Captivity (First 8 Chapters) (7)
* * * * * Pavel juggled with a crust on Roz’s kitchen table. Banrock sat beside the door. Roz sat by the stove. “I can’t see anything wrong with him,” said Banrock. “Neither can I, but there is something wrong.” “Not necessarily.” “I have never lost a raccoon before and now I have lost three from the same litter.” “How many raccoons have you raised?” “Not many. In fact, one, so far.” “One? And this is him, is it?” “Yeah, so far.” “So your raccoon raising ratio is three dead and one still rolling along?” “More or less. Racoons are good parents.” “How did their mother die?” “Good old-fashioned childbed fever.” Pavel grabbed Banrock’s mug of tea and threw it onto the floor, before scampering off to wrestle with Roz’s, which magically levitated before his eyes to settle on Roz’s lips. “I’m not the vet, you know.” “No, but you’re the expert.” “Have you googled up the symptoms?” “I would have done, except the only symptoms are a low body temperature, no breathing or heartbeat and stiff limbs.” “Does it happen overnight?” “Yup.” “I have no idea,” concluded Banrock. “Why do you care, Roz?” “What do you mean ‘why do I care?’” “Come on, you know. This is Roz’s kitchen of death where only the strongest survive! Death is an occupational hazard.” “How dare you Chad Banrock! This is Roz’s warm and fluffy incubator of life and love!” “Yeah, right.” “And I hate a mystery.” There was a knock at the door, the back door, behind Banrock, who leaned back in his seat and pulled it open. It was Igglesden. “Oh. Hello Chad. I didn’t expect to find you here.” Igglesden was bright red. “Come right in and take a weight off. Roz and I are chewing the raccoon fat.” Igglesden looked at the table, awash with spilt tea as if he expected a bowl of raccoon fat and crackers. “You’d be the very man to cast some light.” Igglesden tottered into the room and produced a large bunch of flowers from behind his back. Both Banrock and Roz wrinkled their noses and furrowed their brows. “What the…’ began Roz. “It’s a kind of house-warming present.” “But… I’m not…” “No, but I am. I’m moving in next door.” “But…” “Well, there seems to be a bit of a housing shortage. The only housing available on site is George Amis’s a old cottage, and that is a bit out of the way. I haven’t come here to live like Diogenes. Sir Miles has rented Mrs McIntryre’s cottage. Apparently it has been empty for months.” “It has been. Years. But she wanted to sell.” “Sir Miles has an option for me to buy after six months.” Mrs McIntyre was now resident in a nursing home in Hastings. She had been born in Maybury and her cottage had been her parents. She was not prepared to sell it to a lawyer, nor indeed to any outsider and so it had remained on the market, not for months, but for years, though she had lived in it herself for quite a few of those years. Pavel began to tear apart the flowers on the table. “I think you probably have the answer to your mystery right here. I better be going.” The smirking Banrock got to his feet. “What mystery?” “Baby raccoon sudden death syndrome, endemic in Roz’s kitchen.” Banrock took his walkie-talkie from the work surface and slung it into its holster. “Is that on?” asked Igglesden. “Carol Cornwell has been trying to track you down.” “Roz’s kitchen is a place where many secrets are kept,” was Banrock’s grinning reply as he departed through the door Igglesden had just entered. “We are out of range,” said Roz. “People tend to hide out here.” Banrock’s motorcycle roared off into the distance, back within range. “There really is something most peculiar about that man, you know; does he have a sense of humour? What did he mean by baby raccoon sudden death syndome?” Roz recounted the tale of three dead baby raccoons as she put the relics of the flowers in water and boiled the kettle. “It’s a bit of fool’s errand to be guessing about cause of death in unweaned infants and to be perfectly honest, this is as close as I have ever come to a raccoon. It’s all cheetahs and oryx, tigers and falcons where I come from. The aristocracy of the gulf does not have much time for anything they would consider vermin.” Peter began tapping on his blackberry. He read off the screen. “Kittens are particularly susceptible, especially at four to twelve weeks when the antibody count in the mother’s milk falls off…” “Susceptible to what?” Peter peered into the tiny screen, ignoring Roz and continued to read. “..vomiting…” “Nope.” “..foaming at the mouth…” “Nope.” “..inablity to eat…” “Nope, nope, nope.” “… watery diarrhoea..” “A thousand times no.” “Unfortunately, there are often no obvious symptoms and a cat will die without apparent warning.” He put the machine down on the table. “Feline Parvovirus.” Roz frowned. “And raccoons are susceptible?” “Seems like more or less all they are susceptible