Short stories

STEVE WALKER's
WINDSCALE, THE FAT DETECTIVE

PLETHORA OF PRIME MINISTERS

Detective Chief Superintendant Windscale was lying asleep in the back of his van, a copy of Mrs Beaton's Household Management - his only reading - rising and falling on his incredible paunch. This was in Holborn, London. He was parked, waiting for a bank robbery, was betting the shooting would wake him up. It did. When the miscreants saw the vast cruel history of overeating plop out of the van, like a giant octopus with the tentacles lopped off, they turned to religion in a flash. Windscale took them, two mackintosh pocketsful of the bank's money, and a buck-toothed nun (whose nose had sensed the oncoming of religion in the miscreants) to one of his favourite Italian restaurants for an unholy binge. Prison later, he told them, very reasonably, while slapping their faces puce. An average day for Windscale. He good humoredly shot waiters in the shoes if they were late with a sauce or because the asparagus wasn,t firm enough. He lectured his prisoners on the need for discipline in society, handing them pamphlets on this subject written by his new wife in her youth, long before she became Home Secretary. He shaved off the nun's moustache, using his rough-skinned thumb and various items of cutlery. But mostly, he ate. 12 helpings of everything. Whole chickens were incidental mouthfuls. Limping waiters were in a never-ending coming-and-going. The swing doors swang open and shut as often as Windscale's mouth, a mouth, admittedly, small in his huge pink face. Suddenly, he stopped. "I always know when I's had enough," he told the table, then fell asleep. Seeing this opportunity, his prisoners suddenly renounced religion, stripped the nun, and, all disguised in her habit - and she wasn,t a big nun! - they sidled towards the exit. But one had, through a different kind of habit, clepped a pocketful of spoons. One dropped, woke Windscale and he shot indiscriminately into the bogus nun in the doorway, to the applause of the law-abiding fellow-diners. He acknowledged their applause with a shocking belch. But the nun, nude in the chair beside Windscale, was unimpressed. "I think you're disgusting!" she said, her voice rasping over the clink of taken-away plates. "All that food could have fed a family in India for 50 years. It's no wonder you're so fat." "I'm not fat," said the Superintendent, grim for the first time that day. Then his eyes fixed on the nun's chest. "Does yous know, madam, wot a man most likes in a woman? Chests! - that's wot. And a big man like me, yerh see, has no need of women, cos he's got hisself bigger and better chests of his own to play with, see!" And to demonstrate, he ripped open his sweat-wet shirt and fondled with his left chest for nearly half an hour, caressing it and blowing it kisses. The nun sat singing hymns, looking holy, but mesmerised to ecstasy, she later admitted, by the sight of Windscale's twanging nipple. The robbers, meanwhile, attempted escape, and got shot at until every last one lay mortally wounded inside the nun's outfit. When the writhing black mass still insisted on crawling for the exit, Windscale flung a handgrenade at them, which created total silence and the loss of 3 waiters. Windscale wrote letters to their relatives in Turin, in a rare apology. Too full for the van, Windscale was dragged home across London by two off-duty policehorses. He read Mrs Beaton's on the way, belching over the bumps. But despite his possession of better chests than any womankind could thrust, Windscale had recently married. Cynthia Passy-Wix, Windscale's posh new wife, he had admired from afar for years, when she was Sir Cyril Passy-Wix, disguised as a man to further her political career. Now, she was out as a woman, the darling of the tabloids, more so because of her recent marriage to an earthy policeman who was a bastion against crime. But this evening, as the policehorses dragged Windscale burping into the hall, Sir Cynthia (she never dropped the 'sir',) was in a tizzy on the stairs. The servants unharnessed the Home Secretary's husband while she fluttered. "Oh, Wilfred, dear, I'm so glad you're home early. Something terrible has happened." She helped him to his feet, no easy job. He was 60 stone plus that day and his pockets somehow full of spaghetti. This took from 4-30 till after 