Do You Know The Way To Holloway?

By the time I got back to bungaville, I’d remembered why I’d gone to see Mr Konstantin; new filters for the vacuum cleaner. The big clean up would have to wait. I sat at the kitchen table and pondered the ever more miserable misty drizzle outside the window. I was increasingly convinced that the Underbelly had its own micro-climate. The kettle was almost ripe and my apple and custard turnover was awaiting massacre. The incredible Zac sat patiently on the floor beside me hoping for some rich pickings as I covered my cheeks with sweet yellow goo. When I’d finished, I sought out my coat, in particular its pockets which was likely to host a small platoon of doggy treats. I reached in and pulled out a handful of bric-a-brac, tossing the black and white one some tasty morsels. What was left in my open palm resembled the foreshore after the incoming tide and I turned over its contents like a beachcomber with the index finger of my other hand. It didn’t take me long for my eye to spot it; the foil ring that Trudie had wrapped around Zac’s collar. I re-pocketed the remaining detritus and sat studying the piece of foil on the battered pine table before me. What was important about it? Had Trudie been trying to say something about the nature of tin foil, sweet wrappers or maybe even rings? The connections started to flow. Rings, a wedding, had Trudie been married, who was her husband, perhaps she was engaged, a fiancé? I picked the foil back up and examined it in more detail. The closer I looked at the minute peaks and troughs of the aluminium, the surer I was that it was indeed a sweet wrapper. Automatically I unfurled it. Talk about over-intellectualizing a problem. The foil was lined with a piece of paper. I carefully peeled it out like a fishbone and marveled at its contents. The piece of thin paper was no more than an inch wide and over a foot in length. It curled like the burnt fronds of a fern at the ends where it had been wrapped. Along its length was a sequence of apparently random letters. Trudie had sent me a code.

Zac indicated that the phone was ringing with his characteristic roo, roo, roo, roo, rooooo bark. Somehow he can tell. Before I acquired the young pup (a long story in itself), I turned off the ringer, only occasionally picking it up to see if someone was there. Zac is now my ringtone. Mrs Williams was on the other end, she sounded upset. “I think you had better come over.”
When I got over there, Mrs William was walking up the road to her house from the other direction. “Come and have a look.” It was clear that the bungalow was a shell.
“I had to call you from the payphone. They took mine.”
“Are you OK? Why don’t we go back to my house? You can call the police and the insurance people.” Mrs Williams began to cry and shake so hard that I thought she would fall over onto the concrete floor of her lounge; they had taken her carpets, even her light bulbs. Mrs Williams understandably continued to blub and stutter like a teenager in serious trouble for the first time. She was barely audible but the words came: “I have no insurance” and I took a deep breath. It would be hard to turn the old girl over to social services, she wasn’t even that old, she just had no clothes, furniture, bathroom or kitchen fittings. The bungalow was in essence perfectly fine, although I had noticed they had stooped to taking the guttering and her hanging baskets.
“Have you been away then?”
“Yes, for three days at a health spa, it was a special offer courtesy from the Betterware people.”
“Where is this health-spa?”
“It’s not far, down at the Club.” My course would appear to be set. There was a hollow boom, the sound of the front being knocked.
“Stay there.” I said. It was Mike, the postman. “I want a word with you.”
“I think they,” he pointed over his shoulder at two heavy set men in suits standing firm like bulldogs, “Want a word with Mrs Williams.”
“And who are they?”
“The bailiffs, here to reclaim five grand worth of Betterware.”