About the Bookstore Browse Aisles Search Desk Shopping Basket Book Trade Terms Just Released! Return Policy Help Here is the full reference card for this book... If you'd rather place an order by talking to one of our cheerful order desk clerks, please call 1-888-232-4444 (USA and Canada only) or 250-383-6864. From Europe, ring our UK order desk clerk at local rate number 0845 230 9601 (UK only) or 44 (0)1865 722 113. April's Towers by Darryl Em 296 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); Erotic content - may not be suitable for all readers; catalogue #03-2258; ISBN 1-4120-1880-3; US$25.00, C$27.75, EUR20.50, £14.50 An evocative story of an ordinary man who becomes ensnarled with malfeasance and unwittingly helps develop the means to freeze time and simultaneously cope with a dreadful personal condition. Read more! about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info About the Book 'Pete had called me on Friday morning to tell me about an opportunity that he had been invited to, and they wanted another guy. A short-term contract, but that's where the big money is...' If only Milke Carter had known what he was starting out on. April's Towers tells the fascinating story of how Mike discovers how his work has helped the criminal element create a system that can empower them with amazing powers. Only by accident, after the gruesome murder of his friend and colleague Pete, and the chance encounter of a relative, does he realise that it is the only possible explanation for the audacious theft of a Grand Masterpiece. The book details Mike's sexual encounters and explores his psychological burden of having MS, which is never far from his thoughts. About the Author Darryl has really been a practicing software engineer, and the idea for this book came from his keen interest in science fiction. He also suffers from MS, and so this subject threads its way through the book to help educate people of the real meaning and impact MS has on a sufferer's life. On the lighter side, Darryl is master of exotic writing, and this subject is an integral part of this, his first book.

Excerpts

Pete's Murder

As Pete returned to his place, it was past nine o'clock. The visit to his mum and dad's place had been none too enthralling. It seemed to him that what they said about old people really was true. Older people lost their marbles, their memory, and their passion for intelligent conversation. At least, his parents did. No lights were on in the street, which Pete thought was a bit strange, but gave it no real attention. The entire row of houses were in a gloom that reminded him of when the power strikes were on and the Council had saved energy by switching the street lights off after midnight.

He found a parking space nearby, and after locking his car, trundled the few steps to the front of his house, keys ready in his hands to open the front door.

The guy came from nowhere. As Pete went to skip up the few steps to his front door, the guy tripped him from behind and straddled him as Pete fell harshly against the concrete steps. The guy had a powerful grip, and used it to seize one arm behind his back, and the other around his neck. Pete could feel himself becoming faint, as the grip took its toll on the blood supply to his brain. He was almost passing out, when he felt the guy let go of his arm. Pete thought briefly that everything would be all right, and that this was all some kind of ghastly prank.

But although the tense grip had been released, the guy turned Pete over, so that they were face-to-face. Pete did not have enough strength to do much other than try and figure out who this guy was and what he was doing. Suddenly, the guy took out a small knife, and, whilst holding the back of Pete's
, pushed the knife into his throat. The blade entered his skin just below his chin, which pinned Pete's mouth shut. The metal continued in and upwards until he could feel the tip of the blade under his tongue. His eyes were staring into space, wide-eyed and shocked.

Pete coughed as he choked blood into his mouth. It failed to spatter the assailant because his mouth was firmly closed by the position of the knife's blade. He raised his hands and tried to push the guy back, but he was too weak. Calmly and quickly, the guy angled the knife back. Then he drew the knife down until it reached Pete's larynx. He cut swiftly to the left and right, following the line of the jaw all the way to the ears. Then he removed the knife, stood up, stepped aside, and allowed Pete to fall down the few steps to the path below. He pocketed the knife and walked away without a glance.

Pete lay there. His arms and legs were weak, whilst his fingers moved spasmodically without purpose. He could feel the warm blood flowing from both sides of his throat, as the flesh around it grew cooler. A pool gathered on the pavement, and he could feel its wet warmth in his hair on the back of his head. He tried to call out, but his voice was a burbling whisper. Then panic swept over him as he realised that his lungs, although moving, were sucking in and expelling blood, not air. And they were moving faster and faster as life fought to stay intact.

