PART 1
“Pub!”
He didn’t actually say that, but Gert always said that, just by the way he moved. There were loads of pubs on the main street, but the two walked right on by. Gert didn’t really know where they were going, and Lester never knew where they were going, but they were in a hurry to arrive, all the same.
The big chain pub came and went.
“Why do we have a massive Lager Lounge, anyway?”
“No-one knows, lad, no-one knows. That’s true of all the Great Works of Humanity. Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, that massive ice-cream statue in New York. There’s more to this world than banks and bingo halls.”
“So it’s like our very own Christ the Redeemer?”
“The big goalie statue in Rio? Aye, protecting the market square from the wrath of God. If he ever were to rain down his fire upon us, Heaven forbid that he would, we’d wash it with beer. There’s nothing in Hell or Earth that can withstand beer, you know.”
The remaining pubs and taverns and watering holes came thick and fast, huddled together for warmth, as if they’d left their coats in the Lager Lounge and didn’t want to miss their taxi.
“Up ahead’s the Old Lion, where the professional types sip fine ales and lecture each other about Society. Then there’s the Grey Hart, The Cockatoo – for all the twirly moustaches – The Lady Luck, just round the corner. There’s the Farmer’s Arms – that’s for anyone in tweed. And that, that…”
Gert gestured towards a dark pub in a dark corner of the street. On cue, the wind gasped through its windows, as if it were an unrealistically evil villain in a children’s tale. Lester knew all about the Hood and Hangman, or at least he thought he did. It had a reputation – not a place to be late on a Saturday night, they said, unless you knew how to defend yourself against a broken pool cue. Mothers used it to scare their sons and daughters into doing homework – he’d been told countless times he’d spend his life in the Hood and Hangman if he didn’t do the washing up.
They both looked away, as if recoiling from an evil spirit they dared not speak of. Instead they hurried along an alleyway, down a little hill. The town’s real heart was away from all this hubbub, down a small back street, past golden-headed lanterns and smooth old cobble stones. To the left, just where you weren’t looking, sat the Moon on the Hill, quiet and meditative but for the strain of a long, low saxophone.
It never closed before half two. Long after all the jobsworths and jokers had gone home, the Moon on the Hill kept the lights down low and the ciders flowing. There was no money in staying open this late, but no-one cared. Business plans and profits happened to bankers in big cities, to young go-get-em suits with a point to prove. No-one had proved anything in our town since the nineteenth century, whatever the local mystic said.
It was Wednesday evening in our little bar – jazz night. Once the November night took over and the street lights sparked up, the only place to be was the blues bar, down below the street, away from dreary winter days. It was here that Gert finally stopped his frantic half-jog, half-canter, and descended the steps, Lester panting behind.
“Come on,” he gestured, opening the musty door. Lester stepped in to the warm, watching purples and oranges sweep from the lights and through the cellar. There was a crowd, but the kind of crowd where you’d recognize every face, every figure.
If you’ve left the city you’ll know that every small-town bar is full of rock n’ roll legends. Men cruise through the door in their leather jackets, ladies croon to the small, fuzzy jukebox over in the corner. There’s always a middle-aged man by the bar who’ll never forget his first voyage to The Dark Side of the Moon. In this bar Elvis was relaxing on the leather sofa, waiting for the fun to begin. A smoothed-out Joni Mitchell leapt to her feet for some reason. Three Kurt Cobains squatted by a small table, all plain black tees and crinkled denim, while earnest Stevie Nicks ordered another fiery cocktail.
Gert hopped eagerly past the legends, waltzing left of tables and right of chairs, leaping over bags and ducking under beams. Lester tiptoed behind, apologizing to no-one in particular. They jigsawed to the corner, to some ragged, dusty men and women behind the stage.
No words was spoken as Gert and Lester sat down. The three old jazz hands crooned their necks towards Gert, registered his presence, gave a little nod of acknowledgement, and slowly, quizzically, turned their heads to Lester. Lester was inexplicably reminded of three ageing turtles, who had seen all the young limpets before, and had forgotten what was a starfish and what was a sea monster.
“Lester, meet the blue crew. This is Janey” – Gert pointed to a necklaced woman, who smiled sagely. And here’s Pixar Paul…”
“Why Pixar?”
“He’s never seen a Pixar movie!” someone whispered in his ear.
“Never seen a Pixar movie? What?” Lester didn’t understand, and didn’t keep his voice down. “What about Up?”
“No,” Pixar Paul replied, stony-faced.
“Wall-E?”
“No.”
Two of the Kurt Cobains overheard, and joined in.
“Toy Story! You must have seen Toy Story! Everyone’s seen that! With the cowboy and the talking potatoes…”
“NO. I’ve never seen that.”
The third Kurt Cobain tried to be helpful. “Toy Story 2?”
Everyone looked at him.
“Oh, I know, what about Pirates of the Caribbean?”
“The one with the English lad in eyeliner? Yeah, I’ve seen that.”
The gathering crowd looked a little shocked.
“Oh, hang on, that’s not Pixar, is it? The pirates are all real. They’re all fake in those cartoon films.”
Pixar Paul was looking more and more glum by now. Janey took Lester to one side.
“Paul’s very sensitive about never having seen one of those movies. It marks him out from the crowd, sets him apart from humanity, but not in a good way. Not like Galileo or Eleanor Rigby or a young Henry David Thoreau. More like Hitler. Or that guy who tells people they’ve got weird feet. So just stay off the subject from now on, ok? Nobody wants to be Hitler.”
“Ok,” he replied, uncertainly. “But why doesn’t he just go and watch a Pixar movie?”
“Because then he wouldn’t be Pixar Pete,” she explained, “He’s always been Pixar Pete.”
“Pete?”
“Paul, sorry.”
“Even when he was a baby?”
“Yeah, even when he was a baby. Even then, he’d never seen a Pixar film.”
Lester couldn’t fault her, but was still confused. “Why can’t he just be Paul?”
“Because, well… nobody can just be Paul. I’m not just Paul. You’re not just Paul.”
No, I’m Lester,” said Lester, brightly. “You’re Janey.”
She sighed. “Oh, never mind. Anyway, the band’s starting up, and I need a drink. Sit down.”
Lester returned, and found the third turtle staring at the empty chair where he’d been sitting. He sat down. She was still staring.
She considered him for a moment. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Lester.”
“Why Lester?” said a voice from behind. Kurt 2 wanted to know everything today.
“For Lester Young, right? You’re young Lester!”
“Pretty stupid to call him young Lester, he won’t always be young.”
“Who’s Lester Young?” Lester asked.
“Who’s Lester Youuung?!” roared Pixar Paul, unsure whether to denounce him like a preacher or educate him like the Early Learning Centre. “You’ve never heard Lester Young play? They say he was a seagull with the sax…”
“A seagull?” Gert queried. His knowledge of jazz wasn’t that great, but he’d never heard of a seagull on saxophone. He could picture it though, a groovy little seabird picking up the alto, putting on some shades, blowing a banging tune on the shoreline, fluttering its wings to the beat…
“Yeah, a gull. He’d cut away from the rhythm, rising and soaring and diving and soaring and rising like some crazy seabird and then he’d briiiing it back, all the way back, back down to the beat. Yes sir!”
“I saw him up in Montreal, long time ago,” Janey joined in, “They say the war ended and his saxophone rang out across the world. I heard it. I heard that sax, ringing out across the world. The world stopped playing at soldiers, then and there.”
“So he wasn’t actually a seagull then?” Gert asked, a little disappointed. He’d definitely have paid to see a jazz band with a seagull in it.
“Have you ever, continued Janey, who was warming to her theme, “Have you ever been in a glacier, in cold, cold ice, and put on a jazz record? Soared over the crevasse, between the ice, floating on the wings of the blues? That’s who Lester Young is. Perfect freedom. Freedom like a seagull’s wings.”
“Don’t you dig a crazy saxophone, Lester?
“Um, I, I…” Lester was struggling to swim this evening. He’d always had trouble telling apart the sound of a saxophone from the sound of a trumpet, and didn’t really want to be shown up. He didn’t yet know what every adult human being knows, that it’s actually impossible to tell a saxophone apart from a trumpet or a trombone or a cornet, and everyone’s just pretending. The jazz hands all knew this, but they’d never admit it, even if their lives depended on it for some awkwardly contrived reason.
“What do you listen to, Lester. What do you bop to in your bedroom?”
“What crazy tune comes out of your speakers?”
“Have you ever sung the blues?”
He didn’t have time to answer.
“Have you ever been a seagull, Lester?” Janey demanded. Or are you Seagull Lester, the kid who’s never been a seagull?”
“He’s not a gull! He’s a pigeon!” Kurt Cobain One trumpeted supremely.
“Yeah,” cackled Kurt Cobain Two, “Get this. He’s not Lester Young, he’s Leicester Square!”
He thought this was the wittiest thing anyone had ever said. The jazz hands stared at him patronizingly. Gert threw a sock at him. The three Cobains, luckily, left the conversation.
The third turtle smiled. It had been a long time since she’d last found a new audience.
“Do you know, Lester, why the blues is called the blues?”
The others paused, ready to hear her tell the famous tale again.
“I was there, there in the early days of jazz. When the blues were still pale and colourless and a little translucent. It was me and Duke Ellington, down in New Orleans, way before he became a duke, or a doook, as he used to call it. Just plain old Viscount Ellington. Anyways, the Viscount had this thing for rhythm. Nowadays they say it’s a condition, begins with ‘s’, sounds like cinema or something…”
Some of the legends were listening in to their favourite story, and tried to help out.
“Syntactica!”
“Syncopation.”
“Semaphore!”
“Centrifugal!”
Gert thought he knew. “Sinuses! He could smell!”
“No, Gert, he couldn’t smell it. No-one can smell rhythm, that’s ridiculous. Actually, he was a sinner for rhythm – yeah, that’s it.”
“A sinner for rhythm,” she repeated. “As a kid, he’d feel the rhythm, and he loved the rhythm, real strong, like. But he loved it too much, clung to it as most men cling on to happiness, or love. He couldn’t do without it. And the Devil, Lord curse him, is always there, watching us, finding our weaknesses watching us fall.”
“The Viscount didn’t know that you oughta let the rhythm fly, watch it go like a seagull, and kiss it as it boogies past, just like the poet said.”
“And the Devil said to the Viscount, ‘Viscount, I see you feel the rhythm, and I will help you. I can give you the chance to see the rhythm too, see it with your jazzman eyes.”
“Yes, weird red man, I’d like to see the rhythm!”
Lester gasped. “A Faustian pact!”
“Actually, no, it wasn’t a pact. The Devil was a bit absent-minded that day, forgot to take anything in return. Left the Viscount with his soul all intact, and forgot about asking for a receipt. So the Viscount was a sinner for rhythm, and the Devil went away with nothing.”
“Anyway, Ellington walks in with me to this New Orleans bar, and something special happens to him. This dude’s playing the piano, 4/4 time, and he’s seeing a misty green, like a Scandinavian forest, not that he’s ever been to Sweden, mind.”
“He leaps on the stage, picks up an instrument, and plays and plays and plays. The band are a bit peeved, but the crowd love it. He jazzes fast and slow and somewhere in-between, and then fast again, and eventually settles for this sound. We’re all watching, gasping, but he’s far away…”
“What’s he seeing?”
“Well, when he played fast and slow and fast, he could see all the colours of the rainbow, all out there, brighter than light. But when he settled into this rhythm, there was something else.”
She paused, partly for dramatic effect, partly to eat an olive.
“What did he see?”
“The world’s all turquoise and cobalt and sky-blue. He’s seeing the sea and the sky and cobalt and Italy’s football shirt and Argos plastic bags and the old Ford Mondeo and a 16-25 railcard cover and lagoons and rivers and Monday. And then he stops, stops and strolls to the front of the stage, and he takes the applause.”
“And someone calls out to him, ‘What do you call that sound, what you just played?’ He thinks for a moment, he stands there all still, and he says,”
“I call it the blues.”
The other jazz hands sat in reverent silence. Gert cheered. Stevie Nicks clapped from a long way away. The band started up again, playing a little bit of ragtime to ease the mood. The storyteller ate another olive, pleased with herself. Lester smiled. He’d never heard a story like that before.
So the band played on, and the old jazz hands told more stories. The third turtle told tales of folk songs and stars and wind-swept Oklahoma. The legends settled and the day’s discord gave way to peaceful night, stars orbiting the room in purples and oranges and cider. The saxophone soothed, the trumpets blew, the piano danced. By now the legends were, in their separate conversations, talking together, blending their voices in subtle harmony. Joni took the soprano part as she ordered another cocktail. Elvis crooned soft and low about the customers at his cheese shop. It was as if the Moon On The Hill was a choir and an orchestra, playing the whole world, jamming from the waltzes of 19th century France to the smoky blues of south, deep Louisiana.
A perfectly ordinary Wednesday night. Or so it seemed.
“HELP, SOMEBODY HELP!” shouted the door, or rather the person in the doorway. “THERE’S BEEN A MURDER!”
The bar continued as normal. There was a murder pretty much every night in the Hood and Hangman, particularly if the pool table had started swallowing people’s 20p pieces again.
“It was outside the Grey Hart!”
Now that silenced the room. Nobody died outside the Grey Hart, ever, not even on Saturdays. That’s why it was called the Hart, and not the Hangman. Somewhere a child screamed, but this may have been unrelated.
Some people looked at the town policeman who was sitting with a pint. He bore a remarkable resemblance to one of the Bee Gees. But most people knew better than to look to the law in this town.
“There’s only one person who can solve this”, said Joni – perhaps a little presumptuously, because no-one yet knew whether the culprit had been caught. All heads turned to the corner. Not to the corner with the jukebox – jukeboxes can’t solve mysteries – but to the far corner, where Gert sat.
Gert stood up, munificently.
“Come with me, young Lester. We’ve got a mystery to solve.”
PART 2
Gert’s investigation didn’t really start until the next evening. He reckoned that there wasn’t much point starting when everyone was asleep, and he needed the daytime to have a sleep. He snoozed until drinking time, and then summoned Lester.
The problem was that Gert had never actually been a detective before. Of course, like all entrepreneurial young men, he’d set up a detective agency in his early teens, but it hadn’t lasted long. His one and only investigation was the Case Of The Missing Lunch Money, when, after systematically searching the area and interviewing all possible actors, he had conclusively proved, beyond all doubt, that nobody could possibly have committed the crime, other than himself. For his brilliant inductive reasoning he was, of course, promptly expelled, although the fiver found in his pocket may have had something to do with it.
Lester wouldn’t be much help as a sidekick. Gert had first met Lester on a bus a few weeks previously, although perhaps ‘met’ is too tame a word. Lester had been sitting quietly, staring at the window – the kid had a disconcerting tendency to stare at transparent things, rather than through them – and Gert had been in the mood for a good shout.
“I don’t want any trouble from you youn’un!” he roared. There are many different sorts of things that roar – lions, pirates, tides, The Forties, Brian Blessed – but Gert’s roar had a beauty all of its own, like a hyena laughing through a wind tunnel.
Lester turned his attention from the window and stared blankly. He quickly assumed that Gert was harmless, and grinned foolishly instead. This was a fatal error. Gert took the smile as an invitation and sat down beside Lester, taking up around three-quarters of the space, as some men inexplicably do.
“I was kidding, I was kidding. Oh, where are my manners?” Gert, as every true gentleman ought, proffered his plastic 2-litre cider bottle. Lester respectfully declined – he wasn’t used to drinking before lunch, even though he hadn’t quite reached 18.
Lester had spent the previous ten minutes pretending that his hands were pelicans peering over the window ledge, so Gert’s earthy, hairy conversation came as a bit of a shock. In fact, the next few minutes would be bamboozling.
“Well, I’ve got 6 wives, and 21 girlfriends!” boasted Gert, “and none of them want me to shave!”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m going to see one of them now. She always likes apples, so I’ve brought her some apples!” Gert held Exhibit A, the cider bottle, up on high, as if it were a flaming torch in a Byzantine palace.
“Do you know, lad, how to behave towards a woman? How to treat them?”
“No, not really…”
“Well, take it from me, there’s only one thing you’ve got to know. Take it from me, you won’t find it in any magazine or self-help book, mind.”
Lester waited. His pelicans were holding tight to the seat in front, as if they reckoned the bus would tip over.
“Here it is,” Gert leaned in conspiratorially, talking behind his hand, but loudly enough for other passengers to hear.
“Treat ’em with respect.”
He leaned out again, and winked.
“There. That’s the secret”
Lester hadn’t been expecting that, and both smiled.
“How do you treat your parents? Do you respect them? Gert looked him up and down. “Ah, you look like a good kid. I bet you treat ’em right.”
Lester’s hands had relaxed, and they were examining the seat’s cushion cover. Gert noticed.
“Arr, you’re playing the old pelican hands game! Listen, Lester, do you know what I do? I’ve got a little boat in the harbour! Goes up and down on the waves, it does, rolling the waves. I’d be out on the oceans blue now, sailing the seventy seas, but it’s all rough and stormy out, mind. No sailing in this weather.”
Gert smiled again.
“Listen, this is my stop – I’ll see you around and about the town, if you please.” With that, Gert stood up, pressed the big bell button, and strode out into the bright blue sun, a hundred miles from the sea.
They were to see each other around and about the town. Gert implicitly trusted Lester, in the way that most people trust someone who’s prepared to listen to them for nearly three and a half minutes. Lester, for his part, trusted everyone who deigned to talk to him. Lester hadn’t investigated a murder before, and Gert decided that the young’un would have to be eased in gently. Perhaps he could arrange the magnifying glasses or file all the case notes. Maybe make tea for witnesses. There was bound to be something he could do.
The night after the murder, the two of them met again in the market square.
“We have things to talk about, Lester.”
“Like what?”
“We’ve got to decide what sort of detective I am! Am I Sherlock Holmes, a thinking man?”
“No.”
Gert bristled at Lester’s hastiness. “Fine. What about Miss Marple?”
“What kind of detective was she?”
“She was… well, I’m not sure. Think she was just old. That was her thing, being old.”
“You’re not old.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not Belgian either, which rules out Poirot.”
“Was Poirot the one who always rode on expensive trains?”
“Yep. Don’t know why they weren’t cheaper, what with all the murders on them.”
There was a long pause as both thought about the price of train fares in this day and age.
“I know, be Columbo! Do that turn after interviewing someone, then find out their innermost secret! You could do a turn.”
“I can do a turn! On a good day. When I haven’t had too much cider.” Gert considered. “Criminals already know the Columbo turn, though.”
“Turn twice?” Lester offered, eagerly.
“What, turn around and then back? You’ve got it, young’un! Everyone will think I’m doing a Columbo turn, but then I’ll turn again, and they’ll realise I was only pretending to do the turn, and then they’ll be so shocked they’ll tell me all their secrets!”
Gert pictured the scene. “Or maybe they’ll just think I’m doing a big turn to prove I can. That’s what us acrobatic types do. Somersault down the street, turn handstands in the park, just because we can. Yeah, they’ll think I’m one of them acrobat fellas and ignore me.”
“You know what, I don’t really feel in the mood for a murder mystery, Lester. There’s no dread. After the murder I had a bit more cider, than a snooze, then some eggs. I mean, I’m not feeling it.”
“Did you find anything out about the case today? Like who was killed?”
“Doesn’t matter. Look, we’re here to solve a murder, not find the victim. Already been done, you see.” Gert tapped his own nose, as if to check it was still there. “That lad who ran into the pub, remember? He found the victim.”
“I suppose so.”
Gert racked his brains.
“I know what’ll get us in the mood for sleuthing – a good ghost story!”
“Do you know any ghost stories?”
“No. But I know who does…”
Gert paused, just long enough, to raise the tension. However, Lester was examining his hands again and didn’t really notice.
“The person who knows a ghost story is… Maximilian!”
“Maximilian the tour guide?”
“Yes, but not just any old tour guide. A ghost tour guide.”
Gert’s logic was once again faultless, thought Lester. If you want a ghost story, go to the guy who tells ghost stories.
“His tour starts in the market square in 2 minutes.”
As if waiting for a cue, a very mystical, mysterious looking man tapped Lester on the shoulder. He wore a turban and a v-neck sweater, with the turban posed at a jaunty angle. Having said that, it was generous to call it a turban. It looked as if it had been constructed by someone who didn’t really know anything about turbans, but really wanted to wear one because it made him look exotic and interesting and cool.
The moment would have been more mysterious still, if there hadn’t been 4 or 5 Brummies standing behind with chips, waiting for the tour to start. One was scratching his arse, but in a relatively thoughtful way.
“Maximilian!”
“Gerrrrrrttttttt!.”
Maximilian liked to be generous with his sounds. Lester was suitably impressed. Gert beamed.
“And a boo to you too! Maxi, we need a ghost story. Just to get us in the mood for our murder mystery.”
“Of course. To see the murder for what it truly is, you need to enter the soul of the victim, watch the murder unfold from the other side of the grave, understand what has happened to that soul as it leaves this life and gazes on, powerless to change and turn and manipulate the minds of Man. In that case, you are in the right place. Come with me, and you shall learn about the dark perils before and beyond death. Terrible things happen in both this world and the next, young friends.”
“And you may join as well,” he offered the Brummies, one of whom was looking for somewhere to pee.
Gert was suitably impressed. He could feel his spine tingling already, and his mood picking up, like a spaniel who’s caught the scent of the postman. The little group toddled off, posing at on the corner for a photo of the cobblestones. They turned and disappeared down a winding alley for a while, turning left and right, before emerging on a major road they could have reached in half the time by taking the main street.
“Here,” proclaimed Maximilian importantly,” is where our first tale takes place.”
“I know that some of you may be sc-ep-tics.” He pronounced every syllable of the word, and then one more, as if it were a dirty curse. “I’m not going to talk you round. Some people don’t believe, and that’s that. But I urge you to have an open mind. There’s more to this Earth than bricks and mortar and concrete and tarmacadam. More than just houses and trees and sheep and horses and Connecticut and the price of milk. We all get lost in streets and pigeons and constitutions and beards and cottage pie, and we don’t listen for the other country. Listen out for your long dead grandmothers and your as-yet-unborn great-great nieces, for they are calling to you.”
Lester strained his ears. He reckoned he might be hearing his father’s uncle’s uncle, but on second thoughts he decided it was probably his stomach, as the smell of chips was making him peckish.
Maximilian continued.
“Do you see these cottages, just across the road?” They did. “We cannot venture any closer, brave adventurers, for the current occupants throw toilet rolls at me if I go too close.. Yet, on that very site fifty-three years ago, a brutal kidnapping took place.”
He paused, letting the image consume the gathered crowd.
“It was political, as these things often are. They called it the Cold War, but it was anything but cold. Both the Communists and the Yanks knew that all-out nuclear war would obliterate the very earth we stand on, so all combat was carried out on a tiny scale. The Yankees had their own methods, generally involving ecological disaster. You know, train a school of dolphins to swim into Russian waters and eat some of the plankton, thus leaving the Soviet amphibian population slightly depleted. They say it was omega-3 deficiency that led to the decision to reject Communism as a practical political structure – that’s just a theory, and it may be well be right, but it’s all far beyond the likes of me.”
“What I do know about is the Russian tactics. Those scheming Soviets didn’t want to stick to training whales – oh no. Instead they turned their attention to people!”
The Brummies gasped. They knew that, once upon a time, war was made against human beings, but they never expected to confront this dreadful truth.
“The Russians had a plan. They couldn’t destroy the West in one great strike, but they could defeat it piece by piece. Instead of launching a vast army, they attempted to take out the British people one-by-one. Their plan was to systematically subdue each and every member of the British population in turn, until there was no one left. The first to go was Maggie Jones, of Darlington who was carried off in the night. She was soon followed by Arthur Makepeace, once of The Wirral, who was dragged inside a postbox as he walked past. Little Billy Stuart got stolen in a ball pool and carted off to Leningrad. The Kremlin would have succeeded in taking us all, too, if England had been the size of San Marino!”
“Anyway, one day they came here, to our sleepy town. A young grocer was their target, a Miss Nancy Worthington. Oh, she was surprised, all right. The Russians arrived one morning in Spring, fiendishly timing their arrival after the milkman’s and a bit before old Mrs Crisp came round for a cup of tea.”
Just then a cat miaowed. Gert stared it out, furious at the interruption.
“So the Russians turned up, all three of them, in their dirty old white van. They’d first acquired the van back in ’54, hiring it under false names. The proprietor thought they were Welsh, and mistook their coarse Eastern accents for the sweet melodies of Pontypridd.”
“The bastards!” a bystander exclaimed, with feeling. It is difficult to exclaim ‘The bastards!” without feeling.
“Anyway, they opened up the van, took out their dusty carpet, brushed it down a bit, rolled it up. They carried it to the front door, Svetlana holding the front of the carpet, Alexey at the back, Nadia moving around a bit. She couldn’t decide whether to grab the back or help out at the front, or linger about in the middle and support the weight. In the end she was only in the way, and the others could have carried it without her.”
“They forced the door open, and laboriously pulled the rug up the stairs. Miss Nancy tried to run, but no-one can run from the might of Mother Russia. Nancy was trapped in the front bedroom, the carpet was unravelled, and poor Miss Nancy was thrown to the floor. Those diabolical Communists rolled the rug round and round and round her, until escape was impossible.”
“She was carried slowly down the stairs, the Russians taking care not to hit the bannister, and through the front door, minding the step. She was placed in the van, the kidnappers jumped in, and the van sped off back to Eastern Europe, behind the Iron Curtain. She was never seen again.”
By this point, Lester had blanched, turning as pale as a cream carpet in the winter sales. Even Gert was tongue-tied, speechless at these horrors.
“Twenty minutes later, Mrs Crisp turned up for her morning brew. All she found was a pint of milk, an open front door, and a note – a note to say that Mother Russia had taken another of our daughters.”
“It is said that, whenever the East wind blows, it carries young Nancy’s voice from the ice white snow of foreign steppes, calling out for England.”
“A classic, diabolical tale of kidnap. Menacing Soviets rolled up a young English woman in a carpet and drove her all the way to Moscow. It is to the greatest credit of the Americans, that their brave dolphins brought down the Berlin Wall!”
“Hear, hear” chorused the crowd.
Gert, however, was nonplussed. “I thought this was a ghost story? Where is the ghost?”
“The young woman, Miss Nancy Worthington,” Maximilian explained, courteously and patiently.
“But you said her voice was carried here by the wind! That’s not a ghost! I want ghouls and squeaking chains and figures in white sheets moaning!”
Gert mimicked a ghost. “Wooo! Woooo-ooooo-oooo!” He raised his arms high and wiggled his fingers hauntingly.
Exasperated, Maximilian ignored him. “Let us continue on our journey through the after life. Turn around and head towards Boots.”
The Brummies turned and strode on, enjoying being at the front for a change. The one with the chips walked a metre ahead of everyone else, imagining that he was leading the pack, telling everyone the tales, like a greasy Dickens in a grimy street. Maxi fretted at the back of the group. He didn’t like to be walking behind everyone else. You never saw Ayrton Senna walking behind everyone else. No, he’d be proudly zooming ahead, pushing the boundaries of physics and engineering and sport as he lapped the stragglers and the journeymen.
Maxi worked his way through the pack, as if making up for a poor qualifying performance and subsequent lowly position on the grid. He called the group to a halt in a leafy little square. Four benches loitered in the space between the grand houses, pretending that they were minding their own business, when really they were worried that everyone was staring at them. Benches aren’t much good at casually hanging around – they don’t have a mobile phone or a portable music player, so everything gets a bit uncomfortable.
Maximilian stood before a great white Georgian building. The house was at peace, with pale tinted windows at blossom smiling at the sides. The crowd gathered in front of him, forming an arc with the guide at the centre. They stopped talking and waited for him to begin.
“The house you see in front of you is haunted.”
The Brummies jumped. They’d never seen a haunted house before.
“It is haunted by a mother and her children. They once lived here, in a old wooden house that stood here before this splendid thing behind you was ever created. The children had a father too, but he doesn’t haunt the place. Oh no, he is long gone, summoned back to Hell, the eternal fire from whence he came.”
Lester shivered. There is something about talk of eternal fire which always makes you feel particularly cold on a brittle November night.
“You see, he was no man born of woman. He was not from this Earth. He had no ancestry, no childhood, no hometown. He was, this creature, what is known as a fire demon.”
Maximilian lingered over the words ‘fire demon’, almost spelling them out, letting the audience contemplate them for a moment.
“Fire demons are sent to this women, given corporeal form. They take the shape of ordinary men, assume their form, acquire their habits, beliefs, superstitions. They enter into our conceits, our prejudices, act as if they they, too, were once born weeping and will slowly, fatefully cry their way to life’s passing.”
“Yet all this is mere pretence, for they were not born here and will not die here, at least not in the way we mortals do. A fire demon seeks to wreak the most suffering it can upon the world, consuming itself in the process.”
“Like a bee,” Gert helpfully suggested.
“Ah, not at all like a bee, my friend. The sting of a bee may be sharp for a little while, but the destruction of a fire demon is the most terrible of nightmares.”
“I don’t know, bee stings are pretty nasty, especially if you’re allergic.”
“In a way, everyone is allergic to the fire demon, for no mortal can withstand fire.”
Gert acknowledged this and backed down. He decided to shut up and listen to the story.
“The fire demon, then, is indistinguishable from an adult male human. They are easily not to notice them.”
“One day Mary Murphy met her man. He was a tailor, she a seamstress. He was gentle and kind, with good strong hands. Apparently good, strong hands were considered particularly attractive back then, I don’t know why. After a brief courtship they married. Two beautiful children were born. The family lived here, in this old wooden house. The two made garments for the town, and what fine garments they were! The whole town loved them and the clothes they made.”
“Years passed, and the children grew. But what they didn’t know, what no-one knew, was that their father was a creature of Hell. And one day, just when the family were settled and happy, the fire demon revealed itself.”
“It was a cold November evening, just like this one. A fire was crackling in the hearth, the children’s porridge was laid out on the table, ready for supper. All were smiling, basking in the joy of family life.”
“At that moment, just when Mary’s smile was widest, it burst into flame, and the fire spread rapidly, too rapidly for escape. Mary watched her children fall in the smoke and flames. She struggled with the inferno, but she was powerless as they were. She, too, succumbed to the hellfire. Her howls rent through that fateful night, and are heard there still.”
“In twenty minutes the house had fallen too, burnt to tiny ashes. The townsfolk said that their homespun garments were the last things to burn, all the children’s clothes eventually turning to dust as frantic onlookers desperately, hopelessly fought the blaze.”
“A new house was built – this gleaming, glorious house. Yet the evil remains, lurking in the shadows of November nights. The ghost is sometimes heard, shrieking and crying as her life burns around her.”
“So beware of the men you meet. However courteous they are, however helpful, there is always a chance, a very slight chance, that they are not human. Fire demons lurk among us, hidden and secret, waiting for the very moment when we are most happy, and taking our happiness away in an instant. Anyone could be a fire demon, and you’ll never know, not until the end.”
The group were quiet now. Gert, however, was delighted. He starting clapping enthusiastically, and the entire group slowly joined in. Maximilian basked in the applause.
“Thank you, thank you! That concludes the tour. If anyone’s up for a pint, I’ll be in the Lady Luck in half an hour!”
On the way to the pub, Gert rambled on to Lester.
“I’ve got that murder feeling tonight! Murder investigation feeling, I mean. I’m not going to burst into flame! Although I would say that, wouldn’t I? Maybe the only way is to say that I am going to burst into flame – I wouldn’t say that if I was, so I can’t be a fire demon!”
“You might be bluffing, though.”
“Ah, there is that. Difficult thing, this fire demon business. Like a game of poker, but with real pokers. So, are you ready for some sleuthing?”
“Yes!” Lester beamed.
“Me too. We’ll start tomorrow, right after we’ve been to the Lady Luck. I’ve got some cider to drink.”
And with that the two pushed opened the creaking swing doors of the Lady Luck.
PART 3
The door of the Lady Luck creaked open. This was to be expected. The door was incapable of making any other sound, as if, in its early days, it had tired of its first elocution lesson and run off to sea. Somehow it reminded Lester of a kid in his first ever French class who, having decided that he already knew everything worth knowing, went round telling everyone in the most extravagant accent that he had ze cheveux brown.
Instead of standard electric lighting, there were lanterns sprawled around the tavern, providing just enough light to navigate a voyage past coastlines of chairs and tables. Paraphenalia scattered like rocks: a diver’s helmet hung from the ceiling, low enough to catch the top of someone’s head if they weren’t paying attention. An old blunderbuss was balanced on the wall, a relic from the days of Old Empire, telling anecdotes like a retired old colonel, fondly reminiscing about natives and spears and cow-hide. An enormous replica shark took up an entire wall – a catch from one of the regulars, who had once been a whaler. Not a very good whaler, mind, hence it being a shark. The real shark used to scare away customers, so it was replaced with an 8-foot plastic toy from Sea World. It gave the pub a jovial, light-hearted atmosphere, which was both unwarranted and unwanted. The Lady Luck was a tavern for the braver souls, the ones who left their souls in the darkest oceans or the deepest rainforests.
Gert was hurriedly telling Lester all he knew about the bar.
“The one thing you’ve got to remember in the Lady Luck, young’un, is you don’t have to pay a pound for your rum, like you would in the Moon On The Hill. You play for it.”
They sat down next to the third turtle from the Moon On The Hill, or Sadie, as she was otherwise known. Maximilian was making his way over, having just told the barman the story of a cobra victim in Woolwich.
“This is no ordinary pub. Here rum is gambled for, not sold,” an Irishman grunted.
“Before the round is bought, the table pledges a game. Each drinker bids to buy the round,” Maximilian explained.
“Bids?”
“The drinker with the highest bid leaves for the bar. Let’s say I pledge the most,” Sadie insisted.
“At the bar, I pay my bid. I’m handed a coin and I throw it high, high into the air. If it lands tails, I must go back to our table with nothing for myself or the others, having lost my bid. If it lands heads, I throw again.”
“This sounds like a maths lesson,” Gert grumbled. He didn’t like maths lessons, mainly because he had trouble pronouncing the word ‘maths’. In his opinion, the Americans were right on in getting rid of the bloody awkward ‘s’ at the end.
“It doesn’t stop there,” continued Maximilian, “On the second throw, a tail will send her back to us with the promise of two drinks for herself, to be received whenever she likes, and one drink for the table. A head will let her throw again.
“On the third throw,” Maxi spoke again, as if continuing a song, “a tail will send her back to our table with the promise of four drinks for her, and one for the table. A head will let her throw again.”
“On the fourth throw,” Sadie finished, “a tail will send her back with eight guaranteed drinks for herself, and one drink for the table. A head will let her throw again, and so on.”
“This is how we drink at the Lady Luck, and why the Lady Luck is so named.”
“We even made up a shanty about it.”
“We sing a lot of shanties, here in the Lady Luck.”
“Can we sing a shanty now?” Lester asked, hopefully.
“No.”
“You see,” Maxi explained, “the men and women in here are free spirits, adventurers. They laugh at the chance of peril, they love not money, and spend every last penny on rum.”
“What sort of amount do they bid?” Lester asked.
“Why, some would give the earth to play the game! Men have pledged their diamonds, their homes, their family, just to buy drinks here. Many a time has a night ended in a bloody duel, a fight to the death for the privilege! But the Lady Luck is a perilous mistress, and whilst some leave here with all the rum they could ever drink, others are forever in her debt. Some never leave at all.”
“How much did you bid tonight?” asked Lester worriedly, eyeing up the drinks on the table. He was thinking about the ghost stories he had heard that day. He didn’t want to be a ghost.
The question was waved away. Bids, as a rule, were not disclosed, although Maximilian was no longer wearing trousers.
“Gert and Lester, you’ve got a round to bid for.”
Lester looked nervous. He wasn’t ready for a duel. Ten years ago another kid threatened Lester with a spud gun, and ever since he’d had a morbid fear of potatoes.
“What’s your bid, young’un? I’ve got three quid and this tub of marmalade,” Gert pulled out the marmalade, laying down his aces.
“I’ve got a bus ticket and this Wispa.” The Wispa had melted, so it didn’t really count.
This reminded Maximilian of a ghost story involving fudge, which he started to tell, but Sadie quickly interrupted.
“Where’s the bus ticket to?”
“The bus station.”
“Hmmm.” As the wisest of the group, it was clear she would have to adjudicate the winner. She knew it depended on one vital question.
“Is it still valid?”
“Hang on.” Lester examined the ticket, peering at it carefully, “No, this was my ticket to get here. It’s expired.”
“In that case, Gert, you – and you alone – have the chance to win the world. Go, take your chance!” she whispered, urgently.
With that, Gert ambled up to the bar.
The table went quiet, as tables often do. Tables aren’t particularly effusive, as a matter of fact. Sadie turned her neck slowly toward Lester, anticipating a question.
“Sadie, why aren’t you in the Moon On The Hill tonight?” Lester asked, believing her to be a regular of that sacred establishment.
“Because I am in the Lady Luck. It is not possible to be in the Lady Luck and the Moon On The Hill at once, you know.”
“Although Gert has tried.” Maxi interjected, feeling that Sadie’s last assertion was shamefully materialistic, and that he hadn’t talked enough in the last few minutes.
“He had a plastic cider bottle with him and feared he’d be cast from our hallowed drinking halls in ignominy. So he tried to hide his cider in the Moon when the barman of the Luck was looking, and in the Luck when the barmaid of the Moon was looking.”
“Did he succeed, Maximilian?”
“No, he hadn’t performed the necessary rituals. It is possible for an extended body to be in two places at once, as I have shown in my experiments, but Gert’s cider bottle remained firmly in his pocket.”
He wanted someone to ask him about his experiments. No-one did.
The Irishman had, for some time, been staring stoically ahead, gazing intently at something far away. Lester had followed his gaze once or twice – the man appeared to be staring at a moss-covered anchor propped up against the bar. The Irishman sighed and coughed, before looking steadily at Lester.
“So you’re investigating this murder?”
“Yes, sir.” The Irishman looked like the sort of man you called ‘Sir’.
“Oh, allow me to introduce Bill. This, Bill, is Lester.”
“Hello Bill. What do you do then?” Lester questioned brightly, because this was the sort of thing one said.
