The Greatest Lie Ever Told – chapter 9

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by TomMckinney on January 27, 2012 · 2 comments

in Birding Western Palearctic

The Greatest Lie Ever Told

by Morton Cubberd

Chapter 9

Thick red fluid ran along the cracks in the ancient oak floorboards forming deep puddles, deep enough to see your reflection before the puddles dried. Shards of bone, sinew, flesh and bullet holes peppered the walls, spitting specks of deep crimson over centuries of priceless paintings. The parlour of Bramblebay Castle was now an abattoir.

Detective Inspector Timmy Keen, only twenty-three years old, lay dead on the floor having saved the life of his superior Paddy Rogue, his matted intestines spilling out of his split guts like disheartened pillow cases. On the other side of the parlour was another corpse, that of the super-fucking-cool bodyguard – who looked like a CIA agent and whom the author still can’t be bothered to think up a stupid name for – his body riddled with thousands of bullets having been massacred by the Heckler & Koch sub-machine gun fired by Detective Inspector Paddy Rogue. The latter lay unconscious in a crumpled heap by Timmy Keen having been shot with Erwin McAubrey’s tranquiliser gun. By the enormous granite fireplace the butler Huggins remained tied to a chair, soaked in his own blood, his left knee missing having been shot off during his hours of harrowing torture.

Amongst the blood and piss and shit and bones and horror and terror and chaos, three remained standing – the eccentric aristocratic owner of the castle Sir Wilkins Bramblebay, his evil brother Erwin McAubrey the new head of the Bristow Chapter, and Erwin’s estranged daughter the profoundly gifted Detective Inspector Liz McAubrey.

“Daddy?” Sir Wilkins asked his brother in shock. “Erwin, what in blinkin’ flips name is this filly talking about? What what.”

“Wilkins, this is your niece, Lizzie McAubrey,” Erwin explained to his brother.

“My name’s Liz,” McAubrey said solemnly, looking down at trickles of blood running around her feet. “Nobody calls me Lizzie anymore.”

“Well I never,” Sir Wilkins said, adjusting his top hat and placing a monocle in his eye, “my niece, eh. What what. This is certainly cause for celebration. I’ll go and fetch a nice little bottle of 1811 Chateau d’Yquem.”

“You’re not fucking going anywhere,” Liz shouted, raising her loaded Walther PPK.

“Now don’t be stupid, Lizzie,” her father Erwin said, raising his own Smith & Wesson MP40, “if you shoot him then do not think for one second that I won’t shoot you dead. Throw your super-fucking-cool gun on the floor.” Anyone reading this at home – remember, contrary what pussy vegan lefty pacifists might tell you, guns, shooting and killing IS big and clever, and it’s really fucking cool as well, especially when you say ‘brap-brap’ and hold your hand in the air like you’re preparing to execute someone.

“You really could kill your own daughter?” Liz asked.

“Piece of piss. I never really liked you anyway.”

“Cripes!” Wilkins said. “Why this is a rum old business and no mistake, what what.”

Liz lowered her gun and then threw it to the floor.

“Good girl. Now sit down,” Erwin ordered, following her with his gun as she walked to one of the only Louis XV bergeres chairs that didn’t have someone’s blood all over it. Erwin never even blinked as he traced her movement, knowing how extraordinarily gifted his daughter was, and that she might pounce on him with profound speed at any moment.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Liz said, scratching her confused head that was still held together by sellotape, and echoing the sentiments of probably everyone who has been reading this story, “how can you be the head of the Bristow Chapter? I thought that the Bristow Chapter was a hegemonic bloodline that went back to the taxidermist George Bristow?”

“Hegemonic? That’s a pretty impressive word,” Erwin said.

“I know,” Liz answered, “apparently the prick who’s writing this story has dug his thesaurus out.”

“Well I hope he doesn’t use any more clever words. After all, the average person reading this story is pretty fucking thick.”

Liz sighed. “I think we’re pissing about a bit too much here. We’re breaking the fourth wall and that’s neither big nor clever. Let’s crack on with the story before Colin slits his wrists in frustration.”

“Where were we? Oh yes, how I came to be the head of the Bristow Chapter. Well, you see, Lizzie, your real name isn’t McAubrey. Neither is mine. And your uncle here isn’t really Sir Wilkins Bramblebay. Oh no. Our names were all changed a long time ago, in fact we haven’t used the real family name since the days of great-grandfather George. No no, Lizzie. Your real name surname is Bristow.”

“What?” Liz asked in shock, tears of profound sadness streaming down her extraordinarily gifted cheeks.