Pete's thoughts were confused. He thought of me, and whether my drive home was OK. He thought briefly about the project. He thought about his Mum, and then his Dad. He was back on the beach with them as a youngster, making sand castles on a sunny day. Then they were gone.

The Theft

At that instant, Eddie was watching the two oriental girls as they got up from the bench where they were seated, and set off for the left-side door of the gallery. They had got half way to the door when they froze. There was no noise. He looked across to the female attendant, and saw that her stare was locked in one position, and the page of the magazine that she was turning at the time the RTR devices went live was fixed in space, defying gravity to fall into it's natural place. Eddie slipped his hands into his pocket and pulled out the pair of plastic gloves that he had brought along for the occasion. Putting them on, he got up and walked over to the painting. He stepped over the red rope that draped between the brass stands that marked the area where the public should not stray. He ignored the sign that announced, should anyone approach within twenty-five centimetres of the artefacts, including 'The Work', that the alarms would sound, and the security screens would be enabled. He approached the painting and lifted the nearest corner. The environment remained totally still and silent.

He raised the painting an inch or so to unhook it from its wall mounting, and lowered that corner to the floor. He went to the other end of the painting and repeated the operation. He then laid the entire painting face down on the floor.

He pulled from his backpack the rechargeable screwdriver that Tony had prepared for him. Luckily, the bit inserted matched the screws that fastened the frame battens in place, so he didn't need to fiddle about changing the bit over. He removed the battens, and pulled the inner frame aside. As he did so, the canvas dropped off the inner frame. This was going easier than he thought, because everyone had expected the canvas to be attached to the inner frame. He put the timber frame to one side, rolled the canvas up, and fed it into his sketch roll. He reassembled the frame, sans canvas, and mounted it back on the wall. Gathering up his screwdriver, he did a last check that everything was still in its right and proper place. Everything except the canvas, that was.

Satisfied, he left the museum by the back entrance. Everything around the museum was in a similar frozen state. This was exactly how George had described the dead zone. He looked down the length of George Street, and in the distance, he could see traffic moving. He saw a bus about half a mile away transgress George Street at what he calculated to be normal speed. But as you moved your field of vision nearer, he could see cars and people that were moving very slowly. Around him, they were completely still.

He found a location in George Street where there did not appear to anybody looking in his direction. This was the critical stage, because at the instant the field decayed, following isolation of the RTR devices, time in the dead zone would return to normal. That meant that, for example, if Eddie were to be in front of a car at that time, he would be ran over, and the guy who would be driving the car, for the first time in history, would have legitimately claimed that he had not even seen the poor accident victim.

So he found his quiet corner and waited. He assumed that something like twenty minutes had passed. Of course, his watch still said eleven o'clock precisely. He had but a few minutes to wait. He looked up and saw a pigeon, motionless, about twenty feet above him. Further a field, he was mesmerised at the sight of a small flock of birds flying towards him. Already, they were flying at about half the pace of normal flight, and as they neared, they became slower, and slower, and slower.

Back in Fishpool, in the small first floor flat, Tony Stockman had been counting the minutes. It had seemed like several hours. But eventually, the time came, and he de-energised the RTR devices.

He then called Ryan's men that were manning the devices at the farm in Cheadle, and in the wood to the west of Eccles. Since they were on the temporary sites, they needed to clean up and clear out first. They had to move the PC, the generator, and make the site as clean as possible. Same for Joe and Danny, but they had more time, given that their 'accommodation' was rented. When he called Danny, he wanted to know how he figured things had gone, but decided to wait until he got to Fishpool, for fear of leaving any trail of suspicion on the mobile telephone eavesdroppers.

