Edge drove slowly through the hot afternoon with the breeze blowing in off the sea, and the sun bringing little silver flashes leaping from the water. He saw the sign marked ‘Taitt Hill’ and he swung into the narrow road between two rows of houses. The sign merely meant that Taitt Hill was in that general direction. Edge drew near a sandbox tree where a group of men sat playing dominoes. He stuck his head out of the window. One of the men put the cards face down on the table and came over to him. Edge asked him where Taitt Hill was. The man pointed down the road and told Edge to turn left, then right then left again, and he would see Taitt Hill in front of him.

Edge said thanks and slid the car into gear. A few minutes later a little boy with a bucket of water on his head pointed to a cluster of wooden houses on a hill and told him that was Taitt Hill.

Edge parked the car and left the windows down and followed the rocky path that wound through a gully and up the hill. Edge felt the perspiration gather between his shoulders and course down inside his shirt. He stopped near an unpainted wooden building with narrow oblong windows and a cross on the roof. Edge knocked on the house beside the church. Nobody answered. He knocked again. A man came around the corner of the house.

“Was’t thou knocking long?” the man asked. “I was in the temple and did not hear thee.”

The man was old, near seventy. He wore a full-length black robe belted around his middle with a piece of rope. He was bare-footed. His hair was long and tangled and hung like an off-white mop above his charcoal face. His beard, matted like his hair, reached almost to his waist. The eyes that stared back at Edge were calm and untroubled.

“Mr. White?”

“Yes, I’m Josh White.”

“My name’s Edge. I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes.”

“Come with me into the orchard,” White said. “It’s cooler there.”

They sat on a makeshift bench nailed to a cherry tree.

“It’s about my nephew,” White said. “No?”

Edge said: “Yes. How did you guess?”

White sighed. “I is an old man,” he said. “Nobody coming all the way up here to see me. My nephew now, he young and full of foolishness of youth. If strangers come, is him they seek.”

“Boris left Barbados some time ago. Do you know where he went or who sent him?”

“Ah, a policeman,” White said. “I knew as soon as I see you. Why do you want to know these things?”

“I am sort of a policeman,” Edge said. “Do you know anything about where Boris went?”

White reached up with one hand and picked a handful of cherries and held them out to Edge.

“If I had my way,” White said. “I’d plant rows of cherry trees at the side of the highway. I can see them now in August, red and green and yellow and the birds eating them, and the little children under the trees with their paper bags picking up those that fall.”

Edge chewed a couple of cherries and spat out the seeds and waited.

“All Boris told me was that he was going to New York,” White said. “I asked him where he got the money, but he never say.”

“Any messages, e-mails or letters?”

White shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter no more, the boy is dead.”

“Who told you that?”

White put his hand over his heart. “I know it here,” he said. He looked away into the distance. “The boy came to me in the night while I was in the temple. There was blood on his shirt and he was afraid.”

“A dream,” Edge said. “People get them sometimes.”

“Not so,” White said. “I know.”

“Who are his friends? Did he bring any of them home?”

“No,” White said. “I think he was ashamed of his old uncle. I took him when his mother died. I fed him and Igave him clothes. He became my son, but in the end he is ashamed.”

“Tell me about yourself,” Edge said.

“There is nothing to tell.” White said. For the first time there was a tinge of anger in his voice. “In a land where every man wears a price-tag, I is my own man. I loves the land, and it gives me enough to feed myself. When I not in the land, I in the temple.” He studied Edge’s face. “I trying to lead my people back to God,” he said quietly.

The orchard was still except for the song of birds. Edge leaned against the trunk of the cherry tree and watched the branches move against the sky.

“That’s strange,” White said. “You didn’t laugh.”

“I didn’t think it was funny,” Edge said.

“I started my church twenty-three years ago,” White said. “We are a small group. The Remnant of Judah. We’ll always be remnant. We don’t offer no creeds or dogmas, only prayer and contemplation. We read the Book through once a year, and on Saturdays, we sit down to a ceremonial meal of biscuits and lemonade.”

