Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 14

14. The Fissure King

"We've a client visit in Newport", said Mr. Botham as he parked the car. "One of Gary's accounts. He's off sick. I've never visited the site personally; there always seems to be a fight to be the next one to go there. I suspect some sort of Woman With Large Breasts situation."

"Got it", said Steve, noticing Noel and Lucian sitting in a clearly stolen Vectra on the other side of the road, eating bacon sandwiches. The driver door window of the Vectra had been smashed. A Special Constable walked past the car, apparently unconcerned. Steve felt like leaping out, grabbing the copper by the stab vest, jerking his head down to the shattered Triplex and yelling: "CRIME! CRIME! RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE!" But that, of course, would probably only get him arrested, fixing his position at the station for Lucian and Noel to wait outside on his release. Maybe the rozzer was only failing to roz because he was on Noel and Lucian's payroll.

Mr. Botham handed over the keys to the car. "Crazy Rhodri's House of Coins, 12 Ross Street -"

"I know where it is. I type the address twenty or thirty times a week. Look after yourself", said Steve, jerking his head imperceptibly in the direction of Noel and Lucian.

"Oh, they won't be a problem. We have an understanding now."

Doubtfully, Steve nodded and vaulted the handbrake to come to rest in the driver's seat. "I'll see you later." Lucian and Noel, he was aware, had now noticed him, and were leaving their car - even leaving, he was disconcerted to note, their sandwiches.

The car started and burned away. Lucian and Noel stood, figuratively nutmegged, in the centre of the road, staring black tenfold vengeance after him. In his rear view mirrors, he saw them nod respectfully to Mr. Botham, and saw Mr. Botham nod gravely back.

"How the hell do you do that?" said Steve to himself in exasperation.

One thing, at least was certain; they now knew what the new pool car looked like.

***

The owner of Rhodri's House of Coins, who Steve could only assume was Rhodri, sat on what looked like a park bench with a farmer's shooting stick propping up his distended belly. On either side of him, two further grey plastic crutches would no doubt be necessary for him to rise up to walk.

"Good morning", said Steve. "I am with the Anne Sommers group. We lease you your bandits, cuddly toy cranes, and bubble gum machines, but as yet not your pinball machines. I am here with many beautiful gifts to persuade you of the eminent desirability of our own pinball products."

"We only got one pinball machine", said the mound of Nike that was Rhodri. "I think the lads know where the Free Play switch is on er too."

"The P520", said Steve, "has a free play key." He held a sample key from his pocket on high like the Holy Grail.

"Whoah", said the mound of polyester. "That's grand, that is."

"This key can be yours", said Steve, "if you only sign up to a lease agreement on the new P520, available with a variety of eye-catching and interchangeable themes - Waffen-SS vs. The Saucer Men, Attack Of The Almost Naked Women, Robots Of The Spanish Main, and Skateboard Ninjas In Space." He unfurled a catalogue centrefold.

"Whoah", said the face, out of an immobile body. Even the eyes were immobile. Steve wondered whether Rhodri was blind as well as enormous. "That's colourful. I particularly like the juxtaposition of the ollying ninja and the jets of the descending Martian battle cruiser."

"Or the ascending Martian battle cruiser", pointed out Steve. "A tableau, frozen in time. Who can tell?"

"The flippers've stuck on my old Williams", said the man-mountain sorrowfully. "I used to love watching the German keeper's eyes light up red in rage when I popped a shot into his Special Bonus Hole."

"Our flippers", said Steve, "come with a five year guarantee."

"Is that so? What are your rates for the pinball?"

"Exactly the same as for the B300, including the multiple-lease discount."

There was almost as little pause for calculation as there had been with Mr. Botham. "Whoah. That takes me up to ten machines, beyond the ten per cent discount threshold. Thass very reasonable, I have to say. Leave me the paperwork, I'll look through it. Can you be yur again same time tomorrow?" Still there was no evidence that any part of the body apart from the mouth was alive. Steve half suspected he was addressing a malevolent dwarf with its head projecting from an artificial rubber fat man.

