Contents

The Characters

PART ONE: THE PROBLEM

PART TWO: THE SOLUTION

PART FOUR: THE PLOT THICKENS

PART FIVE: THE FINAL SOLUTION

This book was written in various hotel rooms across Europe during 1987. It was
finished in Tokyo in May of that year. To all those hotel proprieto
rs who kindly supplied reams of hotel stationery
to the peculiar long-haired man at four in the morning, thank you.
To Paddy, who thought it was funny and stayed for the sequel, thank
you.
Robert Smith thought it was okay and that's why you are reading this. .. Merck,
whose second name is too long to spell, did the dastardly deal... Rod and And
y looked on in bemusement (as usual)... Shaun Hutson's chest exploded
in a geyser of blood and intestines . . . Steve Harris threatened tor
ture is it wasn't published ... To all of the above, and to all who suffered an
ear bending in the creation of this book, a very big thank you.
Copyright © 1990 by Bruce Dickinson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechan
ical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the copyright owner.
The Characters
Locals
Lord Iffy Boatrace, Laird of Findidnann
Educated ineffectually at Thigwell Boarding School, his early life resulted in t
he Laird being somewhat tainted physically. Although now around thirty-five
years old, his childhood fetish for stockings and stiletto heels has persisted
and, at the time of writing, he is still a virgin.
The Butler
A tall distinguished-looking male of around forty years old. Balding sig
nificantly from the front of his hairline; has some relative unusual h
obbies and personal pursuits.
Wing Commander Bill Symes-Groat (Retired)
Sixty-year-old RAF officer living as Iffyâ s closest neighbour. A pe
nchant for young male recruits resulted in his dismissal from the service. Await
ing his recall eagerly.
The Secret Army
An acquaintance of Symes-Groat, loaned to Lord Iffy
under false pretences. By definition, his appearance is secret.
Jock Mc.Vitie Barcelona
The grumpy innkeeper, station master, telephone supervisor and petrol station ow
ner of the local village.
Guests

Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison and his wife, Margot Smith

Roderick is a large, bumbling, blue-blooded upper-class twit. His wife (who refu
sed to change her name with they married) is short, fat, feminist and dangerous.
They have two children.
Brian and Laetitia Taylor
An alcoholic Scottich editor and his American consort, the octopoid, well- endow
ed Mrs. Laetitia P. Taylor, childless.
Mark and Cynthia West
The perfect couple, or so it seems. They are good-looking, young and well-off.
Have not been married long enough to have children. As it happens, tha
t is the last thing on their mind.
PART ONE

The Problem

Building the Perfect Beast

Thaw! Lord Iffy Boatrace snorted in disgust as he slapped the paper down on the
oak-covered sidetable, sending up a cloud of dust. 'Not even any bloody money
in fruit any more.' One monocled eyeball raged over the headline: 'Three thous
and people eat one strawberry.' Bah!' he exclaimed and stood up from his faded,
high backed Victorian chair. The grandfather clock against the oak-panelled
wall ticked soporifically around to four o'clock and the double doors swung
open as the Butler arrived with a tea trolley. 'Your tea, sir', said the Butler
. 'May I ask if your Lordship will require hot water this evening?'

'Yes, I shall, Butler, of course I shall, 'Lord iffy retorted. 'Ahem.' Butler cl
eared his throat and stretched out his upturned palm. 'Oh, very well then, very
well,' railed Iffy irritably, digging deep into his tailcoat pocket and producin
g a fifty pence piece. 'Will this do?
'That will do nicely, sir', affirmed Butler, his hand closing over the meter
money and dropping it gently into his waistcoat pocket. Money, money,
money,' groaned Iffy. 'We haven't bloody got any, can't afford hot water, can't
afford a mistress, can't even afford to buy a really nice pair of c
rocodile stilettos for meself. How many cars do I have left?'.
'Six, sir.'
'Six? Is that all? I'm sure I had seven.'
'No, sir, you conjugated with an earthmover two weeks ago; now you have six.'
'Oh,' mumbled Iffy absent -mindedly. 'Earthmover. So that's what it was. My god,
only six left. 'He paused. 'I must sell one, Butler. Drive the white one into t
own tonight and sell it.'.
'Why impossible?'.
'Because we don't have any petrol and can't afford to buy any, sir.'
Iffy slumped back down in his chair; the Laird of Findidnann estate in the remot
e Highlands of Scotland was stumped. No money, no income. He stared down at his
 scuffed patent-leather stiletto-heeled shoes and wriggled their pointed toes.
'What's to be done, Butler?' he groaned.
'Ahem.' Butler cleared his throat again. 'I have been studying Japanese and orie
ntal solutions to this problem, sir, and may have stumbled upon someth
ing.'
'Huh,' interrupted Iffy. 'Japs, orientals, not likely. The Duke of Edinburgh was
right, we'd all end up yellow with slanty eyes. No, I'm not prepared to turn Fi
ndidnann estate into a Celtic bloody bath-house. We won the damn war and that's
it. God save the King, Butler.' Iffy sank even deeper into his chair and began f
uriously polishing his monocle.
'I would rather be poor, Butler, than sacrifice myself to the rising yen.' He
continued polishing intently. Butler took a deep breath.

'Sir, I....I... I... I have an IDEA, 'he finally announced. Iffy screwed his mon
ocle back into his eye and regarded Butler suspiciously.
'You,' he said whispering incredulously, 'have and idea?'. His eyes flicked unce
rtainly from side to side, then his lips Flashed a predatory smile.
'Well, let's hear it then, old boy.' he boomed.
'Sir, robotics, er, automation, the improvement of certain natural functions by
the use of technology to . . .'
'Yes, yes,,' dismissed iffy loudly, leaping to his feet again. 'All very well to
speculate, - but what will we automate?' He sprang on to the dining-room table i
n a single bound, scraping the varnish with his high heels. 'What?' he roared, f
lailing his arms like a dervish. 'What?' he intoned in a hoarse whisper, as his
eyes met the portrait of his dead uncle on the wall.
Butler continued. 'I myself have almost completed a project which I'm
sure your
Lordship. . .'

'Time enough for projects,' screamed Iffy and stood up dramatically. 'Your time
is not yet come but perhaps... ' His eyes caught the stuffed trophies adorning t
he walls and ceilings; pheasants, badgers, stoats, lions, tigers, geese, ferret
s, moose, bears, snakes, fish. His gazed continued: eagles, doves, armad
illos, hamsters, gerbils, horses, dogs, the twenty-third Laird of Findidnann - a
lso stufed. This was it, thought Iffy.
'Sir, my little invention is beautifully compact and it wouldn't. . .'
'Brilliant, Butler, brilliant idea,' raged Iffy. He leapt off the tabl
e and hurtled towards his six-foot-long brass astonomical
telescope which pointed out across the moors. He thrust his eye eagerly up
to it and ranged it around the horizon. 'Hunting, Butler, shooting, fishing all
year round, inexhaustible, indestructible, electronic . . . Unbelievable.'

'Totally inedible though, sir.'

'Piffle, man, piffle,' exploded Iffy in reply. 'A minor detail. Did Columbus sto
p investigating the globe because he couldn't eat it? Did the flavour of the app
le that hit Newton on the head affect his theory of gravity, eh?
Iffy grabbed Butler enthusiastically by the shoulders and shook him war
mly. 'Well?' he shrieked. 'Of course it didn't.'
'But, sir,' whined Butler, 'my idea . . . '

'Your idea.' Iffy smashed his hand on to the tea trolley in rage. 'Your idea,' h
e said mockingly, 'but my genius. I, the twenty-fifth Laird of Findidnann, Lord
Iffy Boatrace, will go down in history as the man who . . .' He broke off. 'What
's the date today?'.
'The twenty-third sir.'
'Perfect,' he hissed, ripping open a desk drawer and flinging the contents aroun
d the room. 'Aha!' he exclaimed, as he pulled out the British Field
Sports Yearbook, feverishly turning to the month of September. 'Here,
look, the twenty-third, and here.'
He turned the page to the next month 'THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH.' He slammed the book
shut triumphantly.
'Do you realice what this means? I, Iffy Boatrace, will institute the most outra
geous sporting coup in history. Grouse shooting all year round. This place will
be overrun with people. All absolutely dripping with boodle an I can cop the lot
. We must experiment immediately. The Glorious Third, there's a starting date fo
r you. A couple of weeks.
Invite every-one', he roared.
'Sir?' interrupted Butler. 'Sir?'
'Oh, what is it now?'
'You don't have any grouse.'
'Then, I shall build them,' declared Iffy in triumph.
'Now,' he continued. 'Invites. I wnat half-a-dozen pillocks who can't shoot stra
ight. Who do we know?
'We don't have any friends any more, sir, we owe them all money.'
'We'll use the old Thigwellonians book then, old school tie and all that. Play p
in the tail on the donkey or play darts with it and dig out six names. Say that
it's an official Thigwellonian reunion or something. Only a real twit would go
to one of those. Whatever you do, don't mention grouse snooting till they
're up here. I don't want anyone else getting wind of this one.'
'Sir, I really do feel that you're getting a little carried away here. I don't w
ish to carp on
but my little invention is waiting below stairs for you to try out and . . .'

ENOUGH!' shouted Lord Iffy. 'I pay you as a Butler, not a bloody Heath Robinson
inventor. Now sod off and run my bath. Butler stiffened and sniffed the air
noisily. He had not been paid for four months, but the alternative was
a spell in Wormwood Scrubs.
'Will that be al, sir?' he enquired archly.
'Yes, yes, go away.' Iffy was staring at his library shelves. He was deep in tho
ught. Books on astronomy, the occult, military matters, philosophy, relig
ion and the like filled the upper shelves: pornography, stiletto shoe catalogues
and Burke's Peerage lined the lower shelves. Nothing, he mused, that w
ould help him build a flock of high-speed, realistic, obedient mechanical grouse
.
He looked up at the portrait of his uncle, the man he had admired so much,
and returned his cracked gaze. 'Where can I find a man to create such a thing?'
he murmured. Realization of possibility dawned in his eyes. He lent
forward and reached for a book of semaphor
e signal codes.
2

The Secret Agent

Iffy trudged up the gravelled path towards the turreted gothic nightmare which w
as the residence of his next-door neighbour, Wing Commander Bill Symes-Groat. T
he Lord of Findidnann was not accustomed to such an indignity as a wa
lk across three miles of sodden moorland, and was totally unprepared for the rug
gedness of the terrain. As a result, his best pair of Italian blue leather stil
ettos had snapped their heels and this, coupled with the appallingly early hour
of seven-thirty in the morning, had left him most distressed upon arriv
al. He reached the front gate.
'Halt, who goes there?' squeaked an unidentified and invisible child-like voic
e. 'I'm Lord Iffy Boatrace and I've come to see the Wing Commander. Would you te
ll him I'm here?'

'Advance and give the countersign', squeaked the voice again, higher in pitch th
is time and mysteriously emanating from a clump of ivy by the side of the huge
oak, iron-studded front door. 'Just tell the Wing Co. I'm here,' groaned Iffy,
wobbling on his fractured shoe heels. 'In fact, bugger it. I'll tell him myself.
' He strode towards the front door.
The first shotgun-blast shattered a garden gnome. Iffy let out a fearfu
l shriek.
'You silly senile old sod,' he screamed, as he ran for cover behind the garden w
all.

The second barrel ripped both coat-tails off his jacket as he dived headfirst ov
er the lower garden wall, leaving his stilettos stuck vertically, point first in
the gravel. There was a loud splash as he hit the ornamental moat which lay bey
ond.
'Cease fire!' bellowed a voice, rather more grown up. 'Sorry about that, old
chap. You can come out now, it's quite safe.'
Iffy cautiously peered back over the garden wall. There, by the front door,
stood Wing Commander Groat, patting a small child, who was clad in le
derhosen an a cub scout top, and clutching an enormous double-barrelled shotgun.

'Run along now, Rommel,' roared the Wing. Co. 'Go and play with Goebbels. Goerin
g can serve the tea.'The child scuttled of round the back of the house. Iffy spa
t some foul green water out of his mouth and stood up. He was soaked to the skin
with water, mud and green slime. He looked down. His best fishnet stockings had
been ruined, and sludge encrusted his toenails. His monocle, however, remained
firmly in place.
'What the fucking hell is going on?' he cried.
'Security, old man, can't be too careful, what? Sorry about the pancake in the b
riny, still at war, eh? Come on in, brekky's ready.' And with that, he went back
inside.
'So,' said the Colonel pouring tea in the wooden-beamed and galleried dining roo
m. 'I got your message by semaphore last night. Still don't know why your uncle
never got a phone. . .'

He didn't like the GPO,' muttered Iffy, who was covered in a blanket from head t
o foot and shivering. 'They refused to accept telegrams by homing pigeon, so it'
s a condition of his will; no telephones at Findidnann Hall.'
'Bit inconvenient,' muttered the Colonel, 'Still', he leaned over and put the
teapot down, 'more secure' he hissed.
'Anyway, about this caper, you said something about Japs.'He clutched
Iffy's leg violently. 'Don't like 'em, never have.'
'I believe I mentioned the oriental solution which was suggest by my
colleague,' remarked iffy slyly.
'Who do you work for?' demand the Colonel suddenly.
'I really can't say', returned Iffy, removing his monocle dramatically.
'Hush hush, eh? Mused the Wing Co.
'Sworn to secrecy,' said Iffy firmly.
'Must be damned important for them to call on me, damned important. Twenty years
I've waited for this crisis. I knew they'd call me back.' He turned misty-ey
ed to the leaded glass windows.'Need a boffin?'
he demanded suddenly. 'Three Para, RSM, SAS, VCMO, etc., etc.'
Iffy replaced his monocle and beamed, in spite of his frozen bones.
'Yes,' he said quietly, 'that was the request.'
'You really can't tell me what it is?' pleaded the Wing Co. Eagerly.
'You know the rules we operate by,' declared Iffy sternly, warming to the decept
ino, if not to his wet clothes. 'Need-to-know principle.'
'Jolly good, jolly good. Walls have ears, eh?'
The Wing Co. sat down again and thrust a piece of army ration cake at him on Luf
twaffe china. Iffy peered at the offering and wrinkled his nose.
'No thanks.'
'Goering,' bellowed Groat. 'Come and take these plates away, please my angel.'

A surplice-clad choirboy appeared and glided around the table, collecting the br
eakfast dishes.
'There's a good chap, Goering. You can leave the silver stuff until later.'
He indicated the enormous roast beef tray and silver cover that was the centrepi
ece of the table.
'Might Drop it you know,' he said to Iffy. 'And then I'd have to thrash him.' He
trembled slightly, his eyes misting over.
'All local boys, you kmnow, from the village. Damn good for them of
course, bit of discipline, cold showers, pilow fights . . . A good thrashing wh
en they deserve it; and they're pretty damn deserving I can tell you.' He chortl
ed and seemed to come back to reality.
'Course, some of 'em can't take it. Had a couple of boys burst on me last
week, sent'em back, but. . .'He driftled off again. 'New ones come all the time
for their old Uncle. . .' He licked his lips' . . . Groaty.' He bared his fangs
'Woaty.' Goering made a rapid exit.

Iffy was quite horrified at the idea of this lecherous old man buggering his way
through the local adolescent population, but, being
an English aristocrat and therefore a pervert himself, he decided t
o take a more pragmatic approach.
'Where is this boffin then?' he demanded. 'And when can he start?'
'He's here, and he starts now,' declared the Wing Co. Proudly. 'In fact, he's be
en here all the time we've been talking.'
Iffy looked up in alarm. The galleried landings were covered in swords, firearms
and model aeroplanes. The man might be a maniac. 'Where is he?' he asked urg
ently.
'REVEAL YOURSELF!' roared Groaty Wo aty as he ripped the lid off the
roast beef carving tray to reveal a huge plum pudding with a cherry on top. The
plum pudding spoke.
'Morning, Wing Commander,' it said in a gruff Aldershot monotone. Iffy
was speechless.
'Well, old man, there he is. SAS, Borneo, Malaya, Northern Ireland, Om
an; explosives, guns, knives, cheese wire, poison.
You name it, he'll kill it. A master of disguise and concealment, the very
soul of discretion.'

Iffy recovered some of his composure and looked into the two large plums which h
e assumed were eyes. 'Can you build me a flock of grouse?' he asked intently
'Of course I can,' replied the plum pudding, deadpan.
'Nuclear tipped; air-to-air grouse; poison gas, early wa
rning grouse. Whatever you want.'
'On a grouse?' exclaimed an astonished Iffy. The plum pudding swivelled in its b
ase of brandy liqueur and turned toward the Wing Commander.
'Who is this idiot?'
'Shhh, hissed the Wing Commander. 'Hush hush. Can't say, need to know, know what
I mean?'
'For your information, Lord Boatrace,' the pudding lectured, 'the grouse is one
of the special forces' most fearsome weapons. When you've been in Her Majesty'
s service as long as I have, you'll realize the value of a good tactical flock o
f grouse.'
Iffy was beggining to glow with triumph.

'Yes, yes,' he interrupted. 'That is, of course, common knowledge, but

what these grouse have to do is not get shot down. Can you manage it?'
'Nobody shoots down my grouse without answering to me first,' declared
the pudding.
'Perfect, you're hired. I want those grouse without answering to me first,' decl
ared the pudding.
'Perfect, you're hired. I want those grouse flying on the third of October at
two p.m. out on the moor. Well done, Wing Commander.' He shook the crusty old pe
rvert's hand warmly. 'You've saved my bacon.'
'Am I dismissed now then, sir?' said the pudding.
'Yes, you are,' said Wing Commander Symes-Groat. 'From now on you're
on your own. Stay out of sight and only contact myself of Iffy in a
n emergency - got it?'
'Understood, sir. One more thing, sir. I suggest you destroy all evidence of
this meeting.'
'Damn good idea,' replied the Wing Commander.
'What evidence?' enquired a suspicious Iffy.
'Might I suggest that you flambe me with brandy and cream?'
3

Butler's Invention

Iffy sat in his study, with his feet in the steaming hot salt water of a zinc tu
b. He was covered in towels as he sat before his telescope studying the night sk
y, wrinkling up his nose from time to time in intense concentration. Butler arri
ved noiselessly through the double doors.

'I have sent out invitations to three couples, sir,'

'Do you suppose they shoot grouse?' asked Iffy, still peering up the lens. The O
ld Boys book doesn't contain that sort of information, sir.'
'No, no, you fool, up there.' He pulled his head away and refocussed his
eyes on planet earth. 'In the sky, on Mars, do you suppose, they shoot grouse, o
r maybe something else? Fascinating thought, eh?'
'Fascinating,' echoed the Butler, not fascinated at all.
'Well, what are they called?' shouted Iffy, returning to his telescope.
'Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison, Brian Taylor and Mark West. They are all ma
rried and none of them know each other because of their differing ages
.'
'Well I know one of 'em,' declared Iffy. 'Ro derick, a real prat. We used to
stand on his ears after rugger and smear jam on his balls. Those were the days,
eh? Well, splendid work, Butler. If the other two are as dumb as him, we're awa
y. He paused. 'God I wonder what sort of woman would marry a carthorse like tha
t? Anyway, Butler, I've done my bit too.'

'What's that, sir?

'I've persuaded that lecherous old paedophile Wing Commander across the moor to
lend me some lunatic spy chappie to build these grouse for me. He's coming to w
ork for me immediately. I tell you Butler; in the words of the immortal Sherlock
Holmes, the game's afoot!'
'Am I to understand that my services are no longer required?' demanded
Butler, feigning hurt.
'Eh? Snorted Iffy. 'No, of course not. This bloke's not a butler. When I saw him
he was a plum pudd. . .' Iffy hesitated awkwardly,' ... a er, er
plummy sort of chap. Peach of a fellow if you get my drift.'
'Where will he stay, sir?' asked Butler coldly.
'Oh you won't see him,' replied Iffy in a more jolly tone.
'He's sort of undercover. Could be anyone. Could be in that teapot over there, h
aw haw haw.'
'Will that be all, sir?'
'Yes, Butler. Yes, off you go. Great days ahead, eh? Great days.' He looked at h
is feet and began to sing in a nasal, toneless monotone . . .
'And did these feet, in ancient times, walk upon England's mountains g
reen, and was the holy, er, grouse of Iffy .. Haw, haw, haw.

The laughter faded as Butler, with supreme self-control, closed the door and sto
od outside the study. He pressed back against the cold stone wall, his thoughts
racing. New chap,spies,undercover agents. It was bad enough ignoring his idea,
disregarding his invention, but getting in somebody else? Butler could see his f
uture usefulness fading fast and that would mean unemployment and that would me
an... He stiffened as sweat started to form on his palms. His face turned pale a
s memory returned.
'John Butler' declared the Judge. 'Fraudulently selling the mortal remains of th
e deceased is a serious charge; no less serious is burying the wrong bits of t
he wrong bodies in the wrong graves. You will go to prison for ten years.'

John Butler had not meant to go into crime but death was just not what it used t
o be. His job as a driver for an undertaker's firm did not pay well. People were
living longer dying more violently and paying less for burial. He got the idea
when he buried one of the victims of the famous 'Tandoori Dismemberment' murders
. He left the little finger of the deceased and filled the rest of the cof
fin with sandbags. Nobody was any the wiser.
It was but a short step for Butler to start burying the wrong peopl
e substituting the remains of demised local villains for 'Loving Jeffrey 75 tak
en suddenly by the hand of God, RIP'.
Loving Jeffrey meanwhile was being carved up by medical students at the
London Hospital in Whitechapel.
'Bodies ' muttered Butler aloud still rigid against the Laird's study wall.
'Cold smooth neat and orderly. Nothing out of place not like this bloody spy thi
ng. Fucking out of order.'

His cultured tones gradually diminished into a gravelly cockney slang. For John
Butler was really from the East End. Butler was his nickname in Wormwood Scrubs
where he acquire the false accent and practised better bulling on the more impo
rtant inmates. His face contorted in agony as the flashback continued.
Cell 10; to jack 'Five Quid a Slash' Munro ('Slasher' for short) who had been gi
ven four life sentences for disembowelling his uncle and his family with a Stan
ley knife 'He took tea to after a disagreement over a game of conkers.
'Your tea sir ' he announced, standing in the cell doorway
'Sling it on the bed, my man,' wheezed Slasher, an asthma-sufferer since childho
od. Butler stood by the grey, coarse blankets which
covered Slasher's bunk and bent over to pour the tea into the cracked prision mu
g. As the tea arced into in, John Butler froze. He could feel the erection b
ulging against his prison suit; a huge lump, like a baby's arm, was trying to pu
nch it's way out of his fly zipper, struggling restlessly beneath the materi
al.

Butler blushed bright red; he couldn't understand it. He had never had such a st
irring. This may have been a result of his father's 'character training'. His fa
vourite method was to tie a rubber band around Butler's scrotum and beat his bal
ls with a cricket bat.
'You've got a fucking bonk on,' coughed Slasher indignantly. 'You're
pouring my tea wiv a fucking stork on.' Slasher dropped his paper and leapt to h
is feet.
'Sorry, Slasher,' the horny tea maid croaked, frightened out of his wits. Slashe
r brought his corrugated, unshaven face right up to Butler's nose, so close that
Butler could smell his foul breath. It was as if a cow's bottom had exploded ev
ery time he spoke.
'You're a bleeding poof, aren't you Butler?' Butler's jaw moved, but no sound wo
uld come.
'I like poofs,' grinned Slasher, dropping his pants to reveal filthy yellow-
stained Y-fronts, 'and I'm going to 'ave you.'
Butler's eyes opened. He had been outside Iffy's door for only thirty
seconds, but he was already drenched in sweat from head to foot, his heart palpi
tating wildly. Since that day, in the Scrubs there had been no trace of an erect
ion, no stirring of physical sexual desire, only the detached clinical search fo
r an expression of his tortured mental desires. He had escaped from the prison i
mmediately afterwards. Lord Iffy had found him on the run, naked in a ditch on
Findidnann estate. Butler recognized a kindred tortured soul in Iffy, with hi
s top hat, tails, stockings, suspenders and thigh boots; whilst Iffy took
the opportunity to fire all his servants and replace them with this new, ho
rrendously low-paid alternative. Butler knew he owed everything to Iffy, and
he wasn't going to let him become ensnared in this latest insane escapade, for b
oth their sakes. He lurched across the hall towards the servant's quarters. He
had to see it, his own invention, touch it, caress it. He fumbled in his waistc
oat pocket for the key to his dream.

The locked door swung open, and Butler's eyes lit up. 'There your are, my beauty
, your time will come.' he breathed reverently. It stood there. A glea
ming riot of steel cylinders and pistons, two feet tall, on telescopic mountings
. It ran on twin caterpillar tracks, each six inches wide, which could pursue a
victic across all terrain at speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. 'Iffy was ma
d no to listen to me', Butler whispered.
'Mechanical grouse,' he snorted. 'Spies, weirdos. But he can't kill us my beauty
, oh no.
' He sat down next to the machine.

I have a plan to make Iffy see sence, and then you and me and the good
Lord Boatrace will make pots and pots and pots of money.'
He smiled and took a last look at his brainchi
ld, his creation, the mechanical expression of his tortured p
syche, the engineer's dream - Pelvotron, the perfect penis.
4

Upper Cut and Upper Crust

It was a small, three-bedroomed, middle-management-level new home, in a new town
slightly north of London and almost in the countryside. The man of the house ha
d been in the Navy for a short period of time after leaving Thigwell public scho
ol but had left, under the advice of his Commanding Officer, after his three-yea
r, short-service commission was up. During his brief spell in the service of He
r Majesty, our man at number 33 Nouvelle Drive had succeeded in bending the sha
rp end of a frigate, hitting a mine in a minesweeper and almost sinking a submar
ine he was visiting by omitting to close the door on the top of it. Subsequent t
o his departure from the Navy he had become a moderately successful insurance sa
lesman. He seemed to have an uncanny knack of pre-guessing all risks.

He had met his sweetheart in the local supermarket near Portsmouth, where he ha
d just recently demolished a fifteen hundred-tin display of South Afric
an sliced peaches. 'Awfully sorry,' he cried, wading through the mass of dented
cans to rescue the small, bullet-like human beneath them. 'Bastards!' screamed t
he woman, for that was what she appeared to be. He blushed. He had never heard a
woman swear before. He wasn't even sure what it meant.
'Oh, er, AWFULLY AWFULLY SORRY,' he gushed.
'SOUTH AFRICAN BASTARDS!' she yelled, glaring
at the shop management who had gathered round menacingly.
'I shall have to ask you to leave the store... '
'Capitalism, greed and racism hand in hand!' interrupted Margot, thumping the be
suited employer in the chest with a half-pound tin, 'and you are selling it, and
persecuting me.'

Our exnaval officer stepped boldly forward to interject.

