Sixty positions with ple.., p.1
Sixty Positions with Pleasure, page 1
SIXTY
POSITIONS
WITH
PLEASURE
Sahlan Diver
Disclaimer: This novel is set in the future, the year 2050. Therefore, no described politician, business, political party, place or person refers to the time of writing (2019/2021). It is a work of pure fiction, a speculation as to our shared fate.
Preface
Unusual Mysteries
Unusual Mysteries, the collection of three novels, and a book of stage plays, presents mystery stories like you have never encountered before. Unusual settings, unusual characters, unusual plotlines, with multiple misdirection and startling reveals.
The mysteries can be read in any order, each set in a different time and place, the first in the recent past in south west Ireland, the second in the present on the English canal network, and the third in the near future back in Ireland.
(Mystery 1) The Secret Resort of Nostalgia
Shortlisted for The Yeovil Literary Prize 2017
A graduate is sent to document a remote Irish island community. What he discovers there may mean the difference between life and death.
“ … unlike any other mystery novel I have ever read.” Sefina Hawke for Readers’ Favourite
(Mystery 2) For The Love of Alison
Finalist 2020 Indies Today Award
A journalist receives an invitation to visit a woman who was the object of his obsessive mental illness thirty years ago. That same evening, a murder occurs. Can the journalist prove his innocence, and his sanity?
“… very different from the countless other crime/thriller books that I have read...” Reviewer at LoveReading.co.uk
(Mystery 3) Sixty Positions with Pleasure
In the year 2050, a suspicious hit-and-run accident sets off a chain of deaths, each more puzzling than the last. A vision in a cave prompts a stampede of pilgrims. An Irish town declares its independence from Ireland and the EU. And twenty-something English engineer, Charlie Gibbs, is co-opted by fifty-year old Dutch company boss, Ilse Teuling, to assist in writing a sex manual.
“… a fun read ... with an enormous cast of characters, most of whom are not what we think they are ... Very enjoyable.” Lucinda E Clarke for Readers' Favorite
(Mystery 4) The Chapel in the Middle of Nowhere
(and three other stage plays)
Members of a fading and obscure minor cult hold a party in an isolated location. None of them are prepared for the disruption that will be caused by three uninvited guests, one of whom may be hiding a dark secret.
All mysteries in the collection available from leading online sellers. Further information and video reviews etc at: https://www.unusual-mysteries.com
Table of Contents
Sixty Positions with Pleasure
Disclaimer
Preface
Prologue
PART 1: TIME, PLACE, DEATH
1: The Town on the Lake
2: Cunninghams
3: Lucas Meyers
4: Orla and Her Granda’
5: Tragedy
6: The Wife
PART 2: WOMAN UNVEILED
7: The Arrival of Ilse
8: Government Inspection
9: The Cottage
10: A Vision of Mary
11: Propositioned
12: East versus West
13: The Hire Car
14: First Audition
15: A Whistle Blown
16: Fraud
17: Pictures and Pilgrims
18: Second Audition
PART 3: THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM
19: The Pressure of Success
20: The Other Man
21: Number Twenty-Three, Tonight
22: A Cat for Jimmy
23: The Big March
24: The Report
25: The Husband
26: Tourists
27: The Doctor
28: Gallagher Walk-Out
29: A Chair
30: The Alteration
31: Experts
32: Dead-End
33: Party Wall
34: Enemy Country
35: The Push Button Revolution
PART 4: CHANGING WORLDS
36: The Independent Kingdom of Kilgarney
37: Finding Anna
38: Furniture Warehouse
39: The New Order
40: The Fourth Man
41: Trees
42: Buzzed
43: The Hunt for Hendriks
44: With the Rain Pouring Down
45: Trouble
46: The Lair
47: Ladies Night
48: “Friends With All Men”
49: A Trip to the Seaside
50: The Charms of Tess
51: At Jimmy’s Place
52: Blowflies
53: Wrapped
54: A Puzzle by the Lake
PART 5: DISINTEGRATION
55: Burgled
56: The Professor
57: Inquisitive Neighbours
58: Hannigan Pays a Call
59: Shot
60: All the Apes in the Zoo
61: Clarence
62: Animals
63: Cat and Mouse
64: Guilty
65: Freedom Coal
66: Poulsen on the Case
67: Living Dangerously
68: The Sighting
69: The Pod
70: Carry On Sneering
71: Fishing
72: A Confined Space
73: The Queendom of Kilgarney
74: Kobus
75: "The Right To A Life"
76: The Archivist
77: Shit Hits the Fan Club
78: Neighbours
79: Control at Any Cost
80: A Day Off
81: The Last Word
82: A New Theory
83: Interviews at the Barracks
84: Curaçao
85: Complications
86: A Matter of Timekeeping
PART 6: CLIMAX
87: Tapped Phone
88: Ilse Packs Her Bags
89: The Trap Laid
PART 7: FULL EXPOSURE
90: Meeting at the Lake
91: Detective Thomas Spaans
92: Reincarnation
93: Poulsen Reports
94: A Question of Identity
95: Ilse's Story
96: Anna and The Mistress
97: No Honour Amongst Thieves
PART 8: EPILOGUE
98: Published
99: A Body Found
100: A Sense of Loss
101: Reap What You Sow
Acknowledgements
Also by the author
Prologue
I remember the summer of 2050 as the summer of heat: the heat of the last of those final glorious Irish summers before world-wide panic set in; the heat of revolution as a town went out of control; the heat of religious fervour gone insane; and the heat of the chase in the affair of the mysterious death of Lucas Meyers. But, above all, I remember the heat of Ilse’s body, as together we explored those sixty ritual positions.
