‘Then he really is a master of disguise.’

‘He’s wearing Michael Jackson’s skin.’

‘Now hang about,’ said Norman. ‘Let’s just get this straight.’

‘I don’t have time for that. For God’s sake, help me shift him out of here.’

‘The things I do for you,’ said Norman. ‘Come on then, let’s lift him up.’

Now, all right. I know it wasn’t Norman’s fault. He was only trying to help. And I’m sure that if I’d been wearing big built-up shoes like his, I’d have found it difficult to keep my balance. And matters weren’t improved any by that damned chimp who was humping away at my leg and the fact that Michael’s hair was still all tangled up in my belt buckle.

Norman sort of tugged at Lazlo’s shoulders. Norman sort of tugged, then sort of toppled. And he elbowed me right in the face and I sort of fell backwards into the crowd, bringing Michael’s head-skin with me and this sort of ended up in my lap like a big hairy sporran. And Lazlo’s body sort of slumped over, with his head all sort of gory and Bubbles sort of freaked out and went sort of berserk.

Sort of.

It was the first major embarrassment of the evening.

And it really took some explaining away, I can tell you.

I let Norman do it.

I dragged the body outside and stood about freezing my million-dollar nuts off Finally Norman joined me. He was in a right old strop.

‘You stupid bastard!’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘Is there something you’d like to say to me?’

‘Thanks for sorting out the situation?’

‘No. Not that.’ Norman stamped his foot and nearly broke his ankle.

‘If it’s about me leaving the top off your iodine bottle—’

‘No. It’s not about that. I’ve just been on the walkie talkie to the guards at the gate.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Yes, ah. You ordered the guards to shoot anyone who tried to climb over the fence. And they’ve just shot Jeffrey Archer.’

‘Then there is a God.’

‘It’s no laughing matter. Have you gone completely mad? You can’t have famous people killed. This isn’t France, you know.’

‘Eh?’

‘I mean, it’s all right with Michael.’

‘It is?’

‘Of course it is. I can rebuild him. He’s mostly made out of Meccano anyway.’

‘Allegedly,’ I said. ‘Allegedly.’

‘I’ve ordered the guards to put away their guns. Before someone who matters gets hurt. So what have you done with the body?’

‘I rolled it under that big black lorry over there.’

‘We’d better have a look at it.’

‘Why?’

‘To search for clues, of course. If Lazlo was shot with a blow-dart, then we’ll have forensic evidence. You have to put the flight of the dart in your mouth when you blow it. So there’ll be traces of saliva and we can get DNA from those.

‘And?’

‘And then all we have to do is get DNA samples from every guest present and we can identify the killer.’

I looked at Norman.

And he looked at me.

‘Right,’ said Norman. ‘OK. Forget that. But let’s have a look at the dart anyway.

‘Here you go then,’ I said. ‘Careful you don’t prick yourself’

‘Oh. You’ve already had a look at it.’

‘Of course I bloody have. And see what’s on the end.’ Norman held up the dart and examined it by the light that fell from one of the great hall windows. ‘Lipstick,’ he said. ‘Pale green lipstick.’

‘Sprout green,’ I said. ‘From the Snuff for Women allotment range. Very expensive.’

‘All right then, time for action.’ Norman flung the dart aside, nearly catching me one in the cobblers. ‘All we have to do is find the woman who’s wearing this lipstick.’

‘That’s all you have to do. I’m not going back in there without at least six bodyguards.’

‘Don’t be such a woosie. If she’d wanted to kill you, she could easily have done it. It was Lazlo she murdered. Did he say anything to you before he died?’

‘Only some old rubbish about the end of civilization as we know it being only a few hours away and the Secret Government of the World taking over the minute all the computers crash.’

‘Of course,’ said Norman. ‘That has to be it. The Doveston was always going on about the secret police being out to get him. It seems he was right. An interview with this woman should prove most instructive.’

‘She might not be too keen to tell us anything.’

‘There are ways,’ said Norman.

‘Oh, right. You mean we should torture it out of her. Good idea.’

‘No! That is not what I mean at all.’

‘What then?’

Norman preened at his lapels. ‘Leave this to the man in the peacock suit,’ said he.

I followed the man in the peacock suit back into the bail.

‘Oh look,’ said Norman, ‘It’s You’ll-lick-a-giant’s-one.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’ll get this. You’ll-lick-a-giant’s-one? Don’t give me any clues. Yes, I’ve got it. You’ll-lick-a-giant’s-one. Ulrika Jonsson.’

‘No,’ said Norman. ‘It’s Kate Moss. I was just thinking out loud that time.’

Norman cranked up the Hartnell Home Happyfier a couple of notches, set his peacock suit on stun and swaggered off into the crowd, going, ‘Whoops,’ and ‘S’cuse me please,’ and ‘Mind your backs,’ and ‘Sorry, did I step on your foot?’

I snorted up a couple of lines from the head of a passing dwarf and determined that I would get right into the party spirit, no matter what. If I wasn’t on the immediate hit list, then at least I could enjoy myself I was the host of this bash after all, so I should be having a bloody good time. Let Norman sort it out.

I would party.

And so, with a hooter full of Charlie and a big fat smile on my face, I squeezed myself into the happy throng.

I grinned at Caprice, leered at a couple of Spice Girls, smiled warmly on Joanna Lumley (you have to remember my age), tipped the wink to Tom and Nicole, roundly iguored Hugh and Liz and stepped over a Blue Peter presenter.

And then I ran into Colin.

‘Having a good time?’ I asked him.

‘Damn right, old son,’ said Colin, slapping me upon the back and loosening several vertebrae. ‘How about you? Enjoying yourself?’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘And I’m determined that nothing will spoil this party for me.

‘Good on you,’ said Colin. ‘The last time I was at a party as good as this was back in ‘sixty-three. Someone blew up the host’s dog with dynamite. Oh how we laughed.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I have to mingle.’

‘Be happy,’ said Colin.

Actually I didn’t mingle. I just drifted about, listening in to other people’s conversations.

Have you ever noticed how, when you do that, the snippets of conversation you hear always begin with the words ‘so I said’?

‘... so I said to Val Parnell, “If my name doesn’t go above the jugglers, I will not appear. ‘

‘... so I said, “I don’t like the look of you, young man.” And he said, “Can I smell your armpits?” And I said, “Certainly not!” And he said, “Oh, it must be your feet then.”’

‘... so I said, “I’ll tell you my wife’s favourite sexual position. Next door, that’s what.”’

‘... so I said to the police that actually I didn’t know I’d been raped until the cheque bounced.’

‘... so I said, “I’ll meet you at that new naturist restaurant. You know the one, it’s called Eat Your Food Nude.”’

‘… so I said, there were these two sperms swimming along and one says to the other, “Are we at the fallopian tubes yet?” And the other one says, “No, we’re hardly past the tonsils.”’

‘… so I said, that’s because you don’t understand how the Secret Government of the World functions. Conventional governments think that they’ll be able to control the chaos caused by the Millennium Bug. But what they don’t know is that their own systems have been sabotaged. Agents of the Secret Government have been infiltrating them for years, pretending to solve the problem, whilst actually making it worse.

‘Revolution in any country is only three square meals away and when the infrastructure collapses and food no longer reaches the shop shelves, there will be a world crisis. And that’s when the Secret Government will take over. They’ve been planning it for years, because they know what’s going to happen. And you know what they say: “Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.”’