Contents

The Characters
PART ONE: THE PROBLEM
1 Building the Perfect Beast 1
2 The Secret Agent 6
3 Butler' s Invention 11
4 Upper Cut and Upper Crust 15
5 A Friendly Pair 18
6 Food Glorious Food 23
PART TWO: THE SOLUTION
7 A Dubl'une Welcome 26
8 Journey to Findidnann 35
9 The Joy of Marriage 41
PART THREE: THE BEST LAID PLANS .
10 The Maiden Run 48
11 Dinner is Served 56
12 Bumps in the Night 63
13 Taking the High Road 70
PART FOUR: THE PLOT THICKENS
14 The Breakfast Club 78
15 A Sporting Event 86
16 Murder Most Mammary 95
PART FIVE: THE FINAL SOLUTION
17 Lord Iffy Investigates 102
18 Escape 108
19 The Sun Comes up 116
20 The Hereafter 123

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
proprietors 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 Andy looked on in bemusement (as usual)... Shaun Hutson's
chest exploded in a geyser of blood and intestines . . . Steve Harris
threatened torture 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, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
copyright owner.

I
The Characters
Locals
Lord Iffy Boatrace, Laird of Findidnann
Educated ineffectually at Thigwell Boarding School, his early life resulted
in the 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
significantly from the front of his hairline; has some relative unusual
hobbies and personal pursuits.
Wing Commander Bill Symes-Groat (Retired)
Sixty-year-old RAF officer living as Iffys closest neighbour.
A penchant for young male recruits resulted in his dismissal from the
service. Awaiting 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 owner of the local village.

II

Guests

Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison and his wife, Margot Smith
Roderick is a large, bumbling, blue-blooded upper-class twit. His wife
(who refused 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-
endowed 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, that is the last thing on their mind.

1
PART ONE
The Problem

1
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 thousand 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
cleared his throat and stretched out his upturned palm. 'Oh, very well then,
very well,' railed Iffy irritably, digging deep into his tailcoat pocket and
producing a fifty pence piece. 'Will this do?
'That will do nicely, sir', affirmed Butler, his hand closing over the meter

2
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
crocodile 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 town 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
remote 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
oriental solutions to this problem, sir, and may have stumbled upon
something.'
'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 Findidnann 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 furiously 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
monocle back into his eye and regarded Butler suspiciously.
'You,' he said whispering incredulously, 'have and idea?'. His eyes flicked
uncertainly 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 . . .'

3
'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 in a single bound, scraping the varnish with his high heels. 'What?'
he roared, flailing 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 the walls and ceilings; pheasants, badgers, stoats, lions, tigers,
geese, ferrets, moose, bears, snakes, fish. His gazed continued: eagles,
doves, armadillos, hamsters, gerbils, horses, dogs, the twenty-third Laird of
Findidnann - also 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 table 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
stop investigating the globe because he couldn't eat it? Did the flavour of
the apple that hit Newton on the head affect his theory of gravity, eh?
Iffy grabbed Butler enthusiastically by the shoulders and shook him
warmly. '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,'
he 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
around the room. 'Aha!' he exclaimed, as he pulled out the British Field

4
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
outrageous 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 for 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
straight. 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 pin 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
wish 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
thought. Books on astronomy, the occult, military matters, philosophy,
religion and the like filled the upper shelves: pornography, stiletto shoe
catalogues and Burke's Peerage lined the lower shelves. Nothing, he
mused, that would help him build a flock of high-speed, realistic, obedient
mechanical grouse.

5
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 semaphore signal codes.


6
2
The Secret Agent
Iffy trudged up the gravelled path towards the turreted gothic nightmare
which was the residence of his next-door neighbour, Wing Commander Bill
Symes-Groat. The Lord of Findidnann was not accustomed to such an
indignity as a walk across three miles of sodden moorland, and was totally
unprepared for the ruggedness of the terrain. As a result, his best pair of
Italian blue leather stilettos had snapped their heels and this, coupled with the
appallingly early hour of seven-thirty in the morning, had left him most
distressed upon arrival. He reached the front gate.
'Halt, who goes there?' squeaked an unidentified and invisible child-like
voice. 'I'm Lord Iffy Boatrace and I've come to see the Wing Commander.
Would you tell him I'm here?'
'Advance and give the countersign', squeaked the voice again, higher in pitch
this 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 fearful
shriek.
'You silly senile old sod,' he screamed, as he ran for cover behind the garden
wall.
The second barrel ripped both coat-tails off his jacket as he dived headfirst
over 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
beyond.
'Cease fire!' bellowed a voice, rather more grown up. 'Sorry about that, old
chap. You can come out now, it's quite safe.'

7
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
lederhosen 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.
Goering can serve the tea.'The child scuttled of round the back of the house.
Iffy spat 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 briny, 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 room. '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 to 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-eyed 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.'

8
'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
deceptino, 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 Luftwaffe 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 breakfast 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
centrepiece 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
when they deserve it; and they're pretty damn deserving I can tell you.' He
chortled 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 to 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 been 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 urgently.

9
'REVEAL YOURSELF!' roared Groaty Woaty 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,
Oman; 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 he 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 warning grouse.
Whatever you want.'
'On a grouse?' exclaimed an astonished Iffy. The plum pudding swivelled
in its base 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 of 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,'
declared 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 pervert's hand warmly. 'You've saved my bacon.'
'Am I dismissed now then, sir?' said the pudding.

10
'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 an
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?'


11
3
Butler's Invention
Iffy sat in his study, with his feet in the steaming hot salt water of a zinc
tub. He was covered in towels as he sat before his telescope studying the
night sky, wrinkling up his nose from time to time in intense concentration.
Butler arrived 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 Old 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, or 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 married and none of them know each other because of their
differing ages.'
'Well I know one of 'em,' declared Iffy. 'Roderick, 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 away. He paused. 'God I wonder what sort of woman would
marry a carthorse like that? 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 work for me immediately. I tell you Butler; in the words of
the immortal Sherlock Holmes, the game's afoot!'

12
'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, haw haw haw.'
'Will that be all, sir?'
'Yes, Butler. Yes, off you go. Great days ahead, eh? Great days.' He looked
at his feet and began to sing in a nasal, toneless monotone . . .
'And did these feet, in ancient times, walk upon England's mountains
green, and was the holy, er, grouse of Iffy .. Haw, haw, haw.
The laughter faded as Butler, with supreme self-control, closed the door
and stood 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 future usefulness fading fast and that would mean
unemployment and that would mean... He stiffened as sweat started to
form on his palms. His face turned pale as memory returned.
'John Butler' declared the Judge. 'Fraudulently selling the mortal remains
of the deceased is a serious charge; no less serious is burying the wrong
bits of the 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 to 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 coffin with sandbags. Nobody was any the wiser.
It was but a short step for Butler to start burying the wrong people
substituting the remains of demised local villains for 'Loving Jeffrey 75
taken suddenly by the hand of God, RIP'.
Loving Jeffrey meanwhile was being carved up by medical students at the
London Hospital in Whitechapel.

13
'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 thing. 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 important 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 given four life sentences for disembowelling his uncle and his family
with a Stanley 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
childhood. Butler stood by the grey, coarse blankets which covered
Slasher's bunk and bent over to pour the tea into the cracked prision mug.
As the tea arced into in, John Butler froze. He could feel the erection
bulging against his prison suit; a huge lump, like a baby's arm, was trying
to punch it's way out of his fly zipper, struggling restlessly beneath the
material.
Butler blushed bright red; he couldn't understand it. He had never had such
a stirring. This may have been a result of his father's 'character training'.
His favourite method was to tie a rubber band around Butler's scrotum and
beat his balls 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 his feet.
'Sorry, Slasher,' the horny tea maid croaked, frightened out of his wits.
Slasher 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 every time he spoke.
'You're a bleeding poof, aren't you Butler?'
Butler's jaw moved, but no sound would come.
'I like poofs,' grinned Slasher, dropping his pants to reveal filthy yellow-
stained Y-fronts, 'and I'm going to 'ave you.'