"I'll be pleased to drive the hundred miles here again tomorrow afternoon", said Steve. "Your account is important to me. I just love being on the road."

"I'll see you tomorrow then." The eyes had still not moved.

"Any particular time?" said Steve.

"No, not really. I don't move around much."

Steve nodded. "I heard that from the other sales staff. Erm...if it's not a rude question, are you blind?"

The mound of flesh shook in what had to be laughter. "No, no, no. Just fat. Can' be bothered to move my yead, see. Got arthritis in all the joints in my cervical spine. Though I think some of your colleagues are under the impression I am blind."

This was unexpectedly interesting. "Oh? Why do you think that?"

The mouth giggled and licked its lips nervously. "Well...it started with them thumbing their noses while they were talking to me. Then it became V-signs and andwritten notices saying YOU BIG WELSH CUNT. Then I think they started to take bets with each other over how far they could go. I've ad that Gary in yur dressed as a good time girl in stockings suspenders and a ballet tutu - very fetching e looked - and one of them come in naked as a babe."

"I see." Steve frowned. "I don't know what to say", he said.

"Oh, iss all right", said the flesh mountain. "I've got the tables turned well an truly." A little finger flickered imperceptibly upward. "You see that little plastic doodad on the desk top there? Thass a webcam. My brother Hywel put here up for me. Feeds directly into www dot sales monkeys dot com. I'm up to hit two hundred an fifty million, and a lot of my content has been stolen by ebaumsworld dot com, which I am informed is a true sign of online greatness."

"Gosh", said Steve. "So many possibilities present themselves."

The face grinned. "Consider me the Fisher King. You know the Fisher King?"

"Not personally", said Steve.

"A figure from Arthurian romance", said Rhodri. "A king afflicted with a terrible sickness, encountered by various knights on their quest for the Holy Grail. Only the knight who bothers to ask the nature of the king's sickness gets the Grail - in your case the URL of my website, where all your company's sales department can be seen cavorting in my office dressed as Roman soldiers, prostitutes, and stark bollock naturists." Rhodri handed over a folded scrap of paper, his arm moving shakily when removed from its supporting crutch. "As to the nature of my sickness, my doctors tell me I've evolved a separate chamber to my stomach. I am a mutant, the next exciting step in Yuman Evolution. However, I do not have the ability to teleport or project spider web from out my bum or any such useful thing. Instead, I have a rudimentary rumen. A fissure in my stomach into which vegetable matter passes an gets decomposed. My stomach is twice as big as yours, and my digestive system twice as efficient, so ner. My doctor would like me to eat alf as much food or do twice as much exercise to compensate, but e can go gobble is cock, twice as much as zero's still zero, isn't it? My mutant powers give me all manner of other subsidiary benefits, such as Diabetes, Eart Palpitations, and Ypertension." The grin widened. "You might call me the Fissure King."

Steve nodded. "Arthurian romance, you say."

"Thass right. Five years I've been waiting ere for you. Now I can die appy. King Arthur was Welsh too, you know. Most folks were, in them days."

"I'm sure you're right", said Steve. "Are you genuinely interested in the B520?"

"Oh, yes. Most definitely. The thematic presentation catches the eye."

Steve nodded. "I'll be back with the paperwork tomorrow."

"I'll see you then." The blind man winked.

***

The juke box had been hijacked for the evening by a group of shrill-voiced teenage girls who'd evidently saved up all their pound coins for the occasion. It was playing non-stop Lily Allen. The Leffe, Staropramen, and Hoegaarden pumps had broken; only the Carling pump remained in operation. Steve was staring at a molasses-swilling pint of it.

"Explain to me again, Dave", said Steve, as Dave poured three pints of Guinness with the slowness of coal forming, "how you can be God if you preside over an environment very like Hell."

