Futile Deceptions: Book 1 of Basil Ackroyd's France

By Douglas Spencer Wallis

This is a humerous saga of Basil Ackroyd, a refugee from a financial scandal in an English municipal council, becomes the mayor of a small town in the French Midi which is saturated with expatriates. He has been running the town as his own domain for many years when outside influences threaten to rob him of his ill-gotten gains. His total lack of sensibility to those around him and insatiable greed blinds him to the real situation and his efforts to combat the menace results in multiple mishaps and a worsening of his position. The hero, Basil Ackroyd, is gloriously Machiavellian and amoral, endlessly scheming and machinating for his own selfish benefit and advantage. Unfortunately for Basil, his schemes have a habit of blowing up in his face and destroying him. But he is never discouraged and is endlessly re-inventive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Spencer Wallis
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310484612

Douglas Spencer Wallis

I am an Englishman stranded, by choice, in France for many a long year. I eat, drink, write, design, occasionally paint and even more occasionally carry out household improvements. I enjoy most things stimulating, with the total exception of rap music which I detest. I feel one should detest something to exhibit some form of intellectual maturity, so there you go. I am beginning to grow up because I listen to jazz from time to time and am totally unimpressed with a lot of popular music since the 1990′s.I also find that I see a lot of popular modern art for what it is, that needs no amplification. I dabble in local politics, mainly because it is so completely different from my native culture, naturally I leave not one hint of an effect.

Book preview

Futile Deceptions

Basil Ackroyd’s France – book 1

Douglas Spencer Wallis

Published by Douglas Spencer Wallis at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Douglas Spencer Wallis

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all those friends and family who have suffered during the gestation of this book.

Special thanks to Jay, who gave me the encouragement to continue when I thought it wasn't worth it.

My thanks also to Alison for her invaluable editing and support:

http://alisonwilliamswriting.wordpress.com/testimonials/

And to BetiBup for the cover design:

mailto:[e-mail]

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER ONE

Basil Ackroyd gripped the wrought iron railings of the town hall steps as he tried to make some sense of the morning’s disastrous start. Spitting tobacco and cursing, he glowered at the main square of his realm, where the sun cast dappled patterns through the trees onto the ancient cobbles of Durac.

On the other side of the square all was quiet save for the soft hiss of the café’s ancient coffee machine. The morning sunlight flooded through the door of the Café du Centre and lit the fine tracery of dust on the windows. The battered zinc bar reflected the rays onto the ceiling. Glancing up from his obsessive round of polishing, the barman watched as Mayor Ackroyd slammed the front door of the Town Hall behind him.

Sid interrupted his attention to the beer pump handles and reached for the best Cognac bottle from the shelf behind him. Setting two glasses on the bar, he awaited the arrival of the senior official of the town.

Trailing a cloud of cigar smoke, Basil set out across the cobbles to the café. His corpulent frame thrust through the glass door, cheeks puffing as he muttered to himself. Bumping into a plastic chair, he fixed it with a confrontational stare before pushing it roughly aside. His shaggy eyebrows were dishevelled and a lock of hair fell across his lined forehead.

The barman kept his silence until the worthy was seated on a stool and had nodded agreement to the proffered bottle. ‘Fine again today,’ Sid ventured.

Basil gathered the glass of cognac and downed it. 'Harrumph!'

The head of the commune, although blessed with an athletic physique in his youth, had allowed the pleasures of the flesh to render him somewhat out of condition. His swarthy complexion had taken the ravages of the sun well, but he now found the heat difficult. He did not like the sun and it was his habit to curse it whenever the subject arose, but today he just sat there and twiddled the glass between his stubby fingers, peering into its depths.

‘We’re in for a hot one today all right,’ Sid said.

‘Who bloody cares?’ Ackroyd hunched his neck deeper into his collar.

Flicking his cloth over his shoulder, Sid un-stoppered the Cognac in a business-like way once more. ‘Will you have a second?’

The Mayor nodded.

‘Are you all right, Basil? You seem a bit out of sorts this morning.’

‘Hardly bloody surprising!’ Basil snapped. ‘I’ve had that twittering crook of a Conseiller Général, Leconte, on the phone for the last half an hour. What a prat!’

‘Ah! Not good news?’ Sid lent on the bar in interest.

