“Oh my God!” Roberta gasped.

“What?” said Carl.

“Look at all the statues!”

As they wandered from room to room in the museum and art gallery, they saw statues everywhere. Hundreds of them, all different shapes and sizes and colours, most with heads, some not.

“There’s so many,” Carl breathed, “Which one is the statue’s head we’re looking for?”

“No idea.  What was the clue again?”

Carl shrugged.  “I dunno.”

“Call yourself educated!”

“Call yourself pretty!”

“Is that an insult?”  Roberta whipped a notepad out of her handbag and scribbled a little line next to a whole bunch of little lines.  “Oh, my bonus is going to be big,” she said, “Insult me again, go on, insult me.”

“Ugly cow!”

“Fantastic!”

“Now hit me!”

Roberta whacked Carl across the face with her notebook.  Carl grabbed her pen and drew a line on the back of his hand.

“How many you got?” Roberta asked.

“Nine,” Carl replied, “How many you got?”

“Eight!”

“Bitch!” said Carl.

“Thanks,” said Roberta, and put another line in her notebook.  “Wasn’t it something to do with food?”

“It usually is,” Carl sighed dreamily,

“Are you talking about one of your sexual perversions again?”

“No!”

“You are, aren’t you?  I bet you like to cover your naked body in chocolate sauce and have your wife – “

“Er,” said a voice in the background.

Carl and Roberta both looked around, confused, as the background voice echoed, “We’re hoping to get a 15 rating for this, so if you could just keep sex out of the conversation.”

“That’ll be easy considering what I have to work with,” Roberta sneered at Carl.

“Sex couldn’t be further from my mind right now,” Carl grimaced.

Carl and Roberta glared at each other.  Then Roberta took a deep breath and said, “Right, the clue.  What was it?  Something about costing an arm and a leg – “

“To eat in this place where there’s a statues head!” Carl finished.

“The tea room!” they said in unison, and began running.

* * *

Outside, in Chamberlain Square, the huge crowd of Japanese tourists were still making their way to New Street Station, passing a man sitting on the floor by the side of the fountain shaking a large pair of headphones.  The man was young, slim and wearing designer casuals.  His name was Bruce.  He was Welsh.

“Ah, Ameri’an wubbish,” a Japanese tourist laughed, pointing at the headphones, “Should ha’e bought Fujitsu.”

Fifty-seven grinning Japanese tourists held out their cameras, their mobiles, their digital camcorders and their MP3 players, all bearing the hallmark of Fujitsu.

“Bugger off,” said Bruce.

The tourists wandered off, photographing everything in their path.

Bruce shook his headphones some more and wondered if he should have forked out extra for the Japanese brand.  He could no longer hear the solicitors who were on the trail of the stolen statue of Boulton, Watt and Murdoch, and that wasn’t good.  He needed to know what they were saying, where they were going, how close they were getting to the location of the stolen statue (although, judging from their efforts so far, it could take weeks, and he’d only booked three days holiday off work).

Statue of Boulton, Watt and Murdoch, just in case you’d forgotten what it looked like

Maybe he should follow them into the museum, but what if he was spotted?  It wouldn’t be easy to hide his identity, not with all the surveillance equipment he was carrying (none of it Fujitsu, he realised).

Bruce slumped against the wall of the fountain and pondered.  It had seemed like a good idea at the time.  The plan had come to him after reading Dan Brown’s Deception Point, and then Digital Fortress, and then Angels and Demons, and finally the Da Vinci Code.  On the very same day that he finished the Da Vinci Code, the plan had formulated in his mind.

He would steal a well known Birmingham statue, hide it, demand a ransom for its return, and then tell his boss at Birmingham City Council’s Department of Well Known Birmingham Statues to stick his job where the sun didn’t shine.

And he’d get to watch solicitors – who he hated because they’d refused to represent him on a recent speeding conviction – run all over the place, just like the people in Dan Brown’s books.

Nice.

His first task had been to decide which statue to steal.  Queen Victoria was an obvious choice as it was right outside the Council House where he worked,

but maybe it was a bit too obvious.  And he could hardly whip old Vic under his jacket on his way home without somebody noticing. [pic]

The Floozie would have been good,

but he didn’t fancy the idea of getting his designer shirt and jacket and trousers wet, and he’d look pretty conspicuous without them (he could just imagine the front page of the Evening Mail: “Naked man steals statue”).

