Banana crime

There could be a wave of banana crime coming your way!

Peel them quickly for our safety.

Interlude: Headache

 Cheryl was bored.  They'd been trudging through the chair-lined tunnel for what seemed like eternity, or at the very least fifteen minutes.  She was bored of walking, bored of all the songs on her Walkman, bored of Iris's back and bum, bored of non-chocolate Easter eggs masquerading as exquisite objets d'art on chairs.  Bored, bored, BORED!
 As the third ladder appeared out of the gloom ahead of her, Cheryl stopped her trudging and looked up to see where it went.  The rusty old metal ladder disappeared into a dark tube in the curved ceiling of the tunnel.
 "What's up there?" she asked.
 "Nothing" Iris called back.  "Come along, Cheryl."
 "There must be something" Cheryl mumbled and started to climb the ladder.
 "No good will come of it!" Iris called to Cheryl's sturdy legs as they disappeared above her.
 After a minute of climbing, a metal manhole cover blocked any further progress.  Cheryl pushed on it and the cover creaked open, daylight almost blinding her.  With a grunt, Cheryl pushed it all the way back and crawled halfway out into what appeared to be a scruffy copse surrounded by an even scruffier hedge.  Just as she was about to hawl herself all the way out, something came flying over the hedge and clonked her right in the head, cushioned slightly by her thick, bowl-cut hair.

 "Oof!" said Cheryl, her grip loosening.  And then a second object hurtled after it.  "Ow!" she said as it too made painful contact with her skull.
 Cheryl half slid, half tumbled down the ladder, the manhole cover clanging shut above her.
 "Owch" she grumbled as she landed heavily on the tunnel floor.  Then, not getting any sympathy from Iris, she struggled to her feet and lumbered after her.

 The fourth ladder appeared after another five minutes or so.  Cheryl climbed it as Iris tutted and shook her head.  At the top of the tube, Cheryl pushed open another manhole cover and was summarily hit in the head by a half-eaten banana.
 Cheryl sighed and made her way back down again.
 "I told you no good would come of it" Iris said matter-of-factly with her hands on her hips, and then she turned and strode off down the tunnel.  "Not far now."
 "Hummph" said Cheryl.

Beauty (and Bananas) are only Skin Deep...

 Douglas squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to concentrate on the many questions brought into being from the situation he found himself in.  He had to whittle them down to just the three important ones, but Iris's staring eyes were putting him off.  How was he supposed to think?!

 After a minute or two of fruitless reasoning, Douglas still hadn't decided if "Should he play Iris's favourite Beatles tune?" was an important question or not - and he really fancied a banana which didn't help matters.  He was dithering between including the question or not because a) he wasn't sure if he knew for definite which Beatles tune was her favourite - despite her singing "Hey Jude" somewhat incessantly in that underwater cave to take her mind off not having a toaster, and b) the fact that the question had cropped up surely meant that it was a plot point to be remembered at a later time, so it had to be important.  Right?  He didn't know so he opened his eyes.  Iris seemed to be staring even more intently, even though, from her recumbent position on the bed, her line of sight was directed at the ceiling.  He looked at his watch - time was escaping him.  All thoughts of bananas evaporated.

 "Sorry, Iris" Douglas muttered as he stooped down, brushed an errant chocolate raisin off the bed, then slid his forearms between Iris's unconscious form and the rather old fashioned candlewick bedspread, and turned her on to her side to face the wall.  "What the hells...?"

 A faint, blinking light behind Iris's right ear caught his attention.  He gently brushed aside a lock of her dark hair to get a better look.  It was probably a bluetooth earpiece, he told himself as he moved closer.  Or a hearing aid?  Although, Iris never had any hearing problems as far as he knew?  But there was nothing there.  No audio technology, no medical devices, nothing.  Except for the light that continued to blink once every second or so.  A light that was flashing under her skin!

 Douglas was momentarily stunned.  After a second or two that felt like hours, he gathered his wits and looked as his watch again.  Then at Iris.  The light was still blinking and, from his new position amongst the shoeboxes and notebooks, he noticed that the light was reflecting off a small, white triangle jutting out from her skin next to her hairline.  He moved in for a closer look.  The triangle looked like the corner of a label.  There was even something printed on it - a letter, by the look of it, but only part of it was showing above the skin's surface.  Gingerly (Douglas was proud of being a red-head), he gripped the label betwixt finger and thumb and gently pulled it out.  One centimetre, two, three, then it stopped - clearly fixed to something within Iris.

 Douglas read the fine, block-cap text: MADE IN TAIWAN