Bridget Jones

JAMES BLOND, SECRET AGENT

CHAPTER THREE

Quickly dropping his trousers and letting them fall round his ankles in the men’s toilet at the Tesco Stockport superstore Blond cursed Y for the umpteenth time that day. Things had started to go wrong from the moment he had entered Y’s office following his briefing by N.

Over the years SA-Seven had visited Y’s office almost as often as he’d been to see N. This was the place where he picked up the tools of his trade. And what tools they were; devilishly clever tools dreamed up by Y’s team of top boffins; shoes with false heels where anything from phials of poison to emergency currency could be secreted; a jacket whose lapels held a six inch stiletto and a skeleton key that could open any lock yet devised by man; a gun that looked like a cigarette lighter; and on one occasion, when Y had perhaps unwisely taken an Irishman onto his staff, a cigarette lighter that looked like a gun.
“Come in, come in Double-O-Seven,” Y, full of his usual bonhomie, said to Blond as he entered, “I have some rather good news for you.”
“My Secret Service name is SA-Seven, if you don’t mind,” said Blond, firmly.
“I don’t mind at all. But N…..I mean M, has instructed me to call you Double-O-Seven and I am not about to disobey him,” Y replied, equally firmly.
Blond could see that further argument was futile, confined himself to saying ‘Bloody stupid idea’ under his breath, then asked Y what was the good news he had for him.
“It’s about the one-liners. We had to get rid of the fellow we engaged as he was quite obviously not up to the standard required.”
Blond wasn’t about to disagree with this. He said, “I've heard funnier funeral services.”
Y went on. “Did you ever see Blind Date, Double-O-Seven? It’s a TV show. Or was. Not on any more I believe.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“You’ve seen it then?”
Blond shuddered at the recollection. “I once had he unfortunate experience of seeing it for about five minutes. That was more than enough.”
“I’d better fill you in then if that’s all you’ve seen of it. Basically it’s a sort of dating show. The idea is that a man has to choose a partner from a selection of three girls. Now he can’t see them, they’re behind a screen, hence Blind Date, and the chap has to pick a mate on the basis of the girls’ replies to his questions. He says something like ‘I’m into cricket in a big way so why should I choose you, Girl Number One?’ and she replies with something like ‘Because with me on your side you’re sure to bowl a maiden over’, or ‘Because I’m just the girl to draw your stumps’, that sort of thing. All terribly smutty. And all heavily scripted of course. Well the thing is, I’ve managed to acquire the services of one of the show’s scriptwriters to write your one-liners.”
Blond made no effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “And that’s good news? That I'm to have the benefit of witticisms penned by someone who writes lines such as ‘I’m the very girl to draw your stumps’?”
“Well I can’t guarantee they’ll all be as good as that,” said Y.
Blond made a mental note to put even more sarcasm into his voice in his dealings with Y as the large helping of it he’d just used had obviously not been enough.
“However he’s come up with an absolute belter for your next mission, a real knee-slapper,” Y went on enthusiastically. “But first a question. What do you know about the Swiss?”
"The Swiss?" Blond thought for a moment. "They make cuckoo clocks."
"Anything else?"
"I would have thought that manufacturing cuckoo clocks was quite enough impertinence for one nation to foist upon the world. However the Swiss also serve as bankers to the world's criminal element; plus the fact that whenever there is a war they're decidedly adept at looking the other way."
"You don't care for the Swiss then I take it?"
“Got it in one.”
“No matter. Fortunately, apart from infesting the word with cuckoo clocks and those other things you mentioned they do something else as well.”
“And that is?”
“They yodel.”
“Yodel?”
Y demonstrated. “Yodel-ay-ee-tee. They yodel.”
“And?”
“Sorry, I'm just amplifying the point because you have to be aware of it in order to appreciate the one-liner our new chap has come up with. Anyway, here’s the scenario. You’re in Switzerland. And while you’re there, being the rake you are, you bed a Swiss miss. Then, not content with that, you bed her mother as well.”
“Her mother?”
"A mite improbable I know, James. However by no means impossible. I mean some mothers can be very beautiful. Say for instance that the woman’s daughter is just eighteen, then she herself could be only thirty six, even younger. Anyway you bed her mother too. Then her husband finds out that you’ve slept with his daughter. Not with his wife you understand, he doesn’t know that you’ve slept with his wife yet. So he takes you to task on it. He says to you ‘Mr Blond, I believe you have bedded my daughter?’ And you say – wait for it James – you say ‘Yes – and your old lady too.’ ”
If that was the punch line Blond didn’t get it. He frowned. “And your old lady too?”