14
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
palpitating wildly. Since that day, in the Scrubs there had been no trace of
an erection, no stirring of physical sexual desire, only the detached clinical
search for an expression of his tortured mental desires. He had escaped
from the prison immediately 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 his top hat, tails, stockings, suspenders and
thigh boots; whilst Iffy took the opportunity to fire all his servants and
replace them with this new, horrendously 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 both 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 waistcoat 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
gleaming 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 mad 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 brainchild, his creation, the
mechanical expression of his tortured psyche, the engineer's dream -
Pelvotron, the perfect penis.


15
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 had been in the Navy for a short period of time after leaving
Thigwell public school but had left, under the advice of his Commanding
Officer, after his three-year, short-service commission was up. During his
brief spell in the service of Her Majesty, our man at number 33 Nouvelle
Drive had succeeded in bending the sharp end of a frigate, hitting a mine in a
minesweeper and almost sinking a submarine he was visiting by omitting to
close the door on the top of it. Subsequent to his departure from the Navy he
had become a moderately successful insurance salesman. 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 had just recently demolished a fifteen hundred-tin display of South
African sliced peaches. 'Awfully sorry,' he cried, wading through the mass of
dented cans to rescue the small, bullet-like human beneath them. 'Bastards!'
screamed the 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 besuited 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.

16
'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
everywhere.
'Gosh,' mouthed Tennison.
'Come on, you berk.' She grabbed him by the wrist and smashed through the
emergency 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 improve 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, eyeing 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 swallowing 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?'

17
'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 reemerged as the kitchen door burst open and Margot Smith,
vegan, feminist and arden 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 gigantic, 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
boots 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 gone. 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 that
morning addressed to him not many letters arrived like that anymore -
and which he had secreted away for this moment.
He opened it, read the invitation, then carefully folded the paper and
slipped it into his apron pocket. 'Good old Iffy,' he exclaimed. 'I jolly well
shall go.'


18
5
A Friendly Pair
The Edinburgh express screamed through the night, twin Paxman Valletta
diesels pushing the 'Durham Light Infantry' locomotive past 125 miles an
hour. The hundreds 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 explaining in
the bar coach, the service could always be improved upon. '. . . And that
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 much that costs to get fixed?' She eyed the Rastafarian train
guard curiously. Methuselah Claude Bimby Gary Smith had never seen a
Rhino, although Laetitia would probably have believe him if he said he
had, but despite his long Rasta 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 grineed 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
couldn't see what that had to do with anything. Still, she thought, who
cares, bloodclot 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
have to put up with my little sniffle then.' She pinched her thumb and
forefinger together to emphasize the particular nature of her medical
condition, and Methuselah observed her tastefully enamelled false nails.

19
'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,
flattened, 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 of those beads to hang on your wig.'
Methuselah was yanked off down the corridor towards the nearest toiled.
He wondered 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 pissed 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 postrate figure lying on the floor, arm half over the chair, tongue

20
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
Laetitia in frustration. 'I know the English have self-control but this is
ridiculous.' '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 him
down the aisle, past the old lady in a woolly hat, past a man with very
large ears and his torpedo-shaped female companion, and past a
businessman intently studying the Daily Mail. 'Shit,' she hissed. 'Get 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
nutting to upser your old man. . .'
'We are alone,' grinned Laetitia evilly, inflating her breasts until they
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 woolly 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 hat 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 hand and yanked hard, while her other hand ripped open the front of
his trousers and closed around his penis. 'Well, well, big boy. 'She licked
her lips in anticipation. 'Oh Christ,' groaned Methuselah in agony. 'Let
go of me bollocks.'
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

21
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 long, 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 Taylor 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 on 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 the 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
rassklaat crazy woman.'
Laetitia grabbed the door handle to steady herself but over-balanced,
wrenching 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
exposed to the rest of the carriage.
'Oh oh oh diar, oh oh,' she gribbered helplessly as her tea tray flew into the
air and the full teapot landed squarely in the lap of Roland Wilkinson,
businessman, still engrossed in his Daily mail.
'AAArgh!' screamed Roland, leaping into the air and clutching his
steaming genitals, the copy of Men Only hiding behind his newspaper
falling open on to the table, to be grabbed by a ferret-like Margot Smith.

22
'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
privates.
'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 leaf. Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison stood up to his full height
of six foot four.
'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
chair, paralytically drunk. 'See him,' slurred Brian, indicating the body
lying on the floor.
'He's a fucking brain surgeon.'



23
6
Food Glorious Food
Mark West woke up at nine a.m. In his large double bed and flailed his arm
in search of his wife. The bed was empty. He looked at the clock, sat up and
investigated 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.
She 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 warmer and tied it firmly around his knob, fastening the woolly toggle
at the top end to the hook attached to the armpit of his dressing gown. He
smirked as he recalled Cynthia's explanation of the knitting of his penis
cover as 'something 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
dollops of atmospheric phlegm waiting to slide in his lungs. Mark could
almost taste the twelve-hour-old stale cigarrette butts as he beheld his wife
Cynthia, aged twenty-five, sprawled out on the carpet, her legs around the
neck of the next-door neighbour and her tights hanging from the rubber plant.
Cynthia was snoring 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 was still rotating uselessly as the arm flopped
against the end stop. The evidence of alcoholic excess lay all aroud the room:

24
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
shaped rear end. The velocity of his kick propelled her pubic bone with not
inconsiderable force into the face of Arthur Desiree Whale, the transexual
music journalist 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, embossed 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
behalf of the Thigwellonians to a most extraordinary dinner party and
sporting 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 accomodation, entertainment and meals will, of
course, be provided.
Mark took a sip of tea. 'Why not?' he thought. 'It would keep Cynthia
away 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
handle moved slowly and a claw-like, broken-finger-nailed hand pushed
open the kitchen door, followed by an arm and then the trunk of the
drunken, cross-eyed Gorgon Cynthia West, alcoholic, friend of strays and
waifs, and downwardly mobile amateur bag lady.
'I hate you,' she spat, swaying on the door handle for support.

25
'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 performing tumbling rotations as her cracked, lipstick-rimmed mouth
repeated her post-alcohol culinary litany.
'Chocolate spinach cheese Locuzade.' One by one, the dietician's
nightmare became reality. 'Ham eggs crisps milk prawn cocktail 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
splattered yellow all over the Laura Ashley wallpaper.
Mark re-entered and saw Cynthia's head in the waste disposal unit. He
was tempted 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.



26
PART TWO
The Solution
7
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, Jose Barcelona, had revealed the whereabouts of the treasure.
The village became 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. The 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 which sold most things, including
contraceptives. But none big enough for Mark West, who was sunning
himself on the gently sloping main street, admiring himself in the shop
windows, and generally thanking God for having created him in his
image.

27
'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. 'The 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 arrived on the morning train (there were only two a day) and
Mark had decided to delay their arrival at Findidnann Hall so as to have a
look around. He was particularly fascinated by the antiquity of the petrol
pump mechanism, which he dated at 1925, and on the subject of which he
was an expert. So much so that he was entitled 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
apparatus, had retired to the chapel with a handbag full of kit-kats, where
she had prayed fervently for an Act of God to strike down her petroleum-
obsessed partner.
'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 confidently on to the platform. He admired the way that the
station, with its single track 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 earnest 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 machine 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

28
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 sound of the engine's whistle threw the entire village into panic. A
taxi pulled round 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 loo; 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,
darkened glass obscuring the re-polished, leather-clad interior; a real-life
time machine on wheels. Mark looked for the Station Master; surely
someone would 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 the 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
more foul than itself, erupting from a well-deserved grave.