PART 1: TIME, PLACE, DEATH
1: The Town on the Lake
Until global warming, the Irish inland town of Kilgarney amounted to little. True, an unusual place, worth a day-trip, though getting there was never easy, a long way from Dublin and the other Irish cities. The mountainous location could bring on wild weather too, so, having made the effort to travel to the town, you might find your day washed out by a ferocious rainstorm.
Everything changed with climate change. By the year 2050, Kilgarney, with the cooling waters of its crystal-clear mountain lake, had become the go-to location for southern Europeans seeking respite from the now intolerable heat-waves that blighted their summers. The warming climate had been kind to Kilgarney, giving it a reputation for near perfect conditions, not too hot, not too cold, with day after day of sunshine from April through August.
A century earlier, a far-sighted Irish government passed a law permitting the construction of a hydro-electric dam, creating a reservoir two kilometres wide and five kilometres long, with th
As the world warmed, driving away the Irish grey weather, replacing it with summers that could once have only been dreamed of, a canny Tourist Board saw their opportunity to promote the lake internationally. The town underwent rapid expansion. The residents made a packet of money converting old cottages to profitable holiday-lets and the local farmers similarly made a killing, selling off land for new building work. Rows of topless young women sunbathed on the lake shore; formerly sleepy bars transformed into pulsating night-clubs; even the rich and famous started to be seen in the town.
Into this haven of perfect climate, unbridled sunbathing, prosperous locals, contented tourists and celebrity visitors, there arrived, in April 2050, a new employee, a young Englishman.
2: Cunninghams
Cunninghams have provided employment to the town of Kilgarney for longer than can be remembered. It’s believed they started off as an agricultural business, the mountain torrent that runs through the valley strong enough to power several mill wheels. In the nineteenth century they moved into engineering, becoming an early adopter of the industrial revolution, using their water wheels to drive the clanging hammer of a forge and the whirring leather drive belts of a machine shop. So important was their industry for the fortunes of the town that, during construction of the dam to raise the level in the lake, the engineers dug a special channel to keep the works in operation.
Approaching Kilgarney by the uphill road, your first sight will be of Cunninghams’ nineteenth-century brick-built factory, still in use today. Then you pass a two-storey office block, of bland rust-stained concrete, containing the managerial suite, the administration department and, last but not least, “Computer Services”, having a staff number of one: myself.
My name is Charlie Gibbs. I’m English, twenty–five years old, average height, black curly hair. One thing I can state as a matter of fact: I’m brilliant at languages. Nothing to do with my training as a computer engineer; everything to do with my subsequent work as a freelance, first in Scandinavia, then in Germany, and most recently The Netherlands.
In my latest contract, here in Ireland, I spend my working hours attempting to upgrade Cunninghams’ clunky and badly configured computer network. The job is such that I‘m constantly interrupted by support requests. I don’t mind. The Irish in general are easy to work with: energetic, but without getting uptight, and any excuse I can muster to visit Administration and chat up Orla is to be welcomed, though it’s advisable to keep your distance when sales manager, Hogan, is around. His surname means “young” in Irish, an unfortunate coincidence as he’s one of those middle-aged men who imagines himself attractive to pretty girls half his age. He’ll miss no opportunity to enhance his self-appointed alpha-male status by putting down any male within a six-yard radius. To give him credit, he works out daily at the gym, so he’s in good shape, but none of that helps when you behave like an anus. At least we get ample warning of his comings and goings, with his vintage Aston Martin, a relic of the petrol age, revving thunderously in the car park.