“Yes. But you say it quickly, and sort of sing it, so it sounds like you’re yodelling.” Y cupped a hand to his mouth. ‘And you’re old lay dee tooooo’. Quite brilliant, isn’t it."
However the brilliance or otherwise of the witticism was not Blond’s concern. “Well it’s not bad I suppose,” he said grudgingly. “Certainly better than the cricket gags. But aren’t you forgetting something?”
“James?”
“My assignment is in Stockport, not Switzerland. And while there’s an excellent chance of my encountering, say, a Swiss pen-knife or a Swiss cheese plant or even a Swiss roll in Stockport, I would chance a small wager that there is very little chance of my encountering a Swiss beauty with a beautiful thirty-six-year old mother."
Y's brow furrowed. ”Yes, I hadn’t thought of that.” He came to a decision. “I’ll get him to work on it then. In the meantime I’ve got this for you.” He held out a crescent shaped piece of transparent plastic, about four inches long and maybe half an inch wide, rather like a piece of flexible plastic piping cut in half.
“What is it?” Blond said, intrigued.
“A stiff upper lip,” said Y, with no little pride. “One of my own ideas, actually.”
Blond looked puzzled. “A stiff upper lip?”
“Yes, you simply clip it over your own lip whenever you’re in a very tight corner and in need of a bit more resolve. Like so.” Y clipped the plastic onto his upper lip. “As its hame implies it heeps the uher lih quite sti.”
“Pardon?”
“I said ‘As its hame implies it heeps the uher lih…..’ Y removed the plastic upper lip. “Sorry. I said ‘As its name implies it keeps the upper lip quite stiff’.”
Blond pointed out the obvious. “Y, as a British Secret Agent I already have a stiff upper lip.”
Y smiled conspirationally. “Not like this one SA-Sev….oops, Double-O-Seven. This is rather special if I may say so.” He held the contraption out in the palm of his hand so Blond could take a close look at it. “No ordinary plastic, this. Plastic explosive.”
“Plastic explosive?”
“Yes. The idea is that when you are about to fall into enemy hands, with all the concomitant nasty things that such an occurrence entails, you simply bite on your stiff upper lip and……poof!”
“I turn into a homosexual?”
“What? No, poof the thing explodes. Bang! Much better than a cyanide pill I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Blond saw at least one snag immediately. “And what if I were to bite on this stiff upper lip gizmo by accident? When I’m not in danger of being captured by the enemy?”
Y put on his honest, earnest face. “Well I’d be lying if I said that eventuality couldn’t happen, James.”
“You would be taking the piss if you said it couldn’t happen, Y, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“Now there’s no need for talk like that, old boy,” Y said, affronted. “We’re all doing our best I’m sure.”
Blond could se no benefit in pursuing the matter any further. Instead he asked: “N said you had something that might help me with my prostate problem?”
Y’s eyes lit up at the thought of revealing his piece de resistance. He went over to a filing cabinet, opened the top drawer and produced a weird-looking contraption that closely resembled a colostomy bag with a five inch by two inch flexible rubber spout attached too it. He held it up proudly as might a gardener hold up a prize-winning vegetable.
Bond blinked. “What on earth……?”
“A urine collector,” said Y, with even more pride in his voice that when he had introduced Blond to the stiff upper lip. Here’s the way it works. “You insert your penis in here, so……” He put his finger in the spout. “Press this button here.” He pressed a red button on a small box of tricks attached to the side of the plastic bag. “And the walls of the spout close gently in, trapping your penis firmly but comfortably. The capacity is one half an imperial gallon and it’s absolutely one hundred per cent safe. On that point you can be certain, we’ve tested it on animals.”
“Animals?”
“A donkey I believe. It did forty trips up and down Brighton beach without batting an eyelid.”
Blond suspected that anyone seeing the donkey trotting up and down Brighton beach with what looked like a colostomy bag dangling from its dick might just have batted the odd eyelid, but refrained from saying so. He inspected the urine collector doubtfully. Certainly if he were to wear it he wouldn’t have to go for a pee nearly so often, but even so….
