Strip the Willow (21 page)

Because with all the different information, and differential pull, adjusted for the swell of sea in its larger motion, and for lurching peaks and sudden holes in a cross sea, it was a pretty sure thing, heavy odds, a dead cert, that soon it would not just be a
kaleidoscope
of buoys bobbing on the surface. Nor would it be only the standard choleric jostlement of gulls. Nor merely a submarine impatience of larger snouts and jaws. There would be a kything, a serious agitation. Then the first fish would break the surface and – thrashing its tail – freak out. Two hours later the
Girl Julie
and the
Spare Me V
would be full to the brim. A further million or two herring, mad on adrenalin, scaling themselves and prone to disease, might have to be released, twindling through the water column in spasm and shock.

It was on exactly such a night, when both fine boats were full – nudging deep noses a mile apart through an oily pleasant sea, nearing the market in Skagen – that the bombshell was released.

Spermy was never a hesitater. He was not known to vacillate. No shadow fell across his decision-making. If he ever had an Oxford Dictionary in any of his series of six cabins or staterooms, propping one end of his diligent collection of scud DVDs, then the word
procrastination
might as well have been Tipp-Exed out.

Close as he was to the market in Skagen, as soon as he was radioed by his wife with the news he had been shafted by Rookie Marr, Spermy swung the head of the
Girl Julie
for Leopardeen.
Spare Me V,
after a fierce harangue on Channel 12, went hard over on her rudder and, gunwales streaming, followed suit. It was a minute past midnight. Spermy made rapid calculations.

Not that there was a herring market at all in Leopardeen; there was hardly even an outlet for white fish these days.
Nae fish market worth a docken,
as the grizzled locals, the pierhead parliament, the weary bodachs in the Shack, proclaimed. It was all oil now, the Harbour, and oil boats, with bluff noses and flat arses, for portering mud and pipes.

Spermy phoned up Frankie Leiper of Leiper Lorries.

– Fit kind o time’s this tae phone a man? said Frankie.

– Aabody doesna sit on their dowp aa day, Frankie. I’m needin lorries aff ye.

– Thocht ye were landin in Denmark?

– Aye, weel ye ken fit thocht did. Damn little, an never got peyed.

– I can gie ye fower, six at maist. I’m oot on contract.

– Mak it a coupla dizzen an we’re talkin, Frankie. Nivver mind if yir ither jobs get shoved tae the side. These fish o mine are specials. But they winna be gaain nae distance, dinna fret. Yir drivers will be
hame an hosed inside the hour.

– Ye’re some fuckin boy, Jed. A coupla dizzen lorries oot o thin air?

– That’s it, said Spermy. Five on the nail.

– Fifteen, said Frankie.

– Ten in yir haun, said Spermy.

– Grand?

– Fit in hell else? said Spermy.

– Grand, said Frankie.

– Mak sure that it is, said Spermy. I’m oot aff Denmark. I’ll be in at ten o the nicht.

It was easier for Spermy when the Swinks had pitched their
long-held
fishing-boat portfolio over to LeopCorp. Otherwise there had always been that scunnersome family complication with Julie, William II being her only brother.

The Swinks had sold on. But now so had LeopCorp, sold him out straight, sold the boat from under him. Streamlining the core business was LeopCorp’s story.

If Spermy and son were to try to land in Denmark, both boats would be impounded.

He was nothing to LeopCorp. Fair enough, LeopCorp was nothing to him.

And Rookie Marr was as good as finished.

Lucy spent the early part of May Day supervising the putting-up of memorials. There were at least two aspects that needed careful handling.

One was that not everyone gladly consented to having a blue plaque mounted proud on their house wall. There could be ticklish conflicts of belief and prejudice.

The other was the wording on the plaque itself. You could get very few words on a round blue plaque, bearing in mind the need for the name, plus the start and stop dates of the celebrated one. There
had been trouble before when one former Communist activist and Spanish Civil War International Brigade veteran was labelled simply
Radical
. Granted that pruned the number of letters somewhat but, after all, a radical could be a mixture of mercies. Good grief, thought Lucy, the Leopard is hardly conservative in his approach.

