Road Kill E-Book

Pete Adams

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Cataclysmic events have occurred in the decorous upper middle class enclave within Southsea, Portsmouth, on the south coast of England.

But what were the circumstances that contributed to this violent clash involving a Sherman tank and a bazooka? The strange occurrence is Investigated by Lord Everard Pimple, a naive, upper class twit who not only inadvertently opens a can of worms, but has an introduction into the world of womanly wiles.

Everard's life is about to blow up like an atom bomb... he just doesn't know it yet. But after the dust settles, will he still be standing?

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Books by Pete Adams:

Introduction

Prologue

1. The Journalist and the Police Inspector

2. The Residents of 28 Frisian Tun

3. The Journalist and the Geography Teacher

4. The Geography Teacher and the Map Room

5. The Dame and the Synchronised Swimming Teacher

6. The Dame, the Journalist, the Synchronised Swimming Instructor

7. The Journalist, the Fish Wife, the Professor

8. The Journalist, the Dame, the Fish Wife

9. The Fish Wife, the Synchronised Swimming Instructor, a Canadian Lake and a Volcano

10. The Geography Teacher

11. The Fish Wife, Cardinal Teapot, the Frisian Inquisition

12. The Fish Wife, the Police Superintendent

13. The Duchess, the Barrow Boy Spy, the Lady Superintendent

14. The Professor, the Journalist

15. The Professor

16. The Man from the Council

17. The Dame, the Hockey Player

18. The Hockey Player, the Gossip Columnist

19. The Gossip Columnist

20. The Priest

21. The Journalist, the Gossip Columnist

22. The Geography Teacher, the Police Inspector

23. The Gossip Columnist

24. A Cockney Barrow Boy (something or other), His Lady Superintendent wife, a Cockney Sparrow Spy, the Priest.

25. The Spy

26. MI5 Cockney Sparrow, Lady Blanche

27. The Duchess revealed

28. The Isle of Lesbos, 5 Frisian Tun

29. Jack, Jane, Dick, Mandy, Duck, the Rocket Launcher (Bazooka)

30. The end bit where all is brilliantly revealed

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2020 Pete Adams

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

An au courant, romantic comedy, crime thriller with scary bits.

A droll and saucy insight into the Middle Class, Haute Monde and, Geography…

Tales of a reclusive England with:

The Journalist, The Professor, The Synchronised Swimming Instructor, The Fish Wife, The Dame, The Actress (really Jack Austin), The Geography Teacher,

The Gossip Columnist, The Spy, The Police Inspector, The Man from the Council,

The Priest, The Knight, The Super-grass (deceased), The Gangster, and,

The Lady Blanche.

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“Tectonic plates, fold mountains, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tsunamis – it just doesn’t get much better than that, except for maybe ecosystems of the world or, globalisation.

Weather and climate, now there’s a thing, and then there is water and rivers.”

Aedd Murphy speaking to 10 F, St Winifrede’s, Roman Catholic School, Portsmouth, England.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the readers who have reviewed my books and messaged me with comments. I value these observations and they have contributed to the creation of the DaDa Detective Agency. I have written, now, three DaDa books with a fourth on the starting blocks.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my Publisher, Next Chapter and in particular, Miika Hannila who took the decision to publish in full the 5 book mini-series, Kind Hearts and Martinets and is now publishing my next four books; watch this space.

Also to A.J. Griffiths, an author I so admire and, if you have not read her, ‘Skeletons in the Cupboard’ series you are missing a real treat – I thank you for your recommendation of my books to Miika and your continuing support.

I dedicate this book and the sequel to Jackie Lederer and Rod Bacon – not just very good friends but philosophical comrades.

BOOKS BY PETE ADAMS:

The Kind Hearts and Martinets Series:

Book 1Cause and Effect – Vice plagues the City

Book 2Irony in the Soul – Nobody Listens like the Dying

Book 3A Barrow Boy’s Cadenza – In Dead Flat Major

Book 4Ghost and Ragman Roll – Spectre or Spook

Book 5Merde and Mandarins – Divine Breath

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The DaDa Detective Agency - Sequel series to Kind Hearts and Martinets:

Book 1Road Kill – The Duchess of Frisian Tun

Book 2Rite Judgement – Heads roll - Corpses Dance

Book 3Wigs on the Green – Blood Sport – (to be published)

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The Larkin’s Barkin’ – East End of London, gangster family, a saga:

Book 1 Black Rose – A Midsummer Night’s Chutzpah - 1966

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The Rhubarb Papers:

Book 1 Dead No More – Rhubarb in the Mammon

Author's Note:

The DaDa Detective Agency series is proposed as a cosy crime series with amusing notes:

Dadaism was an arts movement that flouted the conventional by producing works marked by incongruity.

The DaDa novels have an idiosyncratic narrative, the intention, to create a DNA spiral of real and surreal narratives, but there is a rational design with a significant and satisfying ending.

