Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

'You can say that again.'

'Funnily enough, I found the women more receptive to the idea than the men.'

'I should think you would.'

'Of course, it's not something most people will accept at one go. I put it to them gradually, but on the whole they could see there was something to be said for it.'

'Hell,' said Els, 'you must have had some parties.'

'I hope I'm not boring you,' the Bishop said hopefully.

'I'm never bored by sex,' said Els.

'Do you mind if I take a seat?' the Bishop said on the spur of the moment, taking advantage of Els' evident interest.

'Help yourself.' Els couldn't get enough of the Bishop's tales of group gropes and similar perversions.

'Now then,' said the Bishop, when he was seated, 'where was I?'

'You were saying how the women liked it in the tail,' said Els.

'Was I really?' said the Bishop. 'How extraordinary. I had no idea.'

As the night wore on, Konstabel Els sat rapt in admiration for the prisoner. Here at last, was a man after his own heart, a man for whom there was no shame, no remorse, no regret, only a dedication to lust unequalled in Els' experience.

The difficulty for the Bishop was that his imagination was hardly adequate for the task Els set it. Faced with such rapacious curiosity, he stuck to his calling and Els listened fascinated to descriptions of midnight orgies involving chasubles and albs. Among the other invaluable pieces of information that the Konstabel picked up there were three facts which were particularly damning. The Bishop, he learned, wore a frock, possessed a rubric and owned a biretta.

'What the hell is a rubric?' Kommandant van Heerden asked him in the morning when he read the Bishop's signed confession.

'Short for rubber prick,' said Els. 'He uses it for genuflexion.' 'Does he really?' said the Kommandant and read the astonishing document through for the second time. If half of what the Bishop had confessed to was true, thought van Heerden, the sod should have been hanged years ago.

While the case against Jonathan Hazelstone was being prepared, Kommandant van Heerden wrestled with the problem posed by the continuing disappearance of the prisoner's sister. In spite of the most intensive manhunt Miss Hazelstone continued to elude the police. Kommandant van Heerden increased the reward offered but still no information worth the telling was telephoned into the Piemburg police station. The only consolation the Kommandant could find was that Miss Hazelstone had not added to his problems by communicating with her lawyer or with newspapers outside his province.

'She's a cunning old devil,' he told Luitenant Verkramp, and was alarmed to note in himself a return of the admiration he had previously felt for her.

'I wouldn't worry about the old bag, she'll probably turn up at the trial,' Verkramp answered optimistically. His fall had not, the Kommandant noted, deprived the Luitenant of his capacity to say things calculated to upset his commanding officer.

'If you're so bloody clever, where do you suggest we start looking for her?' the Kommandant growled.

'Probably sitting in Jacaranda House laughing to herself,' and Verkramp took himself off to compile a list of black cooks known to favour Chicken Maryland.

'Sarcastic bastard,' muttered the Kommandant. 'One of these days somebody will fix him properly.'

It was in fact Konstabel Els whose initiative led to the capture of Miss Hazelstone. Ever since his battle with the Dobermann, Els had been regretting his decision to leave the body lying on the lawn of Jacaranda House.

'I should have had it stuffed. It would look nice in the hall,' he said to the Kommandant during an idle moment.

'I should have thought it had been stuffed enough already,' the Kommandant had replied. 'Besides, whoever heard of having a dog stuffed.'

'There are lots of stuffed lions and wart-hogs and things in the hall of Jacaranda House. Why shouldn't I have a stuffed dog in my hall?'

'You're getting ideas above your station,' the Kommandant said. Els had gone off to ask the warder in Bottom about getting dogs stuffed. The old man seemed to know about things like that.

'You want to take it to a taxidermist,' the warder told him. 'There's one in the museum but I'd ask for a quote first. Stuffing's a costly business.'

'I don't mind spending a bit of money on it,' Els said and together they went to ask the Bishop about the dog.

'I believe it had a pedigree,' the Bishop told them.

'What's a pedigree?' Els asked.

'A family tree,' said the Bishop, wondering if killing the dog was going to be added to the list of crimes he was supposed to have committed.

'Fussy sort of dog, having a family tree,' Els said to the warder. 'You'd think it would pee against lamp-posts like any other dogs.'

'Spoilt if you ask me,' said the warder. 'Sounds more like a lapdog than a real Dobermann. I'm not surprised you could kill it so easily. Probably died of fright.'

'It bloody well didn't. It fought like mad. Fiercest dog I ever saw,' said Els, annoyed.

'I'll believe it when I see it,' said the warder and Els had promptly made up his mind to fetch the Dobermann to get rid of the slur on his honour.

'Permission to visit Jacaranda House,' he said to the Kommandant, later that day.

'Permission to do what?' the Kommandant asked incredulously.

'To go up to Jacaranda House. I want to get that dog's body.'

'You must be out of your mind, Els,' said the Kommandant. 'I should have thought you'd had enough of that bloody place by now.'

'It's not a bad place,' said Els whose own memories of the Park were quite different from those of the Kommandant.

'It's a bloody awful place, and you've done enough harm up there already,' said the Kommandant. 'You keep your nose out of it, do you hear me?' and Els had vented his anger by bullying some black convicts in the prison yard.

That evening Kommandant van Heerden decided to make a spot check on the road blocks around Piemburg. He was beginning to suspect that his enforced absence from the outside world was having a bad effect on the morale of his men, and since he thought it improbable that Miss Hazelstone would be out and about at eleven o'clock at night, and wouldn't be able to see him in the police car if she were, he decided to make his rounds when it seemed most likely his men would be asleep on the job.

'Drive slowly,' he told Els when he was seated in the back of the car. 'I just want to have a look around.' For an hour men on duty at street corners and at the road blocks were harassed by van Heerden's questions.

'How do you know she didn't come through here disguised as a coon?' he asked the sergeant on duty on the Vlockfontein road who had been complaining about the numbers of cars he had had to search.

'We've checked them all, sir,' said the sergeant.

'Checked them? How have you checked them?'

'We give them the skin test, sir.'

'The skin test? Never heard of it.'

'We use a bit of sandpaper, sir. Rub their skin with it and if the black comes off they're white. If it doesn't they're not.'

Kommandant van Heerden was impressed. 'Shows initiative, Sergeant,' he said and they drove on.

It was shortly after this and as they were driving up Town Hill to inspect the road block there that Konstabel Els noticed that the Kommandant had fallen asleep.

'It's only the old man making his rounds,' Els told the Konstabel on duty, and was about to turn round and return to the prison when he realized that they were quite close to Jacaranda Park. He looked over his shoulder and regarded the sleeping figure in the back of the car.

'Permission to go up to Jacaranda House, sir,' he said softly. In the back the Kommandant was snoring loudly. 'Thank you, sir.' said Els with a smile and the car moved off past the road block and up the hill to Jacaranda House. On either side of the road the headlights illuminated the billboards which stood like advertisements for macabre holiday resorts: Bubonic Plague, some sinister beach and Rabies, a game reserve. Unaware of his destination, Kommandant van Heerden slept noisily in the back as the car passed through the gate of Jacaranda House, and with a crunch of tyres on gravel, moved slowly down the long drive.-