Dastardly Doings - Part 10

By Bistro Waiters

PREFACE.

I, Bistro Waiters, would like to profoundly apologise for the standard of writing thus far on this blogweb. I am, of course, a professional writist and would, therefore, (with all due humility), like to attempt to redress the balance which I have found to be profoundly imbalanced (even though, it is true, the general level of communication has been profoundly lacking in balance it is also true that this imbalance has been crucial to the immediacy of the style [in that immediacy is an appropriate metaphor in this instance {always assuming that the term metaphor can be used in this regard} but even so it is vague in its premise] but style is not everything, I feel) and to that end I will apply myself.

But first – a few acknowledgements. I was born in 1982 and my dear Mother had a profound influence on that event. Was it not Franz Kafka (born July 3, 1883 – died June 3, 1924) who said, “Mothers may be lionised but not regarded”? Well – no, it wasn’t, but that does not alter the fact that Mothers are jolly important at childbirth and my Mother was no less so because of that. Overall, it may be presumed (with profundity) that ……..

Arjy: What the fuck are you doing?

Bistro Waiters: You interrupted me!

Arjy: I repeat – what the fuck are you doing?

Bistro Waiters: I am attempting to inject a little class into this shambolic mess of vaguely linked wordage. Further, I am going to explain the role of the existentialist in this world of ….

Arjy: I thought so. Senior Sergeant Slideback?

Senior Sergeant Slideback: Bistro Waiters, I am arresting you on suspicion – nay, certainty – that you are writing shit! Moreover, your choice of Franz Kafka as an example of an existentialist thinker is particularly galling when Soren Kierkegaard would be by far the better choice as champion of the individual.

Bistro Waiters: I most strongly object. I made no such assertion about Kafka but I will, however, point out that the existentialist influence on Kafka cannot be denied.

Senior Sergeant Slideback: True, but the implication That Kafka was particularly important to existentialism was there in your decision to link Kafka with your self-confessed explanation of existentialism as some kind of primary role and you can’t deny it, so ……

Arjy: Jesus! Will you both shut the fuck up! This is all bullshit! Have neither of you heard of Schopenhaur? Slideback is right to label Kafka as nothing more than a camp follower and he may also be right to claim Kierkegaard as the founder of existentialism but without Schopenhaur there would have been no ground swell to disrupt the cause of Universal Truth and the denial of power to the individual.

Sean: Excuse me, all of you. Could we concentrate on why we are here?

Bistro Waiters: Duh – that’s what we’re doing!

Sean: No, I mean the story.

Arjy: Oh, yeah. The story …. Um …. Senior Sergeant Slideback?

Senior Sergeant Slideback: Right! Special Constable Gruff?

Gruff: Sir?

Senior Sergeant Slideback: Put the cuffs on this arsehole Bistro Waiters and take him across to the cells. Get a few of the lads to help you to give him a good kicking and make sure he understands you are acting as individuals and that the decision to rearrange his bollocks is entirely your own. And I don’t want him released unless I say so. Perhaps you would now like to carry on, Ms. Barjy.

Arjy: Thank you, Senior Sergeant.

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DASTARDLY DOINGS – PART 10 (PART 2)

By Arjy Barjy

It is obvious to Arjy and less so to Sean that Doctor Plinthmember is a complete idiot and doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. The fact that he is a resident of Incontinental suggests the possibility of a link with Iris Pessary and this is enough to convince Arjy that the Doctor’s explanation for the strange creature left at The Jimboomba Times office is deliberate misinformation.

(Arjy and Sean leave Doctor Plinthmember’s chambers and go off in search of Iris Pessary. In the grounds of Incontinental they come upon a pathetic little man sitting disconsolately in a goldfish pond and making a chain of wild flowers that he has picked. It is Ambrose Jockscent – sans nuts.

Ambrose was brought into this tale in order to make a weak joke about bollocks and bricks. A joke that may once have gone down in blogging history as one of the most desperately contrived jokes to ever complicate a blog for no other purpose than to justify its own inclusion in that blog. But this is no longer the case because Ambrose has important information and now has a very good reason to betray Iris Pessary. It’s amazing how things work out, isn’t it?)

Arjy: Good morning, Sir.

Ambrose Jockscent: Is it?

Arjy: I wonder if you have come across Mrs. Pessary recently.

Ambrose Jockscent: Are you taking the piss? I’ll never come across anything ever again because of that fucking old crone!

Arjy: I take it you don’t have a soft spot for Iris?

Ambrose Jockscent: Soft spot? Soft – bleeding – spot? That’s about all I do have now! Has she sent you to torment me, the evil sadistic old cow? I’ll butcher the bitch when I can get out of this pond.

Arjy: Uh …. Why are you sitting in that pond?

Ambrose Jockscent: Because its got fifty bags of ice tipped in it, that’s why. Now ask me why I’m sitting in a freezing cold goldfish pond – go on! I dare you!

Arjy: Well, I ….

