Looking for Mrs Dextrose (16 page)

“What happened?” asked Si.

“Maybe save that story for another day?” I suggested.

“Well,” began Kai. “I’d nipped out the back door to get away from Si, who can be quite boring.”

“I can’t!” protested his alleged buddy.

“Trust me, mate, you can. Anyway, I’d nipped out back, grab some fresh, take in the stars, and I think to meself, might as well take a piss.”

Bri and Si nodded.

“So I’ve flopped out the old man, gushing away, and I can swear I hear this scuffling. So I stop the flow and listen. Nothing. Start again. Scuttle. Stop. Listen. Nothing. Now
I’m getting nervous, but I’ve started so I’ll finish, if you know what I mean?”

We did.

“So I’m holding the old man with one hand and fumbling for me torch with the other. I’m thinking everything’s OK cos the scuttling sound’s stopped. But just to be
on the safe side, I turn on the torch – and I spot it straight away…”

“Hopping up your piss stream?” suggested Si.

“Hopping up me piss stream! Like your twinkle-toed toad is wont to do.”

I will admit I was caught up in the tale. “Is that bad?” I asked, despite knowing the answer.

“Is that
bad
? Is that
BAD
?” went Kai, exchanging glances with Bri and Si. “Mate, have you any idea what would have happened if that toad had reached me old
mucker?”

I shook my head mutely.

“Mate, here’s how the twinkle-toed toad works. It hops up unsuspecting blokes’ piss streams, as previously discussed. When it’s got to the top, it flicks its tongue into
the little hole and there’s a teeny-tiny barb on the end of its tongue, so it sticks there. Then, slowly but surely, it pulls its way into your old man.”

My crotch region shrunk for cover. “How big is it?”

“Bit personal –
eh, boys?
” quipped Kai.

I was in no mood for frivolity. “The toad, I meant.”

“Yeah, I knew that, mate. I’m not an idiot,” he kidded himself, before addressing Bri and Si. “How big would you say the twinkle-toed toad is, boys?”

“About so long,” suggested Bri, holding his fingertips barely a centimetre apart.

“Yeah, that’s about it,” agreed Kai.

I breathed out again. “That’s painful, but it’s not fatal, surely?”

“Mate,” said Kai. “I haven’t finished.”

“So the toad’s now pulled itself inside your old man, which – as you rightly suggested – would be bloody painful, but it might not kill yer. This is
when, for reasons best known to itself, the twinkle-toed toad decides to commit harry-karry. By inflating, and inflating, and inflating its throat. Preparing for its final croak. Literally. So
you’re watching as the old man gets bigger and bigger and bigger – but not in a good way. Like a balloon, mate. Terrifying. And then suddenly: BANG! Your…”

But Kai never finished his sentence, because there came an almighty crash followed by a roar. We turned in unison towards the commotion, and there in the doorway was the silhouette of a man in
the pose of an ogre. Hairy head down, eyes forward, muscles tensed, arms ready to strangulate, fingers shaped into claws.

“KIDNAP!” it bellowed, then stood there breathing heavily.

I knew only too well who this was. And he wasn’t happy.

“What the fuck is
that
?” I heard Kai gasp for the second time that night. “Bri, get yer gun, mate! Quick!”

“No-no-no!” I yelped, raising my arms in a gesture of surrender and hurrying towards the figure in the doorway. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the light. “Bri,
Si, Kai – may I introduce my Dad. Mr Harrison Dextrose!”

“What. The. Fuck?” went Bri.

“Jesus,” gasped Kai.

“Huh?” gulped Si.

They were no oil-paintings themselves.

Then I saw Dextrose’s head and realised what they were on about. Oh, it was hideous. His previously sunburned face had erupted into a swollen mass of blisters and pustules. They covered
his eyes and mouth and made a mockery of his nose. Barely a single patch of flesh one might have termed ‘normal’ remained. Vivid reds and purples, dotted with yellow heads, and around
those billowing blisters, in all shapes and sizes, packed with rusty-coloured liquid; the one on his right cheek, just below the eye, looked a touch like a sideways map of Britain and made me feel
briefly homesick. And all that… pollution, trapped within Dextrose’s habitual explosion of greasy, matted, greying hair.

