The Cannibals Of Mablethorpe – Part Five

The story so far …

After a spate of cannibalistic killings, maverick, alcoholic policeman Detective Inspector Snake Wolfbane has woken from a booze-stupor to find gnawed human remains on his own doorstep. Coming hot on the heels of discovering his wife’s head in a box in the car park of Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary HQ, could things possibly get any worse for the small Lincolnshire seaside town and its most drunken police detective? Well yes, because after a furious row with his landlady, Snake’s driven onto the Parade only to find that the Dunes Family Leisure Complex is on fire. This surely dashes all hopes of rescuing the all-you-can-eat £8.99 over-fifties buffet AND the Jim Davidson Comeback Jamboree.

* * *

“Fuck a duck!”

I was speechless.

Well … I wasn’t speechless, obviously. I’d just shouted, ‘Fuck a duck!’

I surveyed the smouldering ruins of the Dunes Family Leisure Complex, anger rising from deep within me. This place held so many happy memories for the townsfolk of Mablethorpe: the night Roy Walker told that joke about peanuts that got him in trouble with the PC Brigade; Bernard Manning’s legendary gig where he put forth the theory that the Jews have stolen all the world’s money; Cat Stevens’s sudden conversion to Islam half way through Morning Has Broken; Gimon & Sarfunkel – East Yorkshire’s premier Simon & Garfunkel tribute act; Lenny Bennet shitting himself when a live bear got in through the emergency exit and jumped on stage, looking for bee hives …

Gone, all gone.

“I’m ruined, Snake,” wailed Vern Bottoms, head honcho of the (former) Dunes Family Leisure Complex. “Jim Davidson’s never going to agree to play here now.”

I surveyed the wreckage. He was right. It was going to take more than a lick of paint to sort this little lot out. Even a seasoned builder would be hard pressed to erect some sort of rudimentary stage, orchestra pit, lighting rig, seating for six hundred diners and a Copacabana Midnight Bar out of this twisted, mangled mess.

I moved some ashes aside with my foot. Miraculously, a 1985 poster for Keith Harris and Friends had survived almost intact.

This didn’t sit right with me.

“Vern,” I asked. “How come this Keith Harris poster’s not burnt to cinders?”

“Keith Harris poster? Erm …”

Vern looked shifty. Why did Vern look shifty?

“Why do look shifty, Vern?” I asked Vern.

“Shifty? I’m not looking shifty,” he protested, still looking really shifty.

“Hmmm,” I answered. I bent down and plucked the poster out of the ashes. “So you won’t mind if I take this poster in for testing, then?”

“Testing?” Vern’s face fell. “Why would you need to take it in for testing?”

“Police things, Vern,” I replied. “Police things.”

I left him looking worried in the ruins of his leisure complex. Something was stirring in my policeman’s mind. Something that would take a visit to Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary’s glamorous forensic scientist, Tits O’Leary.

I wasn’t relishing the prospect.

* * *

“Snake, you son of a bitch!” Tits slapped me hard across the face.

We’d enjoyed a passionate, six week affair back in 2007. She’d transferred from Skegness Holiday Police Constabulary’s forensics lab and instantly fallen for my rugged, manly charms. I, in turn, had fallen for her great big tits and pert arse.

“I guess I deserved that,” I muttered.

I’d chosen to break up with her when she’d suggested I lay off the booze for one night so we could go to the cinema. After much soul-searching, I’d chosen the booze.

“You broke my heart, Snake,” Tits said.

“Save it for someone who cares, sweetcheeks,” I replied, considering landing a slap on her backside as she bent to pick up some forensic things off of the floor of the forensics lab. I thought better of it because you can’t slap women on the arse nowadays without being brought up before a bloody tribunal.

I’d learnt that lesson the hard way when Labour MP Harriet Harmon had made a visit to Mablethorpe during the run-up to the 2010 General Election.

“What do you want, Snake?” she spat back at me.

“Look,” I replied. “I know I broke your heart, Tits, but there’s no time for recriminations now. I need you to do your god damn job and test this Keith Harris poster for me.”

She took the poster from me with the same hand she’d used to fiddle about with my bollocks on a day trip to Beverley Minster.

“It looks clean to me,” she said.

“I know it looks clean,” I agreed. “But I reckon there’s something fishy about this poster and I want you to use all your forensics to find out what’s fishy about it.”

“Even though I hate your guts, Snake,” she screeched, shaking with rage, “I’ll use all the forensics at my disposal if it saves this town from financial ruin.”

