* * *
From ecstasy to agony in five hundred metres; Beau the Bum was as close to tears as he’d been in many months. Not from pain. From humiliation. The humiliation of having Cookie and Robert see him being half dragged from the Ute and slapped about the head by his harridan of a sister. He hated them for seeing it, he hated her for doing it and he hated himself for allowing it. All things that he was powerless to stop. After he’d been so careful too; avoiding almost all the curbs all the way around the block! Next time, he’d take out a fence or two and leave some streaks of rubber! See how her precious majesty liked that!
Cookie had seen her first, surging out of the golf course darkness as they pulled up across the road from the Duchy. He’d tried a warning but the hiccups had got him and Beau had assumed it was just another phase of his snivelling. And then she was there, ripping open the door. Beau, in his sudden panic, had popped the clutch and stalled the engine.
“You little cretin!” she was howling as she yanked his hair. “What‘re you doing? If there’s a mark anywhere on this Ute, I’m gonna make rags outta every one o’ you, so help me! Get out of it! Now! All of you! Out! Pack of little pig-faces!”
With his scalp in danger of detaching, he had no choice but to obey and then to do what he always did, which was roll into a ball, limit her access to his head and testicles, and wait it out. Humiliatingly, it was Robert again - Robert of the newfound authority - who pulled her up, clamping himself to her arm and dragging her to a stop.
“Quit it, Hayley! He’s tryi’g to help! Stop hitti’g hib!”
That Beau would try to help someone was not a thing Hayley would ever believe. But then, she also wouldn’t have believed these two little religio’ pebble-brains would be sneaking out at night in his villainous company; let alone standing up for him. Standing up for him against her!
“Help? Help who? To do what?”
That part, of course, was easy - free Neville the Less’s mutt.
“Come on then, weasel! What’s your plan? How ye gonna do that?”
And that part was difficult. Non-existent, actually. It was ‘Soon’s fault, mind you. If she’d just handed over the pistol he’d’ve had a ready-made, unstoppable plan, no doubt about it! As it was, he had to suffer not only the humiliation of not knowing, but also the horror of having Robert answer for him: “We have to doe if the Duke’s got Ava, that’s all!”
“Yeah - duh! How you gonna find out, is the question! And if you find out, what’re you pipsqueaks gonna do about it?”
Which of course was almost exactly the question she’d been struggling with herself.
“I do’t doe. Ask I guess. A’d the’d ask for her back!”
“Ask? Oh! Excellent! Super! Why didn’t I think of that? Is it maybe because it occurred to me that if he had her and if he wanted to give her back, he would’ve already done it? Eh? Bozo-boys! So what else’ve ye got, geniuses?”
And that’s when Beau’s plan finally clicked into focus.
“We’re gonna pull down the Folly!” he sniffled.
And on the instant, he knew they would. And he knew that Hayley knew they would. He could see it in her stunned silence.
“Like I was tryin’ to tell you if you weren’t so busy slapping me! We tie onto it with the Ute. And when the geezer comes out, we bail him up for the mutt!”