2

Murphy and Pkofflunnel are lying on the mountainside. They're doing their best to turn the snow around them red. But it snows heavily that night, and they can do nothing about the white blanket that's covering them. As dawn approaches their lives are about to leave with the night, but a farmer finds them. He's out looking for dead sheep. He loads Murphy and Pkofflunnel onto the back of his cart and takes them to a hospital.

Murphy and Pkofflunnel are deposited at the doors of the hospital. They're taken inside, and if they weren't so close to death they'd think they're in heaven. Thirty nurses surround them. Each nurse is a beautiful young woman who hasn't met any men in months. The man who set up the hospital was a rich American businessman who once broke his leg while skiing and he didn't think the local hospital was good enough because it didn't have a bar, so he set up a hospital of his own. He hired all the nurses himself. They looked a lot like his secretaries. The hospital got very few patients because it was so expensive and it was in such an isolated place.

It's morning now. Maria suspects that something is wrong when she wakes and she isn't with either Murphy or Pkofflunnel. She spends the day looking for them. Late in the afternoon she goes to the police and tells them who she's looking for. When they hear that one of the missing men is the prince, they laugh. "He often goes missing," the policeman says. "It's practically a hobby. The real hobby is women, and going missing is a consequence of that. Sometimes he goes missing with a woman he meets to get away from another woman he's become attached to, or who's become attached to him -- they can be like limpets at times. No offence. Sometimes he has to get away from the husband or boyfriend of a woman he's become too attached to. The woman often goes with him. He always shows up eventually. He has houses all over the world. He could be in New York now. Or Brazil. Or Sweden."

"But I was the woman in this instance, and he hasn't gone away with me, and my boyfriend is missing too."

"Hmm. That's a new variation alright... Are you sure he hasn't gone away with your boyfriend?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"Isn't it a bit of a coincidence, both of them going 'missing' like that?"

"Why would they be together?"

"A new variation. He'll exhaust the female population eventually."

"That's ridiculous. I don't know about Pkofflunnel, but I know my boyfriend."

"Fair enough. We'll keep a look out for them. But I'm sure they'll turn up safe and sound soon enough."

A week goes by and there's no sign of either of them. Maria hires detectives. She travels from place to place, stopping at every hamlet to ask people if they've seen this man (this man being the man in the photograph of herself and Murphy). Some people say they've seen the woman and she wants to punch them or cry or break something.

She's getting further away from Murphy and Pkofflunnel. She's getting closer to Mooney, just a hundred yards to go. He sits on a rock and looks down on the valley. He's knee deep in the black swamp water of thought, with living things creeping around his ankles, things you'd shoot or stab if your feet weren't in the way. He should be a millionaire verging on being a billionaire. He should be in a Jacuzzi with beautiful women who love him for his money, instead of sinking in a mental swamp, sitting on a rock on the side of a hill. The way he missed out on the big time is the source of the dark mental waters. He set up an oil company with a friend of his called Hank. They had been friends since childhood, but it all changed after they fell out because of a disagreement over a bet about the weight of Mooney's head. They couldn't work together anymore. Hank offered to buy his share and he agreed because he thought the company was sliding down an oil-covered slope to a dry oil-free desert plain. But just weeks after he sold his share, they struck gold, as in oil. Hank is knee-deep in the black stuff, up to his eye balls in sports cars and helicopters and the other things that make the women go weak at the knees, while Mooney is stuck in the black swamp water, wading his way through it each day, and the only reason to keep going is the prospect of revenge. He's convinced that Hank knew about the oil strike. He wants what's rightfully his: enough money to weaken enough female knees to keep him going until he can no longer walk. His money has almost drained away. He bought his house in Switzerland and he has to pay his ex-wife. These things put a serious dent in his account.

He thought about kidnapping Chloe, Hank's wife. Hank might pay a ransom without going to the police because he wouldn't want the world to hear about the way he conned his childhood friend, but he wouldn't pay a cent to get his wife back. He'd pay someone to take her away.

A Short Story Made Shorter: He married her two months after meeting her and then he realised she was mental.

She enjoyed throwing knives at the wall and she found the sound of breaking glass as relaxing as the sound of water trickling over stones in a stream through the woods. Hank had a habit of falling in love at first sight and then sliding from the peak of love into the plain of indifference and on into the hole of hate. Kidnapping her wouldn't work.

Maria meets Mooney and a light bulb comes on above his head. "Have you seen this man?" she says.

He's dazzled by the light of the light bulb. It takes him a few seconds to say, "Yes, I've seen him."

"Where?"

"Follow me."

Hank wouldn't pay a cent to get his wife back, but he might pay for the release of a beautiful woman he's never met before. It's worth trying. It's worth catching a fish when they jump out of the river and land on the bank at your feet.

