The Dance of the Pheasodile

by Tim Roux

  “But Derby is not in Scotland, Agnes.”

  “It is where Bonnie Prince Charlie got to on his march south, so it is within striking distance.”

  “What if we made it Nottingham?”

  “No, Mr. McGuire. I am very sorry to be a nuisance, but I am not packing up my bags and heading north for anyone, and if I would do it for anyone I would do it for this family, I can assure you. That is where I will draw the line. I want no flat caps, no plain speaking, no homely ways, no chips and no drunkards careering around the street covered in their own vomit.”

  “You can get pretty much all that around here,” I protest.

  “I do not notice it around here.” Who can argue?

  So we have to make another plan. I think that it is essential that Chrissie be there at the meeting with the Chief Constable. She is very good with people, and especially good with authoritarian men. That is why she is a partner already. She has the right mix of I don’t know what – empathy, resolution, calm, humour, motherliness? – to have them queuing up to hire her. How many times have I heard her colleagues say “Yes, but they all really want Chrissie”? Well, if I am counting, perhaps not too often as I do not visit her office much, but I have heard it said at least three to four times, and I have never heard anyone else described that way so consistently, so it may not be statistically proven, but it is good enough for me. Everyone wants Chrissie, I want Chrissie, the children want Chrissie, and we need to have the Chief Constable wanting her too. It is either that or I have to hire a contractor after all and get rid of Planty with a bullet in his head. In my present mood, that is what I would prefer. I can envisage old Planty lying there, blood swilling the pavement, hands twitching as his life struggles to remain inside him in counterpoint to the grim reaper tugging it away, but I cannot be sure that I will get away with it, so that is what caps that particular fantasy. What we need to do instead is to have Chrissie sweet-talk the Chief Constable into a position “where a bairn could play with him,” as Mike would say, then we will show him Nadya’s doctored photos, which look really excellent, as we innocently ask “Do you recognise any of these people, Chief Constable?”. Naturally, he won’t. Chief Constables are obsessed with politics not with criminals. Their only concern is that the crime statistics pay testament to good solid, occasionally innovative management, and that no scandals ooze out between the cracks of his command-and-control edifice to suggest otherwise. However, DI Martin will lean forward and say “That’s Nobby”, or “That’s G-Man.”

  “G-Man?” the Chief Constable will repeat quizzically.

  “They call him G-Man,” DI Martin will explain conspiratorially. “He calls himself Geronimo, but his real name is Archie Windballs, so you can understand why he gives himself a pseudonym.”

  “Windballs,” the Chief Constable will repeat, gently stroking the word. “That’s an unusual surname.”

  “It probably used to be Windles or Wendles once, and got corrupted somewhere. Corruption has obviously run in the family for some time.”

  “So you know these people?”

  “Yes, they work for Trevor Plant’s mob on the North Bransholme Estate.”

  “And here they are in London.”

  “It appears so.”

  “And they are loitering in the vicinity of Mr. and Mrs. McGuire’s children’s school after Mr. Plant has made menacing phone calls to Mr. McGuire.”

  “So it appears.” DI Martin will not be entirely swallowing the story yet. It will not quite make sense to him. Why would the Inbies be operating so far away from their patch, except that there is no denying that Harry Walker was hoist onto a helicopter hawser and swung across the rooftops of London before being dumped into the Thames bound hand and feet. Were his hands bound? DI Martin will not be able to remember. It is an irrelevant, niggling detail that will trouble him. He will have to get someone to look it up for him. That always impresses the lads, his attention to the minutest details, because they do not realise that it is only the result of compulsive need on his part never to be mistaken about a material fact.

  “So what do you plan to do about this situation, Detective Inspector?” The use of ‘Detective Inspector’ will indicate that the Chief Constable has entered PR mode.

