'I have been given until the weekend to put my affairs in order.'

'A week in politics can be a long time, to quote-'

'Quote me no further quotes,' said Hovis, 'please.' Polly made fists at the ceiling. 'I don't want to be made redundant. It sucks on the dole. Surely we can think of something. There has to be something.'

'I did have one idea,' said Hovis thoughtfully. 'It's an old trick, but it might just work.'

'Tell me. Tell me.'

'You must swear to keep it secret.'

'I swear.' Polly licked her finger and made motions above the bosom area. 'Cross my heart and hope to die.'

'We could discredit Lytton.'

'Now that is a brilliant idea. What should we do?' Inspectre Hovis leaned back in his chair and stared unto s.p.a.ce.

'Catch him in a compromising situation. In the arms of some harlot. Burst in, camera in hand.

Flagrante delicto. The deed is done. I think that would do the trick.'

'And serve the b.u.g.g.e.r right too. Jumped-up little s.h.i.t.'

'Quite so. Right then. I'll pop out to Boots and get some film for the old box Brownie. You go up to his office, whip off all your clothes and pros-trate yourself across the desk. Shall we synchronize watches?'

Polly looked at Hovis.

And Hovis looked at Polly.

'Go and suck,' said Polly Gotting. 'I'm off to the Job Centre.'

Unseen hands had replenished the great table and another course lay ready for the digging into.

Rune dug in. And he spoke as he did so. 'We must wipe out the beings in the Forbidden Zones,'

quoth he. 'Wipe them out while there are still a few of us left.'

'I don't think I quite follow that.' Cornelius heaped goodies on to his latest plate.

'Mankind declines,' said Rune solemnly. 'We grow fewer every day.'

'I would hate to be the one to contradict you, er, guru. But the population of the world is, as ever, on the increase.'

'It is nothing of the sort. Those within the zones grow in number. We decline. Once we were many, but we grow fewer by the year.'

'And might I ask how you come to this con-clusion?'

'Simple mathematics. Allow me to explain.' Rune thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and regarded his audience.

'How many are there of you, personally?' he asked Cornelius.

'Me personally? One, I suppose.'

'Correct, one. And how many parents do you have?'

'Two,' said Cornelius. 'Everybody has two. A mother and a father.'

'Correct again. Two. And how many grand-parents?'

'Four,' said Cornelius.

'And great-grandparents?'

'Eight.'

'And great-great-grandparents?''Sixteen.'

'And great-great-great-grandparents?'

'Thirty-two.'

'And so it goes on. Every generation you go back, you double it. By the time you go back a mere twenty-three generations, you have a figure in excess of four million people. Every one of which was necessary if you were ever to be born at all. The further you go back, the greater the number of people.'

'There has to be something wrong with that,' said Tuppe, giving his head a serious scratch. 'But for the life of me, I can't think what.'

'There cannot be anything wrong with it,' declared Rune. 'Work it out on a pocket calculator if you don't believe me. You cannot disprove an Ultimate Truth.'

Tuppe began to count on his fingers.

Cornelius asked, 'Where is this getting us?'

'We must wage war upon the Forbidden Zones now.' Rune struck the table another mighty blow.

'We must purge the planet of this unseen pestilence. This cankerous bubo, this septic pus-filled-'

'I think we get the picture,' said Cornelius Murphy. 'We're all for that. Tuppe and I have sworn ourselves to this very end. It's just that we haven't made much of a success of it, so far.'

'But that is because you lacked the wisdom and guidance of Hugo Rune.

'Ah,' said Cornelius. 'You think that was it then?' Rune nodded. 'Indubitably. Under my benevolent leadership, we will stamp out these "fairies", devils, more like. Throw off the shackles that constrain mankind. Raise high the battle standard of Ultimate Truth.'

'Do you have a plan?' Cornelius asked.

'Plan? Do I have a plan? I have a stratagem.'

'Tell us, guru,' said the Tuppe.

Cornelius raised an eyebrow to the small fellow.

'It is a two-part stratagem,' said Rune. 'Part one is concerned with drawing the world's attention to the existence of the Forbidden Zones, I will speak of that in good time. Part two deals with the extermination of those inside these zones. And this is where the ragged ancient's magical table comes into play. Allow me to explain. I have spent many years inside the zones. I am au fait with their layout. There exists a great hail, the hall of the king. And when part one of the plan has been put into operation, and there is much confusion within the zones, it is to this great hall that the so-called fairy folk will rush. And suppose that one of us is there. And the magical table is there with them. Use your imagination, gentlemen.'

Tuppe grinned and pictured himself reaching down unto the miniature facsimile of this great hall to place his thumb upon the head of Mr Arthur Kobold.

'Hasta la vista, baby,' said the Tuppe.

Chief Inspector Lytton peered down through the venetian blinds. He watched Polly leave the Porta-kabin and storm across the car park.

'And that,' said Lytton, 'would appear to be that.' The telephone began to ring and so he picked it up. 'Lytton.'

'Everything sorted?' asked a voice.

'He's clearing out his desk.'

'Good work. You've done very well. I think you can expect another promotion within the year.

'Thank you very much,' said Brian Lytton. 'Don't mention it,' replied the voice of Arthur Kobold.

'We look after our own.

15.

Mickey Minns awoke to find himself staring at a strange ceiling. The experience, in itself, was not altogether strange. It had happened many times be-fore. But it caught him temporarily off guard. Minns hastily shut his eyes and made a serious attempt at a mental rerun of last night's closing moments.

