Gridlock

by Ben Elton

  Having closed the door he let himself into Geoffrey's flat. He shuddered slightly to see that the white outline that the police had drawn round the body of one of the men who had been unwise enough to take on Geoffrey Spasmo was still visible on the floor in front of the sideboard.

  'That Geoffrey is a wicked geezer,' Toss said to himself, as he began to load the pram with Geoffrey's computing equipment. Toss had decided to stay the night at Geoffrey's place because he considered that the watchers might smell a rat if he emerged with his pram only half an hour after entering. A character such as the one Toss had created would certainly stay for supper and a shag at least. It wasn't so bad. As Geoffrey had promised, there was plenty of booze in the place, so Toss got his chicken and chips out from under the pram, plus his corkscrew . . . He didn't fancy using Geoffrey's, in fact, he shuddered at the very sight of the evil spike which he knew to have inflated the bottom of the man around whose body the police had drawn their sombre line.

  'Wine, food, vibes,' mused Toss, putting on his earphones and settling down in the darkness. 'It is time to forget the dead, and chill out.'

  REVISION CRISIS

  Toss did his job of collection well and the little laboratory which Geoffrey created was sufficient to his needs, and, for a week, the little community at Deborah's place settled into a routine. Geoffrey slept on the sofa and never went out, spending almost every waking moment in his little lab, redoing his sums on top of the washing machine, earnestly working out weight-to-power ratios in equations so long that they stretched the length of an entire ironing board and constructing anew his specifications for lightweight alloys and revolutionary lubricants. The theory was all still in Geoffrey's head, but the retrieving of it was complex and time-consuming, and, of course, there was the washing to do.

  'We need to wash our stuff, Geoffrey,' Deborah protested. 'The world may be on the verge of a transport revolution, but we still need to have clean underwear.' So Geoffrey reluctantly moved all his papers and Deborah loaded the machine, swearing, yet again, that next time she really would clean out the fluff filter.

  Unfortunately, Deborah's constant presence in the flat proved rather a distraction to Geoffrey's work. Despite being in danger for his life and working against the clock, he still could not help his mind wandering to the girl who was, after all, the inspiration that had got him into the whole mess in the first place.

  It was doubly distracting for Geoffrey because Deborah was at home much more than usual. It was the period of her final examinations, and hence her presence was not required at college. She was constantly in and out of the kitchen and whenever he heard her, Geoffrey's heart ached. Each day she thought of new things to wash, or iron. It was not that Deborah wished to distract Geoffrey, but it was the last week before her history of costume exam and Deborah was in a revision crisis.

  Revising for exams is always hell. The mind wanders, panic wells up, lethargy sets in, the TV beckons. Deborah tried to concentrate, each day she tried, and yet constantly she caught herself coming to with a start having been reading a book for five minutes and yet not having taken in a single word. Throughout the week, Deborah, who was normally so positive and so lively, mooched and slouched about the flat, made coffee, offered to make Geoffrey coffee and watched the midday news. She rang friends on the same course to assure them that she was not getting any work done. They rang her to assure her that they were also not getting any work done. All over the country demoralized young people were ringing each other up to assure their friends that they had managed to do no work at all, while secretly suspecting that their friends must have done loads, and loads, and loads of work.

  On the third day of her torment Deborah realized, with only four days to go until the dreaded paper, that she must really pull herself together, therefore she did what all the other tormented revisers around the country did, she made a timetable. She made a detailed timetable of how best she would organize her revision time in her last four days. She drew neat squares indicating the remaining mornings, afternoons and evenings, and in these squares she neatly wrote things like 'eighteenth-century French court dress' or 'work clothes as fashion', thus indicating at which time she would be revising what subject. This completed, Deborah wearily returned to the article she had been reading in Woman's Own about which member of the royal family had lost the most weight. Each morning Deborah read the paper from cover to cover, arguing to herself that this was a serious and legitimate use of her time. Secretly, of course, she knew that this was simply another anti-revision prevarication. Under normal circumstances, she often skimmed the paper, occasionally not even opening it at all. On revision mornings, however, she even read the situations vacant pages. Deborah was always interested in employment opportunities.

  Ever since the Global Moritz had paralysed her from the waist down, she had been aware that forging a fulfilling career was going to be just that little bit harder for her than for most. Because of this, despite being currently a full-time student, curiosity often led her to check out the job market. Finding out which employers claimed to be equal opportunities employers – not that that meant much because, of course, it only meant equal opportunities for human beings, not fire hazards.

  'Look at this, Geoffrey,' said Deborah, breaking into the middle of some mile-long equation forming in Geoffrey's mind and causing all the numbers to fly out of his ears.

  'Global Motors UK are looking for graphics people in their design department. Maybe I should apply, do you think they'd give me special consideration seeing as it was one of their cars that put me in this chair?'

  'Deborah, please,' said Geoffrey, 'I'm trying to concentrate.'

  'All right already, for God's sake, one little word. I'm sorry,' Deborah snapped back. 'I have work to do too you know,' and she wheeled herself back into the sitting room, past her lecture notes and started to watch a programme for the under-fives which asked Deborah whether she'd like to pretend to be a puppy dog along with Trudy and Sean.