29
'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, emphasized by its hunch back, which contributed to a remarkable
rolling gait as it staggered toward the platform on its hobbit-like, three-
toed feet.
'Mine,' it yelled, pitching toward the approaching carriages, arms
outstretched.
Mark thought of Cynthia. Perhaps the creature would get her. He . . . he . . .
he paused.
'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 alarmingly
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 unceremoniously 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 inflated her breasts dangerously and puckered her patent-
wet-look glossy lips. 'Bonnie Scotland,' she declared proudly. 'From
whence my ancestors may have come.' 'Fuck that shit,' replied Brian
Taylor, 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, meanwhile, had composed himself.

30
'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
fisticuffs 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 crutch 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
happened in a second. Roderick lay groaning on the floor; the creature
grinned evilly 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,
casting 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
platform, 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.

31
'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 own spendthrift, dick-hungry wife, stinking of perfume;
and now here was mark West, a chinless wonder par excellence. God
knows waht his missus was like
'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 was only six-feet hich and the stone was notably
unbending, Roderick found 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.' She 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 as Cynthia appeared.
'Mark, Mark.' The loo door opened and Cynthia staggered 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 with
superglue.'
'OH, VAIN WOMAN!' cried Margot, like some hellfire preacher. 'You
need some sisterhood,' she proclaimed and pushed Cynthia back inside,

32
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 you 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 wave 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
cobblestones, chuckling to himself in a beery, Glaswegian fashion.
Laetitia's mouth remained open, her bottom lip twitching. It was a trick she
had learned from watching 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.
Laetitia' s feature hardened up suddenly, as if her skin had been covered
with leather. 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 canines.
'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 in her hands Mark marvelled at her clothes. Every possible devide

33
of feminity had been perverted, to suggest maximum sexual availability.
Even her shoes made it impossible for her to walk witouth gyrating her
hips wantonly; 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 Laetitia's lap; and with Mark West, who was moaning in pain as
the bass guitar notes hammered through his spine and the vocals set his
teeth on edge like a dentist's drill.
'Where the hell is Cynthia?' he shouted above the noise. 'She's been nearly
fifteen minutes in there now.' He pushed his head through the window and
peered outside. The monster-movie taxi driver leant nonchalantly against
the headlamp, chewing on the piece of hardened glue he had extracted
from his nose.
'Oi!' shouted Mark. 'Oi!'he roared, his voice cracking under pressure.
The monster flashed a green grin as it turned.
'Turn the fucking music off, we can't hear ourselves think,' Mark shouted.
The monster looked away.
'TURN IT OF, you fucking mutation!' yelled Mark opening the door and
half getting out.
'AAAGH!' screamed the punk, and rushed at him. Mark slammed the door
shut and cowered 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 upholsterer. Then it ripped ut a bundle of wires and thrust them
between its teeth, biting and tearing until the cables parted and the cheese
on its earlobes began to sizzle.

34
The repulsive creature chuckled as Margot and Cynthia approached. The
monster flung open the door and bowed deeply, gesturing with its hand
towards the 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
lifted 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 the monster grinned once more.
'Fuck you,' it slavered. 'Bitch.'
The engine roared as the accelerator was floored and first gear span the
rear wheels as the thirty-year-old antique catapulted out of the car park,
handbrake turning on the gravel at the bottom of the road. It set off for
Findidnann Hall, disregarding road signs, junctions, other road users and
especially pedestrians.

35
8
JOURNEY TO FINDIDNANN
The sun hung like a glowing white-hot poker in the deep blue sky, as the
cab continued its manic progress along the hot black strip of tarmac that
wound its way, eventually, to Findidnann Hall.
Lord Iffy sat on a milking stool atop the highest stone turret of his house,
following their progress through his telescope. He tracked them as they
sped over blind, humpbacked bridges, scattering flocks of animals; and as
they wreaked havoc 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
impassive servant standing behind him.
'Be prepared man, be prepared.' He stood up and rubbed his hands with
glee. 'Shall I prepare tea?' asked Butler. 'No, no, no,' exclaimed Iffy, in an
inspired tone 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 syphon off the petrol in the tank. That'll get us into town so we can
flog one of 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

36
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.
Taylor, who had been busy spotting her potential origins as the car roared
past the quiet, stonebuilt terraced cottages of Dubl'une. She had already
recounted the events 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 husband 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 throat 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 five 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,' she 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,

37
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 once, propelling the last two
inches with her index finger as her lips closed over the chocolate brown
end. Mark put his arm around her and whispered in her ear. '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 sensitive than a brick but perhaps less so than a bull elephant-
interpreted 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 throat.
'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
ribs cracked again as Margot repeated her elbow smash.
'Leave him to me, sister,' she commanded, pulling Cynthia off and looking
Mark fiercely in the eyes. 'You sort. . ..' she began, waggling her finger,
but the cab had slammed on its brakes ans spun round on the gravel drive
of Findidnann Hall, throwing the occupants around like poker dice. Butler
stood sombrely on the second step of the great stone staircase that led to
the huge double front door.

38
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,
pebbledashing 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 pump 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. Breasts, 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 grabbed 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 eased 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 from his throat.

39
'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 thumped 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
wait 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
Margot used Roderick as a doormat as she berated the stork-like figure of
the laird.
'Are you in charge here?' she demanded angrily.
Im Lord Iffy Boatrace, twenty-fifth Laird of Findidnann and master of
all that you see.' he swept his hand across the horizont, like Moses about to
spout the Ten Commandments.
'You are all my guests,' he declared grandly. 'And my butler is at your
service. 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?'

40
'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 of suitcases strewn around.
'We do what any English gentleman is taught to do,' smiled Roderick,
picking himself up from the floor. 'Butler,' he ordered sharply. 'Carry on.'
And with that, the two old Thigwellonians strode off happily toward the
house Cynthia remained on the floor, ignored by her husband, chips of
limestone still adhering to ther chocolate-covered mouth. She turned her
head slowly to where the butler was leaning back on the car, ashen-faced,
nose smeared with blood, and still gagging from the choking he had
received.
'What nobility,' she thought. 'What goodness and dedication, what
selflessness and Christ-like capacity for forgiveness he must have.' A tear
formed in the corner of her eye and trickled in a salty line to 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 chocolate she
thought approvingly.



41
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 oven 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 final stages of a great work. He was so engrossed in the
removal of the huge turkey 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 front 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 away. Cynthia had appeared naked, but for a skimpy
white nightshirt, her mascara smudged around her eyes like a vampire. She
pursued Butler across the kitchen.
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 you I have loved you! A man who can clean, who can cook, so
godly, so good, so manly, so, so . .
.' She caressed the top of his apron. 'So powerful... take me Butler, take me
now!'
'B . . . b . . . b . . . out of the question, ma'am. Anyway I have the washing

42
up to do.'
'Washing up.' She put her hand to her breast and raised her black eyes
heavenward.
'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
cleaning,' 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 had to repaint the bloody ceiling. He said it was stalactites . . .'
Butler let out a low whistle of astonishment and biological curiosity. 'You
were the recipient of. . .'he began slowly.
'Sometimes he used to fold it in half,' she interrupted.
You can't take that sort 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
Butler's apron till her face was just below his. 'Just don't leave me alone,'
she pleaded, grabbing a lump of raw steak from the grill tray and
cramming it into her jaws. She fell back against the meat chopping table,
chewing paranoically and in a few seconds, she had swallowed the lot.
She belched loudly.