7. Then they adjourned to the study, leaving the servants to clear themselves up - two were concussed helping their master up and all were wrapped in spaghetti. Alone in the study, Windscale flopped back on the couch. Sir Cynthia took up her usual pose, standing on his belly and looking down. She liked this, feeling like a soap-box radical on Hyde park Corner haranguing the flesh of all England. "Benjamin Disraeli has been sighted in Birmingham!" was her opener. "He was in a shop buying socks. And Sir Robert Peel was at Newmarket races today. And who had lunch with the Queen this lunchtime? Stanley blinking Baldwin, that's who!" Windscale growled strangely. "Yes, that's right. British Prime Ministers, they're coming back. From the dead!" "Huh!" "It's no good going huh at me, Wilfie Windscale. Wot if they all re-enter politics? - Wot with the state of the country and all, they're bound to be tempted. Then wot?" Windscale shrugged, inadvertently knocking Sir Cynthia into his crotch. She climbed back on all fours, panting. Windscale found peas between his teeth and spat them at her. But this wasn,t one of their sexy games. This was serious! She batted the peas away like bad tennis shots. "Look Wilfie, I'll tell you a secret. The P.M. has a disease, one usually found only in geese. He caught it at his farm in Wiltshire. Wiltshire's rotten with it, apparently. Anyway, he's not expected to survive the year. When he goes, I'm favourite for the job. But if Peel or Disraeli should get elected in a by-election between now and then and give a brilliant speech in the House! Wot then, eh, wot then! Oooooh, I've worked for this all my life, and nothing's going to spoil it now, not with my star at its highest. And Churchill! Wot if bleeding Churchill should turn up, eh! Wot then? She drummed Windscale's chest and kicked his guts in frustration, ripping through his shirt with her high heels and getting both heels into his navel at once, a feat she'd never managed before, though often attempted. After a bit, dishevelled, her dress around her ankles, with the full knowledge that the servants were at the keyhole she screamed: "WELL, MR BIG COPPER BRILLIANT DETECTIVE GUTSY PIG, WOT YA GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?" "Hows about if I arrests the buggers for breaking the natural laws of creation? That'll stick, fer sure." "Oh, Wilfie! You do love me, don,t ya!" She fell about him with kisses, then in sudden hauteur. "Someone has been fondling this nipple!" "Only me, dear. Only me." Windscale was old enough to recognise plenty recent Premiers, but in all of history before the recent he only recognised Napoleon and Mrs Beaton, neither of whom achieved that office. So before setting out to round up these returnees from that-land-from-which-no-traveller-is-supposed-to-return, he picked up as adviser and P.M.-spotter an historian, Sir P.L.J.H.P. Stoatsavon, Piers to his friends, in which body Windscale would never be counted. "If yerh sees any Prime Ministers, shout yerself hoarse. Right!" The poor man, dragged from his bed, his boyfriend shot through the sheets, had no idea that Windscale was a policeman, not that that would have improved things much. Nor could he take in the concept of having to look out for Prime Ministers. But anyway he looked studiously out of the van's round window as Sergeant Ewells sped through the London streets. "Ah-hem...," Sir Piers adjusted his glasses. Windscale was rummaging for a egg while eating sandwiches. His barked order was said mouth full. "Hruthleep clookhhhugh, eem cless!" He'd said that Sir Piers should keep looking or else. He obeyed. "Which, ah-hem, Prime Ministers exactly should I keep looking for, sir?" Windscale checked his list. "Lord Liverpool. Lord Palmerston. Bonar Law. Canning. Peel. Bute. Any bugger'l do for a start." The historian turned back to the window with a sigh, huffed on it, wiped it clear and then yelled for help. He'd seen Lloyd-George in a Lambourghini with two bikinied girls. "Sergeant Ewells. Force that Lambourghini through a shopwindow, smartish." "Gotya, Superintendent!" Sir P.L.J.H.P. Stoatsavon smiled, slightly reassured. "Oh, are you a policeman?" Windscale broke wind like a police band. How could anyone think he wasn,t a policeman? A moment later the van pranged into a McDonald's, where the Lambourghini was already crashed. Windscale