Now here's a curious thing...

A taxi driver picks up a fare from a hotel and takes him and his three very heavy and large suitcases to an address literally just around the corner - why?


You might say because the suitcases were too heavy for the man to carry, but if that were so then why didn't the man initially ask the taxi driver to take him directly to his home, or his final destination?


Perhaps the man had a meeting at the hotel and didn't have time to go home first. Seems a little odd when a taxi could have collected him from the station, airport or wherever, dropped him and his cases off and then the man could have run or walked around the corner to his meeting at the hotel without being too late.


Or did the man collect the suitcases from the luggage department of the hotel, where he'd left them earlier, but why? Or had someone else left them and he was simply collecting them? Again why? And what was in them?


A simple incident and one that happened in London yesterday when I was picking up my cab to return to Waterloo station after giving my talk, ( which, thank you for asking, went very well - I think). The taxi driver couldn't believe it himself. He said it was one of the strangest fares he'd had. I didn't get to see the man because he was inside the narrow house with the dark blue door taking in his cases but the taxi driver said he was of 'foreign persuasion.' There was a plaque on the wall, the kind businesses put up, but again didn't get a chance to read what it said.


These are the little incidents that crime and thriller novels are made off and my little brain is ticking away with all kind of scenarios that might just one day end up in one of my marine mysteries.

Comments

Leigh Russell said…
What fun! My publisher told me to keep reading for inspiration, but I find inspiration around me wherever I go. Incidents like your man in a taxi are enough to set off a whole novel, aren't they? Who was he? Where did he come from? And what was in the cases??? I love the sound of your marine mysteries!
Pauline Rowson said…
Thanks, Leigh. It's all about asking good 'open' questions around an incident or an idea. As Rudyard Kipling said, 'I have six honest serving men they taught me all I knew, their names are what and where and when, and how and why and who.'

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