"Made from specially toughened plastic with fibre glass impregnated into it so there’s absolutely no chance of it bursting; we’ve tested it, the sharpest knife won’t even penetrate it," Y went on. "And to release it you simply press the red button twice. The donkey couldn’t get the hang of that but I’m sure you will Double-O-Seven, being more intelligent. However the best part is to come.”
Blond could hardly wait. “And that is?”
“It turns your urine into heavy water.”
“Heavy water?”
“High explosive.”
“Yes I know what heavy water is,” said Blond, tetchily, “I was doubting the wisdom of such a metamorphosis.”
Y ignored Blond’s criticism of his department’s brainchild. “Then, when the process has taken place, about ten minutes, instead of having say a pint of urine in it you have a pint of top quality heavy water, enough to blow up a small factory. And I can’t tell you how useful that might be in an emergency.”
Blond made sure that he’d got it absolutely correct. “So what you’re saying in effect is that I’m going to be going about my everyday business with up to half a gallon of heavy water hanging down the inside of my trousers?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Which could explode at any moment?”
Y began to hedge. “Well, technically I suppose.”
“Yes well I don’t think I’ll bother if it’s all the same.”
“Really? The lads will be very disappointed, they’ve worked hard on this one.”
“So if that’s the best you can do I'll be off.” Blond made to leave.
“No, hold your fire. There’s this.” Y produced a wrist watch from his pocket.
Blond said, sniffily. “I already have a watch, thank you very much.”
“Not like this one you haven’t. It’s atomic.”
“Atomic?”
“Atomic.”
“I see. So if the stiff upper lip doesn’t blow my head off and the urine collector doesn’t blow my bollocks off the atomic wristwatch will blow my hand off.”
Y shrugged this latest objection off easily. “No James, it’s not atomic as in bomb, it’s atomic as in precision timepiece that measures time by using the regular oscillation of individual atoms or molecules to regulate its movement. Completely safe I assure you. And on the subject of safety, what do you think of this?” He opened the back of the watch. In the back, a perfect fit, was a rolled-up condom. “For emergencies,” Y smiled.
Blond regarded it. It was the first half-decent idea Y had come up with during the entire interview.

Now, in the Tesco men’s toilets, Blond quickly put the battery into the urine collector and pressed the red button once. He nodded with a mixture of relief and satisfaction as it immediately began to emit a low hum. He press the red button twice more in quick succession and mercifully the rubber spout released its grip on his penis. So far so good. Now what he needed was a pee. But security guards were already hammering on the door, a door Blond noted, that was of such flimsy construction that not too many more blows would shatter it. “Come on out of there, you can’t get away,” called one of the security guards.
“And don’t try any funny business, there’s two of us,” added a second.
Blond smiled to himself at the incongruity of the statement. Two Tesco security guards indeed! In similar circumstances he had once made good his escape from seven Red Army guards and four rottweilers and had still found time to light a Sobranie while he was doing it, so two underpaid and probably overweight Tesco security guards weren’t going to trouble him too much. In fact not at all, Blond thought, as he noticed an outside window, small, but not so small that a man couldn’t crawl through it, set high in the back wall of the lavatory stall.
But first things first. He took hold of his newly-released penis, directed it at the lavatory pan, and with a huge sigh began to pee for England. Obviously hearing the flow one of the security guards said: “The cheeky bugger’s having a pee, Dwayne!”
“Cheeky twat,” agreed Dwayne, and started to pound on the door again.
Blond, taking offence at being called a cheeky bugger, decided to show them just how cheeky a bugger he could be, and directed a jet of pee over the top of the door.
There was an immediate bellow of anger from the other side of the door. “The cheeky bastard’s pissed on me!” Followed by further pounding on the door. “Let’s have you out of there right now, you dirty bastard!”
For good measure Blond now tossed the urine collector over the top of the door. It must have landed on either Dwayne or his mate as there immediately followed a shriek and a cry of "Ugh, get it off me!" the security man possibly thinking it was a twin of the thing that burst out of John Hurt's stomach in Alien.
By now Blond had pulled up his trousers and was standing on the lavatory seat and opening the window. Seconds later he had dropped lightly to his feet outside, quickly taken his bearings, and hurried off in the direction of his car.

Blond’s car was another bone of contention, and a bone that he fully intended to pick with N just as soon as he had completed his assignment and returned to Paramount Properties.
