Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 12

12. It's Grim Up North

"Naa den", said the man from the Manor Top Gaming Arcade. "As da come far?"

"Morning", said Steve. "I come bearing gifts for you and your tribe." He laid out a glossy sheaf of catalogues on top of a McSweeney Randominator. "See - there are many beautiful pictures."

"Da's reet deer. Iss bedder dan dee owd book." The owner of the Manor Top Arcade, a six foot, burly transexual, stroked his stubble thoughtfully. "Iss in colour", he commented.

"And every subsequent catalogue will be in colour, if you buy from us", promised Steve generously.

The transsexual narrowed his gorgeous eyelashes at Steve.

"Aa want", he said, "a single-payline bandit dat don't tilt when da belts it, but does when da tilts it, an dat don't break when da belts it needer. Folks round ere do a lodda beltin." He stared at Steve meaningfully.

"The B300 will withstand any amount of fist damage", recited Steve, "and up to two minutes of baseball bat and sledgehammer attack, without losing its functional integrity. It also has fifty per cent more lights than our five main competitor machines, all of which flash enticingly."

"Dis one ere", said the transsexual, pointing at the catalogue. "Dass got fruit an bells on. Da knows weer da is, wi fruit an bells."

"Ah, the Liberty Bell B301", said Steve. "You choose a good bandit. One-armed, I mean", he added hastily.

"All teck three", said the owner, "on a lease basis."

"We have very reasonable hire purchase rates -"

"Read my luscious lovely lips. Lease basis. When can da deliver?"

"Sign on the dotted line", said Steve, "and I'll bring them up personally tomorrow."

The owner nodded and perused the dotted line.

"Does darrobject to lavender ballpoint?"

***

He was in the fast lane of the M1, southbound in a sea of lights, when the mobile phone rang. Knowing mobile phones could be used to trigger bombs, he was nervous about answering, though unsure quite how picking up might activate an explosive device. Eventually, good telephone manners got the better of him, and he squirmed his hand down his trousers as if masturbating in control of a motor vehicle, searching for the handset. He didn't reach it in time.

"Never mind", he said to the steering wheel. "If it's important, they'll ring me back."

They rang him back. Like a lurking crocodile, he sank down below console level so that only his eyes were visible, and said:

"...hello?

"...erm...hello.

"I'm dreadfully sorry, I'm on the motorway just north of Luton. I'll be some time.

"I have a job. And you know, you know, I don't even know your name.

"I said name, not zoological classification. I don't care what branch of the reptilia you come from. Look, sex with you is the least of my worries right now. People are trying to kill me.

"They're trying to kill you too. I see. Do they follow you around at all? And do voices in your head tell you to kill them and scoop out their brains like grey jelly? Perhaps you have evidence the world is being run by a vast mammalian conspiracy. Oh wait. It is."

The phone went dead. Knowing it would ring again in a minute, he turned it off.

***

He saw the blue lights reflecting off the white letters of GERMAN'S HIDE FOOD before he saw the ambulances. There were two of them. They were parked outside his own building. People were being lifted into the backs of them on stretchers. He parked the car on the white dotted line and hurried over. A policeman got in his way.

"It's all right, sir, let us handle this."

"It's not all right, I live here. It's one of my neighbours. Who is it?"

The policeman flipped open a notebook. "Er, the name on his Underground pass is Brevet Sub-Commander Gonoroid Quarxxx. We've accordingly charged him with attempting to defraud the London Underground network."

"That really is his name", said Steve. "He changed it by deed poll. Uh, you wouldn't charge him with anything if he were dead, would you?"

The policeman scratched his head. "That'd be a bit of a drastic way for him to get out of being charged, sir. I doubt he'd thank you."

"No, I mean, is he dead?"

"Er, no sir, no he isn't. But let's say he's looking down the tunnel of light to where his grandparents live."

"Gonoroid's grandparents are called Bill and Maureen", said Steve. "They live in Hackney. What happened to him?"

"Someone played noughts and crosses on him with a box cutter, sir. Badly. There was a clear run for X to win down the dexter diagonal. Apparently there was an altercation in the flat next door, and your Mr. Quarxxx intervened. Some of our neighbourhood pond life had broken in and were harassing the occupants."

"Mr. Botham", said Steve. "Tall thin man, small neat beard and moustache? Blue eyes, dark hair, quietly spoken, Home Counties accent? Very clean fingernails?"

"Dresses like a cowboy?"

"That'll be him. Is he -?"

"No. Not a scratch on him. Most peculiar."

"Then who's the second ambulance for?"

