OK, honey.
Isn’t it nice of her to ring? Ring any time. Mum iz ze verd.
Time to grind a new Life.
Time to pop a new cake into the oven.
Rude doorchimes violate the voluble volleying of muesli down the back of her deep throat. Candida waddles across the living-room carpet and wipes her nose round the cold net curtains.
Right to be suspicious.
A rozzers’ dogcart with revolving blue roof-light smouldering outside with the subtlety of a UFO for the neighbours to ogle. Hanging in the hood. Gathered like bees to her overgrown bush. A surge of panic inflates her honey-dripped bosom. She opens the latch of her heart to a friendless world.
‘So sorry to burst in on you like this ...’ The immense belly of Chief Constable Colin Dibble breaches her defences. And like a White Knight bringing booty to the feet of a maiden, he dumps a sack of bones, black, blue and lumpy, in the kitchen doorway, traipsing across the threadbare carpet a trail of blood and gristle like the slime of a slug.
‘Good to see you. Tea?’
‘Yes, Candy. You’re too kind.’
For a split second she tips her head and marks the moribund sack of bones taking up space and leaking crusted burgundy. ‘I’d never have recognised him if it wasn’t for those long-johns. I can’t say it’s the first time he’s showed me up in public.’ They step over the sack of bones.
‘Yes worrying,’ agrees the Chief Constable and putting Size Twelves under the kitchen table (the same Size Twelves already put into the waste-of-space sack-of-bones rotting the floor) <—> ‘My men don’t usually let the bruises show <—> I’ll be taking another look at our training procedures.’
She can sense the penetrating gaze of the Chief Constable hot to the backs of her fetlocks. Knees. And peaks of her buttocks. She pants, ‘What the Hell happened?’
<—> ‘Stairs <—> Fell down some stairs <—> Couldn’t stop him in time.’
‘Your station doesn’t sound like a safe place, Chief Constable.’
‘Call me Colin. Oh we have our moments.’
‘Sugar?’
‘Two lumps.’
‘Milk?’
‘Yes please.’
The climax of the steamer working a good creamy head. Candida’s hot black box flutters Pete Heller’s Big Love.
‘I’ve been meaning to knock you up to see how you’re bearing …. up ...’ hotly croaks the cracking throat of the Chief Constable from behind. ‘… You must have had a terrible time of it lately. What with the riot and the press and everything.’
‘You’ve got to soldier on,’ she resigns with a woman’s shrug and fronting the table.
‘Candy?’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if I could ask a favour?’
‘Feel free.’
‘I know it’s a lot to ask but ...’
‘Ask me anything.’
‘... I wonder if you wouldn’t mind keeping secret your Archie’s return home for a couple of days.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m on the hunt for two runaway cops who’ve taken a er ... unexpected holiday.’
She fingers the pink string of her dressing-gown. ‘We’ve never had a proper holiday.’
‘Oh but that’s terrible. You deserve so much more, my dear.’
‘Oh, Colin!’
‘Shall I move him?’
‘Let him bleed. He’ll live.’
‘Possibly,’ concedes the Chief Constable.
‘I’ll have to soak that patch in something.’
‘If I can be of service?’
‘Oooh! I almost forgot. Hive that nice Doctor Thysson’s number — hissin my handbag.’
‘I’m sure she’ll come at once.’
‘She’ll be so pleased to lay hands on my Archie.’
‘So will the Sister of Casualty.’
***
The Society of Feathered Friends is in good heart and twitters twenty-six to the dickie dozen.
Down on the jungle floor Skins flog Shirts 88-77 in the festival of Springwood Fives.
Up on the roof under a blood moon that foulest of breeds forget their table manners. And the non-flying non-fighting pack of pigs root and scratch, scramble and scrumpy, round the trough of a sweet-smelling mother — A FAMILY BUCKET OF LONDON FRIED CHICKEN! (Or the Screw gets it!)
— Walkie-talkie
— Side order of legal papers
— Red tin of plasters
— (Dangled by rope from the rozzers’ bellyflopter)
‘I said spare ribs!’ spits Tosa-the-Man-Mountain, nose in the bucket.
‘You did,’ agrees Goebbels. ‘They’re stingy bastards.’
‘Thank you. I knew I warrant going mad.’ Tosa-the-Man-Mountain emerges from the netherworld of the festering chicken and wipes his clotted beard — ‘Who do these people think they’re dealing with?’
Goebbels not having the foggiest.
Liberties taken of gastro-gnomic proportions.
Tosa-the-Man-Mountain picks up the walkie-talkie and presses the nipple … szszsz ... szszsz ... ‘ggnnggnn … Now you listen to me. Where’s my potato side salad? Wotcha mean they dinnin have any? Sod off and get me sunnggnn who knows what the fuck they’re talking about … ggnnggnn ... I said potato side salad or the Screw gets it! There.’ He slams the thing on the ledge.
Which makes him feel a trifle better.
‘Oh yeah.’ He picks up the cracked carcass. ‘And a bellyflopter.’
Snuffle the ravenous pack of snivelling rats round the open-sewer bucket.
‘Mellor. You a breast or a leg man? That’s it. Get it down yer. Do yer the power of good.’
Bats, moths, locusts-in-battledress free-range pot-shots into the family-friendly bucket.
‘They shedder chucked in one of those apple pies — and I radder partial — eck! …’
‘Corn on the cob?’
‘… Dassit. Corn on the cob.’
Worse. A shortage of legs.
He kicks the hostage Mellor.
Which makes him feel a trifle with thick custard better.
‘I wish we had some news from your brudder.’ Goebbels fishes from the bucket an unbreakable and possibly suicidal capsule of barbecue sauce.
Oh how he longs to be home with mamma!
Or down below in the warm glow of the ship!
‘Tosa never forgets his friends ...’
‘Friends?’
‘... and he never forgets his enemies.’
‘Just wondering.’
‘Well don’t!’
Thick runnels of grease gouge Cheddar gorges through the gory black undergrowth. To the drop of a bone a soul to sell for a beefsteak dripping onion gravy, with lashings of fresh peas from the garden.
Washed down with a gallon of pop.
‘… Ggnnggnn … ggnnggnn … bastards harr not dealing wid any old amateur. And the quicker they get it frew their fick skulls the better.’
‘Breast, Tosa?’
‘Don’t mind if I do. It’s the principle of the thing. Give ’em an inch ...’