‘What? With that motherless pillock? God, I don’t know what the country is coming to when they let clueless berks like that get to positions of authority.’ The liquor sloshed down his thickset neck.

‘Quite; not the most sympathetic of characters around.’

The lofty President of the Conseiller Général, Monsieur Leconte, a man with an all-consuming passion for self-aggrandizement, was charged with the well-being of the region.

‘Trying to interfere again, I expect,’ Sid said.

‘Who does the idiot think he is? Sticking his snotty little nose in my affairs will get his ass kicked, even if I have to go and do it myself.’

Sid noted the fine spray of spittle flying from Basil’s moustache as it caught the sunbeams from the doorway. The barman nodded with solemnity at Basil’s indignation. ‘Overstepped the mark has he then?’

‘It’s bloody outrageous, Sid! I won’t stand for it. I won’t!’ The glass was thrust across the bar for a refill.

‘What’s it all about then?’

‘They’ve burnt down the gendarmerie in Auchac. He has the bloody cheek to blame me!’

This caught Sid by surprise; he was not expecting a revelation of this magnitude. Basil’s involvement in a major outrage like this was a bit beyond his normal problems, Auchac being the regional administrative centre.

‘Who has?’ Sid asked.

‘Those brain-damaged Free Rural France idiots, that’s who. Why they don’t shoot them like I should’ve done I can’t understand.’

Basil had surprised some young lads sticking up Free Rural France posters some months back and had let loose with his shotgun; the judicial enquiries continued to rumble on. He had weathered the worst of the storm, though, and was unlikely to receive more than a warning about discharging a firearm too close to a highway.

‘Why blame you?’ Refilling both their glasses, Sid relished the prospect of the Mayor’s colourful explanation.

‘He maintains it’s because I kicked those other bloody freeloaders out of the recreation hall last year. What the hell is happening to the world, Sid? They came here dead set on rape and pillage, buggered up the town fête, got pissed up on free community booze and took half the young town wenches hostage in the hall.’ Scattering ash about the bar, he jabbed his cigar in Sid’s direction. ‘Then! Then! Have the bloody nerve to claim it for FRF Freedom Fighters.’ Pink patches were beginning to spread beneath the tan on his pendulous cheeks. ‘And then have the arrogance to get upset when I burn the buggers out! What do they expect? Cretinous savages!’

The glass was banged down on the bar.

‘Was it the same ones who torched the gendarmerie, then?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’ Basil sent a billow of cigar smoke towards the ceiling. ‘This sounds a bit more heavyweight to me. Probably got their dads to help them; they couldn’t open a box of matches by themselves.’

‘Who said you’re implicated?’

‘They didn’t have to explain; they stuck a bloody great straw figure up on top of the building before they set fire to it.’ Sparks cascaded down his shirt as Basil prodded his ample front. ‘Had my name on its chest!’ Basil brushed his chest free of cigar ash. ‘Pompous ass Leconte got all bloody uppity. Says he’s going to make a national issue of it. I’d have none of it. The prick!’

‘Ah, I see. Oh well, look on the bright side, it will make the news. No such thing as bad publicity they say.’ Sid instinctively moved backwards as Basil snorted and pushed back his stool.

‘Trust you to come out with something really bloody silly,’ he said and stamped out of the door, hands deep in his jacket pockets.

‘No such thing as bad publicity? Pah! Prattish thing to say,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘That’s what got me here in the first bloody place.’ Many years before, adverse publicity in his hometown in England had forced him to resign his very lucrative post and move swiftly to France. ‘Who would get off their bloody backside to get the streets swept if it wasn’t for me?’ Basil grumbled as he ripped down an out-of-date handbill from the community notice board and threw it in the bin.

Since becoming Mayor, Basil had taken to the administration of the local community with a gusto and imagination that would never have been possible in England. Here in France he had discovered he was entirely responsible for decisions, without the petty interference he had been hampered by in his home country; not even the local councillors had a say. To his delight he found that he could raise local taxes, spend community cash, grant planning permissions and embark on local development projects virtually unquestioned. To his further rapture he found that the waning nature of this bucolic idyll was considered by those wonderful bureaucrats in Brussels to fall into that delectable classification of underdeveloped. For the correction of this lamentable state of affairs, they gave him virtually any cash he asked for to carry out regeneration. It had been like letting a child loose in a toyshop. His skills had blossomed in the sun.

