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grinding recession on his luxury yacht, heading for sunnier climes and sipping idly at an expensive gin and tonic funded by the vast pension he had never worked at all hard to deserve in any way.
    The fast beat of stilettos in the car park outside brought Dan back to the canteen. Lizzie: wearing stalactite heels early in the day. A danger sign if ever there was one. He quickly wrapped himself in a handy curtain and waited for her to pass.
    The first stage of his great plan required that he had to sell her the idea. But, before that, he needed to weigh the odds in his favour, and that meant finding out more about Edward Bray. Dan peered furtively out of the door. There was no sign of his insane editor. He walked quickly back up to the library and closed the door.
    Now came the surprise.
    Dan had a few more Bray reports to work throughand was ready to find further tales of evictions and protests. But instead he uncovered a hitherto unsuspected heart.
    The man had saved a hospice.
    St Jude’s was in trouble. Tempestuous economic times meant donations had dried up, and the institution was in danger of going under. Wessex Tonight carried a couple of stories warning the end was, if not exactly nigh, then perhaps only months away. Some of the interviews with patients were powerfully moving, one old man talking about how he would have died alone in his cold flat were it not for St Jude’s. A young woman spoke about the wonderful care it gave her mother, and the precious gift of dignity it bestowed in the woman’s dying days.
    The hospice had a proud history of more than a hundred and twenty years of such work, thousands of grateful supporters, and the finest of reputations.
    Imagine then, the shock when Edward Bray was spotted meeting its trustees at a local hotel.
    St Jude’s was another place over which any property developer would salivate. It was a detached and elegant Victorian building, in beautiful grounds on the cliffs overlooking the great natural harbour of Plymouth Sound and the east Cornwall coast. The views were stunning, which surely gave real comfort to the patients. But they would also give delight to the potential owners of the scores of flats into which the grand old building could be converted, and help to persuade them to part with impressively large sums of money.
    The story had been covered in all the local media. Dan clicked at his computer, checking the online archives. The newspaper headlines made the simple point. “The Bastard Poised to do for the Hospice” read one, ‘Angel of Death for the Hospice” said another.
    There were interviews aplenty with fearful residents and their relatives, some even pleading with Bray not to close the place they had come to so depend upon.
    â€˜Fat chance,’ Dan muttered to himself. ‘The milkman of human kindness has hardly been a regular caller at his door.’
    But then came the surprise. Or perhaps shock might have been a better word. To put it mildly.
    Edward Bray had saved St Jude’s.
    Even the tone of the Wessex Tonight report was incredulous. The hospice had released a statement saying that a “very sizeable” donation from Bray meant its future was secured for many long years to come. There were no ifs and buts, no caveats, no provisos or conditions. It was a simple gift, an act of pure generosity and humanity.
    Dan choked and nearly spat out his coffee. He had to rewind the tape to check what he’d just seen.
    By request of Mr Bray, no one from the hospice would be giving interviews, and nor would the man himself. And there the story more or less rested. Many had made attempts to find out what was behind the donation, but with little success. The nearest any of the journalists came was an unsubstantiated suspicion that Bray’s mother had been a patient at St Jude’s before her death eight years ago.
    Dan scribbled a couple of notes on his pad, sat back and stared at the screen, the fleeting image of