9. BULLETS AND BARE FLESH

THE FANCY DRESS BALL (9)

There was a numb sort of buzz in my head as I opened my eyes. Millie was there, stroking my forehead with an expression of horrified concern on her face and Jeffrey was by her side, a look of anxiety on his as he looked left and right. His lips were moving as I opened my eyes, but for a moment there didn’t seem to be any sound bar the constant buzzing.

Then the buzz slowly formed itself into words.

“What was that?” Millie was asking, “did you faint or something?”

I knew that I hadn’t fainted, that I had been struck firmly on the head, and was grateful for the Roman helmet that was part of my uniform.

I looked around through bleary eyes and then I saw the backs of the two sleazy men forcing their way through the crowd, making their way to the exit as if they were in a hurry. Once again I told myself that I knew their sort, that they were up to no good. But I was also aware of a dull aching in my head and I lifted the Roman helmet that was part of my uniform, not genuine, just made of brass with a plume that made it look more authentic, and rubbed my head.

Then I saw what was wrong. There was a gash in the helmet.

Something had struck it and ricocheted off the metal, and it had gone with such force that my head was bleeding where the brass had torn.

“You’ve been shot!” exclaimed Millie, “Oh, my darling Roger...”

That was the first time she had called me darling in public. It did me the world of good, I can tell you!

Jeffrey looked worried. “They must have had a silencer and taken a mighty risk, shooting through this crowd,” he said grimly, “someone’s out to get you, Roger. It wasn’t Todd they were after, but you. The identical costumes confused them.”

“But why?” asked Millie of anyone who might be able to answer.

Before anyone could answer Dakota came running up. She’d recovered from the shock of finding the body of someone who had looked to be very dead indeed, but she was still obviously troubled.

“Where’s Jessica?” she asked, “I haven’t seen her for ages and we said we’d stick together.”

Then a horrible thought formed in my aching mind. Memories of a dark period of my working life began to resurface.

It’s how Tiffany had vanished. A few years ago, at a party not unlike this, she’d been enjoying herself until suddenly she was nowhere to be seen, and hadn’t been seen since. There had been an email which threatened the downfall of society as we knew it if an astronomic sum of money wasn’t make available to an organisation that called itself Tiffany in exchange for the girl, and that had set the police as well as the various secret services to work, but to no avail. I had been a journalist and because I hate corruption, especially when it involves children like sweet young Tiffany, I set myself out to be a lone investigator and more by luck than judgement I hit on a chain of clues to a band of crooks, and they led me directly to the mysterious figure at the head of the Tiffany organisation, and I started writing articles, using the pseudonym Yantiff, which was an easily recognisable anagram of Tiffany, and those articles would have convinced the wrong-doers that I was on their tail.

In the end the police took over from my one man team, but it was me who had shown them the way. Big heads started to roll, important men in parliament and even members at the top of the church hierarchy tumbled as their part in the organisation became clear, as did proof of where their funds cane from, and the organisation seemed to melt away. Not much money had been paid in response to the ransom demand, though some had. For a time it seemed that a nastiness at the seat of government was being cleaned away, but the downside was I that thereafter I found my own name to be persona non gratis when it came to journalism. I was dangerous, it seemed, and I can only conjecture that’s because an influential web of the original Tiffany still existed, and it still had some influence in the world.

And the child Tiffany? She’d been abducted from a sixth form dance at which she was celebrating her “A” level results, her image was used by the criminals as a means of taunting the forces of law and order who were pursuing them, but she was never seen again.

Now Jessica had disappeared.

I’d been shot at, someone, a good man, who resembled me had been all-but murdered and a young woman had vanished. And as if to rub salt into the wound her nurse’s outfit, the costume she’d been wearing, was found not far down the road as if it had been torn from her.

“We must do something,” I said when the police told us to go home and forget it, that it was down to them to engage in such dangerous activities as the pursuit of desperate criminals.

“Go home and leave it to the police,” said Sir Jeffrey, “you know that makes sense. Remember the problems you had after Tiffany? This could destroy you altogether!”

“But Jessica!” I almost shouted, “she’s missing and unless we act fast she may never be seen again!”

“You don’t know that,” he told me, then he eyes me oddly, “or do you?” he asked.

“Of course I don’t” I snapped, “but it seems very likely, don’t you think? Was your daughter the sort of girl to run off like that on her own? The similarities, the connections to the Tiffany affair, are more than obvious to me!”

He shrugged his shoulders as if in resignation. I could see from the expression on his face that he was undergoing an internal conflict.

“Please,” said a senior policeman, “the party’s over, folks. Go home please and we’ll let you know what happens when all is done and dusted.”

“Not bloody likely!” came a stentorian female voice, and from the shadows that led to stables and other outbuildings came the sudden sound of horses hooves on soft earth. Then, majestically, like it must have been of yore, Lady Godiva rode on the back of her favourite horse, Trigger.

“For England and for glory and to save our child!” she screamed, and somehow, I’ll never know how it happened, I found myself being hauled up behind her onto the horse’s back. It was like a scene from a comic book, the sort of thing that might happen in artist’s adventures but never in real life.

And here I was on the horse with her, her glorious long hair streaming behind us as she urged the horse towards the entrance to the gardens, and out onto the street.

“It’s down to you and me,” she shouted from in front of me as she urged the horse to break every record it might have dreamed of breaking, “Lady Godiva and her Roman Squire! So hold on, warrior, to battle and to glory!”

And as the wind raced past us, warm like the day had been warm and whipping her glorious streaming hair into waves of fragrant power I knew two things.

This present day Lady Godiva was as determined a woman as her namesake had been, and as I prevented myself from falling to my death while the horse raced through the early night by embracing her closely, I could tell that she just as naked as her medieval counterpart had been.

© Peter Rogerson 27.07.20