Ambrose Jockscent: I’ll tell you why! Because I’ve got a scrotum like the remains of a burst barrage balloon and a prick like a dead elephant’s trunk, that’s fucking why! And another thing! There were six enormous goldfish in this pond when I got in here but they’ve disappeared! Ask me where they went! Ask me where they shot off to when they panicked as the ice hit them! You think butterflies in the stomach feels like a weird sensation? You want to try six maddened goldfish rocketing around in your colon! Now that is fucking weird, I can tell you that for nothing!

Arjy: Well, that’s ….

Ambrose Jockscent: Don’t talk to me about ‘that’s’. I’ve had all I can take of ‘that’s’ and any other word you might care to mention. If you want the lousy old bint, you’ll find her down by the creek. She usually goes down there this time of day to rinse out her incontinence pads so she can re-use them. Tight fisted old bag. Still, I suppose that’s how they keep their money. Just follow this path – you’ll find her soon enough.

(They follow the path, leaving Ambrose weeping into his iced water. Arjy and Sean are not in fact looking for Iris; they are looking for her wheelchair. Yesterday, when the anonymous tip came through about Iris’s trip to The Frill Necked Lizard, Arjy had taken the precaution of bugging Iris Pessary’s wheelchair. The ‘bug’ was in the form of an mp3 player with a record function.

It had taken all Arjy’s persuasive power to convince Sean to let her have his mp3 player and to delete the dozen or so sound-track episodes of Magic Roundabout that Sean kept on the player and listened to at night when he could not sleep. A few minutes of Dougal, Florence and Brian the Snail were enough to lull Sean into dreamland no matter how stressed the day had made him and losing those episodes was almost more than he could bear. But it was necessary to have plenty of spare memory on the mp3 player for a recording that might be hours long and it was necessary to have the recording because there was no way they would be able to stay close enough to overhear everything Iris had to say during her mysterious visit to The Frill Necked Lizard.

Sean had eventually agreed to give up his precious mp3 player and had even sneaked into Incontinental to plant the device himself while Iris had been taking her morning nap. Now, any extra information is crucial to the investigation so it is time to retrieve the recording.

Just as Ambrose had told them, Irish Pessary is rinsing the piss out of her pads. She is bending forward as far as she can get in order to reach the fast-flowing creek water and she is singing a happy, washerwoman song as she toils. Sean crawls silently through the scrub and approaches Iris from behind until he is underneath the wheelchair. The mp3 player is still in place beneath the seat and Sean carefully pulls away the tape securing it. He is about to make his way back when a swell of anger with this horrible harridan, Iris Pessary, rises up within him. She was complicit in an attempt on Sean’s life and probably thought nothing of it. Iris Pessary is a woman who has spent her entire life caring only about herself and using others for whatever purpose best suits her interests. Sean does not take kindly to being used and he slowly reaches for the wheelchair brakes - but hesitates. For all her horrible ways this is still a helpless old woman and, for all his horrible traits, Sean is not a natural killer.

His anger subsides as he reasons that Iris Pessary has not much time left anyway and, poignantly, she is innocently singing of Beaudesert days long ago when soap and suds seemed to figure largely in daily life and when clear mountain streams were turned cloudy by the washing of farmers underpants. But now Iris reaches a particularly strident part of her song and, just as she bends forward with another batch of pads, a ripping fart rattles the wheelchair seat springs an inch above Sean’s face. With a brief grimace of disgust, Sean flips the brakes to off and wriggles back the way he came.

A few minutes later, as they are making their way along the pathway, Sean and Arjy hear a shout of rage that turns to terror. There is a great splash followed by a diminishing wail. The two ignore the sounds and make their way back to the Jimboomba clock towers where they can listen to the mp3 recording in peace.)

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TRANSCRIPT OF MP3 RECORDING.

The following transcript is part of a conversation between Iris Pessary and a man subsequently identified in this recording as Terence Pucker. Pucker, a fabulously wealthy man, was believed to have died some years before but this seems to have been a ploy to enable Pucker to secretly continue with plans that have far reaching implications for Australia. This conversation took place in the grounds of The Frill Necked Lizard, a hotel near the base of Mount Tamborine, South East Queensland.

Iris Pessary: We’re getting too old, Terry, but it’s still good to be alive. Thanks for taking the time to push me back to my buggy but you could have got one of your staff to do it.

Pucker: No, old friend, besides I need to talk to you without any chance of being overheard and the best way to do that is to keep moving and stay out in the open. Oh look, your little detective friends are sneaking back to their transport. Don’t forget to keep them fairly close as you go up the mountain. Wouldn’t want them to get lost and miss their connection with the bulldozer.

Iris Pessary: So, what did you want to tell me?

Pucker: I’ve enjoyed our relationship and I know you won’t be offended when I say I never thought to meet a woman more devious, stubborn and plain nasty. We should have met years ago; we could have ruled the world together.

Iris Pessary: You’re very kind.

