Chapter Sixteen

“All I said,” announced Bobby, about to say it again, “was –”

“Don’t say it again,” replied Irma, as if anticipating that fact.

“‘Is that a crowbar in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?’” he finished.

Irma rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know why you had to take offence,” he added. “Especially as it was a crowbar.”

“Well I certainly wasn’t pleased to see you,” replied Irma.

“Hey,” said Bobby, “if it wasn’t for me, we’d still be outside with the alarm going off. You’re just grumpy because you’re full of shit.”

Irma looked down at the manure on her spying trousers. She was grumpy, it was true. She’d momentarily lost her cool, let the situation get to her, and run into a compost heap. For Irma Drusen, the legendary poster girl of undercover ophthalmology, it had been a bad day at the office.

“Look,” she said, “let’s just draw a line under this episode and start again. We’ve got off on the wrong foot...” She looked down at the toe she’d stubbed on the badly painted gnome. “... but if we’re going to stand any chance of defeating the D Generation, we need to work together. An effective, cohesive unit, combining our skills and our strengths. And I know we can do it. Sir Roger speaks very highly of you.”

“Really?” said Bobby, surprised.

“Well, no,” replied Irma, “I was just being polite. Two days ago, he’d never heard of you. Even now, he can barely remember your name. But there’s one thing he has told me.”

“What’s that?” asked Bobby.

“There’s no eye in team,” she replied.

“And what does that mean?” asked Bobby.

Irma looked back at him with the sage expression of a wise old owl.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “Now follow me, we’ve got work to do.”

Irma turned and walked off through the smartly decorated entrance hall of Queenswood Junior School. Bobby wondered if he should point out the muddy, herb-encrusted footprints she was leaving behind her in a telltale trail which would surely be spotted by anyone who followed, but in the end he decided not to question the spying techniques of such an experienced operative, and simply felt grateful that he had an easy way of tracking someone who, let’s face it, walked considerably faster than he did.

Following in Irma’s footsteps, Bobby wandered past a photographic display of all the Head Boys and Head Girls in the school’s history, which stretched proudly along the corridor like a walk of fame for pint-sized swots that nobody liked. Pausing for a moment to examine the pictures, he called after Irma.

“Good grief,” he said, “have you seen 1983? Was that the year the freak show came to town?”

Irma did not respond. She was crossing the main hall and making for the stairs to the first floor. Bobby dawdled after her. Reaching the foot of the stairs, Irma turned to check for her companion.

“Come on,” she said impatiently, “we don’t have all day.”

She waited for Bobby to catch up, then led him up the stairs and into classroom 4B. Irma made for the teacher’s desk and sat down in a comfy swivel chair.

“Grab a seat,” she said, “we have a lot to discuss.”

Bobby looked at the choice of seating on offer, and reluctantly selected a hard plastic chair without arms, which stood no more than a foot off the ground. Resting his chin on his knees, he tried to make himself comfortable, before deciding he’d feel more at home on a desk. He repositioned himself at the front of the class, legs swinging like a rebellious eight-year-old.

“Ok,” said Irma, breathing in deeply, “here’s the situation. When it comes to the D Generation, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Bobby.

“For a start, we think it’s cow-coloured,” replied Irma.

“I know,” confirmed Bobby.

“Which presents us with a problem,” added Irma.

“Does it?” asked Bobby.

“It does,” replied Irma. “Bobby, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified information. It is not to be divulged to anyone, anywhere at any time, regardless of the extremes of physical or mental duress you may be placed under.”

She looked Bobby in the eye. He looked back, unconsciously biting his nails.

“By which,” Irma continued, “I mean torture. Bobby, if this information were to fall into the wrong hands, it could bring down governments, cost tens of thousands of lives, and perhaps even change the world as we know it. You must take what I am about to say to your grave.”

Bobby looked serious. As serious as he could look whilst sitting on a school desk and swinging his legs.

“Go on,” he said.

Irma inhaled deeply, then spoke softly, yet clearly, and with a powerful and fiery intensity which resonated strongly within the depths of Bobby’s soul.

“Bobby,” she said, “I have a cow phobia.”

“You what?” replied Bobby, in a tone which perhaps lacked the respect she’d been hoping for.

“I’m scared of cows,” she clarified.

“So?”

“Mr Macula,” she said indignantly, “I don’t think you’re quite grasping the seriousness of this situation. I’m lactose intolerant to the point of fainting. Dairy-free isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s what stands between me and abject terror.”

“At the risk of repeating myself,” said Bobby, about to repeat himself, “so?”

“I can’t get within twelve feet of an udder.”

Bobby was tempted to go for a third ‘so’, but he held back.

“The D Generation isn’t a cow,” he pointed out.

“It’s cow-coloured,” came the reply.

“So?” said Bobby, in a moment of weakness.

“Mr Macula,” replied Irma, “I only have to see a black patch on white leather, and I pass out. I can feel faint at the sight of a Jack Russell. Catch a glimpse of a zebra in the wrong light, and I get palpitations.”

Bobby wondered how often Irma came across zebras in semi-darkness, but he decided not to ask.