'Excuse me, sir, but it was I who . . . 'He broke off. The woman had just
broken the other man's nose with her tin of peaches and there was blood everywh
ere.
'Gosh,' mouthed Tennison.
'Come on, you berk.' She grabbed him by the wrist and smashed through the emerge
ncy exit to her waiting Morris Minor. She jumped into de driving seat.
'Push it then, you dumb shit,' she screamed. He pushed. It started he jumped
in and off they roared.
'I say,' he shouted. 'I've left my trolley in the supermarket. . .' She smacked
him across the head with incredible violence.
'FOOL!' she exploded. 'But you are a man, and ALL men are fools.'
'Oh,. . . Yes,' agreed Mr. Tennison, stunned.
'But I need a man, and you are a man,' she continued logically.
'Oh, er, yes,' agreed Roderick, brightening up.

'You are a very tall man, a very big man.'She swung the wheel into a right-hand
turning, almost flinging Roderick out of the door. 'And I need a big man to impr
ove my stock...' She gritted her teeth and sweerved to avoid a bus, '... to
improve the women of the future to continue the STRUGGLE.' She slammed
her foot on the brakes and skidded to a stop.
'We're here,' she declared, flinging open the door.
'Where?' enquired Roderick.
'The registry office. We're getting married.'
'What? Exclaimed Roderick in horror. 'We're jolly well not.' And so they married
. Her maiden name was Margot Smith and so it remained, for she refused to change
it.

'Do you think my ears are too big?' enquired Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison, e
yeing his reflection in the kitchen window. His ears were, in fact, alarmingly
large, as were his nose and protuberant front teeth, but then, Roderick Morte D'
Arthur Tennison was a giant of a man. He puffed his chest out, but the bulge in
the belly of his Aran chunky-knit sweater simply eased upward like some swallo
wing abdominal Adam's apple.
'Damn fine dinner, dear.' he roared, thumping himself approvingly in the belly.
He looked down at the gluey, speckled grey mess in the sink. 'What was it anyway
, dear?'
'Mushroom bake,' screamed his wife from the lounge. 'And hurry up with
those dishes. Don't use all the hot water, 'cos the kids have got to the bathed
. Vacuum the carpet while I'm gone. . .' The screech faded for a moment but ree
merged as the kitchen door burst open and Margot Smith, vegan, feminist and arde
n hunt saboteur appeared, '. .
And stop looking at yourself in the bloody window all the time. God, you
men are so vain.'

Roderick stared down at the frying pan in his enourmous hairy paws. He tried to
speak, but missed his chance.
'I shall be gone awhile so don't wait up. Don't watch ITV, it's one of those
bastards Charles Bronson things and I don't want Emily seeing that sort of thing
while her awareness is impressionable. Got it?
'Jolly good, love,' mumbled Roderick amiably while Margot heaved a deep breath.
'Where is it tonight?'
'Church hall meeting. Anti-leather goods. We're organizing a boycott of the new
shoe shop in town, murdering bastards. . .'
Roderick looked down nervously at his new leather sandals and crossed his gigant
ic, sock-encased toes.
'Gosh, dear, jolly good show.'
Righto, well I'm off then,' said Margot, struggling to get an anorak over
her denim overalls.

'AAAurgh,' she stamped her feet finally into bright yellow Wellington bo
ots and opened the back door.
'Byedear,' called Roderick, waving a white soapy hand.
'Oh yes,' said Margot, totally ignoring him. 'And no bloody wanking while I'm go
ne. I want a full load when I get home tonight, not the usual ten ccs.' The door
slammed shut and she was gone.
He finished the washing up, washed the kids, hoovered the carpet and
watched BBC 2. Finally, he picked up the letter that had arrived tha
t morning addressed to him â not many letters arrived like that anymore - and whic
h he had secreted away for this moment.
He opened it, read the invitation, then carefully folded the paper an
d slipped it into his apron pocket. 'Good old Iffy,' he exclaimed. 'I jolly well
shall go.'
5

A Friendly Pair

The Edinburgh express screamed through the night, twin Paxman Valletta diesels p
ushing the 'Durham Light Infantry' locomotive past 125 miles an hour. The hundre
ds of millions of pounds spent on developing the world's fastest diesel
train had provided comfort and safety for millions
of passengers but, as Laetitia P. Taylor, formerly of Dallas, was explai
ning in the bar coach, the service could always be improved upon. '. . . And tha
t goodamn smell when the brakes come on. Yuck. I mean, couldn't they use an air
freshener or something?

I suffer from Rhino Hyper Acuity Sindrome. You know what that is? You know how m
uch that costs to get fixed?' She eyed the Rastafarian train guard curiously.
Methuselah Claude Bimby Gary Smith had never seen a Rhino, although Laetitia wou
ld probably have believe him if he said he had, but despite his long Ra
sta dreadlocks and rakishly tilted conductor's cap, he did know a thing or two
about trains. 'I think you'll find dat it's de disc brakes, ma'am.' He grine
ed a row of perfect white choppers at her.
'And dey nothin' we can do wid de bloodklaat ting.'

Laetitia cocked her heaad to one side. Had she heard right? Bloodclot? She could
n't see what that had to do with anything. Still, she thought, who cares, blood
clot or no bloodclot she wanted to be fucked by a black man, and here he was. He
even had the remmants of a uniform on.

'Oh dear, oh dear.' She fluttered her black eyelinered eyelids. 'I guess I'll ha
ve to put up with my little sniffle then.' She pinched her thumb and forefinge
r together to emphasize the particular nature of her medical condition,
and Methuselah observed her tastefully enamelled false nails.
'It's so hard to breathe like this,' she sighed and inhaled a massive lungful
of air. The effect was instantaneous and astonishing. The coach seemed to shrink
and Methuselah could feel the air being pushed from his body. He looked down at
the massive pair of breasts pinning him against the wall. Sweat broke
out on his brow. He struggled to think of
a parallel experience.. . St. Paul's Cathedral dome, the Hinderburg. . .

'Where does one go pee pees?' whined Laetitia flasing her drilled, filed, flatte
ned, plated, crowned and very expensive teeth.
'In the Khazi, ma'am,' croaked Methuselah. 'Er, I mean de toilet.'
'Oh good.' The chest receded as if planning its next move.
'In America we call it the Rest Room.'
'I don't tink you want to sleep in dere, ma'am.'
'I wasn't planning to, er, what is your name you cute little man?'
'Methuselah, ma'am.'
'Wow, named after a bottle of champagne. I'll go for that. I'll call you
Meths for short.
Now, you show me where this li'l ole rest room is, and I'll give you some more o
f those beads to hang on your wig.'

Methuselah was yanked off down the corridor towards the nearest toiled. He wonde
red where she kept her beads.
'Worraloadofshite' slavered Brian Taylor, spraying his oppo-nent with
Scotch and ginger ale, two pieces of pork pie and a small spit of mustard.
'Fuck off,' came back several pieces of crisps and a shower of bitter
.
'You're not an alcoholic.' 'I fucking well am.'
'Just because you're pissed up every fucking day doesn't mean you're an alky. I
read the other day that you can be an alky on two pints a day, or you can get pi
ssed all the bloody time and be perfectly all right.'
'Look, I'm an assistant editor. I'm Scottish. I'm a journalist, I've got a poxy
American bint who's spent all my fucking money AND THAT'S WHY I'M AN ALCOHOLIC.
' Brian observed the bottom of his glass. It as clear, transparent to his watery
gaze. Time for another one he thought.
'Dyewant another bevvy? He asked. Silence. He peered over the table at the post
rate figure lying on the floor, arm half over the chair, tongue
hanging out, small traces of puke beginning to dribble out of his salivating
mouth. 'Fucking brain surgeons,' he muttered in disgust. 'No bottle.'
'But there must be a bathroom that works on this train somewhere,' hissed Laetit
ia in frustration. 'I know the English have self-control but this is ridiculou
s.' 'De only one left is de staff toilet in the bar, next coach down, and dat is
strictly for the use of employees only.' Laetitia cast him a leering glance.

'Well you're an employee, aren't you. . . aren't you?' She shoved hi

m down the aisle, past the old lady in a woolly hat, past a man with very lar
ge ears and his torpedo-shaped female companion, and
past a businessman intently studying the Daily Mail. 'Shit,' she hissed. 'G
et in quick.' 'What, ma'am? 'My fucking husband, Brian. GET IN, or your
job's on the line.'
The door slammed shut behind them. They were alone in the tiny
cubicle, with its washbasin, roller towels and foo-operated loo.
'Madam,' started Methuselah, trying vainly to exert author-ity. 'I don't do nutt
ing to upser your old man. . .'
'We are alone,' grinned Laetitia evilly, inflating her breasts until t
hey threatened to displace the roller towel dispenser. She grabbed Methuselah's
dreadlocks.

'Ouch,' he yelled. 'Leave it out, woman.'

'Go down on me you Zulu you, pierce me with your assegai, spear me on your wooll
y woomera, you gorgeous spear chucker.' Her eyes blazed with missionary zeal.
'And when you skewer me on your rod of iron,' she added, 'leave your h
at on'.
'You're fucking barmy,' he shouted. 'I'm from Walthamstow.' 'Though shit
, honey, sneered Laetitial. 'You're mine.' She grabbed his balls with one ha
nd and yanked hard, while her other hand ripped open the front of his trousers a
nd closed around his penis. 'Well, well, big boy. 'She licked her lips in antici
pation. 'Oh Christ,' groaned Methuselah in agony. 'Let go of me bollo
cks.'

It was too late. His cock disappeared into her jaws. He watched in horror as he
saw it swallowed inch by inch, down to the root and beyond, until all
that was left were two straggly little pubic hairs sticking out of the side of
her mouth.
Laetitia came up for air.

'I give the best head in Dallas, sonny, and I. . .'

She broke off as she looked down at the lavatory pan. It was about six inches lo
ng, brown and hard, several days old and deposited by a British Rail porter who
had eaten a very heavy fried breakfast.
'Ugh!' Laetitia screamed, pointing one painted digit at the offending
jobbie. 'Gross, double gross. Yuck, excrement. Yuck, I mean what a turn off.'
'Well,' she said, addressing the bowel movement more formally. 'You are
going walkies right now.' And she reached upwards to pull the chain. Brian Tayl
or heard the scream.
'No miss, no miss, don't pull that, it'snot . . .'But his voice was
drowned out by the screech of tortured metal as the emergency brakes slammed o
n and a lot of objects formerly moving in one direction demonstrated
the principle of equial and opposite reaction in a way that would have warmed th
e heart of many a psychopathic physics teacher.
'What's happening?' shrieked Laetitia, cannoning off the walls of the
toilet, propelled by her bouncing boobs.
'You pulled the communication cord not de fucking bog chain, your rassk
laat crazy woman.'

Laetitia grabbed the door handle to steady herself but over-balanced, w

renching the door open as she fell backward onto the loo wedging her bum in the
pan.
'Waagh!' screamed an old lady as Methuselah and his privates were expo
sed to the rest of the carriage.
'Oh oh oh diar, oh oh,' she gribbered helplessly as her tea tray flew into the a
ir and the full teapot landed squarely in the lap of Roland Wilkinson, busines
sman, still engrossed in his Daily mail.

'AAArgh!' screamed Roland, leaping into the

air and clutching his steaming genitals, the copy of Men Only hid
ing behind his newspaper falling open on to the table, to be grabbed by a ferret
-like Margot Smith.
'Sexist pig, child abuser, paedophile, bastard!' She felled poor Roland with
one rabbit punch to the throat. 'Filth!' she yelled, hitting him
with the magazine.
'Frightening old ladies with mucky magazines!' She ground her teeth
together.
'AAAurgh!' she exclaimed finally as she kicked him in his tea-stained pr
ivates.
'Help me!' screamed Laetitia, worried that the jobbie floating inches
below her large bottom might re-enter from whence it came.
'Oh man, oh man,' groaned Methuselah, cowering in a corner and shaking like a le
af. Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison stood up to his full height of six foot fou
r.
'Righto,' he boomed, 'Who's in charge here? Is there a doctor in the
house?' He strode towards Brian Taylor, who was still slumped in his c
hair, paralytically drunk. 'See him,' slurred Brian, indicating the body lying
on the floor.
'He's a fucking brain surgeon.'
6

Food Glorious Food

Mark West woke up at nine a.m. In his large double bed and flailed his arm in s
earch of his wife. The bed was empty. He looked at the clock, sat up and investi
gated the room. No sign of her. He flopped back into bed.

'Oh shit,' he muttered. Holding his fifteen-inch penis in one hand so as

to prevent it wrapping around the furniture, Mark investigated the bathroom. Sh
e was not there. 'Not again,' he groaned and pulled on some slippers and
a dressing gown. Finally, he took his fifteen-inch long hand-knitted willy war
mer and tied it firmly around his knob, fastening the woolly toggle at the top e
nd to the hook attached to the armpit of his dressing gown. He smirked as he re
called Cynthia's explanation of the knitting of his penis cover as 'some
thing to keep the garden rake warm in winter, mummy'.
'Yawning and stretching as the morning sun streamed through the windows,
he went downstairs and picked up the post. He wondered carelessly where the hell
Cynthia was. Scratching at his itching scalp, he opened the lounge door.

The air was thick with infernal blue-grey smoke, like huge floating do
llops of atmospheric phlegm waiting to slide in his lungs. Mark could almost t
aste the twelve-hour-old stale cigarrette butts as he beheld his wife Cynthia, a
ged twenty-five, sprawled out on the carpet, her legs around the neck of the nex
t-door neighbour and her tights hanging from the rubber plant. Cynthia was snori
ng loudly and wheezing from last night's cigarrette-and- brandy binge. Her face,
normally attractive - the kind of face that men like to come all over in Danish
magazines - was contorted and twisted by her drunken application of make
-up at forty-five degrees to her natural features. The record on the turntable w
as still rotating uselessly as the arm flopped against the end stop. The evi
dence of alcoholic excess lay all aroud the room:
dirty sticky glasses, poisonous-looking stains of spilt Scotch and brandy, and
half-empty beer cans filled with old cigarrettes.

'Morning, dear,' remarked Mark dryly, delivering a kick to her exquisitely shape
d rear end. The velocity of his kick propelled her pubic bone with not inconside
rable force into the face of Arthur Desiree Whale, the transexual music journali
st from next door. 'Ouch.' Arthur rolled over, rubbing the bridge of his nose
. Cynthia snored on. 'Hard day at the office, dear ?' asked Mark sarcastically.
'Must've fallen asleep.' said the she-male, rubbing its eyes.

'Good job for you you're wearing trousers for once, otherwise I might have saved
you the Surgeon's bill and chopped it off myself,' Mark returned acidly as he
trudged off towards the kitchen. He made himself a cup of tea and read the mail.
Two final reminders; a free film offer; and a long, slim white envelope, emboss
ed with a crest of some description, postmarked somewhere in Scotland and sent
with a second-class stamp. He opened it and read the invitation.

The 25th Laird of Findidnann, Lord iffy Boatrace, cordially invites you on behal
f of the Thigwellonians to a most extraordinary dinner party and sportin
g weekend at his country residence, Findidnann Hall. Mark turned the gold edged
card over. No RSVP he thought. His Lordshipe will be glad to entertain you from
the afternoon of the second of September until the morning of the fifth, all a
ccomodation, entertainment and meals will, of course, be provided.

Mark took a sip of tea. 'Why not?' he thought. 'It would keep Cynthia a
way from her weirdo friends for a while. Who knows, he and Cynthia might even
manage to make love for the first time in six months. He did still vaguely love
her, he supposed.
'Mmmm,' he said out loud, nodding approvingly to himself. The door han
dle moved slowly and a claw-like, broken-finger-nailed hand pushed open the k
itchen door, followed by an arm and then the trunk of the drunken, cros
s-eyed Gorgon Cynthia West, alcoholic, friend of strays and waifs, and downward
ly mobile amateur bag lady.
'I hate you,' she spat, swaying on the door handle for support.
'Oh?' said Mark brightly, 'Why?'
'Because you're always fucking right.'
'Yes, I suppose I am,' sighed Mark and walked past her, out of the
kitchen. Cynthia staggered to the fridge door and pulled it open, her eyes perf
orming tumbling rotations as her cracked, lipstick-rimmed mouth repeated her pos
t-alcohol culinary litany.
'Chocolate spinach cheese Locuzade.' One by one,
the dietician's nightmare became reality. 'Ham eggs crisps milk prawn cockta
il tandoori chicken.'She wobbled to the table
and began to consume all these things.The grill
was turned on and she cooked more food. Then she consumed that as well
. Fried eggs swallowed whole, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms.

Twenty minutes later she threw up voluminously, spraying the kitchen with
tandoori spinach, prawns in Lucozade and two fried eggs which splatte
red yellow all over the Laura Ashley wallpaper.
Mark re-entered and saw Cynthia's head in the waste disposal unit. He was tempte
d to switch it on, but he did still vaguely love her.
'You're not well, are you dear?'
'Yuri Gasgarin,' she vomited loudly.
'First Russian in space,' announced Mark brightly. 'Vostok One.'
'I hate you.'
'Oh dear', Mark responded, unperturbed. 'Never mind. I've fixed up a
nice weekend for us in Scotland, away from all those perverted friends of yours
. You never know, we might even FUCK.' He turned swiftly and slammed the door.
Cynthia looked up from her internal evacuations.
'Scotland,' she barked hoarsely. 'I hate Scotland.'
'I hate you,' she screamed.
'I hate you.'
'I hate you.'
'Yuri Gagarin,' she finished, and stuck her head back in the sink.
PART TWO

The Solution

A Dubl'une Welcome

The remote village of Dubl'une was named after the Spanish galleon which, in the
days following the rout of the Spanish Armada in 1588, had run aground on the
rocks of the nearby coast and spilled its cargo of men and gold. Despite being
fel-low Catholics, the local Scots had slaughtered the survivors in
a most ungentlemanly manner until the last remaining Spaniard, J
ose Barcelona, had revealed the whereabouts of the treasure. The village becam
e known as 'Dubloon Town', and by the twentieth century it had acquired
an apostrophe and an origin known only to the most exacting local historian. T
he only clue to this strange past lay in the name of the village pub,
'The Bonny Hacienda', and its landlord Jock McVitie Barcelona. Apart from this,
the village had one petrol pump, run by the same gentleman. Jock also
operated the post office (never open), a small chapel, and a ship whi
ch sold most things, including contraceptives. But none big enough for Mark
West, who was su nning himself on the gently sloping main street, admiring hims
elf in the shop windows, and generally thanking God for having created h
im in his image.
'Why did you bring me here? It stinks,' moaned Cynthia, who was trailing
ten feet behind him and sweating profusely in the late summer heat.
'You're so unromantic,' Mark replied. He took a healthy-sounding deep breath. 'T
he land of heather and haggis, lying contented in the pastures, roamin' in the
gloamin'. . .'
'Get lost. You're only after one thing,' sneered Cynthia. 'Find yourself ab
knocking shop and someone to match your own maggot-infested mind.' They had arri
ved on the morning train (there were only two a day) and Mark had decided to de
lay their arrival at Findidnann Hall so as to have a look around. He was particu
larly fascinated by the antiquity of the petrol pump mechanism, which he dated a
t 1925, and on the subject of which he was an expert. So much so that he was e
ntitled to use the initials PS, meaning 'Pump Specialist', after his name
, although he never did. He thought it rather pretentious.

Cynthia meanwhile, not thrilled by Mark's liquid passion for pumping ap

paratus, had retired to the chapel with a handbag full of kit-kats, where she ha
d prayed fervently for an Act of God to strike down her petroleum- obsessed part
ner.

'The rest of the chaps should be on this train,' declared Mark brightly, turning
to Cynthia, who was now at the bottom of the station approach drive, staring
misty-eyed at a vending machine full of whole-nut chocolate. Mark strode confid
ently on to the platform. He admired the way that the station, with its single t
rack but two platforms, symbolic of greater days, had nevertheless been
immaculately cared for. The wild flowers suspended from the white
-painted wooden canopy seemed to glow in the afternoon haze. The tranquility of
the scene and its contemplative effect on his psyche was only improved by the ea
rnest efforts of a wasp he observed paying ardent attention to the immaculately
clean and empty wastepaper bin, circa 1920, about which he was also an expert.

'Any minute now,' he muttered eagerly, looking at his wrist-watch.

The train was late. A good half an hour late. Cynthia had emptied the vending ma
chine and retired to the ladies toilet to examine a chocolate- inspired boil on
her neck. Mark read the timetable repetedly, but found little of interest since
there were only two trains a day. Then he heard the
whistle and, eagerly standing on the edge of the platform, saw the yellow-
painted face of the small engine heaving four coaches up the single line some
five hundred yards away.

'Class 31, dear,' he shouted excitedly, being also an expert on trains and their
origins. 'Gosh, what a stoke of luck.' Mark was beside himself with joy.The sou
nd of the engine's whistle threw the entire village into panic. A taxi pulled ro
und the corner to enter the station car park (actually the taxi, the only one in
Dubloon); the local publican checked that he had change in the paper in the lo
o; and a dog barked. It was almost a state of emergency. Mark peered at the taxi
throug the station archway.

'Good lord,' he exclaimed in astonishment. The petrol pump, the station and now
this, a veritable antique on wheels, a beautifully maintained Austin of
1930s vintage. Its lovingly polished coachwork glowed black in the sun, darkene
d glass obscuring the re-polished, leather-clad interior; a real-life time mac
hine on wheels. Mark looked for the Station Master; surely someone woul
d clip the ticket. No museum would be complete without a fossilized servant to
doff his cap. He ran over the taxi, its engine still chuntering amiably.
'Excuse me,' he shouted in a tone of
voice normally reserved for
imbeciles. 'Where is the Station Master?'

The driver's side window erupted in a hail of phlegm, which flew through the air
and ricocheted off the ladies'loo window some twenty feet away. Mark recoiled
in horror. The Boy's Own Paper was never like this. Poking its head out of th
e cab window was the most horrific-looking monster Mark had ever seen.

A Mohican haircut, covered in superglue and hardened like a porcupine's necklace

, bristled out at him. Massive, Continuous, dyed-green eyebrows ran like
a halo around the monster's entire skull. A nail
had been hammered vol-untarily through its nose and a piece of two-year-old
cheese hung from each ear lobe. As it flashed and unpleasantly surly grin at him
, Mark obsreved its ghoulish ripped-appart T-shirt, depicting a monster even mor
e foul than itself, erupting from a well-deserved grave.
'Station Master?' ask Mark nervously. The apparition in the taxi turned
momentarily green.
'Eddie,' it hissed, phlegm ricocheting off the ladies' window once more.
'Well, shouldn't Eddie be looking after his customers?' inquired Mark.

The cab door flew open and the monster stood erect before him, a filthy smirk on
its hellish features. One of its legs was noticeably shorter than the other, em
phasized by its hunch back, which contributed to a remarkable rolling gait as i
t staggered toward the platform on its hobbit-like, three- toed feet.
'Mine,' it yelled, pitching toward the approach
ing carriages, arms
outstretched.
Mark thought of Cynthia. Perhaps the creature would get her. He ... he ... he pa
used.
'No,' he corrected himself firmly. He did still vaguely love her.
The train creaked to a halt and two doors opened. Out stepped Roderick
Morte D'Arthur Tennison, carefully ducking the low exit.

'Lovely day, darling,' he declared, sniffing the air with his alarming
ly large, and therefore excepcionally sensitive, nostrils. The suitcase hit him
in the back of the head, sending him hurtling to the floor, where Margot Smith u
nceremoniously trod on him as she leapt out the carriage both feet first.
'Wildlife,' she screamed, flinging her arms out
in greeting to the wilderness.

'Eddie,' gasped the punk hopping towards her and slavering ravenously. Laetitia
P. Taylor put one hideously overdressed foot on to the platform as if the ground
had rabies, balancing precariously on her spine-deforming high heels. She infla
ted her breasts dangerously and puckered her patent- wet-look glossy lips.
'Bonnie Scotland,' she declared proudly. 'From wh
ence my ancestors may have come.' 'Fuck that shit,' replied Brian Tayl
or, who really was Scottish, and Glaswegian at that.
'Where's the pub?'
'Wonga, wonga, wonga,' grunted the punk, squeezing Margot's breasts.
'Rape !' screamed Laetitia, wondering if she should get her camera. Roderick, me
anwhile, had composed himself.
'Unhand my wife, you bouder!' he roared.
'Stick the nut on him,' shouted Brian.
'I'm going to count to three,' said Roderick, adopting the public school fisticu
ffs position, 'and then I'm going to give you a jolly good hiding.'
'Rape, rape!' screamed Margot, whose attempt at kneeing her attacker in the crut
ch had simply led to shrieks of renewed delight.
'You're so brave.' Laetitia clasped her
hands together, purple nais gleaming in the sun.
'One.' Roderick stiffened his jaw.
'Two.' Roderick flexed his biceps.

The depraved hunchbacked punk span round. The first

kick caught Roderick in the solar plexus. The follow up roundhouse hit him in
the side of the head; then the monster performed two backflips and bounced off
its hump to deliver the coup de grace, a drop kick between the ears. It all hap
pened in a second. Roderick lay groaning on the floor; the creature grinned evil
ly at Margot.
'Carry your bags, ma'am?' it leered, snatching up the suitcase an scuttling
off to the taxi.
'You half-blind pillock!' screamed Margot slamming a yellos, wellington- booted
foot into her laid-out husband.
'Half man, half fucking biscuit, that's what you are.'
'Don't you think you're being a little hard on him?' squirmed Laetitia.
'I mean, he was awfully brave.'
'Fucking shut up, Michelin woman,' Margot spat.
'I don't think we're going to get along on this vacation,' muttered Laetitia, ca
sting an evil glance at Margot and clenching her teeth.
'Well, how extraordinary,' gasped Mark, surveying the chaos littering the
small platform.
'Who the fuck are you?' demanded Brian Taylor bellinger-ently. 'The
Mayor?'

'Mark West actually, fellow Old Thigwellonian.' He strode across the pl

atform, arm extended.'Jolly pleased to meet you.'
Laetitia aimed a kick at Brian's heel.
'Go on then, shake his hand,' she hissed.
'Have you been dwon the pub yet? Asked brian, swaying gently in the sunshine and
supporting himself on Mark West's hand.
'no, actually I don't drink,' Mark smiled

Brian Taylor's face froze as his pickled brain analyzed the situation. A lunatic
vegetarian feminist still remonstrating with her prone monster of a husband, a
mentally retarded prince Charles special if ever he saw one. Behind, was his o
wn spendthrift, dick-hungry wife, stinking of perfume; and now here was mark
West, a chinless wonder par excellence. God knows waht his missus was li
ke
'Mark!' screamed Cynthia, from the ladies. 'Help, Mark, help me!'
'Cynthia!' yelled Mark, alarmed.
'Mark!' she screamed again.
'Cynthia!' Mark roared, even louder. 'What is it?'
'MARK!' she screamed the voice, close to breaking point.

