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GROUNDSPEED
DIRTY BUSINESS
THE CHINA MOON
GIDEON'S BIBLE
S'END FOR BRADEN
THE GRACE OF GOD
EXIT POINT
THE HOUSESITTER
STOP LINE
EXCLUSION ZONE
NINE TENTHS
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EXIT POINT
Introduction One of my favourite novels is John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps. The first film of the book was made by Alfred Hitchcock back in 1935 with the excellent Robert Donat in the lead role (in case you don't know, it's a spy story set in 1914, just before the First World War). The movie was remade in 1955 with Kenneth More* playing Richard Hannay (the hero), and remade again in 1978 with Robert Powell in the title role. Actor Michael Caine once commented that film companies shouldn't remake good movies (I think he was referring to The Italian Job, or possible Alfie). He felt that they should remake only bad movies. Generally I'd agree with that. Remakes, for all kinds of reasons, are usually inferior to the originals. But The Thirty Nine Steps is an exception. All the movies were good, each spinning the story in a different way, and none of them sticking too closely to the book. If you haven't read the novel, I'd recommend it. And if you like it, try Erskine Childer's The Riddle of the Sands. It's got a similar vibe and theme. But where's all this going? Well, inside my edition of The Thirty Nine Steps is a small note in which John Buchan professes his affection for the "shocker" or "penny dreadful" type of novel, which we would today read as a "thriller". This type of novel, according to Buchan, is where " the incidents defy the probabilities and march just inside the borders of the possible." I had these words, and John Buchan's novel, rattling around inside my head when I wrote Exit Point. It's no Thirty Nine Steps, of course. It's a terrorist story rather than a spy novel. And the context is very different. But my hero, Joe Garrick, is loosely a Richard Hannay type of character, meaning solid and dependable and pragmatic. He's not a tough guy, not in the comic-book, macho sense, but there's a kind of toughness there all the same. A durability, anyway. I'd already written two stories about men in microlights, so I gave him an autogiro instead (a kind of helicopter/microlight hybrid). I also gave Joe Garrick a workshop in Essex and an old friend from the past, and dreamed up a female lead and got typing. It didn't get anywhere with it. I sent it out a few times, a little half-heartedly because I was suffering from rejectionitis - which is what pretty much all writers get after a while. In truth, the story isn't really finished. The ending is sketched in, but needs reworking a little. Just a few weeks work hopefully. But it's mostly there, which is why it's partly here. Hope you enjoy chapter one.
* This is the correct spelling of Kenneth More's surname.
EXIT POINT 120,000 words Plot: A struggling Essex-based autogiro pilot is rediscovered by an old friend and soon finds himself embroiled in an aerial terror plot.
Chapter One
It was one of those grey, miserable, washed-out September afternoons. It had rained heavily in the night, much of it inside the hangar where I had an AeroMotion Twin engine stripped on the bench and covered with a tarpaulin. Beside the bench was a pool of water about the size and shape of the Mediterranean. I’d been meaning to fix the roof for the past couple of months. I’d also been meaning to somehow earn the money and find the enthusiasm to do it. Both, however, had been in short supply. It had been a bad year. A bad two years actually. I started Garrick Aviation three summers back largely with borrowed money and the promise of a fat contract from a new geological outfit that needed a cost-effective way of carrying out ground surveys. I put on my best suit and went up to London and made a solid pitch for the job and screwed the price right down to the bottom. It looked good. On paper. But it ended before it even started when the company went bust. I should have cut my losses right then. That would have been the smart move. But I’ve never been that smart. Also, I’m a stubborn bastard. It’s a damning combination. So I borrowed some more, dug myself in deeper and adopted a D-Day landing mentality. Fortunately, I soon picked up some overspill work from a local aviation outfit which tided me over for a bit. And then, unexpectedly, they merged with another company and restructured and that was that. No work. Something else will come along, I told myself. A good looking bloke like me with a cost-effective helicopter for hire will always turn up something. Crop spraying. Joy rides. Emergency organ deliveries. Or ordinary air freight. There are a hundred ways. Or so I thought before reality took a bite and the finance company repossessed the chopper. Now I was seriously in the red and couldn't see any way out of it. I was mulling over all this that afternoon as I sat in my office wrestling with my accounts and contemplating my next leap into that great commercial abyss. There was a letter from my accountant pinned to the board above the phone. He’d long since stopped trying to advise me on what to do next. He was now simply sending me headed notepaper with the single word TWIT! scrawled in marker pen. He was right, of course. Accountants are always right. But he was also wrong. There