The Dai and Julia Mysteries are set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules…

Even when he was supposed to be focused on the case, Dai found himself looking again at the selfie of Julia in the sun and wondering how she was. It had got so the image was always popping unbidden into his mind, leaving his thoughts distracted. He had no idea what he should say to her and dreaded that what he said might be the wrong thing. So he made no further attempt to contact her and as time went on he felt as though the opportunity to say anything, ever was slipping away from him.
“… which means we can effectively eavesdrop on him. Unless he wises up and turns it off.”
He was sitting in Bryn’s office in the Vigiles HQ in Viriconium and it took an effort to refocus his thoughts on what his senior investigator was saying.
“Eavesdrop?”
“Yes. You know how Tony Talog’s using that AI PA system? Mercuria? Well, turns out we can apply to have a listening ear put on it. I put in for it last night and got permission through first thing.”
“So we can spy on him using his own electronics?”
“That’s about the size of it. In fact, we have been for the last few hours.”
“I somehow don’t see him being that indiscreet, but we can hope.”
Bryn laughed. “Bard, you have no idea how people can be with these systems. They think of them as a one-way thing – something they control completely. They tend to forget that it’s connected to the entire internet and not just to their own home.”
“Remind me not to get it installed at the villa.”
“So I don’t think Tony will see it as being indiscreet, it won’t even occur to him there is an issue in the privacy of his own four walls.”
Dai frowned. “He has it at home as well as in his office?”
“Yep. He’s the kind who likes to make out he’s up with all the latest trends. Odd for a man who makes his living from the past, don’t you think?”
“Would be odd if he actually loved the past – Tony Talog doesn’t, he just exploits it.”
“Oh and we have a lunch date,” Bryn said. “Justina Cynddylan says she may have some information for us and wishes us to join her for lunch as her guests.”
“And she can’t just tell us because…?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. But she says she booked a table at an out of town place. Posh one too, Bene Placito, you may have heard of it.”
Dai nodded. It was one of the most exclusive eating places in the area specialising in the finest Roman cuisine. The kind of establishment where your meal would be sparse but served artistically and the fact you felt hungry at the end of the meal would not matter because one sight of the bill would remove what remained of your appetite. Dai had been toying with the idea of taking Julia there for her birthday as a surprise but was not entirely convinced she would want that. There were times he realised just how little he knew her.