Roderick scrambled to his feet and lurched towards the old stone-faced lavatory
building. Many full-backs had quaked in terror at seeing six foot four inches of
number eith Tennison bearing down on them - SMACK - but since the door w
as only six-feet hich and the stone was notably unbending, Roderick foun
d himself felled like an ox. He was hit squarely on the forehead and left with a
bright red bruise.
Margot jumped out of the way as her husband fell back towards her, letting
him slam into the ground, the wind knocked out of him.

'We women,' Margot announced 'can look after ourselves, thank you very much.' Sh
e strutted towards the toilet door.
'Like Mussolini with tits,' Brian Taylor mouthed.
'What did you say?'exploded Margot, who had hearing like a bat. )Some would say
a face like one too.) But any immediate feminine thoughts of violence ceased a
s Cynthia appeared.
'Mark, Mark.' The loo door opened and Cynthia staggere
d out, her
fingernails a white gooey mess and her eyes tight shut. 'I can't see.'
'Open your eyes then,' Mark advised.
'I can't. I was doing my nails an I stuck my eyelids together w
ith superglue.'
'OH, VAIN WOMAN!' cried Margot, like some hellfire preacher. 'You need some sist
erhood,' she proclaimed and pushed Cynthia back inside,
treading on Roderick's solar plexus as the toilet door swung shut. Muffled
cries could be heard from inside. Roderick lay silent on the floor.
'I need a bloody drink,' declared Brian

'That's all you think of, your goddamned liver! When I was on that train, almost
overpowered by that. . . that creature, you were drunk. When we got married y
ou were drunk and pissed into my brother's trouser pockets during the wedding
photos; and now, when that monster tries to rape Margot, what are you?
You're drunk!' Laetitia spat, turning upwind and giving Mark an overpowering w
ave of man-repellent perfume.
'I think we chaps ought to stick together,' said Mark, clearing the nervous
blockage in his throat.
'if I hadn't pulled that communication cord, God knows what I would have had on
my hands. . . ' Laetitia continued.
'Sperm probably,' remarked Brian and belched.

Laetitia's mouth opened wide, and Mark found himself peering inside. It was huge
, he marvelled. He wondered if it was big enough for him to ...
'Well,' Brian continued in a jolly tone, pleased at having shut her up. 'I'm
off for a pint of heavy, see you in hell.' And he woobled off across the cobble
stones, chuckling to himself in a beery, Glaswegian fashion. Laetitia's mouth re
mained open, her bottom lip twitching. It was a trick she had learned from watch
ing bad soap operas. She thought it made her look more vulnerable. Mark thought
it made her appear even more stupid than she looked already.

'Are you all right?' he enquired, using his imbecile and taxi driver tone. Laeti
tia' s feature hardened up suddenly, as if her skin had been covered with leat
her. The dollar signs came back to her eyes and her cheerleader's grin returned
as she licked her lips and ran her tongue over her lovingly polished canine
s.
'My husband,' she drooled viciously, 'is an impotent asshole.'
Roderick stirred in the corner, sitting up and holding his temples in agony.
'I've got a frightful headache,' he moaned.
'You poor man, and so chivalrous, so daring.' Laetitia tottered fifty-two steps
towards him, in her excessive little shoes. She bent over and cradled his head i
n her hands Mark marvelled at her clothes. Every possible devide
of feminity had been perverted, to suggest maximum sexual availability.
Even her shoes made it impossible for her to walk witouth gyrating her hips want
only; and when she bent over, the thinness of the
materialwhich composed her diaphanous dress, revealed the suspenders
and stays underneath.

'With that awful friend?' winced Roderick.

Tm afraid it is the only taxi in Dubl'une,' said Mark unhelpfully.
'Oh, very well then, if we must we must.'
The taxi sat outside, Iron Maiden music blasting out of the driver's side window
. Roderick was already in the passenger compartment with his head in La
etitia's lap; and with Mark West, who was moaning in pain as the bass guitar no
tes hammered through his spine and the vocals set his teeth on edge like a denti
st's drill.

'Where the hell is Cynthia?' he shouted above the noise. 'She's been nearly fift
een minutes in there now.' He pushed his head through the window and peered outs
ide. The monster-movie taxi driver leant nonchalantly against the headlamp, che
wing on the piece of hardened glue he had extracted from his nose.
'Oi!' shouted Mark. 'Oi!'he roared, his voice cracking under pressure. The mon
ster flashed a green grin as it turned.
'Turn the fucking music off, we can't hear ourselves think,' Mark shouted. The m
onster looked away.
'TURN IT OF, you fucking mutation!' yelled Mark opening the door and half gettin
g out.
'AAAGH!' screamed the punk, and rushed at him. Mark slammed the door shut and co
wered in his seat as the hairy hand of the beast grped through the open window.
Laetitia screamed.

'Eddie,' it hissed, 'says listen. . . ' It paused, its eyeballs growing white as
it looked at her, her breasts heaving and swelling. 'But for you,' it continued
slyly, winking one glue-encrusted eyelash. It slashed suddenly at the
leather of the back passenger seat. It threw white stuffing over the
occurpants and filled the air with powdered chaff, as if possessed by a demon u
pholsterer. Then it ripped ut a bundle of wires and thrust them between its teet
h, biting and tearing until the cables parted and the cheese
on its earlobes began to sizzle.
The repulsive creature chuckled as Margot and Cynthia approached. The
monster flung open the door and bowed deeply, gesturing with its hand towards th
e car. Cynthia stepped in gingerly, casting an anxious look at Margot who had
remained outside, hands on her hips.
'You animal!' she said through clenched teeth.
'Get in,' it ordered.

'Don't talk to me like that.' The punk rose from its kneeling position and lifte
d Margot across its shoulders. Then, swinging twice through 360 degrees
, it released its load and Margot hurtled through the open door, landing across
Roderick's knees, which cracked loudly. The cab door slammed shut and t
he monster grinned once more.
'Fuck you,' it slavered. 'Bitch.'
The engine roared as the accelerator was floored and first gear span the rear wh
eels as the thirty-year-old antique catapulted out of the car park, handbrake t
urning on the gravel at the bottom of the road. It set off for Findidnann Hall,
disregarding road signs, junctions, other road users and especially pedestrian
s.
8
JOURNEY TO FINDIDNANN

The sun hung like a glowing white-hot poker in the deep blue sky, as the cab con
tinued its manic progress along the hot black strip of tarmac that wound its wa
y, eventually, to Findidnann Hall.

Lord Iffy sat on a milking stool atop the highest stone turret of his house, fol
lowing their progress through his telescope. He tracked them as they sped over
blind, humpbacked bridges, scattering flocks of animals; and as they wreaked ha
voc on the construction site down the road, where new sheep-dip pens were being
built. The cab made the concrete trucks and cement mixers abort in panic as it
scattered workmen and mowed down unwary theodolites. Iffy sat back.

'They're coming, Butler. Dammit, they're coming.' He beamed a grin at the impass
ive servant standing behind him.
'Be prepared man, be prepared.' He stood up and rubbed his hands with glee. 'Sha
ll I prepare tea?' asked Butler. 'No, no, no,' exclaimed Iffy, in an inspired to
ne of voice. 'When the cab comes, grab their bags and chuck'em inside.
Take old what's 'is name, er, er you know, the fellow who runs the taxi service.
. .'
'Jock McVitie Barcelona,' said Butler.
'Yes, yes, yes,' interrupted Iffy. 'Grab him and shove some brandy down him
, he drinks like a fish, the old fool, all publicans do. Then, nip outside and s
yphon off the petrol in the tank. That'll get us into town so we can flog one o
f the damn cars. Good wheeze, eh?'
'Very good, sir,' replied Butler.
'Of course it's very good,' snapped Iffy. 'I thought of it, didn't I? Now then,'
he settled back on to the well-scrubbed wooden seat and screwed his
eye back up to the lens of the telescope, 'let's see what we can see out
there.'

Inside the cab, everyone was silent. Everyone, that is, except Laetitia P. Taylo
r, who had been busy spotting her potential origins as the car roared past the q
uiet, stonebuilt terraced cottages of Dubl'une. She had already recounted the ev
ents leading up to her persuading Brian Taylor to accept Iffy's invitation, and
the resultant debacle of the northbound express train earlier that morning. She
paused in mid-flow to heave a silent breath.
'Anyway, there we were, in the middle of nowhere, me surrounded by drunks, my h
usband totally useless, and that awful black man trying to rape me. If I hadn't
pulled the communication cord then God only knows. .'
'Coloured man,' corrected Margot, snapping her head upright as if she were
a light, suddenly switched on.
'Oh yes,' chirped Roderick, taking the cue from his wife.
'He certainly was. Black as the ace of spades... Oof.' He jack-knifed
forward as Margot slammed a karate elbow strike in his ribs.
'Racist,' she hissed.
'Sorry dear,' mumbled Roderick, head between his knees. Laetitia cleared her thr
oat and turned to Mark and Cynthia.
'You make a lovely couple,' she began primly. 'How long have you been married?'
'Too fucking long,' moaned Cynthia in a low but very audible voice. 'Er, about f
ive years,' corrected mark, through clenched teeth. 'The odd tiff now and
again. . .' he trailed off distantly.

As soon as five years was mentioned. Cynthia turned bug-eyed and thrust her claw
-like hands and plastic finger-nails into the mail sack which hung off her side
like a bloated windsock. She called it her handbad.
'Mars bar?' She drew the confection out and thrust it like a pistol at Laetitia
, her hand gripping the shiny black wrapper which crackled as her arm shook in
withdrawal 'My last one,' she drooled, one eye on the chocolate, one
eye on Laetitia. She lent across the cab conspiratorially. 'We can share it,' sh
e confided. Laetitia looked horrified.

'Oh, no,' she replied sharply. 'Er, I mean, oh no, I have to watch
my figure.' Mark West had been watching her figure for some time. 'Yes, yes,
I have to watch it too,' he murmured absent-mindedly, his retinas locked
on to her bullet-like nipples. 'Fucking bastard,
' added Cynthia and crammed the entire Mars into her mouth at on
ce, propelling the last two inches with her index finger as her lips closed ov
er the chocolate brown end. Mark put his arm around her and whispered in her ea
r. 'Why don't you ever do that with me in bed?'
'Because you're not a fucking Mars bar.' Cynthia screamed and burst into floods
of tears of saliva.
Margot looked up again, hawk-like 'Leave her alone,' she ordered, 'She's upset.'
'She's not the only one,' Laetitia protested, indignant at being written out of
the script. 'I was nearly raped by a black 'Couloured,' screamed Margot.
'NOT BLACK.' 'But I was nearly raped,' insisted Laetitia. 'What difference does
that make?' yelled Margot.

Laetitia smiled wacenly at her and placed her hand on Margot's knee,
patting it gently for emphasis.
'But don't you think,' she said slowly, 'that black men are kind of.
..
yucky?' she smiled.
Margot, for the second time taht day, was dumbfounded, but Laetitia - more sens
itive than a brick but perhaps less so than a bull elephant- interpre
ted silence as permission to continue.
'I mean,' she added, unwisely. 'I think, on balance, that I'd rather be raped by
a white man.'
'Oh really?' exclaimed Mark enthusiastically.
'You fucking would too, you pervert!' screamed Cynthia, grabbing him by the thro
at.
'Now break it up you two,' cried Roderick looking up from between his
legs. 'I mean, all of us chaps are here on hols you know and . . . oof.' His rib
s cracked again as Margot repeated her elbow smash.
'Leave him to me, sister,' she commanded, pulling Cynthia off and looking Mark f
iercely in the eyes. 'You sort. . ..' she began, waggling her finger, but the ca
b had slammed on its brakes ans spun round on the gravel drive of Findidnann Hal
l, throwing the occupants around like poker dice. Butler stood sombrely on the s
econd step of the great stone staircase that led to the huge double front door.
The approaching Austin hit the driveway at about fifty miles an hour. The
wheels spun hard and the terminal, velocity-inspired maniac driving it
giggled in delight as the vehicle slewed broadside on towards the steps, pebble
dashing the stationary butler with damp chippings and sprayed mud from the drive
.

Butler spat out a piece of limestone and turned purple beneath his grey coat of
Scottish road diggings. He clenched his fist in anger, dropping the stirrup pum
p and zinc bucket he held in his right hand.
'Jock McVitie Barcelona,' he growled, sounding very un-butler like. 'I'm going
to fill your'ed in for this.' He strode towards
the driver's compartment.

Inside the taxi, the passenger doors had been locked and the windows began
to look like a tropical piranha tank as the occupants struggled to escape. Br
easts, ears, teeth and a chocolate-covered face all vied for attention,
when the driver's door suddenly burst open and lay hanging from one splintered
hinge.
'You're not Jock!' cried and astonished Butler 'Eddie,' it hissed, slithering
over the bonnet.

Butler backed away, but the creature sprang from the headlamp mounting and grab
bed him by the throat, thrusting him against one of the stone pillars which
flanked the entranceway. Butler could feel its foul breath, just like Slasher's
. He closed his eyes. No, it couldn't be, not after all these years. 'What...
do.. .you.. . want?' he choked. 'Who are you?' The monster eas
ed its grip and lowered Butler to the floor. 'Heh, heh,' it chuckled,
and nutted him on the forehead.

The skillfully delivered Gaswegian kiss put Butler uncon-scious across the steps
for several seconds, long enough for the three-toed, green-eyed mutant
to tear open the luggage compartment and stand on top of the cab roof, hurling
suitcases and holdalls all over the reception area. Finally, it jumped down and
straddled the face of the semi-comatose Butler. It put its face inches away fro
m his throat.
'Mission accomplished, old man,' came the deadpan Alder-shot monotone.
'Sorry we had to meet like this. Got to make it look convincing you know.' He th
umped Butler's face making his nose bleed. 'OK,' it continued. 'That looks a bit
better. Tell Iffy that the grouse are OK for tomorrow.'
'You... you ...' stammered Butler, flabbergasted.
'Fraid so,' returned the green-eyed, three-toed, glue-encrusted punk. 'Can't wai
t to get back to base and burst this bloody water-filled humpback.'
'Whom shall I say called?' groaned Butler, in agony.
'Just tell him. . . the Scarlet Pudding. Be seeing you.'
And with that it ran across the steps, scaled a drainpipe, swung across the ivy-
clad walls, leapt into a tree ... and disappeared.

The front door opened.

'Butler, what the hell is going on here?' demanded Iffy.
Butler staggered over to the balck cab and released the door catch. The interior
emptied its human effluent on to the gravel. Mark West was first on his feet.
'This is not very amusing, he announced
'My dress is ruined,' screeched Laetitia.
Cynthia remained on the floor, exhausted, counting the gravel chips, whilst Marg
ot used Roderick as a doormat as she berated the stork-like figure of the laird.
'Are you in charge here?' she demanded angrily.

â Iâ m Lord Iffy Boatrace, twenty-fifth Laird of Findidnann and master of all that you se
.' he swept his hand across the horizont, like Moses about to spout the Ten Comm
andments.
'You are all my guests,' he declared grandly. 'And my butler is at your servic
e. We dine at nine, but the poet's in the Moet, ho ho ho.' Iffy cackled like a
drain. Nobody laughed. 'Until then,' he paused dramatically, 'au revoir.' And
she slammed the door violently.
'Hasn't changed a bit,' chirped Roderick from the door.
'Mad as hatter,' declared Mark.
'That's what I mean. Hasn't changed a bit since I knew him at school. He was off
his trolley even then.'
'Speaking of trolleys,' Laetitia whirled to face Butler. 'You had better take
our bags into the house. Or do we have to sleep out here tonight?'
'Yes,. You can do some bloody work for a change,' grunted Margot,
addressing anybody who was male.Tm off for
my meditation.' She clumped up the steps in her yellow wellies.
'I have to fix my hair,' declared Laetitia brazenly and toppled towards the
door on her heels.
'What do we do now?' shrugged mark, surveying the empty taxi and the wrecksage o
f suitcases strewn around.

'We do what any English gentleman is taught to do,' smiled Roderick, picking him
self up from the floor. 'Butler,' he ordered sharply. 'Carry on.' And with that,
the two old Thigwellonians strode off happily toward the house Cynthia remaine
d on the floor, ignored by her husband, chips of limestone still adhering to the
r chocolate-covered mouth. She turned her head slowly to where the butler was l
eaning back on the car, ashen-faced, nose smeared with blood, and still ga
gging from the choking he had received.

'What nobility,' she thought. 'What goodness and

dedication, what selflessness and Christ-like capacity for forgiveness he m
ust have.' A tear formed in the corner of her eye and trickled in a salty line t
o the side of her mouth. She could fall in love with a real man like that, she
decided. She licked her lips and tasted her tears. More savoury than c
hocolate she thought approvingly.
9

The Joy of Marriage

Butler was not exactly a haute cuisine chef. Lord Iffy had given him the task of
preparing a dinner for seven people, but he was just not up the task. Still he
presevered and now at least every available pot was steaming, every available ov
en was roasting, and Butler himself was beginning to feel a little more relaxed
as he flitted about amongst the bubbling cauldrons like an alchemist in the fin
al stages of a great work. He was so engrossed in the removal of the huge turke
y from the oven that he did not see Cynthia West dragging her bare feet down the
stone staircase behind him. 'Butler,' she moaned. 'I need food.'

'Good lord.' Butler nearly dropped his turkey. 'You can't be down here, ma'am .
. .' 'Food, I need food.' She grabbed an isolated cucumber from the table in fro
nt of her and gnawed at it rapaciously. 'If you give cheesecake,' she added, Til
fuck you' 'Out of the question, ma'am,' exclaimed a horrified Butler, backing a
way. Cynthia had appeared naked, but for a skimpy white nightshirt, her m
ascara smudged around her eyes like a vampire. She pursued Butler across the kit
chen.

Til be good to you,' she promised hoarsely. 'You can use me how you like. I
just need love.'
'I can make you a ham sandwich,' he stuttered nervously.
'I LOVE YOU!' she screamed and rushed at him, slamming him up against the pantry
door. 'I love you! I love you!' She repeated. 'Ever since setting my eyes on yo
u I have loved you! A man who can clean, who can cook, so godly, so good, so man
ly, so, so . .
.' She caressed the top of his apron. 'So powerful... take me Butler, take me no
w!'
'B . . . b . . . b . . . out of the question, ma'am. Anyway I have the washing
up to do.'
'Washing up.' She put her hand to her breast and raised her black eyes heavenw
ard.
'Washing up. God, I love you . . . mmmmm.' She grabbed a piece of melon
from a nearby tray and swallowed half of it in a single bite.
'I love to wash up,' she munched, pieces of juicy melon sliding down her chin. '
I love to clean, to cook, to serve, to care for my man. I'll do it for you.' She
fell to her knees and grasped the pressed edges of his trousers. 'I love cleani
ng,' she sobbed, her breath breaking into klaxon-like sobs.
Butler gulped. Come back Slasher, he thought, all is forgiven.
'Does your . . . er . . . husband know?' he began.
'HIM!' exploded Cynthia. 'Him? He hates me. All he thinks of is his
cock!'
Butler sympathized; so did he.
'All fifteen inches of it.'
'How much?'
'Why do you think I married him?' she wailed.
'HOW LONG did you say?' gasped Butler.

'I married his knob, that's all, and now I'm sick of it prodding, poking, prying
, dangling on the floor, tickling my neck at night. Everytime he had a wank I ha
d to repaint the bloody ceiling. He said it was stalactites . . .' Butler let ou
t a low whistle of astonishment and biological curiosity. 'You were the recipien
t of. . .'he began slowly.
'Sometimes he used to fold it in half,' she interrupted. You can't take that sor
t of thing for long.'

Butler thought back to his encounter with Slasher Munro.

'No, maybe that was only twelve-and-a-half inches,' he thought.
'. . . And when we first met, he was using a bin liner as a, as a . .
.condom.'She burst into tears again and hauled herself up the front of B
utler's apron till her face was just below his. 'Just don't leave me alone,' sh
e pleaded, grabbing a lump of raw steak from the grill tray and cram
ming it into her jaws. She fell back against the meat chopping table, chewing pa
ranoically and in a few seconds, she had swallowed the lot.
She belched loudly.
'I need a real man, Butler. A whole man, a pure man. I need you.' Her huge
hands ripped his apron away as she staggered towards him once more, lust burning
in her eyes. Butler thought of the raw steak and turned pale. This woman was ca
pable of anything. . .

The shrill tinkle of the front doorbell saved him. The little red counter bobbin
g up and down in the servants' information window told him who was ringing and
from where. 'Ah,' he yelled, far too loudly. 'Front door. Must be going.' He
thrust the entire forty-pound turkey at her. 'Here,' he shouted, 'eat this.'
'Bloody ridiculous,' swore Brian Taylor, against
a red-skied Scottish
sunset. 'Not only was the pub not open, but the publican was a pervert, trussed
up like a chicken. There's been some serious fucking interbreeding up here, I ca
n tell you,' He staggered through the door and glared at Butler.
'Get me a drink, man,' he ordered. 'Your wife is upstairs, sir,' But
ler
responded, back in his element. 'What sort of drink would you prefer?'
'A bottle of Scotch and a glass of water.' Brian
belched and fated simultaneously, rippling the shiny seat of his tro
users. 'Where is the old cow, anyway?' he demanded.

'Let me have your coat and show you to your room, sir,' replied Butler. They mou
nted the stairs, Butler standing behind the staggering Taylor, in case he fell o
ver. Butler led him past Margot and Roderick's room to the one next door, where
he opened the door and watched him topple inside.
'Hello darling,' he slurred, exaggerating the last word venomously. 'What
are we dressed up as tonight - Henry VIII or a fucking Christmas fairy . . .' Th
e door shut and Butler moved off soundlessly, back towards the stairca
se. 'Aaugh!'Thud. 'Aaugh!' Thud.
'Aaaaugh!' Margot finished her fiftieth press-up and bounced off the floor,
breasts flopping across the top of her distended belly. 'I think I'll wear the b
oiler suit for dinner,' she yelled. 'That's nice, dear.' 'Where's my knob?' sh
e demanded.

The half-shaven face of Roderick appeared fom the bath-room, two large cuts blee
ding on his chin. 'The little man in the box?' he said brightly.
'Yes,' she replied testily.'Did you bring my mains adaptor?' 'Under the bed, dea
r.'
She grabbed the large wooden box from under the four poster. In the
bottom of the box, padded securely, lay the device. She set up the base plate a
nd searched for a plug. Finding one behind a chest of drawers, she inserted the
mains adaptor, turning the two-position switch to 'mains'. There were a
series of settings - 'slow rotation,' 'fifteen-minute superstud',
'two-hour rotation', 'lesbian encount er', and 'five-minute quickie'.

She selected the last. Going back to the wooden box she took a scoop of
'looby lube' jelly in one hand, and a copy of Erica Jong's Fear of Flying in the
other. Squatting above the toadstool-like vertical head of the machine, she sme
ared herself with looby lube, turned to page one, switched on and squatted down.
Roderick had purchased the new device from a shop in Tottenham Court Road. H
e remembered how his ears had turned pink when he saw what it was, and ho
w the air had turned blue when what it did was described to him. Now he heard it
, a loud buzzing sound punctuated by jackhammer-like thumps and the familia
r 'aaugh, aaugh' sound of Margot enjoying herself. He
tried to continue shaving but found it impossible as the
mirror began to vibrate.

'Are you all right, my darling?' he shouted above the buzzing and crashing.
'Fuck off, I'm busy. I'm having an orgasm,' Margot yelled back angrily.
'Aaugh,' she spluttered.'Aau . . . Aaaaur . . . AAAAURGH!!!'

Roderick flung open the bathromm door to see his wife convulsing wildly on the f
loor, the huge toadstool monstrosity struggling and jerking within her. Margot's
head had smashed its way through the wardrove door and become trapped, whilst
her arms banged against the wooden sides in submission.
'Aaurgh.'
'Aaugh.'
AAURGH!' she screamed.

Roderick wrenched on the mains cable, but the whole socked ripped out of the wa
ll. 'Aaurgh,' echoed Margot, inside the body of the wardrobe. Roderick
changed tactics and pulled on the base plate of the machine. He had been jolly g
ood at tug o' war at school, but Margot's vaginal muscles, developed by months o
f natural childbirth exercises, held the killer sexual
device in a bull-terrier-like grip within her. Roderick braced his feet
against the wardrobe and heaved with all six foot four inches of his mighty fram
e.

'You'll pull my - AAAURGH! - fucking head off!' cried Margot. Her pelvi
c thrusts smashed through the first floor-board supporti
ng the wardrobe which thr eatened to topple and crush both of them.
'Turn it off, you pillock!' she shrieked.
Gosh, thought Roderick, wasn't Margot clever? And he flicked the switch on the b
ase plate.
Margot's bottom began to stop thrusting up and down in its slam-diving
pursuit of the orgasmic, but then began to rotate, as if she were being roasted
on a spit.
'You idiot!' she yelled. 'You've put it on two-hour rotation. Help me. Help me.
AAAAAAYAAAUGH!!!'

Roderick rushed into the hallway, stark naked, and banged on the next door.
'Oh, crikey, open up. Margot's being attacked by a huge electronic worm. Do open
up, please?'
'Permit me, sir,' came a voice behind him,. And Butler reached above his head to
the fuse box. The house plunged into darkness.
The lights came on again a few seconds later. Butler stood holding the offending
vibrator by its mains leads as if he were a fisherman displaying a prize lobste
r.
'Awful thing,' muttered Roderick aghast, peering at its glistening oily head.
'Oh, my goodness me,' whimpered Laetitia beholding Roderick's massive naked f
rame.

She pressed her gold-painted nails to her mouth.'What has been going on?' She ex
amined Roderick's hairy chest, hairy navel and huge hairy balls. Her jaw dropped
.
'Oooh,' she squealed. 'A naked man.' And her bottom wiggled in horrified
delight.
Brian Taylor's balding, curly-haired head appeared around the doorway. He grinne
d at Roderick.
'Been giving yourself a good dicking, have we?' he chortled.
'Why, er, well, F, stuttered Roderick, his ears glowing and his balls
retreating into his abdomen.

'Brian!' admonished Laetitia. 'Can't you see he's upset? You poor boy,' she cooe
d, pinching his scarlet cheeks. 'It must have been awful.'
'Worraloadof shite,' spat Brian Taylor and went back to bed.'
'Cynthia,' yelled Mark West from the room three doors down.
'Cynthia!' he called again, emerging out onto the landing with a torch
'Hello,' he said brightly as he saw Butler. 'Good job I was in the scouts, you k
now. Be prepared and all that.'
He indicated the torch. 'I was sure i could hear Cynthia a moment, ago. Have you
, er, seen her?'
'No, sir,' replied Butler, lying. 'Perhaps she went to take some air before dinn
er.'
'Oh God, no,' muttered Mark, grasping the torch firmly. I'd better go and look f
or her.'

