‘We’ve got every base covered,’ effuses Gerbil James and flushing down the drainpipe of the throat medicinal brown sewer fluid.
‘The landlord says you can shack up here tonight in the beer cellar. But blankets cost extra.’
‘Boy! We need more whisky!’ commands Gerbil James the shirt-tailing bar steward. ‘Boy, don’t turn your back on me! Boy! Boy! … I know you can hear me, boy! …’
***
Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies.
Leave no stone unturned, bite the bullet, and pluck out thy left eye which offends thee, the Chief Constable barks into the walkie-talkie at the helm of the flashest and fattest and fastest snail in the fleet <—>
The bastards can’t have gone far.
Immediate promotion to the Porno Squad and seat at top table in the staff canteen for the first man-jack or lady-jack of you to bring home the bacon with brown sauce from the backsides of those two runaway rats Pym and Whitelaw <—>
All leave cancelled. And the typists in the pool have been put on standby. Officers drafted from as far afield as Scrubville or Wormhill.
A happy hoard of devils-on-horseback hardens on the bottom rack of the freezer <—>
‘Dead or alive,’ barks the Chief Constable into the walkie-talkie <—>
<—> And preferably dead <—>
At the helm of the fastest and fattest and flashest snail in the fleet the Chief Constable barks till blue in the face.
*****