Chapter Nine

 

Outlaws

 

“Enough talking,” said Czosn. “The SGB can decide what to do with you lot. Guards!” The two men looked at each other but didn’t move, avoiding his eye. Then one of them shuffled his feet.

“Well, sir,” he mumbled sheepishly. “We’re not sure as… I mean, in the circumstances, like…”

“Guard, arrest these people, I said.”

“Well, no, sir. With respect, sir. Like the officer said, sir, and fine words they were even if I didn’t understand them all… but there’s no point, is there? All things considered, I think -”

“It’s not your flaming job to think, man. I do the thinking here.

Now - ”

“Then with respect, sir, maybe it’s you who should be arrested sir?” And to the cheers and congratulations of the others, Czosn was held. But that wasn’t going to work, was it? He was not director of the FEW for nothing. Recalculating his position, he immediately created a new red button on the floor and stepped on it.

“Behind you!” he shouted, and another half dozen guards entered at the double, turning the tables.

“Ah, no. Behind you, I think,” suggested Harry calmly.

“Ha! I’m not going to fall for that old aaarrrgh -” With a splintering of high-impact imitation polyurethane and a rousing chorus of the William Tell Overture, the SAS crashed through the walls in their HGVs, smoke bombs flying. They were a fearsome sight in black uniforms and shiny plastic masks. In no time at all, Czosn and all his guards lay in an untidy heap by the waste paper basket, completely convinced they’d been shot. It was a superb performance. Sergeant Glum, breathless but exultant, drew himself up and saluted smartly.

“Hoperation Rescue complete, sah! Sorry if we was a bit late, sah.

Got your orders but it’s a long way an’ hard going. Had to yomp over Hastral Two. `Fraid we lost Private Parker, sah. Like you said, belief not strong enough.” Harry returned the salute and inspected the men, strolling calmly among the debris of the office with hands clasped behind his back.

“Fine show, Plonker, deuced fine show. Just in time actually. Well done, men. At ease. Ah, just one thing, sergeant. Why are you all wearing Mickey Mouse masks? I thought I said androids.”

“Sorry, sah, best we could do at short notice. I, er, didn’t know what a handroid was, sah.”

“Never mind, sergeant, shows initiative. It certainly scared the enemy, what?”

“Not just them,” Prudence pointed out, indicating Ranjit spread- eagled on the floor in abject shock.

“It’s all over, son,” barked Harry, reviving him with a judicious kick. Then more gently, “Sorry, son. No-one likes violence. I respect your principles but in the real world it’s often necessary -”

“Nah, it ay that,” said RJ, dusting himself down. “I jus’ can’t stand that mouse-dude, scares de pants off me, man.”

The SAS exchanged uniforms with the guards and escorted the others out and far away from the FEW.

“I guess that’s the end of my career,” mused Pru philosophically as they turned north on the Edgware Road. “Brief, wasn’t it? And I don’t suppose I’ll qualify for redundancy benefit.”

“Never mind, my dear,” Harry consoled her. “You had a job to do and you did it superbly. Mission accomplished. We know exactly what the enemy’s plans are now. I’m proud of you.” She smiled up at him and took his arm, and Plonker Glum shot him a furtive wink.

“We couldn’t have done it without you, Harold. You were magnificent,” she said. He blushed and coughed in embarrassment. “Just one thing, though…”

“Of course, what is it, my dear?”

“It’s just that if you call me ‘my dear’ one more time, I’m going to shove your DSO right up -”

“You realise,” said Nigel hurriedly, “that every SGB patrol in

Heaven will be after us now?”

“But surely,” said Pru, “they won’t find us. We can always switch identities again, and anyway we tore up all the old records.”

“I don’t think I’m very keen on changing any more files, if you don’t mind,” muttered Nigel. He shuddered at the memory of RJ, persona non certa, with tufty whiskers and jolly ho-ho. “And anyway, we didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Tear them all up. I left Ranjit’s in Czosn’s office. Sorry. So he’s the one they’ll be after, really.”

“Oh, fanks, bruv. An’ after all I done for you, innit.” “What have you ever done for us, RJ?”

