by Tom Sharpe
‘Don’t you speak to me like that. I’m not some poor wretch in the dock or one of the barristers you can berate,’ she said. ‘Now, does the name Llafranc mean anything to you? You berth your yacht the Lex Britannicus in the marina there.’
It was hardly a question but the Judge nodded obediently all the same.
‘Very fortunately for you, Timothy has saved you from becoming an unwitting drug-runner. You will find all the details in this envelope. I have made him write them all down. You can check on their veracity. I’m sure you are capable of that. And the money in that bag is what your nephew stole from his aunt. You will see that she gets it back. And now I must be going.’
And before the Judge could ask who she was or how she came to be involved with his beastly nephew, Miss Midden had passed out of the house. Behind her she left a bewildered old man who could only remember that she had faced him down in his own drawing-room. She’d been wearing what looked like an old tweed skirt with a stain on it. And a scruffy anorak. It was weird.
25
Sir Arnold Gonders wandered the house in Sweep’s Place and pondered his fate. That it was a fate he had no doubt. A fate that had crept up on him silently and with an awful purpose. It had to have some meaning. Everything had a meaning for the Chief Constable. He turned inevitably to God. He fell on his knees in his study and he prayed as he had never prayed before. He prayed for divine help, for inspiration, for some sign that would show him what to do in this, the greatest crisis of his life. Or, if God wouldn’t meet that request, would he please tell him what he had done wrong to bring down on himself this terrible fate. The Chief Constable didn’t actually compare himself to the Pharaoh who got it in the neck from God with plagues of locusts and years of dearth and so on, because clearly that Gyppo had been a right bastard and deserved everything the Good Lord chose to hand out. But he thought about him occasionally and hoped and prayed he wasn’t going to have years of this sort of thing. He thought far more about Job. And he did compare himself with Job. After all, Job had been a thoroughly respectable bloke, pillar of society no doubt and with plenty of readies and so on, and yet look what he’d had inflicted on him.
The Chief Constable checked up on the misfortunes God had heaped on Job and was appalled. It had been a wipe-out for the poor bugger. Oxen and asses gone – the Sabeans fell on them and took them away after slaughtering the servants; then God sent fire and consumed the sheep and more servants; three bands of Chaldeans lifted the camels and bumped off even more servants (at this point Sir Arnold thanked God he hadn’t been employed by Job and wondered how he had ever got anyone to work for him again); and, as if that wasn’t enough, the sons and daughters had copped it in some sort of hurricane. Must have had a hell of a big funeral, though why Job should have shaved his head for the occasion was quite beyond the Chief Constable. And still God hadn’t stopped. It was only natural that Job’s health had suffered. In Sir Arnold’s opinion it was amazing the bloke hadn’t gone off his head. Instead he got boils just about everywhere ‘from the sole of his foot to his crown’. And of course they didn’t have antibiotics in those days. Sir Arnold had once had a boil on the back of his neck and he knew how bloody painful that had been. He couldn’t begin to think what it was like to have them on the soles of the feet. And as if that wasn’t enough his three socalled friends had called on him and kept him awake for seven days and seven nights and hadn’t even said ‘Cheer up’ or anything useful. The Chief Constable had seen what keeping someone awake for a week did to a bloke. Mind you, they had taken it in turns to shout questions at the sod but then again that had given the villain something to think about. Sir Arnold would much prefer to be shouted at every now and again to having three bloody friends sitting there looking at him and saying nothing. Enough to drive a chap clean off his trolley. And all Job had done was open his mouth and curse the day. What the hell had the day got to do with it?
The Chief Constable couldn’t go on. It was too dreadful to contemplate and, if memory served him correctly, Mrs Job hadn’t been exactly helpful either, the rotten cow. Said Job had bad breath or something. Hardly surprising. With all those boils he’d probably stunk all over. Certainly no sane woman would want to go near him.