Merde and Mandarins, was the fifth and final book in the Kind Hearts and Martinets series. The narrative now takes off in two new series: The DaDa Detective Agency and, The Rhubarb Papers.

The two take diverse directions, albeit there are extensions and linking references back to the begetting series and, some of the former secondary characters take on a life of their own. Having said that, the central protagonists, Jack (Jane) Austin and his wife, Amanda, have becomeverypopular, so they continue, starring (Jack insisted I say that) in DaDa.

Road Kill - The Duchess of Frisian Tun is a pivotal novel that takes as it driving force, characters and narrative threads conjured in the five books of the Kind Hearts and Martinets series. The concluding book, Merde and Mandarins, sees the central protagonists, DCI Jack (Jane) Austin and his wife, Detective Superintendent Amanda Bruce (now Austin), retire from the police and MI5 to establish the DaDa Detective Agency.

It is not necessary to have read the previous books as Road Kill stands alone as an opening novel that by degrees, introduces the DaDa Detective Agency series. However, the extension of the concluding narrative threads in Kind Hearts and Martinets are the basis for this story. So you may enjoy this and the subsequent books more if you read the originating series.

This novel is light hearted, in as much as it can be, dallying affectionately upon past dastardly deeds with lurid pleasure as real people step innocently into a quagmire of past death and conspiracy. The darkness is but a breath away.

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The book is also written, loosely, in the form of a stage play and a tongue firmly in cheek, Canterbury Tales, where the pilgrims go nowhere. Various key players tell their stories, informing how the disparate, altruistic Kind Hearts, and the sociopathic Martinets, played their diversified roles and, how this is not the end. Far from it. The scene is set for the DaDa to impact on the world of deal and double deal, murder and conspiracy, which leads onto the sequel:

Rite Judgement – Heads roll - Corpses Dance

Which leads onto:

Wigs on the Green – Blood Sport

INTRODUCTION

Road Kill - The Duchess of Frisian Tun, commences with a flashback to the City of Portsmouth, UK, celebrations of the 70th Anniversary of D Day. It was on that day, death and destruction visited, not the beaches in Normandy, but a middle-class Portsmouth Street, Frisian Tun.

The story emerges with a short prologue and a countdown of three brief episodes:

Apocalypse-Idyll:

The Narrator.

The Banana Boys.

Jack and Amanda Austin – DaDa.

The Play is a Human Interest Story. An amusing prelude, followed by scenes of a divergent nature where main players tell their story, all the while the Episodes dramatically closing in on a final Act; a Machiavellian plot and, as the play gathers momentum and the players act out on the stage of life, not all is as it seems. There is a shocking ending, but as they say, that is life… or not.

PROLOGUE

APOCALYPSE-IDYLL

Definition: Apocalypse – A prophetic revelation, especially concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil.

It is not, as many believe, a pottie, portable infants toilet that collapses if a fat ugly retired copper sits on it. This is serious and, actually happened, mainly because a fat ugly retired copper got hold of a bazooka. A bazooka used to be bubble gum but, in the wrong mouth, say for instance, a Malacopperism plagued, fat ugly retired copper, the results can be, were, and still are, devastating, fatal even.

Definition: Idyll – A mental mechanism, operating consciously or unconsciously, in which a person or persons, or a Duchess, overestimates an admired attribute.

This can be attributed to many British upper middle-class individuals who, in their innate ignorance and air of self-importance, perceive their manor to be better than the average chocolate box picture of an urban or suburban haven. Frisian Tun was such an idyll (prior to the apocalypse). It was an idealistic residential, village (said with a French accent) and has / had, a picturesque (said with an English accent) cosy appearance. Apart, that is, the house of a cockney barrow boy police inspector, who could not grasp the basics of gardening or decorous conversing. Nor could he comprehend why snooty people didn’t laugh at his hilarious jokes? And, “to make an omelette you have to break several things, not just eggs”. He would say, so you knew the destruction of an Idyll was not his fault.

Before and After – What follows is before, and then, afterwards, is after. Not afters, as that would be a dessert, say, apple crumble and custard. Suffice to say this is a scary story when you get to the after bits, especially if the custard has gone cold. You, the innocent reader, will be lured into a sense of a secure world of haute-monde and geography and, when you are least aware – Bam!

Warning – What was lovely, could turn ugly. Not Jack Jane Dick Austin, because he was already ugly. However, his wife, Mandy, Duck, Austin, well, she was lovely but, could turn ugly even when Dick had done absolutely nothing wrong, like say, blow up an idyll, kill some gangsters an shit…

The Narrator

‘Der Day, 6th Ju… what?’

‘Der Day? I think you mean D day, as in Dee?’ a megaphone voice from out of the darkness.

‘That’s what I said Diddli?’ … thinks… ‘So, it’s not Der then?’

‘No - Start again.’

