Chapter 1

The new millennium was not long away, the old century was coming to a close, and the night was also ending. He opened his eyes. The soft click of the alarm had been enough to take his attention away from his early morning dreams. His alarm was silent apart from the click; there was no Trans Atlantic sounding disc jockey inanely greeting him to a wonderful day, no tuneless pop music to shake him from slumber. He had long ago learned that the clock radio with the sound turned down was enough. An almost inaudible click, and he was awake, if not exactly ready to go just yet.

Edward had been lying half dreaming and half watching a small spider spin a web in the corner of the bedroom. He leant across and took the remote and clicked on the TV. Sky News came up, and he scanned the headlines – nothing really grabbed his attention. He flicked through the other news channels on the satellite, Al Jazeera, CNN, and Russia Today. The BBC, they were all the same, devoid of news of note, but then he expected that they would be. Most TV news was heavily sanitised if not censored, and, as he knew, it was all too often the later. He flipped the sheet and duvet off and raised himself from the bed. His feet sank into the carpet, its deep pile caressing and embracing his toes as he walked to the ensuite.

Edward turned the mixer tap on the handwash basin to get the hottest of water ready for the morning shave. He warmed his face with a towel held under the hot water and juggled it from hand to hand, the towel almost hot enough to scald. His face glowed pink from the heat, and he applied the white cooling cream of the shaving gel, massaging it into the growth prior to the scrape of the blade. He looked at the head on his shaver and decided that further days’ work from the blades was probably a bad idea, flicked the button, dropping the old blade head into the waste pin before clicking in a new replacement.

A press of the button and a small buzz were audible as the shaver vibrated in his hand. Dipping the head under the hot water, he looked at the white-bearded man in the mirror and scraped. Hot water dripped onto his chest from the blades as he moved slowly down his cheek, feeling the new blades slice through the stubble, leaving his skin bald of both nicks and hair. A sluice under the hot tap was followed by an upward stroke that met the previously cleared path. Again, the blade was under the hot, and then it was the turn of the other cheek, down then up.

Inexorably the white Father Christmas beard shrank, and cheeks and chin, pinked by the hot water, were revealed. Finally, all that needed to be removed was the white moustache, the most difficult of all manoeuvres if the white gel were not to be joined by the stinging spots of red. Small, slight downward strokes were used, with a reapplication of the white gel and lather to allow a final stroke or two to capture any renegade stubble that had avoided earlier decapitation. A final rinse and then an application of cooling aftershave gel rehydrated his skin and calmed the burn from the razors’ passage.

A pink-faced man with green eyes looked at him from the mirror. A critical examination of nostril and eyebrow hairs revealed no need for further trimming. What was important now was to wash away the perspiration of a night under a winter duvet. He pressed the on button for the electric shower and entered, the rest of his body now getting the attention it so desperately needed. Edward stood and leant his hands on the stall wall as the water cascaded onto his head, rivulets across his shoulders combining once more at his buttocks, his eyes shut as the torrent poured across his face. He stood back a little from the main flow and added a little Nina Ricci Mémoires D’homme shower gel to his hands and then lathered his hair.

A little more gel followed, and he ran his hands across his trunk, his hands going up into his arm pits and shoulders before sweeping back down into his groin. A few moments attention and his whole body was covered in a fine patina of bubbles, mildly scented and ready for the rinse. Edward stepped forward and changed the setting to needle and faced the powered jet from the shower, and even the most tenacious of bubbles was washed away. He turned the shower off and stood dripping, clear soft water drops falling away to seek and follow the bubbles that had already left.

He stepped out of the shower and stood on the scales and was disappointed to see that he had added a kilo, now weighing in at eighty-five. At six feet tall, he considered that at eight five kilos, he was turning to flab; definitely time to work out more, he decided. Stepping from his scales, he went to the dresser and took a pair of dark blue Chinese silk under shorts and a pair of dark mid-calf socks and dropped them on the bed. An Egyptian cotton pure white double-cuff shirt was added to the pile, followed by a pair of gold cufflinks with a single small eighth-carat diamond in each and a dark blue silk tie, which completed the inner clothes.

