’t sad a few weeks after her husband’s death and apart from that she was with other man who looked like her husband. The following morning, while he was reading a newspaper, he saw an advertisement where Julie was looking for Colin who th disappeared on June the 10 . There was a photo of the disappeared man and a telephone number. CHAPTER 11: THE VISIT Julie received a call from a police officer saying her that they had found Colin’s car at Heathrow Airport and that they think he had probably gotten on a plane. Julie looked for Colin’s passport in his drawer. She didn’t find it started crying because she didn’t want to believe Colin had left her. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was Mark Ashwood who read the advertisement and wanted to say her about the car accident he had seen. Mark went to Julie’s house and said to her that the Ford Escort that crashed into a tree was driven by John Bentley. She couldn’t believe Mark’s stories because her husband’s car was a BMW and was found undamaged in Heathrow. Mark added that her husband told him to say Julie that he was sorry and that he went to see John’s Bentley’s wife and that she was called Linda and he believed John was alive. Then he took his business card from his wallet, put it on the table and left. CHAPTER 12: THE ROBBERY After Mark’s unexpected visit to Brentwood, Linda took John to a cheap hotel near Central London. John felt better because that night he would rob the shop and soon he would be free. He was ready. He had a set of keys to open the shop back door, a pair of rubber gloves, a torch, a car jack (a long handle tool to push up and down to lift the car), his gun, adhesive tape and a wooden box with plastic explosive. Linda left at one thirty-five and would pass for him in thirty minutes. John opened the door with the key, entered the shop security system code, went to the strong-room, keyed the code, put his coat over the video camera that sent pictures to a video record in the manager’s office, turned on the light, and took the drawers with expensive Jewells into a big box. When the box was full, he took his coat, reset the lock and put the plastic explosive with a detonator and its timer on the lock. With the car jack, he smashed the shop display cabinet glasses. When time was almost over, he set the detonator timer. Linda got the shop, they put everything into the van, and John reset the alarm clock, which started ringing, closed and locked the doors and they left. Linda met Frankie. They made a list of the jewellery. Frankie told her that in two days she would have her money. CHAPTER 13: THE TRUTH Julie was tiding her house when she found Collin’s passport and she thought he hadn’t abandoned her and that he may have had an accident, and that Mark may have told her the truth because other people had called her to say they had seen Collin in a petrol station on the area of the road of the accident. She decided to call Mark to say to him that the man who died may have been her husband and that she needed to meet him. Julie went to Mark’s house in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Mark said to her he didn’t know neither why Colin was driving John Bentley’s car nor why he had his documents, that what surprised him more was the man that was in Linda’s house because he looked exactly like Colin and that he believed they could have changed identities the accident day. Julie knew she had to go on living without her husband but before that she needed to solve everything about Colin, so that she had to talk with Linda Bentley. Mark was taking her to Linda’s house. CHAPTER 14: THE CHASE Linda put some clothes in a big suitcase and she put her passport and John’s in her bag (she didn’t tell British Passport Authority that her husband died so he could use it). Then, she went to a pub to meet Frankie. He gave her the money. She went back to her house to give its key to the owner and to put the suitcase in the van. As she was leaving the house, Julie and Mark arrived so they decided to follow her. She went to pick John up and when she was driving towards the port to get a ferry to France, she realized that a blue Volvo was always behind them; she left the main road and took a narrow one. Suddenly, Linda stopped her car blocking the way; Mark stopped a few metres behind and in the dark, he could see a flash of a fired gun. Mark’s car widescreen shattered, Julie screamed. There was blood on her coat. Then John Bentley ran towards them with the gun in his hand, Mark tried to put the car in reverse but he couldn’t because John was near them so Mark opened the car door hitting John’s chest. Another gun fire was heard. Mark and John fought. Then Linda got off her van, took John’s gun and hit Mark. As he was becoming unconscious, he heard Linda saying: ‘let’s go John’. A few hours later, the Bentley’s were on a train in France going to Spain. Mark and Julie were hospitalized. A motorcyclist found them unconscious and called the ambulance. When they were better they told the police all they knew and with their statement the police could understand what had happened in the

jewellery shop because they knew the robbery was done by someone who knew the security system code and they were able to inform the crime to Interpol as the Bentleys would probably been living in Spain and they may have changed their names and the way they looked. CHAPTER 15: OFFICIALLY DEAD Julie and Mark became close friends. Mark was her company financial accountant so he told her to sell to companies her software licenses for a period of time and that if she improved the product, that license would allow the client to have the new version free so that they would always have the latest version. Mark added that when the license period ended, the client could buy a new license at a cheaper price. Last, Mark said that she didn’t need to hire an office; her staff could work at home, being in constant touch with her by phone and meeting with her regularly. And that her company address would be her own house and as a result the company would earn money quickly. A year later, Mark was the financial director of C.J.F. Software Solutions. Mark and Julie were in love. She sold her house and moved with Mark. Seven years later, Julie was reading the newspaper and she saw John and Linda Bentley’s photos on it. They were arrested in Spain and were accused for robbering the jewellery shop. This happened because Linda’s aunt died and left her her property so Linda went to the court using her real name to claim for it. She said that the man she was living with was her husband John Bentley and that the one who died in the car accident was their friend Colin Fenton. Julie didn’t know how Colin could have involved with those people but she felt better because she said that finally Colin could take his name back and that he was officially dead.