2. AN EXPECTED VISITOR

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 2

It was next morning and Angelina was awake rather than breathing warmly on me as she slept, and I took a mighty great bull by its horns and explained to her what Igor had suggested we do.

Angelina stared at me with wide open eyes and a frown. Think about it: it’s not easy to do both at once.

“You want me to blast off to goodness-knows what death in a home made rocket that’s got Igor’s name all over it?” she asked. “You’ve just got to be joking! I’ll do nothing of the sort!”

“There are other considerations,” I muttered weakly, not really believing much of what I was about to say myself, but arguments had been rattling meaninglessly through my mind for much of the night.

“Really? Like Blinky would let us anyway?” she demanded. “And who’s going to steer the damned thing if you have a black-out? Assuming, that is, that it ever gets off the ground?”

“Igor’s positive that it works,” I muttered, “and it was he who suggested I take you along with me. He likes you and if it proved to be, er, fatal or something unpleasant like that he’d never be able to face your sister again!”

Igor was living with Angelina’s sister Margie and according to both of them they might was well be in Heaven even though they were cohabiting in a cave, and there was nothing he would do to cause the least friction between them. That’s emotional friction, of course, not the physical sort because he’s led us to believe there was plenty of that too.

“What’s wrong with cats?” she asked, “if he wants to experiment with his home-made space ship, what’s wrong with putting a couple of cats on board? That’ll show him if it’s safe, if they get back unharmed and in one piece.”

“There’s work to be done,” I told her, “work that’s way beyond the capability of even the most intellectual feline.”

“And what work might that be?” she demanded.

“The diamonds, from the wretched dentures that gave us so much bother not so long ago. He wants someone to shoot them into the sun and destroy them for good.”

“What’s wrong with him swallowing them? If he’s so keen on seeing the back of them?” she said.

“What do you think?” I asked, “wouldn’t they simply pass through him and come out in his … you know what and then washed into a sewer, maybe, for anyone to find??”

“But who’s going to be out there to find them, all stinking of whatever he had for his dinner yesterday? And heavily disguised by being in the heart of a t**d that nobody wants to look at?” She was being insistent, and I knew why. The whole idea of having to take a voyage into the dark unknown of space in order to dispose of a mere dozen small diamonds was suddenly absurd, even to me without Igor’s enthusiasm to support it. And the cost… it must have all but broken his bank account to have built something capable of leaping a mile in the air let alone into the depths of the solar system where the spaces are, to tell the truth, simply huge and counted in millions of miles.

“It does sound daft,” I agreed, “and I’ll tell him so. You’re right, darling, and I was worrying for most of the night about it. But it takes the clear mind of a woman to see what’s sensible and what isn’t.”

“It’s not like Igor to not think things out properly,” sighed Angelina. “I mean, if it’s just a matter of losing the wretched things, what’s wrong with digging a deep hole and burying them? And if the only stuff on them is a complete copy of Wikipedia and an afternoon’s debauchery in the Cabinet Office with the Prime Minister doing his level best to emulate an elephant with a diminutive trunk? That might be news today, but tomorrow? Who’s going to be bothered tomorrow?”

I had to admit to myself that she had a point there. “We’ll tell Igor when he comes,” I told her. “He said he might pop by today, and it’s not like him to venture so far from the loneliness of his cave. But he seemed keen when I saw him yesterday.”

“Igor plans to come here?” she asked, “has he taken to more sensible clothing? Or does he still parade about in a tee-shirt and boxer-shorts?”

I grinned at her. “That was the summer,” I told her, “and it’s winter now. I think he’ll be wearing trousers. At least, I hope he is for his own sake.”

The trouble with Igor during recent years has been his reluctance to wear more than the absolute minimum of clothing, and some of his fluorescent boxer shorts are a shade too garish for my taste, especially when they’re all that he’s got covering his crown jewels under the full gaze of critical humanity, or as many who get within viewing distance of his isolated cave.

“Well, I’ll put the kettle on if he gets here,” she said, still frowning, and I knew what it was. Igor could be most persuasive in an almost childish way. He had fallen out with the powers that be, yet he was a brilliant scientist with deeply original thinking, and so as a sign of independence he had gone off to live in a cave, initially as a hermit on his own, wiling his hours away thinking original thoughts and googling stuff (he had all the necessary including a secret and, according to him, revolutionary solar power supply for his equipment). And he was happy living like that, and even happier since he had beguiled Angelina’s sister Margie to share his life.

“People in general are okay, but give a man or woman a bit of power and he’s crap,” was his opinion, and I guess that in many cases he’s absolutely right.

I climbed out of bed and smiled at the love of my life’s loveliness. It was, to me, a miracle that someone as lovely as Angelina Parr, should be sharing a bed with humble me, Royston Williams who was afflicted with periodic blackouts at unpredictable times. Angelina had been a young and upcoming police constable before she had joined the Curmudgeon agency in order to keep an eye on its leader and inspiration, Blinky Curmudgeon who had suffered the sort of brain damage that affected his eyesight in the most peculiar and inexplicable way, meaning that he experienced unpredictable periods of total blindness. That’s the two blokes of the agency, both with unpredictable disabilities and a beautiful young woman to take up the inevitable slack caused by that.

“A cup of tea?” I asked her.

She squirmed and smiled back, realising that she’d won the debate with me. “Go on then,” she whispered, “and then, maybe, you can rejoin me for half an hour? It’s early yet!”

“I didn’t sleep so well,” I admitted, and I wandered into the kitchen of the flat to make that cup of tea, but the kettle was only just reaching the boil when there came a rat-a-tat on the front door. Not a ringing of the bell but a definitely Igorish rattle.

I groaned and went to open it.

“Grrr! It’s cold out here!” complained Igor, and I could see why.

His underwear was outerwear and to say it was anything but minimal would be to exaggerate.

“Then you should put some clothes on,” I told him, “and whatever it is you want of us you must wait for Angelina to have her cup of tea in bed. Then she’ll join us and we’ll both say no to you as loud and clear as we can.”

© Peter Rogerson, 14.02.20