Zero - Eddie Zero's Debut Novel E-Book

Francis Young

• Herausgeber: Grosvenor House Publishing
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 108

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Eddie Zero is not your usual hero. He is a successful professional drummer from the 90's whose four interests in life are blondes, mozart, marijuana and cricket. This, his first novel, takes us from Barbados to a Bedouin encampment in the Jordanian desert, via Beirut and Swindon! You will find, amongst some beautiful women, turtles, transvestites, paedophiles, camels and drug taking. Eddie does not know how to use a gun or hit someone. He refers to himself as a wimp. He loves life, most of the time, and this novel will make you laugh, be shocked and maybe cry.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Copyright

Dedications

My Family

Learning for Life, Swindon

CHAPTER 1

I was staying in Barbados, on my own, to get some space from my fifth serious girlfriend, Sarah. She had been seeing a techy computer nerd called Archie. What she saw in him I really don’t know. I met him once and he looked like Superman in his glasses-on phase. He didn’t even like cricket. Happiness for him was an X box – what a waste of dear Sarah. I wish them both, maybe not him, well.

No matter who you are, you still have to wait in line at immigration at Barbados Airport, Grantley Adams International.

Once I’d paid the duty on some duty free cigarettes that I had bought at Gatwick (work that one out) it was through customs, past some bored Bajan Policemen discussing the Combermere cricket match. The heat, as usual, was stifling but you could feel it reaching right inside your lungs -it was great.

Jerome, the car hire guy, sat in the front of the yellow Jeep Wrangler that I had hired for the week. I filled out the paperwork – passport, temporary driving licence, insurance waiver. Air con. check-good. Sound system check - good. I was all set. Time was when everyone visiting the Caribbean hired mini mokes. To see one now would certainly give you some points in an Eye-spy book.

“How’s the missus Mr Zero?” Jerome beamed. Displaying his pride and joy – one gold tooth amongst a sea of white..

He knew well enough that marriage and Eddie Zero never quite went together and a couple of trips earlier he had even asked if Rebecca, my then “squeeze” (great phrase inherited from my Grandmother) would be available when I had finished with her. I’m not sure a single gold tooth would have looked particularly right in the circles that Rebecca moved in. He, like most Bajans, as I did, loved blondes and should Messrs. Lady shave not done their bit, she would have had the matching collar and cuffs to prove that the hair on her head was entirely genuine.

In addition to blondes, I also love cricket, Mozart, marijuana and Charlie Watts, the drummer with the Rolling Stones although not, I would stress, in the Biblical sense. Marlboro Lights and Mount Gay Rum also featured on visits to the island.

I am a professional drummer although most of my current fan base are at that tricky age between the menopause and the first hip operation. The bonus was that most of them had daughters who would fall into the category of Yummy Mummy. Ideally little Tristram and husband George tended to be left in England – at school and the City respectively, while YM was free to strut her stuff on the beaches of Barbados.

I was brought up in Shropshire, my father was the Managing Director of a shipping agency in Liverpool. My mother’s obsession was with horses and any conversations with her tended to be about about fetlocks and the new vet.

“He comes from Birmingham you know.”

She said Birmingham as if it was somewhere on the moon.

“A lovely man who knows just how to handle Bubble.” The first mention of Bubble, I thought was referring to Champagne but no, she was a racehorse being primed to run at the forthcoming Bangor on Dee National Hunt race meeting. She also loved dogs, in fact anything with four legs. It was anything with two legs that she couldn’t quite relate to.

As a result we had a selection of nannies, those from Eastern Europe came and went. We even had one from Copenhagen who I think encouraged my interest in blondes. Once while she was putting me to bed her nightie slipped open, revealing one, she did have two, but I only saw one, beautifully, although slightly underdeveloped breast. I was hooked.

My father’s shipping Company was in Liverpool – just far enough away for him to have to stay over in the city at his club for a couple of nights a week – very handy. Talk in the village was that he had won the Company in a game of three-card brag from my grandfather so that he wouldn’t have to pay death duties. The law has apparently changed since then.

CHAPTER 2

I went to the local primary school, Saint Saviours. On our way to school we tried to avoid Mr Tucker’s house. Mr Tucker was always referred to as a pervert. As will happen in a school environment, the stories about Mr Tucker got more and more outrageous and lurid.

The fact was that he actually was a paedophile who preyed on small boys. If you ever ventured on to his land by mistake Unfortunately, it was on the direct route between our house and the school. He would drag you into his study for “punishment” He would then make you take your shorts down and perform acts on you and particularly himself. He was a London stockbroker and his land seemed to grow over the years. Or was it just our imagination?

One boy called Jackson, who could only have been about 10 years old, had a particularly unpleasant encounter with Tucker. The poor boy reported him to his parents who contacted the school. Unfortunately, for us anyway, Mr Tucker had just given some land, as playing fields, to the school and young Jackson had to stand up and apologize to him in front of the whole school. Tucker had won, and was basically given a free rein to do as he wished, which, I have to admit, included me on more than a few occasions.

