Incompetence

by Rob Grant

  And my gun was all broken. Even if it hadn't been, it was up at the front of the carriage, where I couldn't possibly reach it.

  But the stun stick. The stun stick was still lying somewhere around here. It was lying between the seats, maybe three or four rows in front of me.

  Did I dare risk going forward to look for it?

  Did I dare not?

  The wagon was straining up the vertical climb.

  I had about three minutes, I reckoned.

  I didn't rush things, though. I moved as gently as I could over the seats in front.

  The capsule didn't mind that. It didn't lurch at all.

  I climbed over the next row; again, all slow and genteel.

  Still, the capsule remained stable.

  I put my leg over the next row, and the capsule tilted forward, then lurched back again.

  The stun stick rolled out from under the seat I had my leg cocked over. I waited as long as I dared, then tried moving forward very, very gently. I got my right leg onto the seat. I started to bring my left over, and the capsule lurched again, so I brought it back immediately.

  I waited for the capsule to right itself again.

  I couldn't see the maintenance truck from here, but I could hear it whining. It was getting closer. I had to make my move, or I'd be a sitting duck, perched over the top of the seat here like a broncobuster.

  I swung my left leg onto the seat and immediately threw all the body weight I could muster backwards.

  The capsule tilted again, then swung back level.

  I bent my knees and reached for the stun stick.

  The capsule lurched again, and the stick rolled out of my grasp.

  Again I transferred my weight backwards and waited.

  The capsule lolled back horizontal, and the stick rolled back into range. I grabbed it. I grabbed it good.

  I grabbed it just as the maintenance truck reached the capsule's tail.

  I climbed back onto the seat behind, and crouched on the floor below it.

  There was a jolt as the truck made contact with the capsule. I thought for one terrible second that it was going to nudge me over the edge, that that had been the entire purpose of the trip, but no. The maintenance truck was just docking with the capsule.

  That was good, because its extra weight would make the capsule more stable. What it also meant, though, was that there was almost certainly a way of gaining access to the capsule from the truck.

  There would be some kind of concealed door built into the pod's tail for transferring passengers from the capsule to the truck.

  I heard it whirring away, and I saw a metre-wide circular opening magically appear at the back of the pod, and start sliding to one side.

  I ducked down.

  I thought this might be a good time to test the stun stick. I didn't want to be rushing at an angry psychopath I'd recently holed in the head brandishing just an empty hollow tube to prod him with. That was only going to make him angrier still. I thumbed the trigger. There was a tiny little 'zizz' sound and nothing else at all.

  The stick was dead.

  And so, in all probability, was I.

  The emergency door stopped whirring, and I heard someone step through.

  There was a small silence that lasted just less than a giant sea turtle's lifetime, and then there was a voice.

  It wasn't the voice I was expecting.

  It wasn't a voice I thought I'd ever want to hear again.

  But, right now, it sounded like angel music.

  The voice said: 'Pepperpot, you son of a fricking bitch. Did you really think you could get away from me, you shit stain on a harlot's tampon?'

  Zuccho? How the hell had the anger management madman got here? And what did he want? Was he rescuing me or arresting me?

  Well, whatever plans he had in mind for my long-term future, it had to be better than becoming an integral part of the Alpine scenery. I stood up and grinned. 'Why, Captain Zuccho. I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to see you again.'

  His eyes bulged with mad delight. 'The pleasure's all mine, you filthy piece of dog puke.'

  And then the bastard shot me.

  FORTY-SIX

  I blacked out. I had no choice in the matter. The bullet hit my body, my body registered the pain with my brain, and my brain just said, 'Lights out.'

  When I came to, I was in the maintenance truck, heading back down to Mystic Mountain with Zuccho bending over my leg tightening a makeshift tourniquet around it.

  'Zuccho?' I said. My mouth was very dry.

  He looked up at me. 'Listen. I'm going to apologise to you for that little fracas back there.'

  The little fracas, presumably, in which he almost blew my leg off. 'Yeah, right.' I nodded. 'I know. You got a little overly frisky.'

