With pictures!
Roberta and Carl climbed up the steps at the canalside and onto Broad Street, Carl still holding his wallet and looking confused. “Where are we going?” he asked distractedly.
“To see if all will be revealed,” snapped Roberta. “After which you are taking me for a slap up meal at the most expensive restaurant I can find.”
They stood at the traffic lights on Broad Street waiting for them to turn red. When the beeping started, they crossed. Then turned left.
“Why?” asked Carl.
“Why what?” said Roberta.
“Why am I taking you for a slap up meal at an expensive restaurant?”
“Because you have £275 in cash in your wallet and you don’t get The Point, that’s why.”
“What point?”
“The point you don’t get.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I know!”
They were just outside Walkabout, the Australian bar. The road beside them was heavy with rush-hour traffic. Up on the top deck of a bus, a woman wearing a furry pinstripe suit stared blankly out of the window, her eyes hollow and empty. The bus stopped opposite Roberta and Carl and idled in the gridlock. Suddenly, the doors opened and the mad woman who’d said she was a secret suddenly jumped off, landed next to them, glanced at Roberta, then snatched the paper clue out of Carl’s hand and jumped back on the bus laughing manically.
Roberta and Carl looked at the woman through the now closed doors of the bus. They heard her say, “Let’s go!” to the bus driver, who looked at her and pointed at the static traffic ahead.
“Should we go get the clue?” Carl asked, his hand still outstretched.
Roberta sighed. “D’you know,” she said, “I’m not sure I can be bothered.”
“Me neither.”
Inside the bus, standing next to a catatonic driver, the woman was jumping up and down shouting, “Push the pedal to the metal! Let’s get the fluff out of here! Go, man, GO!”
And still the bus didn’t move.
Roberta and Carl turned and carried on walking down Broad Street by the Hyatt Hotel. “I’m telling you now,” Roberta said, “If all isn’t revealed by the time we get to the bottom of this road, I’m going home.”
“I thought you wanted a slap up meal?”
“I don’t care any more.”
Carl turned to smile at her in relief as he thrust his wallet back in his pocket. Roberta dropped her eyes to the floor, suddenly feeling very tired. They both walked into a man who was standing dead in the middle of the path.
“Ooops, sorry,” cried Roberta.
The man didn’t move, didn’t look at her. He was staring straight ahead with his eyes wide and his mouth open.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
Still nothing. He was wearing a lot of equipment round his neck, binoculars and some other gadgets. There were earphones either side of his head. He looked stupefied.
“Nutter,” breathed Carl, starting to walk away. And then Carl stopped. He stood stock still in the middle of the pavement staring straight ahead with astonished eyes, just like the man they’d bumped into. Roberta wondered if there was some kind of Dr Who forcefield there and was riveted to the spot, too terrified to move in case she got caught up in it. But she managed to turn her head slightly, and look at what the men appeared to be looking at.
And she saw it too.
“What the hell is that?” she gasped out loud.
* * *
We’ll take a little intermission here, just to build up the suspense a bit. I’d put another bit of the story in here, except there’s no bits left – let me just check my waste paper bin in case there’s something I’ve thrown away by mistake.
No. Nothing.
Just talk amongst yourselves for a bit. Tum te tum te tum. Fancy a coffee? Yes? Off you toddle then, and do me one while you’re at it. On second thoughts, I’ll have a whisky and lemonade. I normally wait until 6 o’clock but it’s been one of those days and I could do with a stiff one. With ice, please.
Mildred makes it home okay, by the way, although she’s later than she expected because the traffic is just so appalling in the city centre these days. Mr Cavanagh at the Council House (he’s the one who menaced Jack Sunnier at the beginning, in case you hadn’t guessed) was rushed to Selly Oak Hospital with a suspected heart attack after seeing the invoice from the goldsmiths. He’s expected to make a full recovery, but he won’t be returning to work, which will please Mildred no end.
What else?
Oh, Judy at the office left shortly after her small part in Chapter One She was a bit posh and snooty and thought she was a cut above all the other secretaries, which peeved them off quite a lot so they stopped speaking to her and she moved to another job where the secretaries there didn’t like her much either. Pete, the good looking trainee in the property department, started going out with the company receptionist – Roberta isn’t going to be happy about that when she finds out. And …
Oh wait, we can go back to the story now.
* * *
“Carl,” said Roberta, hardly daring to breathe.
“What?” gasped a frozen Carl.
“Do you see what I see?”
“I don’t know, tell me what you see and I’ll tell you if it’s the same as what I see.”
“I’m seeing a yellow monstrosity outside the old registry office.”
“Yep, that’s what I see, too.”
“Isn’t that – ?“
“It certainly looks like it.”
“But wasn’t that – ?”
“Yes, it was.”
“But how – ?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know,” said the wide eyed, open mouthed man standing between them with the binoculars hanging round his neck and the earphones on his head.
