Making it up

 She didn't fancy the Valentine's  dinner. Certainly not in her husband's company.  It was as intended a surprise. Not enough notice to turn it down.  "Why did you suggest this, she said as they were led into the candle-lit dining room? " I should be flattered but I'm not. You must want something from me. But I can't think what." They sat side by side on a  cushioned banquette in the richly decorated restaurant where other couples examined  the menu with signs of animation.

"That's not very gracious." He spoke as though he didn't care one way or the other. Her reaction  had been no surprise.

It's how I feel. We haven't talked properly for months. Today you left for the office without saying goodbye. Not a word. Typical. Cold, self-obsessed. Even now  when we met in the bar you didn't notice  what I was  wearing.  I took the afternoon off to have my hair done. I  put some decent clothes on.  Not to let you down?  My metier for the last nine years.  Not to let you down. To be truthful  it was not to let myself down.  Not that you would care either way.This was after all  just another  appointment in you diary.

"I thought it might break the ice.  The menu and the wines seemed  OK. I thoughts perhaps we might remember better times.

"That demands a long memory and a high pain threshold."

A waiter slid into place and handed them each a leather folder. Options were few and discouraged. This was a special menu devised to restore romance to the jaded lives of the rich.  "For the first course we suggest a truffled consommé with gold leaf. To accompany it a glass of chilled manzanilla." She nodded her assent. Her husband did the same.

"I was thinking just now," she fixed him with a steady gaze, "that this might be an opportunity to have a serious talk about our future. But perhaps that would be ungracious."

The consommé  glittered in the candlelight. Slices of black truffle bobbed beneath it. The   perfumed  bowl proved enough to take their minds off her recent outburst. As they sipped   they looked across at other tables. She was afflicted by a sense of inadequacy. A sort of loneliness.  Should they not be enjoying themselves or at least pretending to? But her doubts didn't last. He never felt inadequate. Why should she?

"Not bad," he said.

"Must have cost a bomb," she bit into a generous tranche of fungus: "Truffles are scarce in the Dordogne this year, like eating banknotes."

"To go with the gold leaf."

They fell silent. The silence lasted a long time.

It was a relief when the waiter appeared: "Next there is artichoke heart filled with chicken liver parfait.  With it we suggest a glass of St-Amour.   We prefer to serve it  slightly chilled.

Again they nodded it through. "I detest the Gamay grape," she said, "even in a Beaujolais Cru.  But never mind Amour conquers all I suppose. "How's the bank? Still raking it in despite the crisis?

"I can't bet on much of a bonus this year, but I shouldn't complain.  Some will get none at all and I can think of at least one person with a prosecution round the corner. It will be alright for commercial lawyers like you particularly with connections like me. At least I have some uses where you're concerned. "

"Sometimes I think I would  run a restaurant with gastronomic pretensions somewhere rural, with bunnies in the garden and pheasants in the woods".

When  the  artichoke arrived she said: "You know, this Beaujolais was a good idea. I must rethink my Gamay phobia."

The waiter again: "Would you like a pause before the next course?"  "No,"  they both said  almost in chorus. "Bring on the duck.

 "To accompany  the Duckling with Poached Cherries,  we propose a glass of Château Mouton Rothschild 2000."

"Makes a lot of sense, it should be drinking well just at the moment. Thank you, " she said.  And was that a skeletal smile?  She thought  maybe she had managed one. No one could say she wasn't trying.

"Banking is no longer a respectable profession. People look at me as though I were a pimp or  convicted rapist. Perhaps  I should take off to the country, forget the boardrooms and the politics. Would you come with me though?"

" Fine talk, darling, but you couldn't let go of the power and the thrills. Not for a  moment."

"I might if I had to contend with another parliamentary committee and the threat of some sort of investigation...

"You don't mean ...."

No I don't but.... if it's not  a dirty business, it too often looks as though it is. If I retired while the going was good, I could expect a reasonable  handshake, enough to leave us comfortable..."

"Comfortable maybe, but happy ...How would we spend it?   Managing a restaurant is a lot harder than playing with investment when it comes down to it. You're no golfer.  You're not suited to country life. Nature is not exactly your cup of tea. What would we talk about?"

The waiter: "Something for love and romance  to celebrate St Valentine there is a Délice aux Fruits de la Passion, a delicate assembly of passion fruit custard, with fine layers of sponge and meringue" and to accompany it a glass of d'Yquem 2005.

