Watching the Wheels Come Off Read online

  Mark rudely interrupts. ‘Sorry, buddy, but you’re on the wrong course. This is Dr Temple’s very first trip to the UK.’

  He moves quickly away from Wilder, just as the metal trunk is shut and locked. Sunlight plays on the letters RT stencilled in gold on the lid like some royal insignia. Two seamen attach the trunk to a cable hanging from the jib.

  Dickenson says, to no one in particular, ‘I read somewhere that America is moving away from Europe at a rate of two centimetres a year.’ He sighs and casts his jaundiced eyes upon the trunk now being hoisted into the air. ‘Not fast enough, in my opinion.’

  More sniggers from the hacks.

  The wretched Wilder, still desperate for a story, catches up with Mark.

  ‘Didn’t Harry Houdini meet his end like this? Trying to escape from a trunk in New York Harbour?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I thought he did.’

  ‘Facts don’t seem to be your strong point, then. He died from peritonitis.’

  The disappointed hack is distracted by the ship’s winch, which now screeches as it takes the strain. Under stress, the cable tightens and turns. A curly-haired photographer, half asleep until now, suddenly becomes active, jumping up, running, clicking. Mark unties a hand microphone from the ship’s rail and tests it.

  ‘One… two… three. Can you hear me, Reg?’

  ‘Like you were here beside me, Mark.’

  Reg’s voice crackles over the ship’s tannoy. Mark turns to the hacks: ‘Any further questions, gentlemen?’ A nasty smile plays on Dickenson’s face as he addresses the microphone.

  ‘What are your famous last words going to be, Reg?’

  Turpin, already struggling to shed the chain, raises his voice to hide the sound of his efforts.

  ‘The age of the individual is at an end, sir. We’ve all been fed into computers… as grist for the digital age …uh, the whole world’s now trapped in computers …’

  He grunts, groans and loses the plot as the trunk lurches over the water, swinging wildly about. Strands of rusted cable, at the point where it’s wound on to the winch and hidden from the crew, begin to twist and snap.

  ‘Computers have taken us over. They’ve absorbed us. We’re all just digits now. Grey digits. The world has become a grey place, sir, full of grey people. Don’t turn grey. Be like me. Stand up against the encroaching tide of –’ He never gets to finish the sentence.

  The last strand of cable breaks with a loud crack.

  For a split second the trunk seems to defy gravity, silhouetted against the horizon, seemingly frozen, before plunging towards the ocean, hitting it with a mighty splash. The hacks rush to the ship’s rail, as Turpin calls pathetically over the relay system.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Holy shit,’ moans Mark, turning grey.

  The trunk settles momentarily on the surface. Then the ocean opens up, swallows its unexpected visitor, and closes again. Huge bubbles belch from the deep, seeming to transport Turpin’s panicky voice to the surface.

  ‘Careful, boys! You’re going too fast for me.’

  ‘Get out, Reg. Get out!’ screams Mark. ‘Jesus! What’s that gurgling sound?’

  Turpin’s pleas, growing fainter and fainter, and more and more distorted, then start to sound like a wind-up gramophone winding down: ‘Whasssss gooooing onnnnn?’ screams Reg.

  ‘Get the fuck out, you prick!’ screams Mark.

  ‘Pwwwiiiccck? Noooobeehoddy cawwws meehheee a pwwwwickkkk!’

  Prick? Nobody calls me a prick! Such are the famous last words of Reg Turpin. The hacks scribble them down with new-found professional zeal. Other unfathomable, but definitely angry, noises emerge from the deep. Although nobody can decipher them, it’s generally agreed that they concern the retribution Reg intends to exact on Mark when he returns to the surface. For the hacks, long-time marinated in alcohol, purple prose and clichés, this factual gap in the narrative poses no problem. A big news story has just broken before their astonished eyes.

  All eyes shift to the two seamen manhandling a red buoy overboard, intending it to identify the spot where the trunk was last seen. Mark looks helplessly at the approaching rollers as they swell up like a huge sea serpent passing beneath them, and somehow finds it within himself to talk positively.

  ‘Reg can escape in two minutes flat.’

  Dickenson checks his watch and can’t resist a quip. ‘Come in, Reg Turpin, your time is up.’

  Nobody laughs.