to. Tough little buggers.” “But I keep this place cleaner than I keep the surgery. I have never…” “Raccoons are tough, but it looks like the virus is tougher.” He took the Blackberry away from Pavel and mumbled to himself while he tapped away again. “I’ve sent you a fact sheet.” He announced as he put the device back in his pocket out of Pavel’s way. “Where to?” “Your email.” Roz was the proud possessor of a Nokia 3210 which she had owned since new. It was about seven years old. She felt slightly inadequate in Peter’s techno-shadow. “Who were the previous occupants of that tank?” Peter nodded to Pavel’s home. “I’m not entirely sure. Skinks, and before that dagu, and before that a tayra.” “Excuse my ignorance, but…” “A kind of marten I think. Like an arboreal otter. South American.” “Never heard of it, and never seen it around the zoo. Where is it now?” “Ashes to ashes, I’m afraid. Some kind of enteritis, not here though, at Snape Park in Norfolk. You probably have seen them, just not noticed them. The parents are down by the lesser panda and the binturong. Pet’s corner more or less.” “Banrock beasts?” “Moose. They are on the other side of the compound from the Banrock beasts and Banrock gets very little joy from Pet’s Corner, as you might imagine.” “You keep a huge wolverine-like creature in Pet’s Corner?” “Not exactly in Pet’s Corner, no, but nearby.” “Well raccoons, ferrets and mink are all susceptible to FPV and so I would guess that the tayra is where it came from.” “But that was six or eight months ago.” “Tough little bugger FPV. Can survive boiling and freezing. My best guess is the silicon sealant in the tank, there could be all manner of nasties living in there. You are doing a great job here Roz, but it is a bit too ‘Roz’s Kitchen”, don’t you think?” “What do you mean?” “You need a proper regimen, proper records. When I ask you who the most recent occupants were, you shouldn’t be wracking your brains, you should be tapping on the computer keys or at least looking at an index card.” Roz was unsure if she was being slighted or even insulted. “When do you move in?” “As soon as possible. I would like you do me a great favour. Can we go shopping tomorrow in Hastings or wherever? Furnishings next door are rather basic to say the least. I’ve spoken to Sir Miles.” Internally, Roz demurred slightly. She didn’t like shopping much, but at least this was with someone else’s money. “I don’t see why not. Shall we take my car?” Roz’s car was no great shakes, or rather it was. It was an orange VW beetle, 1962, and she did her best to maintain it herself. It was a little ramshackle, to say the least. “I’m borrowing the Brentwood Transit for the day. But we’ll be buying a car too. Sir Miles has been more than generous, but I’m not really the chauffeur and Bentley type, much though I imagined I would be. I’ll make sure you get some decent nosebag! Will you come?” Roz could think of about ten million things she would enjoy less that spending the day with Peter, buying a new car, fitting out his home, having lunch in Piquanté and any hesitation she may have felt was mere posturing. “It will be my pleasure!” * * * * * It was a bowling alley. There was a sign, in English, German and Afrikaans, put there, one assumed, for walkers such as they. The building was an empty shell. The Gemsbok weighed about 200kg. Immanuel was squatting beside it in a small patch of the shade cast by about three metres of clapboard fence which stood, apropos of nothing, in the middle of nowhere, guarding the corpse from scavengers. Shaded inside the bowling alley, the two were as far from Immanuel as the had been at any stage in the journey. “You go too far sometimes,” said Igglesden. “I know.” “You don’t need more enemies.” “I get on well with my enemies.” “Until now, perhaps.” “You know nothing. You have been giving enemas to falcons and manicuring the claws of fat cheetahs for the duration. I have been fighting through swamps and deserts with the likes of him and against the likes of him. You show them, you tell them, you pay them, they do whatever the Hell they like. I show them who is boss. I am the boss. They remember me. And I am alive.” “I still say you go too far. You go too far and other people pay. Other people like me.” “I owe you.” “You didn’t exactly hunt me down to pay off your debts.” “How do you know that? You don’t know how or why I am here. I might have come here just to meet you. Just to pay you what I owe you. Malbeck-Creek is an honorable man.” “Malbeck-Creek is a rogue of the first order.” “A rogue?” Malbeck-Creek roared in Falstaffian laughter. “A rogue? A rascal? A rapscallion?” He made to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes with the heels of his hand. “And what are you Piggles? A poet? A healer? A fool? The rogue’s second?”
Copyright © 2009 Jonathan Shearer |