I suggested to Tommy that Shad and I take up Flanagan’s old patrol area. Since Mathilda was in a Hurricane and couldn’t keep up with the Spits, she came with us. The only experienced flyer among the three of us was Shad and Tommy made him our flight leader. We chased a few pigeons off the Bishop’s Palace and had a brief encounter with a pigeon bio named McGee on the Diocesan House. McGee was probably the same bio Jimmy Dorsey Flight had run off during their patrol. We chased him off but an hour later had to chase him off again. This time the three of us escorted McGee down to the Quay and showed him the cliffs above the river where the “really in” pigeons lived. Shad issued some formidable audio taken I believe from the second King Kong remake: giant gorilla grunts, snorts, thumps, and bellows followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator saying, “Don’t come back,” which took care of the problem nicely.
We took breaks around the Puss in Boots patrol area feeder installed by Pureledge on the roof above the cathedral tearoom. On the first break, Munro couldn’t resist a tired working-for-peanuts reference. After feeding, it was off to the loo. Our patrol area’s designated bombing area was in the Bishop’s Garden, and it took several tries before Shad and I, on the wing, scored bulls eyes on the garden’s compost heap. Then it was back to patrol.
On the second break, Artie Krauthammer shared a useful reminiscence or two about Darcy Flanagan. It seemed that, prior to Pureledge, Darcy and Artie had spent much of their lives together in pubs. That continued until they found themselves in failing health, dire legal circumstances, and turning over more than half their pensions for rat poison blends from the offies. I had to explain to Shad that offies were shops, off-license package stores that sold alcohol.
“It was a rum life,” said Artie. “Darcy’s the one who discovered Pureledge. See, Darcy’s old liver couldn’t take much more and mine was even worse. ‘Another Old Coot Whiskey,’ the doc says to me, ‘and you’ll be looking for a bunk down in the catacombs, me lad.’ Darcy and me both swore off, but it weren’t never an easy oath to keep.”
“Why the RPAF?” Shad asked.
“‘Pigeons,’ Darcy says to me, ‘young they are, livers is just fine, and no questions. How much single malt you think it takes to warm up a pigeon?’ he asks me. Couple of drops? It’s a body weight and metabolism thing, right?”
Shad and I exchanged glances. “Right,” we both said facing him.
“Instead of more booze, we went for less body mass. Seemed like an answer to all our prayers. A single bottle could last a couple o’ pigeons a month or more. The day we was to show, though, Darcy didn’t. He’d spent the night and morning seein’ how much scrumpy he could put down and they had him in hospital. By the time he got out, I was in my Spit flappin’ changes and kind of enjoying having health and a clear head. Wanted to keep it that way. Darcy still had his plan, though. Day he left hospital he was at Castle Street fitted out for wings. All they had left then was Hurricanes. Anyway, Darcy was in the 712. I coaxed him to stay off the stuff, and he did for a few weeks. Then I could smell it on him.”
“He was drinking on duty?” asked Shad.
“I never saw him. Don’t know where he kept his jug,” answered Artie. “I wanted to stay sober meself, see. Got into a program: Birds of a Feather. Well, Darcy and I drifted apart. Didn’t exchange a word with him except to say hi for weeks. Then yesterday he goes missin’ and winds up dead.” Artie Krauthammer sadly shook his head. “Poor Darcy.”
After the second break, Mathilda was missing. Shad and I checked the Bishop’s Garden and began running a search grid on the cathedral grounds when we both looked around and noticed she was right behind us. “Sorry, boys. Had to go powder my beak,” and then she cackled insanely and began sobbing and singing “Chariots of Fire.” I dropped back, took a sniff, and Pilot Officer Mathilda was flying a bit too close to the wind.
“Darcy Flanagan was a good man,” she declared as Shad fell back, Mathilda flying between us. “Such a dear—urp—poor dearie, dearie poo. Can’t believe he’s gone!” More sobbing. Between us, Shad and I guided her to the central peak of a roof, the palace spread out below us. From her babbling monolog, apparently Mathilda knew Darcy from his pub days. Sober old Artie Krauthammer wasn’t the only one with whom Darcy had shared his reduced body mass alcohol conservation proposal. She wept, she reminisced, she sang a tune or two, gave a sloppy eulogy for the departed, and sobbed some more. Shad and I were both trying to decide how to get Mathilda to reveal the location of Flanagan’s jug when she quieted, thought a moment, then took off. We watched as she glided down toward the palace, landed on the crenellated top of a small octagonal tower, then disappeared between the crenellations. When we joined her we noted a trap door set into the roof of the tower and next to it a ceramic jug painted the same dark color as the roof. Set into the base of the jug was a push-button spigot that emptied into the upturned lid of a jar. Mathilda pushed the button with her beak, a dollop of single malt landed in the lid, and she guzzled more than a wee drop or two. I looked at Shad and he was looking along the roof of the Diocesan House to where it joined the Bishop’s Palace. I knew he was thinking the same as I: The bishop’s gas gun was still unaccounted for.
At eleven that night, the 712 Squadron was relieved by the 132 “Big Toon” Squadron. We flew Yosemite Sam Flight around the south cathedral patrol area, then climbed to join Mother Goose and the 712 back to Castle Field, all of us cooing the old Vera Lynn song, “We’ll Meet Again,” as we flapped changes back home, Mathilda’s changes flapping to a different ringer.
“I am getting considerable pressure from the Chief Constable’s office to resolve this dead pigeon matter,” declared Detective Superintendent Matheson the next morning. Shad and I were in his office standing in front of his antique mahogany veneer desk. The rest of his office was unadorned save for the image of a gilt-framed painting of the Biograph Theater in Chicago centered in the liquid crystal wall facing the desk. The superintendent’s hands were clasped behind his back and DC Parker was behind the image of the Biograph in the superintendent’s WC. Between flushes and shouting through the door, Parker did an adequate summary of the progress thus far on the Darcy Flanagan case.
Complete results on pigeon bio deaths and injuries weren’t yet in, but what results there were appeared discouraging. Constabulary SOCOs had been called in regarding the Kumar matter, and had collected the feathers, but apparently the evidence collected at the scene had been misplaced. The report itself had been scrubbed in the Heavitree Tower computer meltdown that year, the file apparently never having been copied to the archive backup nor forwarded to ABCD. The detectives and SOCOs who worked on the Kumar case were scattered to the winds. They were being tracked down, but with little hope of success.
I could see Matheson was struggling with reconsidering his decision to place Parker in charge of the case. At one point his eyes pleaded as his brows arched, wrinkling his forehead, probably hoping against hope I would insist on taking over. The image of John Dillinger begging Sherlock Holmes for a favor quite gave me pause. Nevertheless, as Shad would have put it, we continued with the starting line-up. Either we’d pull this lump out of the fire or we’d all be singing the Oscar Meyer wiener anthem.