"I  would be happy with that,"  he said. His wife blinked her agreement.

In the moments of anticipation before the arrival of  the passion fruit he said to his wife, "I wonder if you have noticed that couple over there, do you think they are enjoying themselves?"

"They are not really a couple,  I'm afraid my dear, despite your efforts.  Vain as ever, you are not wearing your glasses. If you were you would have recognised yourself in that  mirror and perhaps  noticed who it was  who was sitting next to you."

Near miss

He on the  down-escalator, she on the up. Who saw the other first? They waved more or less at the same time. It was five-thirty on a Friday afternoon.  The London rush hour. Time to go home or to meet friends for a drink.   There was no room for either of them to turn on the moving segment of stair on which each was wedged.  He shouted her name across the well, "Sylvie'". She managed only a smothered cry.

He thought: What to do? What would be in her mind? Had she shared the intensity of his feelings? They were different people then. How long was it? Ten or eleven years? Should he when he reached the bottom of the escalator turn and go up?  Would she wait at the top? Or even turn round and transfer to the down-escalator? Time would have changed her as it had changed him. He could not, as he might  once have done, guess her thoughts or feelings. Or predict her behaviour.  Just follow your instincts, he said to himself, and  edging into the jostling crowd, up he went back where he had come from.

She thought: What to do? More than anything else she wanted to tell him that she had missed him. She repeated his name under her breath, "Tim, Tim",  as though chiding him. More recently since her marriage break-up, he had been continually on her mind. At least the Tim she had known. No question,   she would turn at the top of the stair and go down in pursuit. With luck he would be waiting for her. With luck. She wanted to throw her arms round him. To say sorry, though she was not sure for what she was sorry.

What happened? They both retraced their steps, he on the up-escalator, she on the down. They passed for the second time midway, and waved frantically. He tried to indicate that this time  she should wait for him at the top but his signals were open to misinterpretation. And uncertainty was beginning to gnaw on either side.

She thought it likely that he was hurrying home to a girlfriend or a wife. Or perhaps he was on his way to an appointment. Perhaps one  that would affect his future. She felt guilty about her own loyalties, the new lover she was on her way to meet.

This pursuit is about to become absurd, he thought, a perpetual hell of passing escalators sweeping them off for ever in opposite directions. What if they succeeded in making contact? What would be the outcome?  Life was complicated enough as it was, in the office and at home. An ache hollowed his stomach.

He realised then as did she that to resume their journeys they would anyway have to retrace their steps, he on the up and she on the down-escalator. This time they glanced across the well but there was an awkwardness in their wave, something half greeting, half farewell.

At the top of the escalator the crowd grew even busier and more urgent and she felt herself swept on towards the station exit.  In the sharp  air of  the winter evening laden with fumes and the smell of food, a tear came  to her eye. She wiped it away impatiently. She had promises to keep.

At the bottom of  the stairwell for the second time he half turned and tried to join the opposing stream of people to go up again, but he was troubled by doubts and fears.  He was older now. Suspicious of impulse. He gave in and allowed himself to be dragged by the flow towards the Northern Line platform and the train that would take him home.

The Book

From the cave in the mountainside  the procession follows a rough, winding path down to the plain below. Three tall figures  - two men and a woman, the woman taller than the men - lead the way. All three wear garments of a grey,shining material. Behind them six men similarly clad carry,  on a sort of stretcher, a large solitary  book with a worn leather cover. Beside the book, a structure,  about 5ft high, rises from the stretcher  towards the sky. Its uneven, knobbly surface, gives the impression of a giant anthill. It is secured to the stretcher by cords made from the guts of animals, tough but elastic enough to allow it to sway as the stretcher advances.

On the plain in a natural amphitheatre in the rocky ground  a crowd of people has gathered. In the early morning sun their faces have a golden tint but are otherwise white and expressionless. The men, women and children all  wear animal  skins. Many sit on  the ground. Their eyes are fixed on the procession which moves slowly in their direction.

When it reaches them, the people part to allow it through to an elevated area in the centre of the circle. Here a flat stone serves as a stage. A boulder provides a stand for the book. The woman sets it  down  and bowing her head backs away respectfully.  The tower meanwhile  is unloaded beside it. The six stretcher-bearers bow towards it and towards the book.  Once in place as you look towards the horizon, there is no mistaking the tower's resemblance to a mountain and  specifically to the central peak of the range which extends along the skyline.

