Chapter Eleven

“More tea?” said the vicar.

Irma Drusen looked at the empty china cup in her hand. It was Friday morning, about eleven, and she didn’t usually take caffeine after ten, but the man in front of her was so warm, so courteous, and so disarmingly geeky that she couldn’t help but say yes.

“Yes,” she said, as if to prove that point. “That would be lovely, thank you.”

Picking up the handmade ceramic teapot he’d won on Countdown, the Reverend Tinpot poured a weak brew of Earl Grey into Irma’s teacup, before doing the same with his own. A large and unexpected glug caused the vessel to overflow.

“Oh dear,” he said, “my cup runneth over! Tinpot’s teapot lives up to its name!”

Irma’s smile was as weak as the tea. She sat back in the armchair and surveyed the scene. The living room in which she sat was small, and slightly cluttered, but had a unique and friendly charm that Irma appreciated. The tasteful wallpaper, the crocheted doilies, the collection of plastic Smurfs that lined the shelves on the opposite wall – all came together to create a welcoming mood that said ‘Come in, sit down, relax, take your shoes off, and make yourself at home under the lampshade shaped like the Starship Enterprise’. She’d done all five in the last ten minutes, and had warmed to her host considerably.

Contrary to both popular and unpopular opinion, Irma Drusen was not a hard-hearted, unfeeling bitch. True, she could snap a spine like a twig with her bare hands, and would think nothing of trampling over the bodies of helpless kittens in her pursuit of the truth, or a number nine bus, but that didn’t make her a bad person. She saw it as efficiency, not ruthlessness.

Irma’s life up to this point had been a rocky road of hard knocks, broken promises and shattered dreams. Abandoned at the age of three by a mother who wanted more time to pursue her hobby of international whale-watching, Irma had been raised by a couple of high-flying advertising executives who lived and worked out of a small loft conversion in Mile End. Her childhood had been spent formulating strap lines for products as diverse as washing powder, sofas, and designer face creams with active hyperzones and natural lipozoids designed to halt the three hundred and forty-seven signs of aging. Irma wasn’t sure it was worth it. She was left to feed, clothe and fend for herself, all the while growing as bitter as the beer she helped to shift from supermarket shelves.

Such a childhood had not left her without scars. She had a particularly nasty one on her left hand, caused by a deep paper cut sustained by a flip chart during a surprisingly heavy brainstorming session. But the mental scars ran deeper. To this day, she couldn’t look at a billboard poster without experiencing a sense of inner turmoil, and the mere mention of whales would conjour up a feeling of rage within her. She’d once driven past a ten-metre wide advert designed by the Welsh Tourist Board, and the very words ‘See Wales’, glimpsed briefly and inaccurately out of the corner of her eye, had very nearly sent her over the edge. Quite literally. She was driving along a cliff top at the time.

Escaping from the world of advertising, and from Mile End, Irma embarked on a new and groundbreaking career in orthoptics. Her firm belief was that amblyopia was nothing more than laziness, and she took it upon herself to prove it. Years of training and research resulted in her own private practice, an exclusive clinic in Chelsea where she put her original methods to work on the squinty-eyed children of London’s social elite. Few could afford her services, but those who could, left with their eyes opened and, for the first time, working together in harmony.

For a time, Irma appeared to have found her niche in life. Her background in advertising led her to brand the clinic with a single-worded, and strikingly effectively, name. It was known simply as ‘EYE’, and celebrities, particularly those who struggled with long words, soon flocked to take advantage of her unique services. She was growing rich on the disposable income of the upper middle classes, but more than that, her sense of self-satisfaction and contentment was growing too. She was helping the lazy to see. She was making a difference.

It couldn’t last. And it didn’t. If life had taught Irma Drusen one thing, it was that the road of contentment was littered with potholes. Great cavernous pits of despair into which the wheels of the happiness bandwagon could, and inevitably would, plunge at a moment’s notice, leaving the axles of satisfaction scraping along the road to hell like the fingernails of a failing teacher on the brittle blackboard of an OFSTED condemned school.

Sure enough, an unexpected mistake, one single moment of madness, had brought Irma’s career tumbling down around her eyes. Perhaps, she thought, she was partly to blame. True, she was the one who had called that nine-year-old red-headed boy a “speccy four-eyed ginga”. She was the one who’d slapped him round the back of the head and stamped on his Dolce & Gabbana glasses. She was even the one who’d told his celebrity parents that they’d raised “a goggle-eyed freak with the drive of a lemming”, before throwing his eye patch out of the window and giving him the finger. But was she really to blame?

It didn’t matter. Her career was over. Her life as an orthoptist to the stars was at an end. Clients deserted her overnight, and within days she was finished. EYE was permanently closed.

At which point the phone rang, and a man offered her a lifeline. Who wants to be a millionaire, she thought, when there are other, more worthwhile paths to pursue in life? The man on the phone was Sir Roger Logmar. He put to her a proposition. And Irma Drusen said yes.

At the time, she hadn’t known it, but Irma’s career had been followed closely for a number of years. Nondescript figures in dark glasses often sat unnoticed on park benches opposite her clinic, reading newspapers at odd times of day. Newspapers with eye holes cut into them. Through the missing nipples of a page three girl, Irma’s work had been observed, monitored, and admired from afar. Unbeknownst to the celebrity orthoptist, a position was waiting for her at a fledgling organisation sixty miles away. The Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health recognised her talents, and Sir Roger Logmar wanted her. In an entirely non-sexual way.