As far as discreet went, Bene Placito served that up in buckets. The place was in one wing of a small villa, presumably also the home of the chef who owned it, that nestled in the hills behind Viriconium. The villa had a long private driveway which wound past fields of vegetables and livestock, showing off the produce that they would soon be eating.
Dai and Bryn were greeted at the door by a simply dressed waitress who asked their names and explained that each party or individual was given their own secluded dining room.
“Domina Cynddylan is in the Rose Room. If you will come with me…”
Bene Placito was a small slice of Roman elegance and opulence thrust into the British countryside. The decor and furnishings were all items that might grace the pages of patrician’s lifestyle magazines and set in amongst the modern, sophisticated, decor were exquisite examples of ancient Roman statuary and other artefacts.
The Rose Room turned out to be well named. It had a window onto a small walled rose garden, though at this time of year the bushes were little more than pruned back twigs, and there were several pots of indoor miniature roses sitting on small pedestals. Dai’s heart sank as they were shown in. he should have expected it, but somehow he had not. It was a triclinium. The three couches had been set to overlap, in three sides of a square with the table in the middle.
Justina Cynddylan was already ensconced on the central couch, helping herself to some olives from a bowl on the table. She smiled as the two men were shown in and made a sweeping gesture to the empty couches on either side of her.
“Thank you for joining me, please make yourselves comfortable and we will see what the chef is providing today.” Dai eased himself on to a couch, feeling awkward, but noticed with surprise that Bryn seemed completely unperturbed and slid onto his couch as if patrician born.
“You will have to excuse me from getting right down to business, but we can’t be assured of complete privacy until the meal has been served. The timing of that is always a little uncertain as Chef can be very temperamental.”
“I understand,” Dai said, though he was not sure he really did. But he sought an alternative topic of conversation. “There are a few antiquities here I see.”
“Oh yes. I have sold several genuine ancient pieces to Chef. He is a bit of a connoisseur of Etruscan art and it has been my pleasure to help locate and arrange the purchase of one or two for him.” She lowered her voice “To be honest he is a little obsessed, he is convinced he is descended from Etruscan ancestors, but when one is such a great artist as he is, one can be forgiven such foibles.”
The door opened as she was speaking and the waiting staff piled the table with heated stands and small covered pots, as well as plates with a few multi-coloured leaves strewn over them. A bottle of good wine and glasses completed the spread, then the staff withdrew.
Justina lifted a few lids and helped herself to some of the contents, and made the same imperious sweeping gesture with which she had greeted them. “Eat up. We can talk and eat.”
Dai eyed the items on her plate with some suspicion. He went for a plentiful portion of the grains and vegetables and only a couple of the more innocent looking meat slices, spooning garum over the whole lot to disguise any odd flavours. Bryn, meanwhile, was cheerfully piling his plate with samples from all that was on offer.
“The flamingo is excellent, don’t you think?” Justina nodded towards the meat Dai had chosen. He had some in his mouth at the time and chewed and made himself swallow before managing a nod. Why did the Romans insist on eating such things?
“Look, I really appreciate your – uh – generosity in inviting us here -”
“Oh, not so generous, Chef always gives me a discount,” Justina said quickly.
“Yes. Well, the thing is we are a bit pressed for time, so if you feel we are private enough now, perhaps we could get to what it was you wished to tell us.”

From Dying for a Vacation a Dai and Julia Mystery by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago

Cally and Matt’s divorce reached truly shocking levels of viciousness. 

When it was over they were left with a teenage daughter damaged almost beyond repair. Cally woke up first and went humbly to Patti’s room.

It was hard to find words to apologise sufficiently.

“Bit late, Mum.”

“I know that too.”

“Does Dad?”

Cally swallowed the hot bile that rose in her throat. “I dunno babe. Possibly.” 

“You’re bigger than him. He always says bad stuff about you.”

“Maybe I deserve it for hurting you.”

“He don’t care about hurting. But maybe I’ll be okay now I know you do…”

©️jj 2018

If you have a snotty nose
Pour some brandy on your toes
Rub some olbas on your knees
Fill a foot bath with some cheese
If you have a coughing chest
Put bananas in your vest
Rub some chutney in your hair
And run round the garden bare
In short, if you have the flu
Do the stuff you ought to do
Follow this stuff to the letter
Soon you will be feeling better

©️Jane Jago 2018

Everybody’s favourite private eye, the creation of Jane Jago, is live on Tall Tale TV right now. Why not listen in as Chris brings Sam, Sugar and their weird world to life?

The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Private eye and augmented android. Me and my holographic sidekick, Sugar, operate out of an office on the fifty-fifth level of The Last City. We do okay. But some days are a bit bumpier than others…

When a dame whose everyday walk is as smooth and studiedly sexy as a big jungle cat, and whose make-up is as immaculate as a well-pressed designer suit, arrives in your office at a shambling run with her face all over tears and snot it’s a safe bet that something pretty bad is wrong.
I was lost in thought, with my feet propped on my desk and my hat tipped way down over my eyes, when my office door was thrown open in a dramatic fashion. I barely had long enough to wonder why in the hell my holographic door was now making an eldritch shriek, when Katie Scarlett O’Halleran and her exceptional bosom landed almost in my lap. She was crying, and her face was a mess.

