The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8)

by Robert Rankin

  ‘It means, my dear Rizla, that I have saved the patrons of the Palace Pier from an unexpected pillaging – or at least will do once the case is solved and the murderer brought to justice. And there will be a profit in it for the both of us.’

  ‘The bog troll is going to pay you?’

  ‘For bringing his brother’s murderer to book, the galleon that the ship-builders at the marina are presently constructing for him will become mine. I had him sign a contract to this effect.’

  ‘In blood?’

  Mr Rune cast me a certain glance. ‘How else?’ he asked. ‘How else?’

  We did not visit the circus that day, but as Fangio’s tickets were for the following week, this mattered not.

  We travelled instead to Moulsecoomb.

  And we travelled in a taxicab that I hailed for our conveyance.

  The taxi driver’s name was Ralph, and he was an avid supporter of Chelsea Football Club. To which, he promised us, ‘I offer my allegiance and will continue so to do until the Rapture comes and the good are carried bodily to Heaven.’

  He then went on to expound his views upon the gift of prophecy. ‘What folk don’t understand,’ he told us, ‘is that prophets aren’t blessed by God. It’s just that they are able to see the peaks. Time doesn’t travel in a straight line, you see. Time is like light, it comes in waves. You can chart it, like a hospital chart of a patient’s heartbeat.’

  I cared not for talk of hospitals, what with my recent experience in one and everything, but the taxi driver continued, ‘So time comes in waves, peaks and troughs, like on a chart, and your prophet, he can see from one peak to the next – like a mountaineer, if you will. He can see what’s on the next peak. And on the last one, but prophets never predict the past, you notice. They always look forward. And do you know why they do that?’

  Well, I never learned why. Because by that time we had reached our destination, which was within the gates of Moulsecoomb, for cabbies were allowed entry. And there was some unpleasantness regarding the matter of the fare.

  And I turned away once more.

  ‘Widdicombe Way,’ said Mr Rune. ‘A rather insalubrious neck of the woods.’

  ‘This is a most unsavoury neighbourhood,’ I said. ‘We will be murdered here for certain. And most likely eaten also.’

  ‘Plah!’ cried Mr Rune, ‘no man dines upon Hugo Rune.’ The Lad Himself brandished his stout stick. ‘I am a master of Dimac,’ he continued, ‘personally tutored by Count Dante himself.’

  ‘A chum of Count Otto?’

  ‘Another count entirely. But have no fear for your safety, young Rizla. Hugo Rune will protect you.’

  ‘Then I will have no fear,’ I assured him. ‘But what are we doing here?’

  ‘I wish to gain an overview of the situation. We are going to visit the house of the deceased.’

  ‘I see,’ I said and I followed Mr Rune as he paced on ahead. And I have to confess that I marvelled at the man when I did so. Not because he was pacing on ahead – anyone could do a simple thing like that. No, it was something much more than that. Mr Hugo Rune had a way about him, something that signalled him as being above the everyday and the everyman. He was an enigma, a riddle wrapped around an enigma and tied with a string of surprising circumstances. He appeared to inhabit his own separate universe, where normal laws – and I do not mean those of the legal persuasion – did not apply. Who he was and what he was, I know not to this day.

  But he was certainly someone.

  ‘Pacey-pacey, Rizla,’ Mr Rune called back to me. ‘The worm of time turns not for the cuckoo of circumstance.’ And how true those words are, even today.

  I did not like the look of the house we stopped at. I did not like the look of the gun emplacements in the front garden, nor the rocket launchers on the roof. And I did not take kindly to the garden gnomes.

  ‘What are those three gnomes doing?’ I asked Mr Rune.

  And he told me.

  ‘The house seems quiet,’ said the Cosmic Dick. ‘Too quiet, in fact. Follow me.’

  And I followed him.

  The front door was made of steel and fortified with many rivets, but it was not locked.

  ‘Suggestive,’ said Mr Rune.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of many things, but none of them auspicious.’ And he pushed upon the door, which swung open soundlessly. ‘Also suggestive,’ he said. ‘I suspect foul play.’

