‘Stick ‘em up!’ Danny whipped out the pistol. Held it tight between both hands. ‘Drop your truncheons first. Then stick ‘em up.’
Inspector Westlake’s mouth dropped open.
‘I wouldn’t think twice about shooting you,’ said Danny. ‘You know I mean it.’
‘Stand firm, men,’ said the voice of Demolition. ‘He’s bluffing.’
Danny stepped forward and rammed the gun barrel into the policeman’s mouth. ‘If I shoot this man then you’ll die too,’ he whispered. ‘Back off!’ Danny shouted to the constables. ‘Drop the truncheons and back off. Or I’ll shoot the inspector. I’m a psycho killer, you know I’ll do it.’
‘I think he would,’ said Constable Dreadlock, dropping his truncheon. ‘Would you mind if I took your photo as you were escaping?’
‘No, that’s fine,’ said Danny. ‘The inspector’s coming with me. As a hostage.’
‘Mmmph, grmph, mmmph,’ went the inspector’s mouth. The eyes that blazed at Danny didn’t look very human. Rather red and canine-looking. ‘Mmmph, gmph.’
‘He says do it. Hurry up.’
The constables backed into the corridor, dropping their truncheons and falling over one another. Constable Dreadlock raised his box Brownie. ‘Over here, Mr Orion,’ he called, paparazzi fashion. ‘Just one smile. Could you ram the gun in a little deeper? That’s lovely. Got it. One more now, really frowning at the inspector. Make it look intense. Really manic. Great. Now, if you could just take your top off—’
As he had a free foot to use, Danny kicked the constable in the cobblers.
‘Ouch,’ went Constable Dreadlock, doubling up, but keeping a firm hold on his camera.
Danny thrust the inspector before him. Backwards, it wasn’t easy. The constables were keeping well back. There wasn’t a hero amongst them. Not on a constable’s pay. And it was nice to see one of the higher ranks with a gun stuck in his gob.
But then, they also wanted to kill this man. This clear. Interesting dilemma. But one that was left unresolved.
Danny went along the corridor and there was a fire exit ahead. He pushed the inspector backwards through it.
And they were outside in the car park now.
‘Over here.’
Danny turned. Mickey was waving. From the white van. Nice one, Mickey.
‘Come on,’ said Danny, withdrawing the gun, spinning the inspector around and ramming it into the small of his back.
‘I can be inside you as quick as a flash,’ sneered Demolition.
‘I don’t think so. You’d have done it by now if you could.’ The inspector’s mouth closed, his eyes continued to blaze.
‘Don’t bring him,’ shouted Mickey. ‘Come on now, hurry.’
Danny pushed the inspector onwards. ‘Open the back doors,’ he called to Mickey. ‘See if there’s some rope or something.’
‘Danny there isn’t time for that.’
‘It’s very important, the creature that was in me is inside this man.’
‘I don’t know what good that’s going to do us.’ Mickey turned the ignition key and prepared to drive away. ‘No you don’t, you sod,’ he told the voice in his head. He leapt from the cab, rushed round and opened the rear doors. The moonlight shone in upon the remains of Parton Vrane.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mickey. ‘I really should have dumped this lot.’
‘Get in,’ Danny told the inspector, and, ‘Oh dear, Mickey, you really should have dumped that lot.’
And suddenly there was a lot of commotion. A siren sounded and constables issued from the fire-exit door. They had guns.
‘Get in!’ Danny kicked the inspector inside. Mickey slammed the doors shut, raced round to the cab. ‘Drive like crazy,’ said Danny.
‘Have no fear of that.’ Mickey pulled out the ignition keys. ‘No!’ Mickey stuck them in again. Gave them a twist. Gunfire rattled. Bullets slapped into the van. Mickey kept his head down, whacked the van into gear, tore away at the hurry up.
In the darkness of the back Danny toppled over. And hands sprang at his throat. ‘No, get off me.’
‘Are you OK?’ Mickey called.
‘Drive. Just drive.’ Danny clubbed with his pistol. Clubbed again and again and again. The hands about his throat relaxed and fell away.
‘Give us some light,’ called Danny. Mickey flicked on the interior lights that some folk always make such a fuss about you putting on at night.
