"Well he might eventually find passage back to Australia," said the Sneaky Spy, "but I doubt that he'll be prosecuting me for the deportation operation performed by my pilot friend Brin Decembar - a fast flight to Africa with intravenous food injections."

"It was a dramatic step to take, Percy," said Ingrid

"I didn't tell Gillespie or the police what we've done with Lintel. They'll think he's done a runner on them, like Blackshaw. I think it's the best we can do, for the purpose of preventing Lintel from adding to the corruption of Kings Cross.

"So now you're going to go after Paul Gillespie?"
"With dedication and devotion to duty," said the Sneaky Spy.

"Does he have the opportunity to travel overseas as well?"

"No. He has the opportunity to confront the only daughter of his two murder victims ... in a federal court room. He will have that chance anyway, if I can arrange it."

*          *          *          *

With the need to secure a conviction using the proper legal channels, Percy Dale asked his friend Inspector Higgins to arrange a liaison with the inner city police. The old matter of evidence was still a serious consideration.

"Angus Lintel, one of Gillespie's fellow drug lords left the country after I had managed to acquire his information about the murder of the Sharpes," said the Sneaky Spy, "I don't think you'll catch up with Lintel."

"We can arrest Sharpe's most likely killer - based on that evidence - on suspicion of murder. Then it would be up to the courts to hold a fair trial," said the sergeant, "Apparently Gillespie seldom leaves his house, and if he does, he goes by taxi far away from the city. Several other people have been seen going to and from his house over the years. It's as if he does all his work by proxy through his underlings."

"Then you've been watching him?"

"For years. We've been aching to hang something on Paul Gillespie, but he doesn't make it any easier by hiding away."

*          *          *          *

The sergeant, dressed in plain clothes, accompanied Percy Dale to the Gillespie residence and made the arrest.

"Of all the flimsy cases," he said to Percy in privacy, "In his own mind, he's probably laughing at our chances of convicting him."

"Let's go ahead with the trial anyway," insisted the Sneaky Spy. Charge him with drug related crimes, and if the police prosecutor loses the case, it will still damage his credibility a little."

*          *          *          *

"Bring in the accused," said the judge.

"Don't worry too much," whispered Percy to Eleanor, "We'll be doing our best to convict him."

Then he noticed a mixture of surprise and misunderstanding on her face.

"It's him. I'm sure it's him," she whispered.

"Who? The killer?" returned the Sneaky Spy, "but you never saw the killer. You said that you only knew of the murder from an underworld leak of information."

"It's not the killer," she whispered, and her next statement was heard by everyone in the courtroom, "It's Dad!"

The Sneaky Spy saw everything then, but it took the courts a lot longer to prove it. After a week of hearings, he led Eleanor away from the scene where her father was sentenced to life imprisonment.

"It's still too horrible to believe," she said.

"You can't have been expected to know," said the Sneaky Spy in his best attempt to soothe her nerves, "He changed his name from Sharpe to Gillespie and hardly set foot out of his new home, financed by the proceeds from his drug sales. I'll do what I can to help you and your brother, but nobody can ever make this up to you, and I won't try to pretend otherwise."

*          *          *          *

The Sneaky Spy was tired and weakened from a mixture of despair and disgust. He could not go on battling a veritable industry of crime on his own, especially when it was condensed so heavily into one urban location - that curious blend of lively streets and poverty stricken victims of the injustices which plagued those streets.

The enormity of the adventure sank deeply into his heart, and he felt an emotional paralysis. Sharpe's wife had learned too much about his involvement in drugs. So to protect his own interests, he had murdered her and estranged his own children.

A sickening undercurrent of hopelessness dwelt privately in the mind of Percy Dale. There had to be some other people who were prepared to battle the evils he had encountered. For one broken family, he might have made an impact, but that was as relatively insignificant as washing one brick on a dirty neglected wall.

Ingrid Castlecove was happy to have him home safely again, and that in itself was reward enough. However, Percy Dale would never forget what transpired in that courtroom: the irony that a man who had supposedly expected to easily escape the consequences for two suspected murders had been caught out and punished for what  was actually only one murder. As he reflected on the extent to which the world had decayed in its morality since the fall of Adam and Eve, he knew that some of his personal reminders of those symptoms would lurk in his thoughts forever.

“I almost didn’t tell you how it turned out,” he said.

“Because it would remind me of my own ex-husband’s attempt on my life,” she said, “I’m glad you told me. That brought us together, and I can understand that you’d find even our Smiling Island reunion a less painful way of getting together than the church café meeting was.”

“You’re very understanding too.”

