Watching the Wheels Come Off

by Mike Hodges

  ‘Thank you for that. Presumably the canvas hood you have there goes over his head?’

  Mark picks the sack off the table beside him.

  ‘It does, indeed. Incidentally the hood is just a potato sack, which you can get from any reputable greengrocer.’

  ‘But not with the Stars and Stripes on one side and the Union Jack on the other?’

  ‘No, that was my idea as we’d hoped to take the act to America. The dual image represents the special relationship that exists between our two countries.’

  ‘I must say escapology seems the perfect metaphor for that curious relationship, though I fear it’s always us British wearing the hood. Would you oblige, Mr Miles?’

  Mark pulls the hood over Lugosi’s head.

  ‘Thank you. Now, Mr Lugosi, please show us what happens next?’

  Lugosi doesn’t move.

  Mark pats his shoulder, shouting, ‘Off you go, Bela.’

  Lugosi grunts, shudders, writhes, wriggles, then staggers. A table covered by court papers is sent flying. He drops to the floor and continues his contortions there. The coroner’s attention is immediately transfixed in a mixture of horrified bemusement and intense agitation bordering on sexual arousal.

  ‘It has no bearing on this particular case, but are there any women escapologists, Mr Miles?’

  ‘There was one in the north-east, some years ago. I believe she gave it up to become a belly dancer.’

  ‘Really?’

  The coroner can’t seem take her eyes off the contortions being executed before her. Ursula and her pupils stare, too, open-mouthed. The hacks snigger. Wilder takes a surreptitious slug from a hip flask, before passing it back to Dickenson. The chain grinds and rattles as Lugosi rolls from one side of the open area of the court to the other.

  ‘Mr Miles, can you inform us as to why anyone should want to indulge in such contortions?’

  ‘Reg always claimed it was his only form of self-expression.’

  ‘Really?’ She shakes her head, obviously puzzled by the links in this chain of thinking. ‘I’m not sure Mr Lugosi would go along with that.’

  She looks down as he tumbles past her again. Sweat exudes from Lugosi’s every pore; he flaps weakly like a tired fish just landed. With one superhuman lurch, he disappears under a substantial table stacked with files.

  A court clerk stands up to whisper in the coroner’s ear. They then both look at the wall clock. Its hands rest at one. She picks up her gavel.

  ‘I have to confess it still escapes me why anyone should want to perform such curious acts. That said, it occurs to me that maybe they wouldn’t if so many of us didn’t want to watch them.’

  She brings down the gavel with a bang.

  ‘We’ll break for lunch now. Please be back in one hour.’

  nineteen

  The Corner Café may not seem an imaginative name, but it is an accurate one. Situated in the same block as the Coroner’s Court, it has a sandwich-board on the pavement offering breakfast and lunch at prices so low they beggar belief. They must barely cover the cost of the ingredients. Any doubts as to their quality are confirmed by the burger now placed in front of Mark. It looks regurgitated rather than cooked.

  He sits at a table with Ursula. The gaggle of chattering girls surrounding them have chosen more wisely, sticking to biscuits rather than any of the cooked fare. Mark has to raise his voice above the din.

  ‘Can you remember his name?’

  ‘Claud something?’ Ursula is more concerned with the chocolate stains appearing on some of the girls’ pristine uniforms. ‘Charlotte, come here.’

  ‘Not Claud! Claudio! Claudio Cross! Ursula, please pay attention.’

  ‘Look what you’ve done, Charlotte.’ She points at the dark brown stain. ‘Go and ask the waitress for some water. And wipe your mouth, too.’ Charlotte looks directly at Mark, pokes out her little pink tongue and runs it along her lips. The rim of chocolate is wiped clean. Mark watches, wide-eyed, alarmed at her precocity and his own reaction to it. Something is badly out of kilter today: he’d even started to fancy the coroner.

  ‘Ursula, it’s really important. If I should disappear while I’m doing the course, you must go straight to the police.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because Claudio Cross hasn’t been seen since he went on the one run in London, that’s why. And that’s why you have to remember his name.’