“Search your feelings. You know it to be true. You’re a Bristow, Lizzie, and ornithological fibbing and bird-related skullduggery is in your blood. You were supposed to be next in line to the throne, but you just had to be so profoundly moral in that gifted way of yours. I realised even before you went to school that you’d never be cut out for all this killing and murdering and blood and lying about rarities and all that bollocks. But I never could have imagined that you’d end up in the CID as a hot-shot rookie tipped for the top, providing you don’t get too goddam involved like your new mentor Paddy Rogue did all those years ago.”

“I still don’t understand,” Liz wept, “what about all the holidays abroad on your world birding trips? What about that Gunnar Engblom guide in Peru you kept hiring? What about all the twitching up and down Britain with those slightly unhinged blokes you used to hang around with? You know, that guy with the yellow T-shirt and the other one who everyone called ‘The Grubby Badger’? You’re an obsessive birder, so how can you be involved in all of this ornithological fibbery?”

“It’s all a charade, Lizzie. I hate birders, especially British birders. Vermin and scum, the lot of them. Some of them actually bring me out in a rash. But I had to become part of their tribe, all of us Bristows have infiltrated birding scenes all over the world, to find out what’s current in birding, to think in fucking pathetic ways just like them. Whenever Birding World publishes one of their papers about new forms of birds with made-up names you’ve never heard of before, we import them and plant them for deluded rarity finders to go out and discover. Sometimes we just have a bit of fun and bring in Empidonax flycatchers that have been specially bred not to utter a single call and thus piss off the entire British birding scene. And you simply can’t imagine what kind of fun we have with all this made-up bollocks about Thayer’s and Kumlien’s Gulls. You’d be amazed what we get away with – one time we just painted a Pied Flycatcher orange, gave it a fake name, stuck it on the Humber Estuary and told everyone that there was a Mugimaki Flycatcher. Ha! There’s no such fucking bird! In fact, these twitchers are so stupid that they’ve never even worked out that mug-ima ki is Cantonese for ‘suck my balls’. Ha ha ha!”

“You’re evil,” Liz said, regaining her profound sense of courage, “how can you do all of this? How do you sleep at night?”

“Oh Lizzie! Little naive Lizzie Bristow. Did you not read Chapter 4? It was all explained there.”

“No, I mean all the killing and murdering. I couldn’t give a shit about the ornithological fraud nonsense.”

“Oh. Well killing and murdering is actually quite good fun, Lizzie. You know, perhaps it’s not too late for you to join us. I saw how eager you were to shoot your uncle Wilkins. Go on, fetch your gun and kill him.”

“What the crikey flip are you saying, Erwin?” Wilkins asked in shock.

“Go on, Lizzie, kill your uncle Wilkins. Feel the hatred inside. Join me, and together we will rule the bird fraud galaxy as father and daughter.”

Liz dropped her head into her cupped hands, salty tears spilling between her fingers.

“Good, Lizzie, good. Let the hatred and anger well inside. Go on, kill your uncle Wilkins. He’s a crap character anyway. Nobody will miss him.”

“Oh come on now, Erwin dear boy! Don’t tell the filly to shoot old Wilky here, what what.”

“Kill him, Lizzie. Kill him!”

“Never!” Liz raised her head and looked her father in the eye, profoundly renewed courage grew inside her in that typically extraordinary manner of hers. “I said never! I’ll never turn to the dark side. You’ve failed, father. I am a police detective, and a profoundly gifted one at that.”

Erwin’s glee turned to rage. “So be it, Detective Inspector. But if you will not be turned… then you will be destroyed.”

Erwin raised his Smith & Wesson and aimed for his daughter’s head. Liz closed her eyes, anticipating a sudden flash of extraordinarily profound pain followed by eternal darkness and peace.

After some time Liz looked up. Erwin’s hand slowly fell to his side. He gazed at his daughter, his paralysed expression blank, and then opened his mouth. Blood started to dribble from his lips, and then it flooded out of his mouth. He exhaled his final breath, then toppled forward to the floor. Liz gasped as she saw a thrown cricket bat sticking out of her dead father’s back, then she looked to the other side of the parlour and saw the enormous frame of Kathinka Zemlinsky standing in the doorway.

Wilkins slapped himself in the face with shock and disappointment that it appears that this fucking story still isn’t finished. “Oh well this really is just the flipping penultimate, what what! And I don’t care what anyone says, I’m off to get that ruddy 1811 Chateau d’Yquem. I think we all need a strong tipple, old beans. What what.”

***

Final chapter

Previous chapter

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Tagged as: Detective Story, Greatest Lie Ever Told, Non-fiction, novel, tom mckinney

Article by Tom Mckinney

Tom McKinney has been birding for over 20 years and has birded on every continent, other than the continents he's not yet been to. He is famed for having found Britain's first Gray's Grasshopper Warbler and then waking up and realising it had all been a beautiful, beautiful dream. When not birding he enjoys going to Ladbrokes and writing short biographical entries about himself in a 3rd person voice.

Tom has written 49 awesome articles for us.

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