She grabbed me by the lapels and tried to shake me.
“Sam. Sam. You have to come. Somebody has taken Daddy.”
I sat bolt upright and squared my shoulders. Anybody brave enough to mess with Mister Aitch was certainly a big fish, and I guessed I was about to go shark fishing. I grasped the sobbing girl by her slender shoulders.
“Calm down Katie Scarlett, and tell me what happened.”
“I already told you,” she all but screamed, “somebody has taken Daddy.”
“Details Katie, details.”

I gently compelled her to sit down, and held onto her until her chest stopped heaving and she took two steadying breaths. Then I got the bottle out of my drawer and poured her a stiff one. Her teeth chattered against the side of the glass, but the act of drinking calmed her almost as much as the bourbon.
“Daddy’s personal alarm sounded about an hour back. Me and the twins ran, but his office door was locked. When we broke the door down he was gone, and there was blood all over.”
“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t think anything was okay. “Where are the twins now?”
“Flirting with your holographic floozie. We set droids to watch on the office and came straight here.”
I decided now was not the time to react to the slur on Sugar’s character. Instead, I reached into the locked drawer of my desk and pulled out two extra weapons, a mini blaster that I stuck in my sock, and a weighted sap that slipped into my pocket.
“Let’s go then.”

The twins and Sugar were in animated sign language conversation.
“Sugar,” I said, “if anybody comes looking…”
“I don’t know where you are, and I certainly never saw these folks.” She flashed me that empty-headed smile that I knew hid a mind like a steel trap and wiggled her assets. I gave her the raised eyebrow and we left.

The trip down the glides was tense and silent. Katie had herself together but she was only holding by a thread, while the twins obviously looked to me for a lead. I’ll admit it. I was worried. So much so that I didn’t even bother to exchange words with the young chancer who thought it would be a good idea to put his hands on Katie Scarlett; I just broke his wrist before I threw him off the glide. Myk gave me the thumb, and Zig grinned a tight grin.

Jane Jago

Listen in now on Tall Tale TV and you can find the entire story in six episodes here if you want to read along.

The wizard who guarded the coach was old, wizened and crabby looking. He resembled nothing so much as a tortoise. But he was what he was, so people generally gave him a wide berth, which made it all the more surprising when the band of outlaws came screaming out of the woods.

“Stand and deliver!”

The coachman pulled up his team and sighed at the predictability.

“Magic wielder. If you please.”

The wizard waved a negligent hand and the sky filled with snapping dragon wings. The horses bolted.

Once the road cleared, the wizard fed each dragon a chocolate button.