As for the listing iron man,

well, nobody would pay good money to see that returned would they [pic].

The bronze statue of Thomas Attwood lounging up the steps in Chamberlain Square had been considered,

but Bruce doubted anyone would actually notice it was missing, so few people knew it was there to begin with. In the end he’d decided on Boulton, Watt and Murdoch because Broad Street provided easy access.  It would be a doddle to steal.

Or so he thought.

Getting transport hadn’t been a problem.  He’d simply pulled on a pair of old overalls he’d found in the basement, waltzed into the Department Responsible for the Cleaning and Maintaining of Birmingham’s Well Known Statues and stolen the keys to a flat bed truck with a swing arm crane on the back.  Nobody questioned him – nobody at the Council knew what was going on at the best of times [apologies to Birmingham City Council, please don’t increase my council tax – ed].

No, the problem Bruce encountered was not stealing the truck and driving it, unhindered, out of underground car park into Margaret Street. 

The problem had been the traffic.

He finished work at 5 o’clock.  By the time he’d stolen the truck and got out onto the road, it was 5.30pm.

Rush hour.

Birmingham city centre was gridlocked, as it was most nights only Bruce didn’t know this because he caught the train to work.  He had planned to drive to Broad Street, tip the statue onto the back of the truck using the swinging arm, drive to his destination, tip the statue off, and drive back before the underground car park closed for the night.

As it was, it took him over an hour just to reach Broad Street.   And when he pulled up at the side of the road next to the statue, the honking fury of traffic forced into a single lane forced him to move on before road rage took on a whole new dimension.

It took almost an hour for him to reach the top of Broad Street, turn round at Five Ways island, back down Broad Street, around Paradise Circus Queensway, down Great Charles Street, round St Chads Circus, up Snow Hill Queensway and onto Colmore Row, turning right down Edmund Street and left onto Margaret street again.  By which time the underground car park was closed.

He parked outside the barrier. He wasn’t sure what to do next, so he waited for inspiration.  And waited.  He got hungry and nipped off across St Philips Square to MacDonalds for a Big Mac, chips, extra portion of chicken nuggets and a diet Coke, and waited some more.  His bladder throbbed and was forced into Starbucks to use their toilets, but the staff glared at him and he felt obliged to buy a gallon bucket of cappuccino.  Except they didn’t have change for a £20 note so he had to use his credit card, and if he was using that he thought he might as well get a slice of carrot cake while he was at it, which gave him stomach ache.  Clutching his abdomen, he shuffled down Colmore Row towards Boots the Chemist in the Great Western Arcade

but it was shut.  By the time he hobbled back again, there was a tow truck and a parking attendant next to his truck.  His heart swelled to six times its normal size.

Adopting a deep, Northern accent, Bruce approached the parking attendant and said, “Sorry, mate, just driven down from Manchester, like, got caught on the hop, so to speak.  Ain’t been more than 5 minutes.”  By the time he’d finished speaking, his accent had changed from Northern, to Cornish, and finally Irish.

The parking attendant stared at him.  The man in the tow truck looked on silently, leaning out of the open window smoking a cigarette.

“Look,” said Bruce, in a Scottish accent, “Can we come to some sort of arrangement?  Me boss has been on my back all day about getting this load delivered.”  They both stared at the empty truck.  “Which I’ve just dropped off,” Bruce said quickly, “And now I have to drive all the way back to … “  He couldn’t remember where he’d said he was from.  “Leeds,” he said, hoping nobody would notice, “And pick up another load, and me missus is moaning about me being on the road all the time and I’ve got a bad case of the runs.  Give a hard working man a break, will ya?”

Silence.  The parking attendant glared at him as only parking attendants can.

“Twenny quid,” Bruce said.

Silence.

“Forty.”

Silence.

“Okay, fifty quid to turn a blind eye and walk away.”

The parking attendant looked down at his parking ticket pad and sighed heavily.  “I’m just going to give you a warning,” he said, his voice strangely squeaky.

“Great,” said Bruce, “Thanks.”

“And … “

“And?” said Bruce.

“And,” said the parking attendant.

“Oh.”  Bruce glanced at the tow truck driver as he rifled in his pockets for money.  He tried to slip the notes unnoticed into the back facing hand of the parking attendant who was pretending to stare off nonchalantly down the road, but the money missed and fell onto the ground.  They both went to pick it up and banged heads quite painfully.