  ‘You said he disappeared after the course was over?’

  ‘That’s what they say. But I think he died during it, and they’re covering up. Remember how Rodney and Susan Cole clammed up as soon as I started asking them awkward questions?’

  ‘You’re just being paranoid. Even if Claud what’s-his-name did die, why should they cover it up?’

  ‘Because a student popping his clogs during one of their courses is not a good selling point. Especially during a course on personal improvement. Ending up dead cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered an improvement. And Claud what’s-his-name is not Claud anything. He’s Claudio Cross.’

  Mark relishes the burger in his hands before taking a bite. Almost immediately his chewing goes into slow motion, allowing his face time to register acute nausea, before retching and dropping it like it was depleted uranium.

  Ursula remains unconvinced: ‘Okay smart-arse, so what have they done with his body?’

  Mark pokes the lethal-looking bun on his plate. ‘Maybe he’s being served up somewhere as a beefburger.’

  The girls hear this and make gagging noises. Ursula is furious.

  ‘Don’t be revolting.’ She finishes her coffee. ‘I don’t want anything to do with this.’

  ‘Ursula, I need you.’

  ‘You don’t need anybody, Mark.’ She stands up. ‘I don’t think I want to see you again. Ever.’

  ‘Ursula, please.’

  ‘No, I’ve had enough. Besides I’ve met somebody else.’

  Mark registers, in quick succession, surprise, uncertainty, distress and finally incredulity.

  ‘A man?’

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d try one for a change.’

  Charlotte returns with a damp cloth.

  ‘We’ll do that back at school. We’re going now. Girls!’

  Surprised to see tears in Mark’s eyes Ursula plants a condescending kiss on his forehead. ‘It’s none of my business, but I’d stay well clear of that course of theirs.’ She shoots him a smile for old times’ sake. ‘Despite your obvious need for personal improvement.’

  ‘I need the money.’

  He picks up the evil-looking burger. ‘Jesus, it couldn’t be more dangerous than this.’

  He thinks about taking another bite but decides against it. Instead, he watches Ursula walk out of his life. The waitress moves in to clear the table.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, penicillin.’

  It was then that he remembered Lugosi.

  twenty

  Mark arrives back in court as the coroner takes her seat, bangs her gavel, and announces the continuation of the inquest. The ensuing silence is immediately broken by muffled sobs surfacing from behind the witness stand, followed by an ominous clank. Lugosi, still hooded and clamped in the chain, rolls wearily into the centre of the court room for all to see. The court clerk removes her glasses and rubs her eyes, while the coroner keeps blinking with disbelief.

  ‘It seems Mr Lugosi has had no lunch.’

  Somebody titters in the public gallery.

  ‘Mr Miles, can you account for this oversight?’

  Mark turns bright red, stands and stutters, ‘I… I… I… forgot him.’

  ‘You forgot him? A man you had previously bound with a chain and padlock and wearing a hood? Really, Mr Miles.’

  Mark is tempted to air his theory about maggots in the brain, but wisely desists because the coroner seems an unlikely customer for revelations engendered by the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs. He chooses, instead, to try another medical route by way of a
n excuse.

  ‘The tragic circumstances of Mr Turpin’s departure have severely effected my health.’ He points to the carotid artery on the left side of his neck. ‘Apparently the flow of blood in this artery is only intermittent. I am, in fact, due for a brain scan to assess any consequent damage to my memory cells.’

  His eyes remain resolutely fixed on the coroner, to see if she swallows this excuse. She doesn’t.

  ‘Are you suggesting that Mr Lugosi was located in those cells that are now temporarily deprived of blood?’

  ‘It’s the only explanation I can come up with at the moment.’

  Lugosi whimpers again, and Mark looks at him but does nothing.

  ‘And the location of the key to Mr Lugosi’s padlock? Is that in the same affected cells?’

  Mark wearily searches all his pockets. Finding no key, he looks up at the coroner and shakes his head, close to tears.

