THREE
Was Diana Murdered?

International crime syndicates are cheating Princess Diana's memorial fund with pirate versions of Elton John's "Candle in the Wind"... Illegal copies of the song, performed at the Princess's funeral, are undercut by up to £2.50 and have been found in Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore and Paraquay. Profits will fund the drugs and arms trade.

Daily Bulletin,
Majorca,
26 September 1997

"GUN CARRIAGES." Major Nye lowered puzzled glasses. "Dozens of them. Piled across Fitzjohn's Avenue. Where on earth are they getting them?"

Behind their battered Ford the smoking aluminium of the Morrises fused and seethed, buckling into complex parodies of Paolozzi sculptures. Abandoning his Lewises, Mo had used a musical strategy aimed at their attackers' over-refined navigational circuits. A few Gene Vincent singles in the right registers and the enemy had auto-destructed.

"It used to be glamorous, dying in a crash. But the nineties did with auto-death what Oasis did with the Beatles. They took an idiom to its dullest place. This wasn't suicide. It wasn't even assassination. It was ritual murder. How can they confuse the three? It was the triumph of the lowest common denominator. The public aren't fools. Don't you think we all sensed it?"

Finchley's trees had gone for fuel. Its leafy authority removed, the Avenue had the air of an exposed anthill. Ankle-deep in sawdust, people clustered around the stumps, holding branches and leaves as if through osmosis they might somehow restore their cover. They had no spiritual leadership. As Jerry & Co rumbled past, waving, playing snatches of patriotic music and distributing leprous bars of recovered Toblerone, they lifted their rustling limbs in dazed salute.

"These places are nothing without their foliage." Mo lit his last Sherman's. The deadly oils released their aromatic smoke into the cab. Everyone but Jerry took an appreciative sniff. Jerry was still having trouble with his convulsions.

He had developed a range of allergies with symptoms so unusual they had not yet hit the catalogues. This made him a valuable target for drug company goons, always on the lookout for the clinically exceptional. New diseases needed new cures. But he was not prepared to sell his new diseases just to anyone. There were ethical considerations. This was, after all, the cusp of a millennium. There were matters of public interest to consider. The Golden Age of corporate piracy was gone. We were all developing appropriate pieties.

Mournfully Bishop Beesley saw that he was on his last Mars Megapak. Yet compulsively he continued to eat. Rhythmically, the chocolate disappeared into his mouth, leaving only the faintest trails. They slipped like blood down his troubled jowls.

"Seen anything from the old baroness at all?"

Mo scarcely heard him. He was buried in some distant song.

"You made
the Age
of the
Predatory Lad.
It paid you
well."
"What price victory now, Mr C?"
"Eh?"
Jerry was still preoccupied with his physical feelings.
He lifted his legs and howled.