The Lonely Heart Attack Club - Project VIP

by J. C. Williams

  Jack took a moment to process this information, then asked, “You were in the loo the whole time? Just how long were you on the bloody toilet for, Ray?” He had a hard time understanding how Ray could have been sat on the toilet the whole entire time the apprehension of Grandad was taking place.

  Ray tilted his head back, running numbers through his head, but finally giving that up. “I’m not entirely sure, Jack. It was a good while, I suppose,” he admitted. “But you have to understand, when you get to my age, it’s one of those things that shouldn’t be rushed,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Trust me, yeah? You could easily burst something or pop something out of joint.”

  “I don’t… I don’t understand any of this, Ray,” said Jack, shaking his head in confusion and dismay. “Do you have any idea at all why?”

  “Why you don’t understand?” asked Ray, not sure what Jack was asking him, exactly. “Oh, you mean why I was on the toilet for so long? Ah, that would be the curry. I’d ordered some rogan josh for take-away, extra hot. I knew I shouldn’t have. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love it, mind you. It’s just that it always leads to trouble. See, it’s not just hot going in, but it’s also hot going out, and—”

  “Ray! I don’t mean about that!” shouted Jack, interrupting Ray’s sordid tale of gastrointestinal-themed woe. “I mean about Grandad! Do you have any idea why they’ve taken him away??”

  “Oh. No, son. No, I don’t,” replied Ray, bowing his head.

  Jack felt ill. He hunched over, bracing his hands against his thighs, and taking a few deep breaths to try and steady himself. Ray rubbed his back for him. “You don’t look so good, Jack. Are you going to be sick?” asked Ray. “Did you eat something that didn’t agree with you as well?”

  “No, Ray, no I didn’t eat something that didn’t agree with me. That’s not it,” Jack answered, too spent to even be upset anymore. He straightened up, rubbing his forehead, weighing his options. “I think I’m going to have to go to the police station,” he said, talking more to himself than to Ray at this point. But just then…

  “Jack Tate!” shouted an unpleasantly familiar voice.

  Jack looked and saw Marion Higginbottom making a beeline for him. Jack sighed. With what Ray had just informed him about Grandad, Jack had a strong suspicion as to why the roving reporter was moving in on his position with haste.

  “Jack Tate,” Marion said again, in a normal voice this time now that he was standing before Jack and Ray. He said it as a combination of greeting, of sorts, and confirmation that he’d found Jack. He also said it as a kind of introduction for the sake of the photographer who’d arrived by his side, camera readied, even though no introduction was really necessary as this was the same photographer that Jack had ‘met’ (very briefly) earlier in the day.

  “Now’s not the time, boys,” replied Jack wearily. “Really. Now’s not the—”

  “Good show at the airport!” laughed Higginbottom, either not noticing or caring about Jack’s discomfort, which should have been obvious and readily evident.

  “This is Fred, one of the finest photographers at our paper!” Higginbottom carried on merrily. “He’s the one who managed to capture your image just as you were going down for the count! Brilliant. Really sterling work!” remarked Marion.

  “Thank you,” said Fred, taking a little bow.

  “The headline, I think, will be…” began Marion, running his hand through the air to draw out the headline in his mind.

  But before Marion could brainstorm a proper, fitting title for his upcoming article, Jack was in front of him with a face like thunder.

  “I know why you’re here, Higginbottom!” said Jack, shaking his head in disgust. “And I’m going to walk away before I say or do something I’m going to later regret!”

  Marion seemed rather taken aback by Jack’s response. “What can I say?” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “I always get my man,” he declared. “Don’t I, Fred?” he asked, turning to his photographer companion for confirmation.

  “Always,” agreed Fred.

  But Jack, by this time, was already on the move, and was shortly jumping the queue of his own coffee stall in order to speak to Emma, leaving Marion Higginbottom and his sidekick Fred far behind.

  “Emma, I need to go to the police station,” Jack informed her from across the customer side of the counter.