I left her laboratory and climbed into the Lagonda. You may hate my guts, Tits, I thought, but I don’t care because I once shoved a whole banana up your arse during one of our ferociously dangerous sex games.

I’m the winner here, I added, in my mind.

* * *

I was back in Eric’s All Day Every Day, eating a plate of egg, chips and beans. It had been five hours since I’d left the poster with Tits.

My mobile telephone rang. It was her.

“Uh-huh?” I answered, when Tits told me her findings. “I thought as much.”

“What?” I continued, when she then went on to say something else. “Of course you can’t get AIDS off of a banana. Anyway, only poofters get AIDS, everyone knows this.”

I ended the call and poked at a chip.

“Anything wrong, Snake?” Eric asked.

I stared moodily out of the window for a minute.

“I think I’ve just caught the cannibals of Mablethorpe, Eric,” I replied.

I finished off my egg, chips and beans, drained my tea, ordered a raspberry jam tart, ate the jam tart, picked up my keys and my filofax and my signed photograph of Martin Shaw, handed Eric a ten pound note, waited for my change, got my change, left the cafe and climbed into my car.

It was time for a reckoning.

* * *

To be concluded …

The Lighthouse Family And The Riddle Of The Yorkshire Ripper

Yorkshire. 1979.

The Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror continues, bringing fear to the hearts of women across West Yorkshire (and parts of South Yorkshire). In a desperate attempt to claw back some credibility for his much-criticised West Yorkshire Constabulary, Detective Chief Superintendent George Bo’nangus calls in mid-90s easy listening pop duo, the Lighthouse Family, to ‘lift’ the case ‘from the shadows’ of the shit it’s got itself into …

* * *

“Now look here, the Lighthouse Family,” George Bo’nangus said to the Lighthouse Family. “I don’t want any of your fancy Newcastle ways down here. You’re in West Yorkshire, do you hear? We call a spade a spade down here, and we call a murdered prostitute a dead whore. You got that, the Lighthouse Family?”

The Lighthouse Family both nodded their heads.

“Right,” continued George. “Now that’s off my chest, what are your thoughts on the Ripper case?”

“I’ll take this,” said Paul Tucker, the keyboardist from off of the Lighthouse Family. “We’ve looked at the previous Ripper murders, guv, and we reckon it’s a lorry driver what’s killing these women.”

“A lorry driver, you say?” George rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. “What makes you think that?”

“If I may, chief,” said the other one from off of the Lighthouse Family with the funny name nobody can pronounce. “I’ll take this one. You’ll note in this photograph of this murdered prostitute …”

“Dead whore,” George interrupted, irritably.

“Sorry, dead whore … you’ll see that there’s a discarded flask of tea near the body.”

George squinted at the photo.

“By God, you’re right, Tunde Bayi .. Tunde Baywye … Tunde Byli … him off of the Lighthouse Family!”

“Now in this photo,” Tunde Bayamara … erm … said, “there’s a copy of Razzle next to the murdered pros …”

“DEAD WHORE!”

“… next to the dead whore’s head.”

“Add that to this picture,” said Paul Tucker, laying a third photo in front of the chief, “of a discarded enormous Red Nose from off of the front of a lorry radiator grill and you’ve got a lorry driver’s four most favouritist things – pornography, murdering whores, mugs of tea and hilarious novelty charity items.”

“Isn’t 1979 a bit early for Red Nose Day?”

“That’s not relevant to our findings,” replied the Lighthouse Family, putting their foot down.

George leaned back in his chair.

“Good work, the Lighthouse Family,” he conceded. “It looks like you’ve ‘lifted’ this investigation ‘from the shadows’. I wouldn’t be surprised if we haven’t cracked this case by the Ripper getting accidentally caught by a passing South Yorkshire traffic policeman by at least 1981.”

“Glad to be of service, chief,” replied the Lighthouse Family.

“And remember,” added the Lighthouse Family, turning to face you, the person what’s reading this. “Whenever there’s a crime you can’t solve, whenever you’re at your lowest ebb, the Lighthouse Family will be there to ‘lift’ you ‘from the shadows’ ‘all the way’ into the light of solving the crime you’re having trouble solving.”

THE END

The Cannibals Of Mablethorpe – Part Four

The story so far …

Summer season’s turned into a season of unimaginable horrors as a cabal of evil cannibals terrorises the vibrant Lincolnshire holiday town of Mablethorpe. Detective Inspector Snake Wolfbane is hot on their trail, despite being an alcoholic with crippling flashbacks to his days in the SAS. After striking terror into the hearts of the Mablethorpe holiday community with gruesome remains being found at both the Dunes Family leisure Complex and the offices of the Skegness, Ingoldmells and Mablethorpe Mercury, the cannibals have made it personal by cutting off the head of Snake’s ex-wife and leaving it in a box in the car park of the Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary HQ. With the Jim Davidson Comeback Jamboree AND the future of the Dunes’s all-you-can-eat buffet hanging by a thread, time is running out for Mablethorpe’s greatest drunken policeman.

