The meanest Flood

talking exploitation here. It’s only pubic hair. It’ll grow back.
    And then what? Sterilize the stuff in some kind of steamer, dye it if necessary and stick it around the simulated vagina of a life-size doll so some guy can fuck his brains out and pretend he’s not alone. Is this what is meant by a mixed economy? Is this what religious mystics mean when they talk about the interconnectedness of all things?
    Marie wondered if she should put an ad in the local paper. Pubic hair for sale. Good condition. Auburn, crinkly and long. See how much she was offered. Perhaps put a sample in the post. End up with more than one potential customer and have an auction. Sell it by the strand or charge right over the top for the full set. Muff for sale, will sell separately.
    Not yet. There was still a possibility of tracking them down. But if all else failed she might have to resort to an advert. If you can’t find them by conventional detective work you have to flush them out.
    Lady Friendz was not a workshop. It was a minimally furnished one-room office in the shadow of the Huddersfield Town Football Stadium. There was a good woollen carpet the colour of an old blood stain. There were pastel-coloured walls with a reproduction - surely it wasn’t original? - Hundertwasser and a spotlight to show it off. And there was the small round gentleman seated at the flat-screen computer monitor with a wide commercial smile on his face.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, managing to cram a salacious edge into each of the four syllables. ‘Ms Marie Dickens, I presume. Private detective.’
    He made the Ms sound like a swear-word. There was an ebony rack on his desk with his name inset in what was supposed to be ivory but was probably white plastic. Joshua Whone.
    ‘Yes, I rang you,’ Marie said, bringing to heel her instinct to strangle him.
    ‘Indeed you did, Marie.’
    I’m not going to get my knickers in a schnoz over this guy, Marie promised herself. He’d climbed the social ladder, sawing the rungs off after him as he went. She glanced at the painting on the wall. When she looked back he was still there, one in countless columns of grey men on the march towards sterility and self-destruction. He was one of Hundertwasser’s hated straight lines. The tyranny, the forbidden fruit.
    ‘I’m trying to track down someone who makes bespoke dolls,’ she told him. ‘Might be a company, I don’t know. Could be an individual.’
    ‘And by bespoke, you mean?’
    ‘Dolls with real hair. Specifically, real pubic hair.’
    ‘Ah.’ His eyes opened wider. ‘And you being a private detective, Marie, I take it that your enquiries are for a third party rather than for yourself?’
    ‘Does that matter?’
    ‘I’m a businessman, Marie. I’m trying to establish if a sale is on the horizon or if this is one of those occasions that I’m expected to perform my civic duty.’
    Marie winced when he used her name. ‘I’m not looking to purchase a doll,’ she said.
    ‘Because Lady Friendz does have a number of lady customers, if you follow my drift, Marie. Ladies who are looking for Lady Friendz.’
    ‘Do any of your products contain pubic hair, Mr Whone?’
    He shook his head. ‘We use synthetics, Marie. But of a very high quality. It would take an expert to see that the pubic hair on any of the Lady Friendz dolls was not the genuine article. Lady Friendz are a superior product in every way. We have no real competitors in the market place. None at all.’
    ‘And do you know of other manufacturers or importers who do use real pubic hair?’
    ‘We use some of the finest craftsmen in the country. But there are one or two people who remain fiercely independent. There’s a woman in Plymouth who uses organic materials. I may have an address for her.’ He tapped a couple of keys on the computer keyboard. ‘Just take me a moment.’
    ‘Plymouth is further afield than I thought,’ Marie said.
    Is there anyone in the North?’
    ‘There’s a young man near York making a name for himself. I haven’t seen his work but one of my customers said he was charged four figures for a doll. Exquisite but expensive. We are perhaps leaving behind the realm of craft and entering into the world of art.’
    ‘Four figures. Is that unusual?’
    ‘It certainly is. We provide a superior product here, Marie, but we have always found that the psychological barrier of four figures is more than most of our customers want to contemplate. For four figures,