by Tom Sharpe
Miss Midden kept her thoughts to herself. She had no real idea what had started the catastrophic events of the morning or why Buffalo had begun firing his rifle but, whatever it was, she was macabrely grateful. The curse of the Middenhall had been broken.
*
So had Inspector Rascombe’s spectacles. Not that he needed them to see in a blurred way, his mind was pretty blurred too, that he had been partly responsible for the destruction of a huge house, the deaths of at least half a dozen police marksmen from the Armed Quick Response Team, and, to judge by the dreadful smell, some of the previous occupants of the fucking place. As he dragged himself though the mud out of the artificial lake where he had taken refuge, he had the sense to know his career as a police officer was at an end. God alone knew what the Chief Constable would say when he heard about this debacle and, from the sound of several helicopters now flying overhead, he’d probably heard already and was rabidly seeking whom he might – fuck the ‘might’, whom he would devour. The Inspector’s only hope, and it was a very, very slight though sincere one, was that Sir Arnold Gonders had had an apoplectic fit or a fatal heart attack.
*
In fact the Chief Constable hadn’t heard what malignant fate had in store for him that Sunday. He had been spared that knowledge by giving the congregation of the Church of the Holy Monument in Boggington, some thirty miles to the north of Tween, the benefit of his colloquies with God. They consisted very largely of a series of admonitions which made God sound like the Great Lady herself at her most mercenary.
‘I say unto you that unless we maintain the bonds of free enterprise and free endeavour we shall be bounden to do the Devil’s work,’ he announced from the pulpit. ‘Our business in the world is to augment the goodness that is God’s love with the fruition of free enterprise and to put aside those things which the Welfare State handed us on a plate and thus deprived us of the need to which we must pay homage. That need, dear brothers and sisters in God, is to take care of ourselves as individuals and so save the rest of the community doing it out of the taxpayer’s pocket. Only this week I have been encouraged to see how many Watch Committees and Neighbourhood Watches have been set up to augment the splendid work being done by the Police everywhere and in particular by the men under my command. It is not often that I have a chance or, I might say, the opportunity to do the Lord’s work in the way he would have me do, namely, like your goodselves, to encourage others to free themselves from the shackles of passivity and acceptance and to go forth into the world to bring the positive and active blessings of health, wealth and happiness to those less fortunate than ourselves. This is not to say that we must bow the knee to social need or so-called deprivation. Instead we must make of ourselves and our gifts in business and in wealth whatsoever we can. As the Lord has told me, there are as many numerous spin-offs on the way to Heaven as there are handouts on the slippery road to Hell. It is one thing to give a penny to a beggar: it is another to beg oneself. And so I say to you, dear friends, assist the police wherever you can in the prevention of crime and in the pursuit of justice but never forget that the way of righteousness is the way of self-service and not the other way round. And so let us pray.’
In front of him the congregation solemnly bowed their heads as the Chief Constable, calling on all his powers of rhetoric, launched into a prayer for the anti-vehicle-theft campaign and ancillary individual schemes. It was a great performance.
‘I think you missed your vocation, Sir Arnold,’ said the Minister afterwards as the Chief Constable left. ‘Still, when you finally give up the wonderful work you are doing as Chief Constable you may feel the call to the ministry. There are many opportunities for a man of vision.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sir Arnold, who didn’t enjoy references to his retirement, ‘but I see myself in an altogether more humble role, Reverend, as a poor sinner who finds joy in his heart bringing the message of the good book to –’
‘Quite so, Sir Arnold, quite so,’ said the Minister, anxious to stem the flow of the Chief Constable’s oratory before it got going. ‘Splendid sermon. Splendid.’
He turned away to attent to one of the congregation and Sir Arnold went down the steps to his car. As he drove back to Sweep’s Place he considered how best to use the moral virtue that talking about God always stimulated in him. ‘That ought to put paid to anything like Job got,’ he thought to himself. ‘Even God wouldn’t want to interfere with the maintenance of Law and Order on my patch.’
His hope didn’t last long. Turning the car radio on he caught a news flash and very nearly smashed into a bus shelter as a result.
