Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“But?” said Jeremy.

“While I was in the loo just now, she called me. Seemed like such a nice girl and I’d always liked her tweets, so…”

“You told her where you were,” said Barry.

“Yes. Look, I’m sorry. Must’ve been the drinks you gave me that made me talk but she’d already been speaking with Batty Hattie who’d told her about funny goings-on in the village and talking to me and how she’d sent me to this address and…”

“Like you, she’s found us,” said Jeremy.

“Yes. Sorry. Look, I’d take it back if I could, only now it’s too late, and…”

Which was when there came another knock on Barry’s door.

“Popular chap I am all of a sudden,” he said, levering himself from his chair.

“Yes indeed, my dear, do come in. We’ve been half expecting you,” were the muffled words from the door.

“Oops,” said Dennis.

And so it was, after pedalling the metal in her beaten-up pre-Satnav VW Golf all the way to Fanbury that Julie MacKintosh finally met up with her Twitter buddy “Betty.”

And then, to her astonishment, she also re-encountered her one-time-only sex partner, the rogue megalomaniac bonkers banker, Jeremy Crawford.

Back at Jeremy’s ex-home, his soon-to-be ex-wife, his parents, and his in-laws were gathered together in the solarium discussing progress so far and getting antsy— Sophie most of all. She still had her credit and debit cards working, but for how much longer once Sir Magnus cut off Jeremy’s enormous salary, which he had sworn to do if “the bounder” weren’t caught soon? Hardly any time at all, that was how long. Then what? Go to work her self ? No way, Hozay. But life would be soo different. She would, for example, have to let “the help” go. No more cook, no more cleaning lady, no more hairdresser, no more pedicurist, no more manicurist, no more beauty therapist, no more interior design adviser, no more personal shopper, no more free credit for Harrods’ food, wine, and couture deliveries. None of the benefits Jeremy’s money had bought, and to which his “loving wife” had become accustomed.

“Just im a gine how the queen would feel if someone said they weren’t going to pay for her palaces no more,” she complained to Ron, Gloria, Vince, and Valerie. “Proper pissed off she would be. Proper … pissed… fucking… off .” Faux tears dribbled down her rouged cheeks and smudged them.

Ron, Gloria, Vince, and Valerie stroked their chins and nodded.

“Terribly hard for you to bear, my dearest dahling,” said Valerie, eyeing Ron and Gloria with the suspicion she felt they deserved for having spawned a failed banker. Implying there might have been something amiss with either their genetic materials or their parenting skills, or both.

“Spot on, babe,” said Vince, taking his wife’s hand and, while squeezing it, also giving Ron and Gloria the malocchio.

It was Ron who fought back against such thinly veiled accusations.

“There was always a darker side to our Jeremy. A side we could do nothing about. Used to hide in his bedroom playing mathematics computer games all night long, and…”

“You just let him?” said Vince.

“The boy was a genius,” said Gloria. “That’s all we knew. It’s what his teachers all said.”

“Phooey,” said Valerie, taking her daughter’s limp hand and massaging it while also faux weeping a bit.

“ Bastard ,” spat Sophie.

“Let’s just hope the coppers find him soon. At least we’ve got that nice PC Dawkins on the case,” Gloria said.

“Dawkins porkins,” Sophie re-spat. “Never met such a dickhead. Didn’t even know Jeremy’s name till we told him. Okay, so he was tall. But with that horrid beard…”

“A dork’s a dork,” Vince agreed. “Dawkins always was one and still is. Couldn’t investigate his own bottom without a bottom map.”

Which was just as well given “Honest” Vince’s nefarious gambling transactions—horse doping, jockey bribery, and suchlike—but this wasn’t the time or place for such an admission.

“Seems to me,” he continued, “although I’d never have thought it before, it looks like our best hope’s gotta be the bleedin’ Internet, innit?”

“Also it’s all over the telly and the newspapers too, ain’t that right, Vince?” said Valerie.

“Right as night, darlin’. Bound to be some bugger out there who’s seen him.”

“What I think we should all agree on,” said Ron, “is the sooner we get poor Jeremy back to the heart of his family, the better.”

This was a sentiment with which nobody could disagree, given the extent to which they all depended one way or another on Jeremy’s capacity to print money. Ron and Gloria owned their home—mortgage paid off and everything—but a joint state pension and a couple of piddling work-related ones weren’t going to fund any more Caribbean cruises, were they? And thriving though Vince’s bent betting business currently was, he wasn’t getting any younger. Plus he had no pension, seeing as wide boys didn’t go for pensions, did they? And as for Sophie, life was unimaginable without a consistent cash flow. She would even be prepared to forgive Jeremy his “blip” and let him have morning sex with her again just so long as the big cheques kept hitting her bank account.

They were all agreed, therefore, that Jeremy should be found as soon as possible. But none of them had the least idea how that might be achieved and were becoming gloomy and distraught as they sucked down one of the few remaining bottles of Jeremy’s cellar-preserved bottles of Larent Perrier Cuvée Rosé.

“Tell you what,” said Ron. “Why don’t we phone the Sir Magnus bloke and see if he’s found out anything? He was the one who started off the Twitter campaign, wasn’t he?”

“Well actually no, that was Jackie Lamur,” said Vince, whose bent betting business depended heavily on multiple tweets from thousands of equally bent sources.

“Jackie who ?” chorused Ron, Gloria, Valerie, and Sophie, all of them suspecting a secret mistress of Jeremy’s who might have some claim on his money.

“Lamur,” said Vince. “Look, why doesn’t some one just call the Sir Magnus geezer and find out what’s goin’ on?”

“How about you ?” said Ron, “I’ve got his number if you haven’t.”

But Vince did have the number and was surprised at how quickly Sir Magnus picked up.

“Yes?” said the Lord of the Realm, who’d been awaiting on his landline phone a call from Julie to report progress.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s you .”

Vince and Sir Magnus had a shared, albeit covert, interest in horses. And greyhounds. And the likelihood of a further Brexit referendum. Who might win it were it to recur and by what margin. Sir Magnus had a complex three-thousand-pound, win-either-way stake with Vince at odds of 20:1 on both the possibility of a further plebiscite and the repeat of the anti-European vote by margins varying between 2-30%.

“What d’you want?”

Which was when Vince asked Sir Magnus if he had any updates on Jeremy’s whereabouts. Any results so far from the Jackie Lamur tweet?

“None so far,” Sir Magnus replied. But not to worry because his Personal Assistant was on the case with a specially tailored all-go-rhythms formula, which she guaranteed would provide results.

“She… being… who ?”

But, knowing Vince as he did, Sir Magnus wasn’t prepared to divulge that sort of sensitive information.

“Trust me, it’s all under control,” he said before cutting the call.