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THE CASEBOOK OF GEEZA VERMIES

  We caught a shuttle to Paris before checking onto a flight bound for Houston - another bloody non-smoker, so I struck up my Pipe in the smoking room of the departure lounge for my last good toke for the next ten hours or more.

  Elliot had gone into a place that sold petit pains, thinking it was some sort of shortbread biscuit. I had left him to it to go and smoke, but having finished and come back into the lounge proper I found myself within earshot of le magazin and I could hear all the people coming and going, in and out of the shop.

  As time went on I became aware that the noise from the cash-till was getting louder and louder, becoming the predominant sound throughout the departure hall. The noise became more and more repetitive, growing louder and louder and louder again until it reached a tortuous crescendo that made my ears bleed.

  Then the large clock on the wall across from where I sat suddenly went all Dali on me and I was confronted with a giant, twelve foot sand timer, the top of which contained the old clock face flowing down and ebbing away. As it fell through into the bottom, the clock transformed itself into money as it passed through the tiny neck between bulbs - strange, archaic coins and notes that looked familiar, yet still just alien enough for me not to recognise them.

  I’m not sure how long I stared at the sand timer before it began to draw me in – I may have stood involuntarily, I don’t know. Everything in my peripheral vision darkened slowly as the timer grew and grew, filling the lounge first before expanding still further, on and on until it broke the confines of the building.

  My vision blurred momentarily and the next thing I knew I was standing in the middle of a barren Moonscape, nothing but a level plain of powdery grey sand for miles in every direction. There was a black sky above me. All was still and silent, drab and lifeless until I blinked, at which point I suddenly found myself at the intersection of two white roads – blindingly white roads. I’m talking about the kind of white you get in washing powder ads here, that completely unrealistic white so bright it stings your eyes.

  The intensity of the glare was unbearable, forcing me to look away and when I did so, I noticed the flat, featureless land these paths cut through had become an otherwise unbroken blue. A blue that throbbed with colour, varying from a shade almost reaching black to a colour that would be called Navy Blue on a wallpaper chart – although saying that it would probably be Arctic Shadow or Pacific Depths, or something equally as stupid.

  Anyway, next I turned my gaze upwards and that’s when my jaw hit the floor! There was the sand timer, still hanging in the air, but by now so huge that I hadn’t even seen it!

  As I craned my neck to take it all in, the top half finished draining away and it began to slowly turn itself over. There was an eerie silence for a second or two and then - Wham!! I was buffeted about by the air the movement had generated, the shockwaves slamming into me like a Warrington Wolves front row forward with a head of steam.

  The ground rocked and heaved as if hit by an Earthquake notching a number nine on the Richter scale. I felt like a drunk on a bouncy castle, trying desperately to keep my feet, but it was no use. I was swept up flailing into the air, but soon realized as I calmed down that I was safe enough. In fact I seemed to be being carried quite deliberately towards a specific point in space which as yet I couldn’t recognise.

  I looked down as I drifted and saw from my new vantage point that where I had previously been stood looked like an enormous Scottish flag, the cross of St Andrew stretching out for over a thousand acres.

  Then I was brought to a gentle halt with a grandstand view of the Celestial sand timer, the edges of the glass glinting like Starlight. I stopped just in time to see it turn on its end again and begin pouring away, watching as the countless coins cascaded from top to bottom. When this process had finished, the whole thing swivelled around and started again. And again and again.

  Every time it turned over I was taken closer to it until eventually my breath was clouding the glass. I could have reached out and touched it, but I didn’t. I was being shown something here, but it was just beyond my grasp. Turn and drain, turn and drain; turn and drain, turn and drain. Then my mind finally caught up - it was Scottish money!

  And then I knew, in a moment of multi-coloured clarity - just before the kaleidoscope came crashing in and took over: not only was time running out for us, as the longer we left it the more Scottish money our adversary was accumulating - but time was also running out for money itself!

  I suddenly got the impression that this case was a whole lot bigger than I had thought. Elliot came back at that point muttering something about bread rolls and false advertising, but by then I had already set off on a flight of my own.

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