The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived

  And things of that nature.

  But what is ‘a bit of class’ anyway? Can it really be defined? Or is it like ‘style’ or ‘good taste’, a relative and unquantifiable something-or-other? Is it ‘a bit of class’ to have your house and your family photographed for Hello! magazine, as did a certain horror fiction writer who must remain forever nameless to those who do not purchase that publication? (James Herbert).

  Or is it not?

  We must draw your own conclusions.

  The present owner of the Grand had drawn his, and he had added the e. The present owner’s name was Kevin and his wife was loved as Lynne. He had retired from a successful career as an ASDA sales representative. She, from a career of equal success, as a Dominatrix, whose calling-card advertised that ‘naughty boys get bottom marks’. They had moved from their bungalow with the lighty-up coach-lamps and were ‘making a go of the Grande’.

  But now the Grande was not so grand as once the Grand had been. Time and ill-attention had conspired to wear its so-proud lustre all away.

  All gone its court of potted palms’ where bright young things had danced till dawn and taffeta kissed court shoes in the nimble foxtrot.

  Sadly gone. The Bechstein and the Lloyd loom chairs, the standard lamps with tasselled shades, the jardinières, the mirrors in their gilded frames. All gone.

  Out with the old, they cry aloud.

  And inward with the new.

  Down with that dividing wall.

  And knock the blighter through.

  Bring forth the patterned carpet tiles,

  The Draylon three-piece suite.

  Raise fitted units all about,

  Cor, don’t it look a treat?

  Thank you.

  Hugo Rune had taken for himself the entire top floor of the Grande.

  When it came to having ‘a bit of class’, Rune had it, and then a bit more.

  A great deal more. And then some.

  He stood now, nobly framed by the long mock-Georgian UPVC replacement window of the KEV-LYN suite, the last sunlight of the day catching the sum of his prodigious parts to perfection.

  His exaggerated shadow, cast in many fashionable places, now spread over many patterned carpet tiles.

  ‘I believe that our company is incomplete,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘In fact, I know this for a certainty.’

  Beyond the shadow of the man, a group of well-dressed persons sat about an occasional table that failed to rise to the occasion of Rune’s presence.

  ‘We are one short,’ dared one more daring than the rest.

  ‘A foreign entity,’ said Rune. ‘Of no small importance in the present schema.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Rune turned and raised a hairless eyebrow.

  ‘If you say so, Mr Rune.’

  ‘We shall begin without him. Who carries the suitcase?’

  He-that-did-the-suitcase-carry rose up and offered it to Rune.

  ‘And does it fit-to-burst with money notes as we agreed?’ the great man asked.

  ‘It does.’

  The other hairless eyebrow.

  ‘Mr Rune.’

  The unwholesome eyes beneath the baldy brows took in the company of men. Four in number. Very well-turned out. Three of middle years and one quite young (more daring than the rest). Whitehall types. Bespoke. Shoes polished. Known to Lynne in her professional pre-retirement capacity.

  Rune took the suitcase, felt its weight and tossed it to the floor. ‘Out there,’ he said, gesturing to some point beyond the UPVC. ‘Out there. Tell me what you see.’

  The young and daring one took himself over to the window. ‘A clapped-out seaside town, a pair of superannuated piers.’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘The sea?’

  ‘The sea is all you see?’

  ‘The sea, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all. You see the sea, but Rune sees more.’

  ‘What do you see then, Mr Rune?’

  ‘I see gold,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Much gold. Much, much, much, much, much gold.’

  ‘Some sunken wreck then, is it?’

  ‘No, my dear fellow, no sunken wreck. In the sea itself is the gold.’

  ‘I don’t think I follow you there.’

  ‘This comes as no surprise to me.’ Rune joined the daring young man at the window and stood looking out at the bay. Lights were beginning to twinkle upon the twin piers. Holiday folk strolled the promenade. The sea sucked at the shoreline.

