Bill Bones - Barbary Corsair (retired)

Bill Bones is that rarest of creatures - the retired Pirate. Pirates, like politicians, rarely quit while they are ahead and the buccaneer who releases a statement indicating that he wishes to leave the life of pillage and plunder in order to spend more time with his family is usually taking "being economical with the truth" to Austerity Budget levels. The other similarity between pirates and politicos is their shared propensity for cheating at Travel Scrabble (for some reason, they are all unexpectedly high-minded when it comes to "real" scrabble but, when it comes to the miniature, magnetised version, it is a case of "what goes on in Travel Scrabble stays in Travel Scrabble".

Anyway, Bill Bones has put it all - plank-walking, keel-hauling and election-promise-reneging (another pirate/pollo crossover activity) - behind him and has settled for a quite life of whittling model Dolphins to sell to tourists.

Except... except that, every week, for one reason or another, he is forced to come out of retirement for "one last job". One week, it might be to repay a favour to an old friend who once saved his life from a rabid shark or a blood-crazed town council planning sub-committee. The next, maybe he is blackmailed into a final act of murder and mayhem by an old sea-dog who knows where the skeletons are buried (old sea-dogs are particularly good at remembering the location of buried bones).

Sometimes, Bill has to work quite hard to find something that forces him, against his will, to resume his old blood-thirsty ways.

In this way, Bill can rest easy with his conscience and still have all the fun of being a pirate.