With that he set off forthrightly down the stairs.

Butler remained motionless holding up the device.
'What,' he asked distastefully, 'shall I do with this?'
'I never want to see it again,' stammered Roderick firmly. 'Infernal thing . . .
get rid of it.'
'And will Mrs Tennison be all right now, sir?' Til let you know, Butler.'
'Then I shall continue to prepare dinner for nine o'clock, sir.' Butler padded n
oiselessly off down the hall.
'Well,' said Laetitia, taking the opportunity to visually rape Roderick one more
time.

'You'd better get some clothes on. Otherwise, 'she added, licking her lips in th
at predatory smile, 'you'll turn blue.' She giggled and shut the door. Butler re
ached the bottom of the stairs, out of sight of the bedrooms, then broke into a
run and hid behind the cloakroom door. He had it now. He looked at the dildo in
his hands. This act of God. How ironic, that through the pursuit of the Laird's
madcap grouse-shooting scheme, his own idea could now be brought to fruition.
Fate was on his side. He would finish it... Tonight, he thought, with an inward
smirk of joy. Roderick shut the door quietly. The wind was knocked out of his b
ody with enormous force
as Margot headbutted him in the stomach.

'Next time,' she yelled, 'leave me alone when I'm coming. It's my body, so it's
my right to choose. Now get on the bed and get your dick hard.'
'Yes dear,' gasped Roderick painfully, glad, anyway, that Margot still
loved him.
PART THREE

The Best Laid Plans

10

The Maiden Run

Mark went outside into the chill of the swirling Scotch mist. His electric torc
h beam cut through the damp air perhaps only thirty feet in front of him. It fas
tened on the deserted wreck of the taxi and followed the line of the driveway un
til it was swallowed up by the pitch blackness.
'Cynthia?' he called nervously, still standing on the stone steps, his shadow ca
st by the yellow lights of the bedroom windows. Mark shivered; he did not like t
he dark and he was afraid of ghosts, of which there were probably quite a few ro
und here. He knew, he was an expert. 'There are no ghosts,' he muttered to himse
lf firmly, and set off down the driveway clutching the torch.

The gravel drive met the roughly tarmaced single-track road which glis
tened black in the moisture-laden atmosphere.
Mark followed it, scanning his flashlight from left to right and periodically
calling his wife's name. The road followed the contour of the moorland and dropp
ed into a small depression. Mark could see the comforting lights of Findidnan
n Hall being extinguished one by one as the crest of the hill rose
behind him.

Then he was surrounded by blackness and silence, apart from his footsteps, which
seemed to be reflected back at him by the blanket of mist. 'What the hell are t
hose?' he exclaimed suddenly, catching sight of some regular and very unusual-lo
oking indentations in the boggy soil at the side of the road. He peered more clo
sely. They were quite clearly made by a creature with three toes, and one human-
shaped foot. Mark thought back to the three- toed, furry-legged taxi driver. 'S
omething damn funny is going on here and I'm going to get to the bottom of it,'
he vowed resolutely. He set off in pursuit. The tracks continued behind the ridg
e, out of sight of Findidnann Hall, for about five minutes and then cross
ed a small stream which although full of water, lay still and cold in the ni
ght. The tracks vanished on the other side.

'Shit,' he hissed, shining his torch around. He knew what had happened. The mons
ter had moved along the line of the stream, almost certainly away from Findidna
nn Hall, and the tracks would reappear later on. In the meantime,
any casual onlooker would simply be puzzled by
their disappearance, and would be put off by the water.

'It really was a good job I was in the scouts,' thought Mark as he
gingerly placed his foot into the knee-deep, icy water. Then he set off in purs
uit once more. Butler had locked the door at the top of the kitchen stairs and r
aced down the stone spiral steps, hands shaking as they gripped Margot's murdero
us rubber rocket. At the bottom he almost fell over in his haste to rush towards
the door, behind which his mechanical love beast lay. Flakes of white paint sh
owered him like dandruff as he kicked the door open with indecent haste and rev
ealed the machine within. He fell upon it with an orgasmic cry of joy,
grabbing a spanner in one hand and unsheathing the steel stump over which
the rubber head would be moulded. With a small metalworker's mallet he softly ba
ttered Margot's toy until it fitted snugly. Then he applied the molecular adhesi
ve which would bond rubber to metal as if they were one. He giggled manically an
d rubbed his hands ..

Together with glee, doing a little dance on his tiptoes at the same time.
'My beauty,' he smirked. 'A little bit of brasso to polish up your cylinders,
some lubricant on the sharp end, and you'll bring a smile to anyone's face .
. . What's that? He moved like lightning to the doorway as he heard
groaning from the kitchen. 'Oh fuck it, she's still here, ' he snapp
ed remembering Cynthia. 'Oh well, I'll tell her to sod off and ... 'he froze.
Cynthia's torso lay spreadeagled on the meat chopping table, dressed so
lely in her which cotton nightgown. Her feet were on the ground and her buttocks
undulated underneath the material like two copulating ferrets. Her head was s
tuck firmly inside the carcass of the forty-pound turkey which Butler had thrust
at her before answering the front door. All that remained of the turkey was s
kin and bone.

'What have you done with my turkey?' he cried furiously.

'Eaten it,' groaned Cynthia.
'How did you get your head stuck inside the carcass then, you useless piece
of baggage?'
'Trying to eat the rest of it,' answered Cynthia.
'Yuri Garagin,' she vomited violently, the turkey carcass slamming up and down o
n the end of her neck as its semi-digested breast meat exploded through the b
ird's sternum like psychedelic liquid concrete, cascading across the chopp
ing table like and incoming tide. Cynthia caught sight of Butler through the hol
e in the side of the bird's rib cage where she had blown out the contents of he
r stomach.

'Butler,' she gurgled. 'Fuck me now.'

'Fuck you?' he screamed. 'Fuck you? I wouldn't. . .' An evil grin crossed his fe
atures and his black eyebrows angled down sharply. 'I wouldn't say no,' he utter
ed softly, licking his lips.

Cynthia hoisted her nightdress over her hips, revealing deliriously fleshy butto
cks crossed with a suntan line caused by the briefest of bikinis. She thrust a h
and between her legs and started to masage her moistening furry snatch.

'Take me,' she shuddered, the turkey carcass tossing from one side to the other
in ecstasy.
'Yes dear, yes darling, yes my precious . . . My sweet, mon petit chou
chou.' Butler's voice faded as he checked Pelvotron's equipment in the other
room. He ran down the pre-sex check-list: power
terminals connected, erectile fluid prepared, orgasmic cycle correctly adjusted
(he didn't want a premature ejaculation on the first test run), telesc
opic mountings operational - all was ready.

'If you don't fuck me soon. I'll scream,' shouted Cynthia histerically.
Buttler looked up and took a deep breath. This was it. He flicked off the contro
l panel cover and switched on. The machine emitted an even humming sou
nd as the electrics began to pump fluid around in readiness. A green light appea
red on the panel. 'Ready.' Butler turned the silver key to the right and a red l
ight clicked on. 'Armed.' His eyes lit up as if arc lights had been switched o
n behi nd his retinas and his quivering finger pressed the last three command bu
ttons: 'Seek and Penetrate'. 'Full Auto' and, the final on, 'Initiate'.
'Now,' he growled. 'Go get her, old girl.'

Mark's legs were numb with cold. He had been knee-deep in the freezing water of
the muddy stream for five minutes now, wading trough the swirling mis
t, and still no sign of any more tracks. He had begun to despair when the stream
forked off to the right, the main body disappearing into the night.
Mark examined the new tributary with his flashlight. The edges of the c
hannel looked as though they had been dug at some point with a spade. He shone t
he light on the surface of the water; the stream led straight into a samll hillo
ck, a large patch of heather bristling over the point where it disappeared. He
climbed out of the icy brook and squelched upwards. Grasping a thick cl
ump of the bush, he pulled.

'My God!' he gasped, as the heather swung aside on oiled hinges to r

eveal the lair within. The entire hillock had been carefully excavated and lands
caped. Mark had His Backwoodsman's badge from the boy scouts, but this hide, wel
l, he'd never seen anything so professional.

The beam of the torch fell on the contents of the nest. In the corner lay
two large, plastic, three-toed furry feet; a dayglo coloured Mohican wig,
with plastic skull cover; various other artefacts of a theatrical nature and an
empty, waterfillable plastic hunchback. The light continued around the walls. I
n the last corner lay a huge pile of dead birds slung on top of one another haph
azardly, perhaps fifty of them in all. 'Damned fishy,' Mark exclaimed, closing t
he door, switching off his torch, and cocking an ear to see if he had been follo
wed. 'Damned fishy,' he repeated and splashed back into the stream to go home.

What Mark West did not see were the small, radio-controlled antennae that sprout
ed from the head of every 'dead' bird, and the tiny propellers that protruded
from each anus.

Butler's machine pivoted on one caterpillar track and squeaked across the kitche
n floor, its bulbous end gleaming as lubricant was sprayed upon it every 1.2 se
conds precisely. Cynthia was almost on the point of orgasm.
'Hurry up, Butler, dammit, hurry up.'

Butler moved behind her and placed two trembling hands on her buttocks, parting
them slightly to afford a better view. The huge head of the machine was efficien
tly positioning itself behind her vagina and was doing its sums. Bore, stroke, t
iming and angle required. The hidraulic steel tube slid out another two inches w
hilst the telescopic mountings dropped the angle for better upward thrusting.

'Now! Now!' Cynthia screamed.

But the machine was patient; it was waiting for the eact dead centre of the labi
al cleft to gyrate into its cross wires.
'Yesss!' Cynthia's body stiffened as the metal rod shot forward like
a
stiking cobra, the hissing pneumatic release plunging it deep into her
womb. No sooner had it hammered her ovaries once than it withdrew like lightnin
g, squirted more Lubricant on its work surgace, and struck again. The entire cyc
le took precisely 1.2 seconds.

Butler held on to Cynthia's buttocks fiercely as the machine struck more rapidly
, adding a further four telescopic inches so taht the piston-like head was alway
s inside her, and was striking from within.
'Stop!' she screamed. 'Haven't you come yet?'
'I'm a long stayer,' shouted Butler above the
hissing and squirting lubricant. He was a little perturbed; th
e machine was programmed to come, but had no done so. He examined the two si
lver Christmas balls he had suspended under the hydraulics. They were empty. He
had forgotten to fill them with ejaculatory fluid and without it the machine wo
uld not stop. If the machine were to go into orgasm mode without any means of e
jaculating itself... 'Good God,' he thought. 'Two hundred and fifty str
okes a minute is okay for five seconds, but for any longer. . . '

He release Cynthia's buttocks and ran into the pantry, crashing through the shel
ves and looking for a pot of double cream.
'Who's there?' wailed Cynthia. 'Butler, were are you?
Butler, Butler, But. . . Wooargh!'

Butler dashed out of the pantry, the bucket of cream in his hands, but she was g
one. He looked down the long, stone-flagged corridor that led to the tradesman's
entrance at the rear of the house. The door had been battered down with enourm
ous force, and twin caterpillar tracks led up the embankment and out onto the mi
sty moor beyond. In the distance, Butler could just hear the distant whine fadin
g.

The delinquent Pelvotron hurtled over Findidnann moor like a rabid man
battle tank. Instead of a gun, though, it bore a gyrating, white-robed figurehea
d, face covered with a turkey carcass, impaled upon its pistoning probe and was
pitching over the heather at thirty miles per hour.

Cynthia was screaming abominably from inside the turkey' s innards as two hundre
d and fifty thursts per minute penetrated her swollen cleft with the 'kerchung
kerchung kerchung' report of the compressed air used to initiate the orgasmic
cycle. The high-pitched whine of the electric motors cut through the silence of
the mist. It would be a long time before the batteries ran down...

Butler was distraught. He looked hopelessly at the track disappearing into the m
ist. His machine, the mighty Pelvotron, gone, perhaps forever. A tear formed in
the corner of his eye. It was his life's work and now ... And
now... He slumped, ashen-faced, against the outside wall, unable to
concentrate his mind. He looked at his watch. It was 8.15 p.m. The reali- zation
hit him like a thunderclap. He had no turkey, no main course: that wretched wom
an had eaten it.
'Get a grip, John Butler,' he muttered, thinking in cockney.
'Pull yourself together.' He thought deeply. No one knew Cynthia had seen him or
been in the kitchen, and no one would ever find her out there on the moors on
a ni ght like this. 'So.' He sniffed the air sharply. 'A main course, my lad.'
Butler glanced at the bucket of cream in his hand, and then at the caterpillar
tracks of Pelvotron. There, in the light of the kitchen doorway, were numerous
shiny brown globules, most frequently dropped out of the backs of rabbits. Butle
r grinned and evil grin.

'Bit of cream, Worcester sauce and mustard, they'll

taste just like vegetarian meatballs.' He put the bucket of cream on the si
nk unit and went to find a shovel. Mark West was halfway back down the main cour
se of the Stygian stream when he heard the noise. 'Bats,' he thought. The noi
se drew closer and a distinct rhythmic moaning could be heard, as if a hound of
hell was loose on the moors. The hairs on the back of his neck felt needle sharp
and his palms began to sweat.
'There are no ghosts,' he growled, grinding his teeth. This was obviously some
sort of trick, he thought, or else he had disturbed the maniac taxi driver in
the course of whatever nefarious work he was up to. Mark scrambled ou
t of the water and hid behind the ridge. Whatever it was, it was coming closer.
He would wait until it was almost upon him and them ambush it. Mark gripped his
flashlight for reassurance. He damn well knew how to belt somebody with it as w
ell, he thought. The screaming and wailing seemed to fill the moor as Mark Wes
t stood up and switched on his torch.

'The game's up, whoever you are.'

Pelvotron flattened him as it ran along the crest of the ridge at top speed. One
of its tracks knocked the legs from under him as he performed an involuntary s
omersault which drove the wind out of him. Mark picked himself up. He had not s
een whatever had hit him in the darkeness and he had lost his torch. He was now
very frightened indeed.
The awful device ran down the hill at the end of the ridge, still pumping
'kerchung kerchung kerchung' in its orgasmic attempt to shoot its absent lo
ad. At the bottom, the robot ran around in a small circle and headed back the wa
y it had come. 'Mother!' screamed Mark West.

The rotten cadaverous head, pumping and jerking in mid-air, bore down on him l
ike the fifth horseman of the apocalypse on PCP. The white burial shro
ud flapped in the wind as the fiend rode on top of the mist, threatening to ope
n up the very gates of hell itself with its blood-curdling shrieks.

'AAAAGH!' Mark threw his arms up in the air and dived off the ridge, running in
panic through streams, across bogs, into thick clumps of bracken, unti
l he fell exhausted on to a large rock. He could neither hear nor see the pha
ntom which had attacked him. He also had no idea whatsoever about where
he was. He took a pace off the rock and was swallowed thigh-deep in bog. 'Fu
cking hell!' he exclaimed. 'Well, I got in here somehow, so I must be able to ge
t out. Lucky I brought some matches. Be prepared and all that.' The matches were
soaking wet.

Pelvotron ignored the being that leapt out of its path as it careered down the r
idge with a female glove puppet stuck on its prong. The water of the stream how
ever was a different problem altogether and the caterpillar tracks groun
d into the mud flailing uselessly, sinking down until Cynthia's feet splashed in
to the water two hundred any fifty times a minute.

The water soaked everything, but especially the two Christmas tree balls which
were totally submerged and now full of smelly Scottish stream water. 'K
erchung kerchung KACHUNG PSSSS.' A huge jet of water squirted from the h
osepipe-sized nozzle in the glans of the beast, shooting Cynthia straight off th
e end as if a water cannon had been fired up her arse. She flew through the air
a full six feet before splashing into the stream face down, turkey beast bone up
wards. She did not move.

Pelvotron, however, found its ejaculatory fluid being instantly replenished by t

he ditch water, and spent its next happy orgasmic hours squirting evel- smelling
liquid around the moors, like a Thames fire boat.
11
Dinner is Served

Iffy had been at the brandy before dinner. As matter of fact, Iffy had been at
the brandy since the guests arrived, and Butler was dreading the cons
equences. He remembered the last time that Iffy had hit the bottle, on a trip to
a small but very influential Arab Emirate. Lord Iffy, sent by the Foreign Offic
e in a grave error of judgement, staggered off the plane clutching a
vodka bottle and cast a lecherous eye over the
1,000 masturbating Arab schoolchildren laid on in his honour.

Zigzagging up to the Sheikh and his yashmak-clad 250th wife, he shook the wife'
s hand first, addressed her as Darth Vadar, and asked if her husband
was a Catholic on account of all the children. There were questions i
n the House of Commons. Butler shuddered. Presently, Iffy was juggling hard-boil
ed eggs very badly whilst perched like a rooster on the arm of his chair at the
head of the table.

'Not bad, eh?' he shouted tremulously, the eggs all coming to rest in his blanch
ed white hands at last.
Roderick, Margot, Laetitia and Brian all remained unimpressed. They'd
had a long chaotic journey and now this crane-like,
squawk-voiced, interbred aristocrat was trying to do a circus trick. They
were all very hungry.

'Oh well, suit yourself,' muttered Iffy with a sigh. 'BUTLER!' he yelled.
'Get the scoff on the table!'
'Very good, sir,' Butler went to fetch the main course.

The formal dining room at Findidnann Hall was, as one would expect from
such a savage country, largely military in decor. Stern family portraits of
the warriors in the family ancestry of Findidnann lined the oak-panelled walls,
and, guarding the double doors at each end of the room, were four full sets of a
rmour, each equipped with a twelve-foot pike in its mailed fist. Above the tw
enty-foot long table itself, right in the middle of the room, hung a massive
crystal chandelier. Butler wheeled in the main course trolley, unveili
ng the meatball substitute in cream and mustard sauce. Margot peered at i
t, genuinely puzzled.

'What is it?' she demanded sharply.

'A vegetarian dish, ma'am,' Butler replied.
'Vegetarian? That's very enlightened. I'll have two portions then,' smiled
Margot proudly.
'What's it called?' chirped Laetitia.
'Rabbit Findidnann,' Butler said with a smirk, as he loaded Margot's plate.
'RABBIT?' Margot screamed, grabbing Butler by the throat.
'Er, rarebit, ma'am,' he choked, palms sweating.
'What is it in French? Squaled Laetitia. 'I mean, all cuisine is in French if it
's any good.'
'Ahem.' Butler cleared his throat dramatically. 'Rarebit a la derriere,
ma'am.'
'How romantic.' Laetitia claped her hands together.
'I want meat,' Brian Taylor grunted, emerging from his gin and tonic. 'Not this
rarebit shit.'
'We don't have any I'm afraid, sir.'
'Why the fuck is there a bloody great carving tray and a full set of meat knives
laid out then?' Brian wheezed.

Butler was stumped momentarily.

'Tradition,' he replied.
'Bollocks.' Brian Taylor re-entered his glass.
'Whatever, whatever, whatever. Just serve the wretched
stuff, I'm famished,' ordered Iffy.
'Rather,' smiled Roderick, pleased that Margot
was quiet for a few seconds. Dinner continued. Laetitia talk
ed about herself, Brian Taylor talked to his bottle, Roderick tried to get a
word in edgeways but was heavily ignored, and Margot consumed
three pounds of overdone vegetables and had seve
ral helpings of rarebit derriere. Iffy waited until the
foul-tasting coffee had been served, then slipped off one of his stilettos and
banged it like a gavel on the table top.

'A toast,' he proclaimed, screwing in his monocle. 'Absent friends.' Butler had
a violent choking fit in the corner. 'Are you all right, Butler=' asked Iffy su
spiciously. Butler noded silently, red faced. Iffy cleared his throat.
'Fellow Thigwellonians and consorts,' he began. 'I'm not his consort,'
growled Margot menacingly.
'I can't even play a musical instrument,' giggled Laetitia fluttering
her eyelids. Iffy's face bore a pained expression. He began again. 'Friends,
Thigwellonians, countrymen. . . ' 'I'm not a man. I WILL NOT be ster
eotyped,' ranted Margot.
'For Christ's sake bloody well shut up and listen to me the lot of you!'
roared Iffy, his eye growing bloodshot behind his
monocle. 'More democratic-sounding, anyway,' Margot muttered.

'Thank you,' he hissed. 'Tomorrow at two p.m. we people assembled here will mak
sporting history. For several generations my family has been breeding a
race of super-productive birds, based on a popular sporting species, w
hich will result in their being available for sport all year round. But,' he p
aused for effect, 'but only here, on Findidnann estate.' 'Jolly clever,
' shouted Roderick, enthusiastically clapping loudly until his ears blushed and
he had to stop.

'I didn't know birds could play basketball' tittered Laetitia over the
cracking of Roderick's palms.
'Sport?' mumbled margot. 'What kind of sport?'
'Shooting,' Iffy announced. 'The humble grouse, long since ennobled, will acheve
a new notoriety, a new lease of life as the Iffy grouse, superior in every way,
supercedes its. . .'
'Over my dead body.' Margot stood up, flinging her napkin down into her unfinish
ed rabbit droppings.
'That can be arranged,' wheezed Brian, who had his head on the table.
'Shut up.' Margot threw a bread roll which hit his bald head and bounced off int
o a corner.
'Don't you behave like thi s is a country and western movie,' screeched
Laetitia also standing up. 'This is a stately home.'
' I'll behave how I like, you over-titted American pig.'
'Good show, eh Butler, what?' enthused Iffy.
'Poor, innocent creatures!' cried Margot, 'This is a weekend of mass m
urder, poor innocent creatures blown to pieces by aaaaurgh!'

She stamped her wellies and went purple.

'Steady on, old horse,' said Iffy, taken aback.
'Murdering fascist!' she screamed. Iffy ducked under the table as she
hurled a plate of rabbit's droppings at him like a frisbee.
'Worse than Hitler,' she screamed.
'Nothing wrong with Hitler,' muttered Butler, who had all of his albums, under h
is breath.
'Class traitor!' ranted Margot, taking advantage of her bat-like hearing to
excuse her throwing a table knife at him, which missed, shattering the
glass case and finally coming to rest in a stuffed Labrador.

Butler dived behind a suit of armour as Iffy's head popped up from u

nderneath the table and grinned at Roderick.
'Food fight, old chap. Every man for himself!' cried Iffy, hurling a
chocolate mousse at Laetitia.
'Oh, rather,' exclaimed Roderick, bounding out of his chair and pelting the cowe
ring Butler with cold brussel sprouts.

Iffy's mousse stuck pneumatically to one of Laetitia's breasts chocolate dribbli

ng down the rhinestone-studded crinolene.
Laetitia stood up in panic, eyes popping out of her skull, mouth agape,
arms rotating.

'Brian!' she screamed. 'Brian, do something,' she began systematically s

ticking a fork in the neck of her paralytic husband.
'Hit him for me, you asshole! Wake up, you bastard!' she yelled, drawing
blood with the prongs.
'You upper-class dickhead!' shouted Margot at Roderick
. 'This is a fucking class war, not a fucking lah de dah bunfight.'
'Not any more it isn't,' called Iffy as he spin-bowled an orange at Margot's
temple.
'You fucking bastard. I'm going to kill you!' she roared, grabbing one of
Brian Taylor's well-observed carving knives and baring her teeth. Roderick
grabbed her arm.
'Steady on, old girl, he is the host you know.'
'Aaaaaurgh!' Margot chopped at the air as Roderick tightened his grip.
'Kill him, kill him, kill the mother-fucker, he ruined my dress,' wail
ed
Laetitia.

Iffy cackled histerically.

'Still a vegetarian, Margot?' he guffawed.
'Excuse me, ma'am,' said Butler, crawling towards Laetitia on his hands and knee
s from behind the armour, 'But if I may clean your dress. . .'
'Don't touch me!' Laetitia screamed histerically and hurled a silver coffee pot
at him. Laetitia was a lousy shot. The coffee pot clanged into the suit of armou
r once worn by the fifteenth Lord of Findidnann, rattling its metal plates as it
rocked on its base. The twelve-foot metal-tipped pike, which balanced precario
usly in its mitten, dislodged and fell swiftly towards the door, severing the el
ectric cable which not only supplied the power to the huge chandelier, but also
suspended the massive construction which hung Like the sword of Damocles over t
he struggling Margot Smith.
The pike was still pretty sharp after three hundred years and Butler
watched open mouthed as it sliced cleanly through the cord with an al
mighty blue flash. Simultaneously, the dining table was split asunder and Margot
's spluttering screams of indignation were silenced as the chandelier crowned h
er, choppi ng the oak table in two as it crashed down in a splinteri
ng haze of shattered bulbs and fragmented crystal. The room remained in
pitch blackness for a full thirty seconds.

'Fucking hell, Butler!' exclaimed and astonished

Iffy. 'Fucking good fireworks, what!'
'Aaaurgh,' Margot groaned feebly, half brained by the bras centrepiece of the ch
andelier.

Butler felt his way around the walls and found the door; his hand curled up arou
nd the doorknob and he pulled himself to his feet.

SMACK! The double doors burst open and a awoodworm-infested panel

smashed into the servant's nose, re-opening the afternoon's nosebleed and
knocking him to the floor. Silhouetted against the hall lights stood
a hunched figure in rags, trembling and smelling distinctly of ditch water.
'What the hell have you done with Cynthia?' snarled Mark West.
The wall lights flicked on around the room. Iffy stood by the door at the other
end.

'Bit late for dinner,' he remarked dryly.

'You did it.' Mark West pointed at Iffy.
'Not me, old man - never had it, never will.'
'Then it was you!' screamed Mark, advancing on the smi-comatose Margot with his
hands in strangulation mode. 'You and your bloody plastic abomination
, you kidnapped her, didn't you?'
'Steady on now,' muttered Roderick, releasing Margot's knife hand an
d clasping Mark fraternally around the shoul-ders. 'We're all friends here you k
now, remember the school song:
'Thigwell Thigwell all stand together Thigwell Thigwell all kinds of we
ather Thigwell Thig. . . Aaargh'

Roderick clasped his buttocks as Margot savagely thrust the carving knife into h
is juicy gluteus maximus.
'Blood, blood, oh my God.'Laetitia swooned and flopped all over the ba
ck of her comatose husband.

Til bash your brains in, you cow,' growled Mark, renewing his approach on Margot
as Roderick rolled on the floor clutching his bum.

Two enourmous explosions rocked the walls as Lord Iffy let off both b
arrels of a twelve-bore Purdey into the ceiling, bringing down bucketfuls of loo
se plaster and chunks of splintered wood.
'Not tonight you won't,' declared the Laird sharply,'one attempted murder a day
is quite enough, eh Rodders?'
'Just a flesh wound, Iffy, I'll be fine tomorrow. Wouldn't want to miss the shoo
t,' Roderick grinned painfully.
'Yes yes yes, jolly good. Well, stick a plaster on it. You'd better see to that
wife of yours, most extraordinary woman. She is a woman I suppose?' he muttered.
'Now, Butler,' he ordered, turning to the cowering servant, 'See Mr. West
to his room.'
He jabbed the barrels of the gun towards the door. 'I shall see to the good
Mrs Taylor ...
Myself.' He smiled thinly. 'Go on, sod off,' he roared and Butler scuttled out.

