Strip the Willow (23 page)

Except that, on the previous evening, the Bill man had spat his newt, and had gone purple, indicating he could eat, or would eat, no more.

Thus he had a crisis, one that could not readily be solved by asking the Principal Taster to abandon his administrative role and munch for him again. Such a stratagem would set his scheme for detecting long-term, cumulative poisons at naught, and if there was one thing that Rookie Marr prided himself with knowledge of, beyond the global leisure market, it was long-term poisons.

He required that his Assistant Principal Taster come round to a better way of behaving. To expel his food in the company of The Leopard was not becoming. But it might have been, however abhorrent, a one-off aberration. He would give him another chance.

Bill now entered, preceded by the Principal Taster and followed by a couple of flunkeys, each with platters of raw, chopped,
locally-sourced
ostrich, and two more hauling the special barbecue, already radiant.

The Principal Taster went to open the slit window, so the ritual could begin.

While the PT’s back was turned, Bill snatched up the serving fork
and fell on the Leopard. The Leopard saw him coming and rotated in his chair, so that the fiercely downthrust serving fork quivered in his shoulder and stuck there.

That’s for Gwen—! said Bill.

The Leopard roared and, seizing the weapon that lay to hand at all times, pistolled Bill through belly and guts the maximum number of times. Transcending his sedentary and pampered lifetsyle, he dragged the limp lump that was Bill to the open window, and as one groaned and the other gasped, tough to tell which in the shock that prevailed, levered him up and out. Plucking the implement at the third attempt from his shoulder, the Leopard was satisfied.

– It takes a long fork to sup with a Leopard!

Below in the Castlegate, the crowd, spattered with gore and brains, stood shocked, pressing in and backing out, saying
Oh, Gad’s! Fit’s gaain on? Far’s the bobbies
?

Three minutes later, Gwen’s lover’s body went screeching out of the Castlegate, hard right, and away down Justice Street.

Perhaps he was going to A&E. Redundant. Perhaps he was going to incriminate himself at the Police HQ in Queen Street. Unwilling to talk. Perhaps he was off to lie in state at a funeral home. Unlikely.

Whoever was giving the orders would determine Bill’s last fate.

Three intrepid pension-sharers and their chestnut stall were roaring up through the cavern of West North Street, a rusted exhaust
amplifying
their progress, when Ludwig jammed anchors and Amande whacked into his back and Andy just gawped as usual, as a dirty white van cut clean across, veering at the junction.

The van was on two wheels as it screeched out of East North Street, and hammered off down King Street towards the Bridge of Don.

If the eyes of Ludwig and Co. were not so ancient, they might have spotted a thin arc, an aerosol of red, come spraying up from
the van’s rear door. Andy caught a speck on his brow, no more, and it felt to him like warmish rain.

Ludwig was never a one to swear, but even if he had, it would have been inaudible above the kicks he gave his stalled engine, as he kicked, and kicked again. They had not gone a furlong more when they hit the roundabout at the top of the Boulevard and again had to wait, to sit and wait, throbbing like crazy this time and heating up.

Leiper Lorry after Leiper Lorry was taking precedence on the
roundabout
as they nose-to-tailed it and curved away down Commerce Street and off to the harbour. They were all pantechnicons, the kind fitted with onboard chillers; there must have been about twenty of them. Ludwig still did not swear. He put his elbow on the
handlebars
, his gloved artificial hand bunched and pressed against the side of his forehead, as he looked across at Andy. In former days Andy might have laughed at that classic pose and said
Aye, aye, Ludwig, a good think never hurt a man.

But Andy was not even aware Ludwig was looking at him. Andy Endrie was staring at the electric night sky, his Adam’s crab-apple protruding, his mouth gagged from the speeding air by a wool scarf of Amande’s. She had offered him mohair, but, with his strained throat, he sensed fluff as a life-threat.

