The World Of Shadows

The World of Shadows
Extracts from book three, The Spinning Men

    Bugs, trackers, spike mikes, laser carriers, wires, nano intelligence bots, drones, satellites, miniature transmitters, sweepers, sleepers and the biggest electronic vacuum in the world, the National Security Agency, were his life. Even his father died working for the Agency, had been blown into a black ‘bin bag’ of bloody bits. A tray of offal for the ‘military pathologists’ to prod and poke with their shiny metal instruments.
    It felt like living upon the jagged edge of paranoia, complete madness amongst the laughing ‘white faced’ clowns, dressed in the canvass straight jackets of uncomfortable conformity. Which was why John Burrow along with all whom spent time in and around the Shark infested waters of the Intelligence Community, muddied fresh each day. Lived his life as if in front of a camera, talking directly into an open microphone.
    For there were non more watched than the Watchers whose minds, thoughts, fantasies and loyalties were dissected routinely with polygraph analysis and the latest truth serum, the ‘date rape’ drug of Security Organisations around the world. By those who would question the subconscious, the layers and strata deep within the spongy grey folds, where the changelings, tricksters and shape-shifters moulded another scale model of reality in ‘La La Land’. Born of sublimation, fantasy and the collective archetypes, the blockbuster movies with computer graphics and latest ‘special effects’.
    A world hidden in smoke and cracked mirrors, reflections, distant echoes in the hissing ether, distortions of lost realities, freedoms and human rights. As the supercomputers wired into system-x searched diligently for programmed ‘key words’, or listened silently to every conversation, exchange of emails, faxes and texts around the world. Diligently working the frequencies, the algorithms and staccato bursts of code to feed the climate controlled storage vaults and tunnels under the copper-clad, tinted windows of Crypto City, with intelligence. There were times when it felt as if he were living, loving, crying, laughing and dying a little each day upon a prepared slide from which there was no escape, lost forever in the cracks between realities.
  John felt proud serving his country, standing firm against the growing blackness. Proud his father’s name was carved into a wall in the main reception building. Along with all the unsung heroes who had fallen in the course of their duty, who had given their lives for beliefs, ideas and dreams. Which increasingly did not match the cold realities of a post ‘nine eleven’ world. A place were old distinctions and personal certainties no longer existed, except in Hollywood films and the formulaic best sellers by the creative writing courses latest class. While high above, upon the metal gantries and behind thick curtains. The Puppet Masters pulled the strings in the Punch and Judy politics of mess and muddle.
    He knew trying to uncover the truth behind the series of co-ordinated attacks upon the USS Scientific and Research vessel Liberty. Was stirring up history’s chemically treated water, the comforting re-spinning of truth into ‘fairy stories’, epic fantasies and glorious quests. It was a dirty business, a shameful political conspiracy that with the passage of time became increasingly personal as he picked up the last few rocks. Under which hid the pigmintless creatures of ‘Never Never Never Land’. Who scurried blinded into the light for the first time in years, snapping and scratching at anything that threatened or disturbed their silent slumbers.

    In the beginning I got a few precious minutes of investigation time to check my suspect for potential witnesses, regarding his activities in the hours immediately following his reported sighting. Most police time at this point in the investigation went upon searching for a ‘stranger killer’, a predatory paedophile who had whisked them away inside a van, in order to do whatever it is predatory paedophiles are want to do to defenceless children.
    But that is the thing about any efficient investigation, flexibility, a willingness to rule nothing in or out, to systematically follow a number of potential leads searching for that crucial witness, essential forensic evidence, or missing piece of the jigsaw. Of course finding the girls, dead or hopefully but increasingly unlikely as the day’s passed, alive and well, was the ultimate goal for everyone.
  As for me I was out on a limb, swimming against the tide and off doing my own thing. For the Cambridgeshire police force, this was not a game show with buzzers and beeps, a hook-a-duck or stab someone in the back political sale of the century. These were decent, caring, hard working people trying to find two missing young girls and leaving no stone unturned in order to achieve this goal.
    Teams within teams all meshing, working together like a well-oiled machine towards a single purpose. It was one of those rear occasions when I felt proud to be a small part of something infinitely greater. To be valued, listened to and respected, to feel safe enough to dangle, vulnerable and alone in the blackness of a recently discovered ‘cave system.
    It felt like running at speed into a brick-wall, whichever way I turned it was there, enclosing the blackness, the truth about the raging spirits of two innocent young children. There simply was no way the perpetrator of this crime, audacious and arrogant beyond belief in its nature. Had not practised, perfected and refined the many skills in the matrix of double murder, in administering noxious substances and having sexual intercourse with adolescent girls. Like any addiction, any out of control avalanche it started with a few pebbles rolling down the mountain. Minor crimes that with each success, each escape from detection and conviction, created a belief in his ability to commit the perfect crime. If there was anything in the early profile still formed from wet clay to be moulded and shaped, I was certain of, it was that the perpetrator had to have previous. I think there were even occasions when, beyond being woken by a feeling of terror as the blackness smoothers you and sweet runs cold down your forehead. I was mumbling to myself in my sleep: ‘He has to have previous, he has to have previous.’
    Which put my prime suspect out of the frame and my profile, along with all the other rubbish into the ‘waste bin’, including my professional reputation. Because the main suspect in my profile had already been cleared to work with children as part of routine police checks, even the re-check came back clean. I was starting to think myself completely wrong, despite working the profile and myself to the edge of complete obsession, frantically twisting, turning and rearranging the pieces. Not able to eat properly because of the anxiety and tension, the personal disgust and revulsion at man’s inherent inhumanity sloshing like melted lead, where once there was a stomach.

  In her mind and whispered words, Gertrude had not fallen to her knees before man’s brutal God upon the ‘gilded altars’. But amongst the smouldering rubble of what had once been a garage, a home and a place she finally felt safe and could be herself. Vulnerable and alone in the silence, eyes closed tight waiting for a hand to come out of the darkness and press hard across her mouth, before he lay heavy and hot upon her. Grunting and gasping like an animal taken by the carnal inheritances of humanity, of dominance through physical strength and ownership, the brutal economics of social worth. Before the one she had loved above all others and all that remained of her fading memories of him.
    Sharpened occasionally by a piece of music, a smell, a shared secret amongst the rusted, shell encrusted concrete pylons’, where the heroin dealers fixed up with salt-water and sand, where soap-bubble Tumbleweed rolled across the milky surface of the sea. Where Organ Morgan wielded the back-stabbers glinting blade, the inconsequential random crucifixions and burnings, the echoing screams lost amongst the jagged mountaintops and razor-cut strands of fluffy white cloud. Before all that might have been but was again taken away from her by the screaming bat’s, the hooded personal assassins of the Sisterhood, with studied leather tongues, ‘Carbolic soap’ and stiff scrubbing brushes.
    Yet only day’s following the final occasion they made love together. The memories, the images, the sudden smells, drifts of air as if being gently touched, caressed before summer’s open windows. Had started to fade, to draw away like an ‘express train’ leaving a station. As tiny pieces in a grand mosaic, they crumbled into dust, into coloured glazes and archetypal patterns. The collective ‘hard wiring’ of a species in the stands of DNA and RNA, the snake dances of the double helix twisting slowly around and around like metal corkscrews.
    Only to be twisted by the screaming crows and squeaking bats, coming together to share their hatred and intolerance. Holy Water spitting and burning like a corrosive acid as it melted the potential of forms into a consistent greyness, a swirling ‘grey goo’ forever turning about the unstoppable whirlpool of time and space. As in the hours, day’s after he died she could reach out, could pass through the shimmering veils, the heavy fire-curtains and touch him, smell him, feel him pressing the air all around into comforting shapes and memories.
    Not that Gertrude anticipated it would end this way, when Gussepie drove-off in a stolen Alfa. The last time she saw him alive through sleeps sugary crystals, a distant image from an even more distant world. Or that the folds of time, a shimmering curtain that separated would harden as if setting Amber so soon, so cruelly as religions unforgiving judgement left her with the acidic taste of soap in her mouth and red-marks across her back from another beating.
  It felt to Gerty as if they, the crow’s, the bats and big black vultures circling constantly overhead, sunlight glinting ruby red in their eyes. Were sucking the breath, the life from her. Evil, wild imaginings the Sister’s called them. Who were there to protect each other, to destroy the trust and inherent love of those whom God had chewed and spit out, pulling a face as if having sucked a bitter lemon – just so much annoying mucus and snot.
    For no longer could she reach out and touch him with ease or certainty as the intricate mosaic, the brightly coloured pieces and complex geometric patterns had started to turn again into the fine sand from which they had been created. Fine sand flowing through her fingers, despite her increased determination to hold onto it. When each grain was part of Gussepie, without which she would never again be able to assemble the living mosaic. The flesh and blood that only day’s ago caressed and reassured before religion, the Church in all its many forms and faces, stepped upon her. While upon the Inquisitions infernal ‘racks’ and torture machines, in the deep, dark, damp dungeons, truth was stretched to breaking point as with red-hot irons, they wrote large their intent for humanity and the vicious God’s it created.
    It was the not being believed that gnawed away inside her, making her doubt the reality of systematic sexual abuse. Which like the evil it was twisted about her brambles and hawthorn, amongst whose vicious razor-sharp thorns laid dead her imaginary friends and all hope of escape from the clammy hand of God. The secrets too heavy, so important and all consuming that to tell of them would mean death, or another tablet of ‘Carbolic soap’ to wash her mouth out, to scrub her clean of the evil imaginings and personal Demons, the Incubus and Scubas that sat upon her chest at night. Making each gasp a life or death action as with the lack of oxygen she began to drift away, to feel no fear as death the bat, the crow and vulture came upon her final struggles as he forced his penis into her. Until it felt as if it were coming out of the top of her head. 
    Before being washed away and she scrubbed clean, long after all that remained was the imaginary dirt, the indelible stains, the engrained deposits of sulphur and brimstone, the geological ‘deposition’ of material and the many times. The many elements Gertrude, a magician, changeling, foundling and trickster became when the lights went out and she lay alone, shaking with terror in the darkness. Waiting for the Monsters, for her evil imaginings to reach from the darkness. To place a hand across her mouth as closing her eyes, the nightmare began again.
    It felt as times like being beaten for telling the truth, crucified every new day she awoke, eyes puffy and red to the violent, twisted world the ‘grown ups’ created. When all she wanted to do, all she ever schemed and dreamed about was an understanding of whom she was, where she came from and why fate had abandoned her to the unforgiving, uncaring orphanages. To find personal peace and if not drive out the Demons, hunting Tiger bright in the tangled forests of her subconscious mind. Then learn to live with them, to accommodate their needs and consequences.
    Ten minutes or ten hours it was all empty darkness, futile and utterly pointless as times clever knots could never be unravelled or undone. It felt like being slowly encased in an airless, silent void. Blackness so black non-of the normal reference points existed; up, down, left, right, past, present and future. They were all relative but to what, she remained uncertain as emptiness tumbled into her. There was nothing left in this world they, religion’s flocks of black birds had not already taken from her and destroyed.

    If there were God’s who watched over humanity then that afternoon they were acting against him, when their malevolence became as crippling as a ball-and-chain. These were the day’s when every other vehicle was driven by the Sunday drivers from ‘sleepy hollow’, the chemically comforted and age challenged. Day’s when every single set of traffic lights were against you, or changed to red as you approached.
    When every dodge delivery van or poorly maintained car, choose to die at a road junction directly in front of you. Or of all the road chips in the world, one magically pings directly into the centre of your windshield. Leaving the ubiquitous white van man to start reversing into a space large enough to dock a nuclear ‘aircraft carrier’ in. With all the speed and manoeuvrability of a slug, f…k you fingers swirling magically in thin air.
    Now the next set of traffic lights were against John as he tried to turn right, leaving a whole school of young children to cross in front of him, picking their noses or giving the ‘jail-bait’ come on. Making it impossible for him to crash the lights as electricity crackled and hissed in the air like industrial pollution, before settling heavily upon everything.
  There must have been a ‘cloak of invisibility’ or high-tech gizmo, which ‘shimmer shaped’ form into a translucent shadow. A deceptive reassemble of familiar, everyday things into unfamiliar alien objects – an automatic morphing from something into nothing as the waves of light were pulled and squeezed by delicate gravity’s. Stopping him from remembering why the green Mitsubishi appeared so familiar, though why or where this sensation came from. It was as if a heavy curtain, a thick veil were pulled around it when he tried to remember, to visualise, to see in his minds eye that which some intuition, some primal instinct like a punch in the stomach, made invisible.
    He struggled to see through the deceptions, the warping and bending of light into illusions, into a mirage shimmering in the distance, playing with the imagination, the personal dreams of any who thought them real or alternative, parallel reality’s encased in there own iridescence, there own effulgence. Only for his thought to be bent at right angles as if by a complex set of prisms and lenses. Little wonder John was drumming his fingers upon the steering wheel and muttering: ‘Come on’. Repeatedly under his breath as time stretched like a length of fresh spaghetti and his mind raced ahead.
    It took an agitated honk from a driver behind, to make John realise the children had crossed and the lights were now on green. Clutch – Gear – Accelerator. It was an automatic reaction like breathing, swallowing, walking, running or coughing. Something he did not think about, once the light had gone ‘ting’ inside his brain. Tyres smoking dramatically, he slid right causing an oncoming car to break suddenly and start honking ‘f…g idiot’ in Morse code
    Slowing as if to sniff the air, taste the subtle theramones, the dispensed molecules of fear that like sweat or dead skin, were shed automatically as it rolled off the relevant ‘production line’. Trying to sense, to feel Coy’s presence or even his passing, his electrical disturbance, his trail of molecules, skin, sweat and Zephyr breeze of spirit.

    Profiling was a little like going mad all be it a very controlled form of madness, more acute mental illness. When you became totally focused, almost obsessive about a particular series of events to such an extent that you did not sleep and eat properly. All you did day and night was think about this or that murder, or terrorist attack. Going over every aspect, every combination of possibilities inside your head hundreds of times a day.
    When you closed your eyes it was there, flashing across your eyelids in glorious Technicolor. When you fell into a restless sleep it was there, running wild through your dreams and nightmares. Every vivid detail dissolving you, becoming more real than your immediate surroundings, more intense and magnified as if looking at a prepared slide through an ‘electron microscope’.
    Until you became completely absorbed by it, in constantly moving the pieces of the three dimensional jigsaw, putting pieces in and taking them out. While always like a faint echo bouncing about everything were three words; how, who and why? The three M's of murder, method motive and means. This was why the working environment, the team spirit, where everyone else is going constantly around the same exhausting treadmill of thoughts and personal emotions, the same angers and frustrations is so important. Because sometimes it felt as if you had unwittingly ventured deep into the Minato’s Maze, with only the thinnest, most fragile length of string to ever show you the way back out.
  Saturday started exactly the same as Friday, then it was back to ‘scope time’ and frantically twisting, turning the Rubrics cube in my imagination. Desperately trying to hit upon the correct sequence of moves and pieces, each fitting perfectly, for the rest to suddenly fall into place and Eureka!
  Only that had not happened because when it did, I saw the person in my imagination I knew what they would do and how they would behave, I could virtually smell them, could reach out and touch them. So I did not need anyone from the Bureau to tell me that provisional indications were a big fat zero, zilch, my recent additions to the developing profile had not rung any bells, no flashing lights, close but no cigar.
    Not helping at this point was motive, I really did not have a motive. Other than killing for killing’s sake but then you would have expected the perpetrators to kill anyone. While these two guys were being very picky and keeping to a specific victim or kill profile - why? What did they have against Black people, Hispanics and Latino's? That made them want to randomly gun down complete strangers in the street, on their lawn or at the Gas Station? How, who and why, motive, method and means. Because until we understood this, these two men would remain complete strangers and free to terrorise the citizens of Washington by murdering at random …          
    … Then it was about trying to forget, to deal with the issues, the personal emotions and traumas, the bad dreams and flash-backs, which came from witnessing the futility, the tragedy and all to often, the sickening inhumanity of some perpetrators. Because ultimately these were not just victims, interesting cases to solve, or puzzles to pull apart. These were people, flesh and blood like you and me, people whom all to frequently do not deserve what happened to them. Who left behind family, relatives, friend’s and work colleagues. Individuals who would have in many cases, to live with the consequences every day for the rest of their lives, many of whom would never recover from the lose and trauma. The least we could do was give their loved ones justice and help them achieve some kind of closure …
  … I tried to understand why the profile had rung no bells and what it was, something so obvious in retrospect you can never fully understand why it took so long to work it out. But that is the beauty of hindsight, at the time any mistake and erroneous assumption, or incorrect piece can have a snowball effect upon the profile. Where the mistake gets progressively larger and larger, until non-of the pieces fit and the whole structure like a ‘house of cards’, falls apart.
    How was it that these two men could move freely around the Washington area, without attracting anyone's attention? How could they get through roadblocks, avoid the eyes in the sky and not even register in any of the painstaking investigations, or witness statements? What was the cover they used to remain invisible, at liberty and free to kill?
    Of course the reason that they were invisible, was because the profile was fundamentally flawed. Everyone had been looking for the wrong perpetrators from the very beginning. The masks they were hiding behind were so cleverly constructed, it was impossible to see what lay beneath them. While they were obviously so cool, so confident no one would catch them, they felt free to go right on killing. Without causing suspicion or registering upon the over sensitive radar of anyone they interacted with during their normal daily activities - why?
    By Sunday evening I was increasingly falling into negativity and defeatism, interspersed with bursts of anger when I thought: 'Damn it, I will not be beaten'. Even though increasingly I felt like a dog going around and around in circles, chasing after its own tail. Ironically, it was one of those moments of lateral thinking, puzzling over the problem of invisibility. Remembering as I did H.G Wells classic novel of that title but there was another novel called Invisible Man, a real modern day classic I raved over for months, by an American author called Ralf Ellison.
    Ironically, I had just discovered the missing piece, the secret words to open the door onto profiler’s paradise and a Eureka moment that felt like riding upon the biggest ‘Roller Coaster’ in the world. But I was either to stupid or more likely, to tired to realise it until the following morning, while in a taxi on my way home. At which point I almost jumped out of the moving vehicle with surprise, I could smell the two perpetrators as if upon the back seat. They had been ruining my sleep for to many nights, for me to not know the feel of their breath upon the back of my neck.
    How completely stupid could we all be? They were not invisible, they were not even white, racist serial killers but black. No one noticed them because all they saw were potential victims, individuals who but for the grace of God, could themselves have been murdered. The remainder of the journey felt as if it took forever, with the adrenaline tingling under my skin I wanted to shout out, to sing and dance.
    The only reason people assumed the killers to be white, were the victim or kill profiles, once you realised the reason for this was to provide Investigators with the biggest ‘Red Herring’ you have ever fallen for, I know, I fell for it. Because all I had smelt for the past five days was something fishy, only I could not work out where it was coming from.

  John Purple had no doubt as to the reason for his meteoric rise and continuing success. Complete, unquestioning loyalty to Tony Bear and New Labour's Communist inspired ‘cultural revolution’, its brutal Storm Troopers and ‘bully boy’ politicians, the 'Reed Guard', his faithful ‘attack dog's’ and Circus trained Walrus, John Presscoat. The big black Vultures who sat around the Cabinet Table, picking the bones of their Masters latest victims clean, the corrupt lawyers, spin Doctors and congenital traitors who sold out for money, power and influence.
  Though it was not just because of his loyalty, his shared purpose, personal religious delusions, corruption’s and disdain for elected, open government. That he had been risen high amongst the powerful of La La Land as guardian of the State's secrets, the endemic crimes that flourished along side unaccountable politics. The trendy ‘secret police’ of the personality cult, the frightened automatons, dancing puppets, the robots, the ignorant and brainwashed cannon-fodder of another 'pretext war’.
    But because of his ability to think on his feet, to anticipate problems before they emerged and keep politics corruption’s, human rights violations and crimes, tightly locked away. In the dusty bombproof vaults, ‘command and control centres’ and ‘safe houses’. To keep secret the growing body of lies, the serial deceptions, the treason's of power, the 'wet work', increased use of torture, drugging, assaults and every other dirty trick in the book, along with a few not documented yet.
    To protect Tony's back while he talked excitedly out of his bottom. To discredit and destroy the truth where ever it emerged; in the stinking sewers, the Council Housing Estates, the Mosques and Islamic Community Centres, the trendy Bistro's and Tapas bar's of the ‘middle class’. Providing the required smoke and mirrors, without which it remained nothing but obvious ‘stage magic’, ‘sleight of hand’ conjuring and religions that reciprocated an existing dominant ‘power base’, the 'old boy' networks and historical vindication of previous liars, illusions and mass delusions.
    As part of an exclusive ‘feeding chain’ of grey, faceless bureaucrats and eager ex military men with a tendency towards torture and religious persecution as routine, the treason of others that destroyed British history, tradition and cultural certainty. Who personally feed from the soft white hands of Tony Bear upon the bleached bones of mutual self-interest, which along with ‘water boarding’, sleep depravation, white noise, physical assaults and all the other secrets they hide with an ‘iron fist’ in a ‘velvet glove’. Turning the media into a shopping channel for ‘used car-salesmen’, with their 'cut and shunt' politics and shiny new spin making them into all things to all people. Allowing them to hide their crimes, their mistakes, corruption's and incompetence behind that last great repository of injustice and totalitarianism, National Security.
    At least he had instinctively known from chairing the Joint Intelligence Group, while he played cunning ‘guild dog’ for the blind, the trusting co-conspirators who helped make the start of the ‘twenty first’ century into a time of universal deception. A liar's paradise whose insidious corruption's, the yellow acids of personal greed, could eat effortlessly through stainless steel. That personal loyalty was preferable to truth, unquestioning obedience to Tony Bear's ‘Messianic vision’ of a re-ordered world more important than freedom and democracy. The war against terror more beneficial than the increasingly liberal human rights laws of old Europe.
    As they waded knee deep through the Pixie Dust, ‘dry ice’, clever anamatronics, computer graphics and ectoplasm of lies, spin, the turning of things into something they are not, the holy mess and muddle, the middle ground British politics, before the ‘golden calves’, the immediacy of idolatry and weeping statues. In the unblinking, unseeing world of the twenty-four hour news channels, the ten-minute programme loop and five-second sound bites. The rare and precious jewels of the public relations men and spin Doctors, politics new Frankenstein’s and Armageddon's Holy Rollers, the dead end, 'End Timers', tomorrow's mass suicides and ruptured Rapture, the mumbling of ‘mad men’ and inherent Evil of unaccountable politics.
    Which was why, with Doctor Lee not yet outside the tinted, ‘copper clad’ world of MI6 with its delusions of being licensed to torture and kill. Sir John had returned to his office and called an immediate Cobra-M6 meeting, to declare Doctor Lee a ‘priority Timothy target’, regardless of his nationality and involvement with the National Security Agency as Director of group 'M'. After all, this was something his boss Tony Bear, had more than a personal interest in when it came to a possible legal case.
 
    Even though it felt as if he was caught in a repetition of time, a Ground Hog Day all his very own. For he was now somewhere else having long ago dropped through the earth, through the metal core and out of the other side with a watery plop. So, having placed the ‘insect repellent coil’ in the dry hollow of the birdbath. John stood and sipped his drink contemplatively wondering were those forgotten years, those lost moments had gone amongst the empty can's and bottles, the spinning worlds of the inebriated in a growing twenty-four hour drinking culture; another of his little benefits to society, along with Super Casino's and betting de-regulation.
    Then he heard it as the volume of the disco and sound of laughter, the hum and pitch of conversation while the drug of choice alcohol, flushed the cheeks and loosened the inhibitions. Suddenly louder as if a piece of wax had spontaneously melted, or his ears had grown several sizes larger. His favourite Sandy Shaw record, automatically making his arms and legs start to twitch, to move independently of his dissolving will, his melted brain sat like a washed-up Jelly Fish upon a beach. Twitching as if he were having a seizure, a mental short circuit when the strings that controlled his every movement, pulled him first this way then that. Drawn to the music, the laughter and inaudible rumblings of conversation, of tried and tested scripts, read with the nervous intensity of another unsuccessful audition.
    For a brief moment, a spontaneous folding back upon itself of time he felt young again. Freed from the sediments, the crimes of life, of unaccountable politics and personal opportunity for liars and those not too squeamish, when it came to morality.
    Drawn to the music, the laughter and inaudible rumblings of conversation like a dull brown Moth to a flame, a dog to its Master, a Star to their audience as the strings jerked and tugged ever more vigorously, turning him into a John Trivolta disco King. A ‘Babe Magnet’ with a pocket full of Viagra, a man who once sweated power and influence sat farting in the back of his chauffeur driven ‘official car’.
    " ... like a puppet on a string, string, string."
    It was not the way his ‘Hawaiian silk shirt’ started to stick to his back, static electricity in the fabric sizzling like the National Grid, or the amount of sweat upon his forehead. That finally persuaded him to break free of the strings, the Puppet Master's constant tugs upon the painted wooden limbs. To do a little fishing amongst the plastic gnomes, all of whom Paula knew intimately and by name, in order to retrieve a bottle of champagne from the fishpond before retiring briefly to the privacy of his den, for a final line of cocaine. Just to give him the personal enthusiasm to hand-job the big egos, the local ‘King Makers’, the movers and shakers.
    After all, what was the point in spending a lifetime upon the Waterfront, working the scams, taking the bungs, building the networks, the lucrative ‘feeding chains’ and nice little earners, the Council cream-off's and contributions to his retirement fund. Just to give it all away to some eager young shit from the south, Millblink Tower imposed upon the local Constituency Membership.
    At least he was starting to enjoy himself despite the police helicopter hovering overhead in order to shout at the Press, this was restricted air space. Until there was a loud bang and in the echoing silence as those of a nervous disposition got up off the floor, one of the large banks of speakers started to smoke and all the electricity went off inside the house.          
  John returned to his den, supposedly off-limits, to find Councillor Nelly Sevensons and his Election Agent Henry Woodford sat drinking tea. Into which Nelly was putting a spoonful of his cocaine as if it were sugar. It must have been the surprise, the horror of seeing someone putting his cocaine in their mug of tea, an act repeating itself within his imagination as he struggled desperately to calculate the cost.
    Then the consequences knocked him from his feet as in the empty void opening beneath his red flip-flops, he contemplated snatching the mugs from Nelly and Henry before emptying the contents into a fern upon his desk. Claiming it might have been poisoned but it was no good, he just melted. Faded to grey as his stiff wooden limbs hung lifeless and abandoned for the only tugs and jerks, were those upon his heart, his cold, cunning emotions as he remembered all he had once been. A man at the peak of his personal powers, Lord and Master of all he surveyed.
    For though he opened and closed his mouth intending to warn, to advise, no words came out as he began to ask himself amidst the confusions, what harm could it do to them? It was only cocaine and the closest both would come towards having fun, without taking their clothes off and teeth out.
    Other than an indistinguishable 'wha...' which trailed off into a fatalistic acceptance and possible prison sentence, if either should suddenly die. He could see the newspaper headlines: 'Death at PM's octogenarian, cocaine fuelled sex party'. When in truth, he would sooner have a game of croquet or spend the night drunk, dabbing Camomile Lotion upon the insect bites covering his body.