Bill ignored the question. He wasn’t going to answer no landlubber’s question. What could such a child understand about the ways of the navigator? Instead, he continued with his own line of questioning.
“Who is to be punished for this crime against God?”
Lester blanched. He could hardly report the current state of the investigation, which largely consisted of Gert’s love of naps. Nor could he describe the findings of the detectives, for they mostly concerned ghost stories and breakfast.
“What matters to Bill, you see,” crooned Sadie, taking her time over the thought, “is the rhythm of the sea. He wants natural justice, the waves of punishment to wash over the sin. He reminds me of old Oklahoma, people just living their lives, who didn’t know words like ‘love’ and ‘fear’. They lived them, love and fear, felt the beat of the heart. It’s the jazz of the soul.”
Maximilian nodded in agreement. “That is what the dead tell me. It’s all about the jazz of the soul!”
Gert returned from the bar, carrying three rums and a pickled gherkin. He seated himself comfortably between the jazz lover and the mystic, handing a rum to Lester and the gherkin to Bill, who, as it happened, liked gherkins. Gert kept the other two rums for himself. Before he could speak, Bill repeated his question, slowly and insistently.
“Who is to be punished for this crime against God?” He thumped his hand on the table, to make sure everyone understood.
Gert misunderstood. “I don’t think Maxi’s that bad. His stories might be a bit annoying, but they’re hardly crimes against God!”
Maximilian frowned. His stories were brilliant. Everyone loved his stories.
“Oh! The murder! I’d forgotten about that!” Gert instantly regretting saying that.
Sadie expressed surprise that the chief investigator of a murder had forgotten all about the murder, even though it was only the day after. Bill, however, continued to stare at the anchor, lost somewhere in the Celtic Sea.
Gert did some thinking on his feet, or rather, in his head. “Well, we’ve ruled out some suspects! We know it wasn’t Pixar Paul or Janey, because they have a cast-iron alibi. They were in the Moon On The Hill. You can’t do a murder if you’re in the pub!”
“Unless you’re in the Hood And Hangman.”
“Obviously you can do a murder if you’re in the Hood and Hangman, that goes without saying. They say the quiz machine’s built out of skulls. And the big telly only shows live executions, even when the footy’s on.”
Gert thought this would shock the table far more than it did. The others weren’t that interested in watching the footy, even if Manchester United were playing.
“You can murder if you’re in a pub,” Maxi began, ominously, “Long ago, in…”
Gert didn’t feel like a story just yet. “So we’ve ruled out Pixar Paul…”
“No you haven’t,” Maximilian was moody at not being allowed to tell stories at will, “It is possible for an extended body to be in two places at once. My experiments have determined this.”
Again, nobody asked about the experiments, despite the heavy hint. Sulking, he wandered off to the loo.
“…and you too, Sadie. We have a crowd of witnesses to testify you were spreading the word of jazz. Including me and Lester.”
Lester nodded. He’d secretly spent the morning trying to see the blues in his bedroom, but his singing had disturbed the neighbour’s cat.
“He was a good man,” Bill commented.
“Yes, yes,” Gert agreed, hiding his nervousness. He still didn’t know who had been killed and, as chief detective, he felt it proper to conceal this, “How well did you know him, anyway?”
This was the wrong thing to have said. “How well? Well enough, thank you!” Bill crossed his arms angrily and went back to staring at the anchor. Sadie and Maximilian glared at Gert for having said something so dreadfully out of place.
“It feels so strange that we’ll never see him again. All the things he did, gone, just like that.”
“He led quite a life,” remarked Maximilian, returning from the toilet, “A life that was not always happy. But it was eventful, and that’s more than we can dare hope for.”
“And to finish like that, right outside the Hart,” Sadie lamented, “Some men are born in the wrong time, and that’s terrible, some die in the wrong place, and that’s a tragedy.”
Gert might have joined in with the lament, for he liked a good eulogy as much as the next man, but he had only just noticed that Maxi was in his pants, and found this rather distracting. He had, however, picked up a few key details about the murdered man.
“Gert,” asked Sadie, interrupting Gert’s meditation on Maximilian’s knobbly knees, “how did he die?”
Internally, Gert panicked, but on the outside he was winter-coat smooth. “Ah, we haven’t got the path… pathog… crime doctor’s report back yet. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“But you must have some idea! We know he was found outside the Hart, but what did it look like?”
Gert realized he would have to take a wild leap into the dark and guess. It was the Lady Luck, after all.
“Oh, I think it was a blunt instrument of some sort.”
“Aye, that’s what I heard,” breathed Bill. “That’s what I heard.”
He paused.
“A good man, Abraham. Aye, a good man. Punish someone for this.”
With that, he stood up, took one slow, last look at the anchor, and then trod out the bar, without saying goodbye or good luck. The others watched him pace away, rocking slowly from side-to-side, as if on water or rum.
“Ah, Abraham! Abraham!” Suddenly worried that he was sounding a little too cheery about a dead man, Gert lowered his voice, “Abraham. Of course. I remember now. He used to play draughts with Bill, here in the pub.”
“There’s no friendship like that of draughts players,” Lester added, trying to be sage-like.
“They weren’t just draughts players together, you know,” Sadie explained, “They were shipmates together, long ago. I don’t know the details.”
“I know the details,” Maxi ventured, “I can tell you, if you like.”
Sadie groaned, but decided that a story could not be postponed any longer. Gert and Lester leaned forward attentively, ready for another tale.
PART 4
“The story ends in a seaman’s mission, on a cold Gaelic day, one dreadful December. Our friend Bill sits by the fire, cradling a cup of tea in his hand, listening to a young man speak.
“This young man had a blanket round, white and woollen, and he was shaking slightly, telling his tale. I’ll tell it for him, since he’s no longer here himself, rest his soul.
“The story started some years before, when Abraham was younger still. He and his bosom pal Sean were known to the whole harbour. Sean was a fighter, a drinker, a lover. He was both loved and despised by everyone who met him, but he cared nothing for the gossip of lesser mortals. He was interested in one thing, and one thing only – carp.”
“Carp? I thought you were going to say money,” interrupted Gert, “Everyone loves money. Some people say they don’t, but they’re lying just to get more money.”
“No, Sean only cared about carp. It was his one passion in life. Carp.”
“Maybe he was only interested in carp so he could sell it and make lots of dosh.”
“No, he only wanted carp. Someone offered him five bob for a carp once, and Sean nearly tore the jacket off his very back in rage.”
“That’s because he didn’t offer enough dosh!” Gert was not abandoning his theory.
Maximilian sighed, but continued nonetheless. “At first his love of carp was just an eccentricity, a quirk, if you will. It made him seem a bit zany, not your everyday man. Gave him something to thrill the ladies with, made him a bit of a catch, just like his beloved carp.
“But, slowly, everything changed. Sean’s obsession grew. At first he only had the occasional carp poster on his bedroom wall, but soon his whole house was covered in their pictures. There were fish photos, fish drawings, watercolours of carp, fishy pastels, even a giant tapestry he’d had made in Nantucket and shipped all the way over on the deck of a whaler. All the way round the deck it stretched, mocking the hungry sailors as they longed for land.
“Sean was no longer so lucky with the ladies. He stank of fish, you see, and carped on about carp all the time, even when the stars shone bright.
“Abraham watched his friend’s obsession slowly turn dangerous. Abe had never been much interested in carp, preferring backgammon and rummy and that sort of thing. He’d occasionally won some mackerel with the cards, for his mate. That’s as far as it went.
“It all came to a head one day, one fateful day, when Sean decided he had to be with his carp for good, leave dry land, live close to the sea. He bought a boat and a sail and a net and a buoy and a boy to man the thing and a mast and a wheel and an anchor and a poop deck, and he proclaimed that he was going to the ocean for good, or for as long as his supplies lasted.
“Sean asked Abraham to join him, but Abraham refused. Not for fear of the sea – Abraham, as it happens, was a sort of fisherman himself – but for fear of his friend’s madness, that one day the tides would finally break in his mind…”
“Hang on, if Abraham was a fisherman, why didn’t Sean just ask him to bring back a carp or two every time he went out in his boat?”
“Ah, fishing is a competitive trade, Gert, and its margins are tighter than your trousers.” Maximilian was about to say ‘tight as my trousers’, but he still wasn’t wearing any, so it would have been a superfluous simile.
“If he had brought Sean back so much as a single fish each trip, then his whole enterprise would have collapsed like a mackerel cathedral. And besides, he wasn’t much good at it, as we shall see.”
“Anyway, Abraham refused to have anything to do with the enterprise. Sean cursed and swore and cursed, but nothing could be done.
“Sean declasred that he would leave without Abraham. They met for one last supper, but they argued bitterly, as they had never argued before. Harsh words were said, the kind that can never be taken back. Sean stormed out, pronouncing lifelong hatred for his best mate.
“As it happened, Sean spoke the truth when he declared lifelong hate. The next morning, Sean sailed out on to the deep green sea, and was never seen again, alive or dead.”
The table paused in thought.
“He sleeps with the fishes,” muttered Gert, unable to resist. Sadie gave him a push. Lester giggled.
Maxi continued. “People went looking for Sean, but the boat wasn’t found. He had been lost, but where he had gone was obvious, in a way. These Irish fishing villages have been in love and war with the sea from their very beginnings. The ocean has claimed so many of their loved ones. Many stories have ended on the black rocks. Old, hearty Norse longboats; proud, leering Spanish galleys; imperious British navy frigates; poor precarious trawlers – whether kings or pawns, all men are the same to the rocks and the deep dark sea. The sea kept these people alive, but took their families and friends in payment. In olden days Moorish pirates would come and steal their children, taking them from their beds, waking them to a life of hard slavery in a far foreign land. People here knew another of their sons was lost to the sea.”
“Abraham was beside himself with grief. Maybe if he, an accomplished fisherman, had boarded that boat, Sean would have lived to eat carp again. For a whole year, Abe went down to the harbour at sunset, every single night, to wait for Sean’s ship. He’d sit there every evening, staring at the horizon, believing that soon a little dinghy would appear, a speck in the distance, emerging from the beaming old western sun. The days went by, gentle autumn passed into cold diamond winter, and he never came. Winter then became cool green spring, and he never came, spring turned into…”
“Get on with it,” Sadie barked, “We don’t want to hear no speaking clock.”
“Ok,” Maxi coughed, “Well, Sean never showed, and Abraham stopped waiting, and continued his life from where he’d left off. But a couple of years later, there was trouble in the town. It was a cold hard winter, with terrible winds and icy dawns. Fishermen kept returning with low hauls. Things were so bad that the town was even complying with fish quota regulations!”
Lester looked horrified. Once the brave fishermen were keeping to EU law, there might as well be no justice at all. Or, at least, that’s what his dad said.
“What it meant was that the fishermen had to go further out, far into the sea. Abraham had never been that far out in his boat. Usually he just stayed in the boating lake, splashing around in a paddle boat, picking up pilchards. His biggest haul came when two American tourists left the lunch behind. There were enough ham sandwiches to last for hours!
“Occasionally he had to venture out into the sea, but even then he usually kept to the shallow bits. Now there was a carp shortage, he had to do what he’d always dreaded – venture miles out into the open ocean.
“Usually in stories like this it’s a dark, bitter night, blue and navy, with a maelstrom wind from the underworld itself. The sky howls like wolves in a pack, smelling warm, tender meat. This night, however, was not like that at all. It was a clear, pale night. The moon wasn’t full but it was pleasantly crescent-shaped, like a really juicy banana you might have had in your primary school lunch box. There was no real wind and the waves were low and calm. It is always a miracle when the water is calm there, and Abraham was immensely grateful.
“So he jumped into his boat alone, carrying his little paddling craft as a potential lifeboat, and put the SatNav on his favourite setting – Myfanwy, the Welsh female voice. She always spoke soothingly to him, whether he was navigating the terrifying Atlantic Ocean or paddling round the little boating lake. She would keep him company, whatever happened. Abraham jumped into his wellies, threw on his fluorescent lemon waterproof – standard issue kit for the distinguished fishing type – and undid the moorings, setting off into the endless horizon.
Lester shivered slightly, knowing something bad was about to happen.
“Abraham ventured into the ocean, and soon left all land behind. There’s a special kind of loneliness out there, far away from any other human being – apart, of course, from Myfanwy, but her conversation was largely limited to points of the compass. Abraham felt, for the first time, the terror of being utterly alone in the world.
“And that’s when the first trouble occurred. His radio, which had been merry crackling some satirical comedy show, crackled no more. He tried in vain to re-start the ironic ramblings of some Dublin-based buffoon, but he had no luck. There was only one thing to do, and that was continue fishing. He drew his nets up high and cast them off the boat, watching them quickly sink down into the water.
“Things continued in this way for a while, but then the second trouble occurred. Abraham was holding the SatNav on deck and slipped a little bit on wet decking. The SatNav tumbled to the deck. When he picked it up, he noticed that something wrong. He could no longer hear Myfanwy’s dulcet Welsh tones singing songs of Lake Bala. Instead, the SatNav had switched to a coarse, harsh growl. He had unwittingly selected Markus, the male Bulgarian voice. Abraham was horrified.
“It is all very well to have Markus guiding you sometimes. If you are lost somewhere deep in Eastern Europe, he will be your guide. If you are on the shores of the Mighty Danube, staring at the magnificent waterway that connects so many major cities, then he will be your guide. If you come across an ancient Slavic forest, venture deep within, and are confronted by some bearded Slavic woodsman, then he will be your guide. But Markus knows nothing of the Atlantic Ocean, the great body of water that, in medieval days, was believed to stretch all the way to India. He’s never tried to sail to the New World, and has never lain safe behind some great stone harbour, protected from those fierce waves by Man’s studious craft.
“Just as importantly, Markus spoke no English. Oh, he could probably say enough words to save you from the forest. He could surely shout ‘Wolf!’ or ‘Woodsman!’ or ‘Gypsy folk dancers!’ but such an idiolect is no use at sea. Markus, then, jabbered incoherently in his own language, and Abraham had no idea what he was saying at all. The switch had broken, there was no chance of changing him back to Myfanwy.
“So Abraham was stranded adrift in the great Atlantic Ocean, with no way of knowing how to reach home. He searched his pockets and, to his relief and delight, found a map. However, it was only a promotional leaflet on how to reach Barry’s Carpets in Leytonstone. He considered the use of this – even Leytonstone is better than being lost at sea – but unfortunately the map showed nothing further west than East Ham, which only made him feel nostalgic for the sandwiches he’d found on the side of the lake.
“He drifted around the ocean, inconveniently forgetting that he could use the stars to guide his way. Actually, he couldn’t use the stars to guide his way. Abraham could usually locate the moon, but that was about it. He used to snooze off in astronomy class.
“Unknown to Abraham, he had drifted into the very place where Sean had gone missing all those years ago, and lay still, deep under the sea. Sean had been waiting here a long time, frozen cold and alone in death. Some souls are cast into an otherworld, but Sean had been left in his burying place, in dark tunnels far below the waves. What little energy his soul could muster was spent in anger at his former friend, the friend who had failed him on his last voyage. All of us know – in fear – that we shall eventually die alone, but nothing is quite as alone as the death of a lost seafarer, far away from his birth and loving life, from a smiling family and a warm hearth.
“Lust for revenge poured through Sean, and he suddenly had his chance. With loath, ghostly hands he tugged at Abraham’s nets – they were still dragging behind in the water. Abraham had left them to catch carp for hungry families. Instead, they caught only the dead grasp of a man who had, himself, given his life in search of that terrible, elusive fish.
“Sean pulled and pulled, and the boat started to tip. In frantic, desperate panic Abraham tried to loosen the net and let it fall into the ocean. He knew he was facing a force more powerful than anything he could muster, but he hoped to let his catch go.
“But nets aren’t so easy to disconnect from ships. It is a long and laborious process – after all, nets are designed to hold fish and to stay attached to the boat. They are not supposed to detach in the middle of the ocean, for obvious reason. Abraham couldn’t cast the net away, and the whole boat was rocking harder and harder, unable to withstand the strength of a power from beyond the grave.
“The radio was useless. Markus the Bulgarian SatNav babbled warningly of his native tongue, presumably wishing for warm Sofia, not the darkness of the ocean. And the ship turned over, slowly at first, but with immense gravity. There was nothing Abraham could do as his boat capsized and sucked everything down, including Markus. Sean had claimed a life.
Maximilian stopped and took a sip of rum, letting the horror snake, flame-like, along the tavern floor. He began again.
“But that is not the end of our story, as you might have guessed. The next morning, the little fishing village awoke, and there was no sign of Abraham. Everyone feared the worst. They remembered Sean’s tragedy. They remembered all the departed sons which the sea had claimed. Above all, they remembered that Abraham usually pottered about on the lake, hoping for a tuna sandwich – he was not the sort of man who can take on the sea and win.
“Yet, just then, something extraordinary happened. The townsfolk were at the sea’s edge, anxiously searching the horizon for a speck of light, just as Abraham had once done with Sean. And something appeared in the ordinary morning light. A boat, a speck of a boat, appeared in the distance. It was not the fishing boat that everyone had been hoping for, but it was a boat nonetheless. They wondered who it could be, what great hero had fought the ocean that night and won.
“Then, as the boat drew a little nearer, a great cry went up from the keenly-sighted members of the village. For they recognised this boat. They all knew it well. They’d all seen it several times a week, gently bobbing up and down on the boating lake, looking for tins of sardine.
“It was Abraham’s little paddle boat, toddling towards them with a new-found seriousness, like a little boy back from boarding school. The yellow, glowing figure of Abraham could soon be made out, miraculously alive, despite the torment of the night.
“And Abraham was shivering, wrapping his bright yellow mac waterproof tightly round himself, as if protecting something deep inside, something that he had so nearly lost. His soul was nearly damned in that fateful voyage, but he had escaped the wrath of his former mate. He reached the shore and was helped out, supported as he climbed the narrow stone steps from the harbour to the harbour wall, carefully treading his away along the wall to the seaman’s mission, which was secure behind sea defences.
“That, my friends, is where our sailor friend Bill met him, in the mission. Bill gave him a good cup of tea and gently coaxed his tale from him, listening carefully to everything I’ve told you.”
The others looked slightly surprised. They’d never noticed Abraham’s tail.
“However, there was one thing Abraham refused to discuss. He never let on the secret of his escape. Abe was not a formidable man, he could not stare down a small dog, let alone assay the forces of the dark deep sea, with its mysterious dead power. Somehow he dragged himself away from that malevolent spirit, but no-one ever found out how. Perhaps he was stronger than he let on, a man for a life-or-death situation. Perhaps Sean’s ghost had a change of heart at the last, and let his friend go. Either way, we will never know.
“Abraham vowed never to return to the cruel Atlantic. Instead, he became firm friends with Bill, and together they sailed over to England, to Liverpool, where they settled for a time. Abraham left soon afterwards, but I don’t know where to. He eventually found his way here, of course, where his long voyage has finally, terribly, finished.
“There is, perhaps, one saving grace to our story. Sean had suffered terribly, but was no longer alone. Abraham’s SatNav was not recovered, and lies still at the bottom of the sea, working despite the water and a lack of electricity. It tells Sean a thousand tales of old Bulgaria, of long low train journeys and moody green skies. It is the purest kind of love, that companionship in the depths of the ocean. Markus keeps Sean company, easing his loneliness, and will do so for ever, until the world’s very last breath.”
With that, he stopped and sighed.
Collectively, the table swigged their remaining rum, gathered their things and stood up. Coats were fetched, scarvess were hastily swirled round long jackets. The group left the bar, tired in a way that only drunkards know.
Lester and Gert trudged along the pavement in silence. Both were thinking about the night’s events. Lester was quiet, thoughtful. Abraham was clearly a complex man, the sort who lives a complicated life and dies in a way that only he could. Lester felt a little sad for the man he had never met, but felt a strange connection with. Gert, on the other hand, was overjoyed with the night’s tales. For him the investigation had finally begun.
PART 5
It was the next afternoon. Lester jumbled down the steps and walked briskly along the river path, taking care to miss all the cracks in the paving. The brown, misty water didn’t appear to be moving at all, just sitting there under a grey sky, wondering why to bother with Friday anyway. Lester, on the hand, needed to bother with Friday afternoon. Something urgent had happened, and Gert needed to know. Lester quickly outpaced the river, speeding round the bend towards the low concrete bridge, looking for the great detective. It was there he found him, asleep under the bridge, slumbering merrily, bottle of cider precariously balanced, just out of reach.
Some people are beautiful sleepers. They can resemble a finely carved Michaelangelo statue or a fresh Renoir beauty, so warm as to be a pure creation of Art, not of flukey Nature. Other sleepers would be at home in wildlife documentaries, sleeping to prepare themselves for hunts and hunting, looking slightly out of place on a fluffy feather bed. Gert, however, was neither of these. He slept in a way all of his own. His body seemed to crumple and fold in on itself, jagging into the corner between the bridge and the stone, as if he were unconsciously trying to fall through the wall. He snored to upset the rhythm of the universe. It wasn’t a bellowing roar of a snore, or a well-timed tick. Instead, he gurgled just loudly enough to surprise any unfortunate listener, and just deeply enough to put them off whatever they were doing or eating. The snore came at no predictable rhythm, so that it was impossible to become used to, and made a completely different noise each time, so that it always came as a shock.
It was the irregularity of sleeping Gert that made Lester so reluctant to wake him. Lester felt as a bomb disposal rookie feels when he’s asked to deal with his first ticker. Occasionally, when manipulating the wires, the dynamite makes a ghastly creak, forcing the brave hero back, as if he were recoiling from one of Gert’s snores. Our young lad knew, however, that Gert would want to be woken today. Friday afternoons were Gert’s speciality. He liked to wander on down to the Moon On The Hill and gesticulate over a pint, usually about some pressing matter of the day. With the murder investigation taking over the town, Gert wouldn’t want to miss his favourite drink of the week.
Fortunately, Lester’s job was done for him. Two young lads came whizzing past on bikes, both in identical rapping hats. Recently there had been a rapper craze amongst the youth of the town, so all the kids now talked very quickly to one another and used easy-to-rhyme words a lot. One of the hats glanced over his handlebars at Gert.
“Tosser!”
“Yeah, tosser!” his mate rhymed in unison, rapping out the word. With that judgement they departed just as they had arrived: rapidly, with whooshing noises.
The interruption woke Gert with a start, breathing him back to life.
“Whuuh wuh errrrr,” he pronounced, knocking over his cider bottle in the process.
“It’s Friday afternoon, Gert,” Lester explained, knowing full well that Gert would understand the importance of Friday afternoon. With his tone he tried to convey the urgency of this particular afternoon, but such subtleties were lost on a sleeping non-beauty.
The cider bottle rolled down the path a little, towards the river.
“Did you just call me a tosser?” Gert asked. A little bit of golden liquid was trickling from the cider bottle now, forming a new tributary of the river.
“No.”
“Huh, I must have dreamt it. Didn’t think you’d be calling me a tosser, lad.”
“I didn’t call you a tosser. It was two rapper chaps on bikes.”
“A likely tale, young’un! Do you know what else I dreamt?”
“No,” replied Lester again, although this was hardly necessary.
“Flamingoes. Rows upon rows of flamingoes, marching as to war. Don’t know why. Perhaps we’ll go to the Cockatoo later, see if we can find anyone who knows why. Full of that sort, the Cockatoo. Bound to be someone who knows about dream flamingoes.”
“I thought we were going to the Moon On The Hill?”
“We are going to the Moon, just you wait. But we can also go to the Cockatoo. No point spending all your time in one pub when you can go to two. Life lesson for you there, boy.”
Gert was fond of giving life lessons. He’d once set up as a life coach, but the only trade he got was as a replacement bus service, so he’d let it go.
“And we’ve got questions to ask of people. No good lying asleep when there’s a killer on the loose!”
“Speaking of the killer, there’s something I need to show you.”
“You’ve got him! You’ve got the killer! Well done Lester! I always knew you were a bright lad. Where is he?”
“No, it’s not…”
“Or a she, for that matter. Might well be a lady. Where is the scoundrel?”
“I haven’t got the killer!” Lester protested, getting a word in at last, “It’s something else. I can’t really explain, I need to show you…”
Lester let his sentence fade into the background, as if it were the album version.
“You’re starting to scaring me now, Lester. Alright, let’s go and see it, whatever it is.”
There was a small splash behind them, and Lester hopped in fright. He cowered, crouching down, shielding his head from the attack he was so certain would come.
“Something’s spooking you! No need to be jumpy, young’un. It’s only me cider!”
The bottle had fallen into the river and was floating gently downstream, as cider bottles are wont to do. Gert turned and watched the bottle go, a rank-and-file Viking mourning the passing berserker, saluting his burning rise to Valhalla. After a short, solemn pause, Gert turned back to Lester.
“Lead the way!”
—————————–
The walk was longer than Gert had expected, mostly because Lester wasn’t much good at directions. It’s a curious fact of small towns that you can only find the public toilets when you’re looking for something else, and Lester found them three times that afternoon. Gert was starting to tire of those little stick figures on the doors. He reckoned they were secretly mocking him, turning up on random doors just to confuse him. It was a relief when Lester found his way, whatever he might be finding his way to. Roads swirled and spiralled and curled, until the market square was reached. A small crowd stood there, ready for a show. People turned their heads as Gert and Lester approached, waiting for the moment the penny to drop and the performance to begin.
“Just here,” Lester indicated, as they scurried over to the crowd, “Just here.” The spot was where Abraham had been found, two days before.
The first thing Gert noticed was chalk, fresh white chalk. It was in the shape of a body.
“They’ve traced him! The bastards!” Gert commented, with feeling.
“No, they always do that. It’s been done more recently though, by whoever wrote that.”
He pointed again. In big chalk writing, someone had spelled out, underneath a collage of photos:
GERT AND LESTER – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNE
“We’ve been Warne?” Gert didn’t quite understand. The only Warne he’d heard of was the great spin bowler, and Gert had never been a great spin bowler, Warner or otherwise.
“I think he meant to write WARNED, but the chalk broke,” Lester pointed to a blunt, broken bit of chalk lying on the ground. “That’s not really the main bit, though.”
“I mean, we’ve been warned? What have we been warned about? I haven’t been warned,” stated Gert frankly, feeling that he hadn’t been included in this discussion, whenever it was.
It was then that he looked up and saw the collage. It was made up entirely of photos of Gert. Gert sleeping under the bridge, Gert drinking a cider, Gert signing an autograph. He was pictured talking to friends, playing tiddlywinks in the park, saying hello to a friendly dog. There was a photo of baby Gert, Gert at a school disco, Gert making hay while the sun shone, Gert on the beach, Gert at someone’s bar mitzvah, Gert staring intensely at a shrew, Gert dressed up as a Spice Girl.
“I don’t remember that,” Gert frowned, casting his eyes upon a picture of him with John F. Kennedy. “Or that,” pointing at a photo of Gert’s head on the body of a woman, shaking hands with Jack the Ripper.
“It’s unlikely you ever met Charles the First either,” commented Lester, indicating a painting of Gert with a bunch of people in wigs. All in all it was a startling collection of photos.
“I might keep some of these,” said Gert, taking a few down and stuffing them in his pocket, “They’re pretty good, aren’t they?”
So someone had been watching him, collecting photos. He might have known he had a stalker. Detectives always had stalkers, shifty men who preyed on their every weakness.
“Anyway, I’m not that impressed, gents,” he proclaimed to the audience, “I’m off to the p… I mean, I’m off to continue my investigation and follow up on some leads.”
With that, he and Lester went off to the pub. The crowd looked quite downcast. They’d expected better of their favourite showman.
—————————
Ten minutes later, Gert was leaning over the edge of the serving hatch, trying to attract the attention of the bar staff. The Moon On The Hill was pleasant and empty on a weekday afternoon, and today was no exception, but ordering a drink remained tricky. Ordering at a pub is particularly difficult when there is more than one barman or maid – they try at all costs to leave the drinker to the other, like two sentries on the easy mode of a platform game.
“I think I know what that was all about,” Lester ventured.
“Huh?” Gert quizzed absent-mindedly, hoping for a pale ale.
“The photos and the chalk message. I think someone might be trying to frighten us off the case.”
“What case?” Gert was still concentrating on the pale ale.
“The murder!”
“Oh, that case. I thought you were talking about whisky.” Gert sounded disappointed. “No-one will frighten us off the case. Can’t be done.”
Having briskly dealt with the threat, he turned his attention to the pub. “Ah, the old Moon. You can tell it’s the eve of the weekend, can’t you?”
Two of the three Cobains were sat in the corner as usual, mumbling and checking their phones for news updates. The third wasn’t there – presumably off making gloomy, hard-edged rock music. Assorted saxophonists came and went, fretting over something. In the far corner, as usual, sat Janey and Pixar Paul, discussing a topic in earnest. Paul sat tensely, his eyes harmonizing with a hazy day.
Gert finally received his ale and, with Lester, wandered over to the corner. Janey, who was immersed in conversation, turned a little sharply, stopping her chat in mid-flow.
“Gert!” She exclaimed, trying to reassure. “Gert and Lester, how are you both? Come, take a seat. What games are you playing today?”
“Have you been to the market square yet?” Paul asked, a little anxiously.
“Yes.”
The two jazz hands hesitated. “You must have got to him. Or her. Disrupted his tune, made him stop just before the trunpet solo. Never stop a jazzman before his trumpet solo. He’ll turn into a tornado.”
“Literally a tornado,” Paul continued, “Yes sirrrrr. Did I ever tell you boys how Mary Lou Williams hit the big time?”
“No, no you didn’t,” Gert confirmed.
“Well then, let me tell you,” Paul sat eagerly to attention, his troubles forgotten. Lester looked at his watch, worried that the killer might be doing something diabolical
“Well, Mary Lou was doing her thing, up on stage, dominating the room, the world, the galaxy, sir! Her songs were symphonies, freaky space symphonies, taking you all the way out to the moon and back, round Mars and Venus, through all them star signs.”
“Her songs were spaceships to the stars,” Janey agreed. “Buzz Aldrin got the buzz early on, and after tripping out to the Moon, he buzzed all round Gemini and Taurus and Alpha Centauri!”
“So she was doing her thing in some small-time Atlanta joint, twinkling that piano of hers across the stars, hoping to become a star herself one day. But the critics didn’t like her, no Lord they didn’t!
“|There was one critic in that town, a small man…”
“He weren’t no seagull, not one bit.”
“That’s right, Janey, no seabird at all! He hated talent and progress and art, and all he could do was hate on it. But the other boys of this town, they listened to him, not her, and they didn’t listen to their own souls. So she played and played, and jazzed and jazzed, but she wasn’t playing to the stars, for all she tried.
“Then one day, one night in some blue watering hole, she’s twinkling and he’s listening with all his pack of critics frowning behind him. And she let’s the piano fade a little, and her voice croak a little, and the trumpeter raises his hooter…”
“Sorry to interrupt, but does anyone want any crisps?” A resplendent quiff offered round the packet, and sat down, motioning for the Cobains to join in too.
Paul glared, ignored the crisps, and continued his story.
“So the critic, who’s not listening anyways, interrupts, just like you did there. Just as the music goes quiet, he talks extra loud, talking about a taco he ate on the highway.
“But as I said, if you interrupt a trumpeter before the solo, he becomes a tornado. And so there’s a rumble and a roar and a violent growl, and the trumpeter turns right into pure wind, then and there. One hundred miles an hour. A zephyr of avant-garde jazz fusion, ripping through the joint like a jazzman through rice paper.
“And the big critic, the one who sneered and hated on Mary Lou Williams so much, he’s blown away to a distant land, never to return back there, Atlanta, Georgia. With the chief gone, the rest are dumbstrucked. Instead of listening to The Man, they start listening to themselves, to their inner jazzman.
“They listen to Mary Lou Wiliiams, listen to the piano silver-flash through the universe, and they love it. Her voice brings the solar systems right to their tiny town, and their praises take her right up to the stars.”
“What was your point?” Gert asked. “There was definitely a point to this story.”
“I don’t think there was a point. I’m just spreading the jazz, spreading it round the world.”
Gert was satisfied, although Lester looked slightly concerned. He felt sure there had been a point to the story too. Paul paused, and everyone enjoyed listening to the silence. Soon, they started to talk again of roack n’ roll. While everyone else was distracted by a lyric ballad about Chuck Berry, Janey motioned for Lester to come and talk with her alone, where no-one else could hear.
“Lester, I know Gert’s taking this well. But he ain’t really taking it well. He’s pretending. Pretending to be the big ass detective, all calm and casual, but he’s a fool. You’ve got the smarts, kid. Remember not to interrupt the trumpeter. Just remember that. A trumpeter ain’t always a trumpeter. Sometimes he’s a trumpeter, sometimes he’s a gust of wind, sometimes he’s a murderer.”
Lester nodded. He didn’t really understand, but it’s always best to nod, especially if you don’t understand.
“Kid, here’s something I want you to have. When you were last hear you’d never met the blues. Now that you’re starting to see it, seeing it for the first time, sprouting wings, I want you to know it better.”
She took a penny whistle from her bag. It was shiny and silver, and reminded Lester of big tall skyscrapers in big tall cities.
“Take this. I though about giving you a record, but you kids can find them all so easy these days. Take the whistle, and learn to play the blues.”
“Thank you very much,” Lester responded crisply. He was nothing if not a polite young man, and he’d been wanting a musical instrument ever since his last visit to the Moon.
“Oh, and one last thing. I want to tell you and Lester a story, and I want to tell it to you tonight, as soon as possible. The world’s been turning today. It won’t turn for ever, not if I don’t tell the story. But I can’t tell it hear. Come to the Cockatoo later – I’ll be there in an hour or so with some cool cats, hanging out. Bring Gert.”
“Oh, we’re planning on going anyway. Gert wants to find about dream flamingoes.”
Janey wasn’t surprised in the least. “Oh yeah, the cats in the Cockatoo know all about dream flamingoes. Tell him the answer’s there. Bring him. Bring him alone.”
And with that she grabbed her bag and strode past the gathering clientèle of the pub, swinging the non-swing door behind in her wake. Lester wandered back to the corner, wondering how to convince Gert to visit the Cockatoo.
Paul had finished talking about Chuck Berry, and was now singing.
“Gert, did you want to go to the Cockatoo? We need to find about your flamingoes.”
“Oh, we’re all right here. Paul’s in form tonight. He might even tell the story of how a shady lady from Saudi Arabia nearly tricked him into watching Wall-E!”
Lester tried again. “But it would be good for my education, I think, to learn about the interpretation of dreams.”
“You don’t want to know about the psycho business, lad. That’s for psychos. No you want to stay here, hear about moo-sic. No psychos.”
Lester, fortunately, had one last roll of the dice.
“I know. I want to go to the Cockatoo so much that” – he paused for effect – “that I’ll buy you a small packet of peanuts.”
“Peanuts? Why didn’t you say so? Alright, the Cockatoo it is. We’ve got flamingoes to find!”
They took their leave of the others and sneaked off quietly into the sunset. Young Lester was learning, it seemed.
PART 6
Twenty minutes later, Lester was poised by a flickering neon sign, bemused. He was resting on a translucent, bright blue counter, trying to communicate with a dreadlocked barmaid. All very simple, you might think. The problem was that he couldn’t speak.
It is very difficult to order a packet of peanuts when you cannot speak, for there is no language designed to order nuts, and no alternative convention for these moments. His first task was to try and attract the barmaid’s attention in the first place. Normally, this was difficult enough, as some rough-and-ready chancer always had better timing than Lester. He would be waiting at the bar for minutes, but was poor at seizing his chance when it finally came, giving way to a more rhythmic drunk in the ordering pre-chorus. Even if he did manage to catch the barmaid’s eye, his second challenge was to convey an impression of peanuts. This is not easy. If he had been ordering a beer, he could have pointed to one of the bottles in the little fridge under the bar. If he was wanting a whisky, he could have pointed to the pointlessly upside-down bottle that hung from the wall and was connected, via a labyrinth of tubes and tunnels, to the nozzle lying on the counter itself. Peanuts, however, were not within sight, and were not clearly in mind.
Lester looked up to the heavens, pondering. Above the bar hung an ironic poster emblazoned with the slogan, “You can never find a cock or two in the Cockatoo!” Underneath, just to reinforce the humour, was a picture of two large chickens. Uninspired by the poster, Lester wondered whether to use his finely-honed charades skills, a talent acquired from a thousand family gatherings.
Unfortunately, it was at this moment, before Lester could dismiss charades as an option, that the barmaid spotted him. He paused, ready to order. She waited expectantly, raising a finger to her lips, as if mute Lester needed telling to be silent. He raised his finger in response, not to his lips, nor to meet hers in a Sistine Chapel sort of way, but to indicate it was the first syllable.
She narrowed her eyes, looking a little befuddled. Trying to help, she turned sideways, leaned closer and cupped her hand to her ear, gesturing for him to speak up. Silent Lester, of course, could not speak up, and, even if he could, she would only have told him to be quiet. Instead, he made a little motion with his fingers, as if squeezing a fresh green pea between them.
The barmaid folded her arms, widening her eyes. She clearly hadn’t guessed the first syllable, Lester thought. He would have to proceed immediately to the second., because the only homophone he could think of was ‘pee’, and that’s not something you want to be signalling in a public place.
Lester raised two fingers up in the air: second syllable. The barmaid’s surprise quickly changed to a scowl, which deepened as Lester pointed his finger at his head, rotated his arm and made the face of a lunatic. Pea. Nuts. Peanuts. Simple, he thought. Even an amateur could have guessed that charade. He didn’t understand why she stormed off, still taking care not to make a noise. Exasperated, Lester gave up on the peanuts. He turned to face the evening’s entertainment.
In fact, the evening’s entertainment had caused Lester’s silence. There was a light, high humming from the far end of the bar. It was barely audible, but the audience were riveted, taking care not to miss a single beat. Three musicians posed there, dressed identically, grey matching cardigans with grey corduroy trousers, looking down at their computers with fervent dedication. The humming continued at the same pitch, with relentless virtuosity. The audience sat rigid, upright, poised for the slightest murmur, tremble, prey listening for a wise owl to prey on them.
