Edge opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He had been dreaming about Shelley Hardcastle. He could not remember the details. He got out of bed and went to the window. He opened the window and stood with his arms extended and took twelve deep, slow breaths. He turned away from the window and lay down on the floor and hooked his toes under the dresser and did sit-ups until his stomach muscles screamed.

He got up and went to the bathroom. He came back, took an egg from the refrigerator and dropped it into a saucepan of water. He heard the newspaper hit against the door and he pulled on a pair of pants and opened the door and picked up the paper. He took the egg out of the saucepan and got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and sat down and opened the paper.

He heard a knock on the door.

“It’s open,” he said.

The door opened and a voice said: “Morning Mr. Edge.”

Edge said: “Morning Wenceslas.”

Wenceslas Rowley was 12 years old. Twice a week, he came to clean Edge’s car. The last time he came, he had won a dollar a week raise from Edge. He stood in the doorway now waiting for the keys.

“I bet you I win this time,” he said.

“Bet you not,” said Edge.

“I’ll win,” said Wenceslas. “And if I do, you owe me another raise.”

Edge let the paper fall. He scooped the keys off the table and whirled and flicked them to the boy’s left. Wenceslas’ hand shot out. He raised his hand and his smile was like a star-burst.

“I see you looking to my left,” he said.

“You’re going to put me in the poorhouse,” said Edge.

Edge and Wenceslas walked out of the house and onto the driveway where Edge’s car was parked next to a soapy bucket and some sponges.

“If the West Indies had you in the team we would’ve beaten Australia. Let me know when you’re done,” Edge said. “We’ll take some lunch to your sister.”

Edge turned and walked back to the house as Wenceslas got into the driver’s seat. The earth shook suddenly. The force of the explosion lifted Edge off of his feet and sent him flying into the air. Edge rolled onto his stomach and blinked several times to clear his blurred vision. The ringing in his ears made his head ache even worse. Part of the car was beside him near the front steps. Another piece was in the driveway. The rest blazed near the garage door. Wenceslas Rowley was hunched forward over the wheel wrapped in flames.

Edge stumbled to his feet and started towards the car. “Oh my God,” he breathed.

Hands held him back. He tried to break free. He heard himself swearing. Through the ringing in his ears a voice kept repeating, “There is nothing you can do.” He shook his head and suddenly he was as calm as the eye of a hurricane.

A siren sounded in the distance. A fire engine swung into the street. An ambulance followed. The firemen turned their hoses on the flames and they hissed and popped and died.

After being looked at by the paramedics, Edge went into the house. He poured a double rum and drank it neat. He called Hervey. Two uniformed attendants placed the body in a blanket and lifted it into the ambulance. He heard the ambulance drive away.

“You must’ve scared someone to no end to make them try a thing like that,” Hervey was saying.

Edge didn’t say anything. He was thinking about the boy.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Hervey said. “Don’t take it so hard. Give me the boy’s address and we’ll notify his family.”

Edge gave him Wenceslas’ sister’s address.

“Send someone to pick up the wreckage while you’re at it,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Hervey said. “I’ll look after the arrangements.”

Edge put down the phone. His hands were still shaking. He had another drink and then wrote a note for the cleaning lady and left it on the table. He called a taxi and drove to Saul’s garage.

“How you been?” Saul greeted him.

Saul was ex-Special Branch. One day a machete-wielding suspect chopped off his right arm and Saul took his gratuity and went into business for himself. Ten of the cars in the fleet were on permanent standby for the Bureau.

“I need one of your cars,” Edge said.

“You had an accident?”

Saul had a paunch. The empty sleeve flapped whenever he moved. The memory of something terrible lurked in the shadows behind his eyes.

“Ignition bomb,” Edge said.

Saul looked away. He had troubles of his own. The machete had taken more than his right arm. He still awoke sometimes at night sweating, haunted by the memory of a part of himself lying at his feet.

“What about a Volkswagen,” Saul said. “I had it tuned yesterday.”

“The Volks will be fine,” Edge said.

“Did you say a bomb?” Saul asked Edge. “How did you escape?”

“It killed a little boy,” Edge said. “He started the car and the bomb went off.”

“Take care,” Saul said. “They’ll try for you again.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get the car back to you,” Edge said.

“I’m not worried about the car,” Saul said.

The house was a two-bedroom cottage behind a hedge of sweet lime. He knocked and Fenella Rowley opened for him.

“Good morning Miss Rowley. My name is Edge. I’m sorry about your brother.”

She said: “Come in.”

She was a big, soft woman, with calm, intelligent eyes.

“I came to say that I’m sorry,” Edge said. “I don’t know what to say. Wenceslas died in my place.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Wenceslas just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I’m really very sorry,” he said again. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so helpless before.

“Wenceslas was always talking about you,” Fenella said. “I think you were a combination of father and big brother in his eyes.”

Edge shook his head. He hadn’t known this.

“Our mother died when he was three,” Fenella said. She didn’t say anything about his father.

“Is there anything I can do?” Edge asked.

Too late, he thought. Much too late; like so many things in human experience.

“A man called,” Fenella said. “Said he’d be sending someone around.”

Hervey, Edge thought.

“His birthday is tomorrow,” Fenella said. “I baked the cake early.”

The tears started. Fenella dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. The tears came faster.

Edge put his arm around her. He let her cry. She lifted her chin and looked at him and he gave her his handkerchief and she dropped her wet one on the chair and wiped her eyes with slow, deliberate movements.

“I promised myself that I wouldn’t do this,” she said.

She handed him the handkerchief, and he looked into her eyes and saw their compassion and strength and courage, and he said: “I’m sorry we had to meet like this.”

He opened the door and let himself out.

Danny Powson’s name was at the top of the list. He lived in East Parade. East Parade was an old money area. Years ago people who were caught walking through there risked arrest unless they could prove to the satisfaction of the police that they were domestics or ‘gardener boys’.

The name of the house was ‘Wessex’. Edge parked and pushed open a large iron gate. The driveway was a closed zipper on a patchwork quilt of roses, violets, marigolds, lilies and carnations. An old woman was kneeling in the garden. She wore yellow gloves and had a pair of shears in her hand.

“The servant’s entrance is around the back.” She said it without looking up.

“Thanks,” said Edge. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She straightened up and looked at him. Her hair, the colour of straw, hung down around her face in tired wisps. There was hair on her upper lip. She wore a blue sleeveless blouse and pink Bermuda shorts. Her arms were thick and covered with brown freckles.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The false teeth in her mouth gleamed like tombstones in the moonlight. Her eyes swept over him. She couldn’t place him and it was annoying her.

“It’s about your son Danny,” Edge said. “My name is Shannon Edge and I’m from National Insurance.”

She nodded towards the house. “I suppose we could go into the verandah,” she said.

She pulled up a chair and sat down. “I haven’t much time,” she said.

“Where is Danny?” Edge asked.

“In New York. He’s been there six months now.”

“When do you expect him back?” Edge asked.

“Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“There’s something missing from his record at the office,” Edge said. “We’ll need him to come in and give us the information.”

“The last time I heard from him,” Mrs. Powson said, “he was thinking of extending his stay.”

“By the way, is he alone or did he go with a group?”

“Alone,” Mrs. Powson said. “His father and I saw him off at the airport.”

“When was this?” Edge asked.

“Sometime in May, if I remember correctly.”

The little eyes stared at him, confident and sure and a trifle mocking.

“When your son gets back tell him to come and see us,” Edge said. “Oh. Have you ever heard of the Columbus Club?”

Mrs. Powson stood up. “Never,” she said. “And you’ve wasted enough of my time.”

Edge went back to the car. He deleted Danny Powson’s name off of the list that was on his phone. He started the car and drove past the acres of flower gardens and the soft, green lawns. He stopped at the Inn and Out and bought a bottle of beer and a chicken leg. He drove to the beach. He unwrapped the chicken leg, and the sight of it made his stomach heave and he called one of the boys playing on the beach and gave it to him. He drank the beer and sat in the car and stared at the blue-green water. He took out his phone and called Hervey.

Hervey sat in his office as his secretary, Mabel, stood over his shoulder pointing at some papers on his desk. Hervey signed some of the papers as he spoke to Edge through the computer monitor on his desk.