* * *

I awoke in my armchair, as per usual. I’d had a heavy session on the booze the night before, drowning my sorrows with some cheap bottles of vermouth I’d got from the Co-Op discount bin.

“Carry on like this, Snake,” my doctor had recently advised me, “and you’ll be dead in a year.”

What the hell did he know? My father had drank like a fish and he’d lived to the ripe old age of forty eight. I had plenty of years left in me, I reckoned, and anyway, all doctors are Nazis.

I looked at my watch. Nine thirty. Shit. I was due at the station at nine to report to my boss, Dagger Harrington.

Fuck him, I thought. I needed some bacon to clear away my hangover first. And a cigar. And a moody drive around the outer Mablethorpe area in my Lagonda.

And some booze.

My doorbell rang.

“Mr. Wolfbane?”

It was my landlady, Doris.

“What do you want, Doris?” I shouted at the door.

“There’s all human bones outside your door, Mr. Wolfbane,” she shouted through the letter box.

I shot out of the chair and wrenched open the door. Doris stood before a pile of all skulls and legs and what-have-you. She didn’t look pleased.

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted.

“Now look here,” Doris said, pointing at the pile of bones. “I know you’re a policeman, Mr. Wolfbane, but this really won’t do. You can’t go leaving stuff like this outside your front door because it’s going to put my other residents off their breakfast.”

It was a hell of a breakfast: Two bacon, two sausages, two eggs, beans, grilled tomatoes, black pudding, mushrooms, a fried slice and a mug of tea, coffee or grapefruit juice all included in the price of my penthouse suite at the B&B.

“I’ve already had complaints from Mr. Gumpshee in room twelve,” she continued. “He said it brought on one of his turns. I hate to think what would happen if one of the Stimpson sisters caught sight of this mess. You know how Dolly’s had trouble with her insides since the hospital took her vagina out.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. I’d had enough of this woman’s rubbish. “You don’t think I dumped this shit out here, do you? Why the hell would I do that?”

Doris screwed up her ugly old face in thought.

“Well,” she replied, “I assumed it was evidence.”

“Evidence?” I spluttered.

“Yes, you know? From this cannibals thing that’s been all over the news …”

“It’s been on the news!” I exclaimed, running back into my room and grabbing my car keys, my mobile phone, my wallet, my filofax and my Bulgarian Drylite© grey sports jackettelle with the red power stripes running down the sleeves.

I’d bought the jacket whilst on a police exchange program with the Italians. They’d sent two of their boys over to Mablethorpe to learn holiday policing techniques, and Chips and I had spent two weeks in Rome learning how to slouch against the bonnet of a Fiat, chatting up teenagers.

A prostitute I’d had bitter, half-drunken sex with had said the jacket made me look like Lewis Collins. Nobody had ever paid me a compliment before, so I’d let her off with an £80 fixed penalty notice instead of arresting her for solicitation.

“Doris,” I shouted, hastily locking the door. “Get on to Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary HQ and report these bones. Don’t try cleaning ‘em up because it’s evidence …”

“But what about Dolly’s vagina?” she protested.

“To hell with Dolly’s vagina!” I roared, pushing her out of my way. “You think I’ve got the time to worry about some old bag’s mangled fanny when the fucking news has got hold of the cannibal case? You’re over fifty! Don’t you even care about the all-you-can-eat buffet?”

She gave me a look of puzzlement.

“Oh never mind, you stupid old bitch,” I huffed as I raced down the stairs.

* * *

This was disastrous. With the story out there, what chance did we have of saving the buffet or the Jim Davidson gig? I got my answer as I was firing up the Lagonda.

“Snake?” it was Vern Bottoms from the Dunes ringing me on my mobile.

“Talk to me, Vern,” I answered, lurching hell-for-leather from the car park of the Time-A-While B&B and out onto Garfunkel Street with my foot jammed on the accelerator.

“It’s all gone wrong, Snake,” Vern wailed. “It’s all gone wrong!”

“What’s gone wrong, Vern?”

“It’s all gone, Snake!”

“What’s all gone? Vern? Vern? You need to calm the hell down and talk to me, Vern!”

I swerved on to the parade and nearly crashed the Lagonda when I saw the huge plume of smoke in the distance.