Beyond Cunninghams, the road rises steeply and you see for the first time the imposing chalk-white concrete wall of the dam. At the brow of the hill, a sudden dip in the road takes you down to the town proper, with a long row of shops, pubs, restaurants and night-clubs to your right and the glistening surface of the lake to your left. Before the building of the dam, the townies would picnic in summer on the shores of a modest lough half a kilometre distant. Now, an immense body of water has been brought within fifty metres of the main street, separated from it by a beach of imported sand, giving the place the flavour of a continental seaside resort. Up here, on a level with the reservoir, all seems benign. Downhill, along the road, it’s a different matter. You wouldn’t want the dam to collapse. No buildings or people in its path could survive. Cunninghams would be first in the line of fire.
3: Lucas Meyers
Lucas Meyers and I arrived at Cunninghams at the same time. A taxi delivered me to the engineering works simultaneous to a taxi bearing their new managing director. Despite the difference in status, myself a mere minion, a temporary hired-hand charged with the maintenance of their computer system, we formed an instant bond. As soon as Meyers introduced himself, I detected his Dutch accent and talked back to him in Dutch. He laughed, saying, “Hoe wist je dat ik Nederlands ben?” I explained I had worked extensively in The Netherlands and that, although the Dutch in general spoke good English, the distinctive accent made it easy to pick out their nationality.
Lucas ascended the staircase to the rarefied heights of the managerial suite, while I was shown along the ground-floor corridor to the Computer Services room, part office, part laboratory, the workbench cluttered with test equipment and half-dismembered electronics. The previous incumbent had quit due to ill health and left behind for me a single document summarising the responsibilities of the job. I would be working on my own initiative, but that was how I liked it, the reason they chose me, given this quality was the most emphasised on my CV, second only to my foreign language skills, which this time I knew would not be needed. How wrong were future events to prove me on the latter assumption!
I made an immediate start de-cluttering the room, clearing the work bench and investigating the contents of the storage cabinets. An HR girl called in to take me on a tour of the works, an offer I readily accepted, though I have to admit to an aversion to Human Resources departments. They smack too much of “corporate” and I am by no means a corporate man. I could no more dedicate myself to a company than I could to a religion. I love the naked mercenary status of a paid-by-the-hour contractor: I work overtime; you pay me more; I go home early; you pay me less; fair’s fair; the contract between us extends to money for time, nothing more.
Old boss Cunningham, whom I never met, had gone into retirement, selling his family’s engineering company for a tidy sum to “Kobus Industrial”, a Dutch conglomerate headquartered in the city of Leiden, situated halfway between Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Cunninghams’ marketing department had gone into overdrive, putting out the usual bullshit, as they do on these occasions, about how great the takeover was for customers. I didn’t believe it. Frankly, things are never as good as before. The new parent just doesn’t have the interest and emotional attachment of the old. Like here. Meyers singled me out to go to lunch with him on the first day – I guess he felt more relaxed being able to converse in his own language on his leisure break – and it quickly became apparent he’d been sent over as caretaker, a finance man without much grasp of engineering, until the big boys back home decided what to do with their new acquisition.
Like so many Dutch, Meyers was tall, well over six foot. He complained to me he’d have to sleep diagonally across the tiny bed in the Irish cottage provided by the company. After lunch I helped him locate a furniture store in the central shopping area. Their vast selection of beds surprised me, but then I remembered the tourism industry, which must have created exceptional demand. The shop even stocked extra-length beds of a type known in the USA as California-King. Meyers purchased one for delivery next day. At least, that’s what I thought he did.
My first afternoon in the job, I found Cunninghams’ computer network to be seriously disorganised and stayed on for an hour’s overtime to get started on sorting it out. I heard the insistent ring of a telephone going on and on. Seemed I was the only one left in the building, so I picked up the call: the furniture shop, querying Meyers’ address for delivery of “two California-King beds”. I corrected them. “You mean one bed,” but they insisted two had been ordered. I told them the boss had gone home and they’d need to ring back in the morning.
Strange. Meyers had not mentioned living with a friend or partner. From our conversation over lunch, I had the distinct impression he lived alone. Even if he did have a partner, wouldn’t they be sharing a bed? Was he anticipating having to occasionally accommodate similarly tall Dutch guests? An expensive extra purchase if so. Next day, I told him of the shop querying the address for delivery of two beds. He made no reaction other than thanking me for taking the call.