"I never claim to be God", said Dave, raising an admonitory finger. "Only the true Messiah denies his divinity. And if you think this is so like Hell, why don't you drink in the Victoria down the High Street? I've damned souls enough to attend to here."

"The Victoria is a deeper hell", said Steve. "It has live pub rock. Where's the Staropramen?"

"It matters not where the Staropramen has gone", said Dave. "What matters is your reaction to the lack of it. Life is an ordeal by fire, and you must prove you can walk through the fire unscathed."

Gonoroid, standing next to Steve at the bar, raised a finger suddenly. "Aha! Why would you attend to damned souls? That's the work of the Devil, surely."

"Did God not create both Hell and the Devil?" said Dave. "Therefore, whoever is tormented by the Devil in Hell is vicariously tormented by God." He handed all three Guinnesses over the bar to a grateful punter. "Six pounds, thanks." He nodded across the room at an evil-smelling mound of meths and whisky sitting slumped at a table in the corner. "Think yourselves lucky. You are only here for a taste of Hell. Others are here permanently." He turned to two new customers in coloured robes. "How can I help you, gentlemen?"

The newcomers eyed the drinks circulating around them twitchily, and bowed curtly. "We are disciples of Devasekhara Rinpoche. He has told us we can no longer learn from him. He has sent us here to learn from a greater master." The newcomer looked Dave up and down doubtfully. "We are looking for a great rinpoche named, uh", the newcomer hesitated over the name, "Dave."

Dave's facial expression changed no more than it ever did. "You have found him. What'll it be, gentlemen?"

The two acolytes looked at one another in horror. "We have sworn never to pollute our bodies with drink."

"I see", said Dave. "Well, then, how about a nice fruit juice, or a cappuccino?"

"Is it made from concentrate?" said the first acolyte.

"Is it Fairtrade and decaffeinated?" said the second.

Dave's expression darkened. "Two stouts", he said, "coming up."

The acolytes froze.

"Devasekhara Rinpoche informed us we should attempt to prove that you are not God", said the first one.

"Never said I was God", said Dave, winking at Steve.

"Let us begin", said the second acolyte, "with the fact that you are clearly not omniscient. You asked us what we wanted to drink, thereby soliciting information of which you had been previously unaware."

Dave shrugged. "But have you considered that I might be but my Father's son, and God's Word made flesh? That flesh", he said, pinching the skin of his own arm demonstratively, "would be only human."

The second acolyte looked at the first.

"He's good", he said.

The first acolyte cleared his throat. "Secondly, let us consider the fact that you are not omnipresent. I am here, and you are there. Clearly two different things cannot occupy the same space."

"Clearly", said Dave, replenishing the complimentary peanuts on the bar, "your initial premise is incorrect. The force of gravity occupies all of space simultaneously, and yet objects exist in that space."

The first acolyte was sweating. "Then how can I perceive you? If you are omnipresent, then I would hardly be able to walk all the way around you and observe all your surfaces as if you were any other irregular polyhedron."

"Can you walk all the way around me?" said Dave.

The acolyte stiffened indignantly. "Well - no. The bar is in the way."

"Is it?" said Dave, with a smile of supreme knowledge. "Is it really?" He returned to polishing glasses. "In any case, you haven't considered the possibility that nothing in the universe might exist but your own self, in which case I would exist only as a projection of your own imagination, effectively being part of yourself, who would fill the entire universe. Hence I would be, in a sense, omnipresent." He dealt out beermats for the Guinness.

The acolytes exchanged glances again, and nodded.

"You are a worthy teacher", said the first. "Will you teach us?"

Dave nodded. "Sure. That'll be four quid for the Guinness."

The two winced.

"We have books", said the second acolyte. "Books that will enable you to transcend this earthly fleshly prison and achieve a re-empowered existence on a new celestial planet -"

"Fascinating", said Dave. "I deal in quids."

Meekly, the two scraped together the quids, and handed them over.