“He’s barred!” shouted Bri, cowering.

Dextrose was staring at me, or at least his face was pointing in my direction. I could just make out one pupil, the one not obscured by sideways-Britain, blazing with righteous indignation.

“You!” he growled. “You minking mink!” A boil burst in the corner of his mouth and pus dribbled over a blister on his chin.

He hit me, hard in the face, and I went down.

The next thing I knew, I was being hauled off the floor with one hand by Kai, while Bri and Si restrained a spitting Dextrose from assaulting me further.

“Don’t hurt him!” I wailed.

“Why not?” asked Bri, wheezing. “He wants to kill you!”

“He’s my Dad!”

During the scuffle several of Dextrose’s blisters had burst, so that his face had become more shapely, if now covered in off-white, ragged, seeping flaps of skin. His pink velour tracksuit
bottoms were around his knees – at least his shirt hem overlapped his modesty – and one of his arms was bent backwards, trapped in the sleeve of his half-removed overcoat. Though he
struggled and snorted, he was high on rage but low on energy, and gradually his shoulders slumped.

Finally, I heard him sigh quietly and wonder aloud, “How did it come to this?”

“You sure this is your father?” said Kai.

“You sure he’s even human?” said Bri, his voice rising higher with each successive word.

I explained about the journey we had undertaken from Mlwlw and the exposure to the sun, stating that Dextrose had fallen asleep in the sidecar rather than being drugged unconscious.

The lapsed explorer did not play ball. “Minking lies!” he railed, offering a renewed but fruitless struggle. “That minker kidnapped me!”

“What’s a minker?” asked Bri.

“Long story,” I said.

“I still think we should throw him out,” asserted Socks ‘N’ Sandals’ patron.

“Agreed,” said Si and Kai.

“I too,” added Importos, from the safety of his table, having not lifted a finger to help.

But Dextrose had ceased paying attention and was sniffing the air. “I know that smell!” He inhaled with relish. “Booze! Lovely minking booze!” He swiped aside his
captors, at once superhuman, flung himself at the bar, tumbled over it, landed in a heap on the other side and was up in a jiffy, pouring himself a pint. Once content with the head he walked around
to the customers’ side of the bar, pushed Duane off his stool and occupied it himself. Though Duane’s head hit the floor with a thud, he uttered not a peep and lay at Dextrose’s
feet in the shape of a homicide-department outline.

Far from being appalled, Bri, Si and Kai’s expressions became sunnily dispossessed.

“Hold on, fellas,” went Kai. “He’s only one of us!”

“So who the fuck is this?” demanded Si, pointing a twiggy finger at me.

“Yeah, go sit with your ladyfriend,” snapped Kai, nodding towards Importos.

“Bloody nerve,” grumbled Bri. “Taking up our valuable time like that.”

Importos was tapping an empty pint glass on the table when I pulled up the chair opposite. He glared down at me with those murky green eyes. “Where my beer? Why you to
buy zem beer? Zey stupid.”

“They’re not!” I riposted without thinking it through. Anyway, how dare he? “Why should I buy your drink? Why don’t you buy your own drink?”

“Because,” he said, in the tone of one addressing the intellectually challenged. “I. To. Have. No. Money.”

“You mean you’ve come all this way
without money
?”

He shrugged. “So?”

“So I’m expected to pay for you?”

Importos looked gobsmacked. “I to come all zis way. For to help you.” He jabbed me above the breast. “Is most little can to do.”

“But you haven’t actually helped!” I thought for a moment, hoping to speak fairly. “Besides when you looked through that window just now.”

“See? I to help!”

“Well it’s hardly Sherpa Tensing, is it?”

“Who she?”

I was about to become infuriated when I remembered Detritos and my lies. Could guilty parties buy off their guilt with alcohol, I wondered? In my slightly inebriated state, those cold ales
having gone straight to my head, I decided it was worth a shot. “Don’t worry about it,” I told Importos. “What are you having?”