  Emma placed a plastic lid on the cup she was holding, and then handed it to her waiting patron. “Whatever for?” she asked Jack once her customer was sorted. “Is it Grandad?”

  Jack lowered his voice on account of those stood behind him. “Yes. Emma, they’ve taken him away again, but Ray’s not sure exactly why,” he told her. “Look, I just need to go, but I’ll phone you as soon as I know anything, okay?”

  “Wait, Ray doesn’t know why?” asked Emma, looking slightly confused. “But wasn’t Ray with him all day? How can he not know?”

  “It was the curry’s fault. The spicy curry,” explained Jack. “Rogan josh,” he said, though not really having time to elaborate further to try and alleviate the even-more-confused look on Emma’s face. “Look, I’ll need to run. Love you.”

  Jack was just taking his leave when Marion Higginbottom reappeared, though not quite in time. “I told you I always get my man!” he repeated, calling after Jack as Jack buggered off, leaving Marion behind yet again.

  Marion had caught up with Jack, or had tried to at least, feeling, it would seem, that his proud declaration hadn’t gotten the sort of reaction it deserved the first time around. “That’s right!” he said, a little louder still, this time, at the retreating figure of Jack, “Marion Higginbottom always gets his man!”

  But Jack was already gone.

  .

  Chapter Thirteen

  R amon ‘Hip-Action’ Hernandez marched onto the stage to a rapturous welcome from the Isle of Man crowd. He stopped, raising his left hand to encourage one half of the audience to increase the volume even more, and repeating the process with his right hand for the other half of the crowd stood to the other side of him. And then, with this accomplished, he stamped his foot like a matador, raising both hands above his head now, where he clicked his fingers to introduce an impromptu solo Paso Doble. He proceeded with this passionate performance, which elicited appreciative groans from many in the audience each time his hips would snap from one position to the next with practised precision. After all, they did not call him Ramon Hip-Action Hernandez for no reason.

  Once this was concluded, he stepped up to the microphone at the front of the stage. “Are you ready to dance?” he asked. And then, “I said, my friends, are you ready to dance?” he said, posing the question again, only this time with more emphasis.

  It was a simple enough question, but the way Ramon spoke the words in his seductive Spanish accent was like poetry, and enough to send everyone wild.

  “Now before we start with the waltz,” Ramon went on, after everyone had settled down to some degree, “we are going to have a little warm-up to get the blood flowing and the oxygen circulating, all right?” Ramon swivelled his hips for illustrative purposes as he said this, and then he continued, “And so I want all of you to give yourselves a little bit of room and follow along, yes? We are going to do the Macarena!”

  A remote-controlled drone hovered in the air, buzzing along above the throng as the bodies below commenced to jumping and jiving and hopping and bopping, and broadcasting the images it was capturing onto a supersized display screen set up at the rear of the stage for all to see. It was a wondrous spectacle to see hundreds and hundreds of people crammed onto Douglas Promenade performing the Macarena, with most of the people involved dressed in their Sunday best, and all involved completely and utterly consumed by the party spirit.

  Just as this was going on, Jack was sprinting his way back into the fray, sweat running freely down his forehead. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” he was saying, as he encountered one cluster of people, and then another, the crowd getting thicker and
thicker as he went along, and with Jack becoming increasingly frustrated as he progressed…

  Or not progressed, as the case may be. Because it would have been difficult enough for Jack to negotiate his way through a large crowd at the best of times, but with most of them presently slaughtering the Spanish dance song and moving with sporadic and unexpected bursts of motion and throwing their arms up at will, it was nigh on impossible.

  “Emma!” Jack shouted desperately. He could see his coffee stall through the sea of people, up ahead, off to the side, but getting there was not so easy. “Excuse me,” he said again, repeatedly, as he attempted to navigate his way through the undulating mass, and with at least two old dears attempting to rope him into becoming their dance partners, and with him barely managing to evade their clutches unscathed. “Emma!” he shouted, seeing her up there a little further on, still out of reach, and waving to attract her attention.