  'That I did. I didn't mean to be shooting you, it just sort of boiled up out of me.'

  'Zuccho, have you ever considered trying Prozac?'

  'I'm on Prozac, Pepperpot. I eat Prozac like it's jelly beans. You should've seen me before I was medicated. I was a fricking nightmare to live with.'

  'Not that I'm not grateful and all, hole in the leg notwithstanding, but what the hell are you doing here?'

  'I tailed you. I tailed you from the Plaything Club in Vienna.'

  'How did you know I was going to be there?'

  'I may have rummaged through your belongings while you were down in the holding cells in Paris. I found the card. I was waiting in there when you showed up. While you were off chit-chatting with that disgustingly decrepit bunny boy -- which whole interlude, I have to say, I found revolting -- I popped a tracking bug in your overcoat lapel, just in case you gave me the slip again. I was about to pounce when I got into a little... well, let's call it an altercation. Next time I looked, that zap-happy greaseball was nailing you instead.'

  'And you tailed me here.'

  "Sright.' He tugged on the tourniquet, just a little too tight.

  'What did you hear?'

  'I heard plenty. Not everything, but I heard enough. That Yankee doodle dandy guy was really out there.'

  'You said it.'

  'Tell me, Pepperpot, just who the hell are you? I mean, really.'

  'I'm nobody, Zuccho. Like the federal man said: I'm the original guy who wasn't there.'

  'You're something. I don't know what you are, and I probably don't want to know.'

  'Probably not,' I agreed. 'You probably don't.'

  The maintenance truck docked at the platform, and Zuccho helped me out.

  'What about Klingferm?' I asked him.

  'The whacko Yank? He ran off. But wait, you're going to love this.'

  He led me along the platform and shone a torch on the wall. There was a big smear of blood along it.

  'I got him?'

  'You got him, all right.' Zuccho nodded. 'You got him big time.' He panned the torch to the mesh floor. There was a wet-looking blob of something fairly gristly lying there. 'You shot out a big chunk of his brain.'

  'His brain?. I shot out a chunk of his brain?. And he kept running?'

  Zuccho nodded again. 'I've seen it before. They say we only use about two per cent of our brains. Yankee boy better pray that's true, 'cause two per cent is about all he's got left.'

  'You'd better watch out, Zuccho. Those kind of credentials, he'll be after your job.'

  Using Zuccho as a crutch, I hobbled out of the mountain entrance into the startling snow-bounced sunlight, and we climbed into the cable car. Wolfie's body was gone. There was a big streak of gore and mucus where Klingferm had dragged it out. Must have been a tricky job for a guy missing a hippocampus and all points west.

  I saw Zuccho looking at the stain, too, doing the same arithmetic as me. 'D'you suppose he could live?' I asked him. 'You think anyone could survive a shot like that, long term?'

  'Survive? It's possible, he gets himself to a world-class neurosurgeon within the hour. That's assuming he can remember the word "neurosurgeon". Either way, let's face it: he's got a hole
in his head you could fly a biplane through. He's not going to be making too many Blofeld-type plans for world domination in the near future.'

  Zuccho said the words and he sounded like he meant them, but I couldn't help noticing he kept his right hand within very easy reach of his shoulder holster for the rest of our walk out of the park.

  There were splashes of drying blood scattered in an unpredictable pattern on the paving all along the way, suggesting Klingferm had staggered an elaborately erratic route. It must have taken an effort far beyond superhuman for him to hoist Wolfie's body all that way with the wind whistling through his half-empty skull. I kept on expecting to turn a corner and find the pair of them lying there, corpsing up the cobbles of old New York, but it didn't happen.

  The splatters diminished in frequency as we approached the exit, and disappeared altogether in the car park.

  There was a sticky puddle of coagulate where Klingferm must have spent a wee while struggling to get Wolfie's body into his car, which suggested, bizarrely, that he was working alone and unaided. Could he possibly have driven away on his own, the condition he was in?