As she travelled about the town, in the areas that weren’t newly no-go, Lucy could sense it coming. Down in Union Terrace Gardens, the civic grass had been turned into a police horse paddock. The horses were tail-swishing, skittish, one was skittery. They knew there was something up.

Up above the paddock, just below His Majesty’s Theatre and along from the William Wallace statue, was the famous civic coat-of-arms, displayed on a steep bank. The coat-of-arms with the leopards. It was done in heraldic grade geraniums, pelargoniums and small French marigolds.

And, of necessity, it was being adjusted slightly.

A pair of leopards rampant – dexter, sinister – had always been what were technically called supporters on the coat-of-arms. In Crusader days it was believed that while Muslim and Christian were mutually exclusive species, Lion and Leopard were both so fierce, proud, dominant, they were basically the same beast. The Leopard’s intrinsic spottiness, though, might have been the basis of a
knock-down
offer. So the old heraldic beasts were ideal for Leopardeen, their wavy tongues thrust out at the public. Swink handled dexter. Rookie was more the sinister side.

Only the associated motto presented a problem.

When the city was still grinding along as Aberdeen, Uberdeen even, fair enough, the motto
Bon Accord
was an understandable aspiration. But now that it was Leopardeen, things had to change.

Bon Accord
was also the name of a major mall, so there was
no level plaza,
as Swink succinctly remarked. As regards motto, therefore, they had to institute an annual toss-up, between the five malls.

Bon Accord. St Nicholas. Trinity. HyperMall. Sonsy Quines.

The duty squad of three gardeners for Union Terrace Gardens had been instructed as to the result, and were now tossing flowers off the back of a lorry, hoicking last-minute plastic trays from the Hazlehead nursery down the brae, and bending to trowel them in. The winning motto was being embellished in an equal opportunities selection of white, pink and yellow petunias, and chocolate pansies.

Sonsy Quines.
Not many folk knew the meaning, Lucy guessed. Though she knew a woman who would.

The day before, Peem had gone back to Maciek’s flat after the masked encounter in the Shack, but the Poles were up to
something
, and he had to hunt half of Torry to find him. Hunting half of Torry, he noted plenty other activity, definitely a buzz. He had seen black bags being bundled into tenements, with coloured garments sticking out, feathery boas trailing. He had seen vanloads of long, sawn sticks of wood. There were young sentries at the corners of streets, casual, never off their phones, and police cars cruising.

And now this morning, he’d witnessed a couple of brutal arrests. A bloke with his arm twisted right up his back, thrown into the back of a van. A woman in flip-flops being dragged along the pavement just outside his pad, on her bare heels. It was getting tense.

As someone who had cultivated an ability to be at the arse end of nowhere during world events, who had been holed up in a clinic during the Tet offensive, had stumbled about in dank groves rather than march on Grosvenor Square, had been intimated his
classification
as soft-in-the-head at the heights of the Sorbonne, and had done sod-all in the slightest to hinder Swink and Co, Peem had a sense of the long-awaited, the long-avoided; a moment in the stream of history, destiny in the air.

Everyone thought that the first running of GrottoLotto, due to be broadcast that night worldwide – or if not broadcast to certain countries, beamed, or if not beamed to the other side of the world, streamed on-line, and in high-tariff locations cabled – would be pretty momentous, though nobody guessed just how momentous it would be.

There had been other golden dates in the history of
communication
, and the basic principle of
nation shall speak unto nation
was the foundation. The BBC’s triad of intentions –
inform, educate, entertain
– was pretty impressive, and had taken the airwaves, and electrical impulses generally, amazingly far.

But never before – and Rookie Marr was sure, and in that
visionary’s
wake the Guy Bords and William Swinks of this world, the able retainers and public pickpockets, were also sure – never before had one billion, potentially two billion, perhaps three billion viewers and rising, been offered the simultaneous chance – as Rookie put it –
to be entertained, to save the world, and to become rich.

