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Authors: Michael de Larrabeiti

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic

The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis (33 page)

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis

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‘Well keep looking,’ Sussworth was saying. ‘I want every horse you find brought to me. I don’t care what colour it is. Those Borribles are capable of dyeing it pink. And any children you find bring them in too. And don’t trust any dwarfs … They may be Borribles pretending to be dwarfs pretending to be Borribles who are really dwarfs. What? Well I can understand it, you fool.’ The inspector snarled and threw the receiver into its cradle with such force that the noise made Hanks jump to attention and salute. Realizing he had made a mistake he walked over to the electric kettle and poured its contents into the teapot.

‘How about a nice cup of tea, Inspector?’ he asked. ‘It’ll do your nerves good.’

Sussworth leapt from his seat like a spring bursting out of a sofa. ‘Yes, Hanks, yes,’ he said, and shaking hands with himself behind his back he began goose-stepping up and down the carpet. ‘The trouble is,’ he continued, ‘the DAC is not happy about that business at the slaughterhouse, and quite right too … But how were we to know there was going to be so many Borribles attacking us, eh? How were we to know?’

‘It was mass violence and intimidation,’ said Hanks, and he waddled across the caravan and deposited Sussworth’s mug on the desk. Then he returned to the kitchen cabinet, and picking up a grubby paper bag, brought out a mature bacon sandwich and shoved half of it into his mouth.

Sussworth stopped marching and sipped his tea delicately. ‘The DAC has given us one last chance, Hanks. He’s in very hot water visavee Downing Street, boiling hot water you might say. He’s told me that if I can’t wrap everything up in the next two days, neat and clean and tidy, no loose ends, with those ten ringleaders under lock and key, well I might as well try and get a job with Armacor delivering wage packets to building sites. The DAC doesn’t care how we do it, Hanks, just as long as we do it quickly.’

Sussworth paused for a moment and flicked an atom of dust from his sleeve then continued to march up and down the caravan. ‘What do I look like to the upper echelons with my crack troops covered in giblets and tripe?’ The inspector halted and gazed adoringly at the pictures of the two generals on the wall above his desk. ‘Did Rommel have this trouble with the Afrika Korps? Or Monty with the Desert Rats? Of course not.’ He returned to his tea and took a further sip and his moustache flittered over the surface of the beverage like a water bug on a pond. ‘And the complaints from the Camden restaurants, Hanks … Animals in every one, knocking over tables, breaking crockery, butting ladies in the … well, you know.’

‘I have the impression,’ interrupted Hanks, licking his lips, ‘that a lot of them sheep as strayed into them Turkish and Greek restaurants was kebabs in rosemary before they had time to reach the backyard.’

Sussworth sighed. ‘Is everyone dishonest in this sorry society?’ he asked, replacing his mug of tea on his desk. ‘It is enough to make one despair of ever reforming the world.’

Sussworth might have carried on in this highly moral vein but he was interrupted by a commotion from outside the caravan. There was a bump, the sound of a blow and then a torrent of swearing, first from a man and then from a woman. Hanks put down his tea in turn and rolled, as if on castors, towards the door. Once there he flung it open.

‘What’s all this going on?’ he enquired. ‘The inspector is trying to get some research done ere.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said a panting voice, ‘but we’ve got this prisoner, and the inspector said that he was to see everything suspicious, child or dwarf, sheep or horse, fish and fowl … though what you’d call this, I dunno.’

Sussworth leant his behind against the edge of his desk and folded his arms as tightly as two strands of a single rope. ‘Bring it in,’ he called. ‘Is it clean?’

‘It ain’t clean, far from it,’ said Hanks, stepping back from the door, ‘but it is handcuffed.’

The prisoner was pushed forward and there was a squeal of pain as she stumbled against the caravan steps and fell. ‘Ow,’ cried a rough female voice. ‘Leave us alone, can’t yer? I’m a free citizen going about me legal business, ain’t I?’

‘No such thing,’ said Sussworth and went to the rear of his desk. He reached down a large legal volume and placed it on his chair and sat on it, making himself look five inches taller. After that he took his cap from a hook and settled it squarely on his head, composing his features into something resembling a blank well. ‘I’m ready,’ he called, and into the room was propelled the dishevelled and grimy figure of the Queen Mum, her rags and scraps of polythene barely hanging on to her limbs. Being handcuffed she was unable to keep her balance and she sprawled across the carpet between the door and the desk.

