Mad Cows Read Free

Records
.’
    Mamma Joy added a two-fingered salute to her operatic range of gesture.
    â€˜You are banned, however, from the store,’ the Harrods official added, in a final face-saving flurry. ‘Both of you.’
    That might have been the end of it, if the store detective who was repacking Maddy’s possessions had not come across the money pouch. It was nestled – a brown, furry marsupial – in the seat of the baby papoose. As he extracted it from its warm little burrow, Mamma Joy pushed to her feet.
    â€˜Lord have mercy! It’s a fit-up.’ Her huge body was not just vibrating with rage, it was avalanching flesh. The men drew back. The ferocity of her movements dislodged a sack secured beneath her skirt. Before she could scrabble it back into position, the cotton bag slipped to the floor, spilling its cargo of contraband across the carpet. Mamma Joy exploded into a furious, take-no-prisoners patois.
    The doorman gloated. She tweaked his underwear and realigned his epaulettes. ‘I think it’s time, gentlemen, to get in the Old Bill.’
    The baby’s contented little pink face snuffled and truffled at its mother’s breast, unaware that life had just handed them a one-way ticket: Destination – deep doo-doo.
    For Maddy, it was a case of ‘fasten your sanitary belt . . . we’re in for a bumpy ride’.

2
    Mr Wobbly Hides His Helmet
    â€˜SO, OFFICER . . .’ THE clapped-out desk sergeant looked up from his notes and addressed the young constable who had brought Maddy in for questioning. ‘What led you to the belief that the defendant might be an illegal alien?’
    â€˜She doesn’t pronunciate her words properly.’
    Maddy snorted with laughter. Jack smiled, probably with wind, but Maddy liked to think he saw the joke.
    â€˜Do you realize,’ the sergeant monotoned, ‘that the discovery of stolen merchandise found on your person is the causation of your appearance here at the police station?’
    â€˜I always dress this way.’ Maddy resolutely refused to take this situation seriously.
    â€˜Do you realize that failure to input into the present interface may give impetus to a detention scenario? What do you think about that?’
    â€˜I think you should arrest that sentence and have it sent down for life.’
    The sergeant rubbed a toilworn brow. ‘Let’s start again, shall we? Name?’
    Maddy stared into her cold Styrofoam cup of coffee. The Chelsea police station had the tiled ambience of a urinal.
    â€˜Occupation?’
    â€˜Mother.’
    â€˜Working mother?’
    Now there was a redundant phrase. ‘No. As in Theresa . . . Look, can I go home now?’
    â€˜Home address?’
    Right now, Siberia was looking like a more attractive residential abode.
    â€˜Sorry, I can’t say.’
    It wasn’t that she particularly wanted to mountaineer up this poor man’s nostrils, but Maddy couldn’t possibly reveal the location of Gillian’s flat. Gillian Cassells had been in more banks than Ned Kelly and, like him, proven faster on the draw than the deposit. Her Versace tastes somewhat hindered by the Lloyd’s debacle – a strange phenomenon, Maddy thought, to go broke saving money – it was credit-card fraud for which she was actually wanted, but Maddy felt confident her best friend had notched up a few other misdemeanours
en route
.
    Maddy’s mute performance soon entitled her to an interview room. She sat at the desk, concentrating on a cigarette butt embedded in a half-eaten kebab on the carpet at her feet. Each knock on the door heralded the appearance of bigger and bigger policemen. It reminded her of those Russian dolls you stack inside each other. The biggest of all sat opposite her, a dirigible of cigarette smoke hovering over his head. Clad in a dark suit of the sort you wear when somebody’s died, with sweat patches in the armpits of his shirt, and a