Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 67 dozen (804) by Angharad

The cars and other vehicles parted as we wove our way through the jumble of traffic. I was caught in the bind of trying to slide down my seat to hide my embarrassment and Myrtle rubbing my leg whenever I did. She was cackling like a demented witch.

“What do we do if we meet a real police car?” I asked hoping I wasn’t going to get myself arrested again.

“Don’t worry darling Katie–you have delicious knees–let Auntie Myrtle deal with it if it arises.” It didn’t of course, so she continued rubbing my knees until we turned off the M25 and down the A23 into Surrey. “What luck, they’re still moving, we’ll find Sigmund yet.”

By this time I was praying to escape her not rescue Simon, whose name she consistently forgot. I did notice that the symbol for Simon was still blipping on the screen of her tracking sat nav.

“Did Ambrose know about this tracker on Simon?” I asked.

“Yes, he swallowed one of those ridiculous pill things–don’t let him give you one or you’ll never be free of him.” I gulped in horror, then visions of Myrtle and him on my sofa made me feel quite ill. What would my parents have said, the sofa was relatively new before Mummy died. Mummy? I never call her Mummy–must be going senile or something.

“They don’t have any lasting effect, do they?”

“Why? You didn’t take one, did you?”

“Do I look like someone who’d do something as dumb as that?”

“Hmm,” she said and pushed some more buttons on the screen and the map changed as did the noise–it became very loud and continuous. “So he got you, too?”

“I–um–wondered what it was,” I lied, blushing and feeling very hot.

“Never mind, let’s get back to Samson,” she pushed buttons and the picture changed. “Oh oh, they’ve stopped moving. If he goes in a building, particularly one with a cellar–the signal gets fainter. Keep your fingers crossed.” She put her foot down and overtook a van on a bend. My fingers were crossed for something else, but the Aston, slipped in between the van and the truck coming the other way. I was really beginning to doubt we’d be rescuing anyone–more that we’d need a fire tender to cut us out of the wreckage of this lovely and luxurious car.

Did I mention the cream leather seats and the fact that if this journey went on much longer, I was likely to stain them–despite only having had toast, my breakfast felt as if it was being very rapidly processed and already making its way into my large intestine ready for evacuation. I was far less comfortable than I should have been on the leather seats–due partly to the fact that I was leaving my nails in them, I was holding on so tightly, and that I was clenching my buttocks equally tightly–to keep my breakfast in.

“Not far now,” Myrtle said with a hint of excitement in her eye. It was ridiculous–I should have been driving sedately to and from school taking my children there to have their minds structured and stretched, not careering round the main roads of Surrey in pursuit of a gang of bandits and chaufferred by a total lunatic–who would have made Modesty Blaise look pedestrian.

The bleeps of the screen got louder and more close together and suddenly she turned off the road, killed the blue lights–the sirens went several minutes before, not to warn them we were coming–as if it’s everyday that a luxury sports car screams into your drive at about a hundred miles an hour? Maybe it does in Surrey, people like Terry Wogan live here, don’t they?

She switched off the engine. “Right, you go to the front door and distract them–I’ll nip around the back and take them by surprise.” Myrtle had a plan and to my mind it sounded especially stupid.

“How am I supposed to distract them?” I whined.

“Oh I don’t know, pretend you’re collecting for Poppy Day.”

“I don’t have the box of poppies or collecting tin, let alone authorisation from the Royal British Legion.”

“Improvise, tell ‘em you’re a strippergram, you’ll think of something. If we don’t hurry, it’ll be dark before we gain entrance.”

“Myrtle, it’s midday, it’s light for another five hours.”

“Yes but the rate you’re going, it’ll be dark before we rescue Sean.”

“Simon, his name is Simon–why can’t you get it right?”

“Why are you still sitting there whingeing when there’s work to be done.” Before I could say anything she leapt out of the car and started trotting down the drive of the Victorian pile we were parked outside.

“Oh well, here goes,” I said to myself, at least I hoped it was just to myself. As I approached the steps leading up to the front door, a massive affair with an equally large portico, sadly in some decline and neglect, I desperately racked what was left of my brain to think of some apparently valid reason for calling at the house.