Jack started again, ‘Dee Day, 14th June 2014 and it is the 70th anniversary of Operation Lie-in, from the… what now?’

‘Sea Lion.’

‘Where?’ a shared titter.

‘It’s Operation Sea Lion? Or was that the planned German invasion of England?’ another detached mumbled voice.

A megaphone shout – ‘Start again!’

‘What?’

‘Did you seriously not hear that?’ Mandy asked.

‘Hearing aids?’

‘Hearing aids.’

‘Start again?’

‘Start again.’

‘Dee Day, 6th June 2014 and it is the 70th anniversary of… what now?’

‘We’ve looked it up and it’s Operation Overlord.’

‘Start again?’

‘Start again.’

‘Dee Day, 6th June 2014 and it was the 70th anniversary of Operation Overlord and my brother’s birthday, he will be, what, fifty seven, now – shite!’

‘What?’

‘I forgot to send him a card.’

‘Cut!’

‘Cut what?’

‘He means stop for the time being,’ Mandy explained to her Dipstick.

‘I could do with a girl grey. Monkey tea for you, sweet’art?’ Sweet’art nodded yes, she liked his decision making abilities. ‘We’ll have a girl grey, no milk or poncy lemon and a monkey tea, please, no sugars – there you go; spit spot.’ Pause. ‘Nothing seems to be ‘appening? Anyfing ‘appening?’

‘Let’s go home. Get your hand off my bum.’

He took his hand off.

‘I was joking, dinlo.’

He put it back. She liked the feel of his hands on her bum, although he was most definitely a Dinlo and, when he undressed her, he was like a kid unwrapping a Christmas present. Still, she loved the twerp.

‘Who said that?’

‘Me’

‘Can you do the narration – what’s your name?’

‘Susan Narmee… I suppose. Yeah, I can.’

‘Right Sue – let’s start again.’

So Sue started, ‘Dee Day, 6th June 2014 and it is the 70th anniversary of Operation Gaylord… what? Was that okay?’

‘Yeah – the editor can pick that bit up,’ resignation.

‘It was not a particularly audacious start… what?’

‘Auspicious, it’s auspicious – carry on.’

‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Carry on?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do I detect a note of exasperation?’

‘Yeeeeeeeah,’ adistinct sound of air expelling as if squeezed through the neck of a balloon.

‘Exasperation, most certainly it was,’ Ms Narmee replied, in the manner of Yodel.

‘Yodah!’

‘That’s what I said diddli?’

Can you narrate in italics please?

Yes.

The Banana Boys.

The week running up to Friday’s planned celebrations had been blessed with remarkable weather, or so people remarked. They also remarked upon a marked contrast to the days that ran up to the original D Day, which this Friday’s celebrations were to mark. However, if the weather had anything to do with it, this Friday, the day of The Dee Day, the seventieth anniversary, would get only four out of ten, which, is not a very good mark.

A dense sea mist shrouded Southsea Common, an expansive grassed tract of land that fronted the ancient fortified seafront of Portsmouth in the UK. The lumps of World War Two machinery, weapons, materiel and paraphernalia and, the tents accommodating Muppets, who spent their weekends playing toy soldiers in ill fitting Dad’s Army uniforms, were lined up in a regimented military fashion. The exhibition had been regimentally laid out by Reginald Menthe, Portsmouth City Council’s head of setting out lumps. He’d had a lot of experience with lumps. Reg’s wife, Mrs Menthe, whom, in their more intimate moments he called “Sugar”, was a lump, and in the fog, the result of Reg’s regimentation of paraphernalia and, Mrs. Sugar one might add, was, well, grey lumps.

I imagine those who do not know Mrs Sugar Menthe have already conjured a picture, but if you are struggling, bring to mind the vintage saucy seaside picture postcards with the blushing, generously proportioned, battle axe woman. There, got it – well she was like that. If you haven’t got it, never mind, because she’s not in this book, even though this book, in parts, several actually, is certainly saucy.

Keef Bananas (not his real name as that was Keith) looked on and sighed to his number two, Dave Lillicrap. He was number two because his name was Dave Lillicrap, also known as Shitlegs. Rather apt, those with a modicum of astuteness thought, though he was in actual fact and in reality, really and truly, the second in command of this South London delinquent gang, who up until very recently had been on the Lamb.

This is not a pun on mint saucy, though one might be forgiven for thinking this. On the lamb is an Americanism that roughly translated means, on the run, or in criminal parlance, lying low, hiding from the filf as they had been very naughty boys – see the book: Merde and Mandarins.

Apart from his name, Shitlegs was an unremarkable man and truthfully, not ideal material for command and decision making, on this day of marking and remarking the letter Dee. Keef gave him the same mark as the weather, four out of ten, or D out of A to E, which for a second in command was not saying much about the rest of his chums. All things considered, giving this weather of dense fog four out of ten, when it was nigh on impossible to see your hand in front of your face, did not say much for the leader either, though we have to allow, considering it was the intention of Keef and his chums to purloin a Sherman tank, that the cloaking effect of the weather may have been considered a bonus by Mr Bananas.

