Pure Dead Wicked (10 page)

Bad News All Round

B
earing a tray with glasses, two rolls of toilet paper, a pot of tea, and a bottle of whisky, Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell led the policemen into the residents' lounge. The Strega-Borgias were attempting to discuss the workings of their son's gastrointestinal tract with Mrs. McLachlan, and Damp was sitting on a sofa playing with her favorite Christmas present, a teddy that displayed alarmingly dysfunctional lip synch.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. McLachlan, plucking the tray from the manageress's hands. “We'll take these up to Titus, the poor lamb. I'm quite sure it was that undercooked goose that's to blame.” She removed the whisky bottle and the glasses and glared at Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell. “Not content with poisoning his poor tummy with your cooking, are you trying to destroy his wee liver with alcohol?” And with a loud disapproving snort, she slammed the whisky and glasses down on a tabletop and strode off upstairs.

Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell blinked rapidly then, recovering her poise, oiled across the room to where Signor Strega-Borgia stood by the fireside. “Luciano, pet,” she soothed, holding out a brimming glass, “I think you might be needing this. It's bad news, I'm afraid. . . . I'll let the police constable fill you in on the details.”

One of the two policemen stepped forward. “Sir,” he began, flicking through a small black notebook, “are you Luciano Strega-Borgia, resident and owner of the property known as StregaSchloss, situated on the west shore of Lochnagargoyle?”

Signor Strega-Borgia sat down abruptly on an oversprung armchair. The resultant bounce caused the whisky in his glass to slop out over his knees. “I am,” he confirmed. “Wha . . . ?”

“It's about your house, sir.” The constable dropped his eyes to his notebook, unsure of how to continue. “Well . . . urr . . . to cut a long story short, it's wrecked.”

“WHAAT?” Signor Strega-Borgia bounced back out of his seat.

“Darling.” Signora Strega-Borgia took his arm. “Calm yourself. . . .”

“It's the roof, sir,” the policeman continued. “Must have blown off in the night. A patrol car was passing around dawn this morning. Seven-fifty a.m., to be precise. Our officers Macbeth and McDuff noticed that the silhouette of your property appeared to have altered considerably. Upon closer examination, they discovered that the roof timbers were exposed, the slates had vanished, and a quantity of snow had fallen into your attic. We've taken the precaution of placing warning signs outside to this effect, and cordoned off the whole area in the interests of public safety. . . .”

“But, but . . .” Signor Strega-Borgia groped for understanding and failed utterly. “That's IMPOSSIBLE!” he shrieked.

“Darling, calm down. . . .”

“Roofs don't just
vanish
!”

“This one did,” the other policeman muttered.

“But the slates. Where? Surely they must be . . . ?”

“My colleagues did wonder about that, sir, but there was no sign of them—no broken slates in the courtyard, nothing at all.”

Delighted that his business partner had succeeded in destroying the roof at StregaSchloss, Vincent Bella-Vista coughed from a corner of the lounge where he and Vadette had been avidly eavesdropping. “Must've been the wind,” he remarked, adding, “Cost a fortune to replace them. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. . . .”

Signor Strega-Borgia paled. “We don't
have
millions. Oh, the poor house. After all these years, all those generations of our family living and dying at StregaSchloss. . . .”

“Can we go and salvage some of our possessions?” Signora Strega-Borgia said. “The books? The furniture? Oh, Luciano, whatever are we going to do?”

“I wouldn't advise it today, madam.” The policeman replaced his notebook in his breast pocket, and frowned. “The property is in a parlous state. Dangerous, in fact—there's a possibility that the upper floors might collapse. . . . You'll probably have to put scaffolding across the main timbers to stop the whole thing folding up like a pack of cards.”

“We'll get the experts in once the holidays are over,” the other policeman added. “See what, if anything, they can do to save it. But the worst-case scenario is that they have to place a compulsory demolition order on it, and unfortunately, you'd have to pay for that.”