  ‘In the water itself,’ said Rune. ‘A cubit mile of sea water contains, on average, $93,000,000 worth of gold and $8,500,000 worth of silver.’

  (All absolutely true, you can look it up.)

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said the daring young man.

  ‘It’s absolutely true, you can look it up.’

  (Told you.)

  ‘I know of this,’ said a middle-aged, less daring fellow, from the rear of the room. ‘But then I went to public school, so I would.’

  ‘I know of it too,’ said another middle-aged fellow, who hadn’t been to public school, but did know of it too. ‘But no agency exists to extract this gold. If it did—’

  ‘If it did’, said Hugo Rune, ‘then the man who knew of this agency and could affect such an extraction, be it only of a small proportion of the whole, would become—’

  ‘The richest man on Earth,’ said the daring young man.

  ‘And then some,’ said Hugo Rune.

  ‘But it can’t be done,’ said the fellow who had been to public school.

  ‘There is nothing that can’t be done,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Only things that haven’t been done yet.’

  The public schoolboy felt urged to ask whether Rune had got that from a Christmas cracker, but he lacked the daring so to do.

  ‘It is a conundrum,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘The gold exists, we know this for a fact. The conundrum is the means by which it might be extracted. It is a conundrum. Rune solves conundrums. I think, therefore I’m right.’

  ‘So how do you do it?’ asked the daring young man.

  ‘That is for me to know and you only to know that I know.’

  ‘Sounds like horse’s poo to me,’ said the public schoolboy with rare daring.

  ‘Sounds like horse’s poo to me, Mr Rune,’ said Mr Rune. ‘But you are here and I am here and the suitcase full of money notes sent to me by my good friend the Prime Minister is here. So horse poo, buddy, it ain’t.’

  ‘Pardon me, Mr Rune.’

  ‘You are pardoned. The Prime Minister and I have formed a pact in this matter. I will undertake to extract the gold and we will divvy it up between us. He will pay off the National Debt and buy back the British Empire for Her Majesty the Queen (God bless her). And I have plans of my own. I trust that none of you gentlemen would be so unpatriotic as to deny our dear Queen the opportunity to rule once more over an Empire on which the sun never sets.’

  ‘Perish the thought,’ said the public schoolboy.

  ‘God save the Queen,’ said the daring young man. ‘You will require the services of an assistant, Mr Rune. Might I put myself forward as an applicant for the position?’

  ‘You may,’ said Rune. ‘And you are hired.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir, now regarding my salary—’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, shorty. You may cover whatever expenses you feel require covering. And we must get to work at once. The suitcase there contains a very large amount of money. Your job will be to spend it.’

  ‘Right.’ The young man rubbed his hands together.

  ‘You will spend it buying Skelington Bay.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘This town. Every shop, every house, every public utility. All. The parks, the prom and the piers. You will do it first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I am Rune,’ said Rune. ‘And Rune will be butted no buts. Buy it all. I want the population on their bikes by Wednesday next at the latest. It is Thursday now. You have plenty of time.’

&nb
sp; ‘Strewth!’ said the daring young man.

  ‘God save the Queen,’ said Hugo Rune.

  The stars looked down on Skelington Bay.

  And—

  ‘Enough of that!’ cried Hugo Rune.

  Eh? What?

  ‘This chapter may not have been as long as I might have wished. But it is my chapter. And Rune does not share his chapter with characters in other scenes.’

  Er, sorry . . .

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  Sorry, Mr Rune.

  15

  The stars looked down on Skelington Bay.

  And the ocean gurgled like a happy baby in the piles beneath the old west pier.

  It was nearly midnight now, the day was done with and the pubs and clubs and bayside bars were closed. The town was not quite sleeping yet, a voice or two called out in mirth, a song was sung, a whistle heard, a car horn in the distance honked farewell.

  Night fishermen cast out their lines, a boy and girl walked hand in hand along the beach. A dog barked, two cats argued over something, and the vicar, turning in his sleep said, ‘Handbag’, and was promptly kicked from bed.