‘The battle at Middenhall, which was the subject of police action this morning, is over. The building is in flames and there has been an enormous explosion. Police casualties are said to number nine dead. There are no figures for the occupants of the mansion itself. We shall be bringing you fresh updates as soon as we can.’
The Chief Constable pulled into the side of the road and stared at the radio. Nine coppers dead? Nine of his lads? It wasn’t possible. Not his lads. They weren’t lads any more. They were corpses. Dear shit, and Job thought he’d been given a hard time, the whingeing swine. But Sir Arnold knew why he’d cursed the day. He did too. The day he’d ever made that fucking moron Rascombe Head of the Serious Crime Squad. That was the day Sir Arnold cursed. And God, of course, for having created Rascombe in the first place. The old swine should have had more sense. Even as a sperm it must have been possible to spot that he hadn’t got the brains of a . . . well, a sperm at any rate. And what sort of gormless ovum had invited him in? Must have been off its tod, that fucking ovum. If Sir Arnold Gonders had had his way he’d have wrung that evil little sperm’s neck and kicked that moronic ovum into the street. And if that had failed, and he rather thought it might have been too difficult, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use a knitting-needle to get at that vile sperm and ovum. Or, better still, give Mrs Rascombe a uterine washout with some Harpic or Domestos, something that would make her think twice about having it off with Rascombe’s bloody dad ever again.
Sitting in his Jag outside one of the mining villages of Twixt and Tween he had helped so ruthlessly to turn into a workless place, the Chief Constable saw the bright summer day differently from other people. It was a dark overcast day with great thunderclouds spread out across it, black and menacing, as black and menacing as the row of miners’ cottages, meagre and pitiless places with empty cans of lager in the gutters of the street. Some had boarded windows and some were occupied by miserable men who would never work again, who if they were old had miner’s lung, and by their brutish offspring. But even they, in their miserable hovels, would find joy in the downfall of the man who had ordered his men to break their picket lines and any heads that got in the way, and to hell with the consequences. The bastards in those houses would probably hold street parties to celebrate his disgrace and drink themselves sick to his unhealth. The Chief Constable drove on hurriedly to escape this terrifying vision of his future. He had many illusions about many things but he knew his friends and political allies. They would drop him like a hot cake, hot dogshit more like, the Bloads and the Sents and the high-and-fucking-mighty he had helped like Pulborough, the Waterworks magnate. Fair-weather bastards all of them, and the Gonders weather had turned very foul indeed. In his imagination it had begun to rain and the wind was blowing it into his face.
Another news flash. The police casualty rate had gone up to thirteen and the estimated number of dead in the Middenhall was now put at ten. The Chief Constable was disgusted. The Armed Quick Response Team clearly couldn’t even shoot to kill straight. Attempts to reach the Chief Constable had failed but his Deputy, Henry Hodge, speaking from his home, had admitted that he knew of no authorization for an armed raid on the Middenhall. It was news to him.
‘Stupid little fucker,’ the Chief Constable shouted at the radio, ‘couldn’t he have kept himself to “No bloody comment”?’
It was a stupid question to ask. Ev
en Sir Arnold could see that. The bastard wanted Sir Arnold’s job, that’s why he was passing the buck and landing him in the shit. And there was no way he was going to get into his house in Sweep’s Place. It would be blocked by reporters and people from the BBC with cameras and mikes who’d always been out for his blood. Well, they’d got it now. With all the keen cunning of a cornered plague rat, Sir Arnold sought for a way out of the trap he was in. And found it. In violent illness.
Somewhere along the line of his sordid and brutal life he had heard that eating a tube of toothpaste gave one some pretty ghastly and seemingly authentic symptoms. He stopped at an open supermarket and bought two large tubes of differing kinds – one brand might not do the trick – and a bottle of tonic water. He’d be found slumped in his car somewhere very near the Tween General Infirmary – he didn’t want to die – and be rushed in and treated. With fresh determination and fortitude the Chief Constable drove into Tween and, having parked just outside the gates of the hospital, managed with the utmost difficulty to get those tubes of toothpaste down with the help of the tonic. It was a move he was going to regret. The effect was almost instantaneous. And horrible. He stumbled from the Jag and collapsed on the road. He wasn’t shamming. He hadn’t known he had an ulcer. He knew it now with a vengeance. Hiatus hernia it wasn’t. Could be fluoride poisoning though. Christ, he hadn’t thought of that. As he crawled towards the hospital gates he knew he was going to die. He had to be dying. That damned malingering skunk had been bullshitting about toothpaste, lying through his fucking teeth. It had been a terrible mistake.