  The hallway smelled of something. I think it was Bird Puller. Mr Rune sniffed at the air and said, ‘Suggestive,’ once again. ‘Search for clues,’ said he. ‘See what you can come up with.’

  I shrugged and went off searching.

  I did not take much to the hallway. The floor was of mottled linoleum and the walls were papered with a drab floral print. Photographs hung upon these walls – military group photographs. I gave them a bit of perusal. There was the face of Bartholomew – or more probably, on reflection, his brother – grinning along with a bunch of hard-looking soldier boys. I read what was printed beneath this photograph: The Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers. I had never heard of that regiment before and I headed into the lounge.

  I did not much take to the front lounge. It was furnished with a sofa and chairs of the style known as hideous. Their horizontal surfaces resembled the flight decks of aircraft carriers and the vertical ones the north face of the Eiger. There was a preponderance of tweed, and a severe lack of cotton. I am no connoisseur of fabrics, although I do know when to call a spade a spade and when to avoid doing so, lest I cause offence. But there was nothing even vaguely spade-like here and I was lost for an answer to that eternal question: Why?

  There were medals in a glass case on the wall, big important-looking medals with strange sigils and planetary signs upon them. I shrugged my shoulders at these medals and moved on. There were maps on the walls also, maps of the surrounding area with crosses marked variously upon them. A wall calendar, also with markings – rings about certain days. One, I noticed, about today’s date. I moved on.

  A desk stood by the window, a desk cluttered with papers through which I nosed. I examined one of several letters: ‘Dear Prime Minister’ it began, and beneath that there were lots of crossings out. The other letters all looked the same. There were many books to be seen on shelves, books of philosophy and religious matters.

  Mr Rune peered over my shoulder and said, ‘Suggestive,’ to me.

  ‘Digestive?’ I said. ‘I would love a chocolate digestive.’

  ‘You’re piddled,’ said Mr Rune.

  ‘I am not,’ I said, ‘but I do feel rather odd.’

  And I did. I suddenly felt giddy and sick and the room began shifting unsteadily.

  ‘Out!’ cried Mr Rune. ‘It is all around us and it is affecting you.’

  ‘Or a ginger snap,’ I said. ‘Or a caramel spaniel. One with a waggily tail.’

  ‘Out, quickly.’ And Mr Rune grasped me under the armpits and hauled me bodily from the house.

  Outside and in the sunlight, I came to myself once again. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘I feel altogether strange. What happened to me in there?’

  ‘We are on to something here,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Something untoward. Something unique and unsurpassingly queer. We have stepped into a sticky situation.’

  ‘I think I am going to be sick,’ said I.

  ‘Better that than to end up dead in a crab suit upon the Sussex Downs.’

  ‘You mean … ?’ said I.

  ‘I mean,’ said Mr Rune, ‘that the brother of Bartholomew Moulsecoomb was undoubtedly murdered. This is a very bad thing. A truly bad thing. If I am not very much mistaken, this is a plot not only to bring down the House of Windsor, but also the British government itself.’

  ‘And that is a bad thing?’ I asked.

  PART II

  I sat in the front garden next to one of the unmanned gun emplacements whilst Mr Rune returned to the house. I heard sounds issuing from within, bangings and scrapings and other noises that suggested that hea
vy chains were being hauled to and fro over corrugated iron. And then the distinctive chiming of a Burmese temple bell, the plaintive howl of a spaniel and what appeared to be the roar of a train coming out of a tunnel, a factory chimney being demolished, an owl hooting and finally the sound of silence.

  Mr Rune emerged from the house with several LPs under his arm. ‘I don’t think too much of the sound-effects records,’ he said, ‘but I’m keeping this Simon and Garfunkel one.’

  ‘That is not even remotely funny,’ I told him. ‘I saw it coming a mile off.’

  ‘Which is as it should be, young Rizla, but my money, if I carried any, which I do not because I always feel impelled to give it away to the poor, would be placed upon a bet with you that you have not observed the larger picture.’

  ‘You are probably right there,’ I said, rising to my feet and dusting grass-cuttings away from my person. ‘Did you find any clues in the house, or were you even looking for any?’

  ‘I have already made up my mind regarding this case. It is, in its way, all but solved.’ Hugo Rune flicked through the LPs he was carrying. ‘This Captain Beefheart, is he any good?’

