Pure Dead Trouble Read online

  “The wet clothes, laid out flat, drying in the sun. Yes. I saw them as well.” Titus felt waves of relief wash over him, and he watched her turn back to examine the map again. Checking for what he knew was there.

  “Her clothes,” Pandora whispered. “The ones she always wore …” She corrected herself, “The ones she always wears …that means she's not…”

  “She's not dead, Pandora. I don't know where she is, but somehow I'm sure she's safe.” And, hugely comforted by this knowledge, he thought, I'm sure she wanted us to know that.

  On the island, the little driftwood fire glowed, frozen in time by the mapmaker's hand. Painted in reds and pinks, the flames were the color of hope, burning away doubt and banishing grief back into the shadows. Neatly folded and laid over a rock, Mrs. McLachlan's tweed skirt, cream-colored blouse, and assorted undergarments were a guarantee of her presence somewhere nearby.

  It was as clear a message as Titus and Pandora could wish for, and for the time being it would have to do.

  Gliossary

  ANENOME, AN ENEMY, AN ENEMAAARGH: The correct medical term is an “enema,” as in “I'm going to give you an enema, so just lie down, roll over onto your side, and relax. …”

  This somewhat medieval procedure involves a pair of disposable gloves; a small rubber bag filled with warm, soapy water; a long, flexible rubber hose; as little eye contact as is humanly possible; and a mad dash to the toilet by way of an ending. For more details, look in a medical dictionary under “anal irrigation,” but please, not immediately after dinner.

  ANTI-SOCIAL HOURS: In the West of Scotland, these are usually times of day when it is possible to enter a public house (tavern) and purchase alcohol. Having to work during such sociable (social) hours is considered to be a cruel and unusual punishment (hence, “anti-social”). In this case, the use of the phrase “anti-social hours” refers to the fact that the taxi bearing the Strega-Borgias back to StregaSchloss has been hired at a time when most taxi drivers are tucked up in bed, sleeping off the effects of excessive hours of extreme sociability verging on drunken hug-fests.

  CHEESE AND PICKLE TOASTIE: “Phwoarrr,” as Titus might have said. This is one of the staple foods in Scottish households where teenage boys are in residence. It consists of two or more slices of bread (preferably nasty synthetic white bread-fluff) toasted on one side only. Toasted sides are buttered and sandwiched facing each other across slabs of sharp cheddar cheese and dollops of brown and sticky pickle, also known as relish. For those of you who have never tasted pickle, Titus would like to extend his deepest condolences, but his mouth is too full of C&PT to speak right now. I'll continue on his behalf. Take the half-toasted sandwich with its cheesy, pickly filling and either toast it again (the outside, if you've done this correctly, should be untoasted bread) or fry it on both sides in olive oil in a frying pan. The idea is to make the cheese melt into orange goo, which will meld with the brown goo of the pickle and, if you're very lucky, run through your fingers, down your arms, and across your kitchen floor, whereupon your parents will take your precious copy of this book and feed it to the garbage disposal.

  COIRE: Not for the faint-hearted, this refers to an almost circular cleft or hollow in the side of a hill. Climbing a coire can vary in what mountaineers call “the degree of technical difficulty,” as if falling to one's death down a rock face were a mere technicality. Scaling the walls of a coire can involve a good walk (turn the walker into a breathlessly pink and sweaty blob of cardiovascular virtue) or a stiff scramble (vertical ascent complete with Sherpas, ropes, and oxygen. Also can be spelled “choire,” “corrie,” “coomb,” “coombe,” and “come.” Pronounced “caw-ray.”

  DOSH: As in “wads of dosh.” “Dosh” is Scottish slang for money and rhymes with “gosh.” This is no coincidence, since it's a rare thing to find any dosh whatsoever in one's pockets, especially when one is a teenager, a taxi driver, or, regrettably, a Luciano. “Gosh, I have no dosh whatsoever. Do you take American Express?”

  FLY-TIP:“On the fly” means “secretly,” and “tip” means “dump,” therefore, “fly-tip” means “to dump something secretly.” This “something” is usually an item that you desperately need to get rid of but would rather not be observed doing so. To our nation's shame, fly-tipping under cover of darkness is a well-known West coast of Scotland pastime. The results can be viewed at some of our most isolated beauty spots, where rusting caravans, old upholstered chairs with springs bursting out of the seats, and ominously wet and overloaded plastic bags are among the treasures to be discovered.

