Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (23 page)

Chapter 52

Mrs Hathaway turned round to Mick and
Jim with a ‘don’t say anything’ look. Actually, it was more a ‘don’t say
anything, or you could be up for an Enfield Bin’ look.

They understood.

‘That’s very generous offer, but I’m
afraid eight in the morning is a little early for us.’

Mick and Jim glanced at one another. A bit
of 8am brain damage was just what they needed.

‘Ma name’s Hamish,’ said the man in the
loincloth.

‘Tallulah,’ said Mrs Hathaway, as he
helped her up onto the pier.

‘And this is Michael and James.’

Nods were exchanged.

As they walked back along the pier, Hamish
apologised.

‘Sorry abut the Glenfiddich, b
yraway
. I’m still a wee bladdered from last neet. Everyone
got mutted. Naebody left standin’. Fertility rites.
Pure dead brilliant!
And tell ye the truth, it’s really Glenfiddich home-brew. We call it
Glenfiddich Urban Alternative. Tastes like a sample from a non-runner at Kelso,
but does the business.’

Neither Mrs
Hathaway, Mick nor Jim were experts on Scottish dialects, but as Hamish rambled
on, they started to realise that, in a remote tributary, 2000 miles from
anywhere, they’d stumbled across the Amazonian version of a Celtic supporter.

They reached
the end of the pier. As they stepped on land, a floating log grew legs and a
huge mouth and scuttled up to Hamish, presumably intent on biting off his leg.
Almost casually, he whacked the caiman right between the eyes with his rod. It hissed,
turned and slid back into the water to join the other floating logs.

‘Just a wee
bairn, tryin’ its luck,’ said Hamish.

‘Jesus,’ said
Jim, ‘that was a …’

‘We
know
,’ said Mrs Hathaway, ‘keep filming,
keep recording, keep taking stills, this is Daring Dooz Three!’

Before a row
could start, Hamish turned and pointed to the solid wall of jungle that lay
ahead.

‘Yon track’s
to oor bit.’

He led. They
followed.

The walk to ‘oor
bit’ passed without incident, apart from a brief stop where Hamish speared a
long snake with brown and beige markings.

‘Meet the
bushmaster,’ he said holding the dead reptile high in the air, ‘or as we say
surucucu
.’ If you spots one doon the karzy,
ma advice is dump yer turkish someweer else.’

‘Is it
poisonous?’ asked Jim, who for some reason was hiding behind Mick.

‘Aye and no. Say
you get bushmastered. And say yon Greenpeace helicopter is aroond tae pick you
up. They tak you to the hospital in
Manaus,
plug you intae machines
and pump yous full o’anti-venom. Then you die. Or you gae tae oor medicine man.
He’ll mak you a herby soup in a wee bowl. Bit o’ kip. Two days on, your
scants’ll be throbbin’.’

They got the
general gist.

Suddenly the
jungle fell away and they were faced with a large, single-storied building on
stilts. I was made from t
ree trunks, bamboo and palm leaves, held together with vines. There
were some window spaces with palm flaps, but generally it had the air of
something designed to keep things out.

A bamboo
ramp ran up to the main door.

‘Haem sweet haem,’
announced Hamish with a sweep of his hand. Best be quiet, they’re all coming
roond after last neet’s damage. Best gae inta ma office.’

The office
was a separate room on the left. Hamish opened the door and they followed him
inside.

There were
four rattan-type chairs and a low table made from bamboo.

Hamish sat
down and pressed a switch on the wall behind him. About a dozen h
alogen low-voltage downlighters glowed into
life.

‘Not bad, eh!’ said Hamish, obviously enjoying the shock on his guests’
faces.

‘Dimmers too!’

He twiddled the switch to prove his point.

‘Coffee?’

An old Cona coffee machine was bubbling away in the corner.

‘I suppose that’s home grown?’ said Jim, moving into well-brought-up
mode.

‘Nae,’ said Hamish, ‘the coffee growers are all up the Andes, flogging to
the Fair Traders. We get bugger all down here.’

