Read by David Vickery
The house nestles on the cliff-side, tucked between ocean and pine forest. John stands on the doorstep, hands in pockets, watching the black shape crossing the sand far below. The shape moves closer, takes the form of a man.
For the first time in years, John craves a cigarette – if only to stop his teeth from chattering. The sun climbs in the sky but the sweat of exertion is cooling rapidly on John’s skin. He is too old. He shouldn’t have volunteered. He remembers the look that passed between his superiors, but in the end they’d all agreed.
It was John’s job to finish it.
The man has disappeared and the grey sand now stretches empty to the roaring waves. There are steps that cling to the cliff-side. John knows all about these steps, though he has never climbed them. Just as he knows the layout of the house behind him – the access points, the escape routes – though he has never been inside.
Moving into a patch of sunlight, John closes his eyes. Counts. There is the sound of feet against shale, drawing closer. Right on time.
The voice is deep. The words bluntly razored by the labours of scaling the cliff-side. ‘I always knew it would be you.’
John would know that voice anywhere.
For a moment John allows himself the fantasy. He will open his eyes and it will be 1964. Manes bridge. The Vlatava flowing fast beneath them, the snow dancing in the air like ash. But this time the fates will deal a different hand.
The truth of that night haunts him. The fight. The fall.
Truth. What a joke.
John opens his eyes. The man has a shock of white hair, thick and wild, standing out at odd angles; a week’s worth of grey stubble. His skin is darker, heavily lined by years of outdoor living in sun-baked countries. But it is still, undeniably, him.
Alive.
Without thinking, John steps forward but he stops himself, pushes his hands deeper into the pockets of his windbreaker. ‘Murphy,’ he says.
There is a moment. A pulse. Two men on a cliff-edge. A seagull circles on the air current above and when it cries out, the spell is broken.
‘I suppose you better come in,’ Murphy says, ducking his head towards the door. ‘Unless–’
‘No,’ John says, and although it is not true, he adds: ‘There’s time.’
*
In the kitchen, Murphy clatters cupboard doors, draws out a frying pan, places it on the ring. He moves easily, like a much younger man. John tries not to think of his own soft body, his thinning hair, the jowls that descend like a Dobermann’s.
‘How is Anna?’ Murphy asks, as he pours oil into the pan.
At the kitchen table, John traces a coffee-ring stain with his finger. He does not owe Murphy an explanation, but he gives one anyway, speaking to Murphy’s back. ‘I didn’t marry her. We didn’t – I didn’t marry anyone.’
Murphy says nothing. The faucet shrieks as the kettle fills.
John believes he knows the answer, but he asks: ‘Did you ever–’?
‘God, no.’ The bark of laughter is so familiar, even now, that John feels his heart skip. ‘No. Confirmed bachelor that’s me.’
‘Us,’ John says quietly. ‘That’s us.’
Murphy stills. His shoulders round. Then he is moving again, throwing open the refrigerator. It is empty save for a small grease-proof packet that Murphy lifts out and, in the door, a single, white-shelled egg.
‘Breakfast,’ Murphy says.
The kitchen is not sparsely furnished, John realizes. It is empty. ‘It looks like you were planning to leave.’
‘There’s bacon, a couple of rashers. Only one egg, sorry.’
‘Were you going to run again?’ John asks.
The packet of bacon lands on the worktop. The egg yields to the side of the pan and Murphy puts his thumb to the crack, splits it open. The innards drop into the sizzling fat.
‘Well, would you look at that,’ Murphy says, holding out the pan. ‘Meant to be.’ The white is already hardening, becoming opaque, cradling perfect yellow yolks. Two of them.
*
It was Anna who suggested Murphy be their third for the Prague operation. She sat at her dressing table, readying herself for work. It was summer 1963 but Anna dressed demurely.
‘We need someone, and you two are wonderfully easy together,’ she said, smoothing her dark hair, threading a gold earring through the hole in her lobe. ‘You can make out you are brothers. You already finish each other’s sentences. Nobody will question it. What do you think? Do you want to take Murphy to Prague?’
John searched Anna’s reflection in the mirror for some secret meaning, some hint that all his fears had been realised. He was waiting to be punished for it: for letting his guard down.
It had been a muggy Friday night in The Eagle on City Road, one of those nights when all of London felt shimmery and ethereal, wrapped in fog. The type of night where mistakes are made. John had too many beers and Murph was never careful. John suffered a single day of raging hangover but weeks of rollicking fear in his chest.
‘Why do you even care?’ Murph had said. ‘Fuck the law.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Why not? Look at the life we lead. Subverting the law, it’s what we do.’
They had the argument many times. ‘Not with this,’ John said. ‘We’re not above the law with this.’
‘In that case, fuck you too,’ Murph had said.
But they’d agreed. They’d watch their backs. Did Anna suspect?
But Anna’s clear blue eyes betrayed nothing. John studied her open, honest face. The face that made her so good at her job.
Murphy in Prague. The thought made him giddy. John tried not to seem too eager. ‘I barely know the man.’
‘What rot,’ Anna said. ‘Course you do.’
‘Maybe I just don’t want to share you.’
Anna laughed at this. ‘I don’t imagine Murph as a threat to our relationship, do you? I’m hardly his type.’
John suppressed the fizz of anxiety. Anna turned back to the mirror, selected a lipstick from the shelf, said only, ‘I’m sure Murphy prefers a blonde.’
