by Robert Wilde
“What was that about?” Nazir asked.
“The board said there had been another incident. I thought we should read up.”
“Oh, yes of course, sorry, go ahead.”
Pohl began reading, and Nazir looked over her shoulder. “There’s an article about a singing bear neighbours are complaining over.”
“Focus Naz, focus.”
“Slave driver.”
“Here’s the story. A man this time, he was out drinking with friends, left to catch a taxi home early, and woke up sometime later to discover his brown eyes had been removed from his face and two blue eyes put into his sockets. He found this when one fell out. He managed to stagger to a street, where he was taken immediately to hospital. He will be blind for the rest of his life.”
“Is that him?” Dee asked, looking over.
“Yes.”
“He was a good looking guy.”
“Ah, the eyes are a deal breaker for you then?” Naz teased.
“I’d date a blind man.”
“You’d have to.”
“Shut up. It’s just there’s a difference between blind and having two great big holes in the centre of your face.”
“Whereas you just have one in the form of your mouth.”
“Are you saying I talk too much or praising my blowjob skills?” Naz just snorted with laughter. “Because I haven’t had any complaints.”
“Maybe if we get back to the crime at hand,” Pohl suggested.
“Hang on,” Joe said, and everyone turned to look at him.
“Yes?”
“Well, look at that picture. That man has blonde hair. He had blonde hair and brown eyes, but someone put blue eyes in him. That woman, she was a blonde, and someone put blue eyes in her. Blonde hair and blue eyes.”
“That’s two cases…”
“We don’t know the details to the rest, but what if we’re after some Nazi weirdo.”
“Blonde hair and blue eyes…” Dee repeated out loud. “Nazis. I dunno, maybe, but does that help us?”
“Yes!” Naz shouted and grabbed his laptop off the seat.
“Nazir, you can’t just google ‘local Nazis’. There isn’t a handy public list.”
“I bet you can. Okay, let’s bring up google, let’s do a search and, hmm, the first result is for a Wehrmacht re-enactment group.”
“Why would anybody want to dress up and tit around like German soldiers?”
“Their mothers didn’t love them enough. Right, and the second result is, err, ooh.”
“What, what is it?”
“There’s a Liverpudlian Nazi.”
“In what sense?”
Nazir turned the laptop round, and everyone could see a front page which had a map of Britain, and where Liverpool should be there was a Swastika.”
“Mother’s cunt,” Dee said, “there’s a fucking Nazi round here.”
“Hitler really is the shit that keeps on giving,” Nazir sighed.
“I bet that doesn’t have his address on it?”
“No, no it doesn’t, however, we’re dealing with a Nazi here, not a rocket scientist, err, I guess they did have rocket scientists.”
“Let’s leave the history to the professor.”
“Right, I’m pretty sure I can trace the owner of this website to an address, just give me a few moments.
“I think we’ll be at the hotel soon.”
“Well bugger me,” Nazir exclaimed.
“People frequently have done.”
“No, no, I got distracted from searching by what he’s written on his site. It’s bizarre.”
“He’s a Nazi, he has a tenuous grip on reality.”
“He makes Hitler look sane.”
Pohl raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to regret asking this, but what has he said?”
“He thinks Hitler escaped the war in a flying saucer and is even now planning his return from Alpha Centauri.”
“What?”
“He thinks the Nazis are in space. Building an army of Aryans and robots, and he’ll come and liberate the world.”
“Well that certainly makes conquering Russia look a little more achievable.”
“He also thinks the Jews faked the Holocaust to make sure Israel was created.”
“I’ve heard idiots say that before,” Pohl explained.
“Yes, but this guy thinks they faked it by bringing bodies of already dead Jews from across history in a time machine.”
The others looked at each other open mouthed.
“That’s tasteless."
“This guy needs locking up somewhere,” Dee opined, “he’s completely Radio Rental.”
“He does sound like the sort of fuckpie who’d start swapping people’s eyes around. He really does.” Nazir leant back when he’d finished, more web work done. “I have a name and address.”
“I think,” Pohl said, “he’s the issue for tomorrow. We really do need some food now.”
Stapleton was angry, although this wasn’t an unusual feeling. He got very angry about immigrants, benefit claimants who had the temerity to spend some of their money on something other than gruel, Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, and Jews again for good measure. But at this particular moment he was angry about his computer, which wasn’t doing what it was told. He knew little about laptops like this, or any electronics, but wasn’t it possible to get colds through the interweb which affected the devices? Colds, or viruses, or something. Not computer AIDs, that was the gays and the monkeys.
Frustrated with how his machine was refusing to obey his commands, he decided to try turning it off and on again, because that was the full extent of his knowledge, and as he waited for the machine to do that he heard the letterbox clatter. Rising, moving out of his study and downstairs to the front door, he found a leaflet had been dropped through advertising computer repairs. No, it said “Confidential Computer Repairs”, and that was exactly what he needed, so when he returned to the machine, found it still refusing to obey, he rang and spoke to a very crisp English accent which arranged for a man to come out immediately.