  Emma waved back, holding Jack’s van keys up in the air and dangling them about. She held her other hand to her mouth and shouted something out, but her voice was drowned out by the music and Jack couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “Throw them to me!” screeched Jack, struggling to be heard, but keeping his eyes glued to the keys. He mimed the motion of throwing them, for Emma’s benefit, but the little girl in a red dress near to Jack mistakenly took this to be the hand action from the Macarena chorus and joined him for a dance. “Throw them!” Jack repeated, attempting to dance with the little girl at the same time. But Jack’s stress levels were not eased any when Emma then inexplicably lowered her hand, shaking her head. Instead of throwing the keys in his direction as requested, she motioned for Jack to come join her. And yet progress in that regard was sadly like wading through treacle while wearing a pair of concrete galoshes.

  Jack did eventually manage to squeeze his way through to the coffee stall with a fair amount of effort, whereupon he appeared to be in danger of immediate collapse. “I… I forgot my keys to the van!” he gasped, struggling for air, although this was of course a fact already known by Emma as she was presently holding the keys in her hand. “I need to go!” he said, grabbing for the keys. But Emma whipped her hand back, denying him his prize.

  “Emma,” said Jack, in a tone that indicated now was not the time for games. “I need to go and find Grandad.”

  Emma shook her head no in response, which was not only confusing to Jack but served also to drain what little ounce of patience he had remaining.

  “No need,” Emma told him, glancing to an area near to the steps that led up to the main stage.

  Jack wiped the sweat from his eyes, clearly struggling to take in what he was seeing. Then he ran over and threw his arms around his grandad, or at least attempted to. Grandad was mid-Macarena, and nearly clobbered Jack as he spun around to see who was getting overly familiar with him.

  “What the hell, Grandad??” exclaimed Jack. But it wasn’t in response to almost getting clobbered. Rather, it was more the fact that Grandad was standing there before him when as far as Jack knew he ought not to be. And then Jack noticed Ray, who was dancing close by as if nothing was out of the ordinary and as if his and Jack’s earlier conversation had never happened. “What the hell, Ray??” added Jack, to which Ray just smiled and waved.

  Jack placed both his hands on his grandad’s shoulders, looking him up and down and generally checking him over. He seemed none the worse for wear, and in fact looked positively smashing in his new dinner jacket, thought Jack. “I don’t understand. Ray said you’d been taken away by the police,” Jack told him, looking to Ray, and then back to Grandad for an explanation.

  “Well, not taken away, exactly. But I went with the police, yes,” answered Grandad. “I called out to Ray to let him know what was going on, but I couldn’t really get into the details because Ray was rather, ah, indisposed at the time, I guess you could say.”

  “Yes, we had a discussion about that subject not too long ago,” replied Jack. “Not that I really needed to know the details about that part, specifically, mind you,” Jack added, throwing a scowl in Ray’s direction.

  “I did warn Ray about eating that vindaloo the night before,” Grandad was happy to point out. “Didn’t I, Ray?”

  “Rogan josh. Extra hot,” said Ray, gently correcting him. “But that you did, Geoffrey,” confirmed Ray. “That you did.”

  “So what happened?” asked Jack, anxious to learn more.

  “Ah. Well apparently Ray had heard just enough of what I was saying to know that I was off with the police, but seemed rather to have gotten the wrong impression as to why,” replied Grandad.

  “False alarm, as it turns out,” said Ray, with a bashful shrug. “I couldn’t make out everything Geoffrey was saying at the time because I was on the—”

  “Yes, I know!” Jack interrupted, not wishing to be regaled with yet another retelling of Ray’s gastrointestinal woes, as absolutely fascinating a tale as that story was. “I don’t care about that! I meant what happened at the police station!”

  “Oh, that,” said Grandad. “Well I’m off the hook, aren’t I?”

  “Are you?” said Jack. He smiled an uncertain smile, as everyone was clued in as to what was going on except him, it would seem.

