Either the pub was further back than I had thought, or there was a problem finding green parsley, or the pub served a particularly good pint of beer, for it took the crew of Mavis one hell of a lot longer to return with my car and sandwich than I had expected, and standing on a freezing-cold Welsh roadside watching a car with a slumbering man in it wasn’t my idea of fun. They say that food tastes better when you are hungry, and if that is true, I wondered what the hell the sandwich would have tasted like if I hadn’t been hungry. The bread had the texture of mildewed asbestos and the meat tasted as if it had been marinated in creosote. Somewhere between the pub and me the double portion of parsley had gone on the missing list. If I’d had any sense, I should have thrown away the sandwich and eaten the paper napkin it came in – it would have probably been a lot tastier and a damned sight more nourishing.

I must have been over-generous with the gas, because it was nearly three hours before Whalley started up his engine and drove on. Two cars followed him through the night as he headed back towards London. I sat, yawning dangerously, behind the wheel of one of them. At a quarter to seven, Whalley stopped a short distance from the BBC Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush. He went in, with the Jiffybag, and came out, thirty seconds later, without it.

I waited until he had driven off, with Mavis following him, then went into the Television Centre myself and up to the twenty-four-hour reception desk.

Chapter 6

6

Harry Slan stared through the hairs on his plump belly at the thick black bush of the strong German girl, and at her taut stomach, the muscles of which rippled as the stomach contracted and expanded, and then he stared up at her huge breasts that swung down to his face and then up to the heavens, as she rode up and down his diminutive but rigid organ. She held his wrists in a pincer grip against the mattress, and gritted her teeth in a maniacal smile. Although it was only the last week of September, behind her clenched-shut eyes she was working out her Christmas shopping list for her boyfriend, her three sisters, her brother and her two ex-husbands.

Harry Slan thrust for all he was worth, pushing his tiny circumcized stump deep inside that black patch; he was excited, very excited, for he knew he was driving her wild with ecstasy. He pulled down, then thrust deeper still inside her. She groaned with delight; he sweated with pleasure.