Andy’s thoughts ranged, as always, over the best part of the previous century. There was a best part too. There had been peaks, there was a reasonable plateau, as well as four desperate chasms. The war, the loss of Communism, the early death of his wife, Madge, and the senseless disappearance of a son. He kept trying to think it through, so that chasm might not become abysm. But once he contracted spondylitis, he looked more and more the baboon, howling at the moon, and sometimes felt so.

He wasn’t just the Leopard, he was Rookie Marr, and it left an unpleasant taste in his mouth once the rage was gone. It soured the evening. Not that it could be cancelled now. He was a puppet of fate as much as ringmaster, he acknowledged to himself.

GrottoLotto was bigger than him, than any Marr perhaps, potentially bigger than LeopCorp could handle, and to market it fully, once the momentum upped, they might need to bring in Chinese money. They had already liquidised a lot of assets, the food sector and such.

Anyway all that could wait.

His immediate decision was that the Fastness had been
contaminated
by a traitor and was unsuitable for vantage, at least tonight. He turned to betake himself to the Hole.

Something shook him then, shook the whole room, and made plaster dust tumble like ancient snuff on the wall-leopards’ noses –

The cannon had blasted on the battlements, just above his head. Somebody, somebody premature, had given the baroque signal for GrottoLotto to commence—

– Traitors, more traitors!

In a feline rage, he shouted to retainers to freshen the room – he had decided instantly to hold tight in the Fastness – and leapt into his chair. As retainers flew with mop and bucket, and as he spun and spun in his furry chair, all the orange leopard heads, at dado height, merged into one bright blur.

He came to his senses, and put his foot down, so that the chair stopped spinning. He slid the chair on its castors to the slit window, and reached high for his digigun.

He breathed more easily at last.

He breathed on the lenses.

Alert, steadied – in the zone – out of the window he poked his gun.

Alison had just made it onto Balcony A, beside Guy. She couldn’t give tuppence for the whole jing-bang, the way she felt now.

But Guy went up to high doh the moment the cannon went off.

– What the bejesus!

Similar ejaculations filled the air the length, breadth, and depth of the GrottoLotto arena. A hundred TV stations were in mid-ad. Worldwide appetites were in mid-whet for plutonium futures, toilet tissue, direct insurance, funbar cereal. Decisions had to be made on the hoof.

Spilling up North Silver Street, the 189 Pushers had been limbering, bantering. They were no way ready to push when the premature cannon-call came. The maddest scramble now, to get back into Golden Square, to man the balls, to shove for glory.

There was a bit of a scramble too for the three chestnuteers.

They had been allocated a stance on the Plainstanes, just off the Castlegate, in full view of LeopCorp Towers, and the chance for a decent sale was there, though hardly a killing. Folk had many choices these days when it came to stuffing their face, and chestnuts were seen as primitive, a choke-risk if you were busy, and bare of all the fast food comforts of sugar, salt, grease, oil, vinegar and spice.

Ludwig had employed a bottle of meths to get the coals glowing, and the first rows of nuts were set to roast. Amande was arranging the scoop and the bags. Andy could do no more than stand by.

A boy came up and spoke at Amande.

– Het yet, nup—?

– Wait, said Amande.

His pal piled in.

– See’s a sample—

– Go away, said Amande.

– The only right nut here, said the first, is that gowk—

He flicked his thumb at Andy Endrie.

– Ughi bhuggiz, said Andy Endrie, not seeing their small faces.

– Is he wi you? said the second one to Amande. The muckle daftie—?

– Bhuggi awf! said Andy.

– Bhuggi awf yirsel, said the lad.

Ludwig brandished the scoop at the brats, and the brats scarpered.

Andy just stood there, with his mouth open. The scarf over his mouth had slipped.

– To move him a little sideways, peut-être, is one idea? said Amande quietly. For better sales?

Ludwig was coaxing his coals. He used tongs, clenched in his artificial hand.

– For the good of all? said Amande.

Ludwig didn’t answer. The heat went into his wrist.

– Un petit peu to move him?

– You can put mair chestnuts on now, Amande, said Ludwig.