  ‘Exceedingly so. Do you have any Robert Johnson there?’

  ‘The very question I was hoping you would ask.’

  ‘And the answer?’

  ‘We must proceed at once to the Sussex Downs. You will note that the sun is already beginning to set.’

  ‘I trust you will not be taking any personal credit for that.’

  Mr Rune raised a hairless eyebrow. ‘We will need torches,’ he said.

  ‘Flaming ones?’ I asked. ‘As are generally carried by villagers when they storm Castle Frankenstein?’

  Mr Rune sighed deeply. ‘You are still not entirely yourself, young Rizla, so please do this for me.’ And he pointed with a podgy digit back towards the house. ‘Close your right eye and hold your nose and tell me what you see.’

  I gave him the blankest of stares.

  ‘Just do it,’ said the All-Knowing One.

  And so I shrugged and did it.

  I did not see anything untoward at first, just a rather shabby, dull suburban dwelling, which, but for its rooftop rocket launcher, titanium-alloy window grills and sandbag heapings, looking much the same as any similar house might look in any similar street. Although quite unlike one of a different period in a different country somewhere else – Wales, say, or Greece, or possibly the Solomon Islands. But then, as I breathed in through my unblocked nostril, I saw it: there appeared to be something shrouding the house, like a mist, perhaps, or more like a shimmering film, oily, glistening, but difficult to pin down. It sort of came and went as you looked at it. And the more you did not look, it came, and the more you did, it went.

  ‘Whatever is that?’ I asked, turning to Mr Rune.

  The Reinventor of the Ocarina was red in the face and he let out a terrible gasp. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘To grant you the ability to see what I see, even for a moment, is an exhausting exercise. But you did see it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did,’ I said. But looking back I could no longer see it at all. ‘But what is it?’

  Mr Rune gave his nose a significant tap. ‘All will be revealed, and upon this very night. And you will be offered an opportunity to redress the imbalance that exists between us.’

  ‘The financial imbalance?’ I asked. ‘Does this mean that you will be sharing fifty-fifty whatever profits you hope to derive from solving this case? Can I have half-shares in the galleon?’

  ‘You certainly can not,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I speak of a spiritual imbalance – that I have upon two occasions saved your life. Tonight it will be your turn to save mine. Please don’t make a fist of it, Rizla. I am not as yet ready to move on to my next incarnation.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, you can trust me.’

  ‘So,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Torches. And armaments, too, I feel. Bring one of the machine-guns from that emplacement there.’

  ‘A machine-gun? I do not know about that.’

  ‘I will teach you. There isn’t much to it. I observe that the machine-gun there is none other than a General Electric M135 7.62mm minigun, of the variety that they are presently using on the gunships in Vietnam. A war, I hasten to add, that was precipitated by a bet between Aristotle Onassis and Howard Hughes. The General Electric is a sound enough weapon, dispensing, as it does, six thousand rounds per minute from its six rotating barrels. Now let us hasten back to the cab, and be off to the Sussex Downs.’

  Mr Rune suggested that for his own safety and wellbeing, the unconscious cabbie be placed in the boot of his own taxicab. And this I did unaided, for Mr Rune complained that his shoulder was playing up – ‘the one that had been struck by a Jezail bullet during the Afghanistan Campaign, where I was serving as spiritual adviser to General Custer.’

  I dumped the cabbie in the boot and dropped the lid.

  And then I drove off towards the Sussex Downs.

  Mr Rune had not as yet acquired for me the Bentley he had promised; although he had assured me that it was on order. But my driving skills were improving and I merely glanced against a few parked cars, and sent just a single cleric flying from his pushbike on this occasion.

  Oh, and there was some unpleasantness when I nearly ran down a fellow who was filling his Morris Minor with petrol at the garage we stopped off at to purchase a couple of torches.

  Now, I do have to say that I had taken a shine to the glorious Sussex Downs, their natural glories, flora, fauna and things of that nature generally. I took the occasional stroll upon them when I felt the need for solitude, which was not often, I confess, as I am gregarious by nature. In fact, if the very truth be utterly told, I never took a stroll upon them at all, for I cared as little for nature as I did for Art.