"One of the pond life seems to have suffocated inside your Mr. Quarxxx's front door." Unaccountably, Steve exhaled as if the weight of all the world had lifted off his shoulders. "It seems to be quite airtight. Mr. Quarxxx appears to have fought his way free into his own flat and closed the door. One of the gang followed him in and got caught in that booby trap of his."

"It's not a booby trap", said Steve. "It's an airlock. Sometimes the inner door sticks. It's from the TV, you know, Space Cruiser Invincible? He was, is, unhealthily obsessed with it."

The policeman nodded. "I understand how it is, sir. The bright colours, the lycra, all men together on long space voyages, it makes the mind wander."

"The airlock has an Emergency Release", said Steve. "It's clearly marked EMERGENCY RELEASE."

"And if sixteen year old scrotes could read, I'd be out of a job, sir. You know, it's like a technological Aladdin's Cave in there. You wouldn't believe the amount of gay pornography we found on various different hard drives." The officer stared meaningfully at Steve. "We've charged him with that as well, of course."

"Gay pornography isn't illegal", said Steve.

"Yes, but it was illegally downloaded gay pornography", said the officer disapprovingly. "Gay-for-pay bum bandit porno actors need to earn a crust too, sir, and circle-jerk DVD piracy funds terrorism. Are you sure that airlock contraption has nothing to do with erotic asphyxiation?"

Steve pondered this.

"Well", he said, "he's never erotically asphyxiated me in it."

"Easy, sir. Jealousy ill becomes a man, and is a motive for many violent crimes. Where were you at five o'clock this afternoon?"

"I can prove I was in Sheffield at three", said Steve hotly.

"So you broke the speed limit getting here", said the officer, after a brief pause for mental arithmetic.

"It may have been earlier", said Steve frostily. "Look, we're not gay partners, if that's what you're implying. We just...know each other quite well." He walked up towards the entrance, discarding his coat as he entered the warmth of the building.

The officer coughed discreetly. Steve turned, and caught sight of his own reflection in the windows of the ambulance.

"Quite well, Brevet Sub-Commander?" said the policeman.

***

The man facing Steve across the interview room table was no longer the amiable homophobe who had brought Steve in. That man had vanished, no doubt on urgent police business harassing innocent MP's whose penises had accidentally become trapped in pale thin young men on Hampstead Heath. This man was a different breed of interviewer entirely. His handshake had simply consisted of holding his own limp hand out to be grasped. His eyes seemed locked on a factory setting of STARE. He was not a uniformed policeman, but dressed in a casual suit that shrieked I AM AN UNDERCOVER POLICEMAN. OR AT THE VERY LEAST A TEACHER OR LOCAL TV WEATHER PRESENTER.

"Are you aware", said the interviewer, "of the Dowd crime family?"

"No", said Steve.

"They are also known", said the interviewer, "as the Gay Mafia. Don't let that deceive you. Their activities make me far from happy. Mr. Quarxxx's recent Google searches were full of references to them, implying an assocation. We find this strange. Mr. Quarxxx has no criminal record; he does not fit our profile of a gang member. However, it is known to us that the Dowds, and other gangs involved in smuggling heroin, cocaine, and firearms, favour homosexual men of a certain anal looseness. Gay men who indulge in penetrative bum sex for an extended period are known to possess sphincters that will far more readily accept illegal contraband."

Steve struggled to find anything at all to say. He settled on:

"I thought they swallowed them."

"And wait up to eighteen hours for them to come out at the other end? Far more economical to have a storage container you can handily reach into with a rubber-gloved fist. We have found nothing in Mr. Quarxxx's colon, but he fits the profile."

"You looked in there? Um, in him?" Steve could not conceal his disgust at the physical invasion. "All he did was try to fight off a group of men who were attacking his neighbour, as per TOSS 21, Cross Back, Samaritan! He is a good man, a fine man. This is blatant sphincter profiling."

"The Dowd family are known for intimidating their victims to the extent that they are afraid to cooperate with the police", said the interviewer. "If that is the case here, be assured we will do everything in our power to assure your safety."

Steve looked behind the interviewer to the uniformed officer operating the tape recorder, who was making menacing throat-cutting gestures at him.

"I'm afraid I really have no idea who the Dowd crime family are", said Steve. The uniformed officer grinned and gave a thumbs up, then recommenced the menacing throat-cutting gestures.

"I see", said the interviewer. "Well, should you suddenly remember anything you had unaccountably forgotten, please get in touch." He slid a card across the table.

Steve gawped at it. "MI5?"