sat on the creaking counter eating Big Macs while Sergeant Ewells and Sir Piers (they were already friends - Windscale had always had his doubts about Sergeant Ewells) fished Lloyd-George out of the wreckage. "Yes, Superintendent, it's him, Lloyd-George, positively," said Sir Piers. "I quizzed him on the 1922 election. His replies were most fiery, but historically accurate." "Whyfor didn,t yerh quiz them bikinis there?" thumbed Windscale, sly. He winked at them. Married life had made him frisky. "They're not Prime Ministers!" said the pedant, rolling his eyes from them in a huff. "A real man would've quizzed them anyway, see." P.L.J.H.P. Stoatsavon flung back his head proudly under Windscale's manly sneer. "I never really loved Gavin," he pouted, eyebrows high in defiance. "You haven,t turned me hetro by shooting Gavin and dragging me out-and-about on your macho police doings with bikinis and beautiful Sergeants! Never! Gavin was nothing to me! Nothing! Wha-ha!" Windscale didn,t get much of this, especially the Gavin bits. He'd forgotten that he'd shot Gavin in the historian's rooms earlier that evening, forgot cos he didn,t enter it into his notebook. Like all policemen, Windscale only remembers wots in his notebook. All else is blank, non-existence, a blur of crimeless elsewheres. Meanwhile, Lloyd-George was handcuffed and flinching away from Sergeant Ewell's cosh. He appealed to the commanding officer, who was filling his pockets with Macs-to-go. "Look here, boyo, I hassent done nothing wrong, isennt it! I was going about my lawful business, fondling luvly girls, therhaveyou." While saying this he was offering Windscale a bribe, which the top cop took, scrumpled up and threw at scruffs on the premises, like God feeding seals, ordering them to use the money on smart clothes. Then he took Lloyd-George by the collar. "I is arresting you for the breaking of the natural laws of creation, you orrible little villain. According to my list here...." he brandished it witheringly before his courtroom of bikinied girls and money-happy hamburger chewers..... "You have been dead for 55 years." "Well now, see, there you have me, isennt it!" Windscale threw Lloyd-George into the back of his van. "New Scotland Yard, Ewells!" he yelled, saying the 'new', in such a way as to imply that the old one was still out there, cloaked in fog, solving all the cases it had missed in its heyday. The van hadn,t sped far, on the corner of Trafalgar Square in fact, when Sir Piers saw Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper at a taxi. The van nabbed him instead. Windscale didn,t like his look, so karate-chopped him and kicked him under his chair. "May I smoke?" asked Sir Piers, picking up a pack dropped from Chamberlain's pocket. "Gavin would never let me." Windscale suddenly remembered who Gavin was. He took out his notebook and scribbled in his tiny scrawl. He was a mountain of disapproval, then it came to mind his own recently developed passion for the King of Spain, so he tore out the page and let villains lie. "Wot ya think of the King of Spain?" Windscale asked Sir Piers, shyly into his chins. But before an answer could come, the van screeched up at its destination. Sir Piers was jolted against Lloyd-George. His ciggy end touched the Welshman's nose. "Watch it, boyo!" A pink globule rolled to the end of the nose and solidified there. Windscale put his torch on the nose. "Well now, wot a turn up, looksee at that - he's made of wax." Windscale dug his fingernails into Lloyd-George's forearm. No cry of pain. "Urgh, orrible. Some kind of wax silicone mix. A wax man wot moves and talks! Oah, they'll throw the book at yous for that, my son!" The ciggy end was tried on the sleeping Chamberlain. His nose-end blackened, melted, running away to fill the hollow between his slightly opened lips and closed teeth. "I don,t understand!" said Sir Piers. "To Madame Tussaud's!" barked Windscale. Tussaud's was shut for the day. But Windscale opened a side door with his bazooka, then bellied inside, leading his prisoners and his historian into the empty wax museum. Only the cloudy twilight brightened its stairs and the display rooms were in total darkness. Windscale suddenly lost his nerve and started shouting, causing his companion to shout also, standing in darkness with a darker darkness within that darkness being