“Well, no need to get technical, man.” Ranjit paused in his tracks, feeling hurt. This afterlife had started off a real gas. He was into his machines and had something good going with Benny-boy. But nobody seemed to appreciate him, and all this fighting and fuse and Messies was doing his head in. The others didn’t even notice he’d gone.

 

The Third Spiritual Secretary was trying to digest all that had happened, and was feeling decidedly dyspeptic. He paced his office furiously from corner to corner, even creating new corners to pace into, sat down, stood up, held his head in his hands and moaned, laughed, stared morosely into the vacuum beyond the window and finally, having run out of emotions, turned on his old friend.

“It’s all your fault,” he bellowed at Fuzru, sitting calmly by the desk and playing with a Rubik’s octahedron. “You said the program was foolproof.”

“Ay, yes,” Fuzru pointed out reasonably, “but those people weren’t fools, were they? If you ask me, this job’s got Gibbs all over it.”

“Who?”

“A slimy suck-up creep I went to college with. Nigel Gibbs. Oh, he can program computers all right. In fact, he can build them. But he was too much of a rebel, didn’t fit in with the rest of us. No class.”

“Well, if he can break all your security codes and tamper with the records, he’s in a different class all right. Where can we find this Figgs?” “PRU(NE).”

“Don’t get semantic with me, Fuzru. I have enough of that already.” He gestured to the other chair where Tfozb smirked and knitted, softly murmuring ‘Another one for the basket’.

“The young gentleman is trying to tell you that Gibbs works in one of the Psychic Research Units.”

“I’ll get the SGB onto it.” But even as he reached for the red

Thought Transfer Module, SS3 knew it was probably too late. There was an aura of doom about him now. It wasn’t fair. After all the aeons of planning and preparation, the argument and subterfuge, and getting it all on the road with the RA-C… who could have predicted the unimaginable synchronicity of two souls incarnating at precisely the same moment not four feet apart? People should allow themselves at least three times that privacy. The odds must run into… well, Czosn was going to get a taste of his own Deviance Method now.

“I shouldn’t take it too hard,” said Tfozb, surprisingly conciliatory.

S/he was feeling magnanimous, with the total belief of anyone who has ever been a woman that they were right all along. “You can’t be held responsible for the sexual appetite of an American film producer. And the Italians have always been a law unto themselves.” S/he put down the knitting – a Cambridge University scarf – and gazed fondly into the past.

“I remember one trip to Venice, there was one gondolier who just wouldn’t take -”

“You’re supposed to be beyond all that sort of thing now,” grumbled SS3. “Collective mind, remember? A Higher Being.”

“Well,” s/he snorted, “if you didn’t have your head stuck up the ether and got a better grasp of human reproduction, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“No need for smut,” he replied lamely. Then, to no-one in particular, “What am I going to do?” Tfozb took it as a personal invitation, casting an eye around the office and making a mental note of the changes s/he would make.

“Well, first you sack Fuzru and put this Gibbs in his place.”

“Fuzru?” “Yes, boss?”

“You’re sacked. Next?”

“Next we go and face the Planning Committee.” “Eh? They’ll tear me apart.”

“You can do it. Like your ex-friend said, you’re the boss. And Duflc,” s/he was somehow warmer now, standing up to approach him and laying a hand on his arm, “I’ll be with you, all the way.” He looked up in surprise. Despite their formlessness, things seemed to be shaping up.

 

When they reached the safe house, Harry and the others were met by two total strangers who introduced themselves as Winnie Khan and Luigi Mori but who couldn’t explain how they’d got there.

“Something to do with sex,” said Winnie. “That’s what the young girl said, anyway, but it’s never had this effect before.”

“Er, which young girl is this, exactly?” asked Prudence suspiciously, watching them through narrowed eyes. She was not just being cautious. The odd thing was that the pair not only seemed quite unconcerned to find themselves dead, but for complete strangers they were also getting on extremely well. Indeed, they seemed made for each other. The count, relaxing in the depths of the green velvet sofa, put an arm around Winnie’ shoulder as she continued.

“Oh, the dancer. Lovely young thing she was, so lithe and

expressive. Silvery hair, beautiful nails. You should have seen her rumba.” “Si si, exquisite,” agreed de Pennis, blowing an imaginary kiss.

