Watching the Wheels Come Off

by Mike Hodges

  ‘What if the PII were lying? What if Claudio didn’t go back to Italy?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I think something went seriously wrong on that course. Something involving Claudio. The PII say he came top of the class, so was awarded an onyx and marble mantel clock. But I don’t believe them.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So Mrs Cross offered us a reward to find him. You are obviously unaware of that.’

  ‘Did she really?’

  ‘Five thousand pounds!’

  Block’s eyes blaze as she reaches for the phone.

  ‘I’ve seen too many young men like you in this house. Charlatans, snake-oil salesmen, blackmailers, grifters – and now a bounty hunter.’

  She finishes dialling.

  ‘This call is to the police. So I suggest you get the hell out of here before they answer.’

  twelve

  Snazell is back in the entrance of the shop opposite Mark’s office. He makes himself comfortable on bags of garbage carefully selected from the heap awaiting collection on the pavement. He is tempted to upturn his trilby on the step to test the charitable instincts of any passers-by, but decides against it.

  Nobody passes by anyway.

  It is Sunday and the church further up the road has long since closed. During the holiday season it’s used as a disco. ‘Hell’ is painted in red above the dripstone, and again on the church door. At least the operator has a sense of humour. He needs it. On summer nights the place lives up to its name.

  The roar of Mark’s Yamaha heralds his return. It turns into the street, coming to rest outside Provenance House. Snazell watches as Mark unlocks the front door, and then waits for him to appear on the third floor.

  * * *

  Sometimes Mark removes his titanium flip-front helmet in front of the mirrored Victorian hat-stand immediately inside the door of his office. He likes to observe his image switch from hard metallic sheen to soft vulnerable flesh.

  This morning the flesh looks close to death, and for a good reason. The reward he’s been banking on has turned out to be a dead end, literally. He now has only two days left to get the five grand. A vision of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart beckoning from among billowing clouds keeps emerging from some dark cell in his brain, taking him unawares and causing severe palpitations.

  The phone cracks through this daydream, making him jump. He lets the ancient answering machine take the strain, although his numerous creditors are unlikely to be wringing their hands on a Sunday. It clunks loudly as the ‘greeting’ cassette stops and the one for ‘messages’ starts. Snazell’s nasal tones are now being recorded.

  ‘I know you’re there, Mr Miles.’

  Mark angrily snatches up the receiver.

  ‘Piss off!’

  ‘Don’t be like that. I’ve some good news for you.’

  ‘Not again.’

  ‘Just take a look outside and you’ll see what I mean.’

  Mark fights to resist this line but can’t help himself. He sidles furtively to the window. There’s Snazell on the pavement opposite, holding his mobile phone to his ear. He sees Mark immediately and waves the same fat wad of money as before.

  ‘Look! No strings attached, promise. Two hundred of these is not to be sneezed at.’ He crosses the road in anticipation of the door being released. ‘Let me in, there’s a good fellow.’

  Mark wonders what his game is this time.

  * * *

  Snazell bustles into the office. As he talks, he noses compulsively into everywhere and everything, lifting, turning, examining.

  ‘Nice touch that, paying your last respects to my client.’ He hurriedly crosses himself. ‘May she rest in peace.’

  Mark explodes. ‘Mrs Cross wasn’t your client. Nor was there any reward, you bastard.’

  Snazell winces. ‘Language. Language. Remember I’m a practising Mormon. In every respect, except polygamy.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Got a year’s supply of canned food stacked away, have you? Is your bath full of Perrier water? Or is it Evian? And what about hay for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?’

  ‘Careful, Mr Miles.’ Snazell crosses himself again. ‘Just remember Revelations 6:8. “Behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.” For us believers, death is merely the departure lounge to eternal happiness.’

  ‘And life is the shit you go through to earn enough air miles for that exclusive flight to Heaven?’

  ‘In a nutshell.’

  ‘Full of canned food?’

  ‘We need to be plump and healthy, so we remain smiling while others weep and gnash their teeth.’

  Snazell sits down at the desk, opens a drawer and sees a set of keys with a label. ‘Office (spare)’ is scrawled on it.

  Mark has had enough. He storms across to the door and throws it open.

  ‘No more games, Snazell. Just piss off.’

  ‘This is no game, Mr Miles.’

  Snazell slams the drawer shut: minus the keys, now in the pocket of his raincoat. This sleight of hand would have impressed the magicians now checking out of the Grand Atlantic Hotel. He pulls out the wad of money and starts to count ten crisp ones.

  ‘Collect two hundred pounds for entertaining expenses.’

  ‘What expenses?’

  ‘Cream teas in the English countryside.’ Leaving the money on the desk, he crosses to the open door. ‘Take Miss Honey out for the afternoon. I need to look around her room, okay?’

  He closes the door behind him.

  Mark goes to the desk, picks up the money and counts it.

  ‘That’s a lot of cream teas.’

  He shrugs and opens his wallet.

  thirteen

  Soon after Snazell’s departure, nervous exhaustion finally catches up with Mark. His efforts to get the reward and then his rapid retreat from Emily Block and the late Mrs Cross has depleted his core energy. He collapses on to his collapsed sofa. The two seem to be made for each other.