  THE BELL TOLLS

  Finally, the morning of Deborah's exam had dawned and she had gone off, in a rare old state, at about eleven. Toss had been gone for ages as he was on the early morning shift that week so Geoffrey briefly had the place to himself. He went through into his little workroom and prepared to concentrate his massive mind. Unfortunately for Geoffrey, he was not the only one who had been waiting for him to be alone in the house.

  Blissfully unaware that terrible danger was stalking him, Geoffrey became immediately and happily engrossed in his work, so much so that he almost did not hear when the tiny glass bell tinkled at his ear informing him that somebody was messing about at the back windows. Deborah, living as she did, on the ground floor, and being even more vulnerable than most, had done her best to make her flat secure. Toss was not always around, and, as he himself pointed out, he 'wasn't no Mohammed Ali, girl'. Hence Deborah had had bars fitted to the rear of the flat and an alarm system installed. Geoffrey reckoned this offered him a fair degree of protection, but, as an added precaution, he had fitted an extra electronic element to the alarm, whereby if the alarm circuit was overruled or the bell silenced by some skilled hand, the tiny little crystal bell would ring, thus informing Geoffrey that intruders were about without letting them know that their presence had been announced.

  Deborah was glad that the bell had found a function, it had been one of the numerous gifts she had received whilst in hospital from relatives she scarcely knew she had. The only thing to commend the bell, in Deborah's opinion, was that it was small, unlike the six-foot teddy bear that a cousin who worked at Bloomingdales had sent. When you're in hospital for eight months people have time to send things by sea, and Deborah's relations had made good use of this service.

  'Do you want to know what's embarrassing? I'll tell you what's embarrassing,' Deborah had moaned from her sickbed, in a letter to a friend. 'Being a girl from an extended Jewish family, seriously ill in hospital. I can no longer look the nurses in the eye. It ain't the treatment, havi
ng my orifices stared at in disappointment by students I can handle, peeing through a tube I'll live with, but being the cause of the postman getting a hernia, this I cannot take. The man has grown old bringing me my daily sack of presents. First he stooped a little, then he went grey and had a hernia, finally the poor guy ends up in hospital himself. They buried him last Tuesday, killed by the American shopper.'

  The endless gifts had made Deborah terribly uncomfortable, not least because there are so many lonely people in hospitals, people who have no visitors and get no presents because they are old and their lives have died around them. Eventually, fortunately for Deborah, the daughter of a family of Soho/Italian restaurateurs appeared two beds up and even Deborah's family's efforts paled into insignificance – but not before she had received the bell from an aunt in the Bronx. 'Anytime, anywhere, beautiful girl,' the note had said, 'you ring that bell and God will listen. You ring it, you say, let's talk, and you talk. Believe me, beautiful baby, he will be listening.'

  Deborah had been rather surprised that God had so little on his hands, but she did not make this point to the kind aunt in her thank-you note.

  Geoffrey knew the story of the bell, and very much hoped that God was paying attention now. He knew that the intruders were attacking the back of the house, for the signal he had rigged up to the front of the house was the tiny beeping of an electric watch. Somebody, in the privacy of the back garden, was working away at Deborah's bars, and they were very good at their job, because Geoffrey could not hear a thing.

  However, he trusted his warning system and so decided to institute the hiding plan.

  THE HIDING PLAN

  Geoffrey, on considering what it was he should do if ever the hidden hand that pursued him were to arrive at his door, had decided that it would be unwise to try and fight. He was realistic enough to realize that on the previous occasion he had been monumentally lucky, and it would be foolish indeed for him to go about under the impression that he was in a position to get the better of enormous, heavily armed thugs whenever he so chose. Therefore he had prepared a hiding place behind the ironing board.

  Deborah's laundry was, of course, equipped for a person who did things sitting down, a conventional ironing board was far too high for her, besides which she would have found it extremely difficult to set one up. She would, of course, not have been alone in this. Everybody finds ironing boards extremely difficult to set up. The reason for this is that they were designed by a mad octopus, the same mad octopus who designed deck chairs.

  Anyway, Deborah's ironing board was set into the wall, and hinged at the bottom, so that, when it was required, it could be simply pulled down. The wall it was set into was the partition wall between the laundry and the kitchen, which had originally been a single width of reinforced hard-board. However, on Geoffrey's instructions, Toss had spent the previous Sunday morning adding a second hardboard face to the kitchen side of the wall, thus creating an eight-inch-wide cavity, access to which could be gained by lowering the ironing board and climbing through the ironing-board-shaped hole.

  This Geoffrey did, and not a moment too soon, for the intruders had now dealt with the bars and also the glass at the rear of the house. As Geoffrey pulled up the board behind him, he could distinctly hear somebody climbing into the back bedroom, which belonged to Toss.

  It was a brilliant hiding place, the two intruders missed it completely and were very soon satisfied that the flat was empty.

  'So,' said Jurgen, a German employee of Euro Despatch. 'It is a pity, yes? No sign of our quarry.'