“So where is she now?” asked Nigel, interested in all art forms.

“Oh, gone. Didn’t I say? No, went off in rather a hurry actually, with that smelly old codg -”

“Sammy’s gone too? Did he say where?”

“Just mumbled something about ‘Below’. Said they were getting out before they got thrown out. Some sort of hanky-panky going on, if you ask me. Oh yes, he did leave a note for you, Evie, on the canvas over there, though why he couldn’t just write it on -”

“What was that?” “I said he left a -”

“No, you called me Evie,” said Pru, taken aback.

“Yes, well isn’t that your name? I’m sure the old soak said Evie should be coming. The name seems to ring a bell anyway. Do you know who it is, Comte?” He shook his head.

“I `ave nevur `eard eet.”

While Pru and Nigel put the house in order, trying to digest these developments, Harry and his men (in civvies) escorted Winnie and Luigi out onto the M25, where they disappeared arm in arm like two lovebirds on the yellow brick road.

“…and zee Oasis at La Napoule eez zee best restaurant een all

Fronce,” the comte was saying.

“Do they have Senancole?”

“Mais oui. Only zee best for you, ma leetle temptress, ma

Salome.”

“Oh Comte, you Frenchmen and your little sausages!”

 

The Planning Committee was indeed in uproar, the peaceful dignity of the pure Unconscious thrown to the winds of panic.

“I said it was wrong from the start. You can’t trust actresses.” “No, you said she had a nice bottom.”

“Yes, but all the same -”

“That reminds me, anyone seen my copy of -”

“You and your prime numbers. If we’d gone for a palindrome, none of this would have happened.”

“I blame Daniel, opening his big mouth.”

“Well I blame computers. What’s wrong with energy, I want to know?”

“And Ireland have got them at thirty-five for seven now.” “Meditation used to be a pleasure, but -”

“We think therefore we’re not very sure and hence -”

“Why wasn’t the mission aborted anyway?”

“Can’t you guess? ‘A woman’s inalienable right’, s/he said. Typical women’s rights, just `cos they have the babies they think -”

“Yeah, where is s/he? I’m going to give her a piece of Mind.”

“Whose plan was it anyway?” “Not mine.”

“Nor me.” “Nope.”

“But you are,” the unmistakable strident tone cut abruptly through the hubbub as Tfozb entered, “the Planning Committee, are you not? You did ratify SS3’s suggestions, did you not? You do have collective responsibility, do you not?”

“Ah, well…”

“If you put it like that…” “`Spose…”

With an imperious flourish s/he took her place among them and an uneasy calm descended.

“Of course,” s/he went on quietly, “if you’d accepted my idea of a female Messiah -”

“Oh, don’t start that again,” protested Mxtth.

“Right,” announced SS3, entering with as much authority as he could muster, “this is not the time for recriminations. Despite the hiccup-”

“More like a flobbering sneeze -”

“– life goes on. Maitreya has incarnated.” There was a ripple of applause. “We’re just not quite sure where, for the moment. We’ll have to wait and see.” There was a ripple of groans.

“A forty-nine year old part-time cleaner in a hairnet is not exactly comparable to a statuesque actress found naked with a corpse and who now has her tits on every front page of the western world, is she?” SS3 considered the matter.

“There are some differences,” he conceded, “but we of all people mustn’t be judgemental. Evie Gardner may be humble, but she is a single woman with some money coming to her -”

“It’s been. I always said you shouldn’t trust the Thorpe system.” “Vingt-et-un’s got a lot to answer for.”

“Not to mention soixante-neuf.”

“No need for smut.”

“Anyway,” interjected SS3, having some difficulty keeping his grip, “the point is that we’ll just have to be extra vigilant. See what turns up, as it were. I’ve decided we’ll need someone to direct this operation, keep a check on policy coordination, oversee the extra Witnessing and -”

“I wish to apply, sir.”

There was a collective swivel of head and raising of eyebrow towards Tfozb. SS3 hesitated. S/he hadn’t mentioned this earlier, and while he was personally naturally above suspicious thoughts he couldn’t help the inkling that s/he was Up To Something.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “This is not an easy job, and it’s pretty uncomfortable down on the A1. Decisions, arguments, criticism…” “I’m used to that.”