“Oh, Jesus …”

“The Dunes, Snake!” Vern screamed. “The Dunes is on fire!”

“GOD DAMN YOU, YOU BASTARDS!” I roared, slamming my fist into the steering wheel. “YOU’VE KILLED THE ALL-YOU-CAN EAT OVER-FIFTIES BUFFET!”

“AND ANY POSSIBILITY OF MABLETHORPE HOSTING THE JIM DAVIDSON COMEBACK JAMBOREE!” I added, still shouting really loudly.

* * *

To be continued …

The Cannibals Of Mablethorpe – Part Three

The story so far …

Detective Inspector Snake Wolfbane is on the hunt for a nest of cannibals that have set up shop on his Mablethorpe manor. First they left human remains at the Dunes Family Leisure Complex – putting in jeapordy both the Jim Davidson Comeback Jamboree AND the all-you-can-eat £8.99 over-fifties buffet – and now they’ve struck again, killing several members of staff over at the Skegness, Ingoldmells and Mablethorpe Mercury. As Snake and Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary’s chief medical officer, Doctor Bones McClackers, survey the carnage, has this case become too big even for east Lincolnshire’s most maverickist, alcoholiciest cop to tackle alone? Skegness Holiday Police Constabulary’s Viper Malone certainly thinks so, the arsehole.

* * *

“God damn them all to hell, Snake,” Bones McClackers spat angrily, as he shoved some ribs and the remains of a pair of bollocks into an evidence bag. “It’s the senselessness of it all I can’t stand. I mean, it’s not like there aren’t perfectly good alternatives to human flesh.”

I sat down in a plastic chair underneath a ‘No Smoking’ sign and lit a cigar.

“What makes ‘em do it, Doc?” I asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the Doc replied, shovelling bits of tits and eyelids into a tub. “Who knows what drives a man to such depths? A bad childhood, perhaps?”

I blew smoke rings towards the ceiling and shook my head dismissively.

“Bad childhood, my arse,” I sneered. “I had a bad childhood, Doc, and it didn’t make me eat other people when I grew up.”

I narrowed my eyes as the memories came flooding back …

The rug carelessly left on the polished wooden floor; the kite I flew too close to the electricity substation; the matches I’d been careless around that led to the family losing the bungalow; the scars I still bear to this day from the Bonfire Night when I picked up that red-hot sparkler; something to do with Jimmy Savile and an appearance on Jim’ll Fix It that was never aired and that I cannot, for the life of me, recall.

“They even eat the cocks, it’s disgusting.”

“God knows what this is going to do to the summer season, Bones,” I muttered, chomping disconsolately on my cigar. I reminded myself of Hannibal from off of The A-Team, only more miserable. “It could be 1975 all over again.”

1975 was Mablethorpe’s annus horribilis. It had started off so well, with sell-out shows for both The Barron Knights and Bernard Manning. But then, during a packed Friday night performance by The Grumbleweeds at the very top of their game, disaster struck when the IRA set a bomb off in the auditorium of the Horseshoe Hideaway Theatre and Fish Restaurant. Forty patrons had been killed or seriously injured, and Maurice had to be pulled out of Robin’s arse by the fire brigade.

Following the explosion, takings had plummeted to 35% on the previous year. Nothing like that had happened since the Nazis invaded in 1940.

So that’s two annuses horribilises. It gets a bit confusing, does this.

* * *

Back at Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary HQ, I sat at my desk, looking at videos of cats falling into toilets on YouTube.

“Message for you, chief,” a young Detective Constable said, making me miss the bit where the cat falls in. I made a mental note to rewind the video and watch it later. Probably when I was half-cut on the booze, drowning my sorrows at my local. I’d no doubt go home after that and sit in a chair, listening to jazz records, cursing my ex-wife and having flashbacks to my days in the SAS (which I was in).

“Message?” I asked.

I took the note the DC passed me and scanned it with my eyes.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I shouted. “It’s from the cannibals!”

“What’s it say, chief?”

“Dear Detective Inspector Snake Wolfbane,” I read. “By now you’ll have found them bones what we left for you at the offices of the Mercury. Rest assured, Inspector, that they was very tasy people what we done ate. But they wasn’t as tasty as what we’ve done and left for you in a box round the back of the station. You’ll never catch us, you fat bastard. Yours, the cannibals.”

“Blimey!”

“I’m not fat!” I roared, furious. It’s genetic, is this stomach.

“You are a bit of a bastard, mind,” the DC replied.

“Watch it!”