A dark pinstriped single-breasted suit provided the outer wear, but he was not ready yet to wear his outfit. He slipped on a robe and went down to the kitchen, turning on his coffee machine to warm, selecting a dark roast pod for his morning caffeine jolt. As the water for his coffee heated, a bowl of muesli was drowned in ice-cold milk to complete his breakfast. Eating quite quickly before the cereal softened and lost its crunch, he emptied the bowl, savouring the textures of the different grains and nuts, crushing the contents of his spoon between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Once the bowl had been emptied and stacked in the dish washer, he took his coffee upstairs, slipped off the gown, hung it back on the hanger and took a deep breath. Now it was time to dress and face the world.

The darkness of the night ceded ground to light as another winter’s day broke to reveal a sparkling carpet of raggedy-edged white hoar frost. The weak January sun slowly climbed the brightening sky and warmed the cold still air; leaves on plants and tiles on roofs began to steam, their frosty frozen coating turning to a shimmering vapour. As Edward stood at home dressing, people hurried from home to work, some scurrying along paths to wait at bus stops or railway platforms, others stood scraping car windows, but all with breath puffing out of their mouths like steam from long gone and mostly forgotten trains. An ethereal mist floated, reflecting the red light of the early morning sun, softening the coldness of the frosty start. A fuzzy white line crossed the pure blue heaven, growing wider and fainter as it headed west, the telltale evidence of a fortunate few escaping the cold of an English winter day, heading for hotter climbs, perhaps Caribbean, perhaps not.

Edward stopped to pick up a copy of the Financial Times at the local newsagent, a small, garish shop, windows covered with brightly coloured posters tempting shoppers to buy wines and beers, sausages and cheese, magazines and flowers. There was a small red sign, almost lost amongst the advertising posters, revealing its identity as a post office as well as a general store. Edward was running a little late this morning, having decided that a second coffee was needed, and had stopped to buy his paper in this small outlet, rather than the main newsagents in town, as was his usual habit.

As he waited in the queue, he looked around the store at the few other shoppers. There was a bedraggled, unkempt man seemingly intent on buying a small bottle of milk, his body odour invading the senses, a grotesquely protruding stomach escaping between dirty denim trousers and a torn sweat top; a smart youth with short spiky hair dressed in a pin-striped business suit and silk tie, giving away his roots, buying a red top tabloid whose cover was dominated by a scantily clad seductress. Apart from himself, the only other customers were a woman and child shopping in an aisle nearby.

The woman was a little over 5 foot tall with gold and auburn hair cascading in curls and ringlets over her shoulders. A pink, fleshed face, reddened from the exertions and stresses of shopping this early in the day. She was bedecked in smart but not trendy clothes that did little to disguise a trim yet obviously feminine figure. The child was about 14 or 15 years of age, a little taller than the woman, with straight ash blond hair and dressed in the uniform of the local school offering private education.

The child obviously wanted something in particular that the woman did not want her to have. The woman kept putting whatever it was back, and the child kept picking it up again. His interest in the likely outcome of the battle waned as he saw a shop assistant go to an empty till and start it up on the other side of the shop. He hurried across to quickly pay for his one purchase and was on his way.

The day wore on and the sun, tired of warming people and of melting ice, returned the earth to a darkness lit only by a pale crescent moon and the orange glow of street lights. After a day of toil in a non-descript office behind a tall and very secure fence, Edward felt enough was enough for one day; it was time to return home and do some work in a slightly more relaxed surrounding. Deviating from the direct route home, he went to the supermarket to buy some Scottish salmon, scallions, orange pepper and fresh ginger root. He wanted something quick and decided that a quick pan fry would do for dinner.