CHAPTER 8
CAPTURING SMUGNESS
A long hot summer can pass you by. In London the late evening sun was setting low beyond the north-west horizon, having served the day well. Deep sky greys, purples and reds weaved together behind a thin sliver of cloud made black by contrasting shadow. The streetlamps switched on to fill a yellow light over chewing-gum strewn pavements.
Following his long-distance call Nelson was unexpectedly elated. Alone in his tiny flat he beamed, pursed his lips and nodded. His chest puffed, and he caught sight of his distorted face in the Habitat wall mirror. He could not recall any artist capturing this degree of smugness within a portrait.
He had ruffled NASA's feathers.
The radio was barely audible as a backdrop. John Peel played Rewards by The Teardrop Explodes, and Nelson mused what he might accept as his own reward.
Collapsing into a beaten fabric armchair and gripping the threadbare arms, Nelson's thoughts drifted to NASA and his boyhood awe of this organisation. At 2:56 a.m. GMT on the 21st July 1969 he knew that Neil Armstrong became the first in humanity to set foot on the Moon.
Back then, in an all too infrequent act of parental care, his mother had recognised the passion in her son, and presented Nelson with a beautifully detailed pop-up book cataloging the moon landing mission. Setting a rare alarm, a very young Nelson snook himself into the empty living room that warm July night and switched the TV to fuzzy images in black and white. With the volume on low, he remembered vividly Armstrong's celebrated words stepping out of the lunar landing module to make the first footprint in The Sea of Tranquility: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Even at that tender age and with no parent present, Nelson had gaped reverently at Armstrong on the screen and thought:
I bet he feels great.
His pop-up book revealed the Americans laid out an estimated twenty-five billion dollars in '60s money to get Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the Moon. Nelson was satisfied his one telephone call had achieved a similar feeling of self-satisfaction, for far less expense.
He kneaded his neck muscle with one hand.
His thoughts wandered away from Armstrong and then a tension descended. Suddenly a cold tremor took another sucker punch and self-doubt flooded back in.
What the hell am I doing! Seriously. Have I any idea who or what I am dealing with? Are these same people responsible for Duke's disappearance? Am I so bored with my current life that I have become a thrill seeker? Another day lost to faffing around, and Clive will be calling again in the morning. And why oh why did I give my real address to Betty Ann? Stupid!
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As the dusk melted to night, the high altitude 8K surveillance drone returned to its charging station, and a lone figure entered Nelson's sparsely lit road at its northern tip.
Switching on his solitary table lamp, Nelson obliviously rummaged through his sparse fridge in search of an elusive block of opened cheddar for comfort. He settled on a fruit yoghurt two days beyond its sell-by date, accepting this was both safe and inescapable. Standing at the living room window, he contemplated his recent actions and then moved onto closest friend and the growing conviction that Duke was not in Cyprus.
The road appeared empty, and he looked up into the night sky. London offered an abundance of light pollution, yet with the moon tucked away and a solitary low bulb from his living room as a backdrop, Nelson could faintly make out a few stars in the cosmos.
From his school physics lessons, Nelson knew that even as a sixteen-year-old in the 1890s, Albert Einstein had conducted a thought experiment where he chased a beam of light across the universe. Nelson contemplated this journey through its vastness and speculated whether the few bright points he could make out were in fact stars, planets, or other galaxy clusters.
He glanced down at the road below flooded yellow by the sodium-vapour streetlamps and picked at his yoghurt carton with a teaspoon. Between mouthfuls of Waitrose peach melba Nelson's lips steadily pursed again back into smugness. He caught his reflection in the glass, and this restored artistic portrait rewarmed his mood. He offered a faint smile at this renewed image of self-satisfaction.
It was then he noticed the raincoated figure weaving between the streetlights. It was surely too dark for those over-sized sunglasses, and the individual sported a rucksack and carried what looked like a long lens SLR camera. Slowly and deliberately the hands were brought up, turning the camera to point at Nelson's building.
His smugness vanished again at once, and Nelson gasped as a powerful flash illuminated his face and torso, and the whole living room wall behind him. In the shock he dropped his yoghurt and it smashed to the floor with a splatter. His eyes were now dazed from the instant of blinding light. As they began to recover there was no sign of the camera or its sinister owner.