The procession consists  of people known as "guardians of the book" The word for book is sad, plural sadth. It is a word rarely employed, for books are objects of mystery and written words are neither considered nor conceived of.  This, the only known example of a book, was found buried in the cave in the mountainside, but the guardians have long speculated about the existence of others.

With the book in place and the replica mountain on the floor beside it, the tall woman, chief of the guardians, steps forward and begins a prolonged wailing chant.  Its  harmonies  owe much of their rhythm and tonal variety to  the  sound wolves make at night up in the mountains.  Regularly in the long hours of darkness  her listeners are thrilled and terrified by the howling of wolves. As they are now in the light of day, by the  sound similar, but more formal and  more cerebral, which emerges from the guardian's throat tilted  back, like a wolf's. As she breathes in and out her breasts rise  and fall to the cadence of her chant. It lasts about five minutes and ends suddenly leaving a silence hollow as a cave.  Pairs of eyes in the white upturned faces topped by tangled manes follow her as, bending over the boulder, she lifts the book above her head, and turns it to left and right to make sure that everyone had been able to see it.

The book back on the boulder, with reverential slowness and solemnity, she opens it. To her watchers, who  have never seen it close to,  it is as though she has effortlessly doubled its size.   She leans over it as a mother over a child.  She spreads her hands above it in a gesture, half of blessing, half of caress, before with deep deliberation she tears one of the pages from the spread. It is not the first page to go, as the tattered margin bears witness. She  raises the page above her head and shows it  to the crowd. Lowering the page she tears it into three pieces. One piece she hands to each of her fellow guardians. The third she stuffs into her mouth and began to chew it. The other guardians follow suite. The six stretcher bearers sit on the ground cross legged.

As the guardians masticate the strips of page, the crowd begins to intone, "chew, chew, chew... chew the Sad."

When the paper in their mouths has been reduced to something soft and pliable, the guardians spit out the  papier mâché and one by one stick it still wet and pliant on to the model of the mountain, adding  proportionately but minutely to its stature.

 "Sad. Sad. Sad..." chants the crowd.

The sun is high in the sky. It is the longest day of the year. The mid-summer ritual has been handed down from  ancestors and practised as long as anyone can remember.

Understanding

It 's Christmas Eve. God's in the air. Thomas Fastnet doesn't believe in Him.  His brother Chris does. They are good friends and argue at length but amicably.

Thomas says: "Why do you think that  this world and its inhabitants are important enough to receive divine attention? Of the millions of possible worlds, circling millions of stars in millions of galaxies, why this one? And if this one, why is it in such a mess?

"The world is God's. The mess is ours."

Again Thomas says: "Let's get it in perspective. The universe is 13.8 millions years old, the Earth three and half billion. We've been around for 200,000 years.  Crocodiles and ants, fish  and dinosaurs for much longer. The  whole lot is supposed to have started with a bang, from a pinpoint. How can apes like us, clearly bent on self-destruction, matter in the scheme of things?"

The big bang theory may be true but that doesn't mean that it didn't have a cause. There can be no effect without cause. Something must have created your bang. Yes or No?

And so it goes on.  Chris opens a bottle of Madeira, sercial, the dry stuff. They savour it together. Chris's small children are asleep upstairs.  Or supposed to be. Empty stockings  hang at the ends of their beds.  And their heads are buzzing with speculation and mystery. They are awake and whispering.  Chris's wife Pat and Thomas' wife Alison are at Midnight Mass at St Nicholas just round the corner from the house. If they listen carefully they can hear voices, "Hark the herald angels sing..."

"Where's peace? Where's goodwill?  Where's the justice? Just endless fighting over frontiers and tribal differences.

"Perhaps," says Chris, "justice and peace are in the balance of chemical elements in the universe which makes life and this conversation possible. Something of a miracle in itself.  Or one almost achieved.

On that they seem to agree. And so they talk on with long companionable pauses in which the fire mutters in sympathy, until the quiet is  suddenly disturbed. With a popping sound, the  Christmas tree lights go out. In the dark the church clock chimes midnight. When Chris restores the fuse they see that the star on top of the tree is no longer alight. The  bulb inside the  plastic casing has blown. "A surge of current," says Chris.