  In a futile attempt at intimacy with his client, Mark moves away from the group, whispering into the mike: ‘Reg? Reg, I’m sorry. Really sorry.’ The hacks close around him, listening to his pleas. ‘Reg, please forgive me, Reg. I really didn’t mean it. Let me make it quite clear that you are not a prick…. Reg? Reg, for God’s sake, speak to me.’ The hacks turn like sunflowers towards the tannoy: but it remains silent.

  The scene on deck could be a burial at sea.

  Crew and hacks alike silently contemplate eternity as represented by the vastness of the ocean and the red buoy marking the exit point of the recently departed.

  A seagull lands on it and defecates.

  Sudden activity breaks the spell as a crew member, clad in a wetsuit and diving paraphernalia, stumbles from the wheelhouse. Albert Dingle is a big man in every department except intelligence. Lugosi attends to him as he now struggles to remove the rubber mouthpiece.

  ‘What’s up, Albert?’

  ‘The key.’

  ‘Key? What key?’

  ‘To the trunk.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’

  Lugosi finds it and Dingle tucks it into his belt pocket. He looks apprehensively at the huge swell passing under the ship, and crosses himself.

  The captain yells from the wheelhouse, ‘What the fuck are you waiting for, Albert?’

  Dingle scales the ship’s rail. Unfortunately, as he’s just about to plunge in pursuit of the escapologist, one of his

  flippers gets tangled with a cable lying on the deck. As a consequence, his projection into the deep is not as intended. Instead he finds himself dangling upside down against the ship’s rusty hull. The Promised Land sighs as another hefty wave gently lifts her skywards.

  Dickenson smiles another unpleasant smile, directed at Mark.

  ‘You organise this junket?’

  ‘Not the nautical logistics. Only the PR.’

  Dickenson licks the end of his pencil and writes something beside the 3.30 race at Lincoln. He shows it to Mark. ‘PR…ICK! That’ll be tomorrow’s headline. Has a wonderful symmetry about it, don’t you think?’

  The two seamen now have hold of Albert Dingle’s free leg while Lugosi extricates the flipper, finally allowing the diver to slide, with little dignity or elegance, into the water. He executes a painfully inept jack-knife dive and finally vanishes into the deep.

  Mark cheers up, ‘Quite a character, Reg. Probably on his way up even now.’

  Dickenson won’t let that pass, ‘Fourth fathom: mermaid’s lingerie, yellow submarines and diving bells.’

  The hacks snigger yet again.

  But Mark is a bubble that refuses to be popped. ‘Reg is like a cork. He always bobs up.’

  four

  The Grand Atlantic Hotel is ablaze with lights.

  A howling wind rattles the windows and tears at the canvas banner over the entrance. Sixty-plus magicians in white ties and tails have assembled in the Residents’ Lounge. Mark, pale as a pillar of salt, stands before them.

  ‘He just didn’t come up… and the diver couldn’t locate him.’ His Adam’s apple seems to be wrestling with each emerging word, ‘Or… the trunk, either.’

  ‘Mystery. Big, big, big mystery.’ Lugosi is a passionate man. People are surprised to learn that Bela is, in fact, his real first name. His Hungarian mother named him after the star of Dracula, insisting he was the result of an enforced coupling with a vampire back in the old country. The performance he gives this evening is certainly on a par with his namesake. H
is shoulders rise above his ears as he flings his arms up to illustrate his disbelief. He could be singing an aria. Or describing the Virgin Mary ascending to Heaven.

  ‘Diver take key,’ he continues, ‘No trunk. Where trunk? Believe me, misters, Reg one great escapologist.’

  His passion has no effect. The magicians’ perma-tanned faces remain frozen hard.

  Mark tries to reassure them, ‘We have another diver going down at dawn.’

  Eric Wand, receding hair flattened with mousse, bangs his hands on the arms of the lounge chair he occupies, rises and begins to pace up and down. Wand is president of the Magicians’ Brotherhood.

  He finally speaks, ‘Disappearing acts like this, we could do without. Turpin was clearly a damned amateur. It’s a pity you didn’t heed our warning, Mr Miles. We deal in illusions, and reality just isn’t our bag. A publicity stunt of this nature, especially when it goes wrong …’

  Mark whimpers, ‘Wrong is too strong a word, Eric. I will admit there was a glitch –’

  ‘GLITCH?’ Wand goes red in the face. ‘A man trapped overnight in a locked trunk at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is not a glitch, Mr Miles.’

