“Spot on, babe,” said Vince, taking his wife’s hand and, while squeezing it, also giving Ron and Gloria the malocchio.
It was Ron who fought back against such thinly veiled accusations.
“There was always a darker side to our Jeremy. A side we could do nothing about. Used to hide in his bedroom playing mathematics computer games all night long, and…”
“You just let him?” said Vince.
“The boy was a genius,” said Gloria. “That’s all we knew. It’s what his teachers all said.”
“Phooey,” said Valerie, taking her daughter’s limp hand and massaging it while also faux weeping a bit.
“Bastard,” spat Sophie.
“Let’s just hope the coppers find him soon. At least we’ve got that nice PC Dawkins on the case,” Gloria said.
“Dawkins porkins,” Sophie re-spat. “Never met such a dickhead. Didn’t even know Jeremy’s name till we told him. Okay, so he was tall. But with that horrid beard…”
“A dork’s a dork,” Vince agreed. “Dawkins always was one and still is. Couldn’t investigate his own bottom without a bottom map.”
Which was just as well given “Honest” Vince’s nefarious gambling transactions—horse doping, jockey bribery, and suchlike—but this wasn’t the time or place for such an admission.
“Seems to me,” he continued, “although I’d never have thought it before, it looks like our best hope’s gotta be the bleedin’ Internet, innit?”
“Also it’s all over the telly and the newspapers too, ain’t that right, Vince?” said Valerie.
“Right as night, darlin’. Bound to be some bugger out there who’s seen him.”
“What I think we should all agree on,” said Ron, “is the sooner we get poor Jeremy back to the heart of his family, the better.”
This was a sentiment with which nobody could disagree, given the extent to which they all depended one way or another on Jeremy’s capacity to print money. Ron and Gloria owned their home—mortgage paid off and everything—but a joint state pension and a couple of piddling work-related ones weren’t going to fund any more Caribbean cruises, were they? And thriving though Vince’s bent betting business currently was, he wasn’t getting any younger. Plus he had no pension, seeing as wide boys didn’t go for pensions, did they? And as for Sophie, life was unimaginable without a consistent cash flow. She would even be prepared to forgive Jeremy his “blip” and let him have morning sex with her again just so long as the big cheques kept hitting her bank account.
They were all agreed, therefore, that Jeremy should be found as soon as possible. But none of them had the least idea how that might be achieved and were becoming gloomy and distraught as they sucked down one of the few remaining bottles of Jeremy’s cellar-preserved bottles of Larent Perrier Cuvée Rosé.
“Tell you what,” said Ron. “Why don’t we phone the Sir Magnus bloke and see if he’s found out anything? He was the one who started off the Twitter campaign, wasn’t he?”
“Well actually no, that was Jackie Lamur,” said Vince, whose bent betting business depended heavily on multiple tweets from thousands of equally bent sources.
“Jackie who?” chorused Ron, Gloria, Valerie, and Sophie, all of them suspecting a secret mistress of Jeremy’s who might have some claim on his money.
“Lamur,” said Vince. “Look, why doesn’t someone just call the Sir Magnus geezer and find out what’s goin’ on?”
“How about you?” said Ron, “I’ve got his number if you haven’t.”
But Vince did have the number and was surprised at how quickly Sir Magnus picked up.
“Yes?” said the Lord of the Realm, who’d been awaiting on his landline phone a call from Julie to report progress.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”
Vince and Sir Magnus had a shared, albeit covert, interest in horses. And greyhounds. And the likelihood of a further Brexit referendum. Who might win it were it to recur and by what margin. Sir Magnus had a complex three-thousand-pound, win-either-way stake with Vince at odds of 20:1 on both the possibility of a further plebiscite and the repeat of the anti-European vote by margins varying between 2-30%.
“What d’you want?”
Which was when Vince asked Sir Magnus if he had any updates on Jeremy’s whereabouts. Any results so far from the Jackie Lamur tweet?
“None so far,” Sir Magnus replied. But not to worry because his Personal Assistant was on the case with a specially tailored all-go-rhythms formula, which she guaranteed would provide results.
“She… being… who?”
But, knowing Vince as he did, Sir Magnus wasn’t prepared to divulge that sort of sensitive information.
“Trust me, it’s all under control,” he said before cutting the call.
“It’s all under control, he says,” Vince reported back to Sophie, Ron, Gloria, and Valerie, who—seeing as Sir Magnus was a Lord of the Realm and everything—breathed sighs of relief and polished off the penultimate bottle of Jeremy’s cellar-preserved Larent Perrier Cuvée Rosé.
“Well, thank the Lord for that then,” said Ron.
Julie Mackintosh blushed when she was ushered into Barry’s parlour and saw Jeremy sprawled across a sofa. The closet party sex she’d shared with him hadn’t been great, just swift, slurpy and perfunctory, but it had happened and Julie wasn’t one to forget such things.
“Oh, um, hi there,” she said with a little wave. As if Jeremy weren’t the most sought-after megalomaniac bonkers banker on the planet.
“Hi, Julie. So you found me.”
“Looks like it.”
“Do take your coat off and have a seat, my dear,” said Barry. “Cup of tea or coffee? Something stronger perhaps?”
“Stronger please,” said Julie, struggling out of her jacket and wondering where to put it as Hans, Colin and Shirley bounded into the room to welcome their new guest. Just as well Julie had grown up with dogs or else she might have been knocked over by the six forepaws vying for her attention. But, doing the right thing, she dropped the jacket, squatted, and offered her hands for confirmatory sniffing.
“Hi there, boys. Oh, and a girl,” She laughed as Hans, Colin and Shirley recognised her as a pal and took to extensive face-licking, soon to be joined by Pete, who didn’t do any face-licking but did say “oink” to draw attention to his presence.
“Blimey, a pig too,” said Julie, reaching out to pat Pete. “Proper little zoo you’ve got here, Jeremy.”
“They’re not mine, Julie. They’re his and his,” said Jeremy, wafting a hand at Barry and Dennis. “Look, let me pick up your coat before we go any further, okay? And maybe you could call the dogs off, Barry?”
“No, no, leave them,” said Julie. “And the pig. They make me feel at home.”
“Whatever you prefer, young lady,” said Barry, taking the jacket from Jeremy and hanging it on a hook behind the parlour door. “Now, if the beasts will allow it, why don’t you take a seat? And you did say ‘something stronger,’ did you not? Dandelion wine be suitable?”
Julie smiled. She hadn’t drunk dandelion wine since back home in Liverpool where her dad, Steve, had brewed it to save money during his time “between jobs.” Somehow, as if in a dream, this weird little house to which “Betty” had given her the directions, was already starting to feel like back home too.