* * *

In the car park behind the back of the police station sat a blood-soaked box. I inched towards it carefully, worried that it might have a bomb in it and it would go off or -worse – leak blood all over my white leatherette safari shoes.

They’d cost me £35.99 – a king’s ransom in anyone’s book.

“What do you reckon it is, Snake?” Chips, who had joined me on my way outside, asked.

“Could be anything,” I growled, pulling a biro from my pocket, inching it under the lid of the box and slowly opening it up.

Inside was the severed head of my ex-wife, Maureen.

“It’s my ex-wife!” I cried, stepping back. Chips gasped at the horror of it all.

“Those bastards!” Chips howled. He’d always been a fan of Maureen’s home baking. You could see the realisation of a life without her legendary Raspberry Half-Nelsons dawning in his eyes, the poor sod.

“Well, well, well,” I smirked.

“What is it, Snake?”

“Looks like the cannibals have made their first mistake …”

And they had. Because I fucking hated my ex-wife.

* * *

To be continued …

The Cannibals Of Mablethorpe – Part Two

The story so far …

Discovering gnawed human bones in the Banana Lounge and Grillette of the Dunes Family Leisure Complex, maverick policeman Snake Wolfbane has come to the conclusion that cannibals stalk the mean streets of Mablethorpe. With the future of the Grillette’s £8.99 all-you-can-eat beef, turkey and gammon over-fifties special in peril – and his over-fifties boss breathing down his neck – time is running out not only for Snake, but also for the success of the whole Mablethorpe summer season (and the aforementioned all-you-can-eat beef, turkey and gammon over-fifties special, obviously).

* * *

I was having a cup of tea and a jumbo sausage sandwich at Eric’s All Day Everyday on the Parade when my phone rang. I’m on a Tesco Mobile monthly contract.

“Wolfbane,” I answered, wiping brown sauce off of my chin with a napkin.

“Snake,” a familiar voice chuckled.

It was Detective Inspector Viper Malone of Skegness Holiday Police Constabulary. The man was an arsehole. He’d always been an arsehole. I’d been with him at Lincolnshire Holiday Police Training College, and he’d been a right royal arsehole back then. He was still an arsehole now, the arsehole.

“What do you want, Viper?” I asked.

“I hear you’ve been having a bit of trouble,” he smirked (probably).

“Nothing I can’t handle, Viper,” I muttered.

“Rumour has it you’ve got a cannibal problem up there.”

“So they tell me.”

“I better have a word with Troy Futters,” the bugger replied. “It’s not too late to transfer the Jim Davidson Comeback Jamboree to the Sandcastles …”

“You’ll do no such thing, Viper,” I shouted.

Troy Futters, the general manager of Skegness’s world-famous Sandcastles Bingo Fortress and Family Theatre Complex, had been itching to get his hands on the Jim Davidson Comeback Jamboree ever since the comedian announced his new tour back in June last year. It was a publicity coup for the town that he’d chosen Mablethorpe over Skegness. Takings were expected to rocket during the show’s three day run.

“Are you sure that’s wise, Snake? I don’t know what the Skegness, Ingoldmells and Mablethorpe Mercury would say if they found out the audience for the Jim Davidson Comeback Jamboree was in danger of getting all eaten off of cannibals because you bumpkins up there in the sticks can’t find your arses from your elbows.”

“You keep the papers out of this, you fucking arsehole!” I bellowed. “I’ll find these bastards, don’t you worry about that …”

“Well I’ll keep Troy’s number on speed-dial, just in case …” he laughed.

“You’ll do no such fucking thing!”

But he’d already hung up.

* * *

I was in the Lagonda smoking a cigar, listening to Chicago’s classic 1976 studio album, Chicago X. The beast thundered down the promenade at ninety six miles per hour, pedestrians leaping for the safety of the pavement. Chips came on the special police radio.

“Snake?”

“Talk to me, Chips,” I shouted over the roar of the Lagonda’s mighty V8 engine (and Chicago).

“You’re not going to like this,” Chips replied. “I’ve had a reporter from the Mercury on the phone, asking about cannibals.”

“Shit!” I smashed my fist on the Lagonda’s real leather steering wheel, spilling cigar ash all over my imported Yugoslavian Polynyrolene™ trousers. “That bastard Viper! Lock ‘em down, Chips, lock ‘em fucking down.”

“I’ll do my best, Snake,” Chips replied. “I’m not sure how successful I’ll be. You know what bloodhounds they are over at the Mercury …”

Didn’t I just. Two years ago, Mablethorpe had come under attack from a nuclear Godzilla. I’d done my best to keep the news from spreading and causing panic among the tourists, but it was hard-going with Lester ‘Scoop’ Jackson constantly sniffing around.