‘You’re not supposed to have these on at night,’ called Mickey, who was evidently one of these folk.
Danny looked down at his handiwork. Inspector Westlake’s face was a bit of a mess. Danny turned the unconscious policeman over. He found some of those elasticated things with the hooks on the ends, which are never really any use at all for fixing stuff on your roof rack, but which everyone always has none the less, and he bound the inspector’s hands and feet.
Danny scrambled over the seats and into the cab. ‘You’re a genius, Mickey,’ he said. ‘An absolute genius. How are you managing? Do you want me to drive?’
‘I can manage. Like I said, I’m getting the measure of it. Watch this.’ Mickey ducked his head and made a scowling expression. Danny could see the Rider on his shoulders. The blank face took on a look of concern. And then one of pain. Mickey relaxed.
‘It doesn’t like that,’ he said.
‘What are you doing to it?’
‘I’m thinking about it. Thinking how I’d like to drive a nail into its head. Imagining myself doing it.’
‘Genius,’ said Danny. ‘Pure genius. Where are we going, Mickey?’
The driver shrugged. ‘You tell me.’
‘Do you have your book of spells with you?’
‘Of course I do. But you wouldn’t believe what a struggle I had.’
‘Oh yes I would.’
‘So where should we go?’ Mickey asked.
‘To Whitehall,’ said Danny. ‘There’s a gentleman I’d like you to meet.’
23
THE DOGS OF WAR
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Merlin.’ The gentleman extended his hand and Mickey gave it a shake.
‘Pleased to be here,’ he said. ‘Danny was telling me on the way that you have some really decent booze, any chance of a drink?’
‘Please be my guest.’
‘And he mentioned something about cigars.’
‘I see you’re not entirely alone.’ The gentleman glanced with distaste toward the Rider upon Mickey’s shoulders. It glared at him with unbridled hatred.
‘Do the thing with the nail, Mickey,’ said Danny.
‘What’s this?’ asked the gentleman.
‘Watch,’ Danny told him.
Mickey screwed up his face. Thought hammers and nails. The Rider flinched, jerked its head about.
‘Most impressive.’ The gentleman clapped his hands together, then took to the pouring of drinks.
‘Make mine a double,’ said Mickey.
‘What have you done with the inspector?’ Danny asked.
‘He’s tucked away safely. You’re sure Demolition is inside him?’
‘He’s there. He couldn’t get back inside me. I’m sure he tried.’
‘It’s because you know he’s there,’ said Mickey. ‘These things are only powerful as long as they keep you off guard. As long as you don’t know they’re doing it. When you do know, you can defend yourself.’
‘I wish I’d met you chaps twenty years ago,’ said the gentleman.
‘What, when I was three years old?’ Danny accepted his drink.
‘Yes, forget that.’ The gentleman handed a drink to Mickey and opened his box of cigars.
‘Great,’ said Mickey. ‘And you can forget that.’
‘Forget what?’ asked the gentleman.
‘I was talking to that.’ Mickey thumbed to the Rider on his shoulders. ‘He was suggesting I whack you over the head with the cigar box.’
‘I’m sorry about Parton Vrane,’ said Danny.
‘He’ll be
all right,’ said the gentleman, raising his glass and toasting his guests. ‘Most of his major parts are intact. We’ll soon have him up and about.’
‘Holy Hell,’ said Mickey Merlin. ‘I threw one of his legs in the canal.’
‘He’ll grow another.’
‘You mix with some shit weird people, Danny,’ said Mr Merlin, lighting his cigar and taking a puff.
‘It’s been an interesting week.’ Danny helped himself to a cigar.
The gentleman lit it for him. ‘I feel confident,’ he said, ‘that a solution is now near at hand. We have Demolition safely confined. Mr Merlin here has demonstrated that it is possible to fight back mentally. And we have the mysterious book of spells. Surely with all this in our arsenal we have a fighting chance.’
‘So where do we start?’ Danny asked.
‘Well, these things take time.’ The gentleman sat down behind his big desk. ‘We can’t rush matters. We must interview Demolition, see if we can persuade him to cooperate. We must study this book of spells, discover whether an answer lies within. I will put my top people on it. But we might be talking about months, possibly even years.’
