The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (The Cornelius Murphy Trilogy Book 3)

by Robert Rankin

‘No, I’m Tuppe. Come with us before you get burned alive.’

  Crash! and Whoomph! went falling timbers. Creak and rock, went the floor.

  ‘Come on, Tuppe,’ Cornelius snatched up the small man and made a grab at the door handle.

  And the door handle vanished all away.

  And then there was only wall.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ bawled the fire-fighter. ‘Holy crud, what are those cars doing now? They’re backing up. They’re going to ram us.’

  ‘Get out of this car,’ ordered Hugo Rune aiming his revolver at Thelma.

  ‘We can’t get out,’ wailed Tuppe. ‘We’re all gonna die.’

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ Norman asked.

  ‘The door’s vanished,’ shouted Tuppe. ‘Hugo Rune’s magicked it away.’

  ‘Yes I know that,’ shouted Cornelius.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to this lad.’

  ‘There isn’t any lad.’

  ‘Yes there is, he’s here. No he’s not.’ And Norman wasn’t.

  ‘Drive,’ ordered Hugo Rune.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ wimped Mr Craik of the very, very, very wild eyes.

  ‘Help!’ shouted Cornelius.

  Crash went further lumps of flaming roof.

  ‘Help me too!’ shouted Tuppe.

  ‘Take the coast road,’ ordered Rune. ‘And slow down, there’s no need to drive so fast.’

  ‘It’s not me driving fast, it’s the car, and it doesn’t want to take the coast road.’

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ blubbered Tuppe, now clinging to a Murphy trouser leg. ‘Do something, Cornelius, save us.’

  Cornelius clawed at the wall, in search of the vanished door handle.

  The flames licked up about them.

  And then the floor collapsed.

  Peep, Peep, Peep and Honk, went the mad cars, buffeting into the fire engine.

  ‘Steer this damn car, you fool,’ hollered Rune as the Cadillac did a spectacular U-turn on the promenade, scattering the rubber-neckers who were flocking to the Grande.

  ‘There you go,’ said Norman, grinning in from the corridor through the now-open doorway. ‘It didn’t fool me and I managed to open it. Here, where have you gone?’

  ‘Down here.’ Tuppe still clung to the Murphy trouser leg. Cornelius was clinging to the door handle.

  And swinging wildly about. Amongst the flames and chaos. And everything.

  ‘Pull us up,’ called Tuppe.

  ‘I’m trying,’ called Cornelius.

  ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant him.’

  ‘Don’t start that again I . . . ’

  Norman tugged and Cornelius strained.

  And Tuppe clung on.

  And flames rushed up from beneath and out through other doorways into the corridor. And chunks of ceiling came down and UPVC windows buckled and exploded.

  And the fire-engine shunted mad cars aside and ploughed into the private car-park, causing on-lookers to cheer and hotel guests, some in nought but skimpy night attire, to duck this way and that as mad cars mounted the pavements and growled after the speeding appliance.

  Cornelius, Tuppe and Norman scuttled down the corridor to the fire-escape, coughing smoke and gasping like good’ns.

  Thelma and Louise saw Tuppe and Cornelius emerge from the blazing building and begin their rapid descent of the outside cast-iron fire-escape. They set up a bit of a cheer, but soon took to running from a rogue BMW.

  Several floors down now, and relatively safe from the conflagration, Tuppe and Cornelius stopped short to catch their breath.

  ‘Look at that lot,’ gasped Tuppe, viewing the mayhem below.

  ‘And look at that.’ Cornelius pointed towards the Cadillac, skimming along the promenade road.

  ‘It’s Rune,’ gagged Tuppe. ‘And Boris is in the back.’

  ‘And look at that!’

  The Cadillac suddenly left the promenade road, banged up onto the pavement and swerved towards the entrance to the east pier.

  ‘Apply the brakes, you oaf!’ Rune thumped Mr Craik about the ear.

  ‘I am! I am. Oh dear Lord!’

  The Cadillac mashed into the turnstile, smashing it aside and reducing the little ticket box to mangled matchwood, lurched onto the pier proper and tore along it.