Without indulging in even a nano-smidgeon of hype, it seemed for all money an unstoppable combination.

You had to be in Golden Square to see it all take final shape. Beyond the high architrave and Ionic pillars and massiveness of
Leopardeen’s
Music Hall, behind acrylic translucent screens as lofty as its sonorous roof, pre-preparation, and preparation proper, had taken place.

Is global capital present
?

 Yes. The top 21 listed companies in the world, as determined on the New York Stock Exchange.

Are the companies in playful mood
?

Very playful, and deadly serious.

What do they have in common?

Each has invested hope and reputation in a soft plastic transparent LottoBall, five metres in diameter, branded with their logo, and also numbered according to their position on the New York Exchange, as at 17th April, from 1 to 21.

Some pretty famous names then?

GoPlut, Cyklops, Tosh, KUM, Sushi MacBun, Ciel, Shriv, OediBus, Colonel Motors, Sexxon. Need I go on?

Yes.

Plus, Shall, UCKU, Next Butt One.

Fourteen.

Dot, Pi, Lug, Gold, Havakama Parang, Jeremy Futures. Finally, Imperial Wallhole, who just squeezed in, relegating Random Virgin Extra Holdings to 22nd spot as first reserve.

And who is No. 1
?

GoPlut, the energy giant.

Anything special about each ball
?

Each ball will have nine beautiful young people lodged within, four or five men, and five or four women. These are the Pushees.

How were potential Pushees first identified
?

From last month’s pages of
Hiya
!
and
Kool!
magazines.

Are they distinguished in any way
?

They have all come through a rigorous selection process, based on personality in the widest sense, balance and agility. They are all well fit. They have had to demonstrate preternaturally low levels of claustrophobia and high willy-nilliness resistance.

Willy-nilliness resistance
?

The balls will be rolling and colliding with considerable velocity at times. Each of the Pushees will be standing with his or her feet
braced against the small balance ball in the centre, with their arms outstretched and their hands pressed firmly against the inside of the giant sphere. They may feel dizzy and be dislodged, and land up tumbling like dolls in an industrial dryer. Whatever happens,
willy-nilly
they must be up for it, and able to roll till they drop,
collectively
of course, into the Grotto or Hole. Each of the Pushees will be naked.

Why
?

Why not?

Naked Pushees
?

That’s correct.

Is a nude show likely to be permissible on global TV
?

Several nations have indeed an advisory watershed, or else their main religion, or potent sub-religion, holds that the female form should at all times be totally clad. But the World Open Trade and Transport Organisation, WOTTO, has argued that such rulings act as
restraint of intercourse,
and two injunctions, firstly contra
advice,
and secondly contra
religion,
as
ultra vires
have been successfully sought at the Hague.

When is the event due to start
?

At first darkness.

What is the goal or object
?

The goal or object is to propel each ball as fast as possible, from the Music Hall towards LeopCorp Towers, and plop it down the Hole or Grotto, under the Market Cross.

With what ulterior motive
?

The order of the balls’ arrival will determine the global winner, the GrottoLotto winning ticket.

Example
?

7, 1, 20, 17, 9, 3, 6, 8, 13, 15, 21, 4, 10, 19, 2, 16, 18, 11, 5, 12, 14.

What are the odds of winning GrottoLotto
?

It will be appreciated that, because the first prize is vast, in the teens of millions, the odds are quite significant.

How is it proposed to propel the balls
?

By means of squads of sports players, the Pushers, also nine per team.

How were the Pushers chosen
?

A fit player nominated by each and every nation on earth will wear their nation’s flag as leotard, as well as their sponsor’s logo and sponsor’s number on mask, shoes and bib.

Why one Pusher from every nation
?

The winning ball’s nine propelling countries will each receive an SPP, a Sustainable Planet Prize.

Like what
?

A bespoke GrottoLotto windmill will be set in place by US Marine Chinook helicopter on their highest hill.

How big
?

Half a Meg. Enough to power the mobile phone chargers in an average village.

189 countries taking part? 21 times 9
?

Correct.