20 minutes by the thames, p.1
20 Minutes By The Thames, page 1
part #5 of 20 Minute Series
20 MINUTES
BY THE THAMES
DANIEL HURST
www.danielhurstbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
20 MINUTES BY THE THAMES
First edition. September 1, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Daniel Hurst
Written by Daniel Hurst
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
20 Minutes By The Thames
Jelena
Bogdan
Tom
Kathryn
Harry
Joanne
Hudson
Carol
Simone
Scott
Will
Valentin
Sue
Abdul
April
Louise
Joe
Lindsey
Helen
Damian
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About The Author
Books By Daniel Hurst
September
Friday
Events take place between 18:35 – 18:55
All on the banks of the River Thames...
Jelena
18:35
Jelena Markovic was starting to fall in love with London and evenings like this were the main reason why.
It was still light, as summer refused to go down without a fight, although the sky had recently become a lot more overcast and there was the feeling of a storm in the air. But there were still plenty of people on the banks of the River Thames right now, most of them rushing home but many of them stopping to enjoy a drink as another working week came to a close.
As Jelena walked, she observed the patrons of the many restaurants and bars that lined the famous river, sitting at the tables and chattering animatedly amongst the sounds of clattering cutlery and clinking glasses. If any of them had looked up from their plates or their phones, then they would have been treated to a majestic view of several iconic landmarks that had made their home beside the murky river.
There was the elaborate Tower Bridge to their left, the easily recognisable Victorian gothic design that allowed thousands of vehicles and pedestrians to cross the river between the north and south sections of the city each day. There was the historic Tower of London, which sat just beside this suspension bridge, housing the Crown Jewels of England and guarded around the clock by Beefeaters in their distinctive red jackets and black Tudor bonnets. And just south of the river was The Shard, the futuristic skyscraper that loomed over the Thames.
Further down the snaking waterway, following its natural curve as it continued on to the west, stood other famous landmarks like the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. They weren’t quite visible from where Jelena was right now but they would be if she kept walking for long enough and that was exactly what she planned to do.
Yes, London was one of the most expensive cities in which to live, but it didn’t cost anything to walk around it. The Friday night revellers may have been paying a high price for their bowls of salad or their glasses of wine, but Jelena was paying nothing as she sauntered right past them. Many of those who were queuing in traffic on the bridge behind her would have paid a hefty congestion charge just to drive through certain areas of London, but there was no charge for those who travelled by foot. And those who owned the properties that lined this river had paid eye-wateringly vast amounts of money for the privilege of the view that it gave them, but Jelena was able to enjoy a similar view for free.
You could spend as much as you wanted to in a place like this and many people spent every penny they had. But Jelena had learned to enjoy the city in a much more frugal way, which was fortunate because otherwise she would never have been able to afford to live in such a thriving part of the world.
But it wasn’t just the city that Jelena had fallen in love with. She had also fallen for the man who was holding her hand and walking beside her on this late summer evening in the English capital. Bogdan was the man who had turned her life in London from a nightmare to a dream, and the main reason why she felt so safe and secure whilst walking through such a busy and fast-paced part of the world.
She glanced at her partner as they strolled past another noisy bar and smiled when she saw that he was looking up at the 95-storey body of The Shard, clearly lost in his own thoughts about the beauty of the structure and how man had ever been able to build something that tall.
She had come to learn many new things about Bogdan since she had reconnected with him three months earlier in the Underground. She remembered him from her childhood in Serbia when he hadn’t shown much of an imagination or passion for anything other than avoiding schoolwork. But now, she had discovered that there was a bright and inquisitive mind behind his calm demeanour.
They had spent a lot of their time over the summer on walks just like this one and each time she had seen how Bogdan would marvel at the various forms of architecture on display in the capital. London was one of the most advanced cities in the world but it was also one of the oldest so almost every part of its sprawling landscape was a combination of both old and new. There was perhaps no better place to see this than beside the famous river that snaked its way through the centre of it all, and both sides of the riverbank were filled with monuments that charted the development of mankind.
There were the worn-down facades of the Victorian era buildings, sandwiched between the gleaming exteriors of their more modern counterparts. There were structures that had survived historic wars standing side by side with buildings that were barely a couple of years old. And there were properties where ancient decrees had been signed with ink-tipped quills, nestled in beside properties where expensive rental charges were signed with plastic ballpoint pens.