‘Oi, stop there…’

‘What?’

‘I’m not a chum.’

‘What?’

‘A chum. I’m not a chum. We are not chums. Keef may have a Duchess for an aunt but I’m not Uncle Josh.’ And Shitlegs looked around and elicited support from his other, for want of a better word at the moment, chums, and they enjoined their second in command enthusiastically, as you would expect from chums, supporting another chum.

‘What are you then?’

They gathered their heads and discussed a subject that had never arisen before and, after a short while settled on something other than the election of Shitlegs as unofficial spokesman; he was second in command thus his presumed right. Shitlegs turned, because this is what you do in stories, you turn. ‘Cronies,’ he said, turning back again. They looked at each other in turn, except for Keef who had his head in the mist in exasperation, coincidentally, and also coincidentally, he was tall, straight backed and slim and always held his head high, except when he was ducking. His aunt had told him he was aristocatty and he believed he was.

It was agreed. ‘Yeah, we’re cronies and Keef is aristo-fingy.’

‘Good, can we get on?’

The cronies gathered their collective hideous, crony heads, which matched their hideous appearance and discussed the matter. They’d never been asked if they could carry on before, ordinarily by this time they would have been arrested and be on their way to a lovely warm police cell. They were on the lamb until quite recently, as they had only just escaped a capture at a local saw mill and later, a shoot-out beside a Dorset Cottage in the snow. So, you see, the mist was having some beneficial effect in occluding the reappearance of the Banana gang in Southsea, which is likely why Keef gave it four out of ten, this weather being particularly good if you were on the lamb, or intent on stealing some heavy armour.

Having appeared to agree on something, Shitlegs, spokes-thug, replied, ‘Yeah – alright then.’

‘Carry on,’ a loudhailer.

‘Who said that?’ Shitlegs asked nobody, as he could see nobody. He could see nothing, except his hand, which was just in front of his face.

From the edge of the Common, Keef Bananas and his cronies looked on at the labyrinthine, though regimented, collection of murky grey lumps with not their first bewildered look of the morning. To be fair to Keef and his cronies, they were rarely up this early, six am and, were hardly ever down at the seaside, except for Keef who on occasions visited his aunt, the Duchess, in Frisian Tun.

Keef looked at the diagram Reggie Menthe had given him as part of his covert insider dealing, although the Evening News had published it a week or so ago and it was generally available to anyone not of a crony, chum, or even hideous naughty boy persuasion. Keef spun the plan in his hands. Looked this way, then that way, sideways and then decided that this, not that way, was best. ‘Oh fuck it, let’s just go and find it,’ he said, exasperated. This seemed like a plan to the cronies and it is this that marked Keef out as a leader; his ability to make decisions.

This remarkable characteristic was also on his Curriculum Vitae that the London Metropolitan Police force kept up to date for him, to save him worrying about administration. Keef was what they used to call in the olden days, a Prima-Donna villain and he had no time for paperwork. Despite Keef’s patent leadership qualities, administration was not a particular forte and rarely appeared on his radar. Interestingly, on the top of his Met CV, was a CV he had purloined when he was only seven, when just a lad in Ivver Green…

He means Hither Green in south London, but no-way was he going to be Uncle Josh, even if his aunt was a Duchess.

… and that was when he commenced his life of crime. It was in fact, a 2CV, which is twice as good as a CV. A Citroen 2CV was a car that resembled an Anderson shelter on wheels and had the speed of my aged aunt on a bad day, having had a largely ineffective dose of Dio-calm. As a consequence of this remarkable decision of mastermind thievery and, the subsequent shortest ever known car chase in the history of the London Metropolitan Police, Keef’s CV had at the very top of the lengthy list, the remark, Not very bright. Now at twenty three years of age, and this is only my opinion, we are talking four out of ten on the intellectual scale, a bit like the weather, not at all brilliant and, coincidentally, he was a gangster with a foggy brainbox.

‘Oi,’ a detached voice sounded from within the mist, threatening, and noticeably not intellectually challenged, more enquiring in a forceful but polite manner that is oft known in Britain as middle class assertive. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, pretty please.’

‘Shut it mush. You shouldn’t ‘ave put a fucking tent in such a stupid position.’ Keef carried on, blindly leading his stumbling cronies in the fog, here and there, this and that way and, the first part of Keef’s master plan, stealth, went well and truly out of the window. Still, what they lacked in creeping, directional, and searching skills, they more than adequately compensated for in aggression and a remarkable grasp of the Queen’s Street English that would easily trumpmiddle class assertive, when backed up with brute force.

