“Waaaaaah,” they went, in chorus.
“Will you stop all this weeping, you bunch of witless wimps?”
“Waaaaaah!” they reiterated, somewhat louder this time.
“He called me Quasimodo,” whined the humpty-backed geezer.
“He said I had a face like a cow’s behind,” squalled a woman with a face like a cow’s behind.
“He impugned my manhood,” snivelled a closet shirtlifter.
“He referred to me as a pretentious ninny,” ululated a thespian.
“He murdered my daddy!” howled Colin.
There was a lot of silence then.
“He did what?” asked the guy with the sore on his lip, which, I’d mentioned in passing, was probably the pox.
“He murdered my poor dear daddy. Shot him down in an alleyway.”
“I did nothing of the kind,” I rightfully protested.
“Assassin!” cried a crying lady, who, let’s face it, did look a lot like Jabba the Hutt.
“Murderer!” shrieked the bloke with the birthmark that I’d drawn attention to.
“String him up,” yelled the woman with the questionable hairdo that I’d well and truly questioned.
“I’ll get a rope,” hollered Fangio.
“Oi, Fange,” said I. “Turn it in.”
“Sorry, Laz, I got carried away.”
“Murdered my poor dear daddy,” went Colin again.
And would you believe it?
Or even if you wouldn’t.
The whole damn lot of them went for me!
“If you ask me,” said Johnny Boy, “we’re lost.”
“I’m not asking you,” said Icarus Smith.
“No need to be shirty,” said Johnny Boy. “Just because I put you straight about the relationship you have with your brother.”
“It isn’t that,” said Icarus Smith, even though it was. “But actually, I think you’re right. We’re lost.”
They had wandered a goodly way amongst the corridors of the Ministry of Serendipity. They had left the barber far behind, strapped into his chair with his Velocette in his mouth. But now, somewhere in the middle of what might have been anywhere, they were well and truly lost, which wasn’t a nice thing to be.
“Perhaps we should retrace our steps.”
“No,” said Icarus. “We’ll go on. We’ll leave this to fate. Which way would you choose?”
“How about turning left here?”
“Right it is then,” said Icarus.
As they walked and wandered, Johnny Boy tried to lighten things up with tales of the music halls. But Icarus darkened things down again with a tale of a film he’d seen about miners who got trapped underground.
“We might be going in circles,” said Johnny Boy. “You do that, you know, if you try to walk in a straight line. One of your legs is always a tiny bit shorter than the other, so eventually you walk round in a big circle.”
“Does that work if both of your legs are short?” asked Icarus.
“Don’t be horrid,” said Johnny Boy. “You’ll make me want to cry.”
The crying howling mob closed in upon me, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I was prepared to stand my ground and dish out as good as I got. I’d raise my fists and fight a fair fight and devil take the hindparts.
But I was severely outnumbered here.
So I whipped out the trusty Smith and Where’s-this-all-gonna-end and let off a couple of shots at the ceiling.
Which started the sprinkler system.
And set off the fire alarm.
Way down deep in the Ministry of Serendipity, other alarms started ringing.
“I think the barber’s broken free,” said Johnny Boy. “What should we do now?”
“I would say, run,” said Icarus. “But I’m not sure just in which direction we should run.”
“Up might be a good plan,” said Johnny Boy.
“Run up?”
“Head up. Up and out of here.”
Sounds of running footsteps could now be heard.
“There,” said Icarus. “There’s a ladder fastened to the wall. It leads up some kind of shaft.”
“That would be the one then. Let’s get a move on before the guards get us.”
“Get him!” shouted the bloke with the bulldog jowls which I’d said could be cured by surgery. “Get the murderer, batter him good.”
And suddenly I found myself in a maelstrom of flailing fists and battering boots.
“I can hear their boots getting nearer,” said Johnny Boy, halfway up the shaft that led to somewhere. “How are you doing up there, Icarus? Can you see daylight?”
“Er, not exactly,” the lad called back. “Just a sort of manhole cover. And I can’t seem to get it open.”
“They’re getting closer, Icarus, I can hear them. They’re coming from all directions.”
They came at me from all directions, down as well as up and all about. I pride myself that with my daily workout regime[16] I am always in peak condition and can take a blow to the solar plexus without even flinching. However, I’d never quite planned on taking quite so many blows and all at the same time.
“I’ll have to blow it open,” called Icarus.
“You’ll have to what?”
“Blow open the manhole cover.”
“How?”
“I took the liberty of relocating a stick or two of SHITE from the captain’s pocket while we were in my brother’s office. I thought they might come in handy one day. Do you have a box of matches?”
“Sadly no,” called Johnny Boy. “How about you?”
“Er, no.”
“No!” I tried a “no” and I also tried a “have mercy” and also “you’ve got the wrong fellow here” and “I have a heart condition” — but callously aloof to all my pleas, even those regarding the potential damage to my trenchcoat and fedora, the baying mob beat seventeen brass bells of St Trinian’s out of me, then hoisted me into the air, marched me over to the bar’s rear door and flung me out into the alleyway.
Well, at least it was an alleyway.
But boy did it hurt when I hit it.
I was bloody and bruised and chopped up and chaffed, my trenchcoat was in ribbons and my hat had gone missing. And as I lay there in the mud, wondering just how many bones had been broken, I was further saddened to hear the sound of a handgun being cocked.
Especially as I knew the sound of that cocking action all too well. For it was the sound of my trusty Smith and Where’s-all-that-help-when-you-need-it-now?
I looked up through the eye that didn’t have a big brown plum growing out of it, to view the face of my would-be executioner.
“You’re dead meat, Mr Handbag,” he said.
“We’re dead meat,” called Johnny Boy.
“No we’re not,” called Icarus. “I’ll find a way to light this fuse.”
“But we’ll get blown up and melted too.”
“This stuff is directional. It will blow up if you aim it upwards.”
“But we don’t have a match to light it.”
“I’ll think of something.”
A torch lit up Johnny Boy.
“Come down from there,” called the voices, accompanied by the sounds of guns being cocked. “Come down out of there or you’re—”
“Dead meat?” said Icarus Smith.
“Dead meat,” said Colin, third child of God. “There’s just the two of us now, Mr Handbag.”
“Now hold on, fella,” I said. “Don’t do anything foolish that I might regret. I know who you are. What you are. I’m working for your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Eartha Godalming, widow of God. Big fat ugly dame with a face like a bag full of car parts.”
“What has my mother got to do with this?”
“I’ve seen the will,” I said, spitting out a bit of blood, to add a little extra drama. “God’s last will and testament. You’re in the frame for the murder.”
“What do you mean?”
“The will’s a fake. The Earth gets left to you, instead of the meek, who were supposed to inherit it. I know the truth. I worked it out.”
16
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