He leads her to his house. "I found him sleeping in the barn behind my house," he says. "I left him there to sleep it off, whatever 'it' is."

'Don't go into a barn with a stranger' is something her grandmother would have told her if her grandmother ever stopped talking about the time she lost her chicken in a duck race and her aunt Sue was arrested for embezzlement but she got off because she fixed someone's knee. Maria goes into the barn and before she knows what's happening she's tied to a chair. She screams but he gags her.

Hank sees the terror in her eyes. He's looking at a photo of Maria. She's tied to a chair. It's difficult to tell where she is. It's a long way away from the breakfast table in his penthouse where he's drinking coffee. He has no idea who she is, but he has a feeling he's about to find out. He reads the letter that came with the photo. Mooney wants twenty million dollars. "I could have asked for a hundred million," according to Mooney in the letter, "but I'm a reasonable man. Pay me the money or this complete stranger dies. Can you live with the death of a complete stranger on your conscience? She might be evil or she might be mental, but maybe, just maybe, she's an angel. Maybe she's the one for you. Out of all the billions of women out there, maybe your oldest friend is the one who really knows the one you should spend the rest of your life with. She'll spend the rest of her life tied to this chair unless you pay."

The money is to be left in a bin in a park in Geneva. So he's in Switzerland. He always said he wanted to go there. Switzerland is a big country (this is what Hank thinks when he looks at the globe). Where would a man like Mooney go to (this is what Hank thinks as he looks down over the city from his balcony). Norma would know (Hank comes to the conclusion that asking Mooney's ex-wife would be a better way of locating him than trying to figure out where in Switzerland a man like Mooney would go to).

Ten minutes later, he's sitting on a couch in Norma's apartment. She's sitting on another couch opposite him. "He's been in Switzerland for over a year," she says. "He sent me this photo with the last cheque." She hands him the photo. In the background there's a snow-capped Alpine peak. In the foreground there's a raised middle finger. The finger belongs to Mooney, who stands behind it and smiles.

"He's been sending me photos too," Hank says. "And I'm afraid he's going to start sending fingers. He kidnapped a woman and he wants a ransom of twenty million."

"Somehow I'm not surprised. I should be shocked, but I'm not shocked, and I'm not even surprised. Who's the woman?"

"I have no idea. I supposed he realised that I wouldn't be shocked if he kidnapped Chloe. I might be surprised, but that would fade fairly quickly. All emotions would fade fairly quickly if he kidnapped Chloe."

"And he expects you to pay twenty million for the life of a complete stranger?"

"He still thinks I conned him. I was going to let him buy back his share in the company, but when I met him he told me my future wife was so crispy in the head you could hear her brain crunch every time she looked at you. I don't know what that means, but if he said it now I'd agree with him."

"Are you going to pay?"

"If he asked nicely for the money, and said that thing about my wife again, I'd gladly give it to him. But there's no way I can pay him when he plays it like this. I'd rather die myself than pay him a cent."

"Or see this woman die."

"I don't want that to happen. That's why I'm going over there. He won't expect that. He thinks I'll either ignore this or pay the money."

Norma gives him the address. He goes home to start packing.

Murphy and Pkofflunnel haven't forgotten about Maria. Murphy is still in love with her and the prince is still willing to fight for her. This is the official position that they would state if they were asked to state an official position. Unofficially, they're having too much fun with the nurses, but this is the sort of position they'd like to keep under wraps. It's the sort of thing the tabloids would love to hear about.

Being tended to by nurses is much more fun than shooting each other, and the fact that they've recently shot each other is an excuse to be tended to by the nurses. The nurses have needs too. They need tending to. They've been cut off from suitable male company for too long. The only males they come into contact with are ones who smell of dead animals or of the things vomited by animals as they died.

Murphy is well enough to be able to run down a deserted hospital corridor with a nurse or two nurses or three nurses, and find a room somewhere. There are plenty of rooms. On on entire floor of the hospital the wards look more like hotel rooms than hospital wards. There's even a honeymoon suite. Pkofflunnel spends a lot of time in the bar, organising parties in the swimming pool, and then having parties in the swimming pool or in the Jacuzzi with some of the nurses when they get off duty, or when they're on duty and they have to accompany the patients into the swimming pool or the Jacuzzi to make sure they don't drown.

They play croquet in the gardens, get lost in the maze, play billiards in the billiards room, look through the vast wardrobes, put on new clothes or costumes and they stage plays in the hospital's theatre. There's no one in the audience. Everyone is on the stage. If there were people in the audience they'd be men wearing raincoats.

After three months Pkofflunnel can light a cigarette and say, "This is the most sex I've ever had in a hospital."