Beauty

Harry leaned out of her sitting room window. Her small apartment was at the top of one of the old city tenements that teetered over the street below. If Harry looked down she could see the cobblestones of the street and the long-disused central gutter directly beneath her. If she looked out, her gaze was carried over the cascade of rooftops as they tumbled down the steep hillside and into the bay.

On mornings like this, when a light sea breeze blew up the hill and the sun was bright, everything looked fresh and inviting. The cramped, jumble of streets and houses became a delight.

If she craned her neck round a bit she could see the ugly squat squares of concrete of the new buildings in their rigid and space-efficient grids, although even they had flashes of colour where the residents had placed window boxes or the graffiti artists had left their mark. For all its awkardness, and density and inconvenience, Harry had to admit that it was a beautiful city.

Next Bingo Square: Dancing

Criminal Intent

It wasn't that Marco didn't like Alex. In fact Alex was all right, mostly, for someone who was fundamentally a do-gooder and nosey with it. However Marco was a small fish in a big pond and Alex had pissed off one of the big fish. Marco was simply delivering the message.

He told himself this as he watched Alex leaving the small studio where he worked. Marco knew where he was going to to deliver the message. There was a small alleyway, a short cut between a row of shops and the back door of Alex's tenement block. Alex always took that shortcut on his way home. Marco lurked in a doorway across the road from the entrance, half hoping that Alex would turn a different way, walk on to a bar, or down to the bay, or just go in by the front door for once in his life, but no.

Alex turned a corner and headed down the alleyway. Marco shrugged his shoulders in resignation, cracked his knuckles and followed. He had a message to deliver after all. Hopefully Alex wouldn't harbour any ill-feelings about it.

Next Bingo Square: PTSD