“I to have two beer. To say sorry.”

My crimes, I suspected, would require considerably more than two.

Having bought another round for the entire pub, including Duane, who was quite possibly dead, I retook my seat opposite Importos, cradling four fresh ales (if Importos needed
two, so did I). As Bri had poured, I had overheard Dextrose launching into that old chestnut about Nadia of Bujina, his audience already rapt.

The tall man chugged on his first pint. “When last time you to see bruzzer?”

He wasn’t ever going to let it lie, as I had feared. I was going to have to tell him something to put him off the scent – but where to start? How to wheedle around Detritos’s
demise while making my tale seem palatable?

The facts, as I had experienced them, were these:

Detritos was a member of a worldwide network of secret agents, named Secret Heroes Ho! (SHH! for short). He had become convinced – here I
stress that he was very probably delusional – that a terrorist group was plotting to fire a laser at the moon, dragging it out of earth orbit to crash into our planet, unless a ransom was
paid. The dwarf had stolen the ruby at the heart of the laser, and the terrorists wanted it back. The events had culminated in a showdown beside the crater of the volcano, Monserratum.

Now, how much of that was Importos likely to believe? The dwarf had made me an honorary member of the network, complete with my own ‘SHH!’ button badge – still attached to my
tank top, in my baggage – and as such I could hardly come out with, “Did you know that Detritos was a spy?” which didn’t feel terribly Mata Hari.

No, I would have to play it subtly.

When had I last seen his brother?

“He comes and goes,” I replied, then winked. “As well you know.”

Importos leaned away from me. “Why you to do eye zing?” he spluttered.

Interesting, I thought: he hadn’t taken my hint. Perhaps he knew nothing of Detritos’s secret activities? How best to phrase such a question without giving too much away? I settled
on: “What do you know of your brother’s secret activities?” instantly wishing I had left out ‘secret’. It struck me that I was quite drunk.

The tall man looked quite taken aback. “What ze to fuck? What zis secret active?”

That was the clincher: he knew nothing of Detritos’s spying, I felt certain. So, could I now use the secretive nature of the dwarf’s alleged profession to my advantage? Before I
could think of a reply, however, Importos spoke to me conspiratorially: “Wait. For many time, I have zink Detritos hide from Importos somezing.”

Don’t reveal your hand too soon, I told myself. “Yes?”

“Zis secret active. Is very secret?”

What sort of a question was that? “Er. Yes.”

“He to do in dark?”

Quite possibly. “Yes.”

“He to do alone? Maybe one uzzer person?”

I had joined Detritos on his final mission, otherwise I imagined he acted alone. “Yes.”

“He in, out, zen gone?”

SAS style? Pretty much. “Yes.”

“He to make up name, not to use real?”

Of course! Detritos had had a codename: Green Sparrow. “That’s right!”

Importos nodded sagely, grinning. “He is homosex man prostitute!”

What?
No!
“Yes!” Shit. (It had just sounded better than: “He is dead spy!”)

Importos clapped his very large hands together and laughed. “Haha! Zis bruzzer, he crazy!”

I appeared to be compounding the error.

At least that seemed to appease him and he began opening up, telling me about their childhood in Green Golan. He was the elder of the two, he said. Only when Detritos was ten
years old had their parents begun to accept he was unlikely to join the family business (being professional basketball).

As a result, Importos had become the golden boy and Detritos was increasingly shunned. “One Christmas,” the tall man told me, “parent zey to give Importos many zing: basketball
short, basketball shirt, basketball sock, basketball shoe, basketball hoop, basketball ball, television for to watch basketball, Harlem Globe Trotter calendar. Parent, zey to give Detritos leg of
chair. To tell him: you to get next leg year later, and so on. Detritos very sad.”

Poor bugger. Though he hadn’t been overly giving himself, he had always been generous with his actions. There was no doubting that I would have been dead were it not for him. What had been
his last words to me? “We beeg friend, yes?”

Yes, we had been big friends.

“Hey! Meester Alexander! Importos to tell good story. At least fucking to listen!”