“If yer want my opinion,” says Bill Bordersack. He looks up at Alana, with his runtish face twisted into an expression of interest coloured by just enough salacious intent to make most women uncomfortable.
Alana isn’t most women, though.
She likes to think of herself as a professional, and as such, inured to the close attentions of the heterogametic forty-nine per cent of the population, gnomes included, although not the Fae. The Fae are different, of course. For a start, no-one is sure if they have chromosomes at all, and there are certainly no male fae, unless they are kept well out of sight. She ponders on this for a moment and decides society would be altogether better if men were not seen and not heard either. Except for opening jars, carrying heavy stuff, and a few other things they are ideally equipped to undertake, but only when strictly necessary. Alana is, however, on a mission, and Bill is not going to like it, which is something of a shame, because she and Bill have a history, and some might even mistake it for friendship. It’s more of a tolerant jousting for position, an appreciation of each other’s professional attributes, and quite occasionally, something more meaningful.
Although, being the bad penny in someone’s life isn’t unusual where Alana Distrument is concerned, and it is fair to say, few intersect her lifeline and come away thinking it was a jolly good experience.
“Frankly Bill, I don’t,” Alana interjects before he can launch into one of his tirades about the subject at hand, one of his favourites—why elves would be better employed getting some time in—and monopolise the conversation with tired but well-practised jeu de mots and superficially plausible conclusions that pay scant regard to any logical rigour.
“Why’s that then? Yer got no answers, eh?” Bill winks and for a moment he looks handsome, his runtiness banished to some corner of her memory which ekes out a living as a trash cart, something Hermann Ebbinghaus calls the forgetting curve; a repository for unwanted ecoica. He is quite a smart man, she reflects, dressing in an old-fashioned, button-up to the wattle suit, something the fashionably communist would call a pre-collapse Mao Suit, but Bill likens to the more counter-revolutionary apparel of Hong Kong opium dealers; a red velvet waistcoat, the only evidence of which are the brocaded fishtails draped over his trouser-tops; a silver, silk-neckerchief, knotted in the askew fashion beloved of poets and others of ill-repute; patent leather dancing pumps, and a jauntily placed homburg bearing the marks of a remarkable and possibly violent history. At his side, on the table, is his ever-present Makala yellow soprano ukelele, an instrument the demands of which he only has a casual acquaintance, a half empty cigarette carton, and a pair of antique duelling pistols.
“Not really, Bill. As the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato said, opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. And I presume he meant gnomic knowledge too. It requires no accountability, and no understanding,” she says.
She positions herself near the bar, one foot on the brass guardrail, her chin jutting belligerently. Bill takes this as flirtation, and if circumstances were different, he wouldn’t be far from the mark. Alana has a predilection for rogues, and Bill is one of her favourites.
“Alrighty then. I’ll keep my mind to me-self. So, what do you want to talk about? The weather? The price of dried toads? Or where I keeps me etchings?” says Bill, chuckling at his less than subtle transition, and Alana rolls her eyes.
But she nods and offers her best temptress smile. “Etchings would be good. Although, if you’ve got other things to do…”
She eyes the duelling pistols.
“Oh these?” Bill picks up one gun and swings it around his index finger. “They ain’t nuffink. I just gotta return a couple of empties to old Alex on Severn Road and pick up me deposit. Job done, proper like. I won’t be more-un five minutes, tops.”
“Run along then, and I’ll go splash my face with some water. You can pick me up at three,” she says, glancing at her watch.
Bill tips his titfer, swallows the dregs of his absinthe shandy, and stubs out his cigarette. “Right-oh then.”
“Right-oh, Bill,” she says, nodding to her accomplice waiting by the door, a tall and muscular fake Chinaman, who does door-work at one of the rowdier Chinese eateries in Lundainjohn’s eastern quarter.
His name is actually Aldous Smith, but when in character he answers only to Lee Wung To, which is most of the time. In fact, his only out of character moments are when he’s visiting his old mum in her care home, somewhere south of the Thames Lake. He went there once in his full regalia of dragon embroidered silks and had to pretend to her he had taken up a job as a pantomime Aladdin. Aldous’s mum would not look kindly upon her shining star working as muscle for a less than salubrious establishment. But she enjoyed this deceit immensely, greeting him henceforth with, “It’s BEHIND you” whenever he came to visit.
When he’s not engaged in tossing restaurant clients into the sewage pipe at the bottom of the Argyle Street canal, or visiting Mrs Smith, he acts as muscle for Alana, Lundainjohn’s premier fixer of the underworld’s perceived slights, of which there are many; the principal figures in criminality are nothing if not protective of their standing in the community. Look at a crime boss the wrong way, and you could expect a visit from Alana. Most walked away, albeit with a limp, but a few disappeared, never to be seen again. The latter category is rare. Alana likes to think putting the fear of a second visitation into someone, usually puts them right back on the straight and narrow. Only persistent recidivists get the Luxury Treatment, which is usually a swift despatch to a slave clipper headed to the southern continents.