  ‘What’s his driver think he’s doing?’ Tuppe clung once more to the leg of Cornelius.

  ‘I don’t think it’s his driver. I think it’s the car. Oh no!’

  The Cadillac had been accelerating like a dragster on a Santa Pod quarter-mile. Which was exactly the length of the east pier.

  The record at Santa Pod is 6.7 seconds.

  The Cadillac was doing well over one hundred and twenty miles an hour by the time it ran out of pier.

  There was no way on Earth anyone could have leapt clear and had any hope of living at that speed.

  With a terrible rending of metal the Cadillac Eldorado passed through the decorative Victorian railing work and plunged down into the sea.

  And cars don’t, of course, explode when they hit water.

  They sink.

  And very fast if they’re open-topped and have done the full cartwheel.

  Very fast indeed.

  Flaming bits and bobs now showered down on the fire-escapees. Fire roared above, cars growled below.

  ‘Let’s find the girls,’ said Cornelius. ‘And let’s get.’

  ‘So there you have it,’ said Jack Bradshaw, who had started earlier and now was finishing. ‘What do you think then, mate?’

  ‘I think I’ll choose sprout,’ said the dismal and deceased Mr Showstein. ‘But before I commit myself, describe this controller of yours to me once again. He sounds most familiar.’

  30

  Cornelius Murphy woke, yawned, stretched and then went, ‘Aaaaagh!’

  Tuppe jumped up from the Land of Nod and went ‘Aaaaagh!’ too, but then he asked, ‘Aaaaagh! What?’

  ‘Aaaaagh! Last night,’ Cornelius explained.

  ‘Oh yes. Aaaaagh! to that all right.’ Tuppe rubbed at his arms and stamped his little feet. ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘Me too.’ Cornelius raised himself onto his knees and strained morning dew from his hair.

  He and Tuppe had slept out rough on the crest of Druid’s Tor. And they had not done it alone. Around and about them lay other sleepers and other wakers. The Tor was a regular refugee camp. Thousands of people strewn across it.

  And somewhere amongst them, Cornelius hoped, were Thelma and Louise.

  It had not been a night of holiday fun-time at Skelington Bay. The mad cars had spread their madness through the parked ranks of their automotive brethren. At a pace. The fire-engine had been amongst the first to succumb. The fire at the Grande had gone unchecked. Much of the town that lay down wind of it was now also smouldering ruination.

  Not good.

  There had been panic and exodus.

  Much panic, but not without some spirited resistance.

  Cornelius and Tuppe had been in the thick of that, helping to raise barricades across the roads leading from the stricken town.

  The cars had tried to ram these barricades, many destroying themselves in the so-doing. Much flaming wreckage. Mangled scrap. Nice big barricades now.

  ‘This is pretty dire.’ Tuppe looked down to the town below. Cars were doing chicken runs along the promenade. They weren’t swerving aside at the last moment. ‘The meteor did it, you know.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘That down there. The cars. There was a Stephen King movie about this meteor and big lorries coming alive.’

  ‘Was Kyle McKintock in that one?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘That’s not funny. He was dead in the wardrobe. And Boris is probably dead too.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But it wasn’t the meteor. The word going about is that Lola the waitress overheard two scientists talking and it’s a secret government germ-warfare project that’s got out of control. Apparently the local estate agent invented the virus.’
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  ‘That would be the man you saved from being burned at the stake.’

  ‘Mr Rodway, yes. He did promise to pay me a large sum of money for saving him. But I never saw him again.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll post it to you.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he will.’

  ‘Hey wotcha, fellas,’ said Norman, ambling up. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

  ‘Hello.’ Tuppe grinned at the lad in the charred overalls. ‘We lost you in all the confusion. Thanks for getting us out of the hotel room.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Cornelius.

  ‘This is the lad who saved us by opening the door, Cornelius. What is the matter with you?’

  ‘There is no lad,’ said the Murphy. ‘What is the matter with you?’

  ‘Eh?’ went Tuppe.

  ‘He can’t see me.’ Norman scratched his ruddy barnet. ‘That’s not right. It’s him I’m supposed to be talking to.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘What about what?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘I’m not asking you about what, I’m asking the lad about what.’

