23. THE PRIME MINISTER

THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DENTURES 23

The blond-haired and somewhat crumpled politician smiled at his audience of police, crime scene officers and Curmudgeons and turned to hand his ill-creased trousers to the fluorescent-panted Igor who was standing behind him. Then he contrived the most artificial grin anyone had ever seen and announced that, as ever, he was prepared to look the part. He obviously thought that looking the part of those who were looking at him incredulously involved removing his trousers and standing proud in his underwear.

And that underwear was hardly something to be proud of, but at least it looked clean from a hygiene perspective, but from any other it was absolutely filthy and showed no respect to the fair sex with its lurid illustration of female anatomy daubed in bright crimson across the front. Royston assumed that the PM must select his own underwear and wondered what backstreet purveyor of such garments had prime-ministerial patronage.

“Sir, get dressed, this is hardly appropriate,” hissed Igor, loud enough for the audience to hear, “these people are in their underwear for reasons best known to themselves and it’s got nothing to do with a convention for lurid boxer shorts!”

“And yourself?” asked the Prime Minister, for it must be remembered that Igor also favoured minimalist dress in that he had long ago discarded his trousers.

“I am a hermit,” he reminded the Prime Minister, “and custodian of that interesting set of dentures that you’ve offered a huge reward for, and as such I don’t own any trousers. Not a single pair, though I suppose that I could search through my pile of detritus for a pair of shorts.”

At the words huge reward Blinky perked up, but, for the moment at least, remained silent. But he ran the Curmudgeon agency at a loss (due largely to his own incompetence, especially when his eyesight was having one of its outages) and was for ever on the search for ways and means of topping up its bank account.

“If you’re a hermit, remind me why you’re in the heart of England surrounded by crowds of policemen and allied officials at a crime scene,” growled the Prime Minister.

“Your teeth, sir,” replied Igor, “the false ones I made for you when I was in your employ, the ones with a very secret quality. The very choppers that contain in one precious gem the full unexpurgated details of a very sensitive cabinet meeting that you called.”

“And remind me?” suggested the Prime Minister who may well have forgotten what the dentures were all about.

“The cabinet meeting recorded on one of them had sensitive ramifications…?” suggested Igor, and a look crossed the important politician’s face as returning memory in all its glory reminded him of why he was there and that he might have been looking for.

“Ah, of course,” he blustered, and he pointed towards the investigative trio headed by Blinky. “Are these the rough-necks?” he asked, his voice lowering to a still-audible growl, “is it for these miscreants that laws pertaining to the execution of traitors involved in treason are to be returned to the statute book? Are we to incarcerate these three in the Tower and torture a confession out of them?”

Igor, to give him credit, shook his head when he might have wept. “Not at all, sir. These three are in your employ and have vowed to find the secret recordings that I mentioned just now. Your future, it might be said, is in their hands, for it was in that very meeting that you raised the possibility of the Lady Mildred Kampinella-Plonker being an agent of a foreign power and her husband Lord Bernard you-know-what threatening to sue the pants off you.”

“Well, they’re off me now,” smirked the Prime Minister.

Igor sighed in a resigned fashion. “Anyway, you are here to get those teeth back and have the contents of the smallest little molar consigned to history,” he said, “if you know how,” he added in a whisper.

“I can destroy anything,” boasted the blond Prime Minister, “I think I’ve proved that much at least.”

“And this troupe of Investigators has been charged with aiding you,” sighed Igor.

“On pain of death, eh?” nodded the Prime Minister, “it must have been a wonderful time to be alive when the monarch just had to order off with his head and his head was lopped off. I would have given my eye tooth to have lived then! And people spoke often in Latin, you know, a noble tongue that I learned at school. Or some of it. I wasn’t so hot at Latin as I might have been, there being distractions in the shape of Mortimer Minor and his self abuse, but I remember bits and pieces, you know.”

“If you had lived then,” advised Igor, “it would probably have been your head being lopped off, as you put it.”

“Now where is that woman, the one I asked to meet meet me here, what’s her name, Mildred Kampinella-Something-or-other?” asked the most ludicrously important man in the land, “you know, the one who’s going to repay me for services rendered and deal with the whole problem?”

“She is in her bath with the librarian, sir,” Igor told him, his face a mask of seriousness even though his words made Blinky’s mouth twitch.

“The librarian, you say? What’s he got that I haven’t, getting in a bath with a posh lady and no doubt scrubbing her back?”

“She has sent the three people in front of you, sir. Now, if you will please replace your trousers so that the television cameras don’t get a glimpse of your lurid underwear, we can consult them on any progress they may or may not have made in the search for your diamond dentures.”

“Why can’t they wear their trousers too?” asked the Prime Minister, grumpily.

“They got filth and excrement all over them, sir, and thought it improper to gas you with the stench of them,” intoned Igor, sounding as bored as he no doubt felt. “Now please get a move on. I would dearly like to return to my cave and the woman I love.”

At that the Prime Minister pulled his own trousers back up and proceeded to walk the short distance to where Blinky stood patiently waiting for him.

“What are all these people doing in their white suits and flashing cameras?” he asked him when he finally addressed Blinky.

“It’s a murder scene, sir,” replied Blinky, wondering why a man as important as the Prime Minister didn’t know already, and raising one eyebrow in the direction of Igor questioningly.

“We thought it best to tell no-one,” replied Igor, “we’re dealing with this on a need-to-know basis and he doesn’t need to know.”

“Quite,” murmured the Prime Minister as if he approved of himself being kept out of the loop, which probably indicated that he had little understanding of what was going on or what a loop might actually be.

“You have the dentures?” asked Igor.

Blinky nodded, and his hand flew up to his shirt’s breast pocket. Then his hand, or three fingers of it, vanished into the depths of that pocket, then he pulled it about as though intent on tearing it off the shirt it was stitched to.

Then:

“It’s gone,” he said, mournfully.

© Peter Rogerson, 03.02.20