An hour later he knew just what a mistake it had been, in more senses than one.
‘First time I’ve ever known a case of attempted suicide with toothpaste,’ said the doctor who had pumped his stomach out. ‘He must have been out of his mind.’
*
This opinion was shared in Whitehall. Even the Prime Minister, who had seen the inferno at the Middenhall on television (those helicopters had done sterling service for the media) and who would cheerfully have strangled Sir Arnold with his own bare little hands, found the news that the Chief Constable, having attempted suicide by eating at least two tubes of toothpaste, was still alive quite astonishing. He was also horrified to learn from the Head of Internal Intelligence that the Special Branch men flown up from London to check the contents of the house in Sweep’s Place had unearthed scores of videotapes taken in a brothel in which important members of the local party, prominent businessmen, and important contributors to central party funds figured largely. There had also been a great deal of damaging information on Sir Arnold’s hard disk and database.
‘He’ll have to go,’ he told the Home Secretary. ‘I don’t care what arguments you put to me, I will not have such a corrupt person in a position of high public responsibility. I won’t.’ It was a strong statement from such a weak man. But the Home Secretary had no intention of opposing the Prime Minister. He too would willingly have strangled the Chief Constable, not only for what he had done to the Middenhall, but more personally for what he had done to the Home Secretary. Someone ought to have warned him about that establishment at Urnmouth and the fact that he might be filmed in his role of Marlene Dietrich. To put it mildly, Sir Arnold Gonders’ future was not going to be a pleasant one.
‘On the other hand, we mustn’t rock the local party boat too much,’ the Prime Minister went on. He really was a very weak man.
The Home Secretary couldn’t bring himself to agree. He was in a very ugly mood. He’d have torpedoed the bloody boat and machine-gunned any survivors.
29
As the last marksman was carried from the front lawn and the forensic experts flown in from Scotland Yard (‘The hell with what that moron Gonders says, I’m putting you in command,’ the Home Secretary told the Commissioner of Police) began the almost impossible task of distinguishing the remains of Mrs Devizes from those of Mrs Laura Midden Rayter and the other burnt corpses (only DNA tests might do that); while the lobster-coloured cook explained to a TV audience of at least fifteen million how she and the other kitchen staff had escaped the holocaust by hiding in the cellar and being boiled; as the persons who cared and were concerned went back to their extremely expensive conference hotel to discuss the sphincter in an entirely different context, namely as it applied to those arseholes of the anti-feminist State, the police; in short as things got back to normal, the Dean led the Porterhouse Mission to the Isle of Dogs away from the smouldering squalor that had been the Middenhall. In the thicket Consuelo McKoy fumbled with her silver cat suit and wondered if she would ever feel the same way about small boys.
Inspector Rascombe knew he wouldn’t. In the back of a police van he had no interest whatsoever in the fate of little kiddies. As far as he was concerned they could hold Black Masses and slaughter the little buggers on an hourly basis and he would rejoice. He had nothing else to rejoice about. They were waiting for him at Police Headquarters and the two detectives who had collected him said some Special Interrogators had been flown up from London to have a little chat with him. Rascombe knew what that meant. He had had ‘little chats’ with people before, and they hadn’t enjoyed the process.
Behind him in the wood Phoebe Turnbird left Detective Constable Markin with his thumbs tied together round the back of a tree, a trick she had been taught by old Brigadier General Turnbird, who had done the same thing to a great many captured PoWs before interrogating them. Then she headed triumphantly up to the Midden farmhouse in her stained and torn white frock and battered hat. She wanted to console poor Marjorie Midden and let her know how desperately, but desperately sorry she was and how she felt for her in her moment of loss. To her amazement she found Miss Midden sitting outside the front door looking remarkably cheerful for a woman who had lost everything.