  ‘There are an awful lot of these Downs,’ I said to Mr Rune as I drove amongst them on the road that leads towards Henfield. ‘Is there any specific part you would like to visit? It all looks much of a muchness to me, although I cannot see much of the muchness at all now, as it is growing somewhat dark.’

  ‘Keep driving,’ called Mr Rune from the rear of the taxicab. ‘I’ll tell you when I wish to stop.’

  And presently he did so and I pulled to the side of the road.

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘To the very spot where Bartholomew’s brother expired.’

  ‘And you know exactly where this spot is?’

  ‘So would you had you observed a little more closely whilst we were at his house. But that is not entirely your fault. Bring the machine-gun and follow me.’

  ‘You said you would teach me how to use it.’

  ‘And I will, when the need arises. Now pacey-pacey, Rizla,’ called Mr Rune, marching on ahead. ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s loincloth won’t go washing itself.’

  And who can argue with that?

  It was very dark upon the Sussex Downs by that point, and rather chilly, too. I felt very out of place there. And somehow rather vulnerable. Even though I carried a General Electric M135 7.62mm minigun – or struggled beneath its considerable weight, to be precise. But I did not fit in in places such as this – outdoor places, where there were no pavements. I was, and still am, strictly a town-dweller. You know where you are in a town, but out in the wilds, well, you could be anywhere.

  The torch that Mr Rune carried was flashing its light all about as his chunky silhouette loped onwards at an easy pace. He had told me that he had once walked alone across the Kalahari Desert wearing a dinner suit and carrying only a rolled copy of The Times for protection, in order to win a bet with Lawrence of Arabia. Whether this was true or not, there were certainly times when he showed remarkable energy and stamina for a man of his not inconsiderable bulk. This, it seemed, was one of those times and I was sorely flagging.

  ‘Keep up, Rizla.’ Mr Rune turned and shone his torch in my face.

  ‘This gun is bl**d*ng heavy,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, a touch of the Old Sussex dialec
t. How fitting.’

  ‘That particular running gag, if such it is,’ I said, ‘will soon run its course when I run out of swear words.’

  ‘Well, as it happens we’re nearly there.’ Mr Rune’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Now listen to me, Rizla, and listen to me closely. What you are about to witness you will not entirely understand, but do as I say, when I say it, and all will be well. Do you understand this?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘And I am cold.’

  ‘Things will soon warm up, methinks. Now follow close at hand. I’m going to switch off the torch.’

  Mr Rune did this and the darkness closed about us.

  ‘And now I am scared,’ I confessed. ‘There could be badgers about and those things can give you a terrible biting.’

  ‘Badgers are the least of our concerns. Stay close behind me, in case of man traps.’

  ‘Man traps?’ My voice made the whisper known as hoarse.

  ‘We are on secret government property now, and I do not mean property owned secretly by the government – I mean property owned by the Secret Government.’

  It was an uphill struggle. In the literal sense of the words. Mr Rune was on his hands and knees now and so was I, struggling uphill, the minigun slung across my shoulders and Mr Rune’s big bottom filling most of what little vision I had.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ I whispered.

  ‘Nearly, and indeed yes. Come up alongside me, Rizla, and position your weapon according to my specific instructions.’

  Mr Rune’s specific instructions were: ‘Lay it there, pointing in that direction.’ Which I gratefully did. And then I peered out into the darkness all around and a big breath of surprise caught in my throat.

  We were crouched, it appeared, upon the rim of some natural indentation in the Downs. But it was a vast indentation, somewhat like to that of an extinct volcano. It was a great crater of a thing, with steep sides that led down and down.

  To brightness.

  The only way to describe what I saw is as an encampment. There were vehicles parked there that looked to be of the military persuasion, but these were not of your everyday military ilk. They were camouflaged, but in psychedelic colours, positively Day-Glo, and lit by strips of lights that were powered by a chugging generator. And within the brightness of these lights were many folk all busily engaged in activities that were strange and enigmatic to me. And there was equipment, too, scientific equipment – big portable computer jobbies with rotating tape wheels and rows of valves that glimmered and glistened and looked very much all the present state of the art.