A telephone upon his desk began to ring. The gentleman picked up the receiver to his ear. ‘Yes?’ he said, then with a pause, ‘What?’ then another pause. A further ‘What?’ a further pause. A ‘Do what you can,’ and the gentleman replaced the receiver.
‘Well,’ said he. ‘An interesting development.’
‘Yes?’ said Danny. ‘What?’
‘Apparently you didn’t quite outrun the police,’ said the gentleman. ‘Apparently the building is now completely surrounded.’
It’s funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it? Just when you think you’re beginning to get things sorted. Whoosh, out of the blue comes trouble. It’s just possible that if Danny had not taken the inspector hostage, the response would not have been quite so muscular. But if you do take a police inspector hostage, then with or without the influence of the Riders, you can get yourself into all kinds of trouble.
‘Special service units,’ said the gentleman. ‘Heavily armed. State-of-the-art weapons. Stun grenades. Tear gas. Quite a few out there. Massing, as it were.’
‘Over to you, Mickey,’ said Danny.
‘What do you mean, over to me?’
‘You’re the magician. Magic us out.’
‘David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty vanish,’ said the gentleman.
‘That’s a trick,’ said Mickey. ‘Anyone can do that.’
‘Oh yeah, sure,’ said Danny.
‘It’s simple,’ said Mickey. ‘He had two towers built in front of the statue. The audience sat one side. The statue was the other. Then he let down a screen between the towers, raised it again and the statue was gone.’
‘Yes I saw that, but how was it done?’
‘There was another screen behind the first one. A black one. It blacked out the statue. And that’s how it was done.’
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to give away secrets like that,’ said the gentleman.
‘I’m not in the Magic Circle,’ said Mickey. ‘I’m a real magician.’
‘Then make the building disappear.’
‘I may be good, but I’m not that good.’
The sound of a voice amplified by one of those electric loud hailers was now to be heard. Its message was simple and unambiguous. ‘Give yourselves up at once,’ it was, ‘or we will storm the building.’
‘Negotiate,’ Danny told the gentleman. ‘We do have the hostage. Waste time, negotiate. Ask for flasks of tea. Make outrageous demands. A helicopter. A million quid.’
The gentleman’s phone began to ring again. And the gentleman snatched up the receiver. ‘I’ll only negotiate with Michael Jackson,’ he was heard to remark.
Mickey drew Danny away to a comer. ‘This is going to get very silly,’ he said. ‘We could get killed here. I don’t have time to set up a spell. And even if I did, we don’t know whether it would work against these things. We can’t hang around, we’ll have to escape.’
‘There’s nowhere to run to. We have to make a stand now.’
‘Get real, Danny.’
‘Get real? This is all as unreal as it’s ever likely to get.’
‘Where do you think they’ve banged up the inspector?’
‘I don’t know. Down in the basement probably.’
‘Then let’s get down there. I have an idea.’
‘I’m with you,’ said Danny.
‘Then grab my book of spells from that loony in the wig’s desk and let’s get going.’
‘And smoked salmon,’ said the gentleman into the telephone receiver. ‘And I want it fresh, flown down from Scotland, and I want Madonna to deliver it personally.’
Words returned to him through the earpiece.
‘All right,’ said the gentleman. ‘If you can’t get smoked salmon I’ll settle for cod and chips.’
‘Just popping out to the toilet,’ said Danny, snatching up the book of spells. ‘Be back in a minute.’
‘Do you want vinegar on yours?’ asked the gentleman.
‘Yes,’ said Danny. ‘And a pickled onion.’
Danny ran, this time with Mickey. Along the corridor. To the lift. Down in the lift to the basement and along further corridors. Neither was sure exactly whether they were running in the right direction, but each felt certain that the in-built something which always causes heroes to arrive at the right place at the right time would aid them on their run.
And naturally it did.
During their run, Mickey explained what he wanted Danny to do. The thing about real magic, Real Magick, is its specific nature, there is no airy-fairyness about it. You have to be specific and exact. You have to know exactly what you want and be very exact in the way you demand it. There’s no room for half measures in magick. Precision is everything. And so there were certain things Mickey had to know. And Danny was just going to have to find them out.