  Sleep arrives with the inevitable nightmares in its wake. Hare looms large for much of Mark’s restless catnap only to be replaced by something worse. In this dream Mark becomes a maggot among a moving mass of maggots in a tin.

  The tin is opened and a fisherman’s weathered face peers into it. His great callused fingers reach inside. A fish eye lens distorts the fingers as they feel around for one special maggot. Ignoring all others, they finally select Mark. He is picked up with great care and taken towards a barbed fishhook. At this point Mark rolls off the sofa, sobbing and crying out, as he wriggles to escape. For a while he sits on the floor, rubbing his eyes. This is a recurring nightmare and Mark knows the source.

  One night a long time ago, while on a bad trip, Mark found himself watching TV. He was channel-hopping and ended up with a programme on human procreation. Sperm, tens of thousands in one ejaculation, zoomed into the womb, squirming, dodging, diving, determined to be the one that survived.

  It was then that his hallucinogenic craziness took a sudden nasty jump, and he became convinced there was one of the sperm in his brain.

  No, not sperm, a maggot.

  Yes, there was a maggot in his brain, in all our brains. Unseen, it eats away at reality, keeping it at bay, making sure it never disturbs our cosmetic surface.

  A huge rosy apple ballooned in his imagination. Redness filled his mental screen, until a maggot’s head gnawed its way into sight.

  He started to cry.

  But now there were no longer any maggots found in apples. The rosy apple with a maggot inside, once the perfect metaphor for the flawed human condition, was a thing of the past.

  Crocodile tears cascaded over his cheeks as he remembered a world before the supremacy of the supermarket. How these corporate colossi had managed the final solution for maggots would probably surprise even the Nazis.

  He consoled himself with the thought that maggots may no longer be necessary as a metaphor, because reality itself had been destroyed.

  All this non-sense made sense
when he was out of his skull, and it should have been forgotten by the morning.

  But it wasn’t.

  Deep down he knew the maggot was there.

  Doing its job.

  After all we can’t take too much reality.

  No wonder it was an apple that Eve got to bite in the Garden of Eden. That was the original sin. She had swallowed a maggot, that’s how it got into our brains.

  Eureka.

  Mark murmurs ‘Eureka’ to himself and barks a bitter laugh. He wipes away his tears, stands and crosses to the hatstand. In its faded mirror he reflects on his reflection, before shaking his head violently, trying to dislodge the flashback from his brain.

  No such luck.

  fourteen

  Mark passes Snazell as he reaches the Grand Atlantic Hotel. The investigator is on the esplanade, feeding bread to some particularly vicious-looking seagulls. They exchange glances and Snazell smiles when he realises his strategy is being executed.

  Outside Room 13, Mark pauses to contemplate his cosmetic surface. He roughs up his gelled hair and removes a fleck from his trousers. As he knocks on the door, he feels the maggot move and he shivers.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Mark.’

  Alice flings the door open. ‘Where the hell did you get to?’

  ‘My accountant’s wedding. Remember?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Alice, I’m here to apologise. I’m really, really sorry about your suspender.’

  She eyes him suspiciously but Mark appears to be suitably repentant.

  ‘No problem.’ She lifts her skirt to show him the black lacy replacement. ‘Look.’

  Mark looks and, yet again, wanton lust renders him helpless. Confused, he can’t suss whether she’s an accomplished coquette playing sex games or just plain dumb.

  He struggles to regain the initiative. ‘Alice, I was wondering if we could try again.’

  ‘Try what again?’

  ‘To be friends. I’d like to show you our beautiful British countryside: green fields, duck ponds, thatched cottages, four-poster beds, cream teas.’

  ‘I never touch cream.’

  ‘Do green fields appeal? Duck ponds? Thatched cottages?’

  ‘Four-poster beds?’

  ‘We could end up in one, if you so desire.’

  ‘Forget it, Mark.’

  ‘It’s hard.’

  ‘I can see that. You just run along now, boy. Go take a cold shower. And if you should jerk off with me in mind, I’ll sue you for breach of copyright.’

  She laughs and slams the door in his face.

  * * *

  A bowl of voluptuous red apples stands on the sideboard of the hotel’s Dining Room, and Mark casts a despairing look at them as he is leaving. They are uniformly perfect in shape, their redness evenly spread and unblemished. He selects one and rubs it hard against his thigh before taking a bite.

  Tasteless and pappy.

  Even so it opens his eyes to a fresh approach.

  * * *

  The door to Room 13 flies open.

  ‘Can I tempt you?’

  Alice stares at the apple resting on his outstretched hand and is clearly impressed.

  ‘“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” Genesis 3. I was brought up on the Good Book. How about you, Mark?’

  Mark takes the apple by its stalk and dangles it before her.

  ‘“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat.” Also Genesis 3.’ The Bible had been drilled into Mark at school. Much to his surprise, it had proved extremely useful in his business dealings, especially when he wanted others to trust him.

  ‘You can trust me, Alice. I’ve seen the light.’

  She looks into his unblinking eyes as intently as a clairvoyant into a glass ball, then impulsively snatches the apple, wraps her red-lipsticked lips about its red skin, and takes a large bite.