In Bill Bordersack’s case, he has raised the ire of Dyson Mitterrand, a small-time gangster who likes to think big. Dyson is an infected follicle on the hairy rump of Lundainjohn’s criminal fraternity, disliked almost universally by the nativist East Enders, who see Dyson’s French antecedents as evidence of a suspect nature. That he is of the fifth generation born this side of the channel, is seemingly irrelevant to the code of brotherhood existing between the gangs.
Nevertheless, he carved a niche comprising ten streets either side of the Hackney Marsh canal, in which he had exclusive rights to deal banana skin powder. The gang masters laughed at first, because no-one uses BSP except elves, and they were conspicuous by their absence.
But Dyson had a plan and turned the area into an elf-friendly commune, complete with Elven flags, an Elfish church, and the clincher: a donkey driven wave machine producing a steady stream of waves for the surfer dude elves to use in their downtime when the volcanos on the Far Western Isles next to the island where they summered, starts throwing rocks into the sea, as it does once every six months.
The elves loved it and flocked to his commune in their droves. The project became a triumph of invention over adversity. This was much to the chagrin of the more leaden-witted gang bosses, who saw the whole thing as a Frankish plot to usurp their hegemony. So, they sent in The Spoilers.
NOTE: EXPAND FROM HERE ON – ADD DIALOGUE ETC
The Spoilers are the twins, Alan and Dudley Krug, who, despite sharing their name with a well-known alcoholic beverage, are far from refreshingly bubbly and light. Their modus operandi is to make friends with their intended victim, gain their confidence, and entirely destroy anything the victim holds dear by showing an unparalleled commitment to ineptitude verging on virtuosity.
Dyson isn’t as easily fooled as the average thug in a suit found in the higher E postcodes and he quickly uncovered their ruse, evicting them from the commune just before they fed an elf surfer dude into a hand-turned food processor.
NOTE: TO HERE
Far from instilling a sense of caution in the East Lundainjohn Criminal Caucus, Dyson’s discovery, and subsequent dispatch of the plotters, enrages them. And this is where Bill Bordersack comes into the picture.
Bill is what is known in the trade as a plumber. So-called because there are no depths to which he will not plumb to turn a coin. In this case, he was engaged to “teach that bloody Dyson a lesson he won’t forget in a hurry”. This is music to Bill’s ears, giving him carte blanche to use excessive means to secure an objective. So, he rented a pair of one shot, antique duelling pistols and set off to Hackney sitting on the back of a river punt, playing his ukelele and singing, “By the light of the silvery moon”.
When he lands at Marsh Wharf, Dyson meets him on the canal side. Still upset by the food processor incident, he blocks Bill from getting off his taxi punt and demands, “What do you want, runt-face?”
“I’ve come wiv a peace offering, Dyson, me old shiner,” Bill replies. Unfortunately, he didn’t really mean “peace offering”. He means “piece offering”, as used in the phrase, “This is my offer. I’m going to remove a piece of you, and we can do it the easy way, or the hard way. I have no preference.”
Dyson, mistaking this as a sign of weakness, did what he always does in these circumstances, he pushes back, which everyone agrees was probably a tactical error. “Well, you can take your peace offering and shove it in the nearest bodily cavity.”
The punt driver, who possesses the most proximate bodily cavities, regards this with considerable alarm, and starts to punt with all the haste his arms could achieve, causing Bill to slip on the gunwales, and precipitously discharge his two pistols as he fell onto the wharf. Luckily for Bill, but perhaps not for Dyson, the lead balls in each pistol propelled themselves along at half the speed of sound, about a quarter of an inch above the ground, slicing off the big toe from each of Dyson’s sandal clad feet.
Being a gnome, Bill is used to rolling about inelegantly, and gathering his wits, plus several half-eaten sandwiches that fell from his coat pockets, he espies the severed toes, and secures them in a handkerchief with the words, “These’ll do.”
Then, turning to the wailing Dyson, he sticks out his chin and snarls into his face, “The Caucus says you gotta close this operation down. It’s bad for their business having all the elves in Lundainjohn sitting around as high as a kite on BSP, leastways BSP they haven’t supplied. So, be a good boy, and toddle off back to France or wherever you came from.”
“Hoxton,” cries Dyson.
“Eh?” says Bill.
“I come from bleedin’ Hoxton, you cretinous short leg,” Dyson gasps, his pain not so much debilitating as enraging him.
“Oh, very nice. I come here to have a nice civil conversation and already it’s descended into racist and ableist tropes. You know what, Dyson, you’re a very lucky boy. Very lucky indeed,” Bill says, injecting a note of sorrowful contempt into his voice.