He then made himself some tea, not seeing the irony of drinking something found and made in another part of the world, and the doorbell rang. Could they be here already? The service was good, he’d give them that, very good indeed, and he dashed to the door, flung it open and found…
“Hello, I’m Nazir and I’m here to repair your laptop.”
There was silence, as Stapleton looked at Nazir, and emotions were repressed. Finally he forced out “you’re not suitable.”
“Sorry?”
“Can’t come in my house. Not suitable. Sorry.” The door was then slammed shut, leaving Nazir to raise an eyebrow and return to his car.
Stapleton returned to his office, dialled the repair number, and received the same polite, clear voice.
“I’ve got a problem.”
“How may we help you?”
“Your engineer has arrived but, but, he’s not suitable.”
“I’m sorry to hear that sir, what precisely is the problem. He’s our most experienced engineer.”
“He’s… he’s…he’s brown.”
“Brown?”
“He’s a terrorist.”
“Oh, you don’t want him to come inside because he’s not white?”
“Yes, yes, and you said you were confidential so I don’t want that repeated.”
“No, no, your comments are safe with us. I think I will be able to offer you another engineer who is more to your taste, although she is a little inexperienced.”
“Is she English? White?”
“Very pale indeed. When it snows we worry we’ll lose her.”
“Excellent, excellent, please send her round. My laptop is still not responding.”
Pohl put the phone down and turned to Dee, who had her hand over her mouth to stop her laughing. “I suppose we should have predicted that would happen. How are you with computers?”
Stapleton opened his door as it rang, an
d found a very different engineer stood there. She wore the same branded t shirt as the last man, although he didn’t realise it was exactly the same t shirt, and she was tall, thin, with long red hair tied back and a smile that seemed only slightly forced.
“Hello, I’ve come to fix your computer.”
“Oh you’re much better,” Stapleton replied.
“I get that a lot,” and she looked him up and down. She’d expected to find some steroided exercise nut, instead she found a man who looked more like an accountant who spent all his time off playing Warcraft.
“Please come in,” he said, and she was soon in an ordinary looking hallway, with just a vase of players for decoration. “My laptop is in the office,” he said, and she climbed a flight of stairs with pictures of dead relatives on the wall. Soon she was ushered into a room piled high with books and papers.
“You’re a busy man,” she said winningly, “and this is this her?” Dee bent over the laptop.
“Yes, that’s, err, ‘her’. Can I get you a drink of anything?”
“I’m fine thanks, no liquids near the equipment,” and she laughed and wanted to die, “but I might be some time, if you have other things to do…”
He took the hint and left her too it. Her first task was to sit at the laptop, put a memory stick in, and upload Naz’s programme, which installed itself secretly and stopped all the errors Naz had introduced through the wi-fi. Knowing that Nazir was now reading the hard drive she rose and looked round the office.
A lot of books, mostly to do with the Second World War, and mostly to do with the Germans. Some had unusual titles, like “Wehrmacht Soldier Birthday Cards” and the triple volume set “SS Spoons, SS Knives, SS Forks”, some slightly more sensible. So someone liked their Germans all right, but she couldn’t find anything on this pass to do with eyeballs.
Okay, out of this room and creeping down the hallway, Dee opened the next door and found a bathroom. There was no obvious signs of blood or bodily material, no obvious tools, just the usual toiletries and a cupboard filled with pills. Then it was onto the opposite room, a guest bedroom which was straight from Ikea, complete with trendy furnishings. Getting disappointed, Dee exited that room, went down the corridor and opened the door into Stapleton’s bedroom.
Most people had a bed in their room, some even had custom made bedspreads & duvet covers. Stapleton had one, but Dee had never conceived someone would have made a giant swastika cover for their bed. Jaw open she walked in, and was surrounded by the Nazi fetish motherload. Helmets on shelves, uniforms under clear plastic, little bullets and empty shells, medals, every scrap of space had been Nazied the shit out of.
“Someone really needs a fucking hobby,” she whispered to herself as she walked over to the only part of the room that seemed to have survived, a safe. Leaning down, she noted the note sellotaped to the safe with the combination on it. Well, he’s a fucking Nazi, what do you expect. It was a simple matter to put the details in, open the safe and look inside.
Disappointingly, and she was alarmed that her life had reached a point when it was disappointing, she found no mention of eyes. What she did find were a collection of polaroids of Stapleton wearing the uniforms. Well, half wearing, because his top half was immaculate Nazi, his bottom half was stark naked and standing to attention. Twice.
“What are you doing,” came a confused voice from behind him.
“What are you doing!” Dee replied as she wheeled waving the photographs.
“You’re not supposed to be going through my safe!”
Dee opened her mouth to shoot back, looked at the polaroids, and changed what she was going to say. “I have misjudged you. You’re not an eyeball thief.”
“A what… oh, that’s on the news, it’s… you think I stole eyeballs!”
“Don’t get all indignant while you’ve got this in your house you fucking mental.”
