A boy, a prologue, and a taste of A Time for Dying...

(This excerpt is given with special permission from my publishers, Northodox Press.. A Time for Dying is available from them, from Amazon, and from all good bookshops. Enjoy)

Time is a patient killer.

Sometimes, all it takes to put the thought of bloody murder into somebody’s head is a few hundred years wait and a visit to a famous old building, located on the north bank of a famous old river.

Then all you need are sharp knives, a strong desire to end lives, and the ability to leave no trace behind.

But before all that, you needed a King. Preferably one who’s thirty-four years old. Over 6ft tall. And sitting on the throne of England a year shy of the Great Plague of London.

It was August 1, 1664. It was a Friday, and the weather in London fell somewhere in between warm and muggy, damp and dreary.

Charlie Stuart, or to give him his proper title, King Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland, had recently taken delivery of a new set of Royal Regalia.

The old set had, over time, been lost, used as collateral, pawned, and generally buggered about with, before the most important man in the realm took his seat on the most important chair in the land.

Even way back then, the new regalia set him back a whopping ￡13,000. Around ￡1m in today’s money.

And that was apart from the banqueting plate, golden altar, and baptism font. He had to fork out a further ￡18,000 for them.

Charles was well pleased with all his new gear. But he was no mug. So, he stashed all his pretty valuables where nobody else could get within touching distance. The most fortified place in the land. The Tower of London. And there they stayed. For 330 years, waiting for the right opportunity to present itself; waiting for the right mind to pick up the thread of an idea and run with it.

On March 24, 1994, the Royal Regalia, fondly and officially known by all as The Crown Jewels, was moved into the newly created Jewel House on the ground floor of the Tower.

It had six-inch-thick, two-tonne-heavy, blast-proof doors. Strong enough, experts said, to survive a nuclear clobbering. And the national treasures it held were lit by state-of-the-art fibre optics and rested on the finest French velvet.

Around 20,000 people a day viewed the collection of more than 100 priceless objects and 23,578 diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.

But on August 1, 1995, one object more than all the others, caught the eye, and the imagination, of a small ten-year old boy, looking at it through its protective glass display cabinet. He was there with his parents and his twin brother, as a treat for their 10th birthday.

He was older than his brother by two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. Give or take. He had been counting in his head for as long as he could remember.

Today, his head carried all the numbers he’d been counting since the four of them walked through the large, heavy entrance doors. Every breath. Every step. Every person. Every object. They were all there. Numbers were everywhere. Numbers were his passion. Numbers made sense of everything. Especially one kind of number. Prime.

And as he looked at the golden Sovereign’s Orb, he firmly believed that he’d never seen anything so beautiful in all his short life.

But that beauty awoke in him other feelings. Strange, terrifying feelings.

The kind of feelings that made his body buzz as if electricity was coursing through it.

He didn’t just see a cross sitting on top of a ball. He didn’t just see priceless jewels and a hollow golden sphere.

In his warped imagination, he saw blood and death. He saw lifeless bodies.

And he felt a magnificent exhilaration...