Becoming an author had created a sense of order in the normally erratic life of Campbell McBride. It also imposed a discipline that had been lacking. His publisher had required 80,000 words to be delivered within nine months. So, the formula that dictated his existence for the pregnancy period of his unborn book was straightforward. He would produce 10,000 carefully crafted words every four weeks, a mathematical equation which permitted a comfortable safety net to allow for any slippage. It was a satisfactory, if unimaginative, routine but it created a welcome simplicity.
To dissect his waking hours further, McBride divided the day into three parts – the morning, when he exercised his body by running, cycling or visiting a gym; the afternoon and early evening, when he exercised his mind by writing what he had thought of in the morning; and the mid to late evening, when he socialised or, if fortune smiled upon him, he enjoyed other forms of exercise. He embraced the new orderliness, especially the first and last segments of the day. Now, even though The Law Town Killers had long been completed, he maintained the benefits of the structure.
That morning, he had cycled twenty-five miles over a route that took him away from the river’s edge into the countryside. He had chosen the circuit for its combination of testing climbs and flat, fast sections and where the wind was not always in his face or backside.
By the time he had swept down the final descent from the village of Wellbank into the outer suburbs of the city, he was exhausted but elated. The time on the mini-computer fixed to the handlebars of his beloved Trek showed he was well ahead of his usual schedule. The number of consecutive mornings spent in the saddle or running was paying deserved dividends.
Although it was not yet 9 a.m., two callers had been to the flat on the Esplanade during his absence – the paperboy and the postman. The former had delivered The Courier, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, a spread of titles that covered most of the bases. The postman had apparently left nothing more interesting than invitations to sign up to credit card or insurance deals. It was only when he retrieved the pile of deliveries that McBride noted that one of the envelopes did not bear the usual frank mark indicating that disposable business material was inside. It had a real stamp in the corner and the name and address looked as though it had been produced by a human being and not churned out from a database.
The rectangular, white envelope also had a strangely familiar appearance, which was surprising since only a very small handful of people were aware of his new address and none of them were letter-writers.
He tore it open. The single sheet of white paper he removed bore only three sentences, all of which were word and punctuation perfect. They read:
Is the investigative journalist still baffled? All you know for sure is that Prince William is innocent! My new message to you is that the police have much to answer for. You will need to pay attention to the news.
McBride felt a hand reach inside his gut and pull tight. It might just as well have been his testicles which were being squeezed. He was being slowly castrated by an expert. What was worse, he didn’t have the remotest idea how to protect himself.