the shadows of past notables, grisly in the dark, seemingly thinking of their worst moments deep in their waxy hearts. Suddenly, the lights went on. One of Tussaud's employees stood there with a sword he'd taken from Edward III. "I'm the police!" informed Windscale, and when the man didn,t immediately put down the sword, ran at him, pelting him with hamburgers from his pockets. The man lost all orientation, dropped the sword and found himself squashed between Windscale's belly and the wall. But Windscale wasn,t looking at him. He was staring adoringly at the wax figure of his wife, standing loyally next to the Prime Minister, whose waxy pallor resembled his goose-borne illness. "Should do one of me sometime," said Windscale, stepping back and presenting his full figure to the man. "There'd never be enough wax," said the man, not insultingly, merely a professional opinion. Windscale took it as a compliment. He found hamburgers on the floor and, being physically unable to bend over, fell over, catching them in his teeth before belly-bouncing upright. This didn,t always work and he skittled through a display of the death of Nelson twice. But he sucked up all the hamburgers, simultaneously informing the Tussaud's man about the current crisis. The Tussaud's man examined the nose-melted Chamberlain and a Lloyd-George made furtive by his unmasking. "Naw. They's not ours. No way. And this other lot - Bonar Law, Pitt and Pitt, Asquith for God's sake! We melted them down long ago." "I see," said Windscale taking down every word and writing 'I see', at the end of each noted utterance. "In such case could ya tell me where there might be a collection of wax Prime Ministers?" "Ermmmmm....Oh! Lord Heathrow has one. Makes them hisself. And footballers. Politicians and footballers. Nice enough work, too" "Huh." Just before they left the room, Sir Piers nudged Windscale's waistline, thumbing across the room. "The King of Spain." "Oh, yeah," smiled Windscale, then bit his lip and marched out. Lord Heathrow's stately home had been demolished to make way for a runway at Heathrow airport, but had been rebuilt underground at the end of the runway. The day's first flights took off into Windscale's face as he looked for the entrance among the lights. He looked rough after a night spent snoozing in the cells at Scotland Yard, musing on the case in hand, and other cases from long ago, drifting from the swampy stews in his mind. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ewells involuntarily absconded from the search party, being sucked aloft by the force of a Jumbo voyaging the Rio. He clung to a wing for 500 miles, much to the amusement of the passengers, but slipped off and was never heard of, seen again or found trace of. "Cooo weee! Here we are!" said Sir Piers. The entrance was located. A hole in the grass with a down escalator in it. Windscale had to suck in his belly to fit on the narrow conveyance. His trusty duodenum flapped inside him, as it did whenever great evil was about. At the escalator's bottom was a long gallery room full of armour and portraits of ugly ancestors. The tall windows down one side of the room were clogged on their outsides with soil no windowcleaner could clean off. The wanderings of worms could be followed by an interested eye. Apart from this undergroundness, it was the sort of stately home any tripper might visit on a wet Sunday. Windscale smelt a familiar sour sweetness which he knew was death. His nose followed it, with the aid of his policeman's feet, which clipped heavily along on the chequered marble. Sir Piers tagged behind, puppydoggishly, in historical ecstasies, burbling about the architectural features. Lloyd-George and Chamberlain were behind them, armed with halberds recently picked from the wall. They were waiting their moment to run their fleshy escorts through, and no bullet could stop them, for they weren,t men, and had no hearts. But they had barely begun their charge when Windscale twizzled on his feet and tugged a flamethrower from his trousers - its bulge had kept Sir Piers fluttering all morning. It roared like a baritone who gargled with broken glass, making an overpowering crimsonness and a heat which cracked the windows. When Windscale flicked it off, the contrast made the gallery cold and dark and silent. The two wax men were pools on the marble, the