"I will call you Bob", said Dave, "and you Andy. You shall sit in that corner over there, and you over there facing him. You shall support Arsenal, and you Tottenham Hotspur. You shall come in here every Thursday night and assess the merits of Arsenal vis-à-vis Spurs, and that shall be your table."

The two bowed meekly. "Thank you, Master."

"And less of the bowing. 'Cheers Dave' will suffice."

"You know", said the second acolyte, "it's really quite ironic, considering that Andy and Bob were actually our names before we became acolytes of Devasekhara -"

"You do surprise me. And get rid of those robes. This is swinging London, people are gender confused enough as it is."

"Cheers Dave."

"Cheers."

"And get a fucking job."

The acolytes filed off to their corners, and began attempting to argue about two football teams they knew absolutely nothing about.

A sweet and simultaneously vomit-inducing, purple-coloured smell filled Steve's left nostril; he turned to see an evil-smelling mound of meths and whisky occupying the barstool next to him, feverishly counting out Big Issue money for another quadruple shot.

"Truly", said the mound, "that barman is the Son of God."

***

The policewoman behind the armoured glass looked bored. She was sorting a massive heap of filing into ten categories. The box she appeared to have taken the filing out of was labelled GUN DEATHS. Next door to it, on the shelf behind her, was another box labelled KNIFE DEATHS, and next door to that, another labelled BLUNT INSTRUMENT 2006-7.

Steve coughed. The policewoman deigned to notice him.

"I'd like to talk to a police officer, please."

Her little piggy eyes narrowed. "About anything in particular, or were you just lonely?"

"About a protection racket. I'm in fear of my life."

The policewoman reached down to the open desk drawer beside her and drew out a packet of crisps. "We're all in fear of our life, sir. Take the cholesterol content of these." She held them out to Steve, as though, by dint of their being closer, he might be able to see their cholesterol content. "And the roads these days. Terrible."

So saying, she emptied what looked like the entire packet down her big fat gob.

"So", she said, wiping her mouth clean of salt and sub-crisps, "what sort of a police officer would you like to see? I've got CID, Uniformed, Traffic, Special Constable, Firearms, Drugs, Vice, Fraud, Special Fraud, and Dog."

"Can't you help me?" said Steve, becoming frustrated, as he was due in at work at nine.

"I'm not a WPC, sir. In point of fact, actually, no-one is a WPC any more, as the term WPC has been deemed sexist, so you see all police officers have to be PC -"

"In both senses of the word", said Steve.

She looked as though he were a Martian attempting to communicate by making his bottom pulse in different colours, then, having been so rudely interrupted, continued.

"- and I'm not a police officer, sir, only a uniformed customer service representative. Employing civilian staff like me allows trained police officers to be put to more appropriate duties."

"Then could I talk to a trained police officer? Just an ordinary one?"

She turned and yelled, spraying crisp shrapnel. "JEFF!"

A head poked round the door to the next room behind the screen. "Yuh?"

"Got a customer for you." She scribbled unintelligibly on a pad and slid it under the glass with exactly the same ease that a gun might be poked under it. The glass had THIS GLASS IS BULLET RESISTANT printed on it in large red letters. "Sign this, please."

Steve signed. She operated a secret switch. A door buzzed open at the far end of the room. "Sergeant Borrett will process you."

***

The interview room was bleak and devoid of office plants and motivational posters. A large patch of sick had recently been removed from the balding carpet by the door. The interview was being carried out by one officer only, and was not being taped.

"So, basically, what you're saying is that you had an argument with two gentlemen in the back room of Balls and Bandits, and that this proceeded to a fight during which you personally smashed the light bulb on a standard lamp and shoved it into one gentleman's face in the manner of a bayonet", said Sergeant Borrett, reading back his notes with a deadpan expression. "I can understand how he might be displeased."

"He was coming at me", protested Steve.

"So you say, sir. Had these gentlemen done anything to provoke you?"

"They said they were going to cut one of my fingers off!"