“You don’t believe in bread and wine then?”

“Jesus the Brother used what he had,” White said. “We does the same.”

“And Boris,” Edge said. “He ever came?”

“Once when he is very young. Then he followed the daughters of Midian.”

“Who?”

“Women who paints their faces and expose themselves to the eyes of men,” White said.

“Look,” Edge said. “I’m trying to find out about your nephew. I need your help.”

“Boris never worked. He formed part of the twentyseven per cent. As for his friends, I never met them.”

Edge stood up. “Well, thanks anyway,” he said.

White stood up slowly. “Your job is dangerous,” he said. “Do you enjoy your work?”

“It’s just a job,” Edge said. “A tough, difficult job that nobody wants.”

“Each of us does what he must do,” White said.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

White walked with him across the yard and around to the front of the house.

“I’m sorry about the boy,” Edge said.

“He was all I had left,” White said softly. “Still, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Edge rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

White turned to face Edge. The look of pain on his face made Edge wince, then the mask dropped into place and the old man’s face was serene again.

“Have you ever heard of the Columbus Club?”

Edge said no, he didn’t.

“Find out what you can about it,” White said.

Edge went home. He showered and changed and drove to the cemetery. The mourners stood around Greene’s coffin singing ‘They Have Come From Tribulation, And Have Washed Their Robes In Blood’. He saw Hervey’s secretary, Mabel Hillier put her wreath down on the coffin and go up to a tall middle-aged woman who was crying into a handkerchief. Edge went to the woman and shook her hand and told her that he was sorry. She looked at him and nodded and he knew she wasn’t seeing him, and that the pain and shock had cut deep, and that she didn’t even have tears left.

Edge got the address of the Columbus Club from Cooper. He used the fire escape at the back of the building to get to the third floor where Cooper told him the office was. The second key he tried worked. He pushed the door open and went inside. He flashed his torch around and drew the curtains closer and switched on the light. He saw a filing cabinet and two desks. The dust on them looked six inches deep. The clock on the Public Building’s tower struck two. The noise was so slight that it could have been the curtains rustling in the breeze. Edge threw himself to one side. Something brushed his shoulder and drew a shower of sparks from the edge of the filling cabinet. Edge turned. The man wore a stocking over his face. He had a two-foot piece of iron pipe in his hand. The man lunged and swung the iron pipe at Edge. The pipe smashed against the desk as Edge ducked out of the way. The man swung wildly behind him as Edge leaned backwards to evade the attack.

Dropping the flashlight, Edge picked up a chair. He threw it. One of the legs hit the man on the chin. The iron pipe went flying behind the man. He fell to one knee. Edge waited. The man came up off the floor. Part of the stocking was ripped away and one ear stuck out through the rent. The man charged at Edge and slammed him into a wall. Edge’s head snapped to the side as the man connected with a right hook. Edge slapped the man around his ears causing him to stagger back. A kick to the chest sent the man to the ground once again. Edge picked up the chair as the man came up on his knees. While on the ground the man glanced over his shoulder at the door to the fire escape. The man scrambled to his feet and Edge let him reach the door. The man opened the door and Edge heard him running down the fire escape.

Edge looked around the room. Somebody had already cleaned it out. He wasn’t surprised now that he knew they had been expecting him. The man hadn’t really wanted to kill him. Somebody decided that putting him in hospital was enough – for the time being at least. He turned off the light and went down the fire escape. Edge used his cell phone to call Hervey. He sounded half asleep.

“Sorry to get you out of bed,” Edge said.

“Fine, fine. You’ve had your laugh. Now what’s the story?”

“I just left the Columbus Club. Nothing there. They moved out a long time ago. Get Cooper to run a check on old man White.”

“Very well.”

“That’s about it for now,” Edge said.

“Forget about your reports,” said Hervey. “I’ll look after them for you. One other thing. It was hard to find, but intel was able to come up with something about the Club from few years ago. It’s a name: Charles Hardcastle.”

Edge told Hervey thanks. He went home and gave himself a couple of rums and coconut water and went to bed.