Lennox Midden couldn't understand it at all, but being a lawyer he looked round for someone to blame. And to sue. He learnt what he needed from Frank Midden, the ostrich farmer who had sensibly leapt from his bedroom window and rolled down the verandah roof to land on the top of a police van.
'Those bastards started it,' Frank moaned (he was lame in his other leg now and didn't care) and pointed at the body of a police marksman in his black overalls. 'They drove down the drive in those vans like madmen and started shooting at anyone they could see. I saw them kill Mrs Devizes at the window of her room and all she was asking was what they were doing. Don't suppose she'll ever know now.'
'But they're policemen,' said Lennox, who had seen the markings on the vans, 'they must have had some reason for starting to shoot.'
Frank Midden wasn't having it. 'Reason? Policemen? If they're British policemen, I'm going back to South Africa. Our lot are bad enough but these bastards are...' He couldn't find words to describe what he thought of them. Lennox Midden didn't need to hear any more. If the Twixt and Tween Constabulary had been responsible for this murderous attack on people and property, they were going to pay for it. He was more concerned about the property which, while it could never have found a buyer, had cost a fortune to build. Now, in its smouldering state, it was of incalculable value. The dead Middens had their uses too. His legal mind, honed to perfection by years of litigation in matters of compensation and damages, couldn't begin to imagine what this little lot was going to bring in. Or, as he put it, with more accurate irony than he dreamt, to Miss Midden when he found her still on the phone at the farmhouse, 'Talk about bringing home the bacon.'
Miss Midden kept her thoughts to herself. She had no real idea what had started the catastrophic events of the morning or why Buffalo had begun firing his rifle but, whatever it was, she was macabrely grateful. The curse of the Middenhall had been broken.
So had Inspector Rascombe's spectacles. Not that he needed them to see in a blurred way, his mind was pretty blurred too, that he had been partly responsible for the destruction of a huge house, the deaths of at least half a dozen police marksmen from the Armed Quick Response Team, and, to judge by the dreadful smell, some of the previous occupants of the fucking place. As he dragged himself though the mud out of the artificial lake where he had taken refuge, he had the sense to know his career as a police officer was at an end. God alone knew what the Chief Constable would say when he heard about this debacle and, from the sound of several helicopters now flying overhead, he'd probably heard already and was rabidly seeking whom he might fuck the 'might', whom he would devour. The Inspector's only hope, and it was a very, very slight though sincere one, was that Sir Arnold Gonders had had an apoplectic fit or a fatal heart attack.
In fact the Chief Constable hadn't heard what malignant fate had in store for him that Sunday. He had been spared that knowledge by giving the congregation of the Church of the Holy Monument in Boggington, some thirty miles to the north of Tween, the benefit of his colloquies with God. They consisted very largely of a series of admonitions which made God sound like the Great Lady herself at her most mercenary.
'I say unto you that unless we maintain the bonds of free enterprise and free endeavour we shall be bounden to do the Devil's work,' he announced from the pulpit. 'Our business in the world is to augment the goodness that is God's love with the fruition of free enterprise and to put aside those things which the Welfare State handed us on a plate and thus deprived us of the need to which we must pay homage. That need, dear brothers and sisters in God, is to take care of ourselves as individuals and so save the rest of the community doing it out of the taxpayer's pocket. Only this week I have been encouraged to see how many Watch Committees and Neighbourhood Watches have been set up to augment the splendid work being done by the Police everywhere and in particular by the men under my command. It is not often that I have a chance or, I might say, the opportunity to do the Lord's work in the way he would have me do, namely, like your goodselves, to encourage others to free themselves from the shackles of passivity and acceptance and to go forth into the world to bring the positive and active blessings of health, wealth and happiness to those less fortunate than ourselves. This is not to say that we must bow the knee to social need or so-called deprivation. Instead we must make of ourselves and our gifts in business and in wealth whatsoever we can. As the Lord has told me, there are as many numerous spin-offs on the way to Heaven as there are handouts on the slippery road to Hell. It is one thing to give a penny to a beggar: it is another to beg oneself. And so I say to you, dear friends, assist the police wherever you can in the prevention of crime and in the pursuit of justice but never forget that the way of righteousness is the way of self-service and not the other way round. And so let us pray.'
In front of him the congregation solemnly bowed their heads as the Chief Constable, calling on all his powers of rhetoric, launched into a prayer for the anti-vehicle-theft campaign and ancillary individual schemes. It was a great performance.
'I think you missed your vocation, Sir Arnold,' said the Minister afterwards as the Chief Constable left. 'Still, when you finally give up the wonderful work you are doing as Chief Constable you may feel the call to the ministry. There are many opportunities for a man of vision.'
'Indeed,' said Sir Arnold, who didn't enjoy references to his retirement, 'but I see myself in an altogether more humble role, Reverend, as a poor sinner who finds joy in his heart bringing the message of the good book to '
'Quite so, Sir Arnold, quite so,' said the Minister, anxious to stem the flow of the Chief Constable's oratory before it got going. 'Splendid sermon. Splendid.'
He turned away to attend to one of the congregation and Sir Arnold went down the steps to his car. As he drove back to Sweep's Place he considered how best to use the moral virtue that talking about God always stimulated in him. 'That ought to put paid to anything like Job got,' he thought to himself. 'Even God wouldn't want to interfere with the maintenance of Law and Order on my patch.'
His hope didn't last long. Turning the car radio on he caught a news flash and very nearly smashed into a bus shelter as a result.
'The battle at Middenhall, which was the subject of police action this morning, is over. The building is in flames and there has been an enormous explosion. Police casualties are said to number nine dead. There are no figures for the occupants of the mansion itself. We shall be bringing you fresh updates as soon as we can.'
The Chief Constable pulled into the side of the road and stared at the radio. Nine coppers dead? Nine of his lads? It wasn't possible. Not his lads. They weren't lads any more. They were corpses. Dear shit, and Job thought he'd been given a hard time, the whingeing swine. But Sir Arnold knew why he'd cursed the day. He did too. The day he'd ever made that fucking moron Rascombe Head of the Serious Crime Squad. That was the day Sir Arnold cursed. And God, of course, for having created Rascombe in the first place. The old swine should have had more sense. Even as a sperm it must have been possible to spot that he hadn't got the brains of a...well, a sperm at any rate. And what sort of gormless ovum had invited him in? Must have been off its tod, that fucking ovum. If Sir Arnold Gonders had had his way he'd have wrung that evil little sperm's neck and kicked that moronic ovum into the street. And if that had failed, and he rather thought it might have been too difficult, he wouldn't have hesitated to use a knitting-needle to get at that vile sperm and ovum. Or, better still, give Mrs Rascombe a uterine washout with some Harpic or Domestos, something that would make her think twice about having it off with Rascombe's bloody dad ever again.