The Book Vault. Liz Filleul

      BLURB

      Take a look inside The Book Vault and discover award-winning crime and speculative fiction from Liz Filleul:

      The Book Vault includes Liz's prize-winning entries in the annual Scarlet Stiletto Awards; along with The Punishment Book, a novelette based on one of those stories.

      Not What You Think We Are

      An exploited former gymnast builds a team of tiny champions after discovering a dark family secret

      Crime Traveller

      A time-travelling crime writer from 2040 investigates a long-gone-cold case on the Gippsland coast

      Brought to Book

      Four collectors of schoolgirl fiction go on the trail of vintage book thieves

      The Write Place

      Two would-be best-selling authors get caught up in a writing scam

      The Punishment Book

      A nervous new PI tracks down a missing mum via an online spanking forum

      INTRODUCTION

      These stories were originally written for the Scarlet Stiletto Awards over a ten-year period, from 2003 to 2012 and reflect the technology of the time. I've left the technology as is for this anthology, including in the novelette 'The Punishment Book', which began life as a short story half the length in 2003. The way the perpetrator traps the victim through the internet wouldn't have worked in the same way ten years later. Putting together this anthology reminded me how rapidly technology has moved in a relatively short space of time. Perhaps we'll be enjoying the futuristic technology in my 2011 cross-genre story 'Crime Traveller' before we know it!

      Liz Filleul

      Melbourne, 2013

      THE BOOK VAULT

      Not What You Think We Are

      Arad, Romania, September 1991

      The first time I saw him, I picked him as a pervert. So many of them were - why else would middle-aged men want to photograph prepubescent gymnasts in leotards? Sure, they claimed their newspapers had sent them; that they usually covered football or rugby. That might have been true in the days of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, but it certainly wasn't true now that gymnastics was no longer a must-see sport.

      This overweight, balding sleazebag was a recently retired PE teacher from Queensland, Australia called Gary Markham. He'd turned gymnastics photo-journalist for pin money, to supplement his superannuation. And to claim tax deductions on overseas travels. He wasn't even trying to hide the fact that he was a creep. There he was now, loitering by the beam with his camera, waiting for the girls to straddle. Ugh.

      One of the Australian girls, Rowena Harris, was wobbling on the beam when Markham strolled over to me and our official translator, Corinna Ruzici.

      'I was wondering if I could have an interview with Eugenia Sidon,' he said. Corinna began translating, but I was fluent in English and interrupted her.

      'Rowena Harris is training on the beam right now. You have no interest in watching her?' I asked, glowering at him.

      Corinna instantly glared at me. Hostility to foreign visitors, particularly Western journalists, might have been de rigeur during the Communist era, but it was not okay now. The upcoming meet between Romania and Australia was a friendly, so the idea was to be, well, friendly. We were supposed to be showing our Australian visitors the new, post-Communist Romania. Their gymnasts had trained alongside us in the training centre at Arad leading up to tomorrow's competition. After that, the Australian delegation would be taken on bus tours, shown some of Romania's sights. The Romanian Tourist Association hoped the invited journalists would commend Romania and lure more Australian tourists with their dollars. I just wanted them to rave about the new wave of young Romanian gymnastics superstars. All coached by me.

      Gary Markham seemed unoffended.

      'I've interviewed Rowena a few times,' he said, 'and I know her routines by heart. Everyone's saying Eugenia's going to be the next Nadia. I'd like to talk to her.'

      I reluctantly agreed and waved to Eugenia, who'd just finished practising a newly learnt release-and-catch move on the uneven bars. She came over straightaway. Apart from her blonde hair, she looked exactly like the rest of the team - tiny, emaciated, pony-tailed and poker-faced.

      Gary Markham beamed at Eugenia when she joined us. He boomed down at her (even he looked tall beside her four foot nine inches) like a jocular uncle.

      'Gidday, Eugenia! I won't keep you long. I just have a few questions for you.'

      Corinna translated and Eugenia eyed Markham sourly.

      Questions from the press could sometimes be awkward, given all that Romanian gymnastics had to hide. But Gary Markham wasn't a very good journalist. He just trotted out the usual questions that the girls had rehearsed for.

      'How many hours a day do you train?'

      'What do you have to eat each day?

      'How old are you?'

      'How old were you when you took up gymnastics?'

      'What made you take it up?'

      'How long have you been doing gymnastics?'

      'Why do you never smile?'

      Eugenia answered mechanically, with a mixture of truth and lies. Even back in my day, every Romanian gymnast had been programmed to know when you could tell the truth and when you couldn't. She told Markham through Corinna that she trained for three hours every day, in the afternoon, after school. (Which was precisely what they had done all week, with the Australians there.) She ate meat and salad, drank lots of milk and yes, of course, she ate chocolate as well. She'd had some only that morning! She was fifteen years old. Yes, everybody told her she only looked about ten, and looking so young was a real pain, but her mother said she'd be happy if she looked five years younger when she turned fifty. She'd taken up gymnastics when she was five, because she loved doing handstands and cartwheels and her mother thought she could be just like Nadia Comaneci. She'd been doing gymnastics for ten years. (In the past, some gymnasts had slipped up with that question because they'd had to lie about their age and the numbers didn't add up.) And she took her gymnastics seriously; why should she smile when executing a back somersault on the four-inch beam?

      Markham scribbled down notes. He asked her what her ambitions were and she told him she wanted to be the next Olympic champion. Then he asked her what she planned to do after gymnastics. She looked floored by this and said she didn't know.

      'Coach, maybe?' I prompted her.

      Eugenia shrugged.

      'Didn't you do gymnastics yourself once?' he asked me.

      I sent Eugenia back to practise her vault. She'd been working on the vault and I really wanted her to impress the judges. I told him that yes, I had done gymnastics but I'd retired at thirteen; I'd never made it to the national team.

      The youngest member of the Australian team, Sarah Heathcote, was working on the beam now. She was thirteen and only slightly taller than our girls, and not that much heavier. Spotting her, Markham headed back to his vantage point beside the apparatus, but not before giving me an odd kind of look. I wondered what rumours he might have heard. Then I reminded myself: what did it matter? All that mattered was that my gymnasts were more successful than any of their predecessors and I was recognised by the Romanian Gymnastics Organisation as the best coach of all time.

      Which they would be. I would be.