  GREETIN': Not a “hail fellow, well met” but more of a “bwahhhhh.” Greetin' is the sound Scottish babies make when they cry (greet).

  HACKED OFF:Slightly peeved, verging on the deeply displeased, and in this case, heading in the general direction of violently aggrieved.

  HING OAN, SON:Roughly translates as “Hold on, my son.”

  IT'S BRINGING ME OUT IN SPOTS: I am acquiring an unsightly rash of pimples on my otherwise perfect complexion. Possibly due to the overapplication of one of the many moisturizers strewn across my dressing table, or perhaps caused by the hormonal swings occasioned by being pregnant, or, who knows, it might have been entirely due to something I ate.

  JIS' LIKE A CRYIN' WEAN: Exactly in the manner of a weeping child. “Wean” is a contraction of “wee 'un” and is pronounced way'n.

  KEECH YOUR BREEKS: Offload a large quantity of feces in one's underwear—due to either being in a state of extreme terror or having something awfully wrong with one's digestion (q.v. NAE IDEA WHIT'S GONE WRANG WI' MA BOWELS).

  KEN: As in “I dinnae wat to throw up, ken?” This doesn't mean, “I don't wish to vomit, Kenneth,” but instead means, “I don't wish to vomit, you know?” “To ken something” is to understand it. Now that you ken what I'm on about, let's press on, shall we?

  LAY-BY: Scottish motorists' name for a rest area off of a main highway. Lay-bys are used for a variety of purposes: for parking to facilitate map reading, for parking to allow the toddlers in one's vehicle to make a brief alfresco bathroom stop, for parking to allow the driver to have a restorative nap, for parking to indulge in face-to-face contact as demonstrated by Ffup and the Sleeper, and finally, for parking to pour gasoline over one's vehicle and set it alight.

  NAE IDEA WHIT'S GONE WRANG WI' MA BOWELS: I'm aghast at what has just erupted from my bottom and would like to take this opportunity to pretend that I had nothing to do with it.

  NORTON: British manufacturer of seriously powerful motorcycles. Many years ago, this author was trapped beneath a Norton, due to being asked to hold it upright while its owner dashed inside to take a telephone call. Twenty seconds after being handed this metal monster, I found myself toppling sideways with all of its oily, metallic heaviness crashing down on top of me. Thank you for your concern—yes, the scars are healing nicely.

  NUMPTY: An idiot, as opposed to a Humpty, which, as you well know, was an egg.

  PILLION: The dangerous backseat on a motorcycle. Clinging behind the maniacal motorcyclist who is deluded enough to believe that he's in control of ten tons of oily metal speeding along at 100 mph is the poor pillion rider, the passive passenger on the rear. Just say no. Or, as they say in the West of Scotland, “Oan yer bike, Jimmy. Ah'm no goin' on yon thing wi' youse.”

  PLASTIQUE:One of the many pet names for plastic explosives, although why one would wish to give a pet name to something with such a capacity to maim and destroy is quite beyond the scope of this gliossary.

  PLONKER:Second cousin of the fabled numpty, a plonker is similarly challenged intelligence-wise.

  PORKIES:Lies, damned lies. This oddity has been imported from London's Cockney rhyming slang and is arrived at thus: pork pies = lies. I haven't a scooby how the linguistic labyrinth of Cockney rhyming slang ever made it into the language of the West of Scotland, but it isn't the only occurrence. (q.v. “I haven't a scooby,” meaning “I have no idea.” This comes from the TV series Scooby-Doo, and is arrived a
t thus: Scooby-Doo = clue.)

  PUFFED:Out of breath. “Puffless” would be more accurate but requires more breath to pronounce. “Phew. Gasp. I'm too puffed to say ‘puffless.'”

  RHYTHMIC PRESSURE AROUND WITH MY SEVENTH CHAKRA: An obscure way to describe rubbing the top of one's head.

  SLITTERED: Dribbled in a messy fashion, usually out of one's mouth, down one's chin, onto one's T-shirt, and then onto one's lap (q.v. CHEESE AND PICKLE TOASTIE).