‘Still, it tastes very nice,’ said Mrs Hathaway.

‘Aye,’ said Hamish. ‘Gold Blend Instant - get it fra yon supply ship. Comes
up river aboot every two months, that’s if the idle
gowks
deceed
tae shift their arses.’

‘Oh, and sorry for yez all, the air-con’s no on. Timer’s set for aboot nine.’

That did it. Everyone was sat down with their coffee. The lighting was
pleasantly subdued. I was time, Mrs Hathaway thought, to go on the offensive,
in the nicest possible way.

‘Hamish? It’s alright if I call you Hamish?’

‘Nae probs, hen.’

I have to say there are somethings here we weren’t expecting.

‘Like the lecky?’ he said with a broad smile.

‘Yes.’

‘Like the Glasgae accent?’

‘Yes.’

‘But not the Gold Blend Instant?’

‘That too.’

‘Right then,’ said Hamish. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘That isn't a problem.’

‘And it’ll be in slo-mo. Ma heed’s banging like a Govan riveter’s
kneecaps.’

Mrs Hathaway sat forward, put her elbows on her knees and cupped her hands
around her pretty chin. She stared right into Hamish’s eyes.

‘We’ll listen.’

Chapter 53

The early morning mist swirled around
the young man on the end of the pier. He was, obviously, a local. He was slim
and naked, apart from a loincloth and several necklaces. He had jet-black hair
in a ‘pudding basin’ haircut, and eyes that caught the rays of the morning sun.
He carried a long wooden spear. As yet, he carried no air of authority. He just
happened to be the one hanging around the end of the pier, doing a bit of early
morning fishing.

He stopped spearing his breakfast of
grilled piranha and listened. He’d picked up the asthmatic chugging of an
approaching craft.

After about five minutes, the boat
appeared. It seemed it was all it could do to push through the mist as it
burped and backfired its way towards the pier. If he’d been a cinema buff, the
young man would have recognised the craft as similar to one featured in the 1951
film,
African Queen
, starring
Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, directed by John Houston,
adapted from
the 1935 novel of the same name
by
C. S. Forester
, produced by Sam Spiegel and John Wolf.

 
But as the nearest cinema was a 700-mile walk
away, and was still waiting to have sound installed, he was unable to make that
rather interesting comparison.

He had to
deal with what he saw. And what he saw was a just-about-floating disaster, with
a thin black central chimney coughing out clouds of mustard-coloured smoke. His
attention soon turned to its occupant - a large, red-faced man, with wild,
silvery hair. He was wearing strange clothes - a black suit and a black shirt
with a strange white band at the neck.

He took a
hand from the tiller and waved it high above his head. ‘The Lord be praised!
Hallelujah! Humanity!’

He pulled
the boat alongside the pier, threw a looped rope around one of the supports, then
went back and slammed the furnace door. This resulted in a loud explosion and an
enormous sheet of flame, which created a 30-foot high, mushroom cloud directly
over the boat, which somehow failed to sink. Emerging from the shelter of the
boiler, he patted out the fires that had started on various parts of his suit,
and looked up at the man in the loincloth.

‘Is there
anywhere I can have a wee shit? Every time I hang my arse over the side, some
caiman has a go at it.’

It was
obvious to the Reverend Zachariah McFee, that the young man wasn’t
understanding, but, after a few rather vulgar mimes, with accompanying noises, he
got his message across, and was led to a small encampment about 100 yards from
the river bank.

‘Where’s
the cludgie?’

No response.

‘The
lavvy?’

Shake of
the head.

‘The
caramel?’

Shrug -
possibly with an indication he could go into the jungle to relieve himself.

There was
no way the Reverend McFee was going to bare his buttocks to a load of carnivorous
plants crawling with leeches, snakes and poisonous spiders.

Purple-faced,
he turned and scampered back to the pier, crouched double - rather like a speeded-up
version of Charles Laughton in
Hunchback
of Notre Dame.
He got to the end of the pier, just in time. The structure
was about four feet high, which, he fervently hoped, would place his bits well
out of caiman reach.