  ‘It isn’t funny, Tuppe. Turn it in.’

  ‘Oh come off it, Cornelius. This is the lad who pulled us out of the burning room, who opened the door. You do remember that, don’t you?’

  ‘I remember something weird.’

  ‘It was me,’ said Norman.

  ‘See?’ said Tuppe.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Tuppe took on deadly white shade of the face. ‘Stay away from me,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Cornelius.

  ‘Not you, him.’

  ‘Just stop it, will you?’

  ‘It’s in your pocket, get it out.’

  ‘What is?’ Norman asked.

  ‘Not you, him.’

  ‘Stop it at once,’ ordered Cornelius.

  ‘The newspaper page in your pocket. The one that made you feel strange. The one about the boy’s funeral.’

  ‘Oh that.’ Cornelius dragged bundles of money from his pockets, unearthed the crumpled news-sheet, handed it to Tuppe.

  ‘It’s you,’ whispered the small man.

  ‘Me?’ asked Cornelius.

  ‘Him,’ said Tuppe.

  Norman gave the news-sheet a perusal. ‘Wow, I made the front page. That handbag-humping vicar, he—’

  ‘Then you’re—’

  ‘Dead,’ said Norman. ‘Dead as a dead boy. Sorry.’

  ‘Then you’re a—’

  ‘Ghost I suppose. It’s a real bummer, I can tell you.’

  ‘Stone the Christians.’ Tuppe sat down hard on his backside.

  ‘Would you mind not sitting there?’ Norman asked. ‘That’s the very place where I—’

  ‘Aaaaagh!’ went Tuppe.

  ‘We did Aaaaagh!’ said Cornelius. ‘And enough is quite enough.’

  ‘It’s him. It’s him.’ Tuppe jumped up and down. Norman frowned. Tuppe shifted himself and jumped up and down once more.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Norman.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Don’t mention what?’

  ‘Shut up, Cornelius, and listen. He’s here, the—’

  ‘Dead boy,’ said Norman dismally.

  ‘The dead boy. The one who died up here when his dad fell on top of him. The one here in the newspaper. He’s here. I’m looking at him, talking to him. I swear.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I do.’ Tuppe crossed his heart and hoped not to become a dead boy.

  ‘I swear as your bestest friend. I am not lying. He’s a ghost and his name is— ’

  ‘Norman,’ said Norman. ‘And I’m here to help Cornelius.’

  ‘He says his name is Norman and he’s here to help you.’

  Cornelius viewed his bestest friend. And he viewed the paleness of pallor and the earnestness of expression. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not kidding.’

  Cornelius now bumped down on his bum.

  ‘Not there please,’ said Norman.

  ‘He says, not there please,’ said Tuppe.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That’s the exact place where he, you know, er—’

  ‘Aaaaagh!’ went Cornelius, leaping up.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Norman.

  ‘He says thanks.’

  ‘No problem. Where is he, Tuppe?’

  ‘He’s right there.’ Tuppe pointed, but Cornelius couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘I can’t see a thing,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘Well he’s here, I’m telling you.’

  ‘So what does he want? What is he here to help me with?’

  Norman told Tuppe and Tuppe said, ‘Stopping Hugo Rune.’

  ‘I think Hugo Rune has been stopped. And for all of his badness, he was my dad. Which doesn’t make me too happy, as it happens.’

  Norman spoke some more.

  Tuppe said, ‘Rune isn’t dead.’

  ‘Not dead? He could never have survived that crash into the sea.’

  ‘Norman says that there’s more than one Rune. That he cloned himself. How many are there of him, Norman?’

  ‘How many?’ asked Cornelius. ‘What is this?’

  ‘He says there are five, including the one who has taken control of The Universal Reincarnation Company.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’d better explain,’ Tuppe told Norman. ‘Slowly and precisely. And I will pass it on to Cornelius.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Norman agreed. ‘But you’d better tell your friend to sit down. It’s a bummer of a tale and he’s not going to like it.’

  ‘He says you’d better sit down,’ said Tuppe.

  ‘But not there,’ said Norman.