“You know?” Roberta asked, still not turning away from the vision of horror in front of her.
“I know some of it,” said the man.
“What ‘some of it’ do you know?” asked Carl.
A crowd of people suddenly bumped into them. Roberta was stirred from her stunnedness and yelled, “Excuse me! Do you not see me? Am I invisible? Just walk right into me, why don’t you! How rude!”
The sudden high pitched yelling catapulted the two men from their reverie and, as if waking from a dream, they all looked at each other, standing in the middle of the pavement at the bottom end of Broad Street.
“What do you know?” Carl asked the man in a flat tone.
“I stole it,” said the man, equally monotone.
“You stole it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you put it back?”
“No.”
“Then why is it there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Are you sure you don’t know?”
“Why are you two talking like that?” Roberta asked, “You sound like a couple of robots.”
“This is my interrogation voice,” Carl said.
“When have you ever interrogated anybody?” Roberta snorted.
“I have some very difficult clients,” Carl replied, a little hurt.
“You work in plot sales!” Roberta laughed, “You never see any clients.”
Carl pursed his lips irately.
“And I’m trying not to give anything away in the intonation of my voice,” said the man.
Roberta leaned her weight on a hip, crossed her arms over her chest, and cocked her head to one side. “Spill the beans, dude,” she said to the man, “And make it snappy.”
“Oh yeah,” Carl mocked, “Like that’s going to work!”
“Well it all started when I read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code,” the man began.
* * *
Roberta, Carl and Bruce stood in front of the statue of the three men and the telephone bill which was now, inexplicably, standing on its plinth outside what had once been the registry office at the bottom of Broad Street. The statue was back in its rightful place. But, in its absence, it had somehow turned bright yellow. Really yellow, like a canary or that Sunny Delight drink that everybody hates because it rots your teeth on impact and makes you feel a bit sick. The statue looked bloody awful, just really yellow and tacky, like fake gold jewellery in a toy shop.
“So let me get this straight,” Roberta said, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “You stole the double sized statue of the three men and the telephone bill so you could hold it hostage and get enough money for its return to tell your boss where to stick his job and retire to the Bahamas?”
“Yes,” said Bruce.
“Only somehow your boss, Cavanagh, Director of Well Known Birmingham Statues, who also happens to be Mildred’s boss, must have found out about it and tried to get in on the act?”
“Yes.”
“And he contacted my boss, Jack Sunnier, to deal with negotiations over the return of the double sized statue of three men with a telephone bill, only Jack double crossed him and not only charged him an extortionate fee for his services but also planned to keep the ransom money for himself, which would have put the city’s government grant for the maintenance of well known Birmingham statues way over budget and your boss was worried he’d get sacked over it?” Roberta bent double, trying to catch her breath.
“Yes,” said Bruce.
“Hmm,” said Roberta, “That does sound like something Jack would do. And then your boss tried to double cross Jack by sending Mildred out to track down the statue before we got to it so he wouldn’t have to pay the ransom or the extortionate legal fee.”
“Yes!”
“It’s all very complicated, isn’t it.”
“For you, maybe,” Carl said smugly, “All seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Ah, yes, but that’s because you’re a lawyer and you’re used to devious, back-stabbing, cheating, lying, deceitful - “
Carl looked at his watch.
“ – malicious, conniving, vindictive, nasty, spiteful, inconsiderate, underhand – “
Carl sighed.
“ – cunning, sneaky, back-stabbing – “
“You’ve already said back-stabbing,” Carl sighed.
“ – sly,” Roberta continued, frowning a little and pulling a Thesauras from the inside pocket of her jacket and quickly flicking through the pages, “Swindling,” she cried with renewed vigour, “Mean, nasty, unpleasant, unkind, hurtful, horrid, dishonest, two-faced, insincere – “
“Fancy a pint?” Carl said to Bruce.
“ – double-dealing, mendacious, shifty, sneaky – “
“Yeah,” said Bruce.
“ – calculating, conniving, wily, tricky – “
Carl and Bruce started to turn to walk off towards the Living Room, Roberta turning with them, her Thesaurus held out in front of her like a bible as she chanted forth random words. Carl suddenly stopped in mid turn and Roberta pounded into the back of him. Carl gasped, and they all looked where he looked.
“What’s wrong now?” Roberta cried, seeing his wide eyes and open mouth again.
“The Birmingham Wheel,” Carl cried. “It’s … it’s gone!”
They all turned to look at Bruce.
But Bruce had already disappeared.
It’s over! It’s finished! Oh my God wasn’t that good! Did you like it? Tell me then, go on, send me an email telling me it was gooooooooood.
Hmmm. What shall we do now then? Eat, perhaps? I’m still waiting for my whisky and lemonade, but I don’t want to make a fuss, now will do if you can be bothered.
So, that’s it then.
See ya.
D
© Brummie Blogs 2005/6
people have been here (spooky!) [added May 2006]