The bald, muscular musician on the left pressed a button on his synthesizer. There was a small gasp of appreciation from some of the audience. Lester gasped along too, half a second later, hoping he’d done the right thing. A few more button presses, a couple of clicks on the keyboards, and the lady in the middle of the band, a tall silver-haired songster, moaned. Some listeners leaned back, looking to the skies, lifting the sound to Heaven in their hearts. Lester didn’t do this. Instead he drifted into a daydream, the one where he was the way making all the strange humming sounds, where everyone was looking at him in awe and appreciation…
Halfway through his pleasant fantasy, just when he was reaching the humming chorus, he noticed that everyone was looking towards him. Not in the dream as he’d intended, but in reality. The musicians were staring too. He swivelled quickly, examining himself, wondering what he might have done now. There was no pee on his trousers.
“Turn zat off,” the right-hand musician ordered, silver spectacles firmly on his face, hand grasped moodily on hip.
“Yes, ve cannot hear are moo-sique,” the lead lady demanded.
A barman looked sheepish, embarrassed. His fringe had fallen over his eyes, and he pushed it back worriedly. Panicked and awkward, he turned around, crouched low, and pressed a button, turning off the noise. Low lights dimmed to black, and the fridge stopped humming.
Relieved, the clocks ticked again. The musicians, forgetting the interruption of their holy prayer, turned back to their technology, pressing more buttons. There was an awed silence as the fridge’s hum died away, to be replaced by an even gentler, higher buzzing sound. Lester could only just hear it, and he was pretty sure any older person would miss it completely, but there it was, all the same. The musicians continued, the muscle slamming his keys, the silver chiming in, the glasses peering in concentration. It was intense, furious expression – the crowd sat, transfixed by the sound.
Suddenly there was faint, polite clapping, and the musicians bowed.
“Zank you! Zank you!”
“Ve are grate-vell!”
“Tat was our hymn to te Hungarian wax industree!”
More cheers. This was a knowledgeable crowd. They knew their wax surpluses.
They continued to acknowledge the applause, bowing even when the clapping and died and only its echo could be heard. Slowly a hubbub of chatter took over. People settled to their ordinary Friday night routine, which was the same in the Cockatoo as it was in the rest of the world. Lester, standing still in appreciation, was joined by a beaming Gert.
“That humming! Did you hear all that humming! Reminds of the old days when I still owned my swarm of friendly bees!”
Gert never stopped going on about the time he’d looked after some friendly bees.
“My greatest achievement, other than that time I balanced two snooker balls on my nose. That was before your time, weren’t it? Talk of the town for days, that was. Two snooker balls and a swarm of bees! I’ve had a charmed life, lad.”
He handed the two drinks beside him to Lester, who struggled and jusggled them.
“Where’s those peanuts?”
“Sorry, couldn’t order. The barmaid thinks I’m mental.”
“She’s not the only one!” Gert roared. Gert had never really learned how to riposte, and tended to ditch the rapier wit for his tried-and-trusted laughter-blunderbuss.
“Right, let’s go and find them dream flamingo experts. Where do they be?”
“Well, Janey said she’d find some. Let’s look around, see where she is, see if we can find her.”
Gert was half listening. He’d spotted a packet of peanuts hanging from someone’s pocket, and swiped them in one deft motion.
“I’ll lead the way!”
—————-
It was on this journey through the bar that Lester got his first good look at the clientele. Apparently stripy red-and-white scarves were in this month, as everyone seemed to have one. Not all were being worn as scarves, though – a few draped the garments over a single shoulder, one couple shared a scarf between them, and one intrepid lad had fashioned his scarf into trousers. There wre more of those chicken posters scattered around, plastered to tables, as if the bar were trying to convert the unfaithful to the one true religion of roosters and edgy synth-pop.
Behind all this pugwash sat Janey. Next to her, looking contemplative, was a man in a plain black shirt and stripy scarf. His windswept hair was designed as such, waxed – perhaps with the aforementioned Hungarian product – so that no wind would ever sweep it again.
Janey stood up to introduce everyone, but the mysterious windswept stranger breezed across her.
“Gert. Lester.” It was more of a naming ceremony than a sentence. “Are these our stars, our detectives?” he asked Janey.
“For now,” she answered, thoughtfully, “It’s a game few can play for long, for the rules are hard to follow and the pieces rarely move the same way twice.”
“Yes,” remarked the stranger. “And a detective must learn where the rules end.”
“Gert, nice to meet you.” He liked the cut of the strangers jib, but then Get liked everybody’s jib, whatever a jib was. “And what do I call you?”
“I don’t know, what do you call me?” There was weight behind his words.
Gert, surprised, tried again. “I mean , what’s your name?”
“My name? Hmmm. In his life a man goes by many names. In youth, he is the little one, the child. Later, he becomes a man. He grows older, frail, becomes the old man.
“In youth I have one name, in adulthood another, at the end of my life, another still. Speak not of my name, but of my youth.”
Gert smiled.
“You’re just what I’m looking for! I need someone who knows all about dream flamingoes, and I would say, laddie, that you’re just the thing!”
“Ah yes. But not just dream flamingoes. I know of all dream birds. I spent five of your mortal years in the aviary of the subconscious, and I understand all their roostings and flights of fancy.
“This chicken, for example,” he gestured at the poster on the table, “this chicken is no real world bird, but a feathered friend of the frontal lobe. Do you know what happens when she enters your dreams?”
Gert, waited expectantly.
“No? I’ll tell you. An earthquake. Yes, an earthquake. Natural disaster follows this chicken as surely as chicken follows egg. Of course, no-one knows which came first, the chicken or the egg, that is the most important question of the universe, but in the dream world the chicken is always followed by the egg.”
“I know which really came first,” Lester volunteered, “It was the egg!”
“Ah, but where did the egg come from?”
“The chicken!” Gert yelled happily. He loved philosophical debate almost as much as he loved chicken.
“Another animal like a chicken. It’s called evolution,” Lester explained, glad that two hundred years of scientific endeavour were finally relevant to real life.
“Ah, but why couldn’t the chicken have come from a chicken-like animal’s chicken-like egg? Then the chicken would come first.”
“Maybe the egg wasn’t really an egg at all, but was actually a dream,” Janey suggested, “then the dream comes first, and the chicken and the egg are one, forming a single reality.”
“Perhaps, but as I said, in the dream world the chicken always follows the egg, so they cannot be one.
“And the chicken is always followed by an earthquake…”
“No you didn’t, you said the egg is always followed by the chicken!” Lester was indignant.
“Yes, that’s what I said. The egg lays the chicken, and then the dream chicken grows, fed by its chicken mother on dream eggs, and then the dream chicken enters the frontal lobe, and the dreamer dreams the dream that hatched out of the dream egg. And what did I say the dream chicken symbolizes?”
“The chicken!” This was one of the best Friday nights in ages.
“No.”
“The egg!”
“No.
“No, it was the earthquake.”
Gert sighed in relief. “Of course!”
“So the dream chicken – or rooster, I do not distinguish between gender – the chicken leads to the real earthquake, which the dreamer is part of. If you ever dream of the chicken, fear the earthquake, for the earthquake will crack the eggs.”
“The dream eggs or the real eggs?”
“The real eggs. The dream eggs have already hatched, you see.”
Lester and Gert did see. It was all clear now.
“Anyway, let me ask you some questions first, before we talk of dream flamingoes.”
Gert agreed, reluctantly. He was more interested in flamingoes than he was in himself.
“So. You are, for now, the detectives, yes?”
“Yes, yes we are. And fine ones at that.”
“Of course. You saw the collage and the chalk, yes?”
“Yeah, took some of those photos away with me. Good quality pictures, them. Show them to all the wives and girlfriends.”
“Hmmm. Your courage is commendable, noble detective.”
The nameless one paused in thought a little.
“But the chalk, also? You saw the chalk around the dying place? You take the chalk away with you too, hmmm?” He gave a little half-smile.
“No, left the chalk. Got nothing to do with it, don’t want it.”
“But what did you feel, seeing the chalk there, circling a life? How did you feel, what did you feel of the chalk circle?
He didn’t let Gert answer.
“You must have felt, like we all feel, that we too are surrounded by that chalk, entombed in it. For that chalk outline surrounds this city, marking the divide between the living, breathing town and a hundred years from now, when all will be gone. There will be town here still, in all likelihood, but it will be a different one, of different people. There will be shopkeepers and boot-polishers and detectives, but we, the current townsfolk, will have faded, leaving only chalk outlines where we once stood.
“And then, one day, this whole town will be gone. Just a chalk outline that nobody stayed behind to draw. An empty wasteland in an emptier universe.
“That is how you felt, was it not?”
Gert just felt uneasy now. He considered saying ‘The chicken!’ again, just to lighten the mood, but this might have been foolish. He needed his dreams interpreting, after all. Fortunately, they were interrupted by the silver-haired, spectacled band, who chose to join their table at just that moment.
“Hello?” Janey asked, trying to welcome them. They did not reply. Instead, they stared ahead in unison, as if seeing some long-forgotten tragedy in the distance. The others turned back to the table, realizing that their conversatoin was not for artists such as these.
“So, these flamingoes. What do they mean?” Gert asked, trying to take control. The windswept stranger, however, was not in the mood just yet.
“The tale of the chalk, it is… almost poetry, is it not? And now that we have such accomplished artistes in our company, perhaps we shall make our day into glorious Poesy. Young man,” he proclaimed, turning to Lester,” Young man, do you wish to help me write a poem?”
“Yes please!”
“Very well, then, I feel it is time. Hand me my poetry pen,” he said to nobody in particular, pulling a feathery biro from his pocket. “This quill only produces verse, it cannot be used for any other purpose.”
“Do you carry a separate pen for signing things, then?”
“Sometimes, although I do like to write my coupons in rhyming couplets.
“How shall we begin?”
“The cat sat on the mat! That’s poetry, because it rhymes.”
“What about a sonnet?”
“I think,” Janey interjected, “we should bop about our shared identity with the murdered man, and how, by surrounding him, the chalk runs circles round all of us too.” Seeing as the stranger was set on that idea, she thought she’d hurry things along a bit.
Suddenly the synthesizer strongman spoke up.
“Human voices, zey are only ze babbles of chim-pan-zees. Zyou are monkees, babbons, o-rang-o-tangs. Zeese people, zey ooh and aarrrr and pip and squeak, but ze words have no meaning, no sense. Zey are not for expressing great truze, but for ze customs of ze chim-pan-zee! Zyou are all baboons!
“Baboons!”
Janey responded. “Aren’t ya human then?”
“No, ve are not hoo-man.”
“We are not te babbons.”
“Ve are ov a different kind to you. Ve have come wit a message. Ve vant to spread te message across your world, troo te medium of moo-sic, and ten ve vill leave your babbon planet for ever.”
“What’s the message?”
“Never mind the message, we’re trying to write gentle lyric that will be heard in the long future, when the world is all one steel machine.”
“Bugger the steel machine. What do you want to tell us?”
“You shud know zat, zat zyour power, your energy, will destroy you!”
“Our energy, what energy?”
“Maybe it’s our energy, the way we try and try to be something we not,” suggested Janey, “the struggle through these times.”
“Perhaps,” declared the windswept one, “she means the life-force, our great human power, and that will end everything.”
“No, zyou baboon!”
“Baboon! I am no baboon!” He untwirled his scarf and threw it on the table, as if releasing some wild animal from its cage.
For a few moments he shook in furious silence.
“I cannot bear such outrage! I must go. Good bye!” And with that he twirled his scarf decisively around his shoulders, stood up angrily and strode away from the table.
No-one spoke for a moment. The musicians returned to their aloofness, before standing up in unison and shuffling off. Lester noticed that the lady was clutching a crisp note in the fingers of her left hand.
Gert was disappointed. He still wanted to find out about the aviary of the subconscious.
PART 7
So now they were alone, the three of them. Well, alone at the table, that is. The Cockatoo still roared along, hipster lads comparing identical scarves, musician types starting up a tune on the resident xylophone. Drunker clientele were drawing moustaches on all the chickens. If there’s one thing that’s truly unnatural, it’s a chicken with a moustache, picture or otherwise.
“Sorry about him. I needed you to meet him tonight.”
“Who was he? What was his name, anyway?”
“He don’t have no name, or that’s what he says. Gave the booksellers hella trouble when his first anthology got out. Some cat come in, look for the book, don’t find it, crawl out the shop. So he had to give it a name, called himself Rupert Cornelius Chameleon. Ain’t real, I guess.”
“Anyways, I don’t know if Lester told you, but Gert, I got you here to tell you something. You need to know Abraham’s story, what happened to him in America.
“I don’t know ’bout his early life, don’t know about him growing up on the Emerald Isle. They say he was England for a while too, but the first I knew of him was in the good old U S of A.”
“We’ve heard some of his shenanigans in Ireland,” Gert informed her, proud of his sleuthing skills.
“Right, great. Well, I first met him out in Tennessee, one long lonely night under the stars. He didn’t have a bean to his name, that young lad. Came over there for the American Dream, he did, but way back then it was still just that – a dream.
“So he was there, truckin round Nashville, living day to day, just looking for something to eat. He’d eat anything, that kid, except fish, for some reason. Never did find out why he turned up his nose at the seafood, wouldn’t say.
“One day, I passed him on the side of the road. He was grinning ear-to-ear. I asked him, ‘Sonny, what you so glad about?’ He’d got himself a salt shaker. I couldn’t for the life of me see what was so peachy ’bout a salt shaker.
“Well, anyways, he comes back next day, and he’s got something in his chest pocket. He’s got a toothbrush! I ask him, ‘Sonny, where d’ya get that toothbrush?’ Turns out he’d bartered for it. Hung about some fancy porches all day. Picked up some snails and slugs from the topiary, put them in the flowers. Home owner comes out later to water his plants, finds the slugs. Abraham pops up, little Irish fella with a salt shaker, offers to trade the Yank some salt, asks for something in return. Ends his day smiling bright, he’s got a toothbrush for his troubles.”
“Why’d he want a toothbrush?” asked Lester, not understanding what oral hygiene had to do with the American Dream.
“He didn’t want no toothbrush, kid. He sold it immediately.”
“Sold it?”
“Bartered it, really. Found some old paint in the dump, gave it a lick of paint, racing stripes. Takes it back to them fancy porches, goes knocking door to door. Sometime later, an impressionable young teen likes the look of his brush, offers to trade it for a pair of scissors. So now kid Abe’s got himself a pair of scissors, real sharp like.
“He takes them scissors, cuts himself a chance. Sharpens them up, turns them to a weapon, well that’s if your enemy don’t like no poke in the arm. Finds a hunting shooting type, trades it for a sheepskin hood. Turns out the hood’s down, the latest trend with the kids. Trades with another boy, now he’s got himself a bike. Fair trade then, a hood for a bike.
“Living the American Dream, our Abe. Took that bike, put an exhaust pipe on it, called it a rocket ship. Finds another kid, kid gazing at the stars, wants to be Neil Armstrong. Trades the bike, gives him a Chevrolet in return. Abe ain’t got a home or a family, but he’s got himself a classic auto-mobile.
“Classic’s pushing it though. Beat up, run down, brown dirt track camouflage. Ain’t the car you’d drive through Sunset Boulevard. But that’s just what he did, our Abe. Jumps in his front seat, pulses the motor, runs it all the way to San Francisco, looking for Hollywood. Course, Hollywood’s in LA, so he goes there instead, living America for real.
“Takes that saloon, gives it a shoeshine. Dirt brown’s now a shining copper light, bright to reflect all them stars in the sky. He’s out in front the movie studio, leaning ‘gainst the Corvette, smokin’ something strong. Producer rolls out from a film, dressed as a policeman, tight in uniform. He says to Abe, ‘What can I do for you, son?’
“And Abe’s a sweet smelling man in ragged clothes, a crazy, cootie-ridden Irishman with a Chevrolet, and he looks like he’s on for a deal. He’s up for a part, if he can just act it out. So he says, in that rough Irish growl of his, ‘Hey, movie cop, I’m your next star.’
“The producer has five kids like this a day, rolling up, looking for dinner in the camera light. And every day he turns five away, sending them back to electric hotels. Failed surfers, Broadway castaways, all go the same way. But today, this time, somehow he gives in. Gives Abe a go. No script, no shoeshine, just a small-time picture as Angry Crowd Member Twenty One.
“Abe wasn’t leaving LA any time soon, so he traded in his car for a one-bed apartment on the Upper East. World of guns and knives and pocket-thieves, a part of LA where it’s all rats and no stars. Abe plays his part, dodging the devil, playing the crowd. The kind of life folkies sing songs about, a droopy-hair fella softly strumming the guitar.
“So he’s there watching, waiting on the overpaid male leads and all them swingeing starlets. And he sees a pretty young actress, all eyelashes and talent, and he falls in love from the crowd, as men often do. He says he’s gonna get that girl, no matter what he does, gonna be the star of the show for her, take away all her sorrow.
“And so Abe’s a Crowd Member, he’s a Bus Passenger, he’s all the little people, from Flower Seller 3 to the bruised-out Victorian Urchin. But he’s good, oh yeah he’s good. If you’d seen him at the bus stop you’d think it was a real bus you were waiting for, not some over-budget dinosaur rom-com Z-movie coach wheels.
“He’s so good, he gets a line. Shopkeeper: That’ll be 12 dollars, ma’am. Great performance, shopkeeper gets another line. ‘Can I interest you in some apples?’ Producer goes wild, gives him a pay rise of 20 cents. Big money, but Abe’s got a new plan. He’s gonna play the shopkeeper for good. So he gets out the apartment, walks down the bakery.
“Abe waits ’til there ain’t no prying eyes, and he stands behind the counter. Customer walks in, he delivers his 12 dollars line, customer can’t tell dream from real. He collects the dough, makes the dough, and now he’s a living breathing money-spinner, baking his daily bread straight from the oven, a real-time Yank hero.
“He’s still playing his parts, but now he’s got a trade. Keeps acting, and suddenly he’s making a fistful. Bedsit’s now a little house, a continent away from gangland. But he’s still acting, and he ain’t forgotten the actress. So he puts half shares of his bakery up, trades with the producer for a speaking part, and soon he’s sharing tickets for the big time.
“But tickets don’t get you no seat in the big time show, they just let you in the door, and l’il Abraham needed to find the girl in the stalls. He still don’t know her, ain’t spoke a word to her. He was only tall as his height, and only had what he could trade for. He thought he’d need to play the big shot, the collar jewel, the watch-worn college boy.
“His first part’s a French count in a sci-fi drama. He learns his lines, loosens his accent. He’s standing tall in the studio, croaking every ‘r’, and suddenly she’s there, all dressed up as an alien carpet salesman. Now the toad’s deep down the French count’s throat, and he can’t make no sound nor song nor rhyme.
“But one day he speaks and she speaks back and he speaks again, and the frog’s gone and it’s leapt away out into lush grassland, hopping and jumping. More days go by and the picture ends, and they’re still talking in still life, like sunflowers in a vase. But Christie don’t go with him, not yet. Not now he’s got all that dime.
“See, she’d just been playing the Russian leadin’ lady in a spy thriller, and she’d looked all the Communists in the eye. And she’d caught the faith, seen the sickle light. Life ain’t about trading your way to the top, she said, when you can join hands with the proletariat by the altar. If he wanted to go to the altar with her, she said, he’d have to trade it all for a ticket to Cuba.
“Anyways, I’m over in LA by now, and I’ve seen him again, and I’ve heard all his fight. He’s in a new movie, as an old President of the U S of A, He don’t wanna go to Cuba, not really, and he don’t know how to get there, not really. The Pacific Coast got sun enough, he reckon, and free trade too. But he’ll go with her, all the same, go back to the pits if she wanted, if they could.
“It’s hard there. He’s got his part to play. He’s got half a shop. She’s got her place too, now a heroine in an indie teen flick, and she can’t just run off. They’ll be caught. Contract law, kid. Can’t just break it all off. So they get their heads together, and they plan their escape. Come up with a plan so devious they could fool the wisest cat on the curtain. Now, them kids could act, all right. He thought about being the shopkeeper again, but there’s no way a shopkeeper can run away with an indie heroine. No talkie ever ends like that, no matter who’s directing.
“So there’s only one thing he can do. They make their plans and, one week later, the pearly-white producer, the one who gave him his big break, the producer hears his phone ring. Picks it up, holds it close, and there’s an official voice in his ear, you know, like the guy who reads the news. Reading the news to producer-man now, telling him the President’s gonna be visiting his studio tomorrow, a super slick visit, not just to chum. There’s business to do, national security. Things more important than flicks, if you know what I’m saying.
“And the producer has a crazy night. He’s never met the President, not once, but he’s the kind of cat who thinks he oughta. Thinks the country’s all for him, that he’s the superstar in a great big play, the lion of jungle suburbia. And he gets all his staff ready, hands clasped behind backs, leaning forward as a shiny limousine approaches.
“The limo slows, a big, dark limousine, and it stops right in front the red carpet. A man gets out, dark glasses and sweeping hair, and offers his hand. I’m there too, carrying his case, playing the President’s aide.
“’Welcome, Mister President!’ The producer’s time is shining, and his tie is sober. Abe, Mister President, does his best JFK impression, hooting, tooting, talkin’ ’bout donuts. He’s swept round the studio, looking through all the cameras, caught up in all the bright lights. And finally he’s introduced to Christie, as if for the first time, and he smiles politely, and says it’s her they need to discuss.
“So we go to a back room, Abe, the producer, Christie and me. And Abe, Mister President, Abe says that the CIA have been tracking Christie, and she’s a Soviet spy, and they need to take her away. Off to jail she’ll go, locked up for betraying the land of the free. She’s crying, and cries, and cries. Producer’s still starstruck, sad but tryin’ not to show it, and he tells her to go. Contract law don’t mean nothin’ when the President tells you otherwise.
“And they’re off, back of the old Chevrolet Abe’s bought back, and I’m outta there, back to my li’l room in Tennessee. Di’nt see Abe again, not for years, but I heard all about what happened.
“You see, some kid at the film studio suspected something. He’d been in love with the girl for an age, seen her with Abe, and he’d been pretty darn green. Yeah, the President said she had to go, but when did the President do this kinda thing? What’s more, no-one could get hold of Abraham. He’d gone someplace.
“The more he reasoned, the more he suspected. JFK was a tall guy, and this one was as short as a sharpened pencil. I guess that didn’t clinch it, though. The year was the real killer. It was 1970, and Kennedy, Lord rest his soul, had been gone seven dark years already. Ain’t no President gonna show up seven years after his death, even the great hero JFK. So the kid tells his boss what’s happened, and his boss calls the cops. Someone flicks a switch and every siren on the West Coast is humming the tune.
“Oh, the film studio knew Christie had been playing a Communist. They’d been keeping every ear out, hoping to catch her drift. But they’d missed it, and she’d gone, and they sure were angry. The newspapers are buzzing and the radio’s stinging for her and the cops are chasing for a classic Corvette and a pair of Red tearaways.
“The lovers didn’t get to Cuba. Feds saw to that. Where they did get to is anyone’s guess, but they weren’t ever seen in the U S of A again, that’s for sure. Abe never went back, he told me. Guess they musta ended up over on this li’l island, most likely.”
Lester was the first to talk again. “Where did Abe live when he got here, anyway?”
“Oh, on the West Point farm, just outta town. He took it over, the whole place.”
“Lucky lad, Abe,” Gert remarked meaningfully, as if he’d got a hint to drop.
“Yeah, too right.”
There was one question Lester felt he needed to ask. “So if they ran away, and Abe ended up back here, and now he’s gone for ever, what happened to her? Where;s Christie?”
“Well kid, that’s just the thing. See, she…”
But before she could explain, Rupert Cornelius thundered back in, crashing to their table, only quietening down to slide elegantly into a chair.
“Forgot my pen,” he explained, picking up his pen. Turning round to the bar, he ordered himself a Martini and sat smug in the way. Janey, shrugging, left it at that.
“Now where were we? I think we were trying to find a rhyme for ‘chalk’, were we not?”
Gert groaned and left the bar. Lester, of course, followed quickly.
“Gert, why do you think Janey wanted to tell us all that so urgently?”
Gert laughed knowingly. “Oh, Lester, I don’t think she knows what I know. She wanted us to hear more about Abraham, but I’ve understood everything! The final jig’s in the saw, young’un.”
“So who did it, then?”
“Oh, it’s not who, but why. Lad, there are some things people murder for. Some things even I’d murder for. You’ll understand soon.
“We’ve got a big day tomorrow. Need to be up bright and early, so you’re off duty. Go home, get a proper kip.”
“Why? Are we going to apprehend the murderer?”
“No, young’un, no.”
“Are we going to take our evidence to the police?”
“No.
“No, tomorrow’s the Novelty Vegetable Show at the Farmer’s Arms! There’s some fun to be had there. See you on the morrow!”
And with that the night set in.
PART 8
“What are your favourite animal noises, lad?”
“Baa!”
“That’s not a farmyard noise. Don’t get sheep on farms.”
“Yes you do. They’re called hill sheep farms.”
“No I mean normal farms. Yard farms. All the animals in the yard. What’s the best farmyard noise?”
“Neigh!”
“Don’t find horses on farms, either.”
“Ok, then – moo!”
A few people from the queue of farmers turned round, startled. There weren’t many large events in our small town, but everyone showed up when there were. It is a curious fact of small-town gatherings that, on big occasions, everyone dresses the same. If there’s a sports match everyone dresses up in the team colours. On Bonfire Night everyone wears long dark coats. And on the day of the Novelty Vegetable Show, there are a thousand flat caps, or at least there would be, if there were a thousand people here.
“Nah, the best is oink.”
“Woof!”
“Quack!”
A flat cap flew in the air, its elongated owner flapping furiously, but then realizing who it was, and that they were not calling him a quack, smiled his piano whites.
“Maxi! You’re in a cap.”
“Yes, Master of Ceremonies, they call me today.”
“You’re the Master every day, Maximilian, whatever they call you. Is everyone ready?”
“They’re organising themselves as we speak,” said Maximilian, gesturing towards a few tweed jackets by the pub gate, who were erecting rickety tables by the wobble-load. “Either of you entering today?”
“No, we’re just here as spectators, investigators. Or, actually, I’ve got two entries, but they’re both a bit last minute.”
Gert had found his entries in the local supermarket.
“Ah, right then. Any luck with the murder? There better be no murdering here today, mind,” he said, waggling his finger at Lester, “don’t want a fine day spoiled by the cold callow stench of death.”
He raised his nose to the air and sniffed.
“All I smell – for now – is the lingering odour of aubergine. But if the scent of the grave should rise, then Lord have mercy on us! Have mercy on our root vegetables!”
And with that he pirouetted away, looking for a wonky manger.
Gert and Lester wandered over to a trestle table and took their places.
——————————–
Paul opened his eyes. He was at the cinema. He didn’t know why he was at the cinema, because he was supposed to be in bed. This had never happened before, not even in movies. There was a figure wandering around in the shadows, flicking switches and fiddling with electrical equipment.
“What’s the story, guy?”
At least, that’s what Pixar Paul tried to say. What he would have said, perhaps, if there had not been a sock stuffed in his mouth. Paul was tied to a seat and the show was about to begin.
——————————–
The jibber jabber at the Farmer’s Arms continued. As usual, far more people had come along than the lackadaisical bar staff had expected, so underpaid workers buzzed around, seating people however they could. There were little children perched on bags of potatoes, farmers on coat hooks, washerwomen seated on the bar itself. Naturally, all this involved a great deal of hubbub.
Maximilian stood up at the front. It is never easy to silence a crowd, particularly a crowd of honest-to-goodness labourers intent on enjoying their Saturday. The Master of Ceremonies tried coughing, but everyone ignored him. He tried coughing again, but in a more masterly way. Again, the crowd ignored him, except one old lady, who passed him a lozenge. Upon closer inspection it turned out not to be a cough sweet but a sherbet lemon. Maxi sighed.
“Your attention please.”
Noise stopped and stared at the glossy, blue-suited stranger on Maximilian’s left, who, having brought peace, promptly sat down again, grinning in a 1950s sort of way.
“Um, yes, yes, hello everyone,” Maximilian said, “Quiet please. It’s time to start the show. May I introduce your host, of Orange County, California, and also of Broomfield Road, Huddersfield, Mr Bradley Alan Sherman!”
Mr Sherman rose slowly to his feet, as if a social inferior was handing him a cigar.
“Yes, you may introduce me, Max.”
Maximilian scowled. He hated being called Max. Back at school a teacher had once called him Max For Maximum, and the memory haunted him still. Mr Sherman continued in his duties.
“Welcome ladies, gentlemen, and pigs!
Two pigs at the back oinked in approval.
“Welcome to the 42nd annual Vegetable Show or, as we like to call them round here, the Turnip Trophies! What do we call them?” Bradley asked the crowd, gleaming his white teeth.
“The turnip trophies!”
“That’s right. And may I thank your Master of Ceremonies, local soothsayer, mystic meddler, honorary Welshman, proud patriot, storyteller… Maximilian!”
Cheers, roars, oinks. The crowd had already met Maximilian, and didn’t really want to thank him, but their desires were bent to the will of the suede shoes.
“As you will no doubt remember, this marks a departure from previous years. I’m told that the host used to be introduced by the Mayor, who also had to be introduced by the organiser, who in turn needed introducing by the Mayor, who was introduced by the organiser. I hear your fine old show nearly didn’t happen as a result. Well, this year the organisers got their act together,” pointing the organiser out, who beamed, “and they hired me, Bradley Alan Sherman, to iron the record straight.”
“You can call me Mr Sherman, or Bradley. Or, to you, just Bill.”
He winked at a goose. The goose winked back.
“Before I go on, I’d like to dedicate today to a lost friend of ours.”
Mr Sherman stopped smiling and lowered his face into a frown.
“Mr Abe-ra-ham O’Hearney,” he pronounced uncertainly, “A fine man, and a fine farmer. A five-time winner of this show, no less, and sorely missed by all the good folks here.”
The crowd bowed their heads in acknowledgement.
“But on with the show!” and the grin was back, as if emerging from behind an awkward cloud.
“We’ve got all kinds of fun for you today. Big fun, little fun, japes just right for the little ones.”
“And it’s time for our first category of the day. Need a big bang to get us started, folks. Are you ready to make a big bang?”
Clapping. They were ready for a big bang, all right. Someone whooped, but was glared at by his teenage son.
“Okay then. Raise your glasses for the entrants of our first contest, our first Turnip Trophy – the Heaviest Pumpkin!”
Crowd members raised their glasses of carrot juice. Three very similar-looking pumpkins were carted to the front in wheelbarrows. People like pumpkins the world over. Mr Sherman examined each of the vegetables closely.
“Number One first. It’s a big brute, isn’t it?” he asked a farmer, who nodded. “And Number Two, what a beauty!” he gasped. “Number Three, well. Not the prettiest little thing in the world, but what she lacks in art, she more than makes up for in pumpkin!”
Farmer Three wasn’t too happy about this. She’d always seen her beloved pumpkin as male.
“And now, your judge for the first category.” he paused expectantly. “These bathroom scales!”
He laid the bathroom scales tenderly on the ground. They were truly the Scales of Justice.
“Weigh the first pumpkin!” he commanded, in a way reminiscent of Dwight D. Eisenhower, or a young Vernon Kay.
The pumpkin was dumped from the wheelbarrow. The scales broke.
“The scales have broken! Fetch me some bigger scales.”
Bigger scales were fetched and the pumpkin was weighed.
“And the pumpkin weighs in at… the second smallest set of scales. Put that pumpkin away and bring out Number Two!”
“Second pumpkin please! Put that pumpkin on some scales.” The first, broken set of bathroom scales were fetched.
“And the first scales have been broken! The second scales.”
This time the second smallest scales snapped too, but the pumpkin failed to break a third, bigger set.
“And Pumpkin Two weighs in at… the third smallest set of scales!”
Some fumbling and wheeling with the two broken sets of scales.
“Pumpkin Three… The smallest scales are broken. The second scales are broken. The third… the third are intact! It’s a tie!”
The crowd clapped enthusiastically. Pumpkin owners Two and Three stepped forward to receive their Turnip Trophy.
“Of course, all our resources were spent on bathroom scales – and me, of course – so we can’t award trophies to both of you…”
A mild scuffle ensued, in which Farmer Two pushed Farmer Three, but Farmer Three got Farmer Two in a headlock, and so was declared the winner.
“We have a winner! Do you have a name?”
Farmer Three stood up to her full height, triumphant in her moment of glory.
“Yes, yes I do, Mister Sherman.”
A pause.
“Well, what is it?”
“None of your business!”
“Oooh, she’s got spirit, this one. What are you going to do now you’ve won a Turnip? Any plans for the future?”
Raising he fist in the air, Farmer Three shouted, “I’m going to bake me some pumpkin pie!”
The crowd roared.
“Congratulations to our first Turnip winner. They say you can’t beat a good winner, and you definitely can’t beat a good pumpkin, so it’s fortunate that winners and pumpkins aren’t competing, else we’d have another tie.”
“Anyway the next category…”
———————————–
Adverts were playing on the screen, but the sound was down. A bumbling oaf failed to put his pants in the washing machine, so his homely wife had to do it for him. This appeared to be advertising a car. Next up a long-legged woman was posing for the cameras. Apparently other women were supposed to be jealous that she was being hounded by paparazzi. The long-legged woman was urging people to buy cameras, as if people still used cameras.
“You are Paul, yes?”
The voice came from behind him. Paul couldn’t affirm or deny, still having a sock in his mouth.
“Hmmm, Paul. And they call you Pixar Paul, do they not?”
The invisible stranger had a fake accent.
“And why do they call you Pixar Paul?”
Paul didn’t know why the stranger bothered.
“I shall tell you. It is because you have never seen a Pixar Film. Not Toy Story, not Wall-E, not even Antz.
“But all that is about to change, my friend. You have never seen a Pixar movie, yet you have seen all sorts of other things in this world, haven’t you? All sorts of things. But yet they call you Pixar Paul, when you could have had many, more appropriate names.
“Tonight you shall sit here, at my invitation, and watch a film with me. It will not be one of your favourite films. It will not be a recorded Miles Davis concert. Nor will it be The Devil Wears Prada. Instead, it shall be… a Pixar movie!”
Paul jolted violently, struggling with every bit of life he had, desperately trying to break free of his socks.
“You will no longer be Pixar Paul, but just… Paul. Plain, ordinary Paul. You will be nobody, not even a man who has never seen a Pixar movie.
“And it gets worse, my friend. This won’t be an ordinary Pixar movie, this will be… Toy Story 2!”
Paul struggled again in panic.
“Toy Story 2, a wonderful film. So wonderful, in fact, that you will have to go and watch the first and third films for yourself, just to discover how the tale begins and ends.”
“I am a diabolical genius!”
The villain cackled, as all villains are wont to do.
“Very well, then, let us begin. We shall not be disturbed. Hence I have included a good thirty minutes of adverts first. You do so love adverts.”
And with that footsteps clanked, dying away as the sound came on. The reel began to roll.
—————————-
The 42nd Turnip Trophies were storming along. The Biggest Root Vegetable award, a category most spectators agreed was unnecessary, went to the winner of the Heaviest Pumpkin. Similarly, the Pumpkin scooped up the Widest Pumpkin, the Widest Root Vegetable and the Vegetable Most Likely To Sink In An Olympic Swimming Pool, the last of which caused all sorts of logistical issues and left Maximilian completely drenched.
“Now, folks, it’s time for the Turnip Trophy awarded in recognition of the Smallest Parsnip!”
Everyone whooped this time. The massive pumpkin couldn’t possibly win this one.
“Bring out your entries.”
There was a groan as an uncountable number of tiny parsnips were carried to the front, followed by a very big pumpkin.
“And the winner is… the pumpkin!”
The crowd booed as one. Someone threw tomatoes at Mr Sherman, which seemed a little unfair – after all, it wasn’t his pumpkin. Fortunately, the tomato pulp missed his shiny blue suit.
“Fix! Fix! Fix!” chanted the spectators.
The organiser jumped in the air and raised his palms in front of him. It looked like he was trying to high-ten a very large object, possibly a root vegetable.
“There is no fix. The process is all above board, I can assure you, and care was taken…”
At that moment his tweed pocket burst, and seeds scattered everywhere. A farmer examined the seeds.
“Wait, these are pumpkin seeds! Fix, fix, fix!” he led the crowd, waving his arms in the air like a loon.
“Fix! Fix! Fix!” the crowd chanted. They picked up the pumpkin owner and the official. For a second there was vocal, frenzied debate over what to do with them, but eventually they were chucked out the window.
“There’ll be no corruption here. Stay out!”
A few entrepreneurial farmers attempted to throw the pumpkin out with them, but it was far too heavy. Instead, they threw it back in the swimming pool, to a lusty cheer and a gigantic splash. Maximilian was, once again, the only person to get wet. Roars of approval and laughter brightened the breezy pub.
While all this was going on, Gert whispered in Lester’s ear. “Corruption, lad. Never pays. Always stay on the right side of the law, always respect your parents. That’s the way.” He winked and sat up straight, noticing that Bradley Alan Sherman was clearing his throat.
“Order, please.” It was not a request, and Mr Sherman’s listeners obeyed instantly, won over by his bright-button charm.
“Now that we’ve ended all corruption in this town, let us continue.”
“Hooray!” agreed the pub.
“Where were we? Ah, yes, the Smallest Parsnip.” Ripping up the envelope, he examined each parsnip in turn, first with the naked eye, then with a magnifying glass, and finally with a microscope.
“And the winner is… Andre Maisonette with his very small parsnip!”
A French-looking man collected his award, and primly sat down again.
“Let’s move on to the Grooviest Marrow!”
——————————
The adverts were over. Paul had been instructed to buy two kinds of German car, forty-four watches, seven types of detergent and a new cure for warts. Not only that, but he had been shown trailers for eighteen different, yet completely indistinguishable, PG-rated films, none of which were showing in a local cinema.
The hidden villain lurked behind him as the main feature began. It was munching popcorn loudly enough to disturb Paul’s enjoyment of the film, and occasionally balanced bits of popcorn on Paul’s head. It laughed uproariously at every joke or turn of phrase, whether it was funny or not, and spoiled every twist and turn by announcing it five minutes beforehand. Worst of all, it mimicked every catchphrase in a plastic, squeaky soprano, an anti-jazz falsetto that threatened to burst Paul’s very eardrums with its dissonance.