Sir Arnold skipped to the end of the Book of Job and was amazed and delighted to see that Job did pretty well after all he’d been through. Fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand oxen and the same number of asses. And his wife had been ready and willing. Would be after all those months of doing without it. Seven sons and seven daughters and the girls really nice lookers. And to cap it all, Job lived for a hundred and forty years, which was amazing after all he’d been through. Must have been on ginseng or something. On the whole the Chief Constable found the Book of Job almost comforting. Like doing three years bird and coming out to a few million quid. Just so long as God didn’t tell Satan to give him the boil treatment. Boils on the bottom of one’s feet weren’t funny.
Nor was the message he received from London summoning him to Whitehall. It was pointedly brief and coincided with another letter from Vy’s solicitors containing a full and sworn statement by the bitch asserting that he had repeatedly raped her, had insisted on sodomizing her on their honeymoon and had encouraged her to have sex with the wives of his friends . . . ‘Bloody lying cow,’ the Chief Constable roared – and saw the hand of Auntie Fucking Bea behind it all. She was screwing him just as she was almost certainly screwing his wife. Or something. The letter ended with the suggestion that Sir Arnold agree to allow his wife to divorce him on the grounds of adultery and pay all her costs to quote avoid unnecessary and most unfavourable publicity unquote.
What Sir Arnold said wasn’t quotable. The costs of Lapline & Goodenough, Solicitors, were already exorbitant. He’d have to sell the Old Boathouse to meet the bill. Only then did he realize, and regret most vehemently, that he had made the purchase in Vy’s name to avoid the accusation that he was taking advantage of his friendship with Ralph Pulborough, the new Director of the Twixt and Tween Waterworks Company. In short, Sir Arnold was in no position or state of mind to attend to police business. He was otherwise engaged.
*
Inspector Rascombe, on the other hand, was having a thoroughly engaging time. He had been particularly delighted to learn from the surveillance detective in the wood that an old bugger as naked as the day was long had emerged at half past seven from the Middenhall and had walked slowly across the lawn in the altogether before plunging into the lake and swimming on his back, repeat on his back, displaying his dooda for all the world, and in particular thirty children in the tents, to see.
‘His what?’ the Inspector had demanded over the mobile.
‘His whatnot,’ the detective constable told him. ‘His dong, for Christ’s sake. He’s just come out of the water now and is drying himself.’
‘What, in front of all those little kiddies? The bastard! Get it on film.’
‘We’ve done that already,’ said the surveillance man. ‘Got the whole performance, but I wouldn’t call them little kiddies exactly. I mean some of them are hulking great louts.’
‘Those shits like them all sizes, the swine,’ said the Inspector. ‘What’s he doing now, the old sod?’
‘Going into the house bollock naked waving his hand . . . Hang on, he’s blowing fucking kisses –’
‘What?’ bellowed the Inspector so loudly that a neighbouring rabbit went thumping away through the wood. ‘Blowing kisses at the kiddies? He’s going to do years for this.’
‘Not at the . . . well, if you want to call them kiddies,’ said the detective, ‘you can, but they don’t strike me as being –’
‘Never mind what they strike you as. Get it on the camera. Him blowing kisses to the kiddies.’
‘I’m doing that. But he isn’t blowing kisses at the kiddies. He’s blowing them at someone in the house. Up at some window. Hang on. There’s not a soul at any window. I don’t know what he’s doing.’
‘I
bloody do,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘and I know what he’s going to do. A long stretch of very nasty bird, the beast.’
*
But it was at 8.45 that Inspector Rascombe’s most virulent hopes were finally satisfied, when Phoebe Turnbird arrived in her car with the Dean of Porterhouse. He was wearing a black cloak over his cassock and had on his head a shovel-hat. It was not his normal garb, but the late Brigadier General Turnbird had always insisted that the cloak, and particularly the shovel-hat, helped to impress the townies from the East End with the importance attached to religious ceremonies and, in memory of his old friend, the Dean kept to the custom. Phoebe by contrast had on the summeriest of summer dresses, a shimmering white frock that she thought gave her a strikingly youthful air. To complete this ensemble she had crowned her crowning glory with an extraordinary picture hat and, rather shortsightedly, had put on a particularly vivid lipstick.
‘There are those wonderful undergraduates down there sleeping under canvas,’ she had told the mirror in her room, and in any case it was lovely to have a man about the house, even if it was only the old Dean. Being given to fits of poetry she murmured, ‘My youth, my beauty and my charm can surely do nobody harm. It is such a lovely day I must look gay.’