In the end, the parking attendant gave him a parking ticket and took the money, but the tow truck drove away without his truck.  Which was something.

What with MacDonalds, Starbucks and bribery money, it was turning out to be a very expensive night.  He’d just add an extra bit onto the ransom money.

Bruce finally pulled up beside the statue of Boulton, Watt and Murdoch on Broad Street at 7.30pm. He battled with the controls of the swinging arm, almost taking out the top deck of a passing bus in the process.  He finally managed to delicately manoeuvre the arm around the back of the statue and tip it forward.

The statue was supposed to fall straight onto the flat bed truck.

Instead, it toppled off the pedestal and crashed down onto the pavement.

“Bollocks!” said Bruce.

What the bloody hell was he going to do now?

People were starting to gather around him in noisy crowds, drunken people from nearby bars.  Semi naked women giggled as they clambered over the statue, men bellowed that he was a silly bugger, or words to that effect.

Bruce was just about to jack it all in and drive off – bugger the fallen statue, the ransom and his dreams of telling his boss exactly where to stick his job – when a strange thing happened.

A throng of burly men with Welsh accents ambled by.  They took one look at the statue, at Bruce’s horrified face and the empty flat bed truck, and cheered.

They were, they said, all members of the Welsh Rugby Club out on a stag night from Cardiff.

They all, to a man, sounded exactly like Tom Jones.

And they were more than willing to try and lift the double sized statue of the three men and a scroll onto the back of the truck.

There were 13 of them, plus the coach, someone’s brother, the bride-to-be’s father, step-father and foster dad.  They circled the statue, all yelling to each other in broad Welsh accents, and then lifted.

To Bruce’s amazement, the statue rose off the ground a little.  An inch.  Two inches.  Then a foot.  Then it was almost the level of the flat bed of the truck, all the Welshmen heaving and hoing and grunting a lot.

Then the statue fell back on the now cracked pavement in a cloud of dust.

“Can’t do it, boyo,” said a particularly large rugby player.  “Need some leverage, see.  We can lift it, like, but we can’t shift it over onto the truck.”

“You girls need a hand,” a voice bellowed.

The huge crowd which had now gathered around the fallen statue looked across to the other side of the road.  There, beneath the big wheel which was so much better than the London Eye, stood a large group of men.  Big men.  With big muscles.  And big gobs.

“Sowth Burmingum tug of war party out on the lash,” bellowed the voice in a thick Brummie accent.  “Are you the only gays in your village then, boyos?”

“Brummie wimps,” the rugby players bellowed back.

“Bet we can get that statue on the back of that truck for yow pansies in no toyme.”

“Yeah,” jeered the Welsh rugby players, “Come on then, boyos, show us what yer made of then, like.”

Bruce watched in stunned amazement as the tug of war blokes begged a length of rope from the big wheel attendants and lashed it round the statue.  Fifteen drunken revellers cheerfully stopped the traffic on Broad Street as the rope was pulled across the back of the flat bed truck to the other side of the road.

And then the rugby players heaved and grunted as they lifted the statue.  The tug of war blokes bellowed, “Two, three, heyuv, two, three, heyuv.”

The statue rose.  The statue, pulled by the rope, moved sideways. 

The statue slithered heavily onto the truck.

750 people at the bottom of Broad Street cheered rapturously.  Rugby players belted each other on the backs, tug of war men slapped hands in the air and shouted, “Yeah, we showed em, day we!”

It was quite a moment.  The rugby players threw hefty arms across the broad shoulders of the tug of war team, who all yelled, “Fook off yer gay bastard” as they lumbered off to the nearest bar.  Bruce even got a couple of eyeballs from young women who surely couldn’t have worn any less without being done for indecent exposure.  The air was electric with victory and alcohol-induced revelry.

It was only when Bruce got into his truck and drove away with his cargo safely on board that it occurred to him that 750 people would be able to identify him in a lineup as the man who had stolen the statue from the bottom of Broad Street.

* * *

They hurried through the museum gift shop and into the long glassware room.  Roberta suddenly stopped at a display case and breathed, “Oh that blue vase from the Ming Dynasty would go just perfect in my bedroom.”  She turned to see if Carl was witnessing its glassy blue perfection, when spotted the enormous fat Bhudda in the adjoining Bhudda Gallery.

“Relative of yours?” she grinned.