43
'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 capable of anything. . .
The shrill tinkle of the front doorbell saved him. The little red counter
bobbing 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 can tell you,' He staggered through the door and glared at Butler.
'Get me a drink, man,' he ordered. 'Your wife is upstairs, sir,' Butler
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 trousers. 'Where is the old
cow, anyway?' he demanded.
'Let me have your coat and show you to your room, sir,' replied Butler.
They mounted the stairs, Butler standing behind the staggering Taylor, in
case he fell over. 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 . . .'
The door shut and Butler moved off soundlessly, back towards the
staircase. '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
boiler suit for dinner,' she yelled. 'That's nice, dear.' 'Where's my knob?'
she demanded.
The half-shaven face of Roderick appeared fom the bath-room, two large
cuts bleeding 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,
dear.'

44
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 and 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 smeared 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. He remembered how his ears had turned pink
when he saw what it was, and how 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 familiar '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 floor, 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 wall. '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 good at tug o' war at school, but Margot's vaginal muscles,
developed by months of natural childbirth exercises, held the killer sexual

45
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
frame.
'You'll pull my - AAAURGH! - fucking head off!' cried Margot. Her
pelvic thrusts smashed through the first floor-board supporting the
wardrobe which threatened 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 base 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 lobster.
'Awful thing,' muttered Roderick aghast, peering at its glistening oily head.
'Oh, my goodness me,' whimpered Laetitia beholding Roderick's massive
naked frame.
She pressed her gold-painted nails to her mouth.'What has been going on?'
She examined 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
grinned at Roderick.
'Been giving yourself a good dicking, have we?' he chortled.
'Why, er, well, F, stuttered Roderick, his ears glowing and his balls

46
retreating into his abdomen.
'Brian!' admonished Laetitia. 'Can't you see he's upset? You poor boy,' she
cooed, 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 know. 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
dinner.'
'Oh God, no,' muttered Mark, grasping the torch firmly. I'd better go and
look for 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 noiselessly 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 that predatory smile, 'you'll turn blue.' She giggled and shut the door.
Butler reached 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 body with enormous force

47
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.


48
PART THREE
The Best Laid Plans
10
The Maiden Run
Mark went outside into the chill of the swirling Scotch mist. His electric
torch beam cut through the damp air perhaps only thirty feet in front of him.
It fastened on the deserted wreck of the taxi and followed the line of the
driveway until it was swallowed up by the pitch blackness.
'Cynthia?' he called nervously, still standing on the stone steps, his shadow
cast by the yellow lights of the bedroom windows. Mark shivered; he did not
like the dark and he was afraid of ghosts, of which there were probably quite
a few round here. He knew, he was an expert. 'There are no ghosts,' he
muttered to himself firmly, and set off down the driveway clutching the
torch.
The gravel drive met the roughly tarmaced single-track road which
glistened 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
dropped into a small depression. Mark could see the comforting lights of
Findidnann Hall being extinguished one by one as the crest of the hill rose

49
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 those?' he exclaimed suddenly, catching sight of some regular and
very unusual-looking indentations in the boggy soil at the side of the road.
He peered more closely. 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. 'Something 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 ridge, out of sight of Findidnann
Hall, for about five minutes and then crossed a small stream which
although full of water, lay still and cold in the night. The tracks vanished
on the other side.
'Shit,' he hissed, shining his torch around. He knew what had happened.
The monster had moved along the line of the stream, almost certainly away
from Findidnann 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
pursuit once more. Butler had locked the door at the top of the kitchen
stairs and raced down the stone spiral steps, hands shaking as they gripped
Margot's murderous 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 showered him like dandruff as he kicked the
door open with indecent haste and revealed 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 battered Margot's
toy until it fitted snugly. Then he applied the molecular adhesive which
would bond rubber to metal as if they were one. He giggled manically
and rubbed his hands ..
Together with glee, doing a little dance on his tiptoes at the same time.

50
'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 snapped
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
solely 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 stuck 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 skin 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 on the end of her neck as its semi-digested breast meat exploded
through the bird's sternum like psychedelic liquid concrete, cascading
across the chopping table like and incoming tide. Cynthia caught sight of
Butler through the hole in the side of the bird's rib cage where she had
blown out the contents of her stomach.
'Butler,' she gurgled. 'Fuck me now.'
'Fuck you?' he screamed. 'Fuck you? I wouldn't. . .' An evil grin crossed
his features and his black eyebrows angled down sharply. 'I wouldn't say
no,' he uttered softly, licking his lips.
Cynthia hoisted her nightdress over her hips, revealing deliriously fleshy
buttocks crossed with a suntan line caused by the briefest of bikinis. She
thrust a hand 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.

51
'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), telescopic
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
control panel cover and switched on. The machine emitted an even
humming sound as the electrics began to pump fluid around in readiness.
A green light appeared on the panel. 'Ready.' Butler turned the silver key
to the right and a red light clicked on. 'Armed.' His eyes lit up as if arc
lights had been switched on behi nd his retinas and his quivering finger
pressed the last three command buttons: '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 mist, 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
channel looked as though they had been dug at some point with a spade.
He shone the light on the surface of the water; the stream led straight into a
samll hillock, 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 clump of the bush, he pulled.
'My God!' he gasped, as the heather swung aside on oiled hinges to
reveal the lair within. The entire hillock had been carefully excavated and
landscaped. Mark had His Backwoodsman's badge from the boy scouts,
but this hide, well, he'd never seen anything so professional.
The beam of the torch fell on the contents of the nest. In the corner lay

52
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. In the last corner lay a huge pile of dead birds slung on top of one
another haphazardly, perhaps fifty of them in all. 'Damned fishy,' Mark
exclaimed, closing the door, switching off his torch, and cocking an ear to
see if he had been followed. '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
sprouted 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
kitchen floor, its bulbous end gleaming as lubricant was sprayed upon it
every 1.2 seconds 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 efficiently positioning itself behind her vagina and was doing its sums.
Bore, stroke, timing and angle required. The hidraulic steel tube slid out
another two inches whilst 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
labial 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
lightning, squirted more Lubricant on its work surgace, and struck again.
The entire cycle 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 always inside her, and was striking from within.

53
'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; the machine was programmed to
come, but had no done so. He examined the two silver 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 would not
stop. If the machine were to go into orgasm mode without any means of
ejaculating itself... 'Good God,' he thought. 'Two hundred and fifty
strokes a minute is okay for five seconds, but for any longer. . . '
He release Cynthia's buttocks and ran into the pantry, crashing through the
shelves 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 gone. 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 enourmous force, and twin caterpillar tracks led up the
embankment and out onto the misty moor beyond. In the distance, Butler
could just hear the distant whine fading.
The delinquent Pelvotron hurtled over Findidnann moor like a rabid
man battle tank. Instead of a gun, though, it bore a gyrating, white-robed
figurehead, 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 hundred 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 mist. 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

54
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 woman 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. Butler 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 sink unit and
went to find a shovel. Mark West was halfway back down the main course
of the Stygian stream when he heard the noise. 'Bats,' he thought. The
noise 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 out 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 well, he thought. The screaming
and wailing seemed to fill the moor as Mark West 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 somersault which drove the wind out of him. Mark picked
himself up. He had not seen whatever had hit him in the darkeness and he
had lost his torch. He was now very frightened indeed.