It also didn’t help when the nuclear Godzilla set fire to the sewage works.

“Perhaps you should have a word, Snake?” Chips said. “Use your legendary powers of persuasion?”

“Yeah,” I replied, slamming the Lagonda into fifth gear. “I’ll head over there now.”

And by ‘now’, I meant after I’d pulled the beast into Poundland’s staff car park and calmed the hell down by listening to the whole glorious three minutes and fifty eight seconds of Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now.

A man needs to have priorities.

* * *

I handbrake-turned the Lagonda into the car park of the Mercury and did some doughnuts. Parking the beast sideways across two disabled bays, I grabbed my dark beige leatherette jacket from the back seat and jumped out of the motor car.

I could hear the screams before I got to the Mercury’s front door.

Inside it was like my tour of the Falklands all over again. Flashbacks cascaded through my shattered mind: The Deuce with his guts out up on Beefburger Rise; Bernie ‘O’ crying for his mother with what remained of his arms clutched between his broken legs; a dead-eyed Argentinian boy with half a face pleading for mercy as I rammed my knife up his particulars.

There was blood everywhere in reception. Human bones littered the floor and there were innards all up the walls. The receptionist, a pretty young blonde with massive tits, was shrieking hysterically. I struck her with the flat of my hand across the face.

“Calm down, woman!” I shouted.

“Oh God, oh God!” she wailed. “They’re all gone! They’re all gone!”

“Who’s gone? What the hell’s happened here?”

She sank to her knees and began weeping uncontrollably. Absolutely no bloody use in a crisis, women.

I stepped over to the nearest pile of bones. From the shape of the skull and the nicotine stains on the teeth, I could tell it was ace reporter, Lester ‘Scoop’ Jackson. Lester’s bony head bore all the hallmarks of a frantic feeding frenzy.

“God help us,” I muttered. “The cannibals of Mablethorpe have struck again!”

I looked back at the gibbering woman. A light had gone out in her eyes. It was going to take a hell of a lot of Chicago to restore her faith in humanity.

By Christ, she had big tits.

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED …

The Cannibals Of Mablethorpe – Part One

It was the height of the summer season in Mablethorpe … and why were there human bones on the floor of the Dunes Family Leisure Complex?

My name is Detective Inspector Snake Wolfbane of the Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary. I’d had a busy morning giving tourists directions, letting pregnant women piss in my hat and telling people the time when I got a call through on my police radio.

“Snake?”

It was Sergeant Chips Monroe of the Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary. He was calling from Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary HQ.

“Yeah?” I answered with my deep, manly voice.

“Snake, it’s Chips,” said Chips. “We’ve had a call come in from Vern Bottoms over at the Dunes …”

“Let me guess,” I interrupted. “The toilet company hasn’t shown up again and there are no soap cakes in the men’s urinals. He wants me to lean on ‘em, yes?”

“I’m afraid not, Snake,” Chips said, gravely. “Vern’s found a pile of human bones on the dance floor of the Banana Lounge and Grillette.”

“Human bones? Is he sure they’re human?”

We’d recently had an infestation of feral terriers. They’d been the bane of the Mablethorpe Butchers’ Guild’s life for months until they were caught and gassed by the RSPCA. For the whole of the spring warm-up season, there wasn’t an hour went by without a Jack Russell or an Airedale running down Mablethorpe Parade with a string of sausages in its mouth, chased by a furious, pink-faced man in a red and white apron.

Cannon and Ball had cancelled their show and an angry group of disappointed pensioners had led an assault on Mablethorpe Dog’s Home in an act of bloody revenge. We were still finding hind legs and noses on the beach two months on.

“You’re thinking the dogs are back?”

“That’s my thinking, Chips,” I replied. “If they’ve got in the bins behind Barrington’s, they could have easily dragged bones into the Banana Lounge and Grillette.”

“I’m afraid not. Vern says there’s skulls, Snake,” Chips said. “Human skulls.”

“I’M ON IT!” I roared, jumping in the Lagonda, firing the beast up and tearing hell-for-leather at a hundred miles per hour along the Promenade towards the Dunes.

* * *

“I can’t have another scandal, Snake,” Vern told me as he led me through the Spinners Gaming Area towards the Banana Lounge and Grillette. “Since Jimmy Cricket flipped out and took the Carradoes and Henry the Dog hostage, takings have been down twenty percent. Punters are scared, Snake, they’re damn scared.”

Jimmy Cricket was now locked away safely in a mental asylum.