ashes of their clothing floating on the surface. No feature was left. Just warm pink wax, cooling. Windscale looked at Sir Piers without expression, offered him a mint, waited while his shaking hands fumbled for it, then the policeman plode away under the eyes of vanished Lord Heathrows. The latest in that line was not quite vanished, but nearly so. Windscale discovered Lord Heathrow's dead body mouldering in his chapel, sprawled face-up over its single worn step. He had been dead nearly a month, the detective reckoned. A loyal greyhound snuggled at his side, dead for only hours. Likely as not it had been there all that time, guarding the corpse, just lately expiring from lack of sustenance. Death and mouldering had simplified Heathrow's face. So many of the bags and dewlaps and fierce wrinkles had fled to an afterlife of their own. But it was still as ghastly with sin as any fizog Windscale had seen in all his years of dealing with transgressors. His first glance at it was the answer to all the questions about the case. "See the cross over the altar," he thumbed, speaking through his handkerchief, keeping out the stench of decay. "It's upside down!" Sir Piers gasped behind his own hankie, crossing himself a dozen times. "Yeah. This villainous aristo snotbucket was a satanist, that's wot. By the agency of this book of spells...." Windscale kicked it in disgust. "....He spent his final days stealing the ghosts of past Prime Ministers from their niche of Purgatory, and enlivening his corresponding wax models with them. But the strain of his evil was too much for his wicked heart." "Wot about the footballers?" "Uhm?" The question seemed to tune their ears. The sound of a bouncing football was far away. A ref's whistle peeped. Sir Piers zipped ahead and flung open the doors to the ballroom. His lifelong love of football and footballers was rewarded by the sight of a pre-war Cup Final being replayed under twinkling chandeliers. "Oh, how charming!" he gushed. "Urgh," said Windscale, arriving with a belch, filling the double doorway. Spurs vs Blackburn Rovers. Due to a shortage of strips some of the players played naked, exhibiting the painstaking detail of the late Lord Heathrow's workmanship. Windscale's thumb twiddled with the switch on his flamethrower. "Oh, no, Superintendent, please. Let's watch a while." They did. Spurs scored twice. Rovers nearly pulled one back, but Windscale got bored and turned on his flamethrower. The job was a new game. It took an hour. The footballers dodging, splashing through the melted remains of their team-mates and opposition. Windscale's long fiery arm was almost exhausted when the last footballer was pinned behind a grandfather clock. A hesitation from Windscale. Deep between the buttock-sized cheeks of his bloated face was a twinge of regret as he exchanged a look with the Spurs centre forward. "Back to Purgatory, lad, no more trouble now, cummalong." The footballer stepped out from behind the clock and took his punishment like a man, but melted like a wax dummy. Sir Piers was found lying across an ottoman, weeping. "Oh Gavin, Gavin," was his burble. Windscale turned the flamethrower on him, but there was no juice left. Windscale sat on his custom-made reinforced beanbag before the TV surrounded by boxes of chocolates, Mrs Beaton's Household Management open on his paunch, the pages turning with the top cop's latest breaths. His fingers walked around the chocboxes, finding his favourites, popping them mouthwards, but his eyes never left the TV...... Sir Cynthia was sitting on the front bench, her long legs thrust out in front of her, shoes half off. The Prime Minster was speaking, mainly honking actually, as his mortal ailment was well advanced. Suddenly, he stopped in mid-honk. The House gasped. The Speaker rose. Sir Winston Churchill was in the house, a speech crackling in his hand. He'd come to save the country, solve all its problems with a phrase or two. "I thought you said you'd rounded up all the buggers!" Sir Cynthia yelled at Windscale through the medium of television. "Sorry, precious. Must have missed thattn!" He'd also missed Ramsay Macdonald, at the moment wandering the Highlands in all their beauty. And the Earl of Bute, P.M. under George III, at that moment right behind the great detective, wielding an unwashed-up frying pan with all his waxy might.