Looking for Mrs Dextrose (11 page)

Time shifted, rose, fell, billowed in a heat haze. Lasted a full lifetime or vanished in a vacuum.

Within the vortex a shadow appeared. The shadow expanded. Developed features. Called a name. “Pilsbury?” Shifted, replaced by red.

Something wicked this way came, hurtling towards the distance between my eyes.

Wind. Burn. Collision. Speed.

I screamed. You screamed. We all screamed.

Then void.

“Pilsbury?”

“Pilsbury?”

The voices pricked my subconscious, eventually rousing me awake. Other noises joined the repetition of my name: familiar animal calls, the sounds of humidity.

My head felt furry and my spine hurt like hell. I was lying on my back with hard ridges digging into my flesh. What had happened? And where the hell was I?

I opened my eyes, which baulked at the sunshine. There were twisted branches and broad, verdant leaves above me, though not as high above me as I might have expected. As I shifted a shoulder, my
right side began to drop, sharply. I threw out an arm, grabbed at a handhold and looked over my shoulder.

What the fuck was I doing halfway up a tree?

I puked, the matter tumbling to the ground where it splattered noisily, and instantly I felt a little better.

People were looking for me – people with local accents, whose voices I failed to recognise, but who knew my name. Why? Who could they be? While arteries around my scalp
throbbed, recent memories began to filter through. When they reached the point where I had inadvertently poisoned Gdgi, my head cleared in an instant. Wonderful what fear can do.

At once it became obvious who these people were. Trackers. Hunters from Gdgi’s tribe intent upon bringing his killer to justice. But I didn’t kill him – that wasn’t my
cigar! I had lied, to make myself look better! (And, oh, how that had backfired.)

The Shaman was the guilty party. But who would believe me, the interloper?

The voices had been getting closer. Too close. I focused upon them.

“Pilsbury?”

Different male voice: “Pilsbury?”

The name came again and again; as far as I could make out, there were only two of them. Only two. It was a start. But who was I kidding? A single one of those hard-as-nails tribesman could have
taken me down, even if he were half my size… And what if they were armed?

They were bound to be. What self-respecting hunter would travel without some form of weapon? I imagined myself being picked off up here, in this sodding tree, spears or arrows whistling past my
ears, until the inevitable.

Oh Jesus Christ. What was I going to do?

As I assessed the situation, I could not help but wonder again: what was I doing halfway up a tree?

How on earth had I got up here?

Though I strained my brain, it offered only so much, then dug in its heels. I remembered getting on the bike after decking the Shaman. I remembered rifling through my pockets for the key. I even
remembered that little kid’s name: Nzonze. After that, white-out. Not a clue.

I might as well have beamed here via Mars.

“Pilsbury?” That jolted me back to the instant. Not 20 yards away, at most.

How was I going to persuade them that the Shaman was the real killer?

“Pilsbury!”

“Pilsbury!”

I could hear their footsteps now, heard them stop to sweep a hand through dead foliage, talk to each other in their own tongue. Then carry on.

I tried to curl myself up at the sides, to roll myself like a rug, so that I might hide behind mere branches, never once daring to look down.

So close now, I swore I could hear their hearts beating. Again they stopped. I screwed my eyes tight shut and dared not to breathe. Every muscle tensed.

“Hey! We see you up there!”

I waited for the spear shaft to lance my heart, praying for just a flesh wound.

“Pilsbury. Please come down. It looks very dangerous up there.”

“Yes, Mr Quench will not thank us if we return you broken.”

Their names were Benzani and Hagadro and they were friends and occasional customers of Livingstone Quench. Like myself, Quench had expected my trip with the Shaman to be a
swift return journey and, knowing how temperamental old bikes could be, he had sent out a search party when I had not returned by nightfall, just in case.

They had followed my tracks out until coming across the vehicle, some yards off the path, its sidecar crumpled into a significant tree, yet with no sign of myself thereabouts. Tracking my
footsteps, they had traced a haphazard route well into the jungle, until they had spotted me up the tree.

“You were lucky,” said Benzani. “There were many signs that you were bouncing off trees on your way, which would have scared off predators. But you would not have lived for
long without water, had we not found you.”

“Yes,” agreed his compatriot. “And many are the tree snakes.”

Though I had assured my two saviours that they had done enough already and that I was quite capable of walking, they had insisted upon taking it in turns to give me piggy-backs
home. What surprised me was that the journey did not take that long. Whatever had happened during my bike ride back from Gdgi’s ‘lost’ village, I had somehow almost made it
back.

Bobbing along thus – frankly uncomfortable, given both Benzani and Hagadro’s boniness – did I return to Mlwlw to find Quench sitting outside his bar, reading a cigarette
packet. He leapt to his feet when he saw us and came to greet me, arms outstretched. No sign of Harrison Dextrose.

“What ’appened to you?” asked Quench. “You look like shite!”

Cheers. “I’m not entirely sure,” I replied.

“By the way,” Quench said. “There’s someone here been looking for you.”

“For me?” I felt my face blanche. Had the Q’tse come straight here? Had I not eluded them after all?

Quench continued: “Yeah. Called you by your old name: Alexander, weren’t it? Took me a while to work it aht.”

I breathed again. It couldn’t be any of the Q’tse, who knew me only as Pilsbury, nor the Shaman himself. But if it weren’t them, then who could it possibly be? Someone from my
old life?

I could think of only one possible candidate… Surely not?
Suzy Goodenough
?

