Sitting in his Jag outside one of the mining villages of Twixt and Tween he had helped so ruthlessly to turn into a workless place, the Chief Constable saw the bright summer day differently from other people. It was a dark overcast day with great thunderclouds spread out across it, black and menacing, as black and menacing as the row of miners' cottages, meagre and pitiless places with empty cans of lager in the gutters of the street. Some had boarded windows and some were occupied by miserable men who would never work again, who if they were old had miner's lung, and by their brutish offspring. But even they, in their miserable hovels, would find joy in the downfall of the man who had ordered his men to break their picket lines and any heads that got in the way, and to hell with the consequences. The bastards in those houses would probably hold street parties to celebrate his disgrace and drink themselves sick to his unhealth. The Chief Constable drove on hurriedly to escape this terrifying vision of his future. He had many illusions about many things but he knew his friends and political allies. They would drop him like a hot cake, hot dogshit more like, the Bloads and the Sents and the high-and-fucking-mighty he had helped like Pulborough, the Waterworks magnate. Fair-weather bastards all of them, and the Gonders weather had turned very foul indeed. In his imagination it had begun to rain and the wind was blowing it into his face.
Another news flash. The police casualty rate had gone up to thirteen and the estimated number of dead in the Middenhall was now put at ten. The Chief Constable was disgusted. The Armed Quick Response Team clearly couldn't even shoot to kill straight. Attempts to reach the Chief Constable had failed but his Deputy, Henry Hodge, speaking from his home, had admitted that he knew of no authorization for an armed raid on the Middenhall. It was news to him.
'Stupid little fucker,' the Chief Constable shouted at the radio, 'couldn't he have kept himself to "No bloody comment"?'
It was a stupid question to ask. Even Sir Arnold could see that. The bastard wanted Sir Arnold's job, that's why he was passing the buck and landing him in the shit. And there was no way he was going to get into his house in Sweep's Place. It would be blocked by reporters and people from the BBC with cameras and mikes who'd always been out for his blood. Well, they'd got it now. With all the keen cunning of a cornered plague rat, Sir Arnold sought for a way out of the trap he was in. And found it. In violent illness.
Somewhere along the line of his sordid and brutal life he had heard that eating a tube of toothpaste gave one some pretty ghastly and seemingly authentic symptoms. He stopped at an open supermarket and bought two large tubes of differing kinds one brand might not do the trick and a bottle of tonic water. He'd be found slumped in his car somewhere very near the Tween General Infirmary he didn't want to die and be rushed in and treated. With fresh determination and fortitude the Chief Constable drove into Tween and, having parked just outside the gates of the hospital, managed with the utmost difficulty to get those tubes of toothpaste down with the help of the tonic. It was a move he was going to regret. The effect was almost instantaneous. And horrible. He stumbled from the Jag and collapsed on the road. He wasn't shamming. He hadn't known he had an ulcer. He knew it now with a vengeance. Hiatus hernia it wasn't. Could be fluoride poisoning though. Christ, he hadn't thought of that. As he crawled towards the hospital gates he knew he was going to die. He had to be dying. That damned malingering skunk had been bullshitting about toothpaste, lying through his fucking teeth. It had been a terrible mistake.
An hour later he knew just what a mistake it had been, in more senses than one.
'First time I've ever known a case of attempted suicide with toothpaste,' said the doctor who had pumped his stomach out. 'He must have been out of his mind.'
This opinion was shared in Whitehall. Even the Prime Minister, who had seen the inferno at the Middenhall on television (those helicopters had done sterling service for the media) and who would cheerfully have strangled Sir Arnold with his own bare little hands, found the news that the Chief Constable, having attempted suicide by eating at least two tubes of toothpaste, was still alive quite astonishing. He was also horrified to learn from the Head of Internal Intelligence that the Special Branch men flown up from London to check the contents of the house in Sweep's Place had unearthed scores of videotapes taken in a brothel in which important members of the local party, prominent businessmen, and important contributors to central party funds figured largely. There had also been a great deal of damaging information on Sir Arnold's hard disk and database.
'He'll have to go,' he told the Home Secretary. 'I don't care what arguments you put to me, I will not have such a corrupt person in a position of high public responsibility. I won't.' It was a strong statement from such a weak man. But the Home Secretary had no intention of opposing the Prime Minister. He too would willingly have strangled the Chief Constable, not only for what he had done to the Middenhall, but more personally for what he had done to the Home Secretary. Someone ought to have warned him about that establishment at Urnmouth and the fact that he might be filmed in his role of Marlene Dietrich. To put it mildly, Sir Arnold Gonders' future was not going to be a pleasant one.
'On the other hand, we mustn't rock the local party boat too much,' the Prime Minister went on. He really was a very weak man.
The Home Secretary couldn't bring himself to agree. He was in a very ugly mood. He'd have torpedoed the bloody boat and machine-gunned any survivors.
Chapter 29
As the last marksman was carried from the front lawn and the forensic experts flown in from Scotland Yard ('The hell with what that moron Gonders says, I'm putting you in command,' the Home Secretary told the Commissioner of Police) began the almost impossible task of distinguishing the remains of Mrs Devizes from those of Mrs Laura Midden Rayter and the other burnt corpses (only DNA tests might do that); while the lobster-coloured cook explained to a TV audience of at least fifteen million how she and the other kitchen staff had escaped the holocaust by hiding in the cellar and being boiled; as the persons who cared and were concerned went back to their extremely expensive conference hotel to discuss the sphincter in an entirely different context, namely as it applied to those arseholes of the anti-feminist State, the police; in short as things got back to normal, the Dean led the Porterhouse Mission to the Isle of Dogs away from the smouldering squalor that had been the Middenhall. In the thicket Consuelo McKoy fumbled with her silver cat suit and wondered if she would ever feel the same way about small boys.
Inspector Rascombe knew he wouldn't. In the back of a police van he had no interest whatsoever in the fate of little kiddies. As far as he was concerned they could hold Black Masses and slaughter the little buggers on an hourly basis and he would rejoice. He had nothing else to rejoice about. They were waiting for him at Police Headquarters and the two detectives who had collected him said some Special Interrogators had been flown up from London to have a little chat with him. Rascombe knew what that meant. He had had 'little chats' with people before, and they hadn't enjoyed the process.
Behind him in the wood Phoebe Turnbird left Detective Constable Markin with his thumbs tied together round the back of a tree, a trick she had been taught by old Brigadier General Turnbird, who had done the same thing to a great many captured PoWs before interrogating them. Then she headed triumphantly up to the Midden farmhouse in her stained and torn white frock and battered hat. She wanted to console poor Marjorie Midden and let her know how desperately, but desperately sorry she was and how she felt for her in her moment of loss. To her amazement she found Miss Midden sitting outside the front door looking remarkably cheerful for a woman who had lost everything.