Though not my real name, everyone knows me as Dr David Wilkins. Born in South Wales January 1955, I enjoyed a happy and unremarkable childhood during which I decided on becoming a doctor. Whilst a medical student, I fell in love with Jayne. She joined a quasi-religious brainwashing cult which, I discovered, provided a range of dubious services, including a discrete high-class brothel catering to wealthy and influential clients.
In my attempt to save Jayne, I tracked down the cult leader and his ‘church’. Unable to have him prosecuted effectively by the judiciary, I tossed him over a cliff and burned his ‘church’ to the ground; rough justice 1. Unknown to me at the time, an employee of MI5 took note of my actions.
After qualifying, I became an army medic and read the records retrieved from the cult prior to the fire. Captivating if decidedly repellent, they described the cult leader’s fascination with the effects of pharmacological substances extracted from global flora and fauna, and his monstrous experiments on animals, including humans (echoes of Mengele). They prompted me to undertake a PhD in naturally occurring cardio and neurotoxins.
Though awarded my doctorate, MI6 had taken an interest and classified my research as too dangerous to publish. Instead, they offered me a job developing it further in my own laboratory associated with Porton Down. Their belief I would simply hand over the resulting toxins proved delusional. I insisted they could only be used by me, only on ‘marks’ I considered deserving of rough justice: those unable to be stopped by normal judicial means. Under the code name Night Owl, I became an operative, trained in many specialities, including by the SAS. I obtained access to technology and databases you will never know exist.
Me. A paradox:
a caring, compassionate doctor
and a cold-hearted black-ops assassin.
During some eight years as Night Owl, I undertook many missions, some of which, together with other operatives I knew as Cinders and Ghost, have been documented as fictional stories by the author Osian Giles 2. Eventually, I became disillusioned with increasing government immorality and quit to set up a private practice in Brighton, where I took on a side job as lecturer in Forensic Medicine and became a Forensic Medical Examiner (FME), using my expertise and equipment to help the local police to track down and nail criminals; some very nasty indeed.
I bought a disused café, overlooking the sea, on the coast road between Brighton and Peacehaven, and not just for the views. Underneath what was originally a row of fishermen’s cottages, I accidentally discovered rooms and passages once used by smugglers. I converted the property to become my home, with the rooms beneath equipped as my own forensic laboratory and workshops, housing state of the art computer systems, satellite communications equipment and weapons collected from around the world during my black-ops days. Fitted with air filtration and desalination units, a family could live there for years in isolation; a survivalist’s fantasy.
The conversion work took 4 years. When finished, I asked Saphir, my gorgeous girlfriend, to marry me. She said yes but our plans had to be put on hold because that very day, the 10th of March 1999, her 24th birthday, someone tried to kill me. So started a train of events requiring all my black-ops expertise, with the help of my old black-ops colleagues Cinders and Ghost, to identify and bring to justice the perpetrator.