‘Well one of us has to be in charge. And it sure as hell won’t be me.’
‘I’ll tell the boys.’
‘Hang where's these batting averages you promised me?’
Blunkett removes a black book and clears his throat of dead skin and dust — ‘We shovelled into the dogcart herr ... twenty-five Reduce-canaries … erm six Nazis ... hang two liberals.’
‘They don’t count. Say ten tops.’
‘Must be sumfink we can do about these liberals. They’re making hour lives ha misery.’
‘Hmmm. Bad for morale.’
The tick-crawling blood of Blunkett broils to the breach of a blue collar — ‘Hissit hill-legal to hell-lectrocute liberals, sar?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. I’ll check the manual … Look, must these ambulance people make so much noise? I’m trying to get sun work done. Blithering.’
‘I’ll show ’em the door.’
‘Yes. Throw — throw ’em out on their ears. They’re making a mess o’ my nice clean yard. And if we’re not careful the press will come sniffing round.’
The tormenting tastebuds of Blunkett trickle the River Jordan. ‘Sar, your foreign lady doctor says some o’ the men need stitches and some o’ the men need blood, sar. Real red blood.’
‘Eh? Well they’re not getting any o’ mine. Mine is honest taxpayer blood.’
‘Means a hell of a lot of overtime for the men. What with bunging backwards and forwards.’
‘Means my budget sheets heil shoot through the roof!’
‘Sister Gradgrind hiss bound to be furious. She h-hates your guts.’
‘All right. Don’t overstitch the goose. What’s time?’
‘Coming hup to a squatter to one.’
‘Yes I thought I could scent Chef. And send in Thunder Thighs. I need to grill the witch with a stake-load of budget cuts …’
Blunkett marching stiff from the field of battle.
‘… We have in Operation a complete Media Blackout …’
Bog-eye and bog-thirsty, and rusty to the practicalities of a Media Blackout, Blunkett’s directions fade into the foetid fog.
Piteous hunger pre-packs and pecks hell-holes the size of manhole-covers. An apocalypse backdrop broiling the black blood of a billion angry ants.
To the left — the last blood-red fire-dragon, bells ablaze, whistling and bungling under the portcullis and over the grime streets of Springwood.
Waiting. Walking the white line. Kicking stones. Waiting for God-only-knows. Where every day feels wrong. Like you’re trapped in a game you can never win. An offence to Heaven.
Flotsam.
To the right — the George W Bush Management Bar.
Allotments of the skull fermenting lettuce-days of flat English bitter, conkers and marbles.
Time. Time for a nice long liquid lunch.
***
Slithering along Lower Springwood High Street the creepiest crawliest snail in the fleet. Controller at the wheel Detective Whitelaw. Hot on the trail of the missing lolly.
‘See, when push comes to shove our greatest weapon is Logic.’
‘And guns,’ says Pym.
‘Yes. Guns ’n’ Logic. You can’t beat guns ’n’ Logic.’ Whitelaw not coming into contact with many bonobo-fido criminals of late but hearing it sworn as honest truth back at the station restrooms — ‘These science boffs are all the same. Shameful. Heads in the clouds. Fancy degrees and no trousers. Not an ounce of common sense between the lot.’
Pym grunting approval, ‘Your common criminal always have a weak spot.’
‘The mind, see. You got to creep inside your criminal mind.’
Droopy cowboy bush brushes the knees, Pym unhooks the glovebox and fishes into the rude light of day pink rubber handcuffs, condom (over the shoulder and into the back seat), calling card he props to the mirror:
VISITING MASSAGE SERVICE. POLICE TASTES CATERED FOR.
YOUR BENT IS OUR SPECIALITY. RING 867-5309 JENNY
‘If you can’t pay the dime,’ says Pym and on second thoughts pocketing the card, ‘then don’t bake the crime.’
‘Crime?’
‘Prisoner stuff, Archie says.’
‘Yeah, well, friend Archie is full o’ stuff.’
The caterpillar of children on the crossing causing an obstruction cleared from the bumper and bonnet, and Whitelaw crashes in top gear up the ramp and side-bar and into the concrete buffer where Blunkett slumps snoozing.
‘Hang if this Knees is as brainy as Archie makes out, then how come he’s banged in a lousy prison?’
They tramp the prairie-empty exercise yard and buffalo-duck the Admin Block tradesman’s entrance into a fantasy land of coffee machines, fancy-back swivel chairs, palm trees, chandeliers, pen-racks, Persian carpets, the corridor wafting exotic lemon, past ACCOUNTS, AUDIT, EDUCATION (closed), EQUALITIES (SECTIONS I to VIII), INVOICES (IN), INVOICES (OUT) to a door stamped INTERROGATION.
‘Is Knees ready?’ gasps Whitelaw.
‘Either that,’ yawns Blunkett and propping the door frame, ‘or you’ll sniff him out in the bar. Now don’t upset him.’
‘Do we read him his rotsits?’ queries Pym.
‘Tsch! You left the card in the car.’ Whitelaw crashes the padded door with the fluff of Her Majesty’s Filth fifteen years picking cotton in the fields — splotched screen of smoked-glass dividing the room — two chairs padded green — sleeve of silk mauve smoking jacket waves smoke-jets to the joints of the joists — Whitelaw flops spellbound to a shock of black locks, muscles, and moons of blue —
‘My name is Inspector Willie Whitelaw and this is my partner Pym.’
The Strong Spaced Silent type.
Whitelaw removes the scraps of speeches kebabbed through the wee hours, but the Governor’s scribble all over the shop, and what with the stains of chili sauce, the menu wilts to wet lettuce in five minutes flat.
‘... your best chance by our reckoning to put the record straight ...’
The prisoner’s lazer-blue eyes boring the screen, the throat, the back of the neck where trickles runnels of sweat.
‘... open a chain of communication — through us of course — for return of the cash ...’ The sewer of the neck Whitelaw swipes with the final scrap — ‘Look, simply give us where the cash be hid hang we be out of your curlies for good ...’
‘My dear Willie —’
‘... Knees, we came here for your benefit. So let’s stop farting about the bush.’
‘My dear Willie. How should one put it? One is as poor as a church mouse. One faces penury. One is down on one’s luck. Up Crap Creek without one’s paddle. On stony ground. On one’s rocks. On one’s uppers. On one’s beam-ends. On skid row —’
‘Knees!’
‘— One is off one’s rocker talking to you two clowns.’
The bullfrog eyes of a blue-cap madman flash from a puffball mushroom.
‘Knees, stop wasting our bloody precious time.’
‘This is worse than the Addams family. It’s the Brassica bunch.’
‘Knees, we knows you planned it. No-one believes what you told Judge Jeffreys. No-one.’
‘You’re Squawking’s men. No don’t tell me. You’ve been sent here by Squawking.’
‘Look, not even Mother Teresa can escape the Proceeds of Crime Act. So when they give you the boot Monday morning, just you remember you’re on twenty-eight days timewatch to return the one-point-seven-five-million — You with me, boffin-bollocks? — Or you be back behind bars snappo for a further spell care of Her Majesty — hah!’ Whitelaw’s shower of sweat shambles the smoked-screen.