'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Next. I've been waiting for you for a long, long time.'
'I've been away.'
'Since January 1986. I've waited nearly two and a half years to see you.'
'And why would you do a thing like that?'
'Because,' said the man, producing an identity badge from his pocket and handing it over, 'I am your officially sanctioned stalker.'
I looked at the badge. It was true enough, he was allocated to me. All 100 per cent legit, and I didn't have a say in it. The whole stalker thing was licensed by SpecOps 33, the Entertainments Facilitation Department, which had drawn up specific rules with the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers as to who was allowed to stalk who. It helped to regulate a historically dark business and also graded stalkers according to skill and perseverance. My stalker was an impressive Grade I, the sort who are permitted to stalk the really big celebrities. And that made me suspicious.
'A Grade I?' I queried. 'Should I be flattered? I don't suppose I'm anything above a Grade 8.'
'Not nearly that high,' agreed my stalker, 'more like a Grade 12. But I've got a hunch you're going to get bigger. I latched on to Lola Vavoom in the sixties when she was just a bit part in The Streets of Wootton Bassett and stalked her for nineteen years, man and boy. I only gave her up to move on to Buck Stallion. When she heard she sent me a glass tankard with "Thank you for a great stalk, Lola" etched on it. Have you ever met her?'
'Once, Mr . . .' I looked at the pass before handing it back. '. . . de Floss. Interesting name. Any relation to Candice?'
'The author? In my dreams,' replied the stalker, rolling his eyes. 'But since I'd like us to be friends, do please call me Millon.'
'Millon it is, then.'
And we shook hands. The man on the ground moaned and sat up, rubbing his head.
'Who's your friend?'
'He's not my friend,' said Millon, 'he's my stalker. And a pain in the arse he is too.'
'Wait — you're a stalker and you have a stalker?'
'Of course!' Millon laughed. 'Ever since I published my autobiography, A Stalk on the Wild Side, I've become a bit of a celebrity myself. I even have a sponsorship deal with Compass Rose™ duffel coats. It is my celebrity status that enables Adam here to stalk me. Come to think of it, he's a Grade 3 stalker so it's possible he's got a stalker of his own — haven't you heard the poem?'
Before I could stop him he started to recite:
'No, I hadn't heard that one,' I mused as the second stalker placed a handkerchief on his bleeding lip.
'Miss Next, this is Adam Gnusense. Adam, Miss Next.'
He waved weakly at me, looked at the bloodied handkerchief and sighed mournfully. I felt rather remorseful all of a sudden.
'Sorry to have hit you, Mr Gnusense,' I said apologetically, 'I didn't know what either of you was up to.'
'Occupational hazard, Miss Next.'
'Hey, Adam,' said Millon, suddenly sounding enthusiastic, 'do you have your own stalker yet?'
'Somewhere,' said Gnusense, looking around, 'a Grade 34 loser. The sad bastard was rummaging through my bins last night. Passe or what!'
'Kids — tsk,' said Millon. 'It might have been de rigueur in the sixties but the modern stalker is much more subtle. Long vigils, copious notes, timed entry and exits, telephoto lenses.'
'We live in sad times,' agreed Adam, shaking his head sadly. 'Must be off. I said I'd keep a close eye on Adrian Lush for a friend.'
He stood up and shambled slowly away down the alley, stumbling on discarded beer cans.
'Not a great talker is old Adam,' said Millon in a whisper, 'but sticks to his target like a limpet. You wouldn't catch him rummaging through dustbins — unless he was giving a masterclass for a few of the young pups, of course. Tell me, Miss Next, where have you been for the past two and a half years? It's been a bit dull here — after the first eighteen months of you not showing up, I'd reduced my stalking to only three nights a week.'
'You'd never believe me.'
'You'd be surprised what I can believe. Aside from stalking I've just finished my first book: A Short History of the Special Operations Network. I'm also editor of Conspiracy Theorist magazine. In between pieces on the very tangible link between Goliath and Yorrick Kaine and the existence of a mysterious beast known only as "Guinzilla", we've run several articles devoted entirely to you and that Jane Eyre thing. We'd love to do a piece on your uncle Mycroft's work, too. Even though we know almost nothing, the conspiracy network is alive with healthy half-truths, lies and supposition. Did he really build an LCD cloaking device for cars?'
'Sort of.'
'And translating carbon paper?'
'He called it rossetionery.'
'And what about the ovinator? Conspiracy Theorist devotes several pages of unsubstantiated rumours to this one invention alone.'
'I don't know. Some sort of machine for cooking eggs, perhaps? Is there anything you don't know about my family?'
'Not a lot. I'm thinking of writing a biography of you. How about: Thursday Next — A Biography?'
'The title? Way too imaginative.'
'So I have your permission?'
'No, but if you can put a dossier together on Yorrick Kaine I'll tell you all about Aornis Hades.'
'Acheron's little sister? It's a deal! Are you sure I can't write your biography? I've already made a start.'
'Positive — if you find anything, knock on my door.'
'I can't. There's a blanket restraining order on all members of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers. We're not allowed within a hundred yards of your place of residence.'
I sighed.
'All right, just wave when I come out.'
De Floss readily agreed to that plan and I left him rearranging his notebook, binoculars and camera and starting to make copious notes on his first encounter with me. I couldn't get rid of the poor deluded fool but a stalker just might — might — be an ally.
3
Evade the Question Time
PERFIDIOUS DANES 'HISTORICALLY OUR ENEMY', CLAIMS INSANE HISTORIAN
'Quite frankly, I was yim-pim-pim appalled,' said England's leading mad history scholar yesterday. 'The eighth-century Danish attack on our flibble-flobble sceptred isle is a story of invasion, subjugation, plunder and exploitation that would remain bleep-bleep-baaaaa unequalled until we tried it ourselves many years later.' The confused and barely coherent historian's work has been authenticated by another equally feeble-minded academic, who told us yesterday: 'The Danish invasion began in 786 when the Danes set up a kingdom in East Anglia. They didn't even use their own names either. They preferred to do their brutal work cowardly hiding beneath the pseudonyms of Angles, Bruts, and Flynns.' Further research has shown that the Danes stayed for over four hundred years and were only driven home by the crusading help of our new close friends the French.
'How did Kaine rise so quickly to power?' I asked incredulously as Joffy and I queued patiently outside Swindon's Toad News Network studios that evening. 'When I was here last Kaine and the Whig Party were all but washed up after the Cardenio debacle.'