Robert Rankin - Web Site Story

'There's injured people upstairs on the bus.'

'Ah look,' said Derek. 'Here comes Mr Shields.'

The editor of the Brentford Mercury jostled his way through the crowd, pushing a small and worried-looking man before him.

'This is Gary,' said Derek to Kelly. 'Gary's our press photographer.'

'I don't like the look of this,' said Gary. 'This bus might explode at any minute.'

'It's quite safe,' said Kelly. 'But there's injured people upstairs.' She stepped aside as a fireman blundered by with a constable clinging to his throat.

'Go up and photograph them, Gary,' said Mr Shields. 'Have you brought the doll?'

Gary nodded. Kelly said, 'Doll?'

'The discarded child's doll,' Mr Shields explained. 'It makes for a great front-page picture. Adds that touch of pathos. Often there isn't one at a crash site, so press photographers always bring their own.'

'Mine's called Chalky,' said Gary, producing Chalky from out of his pocket. 'She's quite a little star, aren't you Chalky?'

Kelly's jaw fell open. 'Don't you understand?' she said. 'There are injured people. Real people. Suffering.'

'Any dead?' the editor asked.

'Thankfully not.'

'Shame. But one or two might always die on the way to hospital.'

'What?' Kelly looked appalled. She was appalled.

'Ah,' said Mr Shields. 'Well, I know that might sound callous, but actually it isn't.'

'Isn't it?' asked Kelly, as two confused constables rolled by, wildly swinging at each other.

'It's a cathartic thing,' the editor explained, stepping aside to avoid being hit by an ambulance man. 'Vast public outpourings of grief. It started back in the 1990s. People began placing bunches of flowers at the sites of road accidents or murders. Then there was the Hillsborough disaster and of course the death of Princess Di. Conspiracy theorists suggest that it was a cabal of florists who came up with the original idea. But I tend to the belief that the public need that kind of thing. It makes them feel caring and takes their mind off their own problems for a while. And thousands and thousands of bunches of flowers all laid out do make for a very colourful and poignant front page…'

Mr Shields never saw the punch coming. Kelly laid him out with a single blow.

Order was finally restored with the arrival of FART. The Fire Arms Response Team. They had been called in when Mr Pendragon, the proprietor of the Plume Cafe, who had just popped around the corner to the cheese shop shortly before the demolition occurred, and had tarried rather longer than he should have done in the pub next door to the cheese shop, returned to find a bus sticking out of the front of his now defunct café and a whole lot of uniformed men beating eight bells of bejasus out of each other all around and about.

Somewhat upset by this downturn in his fortunes, he had managed to locate his old service revolver from amongst the wreckage of his business premises and started taking potshots at the crowd. As one would.

It was all well and truly over, however, by three in the afternoon.

Derek and Kelly sat in the waiting room of casualty at the cottage hospital. There had been no fatalities through either crash or conflict. Mr Pendragon lay in a private ward, straitjacketed and suffering the after-effects of nerve gas. Mr Shields had recovered consciousness and returned to his office, where he sat composing headlines of the bus crash plume boom doom persuasion. The uniformed walking-wounded had licked their wounds and walked and only those who had been aboard the bus remained tucked up in hospital beds.

Derek was making notes in his reporter's notebook.

Kelly sat and teased strands of her golden hair. Twisting them between her fingers, slowly backwards and forwards. Back and forwards and back.

Dr Sebastian Druid, son of Ted and brother to Conan Barbarossa Firesword Druid (who lived in a world that was very much of his own), breezed through the double doors that led from the general ward and smiled a warm and friendly smile at Kelly Anna Sirjan.

Dr Druid was a man of moderate height and immoderate sexual appetite. He had much of the tawny owl to his looks, but a little of the okapi. He knew his stuff when it came to first aid, but was totally lost beneath the bonnet of a Ford Fiesta. Dr Druid had a clipboard and a pair of brown suede shoes.

'Don't get up,' he said to Kelly, who already had.

'How are the patients?' Kelly asked.

'Odd,' said Dr Druid. 'Somewhat odd.'

'How so, odd?' asked Derek. 'Odd to look at, do you mean? That driver is certainly a strange-looking chap. Reminds me a bit of the Mekon.'

'No.' The doctor sat himself down and then stood up again. 'It's not the looks of them that are odd. Although I've never been overly attracted to the Oriental physiognomy. Not that the women of Thailand are anything other than fair.'

'Aren't they dark?' asked Derek.

'Fair to look upon,' said Dr Druid, looking fairly upon Kelly Anna. 'Fair to behold. But I don't mean odd in looks. The four Japanese students have all recovered their senses and I'll keep them in tonight for observation and turn them loose tomorrow. It's the other three that trouble me.' Dr Druid consulted his clipboard. 'There's this lady in the straw hat, whose name I wouldn't dare to pronounce. The driver, a Mr Periwig Tombs, and the tour guide Robert Charker, known as Big Bob, I believe.'

'So what's odd?' asked Derek.

Dr Druid heard him ask, but addressed his answer to Kelly. 'Blank out,' he said. 'They are completely unable to communicate. It seems as if they are suffering from total amnesia.'

'It's shock surely?' Derek said. 'After all, they've just been in a bus crash.'

Dr Druid shook his tawny head and raised an un-okapi-like eyebrow. 'It isn't shock,' he said. 'Trust me, I know these things, I'm a doctor. And have you had a check-up lately, Ms Sirjan, I think you really should, I can fit you in now, if you're free.'

'I'm fine,' said Kelly, noting how firmly the doctor's gaze had attached itself to her breasts. 'These people weren't unconscious when we found them. How do you explain the amnesia?'

'I don't,' said Dr Druid. 'I have run all the usual tests. The Gugenheimer Cheese Recognition Test. The McNaulty Handkerchief Scan, knotted and unknotted. I've tried rattling change in my trouser pockets and even whistling in a very low and mournful manner, which quite put the wind up one of my interns.'

'Did you try moving a pencil back and forward across an ashtray?' Derek asked.

'Naturally.'

'And what about reciting the alphabet into a paper cup?'

'I also tried it into a bedpan.'

Derek now shook his head, but didn't raise an eyebrow. 'You're very thorough indeed,' he observed.

'Well, I am a doctor,' said Dr Druid. 'Your shoulders look very stiff, Ms Sirjan, perhaps I could massage them for you?'

'Would it be possible for me to speak to any of the patients?' Kelly asked.

'Possibly later. They're currently being interviewed by a policeman and a fireman. Not that they'll get anything from them. They seem to have lost the power of speech and hearing as well, as far as I can make out. I could give your back a quick rub, if you like, my dear. Or perhaps take you to dinner?'

Kelly's fingers twisted at strands of her golden hair. 'Thanks, but no thanks,' she said. 'Derek is taking me out to dinner tonight.'

'Am I?' said Derek.

'Yes,' said Kelly. 'You are.'

There are many splendid eateries in Brentford. There is Archie Karachi's Star of Bombay Curry Garden in the Baling Road. Wang Yu's Chinese Chuckaway in Albany Crescent. The Wife's Legs Cafe down at the end of Half Acre. And the Laughing Sprout, Brentford's only vegetarian restaurant, which tucks itself away at the bottom of Horseferry Lane, near to the river, where no-one has to look at it much. It's a very romantic little venue, but it doesn't serve any meat.