Inside the museum, Jenny Paine was really rather tired of Horse and Groom. She had brought it along with her whilst she did her Tuesday morning voluntary shift at the museum, but none of its usually thrilling articles had failed to capture her imagination. It was normally quiet on a Tuesday morning, and this week was no exception. Only a few people had wandered into the gallery today, and as she looked up, she saw that the two young Japanese girls were making their way out of the gallery.

Suddenly, the two girls faltered in their steps, and as they struggled to keep each other upright. She herself dropped her magazine, and in an unexplainable way, for an instant forgot that she was even holding a magazine. Cognition of the alarm came to her senses.

She jumped up, as the alarm shrilled, and the steel mesh security gates came crashing down on all four walls. They comprised a mesh of slender steel pins that criss-crossed to form a protective barrier. She had only seen one of these before, whilst performing her induction training to become a museum attendant, but this was the first time she had seen them come to life in a real situation.

She wondered briefly what to do. She recalled her training. She was to ask everyone to remain where they were whilst the full-time museum guards came and took stock of the situation. They would know where the security breach had occurred, and they would be going there now. Thankfully, it hadn't happened on her patch.

"Please remain where you are, until Security advises us of the all clear, please", she called out to the two young Japanese girls. They looked frightened, as they held each other in the middle of the floor, but nodded in understanding. Jenny then turned to make sure the young man who had been sat on the other wall understood things too. But there was no one sat on the bench any longer. She thought that this was odd. She walked across to the anteroom entrance, to check if he had wandered in there.

There were no other exits from there, so if he had slipped into that room he would still be in there. But there was no one in the anteroom. She came back into the main gallery, just as two security guards came rushing in from the righthand entrance.

"Every body stay exactly where you are", shouted the first guard.

"Jenny, what have you seen?" asked the second guard.

Neither of them looked over at Jenny, as she stood in the anteroom doorway. Both were staring through the steel mesh at 'The Work'. Jenny glanced up to what they were looking at, and then the horrid realisation that 'The Work' was missing from its place dawned on her. One of the Japanese girls said something to the other girl in Japanese, and pointed to the empty picture frame. Her hand came up to her mouth in disbelief. Jenny approached the guards.

Every one's eyes fixed on the empty space that had, seconds before, been occupied by 'The Work'.

"I saw nothing", she muttered.

"What do you mean, you saw nothing. Were you here when it was taken?"

"I've been here all morning. I only looked at the painting a few minutes ago. Only a few people have been here. The first thing I saw or heard was the alarms going off. It was there then!" Jenny's voice had risen from a low murmur to a loud scream by the time she had finished her last sentence. Her eyes stared quizzically at the empty picture frame, unbelieving the vacant image in front of her own eyes.

The first guard picked up his walkie-talkie from his belt, and listened earnestly to the unintelligible message being broadcast. As the broadcast finished, he said into the mouthpiece "Ford Madox Brown Gallery. Code T". Code T was the museum's call sign for the report of a theft. As he continued the dialogue with the security office, the other guard took steps to bring things under control.

"OK. Who else was here when the alarms went off?" he said to Jenny, taking her shoulders and turning her to him so that she no longer stared at the vacant picture frame.

That was sufficient to bring Jenny back to her normal thinking pose. "Just the two girls over there, myself, and there was a young man sat at the back, but I think he must have left before the alarms sounded. Certainly nobody has left the area since."

In the museum's central security office, Edwin Harris, chief security officer, was already replaying the digital recordings taken by the two cameras in the Ford Madox Brown gallery. He was coming to the conclusion very quickly that there was a serious problem with the new security system.

Outside the museum, Paul Goater was driving along Moseley Street. It was nearly eleven o'clock, as he passed Piccadilly Gardens. If he didn't get a break in the traffic, he was going to be late for his appointment. He hated being late for anything, and proud of the fact that punctuality was one of his strong points. In any event, what hope had you of making a sale if the first thing you did was apologise for your tardiness?

He decided to cut down Portland Street, turn right into Princess Street, and then join Moseley Street near its junction with Oxford Street. That should cut out some of the traffic, and allow him to get there in plenty of time for his eleven-thirty appointment. He looked at his car clock again, and saw that it was exactly eleven o'clock as he turned into Princess Street. He guessed that he should have been paying more attention. It's just that, no matter how many times he recounted the incident, he just couldn't understand why he had suffered that mental block.

