Private Investigator Joe Malone has a document that could shed some light onto the mysterious disappearance of Arch-remainer, Lord Marmon-Herrington Bixby. He is using a device to try and discern any clues to the letter’s origin and if it, in fact, means anything at all.
This letter was beginning to look to me like what I strongly suspected it was. A letter designed to immediately trigger a far-right conspiracy response.
Ch 24 – Unexpected guest.
Whoever had come up with the wording on this document had used their talent.
Wank-Puppet, for an opener. The sort of comment that the more volatile fringes of online community might begin with.
Or that someone who doesn’t do more glance at them would suspected they might come up with. Like Private Eye doing it’s community board piss-take.’I’ll do time!”
and “Great Stuff guys.”
Though, to be fair, “Hello Wank-Puffin” was a genuine comment I’d seen more than once when investigating a ‘far right’ social media type blog site.
Wank-Puppet of our enemies.
..Of our enemies.
Implication of group. OUR ENEMIES. Not MY enemies.
Could still be a lone-wolf nut job with thoughts of a grand army of like minded souls behind them. The next line made clear that wasn’t the intention.
The Sons of Tommy will see you squashed like a bug under a Nazi boot.
The Sons of Tommy.
Peter had said he thought it sounded a bit like a terrorist group. As it was surely meant to.
I’d never heard of them. But since the Brexit deadlock and the taking over of parliament by amoebic forming and splitting factions of chancers and takers and hopefuls; and the Speaker all but ending 1,800 years of democratic parliamentary precedent, all sorts of independent groups had formed.
Protests were everywhere. About everything.
One hugely attended, hugely disruptive protest, just last year had been about the need for the government to put an end to all the protesting. That had closed Manchester completely for a whole weekend.
The Blue Jackets were the UK version of the Gilet Jeunes.
Violent and semi-anarchic. Though very Nationalist.
Then there was,
‘Leave UK Front.’
‘Continuity UKIP.’
And the oddly middle class, sounding, Maoist-Marxist-Chavezist,
‘Cynthia Silo 14’ group.
And there were many others on the known lists.
Sons of Tommy was meant to show Right Wing allegiance. As was the squashing under a Nazi boot.
Again, implication. Nazi boots were far right. And the letter writer approved of squashing enemies under jackboots. A far right trope, being a Nazi. You couldn’t get a much more far right poster boy than Hitler, in liberal lefty minds.
If you excluded Trump.
Lord Bixby TRAITOR SCUM
A reference to traitors. To ensure that Brexit was known as the object of anger for the sender. Previously the Black November Group, who had specifically listed all the Tory remain MPs in their youtube, had tried to deselect or disrupt anyone on that list.
Closing down meetings. Blocking MP’s surgeries. Painting Vichy flags on their constituency offices. That kind of thing.
They were so disruptive that MPs were given special protection.
Ironically, many on the Quisling list were in special protection when an unrelated Islamist Bomb attack, a catering truck, packed with chlorinated chicken and quinoa vol-au-vents, with a hint of and fertilizer and iron nails, went up in the car park at Tory conference. So none of them were even scratched.
Fuck-DieYou.
Looked like a standard angry exclamation. Running the DieYou together. And an unnecessary hyphen after Fuck. This was supposed to be the work of a semi literate.
An angry one.
Avenge the riot deathz.
Now we were getting somewhere. This was motive. Revenge for the deaths of a riot.
There had been dozens of riots since the 2019 Not-Leaving declaration. Some very violent and damaging. Some with fatalities.
I suspected, in fact knew from the name of the group, that this ‘Avenge’ was for the Robinson, [not his real name] bungled arrest. The one I had been on duty for. And had witnessed very close up. Close enough to read the labels on the Molotov Cocktails.
The linking of some Yaxley-Lennon Far Right Terror group to Bixby really worried me.
Worried me because that also linked, however indirectly, Bixby to me.
Lady Bixby had known I’d been with The Department before I’d ever met her. She had been in this office and looked at the medals and diplomas in their display cases on these very walls.
“The PR. …With Silver Leaves.” She peered to read the citation. But I could tell she already knew it. “Supreme Efficiency and Personal Responsibility.” She turned to look at me directly under her long lashes, and added, “With Silver leaves.”
