‘Kill boy!’ shouted Johnny. And the Rottweiler moved in for the kill.
It was all over in moments. But terrible moments they were. The howling, the ripping, the blood. Johnny stared over the bar counter. All that remained of Ganesha were a few bits of gory fur and a tail.
‘Blood* hell,’ said Johnny. ‘Bloo*y hell.’
‘Sorry,’ said the customer, quickly pocketing his winnings.
‘I don’t believe it. I do not believe it.’ Johnny had a sweat on now. ‘It ate my *loody dog. It ate him!’
‘Sorry,’ said the customer.
‘I don’t care about sorry. I want one of those dogs like yours. I’ve gotta have one of those dogs like yours. What’s it called?’
‘Well,’ said the customer. ‘I call it a short-eared, long-nosed, bald-haired, bow-legged spaniel. But my wife calls it a crocodile.’
Oh how we laughed.
I ordered a Death by Cider, was called a ‘country prat’ and settled for a lager. I took myself over to a darkened corner and sat myself down. Johnny’s barmaid got a mop and bucket and cleaned up Ganesha’s remains. The bloke with the crocodile drank his half and left the bar.
I gave the place a good looking over. It defied description so I do not attempt to give it any. I sipped at my lager instead.
Presently the bar door swung open, and in walked three young business types. I suppose it should really have been an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, but it wasn’t. It was just three young business types. They were your standard business types. Those horrible dark suits that seem never to have been in fashion. Those portable phones they carry like symbols of power. The pink sweaty faces, the premature balding. You always have the feeling that they probably do really unpleasant things to the women they get into bed. And they do talk so very loudly. And always about their holidays.
‘Bring me something long and cold with plenty of gin in it,’ one said to Johnny.
Johnny brought out his wife.
‘I’m off for three weeks’ seal-culling this year,’ said one of the business types.
‘Done that,’ said another. ‘I’m off hunting snow leopard. New seat covers for the Porsche.’
‘White tiger are better for that,’ said the third. ‘Bagged three last year. Two in a game reserve and one in a zoo.’
Blaggards! I thought. People with money have all the fun.
‘I was surfing the net the other day,’ said business type one. ‘And I came across this web site called Murder Inc. They advertise the ultimate sporting holiday for the weapons enthusiast. Fly you out to a trouble spot somewhere and let you take pot shots at the natives. You can’t bring back trophies, obviously – you won’t get them through customs. But they video it all for you, so you can relive the fun.’
‘I’ve heard of that,’ said business type number two. ‘Apparently they’ve been in business for more than one hundred years. They claim that all the major assassinations of the twentieth century were actually booked through them.’
‘What, do you mean JFK, people like that?’
‘Chap from a gun club in Leeds shot him from the grassy knoll as part of a two-week package.’
‘Do you have their number?’ asked business type three, priming up his portable phone.
‘Not on me, sorry. I have it back at my business, though.’
‘And where is your business, exactly?’
‘Elsewhere.’
Elsewhere? I squinted at the business types and then I saw him. It was Billy Barnes. I hadn’t recognized him at first. He looked so like the other two. Just like them. But it was definitely him. Well, as definitely as it could be, anyway.
I rose to say hello, and then thought better of it.
My uncle’s dream had been pretty specific. Beware of Billy Barnes, and here he was, right here in the Green Carnation.
I would play things safely, listen to his conversation, follow him and see what he was up to.
‘Of course,’ said Billy. ‘The real thing in holidays this year is to take the supreme trip.’
‘Supreme trip?’ said number two.
‘Virtual tours,’ said Billy. ‘Go anywhere, do anything and experience everything, without ever leaving your armchair.’
‘What, a computer simulation?’ asked number three.
Billy nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve heard.’
‘It’s not perfected yet,’ said number two.
‘You know about it, then?’ Billy asked.
‘My company are working on something similar. It’s very hush hush, the commercial potential is vast. I’m in crypto-encodement, top secret stuff, I can’t talk about it.’
‘You’re full of shirt,’ said number three.
‘I’m not,’ said number two.
‘Tell me more,’ said Billy.
‘Can’t,’ said number two. ‘You might be a spy from Necrosoft for all I know.’
‘Necrosoft?’ said Billy. ‘What’s Necrosoft?’
‘The opposition. They’d give a lot to get their hands on what I know.’
‘Sell it to them, then.’
Number two laughed. ‘No way. I copyright everything I do. I’ll be onto big wonga when it all goes on-line.’
‘Good luck to you, then,’ said Billy. ‘Let me get another round in.’
And I watched him all through the evening. He got plenty more rounds in, but he only drank fruit juice himself. The bar filled up with Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen, Grenadier Guards, blokes with parrots on their shoulders, a man with a twelve-inch pianist and a chap with a head the size of an orange. But I ignored the gags and kept my eye upon Billy. Business type number three staggered off around ten, but Billy kept number two talking and kept on buying him drinks. At closing time Billy offered him a lift home.
I followed them outside. Billy said something about his car being just around the corner, put his arm about the young man’s shoulder and led him away.