The interviewer smirked in satisfaction. "Yes. Much of our work is in organized crime nowadays. We advertise on the internet and are an Equal Opportunities Employer. You wouldn't happen to have Arabic, Persian, or Korean language skills, would you? I realize it's a long shot."

Steve shook his head.

"Well, let us know if you should suffer that dramatic memory recall. Constable Light will show you out. You can stop making the Mafia Sign of Death now, Constable."

Steve had no idea how the interviewer had caught his colleague out. He rose awkwardly as Constable Light held the interrogation suite door open.

***

In Reception, Steve attempted, whilst feeling wretched shame at doing so, to hold his head up as if his presence in the back rooms of the station had been entirely honest, law-abiding, genuine Helping-Police-With-Their-Enquiries, completely separating him from the social underclass who lounged around the room on cheap plastic chairs, waiting for their partners in crime to be released with a caution. The social underclass scowled back at him.

One of them, however, looked up and tipped its ten gallon hat at him.

"Mr. Simpson", it said. "I was told you were here. I have the pool car with me. Would you care for a lift?"

***

"Did you get the MI5 treatment too?"

Mr. Botham nodded. "I doubt they've had the time or opportunity to bug the car, however. I drove down here of my own free will. I have a spare set of keys, and they asked me to move the car. It was blocking the road."

The car purred down Tottenham Lane, generously allowing buses to pull out.

"What happened?" said Steve.

"It appears Lucian and his friends are still upset. They began by hammering on my door demanding I let them in and promising to do all manner of awful things to me once I did."

"Well, duh", observed Steve.

"Quite. So, once I let them in, we had words. Some of the words on their part were so loud that your friend Mr. Quarxxx intervened from next door, running in with some sort of science-fictional sword device and telling them the police were on their way."

Steve nodded. "The Aldebaranian Gladius. An exact replica of the one in TOSS 10, And Brother Shall Fight Brother. It cost him two thousand dollars."

"I see. Well, after they had taken it off him, they were understandably upset and injured him with it. He seemed by some awful coincidence to be wearing clothes very similar to yours; I fear they may have mistaken him for you. I'm afraid I then lost my temper and demanded they leave."

Steve looked across at Mr. Botham's face. "You did what?"

"Demanded they leave."

"And then what?"

Mr. Botham looked at Steve as if at a mental deficient. "They left."

"Just like that."

"Police sirens were sounding outside by then, of course. And they had just hurt your Mr. Gonoroid quite badly."

Steve refused to let this go. "Hang on. How did you get them to leave exactly?"

"I was quite polite."

"You were quite polite to two, maybe three armed men with the IQ's of warm dishwater and the social consciences of gonorrhea?"

"No misunderstanding is insurmountable", said Mr. Botham prissily. "And Lucian, in actual fact, does have considerable native intelligence, albeit combined with a regrettable lack of grasp of basic accounting concepts."

"I see", said Steve, staring into the headlights of oncoming juggernauts.

Mr. Botham took a left turn where he shouldn't have. "I presume we're going to the hospital now, to see Mr. Quarxxx?"

No. Home. And then trains, planes and automobiles to somewhere far away and safe, like Johannesburg, or Baghdad. "Uh...yes. Yes, that would be nice."

"It would be the civilized thing to do, don't you think?"

***

"Are you a relative?" asked the gorgon-like triage receptionist. Steve shook his head.

"He really does need rest", said the receptionist. "We shouldn't really be allowing anyone through apart from relatives..."

"...and policemen who want to check the size of his anal sphincter", said Steve.

"I don't think I heard that", said the receptionist, who had.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'll repeat it -" said Steve. Mr. Botham interrupted, digging Steve in the ribs. "What my colleague means to say is that Mr. Quarxxx has no living relatives. We are all the family he has."

"I thought he had a grandmother and grandfather who lived in Hackney", said the gorgon suspiciously.

"They no longer talk", said Mr. Botham. "They are dead to him."

"They talked to me when I phoned them for him."

Mr. Botham shrugged philosophically. "At times like this, family love softens the hardest heart."

The receptionist stared hard at Mr. Botham, who refused resolutely to turn into stone.

"All right", he said. "But don't excite him." She opened a door filled with posters describing how to recognize the Seven Signs of Gunshot Injury, and motioned for Steve and Mr. Botham to follow her.

"That door says 'Triage'", said Steve.

The receptionist nodded. "His injuries aren't threatening enough to need immediate attention."

"He's been stabbed."

"Decorated", corrected the receptionist. "None of the cuts are more than an inch deep, they haven't cut the intestine wall. We've given him a good deal of aspirin", she added, pushing through another door bearing a poster that said SUGAR: THE SILENT KILLER.

