Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“We’re Ron and Gloria, Jeremy’s poor parents,” said Ron.

“We want him back. Wuh-we nuh- need him back,” said Gloria, dabbing at her eyes.

“Right then. An’ Missus Crawfish is called Sophie, I deduce.”

“Correct, Constable,” said Ron. “Our darling daughter-in law. And it’s Craw ford .”

“Ah-hah,” said Dennis, turning pages in his notebook, jabbing his pen at them, and thinking, “Christ, what with the Sophie bint as a missus an’ this lot as mums an’ dads, no bloody wonder the poor bloke did a runner.”

“And Jeremy was last seen?”

Which was when Dennis learned from Vince Jeremy hadn’t actually been seen by any of them for two whole weeks, during which time he’d been living in a barn with a pig called Pete and refusing anybody admittance.

“ Pete ?” asked Dennis, pen poised.

“Pete,” Sophie confirmed. “We’d been planning on eating him, but now it’s too late.”

“Pete has vanished too?”

“Yes. Been spirited away.”

“Jeremy and Pete? Both of them ‘spirited away’?”

“Yes.”

Dennis’s largely ineffective brain was starting to hurt.

“By demons?”

“Wuh-we duh-don’t nuh- know ,” said Gloria. “Tell the nice policeman about Sir Magnus, Sopha.” That’s what Sophie’s mother called her daughter: Sopha.

So, while Dennis scribbled sinistrally, Sophie recounted at length both failed attempts by Jeremy’s boss Sir Magnus Montague and his team of trick cyclists to heal Jeremy’s evidently deranged mind.

“And the second time, huh-he wuh-wasn’t even there ,” she wailed.

“No Jeremy? No Pete either?” said Dennis.

“Nuh- no . Both of them… gone .”

“An’ this Sir Magnus geezer? Wanna spell that for me? Might need to contact him.”

And so it was that Dennis “Shorty” Dawkins learned the family version of Jeremy Crawford’s disappearance. Not that he didn’t already know Jeremy had disappeared, of course. As “Betty” on Facebook, he already knew about and coveted the million quid reward for clues leading to his discovery. But it was always good to get details from the horses’ mouths.

Not that Dennis was much impressed by these horses. Snobby dipshits, he reckoned. And again, as he pocketed his notebook, made his excuses, headed back to Fanbury’s only cop car and burnt rubber away from the estate, he felt sympathy bordering on empathy for poor old Jeremy. And Pete. Dennis had always rather liked pigs. But, wherever they were, at least they were safe from their loony family.

Sir Magnus Montague was startled and baffled at the global response to “Jackie Lamur’s” plea for information as to Jeremy’s whereabouts when Julie plugged him into his little-used desktop iMac and showed him her results.

“Bloody hell ,” he said as she scrolled up and down from “Maxim” in Minsk to “Jim” in Knotty Ash and back again. “Stop going so damn fast , woman, you’re hurting my eyes.”

“I thought sir would be pleased,” said Julie, faux pouting. “What with it going viral and everything. So many to choose from.”

“Viral? Sounds like a bally disease. And sir is not pleased. Sir is confused.”

“Sir con fus ed?”

“Yes,” Sir Magnus was forced to admit, grabbing at his box of Havana Tranquillities. “How the hell am I supposed to pick any one from this lot? And you’re not telling me Jeremy bloody Crawford has been all over the world in the last seven days. What am I supposed to think, that he’s Superman or something? Some damn bollocks this Internet business has got to be. Talk about finding needles in hay stacks.”

Julie shrugged and stared off. “Only doing my best for you, sir.”

“Well, your best isn’t bally good enough!”

“Sorry, sir.”

Sir Magnus held a Havana Tranquillity to his ear, twizzled it between a thumb and a forefinger, then, satisfied it was up to scratch, cut off its end with a Donatus Gold-plated V- cutter, stuck the cigar in his mouth, and fired it up with a St Dupont Slim 7 lighter. Julie wafted her hands before her eyes and coughed thespianly, but Sir Magnus puffed on regardless.

“And where is this Knotty Ash place that keeps coming up? One has heard of most of the other places. But Knotty Ash ?” he said from within the cumulus of Tranquillity smoke swirling around his head. “Sounds like some joke town.”

Julie went on with the hand wafting but, having grown up in Liverpool, she was also smiling. Sometimes wished she’d never left the place. And in a way Sir Magnus was dead right. It was a joke town. You had to be a comedian to live there, some said. But not a day went by without her remembering the times when things had gone wrong and somebody would come up to her, throw an arm around her shoulders and say, “C’mon, love, give us a smile and you’ll be all right. If you don’t laff, you cry, right?” And she’d laffed, and every time the pain had gone away. When did that ever happen in London? Never, that was how often. Everybody too busy, busy, busy and locked up in themselves. Well, more fool them.

“It’s a suburb of Liverpool,” she said. “Made famous by Ken Dodd. Remember him?”

Sir Magnus frowned. “Ken…?”

“Dodd, the comedian with the big teeth and the tickling stick? The one with the diddymen and more than his share of happiness?”

Sir Magnus stopped frowning and, for once in his life, chuckled.

“Oh, Doddy ,” he said. “I rather liked him. Completely off his trolley, of course, but, how shall I put it…?”

“Funny?”

“That’s it. Funny . A proper clown. And he’s a Knotty Asher, is he?”

“Was. He’s dead now. But yes he was a Knotty Asher all right. Born and bred. Wouldn’t leave the place for a big clock. They made him a sir before he died.”

“A sir ? Like me?”

“Like you, Sir Magnus.”

“Good Lord. Still, it takes all sorts, I suppose. Any way, back to the point at hand. Namely what we are to do with this deluge of improbable information concerning the whereabouts of Jeremy Crawford? Do you know this ‘Jim’ chappie from Knotty Ash, for example? Could he be a reliable source? Or is he perhaps just another diddlyman?”

“ Diddy man. Too early to say, sir,” said Julie, who had no Knotty Ash ‘Jim’ in her address book. Mind you, as far as she was aware, she hadn’t befriended ‘Maxim’ in Minsk either. Or any of the other oiks who’d swamped her pages with self-evident lust for a million pounds. Some hacking must have gone on somewhere, but Julie had no idea how or where.

“Perhaps sir would just like to leave the problem to me?” she suggested. Betty in Fanbury, whose post had only just pinged into the list, looked like a person of interest, for example. Especially as Fanbury was where Jeremy had lived before disappearing. But then Jim in dear old Knotty Ash was also tempting.

“Indeed sir would,” said Sir Magnus, as the Havana Tranquillity this time had its desired effect and he flopped forwards across his mahogany Chippendale desk, whispered “aaaahh,” and took to snoring for England.

“Sleep tight, bossy boy,” whispered Julie, heading for the door.

After they’d put their thinking caps on, Jeremy and Barry debated at length Jeremy’s dilemma in face of the deluge of Internet interest in his whereabouts, which had by then spread to the conventional media. After all, newspaper editors aren’t proud when it comes to hooking a big fish in case somebody else hooks it first. They too have smartphones and aren’t the types to ignore a viral when it smacks them in the face, especially if it can be hitched to a human-interest story. Within a day or so of it airing, therefore, Jackie Lamur’s post and its global response had been spotted. And tweaked a little to give it more oomph. In its first revised version, Jeremy became the lone parent of six children whose drug-addicted mother had abandoned the family home to become a porn star in America, where she was hoping to have sex with the madman in the White House. And now the bonkers banker had done a runner too, the six children were in the care of a grandmother, herself suffering from dementia.