O'Reilly's Secret

This is the opening of a thriller thing I'm working on. Any feedback is kindly appreciated :).

The man had been lying there for what must have been days, a week even. The sharp putrid smell in the dark room made O’Reilly nearly vomit, so that he had to cup his hand over his nose. This was definitely the guy. O’Reilly knew it was. And he didn’t have to get that close to see that either; it was obvious from the black beard, shaved head and biker fatigue of the terrible figure, which lay sprawled face down in a pool of puke and blood and what looked like chow mein noodles. A blanket of flies hovered around the man’s vicinity, no doubt starting the process of repatriation back into nature. O’Reilly understood about nature, and why things happened and all that stuff. Some stuff though, he just couldn’t figure out. The sudden vibration of his phone made his heart miss a beat and he glanced behind himself instinctively before noticing that the noise was in fact the phone in his pocket. Annoyed and relieved at the same time, he took it out and answered.

“Yes, I found him.” O’Reilly said. The person on the other end said one word then hung up. O’Reilly looked around the room, seeing that the place had been trashed. So they had come for it. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted one of planks on the floorboards was ripped up. And they had found it, was O’Reilly’s next disappointed thought. What they had found wasn’t money or drugs or any such prosaic thing. And the people, the” they”, weren’t just any run of the mill thugs or meatheads. What was involved here, what was at stake, was much bigger. O’Reilly quivered momentarily as he remembered one of the Scotland Yard lads he used to work with, an ex colleague, telling him over a pint, no, whispering in his ear. He whispered it to him. He whispered: “Jim, this stuff, these correspondences and dossiers, makes Wikileaks look like a kid’s comic. If you ever even lay eyes on it, you’ll end up dead. And there’s no two ways about it. So my advice: leave this case alone, Jim. Run the hell away from it. Pretend you never heard of it and just get on with your life. Unless you want it to end that is. Unless you want it to be ended by people more powerful than us all put together, Jim.” And these words rang around Jim O’Reilly’s head as he left the flat and the corpse and descended down the concrete stairwell.

“Meoooow….” a grey, skeletal looking cat rubbed its head against O’Reilly’s leg as he got down to the last flight of stairs. The cat looked up at him pleadingly, and then mewoed again, more insistently this time, before darting up the stairs. The poor bastard looked about 12 hours away from death by starvation. O’Reilly followed it up and back into the room where the dead, fly covered man laid face down in the unholy stink. The cat must have been locked out all this time, O’Reilly pondered.

Immediately it started feasting on the putrid mess, and O’Reilly turned his head quickly, just about suppressing another vomit reflex. “Aww Christ,” he muttered, sleeve up to his face, squinting his eyes in disgust. The cat then scurried over to a litter tray which was in the corner and began shoveling a mound with its quick paws. There was something under those small stones that the cat was scraping at. O’Reilly moved over for closer inspection, the almost palpable stench making his head recoil with each step. A laptop lay buried under the cat litter.


If life taught him anything, and at 52 it had taught him many things, it was that nothing was ever as straightforward as it appeared. O'Reilly was half tempted to just leave the thing there and walk down stairs, get into his car and drive home. But there was the money: he had been scrapping by, doing sh!tey little surveillance jobs and what not for the past ten years, ever since he was kicked off the police force, and here was his chance. There was 500,000 sterling for whatever was on that laptop, and it made O 'Reilly think of beach huts and warm islands with golden sands, any island of golden sand would do, preferably as far away as possible, south east Asia he was thinking of. It made him think of not having to wake up and look out the at the rain lashing against the concrete from his pokey flat on the Kilburn high rd in north London. It made him think: rather than walking into his misery soaked local boozer on a Tuesday afternoon, Channel 4 racing blaring from the telly, he could be having a cool beer, lying on a deck chair while young brown skinned women walked past him dressed in bikinis, their black hair lustrous in the blazing sun. O'Reilly seized the laptop with both hands. From behind the half drawn tawdry curtains, he spotted a black Merc pulled up in front of the building. The two muscle-bound, cropped haired men sitting in the front were dressed in suits, serious looking guys, O'Reilly pondered, definitely carrying. It was a good job his car was parked around the back.