  “We are going to have to have a little word with them, I should think. We can’t arrest them. We just have to let them know that we know what they are up to, that we are doggedly on their trail.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. McGuire, does that constitute a satisfactory answer for you? We cannot arrest them, but we can let them know we are watching them indefatigably. It is all we can do for the moment until we can collect together sufficient evidence to arrest them. As yet, there is no compelling evidence of their having committed any crime and, contrary to popular opinion, we do not arrest people simply because we do not like the look of their faces, otherwise half of Hull would be in gaol.”

  Then he will produce a politician’s smile of dismissal, and the meeting will be over exactly on the hour.

  Will that be satisfactory? Satisfactory, who knows, but it will not be sufficient. It will leave Planty pacing the streets with even more of a bee in his bonnet. You don’t intentionally bug people like Trevor Plant unless you are sure that you will be able to squash him afterwards. There has to be another route.

  * * *

  With the prospect of meeting the Chief Constable in mind, and as a thank you for setting up this encounter, we invited Jerry and Sam and the children round for Sunday lunch. Of course, it wasn’t any kind of hardship. We were dying to share with someone what was happening to us, and who better than they with whom we have always shared so much, our good and sympathetic friends?

  Jack and Natty came bundling in, kissed us, greeted Ella and Mark, and went off to play with them far from our view, leaving a trail of noise tapering into silence. Luckily, the children are now of an age where quiet no longer intimates naughtiness or danger. Unfortunately, in our case, it is explicit danger that signifies danger, so we are both continuously listening out to assure ourselves not of what the children are doing, but of the fact that they are still there. We have cautioned them that they must absolutely not go into the garden without our explicit prior permission, and that they must never leave our sight. It is as if they were toddlers all over again. We were expecting that our next set of panics would be when Ella is fifteen or sixteen years old, and she starts going out at night in the cars of boyfriends who have only just passed their tests, maybe having drunk more than they should have done, possibly she too having drunk more than she should have done, all pointing to the risk of a car accident or rape, moral deterioration or pregnancy, none of which we remotely want to deal with, but which we know could be headed our way despite our best efforts and those of Ella as well.

  In the meantime, we thought that we were in remission, enjoying a moment of respite between terrors over lost children. Mark doesn’t disappear off any more when our backs are turned, and it no longer generally matters if Ella does. We are careful not to let her wander alone down lanes, or to be out after dark. If she goes into town, we drop her there, although she often finds her way back during the daytime. We prefer it when she is with several of her friends, even if they may lead her astray a little and get her into minor trouble, which has not happened yet.

  And now, suddenly, total security has to be enforced. They cannot be out of our sight or earshot; they must be guarded. We must even guard each other. Getting between the car and the house is a risk. The supermarket feels safe. The underground feels relatively safe. Wokingham station is highly dangerous, and we do not use it anymore although, if we were to be followed, any suburban station would present the same danger. Over the last three days, Chrissie has been getting home by six o’clock. I have stayed at home with the children whom we have not allowed to go to school for the entirety of the week. They are due to go back on Monday, just as we are due to travel north.

  We are still not sure about this. There will be a solution, but we do not
yet know what it is. Our provisional fix is that the children continue to work from home for a few days more, and that we get Nadya to come to the house and stay overnight, together with Agnes. Agnes is game, and Nadya is available and willing, but she is insisting that we pay for every hour that she is on duty, which is the full twenty-four, so we would be paying in excess of £1,500 a day. I tried to bargain her down to £1,000, but she wouldn’t even come down to £1,500 exactly, so £1,650 it remains, and Nadya has said that we must confirm by this evening, otherwise she cannot guarantee her availability. One of our hopes is that perhaps Jerry and Sam will at least look after them overnight.

  “So,” says Jerry, stroking his glass of scotch, “what is really going on?”

  “You know, Jerry,” I reply, knowing full well that he doesn’t.

  “I know a bit of it,” Jerry concedes, “but I am not at all clear why this hoodlum wants to harm you and the children.”