This could be a long afternoon, thought Pixar Paul.
—————————–
“Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the Most Orange Carrot is” – Mr Sherman opened and quickly closed the envelope which read ‘the big pumpkin’ – “Carrot Number 12!”
The owner of carrot number 12 punched the air and was quickly forgotten. More categories followed.
“The winner of the category for the Longest Corn-On-The-Cob goes to…”
“The Most Vegetables Inside Another Vegetable prize is awarded to that man behind the coat-stand in the tweed jacket! Seventeen spring onions inside a mushroom, well played sir!”
“The Potato Most Resembling A Human Head goes to… this beauty!” Mr Sherman held up a Desiree which looked like Alan Bennett.
Gert groaned, but clapped anyway.
“I was up for that award, young’un! Entered a King Edward I found at the supermarket. Looked for all the world like King Eddy itself, it did. Oh well, it’s a fine winner anyways, and my cucumber’s still got a chance.”
Lester would have liked to know which award the cucumber was up for, but decided he was better off not knowing.
Mr Sherman picked up another envelope. “Ah, a real family favourite coming up now. Let’s see the entrants to the Turnip Trophy for the Most Peas!”
A loud cheer for that one. Most Peas was a beloved, popularist prize.
“A much maligned vegetable, the pea. Lay folks love it, always put it with their meat and gravy, but we true vegetable-lovers disregard it. A vegetable for people who don’t like vegetables, we say. But this is the time for the humble pea to shine. First contestant please.”
A farmer walked up to the front with as many peas he could carry. Impressed ooohs rippled across the audience.
“That’s a lot of peas. Peas in our time! Or our thyme, if you’re a fan of Simon and Garfunkel. Contestant number two, please.”
A second farmer walked up with two big buckets. Both were filled to the brim with petits pois.
“Oh, well done! We have a new leader, folks. Give peace a chance,” he punned, trying to look natural.
“Third contestant?”
A little old man shambled up with a pea-filled eggcup.
“That’s a decent effort, but it’s not going to beat Number Two, I’m afraid. Pea-tiful in comparison. And finally, Contestant Four. Can you beat our leader?”
Nothing happened. The crowd were silent, waiting expectantly.
“Contestant Four?”
A pause, and then a noise. A very, very loud noise. It sounded as if a forklift truck had just collided with a supernova. There was a whiny creaking sound like the wind through a haunted house, and then all the glass smashed. Peas fell from the skylight like rain hurling itself at an umbrella-less public. Peas whizzed bullet-like through the open windows, zapping the audience with a maelstrom of friendly fire. There were petits pois, Alaskan peas, Little Marvels, Mister Bigs. Thomas Laxtons, Early Perfections, Tall Telephones. Panicked onlookers avoided Kelvedon Wonders, Green Arrows, Miragreens and runner beans. Gert was hit by a Wando in the eye and a Serge in both his ears. Lester spent most of the next week picking Lincolns and Sugar Snaps from his hair and face.
Three minutes of pea-rain, of pea-fire, and then it stopped. The calm of the moment was the calm of a broken battlefield. Peas lay stricken across the pub, jamming the jukebox, stuffing the till. Peas had indeed been given a chance, and they had taken it, forcing their illustrious namesake Peace to crawl home dejectedly.
And, just like all wars, those that were left had no choice but to pick up their lives and carry on. The crowd, having taken refuge in various places around the pub, stood unsteadily to their feet, brushing broad beans off as they did so. The floor was layers deep in little green peas. It could have been a giant ball-pool for small mammals, if mammals enjoyed ball pools enough for it to be economically viable. Little attempt was made to clear the mess, but the audience righted their chairs and re-organized. The show must go on.
Mr Sherman had run out of pea-based puns. “That, well, yes, peas.”
“A lot of peas, folks. Unfortunately, there were so many peas that the previous entries have been lost somewhere in all those peas on the floor, and so we have no way of telling which of our entries had the most peas. Thus, I declare it a four-way tie!”
The crowd decided this was fair, and roared.
“What I can say, however,” said Mr Sherman, watching peas squelch under people’s feet and chairs, “is that the next award, the Turnip Trophy for the Mushiest Peas, can be awarded to Contestant Number Four! Big round of applause, folks! Contestant Number Four can be peas-ed with that.”
Clearly he had not run out of pea-based puns.
PART 9
Pixar Paul’s ordeal was nearly over. He had endured hours of high-budget entertainment, hours of ruined plotlines, two and half buckets of popcorn in his hair. The villain’s high-pitched laughter still vibrated in his ears, suspending all animation and joy. Even the credits were slowly drawing to a close, all the hundred thousand names listing in front of him, a glossy war memorial to the film.
The memorial could just as easily have been to his own life, Pixar Paul thought. At that moment the lights brightened and the film stopped rolling. Finally the sock was wrenched from his mouth.
“So you’re going to kill me?”
“No, I shall not kill you, oh no. Instead, I shall… let you die. Ha!”
“What is your plan?” Even though he’d never seen a Pixar film before this day, Paul had seen enough movies to know that villains always revealed their schemes. All you had to do was ask nicely.
“Ah, it is simplicity itself. In films they always try too hard. Lasers, golden guns, and so on. Why the effort?”
Pixar Paul didn’t know.
“When you have your man in an abandoned warehouse, there is no need for lasers. In an abandoned warehouse you may just… abandon him!”
“But then it wouldn’t be an abandoned warehouse if there was someone abandoned in it.”
The villain considered this.
“But it would, Paul. Both the warehouse and the man would be abandoned. It would be a place of abandonment, full only of abandoned people, like sailors lost at sea.”
“So you’re going to abandon me in a warehouse.”
“No. There are no warehouses here.”
“Why all the warehouse chit-chat, then?”
“Because I am going to abandon you here. In this cinema. To cover my tracks I shall, of course, let the townsfolk know. That way I cannot be blamed. But they may never find the note.”
He waited expectantly, but Pixar Paul wasn’t curious about the note.
“They may never find the note, because I shall leave it somewhere no-one ever looks. A place no-one ever goes. A place no-one ever checks.”
Pixar Paul still didn’t ask.
“That’s right. The local newspaper. Ha!”
Despite his affected nonchalance, even Pixar Paul recoiled slightly.
“The local newspaper! The last place anyone would ever look. They shall never, ever find you.”
And with that the villain left. A door slammed somewhere in the distance.
Pixar Paul was left in the darkness, tied to a chair. His fate was decided now, as surely as any fate can be.
———————————-
The ceremony, too, was drawing to a close. Awards were circulating the room. Farmers grinned left, right and centre. All the prizes for vegetables shaped like genitalia had been given out. The Brussels Sprouts, which had been delicately arranged like Ferrero Rocher, had all been eaten. There were only two Turnips to go.
“Our penultimate award is a super one, folks. The Cucumber Which Most Reminds Us Of The Endless, Meaningless Futility of Existence!
Gert crossed his fingers. His cucumber had been snatched from the Buy-One-Get-One-Half-Price display. It was bound to win.
“And the winner is… this cucumber!” Mr Sherman said, holding up a very average-looking cucumber, “Weltschmerz, existential angst, whatever you call it, this cucumber certainly has it.”
A dog yelped in pain.
“I was robbed. Robbed. There’s nothing wrong with that cucumber.”
“Oh, but there is, Gert,” interjected Rupert Cornelius, who mysteriously appeared behind them, “the ordinary cucumber, beholden to nothing, appears day after day in our grocery, ready to be eaten once more. Does it not remind you of Sisyphus?”
Gert ignored him.
“Pity Abe isn’t here this year, Lester. He’d have loved all them peas.”
“Mr Sherman said he was a five-time winner. What prizes did he win?”
“Oh, he was always up for the Grand Prize, Abe was. The only one left, as it happens.”
At the front, Bradley Alan Sherman was readying himself for the main effort. He dabbed his hair a little with wax and straightened his bow tie with a carefree, efficient turn of the wrist.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our final prize. The one you’ve all been waiting for” – he pointed to indicate a particularly big fake turnip on a stand – “the greatest Turnip Trophy of them all.”
“It is, of course, the Novelty Vegetable Prize!”
“But first, a tribute to…” he checked his notes hurriedly, hoping no-one would notice, “Mister O’Hearney, our late friend. Maximilian, our very own Master of Ceremonies, will say a few words.”
And he retreated, clapping politely to his seat. Maximilian stood to address the audience.
“Ahem. A few days ago, someone very important was taken from us. A great friend, a great farmer. We’ll always remember Abe, a great drinker, too. He use to sit in the Lady Luck with that rum and coke of his, sipping away. Maybe he’s up there in the sky now, sipping a rum and coke. I’m sure he’s here now, floating above with a drink, watching the show today.
“We all remember his farming. Five times winner of the Novelty Vegetable Prize, of course, the star of the show. First year he won it with a butternut squash shaped like the Taj Mahal. Second time around it was a radish in the shape of James Joyce’s Ulysees. That one was pretty close, one of the judges thought it more reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw and voted against, but it took the Turnip anyway. Then, three years in a row, three mushrooms in the shape of Nagasaki. Five wins for old Abe.
“But this year Abraham isn’t competing. His tragic passing is mourned by all, we can agree. And our brave detectives – sitting just over there – will surely solve this terrible crime.”
“Hear, hear,” echoed the crowd. But there was muffled disagreement.
“Why haven’t you solved it yet?”
“Why are you in the pub?”
“I saw you yesterday,” accused one farmer, “asleep under the bridge! Not much of a detective.”
There was a disembodied grumbling from the floor. Maximilian, the Master, tried to take command again.
“They, will, of course, solve the mystery of this dastardly deed. But we return to the festivities. Let me sit and hand control back to Mister Bradley Alan Sherman.”
Applause.”Thank you, thank you.”
“I was nervous coming here, to all you good people. Was this, it was.”
He held up the paper, with its headline ‘MAN IS DEAD. RUN IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.’
“But you’ve made me feel right welcome, here in your lovely little drinking-hole. Like the old dad always said, if you get past the cover, the book’s always worth reading. Always said that, he did. And if we get past the cover, we see” – he turned some pages – “grand ladies with their cakes. A washing machine in the middle of the road. A notice for an old Mondeo that’s sitting in the layby. A polite notice of a kidnapping. A little lad proudly holding his first swimming certificate…”
“Hang on, what was the last one again?” Maximilian interrupted.
“First swimming certificate. Forty-seven metres, big bright badge…”
“No, no, the one before.”
“Oh, it;s just a note to say a jazz musician’s been taken…”
The suit crumpled slightly.
“Taken hostage. Someone’s been taken hostage. Cinema.”
Everyone rushed for the door, peas on the floor.
—————————————-
It was a full twenty minutes before the pub was back to order.
“Pixar Paul, who did it?”
Gert felt he ought to lead the investigation, given that he was the lead detective. Bradley Alan Sherman stared somewhere in the distance, watching a golden coast of yesteryear in his head.
“No idea, sir. Could have been anyone, anyone at all. I’ve lived a long life, and there’s many a kid who holds a grudge against me.”
Paul was sitting on an upturned manger, rubbing his head with a sickly orange towel. Quite why he was doing this no-one knew, as he had run out of hair years ago. The only effect was to make his scalp extra shiny.
“Somebody did it!”
“Someone’s to blame for this!”
“String ’em up!”
“Tie him to a stake!”
“Throw him in the river!”
“Pelt him with tomatoes that are past their best-before date!”
“Make him sit out in the rain for a very long time!”
“Throw him in the pool!”
There was a big cheer for this. The squadron of pool-carrying helicopters had been worth it, the crowd reckoned, for a proper afternoon’s entertainment.
Sherman got in on the act. “Pool, pool pool!” he chanted, fist raised in the air, as if he were boxing at a 90-degree angle.
“Pool, pool, pool!” Everyone took his lead.
“Pool, pool, pool! Pool, pool, pool!”
The crowd was up, craving reprisal, stamping a conga of natural justice.
“Pool, pool, pool! Throw him in the pool!”
They turned to Gert.
“Get him, Gert! We’ll throw him in the pool.”
“Where’s the ruffian, Gert?”
Gert paused. He held the silence for a heartbeat longer than anyone would expect, just for that chilling effect.
“Well, we’ve started with a list of suspects. Made enquiries, questioned…”
“Yeah? How many suspects?”
“How many was it, lad?” he said, turning to Lester for support.
“Oh, um, er…”
“It was…”
“57?”
“No, too many. You’re thinking of beans.”
“1?”
“More than one.”
“4?”
“4 suspects! On the list, we’re crossing them off, one by one. For each we’re…”
“They don’t know!”
“Not much in the way of detectives.”
“Chuck ’em in the pool!” At last, they had a scapegoat or two.
A cough, and everyone was suddenly, mysteriously silent. This time Maximilian had got it just right.
“Ladies and gentleman, let me remind you of a middle-aged man, in the prime of his life.”
The crowd would have preferred whips rather than tails, but the cough had worked its charm. They let him continue, still eagerly anticipating a bit more splashing about.
“This man came here many years ago, with a young wife. He set up in the old farmstead, just north of here. Didn’t grow any crops for years, survived all the same.
“Then someone peeked in, turned out the couple were running a socialist communist utopia commune, but they’d forgotten to invite anyone else along. And no-one had told them you can’t be running a socialist utopia, that’s not the point, but they continued anyway, with their land redistribution and anti-competition regulations.
“A few weeks later, they declared war on the United States of America, they did. No shot was ever fired, but the U.S never dared to invade. Scared of something.
“And, do you remember, that man was scared of something too? He’d never go near water, he wouldn’t. Always avoided the fresh juice aisle in the supermarket, would only ever buy from cartons from concentrate.
“But there was that one time, see, that one time when the man was too engrossed in his manifesto on the means of production, and he fell in the river. Terrified, he was. Too scared too swim. And we all went and fished him out. Every last man, woman and child was by that bank, pulling the man to safety. Of course, we didn’t need the whole town doing it, and it took hours longer than necessary, mainly because people kept pushing each other in for a lark, but we got him out, all the same.
“And that misguided, kindly man thanked us, he did. Couldn’t thank us enough. Invited us over to his socialist communist utpoia for stollen. Most of us couldn’t make it, having had prior engagements, but those that did said it was the best stollen they’d had all week.
“Our town grew to love that man. We’d save him from any old river, we would. We’d pull him out the Atlantic Ocean if we had to, because he was one of us, even if he did follow the red flag. And when he came round to liberal capitalist democracy in the early nineties, we all roared for it, but we’d always loved him, really.
“And Abraham – for it was he – Abraham couldn’t bear water, and now he’s dead, and now you’re threatening to throw the detectives investigating his own death, threatening to throw the very detectives into the water he so feared. Shame on you! Shame on all of you!
“If Abraham taught us one thing, it’s that life is more than sickles and swimming pools. It’s about respect for our fellow human beings, in life or in death. So throw not these men into the water, for you are better than that, my friends.”
The crowd turned their eyes to the floor, gazing beyond the assorted vegetables in between the tiling. They were looking at a deeper truth. Finally, one spoke for the multitutde.
“Yes, Maximilian. We cannot throw these fine detectives into the water.”
Gert’s easy grin, which had never wavered, flickered a little brighter.
“But we cannot keep them on the case. Abraham’s memory is too precious for that. We need a new detective.”
The crowd were quiet in their agreement. This mutiny was all for one, one for all.
Gert shrugged. His mind was on his cucumber.
“Who will be our detective?”
A suit jacket was drawn together. The crowd turned at the sound.
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything,” Mr Sherman said, hastily replacing a fountain pen in his pocket, “but a do a line in old-timey sleuthing too.”
He handed round a single business card. ‘Mr Bradley A. Sherman, Guest Speaker’ it said, with ‘Private Detective’ underneath in spidery ink.
“He’s a detective!”
“Maybe he would take on our mystery.”
“Why don’t we ask him?”
He looked round at the crowd and pointed hid finger in the air.
“I would…be delighted to help. My price is very reasonable.”
“How much?”
“What have you got?”
The farmers rummaged through their pockets. They had spent every last penny on vegetables.
“Tell me, Mr Sherman, how do you like vegetables?”
Mr Sherman kept his polished whites showing. Vegetables might not put food on the table, but it was probably the best he could do.
“Show me what you’ve got.”
And show him they did. Every farmer went away with their shovels and came back with everything they could shovel together. All the vegetables in the town were there, all piled up.
“Is this enough payment?”
“Oh, I think it is, folks. But I’ll need a completion fee too, you know. Something for solving the case. That’s my price.”
Everyone groaned. There weren’t any more vegetables.
But Maximilian had an idea. “Well, we do have one thing left. Anything’s worth bringing that killer to justice.”
He turned, meaningfully, towards the last Turnip Trophy.
“As Master of Ceremonies, I bequeath the Novelty Vegetable Prize, our greatest trophy, to the detective who can solve the mystery of the murder of Abraham O’Hearney.”
Gert gasped. This was heresy. Not only had he been stripped of the detective role, the town’s greatest accolade was being given away for a trifle. He had no choice but to solve the mystery, and solve it as soon as he could.
PART 10
It was a bawdy night in the Farmer’s Arms. Every night in the Farmer’s was bawdy, really, from a Puritan point of view, but this one was particularly rousing. For some reason the pub’s custom was to pour every cider past the beaded brim, and tangy foam gurgled down the wrong side of every glass, a pyroclastic flow of dreamy apple. It didn’t help that each farmer insisted on raising their glasses beyond their warm-capped heads, so that, with a lusty clink and slam, cider rain scoured every drinker, every floorboard, and every wobbling barstool.
Apple precipitated down, leaving behind its cider cousins, staining the clothes and character of the good-working sons and daughters of the soil. The apple fell down, down to discoloured wood, leaving small, oak-matured puddles on the hard walnut brown. Peas, shallots and sprouts still cluttered the ground a little, and these were carried away by the cider, which oozed slowly down with the pub’s natural slope. There had been some talk of using this slope to commercial advantage, perhaps by making the pub into a boat riding the waves, but the floor’s cider stains had put paid to that.
So a sickly apple tang rose from the ground and fell from the air. Above and below, flat caps bellowed and roared with the ticking of the clock. In one corner a dozen farmers, male and female, danced the hokey cokey. None could remember the words or, indeed, the rhythm, but the lack of knowledge was made up for by sprightly drunkenness. An apple-cheeked, ruddy-tongued farmer put his left leg in to the air, nearly tripping a passing barmaid in the process.
Amid all this was Bradley Alan Sherman. Grinning his grin, shining his shine. Glasses smashed and cider fell, but somehow it all missed his spotless suit. Even the sticky, oozing rivers of cider somehow wound their round his loafers in respectful worship. He smiled good-naturedly as a farmer placed a cap on his head in congratulations. He pretended to listen to an inaudible tale another farmer bellowed at him. He even saw the hokey-cokey party and mimicked their jig in response, just like cool people do on telly. That face would have sold anything that night, anything at all.
Past the bar, past sloshing and spillage, was the heavy oak door. Lester stood just outside, watching curly white smoke drift and twirl from his companions’ cigarettes. Gert was out of earshot, weeing on a skip.
“Gotta help him, Lester, gotta help him.” That was all Janey had to say, as she said it for the third time.
“Look at him, he won’t even go inside to brave the toilet, not with the new detective there.”
In the distance Gert struggled disconsolately with his zip.
“Oh no, he usually does that. Just prefers the outdoors.”
“Oh. Anyway, can’t pretend to be a detective without doing some detective stuff, yeah? He’d better talk to witnesses, write down names in a little book, get out his magic glass.”
“But he can’t. He’s not the detective any more. Mister Sherman is. He’s not allowed to write down names in a little book.”
“Thing you need to learn, kid. Sherman ain’t a detective, he’s a faker. All in the mind, you see. Act like a detective, you’ll be one. At least get him to creep round with a magnifying glass. Would do him the world of good.
“Now, have you been practising your music?”
Lester nodded primly. He struggled to make any noise at all with it, and when he did it was more of a hoot than a heavenly sigh.
“Good. Just keep practising, that’s all. That’s all it needs.”
And with that Janey stubbed out her cigarette and turned back into the pub.
“What was that all about?” Gert ambled up.
“Well, um…” Lester hesitated, uncertain whether or not to repeat the conversation, “oh, nothing.”
Gert wasn’t in a questioning mood. “What are we to do now? Town doesn’t need old Gert any more.”
He stared over the rooftops of the courtyard. Electric lights flamed behind curtains, televisions blaring out into the cold winter night. Somewhere high above, a cat was licking itself.
“But, Gert, the town does need you!”
“First they don’t want my cucumber. Then they want to throw me into a pool. Then they take my case away from me. No, young’un, this town doesn’t want me.
“Respect for your elders, that’s what I told you. Well, I never respected mine. Don’t give any respect, don’t get any back, that’s the way of the world.”
“Sherman hasn’t respected anyone!”
“No, you’re right there. He turns up in his, his… suit and his shoes, he does. Just stands there, a big fool with a smile, and they’re all round him like pigeons round a lamppost.”
“So, if he doesn’t show them any respect, they won’t show him any respect back. One day he’ll make a mistake, and the town will want you back as the detective! Keep doing the case!”
Gert considered for a moment.
“No, lad. If I sleuth behind their backs, that’s disrespect. Won’t ever take me back.”
“Unless… unless they think you never trusted Sherman, and you were trying to save the town!”
“Hang on, that’s it! I’ll be the maverick detective, the one who gets called off by his boss, but goes on anyway. Solves the case, wins the heroine back. For me the boss and the heroine are the town. My true love. Along with all those other true loves I married.”
He stood up to shout, but then realised it was supposed to be secret, and dropped back to a loud conversational volume instead.
“I’ll continue the case.”
Lester smiled one of his pelican smiles, serene.
The pub’s back door swung open and another smile appeared. It was Bradley Alan Sherman, clutching a notebook and a bottle of cider. His hands were covered in ink – letters, names, numbers.
“Gert! Lester! I’ve been hearing all about you two, you know, all the work you’ve done.”
Gert frowned, saying nothing.
“What’s this I hear about you sleeping under a bridge? Where I come from, lads, where I come from, if you don’t mind me saying so – Huddersfield, the Lord’s own land, as it were – where I come from, we do our duty. When a Huddersfield champion’s got a case to solve, he goes on and solves it, puts the work in. No sleeping under bridges.”
He paused, trying to catch their eyes with a bright, beady twinkle.
“Following through a job, that’s what it’s all about, that’s how you solve a case. When I’m in the pub, I’m not in the pub. I’m networking, interviewing, teasing out clues. No cider for me,” he pointed at the unopened bottle of cider, “just work.
“Talked to some locals, lads. And I’ll let you in on a secret,” he winked, “just in thanks, eh? Now that I’m the chief detective, and you two are back to being townsfolk.
“I’ve got a witness. Someone was there, saw it. Or can tell me someone, something that did. I don’t know, it’s quite hard to interview murder witnesses when Dancing Queen comes on. Bit noisy, and I’m a dancer, me.
“Anyway, I’m going to let everyone get a bit of shut eye, call them in the morning. See, this is how it’s done, lads.”
Gert’s eyes creased merrily.
“A witness? Good work! Best man for the job, I reckon. No hard feelings from here.”
Gert offered his hand, which Mister Sherman shook.
“Ah, a good firm handshake you have, Gert. That’s what I like to see. Now, if you can just take that firm handshake and be firm in the rest of your life, well, you’d have the world at your feet.”
He dashed off another triumphant smile and left them for the darkness.
“I thought you were going to continue the case! You can’t just give up, not like that…”
Gert held up the hand he had shaken with Sherman. It was covered in faded letters and numbers.
“Sherman doesn’t know his cider. Cider stains from the Farmer’s, blue ink and a firm handshake. Recipe for espionage, lad.”
Lester gasped with the genius of it.
“In the morning we’ll give them a call.”
———————————–
Ring-ring
Ring-ring
“Hello, this is Neater Pizza, how may I help?”
“Hi, I’m investigating a crime and I was…”
“Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t deliver crime. We only deliver pizza.”
“No, no, I am calling because I think you might have some information about a crime…”
“No, the only information we have is on our delicious 12-inch takeaway menu! That’s 12-inch pizzas, not 12-inch menus. The menus are” – there was a scrabbling sound – “8 inches long!”
“But your number was given to me because you have a connection with a murder investigation…”
“A murder investigation? Oh, I see. You think we are – how do you say? – Italian mafioso? Just because we are from Italy, we are not all mafia murderers, you know. Some of us make an honest living in the food industry. Not all guns and car bombs and stares and shooting people while they dance at weddings! We have nothing to do with your crime.”
“But…”
“Nothing. Do you want a pizza or not?”
Gert had one final question.
“Just wondering – does anyone actually order pizza at 10am on a Sunday?”
“No.”
The pizza seller slammed the phone down.
“Any luck, Gert?”
“Not a thing. We’d better call the next number.”
Ring-ring
Ring-ring
Ring-ring
“Hello this is Suitor Suits. For all suit-related enquiries press 1. For all other enquiries hang up, because we only sell suits.”
Gert pressed 1.
“Thank you for choosing to phone Suitor Suits. If you did not mean to phone Suitor Suits, press 1. If you did mean to phone Suitor Suits, but have changed your mind, press 2. If you did mean to phone Suitor Suits, and still mean to phone Suitor Suits, press 3.”
Gert considered pressing 2, but opted for 3 instead.
“Thank you for phoning Suitor Suits and not changing your mind. If you want to buy a shiny blue suit, press 1. If you want to buy a shiny turquoise suit, press 2. If you want to buy a shiny cyan suit, press 3. If you want to buy a shiny cobalt suit, press 4. If you want to enquire about a murder, press 5. If you want to buy a shiny sky-blue suit, press 6. If you want to buy a tie, hang up and call a tie seller now.”
Gert pressed 5.
“Please hold.”
A drumbeat kicked in and a guitar jangled.
“Yeah, hold music! Lester, listen to this. Proper music. How do I put it on speakerphone? Ah, here we go.”
A fuzzy noise roared out of the phone, causing a ponderous passer-by to fall over.
Gert started to boogie along the pavement. Pedestrians stared disapprovingly at the two of them – tepid rock music blared from the phone, Gert wiggled his bum to the tune, and Lester scurried behind, trying to keep up with his mentor. Dogs scattered, barking in confusion. Pigeons flew high in panic. Weary curmudgeons refused to don their caps in greeting, but Gert didn’t mind.
A huge, imposing voice cut across the mediocre rhythm n’ blues.
“Suitor Suits, this is Mandy, how may I help?”
If passers-by were shocked by the music, they were even more gasps at this munificent, magnanimous disembodied pronouncement. It was as if God himself had changed his name to Mandy and proclaimed Her existence from the heavens.
“Mandy!” Gert yelled into the phone, forgetting for a moment he had turned the volume up.
“Yes, that is right. How may I help you?”
It wasn’t just the phone being as loud as a whale teaching a school of dolphins. Mandy really did have the timbre of an Olympian.
“You may help me in all sorts of ways. There’s been a murder and we reckon Suitor Suits might know something about it. I got your number from a friend.”
Mandy considered for a moment, then replied, slowly and spectacularly.
“Know something about a murder? No, we don’t go in for that sort of thing at all. Suitor Suits provides quality suits for quality suitors. We do not provide quality suits for – murderers.”
“But I got your number, I thought…”
“You thought? Thinking is not knowing, valued customer. You recall your Plato, I presume? I hope it is still required reading for detectives and journalists.”
She paused again, as if preparing for some great rebuttal.
“There is a command from on high in Suitor Suits. We have company policies, of which there are ten. Number one: Thou Shalt Sell Suits To The General Public. Number two: Thou Shalt Only Sell Blue Suits, And No Other Suits But Blue. Number three: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. Number four: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Number five: Thou Shalt Neither Aid Nor Hinder A Murder Investigation, Or Be Involved In Any Way. And so on.”
She ended, impressively.
“Ah.” Gert was still on speakerphone, but kept forgetting and putting his ear to the handset anyway.
“May I help you in any other way, worthy customer?”
“No, no, that it’s from us. Have a good’un.”
“That I shall.” And with that Mandy – and her majestic voice – disappeared from her new disciples’ lives forever, returning to the Call Centre Asgard from whence he came.
“No luck.”
——————————-
Gert and Lester spent the rest of the morning trying Sherman’s phone numbers, but with no success.
“How many left, Gert?”
“Oh, three more numbers. Here goes.”
“You’ve reached the Farmer’s Innuendo Hotline! Stay on line to hear real double-entendres from real farmers!”
The two of them stared at the phone in puzzlement.
“Gert, turn it off! Those 0800 numbers aren’t cheap.”
Gert stood stock still, as if hypnotized by the inventive uses of needles and haystacks that streamed from his phone.
“I can’t make it stop. Make it stop!” he pushed buttons at random, but only succeeded in making his phone crow like a chicken. Lester took the phone from him and ended the call.
“Good work. You’re a fine apprentice, always said so. Next call!”
This time the phone didn’t even ring. It was picked up immediately.
“I have been waiting for your call. Wait for me in the Hood and Hangman. When the clock strikes 12 I will arrive.”
Before Gert could breathe, the phone, with a clinical clink, cut off. There was a high, shrill howling sound, tearing through the street. Gert thought it was the wind, but suddenly realized he was making the sound. He stopped, and the silence thudded through the alley.
Lester, with impeccably bad timing, piped up.
“Does he – she – it – mean 12 noon or 12 midnight?”
“Midnight, lad. The Hangman doesn’t open in daylight.”
Lester could see Gert was shaking.
“That gives us half a day.”
Gert craned his neck round, looking for the speaker. Lester leapt in fright.
“How did you guys get that number, anyway?”
“Oh, Gert shook his hand and the ink rubbed off.” Gert held up his arm proudly, if a little nervously.
“Let me see that arm of yours.” Gert held it up to the light. His arms were his best feature, except possibly his ears.
“And you rung all the numbers above?” They nodded. “Well, in that case the final number’s Sherman’s own cell. He keeps it on his arm, can’t remember it otherwise. Leave him to me, I’ll arrange for him to be someplace else.
“But we’ve got some talking to do, boys. The Moon, now.”
Neither argued. They followed her down the street, single file.
PART 11
Gert and Lester were seated at the table, looking nervously at one another. They had made the amateur mistake of sitting on opposite sides, and so, while Janey was away from the table, arranging to meet Sherman at midnight, they were forced to stare awkwardly at each other. There wasn’t any conversation to be had. They couldn’t talk about the weather, because there wasn’t any. Neither of them liked sports, or cared about the news. Conversation must, sometimes, be about something, and there wasn’t anything to be about today, except the dread.
Janey returned, replacing her phone in her pocket. There was no time to spare.
“Listen, kids. Big things are happening in this town, and happening tonight. Maybe… maybe I should have told you more. But maybe not. You might have given the whole game away, you know. Couldn’t risk that.”
Gert didn’t enjoy cryptic code, as a rule.
“What are you talking about, Janey?”
She ignored him. “But now you’ve got to go to the Hood and Hangman, and I’d better prepare you. With the reputation of the Hood…”
“What exactly is the Hood and Hangman like?” Lester asked innocently, “How long has it been here?”
Janey and Gert looked at one another with a dark foreboding.
“The Hood has been here thirteen years. All kinds of disaster when it came. You remember that, Gert?”
“Aye, I recall. All kinds of unnatural. Darkness in the middle of the day. The birds stopped singing…”
“Bats flew from every building, tearing down streets in flocks…”
“Dogs walked on their hind legs like people…”
“People walked on all fours like dogs…”
“Rain fell up, the wind sucked rather than blew…”
“The sun actually shone for once…”
Their duet trailed off, silenced by the horrors.
“It started when a herd of ne-er do-wells came here from the country. Filthy braggards they were, the whole pack of them. Family of poachers and highwaymen, way back, but the roads became motorways and the farms became factories, so they could no longer continue their legendary, evil ways.
“Came here one cold summer morning, bought an old, disused shack on the main street. Well, I say bought. They held up the town planners at knife point, made them grant planning permission. And so they set up their lair.
“From the first they were beyond the reach of the law. Murders, robbings, shootings, hangings, garrottings, tax evasion, the whole lot. And the police couldn’t do a thing. Powerless they were, little Johnny Blue in his bright black shoes.
“And so the townsfolk made their own law, and stuck to it. Martial law. Or possibly marshall law, I’m not good with spellings. Anyway, the villains’ pub became the court and the gallows, hanging drawing and courting. You’d go into the post office to send a parcel to Canada and you’d come out with a death sentence for the following morning.”
Gert paused to take a hearty gulp of cider.
“It’s stayed the same pretty much ever since. Except the court and gallows. They’ve stopped. I think the lady who organised it was off sick for a bit and no-one took her place, so the whole thing just packed up. But the pub is still a bit dodgy, if you ask me.”
“Gert’s right, Lester. It reminds me of the old U.S. Frontier towns. Except there’s no Southern warmth and politeness, and it’s too damn cold for saloon doors. No cowboy hats, neither, and more knife-knifing than gun-slinging. If some cat shows you a blade, run for it, before you’re a-squealing.
“But that’s beside the point. There’s some info-mation I’ve not been telling the pair of you. Something that might help you tonight. I don’t know the whole of it, but I’d better let you in to what I know. It could save your life.”
Gert scoffed. He could save his own life, thank you very much.
“I told you about Abe when I knew him in America, right? Ran off with his girl to join the Reds, but met the Feds instead? Well, all I know is they ended up here in the end, and they brought something with them. Ain’t sure what it was, but I knew cats wanted a piece of pie, you know? Something pretty powerful, I reckon, if guys want to kill for it.”
Lester felt like a balloon that’s been tied and let go. Janey looked over at him, giving him a small half smile.
“Sorry, kid. Anyways -”
To her surprise, Lester cut in. He needed to burst that balloon.
“Actually, Gert, last time we saw Janey you said you knew who did it. What was your theory?”
“Oh, I’ve still got my theory. Not who did it, but why. My theory is…”
“That’s great, Gert,” Janey tried to interrupt, “But we don’t have…”
“My theory is that,” Gert raised one finger in the air in a way only he could manage. No-one ever interrupted that finger successfully, however hard they tried.
“He was murdered because of… plutonium!”
Janey flumped back in her chair, sighing in exasperation. Lester gave a credulous, slightly amused smile.
“Plutonium. That’s what unites all these things. Now I know – and you know too,” he added patronizingly, “that whenever there’s a murder there’s got to be a motive…”
“What about crimes of passion, or random killings?”
Gert ignored Lester. He was not to be interrupted.
“And in this case the motive was uranium…”
“I thought you said it was plutonium.”
“Ah, sorry, plutonium. My mistake. Anyway, you remember, Lester, that Abe went out on a grand, dangerous sea voyage. Well, he didn’t do that for nothing. He came back with plutonium.”
“Plutonium from the sea?”
“Aye, that’s right, sea plutonium. It’s the only explanation, because…”
“How come no-one saw it when he got back on the boat?”
“Ah, that’s the beauty of it. As Sadie said, he was wearing a fluorescent yellow fisherman’s coat. He could hide it under the coat and not a soul would suspect, because the coat’s so bright. Or maybe it was actually just a normal mac, and the plutonium turned it yellow. Although it’s probably the first, because I reckon plutonium’s probably a bit green, not yellow…”
“Get on with it!” Janey might not be able to stop him, but she could at least make him hurry up.
“But, as you know, plutonium’s a bit handy. It’s magical, that stuff. Can you tell me what’s so magical about it?”
He waited dramatically, opening his eyes as wide as a nursery teacher, prompting an answer from his unwilling pupils.
“It’s radioactive?”
“It’s lethal to humans?”
“It’s lethal to animals?”
“Nope.” His beardy grin was even more smug now. “Not even close.”
“It makes you grow extra eyes. You can see in the dark. It sends you back in time. It makes you sing like Celine Dion. Oh, I give up. Just tell us.”
“It gives you – luck!”
Gert thought they would react better than they did. He’d hoped for a eureka moment, or perhaps a quiet hum of appreciation, and, being a man for whom hope and expectation were one and the same, he wasn’t expecting loud groans. Someone called out “Plonker!” from behind the bar.
“Luck? Gert, you ain’t just lost your marbles. Your marbles been viciously stolen from you by the British Museum.”
“Luck, see? Explains everything. How did he survive the storm? Plutonium. How did he became a movie star? Plutonium. How did he run off with an actress? Plutonium. You see…”
“But Gert, it’s the American Dream. Out on the range, it ain’t luck. Rags to riches, that’s what it’s all about.”
“Nah, the American Dream’s all about plutonium. It’s why the Yankees won the Second World War, remember? All that nuclear stuff.”
Janey didn’t have an answer to that.
“Then he wins his farm in the Lady Luck. Most men lose their fortunes there, they don’t make them, unless their fortune is to be slightly drunk on rum. Everyone’s lucky he just wanted a farm. If I had even an inch of plutonium I’d be King of Sweden by now.”
“No you wouldn’t, you’d have cider poisoning.”
“And what really convinced me? Well, just look at Abe’s vegetables. The ones he won the Novelty Vegetable Prize with. They were all beauties. The Taj Mahal Butternut. The Ulysees Turnip. Clear influence of plutonium luck, to turn out produce like that. But most of all – the five mushrooms shaped like the Nagaski explosion! How could a mushroom look like an atomic bomb, if it wasn’t atomic itself?”
Janey held her head in her hands.
“Gert, for the last time, nuclear waste doesn’t make vegetables grow. We’ve been through this before. Oh well, never mind.”
“So the killer sees all this, and he’s biding his time, wanting some of that radioactive luck for himself. Or herself, of course, plenty of lady killers out there. Killer takes the luck for themselves, runs off into the sunset or the pub, whichever’s closest. Probably the pub – he did die in the main street, right next to the Grey Hart.”
“So are you saying the killer’s still in the Grey Hart?”
“Use your brain! Killer was there that evening. Doubt they stayed there, mind. If you had all the luck in the world you’d go to a proper pub, one with rooftop bars and hammocks, wouldn’t you? Not the Grey Hart. Boring place, the Grey Hart. Nothing ever happens there.”
“What did you do with this line of enquiry? Did you track the murderer? Did you interview the staff of the Grey Hart, perhaps? Asked them who was in the pub that night, ask if anyone was acting suspiciously? Maybe checked the till to see who was buying the rounds?”