"Or divine disapproval of my views?" says Thomas.  "Or the state of the world?"

"Chris goes into the kitchen and brings another bottle. They drink in silence.

Outside,  gravel crunches under foot, voices and... "I thought I heard a baby cry," Chris says, and gets to his feet.  The sound of a key in the lock. The front door opens and into the room comes Pat and Alison, and in Pat's arms indeed is a baby wrapped up against the cold. "It's the Vicar's," she says. Her husband broke his ankle. Fell off a ladder trying to fix the lights which fused. At midnight would you believe it! Vicar's seeing him to the hospital. We're looking after the baby till she gets back. Jesse is his name." 

The baby looks  solemnly about him. He has that superior look of very young babies which seems to say, "I know more than you do".  She holds him up to show him the Christmas tree lights. He gurgles, wide awake now. He enjoys the attention.

Thomas, who has no children of his own, on an impulse, takes Jesse from her and raises him in the air. He jiggles him up and down. Baby and man catch each other's eye. In a moment of understanding they both laugh.










  

The Stalker

"Move over Dermot. You're occupying my space"
London underground trains do not lend themselves to social niceties. Passengers avoid each others' eyes. In the rush hour, you shrink into yourself to minimise physical contact. The man sitting next to me, apart from accusing me wrongly of taking more than my fair share of space on the seat which we share, overflows liberally. His bum bulges and his elbow digs into my side. And now to make it worse he is talking to me.  Reluctantly I turn towards him.  Though he has obviously recognised me, I have no idea who he is.
"Another novel on the stocks, I suppose?"
For a moment I am flattered. I am not the sort of writer who seeks publicity, but confirmation that a stranger  knows your work, can sometimes ease discomfort. Not  this time. My neighbour is unsavoury as well as presumptuous. "Name's Shadwell," he says, "Tony Shadwell". Feeling as though I had been kicked in the stomach, I turn towards him. I sense some sort of bad joke. Tony Shadwell is a character in my last published novel and in the one which preceded it. A mean and ingratiating inhabitant of the corner of London where it is set. He makes a living by spying on people in public life and selling information to any one who will pay for it. He is a blackmailer and persecutor of women.  Much of the dirt he gleans turn up on the Internet, or worse specifically in the hands of hostile foreign powers.
"So you recognise me?"
" I suppose I should  be flattered," I say,  that you want to  enter into the spirit of  two of my books. The only thing is, your shoes are wrong, cheap and unpolished; that brand of wrist watch is not right for  Shadwell - he wouldn't wear a Swatch - and you have fat, pudgy hands, instead of sneaky, bony hands"

He laughs. He has a particularly unpleasant laugh. Something I recognise and have attempted to describe, though my description does not match the vomit-inducing, staccato snicker I now hear.
What is this? The beginning of some sort of blackmail attempt? Or an even even more sinister threat? The threat of mischief?  I think about my enemies. Who would resort to such a weird trick? And why?

The next stop is Charing Cross where I get out. Will he follow me? I stand up and leave the train without looking behind me. As I follow the familiar route of brightly lit tunnels and moving staircases which lead to the main line station, I persist in keeping my eyes in front of me. The Hastings train is waiting  on Platform 6 and I make straight for the barrier. Even when I enter a carriage half way to the front I refrain from looking back. Relieved I sit down. But my relief is short-lived.

As the train  leaves the station a body thuds into the seat beside me. Making use of its bulk it edges me to  one side. No question  now that I am being pursued by a persistent and sinister stalker. "Not going to greet me, Dermot? I am yours after all, Mr Dermot Frankenstein, your very own handiwork. I now have  a life of my own;  and, I don't mind saying, with rights and in particular the right of self-determination."

"I hope you are enjoying the joke" I say.

"What joke? The crime writer Dermot Martin has responsibilities, like a father for his children. Like a bitch for her pups. Jokes don't come into it. "

"What do you want?"

"What would you want in my place, Dermot? OK, I'll tell you what I want. I want respectability. I want to be ordinary, dull, banal, a bit  like you Dermot. And  I want to be looked up to at least  by a few people. To put it at its simplest, I want to be loved."

I fall for this. "But in that case you would be someone else. The person  in my books has no outwardly attractive qualities . He is a bastard, a liar, a thief and a bully. It is too late to change that. And you, meanwhile " I add to make it clear that I am  not myself nutcase enough to take my stalker seriously, "you are a nut case."