  STONKING BASS RIFF:A deep and danceable bass rhythm that gets even the wrinkliest of geriatrics up on their tottery feet, stomping and swaying to the beat in a fashion guaranteed to embarrass anyone under sixteen.

  SUPPER'S IN THE SUCCUBUS: Usually a Hadean precursor to “And I'm filing for divorce tomorrow, you heartless devil.”

  TARTAN TAT TOURIST SHOPS:On behalf of these horrors, I do apologize. These are emporiums where the innocent tourist is encouraged to spend vast sums of money (q.v. (wads of) DOSH) on a variety of hideous tartan merchandise (tat), most of which has been manufactured not in Scotland but in the Philippines. Just say no. Or, as they say in the West of Scotland, “Oan yer bike, Jimmy. Ah'm no wantin' any o' that rubbish, ken?”

  THROW A SYNCHRONIZED WOBBLY:Simultaneous group eruption of a hissy fit.

  TUGS:Not little boats, but little tangles usually found in children's hair or animals' shaggy coats.

  WET AFFAIRS:The department of Hades that deals with anything involving decapitation, defenestration, evisceration, immolation, amputation, and assorted tortures too excruciating to mention.

  Don't miss the next adventure of the Strega-Borgia clan in

  Pure Dead BATTY

  Excerpt from Pure Dead Batty

  Copyright © 2006 by Debi Gliori Published by Alfred A. Knopf,

  an imprint of Random House Children's Books

  Memento Mori

  t four o'clock on the afternoon of the first of October, police cars drew up at each of the three main gates to the StregaSchloss estate and effectively cordoned off the area.

  As a further precaution, a launch sped up Lochnagargoyle, cut its engines, and dropped anchor just out of sight of the StregaSchloss jetty. Radios crackled, then fell silent as moments ticked by, marked by the rain drumming on the roofs of the police cars and turning their windshields opaque.

  Inside the cars the policemen waited for the rain to stop, enviously imagining what it would be like to have so much money that you could afford to live in a huge house like StregaSchloss.

  “How many did you say,

  Detective Sergeant?”

  “Fifty-six chimneys, sir.”

  There StregaSchloss lay, its turrets and chimneys thrust aggressively into the sky; a vast, unattainable, immeasurably expensive chunk of real estate bigger than all the policemen's houses put together.

  “Surely that rust bucket can't be their only car, Detective Sergeant?”

  “'Fraid so, sir—apart from the butler's wee Japanese jobbie.”

  Outside StregaSchloss, parked on the rose-quartz drive, was the Strega-Borgia family car, badly in need of a wash and bearing a scrawl to this effect on its rear window. With a pair of high-powered binoculars the DCI could just about decipher the message:

  In Titus's opinion a wash was not enough. He'd written this considered criticism on the car's rear window months ago, but it had failed to bring results: the car still hadn't been washed, and a season spent hauling Titus and his sister Pandora back and forth along a rutted muddy track hadn't improved the car's general state of decrepitude. Nor had his little sister Damp's habit of littering all the car's internal horizontal surfaces with a combination of peanut butter, glitter, and a selection of the dried-up furry bits from the insides of several disemboweled felt pens. No, Titus thought, a grin appearing on his face, a wash was not what their car required. It needed some kind soul to disengage the hand brake, put the gears in neutral, and push the car straight into the moat, where, with luck, it would vanish from sight into the deep mud at the bottom—the same forgiving mud that had swallowed so many unwanted things over the years.

  Then they could buy a decent car. Something fast. Something sleek and powerful. Something—Titus's smile faded—something highly unsuitable for a family of two adults and three children, plus another one due to appear round about Christmas. By which time the parents would either tie Titus and Pandora to the roof rack to make room for the new baby or go and buy something truly hideous with buslike rows of industrial seating, the motor equivalent of an elastic band under the hood, and a name that would make Titus cringe every time the parents referred to it. Like, er: “Go and get my bag out of the Nipply, would you, darling ”; or, “I think I'd better get gas for the Sopha while I'm in town”; or even, shudder, shudder, “Yeah, but it's not as big as our Urse TDi.”