*
The operation was delicate. Too soon the fiery colours of Prague in autumn rotted away, replaced by desolate grey; yet they still weren’t ready. Anna worked her contacts – remained relentlessly optimistic, brutally focused. Murphy and John took advantage of the empty apartment, piling cushions onto the wooden floor below the window where the low winter sun would warm their skin. But it couldn’t last. The signal came. And on a dark February evening, the sky heavy with the threat of snow, everything was made ready.
Anna wore floor-length green velvet, a sable shrug, her grandmother’s pearls. Murphy, handsome in a slim tuxedo, his hair parted on the side. He was in high spirits, barely able to stand still. John lamented the cheap chauffeur’s suit and hat that were his to wear. ‘I feel ridiculous in this get up.’
‘I think you look darling,’ Anna said. She held Murphy’s camera. ‘Smile, gentlemen.’
Murphy barked a laugh, threw his arm around John.
And then it was time to go.
*
John was settled in for a long wait, blowing warm air into his cupped palms, when the car door flew wide. The briefcase came first, and then Murphy.
‘Drive!’ he shouted. ‘Drive now!’
And though this wasn’t the plan and though John should have known better, he slammed his foot to the floor without thinking. Shouted: ‘Where’s Anna? What happened?’
In the backseat, Murph pounded his face with his fists, moaned, as they sped through the silent streets.
‘Murphy, please!’
‘Stop. Stop the car.’
And before they could draw to a halt, Murphy hauled on the door, bolted out.
Manes bridge was empty, the snow drifting through yellow pools of lamplight. Murphy paced, his hands raking his hair. ‘I’m fucked,’ he said, over and over. ‘I’m fucked.’
‘Murphy, where is Anna?’
‘Anna’s safe.’
‘What happened?’
‘I fucked everything up.’
John reached for him then, Murphy’s familiar body pressed against his own. The smell of him sent an ache through John – Murphy’s scent of tobacco and shoe leather laced with something primal. Fear. ‘Calm down, talk to me. We can fix this.’
‘I love you,’ Murphy said. ‘I’ve always loved you.’
‘Murphy.’
‘Come with me.’
John stepped back. Murphy’s eyes were wild. ‘What are you talking about? Come where?’
‘Away. Now. Please, John, if you love me–’
‘You need to calm down. Get back in the car.’
Murphy twisted his body. ‘Fuck you, John.’
The right hook took him by surprise, John’s face exploding in pain. And even as he fell, his head hitting the iron railings, John knew: the worst of the bruises would be in invisible places. He staggered back to his feet, gripped the side of the bridge but in the seconds that had elapsed, Murphy had climbed up on the parapet.
‘Get down, man. You’re mad. What are you doing?’
Time faltered. John staggered forward, reached for Murphy but he grasped only air as Murphy’s body fell, silently, swiftly, fatally into the icy black depths of the Vlatava rushing below.
John’s heart exploded into a thousand pieces and fell around him like the snow.
It was only much later, Anna hammering her fists against the wooden floor of the apartment – cursing Murphy, cursing herself – that John realised: the briefcase was empty.
*
The decades crash away. The old men eat breakfast: John off a cheap white plate, Murphy straight from the frying pan. John cuts his bacon with his fork. The egg yolk splits, bleeding across the plate. They do not speak. John’s instructions are clear, the questions will come later – and John won’t be the one to ask them.
Their plates empty, it is Murphy who places his palms on the table and says, ‘Best be getting on with it then hadn’t we?’
John stands. He is reaching into his pocket for the handcuffs when he hears the crash. Murphy’s head whips up. John sees it clearly: the fear in Murphy’s eyes.
‘Stay here,’ he says. He moves his hand away from the handcuffs, feels instead the cold familiar metal of his gun.
The kitchen gives on to a corridor that stretches the length of the house. The layout John has memorised. He creeps along the hall, gun raised, kicks open first one door and then another. Both bedrooms, empty. Nowhere for an intruder to hide. He pivots on his back-foot, enters the bathroom. The bathroom window is closed. An oblong of blue sky.
It is the crunch of glass beneath his feet that alerts him to it. An empty nail on the wall, a wooden frame on the ground, its front smashed. Two handsome young men grin up at him from the portal of the past and for a moment John wonders who they could possibly be – these young, carefree men with their whole lives ahead of them. He stoops to pick up the photograph, shards of loose glass fall to the floor. The beautifully cut tuxedo. The ridiculous chauffeur’s hat.
All these years, Murphy has kept it.
The knowledge burns in John’s chest. Murphy had been right. What they’d had together. How could that be wrong?
John loves Murphy. He always has.
They have waited thirty-five years. John does not want to wait another moment. He holds the photograph above his heart, against the plastic of his windbreaker and hurries to the kitchen, ready to finally say the words. Ready to be the man Murphy begged him to be. To leave. To run. Together.
The dirty plate and frying pan sit on the table.
The kitchen is empty.
Murphy is gone.
(c) Bronia Flett, 2025
Bronia Flett is a Scottish writer based in Accra, Ghana. Her flash fiction has featured in Litro Online & she has short fiction forthcoming in Fictionable. In 2024, she was a finalist in the NYC Midnight short story competition where her story ‘Beach Days’ received an honourable mention.
David Vickery is a former network BBC TV announcer & television presenter, with a track record in programme narrations for Five, Discovery, AETN, Smithsonian, Nat Geo & other channels. He trained as an actor at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama & loves to play croquet.
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