“Oh wait while I stop laughing at your hysterical wit!” Carl snapped back.  “If I can possibly tear you away from your impromptu shopping trip, perhaps we could get on with the matter in hand, vis a vis, the clue!”

“Vis a vis?”

“Oh come on!”

They hurried into the Edwardian Tea Room behind the giant Bhudda and looked around.  Wood panelling, works of art upon the walls, a balcony above displaying old metal pots and pans.  The place was heaving with schoolchildren who wouldn’t know a work of art if it had a huge neon sign on it flashing ‘Work of Art’.  The mini philistines ran riot amongst the diners who were trying to enjoy their expensively bought meals.

“Where?” said Carl.

“I’m looking!”

“Where is it?”

“I’m still looking!”

Carl moved towards the tray stack, licking his lips at the steaming meals on display.  Roberta’s stomach grumbled.

“We’re supposed to be looking for the clue, not stuffing our faces, again!” she snarled.

“I have an expense account,” Carl snapped back, “I can do what I like, eat what I like, when I like.”

“Lucky you!” Roberta sneered, mimicking, “I have an expense account, I have an expense account.”

“There!” Carl suddenly gasped, looking beyond Roberta’s contorted face.  “That’s it!  The statue!”

Roberta spun round, open mouthed.  It stood in a window.  A statue.  Gold.  Around four foot tall, standing on one leg on top of a plinth with an arm raised, like a skinny discus thrower. 

The statue had a head.  And on top of the head was what looked like a folded piece of paper.

The clue!

Carl and Roberta broke into a sprint, both wanting to be the first to find the clue and read it.

Carl stumbled over the queuing rope.  Roberta stumbled through a group of shrieking schoolchildren.  They both reached the statue in the window at the same time.  It towered above their heads.  They couldn’t reach the folded piece of paper, their grasping reach didn’t even come close.

“What are we going to do?” Roberta breathed, staring up at the statue.

“Improvise,” Carl said.  And he reached out and grabbed a dining chair, dragging it beneath the statue. 

“Not high enough,” Roberta said.

Carl grabbed another chair.  And then another.  Very slowly, with the use of six chairs, Carl built a pyramid in front of the statue.

Roberta stared at the construction.  “Yeah?” she said, “And?”

“And, up you go,” Carl grinned triumphantly, motioning upwards with his arms, “Go get the clue.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Why me?”

“Well, you’re lighter.”  He grabbed hold of his protruding stomach with both hands, and wobbled it.  “I’m a bit … unfit.”

“A bit?”

Carl narrowed his eyes.  “Go get the clue.”

“No!”

“You just have to climb up and grab it.”  Carl gripped the topmost chair and shook it.  “Look, it’s safe enough.”   The chair pyramid promptly crumbled into a tangled pile of wood.

Just as Carl was piecing the pyramid back together again, a woman in an apron dashed out from behind the food counter and raced over to them.  “What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked.

“We won’t be long,” Carl said, as Roberta stood there with her arms across her chest, furiously rolling her eyeballs.  “We just need to – “

“Put those chairs back at the tables this instant,” the woman said.

“But we just have to – “

“NOW!” the woman hissed.

“I’m trying to explain, we just need to – “

The woman – who was tiny but clearly bursting with barely repressed aggression – froze Carl in mid chair lift with a look that could have halted a charging bull elephant in its tracks.  “Put … the chairs … back,” she said slowly, “Or I’m calling the police.”

“You can’t call the police,” Carl dared to utter.

“Why not?” the woman growled.

Carl stood up to his full height and stuck out his chin.  “Because,” he said to the tiny woman and the crowds of schoolchildren that had gathered to watch, “I’m a solicitor.”

Carl stood there proudly while the woman looked at him with a What? expression.  Roberta rolled her eyes towards Carl and said, “That might work if you were, say, a famous politician, or a CIA agent, or Richard Branson.  But I’m a solicitor just isn’t in the same league, really, is it.”

“Okay,” Carl said to the woman, “I’ll put the chairs back if you can lend me a long pole I can use to knock that piece of paper off the top of this statues head.”

“You want to knock off the statues head?” the woman gasped.

“No, I want to – “

“You vandal!”  The woman turned and bellowed, “Betty!  Call security!  Code red!  We have a vandal in the building!”

A high pitched alarm suddenly filled the restaurant.  The tiny woman positioned herself in some karate stance in front of Carl.  Carl’s jaw dropped open and his eyes whitened in terror.

