UNDER THE COVERS

Out of the reverie and into discomfort. Charlie's bladder started urging him to get up. He had considered once or twice in recent months the idea of getting a gazunder - nobody else shared his bed these days and it would be an amazing convenience. Maybe his prostate was swelling with age. A nice earthenware one - that would be good. One of those poncey soi disant antique shops down the Northcote Road would have something appropriate and tasteful - perhaps an art deco one - did Clarice Cliff ever make them he wondered? There was a really nice couple had a stall down there that he knew quite well - Kevin and Johnny - queer as four pound notes but very nice guys. Maybe he'd wander down there this afternoon and ask - there was decent little cafe upstairs where they did a tasty bacon sarnie. Johnny was Belfast boy with a beautful burr and a penchant for the canine race whereas Kevin was a London lad but with that peculiarly refined voice favoured by the gay community of a certain age - sans all trace of region - although Charlie suspected that it was not Battersea - more Bermondsey - there was south and possibly east London somewhere in there. If they weren't off in Sitges or over in Oz they'd help him out.

HIs bladder nagged at him again and then his bowel began to join in the Greek chorus beckoning him from his pit. It was no use trying to ignore such bodily calls - he couldn't concentrate with double incontinence beckoning him. He threw back the duvet - a concession to Mary that he had never recanted - and let the cold air in - fucking central heating never worked properly - christ he hated this flat. Paddling barefoot across the sisal carpet he stumbled his way down the hall to the plain black and white bathroom and let his stream flow. The crap would wait until he had had coffee - and a fag or two.

Pissing freehand, he smiled to himself. That moment last night when he had realised that whoever had done the steganography had had some sense of humour - he suspected Ted but would never know for sure, it was just about his handwriting though. The way the steg encoding worked was that whenever you pulled one of the files down all you got to see was a high resolution image badly rendered - last night's had all been nature shots - you then piped the output to the de-steg program which revealed the text hidden within the picture, gradually removing the picture in a wipe effect. It was when he had accessed Golikov's file that he had twigged - as the last traces of the concealing photograph of a piranha disappeared he had laughed long and hard and wryly. A piranha indeed. And that was when he called back the other photographs: various shots of groups of sharks concealed the Obshina texts; charging rhinos for the Bratva texts and so it had gone - he just hadn't seen the connexion before. He shook the drips from his cock and made his way out to the kitchen - and coffee.



(TBC)