After Blond and Y had finished their business in Y’s office they had gone to the garage. Blond had fully expected that Y wanted to brief him on some new crime-fighting device he’d had fitted to Blond’s Lagonda - Blond was aware that an exhaust pipe incorporating a three-inch mortar had been on the drawing board for some time – however when they entered the garage Y led him right past his favourite motor car.
“Won’t I be taking the Lagonda?” inquired Blond, rather surprised.
Y was shocked. “Oh dear, no. To Stockport? You’d stick out like a sore thumb. No James, this is the car you’ll be using, this Lada here.” He stopped and pointed to a rusty Lada, ten years old if it was a day.
Blond reeled. “A Lada? You are joking?”
Y shook his head. “No, of course not. This is the sort of thing they drive around in up there. You’ll blend in perfectly.”
Blond was aghast. “You really expect me to drive a Lada?”
“Well I don’t see why not old boy. I mean it’s quite similar to a Lagonda in a way.”
“Quite similar to a Lagonda? It is about as similar to a Lagonda as….as a blue tit is to a sperm whale.”
Y shook his head. “Not at all. The only difference between a Lagonda and a Lada is that there’s no ‘gon’ in Lada.”
“No ‘gon’ in it?”
“Yes, the gon’s gone, that’s all.”
“Yes, along with the leather upholstery, the walnut dashboard and about five hundred bleeding brake horse power and a supercharger!”
Y chuckled to himself then winked at Blond. “The Lada is much better than you think, James. You see…..”
But before Y could tell him why the Lada was better than he thought Blond noticed something about it. He said: “There’s no sun-roof.”
“Well obviously. They don’t have sun where these are made. Nor where you’re about to drive it to.”
“So how, pray, am I supposed to eject someone from the passenger seat if there’s….aah.” Blond broke off as he realised. “Clever. Very clever indeed, Y.” “James?”
“Because there is no sun-roof, when I eject someone from the passenger seat instead of them soaring out of the car they hit their head on the roof, probably killing themselves or rendering themselves unconscious at the very least.”
Y shook his head, but thoughtfully. “One for the future, maybe, but not this time I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it isn’t fitted with an ejector seat.”
“No ejector seat?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“So that’s just the machine guns that come out of the front headlights, the barrel of boiling oil strapped to the chassis and the leopard in the boot then?”
“Well not any of those either, really.”
Blond was miffed to say the least. “Well what has it got then?”
Y thought for a moment. “Well it’s got a current tax disc. And a little nodding dog in the rear window. Not sure about an MOT though. But, as you quite obviously haven’t noticed yet, it has an 007 registration, which I’m sure you’ll be very pleased about, it being your Secret Service number.”
“My Secret Service number is SA-Seven,” said Blond, flatly.
“Now let’s not go into that again old boy, M has insisted that I call you Double-O-Seven and….”
He was interrupted by Blond’s sudden cry of anguish: “It says P00 7!”
Y looked at the registration plate. “No. It says P 007.”
“It says P00 7,” Blond insisted. “The gap in the lettering isn’t between the P and the first 0 it’s between the last 0 and the 7, it says P00 7!”
Y shrugged. “Well if you’re going to split hairs.”
Bond was livid. "I’m expected to drive around in a car that says poo on it?”
But apparently he was. And did.

The drive north had been a nightmare. Rather injudiciously, for a man with a prostate problem about to set out on a long journey by car, Blond had drunk two large cups of coffee with his breakfast, as well as his usual half pint of freshly-squeezed orange. That alone would have been bad enough but it was a bitterly cold morning and the Lada’s heater wasn’t functioning. Consequentially Blond had had to keep stopping to relieve himself. After calling in at the third motorway service station in a row he hit upon a solution to the problem. He would take advantage of the urine collector.
At Y’s insistence he had brought the device along with him. However Blond had no intention of ever wearing it. He valued his manhood far too much for that. But it had dawned on him that if he were to disconnect the heavy water processing part of the urine collector he could simply use it as something to pee in, a sort of mobile lavatory. So this he did, by first putting on the contraption then discarding the battery, thus rendering the heavy water element of it defunct. All had gone well, and he’d already had two pees in it and reached the outskirts of Stockport when the Lada broke down. The cause of the breakdown was a lack of water in the cooling system, which caused the radiator to blow up. The irony, that the radiator had blown up due to a lack of water while he had a goodly supply on tap as it were, and had merely to keep pissing in the radiator to keep it topped up, was not lost on Blond, but there was nothing to be done about it. By the time he’d had POO 7 repaired it was approaching nightfall.