These intriguing juxtapositions were partly why this was one of Jelena’s favourites places to walk, because there was so much variety on offer. You never knew if the next building you saw would be made from shimmering metal or crumbling stone and in some ways it reminded her of her home city of Belgrade, with its famous landmarks and examples of modernisation in between its monuments to war. But in other ways it was a world away from the place of her birth and that was perhaps why she had chosen to stay here instead of returning to her native country after her ordeal with the sex traffickers had ended.
In Belgrade, there were still many reminders of the conflict that had shaped her youth during the 1990’s, when the Eastern European nations battled for their identities and many families were displaced or destroyed. But here in London, and despite its own experiences with enemies in the past, there seemed to be a constant push towards the future. The city would never forget the nights when the Germans dropped bombs, or the days when terrorists detonated their devices, but things progressed at such a rapid rate here that it was impossible not to look forward rather than back.
Maybe that was why she had found this to be the best place for her to recover from what she had been through earlier in the year. Of course, there were many reminders of her past here. The sight of a tube station always made her heart race a little faster and even the voice of a passing male pedestrian sometimes made her think of the voices of the men who had visited her in that locked room. But there was such a fast pace to life here, and a constant sense of regeneration and growth, that she couldn’t help but be pulled along with it all too.
Just like the city she was now walking around had always developed and changed despite its ordeals of the past, Jelena was learning to do exactly the same thing. The brutal extraction of her tongue had been inflicted upon her in captivity, robbing her of the ability to speak but she was progressing well with sign language and was slowly feeling more confident in communicating with the world around her. She had also learnt that keeping herself busy was the best way to avoid dwelling on the past, so she had taken up some part-time voluntary work at the shelter where she had spent time during her initial recovery. The shelter was a place for victims of abuse and provided a sanctuary as they recovered from their ordeals and learnt to trust other people again. Jelena would help prepare meals for those staying in the shelter, as well as clean their rooms and accompany some of them as they walked around the grounds or watched the television in the living area.
Even though she had left the shelter herself and now rented a bedroom with Bogdan in a shared flat in the East End, she liked to return and help those people who had suffered so much at the hands of others. Her work at the shelter was as much a part of own recovery as it was a charitable act, so she was happy to do it, even though it meant she wasn’t earning any money. She knew that she would have to find paid work eventually, but she was taking things one day at a time and she was grateful that Bogdan was happy for her to do this.
His wage from his security job was providing enough for them to rent one room in a tall block of flats and while it wasn’t much, it was somewhere they could call home and rest together at the end of a long day. The only thing she was worried about right now, as she and Bogdan approached London Bridge, was how hard her partner was having to work to support them.
They had taken a brief holiday in their home country a month earlier and it had been wonderful for Jelena to visit her family back in Belgrade as
This was a rare night off for Bogdan. His night shift as a security guard at a city office had been unexpectedly cancelled, and although Jelena was concerned about the lost income, she was thrilled to be spending more time with him. Besides, he had worked almost every day since they had returned from abroad, so she assumed that one cancelled shift wouldn’t make too much of a difference in how much money he had made this week.
But Bogdan had seemed to take the news a lot worse than she had expected. Instead of being relieved at a rare night off and a little time to spend with his partner, he had been frustrated and even a little angry about the lost opportunity to make money. Jelena knew he was a proud and hard-working man and so perhaps the prospect of not working wasn’t as exciting for him as it was for her. But then again, he had been away from her so much recently, tirelessly putting in the hours at different security jobs all over the city, so surely he deserved to have a little free time now, even if it had been unplanned.
She had tried to tell him as much, through the use of sign language and via the text messages that she would send him when they were apart, but he hadn’t seemed to see it that way. He had remained in a quiet and thoughtful state ever since and had barely said two words since they had been on their riverside walk.
Jelena suspected that he was worried about money and although he hadn’t said anything to her about needing her to find work too, she knew that it mustn’t be easy for him paying for both their living costs on his own. But she had also noticed a change in him since they had returned from Serbia and she worried that there might be more to it than just money troubles.
Before they had taken the trip last month, and in the weeks since he had rescued her from the evil men who had held her, she had found him to be a happy and fairly talkative man. But something had changed in him after the holiday and he was now a lot more withdrawn. If she had to pinpoint the exact time she had noticed the change in him then she would have to say that it had actually been before the holiday had ended, when he had returned to her mother’s home after spending the day visiting an old friend in the country.