“Nope. No point, you see. If the lad’s got a bit of plutonium, there’s no point investigating the crime. He’ll just luck his way out. Even if you corner him, he’ll get away. Maybe a black cat will cross your path and trip you up, or a great big piano will land on you. That’s why,” he continued, warming to his theme, “them Weapons Of Mass Destruction were never found, you see. If Saddam had a bit of the old plutonium he’d get lucky, no-one would check the right place. It’s probably still at the back of his fridge, or under the floorboards, or behind the wardrobe. Maybe we can get someone else with plutonium to check and it’ll all cancel out…”
“Gert, enough. I need to tell you about Abraham.”
Gert stopped. He had just noticed that Abraham was an anagram of ‘A bar ham’, and he found that funny, but decided it wouldn’t go down well.
“Right, now then. Listening? Good. I tell you what I know. As I was saying, Abe had something other people wanted. I don’t really know what it was. I guess it’s why his wife married him, because of some object he’d got a-hold of in Ireland or America or somewhere.”
“Plutonium,” Gert interjected.
“No, Gert. Because that whole Communist utopia thing, all just an act, see? At one time she was a Commie rebel, but turned into a total marketeer over this side of the pond. She wanted the farm, wanted whatever Abe was hiding, and didn’t care too much about Trotsky after all. There was some kind of argument between them in the end, I think. She left, didn’t get what she wanted.
“So Abe’s enemies, whoever they were, they hadn’t forgotten what was in his house. Just needed a way in. Now it ain’t easy to enter as guy’s house if he don’t want to let you in. He’s got a shotgun, a movie career, and a fisherman’s aim. You don’t take him on, unless you want a bullet in the brain, Hollywood style.
“First off they tried to fake their way in. A few guys went to plumbing school, learned to plumb, passed their plumb exams, got a plumb plumbing job with Southern Plumbing PLC. Then they went round to old Abe’s house, gave the door knocker a yank, told him they were from the company, come to fix the boiler. But Abe wasn’t having that. His boiler didn’t need fixing. In fact, he’d stopped using the boiler months before, just in case some freshman burglar used it as a reason for entry. He was way ahead of the game, that kid.
“So they went away again, tried the same thing as firemen, come to rescue the cat. No luck there either, his cat loved being up the beech tree. Most purrers do, you know. Firemen don’t really rescue them, they’re perfectly fine where they are. So they went away again.
“Nothing worked in the end. Every so often they turn up as policeman or shoe-shiners or Jimi Hendrix or Nottingham Forest, but they never managed to fool him. Abraham didn’t let a soul in, even when the ringleader disguised himself as a long-lost leopard looking for his shin pads.
“So I guess he’s still got that thing they want. Must be why he died. Whether they’ve got it now is any fool’s worry. Maybe they have – not sure they’d risk a murder if they couldn’t get their hands on it.”
“Is there really no detail about the object in question?” Lester had his sleuthing hat firmly wedged on his metaphorical head.
“Well, I know one thing about it. They call it – wait, let me get this right – they call it… the topp.”
“The top? What like a shirt? Is it a really special shirt?”
“No, not a top. The topp. Double ‘p’ at the end.”
“What does that mean?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, kid. As I said, that’s all I know. I’ll bet you anything there’s a few cats in this town that do, though. There has to be one or two lurking in our pubs, waiting for their chance. Chance of what, who knows? But it’s going to be a nightmare. And if I’m right, if they’ve got the topp, then that chance is coming sooner rather than later. They’ll wait for the cover of darkness, everyone does around here, but they’ll make their move.
“And the voice on the phone? Well, I know Sherman had a witness, I’ve been tailing the cat. Couldn’t tell you who the witness is, why they’re coming forward, but I’ll bet every cent in my shanty town they’re coming forward because Thriller’s hitting the jukebox. Every single cent.”
She finished. Gert, still upset about being wrong, scoffed.
“Things people want? Pretty powerful things? You haven’t told us anything! All you do is prattle on about how little you know. At least I had a theory. Can’t detect without a theory.”
“Just watch yourself tonight, you hear? We might need you. Something’s going down. When you get to the Hood, just try not to be noticed, keep your head down. If you’re not seen you’re not stabbed, that’s my motto.”
She turned to Lester.
“Lester, you still game? It’s a tough task for a kid, tonight.”
Lester desperately tried to stammer a way out.
“Maybe, maybe… maybe it’s best I don’t go. I’m not scared or chicken, it’s just that…” fortunately he had an idea that might save the day, “Well, whoever this witness is, they’re expecting Mister Sherman, aren’t they? They’re not expecting Mister Sherman and company. So won’t they just run when they see us?”
“Actually, that’s good thinking, L. They’ll be shocked enough when they see Gert, don’t want you taking up space. That gives me a notion – why don’t you come along with me instead when I go to meet Sherman? That way you’ll still be in the race. We got plans to discuss, got to put Sherman to some use now he’s here. Ready for that?”
Lester tried to hide his relief. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll accompany you to your rendezvous.”
——————————————-
Late evening. Gert had spent the afternoon preparing for his midnight assignment. Of course, his preparation consisted entirely in sleeping, but that was surely the most important thing to do. He stirred, gave a sleepy, satisfied yawn, and put his sleuthing socks on, the stripy yellow ones. With a nod and a shake of the head, he was ready.
———————————————
“You followed that, Lester?”
“Sorry, what?” Lester had been concentrating on fitting the silver whistle into his pocket, and hadn’t heard a word Janey said.
“The plan. All right, I’ll say it over. Okay, we’re meeting Sherman in ten minutes in the Grey Hart. Just an ordinary conversation between a jazz musician, a Northern detective / prize giving host, and an overgrown school kid. The kind of thing you see everyday. Don’t want to ring out any alarm bells tonight, okay? And if anything strange happens, I want you to trust me. If I do anything unexpected, if Sherman acts a little weird, if we say anything at all, don’t recoil, don’t say a word. I want you to be a block of stone, yeah? Can you be that block of stone? If Gert’s marbles got stolen, I want you to become that marble. You’re marble?”
“I’m marble, Janey.” It was best to agree. It was always best to agree
“Okay, here we go.”
The small, polished façade of the Grey Hart loomed in front of them. It was not inviting, but it hardly drove custom away, either. In fact, the Grey Hart’s entrance didn’t really make people feel anything at all, and this was why the town’s more interesting inhabitants shunned the place. It was nearly empty, as many pubs are on a Sunday evening. The more respectable folk of the town were tucked up on their sofas, listening to mildly devotional music and droning on about little Willy’s school report. They weren’t in the pub, where they ought to have been.
Janey wound her way round uniform brown tables to where Bradley Alan Sherman was sitting. He stood to meet her, a beady grin on his face. When he noticed Lester alongside her his grin, for once, fell, limply to his side.
“What… what’s he doing here?”
“Relax, Bralan, he’s cool.”
“You sure he’s cool? One hundred percent positive on the cool test?”
“One hundred and one percent, positive. He’s with us.”
“And that scruffy no-hoper, Gert? Still on his way to the Hood and Hangman, as we planned?”
“That’s right, Bralan. Everything’s ticking along like a bed of fleas.”
“Good, he’s had his day. Anyway, this lad better be cool. We’ve got work to do.”
———————————————-
Gert, as a rule, never looked down at the street when he walked. Some men fear puddles or dog mess, but not Gert. Life could throw any puddle at him, anything from a dog’s backside, and he’d still be shining. In daytime the sun always smiled on Gert, at night the stars always sparkled over him. His gaze, of course, was up high in the heavens. If there had been passers-by to see him, they would have seen his neck stretched back, eyes to the sky, looking at the satellites and the planets and the galaxies whizzing by. Those galaxies knew nothing of the Hood and Hangman, of nefarious murderers or shiny-suited charlatans. But they also knew nothing of cider, of girlfriends, of rum, of sleepy snoozes under the bridge. On reflection, he thought, we’re better off down here.
And so he continued his merry, dreamy way along cobbled stones, past cheesecake lamp posts. On the right was his beloved Moon, all warm and welcoming, gently pleading for him to have one final pint. He could hear ‘Still Crazy After All These Years’ on the jukebox, the velvet saxophone solo brassing all woe aside. But there was no choice but to overcome temptation, for the town was depending on him. He needed to go to the Hangman.
He was early, so he took the long way. At least, that’s what he told himself. Circling round the back streets, he saw drunken Marines pour out the Lager Lounge, cadets without a care. They’d have to be back at barracks tomorrow, explaining their tattoos and torn shirts to the Sergeant Major, but right now night was their desire.
Gert turned a few corners, took another long cut. Approaching, still decked in veg, was the Farmer’s Arms. Gert smiled as he remembered all the peas. It might be a bawdy, tweedy, barnstorming bar, but to everything there is a purpose and a time. He saw the Lady Luck to his left, that grand old ship of fortunes. Even at the end of days, when the sea finally invaded the shore, he thought, it would still be here, telling tales of the old land. It would always be a haven for the hopers and the rogues. It would always stay if the storms came.
And he noticed the Cockatoo giving him an ironic wink as he ambled by. The moustaches might twirl in there, but that’s what moustaches are supposed to do, aren’t they? No use in a moustache if it doesn’t twirl. The Cockatoo would remain too, as a different kind of longing: Gert knew the red scarves wouldn’t be in fashion long, but soon there would be a new scarf to replace it. All those who long for brighter, bushier scarves will get them in the end.
He remembered buses and booze and Lester, all that was worth remembering, really. He had grown fond of that boy, knew he would become a good’un, if this town gave him a chance. It didn’t give many people a chance. But Lester respected his elders, and said yes to things. There was all the hope in the world for him.
But was there a hope now? For Gert, here in this place. The Hood and Hangman. In front of him now, howling tall, casting a baleful, fascist shadow. He’d never been inside, always knew it would lead to the worst. He walked to the crummy, creaking door, and took a deep breath.
It was five minutes to midnight, and day was about to begin.
PART 12
“I know who did it, I know why, I just don’t know where they are. ”
Sherman was thinking aloud as he and Janey strode tall, upright, down the winding alleys of the town’s western half. Lester followed, making sure to stay in their shadows, hide in the gloom. In his fantasies he wanted the lime light, but tonight he hid from its lamps. Janey could be trusted, he thought. She had, after all, told him so. Sherman, however, by Janey’s own admission, could not be trusted. But then, if Janey could not be trusted, she would be wrong about Sherman, and so he could be trusted. Either way, he could follow one of them, but not the other. It was just a question of which one, and both had betrayed his beloved mentor Gert.
“You’ve real out-done them tonight, Bralan. They’ll be waiting for you in the Hood, waiting to give you a wham bam knockout, and you’ll be waiting for them in the Moon, making that K.O. Right back.”
Bradley Alan mimed a kung-fu kick in no particular direction. “Pow!”
“So how do we do this?”
“First, tubas. Take out the big guns first. Tried and tested, that one. Next it’s the trumpets and the trombones, deadly combination, those lads. After that it’s pretty straightforward. Easy job. Might give it to you, Lester, if you stand quiet and shut up.”
“Sure, got you.” Janey adjusted the fingers of her gloves, making sure she packed a punch.
Lester didn’t ask. He didn’t really want to know. It was late, and he was missing his bed.
“Leopard got your tongue, Lester? Want to know what we’re up to tonight?”
There was no answer.
“Well, we’ve got to take out some bad guys, movie style. Kind of night you’ll be telling tall tales about in the Moon, when you’re old and stubbly. You got our backs, kid?”
Lester didn’t know whether he had their backs. He didn’t really know what that meant, after all. It was the kind of all-purpose agreement he felt most uneasy about. He might be agreeing to rob a bank, or refusing to give up a seat to an elderly person. Lester had, when little, been told off for failing to make way for an older person, and it had weighed on him ever since.
And, what’s more, he knew that Gert was facing a wham bam knockout, whatever that meant, and Lester was afraid. He considered running to his mentor, but knew he would be too late.
———————————-
You can usually tell a bad bar the moment you walk in. Everyone stops and stares. The Hood and Hangman wasn’t a bad bar in this sense. No-one stopped and stared at Gert when he walked in. No-one broke a bottle to greet him, no-one trod purposefully toward him with folded arms.
No-one greeted him. They were too busy stood in a circle, roaring at two shaven, shirtless men. One, a small, flabby man, stood stock still, hands clasped behind his back, as the other, a tall, leering lemur, front teeth protruding beyond his lips, thumped him hard in the belly. The crowd bellowed.
“Fourteen, fourteen!” they screamed, scoring the game. The lemur gingerly, almost daintily, lifted a shot from a low-lying wooden table. The shot looked steel-grey, foul, and the crowd, men and women alike, cackled as he dregged it to the ends.
Gert, finding his compass in the gloom and the dark, crept sideways, left of violence, voyeurs and viragos. Further left of him was pitch blackness, a corner hidden completely from the light. He proceeded warily, walking a tightrope between the mob and muffled, darkened giggles. Finally, wobbling and balancing, he found the bar.
“What will it be, sir?”
“Oh, I think I’ll have…”
“Well, seeing as it’s your first visit to our establishment, sir, might I suggest you try one of our house specials? Those gents over there” – he pointed to the small, tubby man, who was holding the lerrer in a headlock to roars of ‘seventeen!’ – “they’re sampling our Arsenic Vodka. Alternatively, you could delight your dentistry with our Lime Death Ale, or you could glam in the swank of New York with our Mercury Manhattan. Then there’s the Brain Crusher Brandy, so good you’ll never want to leave. Or be able to.”
“Any rum?”
“We’ve got Inferno Rum. It’s very hot.”
“Oh good, I like spicy things.”
“More flamey than spicy, actually. There’s a hint of tumeric in it, but our customers tend not to notice, what with all the burning insides.”
“A tip, laddie,” came a voice from Gert’s right, “if you’re a wee bit lightweight, get yourself a Lime Death Ale. Won’t actually hurt ye, it’s just a bit sour from all the gone-off limes.”
Gert nodded. “One Lime Death Ale please, and go easy on the death.”
“Right you are, sir.” The barman picked up a glass, an ale and five discoloured limes, laying them on the counter. He turned to fetch something from a cupboard.
“Aye, and while you’re paying, hand the barman me card. You’ll get fifty pence off.”
“Card?”
There was a smash of glass as the barman laid about Gert’s beer bottle with a hammer, letting the ale trickle into the drinking glass. Gert watched as the barman proceeded to whack the limes into the glass as well, sending juice flying everywhere.
“Ach, those limes,” complained the card-carrying customer, wiping sour fruit juice from his Liverpool football shirt. “But here’s the card. Hand it over,” he urged, “it won’t do anything to you. Just give you an extra fifty pence to spend on that rum of yours.”
Gert, hesitantly, handed the card over. “What do you get out of it?”
“It’s me loyalty card, pal. Loyalty card. Shows I’ve been loyal.”
“What, five Arsenic Vodkas and a half price Mercury Manhattan? Ten Brain Crusher Brandies, get the eleventh free?”
“No, laddie, it’s me loyalty. Every five times it’s not signed, I receive an unnecessary surgery.”
“Ugh.”
“Don’t want you to get a loyalty card yet. Not on your first visit.”
“How does everyone know it’s my first visit?”
“Outsiders survive best here. Not enemies yet, see? If no-one knifes you, you’re new, pal.”
He clapped Gert on the back. “Best get out of here quick, before they get to know ye.” He laughed and strode away, card triumphantly in hand.
Gert had no intention of being known. He took his Lime Death Ale from the bar, looking for a spare table, or any sign of being sought after. This is an awkward enough process in most bars. Gert was used to staring contests with total strangers, each trying to surmise what on earth the other was looking at them for. There was a different kind of awkwardness in the Hood.
Tables at the Hood ink-blotted the floorboards. There were two kinds of group: yelling, roaring, bawling, groaning gatherings, and hushed, conspiratorial whisperers, plotting some malevolence. The gloomy, jostling chamber didn’t do moderation. Two women were wrestling on the pool table, disputing a minor foul. On a tall precarious bar stool sat a shaking, long-faced young woman, quickly sharpening a pen knife. Behind her three hooded figures muttered urgently to one another. Gert was sure he heard the words ‘public funeral’ as he passed, but he couldn’t be sure. Clearly, there was no-one here waiting for him, or if there was, they didn’t want to be found.
Just when Gert had found an empty, half-broken bar stool to perch upon, he noticed, through the choking mist – violating the smoking ban, not that he cared – another blackened corner, just behind the death metal jukebox. The Hood clearly went in for dark corners, he thought. And as he peered in he noticed a subdued figure, with back turned towards him.
“Sit,” the figure commanded, “We don’t have much time.”
The voice was oddly familiar.
Gert trod towards the figure. There was a broken stool in the way, and he noticed the low hanging beams above. He ducked his head, and cramped his shoulders away from a candle holder on the wall, pulling the broken wood from his path, and the figure turned towards him.
The figure was certainly familiar.
————————————–
“Wait here. I just need to pop inside.”
The three had arrived at a small, unremarkable town house. Lester and Janey waited as Sherman dashed indoors.
“Janey, Gert… what, why?”
“Why have I sent him to the Hangman?”
“Yeah, who’s Sherman? How do you know him? What’s happening? Why, why… I don’t understand.”
“Hey kid, I can explain! I’ve not betrayed Gert. I need him. We need him. The town needs him. Hell, he’s important, Lester.
“We don’t have much time, but here’s the deal – Sherman’s a Hunter. He’s been hunting all his life, ever since he first went down the pit as a little one.”
“Hunter? What, like a fox hunter? A deer hunter? A…” he paused, scared for what he was about to say, “a man hunter?”
“No, kid, no, not a man hunter. He’s… well, you’ll see soon. None of those things. Not something you’ve heard of, unless your brain’s made of crazy pavings.
“But yeah, Bralan’s here for a bit, because he knows what to do. And Gert, well, this is way beyond Gert’s eyes. We need him, though, sure. Someone wants Bralan in the Hood and Hangman tonight, maybe for some chopping, maybe for some misleading, maybe for some storytelling, maybe just to be out the way. We have to know. If there’s some cat with a long tail of terror then we better hear it. If them villains want Bralan on a one-way highway then they’d better think he’s started on the road to nowhere. You see?”
“But you can’t just send Gert into danger like…”
“Oh yeah, we can. He ain’t a fighter, our Gert, and that’s why he can take it. If there’s danger you don’t want a fighter, you want a runner. And he’ll run from anything, that cat. Nine lives.
“He”l turn out just right, Lester, don’t you worry.”
“So you’re not betraying him.”
“No. I’m not betraying him. We’ve got a job to do.”
The front door opened as if it were skimming a stone. Sherman skipped out, long legs making the steps look small. He held a small fish and a long fishing rod.
“Got it.”
They had clambered a full twenty metres, Sherman almost skipping, Lester definitely scurrying, before Lester let his curiosity go.
“Are we going fishing?”
“No. I’m holding a fish. Why would we be going fishing if I’m holding a fish?”
Lester considered this for a moment.
“Why do you have a fish?”
“It’s a piano tuna.”
This didn’t really answer the question, or make any sense at all, so Sherman briefly paused his trot and turned to face Lester.
“Look, we’ve got to do some de-tuning, okay? And the rod’s to catch their tuna. Got it?”
Lester clearly hadn’t got it, whatever it was.
“Janey, did you even explain to him what’s going on?”
“Well, I started moving it all up, but you weren’t gone for long.”
There was a spot of anger in Sherman’s eye, but he quickly replaced it with his best television-presenter grin. “Oh, never mind. Let’s get on.”
And with that he continued at his former pace. They had nearly reached their destination, the grand old Moon On The Hill.
———————————-
“Gert!” Her eyes were wide in shock, making Gert feel deeply ashamed. “How, why….”
He sat down on the long bar-chair, feeling in the gloom lest there be some concealed weapon on his seat.
“I was expecting Mister Sherman! Are you… did he send you in his place?”
Her eyes were still as wide as they could go, and now creased slightly at their edges with the strain.
Gert rested against the back of his chair, lifting his glass to his nose. He knew how to deal with shame, and the solution generally involved alcohol. “This Lime Death Ale doesn’t really live up to its name, does it? The lime’s off, it isn’t very deadly, and it’s actually a lager.”
“Gert!”
“Sorry, Sadie. I just like my ales to be ales. I don’t have anything against lagers, but…”
“Gert! Why are you here?”
“Oh, I’m still investigating, see. My case, whatever that Northerner thinks. I’m a sly one,” he explained, tapping his nose, because noses and slyness are notorious partners in crime.
“But you weren’t investigating! You were drinking all the time. I waited as long as I could, just to see if you’d care, but you did nothing. I had to go to Sherman. There’s a man who can get things done around here.”
“Sherman couldn’t get anything done. He thinks he’s so big, with that suit and that smile and those big teeth, but he’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing, that one. Better tell me what you need to say.”
She thought for nights a moment. “All right. But Sherman had better hear it from you. I’m not telling it twice. My life’s in danger. I can’t spend my days chatting in pubs.”
“That’s exactly what I’d do if I was in danger. That is what I’m doing now my life’s in danger.”
“Quite. So, do you remember the story Maximilian told us at the Lady Luck?”
“About Abraham and his mate and the storm?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Abe goes out to the sea, hit by a storm, lost his SatNav, gets home alive. Well, that’s not the whole story. Not one bit.”
“We all reckoned not. A friend who dies for carp. I like fish as much as the next landlubber, but not that much.”
“No, that bit was true. His friend really did like carp. But he liked something else too. Something…
“Look, you won’t tell anyone about this, will you?”
“You asked me to tell Sherman, now you ask me not to tell anyone? Your story’s not straight!” he shouted triumphantly, leaping to his feet. “That won’t stand up in a court of law!”
Gert would certainly stand up in a court of law. He enjoyed standing up.
“Gert, I’m a witness, not a suspect. You want my story to be straight.”
“Oh.” His joy fell to a minor chord. “In that case, carry on.”
“It’s just that if, if you tell anyone but Sherman… my life’s in danger. I can’t stress that enough. Actually, I shouldn’t be here, I should be gone. They can’t ever know I’m here.”
“Don’t go. You’re here now, they won’t trust you anyway.”
“Thanks Gert, really reassuring. Don’t become a diplomat.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
Sadie sighed. “Anyway, so, yeah, so Abe takes his ship out, but he isn’t trying to save the town, oh no. You see, Abraham… there wasn’t much to do back on the Irish coast, growing up. He had a lot of time on his hands. And he used to listen to the old songs. Not the old Irish folk songs, those are grand. Everyone should listen to those.”
“No, he listened to…” She turned her head round, looking for something, anything that might do her harm.
“He listened to all the old music hall songs.”
She paused, waiting for Gert to understand . He did not understand. He understood no more than Lester, across town, was understanding Janey.
“Music hall?”
“Yeah, music hall. Oh you don’t know, do you?” She thumped her hand on the table. It hurt. “This little town. It’s great and everything, but no-one knows anything about the outside world, the universe, the possibilities.
“Music hall. The damage it did. The pain it wrought. The needless suffering of millions. All the old worn-out common songs. Don’t you know your history? Clearly not,” she continued, seeing Gert’s big amused grin.
“You ever wondered why the British Empire grew so big? Music hall. All those mediocre entertainers. Took over the world they did, blared into every corner of the globe. A third of the world fell under its spell. These days they’d call it hypnosis. It wasn’t rational, wasn’t logical, whatever it was. Nobody likes music hall, nobody ever did. They just get sucked in, see? Britain’s army was small, but its power was great. And they piped those songs out all the time. Made a fortune on it, and suppressed the world.
“But one day, something changes. And that something is a kid from Texarkana. As a boy, he was under music hall’s spell, just like all the rest. He grows up loving variety theatre, comedy tunes, jingles of the imperial yoke. It’s a fine Texas morning in his teenage years. At least, it seemed a fine Texas morning. He’s out the back, whistling a tune, when there’s a light shower of rain, delicate and moss-thin, and it taps on the ground. Tap tap. Makes a melody, a fine melody, one so sweet and light, like the gentle tinkle of a piano.
“And over all that variety theatre, he hears the sound of falling rain. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it too. Maybe you’ve been in a crowded, noisy hotel bar and you’ve stepped into the lobby for some light. Maybe the receptionist had some old-time classical piece on the radio, just all soft and sensual, soothing the tired moonlight, and all you ever wanted was peace. That’s how this young boy felt. And he wants to spread it, share it with the world.
“And he can share that sound, all right. The kid can play. His fingers whizz along those keys. He knows where to play, too. All the way up in Chicago, there’s a World’s Fair. The whole world will be watching and maybe, just maybe, if he hits the right note, the whole world will forget its mistakes and dance to the sound of the falling rain.
“It’s a long way from Texas to Chicago, especially for a poor Texas labour boy. There’s only one way to it though, and so Scott wheels his piano out into the road, and he hitches a lift. Can only get into trucks, mind, since that piano takes some shifting, but there’s plenty of trucks who’ll carry a musician if they’ll just give over a tune.
“And he gave them a tune, all right. The kind of tune they’d never heard before. One trucker had lived his life on vaudeville and variety, but renounced his deeds and went to pray in Nashville, Tennessee. Another bawled his eyes out. Said it reminded him of his poor dear mother, who he’d done wrong. A third went back to his darling angel wife, telling how Scott’s angel playing could save this whole damn botched civilisation.
“So Scott gets up, and he gets on. Playing his way up to the north, and the highway is like one long blazing trail of light, lighting up America in salvation. By the time he gets to Chicago he’s written two whole songs. One of them, well, that song’s going to save the whole of North America. The U.S never really fell to the imperial yoke, but Canada did. He’ll save them first. The second… I’ll get to the second later.
“First, young Scott needs some glad rags, something to wear in the bright lights. So he takes his piano to a department store, tells them all about how music can really save their soul, and he plays them a little melody. Tearful, overjoyed, saved, they give him the finest suit you ever did see, and they tell him to wear it always. Overwhelmed by their generosity and by the power of his piano, he names all his songs after their garments. The clothes, the songs, they’ll be rags together, he says, and so every song he ever wrote was called a rag from then on.
“There’s still a month to the World’s Fair. Scott’s got time to kill. So he hops north of the border, takes his tunes. Plays his first. It’s called the Maple Leaf Rag, written just for Canada. So he tinkles and he taps, and Montreal’s got the bug, and it’s never going to leave them. Revolution, well, it’s planted, just as surely as Canada’s national tree, right there in that cold, cold soil.
“Luckily for Scott, America and the world never really cared what was going on in Montreal, so he wasn’t known back in the States. He can flit back to Chicago, just in time for the world’s ears to lean in. Scott plays some music halls, a few concerts, making sure to stick the old stuff, the tried and tested stuff of fairs and suburban pleasure gardens. He’s a fine player and, sure enough, the authorities put his name on the bill. Scott Joplin, music hall master, the posters said. Little did they know the truth.
“It’s time for the World’s Fair. Everyone’s there. The Swiss have taken over the river side, and they’ve got big displays of fancy pen knives. The Russians are there, all in good cheer. Even we Brits turn up.
“Day turns to night, and the world packs into Chicago’s finest music hall. Acts come and go, all the usual, but Scott Joplin is announced, the boy from Texarkana who made it good, and the crowd roars. It’s going to be a comedy song, they announce. Good, think the crowd. They love their comedy songs.
“And it is a comedy song. But not the sort of comedy song anyone’s ever heard before. It’s satire. It’s mocking. It’s mocking music hall. It’s a serious point all wrapped up in humour, like a rapier in a woollen blanket. The song’s called The Great Entertainer. The entertainer is your run-of-the-mill music hall act, and Joplin lampoons him big time. Up, down, up, down, the song says, all posturing and ridiculous. The song’s only a few minutes, but it lays bare just how pointless music hall is, how little variety there is in variety, how vaudeville has no style or substance.
“There’s uproar. A shot fired out across the world. No-one, having heard the song, could ever go back to music hall. The British Empire collapsed, a sham, no style or substance to it, the flan in the cupboard. Scott’s a hero, the man who brought down empires with the dexterity of his fingers. From Scott’s music eventually came jazz, and rock n’ roll too. The rest is history.
“And that’s the story of Scott Joplin. The era of empire it was over. Now it was rag time.”
She ended, impressively, folding her arms in triumph. Gert looked puzzled.
“Okay great, that’s all good. But what does this have to do with Abraham and the sea? What does the sea have to do with Abraham’s death? Why is your life in danger? What are we even doing here?”
“Oh, you were listening! Fantastic. That’s more than I expected from you.”
She smiled, if a little nervously.
“Okay, I was just getting to all that. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard a little song called ‘Oh, I Do Like To Be Beside The Sea Side?’”
PART 13
Oh, I do like to be beside the sea side!
I do like to be beside the sea
I do like to stroll upon the Prom! Prom! Prom!
Where the brass bands play
Tiddly-om-pom-pom!
So just let me be beside the sea side
I’ll be beside myself with glee
And there’s lots of girls beside
I should like to be beside
Beside the sea side, beside the sea!
“It’s time.”
Ten past one in the morning, and Sherman stood outside the grand old Moon On The Hill, Janey and Lester watching on cautiously. At first glance, the Moon seemed just the same. As usual, it was open, the early hours proving no stay to the relentless march of pouring pints. A saxophone – or possibly a trumpet – coughed through the window. Presumably old rockers were telling each other about the day they bought their first guitar.
“Are you sure…”
“Yes, I’m sure. Tricky ones, these vaudevillains. Music hall can mimic any form.”
“Music hall?” Lester could have done with Sadie’s story too.
“Music hall. They’ll have taken the Moon by now. It’s the only place they can get brass round here.”
“Brass? Fish?”
“Come on Lester. Let’s go in.” And with that they slowly creaked the door open.
———————————
Gert tried to break into song, but Sadie quickly shushed him.
“Not in here! You can’t do that. The locals don’t like singing.”
Gert started to protest, but behind him he could see two heavily moustachioed cowboys throwing knives at one another, and he saw sense.
“And besides, you don’t want to sing that song.”
“Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Sea Side? It’s a lovely song. Punch and Judy songs, big long promenades, donkey rides, screaming children. Brings back the days of youth. Or possibly my dad’s youth. Or maybe my grandad’s, bless him.”
“Quite. Anyway, that song is not for singing. It is not what good folk would call entertainment.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a bit of fun, really-”
“No. You misunderstand. It is not a song designed to entertain. It is a call to arms, young man.”
“A call to arms.”
“When music hall knew it was seeing the Last Days of Rome, it acted. Have you heard of Arthur and Avalon, or Drake’s Drum?”
“Oh, when Drake was about to die he got in a big drum, and when England’s under threat, someone’ s got to hit the drum, and he’ll be woken up and get out and argue with the person who hit the drum for waking him up.”
“When Drake’s drum is beaten, Drake will return and save England from peril. And Arthur is…”
“He’s supposed to rise again when England is in danger, upon which he will defeat the invader.”
“Yeah, that. So they both wake up? That could be awkward. Who takes charge?”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s…”
“I reckon it’d be Arthur. He’s the King. Order Drake about.”
“It-”
“But Drake didn’t like being ordered about, did he? Bit of a scoundrel, him. Better than Arthur, that ruffian. Wouldn’t obey orders, do what he pleases.”
“The point is, music hall saw what was happening, decided to follow suit.”
“They’re coming back to save England too? Come to think of it, Arthur would lead the army, wouldn’t he, and Drake take the navy. That’s it. Nelson won’t be too happy, though. Don;t see what good music hall would do when you’ve got Arthur and Drake and Nelson and all our living soldiers, like the Duke of Edinburgh and Germaine Greer and Elvis.”
Sadie sighed.
“Music hall stowed away, as it were, just like Arthur of Francis Drake. Instead of dying completely, they left a little of themselves hidden in our land. Joplin drove them underground, but they were never gone completely.”
“So where are they?”
“They are nowhere, yet they can be summoned. It is believed – known, in fact – that they a stone’s whisker from the everyday world.”
“Zombies!” yelled Lester, before realising where he was. Sadie looked round in alarm, but ‘Zombies’ was something you could shout in the Hangman without being noticed.
“I always knew they existed.”
“Not quite zombies, Gert. They’re not dead, they’re not alive as such, but they’re not really undead either.”
“Ah, I see.” He didn’t.
“The point is, they left behind a way to be summoned. It sounds like a spell, but it’s not really a spell. More… more of a recipe.”
“A recipe?”
“Not literally a recipe. Perhaps a guide, some instructions as to how to find them. Anyway, the guide lay undiscovered for some time. And that’s where Abraham comes into our story.”
Gert leaned forward eagerly, or at least even more eagerly than before.
“Abraham… well, there’s not much to do growing up in a small fishing village. And Abe, like a lot of kids, put some headphones on his ears. He discovered music hall. And he wondered what happened to it. So he wandered down to his library and dragged a book from the shelves, two books, three books. They told him that music hall was gone, but that it could be saved.
“Idly, he tried to find out how. He heard lots of music hall songs, looking for inspiration. Thing is, Abraham was a far better detective than you, Gert. Did his homework. Didn’t sleep on the job. Didn’t impersonate other detectives. Not like you at all, really.
“He guessed, but he guessed right. The guide, the recipe, the summoning spell – Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Sea Side.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
“The lyrics tell you what it is, where it is how to activate it. Abraham worked it through. It’s beside the sea side. What’s beside the sea side? The sea. It’s in the sea.”
“The land is also beside the sea side.”
“No, land is beside the sea. The land is the sea side. The sea is beside the sea side. Do you see?”
“Don’t see a word of it.”
“So it’s in the sea, and a curious thing struck Abraham. His little village, Gleewith. It’s beside myself with glee, beside Gleewith. All he needs to do is go out into the sea and find it.”
“Okay, so what is he trying to find?”
“Ah, that’s the beauty of it. It’s named in the song too. They call it – the Tiddley-Om-Pom-Pom.”
“That’s a stupid name.”
“It is a stupid name. But this is vaudeville we’re talking about. They tended to give things stupid names.”
“So the Tiddley-Om-Pom-Pom is under the sea.”
“That’s right. And Abe, with his friend Sean, went to get it. Sean – well, he didn’t last. But Abraham got the Tiddley-Om-Pom-Pom, and he went off to seek his fortune.”
“Why didn’t he use it?”
“Well, he didn’t care that much. Just a foolish kid in search of adventure, not really a crusader for the olden days. And besides, he couldn’t activate it. You need to follow the other instructions to activate it.”
She paused for the inevitable question, but clearly it was evitable.
“All right. Girls. A brass band. And no sea food.”
“No sea food?”
“The Tiddley doesn’t work if there’s anything to do with the sea about. You’ll find that out for yourself, when you find the Tiddley.”
“I still think it was uranium.”
——————————–
“I don’t see any vaudevillains.”
Janey was the first to speak. The pub looked every bit the Saturday night oasis that it always had been. The bar chilled in a warm yellow light. A huge publican strutted behind the bar, drawing whisky from the shelves by magnetic attraction. A few new faces clustered around the stools, but they were still regulars, even though it was their first visit. A regular of one bar is a regular to all bars, especially if that one bar is the Moon On The Hill.
“Where are they? Where are the vaudevillains?”
Sherman didn’t know. He still believed it might be a trick and examined a few of the cutomers. He tugged at a young man’s stringy beard, hoping it was fake. It wasn’t, and the young man waved him away fondly, even though his chin was hurting.
“We’ve been fooled. Tricked. Sent down a blind alley. I play tough but fair, and we’ve been hoodwinked.”
“They’re one step ahead. They’re always one step ahead.”
In every pub there is a huddle of three or four people blocking the exit. No-one ever knows why they are there, what limbo they have been caught between, or what they hope to achieve by getting in everybody’s way, but they stand stock still, all the same. For a few minutes Janey, Sherman and Lester formed this solemn trio. They surveyed the scene.
Sherman finally made a decision. “Well, there’s nothing for it. Meet tomorrow in the market square, 9 am sharp. We’ve got some muck to stink out.”
With that he turned into the night.
————————————-
Gert pondered. He didn’t ponder often, but he was ponderous now.
“So Abraham found the Tiddles and now he’s dead.”
“That’s right.”
“But why? Sadie, who killed him?”
She fell silent.
“That’s all I can tell you for now. I brought you here because…”
“Miss.” The bartender appeared at their side in the sooty darkness. “You have… an urgent message at the bar. Waiting for you.”
He gripped her arm, carefully gentle but unmistakeably forceful. As Sadie was led away, she managed to mouth one final instruction.
“Just find the Tiddley Om Pom Pom.”
“But what is it?” Too late. She had gone, led away to some darker fate. Gert stared mournfully into the distance.
“What on earth is the Tiddley Om Pom Pom?”
Gert stared mournfully at his Lime Death Ale. Gert considered himself a great detective, but he seemed to acquire mysteries rather than solve them. Sadie was involved, but how? Could he believe her story? Gert was a natural believer, but this might be too tall a tale, even for him. There was only one thing to do.
Ring-ring
Ring-ring
No response. Gert tried again.
Ring ri-
“Wha-what?”
“Lester, pick up a pen. I need you to write down everything I say.”
“Whwwhww”
“Okay, here goes…”
“It’s three o’clcok…”
“You mean clock. Get a pen.”
“Brrr.” There was a scrabbling sound, followed by the unmistakeable rhythm of someone looking for his notebook.
“Go on.”
Gert told Lester everything and Lester promptly recorded it.
“We’ll discuss it in the morning. Now get some sleep.”
“Gert, we’re meeting Sherman at 9am, market square.”
“9am! Bless me, I haven’t been up that early in years. I’d best be grabbing some shuteye then. See you on the morrow.”
He hung up cheerfully. He was quite looking forward to seeing a clock at 9 in the morning. Just as his spirits started to lift, on thoughts of sighting that blessed hour, something very odd happened.
Pandemonium, which was the normal order of the Hood and Hangman, stopped. A sudden, cut-throat stop. The unshirted men ceased their punching. Conspirators silently, invisibly disappeared, leaving no trace of their plotting. Ribald revelry became hushed, awed silence. The murders, stabbings, beatings and cheatings ended on a single, orchestrated beat. Dying men and women turned with their deadly cocktails, forgetting their own immense suffering, as if seeing the light of Heaven come before them, or, more likely, the endless grieving pains of Hell.