Whatever happened, he knew that he was the only one to blame for the accident.

Instead of completing the turn, the car had gone straight on into the lorry that was parked on the right unloading. The tailgate of the lorry was one of those load carriers that was operated by the person standing by the side of the loading platform. The operator in this case had finished unloading, and was raising the platform from the tarmac surface to the top position. At eleven o'clock, it was level with his knees. Paul Goater's two-year old Volvo smashed into the tailgate at approximately twenty miles per hour. Jim Bain, the deliveryman, looked down, shocked that the steel knifeedge of the loading platform was now rammed into his legs.

He heard his knee joints crack and pop as the metal of both sides ground the flesh, bone, and gristle together. Warm bright red blood splattered onto the grey steel loading platform, and as Jim Bain lost his balance and toppled towards the van, the two eschewed stumps that had once been the man's legs faced the horrified expression of Paul Goater, staring in disbelief from inside his car. Jim Bain pulled himself up on his elbows, and looked down in horror at the bloody void below his knees. Before passing out, he screamed in terror, and looked through the windscreen at his unknown assailant, who was also screaming in terror.

Maggie Johnson, in her third year of Contemporary Art Studies at Manchester University, was trotting up the steps below the impressive portico at the front of the Manchester City Art Gallery. She was a fit and lithe young lady of twenty-two years of age, and enjoyed coming to the museum. Today's study involved research into a painting called Stages of Cruelty, which had been described to her in Monday's lecture to show a vile suitor pawing at the hand of an evil-expressioned girl, with a child beating a hapless dog completing the group.

She was in no particular hurry, but the brightness of her demeanour made skipping up the steps a joyful necessity. Later, onlookers and witnesses to the tragedy had trouble recalling what had happened. One said that she simply missed her footing, and took a tumble, and that her inertia had caused her to fall backwards instead of forwards.

Another witness, coming out of the museum at the top of the museum, had paused to take in the scene and erect his umbrella. He claimed that it looked as though she had ran into an invisible brick wall whilst she trotted up the steps.

To him, it appeared that she had been thrown from the steps, rather than falling back down them. In any event, he was able to confirm to the police in a later interview, like several other witnesses, that no one was near her at the time, and so ultimately, the coroner recorded that she died as a result of an accident.

Michelle Gaynor was another university student who was also passing by in Moseley Street at the time. She wasn't visiting, though. She was doing her normal morning jog. She had late starts on Tuesday and Thursday, and rather than while away the time in bed like the majority of the boarders in the halls of residence, she preferred to do her bit to keep fit.

She had the same circuit every day, taking in Moseley Street, Piccadilly Gardens, Portland Street, and Oxford Street. It always took her between 40 and 45 minutes to complete the circuit. She never did understand why, on Tuesday 22 April, the same circuit had taken almost thirty minutes longer than usual.

From his quiet location in George Street, Eddie was hit by the sudden cacophony of noise. To everyone, this was the normal background hum to any city life. But with the isolation of the RTR devices, and the cessation of the dead zone, not only had time returned to its regular beat, so had the inner city din of traffic and hustle and bustle. He heard a crash come from the far end of the museum and heard a dull male scream, followed by a chorus of ladies screams.

He looked up at that instant to see a number of people trip and stumble. They simply looked a little dazed. Most looked sheepishly embarrassed, as though they shouldn't be capable of doing something so stupid. Others laughed at their partner's clumsiness. One person looked at his watch quizzically, as though he couldn't believe the time that was displayed back to him. He referred to the tower clock in front of him, and tried to figure out in vain why his watch had seemingly lost thirty minutes. Must pop into the jewellers and ask them to replace the battery, he thought to himself.

Eddie looked up and saw the flock of birds, now approaching at normal speed. He hadn't caught sight of the single pigeon above him, but assumed that it had continued his flight without interruption.

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