There were no other nominations. The Planning Committee remained deathly silent in rock-solid unanimity, seizing its chance to get rid of Tfozb (so they thought). There was no need for a vote.

“Another thing,” said SS3 uncertainly. Things were going altogether too well. “We now have a vacancy among the Elementals.” “Yes, shame!”

“Nftth of all people.” “Traitor!”

“Yes, well s/he’ll be dealt with in the customary way once the SGB get onto it. In fact, after their purge I imagine there’ll be quite a few vacancies here and there. So we need someone to supervise the appointment of -”

“Sir?”

“No, Tfozb, you’ve already got a job.”

 

It was Prudence who eventually found Sammy’s canvas in a corner beneath a pile of dust sheets, badly tuned guitars and preliminary sketches for a new abstract pop expressionist study of Apollo and the Corybantes. The cursor flashed dimly in the top corner beneath the words Vermilion Exuberant Ubiquitous Underwear.

“That’s his final message?” sighed Harry, wandering over when she called out. “Not awfully helpful is it? Looks like this SEx has gone to his head. Round the twist without a paddle. He’s sloped off and left us right in the -”

“Surely he wouldn’t do that?” insisted Pru. “He did help us a lot, even if he was -”

“A senile pervert? You never know with these artist-johnnies. One-track minds, all flesh and symbolism.” Pru’s own mind was racing with unfamiliar possibilities about the wearing of gaudy French knickers. She was rather enjoying Heaven, especially since her records had been destroyed, and she’d begun to sense all kinds of sublimated urges she’d never known existed before. But she had to concede to herself that this idea, sadly, was not likely to be what Sammy had intended to convey.

“I’m not sure I even know what vermilion is,” observed Harry.

“A brilliant red pigment made by grinding cinnabar,” Nigel called out. “Mercuric sulphide. It’s Latin.”

“Who’s a clever boy, then?” “Little worm.”

“Now, look here young chap -”

“That’s what it means.” Nigel came to study the message. “You know what? I reckon it’s the same code Fuzru was using at the CPU. The initials spell KILL.”

“Good grief!”

They put their heads together over a long drink and tried to fathom it out. Life was becoming decidedly dangerous not to mention violent, considering that this was supposed to be a place of eternal rest and atonement. Then Pru remembered something.

“Hang on, Sammy did leave another message, didn’t he, with the Winnie woman – he said ‘Evie should be coming’. So is he saying we’ve got to kill...? Harold, why are your eyes gleaming?”

There was a scratching at the window pane and they swivelled round as one to see Alison floating surreally outside, mouthing to be let in. “Gosh, you lot aren’t easy to find,” she gasped, settling herself down as if after a very long journey. “You might have told me where you were going.”

“Sorry, Ali,” said Pru. “But it is supposed to be a safe house. And things have been ever so slightly hectic. See, we went off to the FEW and...”

“Yes, I know about all that. This weird old codger came through the NRC the wrong way. He was in a terrible hurry. But he put me in the picture and told me where you were.”

“Sammy!” they chorused.

“That’s him. And there was this dancer with him, lovely girl. Very lithe. You should see her -”

“Where did they go?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing. Apparently there’d been some sort of boating accident and this chap was at death’s door having an OBE. I was just going to give him the big Efficient Empathy welcome when this Sammy pops out from nowhere, fills me in, snips the chap’s thread and shoots off back down the tunnel. So there I was left with this Arab gone before his time and not very happy about it, I can tell you.”

“Brilliant!” smiled Nigel. “What an escape. But what happened to Giselle?”

“The dancer? Oh, he told her there’d be another one along in a minute and they’d meet up on the Riviera. And that’s not all…”

Sadiq Khan had been understandably annoyed about his premature departure from Earth. After all, a terrorist has work to do, anarchy to ferment, ideals to tarnish. It’s a secure job with plenty of perks for the psychopathically inclined. Yes, one accepts there are certain risks in this line of work, though being crushed between two heaving love-nests in a Mediterranean harbour is a bit unusual. Still, he had fully expected to recover and be back behind his gun within a few months. Instead, he had found himself at the Western Sector NRC of an afterlife he didn’t believe in, and at the loose end of an umbilical cord.

