THE SENTINEL 

By Tessa Harvey

    Detective-superintendent Alistair Sutherland tapped his pen uneasily on his untidy desk. Nearing retirement he was a broad-shouldered, well-built man. His blue eyes were astute, though the fire of ginger on his thick hair was dying down a little.

    He was puzzled. A message had been passed up the ranks to him. Far away was a small town, fairly nondescript, but on a nearby plateau odd events were linking themselves in his memory.....

    A woman had been calling all the local hospitals and even in his own patch of the city. This lady with the unlikely name of Anemone Wintergarden fleeing from her abusive husband, had reached out to her two adult neighbours on this plateau, only to find an abandoned child. And she remembered grimly, the husband had pulled off a well-planned disappearance ten years ago.

    Sources had told the senior police officer this man was back to his old nefarious activities. And, this part deeply angered him. The wife and daughter had both been critically injured in separate suspicious assaults leaving only a lone vulnerable boy not able to even seek help. Well, thank God for an erratic husband like Mr. Wintergarden, even if he needed a court order against him if it caused a woman with a conscience to help her little daughter's friends.

    And he needed to get his act together now. He knew where nasty missing climber, Tony Smith was probably working. Like a hungry timber wolf, deadly and pitiless to destroy the last survivor of his family.

    Alistair Sutherland had no tolerance whatsoever for abuse of any degree. Mr. Knock-his-wife around Wintergarden was in for a very nasty come-uppance.