‘Let’s try in here,’ said Danny, pushing open a door which had a sign reading ‘TOP SECRET, NO ENTRY’ emblazoned upon it.
‘That might well be the one.’ Mickey followed Danny through the doorway.
‘Oh yes,’ said Danny, then; ‘Oh Hell!’
Now ‘Oh Hell’ didn’t cover it. But swearing rarely helps.
This room was large. It was low ceilinged, but it was large. It was lined with what seemed to be glass-fronted museum cases. Old they were. Victorian. They were lit from within.
‘Oh Hell!’ said Mickey.
‘I said that,’ said Danny. ‘But would you just look at all this?’
The museum cases were packed with specimens. Suspended in sealed jars. Preserved in formaldehyde. Tissue samples. Organs. Limbs. But they weren’t human. No way were they human.
‘It’s an aliens’ graveyard,’ said Mickey Merlin.
‘These are old,’ Danny whistled. ‘Look at the labels.’
The labels were old. They were peeling from the specimen jars. Brown and peeling. Crabbed cursive lettering in quill pen, by the look of it.
‘Here,’ said Danny. ‘You know that bit at the end of Predator Two, when the alien gives Danny Glover that old flintlock with the date on it, to show how long they’ve been hunting on Earth?’
‘Yeah, I saw it,’ said Mickey. ‘Wasn’t as good as the first one though. No general electric mini-gun. And no Arnie.’
‘Yes, well – this is the same business. The aliens were collecting us. But someone here’s been collecting them. I’ll bet there’s bits of the Roswell Crash here.’
‘Forget that,’ said Mickey. ‘Look at the label on this.’ He pointed. Danny read, ‘ “Spleen of entity recovered from wreckage of craft which crashed into the R.101 airship, causing its destruction.” This is a rewrite of history.’
‘Oh, I like this,’ said Mickey, pointing anew. ‘“Skeleton of Jack the Ripper.” ’
‘Looks more like the Elephant Man. Oh, it is the Elephant Man. Well, I
never knew he was Jack the Ripper.’
‘I always suspected it,’ said Mickey. ‘All the murders were a short walk from the London Hospital where he was staying at the time. But then I never knew the Elephant Man was an alien.’
‘I don’t think the gentleman was altogether straight with me,’ said Danny, perusing further specimens and shaking his head as he did so. ‘I think there’s a bit of a conspiracy going on here.’
‘You’re not kidding. Look at that.’
Danny looked. ‘Hell,’ he said once more.
And it was Inspector Westlake. He lay in a sort of open-topped chromium sarcophagus, with dry ice raising little wisps of mist. He was well frozen up.
‘They’ve done him in,’ whispered Danny. ‘And oh Hell, I can see it.’
‘What can you see?’
‘I can see the dog.’ And Danny could see it. The image was superimposed over the inspector’s face. It was another face, definitely canine in design, but more than that, a noble face, a wise face. A face that glowed with a vivid intelligence.
Mickey stared in at the inspector. ‘I can’t see anything but the policeman. This sod messing with my head is clouding my vision.’
‘Well, I can see it.’ And Danny looked, and as he looked the eyes in the transparent face opened and turned towards him. The thin blackish lips moved. Trembled.
‘It’s still alive.’ Danny still had the gun in his pocket, he drew it out and pointed it down.
‘Thaw me out,’ came the voice of Demolition.
‘No way,’ said Danny, steadying the gun.
‘Thaw me out. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what this is about. Set me free and I’ll tell you everything.’
Danny looked at Mickey.
‘Ask him the questions,’ said Mickey. ‘The questions I told you to ask.’
‘What is your real name?’ Danny asked. ‘What is the name of your race and the name of the place you came from?’
The transparent lips rolled back into a crooked smile. ‘Tell you that?’ whispered the voice of Demolition. ‘If I were to tell you those things, your friend could apply his magic.’
‘Actually it wasn’t a request,’ said Danny. ‘More of a demand. It’s a case of, tell me what I want to know or I shoot the inspector and you die with him.’