Eventually they found what they were looking for and Keef stood back before the Sherman tank and allowed himself to be bathed in shrouded crony adulation. He was good, he knew it, and this of course was frequently his downfall. That, and his harebrained ideas like, “Let’s nick a Sherman tank and shoot the bollocks off that tart Jack Austin and his missus”, both of whom, it transpired, had transgressed the unwritten law, even before you think that as a lady, Mrs Austin, would have no bollocks to be shot off.

I can tell you, as narrator, and as it was obviously not written down anywhere, the unwritten law in this instance was: “Don’t go upsetting Keef’s aunt, getting Poles in, or digging up his booty or weapons or dead bodies, or there will be fucking trouble, comprendeh”. The law, which for the benefit of this book we can confirm, was not written, but was formulated at about the time Keef was watching a number of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, last week. Not that he would have anything to do with any shite Wop stuff, of course. (Wop is a technical literary term for an Italian or any such Italianate shite and, for the sake of middle class balance, shite is sometimes referred to as S H one T. See how the middle class English drop the ‘I’ and supplant it with the numeral One, and ‘E’ is dropped altogether as “shite” is Irish; foreign readers take note).

‘You got a baby then Keef?’ Brains asked.

‘What, I don’t got no baby, what made you say that?’

‘You done said someone half inched (pinched – stole) yer booties.’

As narrator I can inform you that it was last week, Wednesday, that Keef mentioned he needed to collect some weaponry and cash from their hidden booty. Now you may begin to comprehend how long it takes for Brains to process information and, why he held the record for the longest interview by the police that involved only two words. I am reliably informed that the two words were “Fuck off”. Ordinarily a solicitor would suggest using the words “No Comment” but Brains had just told his solicitor to fuck off, and he had.

Keef flicked his fingers several times and eventually they clicked. ‘Shitlegs… the keys.’ Keef had moved on and held his hand out, (he’d finished flicking) whilst looking around generally, but in particular up to the turret and the flank of the tank, wondering where the door was.

Shitlegs patted his pockets, but he already knew, he didn’t don’t ‘ave no keys to no tank.

I believe this was how Mr Shitlegs expressed it in his thinking.

‘Maybe you don’t need no keys?’ Brains said by way of amelioration.

‘Brains, der, of course you need bloody keys.’ Keef replied, waving his arms expansively in the fog, to encompass all of the Banana cronies into his theory, such as it was.

Brains was the intellectual one of the cronies, he had half a GCSE in technical drawing, the actual part he had failed, some would argue the more practically necessary half, was in arse scratching and, he had a Library card. Well, you get the drift? Brains did contemplate asking if he could work with Reggie Menthe in the council, by way of a leg up, so to speak, to better himself, but Reggie, who also hailed from Ivver Green was having none of it. He blamed that bloody Sugar lump of a trouble and strife (wife) of his likely as not, Brains thought, wondering if he should send a saucy postcard home to his mum to let her know he was at the seaside. Then he remembered he was actually on the run from the law; that was close. The Banana Boys were, as previously pointed out, on the lamb, because they’d been baaa’d.

‘Who are you and what do you want with my tank?’ Another polite, but assertively middle class voice from deep in the mist, distant, detached, and slightly effeminate, just the hint of a certain desperation for a trip to the toilet.

Keef turned to a man advancing out of the fog. He was a goofy middle-aged, middle-class, comfortably well off man in Michael Caine, toffee nose twat glasses and pink corduroy trousers. A vision of comfortably well 'orf idiot, emerging from the mist. The man had not changed into his American, Dad’s Army uniform yet, probably would do that after he had been to relieve himself, which would likely happen quite soon and directly into his pink trousers, shortly after the Banana Boys had relieved him of his tank.

I’m only guessing, but it is a reasonable assumption I feel.

‘This your tank?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, give us the fucking keys.’

‘It don’t need no keys,’ the man said, with a vacant expression, seeming to examine grammatically what he had just said, but mostly the manner in which he had said it. He clearly felt uncomfortable and at this stage I would ordinarily recommend Dio-calm, it almost did the trick for my Aunt Delores who was at the time running down her stolen 2CV.

‘It don’t? Well bugger off then,’ and Keef nudged the chap in the now soiled pink corduroys and the current representative of middle class England went flying backwards and bumped his head on Shitlegs fist, whereupon, he settled down for a bit of a lie-in, except that was the German plan for the invasion of England, of course. Keef pointed out this very fact, irrelevantly, to the comatose, soon to become, former tank owner and, he and his chums, sorry cronies, were only interested in Der Day stuff, what was Gaylord.

‘Right then, where’s the door?’ Keef asked.

Brains tugged at his partial GCSE, in other words he scratched his bum in an intellectually ponderous manner as became his status as Brainiac Banana, and suggested they had to go in through the lid at the top. Keef clipped him around the ear.

Blimey, who’d be a baddy? Apart from you get to wear black hats.

‘What was that for?’

‘For being a bozo. Now, find the door.’

Brains clambered up onto the top of the tank and opened the lid, pointed and said, ‘This is the way in.’ He was clearly disgruntled.