"But you could, if you wanted to, change me. You have already featured  me in two novels. Your Shadwell is a wanker but not a wally".  The stalker  is bright enough to come to terms with his weak and evil side, to pull himself up, brush himself down. "I suspect that I am already in the plot of  the next  book unwinding in your predictable, little brain. You could plunder your imagination for a change  to show a deeper side to my character, one ready to be rescued, to be redeemed..."

Please don't talk to me any more," I say looking out of the window. "I'm thinking." I am not  thinking. My mind is a blank. But may be  the belief that I am thinking will keep him quiet. Even encourage him to leave the train at the next station.  Some hope. My character lives in South East London in a flat above a seedy shop on a street corner.

From Hastings station it is a short walk  through a street of Victorian houses to my house. I walk quickly and don't look back. "Give me a few minutes" I say to my wife". I know there is a drink waiting and a meal in the oven, but I have a  chore before I can relax. From my study window I can see the street below and sure enough there is Shadwell leaning against a wall under a street lamp just flickering into life. At my desk I begin to type right away what is in my mind.

 '"Come with me," said Lorraine taking Shadwell's arm. She smelt of violets, Her blond  hair brushed his cheek.  Surprised he followed her. It was a new experience  for him to meet a willing partner. And the woman who called herself  Lorraine Price was  to his fevered mind something out of the ordinary. Carpe diem. The pick-up ruse had worked. The man  may have been cunning, coniving and and dangerous, but vanity drove caution out of the window. They left the pub together. "I'm staying here," she said, indicating a small private hotel. Looking over her shoulder she led him upstairs, unlocked the door of her room, and ushered him in. "Make yourself comfortable, " she said, "I won't be a minute" , and  disappeared into  the en suite bathroom. There, opening her hand bag she produced a syringe which she expertly loaded, holding it up for a moment to the light.  Hiding it behind her back she returned to find Shadwell as she had hoped naked and on the bed. "Ah," she said approaching him as though to negotiate an embrace, but instead plunged the syringe into his left buttock ..."That will settle you."'

Would that do at least for the moment?  Some polishing perhaps but positive enough. I looked out of the window to find that Shadwell was no longer in evidence.

The black butterfly 1989

Poem or story? Perhaps both. But true either way.

                   The Black Butterfly 1989

Two days after the funeral in darkest January in the silent house

a butterfly appeared, out of nowhere it seemed, in the room 

where she used to sit,  her long legs stretched out resting

on a footstool, cigarette in one hand, wine glass in the other.
It flew from window ledge to table top or settled now and then
on the arm of a chair or patterned rug as if in thought, or briefly slept.

It was black, quite black from wing tip to wing tip, from antennae
to abdomen. I had not seen one like it and have not since. I thought,
scepticism apart (hers and mine), had she elected to return

in animate form to satisfy a curiosity or concern, a black butterfly
would have matched her wit. What to do with such a guest,
wanderer or recidivist? A diplomatic quandary. It was cold outside.

I let it be. Its gentle wings whispered in the quiet room until one day
I found it dead, on its side, its wings folded, a black triangle, little more.

Obsequies are always inadequate. This town with its brick pavements 
and restricted parking is no place to bury a butterfly.

A Safe Pair of Hands

The day Bill Parchment retired  from the Bank they offered him some cakes containing a generous portion of cannabis. Which of his colleagues had thought up the prank, he was never to know. Four of the cakes were brought to his office with his mid-afternoon tea.They were little cubes of  moist  sponge, coated in white icing and decorated with curlicues of chocolate. There were a dozen cakes in all. The remainder were left in the pantry at the end of the corridor  to be eaten after work when their effect might not be too drastic.

He had been head of the department for the last 15 years.  His colleagues thought him dry and rather dull, a reluctant drinker. Senior management  considered him "a safe pair of hands". Nobody had a bad word to say about him but few had a good one. For the most part people took him for granted.  In fact Bill  had enjoyed his work,  and if he seemed taciturn and distant, it was because he had other interests. When not engaged with  his job at the Bank  his thoughts would be in his studio in the basement of his Victorian house in Dulwich. Here he had for years recycled old packaging materials - boxes, tins, cartons and the like into  small pieces of furniture  and ornaments. New projects crowded his mind when he was not working.

