In another way, Graham was also running out of time. Not at all reassured by her talks with his manager, Miranda moved onto more direct enquiries. She logged onto her computer, searched Google for the Arlington Row Hotel, and found three different hotels. Two of them denied that there was any sort of training party coming down to stay, but the last one apparently had a business group down for the weekend. But they were an Arabian oil firm, which defiantly didn’t include Graham’s company.

Rather worried, she called anything with any hotel even approximating the name Arlington Row, and found no luck with anyone she sought. She was beginning to think someone was seriously wrong, but she couldn’t quite tell what. She decided to call the police. Seeing as it was Sunday, it seemed the only man there was a near-retirement gentleman, who didn’t quite grasp how important this all was to her, and suggested she come in to see them tomorrow. She was getting more and more worried, and she was less than impressed at how she had just been fobbed off.

* * *

Graham would have been less than impressed with the accommodation he had been fobbed off with, if he hadn’t been in an interesting mental place as it was. As it was, he was simply happy to have a bed that appeared comfy, a locked door to keep the ducks away, and an interesting selection of thoughts to keep him occupied until he fell asleep, which he did, very quickly.

* * *

I appear to have written myself into a corner here, since all the characters are taking time out from doing things to sleep, worry, and analyse photofit pictures of each other. Nonetheless, we need something to fill up a section of writing until someone does something, so we’ll talk about a duck on a pond in Amsterdam.

It was a rather boring life for a duck on a pond in Amsterdam. It was a cold time of year, with autumn coming to a close, and very few people coming out to throw out bread. There was always a few insects, or some plants, to nibble on, but these were fewer in number at that time of year, and the leaves coming down from the trees were clogging the pond up somewhat.

He reached round and preened his feathers. The mating season was still a long time away, and he was supposed to be foraging for some food. He dunked his head underwater, and was rewarded with a mouthful of splendid pondweed.

Suddenly, he had a flash of realisation. Ducks were a mighty breed, capable of dominating the entire world if they put their minds together and worked as a cohesive whole. It was simply a matter of instilling a revolutionary consciousness in his fellow duck comrades. He swam over to where the other ducks were gathered.
“Quack quack! Quack! Quack quack, quack!” he loudly declared.
However, since ducks have no formal language system, this meant absolutely nothing to the other ducks.
“Quack?” asked another duck, trying to discern his meaning. However, since that too was a simple quack, it made an equal lack of sense to his revolutionary brother.
“Quack, quack-quack, quack! Quack-quack!” declared the first duck. He was getting annoyed at his brothers’ lack of insight. Surely they could see that instilling them with a revolutionary mindset would set them up for a brutal yet ultimately victorious take-over of the hated human society. What he had not realised was that ducks were simple birds of the water, not given to violent insurrection. However, it worked out quite nicely for me, since now I can tell you that Graham was having a vivid yet bizarre dream about ducks, and we can cut back to the police station, having comfortably hit 15,000 words.