Mark grabbed his sleeve as they turned the corner and were out of sight of the d
ining room.
'Butler,' he whispered. 'I have to speak with you. Look, old man, Iffy's a fruit
cake, Roderick's half-baked and Margot's in this thing up to her neck. I think y
ou're the only one here I Can trust. Listen.' He caught his breath.
'There's something damned weird going on out on that moor.'
Butler stiffened anxiously.
'You'll think I'm crazy, but I saw a white-ro
bed phantom with a disfigured head, screaming like a hell hound
and riding through the mist two feet off the ground.'

Butler went white and grasped at a chair for support.

'Then you have seen it,' gasped Mark. 'You've seen it too, I'm not raving mad.'
Butler nodded silently. He certainly had seen it.
'And that's not all,' Mark continued. 'I've found the lair of that homicidal cab
driver out there. Only he's not really a driver, and he's not really a punk be
cause I found his disguise. He's a proacher dammit -1 saw all the birds.'

Butler's ears pricked up. 'Oh really? Where might one find this poacher's lair?
I'm sure the Laird would thank me for nipping this chappie in the bud . . .'
'Look,' offered Mark, ' I'll tell you where it is, you just help me to find
Cynthia. I know a conspiracy when I see one . . .'
12

Bumps in the Night

Iffy watched as Roderick extricated Margot from the chan-delier and sta
ggered off to bed arm in arm with her, a large red patch staining his breeches
where the carving knife had entered. When they had gone, Iffy placed the Purdey
on the dining table and emptied his pockets of the half a dozen shells he had ta
ken just in case. He looked at the clock. It was eleven p.m.

'Time for bed, Mrs taylor,' he grunted, slinging the corpse-like Laetitia over h
is shoulder in a fireman's lift. 'But first,' he added enthusiastically, 'a few
questions.' He went up to his study and locked the dor.

He dumped Laetitia in his favourite high-backed chair, coughing irritably as the

dust billowed out of the cushions; he lit an oil lamp in the corner of the room
and set it on the table next to the American. Then he took a tape measure from
a drawer and measured her breasts. He measured their individual size,
volume and circumference. With a pair of vernier calipers he measured the nippl
es and finally with a pair of dividers he measured the size and capacity of her
mouth. Iffy sat down with a sheet of paper and a slide rule for five minutes the
n after scribbling incomprehensible symbols by the light of the oil lamp sat bac
k satisfied.

'I think,' he mused. 'I know all about you, Mrs Taylor.' He got up and strode ov
er to the bookshelves, running his fingers down the book spines until he found h
is late uncle's works. He examined the titles: Breasts and Women's Brains, The P
sychology of Mammary Glands, The Nipple and the Empire, and his greatest work H
uman Psychology as Determined by Breast Mouth Relationships. Iffy's uncle had b
een fascinated by breasts
and Iffy longed to continued his research, specially with such an obviously
degenerated and low creature as this awful colonial female. He examined
the tables in the book, correlating his measurements with their predictions. Lae
titia began to stir.

'Where am I?' she moaned.

'You're quite safe,' said Iffy soothingly. 'You're friends.'
'Are we alone?' she asked wistfully.
'Yes, we are,' replied Iffy, jotting something to a small notebook.
'This place is so wonderfully romantic.' Laetitia sighed. 'So peaceful after tha
t horrid dinner with that awful woman.'
'You mean Margot?'
'Yes, her. The Goodyear blimp.' She looked around the room.
'What's that?' she pointed at Iffy's telescope.
'That is my window on the celestial world, my view of the stars. I am something
of an amateur astronomer.'
'You mean it's a telescope?' she translated.
'Yes, it's a telescope,' said Iffy, somewhat deflated.
'Let me see,' she asked.
'Oh, I don't know if that's

But she had already grasped the brass cylinder and was peering out on to the mis
ty moor.
'For hundreds of years men have seen this veiw, and now they are all gone.
Only their spirits remain, shadows in the old oak walls which have seen all but
which tell nothing, such is the depth of their knowledge.' She clasp
ed her hands together poetically.
'Lord Iffy,' she said joyously. 'I feel as though I have been part of this
tableau before, perhaps in another life, maybe I was destined to meed you .
. . 'she trailed off, misty-eyed.

How awful, thought Iffy, what a dreadful woman.

'Are you implying that you might in some way be related to me?' he asked sternly
.
'Perhaps spiritually,' she implored.
'What's your maiden name?' he demanded, taking a copy of Burke's
Peerage from the lower shelves. Tortellini,' she replied.
'But that's Italian,' he exploded, slamming the book shut.
'So are your shoes,' she snapped, looking at his Gucci stilettos.
'Don't see what that has got to do with my parentage.' he retorted.
'Just take my word of it.' Laetitia clasped her hand over Iffy's pud
gy fingers.
'Take me into your clan,' she whispered.
'Eh?' said Iffy.
Laetitia dragged him on to the balcony overlooking the moor and leant on the bal
ustrade, her bottom thrust out at him. She looked down at the thirty- foot drop.
'I feel giddy, Lord Iffy, I feel weak from the height, take advantage of me.' Sh
e slapped her own rump firmly.
'Impregnate me with the blood of the Picts, the Scots, this savage island nation
. Give me the Dunkirk spirit. Invade my Normandy, breach my portcullis.
'
'Just a minute,' shouted Iffy nervously, running in to grab his uncle
's psychology manual. He hadn't bargained for this. He had been a virgin for all
his thirty-five years, having never found a woman whose blood was sufficiently
blue for him to intermingle with.

The hand of the twenty-third Lord of Findidnann, formerly dead and tho
roughly stuffed, reached out of its glass case and held Iffy firmly by the wrist
as he ran past.
'I wouldn't do it if I were you, sir,' came the gruff Aldershot monotone.
'You,' hissed Iffy. 'You've got a damned nerve. My uncle would turn in his grave
.'
'He wasn't using the body at the time, sir, so I took the opportunity to set up
an OP here.'
'OP?'queried Iffy.
'Observation Post, sir. All part of the job.'
'Have you ever had sex over a fire scape?' yelled Laetitia.
'Beg pardon?' shouted Iffy.
'Wow, being up this high makes my head go al gooey, and I feel really horny and
I want you ... RIGHT NOW !' she demanded.

'Coming dear,' replied Iffy, who had no intention of so doing.

'Well, what the hell do you want, and what am I going to do with her?' he
whispered.
'And make it fast.'
'At this very moment, Sir, I have observed one of your guests, Mark West, in col
lusion with your butler, plotting your permanent demise.'
'Good God, I must investigate at one.'
'Sink me with your Socottish Armada!' wailed Laetitia.
'What the hell am I going to do with her?'
'Leave her to me sir,' said the corpse, releasing Iffy's wrist.

Iffy belted along the corridor and ran down the stairs to the dining room. It wa
s empty, apart from Brian Taylor lying in an alcoholic slump at the other end o
f the table, and the house was silent. More significantly, the double-barrelled
twelve bore and six cartridges had disappeared from the table. Iffy started to s
weat.
Laetitia had become frustrated.
'Why can't i ever get laid in this country?' she roared, in a fury.
The glass display case opened and out stepped the twenty-third Lord of
Findidnann.
'Who are you?' she gasped.
'I am the twenty-third Lord of Findidnann.'
'But you're dead, you're stuffed!' she exclaimed in horror.
'Not all of me,' replied the Aldershot monotone.
'Wow!' she marvelled. 'Aristrocratic necrophilia. Oh well, who gives a shit.'

The snapping of suspenders echoed out across the moor. Brian Taylor ro
lled his head over so that his ear rested on a dinner plate. The dining rom slow
ly came into focus. He stared down at the crippled table across which he was spr
awled, its back broken like some torpedoed aircraft carrier, its centre covered
with the demolished chandelier. Shards of crystal sprinkled the surrounding floo
r, and a trail
of blood led towards the main doors.

'Whatthefooksgononhere?' grunted Brian, pushing away from the table and sitting
upright with difficulty. He looked at his watches. There were three of them, and
all six hands told the same story - half-past five. Mr. Taylor
belched loudly.
'Opening time, my boy.' He rose unsteadily to his feet. 'Time for a bevvy.' he w
heezed and lurched over to the drinks tray.

The drinking habits of the Glaswegian alcoholic are akin to those of a grizzly b
ear let loose in a honey shop. One day, David Attenborough might even make a fil
m about it. Until then, however, Brian Taylor made his traditional comment on di
scovering that all the bottles were empty.
'Worraloadofshite,' he slavered, drooling from one side of his mouth as he
inspected the empty bottle tightly, he staggered through the doors, fell
down the stairs, told a stuffed badger to be quiet and fell out into the early
morning blackness, as he headed towards the 'Bonny Hacienda'.

Roderick snored loudly. Immediately after dinner he had put Margot to bed where
she lay in the four-poster like a large mound of pillows stuffed under the sheet
s, and then he had stuck a huge, cross-shaped plaster on his bottom. Now he lay
contentedly, curled up in a foetal position, his woolly hat firmly in place, his
thumb stuck in his mouth, and a set of very warm furry long-Johns covering him
from hairy chest to hairy toes. Margot lay alongside him on her back, arms by he
r side, legs and body ramrod straight, her feet bolt upright beneath the covers.
Suddenly, her eyes snapped open like roller blinds.

One hand swiftly removed the cold compress from her head, and pulled on her over
alls and boots. Roderick continued to snore as she crept silently out of the b
edroom and stealthily moved downstairs.

Butler clutched the map he had been given by Mark West. He now knew where the wr
etched creature had its lair and he knew when the birds in it would fly, but for
the last few minutes he had been racking his brains trying to think of a way t
o despatch the despicable secret agent. He crept upstairs to the Laird's study.

He listened quietly at the door before he pushed it open. It squeake

d protestingly and a floorboard creaked on the landing as Butler's highly polis
hed leather shoes glided into the room. Butler flicked on his torch. The beam f
ell upon the glass case formerly occupied by the twenty-third
Laird of Findidnann.

'My God,' he breathed. 'Empty.' The beam took in the rest of the room. On the fl
oor lay various pieces of ladies' underwear, various parts of the dead Laird's u
niform, a tape measure and a set of vernier scale calipers.
Butler stood puzzled for quite a few moments. He thought he knew the Laird prett
y well, but after what Mark had said, and now. . . this. Butler knew of the Lai
rd's predilection for dressing up in women's shoes and even stockings, but only
below the knee. Never had stooped as far as garter belts.
and knickers, or ... he gulped, dead men's clothing.
Actually, dead men's clothing was something with which John Butler had had plent
y of dealings in his more criminal capacity. He had frequently hired out the su
its of the deceased for further funereal occasions, but he couldn't imagine the
market for a nineteenth-century red tunic and trousers. Butler's train of thoug
ht snapped back to the present as he heard a rustling noise beneath the balcony
window. Soundlessly, he moved over to the telescope and peered over the bal
ustrade into the flower beds below. There was no sign of anyone. He waited for a
few seconds, then re-entered the room and quickly ran his torch along the book
titles on the library shelves. The beam stopped and Butler removed a slim, bla
ck paperback from the dust-encrusted woodwork. He smiled at
the title - The Part-time Anarchists' Guide to Booby Traps and E
xplosive Devices.

'This should do the trick,' he muttered, sneaking out to the landing, with the
book concealed in his trousers. As the doors closed, the rustling bene
ath the balcony began again, as if a small rodent was excavating a burrow. But
ler did not hear it.

Mark West heard everything. Locked firmly in his bedroom wardrobe and covered in
a sheepskin coat, he grimly gripped the bread knife which Butler had l
oaned him for protection. His teeth ground together all night in fear, suspicion
and rage, but his paranoia about ghosts had intensified to such a degree that
he felt incapable of action until morning. He listened intently to the house a
nd its occupants, the wind moaning as it whirled around the damp walls outside.
He listened to the creaking footsteps on the
landing and in the hall, the opening and closing of the front door three
times, and the squeaking of hinges from Iffy's study, which happened tw
ice. Mark lay still, hardly daring to breathe, vowing to recover Cynthia and to
exact a horrible revenge on her kidnapper.

Butler crept through the tradesmen's entrance, past the shattered remains of the
back door through which Pelvotron had left. Picking his way through the now def
unct vegetable garden, he arrived at the gardener's shed. The gardener had not
been to Findidnann for several months now (the Laird was too poor to pay him),
and no one had been near the shed. Butler pushed against the rusty lock and t
he wooden door eventually gave in. He shone the torch around the cans and bucke
ts which were stacked up on the shelves.

Five minutes later, Butler, stagered back into the kitchen, his arms full of pot
s, nails and tools. He laid his terrorist utensils on top of the draining board
and peered at the instructions in the book.

Pressure cooker, weedkiller. . . He checked off the ingredients in the recipe

. . . Sugar, rusty nails, ball bearings, rubber band and an old crow scarer. He
smiled a thin smile. Whatever was out there, he'd do for it tomorrow. . . for go
od.

Lord Iffy crouched, stooping in the old priest's hole behind the portrait of his
uncle in the hall, his eyes peering out of the slits in the picture where his u
ncle stared haughtily down at the front door entrance. He squatted silently, w
atching as three shadowy figures crept out through the front door at various tim
es in the night, the second one apologising profusely to a stuffed badger. O
nly two returned before morning..
13

Taking the High Road

'Here we go, here we go, here we go'. Brian Taylor raucously zig-zagged down the
windy road away from Findidnann Hall in pitch darkness, singing his favourite f
ootball chant as he went, his bottle raised to the invisible moon beyond the m
isty sky. As he reached the bottom of the hill he stopped, swaying helplessly
. He had run out of words to sing. He looked at the crest of the hill, three of
them as a matter of fact, and a broad lopsided grin crossed his alcohol-numed fe
atures.

'You take the higheeh rooooad,' he began slowly, 'And I'll take the low road...'
Then he stopped again, his pickled brain unable to recall the rest. Brian Taylo
r put himself on the starting blocks. He was back at school, the fastest 100 m
etres in Motherwell. He crouched in the mist and lurched forward, scrambling
up to the top of the hill.
'YOU TAKE THE HIGH ROAD' he screamed at the top.
'AND I'LL TAKE THE LOW ROAD.' He plummeted to the bottom again.
'And I'll be in . . .' there was the lopsided grin again, ' . . . SCOTLAND BEFO
RE YE!'

He tore up the hill again with unusual coordination and hurtled down the oth
er side, falling face down in the Stream where Pelvotron continued to squirt
obscenely into the night.
'Kerchung kerchung pss, kerchung kerchung psss.'
Brian extracted his face from the mud and watched admiringly as the little machi
ne pumped away furiously.
'Wha hey, Mac Scottish Mac Roadworks. You're doin a good job there
sonny.' He slapped its metal belly.
'Good lord.' He suddenly noticed the white-clad, turkey-headed body of
Cynthia lying in the ditch. 'My God!' he exclaimed. 'A dead mac sheep.' She
didn't move.
'Probably that filthy big-eared pervert Roderick,' he
murmured unreasonably. 'Anybody with a wife who wears wellies in sheep country .
. . Too dodgy, eh? He addressed his empty
whisky bottle again. 'Well, goodnight to ye, ye bonny Scottish Mac Roadworker
s.' He paused. 'What's tha?'

In the gloom he saw a bright light fizzling in the damp air.

'Time flies when you're having fun, eh? Jock McVitie Barcelona, you rogue, openi
ng time already?' He lurched towards the light, splashing through the half-dry s
tream bed, by now mainly mud, as Pelvotron continued to irrigate the countryside
.

'You've changed the decor a bit, Jock,' he chortled. 'Spit and sawdust is it now
?' He peered inside the hollowed-out hole, a bright light glowing over the entra
nce. 'Jock?' He examined the contents of his discovery more closely, juggling th
em in his vision until his eyes rested on the discarded punk outfit.
'Fancy dress, is it?' he yelled. 'Well, I'm game for that, but I'll have none of
 your bondage perversions.' He put the outfit on, hunchback and all, but ate th
e cheese earrings, being rather hungry and not, after all, having pierced ears.
'Jocky, my boy, you owe me a dram for this!' he yelled.
'Where the hell are you, Jock?'
'Jock?'
'Jocky,' he gurgled.
'Jocky . . . Jockystrapon.' He fell over in the muddy stream, collapsed in laugh
ter. His expression changed abruptly, a few seconds later, and a thunderous
frown creased his receding hairline.
'You'll not mess with my liver any more, McVitie Barcelona. I'm comin'
tae find ye ...

And so, the three-toed, furry-footed hunchbacked Glas-wegian staggered off into
the mist, once more in search of the 'Bonny Hacienda', his false Mohican on ba
ck to front and his eyebrows in the back of his bald head.
A shadowy figure watched Brian Taylor disappear into the mist. It was hiding in
a half-constructed sheep dip pen. As the drunkard's boozy revels faded out of ea
rshot, the shadow flitted furtively out into the mist, his back
towards the brightly lit lair. Clutched to its chest, it carried a large metal
pot.

The 'Bonny Hacienda' was reputed to have been built from the beams that composed
the Spanish galleon shipwrecked in 1588; and Jock McVitie Barcelona, i
ts landlord, was a descendant of Jose Barcelona, the sole surviving Spa
niard.

As a matter of fact, everyone in the village was descended at some point from Jo
se Barcelona, whose prowess as a Latin lover had been sought out by every female
in the village, all of whom he had impregnated, along with a not inconsiderable
number of sheep.
In any case, Jock culminated the line of hispanic Scots-men, and proudly dominat
ed the village. He was, until the possessor of one of the few teleph
ones in Dubl'une, and he ran the post office when he felt like it. Should the n
eed arise for petrol, one had only to ask for him to unlock the single pump and,
of course, if you were a guest of British Rail, voila, Jock the station master.

Some years previously, Jock had taken to wearing a wooden leg below his right kn
ee in hte belief that it would encourage tourism. In the summer months he was
often to be seen hobbling up and down the main street adorned with a stuffed pa
rakeet on his shoulder, grimacing and spitting in a sub-Long John Silver display
of over-acting. As a result, no tourist ever came near his pub for fear that he
was a raving lunatic. Now, however, he lept soundly, snoring loudly enough to r
attle the window panes, and buried under a mountainous pile of blankets
his slumber was noisily interrupted by the violent shaking of his fron
t door and by the foul- mouthed oaths coming from the streets outside.
'Getthefuckoutthere, ye pervert,' roared Brian Taylor.

Jock grabbed his wooden stump from beside the bed. Not only did it keept tourist
s away but it also doubled as a very efficient blunt instrument.
'Who the bloody hell's that?' grumbled Jock, climbing down the steep w
ooden stairs in his heavy woollen night cap and night dress, looking like the dw
arf Snow White rejected.
'Open up, ye canna keep a bevvy from me, McVitie.'
The bolts slid back and the door opened a little, so that Jock could identify
this maniac.
'Jocky, me boy.' Brian spread his arms wide in exaggerated greeting and staggere
d back a pace. He tossed the empty whisky bottle casually over his shoulder wher
e it smashed in the street. 'No more to drink,' he wheedled, wobbling on his thr
ee-toed plastic foot covers.
'Just an incy bincy little one,' he giggled.
Jock opened the door, a curious grin on his unshaven white chin.
'Normally never, but seeing as its you . . .' he gestured grandly for Brian to e
nter the pub.
'Spoken like a true Scottish gentleman,' he slurred, stepping over the
doorway.
'Thwack!' The blow from the wooden leg hit him on the back of the head.
'Ye scummy sassenach bastard,' Jock yelled, raining
blows on the unfortunate drunkard.
'Jocky me boy indeed.' He kicked him in the balls. 'Incy bincy one,' he
mimicked and booted him in the kidneys. 'You've got a nerve coming here after ty
ing me up and stealing my taxi. What've you done with it?'
'Thwack!'
'Degenerate scum.'
'Thwack!'
'Thwack!'
'Thwack!'

Brian Taylor woke twenty minutes later. His eyes regis-tered only a bl
ur, and his brain, such as it was, registered only pain. His body informed him t
hat he was upright, and tied to a chair.
'So, you're awake are ye? Well?' Jock pressed his face up close to Brian's.
'You'd better talk. In Dubl'une no one can hear you scream.' Jock sat down and f
inished stripping the electric flex he was about to connect to Brian's. You'd be
tter talk. In Dubl'une no one can hear you scream.' Jock sat down and finished s
tripping the electric flex he was about to connect to Brian's nipples.
'The voltage hereabouts is pretty variable,' Jock added, matter-of-factly,
'but I think you'll find it sufficient. . .'
he paused and whispered in Brian's ear ' ... sufficient,' he gestured, 'to
turn you into a fucking big prawn cracker.'
Brian Taylor was suddenly sober.
'You've made a mistake . ..' he gulped.
'No, you've made the mistake,' returned Jock, admiring the final piece of copper
wire and cutting a lenght of sellotape.
'Look, I'm not who you think I am. I found this outfit on the moor.'
'Oh yes,' laughed Jocky. 'And I suppose you'll be telling me next that the sheph
erds wear them to help their sheep's digestion. Of course, I've found hundreds o
f three-toed disguises in the Scottish Highlands. . .' His tone changed viciousl
y. 'What do you take me for?' He picked up the two wires.
'It's at Findidnann Hall,' Brian blurted out.
'What is?'
'Your taxi. It's there. I've seen it. It took my wife there from the station. Lo
ok, you can check, call her up on the phone. She'll tell you. I was down this pu
b, but you were tied up and it wasn't open. I couldn't possibly have nicked your
taxi. . .'
'There is no phone at Findidnann hall.'
'Oh no.' Brian despaired.
'And what would you know of Findidnann hall anyway?'
'That's it!' exclaimed Brian. 'Look, there's an invitation to Findidnann hall in
my breast pocket, and a train ticket for the last train here today. How could
I possibly have stolen your taxi if I was on the train, eh?
Jock thought for a moment and then felt inside Brian's jacket, producing and exa
mining the slim white invitation.
'You've earned yourself a reprieve, Mr. Taylor, if that's who you really
are,' said Jock generously. 'But you'd better do some straight talking if you do
n't want me to fry your nipples to Chicken McNuggets.'
'Whatever you want,' breathed Brian Taylor in relief.

The Scottish are a funny lot when it comes to drinking. Long ago they invented t
he spirit known as whisky, and subsequently spent most of their time rampaging,
pillaging and fatally wounding their countrymen in a whole series of cl
an wars. These days most of that sort of thing has been tamed and turned into a
game called soccer, which is of course only an excuse to revive ancient Celtic
traditions of hooliganism and goalposts worship. Had Robert the Bruce been aroun
d today, he would no doubt
have spent several hours contemplating the spider crawling up the crack in
the cell walls of a Glasgow Constabulary before finding inspiration and
killing the jailors to make his escape.

Such determination in the face of impossible odds had been the principle factor
to save Jose Barcelona's bacon when he landed ashore from the shipwreck
in 1588. He had lain low for several hours, listening to the anguished scr
eams of his comrades being cruelly despatched by the bloodthirsty
Scots, who liked nothing better than to see a genteel Spaniard drink whisky for
the first time.

It was inevitable that they would find Jose in the end, and, of course, it had t
o be the women who did. Brandishing flaming torches they scoured the beaches
for any remaining men. They howled and beat their co
nsiderable breasts in anguish at having no more Spanish men to use, abuse, muti
late and torture. Once their husbands had finished
feeding the Spaniards whisky by the half gallon to test their mettle, the
weak-livered where turned over to the girls, while the ones who came through th
e whisky ordeal intact were allowed to live. Alas, no one passed the test, as th
e multitudinous piles of evil-smelling Spanish omelette vomit bore witness. Th
e Scottish men had long since passed into deep and contented heathen sl
eep, snoring loudly enough to levitate a claymore, but the women were still out
for blood.

'Here's one alive,' cried a toothless grandmother, smacking her mouth with relis
h, 'and pretty too.'
The congregation of hessian-clad women swarmed like ants over the sand
dune behind which Jose was hiding. They held their smouldering torches up in the
air to pick out his form amongst the grasses on top. Jose kept his cool. He spo
ke English.

'Hi, I'm Jose Barcelona.' He lay on his back and groaned hopefully. Their faces
gegisterd nothing but savage intent. The whites of thier eyes blazed in the nigh
t with bloodlust. Jose cleared his throat nervously. 'I'm from Spain, I. . .'
'Aaeeee.' The women howled in anger, moving closer. Jose heard the
sound of a dagger being drawn from its scabbard.
'Er, I'm a real big Shakespeare fan ...' he started, but stopped as it became
clear that Shakespeare was persona non grata after publishing Macbeth.
'And ... I've got a really big knob,' he shouted confidently.
The Scottish savages stopped shrieking, beating
their breasts and mutilating their clothing.
'How big?' screeched one of them pushing to the front. Jose dropped his trousers
. 'That big,' he growled.
The women fell back. A hubbub of confused voices
was raised in consternation.
'I've never seen the like of it before.'
'And on a foreigner too,' cried another.
'Twould be like being fucked by a haggis!'
In the light of their descovery, they began to discuss whether Jose
Barcelona's fate should be somewhat different.
From that of his fellow crew members. The women
elected a spokeswoman. She squatted down by his ear.
'Can ye use it?' she whispered. Jose was offended.
'Mother of God, I am the most fertile man in Catalonia,' he proclaimed indignant
ly.
'My seed is of the highest quality and I guarantee a good time

Jose Barcelona was not a soldier; he was a gigolo. The Captain of his galleon h
ad been incensed by the embarrasing romantic encounters of his wife. Forbidden b
y the Catholic church from divorcing her, he had hired Jose to satisfy the woma
n's seemingly endless usts whilst she accompanied her husband on his glorious vo
yage of conquest to England. Jose had been listed, to the crew's amusement, as h
er brother.

'Show me,' the Scottish women demanded. 'Show me how you give a woman
a good time.'
'What here, in front of all these peo ple?' squeaked Jose, professionally
hurt. 'I need a little privacy.'
'You're a wimp, but okay.' Jackie McKenzie raised her voice and screamed out, 'R
ight, fuck off the lot of you, if he's nae good I' 11 slit his throat.'
'When do we get our turn?' they howled.
'Later,' yeled Jackie, pulling out her own knife and holding it to Jose's
jugular vein. 'If it's nae good,' she added, Til chop it off.' Jose performed
spectacularly, fearing for his life as the woman battered his chest an
d raked claw-loads of skin from his shoulders, but she was definitely
satisfied.

