Synopsis

“Chase”, the famous detective agency in Hamburg, is faced with three extremely tricky cases. Solving the intricate mysteries is one thing, the dangers involved are another. Chief investigator Rique Allmers and his team are always up against powerful and unscrupulous opponents.

In “The Hunt for the Mute Poetess”, they set out to uncover the family secret of a deaf-mute author, which is closely guarded by the Hamburg mafia.

In “The Hunt for a King”, the two Chase agents Jérome and Chen Lu travel to Scotland to solve the murder of a history professor. Without knowing it, they fight to preserve one of the greatest legends of mankind.

In “The Hunt for the Tsar’s Treasure”, Andree, Chase’s IT specialist, after his girlfriend is kidnapped, suddenly finds himself in a race to find what is probably the most valuable lost treasure in the world.

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Excerpt

Dumbarton

The Campbell house was in a quiet residential street on the western outskirts of Dumbarton, an affluent neighborhood. They parked the battered Focus in the driveway, and James opened the front door with his key.

“Peter?”

No answer.

While Jérome and Chen Lu looked around, James went through every room and called his younger brother’s name repeatedly, but without success. He left the house and called his name again. Ben Sillings, a neighbor, came out of his house on the other side of the street and greeted him.

“If you’re looking for Peter, the police picked him up and took him with them about two hours ago. Has he done something?”

James went pale. He left Sillings standing there and returned to his friends and told them what he had just learned. He dialed his brother’s cellphone number. They heard it ringing in Peter’s room. From the house phone, he called the police station in Dumbarton, but they knew nothing. He hung up with a sigh of resignation.

“James?” Chen Lu pointed to a box of extralong matches that lay in the hallway next to a low shoe-shelf. “Is this normal?”

James stooped, picked them up and answered thoughtfully: “No, it’s not.” He squinted, thinking. Then he quickly took the box into the living room and went over to the chimney.

“I should have thought of this earlier. I’ve just been away for too long,” he said to the others, who followed him.

“What?” asked Jérome.

“A secret compartment of my father’s. He showed it to me once – and apparently to my brother as well. I assume that Peter found something in it.”

James pressed on a particular spot among the wooden carvings that decorated the ledge of the fireplace. A narrow drawer, which was all but invisible, popped right out from the carving. Inside lay a sealed envelope with a wax seal. They looked at each other. James was about to open the envelope, but Jérome held him back.

“Wait!”

He examined the seal closely. It was a warhammer, framed by the letters H and M. Jérome asked his friend if the seal meant anything to him.

“I think my father wore a ring with this emblem, but what it means, I don’t know.”

Jérome photographed the seal with his cellphone and sent the picture to Andree at CHASE headquarters in Hamburg. Below the image, he wrote:

Urgent!! Find out what this means.

Then James broke the seal and fished a piece of paper out of the envelope, on which four words, followed by a six-digit number in his father’s handwriting, were written.

Sliochd Athair
Treun Cridhe
475542

“What’s that?” Jérome and Chen Lu asked in unison.

“It’s Gaelic,” James murmured thoughtfully.

James took the note, sat down and scrutinized it.

“Can you translate it?” said Chen Lu.

“Of course,” came the reply. “Sliochd means son, but more in the sense of a descendant or heir. Athair means father. Treun is brave and cridhe is heart. I’d interpret this as something like Heir of the father, you brave heart.”

“Have you got any idea what your father meant by that?” Jérome put his hand on his friend’s shoulder from behind.

“Wait!” he said, suddenly excited, “brave heart, of course, that’s it! Braveheart!”

“Braveheart?”

“My father wrote a book about William Wallace, the Scottish freedom fighter. Braveheart! It must be here!”

He jumped up and went to the big book shelf on the wall. He scanned the row of books until he found his father’s work. He pulled it out, turned it upside down and leafed through the pages in the hope that a concealed note would fall out. But there was no note in the book. He turned it over again and flipped hurriedly through the pages in search of a message. “I can’t find anything,” he said, disappointed.

“Maybe you’ll find something here,” said Chen Lu, who had approached the shelf and looked into the gap where Ronald Campbell’s book had been.

There, embedded in the rear wall, was a panel with ten numeric keys. She looked back at the handwritten note, and punched in the number 475542. Immediately, the central part of the shelf moved forward a bit, making it easy to open up the entire bookcase. Behind it, a staircase led down into the darkness. The three looked at each other in amazement, when the doorbell suddenly rang.

Chen Lu rushed to the window and peered discreetly through a gap of the curtains. “Police,” she reported, “two in uniform and one in civilian clothes.”

“I don’t think we can trust them. Come on!” Jérome called to them. Together they went down the secret staircase and closed the shelf-wall behind them.

About the Author

Thomas Dellenbusch was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1964 and still lives there. The former police detective and advertising copywriter has been actively writing for more than twenty years on a wide variety of topics. Although the lion’s share of his assignments originates from the advertising industry, he has also put his talents to use, producing speeches for government officials, poetry for individuals, screenplays, rulebooks, newspaper articles, sketches, and much more. In short, any subject that can be communicated in a stimulating manner.

Since 2013, he has specialized in the production of movie-length-stories — written both by himself and seven other authors via the publishing company he founded expressly for that purpose.

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