“Lucky? You just shot my toes off, you squeaky little toad,” Dyson screams. He drags himself up onto a nearby bench and tries to stem the flow of blood from his feet. By this time, a small group of Elves are gathering on the bank above the wharf.
“Lucky these are single shot pistols,” Bill says. He whistles to the taxi punt, urging him to return and hand-signals dire consequences should his compliance be less than prompt. Once the punt-taxi returns, Bill picks up his homburg, and steps lightly onto the deck of the punt. He turns to Dyson, who is by now surrounded by elves fussing over his feet and tips his hat. “As I said, Dyson, be a good boy and toddle off back to Hoxton. Yer not wanted here.”
“You haven’t heard the last of this, mark my words,” Dyson snarls as Bill punts serenely down the canal towards the city.[1]
“You know, I fink I’ll go and wet my whistle,” he says to the driver.
“Where to then, guv?” the taxi-driver says, thinking, I’ll be glad to get rid of this fellah.
“Drop us off at the Duck and Wolverine in Aldgate,” Bill replies. He touches Dyson’s toes wrapped in his handkerchief and thinks, yeah, they’ll do nicely.
Unbeknownst to Bill Bordersack, Dyson has most of the taxi drivers east of St Paul’s in his pay, not to the extent any of them will rush to his aid, but just enough to oil the flow of information, and do the odd carrying job. So, once Bill climbs out of the taxi, pays the driver, and disappears into the warm embrace of the pub, he pulls out his shell-phone and calls Dyson.
“Hello guv. I got some information about the fellah who shot your toes off,” he says.
Dyson, who by now was under the calming influence of Elven Elderflower Balm, grits his teeth and eschews the opportunity to ball out the taxi driver for not coming to his aid. “Go on. What you got?”
“He’s in the Duck and Wolverine in Aldgate, and I reckon he’s going to be in there for a proper session, like.”
“Good man, I’ll credit your account with fifty ducks by ten owls,” Dyson says, thinking rapidly. He cuts the connection and digs out his pocketbook, flicks through the pages until he alights on a special number, one he only ever uses for exceptional occasions.
“Hello, Alana Distrument and Associates,” says a silky voice.
“Hey, Alana, it’s me, Dyson, and have I got a job for you,” he says, trying to inject a note of bonhomie into his voice.
“Heard you had a bit of trouble,” she says.
“Yeah, word travels fast, eh?” Dyson responds.
“I’m not sure I want to get mixed up in stuff that sets me against the Caucus,” she says. Dyson knows this is a bargaining position. Nothing frightens Alana.
“A thousand ducks,” he says, a bit too quickly.
“Cheapskate. You’ll have to lay out at least three thousand for this,” she replies. Her rule is to ask for triple and accept double.
“Two thousand,” he says, playing the game.
“What about Lee Wung To?” she rejoinders.
“What about him? If you need to use muscle to deal with a little squirt like Bill Bordersack, then you’re not the woman I thought you were.”
“Five hundred,” she says flatly.
“Deal, half now, the remainder on completion,” he says.
“Agreed. I’m sure you know what happens to those who try to bilk me, Dyson. You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Alana purrs into her shell-phone.
After assuring her he is a man of his word, Dyson closes the clam-shell, dips his feet back into the elderflower balm and falls asleep.
Alana calls Lee Wung To and agrees to meet him at the Aldgate Wharf, where they make plans and head for the Duck and Wolverine.
Following her brief but promising conversation with Bill, Alana watches Bill exit the pub, followed by Lee Wung To, then picks up her bag and edges towards the door. Stepping outside in the cooling air of early evening Lundainjohn, she watches as Bill crosses the Severn Road bridge and lights a cigarette.
“Hello Alana, could I have a word?” says a voice she recognises instantly.
“Oh, come on, Inspector. Can’t you see I’m working?” Alana says, her voice rising.
“Let me guess,” says Inspector Camden Ironbell, as he emerges from the shadows.
“Bill over there has upset Dyson Mitterrand, and he’s hired you to put things right. Bill must return the pistols he rented and get back his deposit, which is, no doubt, a pretty penny. So, you’ve sent Lee Wung To to follow him, duff him up, and relieve him of his deposit,” Ironbell adds.
“He SHOT two toes off, Inspector. Whatever he has coming to him, he richly deserves,” Alana snaps back. She’s reaching into her bag for her whistle, which will bring Lee Wung To running back to her. She doesn’t like tangling with the police, but she likes incarceration far less.
Ironbell reaches out a hand and grips her wrist, his strength surprising for someone who barely tops five foot two. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Compounding petty larceny and violent affray with assaulting a police officer will go badly for you at the magistrate’s court.”
