Free The Vacant Casualty by Patty O'Furniture Page A

thing I want is to hand the management of the community entirely over to these cretins. Well, you saw for yourself yesterday the kind of crap that they come out with. I
wanted to make sure I always vote for the most sensible course, and goad others into following me.’
    ‘Even if your reasoning seems insane?’
    ‘Yes, exactly.’
    ‘So you must be worried about Terry Fairbreath going missing. If you’re a Tory-hater he must have been an ally.’
    ‘Certainly he was. A nice normal fellow, always around except when he went to visit his mother once a month. He was an excellent chess partner too. And with this vote coming up . .
.’
    ‘So tell us what the vote’s about.’
    ‘They want to build a wind farm near here.’
    ‘And no doubt Lord Selvington’s saying, “Not in my back yard”?’
    ‘Yes, but literally, because it
is
in his back yard. They would look directly down onto his property and apparently take about three million pounds off its worth. Which, when
all’s said and done, is quite a lot. Don’t let the mannered pleasantness of the meetings fool you, there are matters of life and death at stake. Then there are the Miss Quimples . .
.’
    ‘Ah yes, we just visited them. They keep accidentally causing violence on each other’s gardens.’
    ‘That’s them. They’re opposed to anything new.’
    ‘What exactly do they class as new?’ asked Bradley. ‘Video games? Colour television?’
    ‘Bumming?’ put in Sam.
    ‘Bumming’s definitely out. But the Internet,
especially
the Internet.’
    ‘Ha!’ Bradley laughed. ‘Well, I don’t suppose they’ve had much luck in banning
that
.’
    ‘Don’t you believe it. China could learn a thing or two. There’s still no WiFi in the village.’
    Sam toggled with his phone and realized it was true; he barely had any reception.
    ‘I don’t suppose that’s a problem for you . . .’
    ‘Are you kidding?’ the major frothed. ‘It completely fucks with livestreaming the fucking podcast. And with my online fucking poker. (It doesn’t exactly help my online
fucking, either).’
    Sam blinked and pretended he hadn’t heard the last remark. ‘You, uh, you play online poker?’
    ‘’Course I do, how else is a pensioner supposed to make up his winter fuel allowance in Blair’s Britain?’
    ‘It’s not actually Blair’s Britain any more.’
    ‘Isn’t it? Oh well, whomever. Obviously things were better under Major. Just’cause of the name, you know?’ He winked at Sam, whom he clearly took to be a kindred spirit,
perhaps on account of the fact that he had brought both the crème de menthe and the bowl of custard with him, and was cradling the latter in his lap.
    ‘What’s their problem with WiFi?’ Sam asked, now taking a taste from the tip of a spoon of custard.
    ‘They said they thought it caused tumours.’
    ‘Who would know what causes tumours in these folks? They’re all a hundred and three anyway . . .’ said Sam.
    ‘We’re getting off the point,’ said Bradley, looking at his watch. ‘We’ve got other council members to get to. I just wanted to ask, Major—’
    ‘I’m not a major, actually.’
    ‘
Mister
Eldred, then . . .’
    ‘As a matter of fact, I’m a Doctor of Oriental Languages.’
    ‘Doctor, then. Do you know of any reason why anyone would want Terry Fairbreath to disappear?’
    ‘Six of them,’ he said cheerfully.
    ‘Would you please elucidate?’
    ‘One: there was a rumour he had an affair with – what’s his name? The artist. I can never remember it. Aloysius something.’
    ‘Walerian Exosius. He shagged that guy?’
    ‘No – his sister, so the rumour went. When she came to stay last spring.’
    ‘Is it true?’
    ‘No, no, no! Terry’s camper than the Brighton male all-nude self-raising tent Olympics. Unless it’s all just an act, of course, and he’s shagging prostitutes behind our
backs. Hah! But the artist doesn’t realize that he’s gay, so he swore revenge on Terry, based on rumour