I followed, stealthily.
They wandered down Moby Dick Terrace, crossed the High Street and then turned into Horseferry Lane.
And I followed with further stealth.
They were almost at the lock gates, where the Grand Union Canal meets the River Thames, when the young man began to express his doubts. I ducked down behind a dustbin and watched. There was something of a struggle, though rather one-sided, and then Billy hit him. The young man went down and I watched from hiding as Billy began to assemble some kind of electronic apparatus from pieces he’d been carrying in various pockets. It looked almost like a 1950s ray gun to me. Billy held the thing to the temple of the young man and squeezed the trigger. The young man twitched horribly and then went limp. Billy dismantled his ray gun and placed the parts back in his pockets. And then he lifted the young man’s body, carried it to the river bank and dropped it into the water. And then he turned, grinned and called, ‘Come out, then, I know you’re there.’
I was all crouched down behind a dustbin and kept very still.
‘I know you’re there,’ said Billy. ‘I know you followed us.’
I rose as silently as I could amongst the shadows and prepared to take my leave at the hurry up. And then something hit me very hard on top of the head.
I turned and staggered and took- in the image of a beautiful woman with haunted eyes, dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform. And then I found myself tumbling down once more into that deep dark whirling pit of oblivion so beloved of the 1950s American genre Private Eye.
And it didn’t half hurt.
Sundown on Jim the Wooller
Jim the Wooller leaned a leather arm upon the bar.
‘One more for the road?’ said Musty Fuller.
‘I’ll take one, if one there be,
For there’s no-one alive but me,
And I’m the last of all men, Jim the Wooller.’
Jim the Wooller drained his road one to the dregs.
‘I thank you for that drink, my Musty Fuller,
It likes me fine, this Auckland Rum,
/>
I drank some watching Things to Come,
And realized that I’m the last of all men,
Jim the Wooller.’
Jim the Wooller spat with haste into the cuspidor.
‘I must be going now, my Musty Fuller,
For I’ve no time to sleep,
Shearing thirty million sheep,
And it’s no fun at all to be
The last man,
Jim the Wooller.’
13
The way to a man’s belief is through confusion and absurdity.
JACQUES VALLÉE
I awoke in some confusion, feeling most absurd. It wasn’t the bopping on the head I objected to, it was the manner of the bopping. Bopped by a dame! Woodbine would never have let himself get bopped by a dame! Tricked by one, maybe, deceived by one, done wrong by one, but never actually bopped on the head by one. The ignominy, the shame.
But then I wasn’t Woodbine.
In fact, when it came right down to it, I had to confess I was really rubbish at being Woodbine. I hadn’t been in character at all when I got bopped on the head. And I hadn’t been indulging in the usual banter with Barry either. I’d really fouled up and I’d got my just deserts. I had no-one to blame but myself.
But enough of self pity.
‘That was your *lood* fault, Barry,’ I said. ‘You could have warned me she was coming. Call yourself a Holy Guardian Sprout?’
But Barry did not reply.
‘Don’t sulk,’ I told him. ‘Just admit that it was all your fault, and we’ll say no more about it.’
But Barry still did not reply.
‘All right, then,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t all your fault. Most, but not all.’
But Barry—
‘Barry,’ I said. ‘Are you there?’
I shook my head, and tapped at my temples.
‘Barry? Barry?’ But he wasn’t there. I could feel he wasn’t there. My head felt, well, empty, really.
‘Absolutely typical,’ I said. ‘Just like God, never around when you need him.’
I struggled to my feet and rubbed at my head. But my head didn’t hurt. Inside or outside. There was no bruising. I felt fine.
‘She must have hit me with something really soft. Now where exactly am I?’ I had a good old look around. I wasn’t in an alleyway, which I would have been had I been playing Woodbine, but wherever I was, it looked far from familiar.
Because it looked far from anywhere.
Absolutely anywhere.
I was standing upon an utterly flat surface. Like sheet ice, or clear plastic, or something. And it just went off in every direction. And the sky—
‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘The sky.’
The sky was white. Paper white. I’d never seen a sky like that before. But then, was it actually the sky? The harder I looked, the more uncertain I became. Perhaps it wasn’t the sky, at all. Perhaps it was a ceiling. Perhaps I was inside some vast modern building, with a white ceiling and a plastic floor. That had to be it. But whatever it was, I had to be off.
For one thing I had to call the police. I may have indulged in client confidentiality with Billy’s mum regarding the boxed-up Inspector Kirby, but this was different. I wasn’t in Billy’s pay, and that monster had murdered someone. I’d actually witnessed a real-life murder. And that was no laughing matter.
‘Where is the exit?’ I asked myself.
‘I do not know,’ I replied.
But I set off to find out.
Now, I don’t know what exactly was wrong with my wristwatch, but it had stopped working.
I was most upset by this, because it was a really expensive wristwatch. A Piaget. An image thing, I don’t want to dwell on it. But I will say this, you can always tell a man by the quality of his wristwatch. The same way you can judge a woman’s morals by her shoes. My dad could tell a woman’s age just by looking at her knees. But sadly that was a skill he never passed on to me.