  Maybe. But not for long. He wouldn't get far.

  Zuccho had reached the same conclusion. 'You think we should chase after the Yankee freak with half a fricking head? I could put out an APB. He wouldn't exactly be hard to spot: just look for the guy with only one profile.'

  I thought about it, then shook my head. 'He's lost, what, four pints of blood here? Plus, like you said, Zuccho: the man's not about to become world chess champion anytime soon. Even if he makes it, it'll take his entire remaining intellect and years of retraining for him to work out which orifice he's supposed to poop through.'

  It was sound enough logic, but the truth was: despite everything Klingferm had done, in spite of what he'd put me through, I had no desire to see first-hand the damage my bullet had inflicted on him. Especially if he did miraculously manage to survive it on any kind of long-term basis. That was one nightmare I could live without, thank you so very kindly.

  Zuccho nodded. 'Besides, you lost a lot of blood of your own back there. You should probably be thinking about getting your extremely ugly self to a bullet doctor, double-quick time.'

  He helped me over to his hire car and propped me against the wing while he opened the passenger door. For the first time in quite a while, I started realising I had a future, and I was beginning to wonder what that might be. 'What's the deal here, Zuccho?' I said. 'You wouldn't be thinking of arresting me, now, would you?' I'm not saying I'd exactly grown fond of the deranged detective, but I was in no mood to be inflicting any kind of unnecessary hurt on him, neither.

  'Arresting you, Pepperpot? What are you talking about? I never even saw you. I'm here on fricking vacation, is all. This is me, relaxing. What happens next, I drop you off at a bullet-hole repair man, then I'm on the next flight home. And hopefully you make a lifestyle decision to avoid Rome and its immediate environs for the next couple of millennia or so. That's the deal, if it's jake with you.'

  'It's jake with me all right. Just one small detail: I do the driving.'

  'You? Drive? Get serious. You're pumping blood like a bad matador with haemophilia.'

  'Better that than travelling six hours along slender winding Alpine roads with Italy's anger management champion for the last eleven consecutive years at the wheel.'

  Zuccho thought about it. He thought about getting mad about it, too, but he mastered the urge. 'OK'. He nodded. 'You've got yourself a point. I nearly killed myself a dozen times along the way here. Fricking cyclists.'

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The pilot almost landed at the right airport, but missed the runway more or less entirely, so we had to leave the plane by way of the emergency chute and I lost my shoes again.

  I wasn't too bothered this time; the damned things were made of melon anyway. What did bother me was that the self-inflating dinghies failed utterly to live up to their name, and we had to swim to the terminal building.

  I was fairly tuckered out by the time I'd limped through Customs and Security, dripping wet and in my stockinged feet, lodged the usual useless lost luggage claims form with a narcoleptic baggage complaints clerk who fell asleep seventeen times during our conversation, and sloshed my way to the taxi rank to find the queue stretched back almost as far as the nation state I'd originally flown in from.

  But I waited patiently. I wasn't in too much of a hurry.

  Now my cover was blown beyond repair, thanks to the redoubtable Captain Zuccho, I had nothing much to go back to. Technically, I should have killed Zuccho, of course -- Klingferm had been right about that -- but what for now? So I could go back to a job I'd learned to hate, and a life that wasn't worth living?

  I didn't want any part of it anymore. I didn't know what I was going to do, except start living again. Maybe I'd start up a private detective agency and spend my time chasing faithless wives and cheating husbands, if I could bear the tawdriness of it all.

  But I'd think about that tomorrow.

  And tonight?

  Tonight I had a date with a copper-topped dame that was so hot, you could use it to cut through bank vaults.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  I would like to thank all the team at Orion for their saintly patience while we all waited for this book to show up, especially my editor, Simon Spanton. I would also like to thank my agent, Jonny Geller -- without him, this book might not have happened at all. Thanks, also, to the crew at The Victoria Stakes, who helped me through the dark days of this novel with kindness, succour, and even more importantly, lots of beer.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE