Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (12 page)

Chapter 24

Aubrey dropped his spoon into his CoCo
Pops.

‘What d’you mean goin’ on a
journey
?’ he said, with a look of terror
flashing from eyeball to eyeball.

‘You know
exactly
what I mean - a journey, a trip,’ said Mrs Hathaway happily,
as she sponged the milk splashes from around his bowl.

Aubrey was hardwired to be extremely
wary of words like ‘journey,’ ‘trip’ and, especially, ‘ride’. In Aubrey’s
previous life, people went for ‘rides’ in the back of limos with darkened
windows, sandwiched between two big, fully tooled-up, stony-faced specialists.
A ‘ride’ ended up at a car-crushing plant, a concrete factory, a remote
landfill site or Beachy Head. ‘Rides’ never included a return ticket.

Normally, if someone suggested they take
Aubrey for a ride, his first instinct was to dive through the nearest plate
glass window, so perhaps splashing a few CoCo Pops over the table could be
considered quite a low-key reaction.

‘Calm down, Aubrey. It’s just that I
have some very good and very important news.’

She sat down opposite him and told him
all about the events at the Shard. About Daring Dooz. About the Enfield
incident on TV. About the challenges. About how she’d like him to go with her.
And about the money.

Aubrey was lifting a rather full spoon
of CoCo Pops to his mouth when the words ‘2 million pounds’ hit his ears. His
eyes glazed over, he opened his mouth and spooned the breakfast cereal slowly
down the gap between his neck and the collar of his pyjamas. He didn't notice.

‘2 million quid!’ he mouthed, quietly.

‘Yes, I thought you’d like to hear about
that,’ said Mrs Hathaway, cheerfully.

‘But these challenges,’ said Aubrey,
tipping another spoonful of cereal down the front of his pyjamas, ‘how
dangerous are they? And, like, will they expect me to do ‘em, too?’

She explained that it would be her,
alone. He would never be in danger, and nothing would be happening for four to
six weeks. There was a lot to organise.

While she was talking, she removed
Aubrey’s soggy pyjama top and was reminded again of how revolting his scrawny,
deathly white little body was.

She handed Aubrey a freshly ironed
pyjama top, and removed the bowl of CoCo Pops to a safe distance.

‘I think that’s enough exciting
information for one day. I’ll tell you more as we get nearer the time,
alright?’

Aubrey nodded. He liked not knowing
things. They cluttered his brain. He preferred to concentrate on the important
things in life, like where his next curry was coming from, and which
off-licence was doing the cheapest deals on six-packs.

Mrs Hathaway turned her gaze away from
Aubrey’s body, controlled her understandable feelings of nausea and walked
casually over to the phone table. She picked up the Yellow Pages and turned to
Cosmetic Surgeons. Harley Street was closest, and, by Monday, Giles-willing,
money would be no object.

While she was making a selection, Aubrey
sat happily thinking about curry and lager with absolutely no idea he would
soon be under a very expensive knife.

Mrs Hathaway decided to make the call
the next time Aubrey dozed off, which, from experience, would not be long. She
smiled. She could get used to having a mammoth bank balance!

Tallulah Hathaway would be taking on the
Daring Dooz
challenges
accompanied by a de-flapped, de-haired, de-sagged Aubrey. And her recently
conceived grand design would be another step closer to a successful conclusion.

Chapter 25

Although he had no idea where the one
thousand pound cheque had come from, the fact that it had cleared into his
bank, had motivated Digby to begin marketing his practice in earnest.

One morning, despite a raging hangover,
he had decided to improve the office ambience so as to impress the increased
number of clients, his efforts were sure to generate.

He made a start by repairing the
ladderback chair which had disintegrated during Mrs Hathaway’s visit. Wielding
a large tube of industrial-strength contact adhesive, he worked relentlessly
for at least an hour. When he had finished, the chair had five legs, no back
and a number of small steps up to the front of the seat. He had also managed to
glue one of his Hush Puppies to the wood laminate flooring. Subsequent attempts
to prise the shoe from the floor with his Swiss Army knife resulted in a lot of
blood and the use of copious amounts of bandages, plasters and antiseptic
cream. Eventually, Digby realised the full extent of his injuries, and dripped
off to the local A&E to have everything stitched up.

Clearly, expanding your business was
fraught with difficulties, if not danger. Still, he had his advertisement.

After the ambulance had dropped him
back, Digby sat in his chair and looked at the sheet of paper on his desktop.
The words for the advertisement were fantastic. Despite his heavily bandaged
hands, and a sight decrease in his motor abilities caused by a trainee doctor's
overenthusiastic injection of morphine, he pushed the sheet of paper to another
part of his desktop, inspected it again, and the words still looked brilliant.
If this didn't appeal to the scrag end of the market, nothing would.

NO CASE TOO TRIVIAL

NO COMPLAINT TOO PUERILE

Is your compensation
claim getting on your tits,

and no bugger wants to
know?

Do you have an
insignificant but apparently intractable problem with your compensation claim,
and those legal wankers laugh in your face?

Well now, you can
contact a devious, conniving (legally-trained) bastard who makes Machiavelli
look like a recently
canonised
nun.

Underhand tactics,
barely legal manoeuvres, fake documentation, bogus claims and counterclaims,
intimidation, blackmail, jury nobbling and any other shit-laden technique that
will get you the compensation you do, or do not (I couldn't care less) deserve.

Email me now at [email protected]

(You know it makes sense!)

Time to
place the advertisement. Digby scanned the local Thomson Pages - no point in getting
too ambitious. The Financial Times would cost a bomb, and anyway the low-life
he was trying to recruit wouldn’t read the Financial Times, although on second
thoughts…

No, Digby
became ever more convinced that ‘local’ was best. And anyway, he was very keen
to keep his new approach well below the Solicitors Regulation Authority radar.
Those sods were so fucking touchy. One glimpse of a single word they felt
constituted non-compliance with their principles and he’d be getting a good
upside-down view of central Birmingham as he hung by his balls from the ceiling
of their investigation chamber.

So, he
chose the
Soho
Post-Intelligencer - all the gossip that’s not fit to print.
If
that
wasn’t below the radar, a freesheet with a circulation under
2,500, he’d like to know what the fuck was.

He phoned the number and was greeted by the usual full range of 16
recorded options. The only one missing was ‘
If
you’d like to firebomb the home of the cretin who came up with the idea of
using this shit-all useless message system, his address is…’

Having
listened to all 16, it turned out the option he needed was number one.

He stuck
out his bloodstained index finger and dialled one. Another message followed:
Your call is important to us, but we are
receiving unusually high call volumes at present. Please stay on the line and
one of our senior advertising executives will be with you shortly.

After ten
minutes of listening to a digitally distorted version of
Father Abraham in Smurfland
, Digby’s call was answered by a 14-year
old with very special needs - namely, a good kick up the arse.

‘Yeah!
What?’

‘I’d like
to place and advertisement in the
Soho
Post-Intelligencer.’

‘A what?’

‘An advertisement.’

‘’Ang on,’ There were muted sounds of papers being shuffled. The theme
from Grand Theft Auto could be heard in the background.

‘Classified or display?’

‘I have no idea. I thought perhaps you could help me. It’s about a
hundred words.’

‘I’d go for display, ‘cos I get more commission.’

Even though the advertisement would cost £25, Digby’s attitude thawed,
driven mainly by a sense of social responsibility. If placing a display
(whatever that was), rather than a classified advertisement, generated more
income for this senior advertising executive, Digby could sleep easier at
night. He would know that, thanks to his generous decision, the quality of the
cocaine the useless piss-pot was snorting down the local club might contain a
smaller-than-usual percentage of Harpic.

‘Can you read it out to me?’

‘Yes, of course, the headline is:
N
o case too
trivial. No complaint too puerile.

‘Er, ‘ow
you spellin’ ‘case’?’

‘Look,
would it be better if I emailed it to you, your email address is in your
Thomson Pages’ entry.’

‘Yeah do
that - though I’ll have to wait till Mrs Hathaway, our cleanin’ lady, gets
here, she’s dead good with computers, and that.’

Digby made
no connection.

The senior
advertising executive assured him the next publication date would be in about
three or four or five weeks. Then, as an electronic voice announced,
I am the
first
woman married to a Domestobot
, he hung up.

Digby went
to his computer, added his telephone number to the bottom of the advertisement
and emailed it off.

It wasn't
quite how Saatchi & Saatchi would have gone about it, but Digby was well
satisfied - his campaign was on the way. All that remained was to give it three
or four or five weeks, and see who replied.

In fact, he
would only get one reply, but the consequences would be way beyond his wildest
dreams, or nightmares.

Chapter 26

Aubrey had another fit of hysterics when
he heard about the trip to Harley Street. However, Mrs Hathaway stayed cool
and, within seconds, played her trump card, without even having to open the
pack.

‘When, you’re out of the clinic and
looking all nice and normal, we’ll go to Harrods and you can have anything you
want.’

Aubrey stopped the hysterics, put his
pyjamas back on, took a deep breath and decided to assess the situation. If he
thought ahead for once, he could come out of all this very well - hanging around
with a decent-looking bird who could make mincemeat out of any WWF wrestler, a
bird who was keeping him safe by outmanoeuvring Charlie Sumkins and, best of
all, a bird who had two million smackeroonies tucked down the front of her
knickers.

Plus, Aubrey had only ever been in Harrods
on shoplifting expeditions; so he was vaguely intrigued to find out what it
would be like to go there, without getting eyeball ache from checking the
horizon for store detectives. Plus, he could have whatever he wanted - even
though he couldn’t immediately think of anything.

On balance, undergoing surgery seemed a
small price to pay - not that he would be paying anything. So, the deal was
done, with the final sweetener being an offer of a mutton vindaloo with two six
packs of premium lager, delivered to the door, the night before surgery.

*

The Harley Street consultancy was
impressive - a beautiful Georgian town house, impeccably painted front door
with a fan light, and a highly polished brass nameplate, hand-engraved in
rather primitive capital letters to avoid the vulgarity associated with
precision laser finishing and alignment.

The receptionist was absolutely
charming, despite Aubrey’s appearance. The interior was a symphony of
impeccably understated good taste. The colours were muted, the lighting subtle,
the carpet thick and the chairs co-ordinated and comfortable. The paintings on
the wall struck a delicate balance between traditional and modern. If you
wanted an atmosphere which would encourage people to part with a lot of money,
this was perfection.

It was all quite a revelation to Aubrey,
who had only been in buildings of this quality at night, where his appreciation
of the up-market ambience had been rather limited by the fact he’d viewed it
with a torch.

The consultant arrived right on time,
and Mrs Hathaway and Aubrey followed him into his room.

They sat down, and the consultant got
straight to the point. ‘I have to tell you straight away, it won’t be easy, but
I’m sure, if we get the right international team together, we can get an
acceptable result.’

Mrs Hathaway looked crest-fallen. ‘What
do you mean?’

‘Well, when you’ve been a consultant
surgeon for fifteen years, you’ve seen nearly everything.’

He turned to Aubrey.

‘My guess is agricultural - you were
working on a hydraulic platform repairing a barn, fell 60 feet, crashed through
the roof into the pen of a prize bull which gave you a good, and by the looks
of it, extended, kicking.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Hathaway, looking very
perplexed.

‘Well,’ said the consultant, ‘it must
have been something pretty serious to get his face in
that
condition - he looks absolutely pulverised.’

‘No, we’re not here about his face - his
face is so much better than it was - almost normal.’

The thought of what Aubrey’s face must
have looked like when it wasn’t ‘almost normal’ flushed nauseously across the
consultant’s features.

‘Well, then,’ he said placing his palms
on his desk and breathing in quickly through his nose, ‘what do I have to deal
with today? Is it
worse
?’

‘It’s his body - have a look for
yourself,’ said Mrs Hathaway.

‘Right, Mr Brown,’ said the consultant,
‘could you please take your jacket and shirt off.’

Aubrey did what he was told.

‘And your tie.’

Aubrey did what he was told, again.

The consultant looked at Aubrey’s skin
and assured them it was
not
a problem.
His receptionist would phone through the fee and date for the operation, and
follow it up with a confirmation in the post.

Mrs Hathaway and Aubrey left, and the
consultant waved a professional, confidence-inspiring goodbye.

Once the door closed, he leapt across
the room, wrenched open a filing cabinet drawer, and threw up into it.

He turned, leaned heavily on his desk
with his head down. As he pressed the reception intercom, a thick stream of
saliva dribbled onto the back of his hand.

‘Get a cleaner in,' he gasped, 'one with
a strong stomach, cancel my appointments for the rest of the day, and get that
list of locums - I need to give someone a job.’

One can only image his reaction if he’d
asked Aubrey to drop his trousers.