Roberta sighed heavily.  “Oh, for crying out loud,” she said, picking up a child from the crowd and lifting it up above her head.  “Can you reach that piece of paper?” she asked it.

“This piece of paper,” said the child excitedly.

“How many pieces of paper can you see up there?” Roberta drawled.

“Is this an appropriate moment for your biting sarcasm,” Carl squeaked in a terribly high pitched voice.

“Got it!” the child declared gleefully, and Roberta lowered it gently to the ground and took the piece of paper from its small hand.

“Why didn’t you do that before?” Carl squeaked.

“I didn’t think of it before.”

Three quite overweight security guards suddenly appeared at the far doorway. Roberta and Carl glanced at the doorway nearest them.  The tiny woman was a tightly coiled spring, watching Carl like a hawk, waiting to pounce.

“Run,” Roberta whispered from the side of her mouth.

“What?”

“RUN, YOU IDIOT!”

They sprinted towards the doorway as the tiny woman screamed like a banshee and made a grab for Carl’s shirt, missing it by millimetres.  The guards came running through the restaurant towards them as the tiny woman bawled, “That’s them!  Get them!  Don’t let them get away!”

Carl and Roberta raced through the Bhudda gallery and through the glass displays, Roberta pausing only momentarily by the blue Ming vase.

By the time they reached the gift shop, Carl was already gasping like a steam engine and the three security guards were getting closer.  In one fluid motion, Roberta opened her bag, reached inside, took out her purse, pulled out a note, replaced the purse, snatched up a large rolled print of Birmingham From the Air from a display, threw the note down on the counter as she raced passed, and began whacking Carl with the poster hissing, “Faster! Run faster!  And join a bloody gym you fat slob.”

Roberta and Carl ran through the museum with a red faced Carl crying and gasping for air in front of Roberta, who continually whacked and prodded him with the rolled up poster.  They crashed through the exit doors and stumbled down the outer steps.  They could hear the security guards close behind.

Without thinking, Roberta grabbed Carl and pulled them both against the wall of the museum.

“Kiss me!” she hissed.

“Wh-ha-a-t?”

“Kiss me!” 

Throwing her arms around his sweating neck, Roberta pulled Carl’s face towards hers but couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his lips.  Instead, they stood there, cheek to hot cheek, pretending to kiss, as the three security guards appeared at the top of the steps beside them.

“Quiet,” Roberta whispered, glimpsing the security guards from the corner of her eye as they scanned the crowds in Chamberlain Square.  “Stop wheezing.  And stop sweating!  Jeez, its like hugging a hot sponge.”

“Wh-ha-a-t … are … we … doo-hing?” Carl breathed laboriously into her neck.

“Hiding.  I saw it in a movie once.  They’ll never recognise us like this.”

“Despite the fact that we’re wearing the same clothes and look exactly like the people they were just chasing.”

“It worked in the film.”

“This isn’t a film.  This is real life.  We’re screwed.”

“Oh ye of little faith.  Watch out,” Roberta suddenly gasped, clasping Carl tighter into her neck, “They’re looking this way.  Don’t move.”

“If only I could,” came Carl’s muffled voice.  Seconds of tense silence passed.  “I like your perfume,” he mumbled.  

“Oh, do you?  It’s called Poison.  You should get your wife some.”

“Your hair’s very soft.”

“Thanks!  I condition it every day so it retains a youthful shine and bounce.  Hey!” she hissed, nudging him, “Are you getting fresh with me?”

“No, just making conversation.  Have they gone yet, only I think I might be suffocating?”

“Hang on, they’re still looking around.  Now they’re looking at each other, two of them rather lingeringly.  I think they’re gay.  Now they’re turning, they’re … yep, they’re going back into the mu- “

Carl pushed himself away from Roberta and sucked in a huge gulp of air.  “Oh God,” he gasped, “I thought I was going to die.  My whole life flashed before my darkening eyes.  It was quite disappointing, I haven’t done much at all.”

“Except eat, apparently.”

Carl stiffened.  Roberta ignored him and glanced towards the steps to make sure the security guards were gone before hurriedly unfolding the slip of paper.  Her eyes flickered over the typed words.  Carl, wheezing, stood beside her and read it too.  Then they looked at each other with furrowed brows.

“Well, I don’t understand it,” Roberta shrugged.

“Me neither.”

They read it again.

And again.

Their furrows deepened.

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