But I digress. My watch had ceased to function, and although my legs were working fine, they didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. How far had I walked? And, when it came to that, was I walking into this place, or out of it?
I was lost all right, and that was a fact.
I remembered being lost before. Once before. A long time before, when I was a small boy. My dad had taken me to the British Museum to show me the shrunken heads. We’d been walking through the Egyptian gallery, and I’d stopped to look at a sarcophagus in a glass case. I was fascinated by all the hieroglyphics. Row after vertical row. What did they mean and who had drawn them? Who were these people who had once been living but now were so long dead? I asked my dad, but he wasn’t there. I was all on my own in that long gallery. All alone amongst the dead. And right there and right then I understood, for the first time, the loneliness of death. It just hit me out of the blue and it hit me very hard. The young are far from death, the young consider themselves immortal. Aged aunties or grandparents die, but not the young, their time is now. And my time was now. But I was here. Alone amongst the dead whose times were very long ago.
And I grew afraid and I wept.
Wept as I was weeping now.
Weeping now? I wiped tears from my cheeks. I was weeping now. Why was I weeping?
And where—?
I looked all about me. I was no longer all alone in the middle of nowhere. I was all alone in—
The Egyptian gallery of the British Museum. And it was all exactly as I remembered it. I was standing by the very case. The one with the sarcophagus with the hieroglyphics. And the smell of the place and that certain light, it was exactly how I remembered it.
And at this I became very afraid.
‘Are you all right, son? Lost your dad have you?’
I looked up. And I remembered this man. He was the curator of the Egyptian antiquities. It was he who had found me when I was a child. He who had taken me by the hand and led me around until we found my dad.
‘Come on,’ said the curator. ‘Let’s see where he is.’
And he reached out his hand.
‘No,’ I said, backing away. ‘I’m not a child any more. I’m not here.’
And he faded away. Right in front of my eyes. He faded away and was gone.
And so too the Egyptian gallery.
And I was all alone once more. All alone in the very middle of nowhere. And then it dawned upon me. Because it was then that the loneliness of death closed in all about me and then spread out in every direction.
And I knew what had happened.
And why I was here.
And I knew why Barry wasn’t with me any more.
Because his job was over. Because he only guarded the living.
And I was no longer one of the living.
Billy Barnes had killed me.
I was dead.
Wandering in Deserts
Out of water,
Out of luck,
Curse the sun,
And curse the truck.
Curse the fabled pharaoh’s gold,
Curse that gearbox, ten years old,
Curse the greed of mortal man,
Curse the drive-shaft full of sand,
Curse the Fates that brought me here,
Curse the sodding second gear,
Wish I was home drinking beer.
Not wandering in deserts.
14
If you flick the words, the ideas will come into being.
JIM CAMPBELL
I was dead.
And I was angry.
Angry at being dead. Furious at being dead and angry with the living.
I remember as a child having chickenpox. And that made me angry. Not angry about the pain or the discomfort, but angry with everybody else. The well people, the people who didn’t have chicken-pox. I would sit at my bedroom window and glare down at them as they walked along the street. How dare they be well when I was ill. It wasn’t fair and it made me angry.
As you get older you get used to life not being fair. You tak
e for granted that life isn’t fair, and so you just do your best and try to get whatever you can out of it. But you’re still angry, deep down inside, even if you can’t admit it to yourself. You’re still angry.
Or at least I was, anyway.
But now I was dead I was really angry.
This wasn’t just a view from a bedroom window, this was an overview of every living person in the world. No matter how rich or how wretched. I was jealous and angry with every single one of them. Because they were still living and I was not.
But none more so than Billy Barnes.
He was responsible for my death. And he was the one who would pay.
‘I’ll find him!’ I shouted. ‘And I’ll haunt him. I’ll haunt him until he dies, and then I’ll meet with him face to face and kick his head in.’
The thought of eternal revenge cheered me slightly, but then another thought entered my head. If I was dead, then where was I? I wasn’t in hell, but this sure as hell wasn’t heaven.
The third and most obvious option had to be limbo. And if I was in limbo then it meant that God hadn’t yet made up his mind about which way to send me. And if that was the case, then it might be a wise move to dispel all thoughts of anger and revenge and concentrate more upon peace and tranquillity and things of that nature.
Then I could get up amongst the choirs celestial with the all but certain knowledge that Billy Barnes would be getting his comeuppance in the furnaces below.
And that thought cheered me up no end at all.
But I hastily struck it from my mind. That was gloating over another’s impending misfortune wasn’t it? And that was sinful, surely? God wouldn’t go for that kind of thing. God only went for purity of thought.
‘Shirty shirt shirt shirt!’ I said (consigning the “shirt” business forever to oblivion). ‘It’s a tricky one. How can you have purity of thought, when you know deep down inside that having purity of thought is something that will get you into heaven? That makes purity of thought a motive in itself rather than purity of thought for its own sake. And therefore it’s not purity of thought. It’s impurity of thought.’