“How is Miss Rowley taking it?”

Edge told him. He also told Hervey about the visit to Mrs. Powson.

Hervey looked at Edge through the monitor and said:

“We’re keeping an eye on Shelley Hardcastle. She’s been out only once. Playing golf again this afternoon.”

“What about her phone?”

“Usual routine. We’re monitoring her cell, landline and e-mail.”

Tapping Shelley’s communication devices would save them a lot of legwork, Edge thought.

Using the GPS unit in his car, Edge set a course for Hillaby Village. Cedric Wall lived in Hillaby Village. His name was next on the list.

There are no real mountains in Barbados. From the coastal-plain, the land rises in a series of gentle ridges to the jagged hills in the island’s northeast corner. Edge drove slowly through the hot afternoon. He was glad to get away into the countryside, away from the boutiques and packaged fun.

It was cool and green in the interior. This was plantation country, the island’s food basket, and green was its colour; the pale green of ripening yams, the golden green of pastureland, and the dark green of banana, breadfruit, avocado and cassava.

Hillaby was just another village on the edge of a ravine. A group of small boys was playing cricket in the road. Edge asked them where Mrs. Wall lived. One of them pointed down a narrow track and showed him a house with a flamboyant tree.

Edge parked the car and got out. The houses were unpainted. They huddled together as though seeking consolation from each other against the poverty and despair that was their lot. There was a radio blaring from every house. A girl with adenoids was singing.

“I only got one desia-h-h-h!”

“And that is to satisfy yah-h-h-h!”

The singing stopped and the disk-jockey began telling his audience what a great lover he was.

Edge knocked on the door of the house. He heard a dog barking somewhere in the back. He knocked again. The dog came around the corner of the house and stopped a few feet away and barked at him. Edge looked at him and he turned away and went and lay down under a tree. A woman came out wiping her hands down the front of her dress.

“Yes?” she said.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Wall,” Edge said. “My name is Edge. I’m from National Insurance and I want to talk to you for a few minutes.”

She studied him for several seconds. “I busy getting these children dinner,” she said. “But come. You goin’ have to talk to me in the kitchen though.”

It was hot and cramped in the kitchen. Virginia Wall was frying flying-fish. She took the pan off the stove and placed the fish in a dish and put the pan back and floured four more fish and put them in the pan. She turned to face Edge.

“National Insurance you said?”

“It’s about Cedric actually,” he said. “Where is he now and when do you expect him back?”

Virginia Wall stepped away from the stove and wiped her face with the hem of her apron.

“I don’t want to talk about Cedric,” she said.

She was tall, with hard, angular features, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. It was hard to guess her age, but he knew the grey in her hair had come early. Her dress had been blue originally. She wore rubber slippers.

“He is your husband,” Edge said. “The father of your children?”

Her smile was tight and a trifle bitter. “You listen to me,” she said. “Cedric walked out of this house a year ago to get a doctor for one of these children. He ain’t get back yet. I hear he in America. I don’t know.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Eight living,” she said. She took the pan off the stove and turned the fish. “They all at school.”

“Have you seen him lately?” Edge asked. “Where does he live?”

“I does send the biggest boy to him for money when the Saturday come,” Virginia Wall said. “Well this is over two months now the children ain’t get a cent from he.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d give me his present address,” Edge said.

“Go in Nelson Street,” she said. “He have a whore there. She name Broadway.”

“Where do you work?” Edge asked.

“I doin’ a little evening job at the Copa Beach Hotel,” she said. “It ain’t much but I does try and make it do.”

“I guess I’ll have to go and see this Broadway,” Edge said.

He took a hundred dollars from his pocket. He folded the money in half and held it out to her. She searched his face and he saw the suspicion in her eyes.

“Buy something for the children,” he said.

She shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything,” she said.

I know,” Edge said. “But still take it. For the kids.”

She took the money and put it on the table. “Tell me,” she said. “Is Cedric in trouble?”

“No,” Edge said. “Not that I know of.”

She stared at him hard. “Be honest with me,” she said.

“Honest,” Edge said.

He looked back once as he walked down the gap. She was at the window staring after him. Life, he thought, can be a son-of-a-bitch.