  ‘Delicious.’

  ‘Like you, Alice.’

  He watches her devour the fruit.

  ‘Time to transport Herman Temple’s drum majorette away from this hermetically sealed, thermostatically controlled cell that passes for a hotel room. So pull on your star-spangled panties and synthetic jackboots, button back your eagle wings, and fly with me across the green pastures of England to a far-off pagan place.’

  Alice holds out the apple core for him to dispose of.

  ‘You have such a cute voice, Mark. It’s so English.’

  ‘Would that I were some English knight of old who, by a daring deed, could win your fair hand.’ Adding with a lewd smile: ‘And all that comes with it.’

  ‘Now, stop that.’

  She smiles and this time, he knows she isn’t dumb. The chivalric card has turned out to be trumps, and the game is on.

  * * *

  The Yamaha penetrates the narrow country roads. It corners gracefully, sweeps up hills and under bridges, passes green fields, duck ponds and thatched cottages.

  But it’s the four-poster beds that play on Mark’s mind.

  With Alice clinging to him like he was a horse on a carousel, he is frantically thinking how to capitalise on their unexpected intimacy. Where to take her? If he was a Bedouin, he could take her to his tent and feed her sweetmeats. A knight of old would ride her into his castle and raise the drawbridge.

  Then he remembers Old Nick.

  * * *

  Their leathers creak as they dismount.

  Alice looks good in Ursula’s gear. He’s retrieved it from his office, where it had hung, unused, for years. Even the helmet has fitted. They could have been sisters. She shakes her hair into shape and surveys the scene.

  They are parked at the foot of a hill, with a path winding steeply towards the sea fret that hugs its summit. Distant waves can be heard crashing against the rocks beyond.

  ‘Where now?’

  Mark pulls a white handkerchief from his pocket.

  ‘A mystery tour. A magical mystery tour.’

  ‘Cut it out, Mark.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  With a sweep of his arm he encompasses the craggy peak ahead, and the mist swirling about it.

  ‘Imagine this is Camelot, Alice. A sacred place where virtue and virginity remain forever untarnished.’

  She stops him as he tries to blindfold her.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m taking you to see a giant.’

  ‘A giant? A giant what?’

  ‘That’s the mystery.’

  Alice giggles, and the handkerchief flutters like a flag of capitulation as he knots it about her uncertain eyes.

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘And single-minded.’

  He spins her around as if they were playing blind man’s buff, before taking her hand and leading her up the path like an innocent in a nursery rhyme.

  * * *

  William Snazell stops outside Room 13. He checks the empty corridor before inserting a skeleton key into the lock, completing his illicit entry with ease.

  Mark should be so lucky.

  * * *

  Mark and Alice climb the hill like Jack and Jill. The fog, as damp and clingy as candyfloss, soon swallows them up. Silence envelops them; even the surge of the waves is lost. Alice shivers and stops in her tracks. A distant eerie sound has penetrated their silent bubble. It’s not a human sound; yet it somehow carries human pain and melancholy with it. Her blindfold swings about in alarm.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘A foghorn. There’s a lighthouse just up the coast.’

  She tries to take back her hand, but Mark won’t let go.

  ‘No. We’re nearly there.’

  ‘Nearly where?’

  ‘The giant’s lair. A penthouse cave with a pool the size of the Atlantic Ocean.’

  Alice laughs and he l
eads her on.

  ‘What’s the giant’s name?’

  ‘Old Nick.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘He would have been even older if he hadn’t upset the local goblins.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘As you might expect of a giant, Old Nick had an enormous penis. Unfortunately for the little goblins, he used it to taunt them. Old Nick was literally a cock swinger.’ Mark watches her reactions closely as he unfolds his raunchy story, surprised that it hasn’t apparently shocked her. On the contrary.

  ‘You mean he used his cock as a weapon?’

  ‘He sure did. He terrorised the goblins by employing his member as a pendulum, knocking them over like skittles. His laughter was thunder in their ears, rattling the windows of their little goblin houses. The little goblin men were helpless. Worse, their wives came to mock their little goblin dicks. There was eventually unrest and dissatisfaction in the little goblin world.’

  Mark is grateful Alice can’t see his shifty eyes, but he needn’t have worried. She could be a little girl listening to a fairy tale.

  ‘Something had to be done?’

  ‘Too right. The little goblins had to come up with a big plan. They sent out messengers to all the goblin communities across the land, asking them to convene right here.’

  Mark and Alice have reached the top of the hill, and can now feel a breeze coming off the sea. The mist has rapidly vanished and the horizon is clearly visible. Mark looks across the bay at a rocky promontory where the lighthouse stands. Just then the same eerie sound that so unsettled Alice when they first arrived intrudes again. Closer now and coming from the fields behind them, it’s definitely not a fog horn. Mark quickly tries to blot it out by raising his voice.

  ‘It was the night of the summer solstice when the goblins, thousands of them, crept up on Old Nick as he slept. Each of them had brought little bed sheets which they tied together. They then swarmed as lightly as ants over the giant, passing these improvised ropes across his chest, legs and hands.’