Guy Bord had the job of refereeing and ensuring fair play in
GrottoLotto
, now that The Leopard had chosen to sulk in the Fastness. Guy had a team of ballsmen along the course, marshalled by Otto, but final sanction, based on online playback of any underhand incident, was his. If he couldn’t guarantee fair play, there might be all sorts of repercussions.

As twenty-one LottoBalls stampeded out of Golden Square it was like lowsing-time at the Tower of Babel, a wild cacophony of slogans, gee-ups, hortation and abuse, in a hundred major tongues and dialects.

 GoPlut had a Barbados bobsleigh champ and a Kiribati
strongman
shoving for them. A French World Cup defender from Dominique. An anabolic sprinter from Azerbaijan. The New Year’s Day winner from that grandpappy of all streetwise ball-shuffling
contests, the Orkney Kirkwall Ba. A quarterback from the New York Patriots. A Namibian shotputter. A Mongolian Sumo wrestler, like a LottoBall himself, with stubby limbs. A recent Mr Universe from the Ukraine. GoPlut had clout, they were full of themselves. They were favourites.

Yet, shame of shames for that hard battalion, it was Sushi MacBun who took the lead. Because Sushi MacBun’s Pushers had got a chant going, in a funky Esperanto.

Allez Sushi Drive! Allez Sushi Vamos! Allez Sushi Drive! Allez Sushi Zou-Zou!!

Their ball was whirling along. Their Pushees, naked, blurred and anonymous, were even taking the odd hand off to wave up at the indistinguishable guests on the balconies.

Soft on their heels came shoving the balls of Colonel Motors, UCKU, Sexxon, Ciel, Cyklops, GoPlut, and so on.

But
Allez Sushi Zou-Zou!!
was winning the day.

The rolling vanguard of this huge bright scrimmage was approaching Balcony A, with GoPlut trying to mount a sprint, when Guy spotted Lucy in the crowd below him, waving. He got a spare security badge from Otto and threw it down as promised.

Guy spotted something.

Odd clowns here and there had ducked under the police cordon and formed a posse. They were now obstructing GoPlut to the extent of being bowled backwards – hats and orange wigs and sticks flying – bouncing their heads off the pavementette, and being rucked, trodden and squashed. This diversion was concerted, it was confusing, and he didn’t know how to intervene.

Guy mopped his brow.

The hefty GoPlut Pushers were screaming abuse, kicking the clowns and flailing their fists. Their massive promised bonus was on the
line. More clowns came piling in.

Guy mopped his lips.

There would be hell to pay. For if plutonium’s representatives on earth were unable to move one ball less than a mile, they were hardly the answer to an energy crisis.

From his higher vantage, The Leopard saw much more of the badness.

The heaving mass of costumes and spheres was careering down the street towards the Hole. Heaving, bouncing, barging, skidding, grappling and interfering, they had spread the full width of the
pavementette
. The pavementette was itself moving swiftly in the
opposite
direction, back past the Music Hall, freighted with the mashed and broken, sauced with fluids, garnished with bits of ripped-off mask. The aftermath of failure was not for the global viewer.

Through the telesight on his digigun, the Leopard zoomed in on a single LottoBall. It was Cyklops, Cyklops who made their fortune from DVDs. He saw their Pushees change the rules as they went along. One moment they were braced hand and foot, whirling like gyroscopes. The next, as if by collective signal, they turned inwards, and collapsed into a whirligig of overlapping limbs, balls, boobs, eccentric body parts, really wild hair. This was a breach of the Pushees’ contract. Why?

A lance—? A bird, a ten foot bird, had stridden across his view, all pink feathers and very stiff legs, and pierced straight in. Cyklops was skewered!

– Oh, yes! shouted the Leopard. Get in!

He’d heard his barbecue people use this yelp when they managed to slice the tougher fibres.

Before he had time to focus his scope, there were more tall birds, strutting and boarding the pavementette. Yellow feathers, scarlet,
blue, white and grey and black. They were going berserk, jerking their beaks high, skewering.

– Guy! he shouted. Guy, what is this? Do something!