  In a deck-chair at the pier’s end lazed Cornelius, his long legs stretched before. Beside him Tuppe, his short legs all a dangle. Under Tuppe’s deck-chair, a fellow from beneath the sea snored soundly in his somewhat matted sheep suit.

  Cornelius put his hand to his head and touched certain tender places. These were places the tenderness of which had not been brought about by the truncheons of the Brentford Constabulary. These were new tender places. New and bruised from treatment Cornelius had lately received on the beach.

  It had all been a dreadful misunderstanding really. And not the tall boy’s fault at all. Well, it had been his fault, but it hadn’t. So to speak.

  It was the fellow in the sheep suit who had caused it to come about. Although he hadn’t actually seen it come about. Which was why it had come about. So to speak also.

  And it had come about in this fashion. The fellow in the sheep suit had told his tale to Cornelius and Tuppe. It was a fair old tale and it didn’t lack for interest. It involved him coming from an undersea kingdom called Magonia, where a wise old race lived in peace and harmony with minnow and mermaid. It involved secret negotiations with surface dwellers regarding a possible exchange of advanced technology for promises that the surface dwellers would not exploit certain ocean areas. It included also a fair degree of New Age folderol, the usual sprinkling of Gaia and eco-mania, and much of what Cornelius had mentioned while sheltering in the barn, about mankind giving up its nuclear nastiness and joining a cosmic brotherhood, et cetera and et cetera.

  Cornelius had listened to it all. He had nodded politely and when it finally reached the et cetera and et cetera stage, had made a humble request.

  That the fellow in the sheep suit might demonstrate proof of his aquatic origins simply by walking out into the sea, holding his head beneath the water and breathing there for five minutes or so.

  ‘And then you’ll believe me?’ asked the fellow in the sheep suit.

  ‘I could hardly deny what I had witnessed with my own two eyes,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘Come on then and I’ll do it.’

  And so he had.

  It was a really bad idea.

  There hadn’t been many folk upon the beach. Just a group of youths. Young farmers they happened to be. Down for the day and high upon the pleasures that come in a ring-pull can. And they could hardly deny what they had witnessed with their own, if bleary, eyes.

  They had witnessed a tall bloke and a short bloke drive a helpless sheep to a cruel death by drowning in the sea. And they had taken out their rightful indignation at this atrocious act by gathering up pebbles and stoning the two murderers along the beach.

  Breathing happily in his natural habitat, the fellow in the sheep suit had missed most of this and only after seven minutes had elapsed on his waterproof wristwatch, had he risen as a maritime Lazarus from his watery grave.

  His reappearance, accompanied as it was by his cry of ‘What the bloody hell is going on here?’, had caused a certain panic to break out in the ranks of the stoners, who had then left off their stoning and fled howling to the nearest bayside bar.

  Cornelius stretched in his deck-chair, yawned and clicked his jaw. Tuppe made little grumbling sounds beneath his breath.

  ‘What is it?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘Oh nothing much. I ache from head to toe and I’m not looking forward to spending the night sleeping on the end of a pier, that’s all.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Cornelius. ‘But I can hardly be blamed for the local seaside landladies refusing to put up a sheep for the night.’

  ‘I nearly had that short-sighted one going that he was a collie dog,’ said Tuppe. ‘Until the silly fool started going BAA, BAA.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Cornelius. ‘But I had to put him straight. He kept going BOW WOW and people were beginning to stare.’

  ‘Your fault for the stoning we took also.’

  ‘I accept some degree of blame for that, yes.’

  ‘And for the fact that we can’t sleep in the car? You having left the keys in it while we sought lodgings and somebody nicking it as soon as our backs were turned.’

  ‘There is much dishonesty in the world today,’ said Cornelius Murphy.

  ‘And I’m hungry,’ said Tuppe. ‘Which is also your fault as you gave away the last of our money to that bloke selling The Big Issue.’

  ‘He looked hungry,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘You’ve been a bit of a disappointment to me today,’ said Tuppe.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you tomorrow though.’

