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Books written by Ray Sullivan

Monday 31 December 2012

Parallel Lives chapter 39


The news report about the aircraft crash was absorbed and forgotten within minutes by Jack as he sat at the kitchen table sifting through the mound of paperwork he had brought home. Some of it was routine paperwork that he had to keep on top of for the engineering department to continue to function; requisitions for high value spares and requests for manpower overtime for the forthcoming maintenance shutdown. Most of the papers on his desk, however, related to the information requested by the Coroner’s office to be available.
Jack wondered how Alan was hoping to swing this with the Coroner. He knew only the official side of the plan, how he was being called to confirm that certain specific engineering records were accurate, to agree that the signatures on all of the documents called for were, in his opinion, authentic and that as far as he was aware that all of the work had been carried out. What he didn’t know was what Alan had reported to the Coroner’s office regarding John Staples. He knew that the company had been requested to bring along all paperwork pertaining to John, including his Human Resources file, and that the company had been advised to consult their legal department and arrange for necessary legal representation for the day of the inquest. Alan had intimated that the hospital was being pressured to contact John through various channels, but he wouldn’t reveal exactly what that meant or involved. Jack assumed that Sam Jackson had kept most of his tracks covered, but would have to stay in contact with the hospital. Presumably he would be sensitive to reasonably high level enquiries via the hospital administration from official sources, and as it seemed likely that what he was doing with John was almost certainly not sanctioned or known about by the hospital then he would react by producing him as called for.
Upstairs Karen lay awake, wondering about the events of the previous days and her involvement in it. For the hundredth time since ‘turning in for an early night’ Karen had puzzled how she and Jack had been sucked into a conundrum that was of little relevance to them. Both of them, she mused, avoided becoming ‘involved’, did not take part in local events, were uninterested in other people’s lives as a rule. And now she was planning and plotting, scheming and manipulating on behalf of someone she neither knew or ever wanted to know. Had Karen known about the plane incident she would have contemplated about the vulnerability of the medium, would have felt concern momentarily for the persons involved but would have forgotten the event very quickly. As it was, by the time Karen would hear another news broadcast or read a newspaper, this item would be long gone and forgotten.


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Copyright Ray Sullivan 2011


The characters, places and events described in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance to persons, places or events, past or present, is coincidence.  All rights reserved

Parallel Lives is published in paperback and as an eBook


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