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Don Bentley sat in the compartment of the train heading to London, thinking of murder. The smoke from the thundering steam engine wafted past the window as the teenage Bentley drifted in thought. Bentley was occupied not so much with the act of murder and its repercussions; the police investigation, the court case, the gallows. Bentley was imagining he was the reporter with a scoop; the journalist who broke the news of the killing first, the pressman whose byline was on the … [Read more...] about Butterflies on the semi-fast from Basingstoke

The obituaries came thick and fast this night. It was winter after all, when most people seemed to die; or so it appeared to Don Bentley.  He had 40 years experience in either writing or editing obituaries and he would always say you could virtually use the “births, deaths and marriages” notices in a newspaper as a calendar. Deaths in winter; marriage in spring and births in summer and early autumn. Obituaries generally were written to a certain style, a style all reporters … [Read more...] about Reporter comes to grief

DON Bentley waited for the last report that would complete the jigsaw of words and pictures that was the latest edition of the Chronicle. The final piece of the night’s work was the theatre review. It was midnight, the post office clock was chiming, but there was still plenty of time for the theatre critic to file his copy. The critic always took his time and Bentley was confident the review would be concise and accurate as always. All names would be spelled correctly, of … [Read more...] about All the world’s a stage

Tired of ping-pong, Don Bentley left the table tennis players at the Chronicle to their game one night and  wandered across the road in his break to Mahoney’s pub and sat at the bar. The juke-box, which usually filled the pub with music, was quiet this night and when Don Bentley looked about him he saw that he was the only patron in the bar. The barmaid was new, she didn’t know Bentley, and so there was no one to make conversation with. A pub without conversation, a pub … [Read more...] about Going down slow

A SHADOW drifted across the far end of the long, dark passageway and Don Bentley stopped, surprised that someone else should have been down there in the printing works at this hour. Bentley strained his eyes to identify the shape in the near darkness, at the far end of the passageway where the light from a single light bulb at its entrance barely penetrated. The shadow moved out of sight and Bentley called out, softly at first as if not wanting to disturb the silence down … [Read more...] about The spirit in the press room