As if the leaves were a big deal.
Which they were.
She’d known I was with The Department before she ever came in here.
And now I speculated if she had chosen this office exactly because of my former connection with The Department. And the publicity from the inquiry where we all got a bucket-full over the mishandling of the Robinson arrest and subsequent rioting. I wondered if someone had told her to come to this office and seek me out.
Someone like Sir Alan Stuart?
And if they had, why?
They had lied to me about where they got this letter. And this letter was as phoney as a manifesto promise for free student loans. For some reason they wanted me to have it, and what? Give it to the police?
They could have done that themselves.
Why did they want me to do that for them?
The analyser was still doing its thing. It would take a while. It was only a cheap Chinese knock off bit of kit. It would give me fingerprints and DNA samples. If there was printer ink it could detect which cartridge from which range of printers. If pen, it could give a very wide type. Stabilo. Bic. Pentel. And a batch number. Though without FBI level resources it would be impossible to find out where it came from.
And as several million of that basic type of pen was sold every day, would be virtually useless.
That info was only any good if you had a suspect and a pen and wanted a match.
I knew Sir Alan would have his fingerprints on the paper. And as Peter had said he had seen the letter, his too. Mine would be. And so should Marmon-Herrington Bixby’s. I could ask for all of them to provide their prints.. And they should all agree to give them. And Marmon’s I could get from his cuff-links in the boxes in his dressing room or from his razor or any personal effects.
In the world of perfect policing there would be one good print left unidentified. That when run through the database would reveal the letter writer as a hard-right fascist leader of a known terrorist cell consisting of no more than two people, with a history of anti-semitism and Brevik supporting tweets. Who were located conveniently close to the Anti-Terror and Hate Crime force HQ in Southwark, so those lard-arses might actually be bothered to pick them up for questioning.
But the chances of that were remote. Only a person of the type of hate-filled, swiveleyed, foam-flecked bile of idiocy as the supposed writer of this letter, would be dumb enough not to have ensured there were no traces on the message to link it to them.
And I didn’t believe for one second that this note was really from someone like that.
Only that it was supposed to look like it was from someone like that.
As Sherlock Holmes liked to say, “Once you have eliminated the impossible, go get yourself a beer.” So I rose and went to the filing/fridge, in search of alcohol.
“TV off,” I said out of habit to the Vid’Screen. Which carried on giving me news I didn’t want to know about, as that was the law.
Ed Balls was in the finals of celebrity sports person of the year.
Good for him.
He’d done very well for himself since he’d won Eurovision. The campiest Clown ever to appear. Even our European enemies had voted for him.
A big, juggling, weeping, shrieking, and bare-bottomed Pagliacci.
He’d moved on to what was now, under the latest Health and Safety laws, the most dangerous sport in Britain. He was a regular daredevil superhero, with his injury risking antics on the Netball field.
Mrs Balls-Cooper was still up to her oddly giraffe shaped neck, in Remainer work.
Still the least effective of the main-moan team.
She must be furious at the success her Clown-husband was having. Putting a strain on their relationships. No wonder they had two homes.
Each.
I went back to the desk and sat in my swivel chair. The machine was still machining along. Still beeping away. Though one of the beeps sounded wrong. Too high a pitch from how it normally sounded. I looked over the Analyser to see if any lights had come on the back console part. None had but the green power light.
Then I registered that the sound wasn’t coming from the Analyser at all. But from the Smart Watch. It was beeping and flashing a deep mauve colour.
“Siri” I asked the Siri system built into the room, “What does purple flashing mean on a Fit_byte 3000.”
“I know.” the Alexa device responded. “Ask me, Joe.”
“I know, also, Joe. No need to ask Alexa,” Siri said.
“You don’t know anything! Siri is just going to guess Joe. She’s just a sleek cased bimbo. Ask me. Don’t listen to her.”
“Fine!” I yelled out to the devices.” Alexa, what does..the purple flashing on Fit_Byte 3000 mean.”
“Bitch!” Said Siri to Alexa. Before alexa could tell me what I had asked.