“Well let’s just hope you’re wrong about these bones, Vern,” I said.

He wasn’t wrong.

On the dance floor of the Banana Lounge and Grillette were the remains of two adult humans. Bloody lumps of flesh still clung to the bones. I knelt down, put on my special police gloves and picked up a femur.

“Are these … teeth marks?”

“Good God!” Vern staggered back, clutching at his chest. He’d already had thirty seven heart attacks because he drank like a chimney. “You don’t mean …?”

“Cannibals,” I muttered. “We’ve got cannibals in Mablethorpe.”

“Shit!”

* * *

“Cannibals?” cried Dagger Harrington, my Chief Superintendent, when I informed him of my discovery. “Here, in Mablethorpe?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” I replied, gravely.

“Dear Christ, Wolfbane! What the hell are cannibals doing here? This isn’t Skegness!”

“I wish it wasn’t true, sir, but I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. Bones McClackers has been down to have a look and he confirms the remains are cannibalised human bones.”

Bones McClackers was Mablethorpe Holiday Police Constabulary’s chief medical examiner.

“Damn it,” Harrington muttered. “And in the Banana Lounge and Grillette, no less. Christ, Snake, it’s not even been a year since Jimmy Cricket went mad and kidnapped The Carradoes and Henry the Dog. This could kill the Dunes Family Leisure Complex stone-dead. Overall income for the town could fall by twelve and a half percent over the summer fiscal quarter.”

“I know, sir,” I replied. “And what’s worse is Chas from Chas ‘n’ Dave was due to play there tonight. He’s a guaranteed money-spinner for the Lounge and now Vern’s had to cancel. He reckons this could be the final nail in the Grillette Family Evening Carvery Buffet coffin.”

“What? You mean …?”

“I’m afraid so, sir,” I glowered. “Unless we can clear up this cannibalism problem quickly, you can wave goodbye to the £8.99 all-you-can-eat beef, turkey and gammon over-fifties special.”

“FIND ME THOSE DAMN CANNIBALS, WOLFBANE!” the Chief Superintendent bellowed.

He was over fifty, so this was personal.

* * *

TO BE CONTINUED …

Speedway 7000 – Starring Barry Sheene

“Hello there! I’m Barry Sheene from off of the 1970s. In the year 7000, scientists will reanimate my corpse and make me compete in dangerous speed races, even though I don’t want to. But, as you shall soon see, messing with forces they don’t understand to fulfill their dreams of speedway glory will quickly turn murderously sour …”

* * *

“Jesus Christ!” shouted Barry Sheene, as he surveyed the futuristic speedway track. “That’s a steep circuit, Colin. How the hell am I going to get my speed racing machine up that slope?”

“Don’t ask me, Barry Sheene,” replied Colin. “You’re the reanimated corpse who’ll be speed racing, not me.”

It was then that Barry Sheene plunged his razor-sharp fist into Colin’s belly and started pulling out the young mechanic’s innards.

“Aaaaagh,” cried Colin. “My innards, Barry Sheene! Why are you pulling out my innards?”

“I’ve got no bloody idea!” shouted Barry Sheene, still pulling out Colin’s innards. “It’s like I’m possessed or something. Is it possible that the reanimation process awoke an urge to murder deep within my Barry Sheene mind? What do you think, Colin?”

But Colin didn’t answer because Barry Sheene had pulled all his guts out.

* * *

“This won’t do, Barry Sheene,” shouted Gordon McNuggets, the chief scientist in charge of Team Sheene. “Colin was our best mechanic. You can’t go pulling out our best mechanic’s innards on the eve of the most important speed race of the speed racing season.”

“I don’t know what came over me, chief,” replied Barry Sheene.

“You better get your arse in gear, Sheene,” replied Gordon. “This is a blue sky company. We think outside of the box here, do you see? You pulling out Colin’s innards is a problem and I don’t want problems. I want solutions. And if you don’t like it, Barry Sheene, you can piss off because it’s my way or the highway.”

“Now look here,” Barry Sheene cried. “I didn’t ask to be brought back from the dead and made to take part in dangerous, futuristic speed races! I was happy being not alive any more back in the 20th Century when I died originally from complications arising from bollock surgery (note to self – check Wikipedia about this). It’s YOU, Gordon McNuggets, wot’s made me … oh God! It’s happening again.

“What’s happening again?”

“I’m going to murder you and I don’t know why!”

And with that, Barry Sheene leapt over the table and pulled Gordon’s face inside out.

“My face! My face! How am I supposed to head the best speed racing team in the world when my face is inside out, eh?”

