“Are you sure they’re real?” asked the cabbie. And he knelt down and gave them a tug. “Damn,” he continued. “They are. And there was me thinking that I’d be able to give up cabbying and indulge myself in a brief but exotic life of drunkenness and debauchery.”

“Such is life,” said a pinch-faced woman, “but not yours, it would seem.”

“Ned Kelly said that,” said Constable Meek. “‘Such is life,’ he said, when the hangman topped him. So, should we set this fellow free?”

“Release him into our custody. We’ll take care of him.”

“I’m very upset about this,” said the cabbie.

“You can drive us to Chiswick,” said a different, but curiously similar pinch-faced woman. “We will give you a very large tip.”

“Then I’ll just have to make do with that, I suppose.”

“Splendid,” said another pinch-faced woman. “Carry him out then.”

The cabbie, aided by a constable, set to the carrying-out.

“Put him back,” said another constable, barring the way of all in the corridor beyond the cell.

“What is this?” asked the constable who was helping with the carrying-out.

“We have to hold this man for questioning. He answers to the description of a fellow who was observed in the company of several others, urinating upon a burning gatherer of the pure, stoning a tramp who was looking at him in a funny way and throwing an old lady from Kew Bridge for a reason that probably seemed appropriate at the time.”

“A regular villain,” said the constable, letting his end of Colonel William drop to the cold stone floor. “Back to the cell with this scoundrel.”

“Damn,” said a pinch-faced woman, but which one it was remained unclear.

“Damn,” said Will.

“Damn?” said Tim.

“He’s right,” said Will. “Whether we like it or not, Mr Merrick probably did the right thing.”

“But all those people dead. All those people injured.”

“It could be very much worse. If Mars Attacks.”

“It could,” Mr Merrick agreed. “And it would be very much worse.”

“So are we just going to walk away from this?” Tim asked. “Walk away from him? Even though he’s responsible for all those deaths?”

“What would you do?”

Tim thought and then he shrugged his shoulders.

“Let’s go,” said Tim.

33

Three and a half hours earlier, Colonel William Starling of the Queen’s Own Aerial Cavalry Regiment had awoken to the sounds of an instrumental rendition of Little Tich’s ever popular Big Boot Dance, issuing from his Babbage digital alarm clock. This clock, a present from his now late and lamented daddy, had been given to young William upon the occasion of his sixth birthday. William reached out a hand and silenced the clock.

He blinked his eyes and focused them and took in his present surroundings. These were not his barracks at Queen’s Gate. William scratched at his blondy head and his prodigious sideburns and then memories returned to him: memories of the night before, the riotous night before.

He had been taken “out on the razzle” by the chaps of the officer’s mess, to celebrate the moon launch of the morrow. Much champagne had been imbibed, many guineas had been squandered at a Notting Hill gaming hell, named Barnaby Rudge’s Electric Fun Palace, and much clubbing had been done at the Burlington, Stringfellow’s and at the Pussycat Club. And there had been much whoring too, at Madame Lorraine Loveridge’s establishment in Bayswater. But beyond this, things were blurry for William.

He dimly recalled a urinating competition which involved an attempt to extinguish a gatherer of the pure whom Binky Harrington had set on fire for a bit of jolly. And then there was the stoning of a tramp who had looked at them in what they considered to be a funny way. And an old lady had been thrown into the Thames from Kew Bridge for some reason that now escaped William, but had seemed appropriate at the time.

All in all, it had been a memorable evening, although no less memorable than any other Tuesday night, when the regiment was down from the sky and billeted in Queen’s Gate.

William arose from the bed and stretched his lanky limbs. His regimental cronies had brought him back here, to his childhood home at number seven Mafeking Avenue, Brentford and laid him to rest upon his childhood bed. William glanced down and noticed that he wasn’t wearing any trousers, and that his genitals had been painted with boot black.

“Damn poor show,” said Colonel William Starling, examining his blackened bits. “Tarring a fellow’s chappie when he’s in the land of Nod. Although,” and here he paused and clenched his buttocks, “it could have been a lot worse. ‘Chunky’ Wilberforce could have rogered me rigid and I’d not have known a damn thing about it.”

“Willy dear,” a voice called up to him. “Are you out of your bed yet? It’s a big day for you, remember?”

“The mater,” said Colonel William. “I shall be down in an instant, mother of mine, just as soon as I’ve had a wash and brush-up.”

“It’s kippers and jam,” called his loving mother. “Your favourite.”

“My favourite is pâté de fois gras smeared upon a maiden’s nipple, you common old cow,” muttered Colonel William. “My very favourite,” he called down.

Getting dressed proved to be something of a problem, for Colonel William’s trousers were nowhere to be found. His boots were there, patent and polished, complete with their golden spurs with airship motif, but of trousers, Colonel William’s bedroom was a regular Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

“Damn poor show,” said the Colonel once again, and with no propriety-brand cleaning products to hand, he strode down the stairs to breakfast, sans trousers and dark as a nigger’s[26] nadger about the nadger regions.

William scarcely glanced at the pictures that hung upon the gaily-papered staircase wall. These were all of his father, the late Captain Ernest Starling, who had been posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for saving the life of his monarch during the launching of the Dreadnaught.

The son of a national hero was Colonel William and he had every intention of eclipsing his father’s fame and winning for himself a very large place in the history of The Empire.

Colonel Will entered the front parlour. It was decorated in the suburban chic of a time two decades before, quilted Farnsbarns ruff-tuckers with extended dolly-frames and overlarge splay-footed finials in the style of Marchant; a Dutch crimping cabinet, with the original geometrically glazed sodium foils, a matched pair of Cheggers, a filigreed muff tunnel, and a dining table and six chairs that were recognisable as “Olde Chameleons”.

Upon the table was the morning edition of the Brentford Mercury. Colonel Will’s mother, who had been decanting kippers from the Babbage low-fat fryer to the Babbage electric hostess trolley, caught sight of her son’s naked loin area and all but fouled the fish.

“Hell’s handbags!” shrieked she. “Oo, pardon my French.”

“No, pardon me, mater,” said Colonel Will. “The chaps played a prank upon me.”

“Boys will be boys,” said the lady of the house. “I recall the regimental dances that your dear dead daddy and I used to attend. Not a pair of trousers left on a man after the clock struck ten.”

“I shall need to borrow a pair of the pater’s kecks, if I’m to look respectable for the launching,” said Colonel Will, seating himself at the head of the table.

“His dress uniform is mothballed in a trunk in the loft. I know he’d be proud for you to wear it.”

“Damn good show.” Colonel Will took up a knife and fork and his mother served him kippers from the hostess trolley.

And then she hovered over him, wringing her veiny hands and cocking her head from side to side in that way which mothers always do when they gaze proudly upon their only sons.