It certainly looked that way to the surveillance unit, though they left out the youth and beauty bit. Charm was out of the question. Phoebe Turnbird, even in the saddle at half a mile, was sufficiently and distractingly uncharming to have saved the lives of a good many foxes who had found a second or even a third and fourth wind in their desperate flight from death. And she tended to rush her fences.
‘Fuck me, this has got to be the drag queen of all time,’ the detective muttered as he filmed the Dean and Phoebe moving to the jetty and getting into the little rowing-boat. Phoebe rowed with a vigour that was definitely out of keeping with her outfit. The Dean sat nervously in the stern and looked sinister. He was carrying a large brass cross and the late Brigadier General’s family Bible, both of which were part of the tradition that went with the Mission’s stay.
‘What did you say?’ demanded Inspector Rascombe in the Communications Centre.
The surveillance detective found it difficult to put into words. He had never much liked Rascombe but this time the swine had hit the nail on the head. ‘I think they’re going to have a Black bloody Mass,’ he said. ‘There’s this priest bloke with a fucking great cross and a hell of a big old book being rowed across the lake by Mr Universe in a white frock. Got arms on him like an all-in wrestler. You’ve never seen anything like it. I haven’t, anyway.’
‘And you’re getting it all on film?’
‘I’m trying to. They’re still some way off. Drove up in an old Daimler. Got any leads on that? Looks like a fucking hearse.’
‘Jesus,’ said the Inspector, simultaneously appalled and delighted at what was apparently happening, ‘that’s probably what it is too. They’re going to do a human bloody sacrifice with one of the kiddies. Don’t lose them.’
‘Lose them? You’ve got to be joking. You couldn’t lose that drag merchant on a pitch-black night. Not in that white frock and hat.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I mean keep filming, and for God’s sake don’t let them see you. This is going to hit primetime TV on all channels. I’ll get the Child Care do-gooders up and ready and I don’t care if it is Sunday.’
‘Best if you got the Armed Quick Response brigade in, and fast,’ said the detective. ‘They’re getting out of the boat and some of the other blokes have arranged an altar thing in front of the tents. Gawd, this is horrible. I’ve got kids of my own.’
For a moment the Inspector hesitated. He didn’t want to take the blame for allowing a kiddy to be murdered naked on that altar. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘the moment they have the poor little bugger up there stripped and naked and the priest sod’s had his say, you are to up and hit them. Do you hear what I said?’
‘I heard,’ said the detective, ‘I heard. But if you think I’m going to tangle with that monster in the frock and come out alive, you don’t know what I’m looking at.’
There was a pause, then a gasp. Inspector Rascombe was too busy to hear that gasp. He was now fully occupied in trying to order up a platoon of battle-hardened Child Abuse Trauma Specialists through Police Headquarters in Twixt and getting nowhere fast because, he was told, it was Sunday and the strain of being called fucking shits by enraged and innocent parents all week and the CATS by colleagues in Social Services took its toll by the weekend and they liked to lie in . . .
‘I know what they like and I know about their lying. I’ve heard them in court so don’t give me that. This is a Top Priority Order. You tell Social Services Emergency – and they can fucking get out of bed too – that we’ve got a Witchcraft Black Mass going on up here and the priest is doing the Communion bit at this very moment . . . Yes, I know the cross has got to be upside-down. What the hell’s that got to do with the price of eggs? It’s the little kiddy lying naked on the altar I’m worried about. No, they’re not going to bugger him, not yet at any rate, They’re going to slit the poor little sod’s throat first and drink his blood out of the chalice. Get that into your thick head. Over and out.’
At Police Headquarters the operator had got it only too well. He was over and out. Over the apparatus in front of him and out for the count.
Inspector Rascombe turned back to the Surveillance Unit. The gasping had stopped. ‘What now?’ he demanded. ‘Have they got the kiddy naked on the altar yet?’
‘Kiddy? No, not as far as I can see. They’re waiting for a woman who is jogging round the lake and, blimey, is she worth waiting for. I mean this one is the real thing. A right smasher in a silver cat suit. Got boobs on her like –’
The Inspector didn’t want to hear what her boobs were like. For all he cared she could be Dolly Parton with knobs on.
