17. AN AROMATIC NIGHT

THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DENTURES 17

“Well, this is a fine state of affairs,” muttered Blinky, “lost at night in the middle of what smells like a gigantic cess pit, and the thing we’re after sinking ever further into the stinking sludge, and doubtless ending up in some subterranean wilderness, well beyond our reach, rotting away until it’s little more than dusty sludge...”

“And by the sound of it when you arrived, the car’s batteries badly needed recharging again,” added a morose Royston, “when I had it adapted I never thought I’d use it for much more than nipping to the shops or the pub or somewhere local. Though it could manage the coast and back...”

“We’ve got to go, though!” declared Blinky, “we’ve got to pursue our quarry to the ends of the Earth if needs be.”

“Royston shook his head. “The facts and my batteries are against that,” he said, “I doubt the old girl will do more than another mile or so, the way it sounded to me when you pulled up. I understand my car from its voice, you know, and the old thing’s weary.”

Angelina was about to suggest that they’d have to snuggle up together in the car and if Royston couldn’t keep his hands to himself as he slept she might just forgive him for everything, including the great Fire of London and the Black Death, when the night was disturbed by the sound of a police car racing along the road towards them. The increasing brilliance of its blue lights flashing as it drew closer to them cast a kind of eerie luminance on the landfill site as a dreadful and almost certainly toxic aromatic steam rose into the air from its turgid surface and lay like a poisonous blanket on the bubbling land.

“Quick, back to Royston’s car!” urged Blinky, and he started running through the sludge and mire towards where he’d left the vehicle. It was getting harder for him to see what was what if the gathering gloom of nightfall.

The two of them followed, and it wasn’t easy. At first Angelina carried her broomstick, but after a few moments of stumbling and gnashing her teeth she cast it aside. She was pretty sure she’d never need it again. She wasn’t, she decided, cut out to be a witch even though it seemed she did know how to get about on a broomstick.

They reached Royston’s Land Rover as a police car pulled up next to it, and Inspector Gadgett climbed out. He looked to be three quarters asleep, but then it had been, for him, a long day.

“Now then, now then, now then,” he mumbled at them, “what’s going on?”

“If only we knew, officer,” replied Angelina, and she flickered her eyelashes at him in a way that usually worked on the male of the species. But not this time. Inspector Gadgett was too half-asleep to be beguiled by the gymnastic displays of eyelashes.

“You’ll have to go back, officer,” almost shouted Blinky, “they’ve got clean away, that barmaid woman and her geriatric accomplice. On broomsticks, would you believe it. I think the old stories of witches and the like must have been true after all. And Harry Potter. He’s probably true too. They all fly broomsticks and move faster through the air than modern wheeled transport does on land.”

“You stink,” replied the Inspector, “and that’s no lie. You stink of month old cabbages, rotten tomatoes, cat vomit and I reckon I can detect a hint of my old woman’s cooking in the fragrant air wafting from you!”

“It’s a landfill site and we’ve been in it at the deep end,” roared Blinky, forgetting that he had no need to raise his voice much above a whisper.

“What are you going to do now?” asked Inspector Gadgett. “I’m taking your advice and going back to Swanspottle where I hope to find an officer ready to replace me because I’m knackered and need my duvet.”

“Give us a lift, then?” almost begged Angelina.

“Not on your nelly, not the way you three stink.” replied Inspector Gadgett, “you’ll have to find your own way back, and best of luck to you!”

“But the battery’s flat...” protested Blinky.

“Sir,” added Angelina.

But the Inspector was adamant. “It I arrived home with even a smidgen of your stink on me My old woman would chuck me out, and who would be able to blame her?” he snarled, “so good night to you!”

Then he climbed, wearily, back into the police car, did a seven point turn and raced off the way he had come.

“Your broomstick?” asked Royston, looking at Angelina.

“No way!” she exclaimed, and then she waved her arm over the vastness of the landfill site. “It’s somewhere in that mess,” she added, “and I for one have no intention of spending until dawn looking for it in the pitch black of night when I won’t even be able to see my hand before my face.”

“We’ll have to make the best of the car,” said Royston, and then he glared at them both in turn, starting with Blinky and hoping his words wouldn’t offend Angelina.

“Look, friends, we know that we smell bloody awful. We’ll have to strip off our outer clothes,” he said, “I’m not having the foul fragrance of other people's, and excuse me for saying it, s**t, anywhere near my nice leather seats.”

“I’m only wearing a short skirt and I don’t think I even got a splash on it,” smiled Angelina, “I was careful not to,” she added.

“And I’m keeping my trousers on and don’t you think I won’t, not with a lady present,” barked Blinky.

“Then you can sleep under the car,” said Royston mildly, and added, “sir.”

And in front of the two of them he slowly removed his own trousers. It wasn’t pleasant because the torpid mess that had become almost one with the fabric seemed to reach out and cling to him as he pulled them off.

“Here, let me help,” murmured Angelina, and she tried to disentangle one sludgy leg whilst he did his best not to point out to her what she was doing. Blinky was lost in a dark world, probably because by then it was pitch dark with barely a star showing in the sky, but maybe because he had reached a blind phase in the never ending variety of his ocular world. But somehow he managed to wriggle out of his trousers as well, and in such a way that neither of his colleagues noticed.

Angelina, fortunately, was able to keep her skirt on because the odd splashes that had reached it were luckily invisible in the darkness, and when Royston was convinced that there was little danger to his precious leather seats he let them climb in. He suggested the Blinky had the front passenger seat whilst he and Angelina shared the back seat, and he set the controls to allow the batteries to recharge the moment there was any sunlight available.

“Goodnight, travellers,” he yawned.

“Goodnight, sergeant,” shouted Blinky.

“Goodnight, love,” whispered Angelina.

And that was the start of the night, all three of them so tired that they actually passed into a peaceful sleep pretty quickly, and Royston with Angelina’s whispered Goodnight, love circling him like a dove of peace.

And two pairs of sodden trousers slowly started drying, stretched over a nearby hedge and scaring off anything with a nose.

© Peter Rogerson, 28.01.20