There were a dozen trees, in two lines of six, perhaps eight metres apart, and Bobby had secured the rope to the first. A second rope was tied to the base of its opposite number, a third to its lowest branches, and a fourth served to match it on the other side. The ropes met in the centre of the avenue, secured at four points in an approximate square. It was a square formed by the limbs of Mavis Clutter.
Bobby surveyed the situation. “If Fay Wray was alive today,” he said, “she’d be proud of that workmanship.”
Mavis looked back at him from a standing position, legs akimbo, her body frozen in a permanent star jump by the ropes attached to her wrists and ankles.
“You really think,” she said, “that this will cure my back pain?”
“Absolutely,” replied Bobby. “It’s all about stretching the spine. Chiropractors charge a fortune for this kind of therapy.”
Bobby turned to the shadowy figure standing in the gathering gloom behind him.
“What do you think?” he said.
Irma Drusen stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I like it,” she said. “Now give her some Lucozade.”
It was dusk on a cold autumnal Saturday. From the charred remains of spent fireworks which littered the grass of the playing field, it could only be early November. Or Christmas. Or indeed New Year. Or possibly mid-summer after some kind of sporting event or family barbecue. Let’s face it, it could be just about any time of year, but on this occasion it was November, and Bobby was in Essex. Quite how he’d come to be there, he wasn’t entirely sure. He could remember the journey, the National Express coach, the endless hours sat next to Mavis Clutter and the pointless tales of her cats. What he couldn’t recall was ever having said yes to any of this.
Nevertheless, here he was: tying up a pensioner on a school playing field in Basildon, in the hope of attracting a cow-coloured, man-eating, retinopathy-screening mean machine, possibly with five legs, although that had yet to be confirmed. He wondered how his life had come to this. And if there was any way back. Looking into the distance, past the church on the corner, he pondered his chances of ever finding his way back to the bus depot.
Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. Bobby adjusted his view and looked towards the vicarage. He watched as the frosted glass of a small window at the front of the house opened and a face appeared, indistinct from this distance, yet clearly visible. Something fell from the window, something small, something yellow. From where he stood, Bobby could not accurately identify it without the use of a pinhole occluder, but as it hit the ground, a faint noise rang out and carried across the road in the still evening air, rustling through the branches of the poplar trees opposite. It sounded like a quack. It was followed by a curse. Then a short prayer for forgiveness.
Bobby recalled the final words spoken to him by Sir Roger Logmar as he and Mavis boarded the coach in Oxford city centre: “There’s no eye in team,” he’d said. Bobby still had no idea what he meant. They’d ridden that coach as far as the South Mimms services on the M25, where Sir Roger had instructed them to switch vehicles in an attempt to throw any would-be followers off the scent. Bobby had politely pointed out that they were unlikely to bump into the D Generation buying a Ginsters pasty at a Welcome Break service station on the M25, and that any undercover optician worth his salt would be fully capable of reading a coach number plate at a distance of twenty metres, thereby recognising the swap, and rendering their change of vehicle meaningless.
For his part, Roger had informed Bobby that he hadn’t got where he is today by taking things for granted, and that given the incomplete nature of OOOH’s dossier on the creature, no such assumptions could be made, and that for all anyone knows, it regularly eats at Julie’s Pantry. At which point they’d agreed to disagree, and Bobby had gone along with the plan to change coaches.
Boarding the National Express service from Stevenage to Southend, Bobby and Mavis had disembarked at Basildon Bus Station, where they’d successfully rendezvoused with Irma. She’d held up a handwritten sign which read ‘DRUSEN: MACULA CLUTTER’, and they’d spotted her immediately, Bobby introducing them both, as Mavis took her coat off. After a brief period of small-talk, during which they all agreed that it gets dark very early these days, but is definitely not as cold as it used to be, Irma had led them out of the bus depot, and past a police cordon surrounding ‘Raquel’s’ nightclub on the corner. Bobby had been intrigued by the white-suited forensic team carrying what appeared to be human body parts out of the building in large plastic bags, but he’d never visited Essex before, and assumed it was par for the course.
The walk up Clay Hill Road had taken perhaps ten minutes, not including the regular pauses for Mavis to rest her aching feet and express her disgust at the way the current government treats pensioners. All in all, it had taken them three hours. Bobby had suggested getting a taxi, but Irma was keen to avoid leaving a paper trail of financial transactions, and Mavis expressed a reluctance to “feed the fat cats on the council”. Which Bobby found ironic, as she wouldn’t shut up about her own. Cats, not council.
By the time they’d reached Queenswood Junior School, the sun was setting, not just on that cold November day, but also on Bobby’s resolve to do anything meaningful before nightfall. It was all he could do to muster the physical and mental strength to tie Mavis Clutter to a couple of trees with large ropes.
As he poured the last drops of Lucozade down the trussed-up pensioner’s throat, Bobby turned to Irma Drusen.
“Shall we go to bed?” he said.
Irma looked taken aback. “We’ve only just met,” she replied. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
“No,” he said, “I mean turn in for the night. I’m knackered. Which way’s the hotel?”
“The hotel?”
“Sir Roger said accommodation would be provided.”
“I wouldn’t focus too much on accommodation,” replied Irma, repeating the line that had won her ‘Best of Show’ at the 2004 ‘Jocular Ocular’ comedy festival in Beirut. It was wasted on Bobby Macula, who looked at her with an expression of tired disappointment and vacant bewilderment. Irma wondered if it wasn’t too late to resurrect her old stand-up career, and perhaps get some work on the after dinner circuit. She resolved to do more writing in her spare time, and perhaps the occasional open mic spot at ophthalmology conferences across Europe the following year.
“So where are we sleeping?” asked Bobby.
“I’ve set up a bed in the school,” replied Irma. “Well, I say bed. It’s more of a story mat. But it’s within easy reach of the nature table, so if you get hungry, there are nuts, berries and a cool glass of rain water.”
Bobby screwed up his face a little. The “deadly game of Eye Spy” that Sir Roger had promised him, was beginning to sound a bit like a camping trip for underprivileged orphans. He wondered if things could get any worse.
“But if you think you’ll be getting any sleep tonight,” added Irma, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
Bobby regretted tempting fate.
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