“Cost a king's ransom,” another voice added cheerfully from the door of the lounge. “Allow me to introduce myself, officer. Name's Pylum-Haight. Hugh Pylum-Haight. My firm was just about to undertake repairs to the roof at StregaSchloss. Could I be of some assistance?”

“Is that your black BMW in the car park, sir?” one of the policemen asked irrelevantly, looking out the window. “The one with pink dots all over the hood? And its lights left on?”

“Pink dots? I
don't
think so. Mine's black all over.” Hugh Pylum-Haight crossed the lounge and peered out at the parking lot. “What on earth are those? Excuse me just one moment. . . .”

While the puzzled car owner stepped outside, Vincent Bella-Vista swooped down on the stunned Strega-Borgias. “Bad luck, that,” he said, patting Signor Strega-Borgia chummily on the arm. “The offer still stands, you know. Always glad to help someone out when fate deals them a curve ball. Just give me a bell when you're ready.” Clasping Vadette's arm, he steered her rapidly out of the lounge, followed by Mrs. Fforbes-Campbell.

“Will that be all, officer?” Signora Strega-Borgia attempted a wan smile. “My husband and I will need some time to decide what to do. . . .”

“We'll be in touch when we've had a word with the experts, madam,” said the policeman. “Let you know what they decide.”

Both policemen turned and left the Strega-Borgias to their misery. Signor Strega-Borgia took his wife's hands in his. “We're ruined, Baci,” he said bleakly. “We're going to have to leave StregaSchloss. The children are going to be devastated. . . .”

“Oh, my poor house,” Signora Strega-Borgia burst into tears. “Our lovely home. We should never have left.”

From the parking lot, muffled curses drifted into the residents' lounge. Hugh Pylum-Haight was attempting to remove the splattered remains of several suicidal clones from the hood of his beloved BMW. Since the clones had launched themselves onto his car from several floors up, their flattened bodies bore more resemblance to pink blancmange than to homunculi, but unlike blancmange, they were proving impossible to remove. Unaware that he had an audience, Hugh Pylum-Haight let loose a stream of toe-curling invective as he dabbed ineffectually on the car hood with a tissue.

Behind him, Tock rooted in a recently exhumed crocodile-skin handbag and produced a packet of scented wipes. “Try one of these,” the crocodile offered, extending a helpful claw.

“Better see if you can burn it off—cleaner that way,” Ffup decided. “Stand well back. . . .”

Hugh Pylum-Haight turned round. His audience of watching beasts grinned at him, but the sight of so many teeth bared in greeting failed to give him any comfort whatsoever. “What?” he squeaked, backing away from the beasts' combined grins.

Assuming incorrectly that this meant he had permission to proceed, the dragon stepped forward, bent over the hood of the BMW, took a deep breath, and blasted a vast gout of flame from both nostrils.

“MY CAR!” screamed Hugh Pylum-Haight. “STOP! NO! HELP! POLICE! NO, NO, DON'T DO THAT!”

 

In the bathroom, Titus carefully placed the last pink clone to fall asleep onto the floor beside its four hundred and three siblings. It hissed faintly as he tucked it in under two leaves of toilet paper. Despite the horrors that he'd recently experienced, Titus felt quite absurdly pleased with himself. He'd managed to remove all traces of rancid goose fat from the five hundred clones by the simple expedient of upending a bottle of shower gel over them, waiting while they squabbled and fought, and turning the shower on them with sufficient force to pin them against the wall of the shower cubicle.

Regrettably, there had been a few casualties along the way: the three dozen that had scaled the heights of the radiator, crawled onto the window ledge, and launched themselves into free fall onto the black car in the parking lot; the many handfuls that Damp had flushed down the toilet; and the one . . .

“Ugh.” Titus shivered, his eyes drawn to a tiny pink stain on the carpet, near the door. He could still remember the underfoot hiss, then a pop followed by spreading wetness. . . .