  “Yes, of course. Where have you been?” Grandad answered, like this was all old news. “I’m off the hook,” he said again, with a toothy grin. “I shouldn’t have signed some of the forms I did, which I already knew, but the police said that they won’t be pressing any charges,” he explained. “From what I understand, Barry Cox’s wife withdrew her statement about her husband’s innocence in the whole affair, and also came clean about him being an absolute scumbag. So, I’m in the clear,” he said, adding, “And apparently it’s all thanks to that man over there.”

  Jack looked over to where Grandad was pointing, and to his surprise it was none other than Marion Higginbottom. Marion, who’d been joining in the festivities, took this as an opportunity to make his way over, at which point Grandad pulled Marion into an affectionate embrace, patting his back. And, now, Jack was even more confused than he was before.

  “So we’re good?” Marion enquired of Jack once released from Grandad’s generous bearhug. “As I tried to tell you before, Marion Higginbottom always gets his—”

  Jack raised his hands. “I haven’t got a clue what’s going on!” he said, not allowing Marion to finish. “So Grandad’s not in any trouble, then?”

  Marion was more than happy to fill in the blanks for Jack, if for no other reason than to show off his investigative prowess. “My colleague ran the investigation into Barry Cox originally, so I took a thorough look at his file. Originally, I was thinking that Geoffrey here was crooked and that Cox was not nearly as guilty as he was being portrayed,” he said. “No offence, Geoffrey.”

  “None taken!” replied Grandad cheerfully.

  “But I follow the evidence, don’t I?” Marion went on. “And the evidence leads where it leads. And I quickly realised I’d had it the wrong way ’round and that it was Cox who was guilty as sin, while Geoffrey here was nothing more than just a gormless rube,” he told Jack, adding, once again, “No offence, Geoffrey.”

  “Erm… none taken?” replied Grandad, a little less enthusiastically this time, uncertain if he’d just received a compliment or been insulted.

  “Right. So Cox was clearly crooked,” Marion continued. “But what I couldn’t understand was how he’d stolen all this money to spend on copious amounts of drugs, loose women… and some of the money he even wasted,” he said, and giving a snort at this last witticism, which was promptly ignored. “Anyway,” he went on, “I couldn’t understand how he could spend all this money on loose women, among other things, and have his wife adamantly stick by him the way she was. I had to wonder if perhaps she didn’t know just what sort of mischief, precisely, her husband was getting up to with all of this stolen money.”

  “Ah. And I’m assuming…?” replied Jack, getting an idea as to where this was
going.

  “She did not,” confirmed Marion.

  “You told his wife what he was up to?” asked Jack.

  “She was… discreetly informed,” Marion answered him. “My colleague had a couple of compromising pictures of Cox with a tart hanging off his arm. In addition to that, I found the hotel where they were taken and managed to persuade the head of security to lend me the CCTV footage. Cox’s wife found all of this, shall we say, quite elucidating.”

  “I’m sure she must have,” said Jack, nodding along.

  “So. As a result, Cox’s wife realises exactly what kind of a scumbag he is, Geoffrey here gets his criminal slate wiped clean, and I get a nice little story for tomorrow’s front page describing your grandad’s vindication,” Marion concluded.

  “That’s brilliant!” replied Jack.

  “Yep. And get this. Cox’s wife was only too eager to distance herself from him for fear of getting charged herself, right?” added Marion. “She’s actually a bit of a looker, let me tell you, and very appreciative of my efforts. So, you know… watch this space,” he said with a wink.

  He was a bit of a sleaze, was Marion Higginbottom, but for now, he was hero of the hour.

  “Thank you,” said Jack, extending his hand. “I sincerely mean that. You’ve helped my family more than you can ever know.”

  “Well, as I was saying before,” Marion answered him, “Marion Higginbottom always gets his—”

  “Ah! Hold that thought!” said Jack, interrupting yet again Marion’s chance to utter his favourite catchphrase, to Marion’s chagrin. But Emma had just made her way over to join them, along with Jack’s mum, who was holding little Lucas. “I see the record attempt is about to begin,” Jack told Marion. “I owe you a drink when this is all over!”

  “Who’d have thought?” remarked Ray, as they watched Marion walk back over to his dance partner.