Squinting against that same morning sun, some kilometres away in Auchac, gendarme Capitaine Jean Paul Beauclaire grappled with his bewilderment. He looked down distractedly at the droplets of black, greasy water gliding off the shining polish of his shoes. He could trace the rivulet that cascaded over the edge of the gutter back to what had been, up until 8:00am that morning, his headquarters. Three quarters of an hour ago his gendarmerie had been an early twentieth century building, considered by experts of municipal French architecture to be of considerable historical interest with its wealth of Art Deco detail.

Every first Thursday in the month at 8:00am there was a fire practice and evacuation of the building. All occupants had to muster in the courtyard behind. He had carefully selected this routine to minimize interruption of his staff’s work. He had insisted on the involvement of all personnel. It was well known.

That cloudless Thursday morning, the local fire station ignored the test signal as agreed and Capitaine Beauclaire had stood at the yard gates, his steady eyes surveying with considerable satisfaction the occupants filing in an orderly manner from the headquarters by the outside fire escape. Instructed not to use the lifts or the large, ornate central staircase, even the civilian staff knew this drill and left by way of the noisy steel steps.

Last to descend had been the contract window cleaner. On hearing the alarm he had casually lowered a sandbag from the parapet of the building using his cage’s pulley system. As it descended, the first indication that the day’s routine was to be different appeared from below in the street; a large effigy of a man with an exaggerated bushy moustache and dressed in a black suit slowly rose up the street side of the building on the other end of the rope. Across the rotund stomach stretched a diagonal tri-colour sash emblazoned with the name ACKROYD and the words GO HOME. It was clearly discernible from the road but went unnoticed by those leaving the building at the rear.

The window cleaner, accompanied by his co-worker, left the upper storey by the fire exit. He had just opened the drain tap of a large drum, labelled Surface Cleaner - Flammable, which poured silently down the marble internal staircase below the large, oval, stained glass dome.

In the courtyard all present and correct was recorded on the work sheet. Capitaine Beauclaire clasped his white gloves behind the rear flap of his immaculate uniform jacket, where they rested on his firm buttocks. He had allowed himself a slight smile of pride as he nodded to the two window cleaners, who briefly saluted as they left the yard. He did not see, of course, one of the window cleaners press a radio control button in his pocket as they drove away in their van from the street behind. Neither was he aware of the central stairwell of the empty building, now drenched in cleaning fluid vapour, erupting in flames.

The capitaine nodded his satisfaction to the sergeant and congratulated himself on the perfection of the turnout in neat rows with their backs to the headquarters building. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, a movement he found pulled in the already well-toned stomach muscles and added a vital centimetre or two to his stature when needed. He opened his mouth to start his customary lecture on aspects of discipline. His finely sculptured jaw, however, remained open as he and the sergeant watched the stained glass skylight from the stairwell explode, fountain-like, from the top of the building with a strangely muffled WRUMPH.

The assembled personnel were intrigued by the two men’s sunburnt faces gaping into space, illuminated by an unworldly orange light, but they knew better than to turn without the command. It was not until a shower of broken glass rained about them that they broke ranks.

The sergeant was the first to reach the door; he opened it, then quickly changed his mind, just in time to arrest a wall of fire that was bowling down the corridor towards him. The communication computer on the top floor had been rendered useless in the first few seconds of the fire and it took time for someone to rush to the nearest kiosk to call the fire brigade. They, of course, took some persuading to turn out, it being 8:00am on the first Thursday of the month, by which time the building was well ablaze.

The capitaine looked away from the destruction and studied his feet once more, watching with disgust as patches of unsavoury stains from the fire hoses spread up his crisp uniform trousers. Suddenly he realised how alone he was.

His long-time friend, the fire chief, walked almost leisurely over to where Capitaine Beauclaire was standing, a broad sympathetic grin on his face. ‘Not a lot else we can do, Jean Paul old man. They made a thoroughly professional job of it.’

He laid his hands on the capitaine’s tense shoulders in a comforting way that made the chief of the regional gendarmerie flinch.

‘Got to look on the good side though, my friend; at least your fire practice came in useful at last, eh?’

Beauclaire grimaced. Bile welled up in his throat and contracted his gorge into a suffocating knot that made him sob involuntarily.