There are some who have quietly suggested that the downfall of Irma Drusen’s orthoptic career was no accident. That there was more to that nine-year-old ginger boy than met the amblyotic eye. That the incident was, in reality, a carefully crafted set piece, designed to achieve a deliberate end and to fulfil a specific purpose. That, perhaps, an unseen puppet master was somehow controlling Irma’s fate.

The truth, of course, may never be known. Unless you were to ask Sir Roger Logmar, in which case he’d admit it was all his idea. He’d found the big-eared carrot-topped tyke on a farm in Devon, and sent him in like a heat-seeking missile to poke Irma in the EYE, and free her up for a new challenge. And he didn’t care who knew it. Although, oddly, no one had ever asked.

As it transpired, it was the best thing that ever happened to Irma. She was routinely referred to an ophthalmologist in Kensington, who took her via the underground railroad to Oxford, and a meeting that would change her life. Mostly for the better. Having seen her determination, her groundbreaking ocular research, and the ruthless way she meted out violence to a nine-year-old ginge, Sir Roger Logmar had no hesitation in signing her up for the OOOH team. He promptly offered her a role as his special envoy, his all-seeing eye, his 007 with a licence to kill, maim, and administer prescription-only eye drops. It was an offer she could not refuse. Mainly because Ivor Snellen had her in a headlock at the time.

The rest, as they say in all good humanities departments, is history. Irma Drusen took to the undercover world of eye spying like the proverbial duck to toilet. The job played to her strengths, allowing her to use both her extensive ophthalmic knowledge and her innate ability to subtly extract key pieces of information from unsuspecting members of the public using nothing more than intimidation, kidnap and extreme physical violence.

That new road of happiness had led her to places she never dreamt she would visit, and allowed her to see things she never thought she would see. And now it had led her to Essex, to a vicarage on the edge of a housing estate near Basildon town centre, and allowed her to see the Smurf collection of a middle aged clergyman. It was beyond her wildest dreams. And dangerously close to a nightmare. But she felt strangely comfortable.

“So tell me, Reverend Tinpot,” she said, “Exactly what did you see last night?”

The vicar finished mopping up Earl Grey from a china saucer shaped like one of Mr Spock’s ears, and sat down in the chair opposite. “Well,” he said, “as I told your colleague on the phone, I’m not really sure.”

Reverend Tinpot had not told Irma Drusen’s colleagues any such thing. He’d told the police. Irma had merely heard them laughing about it on shortwave radio. Within half an hour, she’d been knocking on the vicarage door with a fake ID and a genuine concern, keen to know more, and determined not to leave until she got it.

“But you saw... something?” Irma prompted.

The vicar looked mildly troubled. “I heard a scream,” he said. “That was the start of it. I was upstairs in the bathroom, filling my hot water bottle from the tap, when I heard a noise coming from outside, over that way”. He motioned with his hand towards the front of the house. “The bathroom window’s frosted of course, so I opened it, but it’s hard to get a good view. The sink’s below the window, and I can’t lean out without standing on the toilet and moving my ducks from the windowsill.”

“And did you do that?” asked Irma.

“Well, yes,” replied the vicar self-consciously. “With hindsight, it might have been quicker to run downstairs and open the front door, but I wasn’t really thinking straight. I’d heard a scream. And a...” he paused for a moment, “... a howling I suppose you’d call it, something animalistic. Like a young hippo caught in a man-trap. To be quite honest, I felt like locking the bathroom door, not running downstairs.”

“So,” said Irma, “you stood on the toilet, moved your ducks, and leaned out of the window..?”

Reverend Tinpot nodded.

“And what did you see?” she asked.

The vicar looked pale. “Not much,” he said. “I think I was too late.”

“But you did see something?” Irma pressed.

“I saw a woman,” the Reverend replied. “At least I think it was a woman.”

He paused, trying to find the right words.

“How can I put this,” he continued, “she may have had some issues with food.”

“She was a lardbucket?” suggested Irma.

“No, no,” replied Tinpot. “I wouldn’t put it like that at all.”

“But she was fat?”

“Let’s just say she was wider than she was tall,” he clarified.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” said Irma, “she had the figure of a space hopper and moved about as fast.”

“Well, yes,” admitted the vicar. “She was running – if one can call it running –”

“I’ll put down waddling,” said Irma, writing on a pad.

“- towards the school across the road. I only caught a glimpse of her before she disappeared behind the poplar trees, but she appeared to be fleeing from someone. Or something.”

“And did you see what was chasing her?” asked Irma.

“Well...” hesitated the vicar, “... only for a moment. It was dark, and it was moving at speed. I couldn’t get a clear view past my dental floss holder, and I was struggling to keep my balance on the toilet. But it – whatever it was – came out from the bushes by the street sign, and chased her across the road and behind the trees.”

“And what was it?” Irma said, looking the vicar in the eye. “What did you see?”

The Reverend Tinpot exhaled deeply, and swallowed hard before replying.

“It appeared,” he said nervously, as if scared of his own words, “to be a cow with five legs.”