The damned customers turned toward the middle of the bar, captivated. Gert poked his head from the darkness to see what was going on. If anyone noticed him – not that they did, being blinded by the light – they would have seen a grizzled, unkempt, curiously wide-eyed face emerging, almost bodiless, from the dark. Craning his neck round a pillar, he finally saw the procession.
The bar staff had changed. Altered completely, in fact. Instead of grimy t-shirts, they were now caped in brown, overbearing hoods, bowed to the floor, carrying between the four of them a plush velvet cushion. On this cushion lay a little bell, which hollowed in faded bronze. The four were slowly, deeply chanting. After a while Gert could not make out what they were saying, for he did not understand the tongue in which they spoke. Behind them, however, came a much taller woman, the bar manager. She wore no hood, spoke no words. As the four chanters came to the centre of the floor, circled by uneasy, devout onlookers, they slowed and finally halted, in respect of some greater power. As they stood motionless, the manager, still standing tall, trod slowly round them, orbiting the bell as we might orbit a distant star far beyond our ken. Having completed three orbits, she fixed her gaxe on the bell, examining it, taking in every aspect of its shape and colour. The manager, eyes never leaving the bell, walked gently, purposefully into the inner circle. Keeping her eyes on that copper bell, she placed her hand on the sacred object, lifted it in the air and, in plain, ordinary English, let her voice clearly and distinctly ring out across the pub.
“Last orders!”
She rang the bell. It tingled gently, meekly, a softness almost absurd in this filthy den of din.
“Last orders!”
Here endeth the service. Onlookers awoked from their bewitched slumber, and sprang into their dungeon life. The usual quarrels over last orders broke out. For those who had not bought a round, this was their last chance to absolve their sins. For those who were owed a round, divine justice was to be served with a bag of crisps. For those fearful of impending night, a final round of joy was to be burst, Dutch courage for journey into endless dark.
The man in the Liverpool shirt was among the first to be served. Gert, still behind his pillar, watched as the Liverpool shirt handed over silver and waited, smiling raptly, for his ale. The barmaid poured the drink and, as Gert continued to watch, leaned over, gesticulating for something. Liverpool shirt laughed and, lifting his wallet, opened the cards section. His face, his contented, jocular face, turned grey and dark. Scrabbling, the man frantically rummaged through his cards. Store cards, season tickets, old memberships to long-disbanded societies – they all tumbled to the floor, sadistic confetti.
His loyalty card had gone.
The barmaid stood back, arms folded, face hardening. He knew it was over, the look in hie eyes said so. Burly men appeared behind him, wrapped in chains. They took his arms, no ceremony this time, and dragged him, visibly screaming. No sound was heard. The tumult was too great for that.
Gert knew he was powerless to help. The man and his captors disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. The ground must have taken them all, taken them to some underworld far beyond this mortal place.
“Poor man,” said a voice in Gert’s ear.
“What a poor man.”
There was no sympathy in the voice.
“What a poor quality man. No loyalty.”
Gert knew there was no point turning round.
“Loyalty is what we value hear at the Hood and Hangman. We do not value wit or charm. We do not care for looks, or manners, or that which you ordinary folk call intelligence. We care only for one thing: blind obedience. A person may be as wicked, as cruel, as despicable as they like, but for us they are neither good nor bad. Neither good nor bad, that is, until they are for or against us.
“That man, well he had loyalty, didn’t he? He even had a card to show for it. But not all things can be demonstrated with cards, can they? He showed you his loyalty card, a stranger. That is no way to be loyal, now. And you,” he tapped Gert on the shoulder, “you are not of this place, and never shall be. You are one of the ordinary folk. You are particularly ordinary.
“Tell me, do you have loyalty?”
Gert didn’t answer. He suspected, correctly, that it would not make any difference.
“Come with me, ordinary man.”
There was no point struggling. He allowed himself to be led to the back of the bar, just as his old pal Sadie, the jazz turtle, had been taken.
PART 14
The Hood and Hangman’s dark, haunting passages were a little disappointing, Gert felt. They weren’t really up to standard. You would expect low, hanging beams, flaming torches on brackets, grimy stone walls. At the very least there should be a steady drip from the ceiling, muffled screams from a distance. There were none of these things.
Gert was led, firmly, down an ageing corridor that reminded him of his old school. Old, disused bookcases cracked noiselessly on the walls. The carpet was, in colour, completely forgettable, so completely unmemorable, in fact, that Gert didn’t notice it. The only memorable, noticeable thing about the straight, planned corridors was their smell. They smelled, as so many 1960s buildings do, of brown. The colour brown. All it needed, thought Gert, was a man named Gerald to pop his head round the corner, predictably wearing glasses too boring for his face.
There was no man named Gerald. There was no man at all. Endless corridors, one after the other, round right-angled turns and broken filing cabinets. If there was a Minotaur in this maze, thought Gert, it wouldn’t gore you to death. It would bore you to death.
He chuckled.
“Quiet.” The prim guard hated laughter.
Gert was quiet. The man probably wouldn’t understand the joke, and it might come across as a bit rude.
“Where are we going?”
“Quiet.”
“Quiet’s not a place.”
“Quiet.”
The man sounded far too smug, Gert reckoned. A bit like those suspects you see in TV dramas who say ‘No comment’ to every question. They get very pleased with themselves after a while, as if they’re a criminal mastermind outwitting The Law. Gert decided to do some outwitting of his own.
“Say ‘quiet’ if you’re a poohead.”
“Quiet.”
“Ha ha! You’re a poohead.”
“Quiet.”
Gert eventually tired of this exchange and went back to memorising the route. After a few more corners he gave up and stared blankly at the carpet, trying to work out exactly what colour it was. Before he could decide, they finally stopped at a door.
“Inside.”
It made a change from Quiet. Gert bustled through the door, which was shut behind him. The Liverpool shirted Scotsman sat slightly cross legged on the ground, a shambling, apologetic Buddha. There was a trendy hole in the knee of his jeans.
“Oh aye, there you are again. Thought I’d be seeing you soon.”
“I was never going to last long in there, was I?”
“No, you got that right.”
They sat in silence for a second.
“So… do you come down here often, um, Fowler?”
“Fowler?” Shaking his head, he gestured to the back of his shirt. “The name’s Duncan. And…”
“Why does it say Fowler on your shirt? Is it someone else’s shirt?”
“It’s… oh, don’t mind that. It’s my first time here. Even the Hood and Hangman doesn’t treat its customers like this. Don’t send drinkers to dark prisons.”
Behind him a balsa wood panel slowly peeled from the wall.
“It’s not my first time in a prison though.”
Gert tried to ignore this.
“Where are we?”
“Aye, it’s not my first time in a prison. But a very different prison from this, mind.”
Gert again tried to ignore this.
“I think we’re probably in the old council offices, or maybe the disused school…”
“My first time in prison was some time ago. This is my second time.”
Gert wanted to ignore this, but had little choice. The truth was that he was locked in a room with a convicted felon, with no supervision whatsoever.
“What were you in for?”
Duncan chuckled, but it wasn’t a maniacal chuckle, if it is possible to manically chuckle without it turning to a cackle.
“What was I in for? For freedom, laddie.”
“How can you be locked away for freedom? Freedom isn’t a crime.”
“Oh, I wasn’t in prison for committing a crime. It wasn’t your everyday prison. No, I was a prisoner of war. A political prisoner. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why, have you seen the horrors of war too, sonny? Do you know what it’s like for a man to watch his comrades die?”
“No, I’m just a bit gullible.”
“Ah, well in that case let me tell you the things I’ve seen. I’ll give you the chance to believe some more.”
“Go on, I like a story.”
Duncan cleared his throat grandly.
“My story starts with five wee impressionable Dundee lads. Seventeen years old we were, and all we knew were our names. Fine lads we were too, strapping healthy lads. Big, tall and strong, reckoned we were harder than Brazil nuts.”
“Nothing’s harder than a Brazil nut.”
“Aye, you’re right there. And you learn in time, don’t you, that you’re not as tough as you think when you’re seventeen. But we thought we were hard as anything, and we took on all comers in that Dundee pub.”
“Sounds a pretty rough pub. No wonder you’re here in the Hood.”
“No, not at fighting! We didn’t fight. Weren’t that sort. No, took on all comers at snooker. We were the pub’s snooker second team. The youth squad.
“But aye, we were right good. Beat everyone. Other wee lads, older dogs, hardened Glasgow gangs, they couldn’t match us on the table.”
“If you beat everyone, why were you only the second team?”
“So we were strong snooker lads, and we played all day and all night. That is, when we weren’t studying or partying or playing FIFA. And then, one day, we did our duty.”
He sighed, and stared back in time.
“The war started, the brutal civil war. Freedom versus slavery. Love versus hate. Peace versus war. Decency versus not decency. And, even though the war so far away, snooker players around the world took their cue.
“It might be a far-off country, but it’s where snooker started. Where the first red was ever potted. Us snooker players loved it. Philosophers love Athens. Cherry tree lovers love George Washington’s birthplace. We couldn’t let the fascists have our home of snooker.”
“So the war started and we were too young to fight. Seventeen. But we played snooker, and we heard the news. No-one really understood the news. It was a very confusing conflict, but we knew it was bad.
“And one day the recruitment tents rolled into town. They camped out in the square. Squaddies got a camp fire going. A smiling lassie hands round leaflets. We smile back. We took leaflets and we headed back to the pub.
“The whole pub went with us. Everyone signed up that day. The old heads, the laddies, we all joined up. There were so many of us that we formed our own regiment. The Dundee Snooker Club Regiment, they called us. All bright and bonnie, we were. All bright and bonnie.”
He paused to stare again. Gert could not see what he was staring at, but hoped to be told.
“So the Snooker Club got on a plane. Off we went. The five of us lads at the back of the troop carrier, playing Mind Billiards and I-Spy. Soldiers love I-Spy. It’s how they locate enemy bombers. We laughed, yelled, laughed again. Aye, those were the days. We’d potted our first red.
“But when we got out there, well, it all changed. Us and the other internationals. As I said, a complicated war. We were on the side of freedom, but we didn’t know who stood for freedom. For a while we were part of the Freedom Movement. Then it was the Liberty Army. Later it became the Democratic Republic of Free Peoples. Finally we were in the Liberty Movement, who we thought were the enemies in the first place. But we were strong, and we were bonnie, and we could only fight for good.
“And then, the five of us, we got stuck on a cushion. We were on patrol. A van turned up, tricked us by pretending to be carpet salesmen. We end up in the van, taken away, prisoners of war. Aye, prisoners.
“But look around this place,” Duncan gestured at he and Gert’s surroundings, “A prison is only on a cushion, we’re not snookered. The laddies and I – well, just a minor setback.
“The first escape was easy. Two days in prison. We told the guards we were on their side. It was a difficult war, no-one really knew what was happening. They believed us and let us free. We got halfway across the desert before they caught us again.
“Second escape wasn’t much harder. We grew moustaches in the camp. Easy to do when you can’t shave. Convinced the guards we were different men, they let us free. We were halfway across the desert before they caught us again.
“Third time, we dug a tunnel. Fourth, we dressed up as the guards on Fancy Dress Day and ran for it. Two thirds of the way across the desert, only got caught because we’d dressed up as the wrong army’s guards. Fifth time we grew moustaches, dug a tunnel and dressed up as the guards. Threw them completely, that did. We nearly got clean away through the desert. Water was hard to find. We only survived by drinking our boots, which had melted in the sun. To be honest, by that point we didn’t care about freedom or getting home. The only thing that mattered was escaping in braver and classier ways.
“But again they found us, all the wee snooker lads, all five of us. Oh, it was seven by this point. We’d been joined by a tall London sonny boy. He had no respect for authority, but his heart was in the right place. Then there was the young Jamaican laddie, Pelly. Not sure who he was, or how he’d got there, or what the point of him being there was, but he was there all right.
“Escape six was a good one, it was. Little Jonny Weir took up the drums in prison, or said he did. We practised all day and night, keeping the guards awake. We learned how to mimic a drum each. The Londoner took the bass drum, I could sound like a tom-tom,” Duncan made a perfect drum noise, to which Gert nodded in approval, “and Jonny was a cymbal. One night, months later, we carried out our plan. We put our drum kit up for sale on E-Bay. The Cockney laddie got in his bass drum, I squeezed inside the tom-tom – tight fit, mind, even then – and Little Jonny Weir puts a cymbal on his noggin. The buyer came and we snuck out in the drum kit. Got right across the desert that time.”
He smiled proudly.
“Did you escape for good?”
“No, sonny. Turned out the courier got the address wrong, shipped us back to the right address. It was the prison camp. The head guard heard us, got inspired to take up the drums. We found ourselves in his office, staring glumly at the floor.”
“So how did you escape in the end?”
“We committed the ultimate sacrifice, laddie. Sometimes you have to give up everything, and we did. It started when the guards gave us a snooker table. They knew we were good. The best around. So they challenged us to a match. The five of us, plus Pelly, the Cockney sonny, and some random American who had never played snooker before. Didn’t get the rules, either. He held the cue like a baseball bat. Every time he hit a ball off the table he whooped and shouted ‘Home Run’. But the guards wanted to play us, and to beat us.”
“So you beat them and escaped?”
“No. Their officers told them it was a stupid idea and cancelled the match. We were devastated. Pelly in particular. He was a wizard with the yellows. Instead we sanded down the snooker table. Made it into a glider. Used cues for the wings. Painted it in camouflage with that weird green chalk that everybody polishes the cue with, even though it makes absolutely no difference to their shot. The eight of us jumped in. I’ve never flown a glider before, but I took the wheel. We flew right out that camp. We flew over the desert. We flew right out the war zone, right back to bonnie Scotland. No-one saw us, even though the green camouflaged stuck out horribly in the sandy desert.”
Gert looked thoughtful.
“Hang on, I thought you said you’d made the ultimate sacrifice. That doesn’t sound much of a sacrifice.”
“But we sacrificed everything! Don’t you see? We wanted to fight for freedom, but we flew all the way back home again. We were fighting for snooker, but we turned a snooker table into a glider. We might as well have potted the black when we were meant to be going for red.
“And we sacrificed our lives. Little Jonny Weir could have been a star, but he ended up playing the Lancashire third league. Rossy Ross potted the blue like nobody ever did, but now he’s doing a cabaret act in Bognor Regis. The American went back to America. The Cockney git lost his mind and now thinks he really is a bass drum. Pelly – well, I don’t know what happened to Pelly. Gordon McKinlay now plays football, for Pete’s sake. And me -”
“And you?”
“Aye, laddie, I’m an addict. Not to drink or drugs, although I am addicted to those too. I’m addicted to escape.”
He paused to reflect.
“I escaped once too many times, you see. Snooker was my love, but I had too much escape. Couldn’t stop. When I got back home I had to keep escaping. Making friends just to escape friendships. Falling in love just to escape being single and escaping relationships just for the sake of falling in love. Walking into supermarkets just to escape them. Locking toilet cubicles from the inside just to climb over them and clamber out the window. Taking the window seat on the train so I could exit by crawling under the seats, rather than making my fellow passengers stand up. The only thing I can’t escape from is my addiction to escaping from things. Ironically.”
He gave another long, low, avuncular chuckle.
“Duncan, if you’re so good at escaping, how do we get out of here?”
“No, sonny, my escaping days are done. I told you – I’m an addict. Not even a small escape for me. I have to be escape-dry. Duncan’s escaping days are done, that’s for sure -”
There was a very loud noise. Something, somewhere had, somehow, fallen over. Yells and shouts came from down the corridor, in a way that reminded Gert very strongly of the day he had been expelled from school. Gert and Duncan craned their heads through the tiny window in the door, trying to see what was going on.
They need not have craned. A figure, a female figure, dashed past, clutching the Hood and Hangman’s Last Orders Bell as a relay runner clutches a baton. Other sprinters chased in pursuit, the rival Hood and Hangman relay team, all in uniform. They wanted their bell back, clearly.
“Sadie!” Gert cheered, though not too loudly. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
“You know her?”
“She’s an old friend.”
“Was she the person you were sitting with? Ah, I get it. This is a plot!”
“It’s not a plot. I didn’t know she was going to take the bell.”
“Course, you didn’t, laddie. Course you didn’t. If it’s a plot, of course, that changes matters. I’m not gong to escape myself, but if I can help a plot, that’s a different matter.”
Gert seized his chance.
“Yes, it’s a plot. A great big plot.”
“What are you going to do with the bell?”
“We’re going to run off with it!”
“I can see that. What are you going to do with it after that? That’s always where escape plans fail, my friend. People get out, they don’t plan for the ride home. They usually don’t think they’ll ever escape, don’t really think about the long run.”
“We’ve planned ahead all right!” Gert had to think on his feet and desperately search for a convincing plan. “We’re going to melt down the bell and… we’re going to, we;re going to sell it for gold! That’s right, we want gold. Lots of it.”
“Just gold?” Duncan asked, looking suspicious.
“No, there’s more to it than that. We… we’re against last orders. We don’t think there should be last orders. We think orders should go on for ever. If we take away all the last orders bells then drinking will have to go on all night and all day. That’s what we want: drinking all night and all day.”
“Hmmm,” Duncan considered, “Do you realize what a blunder you’ve made here, laddie?”
“Blunder?”
“You come in to a pub you don’t know, a dangerous pub, you chat with a stranger at the bar, you get a drink. You’re taken prisoner, by sheer chance you find yourself locked up with the person you met at the bar. He, with his charm and openness, extracts a full confession from you, without even the slightest little bit of torture – oh yes, the best interrogators don’t use interrogation or torture at all, sonny – and you’ve given the game away. Rookie mistake, laddie.”
“You’re working for them?”
“As far as you know, I might be working for them. How do you know I’m Duncan, the friendly Liverpool supporter? I could be an addict in their pay just to get my fill of escapes.”
“Are you?”
“No, but I could be, as far as you know.”
“No you couldn’t. You’re too friendly.”
“Ah, but maybe I’m acting?”
“But you’re not acting!”
“No, but maybe I am.”
“But you’re not.”
“No.”
The two stood in silence for a moment.
“Okay, sonny, here’s the deal. I’ll help you. But be more careful in future, yeah? I hope your plan comes off.”
“Thanks. How do we get out of here?”
“How do you get out of here, you mean? Let me show you.”
With that Duncan rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a key made out of denim.
“Here, take this. I knitted it from my jeans just before you got here.” He indicated the hole in the knee of his jeans, which Gert had assumed was simply fashionable attire. “It unlocks all the doors on the way out. Take it. It’ll only save one of us.”
“I can’t take this. It’s yours. You made it. You would have escaped yourself, if it wasn’t for me.”
“No, it’s yours now. There is a point in a person’s life when… when he must stop escaping. A man – or a woman, for that matter – cannot run away from his problems for ever. He must turn to face them, whatever may come of it. Go.”
He handed Gert the denim key.
“I hope you memorised the way.”
“I tried, but I was distracted by the guard. He would only say ‘quiet’ to every question, so -”
“Never mind. You’ll just have to follow your lucky stars. Now go, before they return.”
“But-”
They could hear the sound of distant, approaching footsteps. Several pairs of footsteps.
“To everything there is a purpose. Go. Go now.”
Gert turned the key in the door. The footsteps were close, much closer now, and travelling faster, more urgently, marching to war.
“Are you sure?”
“Good luck. A time and a place for everything under heaven. Run.”
Gert opened the door, looked back one last time at the serene, unapologetic, slightly smiling Liverpool Buddha, and he ran, down one corridor and round the next, away from the sound of feet, away from the guards. He ducked under a beam, pushed aside an old shelf in his mad dash to nowhere in particular. The distant footsteps stopped and, for one lingering, pulsing second, there was silence.
Brief, throbbing, deepening silence, and then the guns began. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat. And silence again.
Gert broke into a madder, uneven dash, his own footsteps urgently, desperately muffling any pursuing trods. Somewhere, somehow, there was a way out.
PART 15
She was a doctor and she drove a bus. Bus Doctor Debbie, they called her. Her formal title was Dr. Deborah Bussell, but she wasn’t one for titles. Three years ago she changed her mind about the medical profession. They only ever saw people when they were ill and, Dr Debbie thought, it’s too late to stop people being ill if they are ill already. So she decided to start seeing people with their illnesses before they fell ill. That way, she reasoned, they wouldn’t get ill. To do this she would have to leave the hospital, because people only visit the hospital when something is wrong with them. She would get her own bus. Put the world to rights from behind the wheel.
Dr Debbie was a legend in our town. Still is, in fact. Every Monday morning was the Pensioners’ Run. She would, at half seven sharp, start up the engine of her double decker, and head to the furthest of our town’s surrounding villages. She would, in turn, visit every single village and hamlet nearby. The village with the dinky bridge over the river. The hamlet with three houses and a glass workshop . The church next to three hairdressers’ shops. A thatched post office. She would visit them all, and more.
Lester sat, weary, on Doctor Debbie’s bus. It had been such a late night, and he wasn’t used to late nights, not yet. He had always been an early riser, getting up at dawn to help on the farm, but he rarely needed to stay up late. Last night was the exception, not the rule. He yawned again, too sleepy for the morning, too sleepy even to play Racing Cars with undertaking tractors.
Eight thirty. He had been on the bus for forty-five minutes. They had travelled three miles. Death by numbers. The bus chugged on again, a cloud of black steam coming from somewhere on the side. There were two other young people on the bus. One, a long-haired woman, was staring mournfully into space. The other, a long-haired teenage boy in a black shirt, was very audible. A metallic, fuzzy noise erupted from his earphones at regular intervals. There was almost certainly a volcanic eruption taking place in his brain.
The bus stopped yet again. The doors creaked and shrieked, doors jerking at conflicting angles, struggling to keep up. A new fitness regime for an ageing omnibus. A man and a woman and a man and a dog alighted, in that order. Doctor Debbie turned to the first.
“How can I help you, sir?”
“My back’s playing up again.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Tell me where it hurts.”
“Lower back, to the side a bit.”
“Well, when you get home, take a long, hot bath and do your exercises. That’ll put it right.”
“Thanks, Doctor Debbie!”
“No problem. A return is two-fifty.”
She turned to the second customer. “What’ll it be, Agnes?”
“Two aspirins and two return tickets to town please, my darling!” Agnes turned, ushering her man and her dog. The dog tried to shake free of its lead.
Doctor Debbie handed Agnes her tickets and her pills. “That dog will need a ticket too.”
“Oh cripes,” Agnes looked aghast, “We haven’t got change for the dog, have we?”
Her man shook his head vigorously.
“You and the dog will have to wait for the next. Ta-ta!”
She waved them good-bye and bumbled to a seat by the window. As the bus started to pull away she made kissy noises at the dog, who presumably could not hear her through the glass. The bus, almost as soon as it had stuttered away, spluttered to another stop.
Three more pensioners joined the service. A small, clearly spectacled man clambered aboard, taking his place in aisle seat. Lester could see the small, single tufts of white hair that wired from his otherwise bald head. Perhaps he had always been the joker, the one who led the laughs after the footy. Behind him an upright man stiffly, woodenly took his ticket. His smart grey jacket brushed down dignified creases. He sat in front of Lester, next to an ambling flat-capped fellow, smiling serenely.
“Off to collect your winnings, eh?”
“Aye, that’s right.”
Perhaps they greeted each other like that every Monday morning. Perhaps they had for years, Lester thought. Retired, healthy happy, after long lives in a land at peace. Lives of smiling and farming and family, with their beloved green fields close at hand. Friends from school, Lester fondly imagined, playing in lessons, playing on the farm, learning the land. Now they sat together, warm and comfortable, off to receive their hard-earned pensions. That was how to live, really, wasn’t it? The sort of thing to aspire to-
Lester’s thoughts were interrupted by a clip round the ear.
“Oi!” yelled the clipper, triumphantly. Several pensioners looked round in alarm, but Lester didn’t. He knew exactly who it was.
“Gert! You’re here!”
“I am here. And it was a bumper adventure last night, let me tell you.”
And before Lester could get a word in, Gert joyfully recounted the tale of his night. Every last word of it, from Sadie’s story to the ripped-jean Scotsman to a daring escape involving a key, a fire escape and a small pigeon. Lester sat open-mouthed. Some of the pensioners were leaning in to listen.
“Sadie?”
“Sadie.”
“So is she for us or against us?”
“Us? Who are we?”
“I’m not sure.” Lester quickly told his tale of the previous day’s events. Gert stared dreamily ahead. The boy with a volcanic head had started pretending to play the drums, possibly in time with his music, although it was hard to tell. He was probably trying to impress the girl in the seats in front of him, but she didn’t appear to notice.
“Gert? What do you think?”
“Huh?”
“What do you think? Who are these people and why weren’t they in the Moon like Mister Sherman said they’d be?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out.”
There was only one more stop to go before the town. The long queue of patients slowly crept aboard. Doctor Debbie dealt with a dodgy knee, a splintered wrist, two heart transplants and an elbow surgery before starting the bus again. An appendicitis case slowly moaned at the back. One of the joker’s tufts of hair was very slowly curling, as if drooping under a river bank’s gentle breeze.
Gert and Lester sat out the last ten minutes of their journey in silence, as people always do on buses. Finally the bus trembled to a halt in the bus station. Doctor Debbie removed her translucent blue gloves, briskly rubbed her hands together, collected her bag and strode off the bus, doors snapping open to attention. A trail of pensioners followed behind, rank-and-file to their white-coated captain.
—————————————
“Shiny things!”
Gert was right, the market was full of shiny things. The Monday Morning Market, organised just at that time when everyone had better things to do, sold anything that was going. As usual, all the stall renters, each looking for their own peculiar gap in the market, had brought exactly the same thing: jewellery. Big jewellery, little jewellery, brightly coloured trinkets, elegant regal necklaces, wild Celtic crosses.
“Gert!”
He glanced round.
“Survive the Hood?”
“No, I’m one of Maximilian’s ghosts. What does it look like?”
He wasn’t best pleased with Janey.
“Look Gert, I’m sorry. But we thought it was show time, and we had tickets.”
“You betrayed me. Maybe you were too scared to take on the Hood and Hangman…”
He stopped short. It was clear from Janey’s face that she was not too scared of the Hood.
“Look, it’s like this-”
Sherman appeared beside her.
“Gert.”
“Sherman.”
In a standard English grammar textbook neither of those utterances would be sentences, but this was not a textbook moment.
“How are you?”
“I’m very well, thank you.”
Silence. Sherman waited patiently for Gert to ask how he was, but the polite question never came. Janey sighed.
“So, Gert, what happened?” And Gert, although still offended, told his story again, with only slight edits. His mood lifted as he recounted the tale. Lester did not find it as exciting the second time around, even though Gert skipped the bell bit completely and expanded more on the riveting details of his daring escape.
“Yeah, I knew it was Sadie all along,” Sherman remarked confidently.
“No you didn’t.”
“Did.”
“Did not.”
“Guys, guys, please, you;re killing the vibe. We knew all about the Tiddley Om Pom Pom and stuff. That’s why we went to the Moon. We though there’d be some cool smooth jazz, a bit of brass.”
She let this hang as if it explained everything.
“Brass?”
“The recipe. Where the brass bands play. You need to be where the brass bands play. In order to bring back the music hall, one of the things you need to do is be where the brass bands play.”
“Do we?”
“It’s a line from the song, dimbo. Remember?”
“I thought we were trying to stop them bringing back music hall?”
“We are. But it’s where there’ll be when they do try and bring it back. And we thought last night was the night. But clearly it wasn’t.”
“So we’ll find them near a brass band?”
“Or possibly just near brass metal,” Sherman added, “There’s more than one way this can go.”
“He means he hasn’t found out which yet,” Janey whispered, in as quiet a drawl as she could manage.
“I thought you were meant to be a professional detective.”
“That’s my cover, Gert. I’ve only just become a professional detective. My usual job – I’m a vaudeville hunter. I hunt the music hall. I don’t know because… because the music hall’s a mystery. A right mystery. One that’s taken all my life to put an end to. Oh, and I’m a talk show host in my spare time, as I’m sure you’ve guessed.” He flashed that pearly white smile of his.
“So that’s why we’re here, boys. Brass. We need to find something brass. An instrument, a valuable object, something groovy enough to bring back the music hall. You find anything, you buy it. We’ve got expenses. A hunting purse.”
Gert and Lester, not really sure what else to do, joined in meekly. Annoyed as he was, Gert couldn’t resist rummaging through shiny things. The four of them ruffled through the market.
“Lester, look!” Gert giggled as he held up a twinkling copper root vegetable of some description.
“That’s nothing compared to this.” Lester produced some blue dice in the shape of fish.
“Back to the task!” Janey commanded. They obeyed. After many minutes of searching, they found nothing.
“I’ve got copper, tin, bronze, aluminium bronze, nickel silver, zinc, a little woodwind” – he held up a mouse-sized flute – “but no brass. Where’s the brass!” Sherman threw his wide assortment of rings and bracelets on the ground in frustration.
“Tell you what,” Janey recommended, “We’ll go to Mr Wiggs’. They’re bound to have something brass. They’ve got everything.”
Gert and Lester nodded in agreement. They loved Mr Wiggs’ Super Store.
Janey led the way, past agreeably quiet market traders and rowdy truanting children. An old lady with a walking stick ventured across the street. She was ten metres from a zebra crossing but hobbled forward anyway, forcing the traffic to watch as she circumnavigated the roundabout.
Janey dragged open the door of Mr Wiggs’ Super Store. Lester choked on the dust.
“What is this place?” Bradley Alan Sherman asked.
“It’s Mr Wiggs’! Everyone knows Mr Wiggs’!”
At first glance Sherman might have thought it was a giant skip. There was no carpet, just grey concrete. The air was dusty, and it was not clear where the sawdust smell came from. Sherman walked warily to the nearest shelf, which was marked ‘Objects between 7 and 16 inches’.
“Don’t normally see these things stacked together in a shop.”
“You should see the aisle of slabs.” Gert was quite chirpy now he had entered Mr Wiggs’ Super Shop. “I used to buy all my wedding rings from here. There’s a section right next to the wallpaper.”
Lester wandered to a giant display case. It contained a large warning sign, reading OBJECTS BANNED BY THE CONVENTIONS OF LOGIC, and it contained all sorts of curious items.
“Hello, how may I help?” A man in a stiff white shirt had appeared over Sherman’s shoulder.
“Oh, I’m-”
“Good morning, and how may I help also?” Another man, identically attired, had glided beside them. “Why, good morning Gert!”
“Good morning, Mr Wiggs!”
“Good morning, Gert!”
“Good morning, Mr Wiggs!”
“Good morning Gert. How do you do,” said the first Mr Wiggs, addressing Sherman, “I am Mr Wiggs.”
“Yes, how do you do?” the second Mr Wiggs cut in, before Sherman could answer. “I am also Mr Wiggs.”
“You could say – we are Mr Wiggs!”
“Yes, yes, yes, we are!” Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs were delighted by the change in pronoun.
“What can I – what can we do for you, sir?”
Sherman looked from one Mr Wiggs to the other. “Well lads, I’m looking for some brass.”
“Do you seek a particular brass object, or an object that is particularly brass?”
“Anything brass, me. Where do I find your brass?”
Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs looked thoughtful. “Ah, Mr Wiggs, where did we move the brass section?”
“It used to be found in ‘if metals, and if not-metals then yellow objects’.”
“I know where it used to be, Mr Wiggs. I am perfectly capable of grasping the linear progression of time.”
“Perhaps it is now if metals. If you, Mr Wiggs, are capable of grasping the linear progression of time, you will surely recall that we have not completed our re-organisation in light of the Convention.”
“I am more than aware of not having re-organised the entire store after that damned Convention, Mr Wiggs, but I do not recall it, as it is a fact about the present, not a fact about the past. It is now that we have not re-organised in light of the Convention, you see.”
“Ah, but you also recall not re-organising in the past.”
“I cannot recall not re-organising, because not re-organising is not something that has been done, it is something that has not been done, and hence not something which can be recalled.”
“So only that which has been done can be recalled? Are you implictly obeying the Convention?”
“No, how dare you! I am merely being consistent with the convention, not acting from it-”
“Lads,” Sherman interrupted, “I hate to stop you, but where’s the brass?”
Abruptly, Mr Wiggs and Wiggs halted their train of thought. “Oh, I’m sorry sir, we can get rather carried away. The ‘if metals’ section is forward for 5.465 metres, then 23 degrees clockwise for 2.122 metres, then 96 degrees clockwise for 0.465 metres.”
“Mr Wiggs has, of course, only given you angles to the nearest whole degree. He does become rather – poetic – at times, does Mr Wiggs.”
“How dare you, Mr Wiggs! I am giving measurements to the precision required by-”
“That’ll do, lads. Why don’t you show the four of us to the brass section?”
“The ‘if metals’ section, sir.”
“Mr Wiggs, the customer is always right!”
“And he is sometimes wrong. Or are you explicitly obeying the Convention?”
They began to shuffle towards the if metals section. The others followed.
“Hey Wiggs and Wiggs, what’s the game with the Convention?”
“The Convention! Do you not know of the Convention?”
Lester tried to help. “Is it anything to do with that display case by the entrance?”
Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs beamed. “Exactly, young sir. It is everything to do with the display case by the entrance.”
They turned to face the others, now walking backwards along the corridors of their shop.
“The UN Convention of Logic. You must know of the UN Convention of Logic.”
“Be aware of your modalities, Mr Wiggs. It is possible that they know of it, and probable given empirically true facts about communications systems, but it is not known of necessity.”
“On this occasion you are correct, Mr Wiggs. The UN Convention of Logic, if you do not know-”
“And if they do.”
“Quite. The UN Convention of Logic has forced regulations upon us, regulations it has no right to do, regulations that encroach upon our sovereignty!”
“Quite right. The UN has decreed, in its infinite folly, that Classical Logic shall be the standard for the whole world’s retail industry.”
“Not just this world, Mr Wiggs, but all possible worlds! The UN has imposed regulations on all possible worlds!”
“Worlds it has no jurisdiction over! It has placed unnecessary, merely contingent regulation over this possible world.”
“It is our doctrine that we should have sovereignty over our own possible world.”
“That a governing body from an arbitrary, contingent world cannot set necessary restrictions on the will.”
“We are, and will be, taking our claim to the European Court of Abstract Reasoning.”
Gert looked confused. “I didn’t know there was a European Court of Abstract Reasoning, and I’m a criminal detective. I know about this things, or at least I probably should.”
“There isn’t. At least not in this possible world. Or in space and time.”
“We’re having trouble working out how to get there.”
Sherman sighed, but Janey looked sympathetic.
“That’s real bad. What -” she asked, “what arrangements have you cats had to scratch? What’s changed?”
Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs looked at each other, collecting their heads. The group passed a section marked ‘Gizzards, Wumples, Artichoke.’
“I think – and so does Mr Wigss – that this brass business is a fine example. Brass used to be in ‘if metals, and if not-metals then yellow things’. Now the UN-” he huffed just mentioning it, “the UN decrees, and I quote, that brass has to ‘be in one, or the other, but not both’.”
“It’s a terrible dilemma. We used to direct customers to ‘if metals, and if not-metals then yellow things’, knowing that brass would be in both. But now they must be one or the other. Where do customers go?”
“And it’s the same for all sorts of goods. Where do you put pogo sticks? In ‘things between 23 centimetres and six miles’, or in ‘objects invented during the Spanish Influenza epidemic’? It’s impossible.”
“Impossible? Modalities!”
“Very difficult, then. I was rather poetic there, it must be said. Thank you for correcting me.”
“And don’t get me started on the goods we’re no longer allowed to sell!”
“Are those the things in the display case?” Lester asked.
“Yes. Well, it’s only a selection. There’s an infinite number of things we’re no longer allowed to sell.”
“Round squares.”
“Escher staircases.”
“Our entire fancy dress range. The present King of France, the First Chicken Egg, The Set Of Sets…”
“Gee, that’s a shame.”
“I know. We know. Don’t we, Mr Wiggs?”
“Yes, Mr Wiggs. In fact, before the Convention, we used to be one person.”
“I used to be one person. Plain old Mr Wiggs.”
“No, I used to be Mr Wiggs.”
The first Mr Wiggs groaned. “Things are so much more difficult since we became Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs. That’s why we argue so much.”
“Well, I think things are easier.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, we do. Especially in bed.”
Mercifully, they had reached the ‘if metals’ section.
“It’s time to love you and leave you, lads,” Sherman said pointedly, “We’ll take it from here.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Good bye, Gert and companions.”
“Good bye, Mr Wiggs!”
“Good bye all! Damn the UN!”
“Good bye, Mr Wiggs!”
Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs left them in the ‘if metals’ section, and they got to work. Lifting scrap metal, examining cans, checking the undersides for hallmarks.
“Gert, what are you doing?” Janey asked. He appeared to be rubbing a kettle very hard.
“Thought it might be Aladdin’s Magic Lamp. Could find anything in this place.”
“Maybe they’re banned by the UN Convention too,” suggested Lester. Janey chortled, and Gert raised a smile. Encouraged by the laugh, Lester wondered whether he should air the thought he was hiding. The others would probably have dismissed it already, but perhaps not.
Sherman lifted his head from the heap of metal. “There’s no brass here.”
“None at all.”
“None whatsoever.” He wiped a slightly shiny hand across his face. We’re going to have to try the other section, whatever it was.”
“We’ll have to go back to Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs, see if they can show us.”
Everyone groaned.
“May I say something?” No-one objected, so Lester continued. “What I think- what I mean is… is that, if the baddies, whoever they are… aren’t they supposed to be looking for brass, not us?”
They all looked at each other.
“Shouldn’t we be looking for the baddies. Or for Sadie?”
Sherman tried to explain himself. “Well, son, we were out looking for brass. The bad guys need brass, so if we find the brass, they won’t be able to get their hands on it.”
Janey looked sceptical. “Young Lester’s got a point though, Bralan. We can’t collect all the brass in this town.”
“At this rate, it looks like we can.”
“Maybe they’ve got the brass already.”
“Shut up, Gert.”
Lester pleaded again. “But we need to find Sadie!”
“Hang on, son, we don’t know whether she’s with us or against us.”
“But she’s in mortal danger! She’s got the bell!”
Janey and Sherman looked surprised. “The bell? What bell?”
“The bell from the Hood and Hangman! Well, that’s what Gert said. Actually, maybe he forgot to mention it to you…”
“You didn’t mention it, Gert. We heard all about the part where you hid in the air vents while gunmen ran past looking for you, but we didn’t actually hear the bit we needed to know.”
