Horse's Arse (19 page)

    Gillard
pushed the door open and peered into the room. He winced and held his nose with
his fingers as he took the full force. Looking down to his right he saw the
prostrate Bott on the floor.

    'Better
call an ambulance, Barry,' he called over his shoulder. 'She's passed out.'

    Evans
pushed past him and went over to the toilet bowl, also holding his nose. He
lifted the lid and peered in.

    'I'm
not fucking surprised she's out cold. Is she still breathing? This thing's big
enough to be making contributions to the pension fund.'

    He
made a hurried exit to the main office to telephone for an ambulance as Gillard
went to see for himself before kneeling down next to Bott and patting her face.
'Hilary, Hilary,' he called softly.' 'It's me, Pat Gillard. Can you hear me?'

    She
began to murmur and move her head from side to side, but her eyes remained
shut.

    Evans
returned to the room. 'Ambulance is on its way,' he said, and began to flush
the toilet. After four goes it was finally clear. As Gillard continued to speak
quietly to Bott, he located an air- freshener can under the sink and began to
liberally spray the room. The spray fell on to Bott s face and she slowly
opened her eyes. As her vision cleared, she saw Gillard kneeling next to her,
patting her hand, and Barry Evans standing alongside him.

    'What
happened?' she croaked. 'What are you doing in here?'

    'Don't
worry about it, Hilary,' said Evans cheerfully. 'I've clubbed it to death; it
was a bastard to flush away, though.'

    'What?'
said Bott. 'What are you talking about?'

    'Listen,
Hilary,' said Gillard, 'next time you need to take a shit, let me know and I'll
make sure there's a midwife on standby.'

    'Or a
seal trainer,' added Evans.

    'What?'
repeated Bott, before the terrible realisation of what these two morons were on
about dawned on her. 'No, you don't understand . . .' she began.

    'Forget
it, Hilary,' said Gillard soothingly. 'We understand. Women's problems and that
sort of thing. It's happened before, hasn't it? You're going to have to speak
to a doctor about it though, aren't you? I did wonder why the Japanese whaling
fleet was moored outside,' he added, warming to his task and taking a lead from
Evans.

    'No,
I walked into the door. It was already in there,' she said hysterically.

    'Calm
down, calm down,' said Gillard, before looking up at Evans and saying, 'She's
starting to hallucinate, Barry. It could have done some damage internally.'

    'It
was already there,' screamed Bott, trying to free her hand from Gillard's and
get up off the floor.

    'You
stay where you are, Hilary,' he said firmly. 'It's done more damage than you
think.'

    She
began to struggle violently and shouted, 'Let go of me, you fucking idiot. Let
me go.'

    'Give
us a hand, Barry,' said Gillard. 'She's lost it completely.'

    Evans
knelt down on the other side of her, and both men held her to the floor as they
waited for an ambulance crew. 'Must have been fucking agony,' said the Chief
Inspector, sounding genuinely sympathetic as Bott thrashed around underneath
them.

    Psycho
was walking past the door when he saw the ambulance crew in the front office
with their casualty chair, waiting to be buzzed in. He opened the door from the
corridor and held it open as they bundled the chair in.

    'You
here for us?' he asked. 'Something up?'

    'Got
a call to the first floor, an Inspector Bott's office, report of a female collapsed.'

    Psycho
was temporarily speechless. Surely nothing to do with his handiwork?

    'Can
you lead the way, mate?' said an ambulanceman.

    'Yeah,
of course,' he replied slowly, and led them to the stairwell. As they climbed the
stairs they could hear Bott screaming.

    'She's
conscious, then,' said Psycho. 'Can't be too bad.'

    He
took the two ambulancemen into Bott's office, where they paused as they caught
sight of Gillard and Evans struggling on the toilet floor with Bott. The
ambulancemen hurried to help, leaving Psycho with their chair.

    'What
happened?' asked one of them.

    'Passed
out after a huge shit,' replied a perspiring Gillard. 'She's started to
hallucinate and become hysterical.'

    'It
was a fucking monster,' added Evans. Psycho glowed with pride as he listened
from the door.

    'OK,
we'll take over,' said the other ambulanceman, opening his kitbag and removing
a syringe. He plunged the needle into a small glass phial containing a clear
liquid, squirted some of the liquid into the air and flicked the syringe with a
finger. Bott had stopped struggling and was watching him, wide-eyed.

    'What
are you doing?' she shouted.

    'Just
relax, darling, this'll help you no end,' he said without looking at her. He
then addressed Gillard, Evans and his colleague. 'Turn her over for me, lads.
I'm going to need plenty of flesh for this one.'

    'You're
not fucking putting that in me, you bastards,' shrieked Bott. 'I banged my
head, I'm fine, it was already there. Fuck off. . .' She trailed off as they
unceremoniously turned her on to her front.

    'Incoming
. . .' muttered the ambulanceman as he hauled her skirt up, exposing her huge
wobbling bottom encased in a suspiciously grey pair of shapeless knickers. The
group pulled lemon-sucking faces at the spectacle, and glanced at each other.
The unspoken question 'How could anyone fuck that?' passed between them.
Psycho, who had the morals of a tomcat (if it moved, he shagged it; if it
didn't he pissed on it), quickly assessed her as at least a fifteen pinter.
Even after that copious alcohol intake it would still be a toss-up as to
whether he'd rather shag the horrible old lesbian or stick pins in his eyes.
Perhaps a shag would put her back on the straight and narrow. He'd have to
think about it.

    'Fire
in the hole,' shouted Psycho from the door as the needle was thrust into her
buttock.