* * *

“So this is the guy they’re using then”, said the first special agent.
And it was indeed Graham, though of course, they didn’t yet know he was called Graham, this resulting in this long and probably unnecessary explanation.
“He doesn’t seem to fit the normal profile for this sort of work.”
“Maybe they’re trying something different. Throw us by using new tactics.”
“Well, it isn’t working, for a start, we know what he looks like. Circulate this image to Customs in every port along the North Sea coast, and send one down to Humberside airport. We’ve probably just missed him, but perhaps someone in passport control might recognise him.
And recognise someone he did. The man on passport duty in Rotterdam got back to them.
“He seemed a bit… suspicious,” he told the special agents by phone. “I just thought he was hung over, but you tell us he is smuggling contraband… I should have stopped him.”
“You weren’t to know, if you can tell us his details, we can move onto arresting him.”
“Hold on, let me check the passenger records for that trip…” which preceded a flurry of keyboard tappings. “Aha! I remember his name now; he is a Mr Graham Burricombe, passport number…”
Finally having his details, Graham’s details were pulled straight out of the police records, his credit was run, and in no time at all they had a more comprehensive record of information on Graham than Graham had. Comprehendible, however, was an entirely different matter.
“He booked the ferry ticket before making contact with Winterton?” asked an incredulous Second Special Agent.
“This makes things even more complicated,” postulated First Special Agent (see, making up actual names for characters is a ridiculous idea. First and Second Special Agents are much better names than, for example, Agent Townsend and Agent Stevenson. Oh bugger, I’ve gone and named them now. And there goes the fourth wall sailing out the window again.)
(Hang on, where was I?)
“This makes things even more complicated,” postulated Agent Townsend, not realising he’d actually acquired a name. “Normally its either booked a while before, or it would have been booked on the day and paid in cash. He booked this only the other weekend.
“Its not fitting the normal pattern. Still, we’ve got to work with whatever we’ve got. OK, someone find his old lady, his boss, anyone who can give us the heads up on this guy, work out his normal modus operandi, then see what’s changed in the last week.”
* * *
Quite a lot had changed in Graham’s world. He woke up, and felt like his head was stuffed with cotton wool. Hangovers, he could understand and work with, but this was something else. His next thought was something else as well, as he had no idea where he was. It seemed like a hotel room, and a relatively nice one at that. Was he still in Rotterdam? Had he dropped off the package early? What the hell was going on?
He took a moment, and a deep breath to go with the moment. Five minutes to look around before he started properly freaking out. He found a notepad and pen with the name of the hotel, with a name that had something to do with looking at ducks.
Ducks… why did ducks seem so familiar?
At any rate, the hotel seemed to be somewhere in Rotterdam, which was a good start. He showered, dressed, and wandered downstairs to where he hoped he would find breakfast. He found a fair few of the staff giving him funny looks. Not necessarily nasty ones, more like the sort of look you would give a man who had showered up covered in cheese and singing Disney songs. He went up to the front desk.
“Are you feeling all right his morning, sir?” asked the girl on the front desk.
“What happened yesterday?”
“Ah, sir was was… in a very strange way. I think he had been smoking the marijuana…”
Oh shit. He hadn’t even touched a joint since he was at university, and he hadn’t gotten very far before being gone for the night. By the feel of it, it hadn’t been a little he had smoked.
“I’m so sorry, did I do anything particularly stupid?”
“No, no, at worst you were a bit rude, but as long as you don’t plan to do it again…”
“Oh gods no. Did I actually pay for my room?”
“Yes you did, although depending on when you need to go, you may have overpaid somewhat.”
“Well, I’m going as soon as I’ve had breakfast…”
Difficulties sorted, Graham recieved a small refund, made smaller, because despite what the staff
were telling him, he had the idea that he had done something horrendously embaressing. He then enjoyed a light continental breakfast, and departed the hotel.
Ignoring the worryingly familiar statue of a duck outside, Graham attempted to get his bearings. He wasn’t quite sure where he was, but after about fifteen minutes of searching, he managed to find a tourist information station, where he acquired a fresh set of maps of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the Netherlands in general. He was advised to also buy a bus ticket, which he did, ending up very perplexed by the bookmark-like strip of card he was given. Taking an English translation of the bus timetable, he went outside, and went in search of a bus stop heading to the train station.
Holland is very small. Most counties in England, if not being bigger at it, can at least give it a massive inferiority complex, and the average American state would eat it up for breakfast. There are also enough stereotypes about the Dutch being stoned all the time, an image I the author have done nothing to try and disprove. But they do public transport right, which is sixteen million billion times better than the rubbish we have here.
A bus ticket in Holland, shaped like a bookmark, as I have mentioned, is valid just about anywhere in the country. There’s some business about zones, but when it was being explained to me when I went to Holland a while ago, I was already stoned to my eyeballs, so I missed what parameters a zone came under. But one bus ticket could take you across ten zonesworth of Holland, in any part of the country, on any day you liked after buying it. This is infinatly more useful than a British ticket, which only works on one line, needs buying afresh every bloody day, and costs an arm and a leg.
Buses also actually show up on time. And indeed, show up at all. You’d think these would be things that normal buses would do, but you would apparently be wrong. Wrong. And trains! It takes half an hour to take the train from one end of the country to the other! A marvellous combination of miniscule geography, and trains that actually move. I remember them being double decker trains too, just for good measure. Basically, English public transport is pants, Dutch public transport is brilliant, and I’ve managed to pad out my story a bit more.