(EPISODE SIX - ALIMENTARY, MY DEAR CONAN.)

 

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my AppleMac^TM to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Hank Conan was distinguished.
My name’s Peri Stalsis and I’d like to pay tribute to the man who by the mere mention of his name invokes the response, “Dick!”; the guy who put the “Y” in ‘Private Eye’ - Hank Conan.
Dear readers, I can only relate to you the scraps of information found in his journal, and tell you that he was planning to scour this land from Salford to Sutherland, if he had to, to find Viv. Up to the Wyre he’d take his search for her, and his fight against the ‘mob’ and the sewer-sucking scum-buckets and low-lives, if needs be.
Dreams, you may think. Kidstuff, you may comment. But there are ordinary mortals - and there’s Hank.
I think it’s probably fitting, in line with another historical crime-fighting partnership, to intersperse my eulogy and memoirs with handwritten notes, from Hank’s own mouth, detailing the extraordinary lengths to which he expired in this, his final problem.

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So, readers, yours truly has managed to sneak over the Wales/England border without being stopped by guards and I’ve left the land of dragons, leeks and apprehensive sheep behind me.
So this is merry England, huh?
Well, the people I’ve seen up to now would qualify for a rebate from The Royal Academy of Tickled Pink, I can tell you.
As my wise old granny used to say, ‘There’s only one thing worse than a miserable bastard: that’s two miserable bastards.’
For such a boring race, though, the English sure got some liberated views. One of the first things some whacko asked me as I was walking down the street to my hotel was where he could get some fags. Then I got really worried when a run-down-bag-lady-type asked, ‘Have you got the time on yer cock?’
I’m kinda wondering whether I should risk carrying on to my next planned stop - Gay Paris!
I’d contacted an English acquaintance of mine, Nora Drenaline, in advance to make sure there was somewhere I could rest my head on my flight across the United States of Europe. I was on a stop-over, Nora had e-mailed me directions to the place she called home - a quaint little English village called Little Longer, near Stuttering-in-Apoplexy.
That’s when I ran into my latest case.
This dude sidled up to me while I was waiting for my ‘McGazelle Fetlocks with Yak-lets and FREE Serengeti Dip’, and asked if I wanted a nice soft muffin.
I laid him out quicker than a while-u-wait embalmers and made for the exit.
The guys who helped him up looked suspicious, though, so I decided to stick around and dig the dirt. Following them was difficult but I think I got away with it. Every time they looked over their shoulder I turned into a door or store front - it’s amazing the gimmicky inflatable camouflage they sell at the Annie Somers’ Store for Dicks, back home.
I tailed them to a mall. Their counter-surveillance techniques were pretty sophisticated and I was beginning to suspect they were from the ‘mob’. Their next move confirmed it: they turned into a Deli. Damn! They must have Annie Somers’ stores over here, also.
I crept through the aisles - feigning a left at cakes and biscuits, I bolted for dairy products. From there I went crackers and nuts.
Hah! These guys would have to get up early to catch old Hank, especially since I got this dinky little automatic alarm watch. Never needs winding - it’s all done by movement of the arm, although I’ve overtightened the spring several times since I bought it. So now I wear it on my left wrist.
Any road up, I trailed them, thinking they were going to head for the garlic sausage, but then things took a turn for the Wurst.
They dodged into a back-room meat locker. Things were smelling pretty fishy - there was something rotten in the steaks at Spend-Mart.
What I saw next almost caused my clear glass or plastic container utilised for the conveyance of refreshing libation material to be irrevocably absent. On top of which I practically procured an expeditious voiding of my alimentary canal.
The biggest name in ‘mob’ circles was sitting there, giving orders. I couldn’t make out everything he said, but it sure as hell was the main man: Arthur ‘Arty’ Fonzirrelli.
His wiseguys called him ‘Fonzi’, to try and divert attention from the ‘mob’ connections, but everyone else knew him by the name I’d christened him many moons ago in a life-or-death struggle on another of my intrepid cases: ‘Mob-Arty’.

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Hank’s journal becomes somewhat fragmented after this. But I’ll fill in the gaps to make things clear.
I’d just finished writing my book - on a little cardboard sign. It was a job I’d kept meaning to get around to when I first bought the book-case and people kept asking me what it was for.
I’d been told Hank was abroad. I didn’t really believe it - I’d played squash with the guy so many times, I’d’ve noticed. His friends at the poodle’s nail-polishing parlour never mentioned anything of the sort, either.
Then, on a Tuesday evening at 7:47 and 52 seconds I heard “DING-DONG! DING-DONG” at the front door. I thought it odd - I don’t have a doorbell.
I opened the door in my smoking jacket and looked long (and very hard) at the curvy blonde on the doorstep.
Her panties should have held a pilot’s licence to have legs at that altitude and it’s a wonder her brassiere didn’t have triceps the size of a mobster’s rap sheet with the volume of push-ups it was being asked to perform.
She had an hourglass figure that was exceeding time and a-half and buttocks so tight they’d probably cracked more nuts than a sadistic psychiatric nurse.
Crowbar all of that into a racy trenchcoat and natty homburg and you.....

Er.....

‘Hi, Hank. Come on in. If I’d known you were coming I’d have undressed you...me...undressed me. And dressed me again. Changed, that is.’
I invited him in and decided to stay diplomatic about his attire until he brought it up. You never know how people will react if you mention these sensitive issues.
‘So Hank, what brings you here? Apart from those ludicrously large high-heels making drill-holes in my carpet like genetically-modified JCBs? That get-up makes you look like Madonna’s slappier half-sister!’