[John Whitworth]

Competition: Cliffhanger
LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 8TH OCTOBER 2011
Cliffhanger
In Competition No. 2716 you were invited to supply the gripping final 150 words of the first instalment of a serial thriller.
Charles Reade, now mostly forgotten but ranked with Dickens in his day, summed up the art of the cliffhanger thus: ‘Make ’em cry, make ’em laugh, make ’em wait — exactly in that order.’ The best of a magnificently overwrought entry that elicited the odd wry smile though no tears from this flinty-hearted judge are printed below and earn their authors £25 each. Alan Millard pockets the bonus fiver.

Assured of a handsome income despite the dubious outcome, I relished the Franco Deutsch challenge to salvage the foundering eurozone, sadly torpedoed and sinking fast.
Pietro, who claimed to know Papandreou, had planned our rendezvous, undercover, though actually under a roofless relic. Primed for action but grossly obese, I gasped for breath atop the Acropolis, rechecked the cryptic, encrypted message I should have swallowed, and spotted our venue which turned out to be the Parthenon’s front, middle column. Counting eight, but expecting nine, admittedly muddled, I mused upon which was the middle. Had Pietro, I wondered, sheepishly, fleeced me? Or was I, just like the Greeks, losing my marbles?
Suddenly, springing from nowhere, Pietro appeared, pointing a pistol. ‘Aha!’ he cried. ‘My friend, you are snookered!’ But was I, or had I the balls to pot the blackguard? The cue was poised, but would he, or could he, be pocketed?
Alan Millard

And it was at this precise moment that the food began to froth. He had been so intent on ensuring that the door was barred and bolted, and the detonator precisely primed, that he had forgotten the meal he had left simmering surreptitiously on the stove. It was the oxytocin still racing round his system: it had robbed him of his normal composure. ‘Darling,’ he said, in a strangulated voice, attempting to stretch a hand towards the handle of the pan. ‘Darling, if you could just...’ But the words were drowned out by the grandfather clock, which began sounding the arrival of noon. He clenched the dagger between his teeth. Feet began to pound violently up the path, and the signal came through simultaneously on his head-set. And now she was coming down the stairs, her silks rustling vigorously. There was nothing else for it. He improvised a lasso.
Bill Greenwell

The chamber door hissed shut. Guy took stock of his situation — secured by clamps to a chair itself fixed to the chamber floor; hands clamped to the chair back, feet to its legs; encased in a wet suit strong enough to withstand the stings of the killer hornets several comatose nests of which were at his feet. Only his eyes and nostrils were uncovered. Liberally scattered across the floor were fragmentation grenades primed to explode at the slightest movement . Soon the thermostat would activate the heating. The hornets would become active. Through the grille would come the gas goading the hornets to homicidal fury with his eyes and nostrils as their only target.
It’s a chance in a million,’ thought Guy. ‘But it might just work.’ He blinked his right eye and curled the toes of his left foot repeatedly. Noises came from the thermostat.
J. Seery

Luke stared into his screen. So this was it. Vassily had broken through the security firewall, breached all trading caps, and sent the markets into the wildest spin the world had seen. Already he could hear the first squeaks of shock turning to panic on the dealing floor. But there was still a chance if he acted quickly. Only he knew all the codes; no one else knew he knew.
He grabbed the fake ID, passport and neat hand-gun hidden against such an emergency. Vaclav could get him airborne before Vassily realised he was on the move. Sandar stepped forward as though to stop him. Luke’s laptop smashed him under the chin and he crumpled sideways. No time to shoot.
But there was worse. Bronco blocked his path, pale as lard, his icy-blue eyes full of tears. ‘It’s Carla,’ he moaned. ‘Some bastard ...she’s...’ Then he collapsed.
D.A. Prince

‘Surrender, Ovlovov,’ Cardew spat through gritted teeth, limbs straining desperately against tight bonds ‘you may not play by the rules, but by Jingo I’m going to defeat you by them.’
Ovlovov, a grin writhing across his fat Russian face like a nauseous puff adder, merely chuckled. ‘I think not. With the aspidistra from your foolhardy Control’s office and Professor Ampersand’s process for extracting sound waves from chlorophyll, all your secrets will be ours.’
Control’s once charming eccentricity, ruminating over matters of national security while tending his aspidistra, now caused Cardew to shudder at the fate of the nation it had inadvertently betrayed.
‘You may get away with this, Ovlovov,’ said Cardew, ‘but history will judge you a cad.’
‘Better cad than corpse.’ Ovlovov gloated, his finger caressing the death ray’s trigger.
Cardew, paralysed, felt the chill proximity of death from which only poor quality Soviet manufacture could save him.
Adrian Fry

We called our unit Coastbusters. Stopping drug-smuggling was our job. I was the team rookie. Two of us had staked out a surveillance position high above the little moonlit cove. The fishing smack, Le Mot Juste, was unloading. Then my buddy slipped. DC Hanger, known inevitably as Cliff, was now living (for the moment) up to his nickname. He held on grimly to a tuft of grass. Help! Why hadn’t I had a practical education? What use was my 2.1. in Eng. Lit. now? And yet ...I vaguely recalled a similar situation. Early Hardy. ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’? Whatever! Heroine made a life-saving rope with her drawers. I stepped out of mine. Offered them over. Useless. Thongs aren’t what they used to be. ‘For pity’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘Can’t hold on much longer.’ I needed material stretchy but strong. My bra! Oh, damn these hooks and eyes...
Derek Morgan