The domesticated animals could enjoy a rest for today, their meat considered too disconnected from what nature and God had intended, a gloriously wild life and death.
‘Where’s Jambit gone?’ Bastian asked May.
‘Said he was going to catch a crocodile, wanted people to try it fried.’
‘Oh.’
‘They do say the blood is good for the heart.’
‘My heart’s just fine, I don’t eat reptiles. But honestly, what do you think happened to June?’ he asked.
‘Nabulus said it was suicide,’ she replied. ‘That she let the rope fray on purpose.’
‘But why let others watch her die?’
‘Are you saying Mum was selfish?’
‘No, but falling from the cliff? Most people round these parts take snake poison.’
‘What if I’m next?’ asked May.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You’ll be fine with June out of the way.’
‘Are you drinking that cider or looking after it for someone else?’
Bastian knocked it back.
‘You want some zebra?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely, I’m starving,’ said May.
There was a queue for the barbecue and Nabulus stood behind Bastian.
‘Meet me in my office first thing tomorrow morning,’ whispered Nabulus. ‘We’re going to destroy the source of June’s problem and I’ll assume your girlfriend played no part.’
Everything was bartered including your safety.
When Bastian and May finished their hippo shish kebab and chips, they tagged onto the queue saying goodbye to Jeremiah and Eliza. After everyone had bowed to the abdicating King and Queen, they removed their crowns and threw them in the bonfire as the village cheered and roared one last time.
Jeremiah and Eliza retired to the inn for the night where Mandrake had delivered their three cases. The student carers drinking at the bar didn’t speak but smiled before returning to their conversation.
‘They’re too tired to talk,’ said Jeremiah to Eliza in their room. ‘Don’t work yourself up over that, old girl. I’m sure they’re lovely people. And who else would do their job?’
‘Hold me in bed tonight, Jeremiah. I’m scared.’
‘Why not, it’s our last night in the village. But what did you think of that there monkey brain?’
‘I don’t know which daft clot ever came up with that idea but it was so moreish,’ she said smiling.
* * *
In the morning as the sun rose over the village, the two old-timers silently followed their escort to the cart before it trundled along the stony path to the harbour and their cruise to Scotland. The rest of the village was glad to see the back of them, a reminder that their own time in the sun was all too brief. Besides, old age was connected with illness and that could cost you points if not your life.
Jeremiah and Eliza hesitated on the gangplank and took one last look over their shoulders at the village. They held onto the ropes at the side before the man behind pushing their luggage boomed, ‘move along, we have three more villages to visit.’
Below deck, with the sails flapping above them like giant sheets on the washing line, they raised their right arms for the MHCA to check their dobs.
‘Raise the anchor,’ the captain shouted. Jeremiah and Eliza settled into the seats, the first pickup of the day and looking forward to a natter with their fellow retirees.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nabulus’s bodyguards had refused him entry and Bastian was waiting outside the tall white building kicking his heels on the hitching rail used to tie the horses and camels. His own horse carried a leather flagon of cider on either side this fine and sunny morning.
Just after nine, with the temperature rising, Nabulus stepped outside with Holroyd. The latter looked nervous but this time he was carrying sticks of dynamite. He placed them carefully inside his saddle bags before all three mounted their horses and rode towards the jungle with Bastian leading the way.
In the east of the jungle near the two crossed footpaths where Bastian had once tripped over Malthus’s hose was a dilapidated wooden door in the side of a nondescript hill covered in dense foliage. Behind it, a small tunnel went several feet across before dropping abruptly.
‘I’ll go first,’ said Bastian, holding the door open into the gloom that could be hiding tarantulas, scorpions, or a viper’s nest.
‘Are you sure this is it?’ asked Nabulus.
‘You want to take a look?’
‘No. Well, go on Holroyd, don’t take all day.’
‘Okay, let’s light the lanterns,’ sighed Holroyd.
He untied his saddlebags and checked his pistol.
Bastian was on his knees leading the way. At the lip of the drop was a ladder and they inched slowly to the ground hoping the forty or so rungs didn’t give way. The air was thin and the lanterns flickered, the men coughed. A few yards across, the passageway opened out into a large bell chamber packed with black bags crammed with medicines spilling onto the floor.
‘Sodom and Gomorrah,’ gasped Holroyd.
They hung their lanterns from the wooden beams propping up the walls and Bastian picked up an old dusty register to leaf through the pages. Inside were the dates and names of the very first retirees sent to Scotland and the same note scrawled beside each, ‘To take no meds’ written over and over again followed by a signature he couldn’t read.
They checked the bags and Holroyd shivered before he threw a sealed catheter across the cave and hit a tarantula on the wall. There were packets of statins, small white boxes of antidepressants, and bottles of lithium scattered around them. Bastian found a blister pack holding several different sized and coloured pills for every day of the week for just one patient.
‘Let’s blow the place,’ said Holroyd.
As he placed the sticks of dynamite and lay the long wire fuse, Bastian ripped some pages from the register and put them in his
