Panic Time

Norbert

Chapter 47

Panic Time

I knock on the nearest door. A woman drying a plate with a tea towel answers. I ask her to call the emergency services.

‘I already have.’

‘You saw what happened?’

‘You can hardly miss it. I phoned Dyna-Rod, but they are engaged.’

‘I mean the 999 services.’

I explain briefly what happened.

‘Which one?’ she asks.

‘All of them. Quickly please.’

She returns after a few minutes, drying a cup. ‘They’re terribly busy.’

‘I appreciate that, but did you tell them it was urgent and life threatening?’

‘Of course I did.’

I’ve seen that look before. ‘What did you really say?’

She looks down. ‘All I could remember was that one man and his dog went for a swim.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘They said, I think you mean went to mow a meadow. I’d put them on speaker phone so I could finish drying the pots and I heard them singing it in the background.’

I wait ten more minutes and then head back the way I’d come.

I knock on the door. The woman answers.

‘You’re so kind. I’ve finished the letter. I’ll just get it for you.’

‘Something bad has happened.’

‘I know. I haven’t got a stamp.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘You’re all wet.’

‘And you’re most likely a widow.’

(I didn’t get my subtlety badge, either.)

‘I wish I was; big lummox that he is.’

‘Your husband got swept away in the flood.’

‘He’s gone to post his pools.’

‘He’s in the pools. The postbox is under water; he slipped and got carried away.’

‘He’s always getting carried away, believing this will be the week. I’ll kill him.’

‘You won’t have to. He could already be dead.’

‘Are you saying that my beloved Alphonse has had an accident?’

I nod.

‘What kind of accident?’

‘The fatal kind.’

‘Why didn’t you go after him?’

‘I can’t swim, but my dog can, after a fashion. Weggie risked his life to save him.’ My voice cracks. ‘I don’t think I will ever see him again. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Nunky.’

‘So it’s fairly serious, then?’

‘Drowning is about as serious as it gets.’

‘No, I mean the flooding. You see, I bank with the Nat West and that’s right next to the bridge. What happens if all my money drowns?’

‘You’ll be a poor widow.’

I suddenly realise it has stopped raining. I look up and see patches of blue appearing amidst the angry grey clouds, which are speeding their way inland.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ I ask.

‘Half past eight.’

I can’t believe how the time has flown. ‘I should have been at work half an hour ago.’

‘You’d better go, then. My husband will be home soon. He’s gone to post his pools. It’s going to be our lucky week.’

*

There is a police Land Rover outside the house when I get home. I let myself in, shed the wet outer clothes and enter the lounge. A couple of uniforms, male and female, are sitting on the sofa. No one else is in the room.

‘Have you come from the hospital?’

‘Yes,’ says the man.

‘Did they send you to arrest me for being late?’

They look at one another.

‘Are you Norbert Winstanley Rockhampton-Smythe?’ the woman P.C. says.

‘Yes. Where’s my uncle?’

‘He’s upstairs bathing the dog.’

I collapse into the chair and sob my little heart out.

*

I make a pot of tea and we sit round the coffee table, eating digestives from the biscuit barrel. The woman P.C., whose name is Deidre, plucks out a Bonio. With lightening speed, it is whipped from her fingers in a blur of damp fur.

‘I told you to put them on a plate,’ I hiss at Nunky. ‘Civilized, like.’

‘If I’d put them on a plate, Weggie would have stolen them all, mi babby. You know that.’

‘You must excuse Weggie’s manners,’ I say to the police officers. ‘He isn’t properly house trained yet in etiquette.’

‘I haven’t done an etchysketch since I quit art class,’ says Nunky. ‘You can’t blame Weggie.’

‘That’s all right,’ says Deidre. ‘I think we can make allowances for a hero. He deserves more than a biscuit.’

Weggie barks in complete agreement and stares at the biscuit tin.

I have already telephoned work and apologised. Warnetires-Skidmore told me to come in on late shift instead. ‘Several others phoned in a lot earlier than you did and said they couldn’t get to work because of the floods. That’s all you needed to do, none of this berdollox about trying to save a drowning postman.’ At which point he hung up. Now I am trying to piece together what had happened.

The policeman takes over. ‘Eye witnesses on a hastily arranged inland pleasure cruise saw what happened. The man, who we have now identified as Mr Alphonse Ebygum-Bartat, was swept into a brick wall on Brick Wall Street and suffered a possibly fatal skull fracture.’

‘What do you mean by possibly fatal?’

‘The pleasure craft attempted a rescue. They got up real close, but unfortunately his head got mangled in the propeller.’

‘But on the happy side, many of the passengers were taking photographs prior to this,’ says Deidre, ‘so at least his widow will have some mementos in which he is still recognisable.’

‘I’m sure that will be a great comfort to her.’

‘It was a regrettable accident,’ says the policeman, ‘but he would have drownded anyway.’

‘So the poor man died twice?’ says Nunky.

‘I’m afraid so,’ says Deidre. ‘Which death came first we may never know.’

‘An autopsy will tell you. I work at the hospital. I have insider knowledge. If he’s got water in his lungs he drownded first. They will, of course, still cut his skull off because we steal the brains and pickle them in acetone to make clotting reagent. (I immediately wished I hadn’t said this, especially to a police officer.)

‘What do you put in its place?’ says Deidre.

‘A screwed up copy of The Times.’

‘Very cerebral,’ says the policeman, opening his notebook. ‘The incident came to the attention of the police when a certain Mr Weggie, a German shepherd of dubious character, and with a string of convictions as long as the pier, was clocked by the speed camera on The Avenue with no Trees dog paddling at 38 mph in a 30 mph zone, with the deceased in his jaws.’

‘So you’re here to charge Weggie with speeding and kidnapping a dead body?’

‘The canine in question was seen, at great risk to paw and tail, to struggle to shore just before the torrent entered Old Sludgy and the body swept out to sea.’

‘He was very brave,’ says Deidre.

‘Did my Weggie try to resussulate the man?’ says Nunky.

‘No, he destroyed his sou’wester,’ says the policeman.

‘The lengths my boy will go to in pursuit of his favourite hobby,’ says Nunky, ruffling Weggie’s neck fur.

‘Do you have an address for the deceased?’ I ask. ‘I was talking to his wife only twenty minutes ago.’

‘That’s where we’re heading next,’ says Deidre, ‘to break the bad news.’

‘Good luck with that. She’s also from up north.’

‘Thanks for the warning. Will we need an interpreter?’

‘Did Weggie make his own way home or did you bring him?’

‘We got the address from his collar, but drove him to The Unloved Dog’s Home for Rejects, as we were simply too busy to process the necessary paperwork first. However, when the man there saw Weggie he tasered himself in the testicles and fainted, so after dropping the body of Mr Ebygum-Bartat off at the hospital morgue we brought him straight here.’

‘We could, of course, have put the body on the 32 bus,’ says Deidre, ‘but there’s a limited service until the waters recede.’