Taylor entered the room and hugged a sobbing Alice, comforting her after her ordeal. As she dressed he went through David’s clothes, found the gun, then called Edward in to help him remove the body. They planned to dump it a long way away in woodland so it would be days or even weeks before it was discovered.
When Dick returned home after his dinner he couldn’t sleep, partly as a result of the very rich meal he’d eaten but mainly because of apprehension. He awoke in a sweat at about five, went for a walk to clear his head, and arrived at the office by half past seven. He was just sorting through his paperwork for the day when the phone rang.
‘Jeremy?’, a familiar female voice asked. ‘It’s Margaret’.
Dick hesitated. He didn’t know anyone called Margaret. Then he remembered. ‘Margaret!’ he replied in amazement. She was still alive!
‘I know I shouldn’t call you at work but I wanted to say it was good meeting you yesterday evening. I passed your best wishes to my boss as well’.
‘I see’. Dick said, being very economical with his comments in case Party agents were eavesdropping on the conversation. ‘And how about your new colleague? How is he?’
‘Not very well’, Alice said. ‘Not very well at all’.
Dick smiled. ‘I’m sorry to hear that Margaret. Anyway, I’d better go as I have a full work schedule ahead of me today. I’ll see you shortly’.
The call set the tone for the rest of the day. Dick had a spring in his step. He was happy wading through interminable telephone conversation transcripts. He was pleased to spend his lunch hour with Stanley who regaled him with tales about his latest brass-rubbings exploits. He even remained cheery during a three hour meeting in a small stuffy office with Enid discussing a possible curfew for the under sixteens in inner city areas. Dick was on such a high after the morning’s good news that he knew it was only a matter of time before he found himself returning to earth with a bump. This did happen but the sensation was less ‘coming back to earth with a bump’ and more like being thrown out of an aircraft attached to an anvil, with another even bigger anvil attached to the first one. It happened at seven o’clock. Dick, who had been working late to finish the transcripts, yawned and stretched. He rose from his chair to put a file back on a shelf when someone called his name.
‘Dick S. Longg’.
Dick’s blood turned to ice. In fact it turned colder than ice. It turned to liquid nitrogen. No one outside of the Resistance had called him by his real name since he’d first arrived in this future. And the fact it was a statement rather than a question indicated that the speaker had no doubt whom he was addressing. In the nano-second before he turned around Dick thought of the person he’d least like to see standing behind him. Surprisingly it wasn’t the circus clown holding an axe, or a giant ghostly lobster called Jaques, both particular and irrational fears from his childhood. No. The person Dick least wanted to see standing there in his office saying his real name was, unfortunately, the person who was actually standing there. And he was holding a gun.
‘I can’t believe it’s really you’, said the Leader.
CHAPTER 28
A million thoughts went through Dick’s head. Well OK, not a million of them. More like five. How? Why? Where? When? What?
‘I thought you looked familiar the first time I met you’. The Leader gently shut the office door behind him and closed the blinds fully. Dick stood totally still, thinking back to their first meeting. He recalled the slightly surprised look on the Leader’s face when they stared at each other and shook hands.
‘Of course, I knew it couldn’t be you. I mean, how could it?’ The Leader was a few feet from Dick, the gun aimed squarely at his chest.
Dick listened in silence.
‘But there was something not quite right about you. Something that didn’t add up. I felt, well… a disturbance in the Fabric’.
Dick frowned.
The Leader continued. ‘You wouldn’t understand’.
‘Is the fabric like ‘The Force’?’, Dick asked.
‘Shhhhhhhh’, hissed the Leader, looking furtively all around him before continuing. ‘But the annoying thing was, although I had doubts about you I couldn’t find anything to substantiate them. Whoever gave you your new identity is very clever. Very clever indeed. You stood up to the most robust security checks. We studied your background and the backgrounds of friends and colleagues. Again, there was nothing at all to arouse our suspicions. From time to time you seemed to disappear when we tried to track you, but again, that in itself didn’t alert me to who you really are. I decided my instinct must be wrong which is why I invited you on to the Ruling Council’.
Dick decided he had to act fast. He looked at the Leader facing him, still holding the gun. He judged the distance between the two of them and looked down at the heavy hole-punch on his desk. Then he looked up once more at The Leader, staring him straight in the face. The Leader went to say something but just as he opened his mouth, Dick let fly.
‘I think you’re mistaken’, he spluttered. ‘My name is Jeremy Brunel!’.
Dick, along with most Party members, had never heard the Leader really laugh. It wasn’t really in keeping with his personality as a ruthless politician or brutal leader. This time though, he let out a loud chuckle.
‘Is that the best you can do, Dick?’, the Leader smiled. ‘I was expecting you to have least thrown that hole-punch at me’.
Doing that, Dick thought, would have just been admitting his identity and therefore his guilt. No, he was sure he could bluff his way out of this mess. After all, many of his co-stars had complimented him on his smooth tongue.
‘I think you’re mistaking me for someone else’, Dick said with as much conviction as he could muster. ‘I’m Jeremy Brunel. I’ve never heard of this Dick S. Longg. Maybe I look like him, whoever he is, but I am most definitely not him’.
The Leader stroked his chin. ‘Hmmmmmm’, he said aloud. Stepping forward he lifted his gun and slowly ran the end of the barrel up Dick’s left cheek then along his forehead, wiping away a large bead of sweat that had formed there. The Leader then used the weapon to trace the profile of Dick’s nose and chin, studying his features intently. A second large bead of sweat formed. The gun moved slowly down Dick’s chest. ‘Well, you do definitely look like Dick Longg. And you sort of sound like him’. Dick didn’t like where this conversation was going. And he definitely didn’t like where the gun was going. It was now heading south of the equator, towards the inevitable destination of the Tropic of Penis.
‘There’s one way to settle the confusion once and for all’, said the Leader as the gun reached Dick’s fly.
Dick gulped. He then realised what was happening in the trouser department and gulped again. The Leader looked down and saw it too. Dick tried to prevent his erection from going any further but no matter how hard he tried, both the thought of sodomisation by Hulk Hogan and the truly frightening real-life threat of a shot to his penis failed to cool his ardour. The rubbing motion of the gun against the cloth of Dick’s trousers turned a mere swelling into a prominent lump into an enormous bulge. The Leader took the gun away and smiled.
‘Sit down Dick’. Dick did as he was told, relieved that the desk between him and the Leader would hide any further embarrassment. The Leader sat facing him and smiled.
‘Aren’t you remotely interested in how I finally realised your true identity?’