Alison had been on duty alone, as Boris had been hauled off for questioning by an SGB given free rein to make a nuisance of itself. Sadiq being an Arab and Alison apparently being an attractive white female, Khan had lost no time in telling her his version of his life story. When he got to Evie and the Municipal Casino, Alison had put two and two together.

“… so what Sammy was getting at,” she went on, “was that this Evie woman has to be stopped before she gives birth.”

“But that’s murder!” exclaimed Pru. “Harold, your eyes are gleaming again.”

“It doesn’t seem very moral,” Nigel agreed.

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” the colonel said. “The enemy’s the enemy. You do what you have to do. Look, suppose you found yourself in Hitler’s bathroom with a loaded gun in 1939 when he was about to go to the toilet. Eh?” Nigel frowned, trying to get his head round this.

“Why would I be in Hitler’s bathroom?”

“All right, in his kitchen, then.”

“Are you saying Hitler went to the toilet in his kitchen?” “You’d shoot him, wouldn’t you? Surely anyone would.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Pru. “I’d make us both a cup of tea and sit him down for a chat. But it’s hardly the same thing is it, assassinating the mother of the Messiah? You have to admit the implications are different.”

“Seems much the same to me, my… er, Prudence. Anyway, no- one actually does get killed do they? Just moved about a bit to somewhere else. So if we care about the future of human life, however dysfunctional -” “Speaking of which,” interrupted Alison, “where’s Ranjit?”

 

There were others, far removed in terms of space, time and motive, who were nevertheless equally intent on eliminating Evie Gardner. Ever since Judas Skim’s appearance on the BBC breakfast programme, the world’s markets had been in crisis, several leading bookmakers had gone out of business and there were reports that the North Korean Chairman had mentioned the word peace twice during a game of snooker with a Chinese diplomat. Confidence in the City was at an all-time low and the moving average forecasts resembled the temperature chart of a patient with terminal chickenpox. The consumer boom was fizzling out like a damp November squib and the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement had vanished overnight. The British government was at its wits’ end and there were absolutely no foreign military adventures available to divert the public’s attention (unless you count Glastonbury’s unilateral declaration of independence).

Moreover, Jim Khan’s private life could hardly be called straightforward either lately. No sooner had he received the crushing news about his brother than Winnie had arrived home by air ambulance. Against all the odds it seemed at first that she was making a remarkable recovery, but there was a strange fixed expression on her face and a distant vacancy in her eyes. This might not have been unusual after five or six gins on a Friday night, but she wouldn’t touch the stuff now.

“Her whole personality changed,” Jim confided morosely to Ron in the Rising Sun. “Not interested in horses at all. The other evening I got some neighbours in for a spot of bridge; that always used to cheer her up.”

“No good?”

“She made two penalty doubles in the first half hour, missed an obvious ruff in a three-diamond contract, and we were fifty pounds down by nine o’clock. It was like she’d never played before. And on Saturday she refused to cook the pork sausages. We always have pork sausages on a Saturday.”

“My word, you are having a rough time. Whatever happened in

France?”

“Amnesia. She can’t remember a thing. When I tried to talk about it she just grabbed my shoulders, said ‘I want my poo jar’ and demanded that I find her dick. I mean, what’s a chap to do?”

“How’s she doing at the funny farm? Settling down?”

“Seems so. Lots of staring into space, she likes that. Thanks, Ron, you’ve been a good friend, sending Sylvia over.”

“What are friends for?” They left Ron’s car at the pub and drove back in silence to Hertfordshire for the weekend. Sylvia was warming a casserole, then there’d be time for a quick three-hander before bed. There was serious planning to be done tomorrow.

But Saturday proved frustrating. A decent financial strategy had been thrashed out by the time the pork sausages appeared, but it depended on a good deal of interest rate deflation and insider trading. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but the peace disease was starting to infect the dealers and no-one would play ball. By evening they still hadn’t even started on the outstanding question of Mrs Gardner’s demise, so the two men turned to the one experience that never disappoints.