As he was hungry he scoffed all four cakes. He had missed lunch because he had to complete his last task before leaving the office.  This was to conclude the arrangements for a visit to the Bank by an oil magnet from a former state in the Soviet Union. The visit was to take place that afternoon, and he had to supply a final briefing to the Bank's Chairman, arrange an interpreter and book a limousine to take their guest to Heathrow Airport when the meeting was over.

By the time he had finished his tea and cakes the briefing was complete. Three hundred carefully chosen  words summarised the magnate's career and background, the political undertow which affected his long terms prospects as a client of the Bank and a tactfully phrased indication of sensitive areas to avoid in discussion.  At the end of  the meeting the magnate was to be escorted  to the limousine. He would be met at the airport by his staff  whom he had given time off to visit the shops. His briefing complete, Bill's work for the Bank was at  an end.  He sent the document on screen to the chairman. Others would assist at the meeting.

Meanwhile another task, which might in different circumstances have been his province,  had been assigned to his successor.  Now in  its final stages it concerned his own farewell dinner at a West End hotel. A car was to pick him up outside the Bank and take him to the hotel where his wife and colleagues would be waiting greet him.

Bill leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He felt extraordinarily relaxed.  To his surprise, he found himself laughing out loud. When had he ever laughed in that office before? That in itself he found funny. For a while he couldn't stop laughing.

By the time he had  showered  and changed in the executive suite provided by the bank for senior managers, his laughter had quietened to an occasional chuckle. But there was still much to laugh at. And he thought it oddly amusing as he said goodbye to the receptionist in the lobby, to hear the jovial voice of the oil magnate in the process of leaving. He seems a cheerful bird, Bill thought. What he didn't know was that like himself  the magnate had been offered and greedily swallowed with his tea, some of  the remaining cannabis-laced cakes.

Out of the corner of his eye as hewaited for his own driver, Bill saw the magnate disappear through the entrance into the street, where the doorman helped him  into a waiting car.

A few minutes later Bill handed his suitcase to his driver who stowed it in the boot of the car.  As he sat back on the padded seat, he laughed again.   No more worries. Even his unavoidable speech at the dinner has been honed and reduced to seven points interspersed with two jokes. Now he went over the points in his mind, and one by one eliminated them as superficial. The jokes which earlier had seemed original were he realized only variations of old ones. No, he would not make a speech. How pleased everyone would be. He would just say thank you and sit down. He lent back and laughed at the prospect.

It was only then when looking out of the window  that he realised that the car was travelling in the wrong direction. Probably some sort of surprise they had dreamed up for him, he thought, and went to sleep.

When he awoke it was to find two men on either side of him in the back seat of the car. Another occupied the passenger seat next to the driver. One of his new companions was prodding his ribs with something that could have been a gun. They seemed to be speaking gobbledygook.  This was ridiculous. The bank had always been a sober institution steering clear of the excesses which had brought larger and more ambitious enterprises to their knees. To go to such lengths to surprise a middle rank executive on the occasion of his retirement party, didn't make sense. "Look, " he said, "It's very kind of you to go to such trouble to give me a good send off... but...". The man with the gun pushed the weapon heavily against him and continued to gabble in what, it dawned upon him, must be a foreign language. It struck Bill Parchment, whose  business life had been notably unexciting, that he was making up for the absence of  thrills on his last day at work. And much to the consternation of his assailants, he began to laugh. He looked out of the window and realised that the car was now on a motorway and that they were leaving London behind.

Meanwhile at the Savoy Hotel in The Strand a bewildered  magnet stepped out of his car to be greeted by the  Chairman of the Bank  to whom he had said goodbye only a few minutes earlier. Gradually the facts unravelled. After an hour of explanations,  apologies and calls to  the magnet's staff at  the airport, the Bank's guest set out once more for Heathrow. But what had happened to Bill Parchment? No calls from him. No response from his phone which he had left in the jacket of his suit now packed away in the boot of the hijacked car. Eventually the police were alerted and provided via the hire company with the registration number of the missing vehicle. 

It was nearly midnight when three police cars managed to stop the car on the M 6, to rescue Bill Parchment and arrest his kidnappers who were under the impression that they had a lunatic in tow and were waiting orders from their employers. As for Bill, provided with a lift in a police car on his way back to London,  he was still laughing.