He had returned much later than he had promised her, and while she had just presumed that he had been enjoying himself and lost track of time, he hadn’t shared with her much of what he had done that day. He had been quiet throughout their flight home and it had been that way for most of the last month, during which he had either been going to work or falling into bed exhausted. She could sense that something was troubling him, and she almost hoped that it was just about money and nothing more serious. She was worried that perhaps he hadn’t liked her family, or that their trip to their homeland had reignited something inside him that he had been struggling with ever since. Whatever it was he hadn’t told her, so she was still in the dark about whatever was going on behind that stoic face of his.
As they climbed the steps that would take them onto London Bridge, she squeezed his hand a little tighter to let him know that she was here for him if he ever decided that he wanted to share his worries with her. But when she didn’t feel him squeeze her hand back, she knew that he was still lost in his thoughts, which only made her worry a little more.
Like the ominous black clouds that were beginning to fill the sky above her, Jelena felt that there was potentially something dark looming on the horizon between them. But unlike the weather which had no problem making its intentions clear, Bogdan was a much more reserved entity and she feared that she may never truly know what it was that was troubling him.
Not until it was too late.
Bogdan
18:36
Bogdan Petrovic knew that Jelena was worried about him and she didn’t need to squeeze his hand to tell him that. He was well aware that he had been distant with her ever since they had got back from Serbia, but it wasn’t his intention to be that way. It was just really hard to concentrate when he had so much on his mind.
It was really hard to concentrate after what he had done.
It had been a month since he had killed Laslo, the man who was responsible for so much of the suffering that had befallen Jelena earlier in the year. He had pulled the trigger on the gun and watched as the man’s body disappeared into the depths of the Tarnava Mare river and he saw that same sequence replaying itself over and over again when he closed his eyes in bed at night. But that wasn’t the only time he was reminded of what he had done. Even being here, alongside the banks of the Thames and looking across its murky waters, was enough to remind him of that river in Romania where he had ended another man’s life.
It wasn’t that he felt guilty about what he had done. Laslo was an evil man and there was no doubt that he had deserved to die. Nor was he worried about being prosecuted for his crimes, having fled Romania straight after and having seen no news reports about the discovery of the man’s body in the media since.
He was simply carrying the mental scars that came with such a brutal act.
There was a reason why it was rare for a human to kill another human and it wasn’t just because of the law. It was because it was a difficult thing to process and was something that you would never forget for the rest of your life. But Bogdan believed he was tough enough to cope with the knowledge of what he had done and keep it a secret until he joined Laslo in the afterlife. But what he wasn’t tough enough for was the constant worrying that had plagued him ever since he had put his plan for revenge into action.
In order for him to be able to track down Laslo and get his revenge for Jelena he had been forced to part with a significant amount of money. Firstly, for the private investigator who had hunted down the man and given up his location and secondly, for the weapon that he used to eliminate him. Bogdan had had no choice but to borrow money, but he had known that a traditional bank loan was not something that he was likely to qualify for. He hadn’t even formally enquired about such a thing, wanting to keep his need for such a large chunk of money as inconspicuous as possible. Besides, someone like him, an immigrant on minimum wage who was known to change jobs and locations on a regular basis, was hardly the ideal candidate for a bank loan.
He had wanted somebody who would give him the money without asking any questions. Somebody who wanted to be as secretive as Bogdan did. Somebody who was mired in the criminal world as much as Bogdan would soon find himself.
He had needed a loan shark.
And it hadn’t taken him long to find one.
Ronnie Larkhall had been the name that Bogdan had received from one of his colleagues after he had asked the man working the nightshift with him if he knew anyone who could help him get some money together quickly. His colleague had told Bogdan that he had previously taken a loan out with Ronnie to help pay off a gambling debt, but the information came with a warning. Bogdan was told that if he were to use this man for a loan then he better be able to pay him back on time.
Because if he couldn’t then things wouldn’t end well for him.
Bogdan had mulled over his decision but after several more nights of waking up beside a distressed Jelena, who was suffering from night terrors after what she had been through with Laslo, his mind had been made up. He wanted his revenge at any cost. Therefore he needed the money and so he would make contact with Mr Larkhall and try to do business with him.
Bogdan had steeled himself to ask Ronnie for a hefty £8,000 to cover the services of the private investigator and the use of the gun that he would need to carry out his revenge. While the figure was large enough to increase Bogdan’s heart rate when he thought about it, he felt confident that he would be able to pay it off since swapping his cleaning job for the better-paid security one. There were a lot more hours available to work in his new job, so he had figured that he would just do large amounts of overtime until he had paid it all back. And he had been left in no doubt that he must pay it back because his colleague at the security company was right.
Ronnie was not a man that you wanted to disappoint.