  ‘But not there.’

  And so it came to pass that Norman did speak unto Tuppe and Tuppe did speak unto Cornelius, saying all that Norman had spoken unto him. And Cornelius did drop his jaw and raise his eyebrows to what was spoken. Yea verily, thus and so.

  Norman told it all. Of the man-powered flight competition and his unfortunate demise. His funeral and his journey to The Universal Reincarnation Company. Of the static souls that encircled the sun and how God had put the bollocks on the outside, closed down Hell and built Heaven far too small. Of Norman’s going through the filing cabinets and of the terrible disclosure that most, if not everyone, were destined to die next Friday at midnight from an electrical discharge. Of his capture by the large controller. And his meeting the real controller and all that the real controller had told him about Rune being pre-incarnated as himself on his original birthdate again and again. And there being five Runes, one of which was now controlling the URC.

  And he spoke of the airship Pinocchio and the big sky nozzles and how Claude had shot him to Earth. And how something hadn’t gone altogether right and he’d nearly burned up on re-entry. And how he was sorry for burning down the Skelington Bay Grande.

  And everything.

  ‘And he says, that’s everything,’ said Tuppe in a very small voice.

  Cornelius shook his head in awe and vanished ‘neath his locks.

  ‘Big hair,’ said Norman approvingly.

  ‘I’m gobsmacked,’ said Cornelius, seeking out his face. ‘This is all very much too much. But then it makes some kind of sense. Remember when I told you that I smelt my father in the hotel room, but at the same time I didn’t?’

  ‘Strangely I don’t follow that,’ said Norman.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ said Tuppe.

  ‘No, it’s what I said.’ Cornelius rolled his eyes. ‘But that must be it. The Rune in the hotel room wasn’t the real Rune. Not my father, but one of his clones. My father’s something of a nutter, I grant you, but he’s not the stuff of genuine baddy-dom. Killing off the world’s population isn’t his game. I’m sure that must be it.’

  ‘Could be.’ Norman shrugged.

  ‘He said it could be,’ said Tuppe. ‘And he shrugged when he said it.
’

  ‘Incredible. Hey, hello.’

  ‘Hey hello?’

  ‘Hey, hello, it’s Thelma and Louise.’

  ‘Well, hey hello to that.’

  The two young women came smiling and waving. Steering their shoes between the sleepers and the wakers.

  ‘Is this Woodstock?’ Thelma asked. ‘What time does Hendrix come on?’

  ‘You OK?’ Louise asked Tuppe.

  ‘We’re fine. Are you both fine?’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that fine.’

  ‘It’s fine. Who’s your friend?’ Thelma reached to tousle Norman’s hairdo. Her hand passed straight through his head.

  ‘Aaaaagh!’ went Thelma.

  ‘We did Aaaaagh,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘But I, he—’

  ‘He’s a dead boy,’ said Tuppe. ‘And his name is Norman.’

  ‘He’s a what?’

  ‘He has returned from beyond the grave to help Cornelius prevent Hugo Rune from wiping out the world next Friday.’

  Thelma shook her golden head and stared at her fingers. ‘Things are never dull around you blokes, are they?’

  They all sat down (being careful where they sat) and spoke of this and that thing and the other.

  Having been introduced, Norman told Thelma and Louise everything he had just told Tuppe. Looking on, Cornelius was appalled to observe that both Thelma and Louise could see and hear the red-haired dead boy in the charred overalls.

  Thelma then spoke of the conversation she and Louise had overheard between Rune and ‘Chunky’ Wilberforce, about pylons and cables and radio masts.

  Cornelius chipped in with an inventory of pre-fire hotel-room contents, the maps and the printouts and the calculations and the books on electrostatics and electroplating.

  And Tuppe told a story about how his father had once met Judy Garland in a London hotel and helped to put her to bed.

  Norman said that this was a most interesting tale, but probably not very relevant. ‘Ask Cornelius to tell us about those calculations he saw,’ he told Tuppe.

  Tuppe did so.

  ‘Oh the figures,’ Cornelius thought about this. ‘They were to do with cubic miles of sea water and units of $93,000,000.’