He wasn’t far wrong. Consuelo McKoy could by no stretch of the imagination be called the real thing. She had used her years, and there were a great many of them, and vast sums of her husband’s money to enrich some of the most proficient plastic surgeons from Santa Barbara to LA. At several hundred yards she looked a million dollars and she had spent far more to achieve that illusion. She had the gloriously lissom figure of a girl of eighteen, which, considering she was eighty-two rising eighty-three, was no mean achievement, particularly on the part of the late Mr McKoy. What liposuction hadn’t done for her thighs and silicone implants for her breasts – her latest nipples were extraordinarily effective – the silver cat suit did. It constrained her and preserved the illusion that her navel was where it always had been instead of appearing, rather peculiarly, in her cleavage. Even in Santa Barbara she had been something else. At the Middenhall she was something else again, a vision of such unutterable beauty that at two hundred yards in the morning sunlight it took the surveillance detective’s breath away. He kept the camera running.
It was an action he would live to regret. It was only when she came round the lake and he was able to zoom in on her face that he began to realize something was terribly wrong. It didn’t seem to gel with her body. In fact, it didn’t gel at all. Even the finest cosmetic surgeons, using portions of skin stretched to the utmost from her throat and neck and even unravelled from her chest, had failed to make good the ravages of time and marital bitterness. Not that Consuelo McKoy, née Midden, had ever had a beautiful face. At eighteen her mind, never far from the cash register in her father’s shop, had bred a mean and hungry look which should have warned Corporal McKoy what he was letting himself in for. Being an incredibly innocent and full-blooded man with a romantic passion for things English, he failed to look too closely into her eyes. He chose instead to think of them as the windows of the soul. To some extent they were. In Consuelo’s case they would have been if she had a soul that needed windows. She didn’t. She had about as much soul as a scorpion disturbed by the entry of a bare foot into an empty desert boot. Her eyes were dark and small, lasers of such malignancy that h
er mother, a placid woman not given to much imaginative fluency, had once said they made her think of the bit on the end of a dentist’s drill, they were that spiteful.
To Detective Constable Markin, zooming in on that taut suntanned leathery mask, those eyes were proof that hell existed and that what was about to be done on the makeshift altar by the old bastard in the weird black hat was authentically diabolical. The hair on his neck seemed to have caught prickly cold. As the Dean began reading from the Turnbird family Bible the constable babbled into the mobile. ‘For fuck-sake hurry,’ he bleated, ‘they’ve started. Shit, this is awful. I don’t want to watch. Oh God.’
But Rascombe and the Quick Response Team were already converging on the Middenhall. Their cars and vans raced along the narrow roads, killed a sheepdog and two cats outside Charlie Harrison’s farm and sped on without stopping.
It was just as well. At that very moment Mr Armitage Midden, or ‘Buffalo’ Midden as he preferred to be called, who had spent sixty years decimating herds of elephants, rhinos, lions, wildebeest and, of course, buffaloes across the length and breadth of Africa and who claimed to have spoored more animals than any other white hunter north of the Zambesi, was moving with deadly stealth across the leads of the Middenhall roof with an unlicensed Lee Enfield .303 rifle. From his bedroom window he had seen Unit B stir in the undergrowth behind the kitchen garden and take up a position in a small corrugated structure that had once served as a privy for the under-gardeners. Unfortunately he couldn’t see what weapons, if any, they were carrying but men in camouflage jackets who slithered through the grass and then dashed for the outhouse were clearly bent on some dreadful and murderous course of action. Buffalo Midden had spent the previous evening reading an article on the IRA and terrorists in general that had chilled his blood. The Red Menace of Bolshevism might be dead – though he doubted it, it was merely lying in wait for the Civilized World like a wounded buffalo under a lone thorn tree where one would least expect it – but a World Conspiracy, comprising Zionists in alliance with Ayatollahs, Irishmen and of course Blacks and every other demon, still existed in his imagination. And now on this beautiful summer morning it was exercising its deadly skills against the Middenhall.