‘Pardon, mon Capitaine, they’ve found the cleaners’ van,’ the young lieutenant panted out as he rushed to Beauclaire’s side, splashing through the puddles.

The capitaine showed no hint of understanding.

‘The cleaners’ van, Sir,’ the junior officer gently tried to nudge his chief’s memory, ‘the one used by the saboteurs; they found it at the train station.’

The gendarme stared balefully at the keen, young, intelligent face. Forcing his throat to respond he managed to speak. ‘So?’ he squawked.

‘They left all their working clothes and some gloves…’ the young man hesitated as he saw the cords on the capitaine’s neck tighten almost to breaking point, ‘… so no doubt it will be clear of prints.’

A small choke escaped his superior’s barely controlled face. Cautiously, the messenger continued.

‘There was a local stopping train for Toulouse that they could have caught…’ his eyes became transfixed by Beauclaire’s deeply cleft chin that was now jerking rhythmically, ‘… and left it at any station in the last half hour.’

Small ripples ran up and down Beauclaire’s jaw muscles. ‘They have got away, haven’t they?’ he croaked softly. ‘Bâtards!’

His embarrassed lieutenant bit his lip before nodding agreement to this assessment. ‘They left a message, Sir, at the van,’ the young man falteringly volunteered. ‘On it in fact, Sir, in spray paint.’

The capitaine’s eyes suddenly sharpened and, clearing his clogged throat with a rasping intake of breath, he demanded, ‘A message?’

The young man nodded reluctantly.

‘Well? What message? Speak, man!’

‘It was sprayed on the side of the van, Sir. On the left side…’

‘What did it say?’ Beauclaire whispered.

The young officer stiffened. Snatching a glance at the fire chief, he carefully read from the piece of paper in his hand:

If Monsieur Propre can’t defend France, we will! FRF.

He spoke the words with great care as though reading from a tombstone.

Beauclaire reddened, his temples pounding. If there had been any doubt in his mind that his career was finished, this dashed his remaining hopes. ‘Connards! Bâtards!’ he spat out, flapping his immaculate white gloves violently against the seams of his trousers.

The lieutenant watched with increasing agitation; he had never before seen his chief exhibit emotion.

‘You know who they mean, don’t you? MONSIEUR PROPRE? Mr Clean? That’s me they are referring to. Me! You realize that? Eh? Connards!’

The young officer gave a hint of a nod.

‘And that blasted Arr...ch...hoid… This is what it is all about, Arsh...rhoid... Artch...oid... What an absurd English name for an absurd Englishman!’

He stamped the ground in a petulant rage, sending a spray of foul water over the younger man. The fire chief and the lieutenant exchanged awkward glances and found some reason to hurry off, leaving Beauclaire to his misery.

At this moment, when all his life’s training demanded that he should rationally assess the situation and act accordingly, he found that his only desire was to fight his way through the blood-red film that covered his vision and kick the shit out of some idiotic Englishman named Ackroyd. Kick him to a pulp. Then hunt down the unknown bastards who had destroyed his career, with the sole intention of ripping every vital organ from them with his bare hands. Compounding the torment that he fought was the overwhelming need to find a darkened corner and cry himself to death.

As Basil stamped off across the market square of Durac, a clattering called Sid’s attention to the vain attempts of a grey-bearded cyclist to prop up his machine against a lamppost outside. The third try met with some success and the tweed-jacketed gent entered the bar, furiously scrabbling through his pockets. Upon reaching the bar stool a crash from the road elicited a deep sigh and a shrug of his broad shoulders.

‘Effin’ contraption! Don’t know why I didn’t leave it on the effin’ floor in the first place.’ His hands eventually located a large and blackened pipe in a pocket. ‘Quelles sont les nouvelles, Sid? Our worthy commissar nearly flattened me just now. Some sort of crisis? Has he seen that Tony Blair looks like winning the election back home?’

‘Politics a bit nearer to here; it would appear he’s had a bit of a run in with Conseiller Leconte this morning.’ Sid slid a demi pression of beer in the direction of the newcomer, who was by now carrying out a detailed search of his trouser and cardigan pockets. The barman passed a box of matches to Herbert, bringing a grateful end to the frantic delving.

‘Ah ha! The wretched thorn in the side of free local government has found yet another petty point of order with which to beard our revered chief, has he?’ he asked the barman.