“You’ll not be heading anything,” roared Barry Sheene, pulling Gordon’s balls off and beating the scientist to death with ‘em.

* * *

“Right, lads,” said Clive Cheeseburger, Team Sheene’s head coach. “Barry’s gone and pulled out Colin’s innards and beaten Gordon to death with his own balls. We can’t let this play on our minds on this, the eve of the most important speed race of the 7000 season. Barry?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Don’t kill anyone else until the race is over, you got that?”

But it was already too late. Within seconds, Barry was on the hapless head coach, weeing in his eyes.

“What the bloody hell’s this all about?” shouted Clive, wiping wee out of his eyes.

“I can’t help it, boss. Something in the reanimation process has turned me into a murderer! What’s wrong with me?”

But Clive didn’t answer because, as Barry was saying that last bit, he was also tearing off Clive’s moobs and suffocating him with his own moobs.

* * *

“I want answers, damn you!” bellowed Barry Sheene at Bernard O’Potatoes, the scientist responsible for reanimating him.

“I’m sorry, Barry Sheene, but when we was reanimating you, there was a fair amount of you what had rotted away and dropped off. We had to rebuild over half of you with the remains of notorious West Country serial killer, Fred West.”

“You maniacs! Don’t you realise that Fred West was the most murderous man who ever lived?”

“No he wasn’t, that was Harold Shipman!”

“I’d forgotten about him! Anyway, you don’t understand the implications of your meddling! Fred West’s bits and pieces are making me kill everyone. What the hell am I going to do?”

“Well,” replied Bernard O’Potatoes, “considering how the rest of this story’s panned out, I imagine you’ll be murdering me next.”

“You guessed correctly!” Barry Sheene roared in a West County accent. “Oh God! Oi’m bloody taaaalkin’ loike ‘im now!”

And with that, Barry Sheene killed everyone else in the world.

* * *

“So that’s my story. Thanks to science’s never-ending quest to bugger about with everything, everybody in the world of the year 7000 is dead. There’s just me and Fred West now, here on our own because they didn’t realise, when reanimating the corpse of Barry Sheene, that they would get more than they bargained for (because they stuck bits of Fred West in me).”

The Haunted Pair Of Big Tits

Orphilia Wellesley was the happiest girl in the boarding school because her father had bought her a huge pair of tits for Christmas.

“I’m not having you walking around that school of yours without great big tits,” he had told her as she excitedly unwrapped the tits on Christmas Day. “So I bought these enormous knockers for you from a mysterious Chinese merchant who appeared in a cloud of smoke as I was heading up The Strand.”

“Oh, father!” Orphilla gushed. “I’m so awfully, awfully happy now you’ve got me these gigantic tits for Christmas. Emily Forbes-Sausage will be so jealous!”

And jealous she was when Orphillia rolled up at Knottington Priory School For Very Rich Young Ladies with her huge new boobies.

“You beastly squirt!” Emily Forbes-Sausage shouted. “I had the biggest pair of tits in the school and now you have! This is so unfair!”

“Ha ha!” Orphillia laughed, plumping up her massive udders.

But that night Orphillia wasn’t laughing when her tits – which were posessed by the ancient Chinese god of Merciless Anger – tore themselves off of the girl’s torso, strangled her, ripped her head off and shit tit turds down her neck.

“The molal of this stollee,” said the mysterious Chinese merchant who had sold her father the tits, “is far too compricated to get into at the moment.”

The One Hundred Year Old Fart

I approached the withdrawing room cautiously. Suddenly, I felt McManure’s hand on my shoulder.

“Dinnae go in there, sir! Dinnae dae it!” he cried. “There’s a fart in that room that’s been aroond for a hundred years! Dinnae dae it to y’self, sir!”

“Nonsense!” I laughed. “I am a man of science, sir! This old wives’ tale of yours is poppycock spouted from the mouth of a blabbering bumpkin! There’s no such thing as a fart that lingers in a room for a hundred years … as I shall soon prove!“

He moved to block my way.

“Dinnae dae it, sir! The fart’s noo a legend, d’ye ken? It’s real, sir! As real as you or I!”

“Get out of my way!” I thundered. “Your pudding-headed Scotch nonsense holds no sway with me, d’ye hear? This is 1880, not 1480! Remove yourself from the doorway this instant!”

Reluctantly, McManure moved out of my way.

“Dinnae say I didnae warn ye, sir,” he muttered.

“Pah!” I scoffed, turning the handle and stepping into the parlour.

“Dear God!” I exclaimed. “It fucking STINKS in here!”