  ‘I think you’ll find it on the table: Exhibit D, next to where your left hand now rests. But before you use it, Mr Miles, let me say that any further cogitation on the reasons for Mr Turpin’s disappearance is pointless. Mr Lugosi has given us a graphic demonstration of why Mr Turpin is undoubtedly still in his trunk at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.’

  She bangs the gavel. ‘Death by misadventure.’

  The coroner rises, as if about to leave. On a sudden impulse she turns back, angrily silencing the court with the gavel.

  ‘I must say the part played by Mr Miles in this sad story is less than pleasing. It brings to mind what my namesake, Cordelia, says in King Lear: “That glib and oily art to speak and purpose not.”’ She points at Mark. ‘One can only hope that in future Mr Miles will direct his glib and oily art into a more fertile endeavour than adding to the legions of worthless celebrities and fodder for the tabloids.’

  Mark looks up at the smirking hacks scribbling away in the public gallery. He himself will be tomorrow’s fodder.

  As soon as Cordelia retires to her chambers, Dickenson raises his flask to Mark and shouts, ‘You’re toast, Mr Miles!’

  Mark flees.

  The maggot has a lot more work to do.

  * * *

  The old adage that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s lavatory paper no longer holds good. Not just because it’s now called ‘toilet tissue’ but because a couple of cute puppy dogs, frolicking with fluffy rolls of the stuff on TV, has helped wean us away from the newspaper’s traditional secondary function. As a result they tend to hang around longer than is healthy for those they have traduced.

  That’s why Mark stayed off the streets for the next two days.

  His mother slept that same night on the sofa, leaving her large double bed for him to rest up in. The day following the inquest, she went out to buy all the papers, local and national, that she could find. The nationals totally ignored the story and the tabloids were preoccupied by a millionaire footballer’s diminutive penis, as reported by a lap dancer he had consorted with.

  Whilst the local rag did carry a report of Cordelia’s hatchet job, it was abbreviated and buried on a back page. The front page, luckily for Mark, carried a story that broke the same day. A prominent town councillor had been arrested for indecent exposure in the esplanade’s public lavatory.

  On the Friday, rested and refreshed, Mark returned to his office and prepared himself for his induction into the Personal Improvement Institute.

  * * *

  Earlier that Friday morning, Snazell had watched Alice Honey leave her room for breakfast. As before, he let himself in with ease, only this time he had to work fast in case Alice returned or one of the chambermaids arrived. He anticipated that the name tags for the students would be already prepared.

  They were.

  Displayed on the desk in alphabetical order, it took him no time to locate the one for Mark Miles. At the point where the cheap metal chain was attached to the tag itself, he clamped a microphone no larger than a pinhead. The whole operation took less than a minute before he slipped back into the deserted corridor and returned whence he came.

  twenty-one

  Aconvoy of three liquorice-black Cadillacs with mirror windows glides through a storm that would have impressed even Richard Wagner. Travelling nose to tail, and each abnormally stretched, they take an eternity to pass.

  Like a funeral cortège.

  Pedestrians, trapped in doorways while sheltering from the torrential rain, bow their heads out of respect for the dead. Forked lighting reflects in the waterfalls pouring off the vehicles’ roofs. Cannonballs of thunder roll in from the Atlantic.

  Herman Temple and his entourage have hit town.

  For Herman every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of his life is, in his own words, ‘power productive’. His mind is a thought-processing plant. Like any other commodity – cars, clothes or candy – thoughts equal dollars, and dollars equal power.

  That simple.

  The first two limos carry Temple’s assistants. He sits alone in the third.

  Inside this limo, the storm can be seen but not heard, baffled as it is by the pea-green, tightly stuffed upholstery. Temple is talking into a tape recorder. He has the soft voice of someone who is hard: when he speaks, people listen. His life is a never-ending tapeworm of spiel. Seeking – and finding – inspiration from the deluge outside, he continues his dictation.

  ‘“And when they saw Jesus walking on the sea, they were terrified; thinking Him a spirit.”’

