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Some years ago I stole a hot air balloon, intending to use it as a place to hide a body. The notion was to dump the body in the balloon's basket and set the thing floating off on a nice long trip. Hopefully it would land several countries away. Clever.
I hid the balloon in some deserted farm buildings on my estate, and forgot about it. I knew nothing about how to operate balloons, so although I killed several people during the time the balloon was hidden, I did not use the balloon in the way I intended. A ballooning lesson was what I needed and I never got around to having one.
The balloon had long been hidden and forgotten, like so many bodies in forest and field, when the daughter of a friend of mine happened to remark that she had bought her boyfriend an unusual engagement gift: a trip in a balloon. I said what a wonderful gift that was and that I wished someone loved me enough to buy me a trip in a balloon.
The girl reported my speech to a certain woman who once had hopes of marrying me. Among the heaps of birthday cards which arrived every day in advance of my next birthday - September 26th, my 49th - was a card from her. In with it was a slip of paper which was a voucher for a balloon trip.
My thinking was, in engineering this charming gift, that if someone bought me a gift of a balloon trip, then the fascination with balloons was theirs, not mine. So if the police at some future interview were to say: "Have you ever had anything to do with balloons, your Lordship?" I could truthfully say: "Well, I was up in one once, loathed it, but it was a gift from a friend, so had to force myself to go". Thus I would be made to look ever-so innocent balloon-wise. Such precautions are neccessary if you are to murder countless people, one at a time, and never get caught.
So on my birthday morning, feeling no older at all, I drove to a totally obscure field off the M6, where the balloon was patiently waiting, and presented myself to the only person about - a slight serious Indian gent in a nicely tailored brown suit. He looked the sort who would chatter about balloons without being asked, thereby clueing me up about everything I needed to know in order to use my hidden balloon in the way I intended.
I did not like the Indian gent's balloon. It was dirty. The basket had small slugs nestled in its weave. It gave me mild alarm to see that there was only one parachute, but the pilot, seeing my bothered eye, said that it was a double parachute. Should the balloon burst we would descend strapped together. The idea of such intimacy made him suddenly bashful, at least that is how I read his lowered eyes and a smirk he bit to suppress.
We climbed slowly at first, then rose with a whoosh which swang the basket. The pilot did indeed prove loquacious, but his natter was about the geology of the countryside, NOT balloons. I did, however, watch everything he did carefully and learned all I needed to know.
It was almost a clear day, the view was magnificent and I found myself a fanatical convert to ballooning. I asked if we could fly over my estate and the pilot set about arranging this. He poured me a glass of champagne, which was excellent, and offered me salmon sandwiches, which I refused, then ate six. The altitude had made me hungry. I studied the patterns of the fields. My attention was caught by the outline of some ancient buildings under the turf. Fascinating!
The bolus from the sixth sandwich was still in my throat when I saw far below a sudden puff of white. It was a parachute opening. I briefly wondered where a parachutist might have jumped from - there being no buzz or sight of aeroplane in the blue sky. I kept on, stupidly, looking around the bulb of the balloon for a glider or perhaps another balloon obscured by the balloon I was in. Even though I edged right around the square of the basket and did not bump into the pilot, it still did not immediately occur to me that the parachutist was he. Then I got it, at the same time sinking down rather woozily, my arms hanging over the edge of the basket like a doll in a box.
I saw the pilot reach the ground near some deserted farm buildings at the far side of my own estate, and in the same instant realised that I was flying in my own balloon, or rather the balloon I had stolen to use for the exact purpose for which it was now being used. The whole ingenious plot then hit me like the bad news it was.
Without any anxiety at all I studied the contours of my estate and admired the roof of my house, so recently and expensively restored. I was captivated by the sight of a Bentley moving like a tiny clockwork mouse along the road to the farm buildings. The balloon was getting higher, floating fast into a thin cold cloud. Far below, the increasingly tinier Bentley did not seem to have stopped moving, but out of it popped a certain woman who once had hopes of marrying me. I recognised her white fur coat against the green land. She was waving. Making gestures anyway.
Thinking clearly, as always, I decided to confound her murderous plan by jumping out of the balloon, thereby splatting myself in open view rather than floating away into perfect obscurity. But clambering out of the basket was not easy. The champagne and/or the sandwiches had been drugged and I found my limbs numbed entirely. In fact, I do not remember achieving my suicidal objective at all. But obviously I did pitch myself over somehow and am rather thrilled with myself at having being brave enough to do it. The windy breathlessness of the fall I do remember, with fright.
By a miracle which made front pages in all the newspapers, I crashed through the roof of my own house and landed in my own bed. Flat on my back, I could see the balloon through the hole I had made. It was only sighted once more - by a commercial aircraft not far from the Isle of Rockall. Where it ended up no one knows.
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