‘Aaaaagh,’ cried Sussworth weakly, surprised out of his superior stance for a second. ‘Pick her up, Hanks, and get an old newspaper for her to stand on.’

The Queen Mum was dragged to her feet and the inspector’s request complied with. The arresting officer entered the caravan and went to stand by the computer, ready to answer questions. The inspector nodded at him. ‘You may begin, PC Blume. Tell me what is known.’

The police constable switched on the computer terminal and pumped up the relevant record. ‘Susan Palmer,’ he read aloud, ‘alias the Queen Mum or Queenie, found today wandering north on the Finchley Road, drunk in charge of a pram. Previous convictions include obscene language, behaviour likely to cause a breach of the
peace, viz, removing her knickers and waving them under the noses of innocent bystanders—’

‘Is there no shame?’ said Sussworth quietly. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a jar of pot-pourri and removed the lid. ‘She smells like Camembert,’ he added.

Hanks sniffed like a connoisseur. ‘Yes,’ he observed. ‘I bet her armpits are all stuck up with black jam.’

Officer Blume coughed and continued reading. ‘—causing alarm and despondency on the public highway by singing and dancing in Trafalgar Square, grievous bodily harm, damage to police property and zigzagging down the middle of Fleet Street with her pram during the Lord Mayor’s procession, shouting, “I am royalty,” thereby causing a breach of the peace.’

Officer Blume raised a hand to his mouth and coughed again. ‘The prisoner is also known to all London divisions as a vagrant, a troublemaker, mentally unstable, and is often found consorting with meths drinkers in the King’s Cross area, though she has been known to live in the north for long—’

‘Stop,’ said Sussworth suddenly, and he leant forward and placed his elbows on his desk, interlacing his fingers and resting his pointed chin on the bridge he had so formed. He had perceived the tiniest flicker of guilt passing across the Queen Mum’s countenance.

‘King’s Cross,’ said Sussworth. He smiled sweetly, like deadly nightshade masquerading as a bunch of violets. ‘I believe C Division has an unsolved murder at King’s Cross,’ he said. ‘Get it up on the computer, Blume, it might be interesting.’

Blume touched a button on the terminal and the screen glowed with light. His voice sounded out again. ‘Right, sir. Murder … victim a methylated spirits drinker going by the name of Madge. No witnesses, or rather all witnesses intoxicated out of their brains. A certain Hughie MacMungall held on suspicion but later released. Motive thought to be robbery. Several valuable items, probably stolen goods, missing. General call put out for Susan Palmer, alias the Queen Mum, alias Queenie, a material witness, thought to be implicated. In any case she was accused of the crime by MacMungall during his interrogation. And look here, sir … MacMungall also talked about children or Borribles
being present on the night of the murder. It looks like they were all in it together!’

Blume finished his reading and a deep and heavy silence settled over the caravan. The Queen Mum began to cry. Sussworth got slowly to his feet and pointed at his prisoner and his finger burnt in the air like an acetylene torch cutting metal.

‘I’ve got you dead to rights, Queenie,’ he said, ‘because you’re going to tell me everything I want to know … And one thing is certain, if you don’t cooperate I’ll see you get weighed off for twice as many years as you’ve got left to live.’

‘I don’t know nuffin’,’ said the old woman. ‘I don’t know nuffin’. That Hughie MacMungall has it in for me, that’s all; he’d say anything to do me down.’

Sussworth crept round his desk and twisted his face sideways. ‘There’s something you ought to know, Queenie,’ he said. ‘I hate Borribles and the only thing I hate worse than Borribles are adults who help Borribles. But, Queenie, anyone who helps me in my unending war against those little enemies of society will find herself basking in the sunlight of my pleasure.’

‘I had nothing to do with it,’ said the Queen Mum. She joined her hands together and dropped to her knees in front of Sussworth and looked up into his face. ‘I did see some kids, yes, but I never knew they were Borribles or anything. And I didn’t stay at Madge’s at all, ’cos her and Hughie were fighting drunk … I left.’