“About most things,” said Ingrid, “But I still can’t get over how familiar you tasted when I licked you before this adventure started.”

“But you’d licked me before that,” said Percy.

“I suppose so,” said Ingrid.

She was undoubtedly getting closer to the truth.

“You don’t know what it might have been that you ate that I taste like?” he asked.

“Well maybe not, but I think it’s something I had when I was a teenager. I might find some more there at the school fete. Would you like to go there with me?”

She was thinking of searching the grounds for more little boys, where she’d caught him the first time, and eating them, and possibly even thinking of testing to see whether Percy would be around at the time she caught the little boy.

“I’d love to go,” thought Percy.

This would not be her opportunity to confirm any subconscious or open suspicions of Percy being the shrunken men she was eating. It would be his opportunity to allay her suspicions. He agreed to meet her at the fete after attending to some legal issues following on from the drug case.

On that day, he shrank himself and teleported into the same school garden where Ingrid had caught him as a teenager. He let her find him again. She picked him up proudly.

“I’ve enjoyed eating a few little fellows like you,” she said, licking him twice to taste him, “It’s not your lucky day, is it?”

“No,” said Percy.

“Well you can think on it until dinner time. It’s nothing personal. I just enjoy the taste of you, and there’s nothing else like it.”

Ingrid put him into her handbag and clasped it tight, and then walked up to the gate to meet Percy and walk down with him. Percy teleported back home with the ring, and then rode his new motor scooter to Pymble as fast as he could, something he’d never done before. He had to get to her before she looked in the bag again.

He parked just near the school, walked up to the gate, and met Ingrid. She suddenly licked his cheek.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“I thought you liked it,” said Ingrid.

“It’s a bit embarrassing in public,” said Percy, well aware that she was comparing the taste of him to the taste of the tiny man that she assumed was still in her handbag. He had to make sure that she did not open it at all.

“Well I’m sorry for being late,” he said, “Today everything you like is my treat.”

“Thank you,” she said.

That would keep her from opening her bag. He would offer to carry everything in his backpack too, leave the motor scooter there and let her think he needed a lift home, as she had not seen him park it. She didn’t even know he’d bought it specifically for the purpose of this ruse, though it would be useful for Sneaky Spy adventures, he felt sure.

After a romantic day with Ingrid, which included watching her licking cream from a jam and cream bun, he walked her to her car, and invited her to come over for dinner.

“I did have some of my own food in mind, but I love to spend every moment I can with you,” she said.

She drove him home, and he set her up in the dining room, noticing that she carried her handbag by her side the whole time, not wanting him to escape.

He ran upstairs, shrank and teleported directly into the bag just in time to see her lift it and look in at him.

“We’re at my boyfriend’s house, and I’m most likely going to stay the night. I can’t risk you escaping the bag while we’re asleep. So I’ll have to look for a suitable moment to eat you up quickly, when he’s not likely to walk back into the room. I’m sorry it’s so up in the air, but we’ll work something out.”

The politeness of the speech excited him in yet another way.

As soon as she’d closed the bag, he teleported back upstairs and then came down fully dressed once again (having removed most of his clothing except for his underpants, each time he had shrunken). They had dinner together and then he decided to engineer the opportunity for her to eat him in privacy.

He had to get her away from his bag this time, to make sure she didn’t discover his absence before he could teleport into it again. He invited her to dance with him and led her upstairs, holding hands, before she could think to pick up her bag. She would be worried about the little man’s escape.

“I’ll just get my bag,” she said.

“Nothing will happen to it,” he said.

“I know, I just think …. Maybe I should hang it up on the clothes hooks to stop its contents getting damaged,” she said.

That was still far enough away from their dancing destination.

He led her up to his bedroom after she hung up the bag. They danced arm in arm on the balcony and in the bedroom until she said that she needed to go and fetch a glass of water from downstairs.

He let her go, and raced into the laboratory room, which he always kept locked, and shrank himself and teleported into the bag.

He heard her briskly approaching and taking the bag into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry for the short notice, but it’s more than my last tiny man meal got,” she said, recalling the rapid gobbling in the Botanical Gardens, “I’ll have to eat you all up now. No more time to talk.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Thanks for being such a good sport,” she said, and opened her mouth and slipped him in.

She swallowed quickly this time, and he was just as quick in teleporting back to the laboratory and returning to the bedroom.

He soon heard her ascending the stairs and saw her with a glass of water.

“Thank goodness she really got one to authenticate HER journey,” he thought, “It gave me more time to hide mine.”

They snuggled into bed and she licked him again.

“I guess you just have that kind of a taste,” she said, having apparently disproved her suspicions.