Nature
having taken its course, the Reverend McFee stepped onto the boat, collected
his suitcase and walked back to the village, where people were waking up.

He
attracted a lot of attention from the villagers. Mainly because his skin was
such a funny shade of red, and because they had never seen a man with smouldering
clothes.

Once they
had finished pointing and giggling, they damped down some of the areas that were
starting to re-ignite, then left him alone and went off to start their daily
tasks.

The young
man took him into the long house and showed him an area with a bed made of palm
leaves, and, with actions, indicated this was somewhere he could sleep.

‘Well,’
said the Reverend McFee, ‘I’ve seen better wank chariots in my time, but that
will do nicely thank you.’

They
shook hands, and the young man smiled.

‘Look,
Hamish, you don't mind if I call you
Hamish
do you? Hamish, this place may be paradise for you, but to me, when you go up somewhere
without a paddle, in your worst nightmares, this is where you end up.’

The young
man smiled.

‘But
this,’ he patted his shabby brown suitcase. ‘This is the future. This is
your
future. This is the Sodom and
Gomorrah of all futures.’

He hugged
the suitcase to him.

‘This
will blow your fuckin’ socks off, then blow them back on again with all the
holes mended. And Holy Jesus, Mary Mother of God, wait ‘til you see what we’ve
got for you in the hold.’

The young
man smiled.

At that
exact moment, back in Aberdeen, the head of the steering committee for the
Society of Global Missionary Zeal and Probity was not smiling. She was displaying
psychopathic symptoms, rarely found outside secure facilities.

Chapter 54

Moira McPherson’s Bri-Nylon cardigan
bristled with static, while
she
bristled
with indignation. The other committee members sat on bare ladderback chairs
around a scrubbed bare wooden table - no expense incurred at the headquarters
of the
Society
of Global Missionary Zeal and Probity.

Actually,
the committee members were not sitting, they were cowering. Cowering in the
face of Moira’s piercing eyes, threatening personality and enormous bosom. Apart
from Moira, the committee was made up of elderly gentlemen, frail, shaking
slightly, but as scrubbed and as thoroughly disinfected as the
tabletop
.

Moira’s
solid frame and intimidating personality would make an SAS commando think twice
about the consequences of lobbing a stun grenade in her direction. But it was
the solidity and size of her gigantic breasts that won each and every argument
at SOGMZAP. The elderly men would vote her way on anything, as long as she and
her bosoms stayed in the room.

‘We are
gathered here today,’ she started. The elderly gentlemen all nodded.

She
paused to let her power flow over them.

‘We are
gathered here today to conduct a case review for one Zachariah McFee, who I
believe is adding a 100 per cent fraudulent ‘Reverend’ in front of his current
name.’

‘We are
all familiar with Mr McFee, also known as Andy Murray, Sean Connery and Alex
Salmond, if some of the bounced cheques arriving at these premises are to be
believed.’

‘Not to
mention his other alias - Sparky Bill, the owner of the website www.ifyourelectricsarefuckednaebotha.com.
which, as you know is currently the subject of an investigation by Interpol.’

‘I’m sure
we can all remember how Mr McFee came to SOGMZAP. He’d been a highly qualified
electrical engineer who had fallen on hard times. And, I believe, not only did
he fall on hard times, but he gave hard times a good kicking while he was
falling.’

The
elderly gentlemen nodded.

‘He was
drinking two bottles of whisky a day when he arrived at one of our shelters. He’d
been living in an up-market squat in Glasgow, where the police had formed a
special division to deal with the consequences of his actions. He had been regularly
involved in serious physical assaults on members of the public, charity
workers, law enforcement officers, police dogs, court officials, clergymen and large
groups of Rangers and Celtic fans. He ran a number of illicit alcoholic drink
production facilities and a nationwide distribution network for the
aforementioned products.’