"Ah, but sir", smiled Sergeant Borrett, "did they actually cut one of your fingers off."

"Well, no! I wouldn't let them!"

"No need to get excited, sir. Did they demand money from you at all? We could get them for demanding money with menaces; that's illegal."

"No. They weren't extorting money from me, only from the arcade owner. But they attacked me. Erm. Were going to attack me. They said."

"I must point out that they were the only ones who were injured, though sir. In the eyes of the law, it would be their word against yours, and I'm obliged to treat it as such."

"Aren't you going to do ANYTHING about this?"

"Well, as far as I can see, sir, you've already punished them about as much as they can be punished, and I do have to say, you've been very lucky the gentlemen in question haven't involved the law so far. Some courts would view the action you took to be disproportionate."

"Disproportionate? They're going to bloody kill me. Half the intestinal fauna of North London seem to know it, and yet the police seem blissfully oblivious. Maybe I ought to write to the Daily Mail and predict my own death. I might get a sympathetic ear out of them."

"Now, sir, there's no need for unpleasantness. I could come down on you far harder for stabbing a man in the eye with a standard lamp."

"You could come down on me harder? Unless you're going to actually kill me, I'm expecting worse today, thanks."

"I could take you into custody for your own protection, sir."

"And how am I supposed to get to work? And pay my rent?"

Sergeant Borrett cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Well, strictly speaking, you wouldn't be able to go out to work whilst in custody, no, sir. And we'd only be able to hold you for twenty-four hours, or thirty-six with a superior officer's permission. Or twenty-eight days in the case of terror suspects."

"Then bring me in as a terrorist", said Steve, his eyes shining. "I declare to you here and now in this room that I am part of a Moslem cell who intend to blow up the Queen."

"Ah, now you're being silly, sir."

"We plan to hollow out a corgi and fill it with Femtex. Our radio-controlled robocorgi will pad past the guards right up to Her Majesty, and then it's yap-yap-BOOM."

"If I may point out one tiny flaw in your plan, sir, Semtex is a Czech-made plastic explosive commonly used by terrorists, whereas Femtex is in fact a feminine hygiene product. Filling your corgi with it would do little, apart from possibly giving it the ability to water ski, parachute and rollerblade."

Steve bit his lip. "Ah. Silly me."

"It's a common mistake, sir. You wouldn't believe how often we hear it. In any case, sir - don't have nightmares. People threaten to cut each other up and widen each other's smiles and fill each other's bums with broken glass in London every day. It's very rare that anyone actually ever follows through on it." Sergeant Borrett smiled cheerily and rose to his feet, opening the door to the interrogation suite. The interview was over.

"So I should just wait and see if they do follow through on it, and then phone you up and report it?"

The grin turned into a frown. "Now you're being silly again, sir. And there is such an offence as wasting police time."

"Surely you know these men? I've given you names and descriptions, and you know who the Palace Albanians are. The local newspaper knows who they are, crying out loud."

"The local newspapers think they know a lot of things, sir. Let me reassure you. Gang crime is actually quite rare. Most of my day is spent dealing with happy slappings, petty burglaries, car theft and RTA."

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw the receptionist, humming Theme from Titanic absently to herself, lifting a massive box of filing off the shelf. The box was labelled PRE-SCHOOL VIOLENT ASSAULT.

"I feel reassured", said Steve. "I think that I should go." To, say, Australia.

"I'm glad I was able to set your mind at rest." PC Borrett opened the door to Reception, where Lucian was standing leaning unconcerned on the counter, striking a match to light up in a No Smoking building.

"Hello Lucian", said the receptionist. "Have we been a bad boy again?"

Steve shrank back behind the doorframe in shock. Lucian's voice replied: "Constable Williams brought me in for urinating in a public place."

"Now, that's not the whole story, really, is it, Lucian? Where was that public place?"

"Er, on top of a client." On the CCTV screen in the office, Steve could see Lucian grinning bashfully.