Pucker: Not at all. But I haven’t always been entirely honest with you, Iris. You know about the plan to destabilise and disgrace Cols and Woodies of course, because your contacts within the police made the scheme possible. A few more murders and suicides and we can go public with the accusations. Those accusations, together with the price fixing revelations will cause the stock values to dive and we will eventually control a couple of decent food retail chains.

Iris Pessary: So where have you not been honest with me?

Pucker: I suppose I haven’t been honest about the real reason we need the food retail outlets. And I wasn’t entirely honest about our little friend strapped to your vehicle.

Iris Pessary: You said the snake would be used to discredit the local paper with a story of a mutated snake that can be later revealed as a hoax. You said we needed to neutralise any possible local opposition to the way we are handling our business.

Pucker: That’s partly, but not entirely, true.

Iris Pessary: I’m listening.

Pucker: Many years ago, when I was a relatively young man, I was just starting to feel my feet in the business world. One of my companies was a haulage operation that specialised in earth moving and waste disposal. We won a federal government contract to shift a million tonnes of waste and safely dispose of it. There was really no way we could do the job but our price was right and the government of the day just wanted something to be ‘seen’ to be done. They didn’t give a shit about the details.

I had a hundred trucks and I bought a hundred more. We met immigrants off the boats and gave them a job if they could claim to have once seen a truck let alone knew how to drive one. We worked the trucks 24 hours a day with two drivers to a truck on rotating six hour shifts. The drivers worked four days on, one day standby and one day off. It was a massive operation for us and it took five years to complete. We dumped the waste where we could, right across Australia, but it was difficult to keep things quiet – except in Queensland. Most of the million tonnes ended up here and the biggest part was dumped in the Bromelton area.

Iris Pessary: So, what was the job?

Pucker: The Maralinga clean up. A million tonnes of radioactive ground zero waste was carried north to Tennant Creek and then east to Mt. Isa where we changed the signage panels on the trucks so they looked like they came from Mt. Isa. From that point there was no documented link between the trucks and Maralinga. We then took the shit south through Longreach and on to Toowoomba. From there, it was a short trip through the back-roads to Bromelton. We raised the ground level of the whole Bromelton area by two metres. We dumped the really hot stuff first and covered it with a less active layer and then we just hoped for the best. Of course, there were pay-offs but it seemed incredible that the secret didn’t get out. It was only later we found that the main reason for the silence was that most of those who came in direct contact with the waste died within five years. The last of the drivers we assigned, died a year after the final trip.

Iris Pessary: That’s quite a story but where does the mutated snake come in?

Pucker: It’s a sort of … warning. A first shot across the bows, if you will, using a limited and easily controlled source. You see, I found out something interesting about Bromelton. An acquaintance was telling me about some excavation work he was doing on his property in the Bromelton area. He had to halt work for a while and weeds grew in the hole. The weeds were forty metres high in two weeks. I did a few little checks, bought some land nearby, scraped off the surface and started a small market garden. In eight days, I could grow tomatoes that weighed ten kilos each! It was the same no matter what crop I planted, there was phenomenal growth in a very short time. It soon became obvious that anyone who started to farm certain areas of Bromelton would make billions and if they had their own outlets for the distribution and sale of the produce, they would make billions more. We could feed the whole of Australia using only a couple of hundred acres of land. Of course, I set about trying to acquire the entire area but ran up against the State Government and the proposed Bromelton Industrial Project. Bligh is being awkward so I need to shake her up.

Iris Pessary: You threatened to spill the truth about the Maralinga clean up?

Pucker: Yes but they don’t believe I would cut my own throat and, of course, it wasn’t THEM who ordered the clean up so they think they’re fire proof. But then I asked what would happen if it became known that large areas of Queensland were radioactive waste dumps. I showed them maps of where we unloaded and that shook them up; many of the places are now covered by developments and one of the major dams is surrounded by radioactive dirt. Open knowledge of all this would be a disaster for Queensland and the state government.

Iris Pessary: How do you protect yourself in all this?

Pucker: I don’t need to protect myself. According to official records, Terrance Pucker is dead. The man who won the sham Maralinga clean-up contract is long gone. Only the living will suffer and that includes Captain Bligh and her crew. When I send her a copy of The Jimboomba Times with a story about a snake mutated by radioactive dirt from Maralinga, she will cave in. Queensland is already borderline bankrupt and a scandal like this will finish it off and the implications of that for Australia will ensure Federal pressure on Bligh. The land will be mine, we can discredit the snake story before it gets widely reported, we’ll finish Cols and Woodies off and then start making a whole new fortune as ‘the fresh food people.’

Iris Pessary: But why hasn’t this radioactive waste affected the local population before?

Pucker: Have you taken a walk around Beaudesert recently and had a really good look at the residents?

Iris Pessary: Ah yes, I see what you mean.

END OF TRANSCRIPT.

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Arjy: Bloody hell.

Sean: Strewth.

Arjy: You’re going to ask me what we do next aren’t you?

Sean: Yes.

Arjy: I was hoping you would tell me.

Sean: Shit – that is bad, Arjy.

TO BE CONTINUED.