24. TO TRAITOR’S GATE

THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DENTURES 24

The Prime Minister stared open-mouthed as Blinky searched futilely in his shirt breast pocket for the much-travelled diamond dentures, and failed to find them

“They can’t be!” stammered Royston, “not after all we’ve gone through to find them!”

“They must have leapt out of my pocket...” glared Blinky, “when I was having a blind moment or two and didn’t see what they were up to. That’s typical, that is. ”

“That’s quite enough!” bawled the Prime Minister, “I see what’s going on! I see what you three reprobates are after! Blackmail, is it? Trying to take a great man like myself down? Undermining the wealth of the country with your foreign ways? And all the time calling me a liar?”

Then he turned to his unnecessarily large team of security officers and barked his order. Well, barked is probably the wrong word. Stammered and stuttered was actually more like it. And hummed and ha’d

“Take them to the tower and lock them in, and make sure they can’t get away or slip off when nobody’s looking. You know it can happen and it, er, mustn’t, er, happen here!” he mumbled, “and order the Lord High Executioner to be ready with his collection of blades! Tell him to get them sharpened.”

This can’t be happening, not in the twenty-first century thought Angelina, we’re supposed to have democracy and all that, but if the man at the top can order people to be sent to the tower than it’s more like autocracy, and that always gives way to dictatorship and slavery…

Blinky had thoughts too. To think that I voted for this twerp in the election, his mind wittered, and to think that I considered him to be an all-round but simple-minded good egg…

As for Royston, he stared in disbelief at the blond Very Important Scarecrow in front of him, and smirked.

Well I never, he thought, the man’s as loony as I’ve always thought him to be. But we’ll get out of this, by hook or by crook. It’s what we do all the time, get out of tight corners that seem, on the surface to be insurmountable…

And while the three Curmudgeons were having that range of thoughts a burly bald-headed brute with a face not unlike that of an enraged Orang-utan pushed his nose as close to Blinky’s as he could, which would almost certainly have unnerved Blinky had he been able to see it. But he couldn’t. His eyesight had performed its closing-down trick and his was, for the present and the immediate future, quite blind, though his sense of smell was still functioning and the gross man had pyorrhoea, which made Blinky’s stomach twitch.

“Get a move on!” urged the Prime Minister, “I’ll phone ahead and let them know you’re coming. When you get to the capital go by water-taxi. It’s the quickest way of getting to Traitor’s Gate, what with traffic the way it is...”

And the Orang-utan grabbed hold of Blinky by the waist band of his boxer shorts and dragged him off. Blinky wanted to shout ouch but didn’t like to put any sign of personal weakness on display, though something south of his waist-band was digging in and making his eyes water.

“Hey! Let go!” shouted the blind leader of our heroic group of investigators in the end when he could stand no more, “that could be interpreted as a sexual assault!” he added.

“Grrr...” growled the Orang-Utan as he placed his free hand over Blinky’s mouth and released his grip on his underwear. Then he was marched off, unable to protest even though he did try to bite the palm of the big man’s sweaty hand, but failed. The politician’s strong man was exactly that: a strong man, and he wasn’t going to let and namby-pamby private investigator take a chunk out of his flesh.

Royston and Angelina were similarly marched off, their apes being inferior to the one that was holding Blinky, but still well up to the task of subduing them.

“I’ll see you later then, naughty boy,” said Angelina to the Prime Minister as she passed him by, and the three Curmudgeons were bundled into an armoured car with a huge gun sticking out in front like some obscenity out of a porn film, and down Butcher’s Close, and onto the main road and from thence onto a motorway it trundled. And from there, rattling and bouncing and grinding and sliding along towards a distant London it went, with slow and semi-military majesty, whilst a saloon car with a tousled Prime Minister raced by, ignoring speed limits, and Angelina was quuite certain, as her eyes tried to penetrate the blackened glass of its windows, that he was sitting ultra close to a woman, and she frowned because somewhere, in the back of her memory, she thought she recognised the woman.

“This is a fine mess you’ve got us into, Blinky,” whispered Royston.

“Shurrup!” hissed a guard.

“I don’t know where they went, the dentures I mean,” replied Blinky, ignoring the guard, who didn’t like being ignored and went into a sulk.

“They were in your pocket before we left that pub. I saw you check, and there was a denture-shaped bulge in it,” grunted Royston.

“Shurrup!” repeated the guard, who they ignored again.

“They must have jolted out during our journey to 221c,” mused Blinky.

“Maybe got caught in the leather of the Land Rover’s seat?” suggested Angelina.

“Or onto your lap?” suggested Royston.

“I’d feel it if they were there!” scoffed Blinky.

“Here, let me take a peek,” suggested Angelina, and to Blinky’s amazed delight he felt her fingers poking around actually on the inside of his underwear as she searched for anything that resembled a set of diamond dentures.

“There’s something here!” she said after a few moments, and she pulled her hand away, much to Blinky’s dismay. But between her fingers she was holding, of all things, the dentures. They must have jerked out of Blinky’s pocket and landed on his lap. They must then have sneaked between the fly opening of his boxer shorts and somehow lurked out of sight, unnoticed and unfelt by him.

“That could have been nasty,” joked Royston, “I mean, teeth down there!”

“Shurrup!” repeated the guard, and Angelina winked at him.

“I knew I shouldn’t be in this job,” he mumbled, as if to himself, “bossing people about, being nasty to ‘em, taking them to cells and jails and the like when all I want to do is be fluffy. That’s it. All I really want to do is be fluffy and nice to folk. But I’m bossed around mesen and told to bark in their faces, so that’s what I do.”

“We’ll be quiet, then, while you’re being fluffy,” smiled Angelina. “I tell you what, when all this is over and done with how would you like to spend a night with me in my cosy little flat? I’ve got a nice big bed and I’m always on the look out for someone strong and muscly to share it with my...”

“Shurrup!” whispered the guard, and tears started running down his face.

“Hey! You! Stop blubbing and perk up!” snapped a second guard, “remember who you are.”

“Life’s so unkind...” mumbled the first guard.

“Trouble with you is you’re soft,” snapped his colleague, and he sniffed meaningfully. But from that moment onwards there was on uneasy silence that seemed to get longer and longer as the hours slipped by and the armoured vehicle jogged and rumbled its way towards London.

© Peter Rogerson, 04.02.20