Unfortunately, Keef and his cronies had quite poor inter-personal skills and were not, in the main, particularly brainy at reading and interpreting the manner and mode of inflection in a person’s speech.

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ See, Keef did not read Brain’s body language or tone of voice, but Brains knew it didn’t pay to question Keef.

I suppose you learned things like this early on, when you decide to become a bozo baddie hoping to get a black hat.

However, the way had been indicated and everybody piled in through the lid. Keef, then Shitlegs, as he was second in command, Brains and the two other cronies Gerald and Simon followed.

‘Kin ‘ell there’s no bloody winders (windows), turn the lights on,’ Keef ordered.

‘It’s a fucking tank, they don’t ‘ave no winders…’ Brains noticed the circumspect look of his leader in response to his animated reaction and muttered, in a pleading defence, ‘… it’s a fucking tank?’ Brains demonstrating not only exasperation, but the cerebral ability that had earned him his half a GCSE and had his teachers scratching their head…

Not their bottoms – teachers don’t do this, at least not in the classroom. …wondering if they should submit him for English Literature; they had of course

spotted his library card, but failed to notice the inscription indicating membership of the children’s library and, in particular, the picture book section.

Never let it be said that Keef did not catch on fast. He flicked Brains on the nose with his thumb and forefinger and set about looking for the light switch, some bullets and a steering wheel. ‘Brains, you look for the bullets. Gerald, the lights for Christ’s sake. Simon, steering wheel please and Shitlegs, you look for the front windscreen. Which way is front? They should ‘ave ad bleedin’ winders. Put the fucking lights on.’

Brains derred, switched on the lights and pointed. ‘This ‘andle is for steering, these shells are the bullets and, someone looks out of the lid and shouts down turning instructions to the driver.’ He tapped his fingers on the stick that was the steering wheel, and applied a rather risqué grin, which in theory was appropriate as the D day landings were to be in France, where of course, it would be tres risqué, as there would have been a lot of Germans not having a lie-in, despite it being their plan.

Keef pondered and, not for the first time, wished he had not decided to rob the local library because Simon thought they would have a load of late return fine money and, it would all be sausage and mash! (Cash) It was on that robbery, which incidentally only netted them 75p, they met Brains. Keef should have known that an eighteen year old, spot ridden, beanpole youth, reading Enid Blyton’s, Noddy, was not necessarily a good sign, even though he could read without following the words with his index finger; quite novel (not the book) where Keef came from. However, as it turned out, Brains knew where the Library back door was, had a bike and could give Keef a getaway crossbar. Shitlegs, Simon and Gerald were nicked and would have been in serious trouble if the police had not let them go because they were laughing so much and did not know how to write up the crime of the century.

‘Well, sort it then.’

There, you see, Keef commanded

Jack and Amanda Austin – DaDa.

‘Oh, Jack’

‘Oh, Amanda,’ his hand was rummaging around her bottom parts. ‘You farted?’

‘Oh, Jack, I love it when you talk dirty.’ Jack thought for a while, which involved stopping as he was not a famed multitasker. ‘What is it? Jack, please, come on. I want to get home and fuck your brains out.’ She did titter at her remark, the intimation being he had brains. She wondered if he had no brains left because she liked making love to him and did love him, even if this came with very early morning strolls along the seafront in pea-souper fogs. ‘How did you know I’d farted?’

He’d started walking again and the cloud of passion, as thick as the fog and, some might say, uncharitably, as thick as Jack Austin, overcame his enema moment (he meant enigma, of course). ‘I smelled rose petals.’

‘Rose petals?’

Jack may have been in that state of euphoric oblivion he seemed able to summon at a moment’s notice, a particularly masculine skill Mandy had commented once, but he was nobody’s fool where women were concerned. Of course, most women would see this as his most serious failing but, as I have just mentioned, if confronted by the blindingly obvious, especially by a blindingly attractive woman like Amanda, then Jack could summon up his oblivion - just like that. He knew women. He understood women, to the extent to where he would often remark, even to women, (see what I mean) he was blessed. It should be noted that frequently after such discourse with a woman, he would ordinarily adopt a trance like state, which rendered him immune to stares and even the most vitriolic of reposts. It was a master class in denial, the core faith of his C of E (Church of Egypt) faith, De Nile.

He knew women liked a laugh and sometimes he had to filter out the irrelevant stuff and, as far as women farting was concerned, he just knew it smelled of rose petals, even after Amanda had eaten a Brahma of a curry. The reason was, you see, he loved this woman with a passion and he was no fool, of course, he thought, ignoring what anyone else thought.

De-Nile. You see how it works.

It helped that frequently his nose was bogey stuffed and, as he rarely thought of exchanging his filthy handkerchief with a freshly laundered cloth and, Amanda had banned all public displays of a rag that defied all feminine description, it was sadly thus that a handkerchief was seldom employed in the presence of Amanda.