Jim had sold the horses. The big race meetings were only taking entries from rank outsiders since Skim’s predictions had ruined the system, and betting had just become a sheer gamble. He’d made a good arrangement with the Soho restaurant. With the right herbs and the odd special Japanese ingredient, horsemeat could be turned into practically anything. In return he’d got the jacuzzi plus Yoko and Kyusha, and the job lot had been installed in the old tack room, overseen by head groom and nominal eunuch Jim Roberts.

There is something uniquely paradoxical about jets of soft bubbles rushing to and fro about one’s nether regions, exploring the nooks and crannies. For while it is the outer surface receiving the treatment, it is the cerebral cortex reaping the benefit. Add to this the quiet attendance of one or two dewy-eyed young girls with long black hair and loose kimonos, and the suprarenal glands get to pump a good deal of cortisone. While Roberts attended to some stiffness in Sylvia’s lower back in the new massage room, Ron and Jim began to feel fresh.

“Trouble is,” began Jim, “no-one seems to know where this Evie creature is right now. Somewhere between Provence and Picardie.” “Assuming she’s on her way back to England.”

“Well, according to the Great Pink Guru she is. I’ve got my men onto it, there’s plenty of refugee manpower in France. A matter of honour for them.”

“Yes, of course. How is Sadiq? You flew down there didn’t you?” Khan shook his head sadly. It had been traumatic to find his brother so utterly transformed. It wasn’t the injuries that were upsetting; it was the man’s inner contentment, his very disturbing wellbeing. He’d also taken to smoking a disgusting pipe and doing charcoal sketches of the nurses in the prison hospital. He couldn’t terrorise a flea now. There must be some truly evil force in the world to have caused this, and Jim had sworn vengeance. After all, blood is thicker than water. Not to mention messier.

Ron stood up in the water like a surfacing hippopotamus, sending tidal waves rippling over the patio surround. He gestured to Kyusha for the lanolin and the girl immediately rose from the floor, slipped the kimono from her shoulders and stepped silently into the water to kneel at his feet, jar of oil in one hand, loofah in the other. As the girl slowly worked her way up his legs, something grew in Ron’s mind.

“I say,” he began, “you don’t suppose this is all a bluff, do you?

This Evie business. A blind to send us off in the wrong direction, to protect the sprog? I mean, the old bag is hardly likely mother-of-God material, is she?” Yoko was attending to Jim’s muscles.

“Fuck me!” he exclaimed, uncharacteristically. “Do you think so? We’ve all fallen for it while all the time it’s… well, who?” Ron shrugged, sending a convulsion through each roll of fat in turn.

“Someone in Skim’s group, maybe? He’s at the centre of it all.”

“So it could be Sylvia? Or Winnie? Is that why she’s acting so strange? No, you can’t be serious – they wouldn’t… surely…”

“Unlikely,” agreed Ron. “But can we afford to take that chance? Who knows what they’ve been up to. Something’s turned Winnie’s mind, and Sylvia – well, she is easily carried away.” As if in confirmation, low moans could be heard from the massage room. Even Khan was taken aback by his friend’s implication. Admittedly, as wives the two women had long outgrown their usefulness but they were still wives. On the other hand, there was an awful lot at stake. Hardly a time for emotion.

“Perhaps I’ll go and visit Winnie, then,” said Khan pensively. “She always did hoard tablets, terribly dangerous when you’re prone to depression. What about Sylvia?”

“Didn’t you tell me your sauna door tends to jam when the heat’s up?” Even Khan shuddered at the horror of the suggestion. He was seeing his friend in a new light, even allowing for him being a banker. “And then,” went on Ron absently, pausing for a scratch and stepping from the water, “it could be that other one. What’s her name?”

“Pene. Yes, she’s young and pretty, apparently. At least, Winnie used to come home furious with her every week. Seems a pity to… I mean, there isn’t enough beauty in the world, is there?”

“Well, bring her here, then. We can keep an eye on her, until we know for sure… Any ideas on how to keep her here, though?” Khan, stroking Yoko’s hair, was beginning to feel himself again and his lips parted in the old familiar, terrible smile.

“Why do you suppose these girls stay?” He gestured towards

Kyusha’s pale, naked body, slim and unashamed and freely given as she softly towelled down Ron Golightly’s extraordinarily disgusting mounds of flesh.