‘Despite
our best efforts, he failed to improve, until one day, he approached this
committee concerning a prize being offered by a TV company for
The Most Reformed Man in Scotland
. His
proposal was that he would reform his ways, and split the sizeable amount of
prize money with SOGMZAP.’

‘This was
an unusual request, but, as we know, our principal, potential benefactor, 95-year
old Delbert MacSiegfeld, CEO of MacSiegfeld Saturday Night Specials, Dayton,
Ohio, married a 17-year old actress, and in three weeks, he was dead. He left her
all his fortune. And she, understandably, disappeared.’

‘Not to
put too fine a point on it, we needed funds, badly. So we agreed to his scheme.
Or should I say,
you
agreed to his
scheme.’

The
elderly gentlemen nodded. Moira’s bosom heaved. Their increased levels of
concentration caused a significant rise in room temperature.

‘As you
know,’ she continued, ‘he became a model client. He gave up alcohol, and began
training 12 hours a day at our Missionary School. He researched and wrote an
article on
The Heathen Women's Friend,
the first Methodist women's
missionary magazine. He started amassing a mountain of evidence to show how bad
he’d been before he got back on the straight and narrow. You probably remember
the court photographs of battered faces, the variety of improvised weapons he’d
used, him lying in his squat surrounded by mouldy pizzas and cheap sherry
bottles. And who could forget that full colour, close-up of the veterinarian’s
kidney bowl with that poor Alsatian’s gnawed testicles.’

The
elderly gentlemen nodded, and one or two of them winced.

‘Then,
thanks to us offering him an honorary missionary posting to the Vatican - he
won. Lots of TV coverage, handing over the big cheque and all that malarkey.’

‘We were
all there to wave him goodbye as he flew off to Rome. It was first item on the
6 o’clock news. But I think it was a mistake when
you
decided to arrange for him to stay at a monastery. Now, we all have
to live with the consequences of
your
decision.’

‘I’m sure
you recall that, within two hours of his arrival, he had propositioned three novices,
used convent funds to join several strip clubs and obtain membership of a
number of very private gentlemens’ establishments. He also raided the communion
wine cellar and imbibed a significant amount, with disastrous results.’

‘His
fight with the Mother Superior after Matins on the second day was vicious, but
brief. I certainly wouldn’t want to go ten rounds with Sister Mary of the Holy
Gentleness of St Chasm. When he came out of hospital, he refused to answer our
emails demanding our half of the cheque.’

‘Within
days, he’d disappeared. We know a Reverend Zachariah McFee left Italy a few
days later, having cleared his bank account of every last penny. And we know he
used his, no doubt, perfectly forged passport for a flight to Brazil. And that’s
where the trail runs cold.’

‘So the
situation as is stands is we have no money and the TV company are calling me,
wanting to know how things are going with Scotland’s Most Reformed Man, and can
they pop over to the Vatican and do a follow-up.’

‘If they
keep on pushing, and I think you know they will, we’ll be exposed as fraudsters,
they'll be exposed as innocent victims, and we’ll lose all the meagre funds we currently
receive from the general public. It will be a total and absolute disaster. We’ll
be facing bankruptcy, and all the good work we do will have come to nothing.
Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!’

Moira
banged the table - and when she banged the table, you knew it had been banged.

She
looked accusingly at the elderly gentlemen. She stood up and screwed her
knuckles into the
tabletop
surface.

‘Well,’
she said, ‘what have you got to say to Moira?’

The
elderly gentlemen looked down at the table, hardly daring to breathe.

‘Come on,’
she goaded. ‘You’ve been much too quiet, for my liking.’

They
stayed quiet.

‘Gentlemen,
Moira is waiting to hear what you have to say. I do
not
want to lose my
temper
!’

Suddenly,
one elderly gentleman, at the end of the table, bravely raised his hand.

‘Yes?’ hissed
Moira, with as much venom as she could generate.

‘This
Sister Mary,’ he said. ‘I don't suppose you’ve got any pictures?’