4

Maria falls in love with Hank. They waltz in the ballroom of an Austrian castle, they kiss on the balcony of his penthouse, make love next to a lake in Switzerland, laugh at inappropriate jokes in Monte Carlo and stare into each other's sunglasses in Nice. They travel all around the world. There's a very interesting story about a funny looking dog in Russia. Maria will gladly tell it, if you ask her about it.

She never forgets about Murphy and Pkofflunnel, but her love fades. She believes they're dead until she arrives in Nice with Hank. It's July now, and she sees Murphy and the prince all over the press. The papers report a love affair between the two men. The two men in question haven't contradicted this story because it covers what they were doing in the mountain with the nurses.

Murphy thought that Maria didn't care enough about him to look for him after he went missing. Then he heard about her and Hank and he thought she didn't care about him at all.

Murphy and Pkofflunnel are living together. Pkofflunnel lets Murphy stay in his house, which fuels the fire of the rumours, despite the constant trail of women and women's clothes from their bedrooms. They're always arguing, like the odd couple, but despite this they become good friends.

Breakfast on a sunny morning. "That woman you brought home last night looked as if she'd been doing something to her face," Murphy says to Pkofflunnel.

"They all do things to their faces."

"Something she shouldn't have done. Or something where she thought, 'This might work out really really well,' and then regretted it later."

"I didn't bring her home for her face."

"You're royalty. You can demand the best. You don't have to settle for women deficient in the facial area."

"She wasn't deficient anywhere. It's all in your mind. You've been doing something to your mind."

"We all do things to our minds."

"Something you shouldn't have done."

"We all do things we shouldn't do. Every time we get drunk it's something we shouldn't do, and think of all the things we do that we shouldn't do when we're drunk. Imagine the things we shouldn't have done, but we did, and we can't remember doing them."

"You've done something to your brain with scalpels and tweezers."

"That's what that woman did to her face."

"There was nothing wrong with her face."

"I suppose it depends on the light."

There's a letter for Pkofflunnel in the post. It's from Mooney. The envelope contains a photo of a woman tied to a chair. Despite the gag covering her mouth and the look of fear in her eyes, Pkofflunnel recognises the face. It's one of the nurses. The letter is a ransom demand. 'She told me everything,' the letter says. 'She'll die but her knowledge will live on, unless you pay me two million euros...'

The money is to be left behind a rock near a path on a mountainside. Murphy and the prince go there at the appointed time, five o' clock in the afternoon. They leave a bag behind the rock and then they hide, pretending to be bird-watchers/hikers. They have camping equipment and binoculars.

A hiker walks by. "That's him," Murphy says.

"How do you know?"

"He's not a real hiker."

"He looks real to me."

"He's too real. He might as well be singing 'Fol deree, fol derah, fol deree, fol derahahahahahahaha, fol deree, fol derah, my knapsack on my back.'"

"Fol deree, fol derah, fol deree, fol derahahahahahahaha, fol deree, fol derah, shut the f**k up."

They can hear him whistling as he casually walks towards the rock. "Who in their right mind would demand that we leave the money behind a rock?" Murphy says.

They watch him as he looks all around before picking up the bag and looking inside. They can hear an F word when he realises that the bag is empty.

They follow him back to his house, a long trek through hills and valleys. His song is now a stream of expletives. It's nearly dark by the time he gets to his house. Nearly dark isn't nearly dark enough for breaking into houses. They wait until after midnight before breaking in. Mooney is there with his new friend the gun. He says, "Ye don't seriously believe I'd keep her here, do ye?"

His gun doesn't say anything but they're still afraid of it. He leads them outside at gunpoint. It's a cold night. They look up at snow-capped peaks and stars sparkling in the sky. He takes them to his barn. He handcuffs them to an old plough. "Try to get some sleep," he says. "It'll be a long day tomorrow."

It's a long night trying to sleep on the hard floor of the cold barn. The prince isn't used to cold and hard. Warm and soft are what he's used to. Murphy is has more experience with hard and cold, or cold and hard, but he still struggles to sleep.

In the morning Mooney takes off the handcuffs and tells his captives to go outside. "And take the camping equipment," he says. "Ye're going on a long hike. Carrying all that crap on your back will make it much more enjoyable for me."

He points towards a hill in the distance and tells them to start walking in that direction.