'There's no man in the village can get it up any more,' she complained.
'They're all too drunk. And the women are without child now for five year
s, d'ye understand?'
'I am a professional,' declared Jose, 'and I... '
'Enough of the smooth talkin, ye scumbag. If I'm to keep ye alive, you'll have t
o pay me and the village a dowry . . .'
Jose thought for a second. 'The galleon treasure,' he said. 'I buried
it earlier tonight on the beach. If the women agree to spare my life and find
me professional employment, I'll tell you where it
is.'
'A deal, Mr Barcelona.'

Thus it was that the whereabouts of the treasure of the Spanish galleon was reve
aled to the villagers of Didnann.
They subsequently used it to pay for a major sixteenth-century construction
programme, building most of the current village of Dubl'une, as it came to be kn
own by modern times.
Jose, however, had done a very sharp deal, because he had omitted to me
ntion the most valuable treasure of all, the personal fortune of the w
oman he was screwing on board the ship. He had hidden that elsewhere, for future
, more secure, re-burial.

The secret did not die with him. On his deathbed, Jose, in a fit o
f uncharacteristic amateurism, revealed the map explaining the location of the
burial site. But for some reason it was never found, and the Hall which stood o
n the spot, Didnann Hall, became known as Fin-didnann Hall, which brin
gs us back to resent-day Scotland, and Jose relative in the Bonny Hacien
da.
PART FOUR

The Plot Thickens

14

The Breakfast Club

Brian and Jock were drunk. Very drunk. Twenty-four different varieties of Scotch
whisky had passed their lips since Brian had explained the mad Laird's s
cheme to the eccentric inn-keeper. They were still talking - Brian in his punk
outfit and Jock addressing the end of his wooden stump in a maudlin
fashion - by the time the first rays of light seeped through the fusty old hessi
an curtains of the pub.

'From what you tell me,' Jock ruminated. 'There's been some mighty queer goings-
on at the hall. Frankly, it disna surprise me.'
'Eh? Brian wiped a sniffle on the back of his hand and tried to comprehend.
'You've heard, of course,' whispered Jock, 'About the treasure?'
'No,' mumbled Brian, the alcoholic fog lifting slightly at the thought of mone
y.
'Of course ye haven't, nobody has, because I never told no one,' cackled Jock,
thumping Brian over-enthusiastically with his stump. 'When his uncle died,' he
continued, 'That sassenach pervert was left the house and contents, but the inhe
ritance went to his half brother, Ferdinand Alfonso Boatrace. They never
got along, and Ferdinand spent the money, then ran
off and
disappeared. Some day he joined the Foreign Legion, others reckon he
joined the Merchant Navy and was sold into white slavery in Africa . . .'
'What about the treasure?'
'Never found,' exclaimed Jock, triumphantly.
'The villagers of Dubl'une buried it in 1590. Only one map was ever
made.'
'So, where is it?' Brian's voice was stone cold sober and quivering
in excitement. Jock chuckled.
'Where is it?' repeated Brian.
'I know,' growled Jock. 'I have the map.'
'Show me?' asked Brian slyly.
Jock roared with laughter and slapped him on the knee.
'Take that bloody ridiculous outfit off. I'll cook ye a haggis breakfast, and th
en we'll pay a visit to that walking sex-crime on the hill. Then I'll show ye.'

Brian struggled to pull off his three-toed feet and peeled his skull cap mohic
an off with difficulty; but try as he might, the water-filled inflatable hunchba
ck would not yield, in spite of several alarmingly rude Glaswegian requests.
'Jock,' roared Brian, 'Get this fucking strap-on rubber johnny off ma back man,
I canna do itmaself.'
'Yer a daft bugger tae ha put it on in the first place, Brian Tayl
or,' mumbled Jock, as he fumbled with the absurd webbing which attached Brian t
o his prosthetic hump.
'Funny thing now . . .' mused Jock as he peered closely into the translucent
plastic of the bag.
'It's nae bloody funny, get rid of it,' growled Brian. Jock sighed.
'I've never seen ... I mean who in their right minds would put an alarm
clock in a plastic bag and then fill it with water? Still, off it comes.'

Sunrise came peacefully. A pre-dawn gentle breeze had washed away the mist and
fog and then died down to leave the landscape moist and expectant as
the sun rose over Findidnann Hall. The first small birds began to chirp excitedl
y as they flew around the chimneys, looking for small female birds or the most i
nconvenient spot to have a crap. Into this scene
of Highland splendour, unchanged since at least yesterday, came the
explosino. As explosions go, it was a pretty small one, but the orange and
black mushroom cloud of smoke and flames was clearly visible from Lord
Iffy's residence.

Something in the village no longer existed.

'What was that?' yelled Roderick, sitting bolt upright in bed, his pom-pom tasse
l bobbing furiously on the end of his nightcap.
Margot karate-chopped his throat with unbelievable violence.
'I'm asleep,' she growled through clenched teeth, and slammed a fist into his ch
est, so hard that he fell back to sleep.' Roderick, however, was alread
y out for the count.

The Bonny Hacienda lay in smoking ruins, huge black dollops of oily sm
oke concealing in the sky above it. Lying in the street was all tha
t remained of Brian Taylor and Jock McVitie Barcelona - a three-toed, f
urry foot cover . . .

Mark West leapt out of his wardrobe hiding place screaming, wild eyed, and clutc
hing his bread knife in his trembling right hand. He resembled an apoplectic Bla
ckbeard on acid.

'Cynthia'" he screamed, grinding his teeth and staring manically at th

e bedroom door. 'They'll never take me alive!' he hissed and crawled back into t
he wardrobe. Butler was at the top of the highest turret only seconds after the
explosion had rocked hi m out of a black and dreamless sleep. Panting with exer
tion from the climb, he stood in bare feet and shirt tails, focusing one of Iffy
's telescopes on the village.

'Bloody hell, Butler, damn good fireworks, what? You surpassed yourself.' Butler
turned to see a dishevelled-looking Lord Boatrace screwing his monocle in
to his eye as fiercely as he had ever seen him do it.
'Covered in bloody brick dust,' continued Iffy. 'Nearly fell out of m
e
bloody portrait. Damned good dream I was having as well, bent over fe
male auctioneer, all the straps and flying gear, had a bloody good time with th
e hammer I should say, har har ...'
'I didn't do it, sir,' shouted Butler, anxiously.
"What?' grunted Iffy. 'Lemme see.' He elbowed his way to the telescope. 'I
say, Butler, it's that damnably awful pub. What a stroke of luck. I owed
him a lot of money that McVitie chappie, don't suppose he needs it now. One les
s of the bastards, eh?' Iffy snapped the telescope down to its portab
le length and beamed a smile at the sunrise.
'What a day, Butler, eh? Beautiful sunshine, half my debts wiped off the face o
f the earth, and grouse shooting after a fine English breakfast. Perfe
ct.'

Butler, not for the first time, was astonished at Lord iffy.
'Good wheeze, eh, old chap. See you downstairs for brekkie in ten minutes. Wake
our virtues guests, there's a good fellow. Oh yes, and, er, put some trousers on
.'

Lord Iffy disappeared down the turret stairs as Butler stared at his own exposed
kneecaps huddling together for protection against the morning chill.
'We'll see who's wearing the trousers by the end of today.' He growled, revertin
g once more to his thick cockney twang.
Just then, a bird crapped on his head.

Laetitia staggered down into the war zone that was all that remained of the dini
ng room. The chandelier rested at a crazy angle in the middle of the broken-bac
ked dining table, adorned all around with the broken dishes and cutlery that had
slid down to the middle of the wreckage from both ends of the oak surface.

The walls had been liberally pasted with splotches of dessert and fresh fruit wh
ich were now beginning to smell rather offensive, and a gaping hole in the
roof above the head of the tables and chairs bore witness to Lord Iffy's improm
ptu shoot-out the night before. In the corner of the room was the breakfast trol
ley, prepared by Butler. It as a traditional English breakfast of three-day-old
toast, butter frozen so hard it was impossible to cut and a jug of milk merely
sufficient to satisfy a thirsty kitten - a small one at that. His piece of resis
tance was an enourmous two-gallon tea urn full of a brew so strong that it would
have incapacitated a whole regiment of Indians, curry or no curry. 'I can't eat
this fucking shit!'
Laetitia had staggered over to the table somewhat bandy-legged from her
evening's encounter. A similar problem is often experienced by men at sea, after
several months of rolling around on the ocean wave. It had taken only several m
inutes of someone rolling around on Laetitia to produce the same effect. Her eye
s were almost black with mascara, and her face was a mask, knee-deep in founda
tion sludge. She was not, as Californians put it, a morning person.
'What in God's name happened to you?' Mark West stood in the doorway,
his facial muscles clenched into knots, the eight-inch blade concealed
beneath his jacket.
'I might ask the same question, honey,' spat Laetitia, turning to face the hopel
ess victim standing before her.
'I mean, it's not everyday that. . . Jesus, you stink, I can smell you from here
.'

Mark looked down at his turn-up trousers bottoms. They were full of co
ngealed sheep shit and ditch water, which had matured in the wardrobe overnight.
His hand grasped the handle of his knife more firmly.
'At least it's a bit more natural than ten tons of ruddy face cake
and perfume like a French whorehouse,' he retorted angrily.
'What's for breakfast, chaps?' roared Roderick enthusi-astically, limping vigoro
usly from his wounded buttock, but managing a valiant smile, despite th
e huge bruise spreading around his throat. 'I say, what a damend fine-looking b
rekkie, eh?' He rubbed his hands together vigorously in anticipation.

Roderick stood alongside Mark West, towering above him in fact, glancing a littl
e nervously from side to side at the lack of activity.
'Good Lord, I'm sorry,' started Roderick suddenly. Were you waiting for
me?
Damnably rude of me to be late. Still, tuck in anyway. OK?' and with that he str
ode forthrightly to the trolley and began to devour half a loaf of flexible
toast together with a couple of pints of tea.
'Where's that wife of yours? Growled mark.
'Upstairs, old man, bit off-coulour today.' Roderick continued to munch contente
dly, as if fattening himself up for the slaughter.
'Where's your wife? Er . . .' Mark cut him a filthy look.
'Sorry, old chap. Forgot. Any news on her whereabouts?'
'I thought perhaps your wife might know.'
'WELL, I DON'T, so you can stop barking up that tree right away.' Margot stood a
t the top of the stairs, arms folded, tapping one booted foot loudly and impatie
ntly on the floorboards. An enourmous bump protruded from her skull. The doors a
t the other end of the room crashed open as Lord Iffy knocked them aside in spec
tacular fashion.

'Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning!' he yelled.

'All recovered from the Big Bang?' He winked slyly at Laetitia, quietly wonderin
g what she looked like without makeup.
'It's not a good morning,' grunted Mark.
'It's a simply splendid morning,' exclaimed Roderick.
'Not if you're a game bird it's not,' retorted Margot.
'Who asked you?' shouted Mark.

Laetitia could stand no more. The sight of Roderick piling slab after slab of na
useous toast into his mouth and the smell of the tea urn, like distilled soldier
's boot leather, was too much. She threw up daintily in the palm of her hand,
Then watched it cascade through her fingers to the polished wood floor.
Lord Iffy ignored the interruption.
'Nevertheless,' he roared, 'We will sally forth after a decent interval and blow
a few of the bounders out of the sky, eh? Grouse for supper.'
'Disgusting and immoral,' shouted Margot, who was still keeping her
distance from Mark not so much for fear of her life, but mainly because of the s
mell.
'A noble contest,' continued Iffy pointedly. 'Of skill and strategy against a cu
nning adversary . . .'
'Cunning?' exclaimed Margot. 'It's fucking brown brird with the brain of a sparr
ow against half a dozen psychopaths armed with heavy artillery. By the time you'
ve blown holes in it there's nothing left to eat anyway, and what little there
in left is full of lead . .
Well, I hope you all fucking choke on your shotgun pellets and die of fucking le
ad poisoning, the lot of you.' She paused. Iffy opened his mouth to speak. She c
ontinued.
'And since I can't persuade any of you, including my ex_husband. . .' She threw
Roderick a filthy stare. Roderick dropped his tea mug and scalded
his fot, then hopped up and down screaming silently. '. . . to deviate from
this folly,' she carried on, 'I shall take no further part in this obscene ritua
l. I am going to bed.'

She turned on her heels and stamped loudly up the stairs back to her
bedroom where she slammed the door loudly, and yelled her customary
'Aaaaaurgh!'

The population of the breakfast room stood open-mouthed. Roderick had expected a
t least a severe beating and possibly a broken rib or two.
'There's always one, isn't there,' remarked Iffy as casually as he could.
'Butler'" he yelled, 'Bring in the guns.'
Butler struggled into the room clutching six shotguns. 'I suppose you all know
how to use these things?' said Iffy, glancing at Laetitia.
'I was raised in Texas, and I could shoot the dick off and armadillo before I
was ten,' she drawled.
'Charming,' said Mark dryly. 'I suppose you know how to shoot as well,' he bawl
ed at Roderick.
'Oh gosh, yes. I was an awfully good shot actually, snapshooting a
speciality. How about you?'
'County clay-pigeon champion,' Mark replied, matter of factly. 'Three ye
ars running.'

Iffy's face fell.

'I say, old man.' Roderick was impressed. 'WELL DONE.'
'Where the fuck did you pick up this lot from, Butler?' hissed Iffy
furiously. 'They weren't supposed to be able to shoot straight.'
'Well, you knew one of them,' murmured Butler hotly.
'I forgot, didn't 1.1 remember standing on his bloody ears after rugger. I just
forgot about the riffle team, that's all. Hope this bloody secret agent's done
his stuff. I don't want all my birds going up in smoke in five minu
tes.'

Butler repressed a smirk of satisfaction.

'Gun dogs,' exclaimed Roderick. 'Where are the gun dogs?'
'Eh?'
'One has to have retrievers to pick up the dead birds...'
'If there are any dead birds,' replied Iffy.
'Yes, but...'
'And if there are any birds worth picking up,' Iffy confirmed, 'Then there will
be dogs.' Butler's expression was deadpan.
'Good then, half and hor, see you outside in the old hunting apparel, what ho.'
15

A Sporting Event
Mark West had had a wash, but was not in any better temper. The water had been c
old. Laetitia met him on the steps outside the front door, looking somewhat more
glamorous than she had at breakfast.
'It's not an aerobics class, you know,' Mark sniffed grumpily.
'Li'l ole me likes to get on a nice workout outfit to, er, put me in the mood. Y
ou know, I'm a very inner person.'

Mark looked her up and down, then opted for the upper part of her.
Laetitia's boobs were tenuously restrained by the sparkling pink leotard, but t
he nipples shot forward prominently like two cigarette butts stubbed out on poac
hed eggs. The poached eggs reminded him of breakfast. He hadn't eaten any, and h
e was still famished. He ogled her crutch, and the way that her thighs always p
arted to reveal a great deal of daylight around her pussy. Despite his lack of s
leep, Mark felt a stirring under his armpit, as his member began to snake upward
s in erection and threatened to poke out of his collar.

Laetitia pulled out her walkman headphones and adjusted them over her ridiculous
hairstyle, bouffant in the extreme, Which was suported by a gold lame headban
d and sprinkled with glitter. The glitter was echoed on her leg-warmers, underne
ath which were vastly expensive Ivan Elavonitch ballet tights. Beneath those wer
e the standard Miss USA all-year-round, guaranteed suntan and sweaty crotch ti
ghts - just in case you ever needed to take all of your clothes off in a crowde
d gymnasium. Beneath all of this was a pair of legs. By now the legs had started
to walk on the spot, and the blood-red painted fingernails twitched
convulsively to the beat of a dreadful anonymous A
merican rock band. Mark watched her little red- booted feet pitter-patter
ing and crunching on the gravel drive with a look
of horror on his face. It was a bizarre sight in the Scottish Highlands.

'How's Brian?' he yeled.

'WHO?' screamed Laetitia, oblivious to her effect on the environment.
Take those things off for a second, can't you?' shouted Mark, waving his arms. O
ne headphone came off as she continued to twitch.
'Brian,' she panted, 'Is probably making an ass of himself in some bar
somewhere like he usually does, and I for one do no give a damn.' Click. She swi
tched off the tape recorder and regarded Mark with a carnivorous smile.
'You don't look too worried about your wife at the moment either. I mean,
you're going out shooting, not looking for her.'

Mark thought of Cynthia, then thought of the gun. No, he did still vaguely love
her, he supposed. He looked at Laetitia's heaving breasts and the ath
letic-looking labial cleft pouting through her leotard. Well, he mused, maybe I
don't vaguely love her quite as much as yesterday. He cleared his throat.
'Are you actually any good at shooting?'
'Are you any good in bed?' She levelled her gaze directly at him and licked the
tips of her screwed and glued 10,000 dollar teeth with the top of her glistenin
g tongue. Mark caught his breath sharply and turned away just as His rogering pi
ece shot out of his collar like a coiled snake and hit him under the chin. 'Good
God,' he choked.

'Well, well,' boomed Lord Iffy, flinging open the double front doors, 'The early
Bird catches the worm, eh?' He delivered anoher sly wink at Laetitia. He was a
splendid sight. An enourmous racoon hat from the North West frontier of Canada s
urmounted his beaky monocled visage, and the red serge tunic of the Royal Canadi
an Mounties, which had formerly belonged to a dis-tant Boatrace cousin, clad his
concave skinnyribs. A pair of huge, piratical-looking tigh-high patent leather
stiletto-heeled boots completed the outfit. . . and Lord iffy was wearing his be
st fishnet stockings again, having recovered them from their muddy demise
at the hands of Bill Symes-Groat.

'My God, you look wonderful,' Laetitia cooed.

'Nothing like a uniform to show off the man, eh,' declared Iffy, 'Butler!'
Butler staggered into view, looking like a cross between a pack mule and Marley'
s ghost. Bandoliers of ammunition criss-crossed his black tie butl
er's outfit, and he struggled under the weight of half a dozen shotguns and a pi
cnic hamper strapped to his back. In his teeth he carried a four-foot telescope
by its carrying strap. 'Yyyygumpf,' he grunted, swaying in the doorway precariou
sly and grinding his teeth on the leather of the telescope.
'So, off we go, eh,' said Iffy. 'Follow me.' And with that he strutted down
the steps and wiggled off down the driveway the blanched flabby cheeks of his bu
ttocks showing through the fishnets above his high boots.

Laetitia looked at Mark. Mark looked at Laetitia. Butler looked forward to getti
ng it over and done with, then Roderick looked over his shoulder.
'Follow that man,' he boomed, almost blowing the overladen servant out of the do
orway.
'I wouldn't go so far as to call him a man,' Mark advised 'Real men don't wear
fishnets.'
'I don't know,' Laetitia mused defensively. 'You English guys are all too
straight. I think it gives a man something.'
'I'd like to fucking give him something,' thought Butler, in a thick London acce
nt.
'I'd like to give her something,' thought Mark, horrified at the prospect but
enslaved by his rampant libido.
'I think we'd better be orf, otherwise we'll get the bird, phaw harumph, haw haw
.'

Roderick strode down the steps, now limping only slightly and laughing with his
painfully tortured English boarding school laugh. The kind that is only heard wh
en something is really not funny at all.

Margot waited upstairs in bed like an undischarged cannon waiting for a taper. S
he had sent Roderick to Coventry when he returned from breakfast to change into
his ridiculous plusfours and tweed jacket. She had simply lain still and stiff o
n the bed, thinking contemptuous thoughts and snarling softly through her nose,
'Aaaurgh, aaurgh, aaurgh,' like a ferocious Morris Minor ticking over.
She heard his booming laughter receding down the drive and waited till
she could hear nothing at all except the background morning buzz of the
Scottish Highlands in summer. Then she made her move.
She tiptoed cautiously down the main stairs and quietly opened one of the front
doors, peering through the crack to check that no one was around. Only the dool
ess taxi remained outside, looking forlorn in the growing heat of the morning su
n. Luckily, it was shaded by the large tree that...
'Funny,' thought Margot. 'I could have sworn that
tree wasn't there
yesterday.' She felt the bump on her head.

It was very painful so she pressed it

harder. The pain got worse.
'AAAAURGH!' she exploded and scurried down the steps, spurred on by the night's
memories. With only a passing glance at her environment now, she scuttled fut
ively around to the flower beds underneath Lord Iffy's balcony and fell
upon them with the zeal of a mole in a worm hatchery.
Til show you fucking hunting.'Heaps of soil and dirt flew from her spade- like
fingers as she excavated. 'Over-privileged bourgeois
scum.' She reached the cartridges buried in the earth and pulled out the shotgu
n shells, blowing the soil off them.
'Aaaurgh.' She tugged at the wooden object and it came free. It was a
beautifully made shoulder stock and was attached to Lord Iffy's shotgun. Margot
cleaned off most of the dirt, then loaded it, locking the mechanism, which close
d with a very reserved-sounding, well-oiled English aristocratic click.

She heard the sound with distaste. She would have preferred one of those AD-47s
or a Uzi, the choice of most discerning liberati
onist revolutionaries, but this would have to do.
The bandage around her head came off and she pulled out a speckled
bandana, bought from an Indian clothing stall in Netting hill Gate. Tying the ra
g around her head she looked at her reflection in the window.
'Passable,' she approved. 'I shall call myself the revo-lutionary spearhead of t
he FLF.'

An so the praetorian guard of the newly inaugurated Findidnann Liberation Front

crawled up to the ridge around the back of the house, checked its bearings, and
crept off in the direction of Roderick, Mark, Laetitia, Butler,
and enemy of the people number two on the hit list, Lord Iffy Boatrace.
So who was number one?

The shooters arrived at the butts, some 500 yards away from the house. Butler sa
nk down, exhausted after ditributing guns and ammunition and setting up Iffy's
telescope.
'Come on, Butler, cheer up,' grinned Iffy. 'They'll be up in a minute.'
'How do you propose to get grouse in the air without any beaters?' asked Mark sa
rcastically. This whole bloody ridiculous exercise looks like a wild goose chase
to me.'

Iffy looked pained and offended.

'These birds, old man, well they're. They're not your average sort, o
ld chappie,'he began.'You see, for centuries my family.
Have been shooting things. Pretty much anything that's ever moved on land, sea o
r air - a Boatrace has probably bagged one. The problem was taht one had to go
a damnable distance to find things to shoot after most of the local fauna had b
een blasted into oblivion. The wretched animals used to run away, damned unsport
ing.'
'Undestandable in the circumstances I would have thought,' said Mark dr
yly.
'Wuite so, quite so,' said Iffy dismissively.
'The point is my family, more correctly myself, have devised a way to make anima
ls, in this case our feathered friend the grouse, come directly towards us. Sp
lendid, you see, no overheads, haw haw.'

Laetitia applauded pathetically, smacking her manicured palms together. 'I think
that's really smart. We could do with something like that in the Sta
tes.'
'Utter bullshit,' stated Mark West flatly. 'And furtherm
ore, if these
mythical birds don't appear in the next five minutes you're in deep shit.' He sa
t down on the grass and glared at everyone.
Roderick cocked his weapon and aimed it skyward, sweeping the barrel towards the
wispy clouds that streaked the blue sky.

Butler groaned at his stiff back. He was sweltering now in his black butler suit
. He peered out onto the moors. A few hundred yards away was a small
mound with a large sycamore tree growing out of it. Butler was puzzled.
That tree, he thought - he hadn't noticed it before.
Iffy yelled excitedly as he peered down his telescope.

'They're coming dammit. Butler, the grouse are up!' It was 11:45 am.
A pair of birds broke cover and climbed to about 150 feet, circling before they
headed towards the butts, zig-zagging violently.
Roderick gave them both barrels.
'Crrump, crrump.' The sound of the shots rebounded across the moor. The first bi
rd got it in the engine room.

Smoke trailed out of its tail feathers as it went down out of control, a hundred
feet in front of the guns. The second shot took the entire wing off the number
two bird, which cartwheeled through the sky in a slow tunbling arc of death, to
land behind them. 'Good shooting, old man.' Mark West, for once, had some-thing
good to say. Laetitia was clapping furiously now and careful to indent her bre
asts on his midriff as she did so.
'What a star,' she breathed.
'Yes, er, well done old chap,' mumbled Iffy in consternation.

This was not supposed to happen. 'Butler,' he ordered. 'Fetch me my other electr
ic blue stilettos. I won't be able to hit a damn thing in these thight boots.'
Iffy needed to do a bit of quick thinking and while most people put their think
ing caps on, Iffy changed shoes. For someone whose brains were in
their boots, it was rather appropriate. Morning turned
into afternoon, and the birds acme in pairs fairly regularly, but desp
ite the grouse being somewhat larger than an armadillo's dick, Laetitia could n
ot hit one: neither, for that matter, could Mark West.

Roderick, however, had downed twenty-five definites

and several probables and was beaming with a radiant no-vegetarian grin.
'Damned good hunting,' he exclaimed.
'Hmm, yes. Well, you must be er, jolly hungry old man. Yes, well, er, mind you d
on't get indigestion.'
'I think there's something bloody strange going on.' Said Mark. 'I could
swear that those birds are flying in zig-zags to avoid being hit. I'll tell you
what, I wouldn't want to fucking eat one.'
'You're just jealous,' accused Laetitia. 'I think Roderick's a perfect English
gentleman and VERY talented.'

Margot crawled and grumbled through the heather

on her stomack, covered in cuts and bruises, pushing the gun ahead of h
er. Every few feet whe paused to look over the top of The vegetation to check wh
ere the birds were coming from. Whoever was releasing them from their cages woul
d be the first to die, she decided.
'Aaurgh.' Her palm pressed into a pile of sheep shit and slid from under her,
so that her face fell into a pile of rabbit droppings.
'Male rabbit, fuck bastard!' she screamed, spitting out the little rabbity ex -
breakfasts.
'Why don't your sort ever clear up?'

The indignant rabbit looked up at this insult, twitching its head around to glar
e at this strange new addition to the crawling livestock of Scotland. Margot gla
red back, hoisted herself up to shoulder height and lobbed a large lump of earth
at it, but missed.
'AAAAAURGH!' she hissed, stamping the ground with
her fist in
frustration. She breathed heavily for a second, then narrowed her eyes into slit
s of determination as she resumed her prickly path through the heather.
'What was that?' shouted Roderick.
'What was what?' said Iffy, peering intently into his telescope.
'I saw an animal out there, a great big woolly spotted thing. It waved at me.'
'Probably a sheep, old chap,' replied Iffy, pivoting the telescope to the right
a fraction.
'But it waved at me,' Roderick insisted. 'Sheep don't wave.'
'Snarling sheep probably.'Lord Iffy pulled his eye away from the tube and screwe
d in his monocle. 'Lots of em around here, nasty horrible things, and believe
me, they'll wave at you.'
'Bollocks,' exploded Mark West. 'Snarling sheep. I've
never heard anything so ridiculous in my whole life.'
'The Lock Ness monster is not the only unknow phenom-enon in Scotland, you know
,' said Iffy tersely. 'The snarling sheep is a dangerous and ferocious
adversary, capable of severing a man's wrist with a single bite. They are very
shy, rarely seen and . . .'
'Roderick,' squealed Laetitia. 'Look over there.'
Two more muddy-looking grouse broke cover and flapped upward out of
the heather.
'Oh crikey.' Roderick tracked the birds intently. Bang.
'Damn and blast.'