My legs felt leaden and my stomach churned as I mounted the steps and pushed the rather incongruous late twentieth century bell-push. It rang inside because despite the traffic, I could hear it through the front door. All I needed now was Lurch to open the door, I’d probably throw a wobbly and fall in a dead faint.

I heard footsteps approach, I pulled my identification badge for Portsmouth University from my bag. It had my photo on it and if I held it by the top, you couldn’t see what it represented. The door lock clunked and turned and so did my stomach. “Oh shit!”

“Yes?” said a voice with a hint of a foreign accent.

“Katie Potts, Surrey County Council building inspectorate, I’ve come to see why you don’t respond to my letters about the material condition of this building. Don’t you realise that we could prosecute you if you refuse to carry out necessary maintenance? The fines we can levy are swingeing.” I was off and running–on pure bullshit. I’d put the badge back in my pocket and attempted to push past him. He resisted, “I have to see inside the building.”

“You cannot, is private,” his accent was more noticeable.

“I jolly well can, I informed you of this visit two weeks ago as per the pertinent preservation of buildings act 1938, revised 1972 and 2004, I have a legal right to enter this building and inspect it, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. If you hinder me further, under the Local Authority access act, I am empowered to summon a police constable to enforce my right of entry.” I pushed once more and slipped inside the door while he was digesting the bit with the phrase ‘police constable’ in. “You see, you cannot legally prevent me...”

“I think I can,” he said and drew a gun from his shoulder holster and pointed it at me.

“I’m afraid this constitutes an illegal act under the Local Authorities Act of 1994, where attempted intimidation or menace is seen as a serious offence, in preventing an officer from said local authority viz. Surrey County Council, from performing her statutory function. I’m afraid I shall have to report you for threatening behaviour, now please put the gun away before I report you for illegal possession of a firearm and its use in preventing a council officer from performing their statutory duty, to wit, the inspection of this property under the previously mentioned act...”

“Shut up,” he said.

“I can’t until I’ve given you a caution about your seriously unhelpful behaviour.”

He clicked the safety catch off, “I said, shut it.”

“Oh alright,” I said swallowing hard and hoping Myrtle had penetrated the building by the back door.

“What is it?” called a voice from behind my host, which was just long enough for me to stand to one side, punch his wrist, stamp on his foot and knee him in the groin.

His response was something I took to be a curse in Russian, he dropped the gun, hopped, groaned and collapsed backwards. I picked up the gun and pointed it at his colleague.

“I’m here to do an inspection of this house on behalf of Surrey County Council, I’m afraid I shall have to report your friend for his non-compliance to a statutory requirement and for threatening an officer of said council with a loaded and probably illegal firearm.”

“You can’t come in, this private house.”

“Oh, and my colleague, who isn’t from Surrey County Council, has a gun pointed at you, and she’s licensed to kill you, which isn’t usually a requirement of the 2004 amendment to the local authorities act, but a useful codicil.”

“Stick ‘em up, Ivan,” said Myrtle with more menace than I could have produced. He went for his gun and she hit him with her gun and he went down like a stone and lay still on the floor. My victim was still rolling around looking for his nuts. The way my knee hurt, they were probably somewhere up round his diaphragm.

A shot was fired and we both turned to see a third man holding Simon, a pistol to his head. “Drop the guns, bitches, or he gets it.”

“Hardly an original line is it?” carped Myrtle. I was on the point of dropping my gun mainly because I was as likely to shoot myself as our opponent.

“Drop the guns,” he insisted, “or he dies.”

“You’ll follow him rather rapidly,” she snapped back holding hers in a relaxed grip.

“We’ll see, you old hag.”He pushed the gun roughly against Simon’s head, who squeaked through his gag.

“I say, that’s uncalled for, bullets are one thing, but insults can really get to one, d’you see?”

“You are an old hag,” he said again and laughed, which was when she moved her hand rapidly and shot him between the eyes. He fell backwards and Simon fainted falling backwards on top of him. I stood mouth open totally aghast.