"They're going to have to interview you again, you know. You've taken a good hour out of your day, being so foolish."

"I'm sorry, Cynthia. I know I've been a very bad boy. You can spank me if you want."

The receptionist tittered like a hideous parody of a schoolgirl.

"On second thoughts", said Sergeant Borrett, speaking to Steve out of the corner of his mouth, "I think we'd better take you out the back entrance."

"I think you've already taken me up the back entrance", said Steve, "metaphorically speaking."

"There's no need for unpleasantness, sir", said Sergeant Borrett. "We do our best."

"I must agree", said Steve, "if 'do our best' corresponds to 'look the other way when some petty gangster bungs us a tenner'."

"I'm sorry you see it that way, sir", said Sergeant Borrett, opening a door marked FIRE ESCAPE DO NOT OPEN, ushering Steve through it, and then slamming him up against a wall so quickly as to give him a mouthful of brick dust and mortar. Steve moaned in pain as he was punched in the kidneys repeatedly from behind, then kicked in the ribs after he made the mistake of collapsing onto the concrete.

He heard a fire door close behind him.

Breathing heavily, he remained coiled in pain for many seconds, then slowly managed to unwind himself and rise to his fet with the aid of the wall. Then he shambled off down the alley, supporting himself on a line of dumpsters. The end of the alley still couldn't be seen. At the end of the dumpsters, however, he stopped suddenly, willing himself not to breathe or do other noisy things like blinking and pumping blood.

"The emergency exit's round the back here - I chucked him out there. Just got to find the key to the gate - hang on -"

The voice was Sergeant Borrett's. There were, however, two sets of approaching footsteps.

"I do appreciate this. It's good to see our contributions to the community are well spent."

"You carry out a social service, Lucian. Take the money the scum will only spend on fags and heroin and give it out to those who make good use of it." There was a sound of fumbling for keys.

"I hear your old mum's coming out of hospital soon."

"Yes she is. She'll enjoy her new stairlift, for which much thanks - ah! Here we are!"

"What goes around comes around, Charlie."

A key turned in a lock. "Don't worry about the wait, it's a blind alley, he can't get out."

In the next two seconds, sheer fear and indignation propelled Steve onto a dumpster and further up onto a low bitumen roof, rolling on tar and gravel. Bizarrely, he could now see rows of uniformed and plain clothes policemen sitting noses-to-grindstone at their desks through the first floor windows.

"Where the bloody hell is he -"

No-one in the office appeared to have noticed Steve. One of the first floor windows was open. In the alley below, he could hear dumpsters being kicked and threatened one by one.

"He could have run off down the alley and shinned over the wall."

"Not after the kicking I just give him, he couldn't."

Trying to maintain a low profile, Steve moved in a low reverse crocodile walk over the roof towards the open window. The glass in the window was frosted.

"Could he have got up on the roof?"

From inside the frosted glass room came sounds of straining defecation. Creeping slowly up the wall, he could see the back of a close-cropped head that appeared to have no neck.

"Hurry up in there Bob. I'm busting to release the chocolate hostage."

Just a mo" - said Neckless Bob - "it's a difficult delivery - I've had to open the window - I wouldn't smoke in here if I was you."

He heard a sound of wiping, then a sound of zipping and buckling, then a sound of flushing.

"Give us a hand up, I'll check the roof."

Now. The timing had to be perfect.

He saw the door closing as Neckless Bob left - "cheers Bob -" scrambled soundlessly through the window, sat down on the toilet, shut the window, locked the door, lowered his trousers. The door shuddered as someone tried to open it from outside.

"What the - who the bloody hell's in -"

Outside the cubicle, he heard a door slamming as Bob left without washing his hands.

"I'm Bob's friend", said Steve innocently.

From outside on the roof, he could faintly hear the sound of a voice yelling:

"No - no-one up here. He's made like a southpaw and left. You must have kicked him like the big girl you are, Charlie."