The Happy Kidnapper

On the stadium lawn beside the big tip tree (it is near an infamous toxic dump), looking from the reporters’ box, you can see a shoe lying on the grass beside those fresh white stripes. It has been a week and the owner, whom I know, refuses to return for it. “A gift” he said when interviewed from a secret location. He is such a fraud. “Leave it there. Better even bury it—make the soil strong.” The minister for the transition has separated himself from the events of the past week with a lie. To be fair he was probably just embarrassed. The game had not gone his way. When the hummers drove onto the track beeping their horns and the ball men started waving their flags things had begun to disintegrate. Parcelby had handed the minister a package of papers to sign just as number 8 kicked the signpost with a left hook leaving the opposing team all agape and the minister, having missed whatever it was that caused the crowd to cheer, threw the stack of documents in his underling’s face and stalked off to the bathroom. Nothing else was going to happen for a while. Play wouldn’t resume until number 8 gave the thumbs up and he was notorious for milking his little moments in the sunshine until the heat had all gone and a chill was in the air. So anyway it was doubtful he’d miss anything. The minister, who does have a name, Nigel, didn’t even think to beckon to his security he was so irritated and stalked off leaving his bodyguard at their cards. Minding a low level minister was tedious and sure they got paid but not enough to not relax once in a while. In the bathroom one of the drivers was waiting. He was a big man and had been quite prepared to take on an army but as it happened didn’t have to even raise his voice. Taking the minister’s arm he lead him out to one of the hummers and gently but firmly pushed him in. They’d do one more circuit and then be on their way. The brazenness of the whole thing—but then that was what they were famous for. Once they’d kidnapped a famous singer naked. The three of them had been naked and the singer had laughed and so had been taken off his guard. They always got in the papers and on this day they’d tossed one shoe into the middle of the playing area, released a plume of confetti and then had exited, their boom box expelling the sounds of Pavarotti at a volume even the frenzied crowd could not drown out. I saw it all but found it hard to fully digest at the time. The big screen even showed a close up of the minister’s sad little face as he peered out of the window a gag in his mouth and a tear on his cheek—a tear for everyone to see—an enormous ten-inch tear. His kidnapper smiled and waved at the cameras. Dressed in a fine pin stripe he was the essence of dignity and hard to dislike and his demands were undeniably reasonable. Even stadium security was disinclined to stop the hummer as it slowly drove out. The guard at the main gate even waved cheerily. The evening news put the item at the latter end of its programming.
“Peter Morgan has done it again!” the news announcer began. Smilingly he went on to describe the famous kidnapper’s latest antics. “Demanding a modest million he has declared this day to be a new national holiday and tells people to look out for a big fat check in the mail very soon! In further news an escaped hamster was deemed responsible for the five-car pile up on Chipham High this morning. The young owner ran out into the heavy morning traffic waving his blankie just as an ambulance was speeding through lights to get to another accident scene. Both owner and hamster were said to be thriving.”