“But why would you think it was me? Look, why don’t we have some tea and discuss this.”
“Tea? From India? With the Indians?”
“Err, oh, anyway, tea?”
Which was how, five minutes later, Dee was sat with an expensive china cup in her hand opposite a red faced Nazi. “Would you like a biscuit?” He asked. She wanted to say no, but they were hobnobs, so fuck it.
“Okay, you have nice biscuits.”
“So why me?”
“We there was some sort of connection between the blue eye being put into blonde haired people.”
“Oh, an Aryan was doing it.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard of any Aryan trying to do that.”
“I know a historian, she told us Nazi doctors tried to dye people’s eyeballs different colours.”
“I’m not sure that’s true.”
“No, you’re not are you, and that’s a big, big fucking problem with you.”
“I think you’ll find your historian, and your received ‘wisdom’ and everything you know is wrong and was created in the aftermath of a war by the victors. The truth…”
“You mean the spaceships and shit.”
“Yes, yes! You read my website.”
“Well, we all sat round drinking and having a laugh at it if that counts.”
“Hitler is alive and in the galaxy, and he’ll come back as our saviour.”
Dee opened her mouth to ask if Hitler’s brain was in a jar now, but that didn’t seem funny given everything that had happened to them since they’d had the box.
“If he has a nice base and a nice planet and is in charge why would he come back to this shit hole?”
“What?”
“Why would he come back here?”
“It’s, err, lebensraum?”
“I should have seen that coming. Really should.”
“But you still think I’m an eye thief?”
“No, no you’re not. You get your jollies wanking off in Nazi uniform which, while morally repugnant and sure to haunt my nightmares, is a lot different from the person we’re looking for.”
“I think that’s a thank you sort of reply. What happens to me?”
“To you?”
“Yes, what do you tell the police?”
“Ah.” She hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t suppose you’re doing anything illegal, it’s all in the privacy of your own little house. I guess I can leave and let you carry on.”
“That would be great.”
“But I’ll keep your website bookmarked and if you start causing real trouble I’ll come round and shit you up.”
“That sounds fair. What about my laptop?”
“Oh, I fixed that. You owe me £80.”
Dee walked down the step, counting the four twenty pounds notes, and was soon driving back to their hotel with the unpopular manoeuvre of having the phone to her ear. She gave them a full recap of the day’s adventures, then added “He’s innocent, he’s just a stupid fucking child.”
“Dammit,” Nazir replied, “back to stage one.”
“You didn’t find anything on his laptop?” She half expected to be proved totally wrong.
“No, nothing to do with eyes.”
“I still feel I should have done something. Not burn his house down, exactly, but something. The guy’s got a fucking Nazi bedspread.”
“So, basically, there’s some really fucked up craft site out there. We should probably find it.”
“We are not encouraging these people.”
“Well, don’t worry, I’ve got your revenge for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll show you when you’re back at the hotel.”
Intrigued, Dee drove back, picking up a tray of coffees for them, and she was soon knocking on Nazir’s door and being let in.
“Ooh, coffee.”
“And it’s very good stuff Nazir, we need to see if they’ve got a chain down near us. Now, what is this revenge?”
“Ooh yeah,” and he chuckled evilly. “Come look at this.”
Soon th
e three were hunched round a screen. “What am I looking at?” Pohl asked.
“This is Stapleton’s laptop, I’m in it. It’s working fine now, but I’ve tweaked my programme, so every time he turns it on the browser loads up this website.”
“Big Black Cocks?” Pohl said, sounding deeply embarrassed at the last word.
“Oh yes. Then it changes his screensaver to a random picture from Arseketteers, and his background screen to the Chocolate Factory.”
“Tell me you had to google this and it isn’t just saved in your favourites.”
“Oh, well Dee, shall we have a look through your favourites?”
“Touch my laptop and I’ll circumcise your throat.”
“That’s a clear sign of guilt right there.”
“So, basically, this guy is going on a gay porn safari and he can’t stop it?”
“Yes Dee,” Nazir said grinning. “I also signed him and his pc up to all the cruising apps I could find.”
They all broke down laughing, including Joe, “the poor, poor Nazi. He’ll have to buy a whole new laptop to clear that out.”
Dee was laying on her bed in the hotel room very pleased with herself for having fallen on the bed so perfectly her whisky was within reach, and wondering if she’d bother going down to the evening meal or just order room service. Things were so comfortable and lovely like this, laying here, alone, her mind half in another world, that she almost didn’t want to go and see her friends and try and chase all this bullshit down, she could just fall asleep right here and go permanently to another place.
Her peace was to be interrupted, because her phone rang. She saw it was from Jeff, so she pulled herself up, slapped her cheek and answered.
“Hi there.”
“Hello, how is the investigation going?”
“We have nothing,” she confessed.
“Well you’ve got another shot, we have another victim, have you got a pen and I’ll give you the details.”
Dee decided to keep quiet on the fact her veins were buzzing with alcohol, and dutifully wrote down what Jeff had for her.
“Will you go in the morning?” he asked.