  ‘We still have key,’ Lugosi interrupts, desperate to reassure.

  ‘Shut up, Bela,’ snaps Mark. ‘Gentlemen, Reg Turpin is a great showman. Publicity is like oxygen to him. You can rest assured that Reg is not fishmeal. Reg is not in the belly of a shark, or the arms of an octopus. Right now he’s probably giving his girlfriend one in a hotel up the esplanade.’

  The ice is broken with a sprinkle of laughter.

  Mark beams, hoping to see doves appear from pockets, rabbits from top hats, cigarettes transformed into glasses of water and endless lines of flags pulled from sleeves. No such luck.

  Wand impales him with a knife-thrower’s eyes. ‘Let me remind you, Mr Miles, that Turpin is not a member of the Brotherhood. His stunt was not, in any way, part of our conference. As press officer, I insist you issue a statement to that effect, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  * * *

  Opposite the Grand Atlantic Hotel is a seafront shelter. From here William Snazell observes Mark and the magicians as their meeting comes to its untidy conclusion. Beside him sits a grim-faced giant of a man with a head that would excite even the most mundane anthropologist. Snazell can hardly bear to look at him.

  ‘Put the fear of God into him.’

  ‘Can’t do better than that, Mr Snazell.’ He stands and the detective can’t help but look up in awe. Hare, his surname alone serving for identification purposes, lopes across the esplanade, climbs the broad fan of steps and swings through the revolving door.

  The foyer of the Grand Atlantic has an air of elegant mouldiness. As does Arthur Springer, the hotel’s owner, nervously pacing the worn carpet. Springer, known to his friends as ‘Ace’, is reputed to be a much-decorated ex-fighter pilot. But nobody knows in which war; all wars having merged over the decades into one continuous stream of conflict.

  Ace’s fatal character flaw is revealed by his nose, which is a blistering red. By way of confirmation, he clutches a large glass of brandy. Hare suddenly looms before his oyster eyes; oysters delicately tinged with cayenne pepper.

  ‘Where can I find a Mr Mark Miles?’

  Springer points a shaky hand towards the Residents’ Lounge. With uncanny synchronicity one door opens and a white rabbit hops out. Haunted as he is by a fear of delirium tremens, his drinking arm begins to vibrate like a tuning fork whilst trying to guide the brandy into his expectant mouth. The arm misses, emptying the glass down his shirt front.

  ‘Shit.’

  His nerve steadies when a magician immediately pursues the rabbit, pounces on it, and pops it into a voluminous inside pocket of the kind much beloved by his profession. Phalanxes of his colleagues now roll through the double doors into the foyer. Hare struggles against this tide towards his target.

  Springer focuses with some difficulty on Eric Wand, now approaching among the flock of penguin suits.

  ‘One of your chaps missing, eh, Mr Wand?’

  Initially Wand seems hypnotised by Springer’s nose; it’s like a map of veins leading only to cirrhosis of the liver.

  The manager ploughs on, ‘Bad show. Nil desperandum. I remember during the war –’

  Ward has had enough. ‘Turpin was not one of our chaps, Mr Springer.’ He clicks his heels sharply, turns and makes for the stairs. Springer sways as he regards the vanishing magician.

  ‘Must be a bloody Kraut. Damned fellow should be sawn in half.’

  His attention is taken by angry shouts, and at first he can’t locate their source. Then his bleary eyes settle on the swing-doors of the Residents’ Lounge.

  * * *

  Hare is bellowing with rage.

  ‘You calling me a liar?’

  His encounter with Mark Miles had started pleasantly enough. The big man had introduced himself as Reg Turpin’s brother-in-law. ‘So?’ was all Miles had replied but it was enough. The eruption was sudden and volcanic. Hare’s face and eyes turned into molten lava, his voice became louder than Vesuvius.

  ‘You fucking, septic turd. Lola – my beloved wife and Reg’s sister – is a very sick woman, and all you can give me is lip? She’s already in the grip of terrible angina and Reg’s demise will, as sure as night follows day, finish her off. Listen closely, you pile of vomit, if she crosses to the hereafter because of this, you, too, will soon be meeting the Grim Reaper. Get me? Now, what’s the update on Reg?’

