TWELVE
TWO BILLION BROKEN HEARTS

We think Diana was killed through drunken driving... We think. I think. But we do not know. I do not know. Every newspaper and news organisation,with the exception of the more excitable elements of the Arab media, has decided it was an easily explained crash. Lurid theories about her death abound on the Internet but that is the domain of students in anoraks—desperate like the fundamentalist Muslims, to pin something on the Satans of the Western security services and their imperialist masters. Yet people who read serious newspapers and watch serious television programmes still have their doubts. Perhaps in this uncertain world they need to find a perpetrator, they cannot accept that the most popular woman of her time was wiped out with her playboy lover in an ordinary car crash after a night at the Ritz.

Chris Blackhurst
The Observer,
October 19, 1997

"ARE YOU SURE it's not a lookalike or a wannabe?" Sucking a purloined lolly, Trixi stared critically up at the slowly circling corpse. "And he could be pretending to be dead."

The swollen head, the eyes popping, the ears flaring, stared back at her as if in outrage at her scepticism. Oddly, the silver paper crown his executioners had placed on his head gave the Old Contender a touch of dignity.

"We're going to have to burn him." Major Nye came up with his clipboard. He was counting corpses. "Before his followers get hold of him. He's worth an army in that state." He paused to cast a contemplative and sympathetic eye over his former monarch. "Poor old boy. Poor old boy."

The rest of the besiegers were either dead, dying or sharing a common gibbet. By and large the century hadn't started well for the monarchists. It looked like the Dianistas were soon going to be in full control of the accounts.

"Good riddance, the foul, two-timing bastard." Mo had sat down comfortably in the grass with his back against the tree. He was cleaning his piece with a Q-tip. "First he betrays his wife, then his mother, then his lover. He makes Richard the Third seem like Saint Joan."

"He struck me as quite a decent, well-meaning sort of chap." Major Nye glanced mildly at his board.

"I don't think we want to hear any more of that sort of talk, do we, major?" Trixi had the moral high ground well sorted.

"He gave her a lovely funeral," said Bishop Beesley. "That huge wreath on the hearse with 'MARM' picked out in her favourite flowers. It made the Krays seem cheap. A proper people's send-off."

"The man was a monster." Trixi firmly held her spin. "The Prince of Evil. The Demon King. That's all you need to remember."

"But what of the Web?" Una came walking through with a scalp-pole she had liberated from the Shire Protection Association. "Can you control that, too?"

"Like a spider." Trixi's words were set in saliva. She tasted her own bile as if it were wine.

In a moment they would achieve the culmination of all she had ever dreamed.

"They're getting a raft ready to go to the island," said Una. "I knew you'd want to be there at the moment they dug her up."

Trixi quivered. "You realise this will give us power over the whole fucking world, don't you?"

"It goes round and round." Una put her scalps into Jerry's willing right hand. "Hold on to those for a bit. And come with me."

They stumbled over the ruins of the manor, over the remains of tents and makeshift defences. Crows were coming down in waves. Parts of the battlefield were thick with heaving black feathers. It had been impossible in the end to save either the attackers or the defenders. But the island, by general consent, had not been badly shelled.

They arrived at the lakeside. A raft of logs and oil-cans was ready for them.

"Good lord." Bishop Beesley gestured with a distasteful Crunchy. "That water's filthy. Thank heavens we don't have to swim across. There's all kinds of horrors down there. What do people do? Sacrifice animals?"

"It's our duty to take her out of all this." Mo picked up a long pole and frowned.

"Clearly the family no longer has the resources." Stepping onto the swaying boards, Trixi Brunner assumed that familiar air of pious concern. "So we must shoulder the burden now. Until we can get her into safe hands."

"You're still sending her to Coventry."

"That's all changed." Bishop Beesley chuckled at his own misunderstanding. "I thought it was the Godiva headquarters. She almost went to Brussels. But we've had a lovely offer from Liverpool."

"Which we're not going to take." Trixi's sniff seemed to make him shrink. "Ten times her boxed weight in generic licorice allsorts? That's pathetic! You're thinking too parochially, bishop. Don't you realise we have a world market here?"

"She's right." Una began to pole them out over the water. "America. Russia. China. Wherever there's money. And the Saudis would buy her for other reasons. It's a seller's market."

"Russell Stover. Hersheys." Convinced, the bishop had begun to make a list. "Pierrot Gormand. My Honeys Tastes a Lot of Lickeys." Thoughtfully he popped the last of his Uncle Ben's Mint Balls into his mouth. "Sarah Lee. Knotts Berry Farm. Smuckers. America. Land of Sugar. Land of Honey. Land of Sweetness. Land of Money." His sigh was vast and anticipated contentment.

"Syrup?"