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'I'll bet you they can,' said the barman. 'Old Vic's leading the war party. He used to be a POW, you know. He knows all about blowing things up. He told me that he once blew up a Nazi watchtower at his camp, using an explosive formulated exclusively from his own bodily fluids. You wouldn't think that was possible, would you? Although I would, I've heard the old blighter fart.'

'Oh no,' said Derek. 'Oh no, oh no, oh no.'

'I don't know what you're "oh no-ing" about,' said the barman. 'You don't have any friends working at Mute Corp, do you?'

Derek's pale face nodded up and down in time to his nodding head. In perfect synchronization, in fact, because it was all joined on. 'Kelly,' he said. 'The woman I love.'

'The beautiful bird you were in here with yesterday?' asked the barman. 'The bird with the outstanding charlies?'

'Shut up!' said Derek.

'Sorry mate. But she's a babe. You lucky sod. I'll bet she's something between the covers, eh? You wouldn't care to tell me all about it, would you? I'm a married man myself and other than forging my signature and painting our house purple because it's the colour of universal peace, my missus doesn't go in for anything much any more. She seems to be obsessed with charity work. I went home the other evening and found her giving that Mad John a bath.'

'Shut up!' said Derek again. 'I have to warn her.'

'Well, you have plenty of time,' said the barman. 'They're not going to do the dirty deed until Monday. They want to cash in their shares first.'

Derek breathed a big sigh of relief. 'Phew,' he said.

'So there you go,' said the barman, handing Derek his Scotch. 'That's one pound one and sixpence, please.'

'Yes,' said Derek. 'All right.' And he rooted about in his pockets in the hope that he still had some change. He didn't have much, but he did have enough and he also had something else. A screwed-up note that he'd picked up from his doormat, but hadn't yet read.

Derek paid the barman and then he read the note.

And then the bleary bloodshot eyes in his pale and designer-stubbly face grew wide and Derek screamed very loudly.

Horrible, it was.

20

There was no-one home at Mrs Gormenghast's.

Derek banged and hammered at the door, but no-one answered. He thought he saw the net curtains move in the upstairs front window and he thought that he saw the face of Mad John peeping out. But Derek dismissed this as only his fevered imagination.

Derek was all in a lather. Kelly's note was a warning. It warned him not to use his mobile phone. Indeed, not to use any telephone. And not to touch his computer, nor indeed anything that might have computerized innards. And it said, 'Come at once, as soon as you read this note,' and it said, 'You are in terrible danger.'

Derek fretted. He didn't know what to do. Go to the Mute Corp headquarters? Surely that was where Kelly was. But would she be there? If she was warning him not to touch any computers and that there was terrible danger, surely she wouldn't be there, amongst all those computers. Derek thought not.

So at least she would be safe if Old Vic and his cronies actually blew up the building.

She would be safe.

Wouldn't she?

But where was she?

Where?

Derek fretted further. If she wasn't at Mute Corp and she wasn't at Mrs Gormenghast's, then where was she? Oh no! Not that? Derek fretted furiously. Not vanished"? Not her too. He'd turned his thoughts away from all that mad stuff. Kelly had to be somewhere, and somewhere safe. She had to be. Surely. He loved the woman, for God's sake. Nothing bad could have happened to her. It couldn't have. No. No. No.

Derek went home.

At six of the evening clock, Derek returned to Mrs Gormenghast's. Mrs Gormenghast opened the door to him.

'No,' she said, when he asked her. 'Kelly has not returned.'

Derek went home again.

At just before eight of the evening clock, Derek returned once more to Mrs Gormenghast's.

'No,' she said once more. 'Kelly has not returned.'

Derek went home again.

He returned to Mrs Gormenghast's at half-hour intervals. And then quarter-of-an-hour intervals and then by eleven of that same evening clock, he -wouldn't go away.

'I know you, don't I?' said the police constable that Mrs Gormenghast called. 'You were in that punch-up at the Arts Centre, weren't you? I'd go home if I were you, sir, or I'll have to run you in. And I don't think you'd like that very much, as all the cells but one are currently being given a makeover by this long-grey-haired designer, who used to be very popular on the tele. And the only one we could put you into is currently occupied by a bearded tattooed poet from Mute Corp Keynes, who turned up at the station claiming that someone had nicked his wristwatch the last time we had him in the cells…'

Derek tried to get a word in. But the constable continued.

'And he got really stroppy and we had to bang him up again and he keeps shouting out that he's the daddy now. And he says he wants his bitch.'

'My girlfriend has gone missing,' Derek bawled to the constable. 'Do something. Do something.'

'Move along quietly now, sir,' said the constable. 'Or I'll have to run you in.'

Derek made fists but kept them to himself, and then he went home to bed. Not that he slept very well, he didn't. Strange dreams came to him. He saw Kelly standing in the Butt's Estate and she was talking to this old gentleman and the old gentleman was telling her something, something terrible, that scared her and there was violence and Derek saw Kelly running and running and then being swallowed up by something awful that he couldn't see but could only feel. And it didn't feel good, it felt horrible.

Derek awoke in a bit more of a lather.

And he went without a shower for the second day running and as he hadn't washed, he was rather smelly too.

Derek didn't breakfast either, he just ran out of the house.

'Police, police,' called Mrs Gormenghast down her telephone. 'That madman is back at my front door.'

'Madman?' asked Mad John, looking up from his puce breakfast bowl.

Saturday was Hell for Derek. He went around to the police station to report Kelly missing, but was told to get onto the end of the queue. People were now going missing all over the borough. They were here one minute and gone the next. Several Brentford Poets and poetesses had vanished and some muleskinners and a wandering bishop and a bunch of pimply-faced youths (although no-one seemed too bothered about them). And some nurses and interns from the cottage hospital had vanished too. It was The Rapture, the desk constable told Derek. But not to worry, because it was all going to be heaven on earth in Brentford for all the un-raptured, thanks to Mute Corp. The company that cares. And while Derek was here in the police station, would he care to purchase some extra Suburbia World Plc shares? As the Brentford constabulary had just been issued a licence by Mute Corp to sell them.