She drew back a green curtain. Not for the first time, Steve wondered why hospital curtains were green.

"Oh", said Gonoroid miserably, "it's you. I thought it might be the doctor."

Steve's lips curled at the injuries. "They've not even dressed the wounds."

Gonoroid tried valiantly to speak without breathing. "I think they're waiting for someone from the Evening Standard to come over and take a picture. I heard them on mobile phones in the corridor. There's money in it."

"Why haven't they seen to you yet?" Steve turned for the receptionist; she had already vanished. "This is appalling."

"...No, this is north London. A couple of stabbings, a glassing, a marlinespiking and a gunshot injury came in at the same time as me, and one of them wasn't British. I heard them whispering that they hadn't treated their quota of on-time asylum seekers yet tonight, so the guy with the marlinespike got bumped up the queue before me...probably a good thing. He couldn't have sat and waited. Couldn't have sat at all, point of fact..."

"This is outrageous. I'm going to see the nurse."

"She's not a nurse...none of them are. They aren't required to have any qualifications to man the desk any more. There's a nurse around here somewhere, I think. In this building, at the very least."

Steve sat down by the bed. "I'm really sorry, Gonoroid."

"Yeah, I know. They thought I was you. Dumb idea of mine, hey."

"Did it hurt?"

"No, I was actually quite turned on by the experience."

"Gosh. Is that a gay thing?"

"Of course it bloody well hurt."

Steve grinned. "Like buggery?"

"Shut up, you're making me laugh, you miserable cunt."

"How long have you been here?" said Mr. Botham.

"Four hours."

Mr. Botham tutted. "Well", he said, "it's time to take matters into our own hands. Mr. Simpson - the screens. Take a look out there and see if you can find us some surgical thread." He held up a sewing kit, from which he extracted a single long needle which he held over a lighter flame.

Gonoroid stared round-eyed at the needle. Mr. Botham noticed him staring.

"Oh", he added absently, "and some anaesthetic. Anything ending in ocaine or orphine."

***

The receptionist glowered down at Gonoroid. Behind her, a poster shrieked: do YOU have LEPROSY?

"Who did this?"

"Who did what?" said Gonoroid, eyes happily focussed on things only he could see.

"This stitching." She stared disapprovingly at Gonoroid's stomach.

"I passed out from the pain", lied Gonoroid. "When I woke up, I had been stitched up." He reached out to grasp pretty coloured butterflies invisible to the receptionist.

"You've stitched yourself up", accused the gorgon.

The nurse pushed into the room behind her.

"It took so long", said Gonoroid, "I did it myself."

The receptionist's undershot lower jaw quivered in rage. "Well, it'll have to be undone. It may get infected."

Gonoroid crossed his hands over his stomach protectively. Not quite that far gone.

The nurse leaned closer. "Actually, it's quite well done", she said. Is that proper sterile thread?" Gonoroid nodded proudly.

"And where did the people who stitched you up get that?" said the receptionist.

"Musta found it", opined Gonoroid.

"Without anaesthetic?" The receptionist's fingers were curling reflexively, itching to unpick the stitches.

"Musta found some of that too", said Gonoroid. "Wow", he added, indicating an empty corner of the room. "Will you look at that."

"The supplies cabinet is supposed to be locked at all times", said the nurse to the receptionist severely. The receptionist shrugged.

The nurse took another look at the stitching.

"Have you any idea why he's finished it off with STEVE WOZ ERE in cross-stitch?"

***

Mr. Botham was angry. The car backed into place between two others with autistic precision.

"You shouldn't have taken all that diamorphine."

"I didn't know it was the same thing as heroin. Whoosh!" Steve followed invisible racing insects across the dashboard with a finger. "There they go! There they scamper!"

"They'll examine their medicine cabinet, count what's missing and assume he took twice as much as he did", said Mr. Botham. "They may give him other drugs to bring him down. They may bring him down too far, and have to give him more diamorphine to bring him up again. The possibilities are endless."

Police Crime Scene tape was strung along the staircase as Mr. Botham led Steve, following Mr. Botham with one hand on his shoulder like a baby elephant grasping its mother's tail, to his flat.

"Now, do you have the key to your door?"

Giggling, Steve produced a credit card and swiped it through the door jamb. Instantly, the card snapped into fragments. The door, which had been unlocked, swung open.

"Burglarcard", grinned Steve, holding up the ruined card. "Accepted at all good doors."

"I feel my work here is done", said Mr. Botham. "I will see you at work tomorrow morning."

"Yeah", snorted Steve, "that's gonna happen."