  ‘Update?’

  Mark has by now retreated behind the grand piano in the corner. His eyes dance in their sockets, as if trying to escape, only settling as his tongue comes to the rescue.

  ‘Reg was merely following in the steps of the late great Harry Houdini. Harry performed the same amazing act in New York Harbour.’

  ‘With one big fucking difference: Harry Houdini escaped. Reg didn’t – at least, as far as we know. Did the diver find the trunk?’

  ‘No. We have another diver going down tomorrow, at first light.’

  ‘He’d better find that fucking trunk - or you’ll be as dead as the late and not-so-great Reg Turpin. You know the cunt borrowed off his sister to finance this fiasco?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Five thousand pounds, to be precise.’

  Mark is close to fainting. As he steadies himself against the grand piano, Hare bangs the support away from under the lid, so it crashes on to Mark’s hands. His scream hits top C with ease, and rises even higher as the big man puts his full weight on the lid.

  ‘You’re in deep shit, sonny boy.’

  Hare eases the lid up, and then picks out a tune with his free hand. Mark is in no state to recognise ‘My Way’, but that’s what it is.

  ‘Reg told me he handed the money over to you.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  Mark’s not a quick learner.

  Hare bangs the lid down and up, like a snapping crocodile. While Mark howls, he changes his one-finger exercise to perform a funeral march.

  ‘Well, I ain’t allowing my wife’s savings to be wasted on having her brother buried at sea.’

  Mark foolishly tries to reason with him, ‘What about the cost of the trunk? It came from Harrods.’

  Again the lid crashes down; again Mark gives any banshee a cause to be envious.

  Hare is relentless. ‘You think I’m kidding, don’t you, cocksucker? You have just three days to return Reg to his sister. And if not Reg, then her five thousand pounds. Right?’

  Mark manages to nod.

  ‘Three days, or you’ll be as dead as Mozart.’

  With that Hare raises the lid and runs a finger the size of a courgette up the keys, executing a farewell glissando.

  Mark slides to the floor. His tear-sodden eyes shift from his mangled fingers to Hare, just as he powers through the revolving door into the foyer. Only then does Mark feel safe enough to lose consciousness.

  * * *

&n
bsp; Snazell waits contentedly in the weather shelter for Hare to join him. An eventful previous night at the Journey’s End boarding house had unexpectedly allowed him to indulge his twin obsessions: big tits and Monopoly. These two stimuli had become paraphiliacally entwined at a very early age, thanks to the aunt who introduced him to the board game while always resting her pumpkin-sized breasts on the table as she pursued her imaginary property portfolio. Imagine his surprised delight when, after several ‘apéritifs’, Mrs Westby had produced the board and suggested a game before going to bed. He’d won, easily, and his prize, as became increasingly evident with each throw of the dice, was the landlady herself. What a shame he was staying there for only one night. He interrupts his musing on seeing Hare leaving the Grand Atlantic Hotel.

  The enormous man carries a hideous smile as he lopes towards him, ‘Softened him up nicely, Mr Snazell. He’s like putty now.’

  ‘And the fear of God?’

  ‘That as well. Left him vibrating like a Jew’s harp.’

  ‘We’re talking Old Testament God?’

  ‘Is there any other?’

  Snazell stands up, satisfied. He rubs his hands and makes to leave.

  ‘Right, a cheque will be in the post to you by the end of the week.’

  His departure, however, isn’t as imminent as he had hoped. Just then Hare lays a hand on his shoulder, making him keel to one side like a yacht in a heavy wind.

  ‘You said cash.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Yes, cash. Cash in the hand.’

  ‘Did I?’

  Snazell contemplates disputing this point with Hare. But, after a shifty assessment of the giant’s demeanour, he decides against it.

  ‘In that case we’ll have to find a cashpoint.’

  This they do.

  Snazell looks about furtively as he inserts his card into the machine, and again before punching in the pin number.

  ‘Do you mind standing back a bit?’

  ‘Why? It’s not nicked is it?’ Hare looms over the podgy detective.

  ‘Piss off. This is my own perfectly valid card. You want your fee, don’t you?’