Occasionally Mr Tucker came over to the house for dinner. He always insisted on coming upstairs, tucking me up in bed and reading me a book. There were always a lot of associated activities involved in this seemingly innocent exercise.

When he eventually returned, slightly red-faced downstairs to my parents, his hosts, he was always asked which book he had read to me that evening. It was always some great classic like A tale oftwo cities or Kidnapped.

“We nearly came up to see if the young rascal was behaving” my father apologized – Even he would have had a shock!

“Were there any horses in the book?” my mother always enquired.

“Definitely in Stephenson’s Kidnapped. I’m not so sure about Dickens.”was Tucker’s vague reply, trying to pretend an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature so he would be invited again.

Black Beauty, National Velvet and all of the Dick Francis novels were more my mother’s speed. She even read “War Horse” and went to see the play in London.

“It wasn’t a proper horse, you know, It was men dressed up” she somehow felt that she had been cheated.

I mentioned that the Queen had liked it and the play suddenly became acceptable.

CHAPTER 3

Despite the constant jokes at secondary school: Zero – zero marks. I managed a couple of reasonable A levels and went to Luton University to read Philosophy. There are those that say that Philosophy is a “useless” degree. I don’t know. I hardly ever went to lectures and would have got a first, if the subject had been beer and women. They may do that degree now. It would attract a lot of interest. Not from Mr Tucker I suspect.

What I did discover at university was music, Mozart surprisingly, and the drums. To the poncy guitar players I was “drummin rather than strummin”. My other two great discoveries were drugs and vaginas. The secondary school I went to, was all boys, and even the only willies that I had seen, apart from my own, were in the changing room. And, of course, the dreadful Mr Tucker’s.

Vaginas were a revelation and I made it my duty to investigate as many as possible. In reality my degree should have been in gynaecology, not philosophy, or indeed beer and women. In contrast, I stuck with just one type of drug – Mary Jane or marijuana. A girl with the name of Mary-Jane would have ticked all of the boxes.

With four other mates we formed a band. In reality drummers were hard to find. You needed a van or at least a big car to carry the kit around and both my mother and father, when he was there, were completely pissed by 9 pm. There were definite advantages to that arrangement in terms of making noise late at night. It did, however, mean always asking for lifts coming back from gigs.

I shared a flat with Chung (he didn’t seem to have another name) He was from Thailand. He had been sent to England by his father for a proper British education. He didn’t seem particularly interested in vaginae (they still studied Latin in Thailand) He did however became a football fanatic - Luton Town, The Hatters. He even used to go to the away games in some really God- forsaken places.

CHAPTER 4

Back in Barbados, having made friends with the Jeep, I set off down Highway Two to the hotel. Highway One was always crowded, not only with gawping visitors (tourists) but yellow buses on the search for their next fare. The yellow buses are private enterprises. The blue ones are owned and run by the Government and are very boring. Some parents would not even let their children go on a yellow bus. The blue ones were always hushed, with hardly anybody ever talking to each other.

Go yellow and it was, wall to wall Soca music, with an, often stoned, “conductor”. The basic rules of the road were for other people and you had to hang on very tight when you went around a corner. The secret was to jam yourself next to a portly Bajan woman, of which there were plenty. You can understand why a drummer was always drawn to a yellow bus. After a couple of Mount Gays or Jack Specials the bus was really the only option.

Although I only used it sober or clean, I was delighted that my Jeep was also yellow. The only thing that prevented complete coolness from it was the number plate. P was for St Peter. J, St James etc. All hire cars were H which meant that, come what may, I was a tourist.

Very sensibly, Bajans drive on the British side of the road, the only downside being that you can often find Americans or Venezuelans stuck in a ditch facing the wrong way. Usually in the middle of a sugar cane field. There were an increasing amount of US-made Limos, swanning about, unable to see what on earth was going on, and they were far too big for the roads anyway. At least it was safer than the Bahamas where nearly all of the cars are American manufactured. They have a left hand steering wheel and they blindly, literally, drive on the left hand side of the road.

Barbados names each of its roundabouts after famous Bajans, most of whom no one has ever heard of. On the (ex Prime minister) Tom Adams Highway from the airport you could always take your bearings from the “Sir Garfield Sobers” roundabout and the “Emancipation” roundabout. Sir Garfield was, rightly, moved to the Cricket Ground – the Kensington Oval. He stood outside the main gates ready to hit someone for an off drive. Where “Emancipation “went I have no idea.

Hey, I was in Barbados, in an open top yellow Jeep with Mozart’s Symphony No.5, Allegro con Brio blasting my eardrums. If there was Heaven on earth, this was it.

CHAPTER 5

On check-in at the hotel, all of the staff knew my name. I suspect that Jerome had called ahead to warn them, in the hope of bigger tips all round. They also all knew me from previous visits.

“Good Afternoon Mr Zero, how was your flight? On your own this time? Jack will be pleased to see you. These are lean times on the island at the moment and, someone with your tastes, is especially welcome.”