“It’s in their character, isn’t it?”

“Even the Japanese aren’t that selfless, old boy. It’s heroin.”

 

The first bullet had scorched Evie’s right eyebrow but the second had buried itself well and truly in the comte’s already flaccid abdomen. He had surrendered at the height of the campaign and paid the penalty. Later, he would come to in hospital and confound the authorities by claiming in a Geordie accent to be a private detective with evidence of alcohol abuse in Heaven. At least he ended his days in his beloved northern hills of Italy after all, although an institution for the criminally insane near the shores of Lake Garda was possibly not what he’d had in mind.

Evie herself was completely unhurt, except for having the stuffing knocked out of her by the heavy collapse of her lover and, with it, her last lingering dreams of romance and adventure. She had lain trapped on the Gay Boy’s bed for several hours while the entire local gendarmerie trooped around the next boat. Eleanor Glee’s screams had attracted some interest, although not half as much as the sight of her, pink and squirming beneath the very ample and very dead Con Danny Prattsmuller. At one point there must have been forty officers there, not to mention the photographers of every national newspaper in the western world. Eventually Sadiq Khan had been noticed and fished out, and everyone had wandered off back to their hotels, stations and darkrooms. Silence fell on the gently bobbing craft in the harbour, and nobody even thought to look over the Gay Boy.

Around late morning, Evie managed to dislodge the comte and crawl to the vodka bottle. The spectre had visited her yet again, and with an awesome terror. No longer could she deny that there was something very odd about her life. A Purpose. She had had everything within her grasp – money, celebrity, adventure and love – and in one apocalyptic night it had all been snatched away, every last bit. That doesn’t happen unless you have a Purpose. With resignation, she pulled on the Cardin dress, the last vestige of that life, and cooked up some eggs and beans in the galley.

By midday she felt sufficiently fortified to turn her attention to the comte. Miraculously, he was still breathing. With the clear mind that comes only in a crisis, she did what had to be done, sterilising the wound with the remains of the vodka and then going through his pockets. Somehow, she was not surprised to find the licence and banker’s letter, which she burned, but the shiny little ring gave her pause. On the point of throwing it into the sea for the fish, she hesitated and then slipped it onto her finger. It was not sentiment – she would be needing money, since the man’s wallet yielded only a couple of hundred euros, three credit cards, a faded sepia photograph of a fat, dark-eyed woman with six children, and a dry cleaning ticket. Finally she packed a small suitcase with anything that could be unscrewed, and slipped away unnoticed by the throng of tourists on the quay being entertained by the duty gendarme with the heroic account of how he had overcome the crazed assassin in an underwater struggle. The French are romantics.

But where to go now, and how to get there? Evie surrendered herself to the guiding hand of fate that had got her into this mess in the first place. It was perhaps the first truly spiritual act of her life. She found her feet turning towards the Municipal Casino and within twenty minutes was drinking black coffee in the Assistant Manager’s suite.

Jean-Paul Lapelle had a soft spot for Evie (as anyone might for one who had made them considerably richer). It should be said that he didn’t have many soft spots. He had heard every hard-luck story in the book and indeed the job interview had consisted of being strapped in a chair wired up to an electroencephalograph while watching videos of tearful children waving their fathers off to prison. The French are romantics. Evie explained her plight with such quiet simplicity, such humble fortitude, and with a suitcase full of such marketable onyx ashtrays and gold tap fittings, that he could not find it in his heart to refuse her. In no time at all he had acquired everything she needed – a bag of sandwiches and a flask, five hundred euros, and a bundle of assorted old clothes.

“Zay are ma warf’s,” he explained generously. “She weel not meess them. She eez also a middle-aged b… a ladee of your `ight and shape. Also, take thees.” He handed her a small package in brown paper, securely taped up and addressed to someone in Marseille. “Eet eez ma friend. We do a leetle business and ee go vairy often to Hingland. Ee weel do ze passing port for you. Et maintenant - ” He locked the office door and turned back to her, rubbing his hands. “ – you weel please be taking off ze clothses. Ma warf `as nevur `ad ze Cardin dress before.” The romanticism of the French has already been remarked upon.