Mr. Botham closed the door. Steve whimpered in the sudden darkness. Navigating by brownian motion, he collided with all five walls of the square hallway, thereby breaking the laws of physics, and tumbled into the huge black space of the bedroom.

Lying on his face in a carpet that had not, for many weeks, known the sweet kiss of the hoover, he could hear a woman sobbing.

His eyes became accustomed to the dark.

"Oh...hello, it's you."

She was wrapped in the duvet, still fully clothed, still careful to maintain her body temperature. She looked up, caught his eye, and shrank back into the duvet weeping.

"Easy", he said. "You shouldn't cry. If you're a reptile, then that means they're crocodile tears." He nudged her. "Crocodile tears, hey? It's a joke."

She still refused to look at her. "But the order crocodilia are descended from the diapsids, unlike the ichthyosauria, which are euryapsids. It's all to do with holes in the head."

"Have you got a hole in your head?" said Steve.

"...I expect so..."

"What are you so upset about?"

She drew the duvet around herself like the cloak of an Indian squaw. "I imagined I would lose interest in you as soon as I ceased to ovulate. But then I stopped ovulating, yet my interest in you was clearly undiminished."

He sat back against the side of the bed. "How do you know you've stopped ovulating?"

"One knows these things. We ichthyosauri are close to the bosom of nature." She glared crossly at him from out of the duvet. "You are disturbing my coding. I haven't been able to write a bug-free line all afternoon."

"Coding? What have you been doing?"

"It's how I earn money. I write safety software for mammalian aircraft manufacturers."

The potential consequences made Steve's stubble stand on end. "Any I'm familiar with?"

"All of them. I'm very sought after. At the moment I am working on the SkyTram Super Hippo YakFokker 9000, an appalling collaboration between Fokker and Yakovlev. Don't worry, I'm not betraying my ectothermic heritage. I put tiny deliberate errors into the code that ensure the plane will crash if I can be sure it's being piloted by a mammal."

Steve's teeth ground together. "How do you tell it's being piloted by a mammal?"

"Small but tell-tale signs. Low or excessively high cabin temperature is the key indicator."

"You learn something every day", said Steve.

"Have you lost interest in me?" she said. "A foolish question, I imagine. The comments you made earlier this evening make your position clear." She retreated wretchedly back into the blanket.

"Hang on", said Steve. "Hang on. I didn't say I wasn't interested."

"No. You only said sex with me was not your highest priority."

"Well", Steve, sliding an arm round her, "I don't have any other priorities right now."

"You'll lose interest as soon as you've fertilized me."

"That", he beamed truthfully, "is not going to happen."

Her head emerged from the duvet like a tortoise's. "Well", she said, "that is encouraging. I'm afraid there will be no point in mating tonight. I am eggless."

"I", said Steve, "will be unable to do little but snore loudly for the next four hours. At eight a.m., I will have to rise, turn, and walk in a zomboid fashion towards that door over there in the same clothes I am currently wearing, after which I will allow myself to be carried to my place of work by our appalling public transport network and pretend to work for eight hours. Then I will return here and sleep for eighteen months, after which time the current government, astronomically high fuel and housing prices, global warming, and inexplicable popularity of R&B, will all be over." He held her hand out in front of himself, his eyes focussing and defocussing on it crazily. "You know, it's true, I really can see the scales."

All went dark. When it went light again, he had his arms round a cuddly fluffy dinosaur. The dinosaur - one of the sauropods - was huge, and sported a cheeky grin. One of its cheap plastic eyes was winking.

Pinned to the dinosaur was a note saying:

IT IS NINE AM AND I HAVE TO GO TO WORK IN MY MAMMALIAN SWEATSHOP. LUCKILY I AM IMMUNE TO ITS ILL EFFECTS AS I DO NOT SWEAT. YOU NEED TO REST. I HAVE TURNED THE HEATING UP TO RAISE YOUR BODY TEMPERATURE. THIS DINOSAUR IS PERFECTLY ZOOLOGICALLY ACCURATE. MANY DINOSAURS POSSESSED FUR-LIKE FEATHERS AND HENCE BY INFERENCE WARM BLOOD C.F. UTAH RAPTOR THOUGH THIS HAS ADMITTEDLY NEVER BEEN OBSERVED IN THE SAUROPODS.

"Jesus." He struggled upright. "What time is it now?"

He parted the curtains. Schoolchildren were standing spraying aerosols into plastic bags and breathing the contents in the ginnel at the back of the terrace. That meant it was after morning registration.

"Jesus", he said. "Jesus."

In his heart of hearts, however, he was aware that, no matter how many times he called upon him, Jesus would not help him get to work on time.