  “That’s very odd,” Sam echoes. She shudders. “I cannot imagine it.”

  “When it happens, you have to,” Chrissie emphasises resolutely. “We have to anticipate every possibility, even if we think we are going way over the top.”

  “Jerry says that you have hired a bodyguard for the children,” says Sam.

  “Yes, a Russian private detective,” I reply.

  “Does she speak like this?” jokes Jerry, adopting a cross between a genuine Russian accent and a phoney Liverpudlian one.

  “No,” says Chrissie. “She sounds Russian.”

  “I am very proud of my Russian accent,” Jerry protests.

  Jerry is always putting on accents, none of which he ever gets quite right, but he adlibs them irrepressibly and with great gusto.

  “What’s she like?” Sam inquires.

  “3Ms,” replies Chrissie. “Motherly, meticulous and mercenary. I think she is planning to buy a country estate on the basis of our fees alone. It is absolutely breathtaking what she wants to charge us. Not the base fee, that is reasonable. It is all the extras. We will be bankrupt within a month.”

  “You know that you can always come and stay with us,” Jerry offers.

  “That is very kind of you, Jerry,” I reply.

  “Not you, Keith. Just Chrissie.”

  “You should be so lucky!” says Sam. “You can barely handle one woman. I don’t know what you think you would be able to do with two.”

  Jerry leans forward. “Anyway, back to where I started. What have you two done to upset this guy?”

  I chuckle. “You would never believe us.”

  “Try me.”

  So we tell them much of the story, and they don’t believe a word of it.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” says Jerry. Sam sits there without venturing any comment at all yet.

  “No, Jerry, it is entirely true.”

  “So you seriously woke up in the body of this Harry Walker character?”

  “Yes,” I confirm.

  “Swear to God?”

  “I would even swear on my granny’s grave, if I had one.”

  “You have. You just don’t know who she is. And whom have you told this version of the story to so far?”

  “A few people.”

  “And they believed you?”

  “Strangely enough, yes.”

  “That is certainly strange.” Jerry is rolling around his chair enjoying this. Sam is sat stock still watching each of us in turn as we speak.

  “You are actually suggesting that a real, intelligent human being has actually fallen for this hokey metaphysical malarkey?”

  “Not everybody is as cynical as you are, Jerry,” Chrissie chides him.

  “And if you were in court, and the defending lawyer said that his client could not possibly have committed the crime because he had just popped off into someone else’s body at the time, you would just go ‘oh, all right, then’, would you? You wouldn’t seek to challenge this rather unusual attestation?”

  “Well, Jerry, firstly I am a solicitor, not a barrister, so I don’t usually appear in court. Secondly, I am a marine lawyer, not a criminal lawyer. Thirdly, as a barrister, it is your job to challenge any idea the other side puts forward, whether you doubt it or not, if you judge that to do so might further your case. So, if I were a barrister, and if I were a barrister specialising in criminal law, I would certainly do everything I could to rip the story to pieces. In fact, I would be rubbing my hands with glee because I couldn’t fail to discredit the entire defence case on that point alone. However, it doesn’t mean that I would be right, only that the jury is unlikely to have more than one spiritually enlightened member present at a time, and the minute she opened her mouth to explain her point of view, the rest of the jury would write her off as a weirdo.”

  “So you think that this sort of thing really can happen?”

  “It did happen,” Chrissie states emphatically.

  “And how can you be so sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just sure.”

  “That doesn’t sound too scientific an explanation.”

  “It is not, but us lawyers have intuitions too, you know. Plus I did have this naked guy hanging outside my window, and Keith was a pale shadow of his former self for nearly two months, plus this Harry Walker character knew things that only Keith could know.”

  Sam swallows. “You are really spooking me, Chrissie.”

  “It is spooky,” I reply. “Nobody is arguing otherwise.”

  “How did it feel?”

  So I have to go through the whole story again, adding in a full emotional commentary this time.