©️jj 2018

When the last thing you remember is something that feels like a bee sting on the side of your neck, and you open your eyes to see a skeleton sitting in a wing-backed chair, apparently reading what looks like a very dog-eared copy of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ by the light of a hissing Tilley lamp, the temptation has to be to close your eyes and wait for it to go away. So I tried that. But it was no manner of use. All that happened was that I heard a dry bone-ish sort of chuckle inside my head.
I opened my eyes again and regarded the ossified one with some dissatisfaction. Then I noticed the spectacles – and that was the moment when hysteria almost overtook me. In order to wear spectacles the frames have to rest on your nose and your ears. Of course, a skeleton has neither but, nevertheless, these horn-rimmed spectacles hovered in approximately the correct position and hideously magnified a pair of bloodshot eyeballs, which seemed to be studying me in much the way a schoolboy studies a bug on a pin.
In an effort at nonchalance I snorted indelicately and sat up.
Bones averted its gaze, which alerted me to the fact I was completely naked.
“Can you cover yourself please?” The voice in my head was almost plaintive. “Normally I wouldn’t care, but I’ve been reading this…”
I laughed and pulled the bedclothes up to my armpits.
Bedclothes? At this point, my hair all but stood on end and it was only iron self-control, and the discipline of years, that enabled me to pull myself together.
I looked around me to discover I was in an enormous barrel-vaulted chamber – windowless except for one narrow slit high on the ceiling which threw a line of light on a clock face equally high on the opposite wall. This would seem to be suggesting that it was three o’clock in the afternoon. I registered that piece of information and filed it in my brain for future reference, before carrying on with the catalogue of my situation. I was sitting on what was possibly a tomb or, more likely, some sort of an altar, on a thick soft mattress and I had a downy coverlet pulled over me. At the side of my ‘bed’ there was a small pile of clothing: not mine. There was also a leather satchel – which was mine, and which I was very pleased to behold.
A deep, cool voice from behind me all but had me snapping my head around in surprise.
“Is there aught you require, lady?”
I turned around with calculated slowness to find myself looking into the eyes of an obviously female stone sphinx.
“My own clothes” I said coolly “and food”.
The creature met my stare head on for a moment before inclining her cranium ironically. She whistled shrilly, and a troupe of fauns clattered into view, bearing various items of clothing and a basket from which the scent of new bread oozed its enchantment. I inclined my own head as the little males disposed their burdens on the coverlet at my feet.
“Right boys” I said briskly “everyone turn away so I can dress in peace.”
They all turned, except the sphinx.
“You too sister. I have no desire to wring your little marble heart with my beauty.”
She snarled, but turned to face outward.
Once I was dressed in leather trousers and a form-fitting multi-pocketed weskit I opened the basket to find bread, bacon, honey, and a flask of wine.
“You can turn back now thank you” I remarked “and can somebody please take the bacon. I don’t eat flesh.”
One of the fauns trotted over and showed me its sharp little teeth in a feral grin as it took the lump of fat bacon out of the basket….

This is an extract from ‘The Nature of the Beast’. Just one of the stories in ‘Pulling the Rug 2’ by Jane Jago.

Rosita lit cigarette from the stub of the last and scrubbed a yellow sock.

“Me and Manuel don’t get jiggy no more. He’s so fat I can’t find his cojones. Last night he’s begging for it, so I go looking. What’d I find under his great belly? I’ll tell ya. I find the biro pen he lost last month. I find a half-eaten sucking candy. I find cannoli from the ristorante we went for his last birthday. What don’t I find? His pênis. I’m shouting out the list and he laughs so much the bed collapses. Hombres. Who knew…” 

©️jj 2019

This, Carla realised, was what was meant by ‘tea and sympathy’. Only, in this case, it was coffee and sympathy – well latte to be exact – and some comfort-eating chocolate cake.
“So it’s over this time?” Her cup, broad and deep, clicked back on its saucer. “Really? Truly?”
Emmy gave a sad smile. Over the last hour and the chocolate cake, she had burdened Carla’s soul with a gory, forensic dissection of the breakdown of her relationship. Cut by painful cut, from the first misconstrued comment to the final brutal insult.
“Oh it’s over. Dead. Buried. Jake knows it, I know it.”
“You’re sure? Last time – ”
“Last time I was still half in love.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not.”
“So what about Chris?”
Emmy’s blue eyes blinked once, stating clearly that the name was not relevant in her love life and never would be. “I heard from Miranda the other day. Sienna is starting school. Isn’t that incredible? It only seems like last week the three of us were sitting in these very chairs discussing baby names.”
“Emmy – you can’t pretend forever.”
The blue eyes clouded. Emmy grabbed her coffee cup from its brightly coloured saucer and hid behind it. The words ‘I Love Cappuccino’ danced around the rim in bold, red letters.
“Chris won’t just go away,” Carla spoke to the cup.
Emmy lowered the coffee, her face tightly resentful.
“Chris is not involved with this.” Then, suddenly appealing: “Let’s not go there today, Carla hun, please.”
Not for the first time, Carla felt herself being torn between loyalties. Emmy’s baby-blue eyes, pleading, and Chris – dependable Chris – bleeding from a dozen wounds he had never known were being inflicted. Carla shook her head slowly, as the waters of the Rubicon flowed away beneath her feet.
“He’s your husband, not a meal ticket. You have to – ”
Instantly Emmy was by the door, the cup still in her hand.
“I don’t ‘have to’ anything! Don’t you understand? I don’t care!”
The coffee cup arced across the room heading for shattering impact and landed at the moment the door slammed. It bounced on the carpet, with a little spray of coffee and rolled, until it stopped on its handle by Carla’s feet, still safe and in one piece.
Carla bent to pick it up, the words facing her read: ‘I Love…’. For a moment she clutched it close, then she placed it with extra care on its own saucer, where it belonged.