55
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
load. At the bottom, the robot ran around in a small circle and headed back
the way it had come. 'Mother!' screamed Mark West.
The rotten cadaverous head, pumping and jerking in mid-air, bore down
on him like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse on PCP. The white
burial shroud flapped in the wind as the fiend rode on top of the mist,
threatening to open 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, until he fell exhausted on to a large rock. He could neither hear
nor see the phantom 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. 'Fucking hell!' he exclaimed. 'Well, I got in
here somehow, so I must be able to get 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 ridge with a female glove puppet stuck on its prong. The water of the
stream however was a different problem altogether and the caterpillar
tracks ground into the mud flailing uselessly, sinking down until Cynthia's
feet splashed into 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. 'Kerchung kerchung KACHUNG PSSSS.' A huge jet of water
squirted from the hosepipe-sized nozzle in the glans of the beast, shooting
Cynthia straight off the 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 upwards. She did not move.
Pelvotron, however, found its ejaculatory fluid being instantly replenished
by the ditch water, and spent its next happy orgasmic hours squirting evel-
smelling liquid around the moors, like a Thames fire boat.

56
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
consequences. 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 Office 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 in the House of Commons. Butler shuddered. Presently, Iffy was
juggling hard-boiled 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
blanched 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

57
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 armour, each equipped with a twelve-foot pike in its mailed
fist. Above the twenty-foot long table itself, right in the middle of the
room, hung a massive crystal chandelier. Butler wheeled in the main
course trolley, unveiling the meatball substitute in cream and mustard
sauce. Margot peered at it, 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 talked 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 several helpings of rarebit derriere. Iffy waited until the

58
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 suspiciously. 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
stereotyped,' 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, which will result in their being available for sport all year round.
But,' he paused 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
unfinished 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 into 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.'

59
' 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
murder, 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 his 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
underneath 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
cowering Butler with cold brussel sprouts.
Iffy's mousse stuck pneumatically to one of Laetitia's breasts chocolate
dribbling 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
sticking 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

60
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,' wailed
Laetitia.
Iffy cackled histerically.
'Still a vegetarian, Margot?' he guffawed.
'Excuse me, ma'am,' said Butler, crawling towards Laetitia on his hands
and knees 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 armour 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 precariously in its mitten, dislodged and fell swiftly towards the
door, severing the electric 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 the 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
almighty blue flash. Simultaneously, the dining table was split asunder and
Margot's spluttering screams of indignation were silenced as the chandelier
crowned her, choppi ng the oak table in two as it crashed down in a
splintering 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 chandelier.
Butler felt his way around the walls and found the door; his hand curled up
around the doorknob and he pulled himself to his feet.
SMACK! The double doors burst open and a awoodworm-infested panel

61
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 and
clasping Mark fraternally around the shoul-ders. 'We're all friends here you
know, remember the school song:
'Thigwell Thigwell all stand together Thigwell Thigwell all kinds of
weather Thigwell Thig. . . Aaargh'
Roderick clasped his buttocks as Margot savagely thrust the carving knife
into his juicy gluteus maximus.
'Blood, blood, oh my God.'Laetitia swooned and flopped all over the
back 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
barrels of a twelve-bore Purdey into the ceiling, bringing down bucketfuls
of loose 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
shoot,' 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.

62
'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 dining room.
'Butler,' he whispered. 'I have to speak with you. Look, old man, Iffy's a
fruitcake, Roderick's half-baked and Margot's in this thing up to her neck.
I think you'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-robed 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 because 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 . . .'

63
12
Bumps in the Night
Iffy watched as Roderick extricated Margot from the chan-delier and
staggered 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 taken 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 his 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 nipples 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 then after scribbling incomprehensible symbols
by the light of the oil lamp sat back satisfied.
'I think,' he mused. 'I know all about you, Mrs Taylor.' He got up and
strode over to the bookshelves, running his fingers down the book spines
until he found his late uncle's works. He examined the titles: Breasts and
Women's Brains, The Psychology of Mammary Glands, The Nipple and
the Empire, and his greatest work Human Psychology as Determined by
Breast Mouth Relationships. Iffy's uncle had been fascinated by breasts
and Iffy longed to continued his research, specially with such an obviously

64
degenerated and low creature as this awful colonial female. He examined
the tables in the book, correlating his measurements with their predictions.
Laetitia 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
that 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 misty 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
clasped 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.

65
'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 pudgy
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 balustrade, 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.'
She 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
thoroughly 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.

66
'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 collusion 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
was empty, apart from Brian Taylor lying in an alcoholic slump at the
other end of 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 sweat.
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
rolled his head over so that his ear rested on a dinner plate. The dining rom
slowly came into focus. He stared down at the crippled table across which
he was sprawled, its back broken like some torpedoed aircraft carrier, its
centre covered with the demolished chandelier. Shards of crystal sprinkled
the surrounding floor, 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

67
belched loudly.
'Opening time, my boy.' He rose unsteadily to his feet. 'Time for a bevvy.'
he wheezed and lurched over to the drinks tray.
The drinking habits of the Glaswegian alcoholic are akin to those of a
grizzly bear let loose in a honey shop. One day, David Attenborough might
even make a film about it. Until then, however, Brian Taylor made his
traditional comment on discovering 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 sheets, 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 her 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 overalls and boots. Roderick continued to snore as she crept silently
out of the bedroom and stealthily moved downstairs.
Butler clutched the map he had been given by Mark West. He now knew
where the wretched 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 to 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 squeaked
protestingly and a floorboard creaked on the landing as Butler's highly
polished leather shoes glided into the room. Butler flicked on his torch.
The beam fell upon the glass case formerly occupied by the twenty-third

68
Laird of Findidnann.
'My God,' he breathed. 'Empty.' The beam took in the rest of the room. On
the floor lay various pieces of ladies' underwear, various parts of the dead
Laird's uniform, a tape measure and a set of vernier scale calipers.
Butler stood puzzled for quite a few moments. He thought he knew the
Laird pretty well, but after what Mark had said, and now. . . this. Butler
knew of the Laird'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 plenty of dealings in his more criminal capacity. He had frequently
hired out the suits 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 thought 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 balustrade 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, black paperback from the
dust-encrusted woodwork. He smiled at the title - The Part-time
Anarchists' Guide to Booby Traps and Explosive 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
beneath the balcony began again, as if a small rodent was excavating a
burrow. Butler 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 loaned 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 and its occupants, the wind moaning as it whirled
around the damp walls outside. He listened to the creaking footsteps on the

69
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
twice. 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 defunct 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 the wooden door eventually gave in. He
shone the torch around the cans and buckets which were stacked up on the
shelves.
Five minutes later, Butler, stagered back into the kitchen, his arms full of
pots, 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 good.
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 uncle stared haughtily down at the front door entrance. He squatted
silently, watching as three shadowy figures crept out through the front door
at various times in the night, the second one apologising profusely to a
stuffed badger. Only two returned before morning..

70
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 football chant as he went, his bottle raised to the invisible moon
beyond the misty 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 features.
'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 Taylor put himself on the starting blocks. He was back at school, the
fastest 100 metres 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
BEFORE YE!'
He tore up the hill again with unusual coordination and hurtled down the
other 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
machine 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

71
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 Roadworkers.' 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,
opening time already?' He lurched towards the light, splashing through the
half-dry stream 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 entrance. 'Jock?' He examined the contents of his discovery more closely,
juggling them 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
the 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
laughter. 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 back 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 earshot, the shadow flitted furtively out into the mist, his back

72
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, its landlord, was a descendant of Jose Barcelona, the sole
surviving Spaniard.
As a matter of fact, everyone in the village was descended at some point
from Jose 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
dominated the village. He was, until the possessor of one of the few
telephones in Dubl'une, and he ran the post office when he felt like it.
Should the need 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 knee 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 parakeet 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 rattle the window panes, and
buried under a mountainous pile of blankets his slumber was noisily
interrupted by the violent shaking of his front 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
tourists away but it also doubled as a very efficient blunt instrument.
'Who the bloody hell's that?' grumbled Jock, climbing down the steep
wooden stairs in his heavy woollen night cap and night dress, looking like
the dwarf Snow White rejected.
'Open up, ye canna keep a bevvy from me, McVitie.'