After checking in at the Acton Lodge, which was the nearest thing Stockport had to a decent hotel, and not all that near to it at that, he refreshed himself, then attempted to take off the urine collector which was by now quite full, courtesy of the several cups of coffee he’d consumed while waiting for the car repairs to be effected. He pressed the red button twice, as instructed by Y, but nothing happened. He tried once more. Nothing. Then he realised that when he’d removed the battery, thus getting rid of the power source that processed the heavy water, he had also got rid of the power source that opened and closed the spout that was firmly clamped round his penis. And he’d thrown the battery away! Not only that he now needed another pee and the bag was full.
He would have to get in touch Y, there was nothing else for it. His bladder by now seemingly bursting, for there is nothing that makes a man with a prostate problem want a pee more than the fact that he can’t have one, he phoned Y on his mobile. After having had to be called to the phone Y took some time to answer his call and when he did he was quite annoyed. “Dash it all, I’m in the middle of dinner, who is that?”
Blond, although desperate to rid himself of the urine collector, still remembered that first and foremost he was a member of the Secret Service and acted as such, observing strict protocol. He therefore spoke in a language he knew Y would understand but that anyone listening in to them wouldn’t. “This is the Northern Courier. Arrived safely in Grotland. The waterworks there isn’t all that it should be and the equipment recently installed to put it right is in urgent need of repair. Please advise.”
“What?” said Y.
Blond remained calm, and repeated. “This is the Northern Courier. Arrived safely in Grotland. The waterworks there isn’t all that it should be and the equipment recently installed to put it right is in urgent need of repair. Please advise.”
“What?" barked Y, testily, “What on earth are you talking about man?”
“It’s Blond, I’m in Stockport, and your bloody urine collector is stuck on my cock!” Blond bellowed down the phone, his calmness of a moment ago departing him completely.
“There’s no need to shout, I’m not deaf," said the affronted voice on the other end of the phone. "Stuck in what way?”
“In the way that I can’t get it off my cock, in what way do you think?” Blond snarled. “The spout won’t open up when I press the red button twice.”
There was silence for a second or two, then Q said: “Could be the battery I suppose. The donkey might have ran it down a little more than I thought.”
Blond hadn’t until that moment realised that the urine collector was the same one used by the donkey and now that he did he didn’t care for the idea one little bit. However now was not the time to start complaining about it. Jesus! What to do? He certainly didn’t want to admit to Y that he'd discarded the battery. There was nothing for it, he would have to lie. He said: “You’re right. I’ve just checked the battery and it’s completely dead.”
Y's nonchalant tone informed Blond that it wasn't the end of the world. “No matter, you’ll simply have to replace it. That shouldn’t be a problem, it’s a normal watch battery, use the one in your watch.”
Blond breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Will…..” He had been about to follow the ‘Will’ with a ‘do’, but then remembered something. “Shit!”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not wearing my watch. I’m wearing the atomic watch you gave me.”
“Well then you’ll just have to go out and buy a battery won’t you,” said Y, and promptly put down the phone, cutting short anything else Blond might have to say.
Blond hadn’t cried ever since he was a child of fourteen and had fallen out of an apple tree whilst scrumping, but was very close to tears for he was by this time in severe pain. In desperation he tried to pee into the already full bag - surely it would take a little bit more, enough to ease the pain just a little, give him a bit of breathing space? But it wouldn’t, for no sooner had he begun than the pee started backing up, so he stopped immediately, fearing that more urine might go back up his penis than had come out of it and make the pain in his nether regions even worse than it already was. In desperation, and although Y had told him that the plastic bag was one hundred per cent indestructible, Blond tried to cut through it with his penknife, an attempt he quickly gave up when the knife slipped off the rock hard plastic and narrowly missed his testicles. There was nothing else for it, he would have to go out and buy a battery.
If Blond had wanted a Chinese takeaway he could have had his choice from a dozen. Likewise Indian takeaways. He could have purchased kebabs, both doner and shish, pizzas with more toppings than you could shake a stick at, and fish and chips plus whatever other delights fish and chip shops sold. Petrol could be bought, along with diesel and oil; cinemas could be visited; bingo could be played; pubs with their beer, wine, spirits and potato crisps could be dropped in on; and Stockport County supporters dressed in football shirts and scarves hurrying along the pavements suggested that football could be watched at Edgeley Park, where no doubt pies could be bought. But could a battery for a watch be bought? Apparently not. Granted it was by now turned seven-o-clock but one would think that there would be at least one shop open that sold watch batteries. But any likely outlet, perhaps a newsagents, certainly an electrical shop, had their doors firmly locked and their graffiti-emblazoned shutters down.