    The
result was almost immediate as Bott completely relaxed and seemed to sink into the
floor with a loud sigh. Her eyes glazed over and a stream of spittle ran from
the corner of her mouth as she slurred, 'You bastards . . .'

    The
ambulanceman pulled her skirt down as his colleague went to fetch the chair.
Gillard and Evans helped to load her into it and a blanket was wrapped around
her, tucked up under her chin. They lifted her down the stairs, preceded by
Psycho who opened the front office doors for them again.

    The
rest of the Grant Flowers raiding party were in the corridor as he did so, and
watched in astonished silence as the gibbering Bott was wheeled out into the
front office.

    'I
banged my head,' she drooled. 'It was already in there . . .'

    Psycho
tapped the side of his head as he looked at the others. 'Gone mad after a
massive shit apparently,' he said in his best diagnostic manner.

    Evans
had stayed upstairs to let the first floor know all about Bott's predicament
whilst Gillard had followed her downstairs and then outside. He watched as she
was loaded into the back of the ambulance. He'd give her husband a ring shortly
to tell the poor sap of her plight. He looked up at the front of the nick to
see a mass of smiling faces at every window. She'd endeared herself to everyone
in such a short space of time.

    'I
always thought she was full of it,' he muttered as he walked back to his
office, 'but Christ, that must have hurt.'

    Psycho
loitered around the front office long enough for the Blister to confirm in her
own mind that Bott's departure to hospital had everything to do with him. She
sidled up to him as he peered out at the departing ambulance.

    'You've
excelled yourself this time, haven't you? What on earth did you do to her?'

    'Nothing,'
replied Psycho, entirely unconvincingly.

    'So
your visit to her office this morning was to leave her a bunch of flowers, was
it? Or chocolates perhaps?'

    'Leave
it out, for fuck's sake,' hissed Psycho. Only the Blister knew he'd been up
there earlier and he wanted it kept that way. 'I'll tell you all about it later
if you like. Why don't you pop over after work?' It had occurred to him that he
might be able to buy her silence with another shag, perhaps two or three. It
had also occurred to him that if those bastards mentioned the Polaroids to her,
he was dead. He hadn't for a moment envisaged an outcome like this. The success
of his campaign had exceeded his wildest dreams, but the fly in the ointment
was the Blister. She could put him away in style if she had a mind to. He'd
have to speak to the lads again about keeping quiet.

    'Yeah,
OK,' said the Blister, who like Psycho never looked a gift horse in the mouth.
Spending the evening being pumped up by Psycho was marginally better than
listening to her elderly mother complain about the queue in the post office.
'I'll be over about six.'

    'Great,
look forward to it,' Psycho lied. God, the sacrifices he had to make for his
art. He walked out into the yard where the rest of the raiding party were
standing.

    'Psycho,
you're single crewed today, aren't you?' said Clarke.

    'Yeah,
why?'

    'Can
you take the van for us? It'll be better for getting bodies and property back.
Is that OK?'

    'Sure,
no problems,' he replied and went back into the nick to collect the keys for
the divisional van from the control room.

    'The
van was a battered old Ford Transit with bench seats running down either side
in the back. It was used to collect the drunk and dirty prisoners and, despite
regular washes with industrial-strength disinfectant, stank. Night Duty officers
had abandoned it in the far corner of the yard, reversed up to the far wall of
the cell block, with its exhaust pipe hard against a ventilation brick. Having
collected the keys, Psycho settled into the driver's seat, opened the manual
choke wide and fired the engine. It coughed into life and was soon roaring
merrily, pumping noxious exhaust fumes through the ventilation brick and into
the cells occupied by the Mafia. Psycho kept the revs high for several minutes
before moving off, completely unaware of the havoc about to ensue in the cell
block.

    For
the last two hours, the Mafia prisoners had been really performing, shouting
and hammering at their cell doors, demanding to see solicitors and generally
abusing Collins and his gaoler. He'd decked a couple of them through their
inspection hatches, but it hadn't led to a lull in the din. After a while,
Collins had ceased to notice it. What he did eventually notice was the silence.
Puzzled, he called out to his gaoler.

    'Go
and have a look at that lot, will you, make sure they haven't escaped,' he
said, only half joking. He'd never lost a prisoner during his years as a
custody sergeant, and he didn't want to break his duck by losing one, or all,
of the Mafia prisoners. He'd never hear the end of it.

    The gaoler
smiled and ambled into the cell corridor, jangling his bunch of keys. He rushed
back very soon, ashen-faced and coughing. Collins looked up at him from his
desk.

    'What's
up?' he asked worriedly. 'They're all there, aren't they?'

    'Oh
yeah, they're still in their cells, sarge, but you'd better come and have a
look,' the gaoler replied between coughs and splutters. Grabbing his keys,
Collins followed him into the cell corridor, and immediately noticed a strong
smell of petrol. A blanket of wispy smoke hung across the corridor at about
head height.

    'What
the fuck is this?' He coughed.

    'Smells
like exhaust fumes,' spluttered the gaoler. 'Have a look in the cells, sarge.'

    Collins
went to the first cell, flung open the inspection hatch and peered in. Deep
amid the billowing yellow fog inside, he could vaguely make out the shape of a
body on the floor. 'Fucking hell,' he yelled, unlocking the cell door and
running inside. He grabbed an arm and pulled the body out into the corridor. He
looked down at Peter Jeffries, one of the Mafia, and couldn't detect any sign
of life.

    'Get
the others out quickly,' he shouted to the gaoler, and dragged Jeffries out
into the main custody reception area. 'Blister,' he bellowed. She appeared from
the front office quickly. 'Call for some ambulances. All the fucking prisoners
have been gassed. Let Gillard know we're in deep shit.'