  Lightning briefly illuminates his face.

  He nods his approval at this cosmic intervention and continues: ‘“But he spoke to them straight away, saying: ‘Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid.’”’ Temple presses pause on the machine, briefly, then releases it.

  ‘And it is I, Herman Temple, who now speaks to you, students of the PII, saying: “You, too, will soon be walking on water. Be not afraid, for I am here to take you into the land of milk and honey.”’

  Again he pauses before adding: ‘And money!’

  * * *

  The leading Cadillac carries Temple’s three male assistants. A trio of crew cuts on chiselled heads top the hard, muscular bodies sprawled on the back seat. Rip Kubitschek, Randy McMingus and Biff Paretsky are all ex-US marines. Now they work for a private security company, constantly circling a planet wrapped in America’s military might, happily doing the Pentagon’s dirty work. It is more fun being freelancers, as the bounty is bigger and there are no sheriffs in sight. Then there is another bonus: the occasional cushy tour of duty with the Personal Improvement Institute.

  Sucking a can of beer while intent on a porn video, Randy lives up to his name. On the small screen, a team of big-breasted women set about each other with simulated enthusiasm that involves a lot of ululating tongues and not much else. Randy’s taste in porn extends only to coupling women. The sight of men screwing discomfits him. Since he is unwilling or unable to articulate his reasons for this, his buddies have concluded that super-sized cocks undermine him.

  For Randy porn is an addiction. On a recent mission to the Horn of Africa, a drug dealer in the kasbah sold him a hot video called Virgins Only. The cover showed women in burkas who, when up and running so to speak, turned out to be rampant Arab faggots. Randy was so disgusted by the ensuing scenes of buggery, he sought out the dealer the very next night and broke his neck. He now deals exclusively with a website back home that barters porn for photos of torture and massacre. He’s taken plenty of those on American bases around the world, so Randy now finds himself in porn heaven.

  * * *

  The limos float like black bubbles across the countryside and glide through towns and villages. The limo windows reflect but don’t reveal. Their uniformed chauffeurs, dark figures in sealed cabins, are cut off from their human cargo as effectively as an undertaker driving a hearse from the occupant of the coffin behind him.

  * * *

  The scene in the second Cadillac would have been very much to Randy’s tas
te. Alice Honey’s two female assistants, Marjorie Negroponte and Loreen Rutter, are currently locked in a sexual configuration. They lie end to end across the back seat, with Loreen on top. Their various limbs move slowly and in different directions so they look at first glance like some form of large crustacean. On closer examination, it becomes apparent that their faces are totally hidden from view, with their mouths clamped over each other’s excited vulvas.

  For Marjorie this is a first-time experience. After a couple of beers, Loreen came on to her and young Marjorie is game for anything. Besides, it was a way of passing the time, since she doesn’t much like reading.

  It so happens that Loreen and Alice Honey worked once together as cabin staff for American Airlines. When Alice left to become a dental hygienist, Loreen found employment as a guard for a company running a chain of prisons for women. Only then did she recognise her true sexual orientation, and thus shed the shackles that restrained her. Unfortunately, whilst she was doing duty on Death Row, the sheriff and his execution party arrived one early morning to find her and the condemned woman engrossed in a sexual act that involved the electric chair.

  One was fired; the other was fried.

  Loreen, finding herself out of a job, was, of course, a natural for employment in the private-security sector now burgeoning in America. It was pure chance only that she had been allocated to the PII contract.

  Alice Honey is in for a surprise.

  When the muffled groans finally stop and their faces surface, they smile at each other knowingly.

  Marjorie blushes. ‘Not a word to Biff?’

  ‘No way, sweetheart.’ She kisses her. ‘Biff? How the hell did he get a name like that?’

  ‘At high school his nickname was “Beef Steak”. That got shortened to Biff.’

  ‘Has Biff boffed you yet?’

  ‘No way,’ says Marjorie, shocked. ‘We’re waiting till we get married.’