E.M. Swift-Hook

When your mates are hammered by the time you arrive, there’s only one solution. Tequila. Much tequila.

I woke up to brilliant sunshine, a mouth like a crocodile’s armpit, and a sense of unease. There seemed to be something trapping me to the bed. It was an arm. A very hairy obviously masculine arm. I managed to lever myself into a sitting position, and barely repressed a shriek.

Either I was in bed with  grizzly bear, or…

The hairy thing rolled over.

“Morning wife,” it said. 

“Wife?” I heard the panic in my own voice.

I never drunk tequila again.

©️jj 2019

She went to find her mother to tell her she was going back to Thuringen the next day. Instead, she froze in the doorway at the image on the vidcast screen they had been sharing before she had left the room. The face filled the air. It was some documentary her mother had been viewing to do with criminal justice. She moved into the room paused the image and stood staring, feeling her mouth dry a little and aware that her mother was looking at her with real concern.
“Charis? Are you alright? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Uh — maybe I have. Who is that?”
Her mother looked at the screen and then back to Charis.
“That’s Avilon Revid. The man who was an academic genius then murdered his wife and child and went off to become a terrorist. Sad story: brilliant mind goes mad and falls into an orgy of destruction — until they caught him. So happy ending.”
Charis felt sick. She had to be wrong.
“He’s still alive?”
“I would doubt so. It was a big case at the time. If I recall the trial was held behind closed doors for security reasons and he was sentenced to serve in the Special Legion. The judge ruled that the death penalty would be too lenient. Which led to a lot of debate at the time and set a precedent for subsequent sentencing — before the general view had been that the death penalty was the more extreme, but once the —” she broke off with a small smile, no doubt realising she was letting her legal enthusiasm run away with her.
“When was this?”
“It must have been, hmm…” Her mother clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth as she thought. “Must be seven or eight years ago now. Why? Charis, you’re looking as though you recognise him.”
The Specials. A cold frost had started somewhere in her chest and spread out along her limbs. Charis shivered.
“No. Well, yes — it’s just he bears a creepy resemblance to someone I met on Thuringen. But no. It’s not him. It couldn’t be. Just — those eyes.” She shivered again.
Her mother nodded understanding. Then, probably because she was so understanding she turned off the vidcast and took Charis out for the evening. But the image wasn’t so easily dismissed from Charis’ mind and when she got back into the ‘City a couple of days later it was still haunting her. She had just landed when her mother was linking her, very concerned.
“Darling, the man you told me about, the one who looked like that terrorist?”
“What about him?”
“He’s not someone you know well, or have many dealings with is he?”
Charis could hear the tightness in her mother’s voice, see her anxiety.
“No. Not at all. I’ve not seen him for ages. Why?”
“I checked with some friends of mine in the Legal department of CRD. Avilon Revid was released a year ago having served five years exemplary. It was low key and kept unpublicised because of his notoriety. He will have been given a new identity — but they wouldn’t tell me where he was released. That is privileged information.”
The frost was forming again.
“Oh I’m sure this wasn’t the same man,” she said quickly, to reassure both of them. “And even if it was I don’t think I’d be seeing him again anyway.”
“I’m sure it’s not too. I mean, the chances are ridiculously small — but please, take care anyway.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

From Edge of Doom, a Fortune’s Fools book and the second volume of the Haruspex trilogy.