  Still, Titus decided, anything, even an Urse TDi, had to be better than having to walk to Auchenlochtermuchty. He hardly noticed when several wet figures ran across the rose quartz and applied themselves to the front doorbell with great urgency. Had he not been quite so preoccupied, Titus might have spotted that two of the scurrying figures were dressed in identical damp black serge with checkerboard detail round the epaulettes: the uniform of the Argyll and Bute Police.

  Meanwhile, in his bedroom in the attic, the StregaSchloss butler, Latch, was not enjoying an afternoon nap. He'd spent the hours since lunchtime trying to evict a bat. In vain had he opened skylights and made shooing noises; unsurprisingly, given the rain outside, the bat was having none of it. Latch had no desire to harm the little creature, but he most emphatically didn't want to share the same room. After several abortive attempts to flap it out of the window using a pillowcase as propellant, Latch had given up and was now sitting on his bed, trying to reason with the intruder. The bat hung upside down from the lampshade and ignored him.

  “Look,” Latch said, “it's dead simple. This is my cave, not yours. The only person I want to share it with lies fathoms deep at the bottom of Lochnagargoyle, and frankly you, pal, are no substitute. Though undoubtedly heaven-sent, the love of my life had no visible wings and definitely wasn't covered in black fur.”

  The bat blinked and extended one leathery wing. “Please,” Latch said, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes, “leave me alone. Go and do your bat-thing somewhere else. You remind me of death—as if I needed reminding.” He closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the spartan bed-room; a room that bore no evidence of anything other than solitary bachelorhood and utter loneliness. There were no photographs, no letters, nothing to show for the love he'd found and lost. Even his memory of her was dimming as the days without her ticked by; days he spent scanning the loch shore, willing the water to return her to him, his mermaid, his selkie, his loved and lost Flora.

  The bat extended both wings and cleared his throat with a discreet cough. “I hate to intrude on your grieving, sir,” he whispered. “Forgive me for interrupting. I'm not looking for you, actually. Any chance you could point me toward the witch?”

  He waited, refolding his wings like organic origami, his pale eyes blinking in the fading light.

  “The witch ?” Latch's voice emerged as a strangled squeak. “The real witch,” the bat insisted. “Not the big one, nor the medium one, but the little one—oh, whatsername: Wet? Clammy? Moist?”

  “Damp,” Latch said. “Down eight flights of stairs, hang a left, and third door on the right along the corridor.”

  “Damp,” the bat said in an awed voice. “D-aaaaammmmmmp.”

  “Indeed,” said Latch, his tone indicating that his patience was running out alongside the bat's welcome. To further this impression he opened the door leading onto the attic corridor, and stepped back to allow the uninvited guest to make his exit unimpeded.

  “I'm much obliged,” the bat squeaked, unfolding one wing after the other and giving both a good shake. “Really sorry about your sad loss.”

  “Quite,” muttered Latch. He turned aside and crossed the room to stand gazing sightlessly out the wind
ow; as clear a signal as one could wish for that the conversation, such as it was, had come to an end. When his swimming eyes were able to focus once more, he realized that the distant white blob parked across the north gate to StregaSchloss was a police car, but by then it was too late.

  The table in the StregaSchloss kitchen was heavily dusted with flour along its entire length, as were the motley assortment of kitchen chairs, the shelves and crockery on the cupboard, the hotplates of the range, the flagstone floor, and every horizontal surface within a five-meter range of where Ffup the teenage dragon was holding a one-sided conversation with something deeply unpleasant in the bottom of a mixing bowl.

  “Come on,” she begged. “Upsa-daisy—arise arise—allez oopla—hey ho and up she rises.” The dragon closed her eyes, held her breath for a count of ten, and then peered hopefully into the bowl where, to her disgust, her dietapproved no-carbohydrate bread dough still lay irretrievably lumpen, stubbornly inert, and flatly unrisen.

  “Rrrrright,” she muttered. “Time for desperate measures.

  I'm desperate and you're not measuring up to your picture in my recipe book. Don't say I didn't warn you.”

  Brushing flour from his leathery hide and pulling a hideous face behind his fellow beast's back, Sab the griffin dropped his newspaper onto the table and sighed pointedly. “What are you on about, woman? I can't think loud enough to drown out your insane mumblings. Tell me, why are you talking to a mixing bowl?”