‘You see,’ continued the inspector, ‘I don’t care, Queenie, whether you perpetrated this murder or not. All I want is information about Borribles. I eat, drink and sleep Borribles; I can smell ’em a mile off and I can smell ’em on you. You’ve had them round you, Queenie, today, so don’t bother to deny it.’

The Queen Mum wrung her hands again and whimpered.

Sussworth rocked on his heels. ‘You tell me what you know,’ he said, ‘and you walk out of this caravan a free woman, but if you persist in your evil ways I’ll put you inside, Queenie. You’ll do porridge. I’ll send you to a criminal asylum, Queenie, with a nice rubber room and plenty of medicines and pills shoved down your throat to make sure you turn into a vegetable. You won’t be the Queen Mum any more, the scourge of London, you’ll just be a cabbage.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed Hanks. ‘Just a cauliflower.’

‘Definitely,’ said Officer Blume, ‘a cauliflower.’ He sighed. ‘Imagine, if all the world was cauliflowers, what a garden it would be.’

The Queen Mum raised her hands in supplication. Her straggly hair fell about her wrinkled face and her lips of creased gristle writhed over her gums in a terrible anguish.

‘Oh, inspector,’ she wailed, ‘I don’t know nothing about that there murder, I promise you I don’t, on my life. But I know you have the power to do what you say and I would die a living death if you took the streets away from me … I love them, sir, I do, more than life itself.’

Sussworth sneered with pleasure and thrust his hands behind his back where they clasped each other like long-lost friends. He glanced at Hanks in triumph, performed a smart about-turn and then regained his desk so that he might sit in his chair, leaning forward to eye the kneeling prisoner. His moustache twitched in glee. ‘Have you had any truck or converse of any sort or manner with Borribles or any of their allies or accessories? Answer, or it’s prison for ever.’

The Queen Mum rose fearfully to her feet. ‘I am a weak old lady,’ she began, ‘unable to get work at my age and unable to get dole money because I am of no fixed abode. I am easily put upon by people younger and stronger, your honour. I did meet up with them Borribles in King’s Cross, and they bullied me and beat me something cruel, Inspector, nasty little tykes, and they took what money I had too, though they says they never has anything to do with it … but they took mine quick enough, crash, bang and vvallop.’

‘Yes,’ said Sussworth, nodding like a bored child at an oft-repeated tale. ‘Go on.’

‘And that’s why I scarpered out of the arches as soon as I could get away. I took me pram and went, and I never saw ’em again after that, honest. On my life, I didn’t.’

Hanks stepped forward at this and cuffed the Queen Mum round the back of her head with all the weight of his mighty arm and she fell on to her hands and knees. Blood dribbled down her chin.

Sussworth leant back in his chair. ‘It won’t do,’ he said gently. ‘Do you think we policemen are as unintelligent as common rumour would have it? The smell of the Borribles is on you, I say. It’s woven into the rags you are wearing, you guttersnipe. Now listen, you old crone, tell
me the truth or it’s non-stop to the nuthouse for you. A lifetime of carbolic and bleach, a lifetime of no gin and no vino. Speak up, Queenie, or I will incarcerate you quicker than the speed of light.’

‘Yes,’ said Hanks. ‘Fast.’

The Queen Mum stayed on her hands and knees and stared at the carpet; tears poured down her cheeks and mingled with the blood on her chin. ‘Oh help me, someone,’ she moaned. ‘I don’t want this, it ain’t what I want to do. I never told the law anything, ever. Why do I have to do it now?’

Sussworth inspected his nails. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said. ‘They’re only bits of kids, poor little orphans, and we have their best interests at heart. We are the agents of society, as it were; we pass them on to the proper authority, Queenie, just like we might have to pass you on.’

The Queen Mum lifted her stained face and it was completely drained of hope. ‘They’re hiding in the old link tunnel between the LMR and the Bakerloo line at Swiss Cottage,’ she said. ‘Just today, then they’re going to—’

Sussworth screamed with delight and scrambled over his desk. He jumped up and down on the floor, his legs stiff and his fists clenched.

‘This time, this time,’ he yelled. ‘I’ve got them, Hanks. We’ll clip their ears.’

‘This is wonderful news,’ said Officer Blume, and he saluted.

BOOK: The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis

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