  “How did you fend this Fran off, then?” Jerry throws in.

  “She was so pissed off with Harry that I didn’t need to.” I hope that I have delivered this smoothly, without blinking. Chrissie frowns slightly. “Chrissie met me as Harry. You have to admit, Chrissie, he was pretty ugly …”

  “….as oxymorons go …”

  “As oxymorons go.”

  “I didn’t fancy him,” Chrissie confirms, “even knowing he was Keith under there somewhere.”

  “It sounds suspicious to me,” Jerry insists, “unless she was ugly too.”

  “Oh no,” Chrissie counters, “she is very pretty. Quite Keith’s type, I would think.”

  “Luckily,” I battle on, “Harry wasn’t hers.”

  “So you became Harry Walker and, as Harry Walker, you get up this Plant guy’s nose, and he comes after you, and beats you senseless for a week, during which time you plead with him that you are not really Harry Walker at all, but Keith McGuire, and you tell him all about Chrissie and the children, where you live, what a happy family life you have, blah-de-blah, and so that when he has bumped off Harry he decides to come after you in your other guise?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Bollocks!” Jerry holds up his glass to salute us. “Cheers. Your very good health. That was a wonderfully entertaining story. I cannot think why you told us it, but it has certainly got the afternoon off to a good start. I hope that humble pie is on the menu, and that you two will be serving yourselves two generous portions. By the way, are you going to tell the Chief Constable all this on Tuesday?”

  “Hardly,” I reply. “If good and trusted friends like you don’t believe us, I cannot imagine that he will.”

  “Thank God for that. Nor can I.”

  “So you won’t look after our children tomorrow night while we go up to Hull?”

  “Of course we will,” Jerry replies, glancing at Sam.

  “But will you keep an eye on them? Keep them really safe?”

  “Keith, I am a social worker. Nobody who messes with us can hope to come out unscathed. We will gladly look after your children, it would be our great pleasure, we’ll keep them as safe as houses, and we will take the opportunity to run a few tests on them to make sure that they do not qualify to be considered as children potentially at risk, before their parents are kidnapped by aliens, that is.”

>   “Funnily enough,” Chrissie interjects, “that is our other story,” on which comical note we decide to move into the dining room for lunch.

  * * *

  After they have all gone home, the phone rings. It is Fran. I feel very uncomfortable talking to her, especially after the cross-questioning from Jerry at lunchtime. He has definitely stirred up some suspicions in Chrissie. Nice one, Jerry.

  “Is that Keith McGuire?”

  “It is.”

  “Hi, this is Fran Walker here.”

  “Hello, Fran.”

  “How are things?”

  “A bit fraught at the moment.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “And you?”

  “Horrible. I never thought that I would miss Harry, but in fact I do. Tommy does too. He is really upset. He won’t settle. I am on anti-depressants. I keep expecting Trevor Plant to come knocking on our door. It’s hell. Mike tells me that you are coming up here tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to stay here? I have a spare room, as you know.”

  “Chrissie is coming up too.”

  “So Mike said. That is not a problem.”

  “I’ll check with Chrissie. Can I call you back?”

  “Certainly. Goodbye, Keith. Talk to you later.”

  Chrissie’s first reaction is “Is it safe?”

  “Probably not,” I reply. “But if anyone has tipped off Planty, nowhere is safe.”

  “We could always still stay in Derby. We can easily get from Derby to Hull by eleven. Perhaps we should accept Fran’s invitation, and then stay in Derby anyway. How do we know we can trust her?”

  “I think we can.”

  “That is not enough reassurance in this case, Keith. Ring her back and say we will be there late, then book a hotel for us around Derby somewhere, as we agreed.”

  “I can’t do that. That would be cruel.”

  “I’ll settle for anything that keeps our family safe. After all, she has been a party to getting us into all this mess. She has to take some of the responsibility. I have no qualms doing it. I’ll phone her.”