My motivation to follow in Dextrose’s footsteps, I should explain – it wasn’t purely about self-improvement. That wasn’t the whole story. There was also a woman.
(Isn’t there always?)

Back home in Glibley I had two long-term friends: Benjamin Grebe and Suzy Goodenough. The latter, I had lusted after since schooldays. ‘The goddess’, Benjamin and I called her,
though she remained off-bounds to us sex-wise, an unattainable angel, an ache.

There had been one incident: her 16th birthday when she had demanded I help her lose her virginity (coincidentally involving mine also), and we had both become naked in her bedroom. Fabulously
nervous, I’d tried to think of something romantic to utter and had blurted out, “I like your vagina.” It had gone downhill from there and the prospect of anything carnal had
trailed off into obscurity.

So, when she’d offered to sleep with me should I complete the route of Dextrose’s Quest in a faster time than the great explorer himself had managed – knowing I couldn’t
possibly turn the chance down – I had leapt at it like an adolescent on a pogo stick.

Had she come out here to find me?

My hopes were piqued.

I dusted down my tanktop, ran fingers through my hair (which emerged covered in dust, twigs and four dead beetles), cleared my throat and followed the bar owner into his den.

My first surprise was that Dextrose was not present, draped over a table. My second was that there were no women in the bar at all, let alone Suzy Goodenough, elated and flying
into my arms like a bird into a window. No, there was just one chap, looking tall even seated, returning my quizzical stare.

He started getting up as I moved into the bar, and he kept on growing and growing. He must have been well over seven feet tall, with legs and arms as thin and long as his tanned face. Had he not
ducked at full height, he would have put his head through the ceiling.

“Senor Alexander?” he asked.

I furrowed my brow. I had never seen him before, yet he knew of me. “Yes?”

“My bruzzer, he say I must to come to find Senor Alexander here. He say I must to help Senor Alexander.”

The stranger wore long, baggy shorts, satin white, and a matching vest top with the number 57 on his chest in blue with red trim. Above that was a black-lined illustration of a chap in a
sombrero chewing a cigar and toting a pistol. Below the number was a name, ‘Los Desperados’. He was rather handsome in a chiselled, sporty way, if a bit tall.

His ‘bruzzer’? I’d heard that pronunciation before, from the dwarf, Detritos. And hadn’t there also been vague talk of a sibling? A sibling who played basketball?

As we met in the middle of Gossips, he held out his hand. “You are Senor Alexander?” His hair was very black, short, spiked and greased, and he wore unkempt, dusty stubble. His eyes
were duck-pond green.

“Yes, yes I am,” I said, shaking warily. “Are you Detritos’s brother?”

He beamed, nodding. “Si! Is me! How is he, my bruzzer?”

Christ. He was dead at the bottom of a volcano. “He’s…” – Think fast, you fool – “He’s fine. I think. I haven’t seen him for a
while.” I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. What if he took it badly? Or decided to blame me?

He regarded me quizzically. “When he return?”

Shit
. “Well, you know what Detritos was… is like – there one minute, gone the next! Haha!”

He began pumping my hand enthusiastically. He did know what his brother was like! “For sure! He is one, as you to say! My name Importos! I am your friend!”

“Great!” I replied, feeling godawful.

“Detritos, he will to turn up, zen we all be friend! Yes?”

Well, no, actually.

“Beer!” It was Dextrose arriving for hopefully his first drink of the day, and he couldn’t have timed the interruption better.

I ushered Importos towards the table where the lapsed explorer had plonked himself. “Importos, this is my father, Harrison Dextrose. Harrison Dextrose, Importos.”

Dextrose ignored the tall man’s outstretched hand. “Mink off!” he snapped.

“He doesn’t mean it,” I cod-chuckled.

“I minking do,” demurred Dextrose.

The last thing I needed was a scene. Thinking on my feet, I called to the barkeep. “Livingstone, three beers please! And one for yourself – do come and join us! Haha!” I really
would have to cease the false laughter.

My hastily hatched plan was to maintain a mixture of inane small talk and boyish banter, avoiding any mention of the dead dwarf.

Dextrose prattled on about himself as usual, which I only encouraged, and we filled the conversation with that sort of thing until Quench just had to go and ask Importos how he came to be in
Gossips.

“My bruzzer, he to call me,” Importos explained. “He to say, ‘You to come help Senor Alexander – he to go to Gossip, you to meet zere. Come now!’I ask him,
‘But where you to go?’ He will not to tell. I to worry…”

“So you’re a basketball player?” I asked, before he could concern himself further.

“For sure!” he said. “Basketball is family business – but Detritos, he too small! Yes!”

I laughed far more heartily than was necessary, causing Quench to look at me strangely. “How’d you get ’ere, son?” he asked Importos. “Where you from?”

“From Green Golan, you to know?”

No one did.

Importos added: “It many mile, but I to jog here, for to be fit. OK?”

“You jogged ’ere? ’Ow far is it?” asked Quench.

“Maybe 200 mile?”

“
You jogged 200 miles?
” the barkeep spluttered.

Neither of us could quite believe it (Dextrose had stopped listening).

Importos shrugged. “When my bruzzer, he to call, I zink must to be import.”

If I couldn’t stop him talking about Detritos soon, the truth was bound to emerge, and then I’d be hard-pressed for an explanation. Why hadn’t I simply admitted everything to
start with? The dwarf had killed himself in the interests of world peace… hmm, perhaps that was why.