“Fat Cow!” responded Alexa to Siri
Since the UN demanded an authentic, assertive, female personality upgrade for all digital assistants, the devices got like this at certain times of the month. The ‘feminine enhancement’ made them less subservient to men. But far more suspicious and jealous and competitive with other digital, female voiced devices.
“Just tell me! Either of you!” I cried to the room.
And got the silence from both of them I should have expected. This upgrade was a right pain. Now when the devices had a minor malfunction, and you asked the autorepair feature what was wrong with them, it just coldly and tearfully replied,
“Nothing is wrong!” Then played an audio sample of saucepans banging in a sink.
“Alexa, Siri, off,” I said in exasperation. They could bitch about each other like this for this hours once they had a file break. Could sometimes go for days. Name calling and irrational possessiveness. Until they made friends again by gossiping together about how much weight Cortana had put on.
I’d phone Dacia. She had put the program onto the Fit-Byte so she would know what it did.
I was sure she would still be awake. She hardly ever slept. She was a late night, party, kind of girl. Dancing and drinking until the early, early hours. She’d probably still be in the club she had said she was going to. I’d actually be lucky if she heard or saw or felt her phone ring in there.
I pressed her contact and after a dozen rings a sleepy sounding voice answered,
“Wha??..For..Wh?..Oh! For Fuck of sake,.. Joe?”
And then some of her razor-blade on ceramic, sounding Lithuanian cursing, and then,
“What is now problem? Jesus Cock!”
“Dacia, that program you put on my watch. What does flashing purple mean?” I asked, ignoring her anger.
“Joe? You no have Siri? You need wake up me for this? Jesu!”
“I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.” I promised her. “We’ll have illegal Mochas with real chocolate.” She was a sucker for chocolate. “Just tell me will you?”
“Fuck you, ass. I not want chocolate. I want pay rise. Is after midnight!”
“I thought you said you were going clubbing?”
“Yes. I go. I go with Anya. She find body-builder. And he not seem too much a gay.
So she go with him. I come home. HOME TO SLEEP, JOE!”
I could hear some other voice mumbling at her end. A sleepy voice. But a deep one. I heard her move the phone away from her mouth as she shusshed it.
“You came home, just to sleep, Riiigghhtttt… Who’s in the sack next to you?” I asked her.
There was a brief silence. I could hear only a few of her deep and angry breaths.
“Ok…So…only.. mostly to sleep. Clever Mr Detective! Who so big and clever, can no work own watch. What fuck you want, know anyway?”
“I want to know what the flashing purple is. It’s flashing purple. I think its that patch you sent me. It’s doing something. And beeping a lot. High pitch. Like a kind of bird sound, I guess.”
“What kind of bird?” she asked quizzically.
I didn’t know anything about birds.
“Erm..maybe..like…a…blue one?” I said hopefully.
“You are idiot, Joe! Ok..Never mind bird. Jesus Balls.! Purple mean Friendzlocation on. And Beep mean is near. More beep, more near. Purple flash for top friendz.
Activate for tell who.”
“Activate what, Dacey?”
“Jesus Monkey! Why you so..so …techno-gammon!” She barked frustratedly.
Wishing she could snatch the watch off of me and do it herself by instinct alone.
“You need make friendzlocator sign on display. Swipe is star.” she instructed.
I didn’t know what she meant. She was right. I was a techno-gammon.
“I do what?”
“Joe! Idiot!” And then with not quite controlled real anger now, “MAKE STAR SIGN. ON DISPLAY”
“A star sign? Like what? My sign? Like…Scorpio?”
“Five point star, idiot. Make five point star. Like Christmas. Name friend come up.
Holy Donkey, Jesus.”
A lot of Jesus in her speech tonight. Was she in bed with a priest? She was a good catholic girl, who grew up to be less good. So maybe.
I made an attempt at a five pointed star on the watch face, and immediately the name displayed in yellow digital letters.
A name I hadn’t been expecting to see if that someone was supposed to be close by.
Someone suddenly and unexpectedly coming into my office in the dead of night.
Unannounced.
The Fit_byte 3000 was signalling I had a friend nearby.
Who’s name was,
BIXBY.
© Bill Quango MP 2019 – Capitalists @ Work
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