His jaw set hard as he drew again and squeezed the trigger. Bang.
He lowered the barrels; one bird was weaving erratically.
'I winged the blighter,' he shouted enthusiatically.
'Mmmmmm,' mused Iffy.

The grouse turned malevoulently towards the butts, its aerial quivering in the a
fternoon air, its payload doors already open.
Its wings clicked into the glide position, tail feathers down as it dived vertic
ally towards the disbelieving Roderick who had turned white and was glued
to the spot. At the last second he covered his face with his firearms to prepar
e for the impact and let loose a blood - curling scream. The secret agent's lips
formed a thin smile as he drected his bombing run on Roderick.

'Enough to scare him,' he decided, 'and make him incombatant for now.' He recal
led his own words, 'Nobody shoots down my birds without answering to me
first.' There would be a reckoning for Mr. Tennison.
'Cat shit,' howled roderick, two white eyes and a red mouth surrounded by brown
shiny lumps which leaked thin gruel like streaks down to the corners
of his mouth.
'Gosh, so it is,' exclaimed Iffy 'Tuna and liver I'd say, several days old and
jolly mature. I'd go and have a wash if I were you.'
Margot saw the last two birds leave the hole in the tree by the grassy knoll. Gr
asping her shotgun more tightly now, she took several slow breaths and cocked th
e weapon.
'You're in there, you bastard,' she thought, 'Sending inno-cent creatures to the
ir deaths.'
'AAAAAAAARGH! AAAAAAAARGH!' Margot broke cover and
hurtled over the heather towards the tree.
'Die, you bastard!' she
screamed, jumping with both feet on to the grass around the tree and
pulling the trigger.

The flash bang of the report knocked Laetitia off her feet and sent Iffy scurryi
ng to his telescope.
'What the fuck was that?' exclaimed Mark, looking out at the black smoke
ring rising from the moor.
'I say,' said Roderick, who had wiped most of the big lumps out of his eyes. 'Wh
at are those?' He pointed at two yellow flying objects dropping and tumbling thr
ough the sky.
'I suspect that they are the mortal remains of your wife,' commented Iffy, squin
ting hard through the eyepiece.

Butler uncovered his head and peered over the top of his cover out at the moor.
The tree was no longer in existence. If he could have stood on the very spot, he
would have noticed a large crater, into which two yellow, size six and a half W
ellington boots had just fallen. Above the hole the grouse wheeled and swooped l
ike vultures.
16

MURDER MOST MAMMARY

'I tell you he killed her,' hissed Mark West to the Butler. They we
re standing outside the front door, looking generally conspiratorial and up to n
o good, in the way that paranoid people usually do.
'What possible evidence would ...? '
'I don't know, Butler, but all i do know is that since I came to this wretched p
lace, my wife has disappeared, even though she's probably not exactly bothered
, and someone's been blown to pieces. Personally, I always thught that Margot wa
s a lesbian bitch who had a crush on Cynthia, and that she was responsible . . .
not to mention the fucking maniac in the village with the taxi.'

He paused and let out a deep breath.

'Does that still work?' He indicated the taxi.
'Should do,' replied Butler.
'That's it then, I'm off. I'm calling the police.' Butler grabbed his arm.
'Where do you propose to do that?'
'From the nearest phone, any pone
'The only telephone is in the village pub.'
'The Bonny Hacienda?'
'Yes.'

Til have to use that one then. Look let go of my bloody arm, it's getting dark a
lready . .
'The Bonny Hacienda no longer exists.'
'What? Don't be ridiculous,' Mark snorted.
'It was blown up and burnt to the ground at dawn this morning. I saw it from the
top turret, not question about it.'
'Fucking hell!' exclaimed Mark. 'There's a mass murderer on the loose up
here and we're stuck overnight? Well, not me, squire. Where's the nearest town?
I'll drive there.'
'You'd never make it,' said Butler flatly. 'I siphoned out the petron on
Iffy's orders this morning. There's enough to get to the village and back, that'
s all.'
'Can't we put it back?'
'I'm afraid we can't. My Lord required hot water for his bath this morning and,
er, well.
'So we're stuck here for the night after all.'
'It very much looks that way.'
'Shit.' Mark sat grumpily on the top step and stared at the magnificent sunset w
hich was beginning to fill the sky. 'Savage beauty,' he thought.
'Red, the colour of passion, the colour of blood.'

Earlier in the day it had taken Butler and mark several hours to administer to t
he twin problems of Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison and Laetitia P. Taylor. Ro
derick had been the easier of the two.

At the sight of his wife's yellow wellies flying through the air, along with the
other more unidentifiable bits, Roderick had simply registered mild surp
rise, emitted a softly spoken 'Good Lord, whatever will her mother do to me?' an
d fallen backwards into a catatonic trance, rigid as a board. The main problem h
ad been the rigid six foot slab over the hundred yards back to the house, but, h
aving established that he was breathing and his heart was beating, Roderick did
n't require much more attention. He now reposed upon his bed like an Arthurian c
orpse, arms across his chest, naked except for a sheet on his midriff and a co
ld damp towel across his forehead. Laetitia had reacted somewhat differently
. The Americans are very fond of a good death. The more poignant and closer the
relative, the bigger the funeral, the more expensive the flowers, the more hig
hly paid the organist and the minister.

The American death industry had persuaded people that bankruptcy for the living
was infinitely preferable to poverty for the dead. Ramses II would have had dif
ficulty topping a few of the really good death celebrations that Laetitia had
attended. Sudden death, however, was quite a differen
t
matter. Public lamentation, hopefully a couple of TV interviews, including
a character sketch of the deceased and the phone number of the person being inte
rviewed (in case they should want to further their ambition and be on a game sho
w), was par for the course.

Laetitia fell to the floor, beating the earth with her fists, tears rolling down
her cheeks in rivers of mascara, wailing as Margot' s yellow wellies hit the du
st.
'WUG glug glug,' she spluttered. 'She was my friend. She was all of our
friends. Wug glug glug,'
'No, she wasn't. I couldn't stand her,' muttered Butler under his breath.
'Waaagh wug gug glug.' Laetitia prostrated herself. 'Take me instead, take me ,
take me.' (She had heard this line in The Exorcist and thought it rather effecti
ve.)
'Bit late for that,' Iffy chortled, looking at her in wonder.
'Are you all right?'

Laetitia looked up. 'Hearties fiend,' she wailed and scram-bled off the
floor, waving her claws at him.
'Butler!' squeaked Iffy, 'Restrain her.'
'With pleasure, sir,' said Butler, grabbing her and pinning her to the
ground, where she broke into fits of sobbing and muttered mortifying
confessinos to the afternoon sky.
'Stick her next door to Roderick, Butler. Give her something to put her to sleep
. You know, a finckey mink or something.'
'Mickey Finn, sir. Butler corrected.
'Yes yes yes, granted. Just get her out of my sight. I am going out there to tak
e a look at what's left.' And he strode off across the moor to examine the debri
s.

Mark and Butler cooked up a pretty mean cocktail between them. It was quite rema
rkable that two men from such differ-ent backgrounds would both know the best w
ay to get a girl flat on her back in fifteen minutes. It was a shame that only o
ne of them could do something about it afterwards.

The sun finally dropped over the horizon

and darknes enveloped
Findidnann hall. Upstairs, in Roderick's bed-room, Laetitia began to stir
on the bed where she lay alongside him. Multiple triple-expansion engines
breaking huge granite stones rocked in her head. The winds of hades hurled in he
r earlobes. Her guts felt like shit and smelt like them too for that matter. Bu
t whatever the state of her involuntary hangover, she was sure it could not be a
s bad as the emotional distress felt by poor, benighted, bereaved Roderick.

Laetitia groaned, but reached over nevertheless and mas-saged his brow with the
cold towel. Something deep in the subconscious of Roderick morte D'Arthur T
ennison stirred. It was probably the cold towel that did it, with its associatio
ns of matronly administrations of cold compressed after rugby-inspired concussi
ons at boarding school.

'Oh matron,' he groaned out loud.

'There there, poor boy,' Laetitia soothed.
'You've hit a rugged post jolly hard with your head, and you've been
unconscious for two days.,' said matron. 'Your parents have been awfully worrie
d about you, not to mention your missing your part in the school play. Still, y
our health is more important and Mr. Cartwright will just have to wait till next
year. You'll be pleased to hear that Cylinder Multitude understudied your part
.'

'Oh no, matron, I can't stand him.'

'Really, Roderick,' she scolded. 'You must learn a little Tolerance an
d humility. If you weren't so ill I'd tap you on the bottom with a slipper.'
'Roderick, Roderick can you hear me?' Laetitia's voice cut faintly through
the mist of the memory.
'Cylinder Multitude's going to make a funk of it... you bastard . .
.' Roderick tossed from side to side, then lay still.
'matron,' he exclaimed in a child-like voice, 'Matron, why are you washing
me there?'
'Because it's dirty and must be cleaned out.'
'Gosh, matron, what's that?'
'This is what I use to clean you out.'
'I didn't know I was that dirty.'
'You boys don't know how filthy you are. Rubbing against your little jock straps
, sweating at your little desks. It's a wonder it hasn't turned black.'
'Black?' exclaimed Roderick in horror.'
'Don't worry,' Matron replied calmly. Til suck the worst of it out, just like a
bad splinter. . .'
'Splint er, ouch, aah aah.' Roderick's pelvis began to undulate on the bed as
the sheet covering his midriff developed midriff
bulge to a very considerable height.

'Wow,' breathed Laetitia. Her hangover micaculously disappeared as she imagined

this six-foot hairy monster at the age of thirteen dressed in short trousers and
laying on the operating table with a monstrous penis squirting seminal fluid
all over a nurse's breasts. She ripped off the shhet and exposed Roder
ick's huge, blue-veined pulsing member, trembling in the dim electric light.

'hang on in there, honey,' she prayed, divesting herself of her various pairs of
tights.
'What's that, matron?' cried Roderick in anguish, writhing on the bed.
'This is an enema, Roderick.'
'Does it help you to suck the poison out?'
'In a way ... in a way.'

Laetitia was ready. She fastened her fanny lips around the bulging end of his pe
nis. She was soaking wet.
'So big,' moaned Roderick.
'God yes,' thought Laetitia.
'So hard,' he thrashed on the bed.
She savoured the moment before she would impale herself on his pork dagger.
'So cold,' he squeaked.
'Cold?' And then it happened.

Roderick's erection collapsed like a nervously built card house as Matron shoved
the tube up his bum and sucked hard on the end.
'I don't like it,' he cried and tears ran down his cheeks.

Laetitia was furious. 'Every fucking Englishman I ever got near had some fucking
problem. Jesus Christ, the only perons I've fucked on this vacation
has been a frigging ghost!' She sat down despondently, then looked at
Roderick.
'But I'm not giving up on you, not when you're hung like a donkey. I'll give you
blue blodd. I'll make it hard.'

She straddled his face and smothered his nose and mouth till he almost choked.
His tackle remained soft. She sucked the shaft of his penis, lovingly
licked his rectum, rubbed her wet bagina against his thigh, blew in his ear, bi
t his ear, sucked his nipples, inserted his finger in his anus. Nothing happene
d. She tried a multitude of combinations.
Still nothingh happened.
There was one thing she had not tried, something that only she could do, and som
ething that not everyone enjoyed.
Laetitia sat on his chest.

'Little mama's boy, huh?' she taunted, pushing

up one of her monumentally huge breasts and smothering his face wi
th it. 'Like it a little rough, do we?' She let the other huge tit swing freely
till it smacked him on the side of the head like a wet cat fish.

With one huge breast each side of his head and Roderick's large nose
snoring eagerly against her perfumed breast bone, Laetitia commenced wha
t she called 'Mrs Newton's cradle.'

She swung one pendulous mammary gland up in the air and let it fall smack i
nto the side of Roderick's head. The impact sent the other tit wobbli
ng skyward, only to fall back again to repeat the process.
'Smackety smack, smackety smack.'

Laetitia sat for several moments with her tits flying from side to side, bounci
ng off the poor man's cranium, but still nothing happened to Roderick'
s penis. It remained soft and curled up like a hibernating snail. Then something
else happened. Roderick stopped breathing. He was quite dead. In the blackne
ss outise, tree branches rustled in the cool, early evening breeze. The
wind moaned through the creaking boughs, with the
exception of one particular tree which was in rather a hurry to get home.
The newish-looking sycamore, darted agilely down the drive, whistling
'Frere Jacques' as it did so.

The high-pitched scream from inside the house froze it in the middle of the road
. It listened intently, but there was no more sound. A little chuckle permeate
d through the bark as it waddled off down the road.
PART FIVE

The Final Solution

17

Lord Iffy Investigates

Iffy had stodd that afternoon on the very spot where Margot had met her demise.
The crater was still smoking, and in it lay the remains of two very frayed-looki
ng yellow wellies. Stuck in the ground some distance away where the ben
t and shattered remains of Lord iffy's favourite Purdey.

'What a way to go,' he exclaimed sadly, examining the antique firing piece.
'Blown to bits in the hands of a raving lunatinc.'

He sifted through the soil around the site, grunting

and murmuring, refocusing his telescope at close range, examining th
e bizarre objects he found Pieces of an aluminium colling vessel, bits of rusty
nail ans assorted shrapnel... He cast his eyes around. There was one more thing
he needed to find, on more piece. . .

'Aha.' He swooped down into the crater and pulled out one of the wellies, sniffi
ng it with distaste. 'What awfully smelly feet,' he thought, but his real intere
st was not chiropody. He examined the sole of the boot carefully then let out a
yelp.
'The game's a-foot, Boatrace!' he roared triumphantly.
The first sign of Roderick's death had been rigor mortis. His temple were alread
y quite severely bruised but Laetitia would not give up. It was not until the b
ody had chilled somewhat taht Roderick's penis finally became hard.

'At last, you blue-blooded sucker,' she hissed. 'You're mine.' And she
leapt upon his rigid frame, which looked little different in death to the way i
t looked in life, apart from its rather large protrusion.
The scream occurred at 8.37 p.m., while Iffy was examining several cutting imple
ments and kitchen artefacts in his study.
He was making copious notes, with several of his uncle's textbooks on criminolog
y open around him, when he heard the shriek.
'Roderick's dead. WAAAAAAGH!' screamed Laetitia, doing a tap dance on the landi
ng in her bed sheet. 'There's a dead man in the bed, there's a dead man in the b
ed!' she wailed.

Mark West was first on the scene and grabbed hold of her shoulders.
Butler and Lord Iffy raced up the stairs from opposite ends of the house, Butler
racing rather more effectively, since he was not wearing Guccy stilet
tos.

Iffy took in the scene, the hysterical naked woman, the stiff naked man, and dre
w a deep breath. 'Mark West,' he boomed. 'Take her to your room and keep her qui
et.' He paused. 'Butler, com with me and bring my telescope.'
'Cause of death a blunt instrument, severe bruising to both temples. He's
had a pretty brutal beating if you ask me.' Death was no stranger to John
Butler and this corpse was the first real stiff he had seen for a while.
Iffy sat across the room on a milking stool, examining every inch of the body wi
th his telescope, now set up on its tripod.
'Perhaps', he murmured. He had only heard of one case similar to this, but he fe
lt eminently qualified to investigate. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'We should have a wo
rd with Mrs. Taylor.'

Crossing to Mark's room, he ushered him out of the way in order to begin his inv
estigation. 'I only want to ask her
A few questions,' said Iffy flatly. 'And Butler will be here all the time.'
'He was such a nice man,' sniffed Laetitia, blowing her nose on the sheet.
Iffy ignored the comment and paced the room, perched on his high heels and fish
nets, his Mounty jacket glowing red in the dim light by the bedside.
'When you were put to bed this afternoon,' he began, 'You had all your clothes o
n, so why did you go to all the trouble of takeing them off before, running out
onto the landing and screaming blue murder, haw haw.'
'I... I was too hot when I woke up - it's not very hygienic to sleep in your
clothes, you know.'
'I wouldn't describe these,' said Iffy brandishing Laetitia's nylon tights, 'as
very hygienic at all. In fact, they're very smelly.' He raised them to his nose
and sniffed. 'A little fishy, wouldn't you say?'
'If you get off smelling my underwear that's your problem,' sneered
Laetitia. 'But, oh, he was so gentle.' She burst into sobs again.

'The point,' continued Iffy, 'about smells, is that to the trained nose they are
about as characteristics as a fingerprint, and this nose,' he tapped his whit
e bony beak with his index finger, 'is pretty damned good. We found the same sme
ll on these,' he held the tights up to her sniffling face, 'as we did on his thi
ghs, chest, fingers and mouth. Also,' he added slowly, 'the strongest and mos
t recent aroma emanates from his penis.'
'He was horny,' protested Laetitia.
'He was dead,' replied Iffy.
'No, he wanted it, he ...'
'You tortured him for hours, then beat him around the head until he died, then
you fucked the corpse . . . Not even I, in all my studies of p
ornographic literature, have come across anything so bizarre.'
'So how did I beat him up?' retorted Laetitia. 'And what with? You've got
no evidence.'
'You beat him to death with your breasts, Mrs Taylor.'
'Impossible. Don't be ridiculous, you're just a filthy old man.'
'Science, Mrs Taylor, will prove me right. I
have seen only one documented case such as this, but my late uncle was
very thorough in his notes. Death by mammary gland trauma.'
'Prove it. You're crazy.'
Iffy spun round and held up a slide to the light.
'You know what this is?' Laetitia was silent.
'This is what we took from the sides of Roderick's temples, and this,' he
produced a second slide, 'is what we took from your loetard.'

He pressed his monocle in firmly and pushed his nose down level with the suspect
. 'A nipple print, Mrs Taylor, and they match perfectly.'
Iffy closed the door behind them.

'Butler,' he said quietly. 'I'm going to have to put Mark West in there with our
little necrophiliac seductress to keep an eye on her. In the meantime, I want
you to bring every available meat cutlery knife
upstairs into Roderick's room. I feel the need to investigate further.'
Butler turned pale.
'You're not going to . . . '
'Just do as I say, old fellow, it's not as bad as you think.'
'He's quite mad, you know,' said Mark to Laetitia, who was sobbing qu
ietly on the corner of the bed. Mark had his back pressed against the bedroom d
oor.

'I felt so sorry for him, really I did,' she blubbed. 'He couldn't even get a li
ttle ole stiffy. For that matter,' her tone hardened up, 'show me a
goddamned Englishman who can.'
She relapsed into tears once more.
Iffy's voice drifted down the hall through the closed door.

'NO, NO, NO, NO, BUTLER. I WANT SOMETHING MUCH BIGGER, BIG ENOUGH TO REALLY SLIC
E A BREAST!'

Mark shuddered at the thought.

'He'll kiss us all. I am quite confident that he has brought us all here to die
one by one; then he'll dismember us and eat the bits. I think he's
a cannibal.'
'Oh my god.' Laetitia's lips twitched uncontrollably.
'You see, he's
accused me of killing Roderick.'
'Of course he has,' said Mark. 'That's because he needs and excuse to kill you.
You know, madman's logic and all that. Anyway, how does he reckon you
did it?'
'With thises,' she said and let the sheet fall away from her breasts. In the
dim light, the brown and red glow reflecting off the walls and bed made
her breasts look like new additinos to the solar system, or at least aliens wort
h negotiating with.
Mark West nearly choked. 'Ridiculous,' he whispered hoarsely.

Laetitia stood up and let the sheet fall from her waist, revealing her athletic
thighs and evenly tanned muscular claves.
'Help me, Mark,' she begged, approaching him and gently raking her claws down th
e soft skin of his neck. 'We have to escape.' She blew softly in his ear. 'WOW!'
She jumped back in horror as Mark's huge fifteen-inch penis extended to its ful
l length and hurtled out of his collar just below his right ear, poking her in t
he nose.
'What's that?' she yelled.
'What does it look like?' grumbled mark, red with embarrassment.
'I've never seen anything like it,' she said, horror changing to curiosity.
'Get it out, I want to have a look at it.'
'Well, I er ... '
She fluttered her mascara-glued eyelids at him.
'Pretty please?' She giggled girlishly.

Mark West's erect penis resembled nothing more nor less than a tent pole with an
apple on top. As he stood naked now before her, almost twenty- five per cent o
f his blood supply was engorged in his sexual organ, which bounced up and down g
ently in tune with his pulse.
Laetitia moved towards him astride its lenght, feeling it slide under her
bushy pubic hair.
'I guess this must be what a witch feels like on a broomstick, honey,' She smile
d.
'I wouldn't know,' croaked Mark with a dry throat.

She slid back down it again and grasped the head with both hands, pulling him to
wards the bed. The she bent over and rubbed the hot glans against her moistened
opening, bucking her hips with a mule-like thrust to spear herself on the end.
'Ohohohohohoh,' she moaned, dragging all the bedcovers off with her cla
ws and digging in to the mattress.
'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,' she screeched. 'Come in my mouth, come on
my tits, come in my hair, you bastard. I love you, oh oh oh God I'm
coming you swine, oh oh harder harder. I hate you. I hate you, you
beautiful fucker. Treat me like a dog, tie me up, whop me with your willy, you w
icked warlock. Tie me to the stake and let your braves do their worst. . . '

Mark was taken aback. What could he do? He hadn't actually done anyth
ing except stand there and let this woman impale herself. 'Deep it down a bit,
' he hissed.
'AAAow,' wailed Laetitia even louder, as if someone had stepped on a cat's tail.
'Fuck me till my head comes off, come up my nose . . . '
'Ssh, be quiet. Christ, Iffy will be in here if youcarry on like this.'
'Oh, ooagh, ooh, oooarg,' she spluttered. 'Fuck my asshole, puncture my poop chu
te, drive it up my hershey highway . . .'
'Fucking shut up will you?' complained Mark.
'. . ram it in, say hi to the brown dirt cowboys, backscuttle my hole in one . A
nything to shut her up, thught Mark. Here goes: and so he sank his penis swiftly
, firmly and six inches deep.

Laetitia screamed louder than when she discovered Roderick's death. She screamed
louder than when whe discovered Roderick's death. She scre
amed louder than when she had been born, and that was pretty loud, and she cont
inued to scream, thumping the bed with her arms and thrashing her head on the ma
ttress. 'There's no fucking need to overact, for God's sake,' yelled Mark, bu
t she continued to yelp and moan in ecstasies of agony or viceversa, when Mark W
est decided that giving her the remaining nine inches of tent pole was all that
he could do to silence this wretched screaming woman.

He took three brisk paces forward. She was silent. He paused to savour the still
ness and the sweat on her buttocks.
'Was it good for you?' he asked quietly.
'Hello, anyone home?' he asked again louder.
He took her hand - it was loose and floppy. He felt her wrist for a pulse. There
was none, and his erection began to subside rather quickly. Despite the twenty-
five per cent of his blood returning into his system, Mark's face was still very
pale. 'Oh no, not another one,' he mouthed.
18

Escape

Iffy kicked the door open and beheld the scene - Laetitia collapsed on the bed,
mouth agape, eyes bulging out of their disbelieving sockets; and mark West, plu
gged into her rectum, with his anaconda-like sexual organ slowly deflating.

'We appear to have caught you red, er, ended shall we say?' remarked Iffy.
'I don't know what you mean,' stammered Mark, white as a ghost.
'I would say that she was dead,' said Iffy, indicating the body. 'That she proba
bly died of multiple orgasms bringing on cardiac arrest, and that you are most
certainly responsible.'

Mark's penis finally slithered out of Laetitia's puckered and pierced back passa
ge, and dropped down between his legs, where it swung obscenely, dripping brow
n spots onto the carpet and smelling very offensive. 'She liked it,' he suggeste
d.
'That's exactly what Laetitia said about dear old Roderick...' started Iffy.
'And she killed him as well,' Butler chipped in his six pen'worth as he moved in
to the open doorway.
'In your own words of this afternoon, Mr West, you are in deep shit.' Iffy supp
ressed a wry grin.
'Butler,' protested Mark, 'You surely can't intend to take the word of this fien
d â the word of a transvestite, eccentric, intrebred nutter - against mine.'
'The evidence looks pretty good to me, sir,' replied Butler, dangling his finger
in the air and waving it to simulate the pendulum motion of Mark's penis.
'You bastard, we had a deal!' shouted Mark.

Iffy raised his had. 'Silence!' he yelled. 'I know you had a deal. I may look li
ke a bloody fool, and I may dress a little unusually and come up with some
crazy schemes, but when it comes to crooks I know about most things, and
Butler,' he jerked his thumb at the now decidedly uncombortable-looking manserva
nt, 'Is a lousy crook.' Iffy entered the room and paced around the bed, regardi
ng the cropse with a twinge of sadness. 'What a specimen,' he thought. 'When all
this is over I think I shall bottle those breasts for my late uncle's collectio
n.' He shook his head and cleared his throat.

'Ahem, Butler over here is in a difficult situation. He thinks that he killed Ma

rgot by accident with a home-made explosive device constructed out of an alumini
um pot. This device was not inteded for her, it was intended for someone else.'
Butler's jaw dropped. Iffy raised his hand to silence him.
'This unfortunate woman also believed that she had killed poor Roderick by mamma
ry trauma to the cranium, something that I wanted her to believe in order to gua
rantee her safety. But she did not kill Roderick nor, Butler, did you kill Margo
t.'
Butler was astounded.
'Well, who did?'
'He did,' said Iffy, nodding his head at Mark West,' and we caught him hard at w
ork destroying the evidence - to whit, Laetitia.'

Mark looked round like a caged animal, eyes darting nervously around the rom. 'Y
ou're off your rocker. Roderick, Margot. . .?'
With one enourmous stiletto-heeled stride, iffy made it to the wardrobe
and flung it open, snatching up Mark's carving knife. 'So how do you expla
in this?'
'It's for self-protection. . .'
'Self-protection and coated with a rare African posion causing death by paralysi
s twelve to eighteen hours after administration
'You mean Roderick . . .' exclaimed Butler.
'Roderick was accidentally skewered by Margot at dinner last night with this vey
knife: that's how the poison got into his system.'