A long draught from the beer left a frothy half-moon to enhance the beaming grin spreading across Herbert’s bearded face.

‘Indeed, ’tis so, master clock mender, a little matter of a gendarmerie being razed to the ground by fire in our fine regional centre.’

‘Cor lummy! You don’t say? Mild-mannered Basil has resorted to torching more public buildings, has he?’

‘What’s this, darlings? Basil gone feral with his fire lust?’ cooed a blonde lady festooned in gold bracelets and beads, stretching her well-respected bosom over the bar to kiss Sid and turning to bestow similar favours on his customer. She sat at the bar and kicked off her shoes.

‘No, not directly, Julia. He has only been blamed for it,’ Sid said; he knew how to spin out a flimsy story.

‘Come on, man, spit it out. What’s the dirt?’ A vigorous cloud of smoke spread from the gnarled pipe of the clock mender.

‘Yes, Sidney my lover, do tell all.’ Long coral fingernails dunked a cube of sugar into a balloon of calvados.

‘Well it appears that…’ Sid was cut off in mid-sentence by the phone. ‘Hang on two ticks.’

‘He is infuriating, that patron of ours, don’t you think, Herby sweetie? I can’t imagine what possible connection there is between our dear old grumpy Mayor and a burnt-out police station. Can you?’

A smart man in immaculate cream slacks and linen shirt joined them. ‘His name across the front, that’s what.’ He swung an elegant leg over a bar stool, carefully positioned his handbag on a dry portion of the bar and swept his fine hands across his freckled brow to tidy his already neat, if receding, wispy hair.

Herbert grunted. ‘Blimey. What brings you in here at this hour, Guy? It’s a touch risqué for you to start this early, isn’t it?’

‘Couldn’t resist it, old boy. I just had to know if you had seen the news flash about the destruction of the headquarters of those delightful flics in Auchac.’ This last was directed at Sid, who had returned to his station behind the bar.

‘So it’s made the headlines, has it then?’ Sid asked.

‘Not half, mine host! Just a rosé if you could, Sid. Flames up to the sky, taking all before them, and bang in the middle, a very passable effigy of Basil Ackroyd with his name embroidered on his pinny.’

‘But they can’t blame him for that, surely, Sidney?’ Julia massaged her instep vigorously. ‘I mean, I know he just loves publicity, but that would be taking things just a teensy weensy bit too far, even for Basil.’

‘Ah ha! But the Conseiller Général, the silly queen Monsieur Leconte, is in on the act, isn’t he?’ Guy chortled.

Herbert snorted out a vast cloud of smoke and, raising his eyes to the ceiling, turned to Sid. ‘Come on, you tell us, what’s the connection? What did our leader have to say?’

‘He’s been in already, has he? I could tell he wasn’t in a good humour when I saw him kick Olga’s poor little dog as I went into Henri’s shop just now.’ Julia carefully pulled a small blob of mascara from one of her long eyelashes. ‘It’ll catch him unawares one day and give him a good dose of tetanus. Have you seen the state of its teeth?’

‘Do stop prattling on, Julia. Let’s hear what Sid’s got to say,’ Herbert said.

‘Who’s a grumpy old clock mender, then? You never used to be sharp with me, did you? Suffering post menopause depression are we, sweetie?’ She gently tweaked his bewhiskered cheek.

‘Get on with it, Sid; she’ll send me mad in a minute.’

‘Children! Children!’ Sid raised his hands for silence and recounted his conversation with Basil. ‘I can report that Mayor Ackroyd is indignant that he should attract either criticism or blame.’

‘He bloody would be, wouldn’t he? He’s never accepted the blame for any of his cock-ups, has he?’ Herbert said, and pushed his glass through yet another blast of smoke towards the beer pumps.

Sid went outside to arrange the tables and waved across the centre of the square to Olga. She was performing her morning ritual of cleaning the glass door of the pharmacy on the other side of the dirt patch. Sid obsessed about keeping his bar clean but that obsession did not extend to windows and other ‘housework’.