O'Reilly left the building via the rear fire stairs , got into his car and opened the laptop. Tempting fate he might be, but he needed to know for sure that this was what the newspaper who had hired him was after. Skimming through the various folders on the desktop, O'Reilly's face bore a surprised expression, which his face hadn't probably bore in twenty years: Bilderberg, handshakes between world leaders and African dictators, munnitions agreements, 9-11, Iraq, Dick Cheney, Exxon Mobil, nefarious drug companies, state sponsored assasinations, Cameron's big society, and devil's banquets - this was stuff. There were recordings, pdf copies of government docs. The conspiracy theorists had been right after all. Almost forgetting himself, O'Reilly shook his head as if he had just woken up. Up until now he thought this was all just fantasist bullsh!t. He snapped the laptop shut. The conspiracy theorists might even have been right about the green lizards, O'Reilly smirked to himself, but he didn't want to read that far. It was fu<king horrendous stuff, and he had to force himself to think straight about the job in hand, as if trying to wake from hypnosis. Get in and get out, that was the way he did things.
He started the engine and pulled his car slowly down the road, the intermittent din of a jack-hammer drowning out the sound of the engine, until he got onto the highstreet. The smell of the flat and the dead man still filled his nose. He'd have his money soon, and before the end of the week he'd be sitting ouside his beach house drinking a beer, watching the sun set, a twenty something year old girl snuggled beside him, her hair smelling of blossoms.....As he pulled up to the traffic lights in the dingy rain he caught sight of the black merc in his mirror. It rolled up behind the car directly behind his. O'Reilly slammed on the accelerator, spinning off up the Highgate road and down a side street then another; he knew these streets like he knew how much of a ***** his ex wife was. Very quickly, he had lost the Merc. Pulling into a lane, O'Reilly made a call on his phone. Within seconds a black gate on one of the warehouses opened afew yeard ahead of him. A young man in mechanic's overalls, a cigerette hanging from a lob sided smile, waved from inside. O'Reilly gave him a wink, slowing his engine down to a purr as his car rolled in.

The second part of your story is much better written than the first part, in which needless repetition detracts from its impact:


These sentences can be combined into one single sentence:

Quote:

---

The man had been lying there for what must have been days, a week even. The sharp putrid smell in the dark room made O’Reilly nearly vomit, so that he had to cup his hand over his nose. This was definitely the guy. O’Reilly knew it was.

---

You might consider beginning the story with this description in the opening line:

Quote:

---

it was obvious from the black beard, shaved head and biker fatigue of the terrible figure, which lay sprawled face down in a pool of puke and blood and what looked like [a plate of] chow mein noodles

---

Quote:

---

A blanket of flies hovered around the man’s vicinity, no doubt starting the process of repatriation back into nature.

---

Blanketing the body was a swarm of flies, doing their part in the process of natural decomposition.

Delete this:

Quote:

---

O’Reilly understood about nature, and why things happened and all that stuff. Some stuff though, he just couldn’t figure out.

---

Quote:

---

The sudden vibration of his phone made his heart miss a beat and he glanced behind himself instinctively before noticing that the noise was in fact the phone in his pocket. Annoyed and relieved at the same time, he took it out and answered.

---

His heart jumped at an unfamiliar vibrating sensation which quickly segued to relief when he realized that the origin of the vibration was the phone in his pocket.

Quote:

---

“Yes, I found him.” O’Reilly said. The person on the other end said one word then hung up.

---

“Yes, I found him.” O’Reilly said. The response was a one-word answer and the click of disconnection.

Consolidate all this:

Quote:

---

O’Reilly looked around the room, seeing that the place had been trashed. So they had come for it. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted one of planks on the floorboards was ripped up. And they had found it, was O’Reilly’s next disappointed thought. What they had found wasn’t money or drugs or any such prosaic thing. And the people, the” they”, weren’t just any run of the mill thugs or meatheads. What was involved here, what was at stake, was much bigger.

---

Lose the repetitions in this:

Quote:

---

O’Reilly quivered momentarily as he remembered one of the Scotland Yard lads he used to work with, an ex colleague, telling him over a pint, no, whispering in his ear. He whispered it to him. He whispered:

---

and this:

Quote:

---

“Jim, this stuff, these correspondences and dossiers, makes Wikileaks look like a kid’s comic [book.]. If you ever even lay eyes on it, you’ll end up dead. And there’s no two ways about it. So my advice: leave this case alone, Jim. Run the hell away from it. Pretend you never heard of it and just get on with your life.

---

He mentions "Jim" by name three times, two times too many. The colleague's last three sentences are repetitious. (He must have been a teacher, who, along with a mother, is described a person who never says anything once.)

So I hope you revise the intro so that it matches the higher level of the second part of your piece.


Fairly Flailing Tales # 1


Words of Whiz Dumb 2012



Thirty Poems in Thirty Days

Hi Auntshecky - as always, thanks for the feedback. I'll take a good look at the first part. All the best.

Ok, I don't have as much to list as Aunty, but I think it's a worthwhile read. I usually hate crime/thriller pieces, but you are able to keep this reader engaged- even with jet lag.

I agree:
O’Reilly understood about nature, and why things happened and all that stuff. Some stuff though, he just couldn’t figure out.

Delete it! It's glaring when you read and distracting.

My problem with this piece is that you do everything right, but it lacks some kind of excitement or conflict. Nothing really happens and maybe it lacks depth. Are you still writing more or is the piece done? It can stand on it's own as is. Despite my opinions, I think it is well written. It's a solid piece, but I have seen you write some very strong pieces. Just comparing you to yourself.

Hey thanks B. Always a pleasure to hear from you :)