73
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
staggered back a pace. He tossed the empty whisky bottle casually over his
shoulder where it smashed in the street. 'No more to drink,' he wheedled,
wobbling on his three-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
enter 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 tying 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
blur, and his brain, such as it was, registered only pain. His body informed
him that 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 finished stripping the electric flex he was about to connect to Brian's.
You'd better talk. In Dubl'une no one can hear you scream.' Jock sat down
and finished stripping 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

74
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
shepherds wear them to help their sheep's digestion. Of course, I've found
hundreds of three-toed disguises in the Scottish Highlands. . .' His tone
changed viciously. '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.
Look, you can check, call her up on the phone. She'll tell you. I was down
this pub, 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 examining 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
don'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 the spirit known as whisky, and subsequently spent most of their
time rampaging, pillaging and fatally wounding their countrymen in a
whole series of clan 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 around today, he would no doubt
have spent several hours contemplating the spider crawling up the crack in

75
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 screams 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 to be the women who did. Brandishing flaming torches they scoured
the beaches for any remaining men. They howled and beat their
considerable breasts in anguish at having no more Spanish men to use,
abuse, mutilate 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 the whisky ordeal intact were allowed to live. Alas, no one passed
the test, as the multitudinous piles of evil-smelling Spanish omelette vomit
bore witness. The Scottish men had long since passed into deep and
contented heathen sleep, 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
relish, '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 spoke 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 night 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

76
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
indignantly.
'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 had been incensed by the embarrasing romantic encounters of his
wife. Forbidden by the Catholic church from divorcing her, he had hired
Jose to satisfy the woman's seemingly endless usts whilst she accompanied
her husband on his glorious voyage of conquest to England. Jose had been
listed, to the crew's amusement, as her brother.
'Show me,' the Scottish women demanded. 'Show me how you give a
woman a good time.'
'What here, in front of all these people?' squeaked Jose, professionally
hurt. 'I need a little privacy.'
'You're a wimp, but okay.' Jackie McKenzie raised her voice and screamed
out, 'Right, 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

77
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 and
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
years, 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 to 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
revealed 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 known by modern times.
Jose, however, had done a very sharp deal, because he had omitted to
mention the most valuable treasure of all, the personal fortune of the
woman 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 of
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 on the spot, Didnann Hall, became known as Fin-didnann Hall,
which brings us back to resent-day Scotland, and Jose relative in the
Bonny Hacienda.

78
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 scheme 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 hessian 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
money.
'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 inheritance went to his half brother, Ferdinand Alfonso Boatrace. They
never got along, and Ferdinand spent the money, then ran off and

79
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
then 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
mohican off with difficulty; but try as he might, the water-filled inflatable
hunchback 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 Taylor,'
mumbled Jock, as he fumbled with the absurd webbing which attached
Brian to 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 excitedly as they flew around the chimneys, looking for small
female birds or the most inconvenient spot to have a crap. Into this scene
of Highland splendour, unchanged since at least yesterday, came the

80
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
tassel 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 chest, so hard that he fell back to sleep.' Roderick, however, was
already out for the count.
The Bonny Hacienda lay in smoking ruins, huge black dollops of oily
smoke concealing in the sky above it. Lying in the street was all that
remained of Brian Taylor and Jock McVitie Barcelona - a three-toed,
furry foot cover . . .
Mark West leapt out of his wardrobe hiding place screaming, wild eyed,
and clutching his bread knife in his trembling right hand. He resembled an
apoplectic Blackbeard on acid.
'Cynthia'" he screamed, grinding his teeth and staring manically at the
bedroom door. 'They'll never take me alive!' he hissed and crawled back
into the wardrobe. Butler was at the top of the highest turret only seconds
after the explosion had rocked him out of a black and dreamless sleep.
Panting with exertion 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 into his eye as fiercely as he had ever seen him do it.
'Covered in bloody brick dust,' continued Iffy. 'Nearly fell out of me
bloody portrait. Damned good dream I was having as well, bent over
female auctioneer, all the straps and flying gear, had a bloody good time
with the 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

81
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 less of the bastards, eh?' Iffy snapped the telescope down to its
portable length and beamed a smile at the sunrise.
'What a day, Butler, eh? Beautiful sunshine, half my debts wiped off the
face of the earth, and grouse shooting after a fine English breakfast.
Perfect.'
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,
reverting 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
dining room. The chandelier rested at a crazy angle in the middle of the
broken-backed 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 which 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 impromptu shoot-out the night before. In the corner of the room
was the breakfast trolley, 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 resistance 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!'

82
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 minutes of someone rolling around on Laetitia to produce the same
effect. Her eyes were almost black with mascara, and her face was a mask,
knee-deep in foundation 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
hopeless 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
congealed 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
vigorously from his wounded buttock, but managing a valiant smile,
despite the huge bruise spreading around his throat. 'I say, what a damend
fine-looking brekkie, eh?' He rubbed his hands together vigorously in
anticipation.
Roderick stood alongside Mark West, towering above him in fact, glancing
a little 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 strode 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
contentedly, as if fattening himself up for the slaughter.
'Where's your wife? Er . . .'
Mark cut him a filthy look.

83
'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 at the top of the stairs, arms folded, tapping one booted foot loudly
and impatiently on the floorboards. An enourmous bump protruded from
her skull. The doors at the other end of the room crashed open as Lord Iffy
knocked them aside in spectacular fashion.
'Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning!' he yelled.
'All recovered from the Big Bang?' He winked slyly at Laetitia, quietly
wondering 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 nauseous 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 smell.
'A noble contest,' continued Iffy pointedly. 'Of skill and strategy against a
cunning adversary . . .'
'Cunning?' exclaimed Margot. 'It's fucking brown brird with the brain of a
sparrow 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 lead poisoning, the lot of you.' She paused. Iffy opened his mouth
to speak. She continued.
'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

84
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 ritual.
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 at 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 bawled 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
years 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
minutes.'
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...'

85
'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.'

86
15
A Sporting Event
Mark West had had a wash, but was not in any better temper. The water
had been cold. 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.
You 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 the nipples shot forward prominently like two cigarette butts stubbed
out on poached eggs. The poached eggs reminded him of breakfast. He
hadn't eaten any, and he was still famished. He ogled her crutch, and the
way that her thighs always parted to reveal a great deal of daylight around
her pussy. Despite his lack of sleep, Mark felt a stirring under his armpit,
as his member began to snake upwards 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 headband and sprinkled with glitter. The glitter was echoed on
her leg-warmers, underneath which were vastly expensive Ivan Elavonitch
ballet tights. Beneath those were the standard Miss USA all-year-round,
guaranteed suntan and sweaty crotch tights - just in case you ever needed to
take all of your clothes off in a crowded 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 American rock band. Mark watched her little red-
booted feet pitter-pattering and crunching on the gravel drive with a look

87
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. One 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 switched 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
athletic-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
glistening tongue. Mark caught his breath sharply and turned away just as
His rogering piece 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 surmounted his beaky monocled visage, and the red
serge tunic of the Royal Canadian 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 best fishnet stockings again,
having recovered them from their muddy demise at the hands of Bill
Symes-Groat.
'My God, you look wonderful,' Laetitia cooed.

