I visited and old friend today, the walrus at the Horniman cabinet of curiosities, donated to the people of London by that curious tea maker Frederick Horniman. The Walrus, we’ll get more personal later, was hunted in Hudson Bay Canada in 1886 and was exhibited at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in South Kensington and highly commended by Queen Victoria and after the exhibition was purchased by our philanthropic tea maker to join his idiosyncratic collection. Not the greatest example of taxidermy you have ever seen but he stands resplendent on his polystyrene iceberg looking longingly into the distance possibly for his harem, we wonder if they missed him?
Why is he my old friend? Well you have got to admit he is cute, you just cannot help smiling and he has a bit part in my second novel ‘Reflections of the old past, nicknamed Ben he plays both a comic and an emotive part in the denouement of my mystery thriller set in southeast London. It’s a poor life if there is no silver lining behind any storm.
The backdrop for ‘Reflections of the old past’ is London a city where history and the 21st century meet. There are bigger cities in the world but none that can match the sheer attention to detail that is present in its winding streets or stolid edifices. It has stood the test of time it has been beaten and bowed but it has always risen triumphant against its invaders. The British can be a perverse people they can make the most obscene joke about the most sacred thing they can lampoon the establishment but give them a wrong that needs righting and they will pour out their blood in its defence.
For over 2000 years London has attracted the bankers and the beggars – sleek yachts and the tramp steamers of all the nations of the world. From the top of the Radden Tower in Canary Wharf, a centre for the city’s wealth, you can get a panoramic view of the whole of Southeast London, possibly one of the most down at heel areas of the city.
The suburb of Catford in Southeast London and Rotterdam in the Netherlands are more than just miles apart – but the accidental death of a researcher at the British Museum would link them together for a few short days. The event that would briefly rupture the tenure of the city’s existence started like a ripple way out in the ocean and would gather pace becoming the perfect storm that would come crashing down upon Catford in a welter of danger, fear and pain.
Caught up in this maelstrom was Annie Brown, a widow at 37 years old, still coming to terms with her grief. She led a peaceful, sheltered life and liked it, but her friends, and she had good friends, coaxed and challenged her to accept her loss and move on.
Sitting on Brighton beach basking in the April sunshine, listening to the swirl of the waves on the shingle, reading a best seller she had bought from a local charity shop Annie felt at peace and in control. Unwittingly she explores a harmless riddle that would swiftly turn into a nightmarish game of cat and mouse leading to the death of friends and shattering her tranquillity for ever, challenging her assumptions, values and beliefs, exposing her prejudices, and guilt.
Annie’s friends are not alone in stirring the untroubled waters of her existence. Chief inspector Andy Baxter and Sergeant Dove of the Specialist Crime Directorate, New Scotland Yard are the thin blue line whose task it is to sift through the conspiracy theory, that is Annie’s take on the increasingly deadly situation, and the gathering evidence of something much darker and more sinister.
Left homeless, with little remaining of her past, faced with an uncertain present and a blank future, Annie becomes key in resolving the enigma that she must unravel to save her life.
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