“It didn’t seem so important.”
“It’s the only part that really matters, Gert. What kind of metal was the bell made out of?”
Gert made a fish face. He looked as if he was waiting for plankton.
“Oh.”
“It was brass, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Sherman stood, hands on hips. “That might just be the game.”
The four of them stood staring at one another for a few moments. Lester didn’t really understand, but he understood enough. The enemy were a whole move ahead. Things couldn’t get much worse than this, he reckoned.
He was, of course, wrong. At that moment a familiar sight skipped round the corner.
“Friends.”
“Maximilian! Why, it’s good to see your splendid face!”
Maximilian’s splendid face was askew. “The town’s saying that a bell has been stolen, and that Sadie did it. Someone who was there told everyone on a bus this morning, apparently.”
Gert pretended to be nonchalant. Maximilian continued.
“So I need you to help me. Come this way.”
PART 16
Maximilian kept playing with the cuff of his shirt. It bothered Lester, watching Maximilian trot in front of the group. Another thing that bothered Lester was the way Maximilian walked. His stride pattern was not even: he took much longer lifting and placing his left leg than his right, almost limping, but placing the foot surely to be in any kind of pain. Lester did not understand, confused by a magician of perambulation. The left leg was not lifted any higher, and the stride length was just the same, but somehow the left stride took longer, all the same.
“Maxi, where are we going?”
“We’re going to my house.” Maximilian was not talking much today, although, as a rule, he tended to save his conversation for standing still. Perhaps walking like that took too much concentration, Lester thought. Maximilian was overtaking a lady now, drifting to the outside bend of the pavement and accelerating through the curve. Any racing aficionado would have seen it as a top-class manoeuvre.
“Why are we going to your house?”
“Sadie’s there. We need your help. As I said.”
“Hey, you’ve got Sadie? Did she take the bell?” Janey was well aware that Sadie had taken the bell, but asked anyway.
“I’m not sure. She hasn’t said much. I was hoping you could talk to her.”
“Sure thing, pal. I’ll give her some ear time.”
“Excellent. Knew you’d help.”
“What about the rest of us?” Gert didn’t really want to spend his Monday indoors, unless it was the indoors of a pub.
“Mr Sherman’s the lead detective now, isn’t he?”
“That’s right. At your service. And call me Bradley, or Alan, please.”
“No problem, Bradley. You’ll need to hear her story too.”
Sherman smiled, showing those teeth once again. Gert shuddered, inwardly and outwardly.
“Oh, and this lad,” Sherman pointed to Lester, “He’s my assistant now. Good kid. Wasn’t his fault the investigation didn’t kick off.”
Gert’s shudder turned to a scowl.
“Yeah, Lester can join you too. That’s not a problem.”
“What about me?” Gert’s teeth were clenched, or as clenched as they could be whilst allowing him to speak.
“Gert? You can… I’ve got biscuits.”
He was slightly reassured. All the same, he thought, he couldn’t be doing with many more hurts today. He was an action hero, after all.
They turned into a pearly white close on the outskirts of town. The road curled steeply upward, leaving houses clinging desperately to the slope. They were trying not to slip down the hill. The road surface changed, smooth tarmac giving way to criss-crossing slabs. It was hard to tell where the pavement ended and the road began.
“This way, please.” Maximilian was in tour guide mode. He led them through a gap between two houses, on to a little grey path with steps at the end. He held the rail as he descended them, walking to a small, unremarkable house.
Lester didn’t know what he had been expecting. It seemed out of keeping with the universe that Maximilian’s house should be so normal. The façade was elegant, yet restrained. There was a neat, straight little hedge leading to the front door, and a well-manicured lawn. It even had the stripy grass that marks a top-quality grass cutter from your average garden hack. Lester couldn’t imagine Maximilian cutting the lawn on a Sunday afternoon, somehow. Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect Maximilian to live in a haunted, high-turreted castle or a worn-down outhouse on the edge of a heath, but this picture of suburban tranquillity seemed out of keeping.
Maximilian reached the front door. Pausing to wipe his brow, he started to rummage through his pockets. The others waited patiently as he did so. They continued to wait, as the tension mounted, that tension which builds up dreadfully, ominously, when someone has lost something important. Maximilian reacted in the way someone might respond to seeing an avalanche start on the top of their mountain. It was the way people run in chase dreams when their feet are stuck to the floor. Finally, the tension, the avalanche, the pursuit reached an unbearable climax, and Maximilian needed an escape route.
“Friends,” he said, his voice trembling, “I’ve forgotten my key. We can’t get in.”
The group shouldered the panic together.
“Didn’t you say Sadie was in? Could we ring the doorbell?”
“Doorbell’s broken, I’m afraid.”
“You keep the grass this neat, but you don’t fix the doorbell?”
“It only broke this morning. Haven’t had time just yet. We could try ringing her mobile though.”
Janey took out her phone and dialled Sadie’s number. The phone didn’t ring.
“Hmmm, must be off. Anyone else got a brain bulb lighting up?”
Gert did.
“I know. I’ve got just the thing.”
He rummaged through his own pocket, pulling out vegetables of varying sizes. Finally, he found what he was looking for.
“Here you go. This might open it.”
“What on earth is it?” Maximilian asked, holding up Gert’s piece of denim to the light.
“It’s… well, it’s supposed to open all doors. And it does work, trust me. It works for the doors I’ve tried, anyway. Give it a go.”
“Oh, it’s a key!” Maximilian exclaimed, finally understanding.
“That’s right. Probably should have mentioned that bit. Anyway, give it a go.”
“Okay, let’s see.” He turned the lock and the door swung open gratefully. “Here we are.”
Again, the house was immaculately tidy. There was a hat stand in the hall, home to a languid fedora. A lamp stood even taller, and two mirrors shone from the sides. Maximilian led them through a door on the right, into a modern, versatile sitting room.
“This is the lounge. Take a seat, examine the books, make yourself at home. I’ll be off for a couple of minutes to deal with the key situation. Sit tight until I get back, and I’ll let Sadie know you’re here. She doesn’t want unannounced visitors, you see.”
The four did as they were told. It was Maximilian’s house, after all.
Janey started to peruse the books. Gert loafed through a magazine he found on the coffee table.
“This kid really does throw a surprise party. Didn’t have him down as a romantic thriller kind of guy.”
“And all these celebrity magazines. Maybe he gets them for the horoscope.”
“Probably. I bet he could tell his own fortune though. Chatting of which, there ain’t a single ghost story. Not one.”
“He might know them all off by heart.”
“Yeah. Well, you think you know someone.”
The two of them laughed. Sherman stared grumpily into the distance, re-tying his shoelaces. Footsteps sounded in the hall, several of them.
“Got the keys!” Maximilian sang out. “Wait one more minute, I’ll just get those biscuits.”
There was the distant sound of doors opening and cupboards closing.
“Now he’s got the key, I’d better ask for the denim thing back. Proper useful, that denim key.”
Lester was puzzled. “If he could just collect the key from somewhere, why didn’t he do so before we got in?”
“Spare key in the house, I reckon. Everyone keeps a spare key indoors.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Didn’t he just go out, though?”
The door opened and Maximilian strode in, carrying a delicate plate of biscuits. Custard creams, in fact.
“My favourite!” exclaimed Gert.
“Actually, Gert, I’ve been talking to Sadie, and she wants to see you too,” said Maximilian, withdrawing the plate of biscuits slightly. “Do you want to come with us?”
“Of course. Anything for a friend.”
“Excellent. In that case, I’ll just take you all to her. She’s in the conservatory. Step this way.”
They passed through a couple more doors, sliding through a spotless kitchen. The conservatory door was at the end of the kitchen.
“When you’ve finished talking to Sadie I’ll give you the tour of the house. No ghost stories this time, I’m afraid.”
He opened the conservatory door, standing gallantly aside to let his guests in first. “After you. As I say, no ghosts in this house.”
Janey walked in first, with the others right behind her.
“That is, no ghosts yet.” Maximilian slammed the door shut, rapidly locking it with Gert’s denim key. He gave them a brief wave, then disappeared from view.
There was a very long, surprised pause. Maxi was not the type for locking people in conservatories. Gert finally broke the silence, which had been growing ever more tense as the group realised the truth. Maximilian was not their friend. Maximilian was their enemy.
“Oh. Maybe it wasn’t his house.”
“Good thinking, genius.”
Sadie was sitting on a cushioned stool in the corner, leaning back against the glass, legs crossed at the ankles.
“I wasn’t to know.”
“You gave him the key and you got locked in. Now we’re all stuck in a strange house while they bring back the nightmare of music hall.”
Janey sat down beside her.
“Sadie, what’s going on? What script are you reading out?”
Sadie suddenly didn’t look so angry.
“Janey… I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Sorry about what? What’s happened? Were you in on this or were you not?”
Sadie cupped her head in her hands. A few moments later, brushing back a hair, her face re-emerged.
“Yeah, I was in on it. Part of the team, as it were.”
“You wanted to bring back music hall?” Sherman’s voice was dark, judging, damning.
“Bralan, lay off, yeah? Let her weave her yarn.” Janey glared at Sherman, before turning back to Sadie. “Go on, kid.”
“I don’t have much of a yarn to spin, actually. It is a despicable tale. I… well, one can love things for a lifetime, but it is possible to become bored with what you know. And for a brief while, alas not briefly enough, I was bored with jazz.”
Janey gazed at her, speechless, eyes opening, letting in new, unseen horrors. She stared out into the world, as it glittered and faded and grew dark before her eyes.
“I know. I’m so sorry. I’ve betrayed you. I’ve betrayed jazz, my true love. I’ve betrayed everything, really. Well, not quite everything, I suppose.
“Abraham took me into his confidence early on. He and his wife, that woman he brought from America, if you remember? They had a plan. I don’t know why they thought I would join them. If anything, I should have been the very last person they approached, with my love of jazz. They said they wanted to bring back vaudeville and did I want to be a part of it? Stupidly, of course, I said yes.
“They had some song and some object, I forget its name now, although I could remember it perfectly when I talked to that fool detective yesterday…”
“The Tiddley Om Pom Pom,” Sherman reminded her.
“Ah, yes, that was it. I’ve never seen it, I don;t know what it is, really. Anyway, they had the object, and they just required a few more items, they said.”
“What were they?”
“Oh, they had to have someone with experience of ghosts and the other world, to contact the old vaudevillains. We recruited young Maximilian there. He’s always ready for some spiritual intrigue, so he didn’t take much persuading.”
“What else did they need?”
“They required two things to activate the Tiddley Om Pom Pom. One was some B-sides. B-side the seaside, you know. But that’s quite easy to find. We just went to the record shop one day, bought some vinyls. They’ll be playing them now, I expect. The other thing – and this was the one that caused us so much difficulty – the other one was the brass bands. To awaken the vaudevillains you need B-sides playing, you need someone with the skill to contact them, and you need a brass band, or at least some extremely valuable, beautiful brass instrument. And it needs to be played well, with feeling. You can’t just have any fool hitting a metal tray.”
“I told you so, Bralan,” Janey snapped, “Throwing away our time this morning.” Her knees had raised slightly, tightly.
Sherman didn’t answer. Sadie continued. Her story, dammed for so long inside her, poured out in an uncontrollable torrent.
“So we needed a jazz musician. Abe, he wasn’t a musician. But he knew someone who was. An old, old friend, from his time back in the United States. Pete, his name was…”
No-one was quite prepared for what happened next. Janey snapped her knees into the air, tightness broken, and the stool’s cushion vaulted in the air. Sadie tipped, legs high, hands high, as Janey threw herself at her, arms cracked and shaking as the stool collapsed, sending both to the floor. A knot of arms twisted, Janey reaching for Sadie’s throat, Sadie pulling away. Sherman, the natural peacekeeper, ran to untie, arms and wrists pulling at the Janey and Sadie’s bow. All he could do was twist the knot further, adding loops and strings to this twisted lace of a fight.
Gert and Lester perched at the back of the conservatory. Neither had considered intervening in any way.
“Lester, I don’t understand.”
Lester nodded in agreement.
Across from them, the fight continued. Janey tried to use the stool as a sword. Sadie tried to use the cushion as a shield. Sherman tried to stand in between them. None of the three were very successful, and gradually the tangle eased, taut but untied. Janey stood, shaking with her stool, Sadie shaking her shield, Sherman looking on. The moment throbbed once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven…
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Above, a hatch slid smoothly open, and Maximilian’s face appeared, smugly smiling.
“Ladies and gentlemen, with the aid of the brass bell, the music hall has been successfully restored. Please make yourselves at home – just as I have done so – and await your doom. Do have a good day.”
Maximilian’s face retreated up and over the hatch. Down below, the fight was still strong. Janey had recovered enough breath to scream.
“Pete! Pete!” She paused for breath. “You knew! You knew all along!” Another sharp intake of breath.
“I turned back, Janey. I turned back when they… when -”
Janey raised the stool again, Sadie raised her cushion in fear. But before they could duel again, there was a noise, a loud crackling noise, and the skies darkened. Birds squawked and flew crazily, dreadfully, trying to escape the gloom in the middle of the day.
“That crackle,” Lester intoned, “That’s not thunder.”
“No, son,” replied Sherman, “That’s not thunder. That’s the sound of a great gramophone. A dusty old gramophone, with its needle placed on an old music hall record somewhere far beyond this world.”
Another crackle, another scuffle of a gigantic record in the skies.
“Folks, we need to get out of here, before it’s too late. Gert no longer has his key.”
Lester, as ever, demanded an explanation.
“If we don’t get out, what happens?”
“If we don’t get out…” Sherman turned to the room, “We get done for. Vaudeville will surround this room and seep in. We’ll never escape. We’ll be part of the music hall.”
The group stared at one another, petrified, as another fuzzy crackle splintered the skies. Lester had a bright idea.
“We could just break the glass,” he suggested.
“What with?”
“The stool?”
“The stool won’t break this glass. It’s double glazing.”
“Nothing breaks double glazing,” Sadie agreed. Janey put down her stool, now that there were bigger battles to fight.
“Music hall can break double glazing, but not much else will.”
“There must be something else that can break windows,” Gert added, helpfully. He hadn’t broken many windows in his life.
“Only something as truly horrific as music hall can break windows like these.” Sherman was clearly the expert on double glazing. In times of crisis all men suddenly become experts on household fittings, except possibly Gert.
Janey spoke on the minim, her heart quavering. “We’ll just have to find some brimstone in our lungs.”
“What can we do, Janey?”
“I’ve got just the thing surfing my neurons. Lester, can you empty your pockets? A cat like you never takes things out of pockets, and we might just be alright.”
Lester out his hands in his trouser pockets and rummaged, looking for gold. He found all sorts of things. Sugar, lemon sherbet, a few pennies, a Queen of Diamonds, a small packet of silica gel, a silver whistle…
“The whistle. Take out the whistle.”
He held up the whistle to the remaining light, and handed it towards Janey.
“No, not me. Lester, have you been practising?”
“Yes.” He meant no.
“Do you mean no?”
“Yes.”
“Good. How does it sound when you play it?”
“Well, I’m trying to…”
“Blow into the whistle.”
He held the whistle to his lips and blew. His breath made just the same sound leaving the whistle as it did going in.
“No, that’s not right. You know we all told you about jazz musicians seagull-soaring, catching the crest of a groovy wind, taking off with the tune?”
“Er, yeah.” He remembered slightly. It had been a long week.
“Don’t do that. Imagine you’re not that seagull. Pretend – be – that you’re a daft young kid, full of air, and you want to be that seagull, but you’re not. Stay with me here,” – the skies grew darker still as she spoke, “You ain’t a seagull, but you build yourself some kid wings anyway. Picture those kid wings, all along your arms, paper make. Picturing those wings?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. Now flap them wings. Raise yourself high. But those wings, they ain’t no bird’s. They work too well for a bird. You ain’t in control. You flap way above the seagull soar, ’til you’re some jittery kid flying too high on paper make wings, too much energy drink in your heart and not enough smooth smooth whisky. You’re too high, too wide, too much, kid. See it? See the light right above you, coming way too close for a jumped-up cat with no lives left?”
Lester nodded. He saw it all too well.
“Cool. Now hold it, hold it. Put your finger on the highest note. Hold it. Now blow. Blow that paper make wing wind.”
He blew the silver whistle. It no longer sounded like his own breath, or, in fact, the breath of any living creature at all. A shaking, scraping, ice-lolly cold shriek froze the air, tearing at any brain within earshot. Gert cowered for the corner. Sadie desperately attempted to block both her ears with the cushion, but to no avail. Sherman stood still, immobile with pain. The floor trembled, a counter-tenor earthquake. The glass walls of the conservatory wobbled, rigid. They wobbled slowly at first, then harder and further, until they shattered, an unsolvable jigsaw of glass falling to the ground.
“Lester, you did it!”
His own ears shaking, Lester just about heard this, and smiled.
“Good work, son,” Sherman said, “Now, we’ve got a world to save.”
And with that the five sprinted into the garden, ignoring the glass and the birds around their heads.
PART 17
The group leaped over criss-crossing garden walls, each leaping in their own special way. Lester vaulted, Sherman slid, Gert ambled, Sadie clambered, Janey spun. One by way they urged each other forward, rushing back to town, rushing back to roads. Sherman took the lead, arms slicing the air in sequence, leading them, finally, to the edge of a carriageway. He turned to face the others, breathing quickly but tunefully.
“Come on then. Let’s be having you. We’ve got a world to save.”
“Alright, Bralan. Gee…” Janey panted, “Ain’t run that far in years.”
Lester, catching up, wheezed. “Where are we going?”
“Yeah, Bralan, where are we going?”
“The centre.”
“Yeah, but where in the centre?”
Sadie, reaching them, volunteered. “The Moon. That’s where they’ll be. Unfinished business.”
Janey glared at her.
“Janey, we’re on the same side now. I’m sorry for what I did. Pete… I thought Pete would join us, and…”
“Why would Pete join you? Why would he ever throw his music to the hounds?”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry…”
She faded, and the two of them stood looking at each other again, a long way from their old friendship.
“Come on! There’s no time for this.”
Sherman was right. There was no time for this. At that very moment a gramophone murmur popped and sharpened above. The crackle smoothed out, eerily.
“Oh no. Folks, this is it.”
Lester expected thunder to rain down from the skies, lights to appear in the huge ceiling of sky. He wasn’t expecting piano music. For that was what it was. A few basic chords, played slowly in a standard time, and then much faster, with notes tucked in, jangling and merry. The heavens smiling with a jaunty little jingle.
“Right, to the Moon, now. And beware! Eyes open at all times! And never, ever follow the vans!”
“We didn’t quite catch that last bit, Bradley!” Sadie yelled back. “Don’t follow the… fans?”
“Vans!”
The road ahead was empty. No people, no cars, no headlights. Only street lights flickered, indignant at being woken up in the middle of their slumber.
“What vans?”
“This doesn’t seem so bad, Sherman,” Gert said, “There’s nothing to worry about really, if you…”
“GERT LOOK OUT”
Gert turned to look where he was going. With the reflexes of an action hero, he flung himself left, off the road. He was just in time too, narrowly avoiding certain doom. Two men, innocently cloaked in blue overalls and cloth caps, carried an enormous pane of glass across the road, just millimetres in front of him.
“Oi! Watch it!”
“They can’t hear you, Gert. They’re vaudevillains.”
“Lord love a duck,” murmured one of the glass-carriers, faintly in the distance.
“See? They’re not of this world.”
Gert took a few moments to catch his breath. “Phew. That’s all I can say. Thought I was done for there.”
“You nearly were. Watch out for anything out of the ordinary. And don’t follow the van.”
“What happens if you follow the van?”
“Bad things happen if you follow the van.”
“How bad?”
Sherman didn’t answer. They continued down the road, keeping close, turning the bend, where they found sailors leaning against lampposts. The sailors were in perfect white suits, Dixie cups perched at jaunty angles. Their legs crossed, angular, at the ankles, in a manner that could only be described as free and easy. Each gazed far into the distance, as if staring at far away ports, thinking of belles on distant shores.
“Watch out,” warned Sherman, “Keep close.”
The sailors, upon seeing the group, lifted their hats in the air. They uncrossed their legs and, strolling breezily, maintaining single file across the road, turned to face their foe. Their eyes were filled with murderous intent, though still carefree enough to charm any Kate or Jane if one happened to walk by.
“Run!”
The sailors lowered their hats, bottom side up. The caps did not look so jaunty now. Inside each Dixie cup was a steaming cauldron of black liquid, which the sailors started to pour on to the road.
“Move! Move!”
The tar hit the track. It streamed towards the group, audaciously increasing in speed, torrenting up the hill. Gert tried to reach the left pavement, Janey the right, but all they could do was block each others way. Sherman pulled Lester to the pavement, accidentally knocking Janey over. She lay, helpless as a vicious stream of tar tumbled inescapably towards her.
“Janey!” Gert roared, having reached the safety of the verge.
Janey crawled, scrabbling at the asphalt. The tar was close now. She could smell it. A burning, rubbery gunk smell. She slipped again, and the tar was in front of her eyes. Somehow she could think, even now. She wondered, in a detached sort of way, which smell would be stronger: the smell of tar or the smell of burning flesh? Perhaps the others would care.
“Janey!” An arm wrenched her own and, with a brittle, bony strength, yanked her free. Scrambling on to the pavement, she watched the dark wave hiss beside her. Where there had once been a road, there was now a scorching river of boiling tar. With a muttered ‘Gor Blimey, guv’nor’ the sailors vanished from view.
Sherman watched the black road.
“We might not be so lucky next time, folks.”
Janey twisted to see who had saved her. Sadie, her old friend, smiled half-heartedly back.
“Huh. Well, I guess that joins the dots,” Janey said, and smiled back a little. A moment or two passed, and they pulled each other up.
Lester pondered.
“Actually, when you come to think of it, they’ve not been very clever so far, have they? We can just escape each attack by staying on the pavement-”
He was interrupted by a loud creaking sound. The others were staring in horror at something over his head.
“What are-”
The others scarpered. In their panic, they nearly tripped each other into the tar river. Lester was stuck to his spot, as surely as to a tarred pavement. A shadow appeared in front of him, a huge obelisk shadow, growing and growing, spreading outwards, silhouetting Lester completely into darkness. A cold wind whistled behind him, ruffling his shirt. He glanced at the others, catching Gert’s eye. Gert, far away from the danger, was open-mouthed in horror…
CRASH
Lester was still standing. He did not understand how. In front of him, shattered, scattered, lay the front façade of a house standing behind him. It had detached from the semi-detached dwelling. Fallen forwards to the ground. Gert, relieved, began to chuckle.
“You were standing in the window, lad! Lucky, lucky.”
He guffawed. Lester looked down to find himself surrounded by a small window frame. Fortunately enough, it had been the only open window on the front of the house. He breathed deeply. To Lester, it wasn’t so funny.
“hey, you were nearly the victim of a broken home!”
Gert roared again with joy.
“Gert, shut it.”
“A warning to you. They can get us anywhere. Stay close. Stay safe.”
Sherman was starting to sound like a telly campaign now, Gert thought. Still, he followed the hunter, as the piano jingle grew louder in the skies. Sherman, the only one to have escaped unscathed so far. For all Get disliked the man, he knew what he was doing. At least, he seemed to know what he was doing.
“Let’s do what Sadie says. On to the Moon On The Hill.”
It was at that moment, turning the corner, that the group first saw ordinary people. They were not so ordinary today. Down the hill, the traffic lights turned to red, halting a flotilla of vans at the crossing. Lester watched as people crossed the road, but not in their usual way. The piano music continued to jangle in the sky, and pedestrians skipped across to its tune. A baby and a mother trod across on stilts. Two little elephants waddled over the zebra crossing, balancing red balls on their noses. Men in top hats bobbed along, spilling champagne from their flutes on to the road. Pandemonium reigned supreme.
The lights turned green again, and the vans continued. Several pedestrians tried to follow, jogging merrily behind them.
“This doesn’t look so bad,” said Gert, watching a passing ventriloquist talk to his lunch.
“It’s not jazz though, is it?”
“You could have both!”
“You can’t have both jazz and music hall, Gert, everyone knows that,” Janey said. “Cain and Abel. Only one can toot over the globe.”
The five moved through the crowd, trying to look inconspicuous. In a music hall crowd, only the sensible stand out. Sadie was pretending to be a mime artist, feeling her way for imaginary windows. Janey was juggling some beads she found on the sidewalk. Gert was pretending to be a lion.
“Roar! Roar! This is a bit of fun!”
“Gert, lions don’t talk. Stop talking and keep roaring.”
Passing the market square – which appeared to have become a circus top – another unfamiliar sight awaited them. The Grey Hart was no more.
“Well, that’s… that’s different,” Gert said.
It was still a pub, just not the Grey Hart. A large, scrubby sign hang out the front now, as if it had always been there.
“The Old Bull And Bush,” Gert read. “Maybe we should go inside and have a drink?”
“No, Gert.”
“Always wanting to go to the pub,” Sadie muttered. “Never learns.”
“Gert, we’re going to the Moon.”
“Oh, of course. We’re off to the Moon, Sadie. Mine’s a rum.”
Sadie huffed. Lester stared at The Old Bull And Bush as they walked round it. It was a curious place. There was a dusty menu in the window advertising boiled beef and carrots for tuppence ha’penny, whatever that meant. A bowler hatted young man with a Hitler moustache slumped on the step, looking mournful as motor cars rolled by.
“Come on, out of here, quick.”
They dashed down the old side streets, taking care to avoid anyone dressed as a sailor. Down an alley they fled, along another back street, emerging just across from the grand old Moon On The Hill.
“Right, we need to get in, before they can take the Moon too…”
Sherman trailed off. In front of them, between them and the Moon’s earthly paradise, stood a van. An old white van, the kind of van that would never have passed its MOT, not in a million years. Beside the van stood a smart, rounded fellow, arms folded, cane under the armpit. The final obstacle between them and the Moon On The Hill.
“Mr Porter, we meet at last.”
“Why, good afternoon, Mister Sherman, sir. It is a pleasure to see you sir, that it is.”
“Bralan, who is this gentleman?” Janey whispered.
“It is Mr Porter, an old stalwart of the music hall. Mr Porter, meet these fine folks. Janey, Sadie, Gert, Lester. Folks, meet Mr Porter.” Sherman flashed those white teeth at the porter.
“Charmed, of course. Lester, is it? Why, what a curious name! Lester, after the square?”
“No, not after-”
“Good heavens, I know a song about Leicester Square. I shall sing it for you now.”
And he proceeded to sing.
“It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go! It’s a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know!”
Sherman and Janey winced, recoiling from Mr Porter’s gentle, tuneful arsenal. The porter paused and wound himself up for the final two lines.
“Good bye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square!” – he indicated Lester, who was writhing on the ground in pain – “It’s a long way to Piccadilly, but my heart’s right there!”
He finished, raising himself up on to tiptoes, then modestly letting himself back down to earth again. Lester could barely breathe. He didn’t know what Mr Porter had done, but it had fixed him, gasping, to the ground.
“I am dreadfully sorry to incapacitate you, Master Lester. Perhaps – if you were not named for Leicester Square, you were named for Lester Young, the-” he paused to register his deep disgust, “jazz – musician.”
Mr Porter took a swig of water to clean his mouth out from saying the dreadful word.
“Yeah, that’s right!” Janey yelled in support. “The jazz cat! The funky seagull-soaring jazz cat! What you gonna do about that, with your big fat hat?”
“Perhaps, Miss, I shall sing you another song? If you would be so good to hear it. On second thoughts, perhaps I shall sing it to your friend Daisy-”
“Sadie.”
“No, no, Daisy, I think.”
“Sadie-” but she was too late. He began to sing again.
“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do,” he warbled sweetly.” She felt the same pain Lester had, a cloudy, endless weight dragging her down to the pavement.
“I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!”
Sadie hit the floor, writhing as hard as she could, but trapped under a spell too great for even a mortal such as her.
“Sadie!”
“There’s nothing you can do, Janey. All we can do is defeat the monster, then we’ll get Sadie back.”
“Monster? Hardly polite, Mister Sherman. And when I have arranged this little van for you. Of course, I know you would like to go to Birmingham, but it will be taking you on to Crewe-”
“We don’t want to go to Birmingham. We want to go to the pub.”
“Quite. But this van may also send you back to London. We’ve sent criminals to Moscow before, too. What silly girls and boys you all are. Of course, wherever you end up, you won’t find your way home.”
He ended with a slight sneer.
“But first, a song. A lovely, tuneful song. To get you in the mood for your journey far away from here.”
“Sherman, what do we do?”
“Beats me.”
“But you knew about him! He knew about you! You had a plan, right?”
“Not really. I was just hoping to smile at him. Usually works.” He smiled back at Gert, who frowned.
“Janey, any plans?”
“Excuse me, kids, but I hadn’t been mapping out this kind of warzone. Not really expecting a dude in a bowler to sing at us, you see. He’s gonna sing the Porter song, right?”
“No, that’s what he does to people. He… you remember me telling you about the vans?”
“Well, yeah, I can see he’s got a van-”
While they squabbled, Mr Porter began to sing again.
“My old man said follow the van-”
“I don’t think he’s falling for my charm,” whispered Sherman through his teeth, smiling as broadly and as cheekily as he could.
“-and don’t dilly dally on the way!”
“That’s it, we need to dilly dally!” urged Gert, starting to feel the extraordinary numbness of vaudeville. He limply tried to flap his arms and wiggle his ears, hoping that this was what dilly dallying meant.
“Gert, flap harder!” Sherman urged, “Dilly dallying, for all its loopiness is actually an incredibly precise routine!” Sherman tried to wave his feet about in the air, but only succeeded in falling over.
“Off went the van with my home packed in it-”
Janey tried to dilly dally too, but her arms were loath and cold.
“I followed on with my old cock linnet-”
“What’s a cock linnet?”
“Not sure. I guess it could be-”
“Don’t want to know,” clenched Sherman. If his time was really up, he didn’t want to spend his last few moments discussing the nature of an old cock linnet.
“But I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied-”
Janey kept her wits, just about. “I know how we beat him.” She yelled at the top of her voice. “JAZZ. With jazz!”
“Lost me way and don’t know where to roam-”
“Lester, hand me your silver whistle. We need to get the groove tunes flowing.” Somewhere in the distance a door opened.
“Janey,” Gert mouthed, “Lester’s down. He can’t give you the whistle.”
Janey groaned. That was it, surely. Finally, that was it.
Mr Porter continued his song, a serene smirk rounding off his featureless face. “Well you can’t trust a special like the old time coppers, when you can’t find-”
WHOOOOP
“What-” Sherman groaned from the tarmac.
WHOO-WHOOOOOP
“It’s a saxophone!” Janey wailed her head skywards.
“Not just any saxophone!” Sadie was up too, struggling for joy.
“Paul! Pixar Paul!”
“At yoooouuuuuur service, jazz hands! Heard your call, that call for jazz, and here I am, ready to spread some peace and some love and some all-time jazz!”
Mr Porter glanced sharply behind his van, giving a frown to his eyes. There Pixar Paul stood. In front of the Moon On The Hill, his spiritual home, his fortress, saxophone in hand, mouthpiece to lips. The Porter saw, and was not impressed. Unperturbed, he determined to continue.
“Can’t find your-”
“No way, Mister Bowler Hat ghost freak! Janey, you still got that whistle? Lester? Janey, take it, let’s get the space show on rocket boosters!”
And he blew, deep, low fast, frenetic, all the way down to the bottom of the sax. Janey caught Lester’s whistle and she joined him, taking the tenor. They riffed and jived, low and high, bursting the air with seamless, cold-calling blues. Sadie was moving too. She unbuckled her vocal chords, letting go from the Porter’s spell, crooning warm, low notes to the crazy stylings of the instrumentalists. Gert and Lester watched in awe as the jazz musicians, the old turtles, rumbled into life, into sound, and the spell slowly lifted from them, letting them up to their feet. Mister Porter looked wildly about him. He tried to continue his song. He couldn’t be heard. He tried to warble the words to ‘Nellie Dean’. He couldn’t be heard. He tried to declare he was Henry the Eighth, he was, but the jazz hands were having none of it. For that moment, that brief, sacred moment, the only thing that mattered was jazz and the ghostly Porter was powerless.
Even spells beyond the grave couldn’t stop edgy, avant-garde free flow. Twelve minutes, twelve long minutes of riffs and solos and crooning. The Porter couldn’t take any more. Fearing for his neither alive nor dead life, he mounted his van and drove, drove fast and away. Gert and Lester cheered his departure, but even they could not be heard.
The three jazz hands wound the song down. There was breath to save. And a world to save. Pixar Paul put it best.
“No time for greets. Let’s boogie on inside the Moon. The battle been won, but the war ain’t over.”
PART 18
The door of the Moon On The Hill made Lester nervous. Normally its loose, easy entrance was a guiding star in life’s dark sky. Cold November evenings saw weary warriors searching the streets for the door of the Moon, knowing that only the faintest push would convince that door to let them in. Certainly, it let in a little draught. But even this town’s cold winter winds could not put out jazz’s roaring fire.
As Paul brushed open the Moon’s welcoming door, Lester felt it was too welcoming today. The Moon On The Hill let everyone in, big or small, cool or not, good or evil. There was all the evil in the world to welcome today. Lester couldn’t see this door keeping them out.
“Oh, don’t you be getting your lower frets about that,” Janey reassured him, seeing his stare. “We’ve got weapons enough. We’ve got jazz!”
“Get down off that jamming ledge, lady,” Paul cautioned.
“What? Jazz saved our souls, like it always does.”
Everyone else fell silent. All that could be heard was the sky-high chime of the ghostly vaudeville piano.
“Right now the old curse of music hall that rules the world,” Sadie said.
“Maybe if you’d kept hold of the bell, Sadie,” a voice replied, “they’d never have come back.”
Sherman had been following Sadie through the door, but she slammed it back as he spoke. No harm came of it: that flimsy piece of wood could only bounce off Sherman’s forced grin. He pushed it aside and tried to follow her, but Sadie had marched far into the bar, and Sherman waited uneasily near the exit.
“Bralan!”
“I told her, trust no-one, trust nothing-”
“It was Maximilian, Sherman. She knew him-”
“Trust no-one. She knew they had a ghost whisperer. Should have guessed it was him, or suspected him.”
Lester spoke up. “She couldn’t have taken your advice. If she’d have followed your advice and trusted no-one, she couldn’t have trusted you, so she couldn’t have taken your advice to trust no-one, so she’d be trusting someone…”
Everyone stared ahead, in that way people stare when they don’t want to be rude.
“UN Logic Convention,” he ended, apologetically.
Sadie had walked over to the far end of the bar by now, and was sitting moodily on the old turtle sofa.
“The real Sherlock would never have sleuthed Maxi out, Bralan. He’s a jumped up tour guide! Shows people where dead cats prowled. Hardly the architect of evil. More like the estate agent. When we all die and paddle down to that underworld below, he’ll be showing us prime real estate and eating crisps.”
“See here, Janey. Them evil doers, them blasted sinners, they don’t go round with evil on their foreheads, oh no! Evil, see, evil is just like you and me. Banal. That’s right. Don’t hear me saying a word like banal too often-”
“Oh, the banality of evil!”
“That’s right, Lester. Evil, well it smiles. Goes round with a lawnmower on a sunny day. Drinks a shandy, then plays with the starfish in the rock pools off Cape Cod. You’ll find it clearing out the garage when the girl next door pops round to ask if Evil wants a trip down the park. Can see that old Evil now, climbing up the big nets, hooting down on the swings-”
“With ice cream?” Gert asked, hopefully.
“Oh, yeah, nothing evil loves better than ice cream.”
“What flavour?”
“Vanilla and strawberry, one scoop each. Maybe a bit of chocolate, just to feed the dark side every once in a while.”
They stood round licking their lips, thinking of ice cream.
“Point is, evil is banal, get it? If you want to spot the evil, you got to look out for the banal. Axe-wielding madmen? They ain’t evil. They ain’t banal. Everybody sees the axeman. Not banal. Not evil. That Mister Porter fella? Well, you ain’t seeing him around here too much. No sir! He ain’t evil. He be a simulation. Can’t simulate evil. Only evil when you’re holding ice cream. Banal.”
The tinkle of that dreaded piano could still be heard.
“Does that mean music hall isn’t evil?”
“It does, young Lester. Simulation. Not real evil. Brought about by evil, sure, but not real evil.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Gert piped up. “It’s not bad. The taking over the world thing, that’s bad. The dancing elephants? Pretty good, if you ask me.”
“Say, that reminds me. My part in the story. You don’t know it yet. Come sit down. I’ll get the bar man to bring you a drink.”
He made a gesture to the figure behind the bar. There was a flurry of glasses and sliced lemons. Pixar Paul strolled over to the sofas where Sadie sat, followed by the others. Sadie continued to stare straight in front of her, arms folded, studiously ignoring Sherman, who perched on a stool. Gert took a stool next to him, raised himself high on the seat, and began.
“Mister Paul, where were you on the night of-”
“Paul didn’t do it!” Janey yelled.
“And besides, this idiot isn’t lead investigator. I’m lead investigator,” Sherman pointed at his ‘Chief Detective’ badge. “Mister Paul, where were you-”
“He didn’t do it! Ask him how he’s involved!”
“Detective’s don’t do that. They ask more detailed questions-”
“Yeah? Well, here’s detail for you. He didn’t do it. He was here, in the pub, telling everyone the story of Duke Ellington. Gert, you were here! And you, Lester!”
Lester remembered, Gert recalled.
“Right. Well, in that case-”
“My case, Gert. So, Mister Paul, what can you tell us about the murder of Abraham, the former fisherman and noted Hollywood actor?”
“Well, that I do know about. Me and Abraham, we go back a while. Didn’t know him too well, but we met one time long ago. Memphis, Tennessee, it was. All the facts of the world are from Memphis, Tennessee. Everything that people live and love for, it starts all the way down in that hot southern town.
“I was playing in a blues bar one night, blue as could be, and there’s this Irish guy at the bar. After my set we chat in a back room for a while, him and me, cars and whiskey-”
“Speaking of whisky, would anyone care for a drink?”
Gert knew that voice. He definitely knew that voice.
“We’ve got all your usual suspects. An ale, a glass of wine, perhaps?”