88
'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
butler's outfit, and he struggled under the weight of half a dozen shotguns
and a picnic 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 precariously 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 buttocks showing through the fishnets above his high boots.
Laetitia looked at Mark. Mark looked at Laetitia. Butler looked forward to
getting it over and done with, then Roderick looked over his shoulder.
'Follow that man,' he boomed, almost blowing the overladen servant out of
the doorway.
'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
accent.
'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 when something is really not funny at all.
Margot waited upstairs in bed like an undischarged cannon waiting for a
taper. She 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 on the bed, thinking contemptuous thoughts and snarling
softly through her nose, 'Aaaurgh, aaurgh, aaurgh,' like a ferocious Morris
Minor ticking over.

89
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 dooless taxi remained outside, looking forlorn in the growing
heat of the morning sun. 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 futively 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 shotgun 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 closed 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 liberationist
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 rag around her head she looked at her reflection in the window.
'Passable,' she approved. 'I shall call myself the revo-lutionary spearhead
of the 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,

90
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 sank 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 sarcastically. 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, old
chappie,'he began.'You see, for centuries my family.
Have been shooting things. Pretty much anything that's ever moved on
land, sea or 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 been blasted into oblivion. The wretched animals used
to run away, damned unsporting.'
'Undestandable in the circumstances I would have thought,' said Mark
dryly.
'Wuite so, quite so,' said Iffy dismissively.
'The point is my family, more correctly myself, have devised a way to
make animals, in this case our feathered friend the grouse, come directly
towards us. Splendid, 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
States.'
'Utter bullshit,' stated Mark West flatly. 'And furthermore, if these
mythical birds don't appear in the next five minutes you're in deep shit.' He
sat 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

91
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 bird 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 breasts 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
electric 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 thinking 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 despite the
grouse being somewhat larger than an armadillo's dick, Laetitia could not
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 don'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.'

92
'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 her. Every few feet
whe paused to look over the top of The vegetation to check where the birds
were coming from. Whoever was releasing them from their cages would 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
glare at this strange new addition to the crawling livestock of Scotland.
Margot glared 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
slits 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
screwed 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.'

93
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 afternoon air, its payload doors already open.
Its wings clicked into the glide position, tail feathers down as it dived
vertically 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 prepare 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 recalled 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.
Grasping her shotgun more tightly now, she took several slow breaths and
cocked the weapon.
'You're in there, you bastard,' she thought, 'Sending inno-cent creatures to
their deaths.'
'AAAAAAAARGH! AAAAAAAARGH!' Margot broke cover and

94
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
scurrying 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. 'What are those?' He pointed at two yellow flying objects dropping
and tumbling through the sky.
'I suspect that they are the mortal remains of your wife,' commented Iffy,
squinting 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 Wellington boots had just fallen. Above the hole the grouse
wheeled and swooped like vultures.


95
16
MURDER MOST MAMMARY
'I tell you he killed her,' hissed Mark West to the Butler. They were
standing outside the front door, looking generally conspiratorial and up to
no 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
place, 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 was 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 already . .
'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.'

96
'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 which 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 the twin problems of Roderick Morte D'Arthur Tennison and Laetitia P.
Taylor. Roderick 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
surprise, emitted a softly spoken 'Good Lord, whatever will her mother do
to me?' and fallen backwards into a catatonic trance, rigid as a board. The
main problem had been the rigid six foot slab over the hundred yards back
to the house, but, having established that he was breathing and his heart
was beating, Roderick didn't require much more attention. He now reposed
upon his bed like an Arthurian corpse, arms across his chest, naked except
for a sheet on his midriff and a cold 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 highly 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 difficulty topping a few of the really good death celebrations that
Laetitia had attended. Sudden death, however, was quite a different

97
matter. Public lamentation, hopefully a couple of TV interviews, including
a character sketch of the deceased and the phone number of the person
being interviewed (in case they should want to further their ambition and
be on a game show), 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
dust.
'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
effective.)
'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
take a look at what's left.' And he strode off across the moor to examine
the debris.
Mark and Butler cooked up a pretty mean cocktail between them. It was
quite remarkable that two men from such differ-ent backgrounds would
both know the best way to get a girl flat on her back in fifteen minutes. It
was a shame that only one 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

98
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 her earlobes. Her guts felt like shit and smelt like them too for that
matter. But whatever the state of her involuntary hangover, she was sure it
could not be as 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 Tennison stirred. It was probably the cold towel that did it,
with its associations of matronly administrations of cold compressed after
rugby-inspired concussions 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
worried about you, not to mention your missing your part in the school
play. Still, your 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 and
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.'

99
'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 Roderick'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 penis. 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

100
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, bit his ear, sucked his nipples, inserted his finger in his anus.
Nothing happened. She tried a multitude of combinations.
Still nothingh happened.
There was one thing she had not tried, something that only she could do,
and something 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 with 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
what she called 'Mrs Newton's cradle.'
She swung one pendulous mammary gland up in the air and let it fall
smack into the side of Roderick's head. The impact sent the other tit
wobbling 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,
bouncing 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 blackness 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.

101
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
permeated through the bark as it waddled off down the road.


102
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-looking yellow wellies. Stuck in the ground some distance away
where the bent 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 the 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,
sniffing it with distaste. 'What awfully smelly feet,' he thought, but his real
interest was not chiropody. He examined the sole of the boot carefully then
let out a yelp.

103
'The game's a-foot, Boatrace!' he roared triumphantly.
The first sign of Roderick's death had been rigor mortis. His temple were
already quite severely bruised but Laetitia would not give up. It was not
until the body 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
it looked in life, apart from its rather large protrusion.
The scream occurred at 8.37 p.m., while Iffy was examining several cutting
implements and kitchen artefacts in his study.
He was making copious notes, with several of his uncle's textbooks on
criminology open around him, when he heard the shriek.
'Roderick's dead. WAAAAAAGH!' screamed Laetitia, doing a tap dance
on the landing in her bed sheet. 'There's a dead man in the bed, there's a
dead man in the bed!' 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
stilettos.
Iffy took in the scene, the hysterical naked woman, the stiff naked man, and
drew a deep breath. 'Mark West,' he boomed. 'Take her to your room and
keep her quiet.' 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 with his telescope, now set up on its tripod.
'Perhaps', he murmured. He had only heard of one case similar to this, but
he felt eminently qualified to investigate. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'We should
have a word with Mrs. Taylor.'
Crossing to Mark's room, he ushered him out of the way in order to begin
his investigation. 'I only want to ask her
A few questions,' said Iffy flatly. 'And Butler will be here all the time.'

104
'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 fishnets, 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 on, 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
white bony beak with his index finger, 'is pretty damned good. We found
the same smell on these,' he held the tights up to her sniffling face, 'as we
did on his thighs, chest, fingers and mouth. Also,' he added slowly, 'the
strongest and most 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
pornographic 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.

105
'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
quietly on the corner of the bed. Mark had his back pressed against the
bedroom door.
'I felt so sorry for him, really I did,' she blubbed. 'He couldn't even get a
little 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 SLICE 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

106
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
worth 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 the 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 full length and hurtled out of his collar just below his right
ear, poking her in the 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 of his blood supply was engorged in his sexual organ, which
bounced up and down gently 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
smiled.
'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 towards 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
claws and digging in to the mattress.
'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,' she screeched. 'Come in my mouth, come on

107
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 wicked 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
anything 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 chute, 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 .
Anything 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
screamed louder than when she had been born, and that was pretty loud,
and she continued to scream, thumping the bed with her arms and thrashing
her head on the mattress. 'There's no fucking need to overact, for God's
sake,' yelled Mark, but she continued to yelp and moan in ecstasies of
agony or viceversa, when Mark West 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
stillness 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.