“So what’s the highly classified information?” he said.

“That is,” replied Irma.

“I thought you said it could bring down governments?”

“Given the right circumstances, yes.”

“It doesn’t seem that likely.”

“Bobby,” said Irma, “look around you. There hasn’t been a bottle of free school milk in this classroom for thirty years. Ask yourself who’s to blame for that fact?”

“Thatcher?” he suggested.

“That’s what they’d like you to think,” replied Irma. “If it emerged that the ban was, in fact, brought about by a highly secretive, yet devastatingly effective, anti-cow pressure group led by a young orthoptist driven by pure bovine terror, it would shake the British establishment to its very foundations.”

“You’re telling me that you were responsible for ending free school milk in the 1970s?” asked Bobby, incredulously.

“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” replied Irma, mysteriously.

“Ok,” said Bobby, about to ignore that instruction three times, “so what’s this got to do with the current situation? With the D Generation? With my role in all this?”

“Bobby,” said Irma, “my cow phobia is the reason you’re here.”

“I’m not a psychotherapist,” he replied. “I mean, sure, I’ve learnt to work through a lot of issues; I’ve been to hell and back with the fallout from a tortoise-drowning; I’ve suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder -”

“I thought that was medically unconfirmed?” Irma interrupted.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Bobby stated, matter-of-factly. “All I’m saying is that I’ve suffered. But that doesn’t make me qualified to cure a fruit loop like you. At best, I can photograph your retinas and take a basic eye history.”

“You misunderstand me,” replied Irma, refusing to take offence at Bobby’s medical diagnosis of her mental health. “You’re not here to help me mentally. You’re here to help me physically. Surely you must have questioned why The Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health asked for assistance? And from you in particular?”

“They told me everyone else said no. And I’m pre-diabetic.”

“That’s true,” replied Irma, “but why ask for help at all? OOOH has me. And I have experience. And the ability to break necks like breadsticks. I could take on and defeat a five-legged retinopathy-screening monstrosity both single-handedly and with one arm tied behind my back.”

“They amount to the same thing,” Bobby pointed out.

“But not,” Irma ignored him, “if it’s cow-coloured.”

Bobby looked indignant. “So I’m here to do your job while you cower in the bushes?”

“Don’t use the word ‘cower’,” she said, “it brings me out in sweats. And make no mistake: I’ll be pulling my weight in this partnership. But I can’t do it alone. I have the experience, the expertise, the knowledge, the skills and, above all, the wanton killer instinct. But I can’t get within poking distance of anything bovine. Even just cosmetically.”

“That’s a stroke of luck for the opticians,” said Bobby.

“Is it?” replied Irma. “Or did they plan it all along?”

“Well, not if your cow phobia is top secret,” Bobby pointed out.

“Top secret, yes,” said Irma, “but not completely unknown. To my knowledge, there are two people alive in this world who know how I feel about cows. Three, counting you.”

“And they are?”

“Sir Roger Logmar...”

“And..?”

“Thatcher.”

“You think Margaret Thatcher’s in with the opticians?” said Bobby, dubiously.

“I don’t know,” replied Irma. “All I’m saying is that forty years after forcing her to endure public vilification by taking the rap for ending universal free school milk, a group of black hat opticians come up with a cow-coloured, man-eating bio-organism capable of detecting diabetic retinopathy without eye drops. Surely that can’t be coincidence?”

Bobby felt this might be a use of the word ‘surely’ that he hadn’t previously come across.

“I think it’s wise to keep an open mind,” he said.

“Milk Snatcher,” said Irma, solemnly. “Those words stung.”

“I’m sure they did,” replied Bobby, “but I can think of easier ways to take revenge.”

“Such as?”

“She could let a Friesian loose in your garden.”

“Maybe,” said Irma. “Although I bought my council house, and put up a cattle grid. The fact remains, however: there’s a murdering, monstrous killing machine out there; the only agent qualified to stop it is me; and I can’t look it in the leather without a crash trolley and three tanks of oxygen.”

Bobby sighed. He’d heard some excuses in his time. Mainly from Fatima when he’d found her with thirty-seven empty crisp packets and a cleavage full of crumbs. But this one took the biscuit. As did Fatima, regularly, and with little concern for her waistline. He suspected that Irma’s tales of cows were just a load of bullocks, and she was milking the situation in an effort to butter him up, but he knew that the human mind was a complex machine. He’d been pushed to the brink by a tortoise. Who knows what a cow could do? Looking at the undercover agent in front of him, the parsley garnishing her shoes, and the manure on her trousers, he resolved to give Irma the benefit of the doubt.

“Ok,” he said, reluctantly, “if you tell me what we need to do, I’m willing to do it. Within reason, of course. I’m not scared of cows, but I’m no killer either. At best, I can grill a beefburger to within an inch of its life.”

Irma looked at once relieved, pleased and determined.

“That’s all I need,” she replied.

Bobby wondered if she was planning a barbecue. For a moment, at least. Within seconds, his thoughts were interrupted by a blood-curdling scream.