was a future here if I just hung on. I was sure of it. It was just a question of outwaiting the bastards. And when they finally realised that I wasn’t going to go away, that Reasonably Honest Joe Garrick was in for the long haul, they’d start bringing me some proper jobs. Perseverance. That’s always the key. Anyway, I was sat there that afternoon at my desk counting the paper pennies and wearing out the window and scratching my chin and wondering whether it was time to invest in a new razor and maybe a clean set of overalls when I saw the car approach. It was about half a mile away and zig-zagging around the perimeter road clearly trying to avoid the bigger potholes. Instantly I took my feet off the desk and got ready to slam the door and hide. I’d already had two debt collectors visit me that week and it was only Wednesday. But then I saw that this car wasn’t the usual cash collection cart. At first I thought it was an old Bentley. It was metallic blue and had that long, unruffled, elegant Bentley poise. But as it got closer I recognised it as a Bristol, which made me relax and put my feet back on the desk and scratch my jaw some more. This looked more like a customer. You get a nose for that sort of thing. And the best way to frighten away a new customer is to look desperate. So I picked up an old magazine and wiggled my mouth around a bit to get the creases out and raked my hair forward in the way I used to do when I was a kid and wanted to look nonchalant. At the T-junction, where the old WW2 control tower used to stand until it fell down in a storm last year, the Bristol paused. I saw the front wheels of the car turn ever-so-slightly away, and for a moment thought he was going to turn left toward’s Mitch Mitchell’s place. Mitchell — a sullen, bitter, foul-mouthed old git in his late sixties — had been both a commercial and personal thorn in my side since the beginning. The day after I moved in, he came around to check me out. He had a good snoop about. Saw how I was equipped. Asked about fifty indiscreet questions. Told me half a dozen stories of recent business doom and gloom in the aviation world and left. The following week he phoned me up and told me not to get too comfortable. Then he called about ten days after that and asked if I was still there. Then the verbal abuse started and I began getting all kinds of unlikely junk mail and enquiries from estate agents and pizza deliveries and suchlike. One Friday afternoon I got fed up with it, so I called him up and asked what his problem was and he told me, more or less point blank, that this airfield wasn't big enough for the both of us. 'Don't you mean the eighteen of us?' I asked, mildly. 'Never you bleedin' mind them,' he said. 'It's you I'm talking about. And you're taking my business.' 'I haven't had any business yet,' I told him. 'So how can I be taking yours?' 'I've seen your advert,' he said. In Flight magazine, he meant. About four lines of text and a phone number. 'Well I've seen yours,' I told him. 'Yeah? Well mine was there first.' I should have just left it alone, but I said, 'Look, ever heard of free enterprise, Mr Mitchell?' 'Ever heard of a punch up the effin' bracket?' he came back. So I hung up. Then he put superglue in my door locks. I went down the following day to try and sort it out in a sensible, amicable way. But it got ugly. He told me to get the fuck off his property and threatened me with a screwdriver. So I did the smart thing and backed away, not wanting to get into a scrap with a bloke who looked like an imminent cardiac case. A couple of weeks later I learned that he'd been slandering me left, right and centre. He'd been spreading the word that I was a crook, a drunk, and had a lousy flying record. My flying record, I should mention, is excellent. And I'm certainly no drunk. But I won't deny that I've occasionally pulled the odd fast stroke — but only with the VAT man and the Inland Revenue. And who the hell doesn't do that? Anyway, for the best part of a minute the Bristol lingered at the T-junction, and then the front wheels turned my way. So, smiling, I went back to my feet-on-desk-posture and smoothed out some more facial creases. Forty-five seconds later I heard the car pull up outside and the engine shut down. I turned another page and started reading about THE PERVY POSTMAN who PUT MORE THAN MAIL IN MY LETTERBOX! and tried to look content with my lot. A minute or so passed. I heard the sound of my corrugated hangar door hinges squeaking. Then a voice — deep, gruff, but cultured — called out, ‘Shop!’ I craned my neck a few degrees, caught a glimpse of some guy wearing a well-cut, big-shouldered suit, put my eyes back on the magazine and called over my shoulder, ‘Yeah. In here, mate.’ There was the scuff of footsteps and I swung my legs off the desk, timing it just right so that my visitor would see how I’d been sat, but would also recognise that I hadn’t totally neglected my manners. It was then that I saw who it was and instantly forgot all about the PERVY POSTMAN and his unusual deliveries. ‘Jesus Ker-rist!’ I said, unhinging my jaw. ‘I thought you were bloody-well dead!’ ‘Socially and professionally speaking, my dear boy,’ drawled my most unexpected of visitors, ‘I more or less am.’ Instantly, I chucked the magazine aside and got up to greet him.
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