Such was her life and this included that the man she loved beyond all rational reason, as people had tried to reason with her, was not only ugly but also as deaf as a post. He would not wear hearing aids as he thought they would make him look daft and he couldn’t see the irony in that either, though he did do the ironing at home. His dad had been a marine and had taught his son to do things like ironing, but most importantly, he cared for and doted on his relatively new wife and, she liked this about him.

Jack loved Amanda. She had lifted him from the depths of sorrow as he mourned the accidental death of his first wife, Kate. After about three years of entrenched grief, Mandy had managed to show him there was a second chance at life and even a sex life that at sixty, he was enjoying probably more than he had ever done. Of course, he knew he brought to the marriage bed, or even out of it, a great deal of skill, experience, and understanding, as ably demonstrated just now with his expert knowledge of the womanly passing of wind, in so much as he could identify clearly the gentle petal like characteristics. He was, he often imagined, the David Attenborough of the famine world.

He may mean feminine.

Amanda, though, thought he was just a lovely man who frequently got his words wrong, known as he had been in the police as Mr Malacopperism, amongst many other quite apt epithets. He was a kind and gentle man and the sex was passionate, if a tad inexpert, improving all the time she thought and had potential, though she frequently wondered if she would live long enough? But, there was no doubt in her mind, this man loved her and, was enthusiastic.

Despite the tip off from the CIA, their walk back from the seafront and Southsea Common was one of barely pent up passion. The sensual stroking that Amanda applied to Jack’s intimate regions, to which Jack reciprocated with a fundamentally juvenile groping, all contributed to a joint sexual oblivion, though Mandy, ever practical, guided their route home. The thought their lives could be under threat at anytime that coming day was not paramount, not on their immediate itinerary.

Amanda was Detective Superintendent Amanda Bruce, now Mrs Austin, because she had married Detective Chief Inspector Jack (nicknamed Jane) Austin, retired? Retired, who knew? It paid not to dwell on matters that affected ordinary people, as Jack was extraordinary and, if you asked him, he would confirm this for you. Jack Austin was generally thought to have retired, though nobody truthfully had the nerve to ask him if this was a permanent state of affairs. He had flounced out of a news conference one day, after a particularly nasty case, saying, “He’d had enough of this shite” and sort of gone off into the sunset. And then, last Christmas, he’d declared he wanted to retire with his wife and sealed this pact with an eternity ring, after which, he announced she would henceforth be known as Duck and he wished to be called Dick, as he had formed the Dick and Duck Austin, Detective Agency; DaDa.

He popped into the police station every now and then and, every now and then, thought about nicking someone in a consultant sort of way, but that was about as far as it went. However, that was now, and, this is then.

This is a flashback of course, and all will become obvious when we reach the, then, bit, or is it the now bit?

Still, the formerly tough and totally in control Superintendent, known as Mandy Pumps or Mandy Lifeboats, had well and truly succumbed to the juvenile antics of her now husband. As she had become a part of his life and had insisted on knowing everything about him, which apart from being a spy, was pretty much nothing. Therefore, as a consequence of their marriage, she also became a member of MI5 and a part of Jack Austin’s discreet group of monkey spanner meat pies (spies) that resided in and around the Community Policing department in Portsmouth.

Even if he had retired, not that this is confirming anything officially, as you wouldn’t believe the crap I had (so Sue Narmee says it) just because Martin, Jack’s dog, got hurt in a fight in book one. And now, Martin had half his front leg amputated in book 5, the finale of Kind Hearts and Martinets, so it’s definite schtum on the retirement angle until we understand just how much Jack Austin is loved by his readership and, how the DADA Agency goes down.

I have it on good authority he is resentful of his dog for grabbing all of his limelight. So, it might be reasonable for us to expect some sort of reaction, to redress the balance as he would see it, except he didn’t like Lime and asked for some other colour light, maybe lemon, but definitely not orange; he hated orange, it drained the colour from his face.

It is a long story and really and truly, you should read the previous five books of Kind Hearts and Martinets, but MI5 needed a low key, apparently benign police unit, to keep an eye on overt and covert matters in Portsmouth, a strategic Naval and Commercial Port on the south coast of Britain. Jack Austin, however, was not a great meat pie (spy), as he was the ugliest, biggest, clumsiest, cockney barrow boy oaf, you are likely to ever meet, but he did have a redeeming capability that allowed his superiors to go along with his raving mad antics - he was a goodanalyst.He had never been an action man spook. In fact in the proximity of anything bordering on action, he was a definite liability, to the good and the bad guys.

As a policeman he was often thought to be a “natural”. He somehow or other solved crimes almost out of the blue; demonstrating no logical deductive trail. Amanda now knew he had another completely separate group of completely unlikely cowboy sleuths, who did the solving for him. But, and I say again, he was mustard at the piecing together of disparate information, seeing the big picture, lateral thinking, basically cutting through the crap, most of which was his by the way – so a balance Mandy often thought.