By now quite desperate, Blond had actually parked up the Lada, entered an Indian takeaway, and asked the man behind the counter if he had any batteries. The man nodded and smiled, disappeared into the back, and returned two minutes later with a balti. Blond had no more success when he went into a kebab house and asked the same question, only for the dusky individual behind the counter to tell him to ‘Get out of here before I call the bloody police, and bloody quick about it man ’.
Cruising the streets again he saw a Tesco ahead. A very large Tesco. Surely such a large store as that would sell watch batteries? Supermarkets seemed to sell just about everything else nowadays.
And that was what he found, on entering the store and asking the first assistant he came across. That they sold just about everything else but watch batteries.
Blond became quite desperate on being told this for he had never known such agony in his life. Then out of the blue, he had a brainwave. Christ! Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He would simply ask someone for the loan of their watch battery. What could be more simple? There were plenty of shoppers in the store, even at eight-thirty in the evening. But how to go about it?
Blond knew that if he were to spin someone a yarn there was a danger he wouldn’t be believed, and if the person didn’t believe him they certainly wouldn’t offer the loan of their watch battery, leaving him in the same predicament. He decided on the truth; the truth always paid off in the long run. He approached a man, and said: “My name is Blond. James Blond. I’m here in Stockport to check out the mysterious Dr Goldnojaws and his henchwoman BloJob, who are intent on nothing less than complete Stockport domination. I have a urine collector stuck on my penis due to battery failure so I would like to borrow your watch battery so that I might free myself, if I may.”
“Fuck off,” the man said, then turned and walked away muttering “Must think I dropped off a flitting or something.”
So much for the truth, thought Blond. But before he could bemoan his luck an opportunity presented itself, a way out of his terrible dilemma. Thank heaven for little girls, Blond said to himself, for as well as getting bigger every day they also invariably trail several yards behind their mother when she is shopping in a supermarket, and one such little girl was doing the same at this very moment, and not a yard from where he stood. More importantly she was wearing a watch. Blond bent over to speak to her. “Hello, little girl.” The little girl, a blue-eyed, pert-nosed beauty of the future, eyed him suspiciously, as little girls are wont to do when addressed by complete strangers. “Don’t be afraid,” said Blond, taking a surreptitious look up the aisle to check if the child’s mother was still engrossed in her shopping. She was. He smiled at the little girl. “What’s your name?”
The little girl shrugged off enough of her suspicion to answer. “Hayley. What’s yours?”
“Thanks for asking, I'll have a pint of bitter."
As well as insisting that he take the urine collector with him on his travels Y had also insisted on Blond also taking the hundred one-liners the Blind Date scriptwriter had penned thus far. Blond had religiously learned most of them the previous night and when the opportunity presented itself the witticism sprang into his mind and from his lips automatically. And fortunately as it turned out, because it dispelled any lingering suspicion the little girl may have had. She now wrinkled her nose, smiled at Blond, and said: "You're funny."
"Yes and I'm also desperate for a pee," thought Blond, but said: “Sorry about that. My name is James Blond. That’s a nice watch you’re wearing, Hayley.”
It couldn’t have gone better if Blond had choreographed it himself. Hayley held out her arm, inviting Blond to take a closer look at the watch. He grabbed her hand, tore the watch from her wrist and was legging it for the nearby Gents’ toilet in a flash. Hayley at once started to scream blue murder. Alarmed, her mother raced to her side. Hayley stopped screaming for long enough to burble to her mother what had happened and point an accusing finger in Blond's direction. But by then Blond was at the door that offered sanctuary. As he entered the toilets he saw from the corner of his eye that the attention of a security guard had been alerted. Blond would have to be quick. And then he would have to find a means of escape, the very last thing he wanted was a clash with the local constabulary and a possible charge of child abuse.

Now, safe in the Lada, or as safe as it is possible to be in a Lada, Blond drove out of the Tesco car park and pointed the aged car in the direction of the Acton Lodge. He was already feeling much better, but he would feel even better once he’d got a good meal and a bottle of burgundy inside him.