108
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, plugged 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
probably 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
passage, and dropped down between his legs, where it swung obscenely,
dripping brown spots onto the carpet and smelling very offensive. 'She liked
it,' he suggested.
'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
into the open doorway.
'In your own words of this afternoon, Mr West, you are in deep shit.' Iffy
suppressed a wry grin.
'Butler,' protested Mark, 'You surely can't intend to take the word of this
fiend 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
like a bloody fool, and I may dress a little unusually and come up with some

109
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
manservant, 'Is a lousy crook.' Iffy entered the room and paced around the
bed, regarding 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 collection.' He shook his head and cleared his throat.
'Ahem, Butler over here is in a difficult situation. He thinks that he killed
Margot by accident with a home-made explosive device constructed out of
an aluminium 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
mammary trauma to the cranium, something that I wanted her to believe in
order to guarantee her safety. But she did not kill Roderick nor, Butler, did
you kill Margot.'
Butler was astounded.
'Well, who did?'
'He did,' said Iffy, nodding his head at Mark West,' and we caught him
hard at work destroying the evidence - to whit, Laetitia.'
Mark looked round like a caged animal, eyes darting nervously around the
rom. 'You'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
explain this?'
'It's for self-protection. . .'
'Self-protection and coated with a rare African posion causing death by
paralysis 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 site of the explosin.'
'Well, I did wander around and find a . . .'

110
'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
are 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
evidence, 'giving each one of us an orally administered dose of poison
minute enough 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
whilst planting a bomb of your own. You're not a very clever villain are
you, Mr West? The whole scheme pretty much went wrong from the
beginning, but with a few people being in the wrong place at the wrong
time and the odd sexual indiscretion here and there, it began to look like a
series of appalling coincidences
'Now look here,' began Mark, 'anyone taking one look at this situation
could only 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, food, 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 knife he
was clutching out of the corner of his eye. 'Oh shit,' he exclaimed.

111
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,
gurgling and choking. Iffy gamely made an attempt at a rugby tackle,
grabbing 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. The 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 struck the earth beneath the window, some fifteen feet below.
It was a moonless night, black as pitch, but Mark West stumbled off into
it, limping 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. His 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 village. 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 poked out from around his navel. The prospect of having his
precious member shredded in the bicycle spokes was not very appealing.
'Here we go,' he thought and swung into the seat. Alas, there was no saddle

112
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 them last?'
Butler had put the taxi ignition keys on his most important key ring, the
key ring that held the keys to his baby, the keys that had disappeared out
onto the moor 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 this . . .'
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
metal spike. Should he see a doctor or a gynaecologist when he got home,
he wondered? If he got home, he thought suddenly, and kicked down hard
on the pedals, ignoring 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,

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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 illuminate the sky as the car engine started, and then lost
them as he descended into the dip where Brian Taylor had commenced his
sing-song. Faster and faster he rattled, legs whizzing round and round
untill they could no longer keep pace with the wheels; his feet flailed
uselessly as the bike freewheeled 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 tried to avoid the highest barrier . . .
'Ooooh shit,' he yelled as the handlebars smacked into the woodwork, and
he somersaulted through the air to land in the half-wet concrete of the
newly constructed 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
forgot 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

114
wheel as the headlights revealed the forbidding granite post ahead.
The taxi lurched and wheezed out of the gates, surviving the near collision
by inches 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
protesting 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 the
clutch in panic.
'Damned British Leyland . . .'
The taxi almost toppled over as it spun through 180 degrees, tyres
squealing and filling the night air with the stench of smouldering rubber. It
stopped 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 quick 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 swirling 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
suggest that you take the first watch. I'm pretty tuckered out after all that

115
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 snoring almost immediately, sounding remarkably like a straw
sucking at the bottom 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, these aristocrats.


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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 bald head shook the numbness out of his bones and prodded the
numbskull 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
twisted 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
started 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
fucking '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 corpse. 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

117
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 hard. 'Very true.'
They got back in the car. Iffy insisting on driving, so Butler reluctantly
started the engine for him. The car weaved unsteadily round the first bend,
roaring full throttle in first gear.
'Should I pull the lever yet, Butler?' demanded Iffy.
'Put your 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, but the road was too narrow, sufficient at that point for only one
vehicle's width, while Iffy needed at least half a truck's length of space to
get round it safely.
'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 wrecked cockpit.
'They were your bloody instructions,' snapped Iffy. 'We'll just have to
walk.' He scrambled in an ungainly fashion out of the twisted chassis, and
crawled up the 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.

118
'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
middle of the road, flush with the surface, lay a circular twelve-inch
diameter 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 military 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
member 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-
controlled 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
levelling the shotgun. 'Poisoner of carving knives, infiltrator of dead
ancestors, 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 been a good blower-up of vehicles had you two clowns been able to
keep a fucking car 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

119
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
watched in horror as the skin began to peel away in strips, until the whole
fabric of 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 thought his chin was even weaker than Iffy's.
'Though I was dead, didn't you eh? Sold into slavery in Africa was the
family rumour, 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 name, 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 problem 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
jolly 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
legal 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
last resting place of the famed Dubl'une treasure, about six feet under
Butler's pantry in fact, so my money problems will be temporary to say the

120
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 that 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 in 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 person in the world, dearest Bro, and this sorry specimen could
pas for an arse bandit 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 gallons 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 'seek and penetrate' mode. Not even a straying sheep had come within
range to trigger 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 that aimed its steel shaft started to tingle. The caterpillar tracks
slowly and soundlessly ground their way out of the dry stream bed, and

121
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 soon,' he added, clenching his fist and staring contemptuosly at Iffy
who remained at the side of the road unmoved.
Pelvotron broke cover and hit the road, travelling at its top speed of around
thirty 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-
ended monster would hurtle into the victim' s anus, squeezing between his
very muscular 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
with a dull 'phplat' sound. His trousers split, followed shortly by his soft
fleshy sphincter.
Alfonso's arms flew skyward as his body jerked off the ground, skewered
on the end of the speeding knob. His legs bicyled through the air in agony,
as he hurtled 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
fallen 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 furiously

122
buggering Alfonso.
There was no Pelvotron any more.
Nor was there a sign of Alfonso. Just a bloody great hole.


123
20
The Hereafter
'Hoisted by his own petard, Buter old chap. What did I say about karma?
Incidentally, damned useful invention of yours, that Pelvotron thing, got us
out of a damned 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
protestingly downstairs by Butler. In a silver bucket alongside lay one open
champagne 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
several 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 pantry.
'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

124
trench.
'Break the ruddy thing open, man.' Iffy gestured manically.
Butler swung the pick at the rusty padlock, once, twice.
Then it caught behind the rotting backplate. He prized the lock away from
the wood, 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
and 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
anguish and hurled the champagne bottle at the opposite wall where it
smashed 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 read the words written in pencil on a piece of excercise-book paper,
hurriedly torn 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 had 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

125
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
half-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 firmly 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 around 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
outstretched hands. It took halting steps towards Butler.
He uttered a shriek of fright and raced up the stairs to Iffy's study, locking
the 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 slowly, 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 pleasure 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 first
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


126
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 stupid sod went and got converted to some
senile old flea bag's TV show! He was probably 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
open 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
apparition that had followed Butler upstairs, the Torn and wretched
clothes, the slime. Suddenly, Iffy laughed quickly and strode past it down
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 my 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 hands 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.

127
'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