Following Jack Austin’s serious press conference flouncing, everybody in the know, allowed his tantrum to settle and waited for the natural order of things to be re-established, which, after a fashion and, after nearly eighteen months, it did.

Jo Jums, Detective Inspector Josephine Wild, was now running Community Policing, but more importantly, she ran the unit for MI5. Jack and Amanda were not so much disappearing into the sunset as acting in a peripheral role that Jack called an Insultant. He meant consultant, but with Jack not all was always what it seemed. He was known as Mr Malacopperism of course and this, combined with his other multitude of inept bumbling idiocies, contributed to his self-styled persona, an enema, by which he meant an enigma, or did he? He was shite at most things, except for the analysis stuff, as I have already mentioned.

Jack and Amanda bundled in through the front door of their house in Frisian Tun and began stripping each other’s clothes off in the hallway. The passion had the potential to become frenzied, except Amanda had to help him with her buttons and finally her bra strap, but that achieved, the release was dynamite.

Despite the humorous banter I touched upon just now, the sex life of this mature couple did have its moments. They called their racy sex, “fizzers”, and, in the hallway and just now, this coupling had all the hallmarks, if you get my drift, of becoming a number one fizzer.

‘Oh, Jack.’ He’d pushed her to the floor, done all the things he had learned and, most importantly, not yet forgotten, she liked. She fizzed and he was there for her. ‘Oh, oh, ooooh, er, feck, what the feckin’ ‘ell?’

‘Shit, what?’ he said, sensitively responding to an unusual remark from Amanda and checked his bits and pieces for anomalies such as testicular cancer; he liked being tickled but never knew it could give you cancer.

He was also a known hypochondriac.

‘I’ve got my bare arse on a rocket launcher and its lumpy and feckin’ freezing.’

He thought she looked gorgeous sitting upon the rather sophisticated weaponry. ‘That’s a Bazooka, babe,’ and he flicked his one eye to the ceiling and back to his bits and pieces.

The unsubtle innuendo was not lost on her, even if she did have a bazooka stuck up her backside. ‘Bazooka?’ She remarked, not casually.

He could tell she was riled and wondered, not for the first time, where the minds of women went? It was after all, only a bazooka.

As I had mentioned before, Jack had a sense for this sort of thing and this is where he was blessed, of course. ‘

‘Jack what is a fucking rocket launcher doing in the hall?’

‘First of all…’ he raised his finger to her…

Bigmistake, and he was going to need the Papal Blessing they had received in Book 4 - Ghost and Ragman Roll.

‘… It’s a bazooka and, to be totally honest wiv you, sweet’art, I’m not sure.’ And to show he was serious, he did Dib, dib, dib and dob, dob with a Benny Hill salute. ‘Maybe Jimbo put it there?’ But his mind had drifted and in a casual movement, she had shifted her derriere away from the bazooka that she was convinced was a rocket launcher, and the passion rebuilt.

‘Jack, should we go upstairs?’ But he was way beyond getting up the stairs and she was catching up fast, when the letter box flapped open.

‘Jack, Mandy, its Jimbo. I left a rocket launcher in the… oh, sorry.’

Mandy let out a scream that Jack thought a little inconsiderate of his possible heart condition, but knew he had to do something to defuse the situation.

‘Jimbo, how nice to see you. Your family they are well?’

It was Jack’s, or should we say Jane’s, Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice, many quotes of which he was famed for misquoting, (he was known as Jack Jane Austin) but he knew instinctively people loved the classics.

‘Tolerably well, Jane, thank you.’ Jimbo said through the letter flap, looking like a spook gynaecologist.

From the unborn infant angle, you understand.

Jimbo knew Jane well, but then he would, as an MI5 minder. ‘And, it’s a rocket launcher, not a bazooka.’

‘Told yer,’ Mandy had recovered a little of her pith and poise, gathering the remnants of her clothing and starting to wonder if some of it could be repaired. ‘Jimbo, if you could maybe give us a minute, I’ll get dressed and put the kettle on.’

‘That would be lovely. I’ll call Bubba and Abe over. I’ll be honest, and I know its June, but we’re freezing our bollocks off out here in this fog.’

‘Yes, well, I’m about to tear Jack’s bollocks off, so you can all be eunuchs together and then I might get some peace and quiet and, maybe a less testosteroned eejit of a husband and his Mossad, MI5 and CIA mates.’ She looked at Jack, forlorn, naked, apart from his penguin socks. She melted, she knew she would. ‘Get dressed, you eejit, and bring the spy world in from the cold.’

She reflected, that was a catchy rejoinder, when Jack responded in his naturally misguided manner, ‘It’s a bazooka…’ and made a run for it.

He was no fool and, as we had previously mentioned, he knew women.

CHAPTER 1 - (the Prologue ends and the story is launched or bazooka’d upon an unsuspecting readership). The Journalist