'But I had nothing to do with it!' shouted Mark. 'Jesus, I wasn't even there.'
'Precisely,' said Iffy. 'You weren't at dinner. And where were you? You were out
on the moor with some cock-and-bull excuse leaving footprints all around the s
ite of the explosin.'
'Well, I did wander around and find a . . .'
'You tried to fucking kill me,' growled Butler, forgetting who he was
supposed to be. 'E told me to go out and find out where some poacher 'ad
'idden a load of birds
'Where you would be blown to smithereens,' finished iffy.
'No, no, I was looking for Cynthia. . .'
'Getting rid of her body more like. You two didn't exactly get along. We'll find
her no doubt, hidden away somewhere out there... '

Iffy stared out at the night and turned to Butler. 'So you see, old chap, you ar
e the hero of the hour.'
'I am?' he puzzled.
'But for your lousy cooking, we would all have been as stiff as boards by nine o
'clock tonight, and you would have been in bits all over the moor.'
'The turkey!' Butler gasped.
'And the carving knife that would have carved it,' said Iffy, holding up the evi
dence, 'giving each one of us an orally administered dose of poison minute enou
gh to be undetectable. The only persons not at dinner or not eating dinner were
you, Butler, and him.' He jabbed his finger at Mark.

Iffy paused in his moment of triumph.

'So you had to be lured out on to the moor and blown to pieces, ironically whils
t planting a bomb of your own. You're not a very clever villain are you, Mr W
est? The whole scheme pretty much went wrong from the beginning, but wit
h a few people being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the odd sexual ind
iscretion here and there, it began to look like a series of appalling coincidenc
es

'Now look here,' began Mark, 'anyone taking one look at this situation could onl
y call it misadventure, and anyway . . . hang on a minute, just before Cynthia
disappeared from my room she said she was going to get something downstairs, fo
od, she . . .' He looked into Butler's eyes. There was no mistaking the guilty,
shifty glare that returned his gaze.

'You!' mumbled Mark. 'You!' he shouted louder and

lunged at the manservant, who fell back against the wall as Mark grappled
with him. Iffy moved fast to crash the door shut. Mark West saw the carving knif
e he was clutching out of the corner of his eye. 'Oh shit,' he excla
imed.
Releasing his choke-hold on Butler's throat, he leapt over Laetitia's
stiffening corpse on the bed, towards the window. Butler sank to the floor, gurg
ling and choking. Iffy gamely made an attempt at a rugby tackle, grab
bing at West's disappearing trousers as he slithered over the window edge.

'Damn!' cried Iffy. 'Damn, damn, damn and blast him!'

he raged, clutching Mark West's trousers and underpants in his right hand.
'Still, he can't get far on a night like this with no trousers on. My God. Th
e car. Butler . . . come on!'
Iffy grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and almost threw him down the
main staircase.

Iffy flung open the front doors. The taxi was still there. He held out his hand.
'Keys,' he demanded and Butler felt in his jacket pocket.
Mark West fell into the blackness, minus this trousers and boxer shorts.
'Thanks God for Oxford bags,' he thought. Iffy's

Grip had pulled the grey flannels over his leather brogue shoes, and now he str
uck the earth beneath the window, some fifteen feet below.
It was a moonless night, black as pitch, but Mark West stumbled off into it, lim
ping on one ankle. One hand clutched at his penis, the other fumbled in front of
him, grasping in the darkness. He walked into the gardener's fence, erected at
knee level.
'Oh Christ,' he shouted as his shins cracked on wood.

Limping on both legs now, he straddled the obstructoin and felt his way round to
the shed. It seemed too obvious a place to hide: he could not stay for long. Hi
s left leg rattled against a metallic object leaning against the rear wall. He
reached down and felt the tubular steel, the rubber and spokes.
'A bicycle,' he exclaimed softly. He remembered it was mostly downhill to the vi
llage. The tyres felt like there was enough air in them. He lifted it over the
fence, stuffing his penis through the buttons of his shirt front so that it po
ked out from around his navel. The prospect of having his precious mem
ber shredded in the bicycle spokes was not very appealing.
'Here we go,' he thought and swung into the seat. Alas, there was no saddle
to greet his bare bottom, merely a rusty one-inch metal pole.
'What do you mean you can't find them?' screeched Iffy.
'What do I pay you for?'
'You don't pay me,' grumbled Butler.
'Don't come the raw prawn with me. What did you do with them? When did you see t
hem last?'

Butler had put the taxi ignition keys on his most important key ring, the key ri
ng that held the keys to his baby, the keys that had disappeared out onto the mo
or along with Cynthia and Pelvotron.
'Er, er, they must have dropped out of my pocket this afternoon while I
was carrying Roderick.'
Til get to the bottom of this later. We'll have to hot wire the ignition- you do
it, I haven't got a clue about mechanical things, and don't make a fuck up of t
his . . .'

A banshee wail cut through the night as Mark West's bottom got a rusty re- bore
from the seat stub.
'Butler, start the car, and get the headlights on. I'll see what the devil that
noise was.'

Mark West's eyes filled with tears as he slowly pulled his sphincter off the met
al spike. Should he see a doctor or a gynaecologist when he got home, he wondere
d? If he got home, he thought suddenly, and kicked down hard on the pedals, igno
ring the pain and standing up over the crossbar.
He rode over the lawn towards the road but Iffy waddled forwards from the
cover of the wall and grabbed him.
'He's on the gardener's old bike, Butler!' he yelled.
The car coughed spasmodically as the starter motor flailed uselessly away in the
darkness.

Mark West lashed out with his right fist into Iffy's face. There was a crack as
he struck him above the eye, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Boatrace was felled.
The bicycle wobbled precariously but Mark gritted his teeth and hung on grimly,
hitting the gravel of the driveway with a sense of relief, and continuing down
the road towards the sanctuary of the village.
The taxi spluttered into ife and the headlights erupted across the moor,
slicing into the darkness. Iffy hobbled across to the driver's side clutching
at his eye.
'Get out,' he screamed at Butler. Til drive.'
'I think I'll drive under the circumstances, sir. I mean . . .'
But Iffy pushed him over and leapt into the seat, engaging reverse gear with an
appalling 'kerrunch' and flattening his foot against the accelerator pedal.

Mark West pedalled furiously, pushing the bicycle into absurd angles to keep it
on the road as he sped downhill away from Findidnann Hall. He saw the lights il
luminate the sky as the car engine started, and then lost them as he descended i
nto the dip where Brian Taylor had commenced his sing-song. Faster and faster
he rattled, legs whizzing round and round untill they could no longe
r keep pace with the wheels; his feet flailed uselessly as the bike free
wheeled towards the village.

His hands grabbed the brakes, but there were none; the brake blocks had long ago
rotted away. He saw the 'men at work' sign up ahead but could not stop. He trie
d to avoid the highest barrier . . .
'Ooooh shit,' he yelled as the handlebars smacked into the woodwork, and he some
rsaulted through the air to land in the half-wet concrete of the newly construc
ted sheep dip pens.

The taxi roared backwards, spraying gravel chippings from its smoking wheels as
Iffy rammed it firmly into the stone column which flanked the main steps. Butler
covered his face with his hands in terror.
'Wrong gear, sir,' he screamed.
'Fuck off Butler. I come from a family of automobile pioneers.'
The car kangaroo hopped across the drive as Iffy discovered first gear but forgo
t to use the clutch.
'Change gear!' yelled Butler, lurching forward.
'What?' roared Iffy.
'SECOND GEAR.'

Iffy looked down and grabbed the gear lever with both hands.
'It's stuck, damned thing,' he protested, wrestling with the stick.
'Mind the fucking gatepost,' shrieked Butler, grabbing the vacant steering
wheel as the headlights revealed the forbidding granite post ahead.

The taxi lurched and wheezed out of the gates, surviving the near collision by i
nches as Iffy managed to rip the gear lever out of first and into neutral. From
that moment on, it was all downhill.
Mark West came to, lying face down in the concrete. He heard the pro
testing scream of the taxi's engine as the lights

Panned around the moorland casting eerie shadows into the concrete pit. The taxi
screamed past, engine revving as Iffy floored the accelerator, but declined to
put the motor in gear. Mark decided he had betterstay put for a while.
'Brakes!' screamed Butler, seeing the T junction approaching.
'They're not working,' yelled Iffy, slamming his ffot repeatedly on th
e clutch in panic.
'Damned British Leyland . . .'

The taxi almost toppled over as it spun through 180 degrees, tyres sq
uealing and filling the night air with the stench of smouldering rubber. It stop
ped in the middle of the road junction, its engine purring softly once more. The
headlight beams burned through the rubber fog that rose all around it.
Inside, Butler released the hadbrake with a sigh of relief.
He was bathed in sweat and had aged years in a matter of minutes.
'Cor, pretty exciting, what? I must go for a drive more often, eh? Damn fine qui
ck thinking, Butler!'

Butler groaned in his seat. 'I think we should stay here for a while sir. This T
-junction seems to be pretty strategic. He'll have to come this way if he comes
by road and we'll never find him tonight otherwise, not with a mist coming down
.'
There was indeed a thin film of Scotch mist forming on the windscreen, and swirl
ing in the headlights.

'Very well, Butler, I agree. We shall stay here until first light, and then, if
we haven't got him, we shall backtrack and have a look out on the moors. I sugge
st that you take the first watch. I'm pretty tuckered out after all that
driving, you know.'

Butler looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. 'When do we change shifts?'
'Butler,' admonished Iffy. 'Really! I should like a 6:30 a.m. call and if you
can rustle up a couple of scrambled eggs on toast, that would be dmanably decent
of you. Anyway, good night and good hunting.' Iffy started s
noring almost immediately, sounding remarkably like a straw sucking at the bott
om of an empty can. Butler marvelled at the way he could just drop off to sleep.
Butler was always disturbed by his terrifying recurrent dreams. 'No shame,' he
thought, â these aristocrats.â
19

The Sun Comes Up

The first early bird swooped low over the high turret of Findidnann Hall, hoping
in vain for that bald head to reappear for target practice. The owner of the b
ald head shook the numbness out of his bones and prodded the numbskul
l next to him.

'Excuse me, sir, this is your 6.30 a.m. call,'

'Rabbits!' exclaimed iffy and leapt out of his seat into the road, poised like a
flamingo. Butler had to put up with this every morning.
'Morning, Butler,' greeted Iffy as if the word 'rabbits' had never existed. 'No
sign of him, eh? Very well, first gear it is then.'

Butler rolled his eyes heavenward, as the car lurched forward back up the hill.
They drove erratically onwards.
'There, sir, there it is, on the left by the roadworks sign.' Butler pointed
excitedly at the mangled remains of the gardener's bicycle, its front wheel twis
ted and broken where it had skidded into the barrier.
Iffy found the brake pedal this time and the taxi squealed to a halt.
'No time to lose, Butler, he must be injured, he can't have go far . . .' Iffy s
tarted to hobble over to the building site on his high heels.
'In here sir, look.' Butler had glanced into one of the concrete pits. It was
Mark West. More or less where he had lain after falling off his bicycl. 'Wot a f
ucking 'orrible way to go,' grunted Butler, averting his eyes.

Iffy arrived out of breath.

'Pretty damned ironic if you ask me,' he commented, running his gaze over the co
rpse. Mark West had lain face down that evening in the half set concrete.
Every extra second had sealed his fate.
All evening, as the cold had nmbed his limbs and chilled his mind, he had
struggled, pulled, cajoled, smashed with his fists till they were bloody, but
the first seven inches of his penis remained set hard in the concrete, and could
not escape.
'Death,' remarked Iffy, 'by indecent exposure. A lesson for us all.' You know
the Eastern thing about karma and all that. You know what those awful coloureds
say, "What goes around comes around"? Very true Butler.' Iffy stared at him har
d. 'Very true.'

They got back in the car. Iffy insisting on driving, so Butler reluctantly start
ed the engine for him. The car weaved unsteadily round the first bend, roaring f
ull throttle in first gear.
'Should I pull the lever yet, Butler?' demanded Iffy.
'Put yo ur foot on that first,' Butler pointed at the clutch, 'then pull it.'
'Righto, old chap, here we go.'

Iffy pressed his foot on the clutch, grabbed the gear lever and wrenched it into
second gear, keeping his other foot flat down to the boards on the throttle.
'Nothing's happening, old man!' he roared above the engine.
'Let go of the clutch,' mouthed Butler, almost inaudible above the din.
The car rocketed forward as the screaming engine was violently connected to the
gearbox.
'Christ, Butler, we're doing almost twenty-five miles and hour.' Iffy
wrestled with the wheel and wrenched it hard over to negotiate the next bend, b
ut the road was too narrow, sufficient at that point for only one vehicle's wid
th, while Iffy needed at least half a truck's length of space to get round it sa
fely.

'Abandon ship!' he shrieked, as the car trampled over the heather and
buried its nose in a ditch, steam hissing and rising from its radiator.
'You've really fucking done it now,' complained Butler, from the silent and wrec
ked cockpit.
'They were your bloody instructions,' snapped Iffy. 'We'll just have to walk.' H
e scrambled in an ungainly fashion out of the twisted chassis, and crawled up th
e bank to stand on the road.
'Christ, Butler, come and look at this,' he yelled urgently, his eyes riveted to
the middle of the tarmac.
'Jesus,' complained Butler, 'What have you ... what the fuck is that?' he
exclaimed slowly.
'That,' said Iffy grimly, 'is a Mark 1 British Army-pattern pressure-
operated vehicle mine, and I do believe that it was intended for us.' In the mid
dle of the road, flush with the surface, lay a circular twelve-inch d
iameter metal plate.
'Somebody must have put it there last night, after we went past,' murmured
Butler, seriously worried about his karma by now.
'Quite correct,' snapped a harsh voice in front of them. 'I did.'

Iffy and Butler looked up. Wing Commander Bill Symest-Groat was wearing
army fatigues and was holding a pump action
twelve-bore shotgun. He stood up, legs twelve inches apart in the mili
tary at-ease position on the crest of the road above them.
'You two are the most repellent pair I've laid eyes on in many a year. Not
only that, you're stupid beyond all belief. Did you really,' he seered at Iffy,
'did you really believe that you were talking to a plum pudding that was a membe
r of the Special Forces? Ever heard of ventriloquism?'
'So who was he?' demanded Iffy.
'The secret agent? Master of disguise and concealment? Builder of radio- control
led game birds - a fucking stupid idea if I may say so . . .'
'Told you so,' hissed Butler.
'Shut up,' growled Iffy, kicking him.
'The secret agent?' he continued, walking towards them down the hill and levelli
ng the shotgun. 'Poisoner of carving knives, infiltrator of dead ancest
ors, fucker of American tarts, booby trapper of hunchbacks, three- toed kung fu
expert, arboreal phanthom...'
'Arboreal what?' grunted Butler.
'It means he's good at dressing up as trees.'
'Indeed I AM,' roared Symes-Groat. 'I am all of these things and I would have be
en a good blower-up of vehicles had you two clowns been able to keep a fucking c
ar on the road at twenty-five miles an hor with no traffic. So now I have to do
the job personally.'

He flicked off the safety catch.

'What's he going to do?' quivered a terrified Butler.
'You are going to have and accident,' declared Symes-Groat.
'Your motor vehicle has just crashed into a ditch and caught fire, alas with
you in it. Pretty neat, eh?'
'You'll never get away with it,' sneered Iffy defiantly.
'I already have,' murmured Symes-Groat. 'Watch me.'

He wriggled his thumbs underneath his double-barrelled chin, and Iffy watc
hed in horror as the skin began to peel away in strips, until the whole fabric o
f Wing Commander Bill Symes-Groat's face came off in a web of gluey plastic and
false hair.
'You!' exclaimed Iffy in horror.
'Me, myself, I, old boy, the very same. The displeasure will be all yours.'
'Bloody 'ell,' exploded Butler. 'It's your double, your Lord-ship.'
'My half double to be precise, ' muttered Iffy grimly.

'Quite correct both of you. May I introduce myself to your Manservant, Ferdinand
Alfonso Boatrace at your service. 'He gave them a supercilious smirk. Butler th
ought his chin was even weaker than Iffy's.
'Though I was dead, didn't you eh? Sold into slavery in Africa was the family ru
mour, I believe, after squandering uncle's money on whores and gambling so they
said. You didn't do much better, did you old man? Broke, not a penny to your nam
e, and you dream up this ridiculous scheme to make money. Played right into my
hands of course. Getting rid of the extraneous baggage posed a bit of a p
roblem but, as it turned out, they did a pretty good job of it themselves.'

'Let's make a deal,' started Iffy, 'I can overlook this little incident...'
'Let me tell you what the deal is, my dear half-baked half-brother,'
interrupted Alfonso firmly. 'You will get into that car where you will burn joll
y nicely until you're unrecognizable. I will then go and live in your house and
assume your identity, which, as your butler pointed out, I am eminently capable
of doing.'
'You'll still be broke,' shouted Iffy. 'You can't sell the house because of lega
l rubbish. Anyhow, I tried it and no one wants it, it's faling apart, so you're
back where you started.'

'Not so, dearest sibling,' hissed Alfonso. 'I have located a map showing the las
t resting place of the famed Dubl'une treasure, about six feet under Butl
er's pantry in fact, so my money problems will be temporary to say the
least. . . Now, get in the car.' He waved the gun barrel menacingly.
'What if we don't?' replied Iffy valiantly. 'Then you'll have to shoot us, and t
hat will show up on forensics too easily.'
'Never give up do you? Very well. Let me put it another way.'

He took a deep lungful of morning air and exhaled loudly. 'Butler here is on the
run from the nick, but you were too stupid to suss that one out, so I shoot him
dead first, then I kick the fuck out of you and put you both in the car - then
I torch it and sling in the gun too. What do you think? Argument or accident i
n the front seat? Criminal trying to kidnap or lover's tiff between a
pair of pooftahs?' He spat. 'You're not renowned for being the straightest perso
n in the world, dearest Bro, and this sorry specimen could pas for an arse bandi
t any were.'

Butler started to move towards the car.

'You're crazy!' screamed Iffy. 'Better to be shot than burned alive. . .'
'Maybe I'll just wound him then,' Alfonso grinned.
Butler opened the car door and got in, sitting glumly in his seat. Alfonso took
a step towards Iffy.
'In the Foreign Legion I was, y'know,' he remarked casually.
Til take your eyeballs out first if you don't move.' He advanced another step.

Pelvotron had beavered away eagerly for hours, humming and coming, squirting gal
lons of juicy malodorous ditch waer around the moors until the supply
became exhausted and the machine had sunk into
the mechanical equivalent of a post-coital nap.

Its circuits, however, remained alert and aware, programmed irreversibly in 'see
k and penetrate' mode. Not even a straying sheep had come within range to trigge
r its arousal stage.

This morning, however, was different. And the little electrical noises
buzzing from its internal motors should have told the unwary observer that this
would be a one-way love affair. As the juicy morsel passed by, the cross wires t
hat aimed its steel shaft started to tingle. The caterpillar tracks slowly and s
oundlessly ground their way out of the dry stream bed, and
rolled across the moor towards ground zero.

Alfonso's face was contorted in a sneer of malice.

'Filth!' he accused. 'My people are gong to get rid of your sort for good, and s
oon,' he added, clenching his fist and staring contemptuosly at Iffy who remain
ed at the side of the road unmoved.

Pelvotron broke cover and hit the road, travelling at its top speed of around th
irty miles per hour, driving considerably better than Lord iffy. It targeted the
muddy, parachute camouflaged, denim-clad bottom before it.
It required pin-point accuracy to hit at the right angle and speed so rubber- en
ded monster would hurtle into the victim' s anus, squeezing between his very mus
cular Foreign Legion issue buttocks.
Alfonso heard the high-pitched whine at the last second.
He looked around and his mouth dropped open.
'What the fuck . . .' but no further sound emerged as Pelvotron hit full force w
ith a dull 'phplat' sound. His trousers split, followed shortly by his soft fle
shy sphincter.

Alfonso's arms flew skyward as his body jerked off the ground, skewered on the e
nd of the speeding knob. His legs bicyled through the air in agony, as he hurtle
d forward at thirty miles an hour.
Iffy dived for cover in the front seat of the car.
'What the fuck is that thing, Butler?' he screamed. Butler ws cowering under the
dashboard. He had seen it coming.
'Well, sir, it's a little invention that I. . .'
Kerrump!

An earth-shaking explosion, throwing tarmac and loose earth fifty feet into the
air, silenced him.
Iffy's head cautiously poked out of the car door. The rever-berations of the
report had finished rattling through the dawn and the last pieces of soil had fa
llen on to the roof of the car.

'He's gone, Butler,' he whispered in astonishment.

Un-steadily, he staggered to the spot where Pelvotron had run over the mark 1
British Army vehicle mine, moving at thirty miles per hour, whilst still furiou
sly
buggering Alfonso.
There was no Pelvotron any more.
Nor was there a sign of Alfonso. Just a bloody great hole.
20

The Hereafter

'Hoisted by his own petard, Buter old chap. What did I say about karma? Incident
ally, damned useful invention of yours, that Pelvotron thing, got us out of a da
mned sticky situation back there. When all this is finished I may let you build
another one. Could be quite entertaining, you know.'
'If I may say so, sir, I. . . ' began Butler.
'Just shut up and dig!' ordered Iffy.

Iffy sat in the kitchen outside the pantry doorway on a chaise longue dragged pr
otestingly downstairs by Butler. In a silver bucket alongside lay one open champ
agne bottle filled, for reasons of thrift, with tap water.
'Soon have the real thing, eh Butler?' chortled Iffy.
'Yes sir.'

Butler was down to six feet under the pantry floor and had been digging for seve
ral hours with a pick axe, shovel, and his bare hands. Sweet ran in rivers down
his back and chest as he toiled in the stifling heat and dampness of the small p
antry.

'I've got it, sir!' he exclaimed suddenly as his pick-axe handle splintered wood
.
Iffy leapt off his couch as Butler struggled to free the ancient ship's chest
from its tomb.
'Here ... it... comes,' he heaved, hauling on a brass ring attached to one end.
'For God's sake be careful,' squealed Iffy.

Butler let out a sigh of relief. 'Got it, sir.' The trunk lay upended in the
trench.
'Break the ruddy thing open, man.' Iffy gestured manically. Butler swung the pic
k at the rusty padlock, once, twice.

Then it caught behind the rotting backplate. He prized the lock away from the wo
od, which splintered and snapped softly, moist after all those years of burial.
Iffy furiously polished his monocle, breathing on it with almost every breath.
'Well, well! Open it you fool,' he breathed desperately.
The lid was raised. In the bottom lay a small envelope.

Butler and Iffy stood in stunned silence. Butler nervously cleared his throat an
d reached down to pick up the paper.

'This seems to be about it, sir,' he said quietly and lifted it up to the Laird.
Iffy snatched the envelope and tore it open. A second later he screeched in ang
uish and hurled the champagne bottle at the opposite wall where it sm
ashed to pieces. He ran up the kitchen stairs screaming oaths. The letter lay on
the stone floor where he had dropped it. Butler reached out os his hole and rea
d the words written in pencil on a piece of excercise-book paper, hurriedly tor
n in two.

To whom it may concern. YOU on treasure.

You can sue my descendants for it. Love Uncle

'Rotten old bastard,' mumbled Butler.

Lord Iffy remained silent for almost twenty-four hours. His monocle fell out as
he sat in his favourite, high-backed Victorian arm-chair, but he did not replace
it. His face was stone grey and his breathing shallow. Twenty- four hours he ha
d remained in that seat, and the noise of a delivery van coming up the driveway
did not provoke even a blink of an eye or a twitch of his nose.

Butler answered the door with surprise, seeing the armoured, dark blue
Securicor Ford Transit pull up, and the helmeted and uniformed guard get
out, unlock the back door and retrieve a small padded jiffy bag.

'Bit cut off up here, aren't you?' a thick Scottish accent enquired, his face ha
lf-concealed beneath his acrylic protection visor. 'Sign here.' He handed Butler
a pad which the manservant signed without looking at it. His eyes were glued f
irmly to the envelope. 'Here you are, sir,' said the guard cheerfully. '
Good morning.' He turned and ambled off towards his van, which soon disappeared
over the hill. Butler opened the jiffy bag. Inside was an airmail envelope
covered in USA stamps and marked 'Strictly private and confidential. For
the eyes of Lord Iffy Boatrace only'. Butler became quite excited and turned aro
und to go upstairs, but what he saw froze him to the spot.

It was covered in slime, its lips sucking and bubbling on the excrement and mud
which caked its body. Bloody sores erupted from its feet and outstre
tched hands. It took halting steps towards Butler.

He uttered a shriek of fright and raced up the stairs to Iffy's study, locking t
he door behind him. He threw the envelope into Iffy's lap. 'There's a
fucking monster downstairs, like a zombie,' he panted. Iffy ignored him and sl
owly, painstakingly opened the envelope as if in a dream. His lips drooped open
and shut as he read the first few lines.

Dear Lord Boatrace,

following our meeting this summer in Los Angeles, I have great pleasu
re in
confirming your appointment as United Kingdom Liaison Officer for Jimmy Reptile
Evangelism Incorporated.
Enclosed you will find two round-trip tickets to LA, where you will attend our f
irst International Conference and Prayer Meeting as a personal guest of the Rev.
Jimmy Reptile.
I need not tell you how important and lucrative this conference can be to all of
us. Hugs and holy water.
Yours in faith

Hyapatia Comebody Personal Asst to Rev. Reptile P.S. I will be in Room 415
Iffy put the letter down slowly as the fire of inspiration lit the engine room
of his brain.
'Butler,' he began, a huge grin rising on his face. 'I,' he started
even louder, 'AM A FUCKING MISSIONARY.'

He stood up and flung his arms in the air, knocking a nearby vase to the floor.
'TV evangelism, Butler, prime time. My God, do you know how much money there is
in that? That's what Alfonso meant when he said "My people are going to get rid
of your sort." The stupid sod went and are going to rid of your sort." The stup
id sod went and got converted to some senile old flea bag's TV show! He was prob
ably going to give him the bloody house and everything.'

Iffy's tortuous mind was really spinning now.

'Pack, Butler, pack right now, we're of to Los Angeles.' Iffy wrenched ope
n the door as Butler uttered his protest.
'Don't do that, sir, there's . . .'

Now it was Iffy's turn to freeze on the spot. He peered closely at the a
pparition that had followed Butler upstairs, the Torn and
wretched clothes, the slime. Suddenly, Iffy laughed quickly and strode past it d
own the stairs.
'Morning, Cynthia,' he yelled.
'That was the best fuck I ever had in my life, you bastard' she croaked.
'Oh no,' said Butler.
"Two days in a stream breathing through a hole in a turkey's breastbone is not m
y idea of fun, so if you want to make this relationship work, then I'm going to
make a few changes...'

Butler screamed as Cynthia grabbed his trousers

and pressed her excrement-covered face to his crutch, her ha
nds tearing at his fly buttons, her mouth contorted like a vacuum-hose monster.

Iffy popped his head around the door.

'Not packed yet?' he asked brightly.
'Help!' screamed the man being eaten.
'Don't need any, old chap,' replied Iffy brightly.
'What am I going to do?' shrieked Butler, rolling his eyes to the ceiling as
Cynthia took a mouthful of flaccid foreskin.
'Adopt the position, old chap,' laughed Iffy.
'What?'
'The missionary position, of course.' Lord Iffy slammed the door.

THE END