This patch of ground, used for games of boules, was surrounded by trees of great age. Olga flapped her duster at the blue sky with a smile that clearly expressed her contentment with the balmy weather. Sid sniffed the air as he looked around at the ancient town. Henri’s bakery wafted tempting hints of fluffy creations that mixed in with the passing hint of tobacco smoke. The boule park smelt of damp earth, lingering from the water emptied there after the cleaning of the pavement outside the newsagent’s. Here the rack of papers was being scraped across the ground to its place below a striped parasol, scattering a flock of pigeons that left a cascade of fine feathers as they circled up from the square to the church bell tower.

The old Priory was at its most charming, outlined by the morning sun. Below it the crumbling towers of Porte de l’Est overshadowed the only other street in this cramped quarter, Rue Grande Fosse. It cut directly down the side of the hill and its massively stoned pavé was climbable by only the most determined aged ladies who still lingered in this side of town.

Tucked in this side street, Basil made his way to an inconspicuous door with a brass plate by its side and was ushered inside. Carefully dropping a pistachio nut shell in the wastepaper bin, Abdul Bin Avay lent back in his chair and chewed reflectively as he studied his visitor.

Basil savagely bit the end off his cigar and seared its tip with the smoky flame that flared from the table lighter in the shape of an oil derrick. The dark room was poorly illuminated by an elaborate, pierced brass chandelier; its one small light bulb struggled to achieve a pale yellow colour. The only other light was shed on a mahogany table by a lamp with a green glass shade above a terracotta bust of Napoleon. To the side of the desk was a large, old leather armchair. Into this sank the Mayor of Durac, in a shower of small incandescent ash particles and a mist of white smoke.

‘Basil, my dear old friend, I am overjoyed to see you so early in the morning. On such a lovely day, too.’ Maître Abdul Bin Avay gestured to the faint shafts of sunlight that had managed to squeeze past the closed shutters. ‘Is this a visit of social dimensions or in the nature of official business?’ His hand hovered above the button on a large timer, which nestled among the piles of ribbon tied folders which filled his desktop and most of the room. ‘Perhaps you wish to seek my professional services?’

‘Keep your bloody hand off that meter of yours! I’ll tell you when you can start charging. What I want is a bit of off-the-record opinion, not another ruddy bill,' Basil told him firmly.

Abdul Bin Avay’s was the only legal practice in town and he was not ashamed to benefit from the monopoly. However, the Mayor had the services of the government legal offices at his disposal should he wish to use them. The lawyer’s discretion in matters borderline regarding political or judicial propriety assured that he received a degree of patronage from the Mayor when he did not wish to broadcast his affairs.

‘Quite so, Basil old chum.’ Abdul Bin Avay glanced at his watch nonetheless. ‘May I have the privilege to offer you coffee?’ This was not a question; a small boy had appeared and was already setting the cup and a glass of water on a brass-topped table beside Basil’s chair. The dark face of the notaire cracked into a crescent of gleaming teeth. ‘Not further trouble from that young lady tourist you helped out, I trust?’

‘Hell no! No, your letter seemed to do the trick there. No, this is serious.’ He heaved himself upright in the chair, only to sink back further into its leathery depths. ‘Have you seen the news this morning?’

‘The early morning one. I like to get around the tenants first thing before they get away. If I leave it to the evening, I’m lost. It is a most dreadful business to have to deal with the working classes, you know.’ The notaire shook his head sadly. ‘No morals at all. Tell me, have I missed an event of great importance? Beside that most dreadful attack on the gendarmerie?’

‘That, oh wise one from the east, is the matter in hand.’ Downing his cup in one gulp, Basil grimaced and spat back some grounds; he had never become used to Arabian coffee. He swilled his mouth with water, then recounted the morning’s pronouncements from the Conseiller Général. ‘What do you make of that, eh?’ he asked.

The grin had long since vanished and all that could be seen were two brown orbs glimmering in the gloom behind the desk.

‘This is indeed serious,’ came the considered reply. Basil could discern the feverish activity behind the intelligent eyes. ‘I assume you have no room for manoeuvre in this year’s municipal funding?’

‘Got it in one, my mystical mentor.’

A manicured hand slowly caressed the legal expert’s beak-like nose, creating a brief flash of electric blue light from the jewel-encrusted watch.

‘May I assume further,’ the brow creased slightly, ‘my closest of allies, that our small quasi-official joint venture in the field of regional development could be in jeopardy?' His eyebrows rose a further fraction as Basil expelled smoke towards the ceiling and nodded.

‘Worse than that, my old darling; if