Glimpses came to him. Buying drinks for policemen. A bottle of Jim Beam that literally materialized beside him. Jack Lane clouting him with a walking-stick. And that was about all really.

Mickey groaned. Perhaps there'd been some un-pleasantness. Perhaps he was in the nick. He opened his left eye and took in the ceiling. Georgian blue. Mickey set free a small sigh of relief. Not the ceiling of a police cell then. Police cell ceilings were invariably white. Stark and intimidatingly so.

Where then? The hospital? No, hospital ceilings are generally green. Hospitals were always painted green in the old days. Something to do with all the blood. And how when you stare at red for a long time and then look away, you see green. Colour opposites, or some such thing. So they painted the walls green, which was the opposite of red, and when you looked up from the blood, you didn't see green and throw up everywhere. Or was it a tradition, or an old charter? Or something? And did they still paint hospitals green anyway? Mickey seemed to think that they didn't.

And so he opened both eyes. Thinking about hospitals always depressed him. He'd been pumped out too many times, and had too many eager-faced young interns going on at him about his liver.

Georgian blue. It was definitely Georgian blue. He'd once owned a guitar that colour which had belonged to Jimi Hendrix. But the thing was be-witched and used to feed back in the middle of the night, when it wasn't even plugged in. Mickey had sold it on to a coven in Acton.

Georgian blue. Who did he know that had a ceiling painted Georgian blue?

And silk pillows? Mickey dug his fingers into them. He wasn't lying on the floor! He was lying in somebody's bed!

There came to Mickey's ear the whisper of silk sheets. And to his senses, the realization that he was not alone in this bed.

Mickey turned his head to the side.

'Shiva's sheep!' He was blinking at a head-load of golden hair. And now at the face of Anna Gotting.

'Good morning, Mickey,' said Anna, yawning and stretching, luxuriously, with naked arms. 'I'd bet you'd like some coffee.'

'I...' Mickey rammed a knuckle into his mouth. 'I...'

'You were wonderful,' sighed Anna. 'Where did you learn all those moves? I've never "taken tea with the parson" before. Incredible.'

'I ...' Mickey fought with his brain. Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he told it. Remember. Please remember.

He jerked upright and began to belabour his skull with his fists. 'Remember, or I'll smash you to pieces!'

'Stop it,' Anna leapt to restrain him. She didn't have any clothes on.

'Naked!' Mickey doubled the a.s.sault on his head.

'Stop it. You didn't do anything. I was just winding you up.

'What?' Mickey's fists hovered in the air. 'What?'

'I was walking home and I found you asleep in a phone box. I dragged you back here and put you to bed.'

'Oh,' said Mickey.

'Oh,' said Anna.

'Oh s.h.i.t!' Mickey struck his head once more.

'Stop hitting yourself.'

'I'm sorry.' Minns fell back on the pillow and draped a forearm over his face. Not too far to obscure his view of Anna's nakedness, but just far enough so she couldn't see him looking.

As the silken sheet covering Mickey's mid-section began to rise, Anna said, 'Forget it, Mickey. I'll get you some coffee.'

She flipped out of the bed, into a peach-coloured towelling robe and was gone from the room.Inspectre Sherringford Hovis sat all alone in the Portakabin. And he was actually smiling. He rubbed his palms together and considered the big fat file which lay upon the desk. The file of Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune.

'I think I can state, without fear of contradiction,' said Hovis with a chuckle, 'that I have definitely seen the last of that appalling young woman. Which leaves me two full days, all alone and undisturbed, to solve The Crime of the Century.'

Now, a lesser man, having suffered as Hovis had suffered, under sentence of redundancy, and faced with the prospect of trying to solve a crime which had yet to be committed, might well have given up the ghost and tossed himself off some high building.

But not Inspectre Hovis. Soon to become Lord Hovis of Kew. No t.o.s.s.e.r he! The future peer of the realm tapped a smiling mug shot of Hugo Rune with the fingertip of accusation.

'You, my fine fellow,' he said to it. 'You, the face at the wheel of the speeding silver car. I know you, don't I? And I know that car. My extensive knowledge of automotive arcana tells me that was nothing less than the now legendary MacGregor Mathers Water Car. I spy a pretty pattern here, and no mistake. A train from nowhere. Diamonds from nowhere. A green demon from G.o.d knows where. And the return of Hugo Rune. Add to this two burnt-out cars, of rare vintage and unknown origin, on Kew Green and two more in the surrounding area.

Hovis took up the mug shot and studied the broad and grinning face. 'The great unsolveds,' said he.

'And the greatest yet to come. But not unsolved this time. Oh no, sir. Not this time. You are the man I seek, sir. And you are the man I'll find. You're out there somewhere, hatching some diabolical scheme, I can feel it in my water. I will have you, Hugo Rune. You see if I don't.'

If the ears of Rune were burning, the Master showed no sign. He placed his great hands on the table and heaved his not inconsiderable bulk from his chair. 'We are going to best and beat these b.u.g.g.e.rs,' he declared. 'Wipe them out. Delete them. But, as I have said, most eloquently, before, it is not sufficient that we do it in private. Retribution must be seen to be done. The whole world must watch us when we do it.'

'The whole world?' Tuppe whistled.

'The whole world.' Rune pushed his chair aside and began a ponderous pacing. 'We must expose the villains. Expose what they have done to mankind. Reveal the truth. The Ultimate Truth. That they have manipulated us throughout the centuries. All the world must know. And all the world must watch.'