Madame Tea

Settling at the bottom of the Teapot

OK, small bananas are dangerous. We all know this: slipping, choking, or when using a green one as a coshh (something of a chemical bludgeon), but never have I seen anyone quite so effectively pin a man to an aluminium lamppost with a bunch of throwing fun size. It's spectacular, especially after his partner was taken down by improvised bolas made from a split skin. And the way she threatened the guy simply by eating the last banana in a menacing way - It certainly made a shiver pass up my spine.

Turns out that Madame Tea has been taking fewer jobs, in truth because there were fewer and fewer interesting jobs about. These days it was all about gangs wanting to pop a cap in an ass, which she felt any squirrel could do, even though she had often found the insertion of bottle tops to be an effective alimentary method of interrogation.

Her last big job of any interest had been the assassination of the leader of a jam making Mafia hidden deep along the Panama Canal in a purple dome, where they produced jam from legally required teas, and berries well known to be highly addictive. By subtly changing the blend of teas, Madame Tea created a mixture that causes an explosion when brought into contact with blueberries or crystal meth, but with a single drop of loganberry juice, it will release a cyanoloid compound in reaction to carbonated carbohydrate, turning the face a very pale blue, hence the cyan. In an effort to produce the deadly gas, she engaged in a pitched battle of Ninja toast (like French toast, but not quite as hard: apparently it needs the flexibility of a frisbee) with the guards, which seemed to go nowhere. Either her chief opponent, the renowned Mari of the Berries, was buttering her slices too thickly or, and at this thought the Madame had shuddered, she liked her toast so weak there was almost no browning.

Eventually, through constant reloading and an oversight by the patisserie gunner in failing to keep the breach dry and clear of crumbs, the enemy toaster finally popped up a couple of blackies. Madame Tea told me she could almost hear the swoosh of the knife, slurping stickily as the toast of darkness was capped with its unholy crown of boiling butter and jam. It was truly a weapon with a darkened heart, the hard-black edge enough for a skilled killer to remove eyes, limbs or even credit cards. But its true horror was if it grazed you it would stick to your flesh, burning and frying to the bone.

However, this time it worked against them, setting off the loganberry mix, swamping the area with the toxin. The death from the gas was tuneful: a common side effect of this form of expiration was a series of reflexive snorts from nasal inhalation. It just so happened that this time the array of dead bodies managed to sync into oblivion together to the tune of "Uptown Girl". The song was punctuated by a muffin triggered explosion in the mixing tanks as planned, that fired the dome from underwater, depositing Madame Tea on the roof of a tattoo artist a few doors down from the laziest police station in central America, an accolade they would have been proud of if they ever had the energy.

The explosion also flooded a posh girls school, right in the middle of their new sex education lesson, put out a fire at a fire engine factory, instantly replaced the roof of the old stadium of the local football club, and dumped a lot of the jam over the entire region and some a bit further afield. One native tribe not far away thought they had been under attack by aliens and spent the next two weeks trying to kill the enormous purple blob, by using tactics that were obviously working, as the blob, evaporating in the heat, slowly shrank until it no longer covered the entire village. Eventually, the people could return to their homes, and the remaining blob was fenced off and left to die. Two weeks later the village was hit by an epidemic of diabetes, caused by secondary sugar inhalation - the fructose and glucose had been absorbed into the hut walls and the vapours were so heavy with sweetness it was like swimming in a pool of baked beans all day.

Since then she has been asked to erase the illegal rubber tapping king of Andalusia, re-index the head of the Guild of Evil Librarians, and discombobulate the Roberts Association for the Advancement of Minor Misdemeanours in Society (Baamms). But she had turned them all down, before in an absent-minded kind of way she had posted each of them a hanging basket with a purple climbing tea stalk, a plant with a strong instinct to climb up anything taller than itself and fires out deadly barbs when it runs out of surface in order to grapple to its next location. Unfortunately the basket accidentally got thrown out in the nick of time by the King; was identified by the librarian as containing a cutting of Pugilisumt Suspencus before being crushed to pulp under a tome entitled "Tea and the art of Zentinal maintenance: including 1107 uses for unwanted tea" by Lap Tze, a 9th century Taiwanese mystic. The final one actually got almost all the Bobs before one of them remembered their secateurs and went all Marly on it.

She still got paid. A lot. It was lot number 137 in a property auction, consisting of several hotels distributed across five different countries. I suggested to her why don't you pack in the assassination business for a little while and try a career in hospitality. At the very least she'll be able to deal with any local administrative issues with an aplomb that even the Mafiosi couldn't imagine and knew how to wield poison tea underpants if necessary. She agreed wholeheartedly and we decided probably the best idea was to sell the properties to herself through a dummy company, for which we picked a crash test facility, so no one would remember that she owned the properties.

It was a fun few weeks looking around the existing buildings: the one in Kenya was in need of some serious investments, but that was only to the law enforcement and government there and Madam Tea rather pointedly presented them all with little cuttings from her own bush in which she had planted a tree store tea stalk. The conversation with the Chief of Police the next day about antidotes had been quite amusing, if only because she sounded like an aunt asking embarrassing questions, and had to tell them to ask nicely at least 20 times. I think she was testing some new techniques, and was interested to see the various livid colours of rash that they really didn't want anyone to see. Or where.

The building itself didn't appear too bad but apparently the land came with an entire section of safari zone included, allowing us to see Lions, Tigers and Bears from the balcony of the single room we had picked. I don't know why we hadn't taken a double room that overlooked the actual savannah. The view into the superintendent's office where he was watching nature documentaries and 1930's musicals certainly didn't make it worthwhile. I also wondered why she had made me share a single room.

Having said that, the competition for hotels was brutal, and I had to stop her from trying to kill all the competitors near the London site, on the grounds that hospitality was not about ambulances; more about promenades. Besides, she would have plenty to deal with keeping her guests safe from other local hazards, such as pickpockets, muggers, copyright serial killers and the ingenious chutney monster of upper Hampstead Heath. And those were just the ones mentioned in the local gangland monthly protection racket bulletin that we took off an attempted extortionist, now turned contortionist.

In London, someone suggested we set up a knocking shop: we called it Home of Knobs. Which upset the nearby World of Leather, even when we showed them around the maze of doors, each with its own unique knocker. Despite the conceptual confusion the shop did well as a gothic horror attraction. The creepy collection of continuous portals apparently made it an amazing interactive experience, and we got it just right enough to scare them into exhaustion, so they stayed at the hotel.

Madame Tea made a fantastic spa experience: massage came in four grades – Hot stone, Shiatsu, Thai, and Krav Maga: Hot stoned therapy was offered to either help addicts with withdrawal symptoms or keep people more relaxed when the stones were placed on their back. There was also some consternation when she put marijuana in the steam room fire, until the introduction of the hash-tags, available from reception, which would only let people use the sauna at their allocated time of day. And if someone stayed in there for too long they were automatically dropped into the plunge pool two storeys down.

Mud packs were also available: clans of women who haunted the wet marshland now inhabited the gardens of the hotel, imported from Madame Tea's favourite tea-growing land. Any incautious or intrepid guest that got too far from reception would find themselves snatched and held in the most amazing rejuvenation clay in the world. Daily search parties were sent in, but if the guest had been there for an overly long period they would be far too young to return to the group they had been part of, and several mothers ended up being adopted by the local children's orphanage.

I had to go back to my regular work, but I'm sure she'll have some tales to tell, and a much bigger patio the next time I see her.

My fault really: I said if you do bump someone else off, just make sure people don't find out about it. 

I just hope it doesn't grow into an entire veranda.