Pandora stuck her head round the bathroom door. The combined snores of the surviving clones had an oddly soothing effect, not unlike the broody cluckings from a crowded henhouse.

“They're really quite sweet,” whispered Titus.

“Only when they're asleep. Euchhh, what an effort! I'm never going to have any babies ever ever ever.” Pandora pulled her brother out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him. “Right,” she said, “we have to do some research. The question is, how big will they grow, and how soon?”

“That's two questions,” muttered Titus.

“Whatever.” Pandora pointed to the de-goosed laptop. “Come on. You got us into this mess, now get us out of it.”

Titus obediently logged on to
WWW.DIY-CLONES.COM
and began to type out an e-mail, hindered only slightly by Pandora breathing heavily as she read over his shoulder.

[email protected]
Dear Helpdesk

“That's not a proper name,” complained Pandora. “Honestly, Titus—dumb or what?”

Titus rolled his eyes and re-typed:

Dear Dumborwhat
We've followed yr. instructions and have grown c. 500 clones at 10%, draft (pink). They're quite big now and are very hard to dissipline

“I don't think that's how you—”

“Shut up, Pan. Do you want me to write this or not?” Titus typed on, doggedly paying no heed to the loud sighs coming from his sister.

. . . and we're wondering just how big are they going to get, and when will they finally stop (i.e. be adults)?
Yours sincerely
Titus A. Strega-Borgia (Mr.)

“Is that
it
?” said Pandora. “What about: how do we get rid of them? Can we send them back? Or are we stuck with them for ever and ever?”

“I'll add on a bit at the end.” Titus's fingers flew over the keys for a few minutes, then he exhaled noisily, slumped back in his seat, and waited for Pandora to approve his amendments before he pressed
ENTER
and sent the e-mail. Pandora peered at the screen. Titus had added:

P
.
S
. We'd be happy to send them back if you would send us your snail-mail address. Or if you would send us some other addresses that might be interested in c. 500 draft, 10% (pink) clones. We'd be very grateful. Or even any suggestions for how my sister and I are supposed to feed c. 500 mouths on our measly pocket-money allowance. Our parents would kill us if they knew. Yours sincerely (again) T. A. S-B.

“Yup. That's good. I like the last bit,” Pandora approved. “Sort of conveys what deep poo we're in. Maybe they'll feel sorry for us. . . .”

Titus pressed
ENTER
and sat back to wait. His outgoing e-mail crossed with an incoming one and he opened this, noting that it was dated December 25. Reminding himself that it was highly unlikely Santa Claus was on the Net, even if he
did
exist, Titus read on.

“Anything interesting?” yawned Pandora, slumping backward onto Titus's bed.

“Oh, NO,” Titus groaned. “Listen to this, Pan: ‘Congratulations. Diy-clones are happy to have assisted you with your groundbreaking discovery. We would like to take this opportunity to advise you that your clones, in common with all bio-engineered beings, will experience accelerated aging by a factor of eight thousand six hundred and forty. This means that one minute of real time equals a bioclonic increment of nearly a week.' ”

“Urrrgh. What? Why can't they write this sort of stuff in English?” Pandora complained. “What does it all
mean
?”

“
I
don't know.” Titus gazed blankly out of the window and frowned. “Out of interest, why are there clouds of black smoke billowing up from the car park?”

“Maybe someone's set their car on fire,” said Pandora. “Stop changing the subject. Go on. Read me some more gobbledegook.”

Titus continued patiently: “‘One hour of your time is actually one year in clone time, one day for you is almost a staggering quarter century whizzing past on a clone calendar. Therefore, the average life expectancy of your creations is something in the region of three and a half days in your time. . . .' ”

“Look,” interrupted Pandora, “you've got another e-mail. Surely it's got to be more interesting than this. . . .”

“That'll be them replying.” Titus opened the new e-mail on top of the previous one. “Yup. Here we go. . . .”