The permitted five minutes of Madam Mayor Sperkins' time began. A hush descended upon her office. Crumpet-Hands Man cleared his throat; Detective Pilchard cleared it up; henceforth there commenced a detailed and unwarrantedly theatrical account of the hero and the detective's activities following the break in at the bank.
“Upon leaving the bank and analysing the surrounding area for clues,” our Crumpety Thespian began, centre stage, “my survey identified a trail of breadcrumbs; I followed said trail of breadcrumbs in the hope that it would lead to a known criminal hideout; alas, to my despair it turned out that the trail was nothing more than the displaced crust of a breaded ham which had rolled down a hill, an all-too common occurrence in these parts. The poor ham, you will be glad to know,” our hero was quick to assure, “I found safe and unharmed.
“Reinvigorated by a belly's worth of slightly dirtied deli meat,” our hero burped, “I thereafter returned to the bank; here I noticed a set of tyre marks on the road opposite, like vulcanised butter smeared across a great slab of concrete toast!” our hero pronounced with an operatic warble, all the while cast under a single spotlight. Having leaped atop the mayor's desk from somewhere, a Viking soprano with horny helmet and ponytails and those pointy breast things whatever they're called decried how Crumpet-Hands Man III had scraped the residue tyre from the tarmac, tested it at his top secret Crumpet Cave (his garage) and determined that the vehicle in question was unquestionably a 1987 Vauxhall Cortina, most likely blue. ('Is it blue? Is it blue? I ask you is it blue?' the fifty-strong choir of Vikings chanted.) Following a furious perusal of the Online Used Car Hub (OUCHK), Crumpet-Hands Man had hurried to the registered address of the Cortina in question, intent on arresting the criminal-mastermind behind the bank robbery; unfortunately he soon discovered that the owner of the blue Cortina (which was actually a red Vesper) was a second breaded ham! The poor mother ham, brining herself with salty tears, was visibly distressed. “I've been out all night searching for my son! He may have rolled down a hill! Oh where, where, where could he be?” she wailed from the front-doorway. The father-ham (played brilliantly by Michael Ball) explained through mime (and screaming) that the boy-ham had been bullied at school due to smelling so strongly of pig meat, and had run away from home/fridge. “Have you seen my haaaaaaaam?!” Ball-ham pleaded from down on bended shank. Crumpet-Hands Man had thus vowed to these two hams that he would stop and nothing to find their boy! He then concealed a guilty burp, a cannon was fired, and the curtain fell for the interval.
Bathroom trips and some concessions later, the curtain rose, and The Hamtom of the Opera, Act Two, commenced – albeit once Detective Pilchard had returned from the lobby with a choc-ice for he and the mayor. (Clarification: That's two choc-ices, one for the detective and mayor each. As a matter of principle, Detective Pilchard refused to share lickage).
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The lights dimmed. The conductor roused his orchestra. Stepping onto the stage, head bowed, Crumpet-Hands Man presented through the medium of interpretive dance, a laser show, a spot of plate spinning and a deeply moving screaming-frog-harmonica solo that–
“This is all very entertaining,” Mayor Sperkins interjected from the balcony, her impatient lips steaming with choc-ice, “but how does any of it relate to the robbery?”
Spitting our his frog, Crumpet-Hands Man admitted, “Dunno.” The Mayor told him to get out. “Okay, Madam Mayor. Burp.”
Thus the curtain fell; our hero crawled out from under it and went on his way, leaving Detective Pilchard to absorb the remainder of the mayor's choc-ice-and-spittle-bestrewn wrath. But despite their superior's insistence, neither our scene-stealing Sir Larry Crumpet nor The Licking Detective were dissuaded from pursuing the case of the bank robbery. As was his domain, his beat, Detective Pilchard took to the streets, kept his ears to the ground; this resulted in an eye infection and a gallon a saline. Having retuned to the crime scene, Crumpet-Hands Man checked and double-checked the interior of the vault; just as he was about to give up all hope of finding a lead he stumbled upon (literally) a tiny white feather in the doorway of the bank's vault; this in turn led our heroes to an abandoned mattress factory on the outskirts of Trifle City. (I would explain how these two seemingly unrelated coincidences are linked, but my word count is tight and the story particularly uneventful, not to mention convoluted.)
“Be sure to keep an infected eye/ear out for any henchmen,” our hero warned the detective as the pair climbed a barb wire fence and approached the ramshackle and not-too welcoming grounds of the mattress factory. “I fear this place is crawling with baddies.”
“Leave it to me. I shall be our eyes and ears,” the ever eager detective assured, pinning back said ears and proceeding to pirouette around and around like a searchlight gone haywire. “Fear not of baddies, Crumps! Nothing will escape my all-encompassing earline!”
Nothing except the factory's outer walls. With our hero watching on, mesmerised, the detective pirouetted face-first into the factory's grubby and graffitied brickwork, demolishing it in an instant. “Nicely done, detective,” Crumpet-Hands Man praised, stepping through the makeshift entrance. “Let us now venture onwards and unearth what menace lurks within this dreadful grotto.”
The dizzy detective dusted himself down, licked the grit from his earlashes with his last remaining sleeve, and hurried after our hero. Burp.