‘Oh, my poor dear . . .’ Phoebe began, disregarding the glow of satisfaction on Miss Midden’s face. Miss Turnbird, in spite of her love of poetry, was not a deeply sensitive or perceptive woman, or perhaps poetry was a substitute for sensitivity and perception. She had come up to sympathize with poor dear Marjorie (and to patronize her) and she was going to do it, come hell or high water. Hell there had already been, and as far as the cook was concerned high water had been exceedingly helpful. But Miss Midden had had too good a day to put up with sentimental slush from Phoebe Turnbird, slush and odious sympathy. Besides, it was plain to see that wherever Phoebe had been she hadn’t been in church all day. The leaf mould on her face and hands and the state of her dress indicated that. She had obviously been rolling on the ground, having a whale of time.
Looking at her, Miss Midden was struck by a sudden inspiration. She raised her hand and her voice. ‘Stop that at once, Phoebe. I won’t have it. Now get yourself a chair . . . no, go upstairs and wash your face first. You look like Barbara Cart – You don’t look your usual self. Lipstick doesn’t suit you. I suppose you put it on for that dreadful old Dean because he once said . . . Never mind. I shall make a nice pot of tea and then tell you all about it.’
Phoebe lumbered upstairs, and when she came down she looked a good deal better. At least the lipstick had gone, though her attempt the previous evening to pluck her eyebrows was now revealed with mottled clarity to have been a mistake. She fetched a chair and joined Miss Midden in the garden.
‘Now then, Phoebe, I have something to tell you. So I want you to listen carefully. I am afraid I have presumed on your hospitality,’ she said as she handed Miss Turnbird a very large cup and saucer. ‘I’ve had a very nice boy staying here. He’s had a nervous breakdown and he’s a bit jumpy. So this morning when the shindig down at the Middenhall . . . No, dear, do not say anything. I won’t discuss it. This is far more important. As I say, when the police began to kill all those people down there, I immediately thought of you and Carryclogs as the perfect place to send the poor boy. Well, to be truthful, he isn’t exactly a boy, more a hulking great brute of twenty-eight and not frightfully bright. He likes to call himself Bright, Timothy Bright,
but he isn’t. That’s part of his nervous problem. He’s been something in the City and the stress has affected him. He suffers terrible nightmares, and I’m not at all surprised. No one should put a healthy young man in front of a computer screen all day and ask him to make instant decisions about money. It isn’t natural. Now, given the healing hand of time and fond affection and plenty of food and fresh air – I’m sure he shoots well and rides, he’s that sort – he’ll soon be as right as rain. So I sent him over to your place because I know how good you are and kind and affectionate. He’s your class, too. I’ve met his uncle and the family is a very good one indeed. And his manners aren’t bad. I’m sure you’ll be able to help the poor boy. Now, I hope you don’t mind my taking advantage of you like this but I thought . . .’
What Miss Midden really thought she kept firmly to herself. If Phoebe Turnbird didn’t take that ghastly lout to her ample bosom and to the altar, her own name wasn’t Marjorie Midden, the daughter of Bernard Foss Midden and Cloacina von Misthaufen, daughter of General von Misthaufen, whom her father had met and married when she was allowed over to visit the dying General at the Middenhall in 1949. Miss Midden had never known her mother, who had died in childbirth, but her father had always spoken of her as an immensely strong-minded woman whose plain German cooking had suited his ailing stomach to perfection. ‘Dear Clo,’ he would say, ‘I miss her Blutwurst and Nachspeise sometimes. She had a wonderful appetite, your mother. It was a pleasure to watch her eat. She used to say to me, “We’re not really ‘vons’. Or Misthaufens. Affectation. We were just plain Scheisse, like you Middens, until the Kaiser came along and somehow we became von Misthaufens. Scheisse is better. Down to earth and no pretendings.” And there was a lot of truth in what she said. Your mother was a remarkable woman. She saw things clearly.’