Gert looked up to see a neat little bow tie and a carefully polished waistcoat.
“A wee rum for you, perhaps, Gert?”
“Duncan!”
“Aye, I’m afraid we have no drink of that name behind the bar, sir.” Duncan smiled at his little joke.
“Duncan! You’re… alive.”
“Aye.”
“No bullet wounds? No shrapnel?”
“None of them. Master of escape, remember?”
“Duncan!”
“Aye, we’ve established that, yes.”
Janey interrupted. “Is this – the Duncan from the Hood? Thought you were shouting off about his death, your escape?”
“That’s me. I’m that Duncan.”
Gert thought slowly, carefully. “But I heard shots! The guards came and… unless-”
“How did you survive, Duncan?” Sherman asked, but Gert hadn’t finished his thought.
“Unless you are dead. A ghost.”
“I’m no ghost.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove I’m not a ghost? Um, how? I don’t have any bullet marks. Here, see.” Duncan showed them his arms, which had no bullet marks on them.
“You wouldn’t have nay bullet marks if you were a ghost. You wouldn’t have a body.”
“I do have a body. Here,” Duncan indicated his face, “A body.”
“Ah, but ghosts look like they have bodies.”
“I’m not a ghost! Here’s your rum. I wouldn’t give you rum if I were a ghost.”
“Yes you would, if you were a ghost bartender.”
“Gert, I don’t think he’s a ghost.” Sherman offered his professional advice.
“You didn’t think Maximilian was an enemy, but there we go.”
“Hang on!” Paul’s voice clanged out, a clarion call through the pub. “I’ve got a story to tell. We’ve not got time. And young Duncan over there is a good friend of mine.”
“That I am,” beamed Duncan, proudly.
“I sent he and Sadie along to thieve that bell, I did. And they got it away too, if only we’d known about Maximilian. So don’t you be questioning my Duncan. He’s brought us drinks, the star.”
Duncan handed round drinks, and Gert eyed him warily. “Keeping an eye on you,” he whispered, gruffly.
“Good to see you again too, pal.”
“How did you escape?” Sherman asked.
And Duncan weaved a wonderful tale of resourcefulness, escape and danger. He told them how he used items lying around: the wall paint he turned into camouflage, the furniture he built an impromptu tank from, the posters he made a cunning disguise out of, the gun noises he could mimic with the roof of his mouth. His audience sat spellbound, impressed beyond measure. There were even gasps of astonishment. Finally, he ended his story. Duncan, the phlegmatic hero, took his place in the group, balancing a chair with three legs.
“Yeah, well I’ve still got an eye on you,” Gert muttered. His escape was definitely better.
“Gert, he saved your life! Thank the man.” Sadie was starting to enjoy this.
“Thank you for saving my life, Duncan.”
“Not a problem, laddie.”
“bet you didn’t notice him detoxifying your drink in the Hood and Hangman either, did you?”
Gert looked personally affronted. “I could have handled that.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Could.”
Paul, again, brought a stop to the argument. “Enough. My story, then we’ll take them music hall phonies down. Duncan, escape plan. Sherman, fight plan. You’ve got ’til the end of my story.”
“We’re on it.” Sherman and Duncan huddled in to the corner, plotting.
“Now. Where was I? Oh, yeah.” Paul remembered where he was. “Whiskey. We talked and drank, drank and talked. Way past midnight, Duncan asked me whether I’d ever been beside the seaside. I say ‘Sure’ – I’ve seen a few waves in my time. No, he said, ‘Tiddley Om Pom Pom’, and tapped his nose. Well, I ain’t into that, I said. Don’t no what that is, but if it’s drugs or sex – I’m just a blues musician, and that’s my sins, all in one long, low trombone. He changed the subject, moved on, as they say. And I never thought it up again.
“And I never saw him for years. Oh sure, I saw him on the billboards. Yes sir, up there on them billboards, grinning right across the line, and I thought about how I’d met that young Irish man once, long ago, in a bar in Memphis. Another story to add to the long life time, all that life of stories. But one day I came across the pond, and I settled down here, in this pretty little town of ours, amongst all the old oak trees. I’m another tall oak tree in the forest here, with my rings, looking down on all the squirrels chopping and changing and taking their nuts from the harvest. And Abraham, well he shows up. Again. He shows up, right in my life, right where I can see him.
“I did some bad things in my time. Real bad things. Things I’m not proud of. But this was a chance to start again, start all over again, and end, too. I took it, but someone from my past, Abraham, who ain’t a friend, shows up. Didn’t want that, oh no.
“Don’t know what he’s doing here. But he recognize me. One night he and his wife, that Yankee gal, showed up here, after hours, and we talked. They tell me they’ve got a scheme, a plan, they want the world, she says, and he knows how to get it. All they needed was a brass band. He asked if I wanted to be his brass band, play, and have half the world.
“But I don’t need half the world. Who needs half the world, when you’re an old oak in the woods and you’ve got your sax? No jazz tree needs the world. These jazz hands weren’t made for holding the universe. So I say no. And they go away, all hell in their hearts, looking for their brass band.
“Years pass, and I don’t hear a word. Abe, though, I think he started to like his creature comforts. Settled, planted roots, becoming another old oak in the forest, all rings and lines inside. Not sure she wanted that, though.
“Janey and Sadie here, they knew them too. They talked to Janey, asked her to be their brass band, but, old head she is, she turned them down.”
“I don’t need the world, neither,” she agreed, “And I ain’t got time for music hall.”
“Sure. No time for music hall. Guessing that just leaves you, Sadie.”
There was silence in the bar. Outside the piano music grew louder. Faintly, but audibly, words were being added to that music. It sounded like a large crowd were whispering all at once.
“Hear that? Is that why you gave the game away?”
“I’m… I’m… you know I’m sorry. Didn’t think I was betraying you. And maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t ready for the roots…”
“You weren’t ready, Sadie?”
The three jazz hands looked at one another. Aged faces, long lines, as if every crotchet, every minim, every quaver they had ever sung, every note, all engraved into their bodies. Rockin’ riffs from the deep south. Twelve bar blues written in a bawdy hotel at night. Quick fusion from an English summer’s day. All the music they had ever heard, passing between their faces and their bones.
“Maybe I wasn’t ready. And – I suppose Abe didn’t understand this – I wasn’t much help to them. I’m a singer. I don’t play a steel guitar. I’ve never played the saxophone. I could never cast the spell. Not like you two. Not like you.”
“But, gee, Sadie, we need you. Sure, the saxophone, the woodwind, they set hearts going. But we need that voice, draw in the words…”
“Yes, I understand. I do. And I’m sorry. But I changed my mind, when they took Paul…”
Sherman was listening, fiddling with his Chief Detective badge.
“Paul, tell me about the murder. What do you know? Who kidnapped you?”
“I don’t know who took me, but I can sure narrow it down. Maximilian or Abe’s wife. They wanted music hall, and I wouldn’t play ball. Wanted me to suffer. Take away who I was. Pixar Paul. The guy who’s never seen a Pixar movie. Show him a Pixar movie, leave him to die as plain old Paul. I guess they failed. But they didn’t fail with Abraham. No sir,” he ended, gravely.
Gert keenly scribbled a note. The music hall murmurings were getting louder now. Words were becoming clearer. Lester felt sure he could hear the words ‘beside the seaside’.
“Didn’t see the murder, didn’t expect it. I was here. But I don’t think he wanted in any more. Too busy with his vegetables. No-one seen the Yankee gal for a few weeks. Maybe they fought, maybe she’s done it. That would be my guess.”
He ended, listening to the sound of music hall coming ever closer. They could make out the words now.
Oh, I do like to be beside the sea side!
I do like to be beside the sea
I do like to stroll upon the Prom! Prom! Prom!
Where the brass bands play
Tiddly-om-pom-pom!
So just let me be beside the sea side
I’ll be beside myself with glee
And there’s lots of girls beside
I should like to be beside
Beside the sea side, beside the sea!
“We can fight that,” said Janey, hopefully, “We’ve got the jazz. The three turtles all back together, playing to the same tune. We did for the Porter.”
“No. We don’t have enough,” Sherman said.
“We did for the Porter.”
“We beat the Porter off, for a while. But he’ll be back. He is coming back. And he’s not alone. He’s a lieutenant, a middle manager. He’s not the best they’ve got.”
“We’ll do for them too.”
“We won’t do for them. Do you hear how they’re singing?”
Janey opened her ears a little wider.
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“It’s a round.”
She was right. This was no ordinary singing. It was a chant, a war song, and the music hall army were singing it in a round, so that a constant bombardment of seaside variety fell upon the Moon On The Hill.
“We can’t fight a round. Not enough of us, for a start.”
“We have to try though,” Sadie said, “We can’t let them take us without a fight.”
Heads nodded in agreement. Ears throbbed as the vaudevillain army grew closer and closer, the round more and more synchronized with each passing second.
“They’re coming down the main street,” Gert observed, listening carefully.
“They’re turning the corner,” Lester added.
“They’re moving through the alley.”
“They’re waiting at the zebra crossing.”
“They’re here.”
The volume stopped increasing, remaining at a constant roar of bloodlust.
“So, Duncan, any escape plans? You’ve always got an escape plan.”
“We could try running as fast as we can.”
The others looked at one another in disbelief.
“That’s it?” asked Gert. “That’s your escape plan?”
“Aye.”
“The great escaper? Our very own Houdini? Plan is just to run?”
“Aye. There isn’t really anything else we can do.”
“And that won’t work either,” Sherman explained, “Can’t run from the whole sky.”
There was a knock on the door.
“If they’ve got an army, why do they bother to knock?” Lester observed, but everyone ignored him again. A male voice rang out, clear and distinct.
“Enemies of music hall, we have come to negotiate your surrender.”
Janey took the lead. “Two of you. Two of you only.”
She turned to Duncan. “Duncan, ready for this?”
“Aye.”
“Good. I need you behind the bar. We’re getting ready for a lock-in.”
“Lock-in!” If Gert could choose the manner of his own death, he would choose a lock-in.
“Alright,” Janey called to the waiting horde, “We’re ready. Come in.”
And that door, that flimsy, welcoming door, flew open, almost off its hinges, showing two shadowy figures in the entrance. Yet it was not the figures that attracted attention. It was the thing they were carrying.
Gert and Lester, after all this time, finally came face to face with the Tiddley Om Pom Pom.
PART 19
Everyone was staring at the Tiddley Om Pom Pom. Gert looked delighted.
“It’s a rubber duck!”
“A red rubber duck,” Sherman added, as if that made all the difference. Our heroes were aghast. They had seen many rubber ducks in their time, but never a red one.
“Yes, it’s a red rubber duck. To the matter at hand. We demand your unconditional surrender.”
“Can I have a look at the duck?”
“No.”
“We might surrender if you let us take a look at the duck.”
Maximilian, who had been shifting nervously from foot to foot, started to consider, but his companion wasn’t having any of it.
“We demand your unconditional surrender.”
She was not joking, Lester thought. Lester had seen her before, somewhere, one of those faces you remember from your childhood, from a Sunday afternoon. They said that she, Abraham’s former wife, used to be an actress. Maybe she had been in a film he’d watched as a kid. She had the kind of face for a film, Lester thought. The grand old sort of film, the kind they never made any more, and probably should never have made. The old-school epic, where five thousand extras were dressed in togas, on a marbled set the size of Gloucestershire. Yes, that’s where he had seen her before.
————————————-
Gert loved a lock-in.
There had been many in the Moon over the years. Gert and the turtles, after a jazz night, maybe a Kurt Cobain too. Lifting ales off the tables, spoiling the latest movies, listening to old journeys on the road. The bar staff would staff – at least, one or two of them would – and maybe they would sing an old song or two until the sun came up.
Perhaps, this time, the sun would never come up.
“We want your surrender. Your unconditional surrender,” the woman said again.
“What are your conditions?” Maximilian asked, meaning well. His companion looked at him menacingly.
“Unconditional surrender.”
Gert was feeling brave. “What happens if we don’t surrender? Yeah? Bet you didn’t think about that.”
“We kill you.”
Janey, warily, weighed up the options. “So, Bea, what happens if we do surrender? Without any strings? No pulleys.”
“Those that can play an instrument will join the band, as humble players.”
“And those that can’t?”
“We will kill them.”
Gert, too, considered his options. “So that’s… death or death.”
“Right.”
“No euphemisms? No evil mincing of words? You’re not going to take care of us, or feed us to the fishes, or help us fall off the bow?”
“No, we will kill you.”
“Oh.” Bea was not being helpful. You always had a chance, Gert reckoned, if the bad guys wanted you to deal with you, or take dispose of you. There was usually an out then. Not so much of an escape if they were prepared to say it up front. Nonetheless, he admired her honesty.
“Here’s what we will do. Maximilian, stop playing with that.” Maximilian stopped tweaking the duck’s beak, and went back to nervously twitching his feet. “You guys are going to surrender, and then we’ll get back to taking over the world. Everybody alright with that?”
“Not really. How about we don’t surrender?”
“Yeah. You haven’t even told us what happened to Abraham.”
“We need closure.”
Bea was clearly impatient to rule the world. “Closure? You’ll get closure when you’re dead.”
“No, we won’t,” Lester pointed out, cleverly, “We won’t exist, so we won’t get anything, because…”
“Lester.”
“Sorry.”
Bea thought for a second. “You know what, I’ll tell you.”
Maximilian looked horrified. “Bea, we agreed not to do any triumphant storytelling, remember? That’s how bad guys lose. They tell their story, giving the good guys time to-”
“Are you saying we’re the bad guys?”
“No, I’m just-”
“Because we’re not the bad guys. We’re the good guys.”
“Ok, sure-”
“And another thing – there ain’t such a thing as bad guys. No-one really wakes up in the morning and says ‘Gee, I’m gonna do bad things today!’ They always think they’re on the goody-goody team. Fighting for what’s right. And what’s right is music hall, not jazz. Remember that.”
“Ok, if you say so-”
“And another thing – if we have to tell the story, you can do it. I’ll go about redecorating. This place needs a lick of paint before we can make it into a music hall.”
“A WHAT!?”
“A music hall, Pete. We’re turning this into a music hall.”
“The Moon On The Hill, a music hall? This ain’t ever gonna be no music hall, Bea. Jazz running through the plumbing and the pipelines. Could no more be no music hall than the Albert Hall could be a jungle safari park.”
“We’ll see about that. Once I’ve got the old-timey piano in here, one or two Cockneys serving eels, place will be more vaudeville than olden day Bethnal Green.”
“Damn vaudeville!”
It was Bea’s turn to look shocked. “Yeah, well… Paul. Pixar Paul. They no longer call you that, do they? Pixar Paul, the man who has never seen a Pixar movie. Now he’s seen a Pixar movie and he’s just plain old Pete.”
Pixar Paul, to everyone’s surprise, smiled, but said nothing. Bea continued.
“You know how I got here, right?”
The group shook their heads.
“Ugh. Aren’t you meant to be investigating? Which of you is the lead investigator anyway? I lost track. Was it you, Gert?”
Gert nodded, but Sherman cut across him.
“No ma’am, the lead investigator is me, Bradley Alan Sherman.”
“Right. Stop grinning. That suit doesn’t suit you. Actually, it does, because it’s terrible.”
Sherman’s smile frayed at the edges.
“I guess you can’t be any worse than this drunk here,” she waved disdainfully at Sherman. “I’m glad they didn’t get a real detective in. Made life a whole lot easier.”
Gert and Sherman suddenly found themselves on the same side.
“Anyway, where was I? Oh right, I’ll tell you how I got here, then Maximilian here can confess to everything. All goes back to our escape from the U.S. Of A. I’d got Communist fever. I wanted to give up my property, get to Cuba, live my life in a Socialist utopia. Set up me and Abe in our own little house – well, the State’s own little house – and live a quiet life away from the capitalist menace. Abraham was a sweet guy. An ultra-capitalist, but goes over to the other side, just for me.
“So we find ourselves a boat in Miami. We get in, Abe’s dressed as President Kennedy – long story-”
“We’ve heard it,” Gert said.
“Sure. Anyway, we get in this boat. Rickety wooden thing, rocked a lot. The motor got us halfway to Cuba before the Feds found us. CIA, FBI, every 3-letter acronym you’ve ever heard, all chasing JFK and the actress. There’s a joke in that somewhere. But we’re there in the little wooden boat. In front of us, parked in the way, is the big US Navy air carrier. A sailor’s shouting through a megaphone at us to give up. Not as if we had any choice really, bit like you guys now. To the right there’s the FBI frigate, guns pointed up in the air in a big formal salute, warning us to hand ourselves over or else. To the left the CIA in its patrol boat, telling us to give in. And behind is the coastguard. They’re not telling us to give in, but that’s because they thought we were lost. They want to take us back to Miami and are wondering why all the big ships followed.
“So I was all ready to give up, hand us over, go to capitalist jail forever. But Abe, well he had other ideas. At that time he wasn’t a quitter. And he reaches into his bag, a little fisherman’s bag-”
“Fisherman’s bag?”
“Fishermen have bags. To keep their fish in.”
“Oh.”
“And from his fisherman’s bag he pulled out this little red rubber duck. I thought he was mad, as you’d guess. He’s gonna fight the US Navy, the CIA and the FBI with a rubber duck. Definitely chose the wrong guy, I was thinking.
“but then, this red rubber duck, he blows on it, and it grows. It grows and grows and grows. It swells like a balloon, and suddenly we were on this giant red rubber duck, bigger than all the US military ships together. It moves too. We turned round, went past the openmouthed coastguard – he didn’t know what was going on – and glided away. Didn’t make it to Cuba in the end, but who needs Cuba when you’ve got a giant rubber duck?
“The duck took us round the globe. Big cities, major ports. There’s a photo of the duck sailing past the Sydney Opera House, there’s another of it in Hong Kong harbour. You can make out two little specks on the back. That’s me and Abe. Our honeymoon, our guess. We had our honeymoon on the top of a giant red rubber duck. I didn’t think of Cuba any more. I asked Abe about the duck, what it could do, and he told me all about music hall, about the Irish sea, about the fall of vaudeville. I was hooked. Transfixed. It became my obsession: to rule the world, become the master vaudevillain of them all. And so I have.
“Anyway, I’m bored of stories. Maximilian, tell them the rest. Good detectives would solve it themselves, but that’s not who we’re dealing with. I’ll go and make a few final touches to the place.”
And with that Bea scuttled off to the corner, where she started taking down the jazz night posters.
“Ah, the victory speech! I love winning, don’t you?” Maximilian asked no-one in particular. “let me tell you how we won.
“Maximilian, how could you-”
“Silence, Gert. You are a fine drinking companion, of course, but I have no qualms for you. You never appreciated the power of ghosts, and that’s your downfall. There isn’t much to tell, really. Abraham and Bea drank with me one night at the Lady Luck, found out I could talk to the dead. They asked me whether I could talk to the not-dead but also not-undead, and of course I could.
“We got Sadie there on board too. She was a bit bored, I think, ready for an adventure. Paul – Pete – turned us down. Shame, really. Eventually, Abe changed his mind, he wasn’t interested any more. His life’s work was done.
“What you want to know is who killed him, yes?” The others nodded. “Oh, we hired someone else to do it. A malcontent. He’s a writer – tries to write great literature about dreams, but secretly composes horror stories to make money-”
“I’ve got it!” Gert leaped to his feet, “I’ve solved the mystery!”
“Who is it?” Lester asked.
“It was that writer, the one we met in the Cockatoo.”
“Are you sure?”
“He fits the description!”
Maximilian frowned. “Did this man tell you all about dream flamingoes?”
“Yes.”
“In that case you’re right. It was him.”
“Success! Solved everything! The criminal is found out. All criminals get found out in the end. No rest for the wicked, lad,” he was addressing Lester, “for they will always get found out in the end.”
Sadie was less impressed. “Gert, shouldn’t you have solved this earlier, maybe before we were all going to be killed?”
“Actually, we were pretty worried he would be caught,” Maximilian agreed. “Right after killing Abraham he stopped in the Grey Hart for a couple of hours covered in blood. Talked incessantly about life, death and the mortal condition. The pub was nearly full, too. If anyone had asked the bar staff, or the clients, or the two police support officers who were sitting at the back, our plan would have been foiled straight away Thanks, Gert.”
Sherman groaned. Janey’s hands were on her hips.
“I did my best.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“ I held interviews, I listened to Maxi’s ghost stories-”
Bea shouted from the other end of the pub. “Maximilian, get on with it.”
Maxi looked slightly offended at her rebuke. “I am getting on with it! That’s pretty much it. We should never have hired that writer. No-one knew him, so he was the obvious suspect. He went round talking about chalk outlines and body counts. He insisted on meeting the lead detective personally. He turned up to every festival or social event, whether invited or not. And when he kidnapped Pixar Paul he failed to do the job. Showed him the movie, as we asked, but then left Paul in the cinema and hoped he would starve. Not what we were looking for in a killer at all. He’s dead now, of course. Sacrificed him to appease the ghosts of music hall.”
“So that’s how I hopped out,” Paul realised, “I’ve been wondering ever since.”
“Except you didn’t really escape, did you?” Bea answered, walking closer. “You lost your identity. No longer Pixar Paul, no longer powerful.”
“That’s what you think, Bea. Just as powerful as I was, make no mistake.”
“No longer Pixar Paul,” she repeated.
“Oh, but I am.” He smiled gleefully. “I’m still Pixar Paul!”
There was a gasp from the audience.
“but Pete – Pual – Pixar Paul,” Janey asked in wonderment, “How can you still be Pixar Paul. You were Pixar because you ain’t watched Pixar. Now you’ve watched one, so you ain’t Pixar.”
“Hey, I’m Pixar Paul. I’m the guy who watched his first Pixar movie after being kidnapped, manhandled and tied to a chair. Ain’t no better story than that now, is there?”
Bea and Maximilian looked horrified.
“Pixar Paul, you’ve reinvented yourself!” Sadie ran to him and hugged him.
“That’s right, old turtle, I’m still the same Pixar Paul, but for a whole new generation. We lived together, we fight together, we die together. All’s forgiven with you.”
The turtles put their jazz hands together in a group high-five. Bea looked on, unimpressed.
“Sure, that’s great. Congratulations for having your power back. I guess that’s how you made it past Mister Porter. I was wondering about that. But it doesn’t matter much now, does it?”
“Pixar Paul’s got the power, we can fight.”
“You won’t surrender?”
“We won’t surrender.”
“Well, we’d better bring our boys in.” Bea held her hand out towards the door, and curled her fingers upwards, slowly, impressively. The door, the creaky, flimsy door, swung open, and the room grew colder and colder.
First came the sailors, still holding tar in their shimmering white caps, red eyes leering in hatred. The men with the pane of glass shuffled through the door, clumsily getting in everyone’s way. The whole crew followed. Minstrels, clowns, dames in wide dresses, the balancing elephants, Cockneys with their rhyming slang.
Lester stared at the mean crowd and they stared back, eyes as hard as hard can be. He was curiously reminded of a pack of cards, if cards could kill.
“I think you’ve met Mister Porter before, haven’t you?” Bea played the host.
The jazz hands nodded. Mister Porter doffed his cap in respect. “Pleasure to meet you again. This shall be the last time.”
“Oh, but I’ve don’t think you’ve met Harry the Champion.”
“Blimey, guv’nors, we’ve got some right ones here, aintcha?”
Harry the Champion crushed a few beer glasses with his bare hands. “Might have to get out the old cock linnet on you lot, aintcha? Lord love a duck!” He curtseyed respectfully to the Tiddley Om Pom Pom, which curtseyed back. Gert had never seen a duck curtsey before and, despite himself, was a bit enthralled.
Bea introduced a few more vaudevillains, but their faces blurred to one for the group. They had enough trouble fighting Mister Porter: they didn’t really want to face his chums too.
“So, that’s our merry crew,” Bea ended, brightly, “Maybe we can discuss your terms of surrender.”
Pixar Paul smiled again, the smile of a man with a trick up his sleeve. “I don’t think so, Bea.”
“But you’re bound to lose! Why fight it?”
“Oh, we’ve got an army of our own, you see.”
“What, this little group of you? You call that an army?” She pointed to her own battalion of ghoulish warriors.
“No, but you’re forgetting something. In all your grand fiendish plans you’ve forgotten the British spirit.”
“What British spirit? Nonsense.”
“The British spirit of – alcohol. The lure of alcohol.”
“The lure of alcohol. What on earth are you talking about?”
“Oh, I know what he’s talking about,” said Duncan from behind the bar, where he had been polishing beer tankards and setting them in rows ever since Bea and Maximilian arrived.
“What I’m talking about, Bea,” added Pixar Paul triumphantly, “it’s opening time.”
The back door of the pub crashed open.
“Here come the regulars!” yelled Gert victoriously. “They want their afternoon pint!”
Customers poured through the back door. The town’s answer to Stevie Nicks led the way, microphone at the ready, hair blowing in the wind of the door. Three Kurt Cobains stood tall, air guitars in hand, mounted on hoarse vocal stylings. Elvis quavered defiantly behind his quiff. Twenty six Beatles haircuts mopped and warbled. A shaky Bez pranced a war dance.
Gert cheered, his heroes remembered. Janey punched the air, stopping to high-five some of the Ramones. Even the town’s policeman was there: he had changed his look to a James Taylor and was now calmly surveying the scene, preparing his banjo for trouble.
“Thing is, Bea, Maximilian,” Janey explained, “The cats of this town, well, they don’t want no music hall. They want jazz. Cool smooth jazz. They want to be free again, free to be who they choose to be, and they ain’t choosing to be vaudevillains. They want to be rock stars.”
The regulars whooped at the mention of rock.
“You think you can make them all be music hall? Make them all stand in line when the creepy piano crosses the Styx? Nah, didn’t think so. We march to our own tunes in this town. When the dictators of this world come a singing they find us with earphones plugged in, drowning out all the background radiation.”
“Is that so?” enquired Bea.
“Yeah. That’s so.” She turned to Sherman. “Bralan, you’re the expert. Lead the fight.”
“Thanks, Janey. My name’s Commander Sherman, leader of the anti-vaudeville movement, and I’m here to end you.”
He stood tall, straightening his tie, and his army saluted.
“Sir!”
“Now, first thing is-”
Bea interrupted him. “I don’t want to spoil the party, Commander Sherman. I love parties as much as the rest of you. But there’s something we need to check first. That policeman over there-” she pointed to the James Taylor lookalike – “come here.”
“Ok.”
“So Mister Policeman, to buy alcohol in this country, what do people require?”
He looked slightly puzzled. “Of course, they need to be over eighteen…”
Lester was disappointed to notice that James Taylor spoke with a slight Manchester accent.
“Right,” Bea continued, “They need to be over eighteen. How do you check people are over eighteen?”
“I suppose they have to supply some sort of identification-”
“Identification. ID. You need ID to come to a bar and drink. So, regulars, valued customers, how many of you have ID?”
Suddenly there was silence. Complete and total silence. The kind of silence you might get down a mine, or at the bottom of the sea, or down a very big hole.
“I don’t have any ID.”
“I have my driving- oh no, that’s a loyalty card.”
“I’ve only got my Nandos tokens, do they count?”
One by one the regulars searched their pockets, and it turned out, one by one, that not a single one of the Moon’s army had recognised legal identification on their person.
“So, Policeman,” Bea continued, “What are you required by law to do.”
James Taylor looked first at the jazz hands, then mournfully at the floor.
“We have to ask them to vacate the premises.”
Sherman, Gert and the rest stared, horrified, as their great redeeming force trudged its way back out the back door, rejoining the late November afternoon. The policeman followed wearily, leaving Gert, Lester, Duncan, Sherman and the jazz hands to contemplate their fate.
“We’re done for,” Sadie whispered to Janey.
“Not just yet, Sadie.” She raised her voice. “Bea, Maximilian, what about your army? If our troops ain’t got ID, yours sure as hell haven’t. Mister Porter, show us your ID.”
“Oh, but of course, Ma’am.” He showed her his id.
“That’s not an ID,” Janey replied, perplexed.
“No, Ma’am, it’s an id.”
“You see,” Maximilian said, in that tone of voice people use when they are about to be terribly clever, “The Writer may not have been much use as a murderer or kidnapper, but he certainly had some use as a psychologist. He may have been known for his ego, but before we sacrificed him, we made him give us all ids. Or rather, show each ghoul its own id.”
“You swine!” Sherman roared, his composure lost in the face of impending doom.
Maximilian chuckled a bit. “We planned for this. Gert, of course, likes to spend his time in pubs, so we planned to eliminate him in a pub-”
“Was it you who created that collage?” Gert asked.
“Oh yes, that was just a bit of fun. And it allowed The Writer to do his bit about chalk outlines all over again. Anyway, we expected to find you drinking in the afternoon, so we thought we would come prepared. Simple, really, but deeply, deeply ingenious.”
For once, our heroes had to agree. They had not only been out-powered, but out-witted too.
“Duncan, do something!” Gert urged. “You’re the master of escape.”
“I’m sorry, laddie,” he replied, “That customer business was the last trick up my sleeve. I could make another denim key, but it wouldn’t be too much use now. No doors to unlock, see.”
“Do your escapes mainly involve making keys out of unsuitable material?”
“Aye.”
Bea stood smiling. “Ready to surrender?” Harry the Champion was gnawing at the tables.
Janey looked round her desperately, turning from one person to another, searching for some final chance. “Gert! Anything you can do? Any tricks or treats?”
“Not really. If I can’t solve a problem with rum, I can’t solve it with reason, neither.”
Janey turned to her old friends, the turtles, the jazz hands. “Anything left, jazz jivers?”
They shook their heads. This was over. This was it. It had been a long life, but this was it.
“Sherman?” Shake of the head.
She turned, finally, almost doubtfully, to Lester. “Lester. Lester Young. Young Lester. The kid who wanted to soar like a seagull. The kid who practises flute in his room, dreaming one day of making a sound. You got anything?”
Lester shook his head too. He had nothing. His adventure had been shorter-lived than the others, exciting but all too brief.
“I’ve got nothing, Janey. I am nothing. I’ve never been anyone.”
“You must have been someone. Ain’t you ever been the greatest footballer in the world? All alone in your room, kicking the winning penalty? You must have become lovers with the most beautiful woman in the world, or climbed the highest mountain, or swum in the biggest school in the sea.”
“Well, yeah, but-”
“But what? Be something now. You’re our last hope, kid. We’ve all had dreams, and we’ve lived dreams, and we’ve gone. Be what you pretend to be, Lester, and be that. That’s all you are, in the end.”
“But the bad guys, the vaudevillains, they didn’t win with dreams, they didn’t win by pretending. They’ve won by knowing a bit about the law!”
“And that’s why you can do it. Your dreams beat their law. That’s how dreams work, kid.”
“I don’t know whether my dreams can beat the law. Can’t beat rules…”
He stopped, as if time itself had stopped with him. His face started dancing.
“Lester?” Janey asked, puzzled. His face was now doing a jig of its own. Hastily, he straightened it, making as composed a line as he could.
“Janey, I’ve got it,” he whispered, and then strode towards Bea. He halted, and stood to his full height, and then some.
“The law, Bea, you talk of the law.”
“The law? Sure, kid. Have they sent you over to surrender?”
“No. We shall not surrender, Bea. And I am no child, Bea.” In his attempt to be pompous he felt he might be over-using her name, but he decided it was best to continue.
“Bea, I am a Very Important Person. I am a lawyer. A lawyer of the highest repute, Bea. So high, in fact, that I have been commissioned as a Law Enforcement Officer to the United Nations.”
Bea sighed. “Alright, Law Enforcement Officer to the United Nations. What are you here to enforce? We haven’t got all day. I’ve got a world to liquidise.”
“That is just the thing, Bea. You have no authorisation to liquidise this world. You have, in fact, violated United Nations rules and regulations!” He simpered importantly.
Bea started to look worried. If there was one thing which might damage her power bid, it was United Nations rules and regulations.
“What regulations?” she asked cautiously.
“You claim that your companions, these personages… Mister Porter, Harry the Champion, whatever these sailors are called, et cetera… You claim that these personages are not dead?”
“That’s right, Officer, they’re not dead.”
“And you also claim that these personages are not alive?”
“That’s right, Officer.”
“Say it.”
“That’s right, Officer, they’re not alive?”
“And these personages, are not undead either?”
“That’s right, Officer, they are not undead either.”
Everyone else in the room wondered where Lester’s argument was heading. Lester himself turned around, paced a few steps, the turned back and paced up to Bea.
“So these personages are not alive, they are not dead, and they are not undead, either.”
“That’s right, Officer.”
Lester smiled, in an official sort of way. He took a moment to mentally thank his lucky stars for meeting Mr Wiggs and Mr Wiggs that morning.
“In that case, I now pronounce you-” – no, that was marriage, he thought – “I now declare you, in keeping company with personages neither alive, dead, nor undead, to be in direct breach of the Law of Non-Contradiction, and thus in full and serious contradiction of the UN Convention of Logic!”
Of all the gasps that afternoon, this was the deepest.
“Lester, that’s brilliant!” Janey mouthed behind him. Gert started to clap and cheer.
Bea’s reaction, though, was the one Lester prized most. Her mouth opened wide and wide, her eyes following closely. She and Maximilian looked at one another, stunned. Bea tried to respond to Lester’s sentence, but failed to find anything to say. Mister Porter, for once, looked frightened. Maximilian was the first to speak.
“What, Mister Officer Sir… what is the penalty for contravening the UN Declaration of Logic?”
“The penalty, Maximilian, or rather the correction, is that any remaining contradictions must cease to be contradictions. That is, cease to exist.”
Lester, although strong on the outside, felt his soft centre run. Much as he opposed Mister Porter and his ilk, he wasn’t keen on extinguishing them. Mister Porter, however, was a stiff upper lip sort of ghoul.
“I suppose that settles it, Master Lester. I am a contradiction. My very existence contravenes the steadfast laws of the universe. In that case I – am friends of the music hall – shall have to depart.”
He, the sailors – whose red eyes had misted to a tearful blue – the dancing showmen: they all looked at one another in sadness. There was, however, a quiet dignity.
“Music hall is no more, friends. The world has turned and we have not turned with it. Or, rather, we have turned against it. We have moved in a logically inconsistent way and, for that, we cannot possibly exist.
“Goodbye, Mister Sherman, Pixar Paul, Janey, Sadie. You have been worthy adversaries. May you have long lives of consistent peace.
“And goodbye, gert, Mister Sherman. You are true detectives, and well-matched foes. I wish you every success in whoever you choose to be.
“Farewell, Master Lester. You are the worthiest foe of all. I cannot bring to call you an enemy, for I admire you too much. I would shake your hand, if my hand logically existed.
“And, perhaps above all, Bea, Maximilian. Friends, compatriots, fighting for a common cause. Thank you for fighting for us, giving us another chance. Alas, it was not to be, but life’s greatest lessons are in failure. We would give Abraham and the rest your love, but I doubt we shall ever cross his path. We shall cease to be, you see, whereas Abraham must still exist, as we can still speak his name. Thank you for everything.
“Goodbye, farewell, so long, all. We fought a fight, but we lost. That is all.”
He turned and, beckoning his army of ghouls and ghosties, glided softly through the now-open front door. The ghosts of music hall followed and soon were gone from the pub and this world, never to be seen again.
A little tear ran from Maximilian’s eye as he and Bea stood, disconsolate, in the grand old Moon On The Hill. They were all that was left of the vaudevillain army. Just the two of them, awaiting their fate. It was Gert who decided on the proper course of action.
“Duncan, show the policeman back in.”
“Aye.”
“Tell him that Sherman, Lester and I have solved the Murder of Abraham. Tell him he’s got two arrests to make.”
“Aye.” Duncan went to fetch James Taylor, the Full Force Of The Law.
EPILOGUE
The town meeting was nearly over. Naturally, the floor of the Farmer’s Arms was covered in peas again, but no-one seemed to mind.
“Order, order, final item!” Sherman was relishing his new job as town crier. The town was relishing it too. He made a much better job of it than Maximilian had. No previous incumbent had built game shows into the mayoral election format before.
“Our final decision is,” he scrutinised the paper, “What to do with the Old Bull and Bush. Gert, the floor is yours. Not literally of course, because these fine folks will want their peas and asparagus back, but in the figurative sense you may have the floor.”
“Thank you, Bradley.” Gert cleared his throat. “As we all know, the Old Bull and Bush came into being with the music hall invasion” – the crowd booed – “and has been neglected since. I propose an idea.”
The crowd roared. They loved ideas.
“I reckon we should keep it as a music hall pub.”
There were confused hisses from the audience.
“Keep the pub of our invaders? Are you mad?”
The crowd speculated amongst themselves about Gert’s sanity.
“I am not mad. Let me explain. There are two reasons. One – vaudeville, music hall, they’re actually quite fun. The invasion wasn’t, but the music itself… I mean, it’s not jazz, but it’s quite jolly. I’d like to hear it every so often.”
The crowd murmured in thought.
“Two – we can’t just ban the things we don’t like. Some people like music hall, that’s because people are just naturally different. We’ve got to give them the chance to listen, right? If we don’t we might get another Abraham, looking for music hall under the sea and then trying to kill everyone and invade because no-one’s prepared to let him be who he wants to be. Respect, that’s what it is.”
“Hear, hear,” someone cried.
“Well, I though he was mad,” one farmer whispered to another, “but I’ve heard him out, and he talks some sense.
“Respect, that’s what it is,” another agreed.
“Respect!” Gert shouted. “Couldn’t agree more.”
Sherman got to his feet. “Okay, so who votes to keep the Old Bull and Bush?”
Everyone cheered.
“A show of hands please. We’ve been through this before. Cheering, hollering and throwing tins of asparagus aren’t legitimate voting systems, folks. Show of hands: who wants to keep the Old Bull and Bush?”
Every hand went up.
A voice from the crowd had something to add. “I think we should change its name though. Bit of a poor name, that.”
“Alright, change its name.” Another show of hands in agreement. “Any suggestions?”
“I’ve got a suggestion,” volunteered Gert, “Why don’t we name it after the saviour of our town? The boy who single-handedly stopped the invasion?”
Another cheer.
“Let’s call it… The Young Lester.”
And that, friend, is how The Young Lester came to be.
THE END
Jezknee 