  'I don't think he's home, Fritz,' replied Noddy, who wore a bobble hat and was from Wolverhampton. Noddy had named himself after the lead singer of Slade, Wolverhampton's contribution to the rock and roll hall of fame . . . 'What we going to do? Wait?' he enquired, leaning against the clothes drier in the laundry room.

  'I think not,' said Fritz, who wore a black polo neck and wished he had a duelling scar. 'Possibly one of the other two might return first. Let me remind you that the spastic fellow is our only target. Our employers do not wish to attract any more interest than is necessary.'

  'Well, let's piss off up the pub then,' said Noddy, shrugging his shoulders.

  Geoffrey, in his hiding place, was of course delighted with the turn events were taking, although he knew that he would now have to find a new safe house, which would deprive him of the society of the girl he loved. Still, it might make him concentrate.

  TRAITOROUS BODYWORK

  Unfortunately, Geoffrey was rejoicing too soon, for his cerebral palsy, which had saved his life on a previous encounter with the forces of evil, now let him down terribly. His head jerked and banged against the cavity wall, then it did it again and after that, a third time. Probably this rhythm solo would have gone on for some time, but at that point, Jurgen pulled down the ironing board to reveal Geoffrey twitching behind it.

  'So what have we here?' said Jurgen, all icy and cool.

  'I think it's the spastic bloke we're s'posed t'kill,' replied Noddy, not realizing that Jurgen had asked a rhetorical question.

  Geoffrey climbed out immediately, without being told to, he knew that his chances of survival were small whatever he did, but trapped inside a wall cavity they were zero. His body was uncooperative enough without further restricting it.

  The laundry was necessarily a cramped space and Noddy was leant against the drier, whilst Jurgen was in front of the washing machine. Between them and Geoffrey was the little stool Geoffrey had been sitting on while his computer sat on top of an upturned laundry basket.

  Jurgen was a professional killer, and the first maxim of professional killing is not to talk about it, but to get it over with immediately. He knew the story of how this strange little twisted fellow had already got the better of his two colleagues. Looking at Geoffrey, he found the story difficult to believe, but he was taking no chances and intended to get his job over with at once. However, pose was also important to Jurgen. He reached inside his jacket for the silenced pistol with a languid hand, the other dangling casually down beside him, limply hanging inside the open lid of the top-loading clothes washer.

  TOUGHER THAN THE REST

  Geoffrey was one of the coolest people in London, he was brave as a lion, smarter than a rat and in his whole life he had never allowed himself to be beaten. If you're spastic you simply can't, because if you did you would be beaten the minute you tried to get out of bed in the morning.

  Of course, nobody ever really understood just how cool Geoffrey was. Even Deborah and Toss, who knew him well and also something of his deeds, could never fully comprehend just what an extraordinary individual he was, because the social conditioning is simply too strong. No matter what Geoffrey achieved it would always be a spastic achieving it and his future potential would always be doubted because it was the future potential of a spastic. Spastics just don't look like they're up to much and when, as so often they do, they prove that they are, other people are still secretly suspicious.

  Geoffrey had a matter of a second in which to act. The controls of Deborah's machinery were wall-mounted, it was Geoffrey himself who had designed this. It saved Deborah having to try to reach out of her chair and lean across the top of the machinery. Many people in wheelchairs employ concertinaed, extendable arms with grips on the end, but Deborah did not need too, she was fortunate enough to have an electronics wizard for an admirer.

  Geoffrey dropped his hand down and turned on the tumble drier, it jerked and rumbled behind Noddy. For a split second both Noddy and Jurgen were distracted, it was the old 'look over there' routine, but done much more effectively with a remote-controlled clothes drier.

  There was a cup of washing powder on a shelf attached to the wall in which Geoffrey had just been hiding and, in the split second he had earned himself, Geoffrey brought his good hand up to grab it. As his hand came up it flipped the washing machine onto heavy stain wash. Deborah's water heater was one of those over-enthusiastic ones that heat the water so effectivel
y that you could virtually make tea from the hot tap. A jet of scalding water spurted over Jurgen's hand, he shouted in pain, Noddy turned to him, eyes wide with surprise, and Geoffrey flung the powder in Noddy's face.

  That was it, Geoffrey had exhausted his armoury and in the momentary confusion that he had created, all he could do was run like hell, or as much like hell as his unruly body would allow him.

  By the time Geoffrey was through the living room and into the hall, Noddy had recovered, and, despite streaming eyes, had drawn his gun and was in pursuit. Geoffrey wrenched open the front door, which set off the front alarm. The clanging made Noddy pause for a moment which allowed Geoffrey to get out into the front path. The cool air of freedom hit him, he was going to make it, the crowded street was only a few feet away. Toss was just turning in through the gate.

  'Wicked, Spas, what's happening?' he enquired of the figure jerking towards him, with its head bobbing against its shoulder and one arm performing a strange modern ballet all of its own.

  But then there was no head, and no arm. Both simply disappeared mid-jerk, each absorbing the terrible impact of a barrel of Noddy's double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, which Noddy fired the moment he had reached the doorway. For a moment Geoffrey's poor twisted, now virtually headless, body remained standing. Then it collapsed.