About the Author

After service in the Royal Navy, Clive Hopkins emigrated to

Canada where he joined the Ontario Provincial Government’s

Reformatory and Prison, Department, became an Auxiliary Police

Officer, Prisoner’s Welfare Officer and PR Officer.

Upon return to the UK, he joined the International Publishing Co.

(IPC)’s Industrial Press Division as writer and subsequently as

Group Editor.

He has also published a Naval Faction trilogy, well received by

the cognoscenti.

By the same author:

Challenger’s War

China Sea Challenger

Challenger’s Way

Copyright © Clive Hopkins (2015)

The right of Clive Hopkins to be identified as author of this work

has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of

the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the

publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims

for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British

Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 897 0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978 1 78455 898 7 (Hardback)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2015)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain

1

The infidel had to die, he had defiled the girl and cheated him.

She was already dead, lying there looking beautiful and at

peace with her God. With heavy sedation, he had spared her

the pain of dying, perhaps that also was a sin, he didn’t know.

For a moment he wondered if he had done the right thing but

she was no longer his sister, she had laid with the Englishman

who now lay on the bed beside her, propped up on the cheap

satin pillows, he had paid for. The rest of the room was no

better furnished; cheap carpet, cheap curtains carelessly hung

with insufficient rings and, in the tiny kitchen, the work tops

had clearly not been scrubbed before the girl had moved in.

The Englishman had drunk, been forced to drink, enough

of Satan’s invention alcohol to render him powerless but still

sufficiently aware of his surroundings to know what had

happened to her and what was happening to him, and that his

would be an appropriate death.

Asmal Jahan, showing the Englishman the curved, shiny

bladed knife, had watched the fear appear then grow in the

man’s eyes as he placed the knife against his scrotum. He

sliced downwards strongly, separating the bag and its contents from the man’s body. He denied the infidel the coup-de-grace

and let him bleed to death so that he would know that God is

great and that the girl had been under His protection.

The Englishman had taken her from him, her brother, upon

whom responsibility for her had devolved by virtue of them

being alone in this God forsaken country, far from the

protection of their family. She was a pretty girl and her

popularity amongst his friends had provided a comfortable

income for them both but now she was pregnant by the

Englishman.

The infidel dog, the term amused him reminding him of

his own preferred sexual style, had tempted her by offering her

freedom from her brother’s control, a flat of her own and with

it a small allowance which would make possible an outward

appearance of respectability. The infidel must die for this as

she had died for bringing disgrace upon the family and penury

upon him personally.

She had sinned in the eyes of God. The Koran stated quite

clearly, Sura V, The Table, “Believer, take neither Jews nor

Christians for friends.” She had sinned and therefore both must

die; the family’s honour, its ird, demanded it and that could

only be redeemed by blood.

Though not a salafi, a true believer wishing to return Islam

to its true, thousand year old, traditions and unconcerned with

the cost to either the modern world or the millions of fellow

Moslems that had accepted a millennium of progress but, he

had not only lost a sister but also the income she had been able

to attract; someone must pay. That someone was, at least in

this instance, both identifiable and available – the Englishman.

The deep, vicious slashing of the girl’s throat would he

was sure provide the police doctor with sufficient evidence for

cause of death to render a post-mortem examination

unnecessary; they must not discover that she was pregnant, no

one must know that. He turned off the light and closed the door

on the room. He would go and see some friends who would

clean the flat and, if asked, provide him with an alibi for the

approximated time of death of his much beloved sister.

He would come back tomorrow, after the flat had been

cleaned and man’s body had been removed and discover and

report to the police his sister’s apparent murder. He would

admit in shame that she had, apparently, been prostituting

herself, this was, he had been told, a known working flat,

perhaps one of her clients…… He would demand that he be

allowed to bury the girl within twenty four hours as was

commanded by the Holy Book. In the new, spineless and

politically correct England the police would have to allow this

and the evidence of his sister’s disgrace, her pregnancy, would

be buried with her; the family need never know.

* * *

Number One Wellington Gardens had been, when built,

more than an address, it was a three dimensional statement of

British national pride and confidence as the head of an empire

upon which the sun never set; of its hegemony over more than

a quarter of the known world. Just as, she believed, Apsley

House, Number One London, the grand house built by a

grateful nation for the victorious Duke of Wellington had been

special so, to Mrs. Edwina Burton, was Number One

Wellington Gardens, Hockley. That she might be mistaken

about number One London had never occurred to her, that was

what she had been told as a child passing it on a big red bus

and she had remembered it clearly.

Outwardly unchanged in the years since its mid-Victorian

builder had completed it, the last house in what was then one

of the grandest garden squares in Sussex, Number One acted,

together with its opposite number, as a guardian of Wellington

Gardens. Although long since converted into flats, these two

houses still formed the grand endpoints of the three-sided

square, the open forth side of which permitted the residents an

unequalled view of the sea.

As Mrs. Burton was wont to explain to anyone prepared to

listen, Number One was bigger and grander than the other,

rather ordinary, run-of-terrace houses that collectively formed

the rest of the square. Together, these surrounded a railed and

gated garden to which only owners held a key; a privilege

jealously guarded by Mrs. Burton.