  ‘Oh yes, and how so?’

  ‘I will earn us lots of money.

  ‘Oh yes, and how so, once more?’

  ‘Promoting,’ said Cornelius.

  ‘Promoting? Promoting what, may I ask?’

  ‘A little money-spinner of an act I intend to manage. It is called PROFESSOR TUPPE AND HIS AMAZING DANCING SHEEP.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Tuppe.

  ‘Good night.’

  16

  Norman was not having a good night at the bottom of the abandoned lift shaft. ‘We have to work out some plan of escape,’ he told old Claude for the umpteenth time. ‘When does the jailer bring the meals?’

  ‘Jailer? Meals? Are you completely mad or is it me?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s me. So what time does he bring them?’

  ‘There aren’t any meals. You don’t eat here. No-one eats here or sleeps here. They work here. For that bastard up there. Doing his evil will, aiding and abetting him in his Machiavellian schemes. But eat and sleep? You’re barking, sonny, barking.’

  ‘But I have to get out of here. I know terrible things. I have to tell someone about them. People are going to die, millions of people.’

  ‘People do that. All the time. By the million. Nothing new in that.’

  ‘There’s something new about the way this lot’s going to die. All at once and everyone there is, in England at least, as far as I can make out.’

  ‘Bad,’ said the ancient one. ‘Bad that is. The bastard will be behind it, you see if he’s not.’

  ‘I’m absolutely certain that he is,’ said Norman. ‘Although I don’t know how or why. But I’ve got to stop it happening. Which means I have to get out of here now.’

  ‘Wish I could help you,’ said the ex-controller. ‘But I only experience fleeting moments of lucidity, such as the one I’m having now. Mostly I am stark staring kill-crazy. Not that you can kill dead people, of course. But you can make a really dreadful mess out of them.’

  ‘Oh great,’ said Norman. ‘Just perfect.’

  ‘There’s a hole,’ said the old fella.

  ‘Where’s a hole?’ asked Norman.

  ‘Up aways. Higher than the door. You can see it if you squint with your eyes.’

  Norman took to squinting. ‘I can’t see it,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it??
?s up there. I’ve seen it. Can’t reach it though. Can’t climb up there. Nothing to hold on to.’

  ‘There has to be a way,’ said Norman. ‘There’s always a way. Where there’s a will there’s a way.’

  ‘And if there was a way, what would you do once you were up there?’

  ‘I’m going to speak to God,’ said Norman. ‘Tell him what’s going on.’

  ‘Speak to God?’ The oldster collapsed in a fit of laughter. ‘You can’t speak to God, no-one can speak to God.’

  ‘Well, I have to do something.’

  ‘Get back to Earth, that’s what you must do.’

  ‘Don’t know how to,’ said Norman.

  ‘I do,’ said the oldster. ‘Reprogramme one of the big sky nozzles and shoot yourself back, that’s how you’d do it.’

  ‘Tell me how,’ said Norman.

  ‘Follow the instructions you learned from your handbook, and—’

  ‘Go no further,’ said Norman.

  ‘You never learned the stuff in the handbook, did you, sonny?’

  ‘No,’ said Norman. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Never mind. I can teach you all you need to know. Take a couple of years, in between my bouts of insanity, but you’ll pick it up.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer but I don’t have the time.’

  ‘All ruddy academic anyway,’ said the old fella. ‘Seeing as how you’d never be able to get up to that hole anyway. Whether there’s a will or whether there’s a way.’

  ‘There has to be a way,’ said Norman. ‘There just has to.’

  ‘Not unless you know how to fly, sonny. Not unless you know how to fly.’

  ‘Fly.’ Norman made the most dismal of all possible faces.

  ‘Something I said?’ asked old Claude.

  ‘Something I tried to do that got me into this mess in the first place. But hang about.’ Norman peered up the lift shaft and then gazed all around his miserable cell. ‘That’s it. Fly! That’s it! That’s it!’