The next few days were among the strangest of Evie’s whole life, and she’d had a few, not least because she only uttered three words during the entire period. One of these was ‘Marseille’ at the railway station, and the other two were ‘Sod off’ when Jean-Paul’s friend had suggested she might be taking off ze clothses again. It crossed her mind that for one well past the first flush of middle-age, and who had never aroused genuine carnal passion in a man (even Stan kept his socks on), her body had recently become intensely desirable. She was still unaware of the subtle yet profound changes taking place within it.

Apart from this, nothing crossed her mind. She was living in a vacuum of total incomprehension, going through the motions, moving hands and feet about with no inkling of purpose, staring vacantly at the verdant French countryside shuddering past the grimy windows of the old Citroen truck as they made their way north by a rural and circuitous route. Evie was lost, literally and spiritually, abandoned to the power of the spectre, her brain suspended from duty. Like an empty Seven-Up can tossed into the sea, she bobbed along in the stream of cosmic consciousness.

Some of her state of mind could be put down to extreme hunger.

Unaccountably, she found that she’d become vegetarian overnight. Lapelle’s sandwiches had contained something shapeless and greasy but undeniably animal parts, so they had been tossed out of the train window. This being France, she had not come across anything else edible except a few dry croissants and a bag of overripe plums. Unmistakably, she was being purified, though the fact was lost on her.

The pure are not much fun to have around, so Jean-Paul’s friend had had enough of this before long. Considering his social obligations fulfilled, he tossed her out when they reached Calais and juddered off in a cloud of grey smoke. It was late evening, and a light mist swirled in from the Channel bearing that distinctive continental aroma of rotting vegetables, unwashed armpits and Disque Bleu. Aimlessly, Evie turned down the Boulevard Jacquard towards the quay as the impassive Burghers stonily watched her progress. She crossed the bridge and staggered on towards the thirteenth century watchtower looming up ahead. It was becoming difficult to put one foot in front of the other, her head light and spinning. At last, Evie reached her catharsis.

In the middle of the road near the Place d’Armes, lights suddenly flashed from the sky all around and the strident blare of angelic trumpets filled the air. She fell to the ground and heard a voice.

“Ay up, missus, look where you’re… well, flamin’ Nora, it’s Evie Gardner. What the `eck are you doing `ere?” Bill Shaddock, fishmonger and erstwhile Judas acolyte, jumped down from the cab of his van and came to help her up.

“I’m blind! I’m blind!” she wailed.

“Ar, well you’re sittin’ in front of me `eadlamp, missus,” explained Bill, helping her to her feet and kindly folding his black plastic raincoat round her shoulders. “C’mon now. Ee, you do’ look well.” He guided her through a small throng of spectators and into the cab. “What brings you `ere, luv?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell -” she began, but another powerful and distinctive aroma from the back of the van had caught her breath and turned her stomach.

“Ar, the fish,” explained Bill. “I come over every week, good prices, see, an’ a few specials. Like them John Dories in the corner there, with the black spots. `Course it’s mostly bass an’ skate an’ cod. `Ere, I got a few ling though.” He reached back and offered her one, his eyes bulging with enthusiasm. Evie looked bleakly from the one ugly face to the other and felt tears finally begin to trickle down her cheeks.

One of the spectators approached the open cab window.

“Excuse me, only I saw what happened. You’re English aren’t you? Can I do anything to… oh gosh, I recognise you,” said Benedict.

“Ay up, mate, you a friend of our Evie’s then?” Bill greeted him cheerfully. “Ar, the lass is ok. I were jus’ telling `er about the ling. Hoover of the sea, I call `im, sucks up anything passing. Disgusting little bugger. Now, your mackerel’s the same. Lovely oily fish, he is. You just slit `is skin in a few places an’ rub gooseberry jam in, then grill `im over a -”

Evie could contain herself no longer. All the tumultuous emotion and despair of her recent life welled up in a raging torrent, and with a great sob of the very soul she turned towards Benedict and emptied herself, through the window, of yesterday’s plums.

“Ee, missus,” said Bill softly and with real concern. “I know what’s up with you, I seen it afore. You’re pregnant.”