Episode Fifteen

The walls were closing in and Gilbert and Petal were trapped. Gilbert racked the vast array of cliches that passed for his brain. While he was engaged in this task, a trapdoor swung upwards and hit him in the Nobel laureates. No loss anyhow; Petal wasn't exactly Mensa material.

On the other side of the door, everything was misty and tinted pink. Gilbert noted that Petal was looking at him in a peculiar manner, almost as if he was a Noble laureate without his jeans. (Yes, you win a prize if J=G, E=E, A=N, N=E and S=S for you). Outwardly, Gilbert pretended hardly to notice her; after all she did have her clothes on.

"Ever since I was a student nurse," began Petal in a simpering, saccaharin sotto voce, "I always hated your arrogance; I was such a little fool" She seemed to be trying to stroke Gilbert's ear. Gilbert's unutterably powerful nervous system baulked at this and sampled another input. It wasn't much better. The misty, pink character of the place was imparted by a large pile of half-frozen chickens which surrounded them.

Gilbert began to revise his estimate of the 'escape'; downwards, rapidly.

Petal continued trying to stroke Gilbert's scabrous little ear, murmering "Yes, I was such a little fool to realize that your brutal treatment of the nurses you got pregnant was a cover-up for your shy, sensitive nature and that it was your professional etiquette that made you fatally clumsy in surgery - you didn't want to show up those poor has-been senior surgeons... "

Gilbert tried not to listen as he pulled Petal out of the fowl-smelling vat and onto a chute. Yuw, of course, being ambitious of ruling the world, took the chance of preaching to the half-frozen chickens as they went into the blender. Diluted in 35,000 chicken OXO cubes he didn't sound so good; just tasted bad.

They fell out of the chute onto the vegtable rack of one of John Sainsbury's sin and stamps joints. Gilbert decided it was time to act cool, so he picked up something and sauntered to the checkout. He didn't feel too cool, standing at the checkout holding two swedes. Gilbert nearly made it out. Just as he crossed the doorway, an enormous guy came flying across the checkout desk and tackled Gilbert around the throat. Gilbert felt the side of his skull assume the shape of the wall. As he slid to the floor, Gilbert noticed that his assailant was somehow familiar, a dead ringer for somebody. In desperation, Gilbert tossed the swedes to Petal, who sprinted into the street and threw one swede across the road.

Ragen had never been hit in the mush by a swede before. As the world took on the familiar red haze generated by his near habitual insensate rage, Ragen realised that clues sometimes jumped out and hit you in the face. Instinctively, Ragen started looking for more clues by thumping the nearest thing under five feet tall. Unlucky. That navvy was standing in a two foot trench. Ragen would never have believed that a six inch swede would fit down his throat.

Petal, meanwhile, slipped a desperate message into the other swede she was carrying. She posted the whole thing, along with another dummy swede, to the secret addresses of the members of THE ORGANISATION ...

TO BE CONTINUED!

Like what was in that second swede? Where was it sent? Could it be traced ..?