“You’ve got to get me there first, Ironbell. If Lee Wung To gets hold of you, you’ll be talking through a mouth brace for the foreseeable future, and I’ll be long gone,” she says, her eyes glistening with malice.
“I don’t think so, madam,” says a second voice from the shadows, as Constable Biter steps forward.
“Okay, so you got a pet troll,” Alana responds. She’s feeling a bit deflated at the this turn of circumstances but decides to front up anyway.
Ironbell smiles and tightens his grip on her arm. “Constable, please detain Mr Lee Wung To promptly, and I’ll have a word with Alana here.”
“Very well, Inspector,” says Biter, and he was gone. A few shouts later and Biter returns over the bridge with Lee Wung To slung over his shoulder.
“How does he do that?” Alana gasps.
“Shadow walking, apparently,” Ironbell replies.
He continues. “But that’s not why I’m here. In fact, I couldn’t care less about your little underworld games, Alana. I have bigger elks to fry.”
“Fish, boss, not elks,” Sergeant Umros Lightweasel says as she too emerges from the shadows.
“You fry what you want to, Sergeant, and I’ll fry what I want,” Ironbell harrumphs.
“Oh, for Bog’s sakes, Inspector. Can you just get on with it?” Alana cries. She looks dejected, but a small ray of hope glints in her eyes as Ironbell releases his grip on her arm.
“We’ve been following up our enquiries into the possible murder of a Fae in Borough Market this morning,” says Lightweasel.
“What’s that got to do with me?” Alana protests.
“We don’t think you’re the perpetrator,” says Ironbell, fixing her with a steady gaze.
“But that’s not to say you’re out of the frame entirely,” Lightweasel adds.
“You were seen in the vicinity of Borough Market at about the time of the incident, and we believe you might have some intel that’s valuable to us in the course of our enquiries,” Ironbell continues.
“Look, I didn’t see anything,” Alana says carefully.
“That’s a shame, Alana, because I’d rather not go through all the paperwork processing your case while you’re languishing in the Gnome Office dungeons,” Lightweasel says, leaning forward until her face was in Alana’s.
“Yes, that infernal paperwork takes so much time these days,” Ironbell adds, pushing his face level with Alana’s sternum.
Biter arrives back and drops the inert form of Lee Wing To on the cobbles next to the trio.
“The villain has been apprehended, Inspector. And might I say, without wishing to sound peremptory, it was done with all due diligence,” Biter says. He attempts a smile, but it comes over as a cracked pastry crust into which someone has just pushed a mallet.
Alana glances down at the hogtied fake Chinaman and her heart sinks. “Okay, I might have seen something. But I didn’t see the incident. I just heard a cry and two blokes running away, laughing.”
“What did they look like?” Ironbell demands.
“The first one was sort of handsome, dressed in a tweed suit. Oh, and he had long, flowing locks. Black as night they were. I’ve never seen such lustrous hair. He had a bit of a bumpy forehead though, and his gait was rather odd, as if he wasn’t used to his legs,” Alana says sullenly.
“And the other one?” Lightweasel prompts.
“Well, he was an odd one. Just a kid really. He had a long cape, with lots of silver sigils on it, stars and planets and the moon in quarter phase. He was carrying a long staff, nearly as big as him it was, and on the top was a big glowing orb,” Alana stretches her hand to demonstrate the orb’s size.
“Hmm, that’s something to think about,” says Ironbell rubbing his beard.
“Sounds like a shapeshifter and a wizard to me,” Lightweasel interjects.
“Yes, but there are no human wizards left. Not proper ones, anyway, not since the goblin wars,” Ironbell muses.
“No, but there are those idiots in Camberwell, who think they’re wizards. Keeping the old traditions alive, and so on,” Lightweasel points out.
“And what about the shapeshifter? What’s his role in all this?” Ironbell says, making a note in his book.
“Could be a familiar,” Lightweasel suggests.
“You know, you could be right. I think we need to go and talk to the Camberwell Wizards. You’re free to go, Alana. The Gnome Office thanks you for your public-spirited contribution to our investigation,” Ironbell concludes.
“What about him? And what about my bounty?” Alana wails as she points at Lee Wung To.
“Oh, he’ll be all right in a few minutes. Biter here is as gentle as a lamb. And you can tell Dyson, you persuaded the police to arrest Mister Bordersack on charges of possessing illegal firearms, with other charges pending, if Mister Mitterrand wants to press any,” Ironbell says and gives her a friendly pat on the arm.
Alana thinks about this for a moment, then her face lights up. “You know that might just work. But you haven’t arrested Bill yet.”
“Constable,” Ironbell says and before he can say any more, Biter has disappeared.
“How does he do that?” Lightweasel gasps.
[1] And that’s how Dyson got his nickname: Triple D, or Dyson Deux Digits.
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