Retromancer

  Who sank in a heap to said litter.

  Which, I considered, was jolly decent of me, as now the chances of him being caught in some kind of crossfire when I ‘resisted arrest’ were considerably lessened.

  ‘He will thank me for that later,’ I told myself, as John was now in no fit state to hear it. ‘And so on my toes and away.’

  And I prepared to take flight.

  Dive off the water side of the barge and swim to Kew.

  It seemed like a likely solution.

  And although I had never actually learned how to swim, I felt that there could not be much to it once you got yourself started.

  I peeped out of a porthole. There were at least half a dozen fellows in black uniforms out there. And they all carried guns. And two of them not only carried guns, but also strained against the leashes of some rather fierce-looking dogs. It did not look at all to be a hopeful situation. In fact it looked to be a terrible situation and, struck dumb with terror, I sank down to my knees and chewed upon my knuckles.

  More stern words were flung in my direction through the electric megaphone jobbie, ordering me to exit the barge immediately with my hands in the upwards position. Compliance with these instructions was not optional, I was given to understand.

  I took deep breaths, struggled to my feet and took myself over to the water side of the barge. The porthole there hung open; it would take but a minute or two to squirm through, drop into the water and swim to freedom. Compliance to this ideal, I considered, was not optional.

  Although.

  And I dithered.

  And then they turned the dogs loose.

  And then I awoke.

  Yes, awoke, that is what happened next. Exactly what happened before this was unknown to me. One minute there were dogs barking loudly. Then nothing—

  And then I awoke.

  To find—

  That I was not in Kew.

  Although it might have been Kew. But then it might have been anywhere. They are all very much the same, or so I have since been told. No matter what city, or town, or part of the world. All very much the same. They look very much the same and they smell very much the same—

  Torture chambers.

  And even though I had never been in one before in my life, I recognised this one to be what it was, almost on the instant.

  As I awoke. Naked. Strapped into the iron chair and surrounded on all visible sides by instruments of torment.

  A very bright light shone down upon me and a very bad smell engulfed me. And I could not move my hands to my nose and I became very afeared.

  And—

  Slap!

  Someone caught me a massive wallop across my mouthparts that shook my brains and loosened my teeth. And slap! it went once again.

  ‘Ooh!’ I cried, ‘stop hitting me. Mercy. Please stop.’

  And a fellow appeared in my line of vision and grinned into my face.

  ‘So,’ he said. And it sounded like Zo. ‘Zo, our little communist awakes. Did you sleep well after your swim?’

  ‘My swim?’ I said. And I shivered as I said it.

  ‘Ill-advised to leap into rivers when you cannot swim. If we hadn’t pulled you out, you might well have come to harm.’

  ‘Well, thank you very much,’ I said. ‘Very kind of you. Sorry to have taken up your valuable time. If you would just give me my clothes, I will be off about my business.’

  ‘Business. Yes.’ And this fellow grinned some more. Although rather too close for my liking and in a manner that I felt lacked for a certain warmth. ‘You have work, yes?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘And I will be late back from my lunch.’

  ‘Right.’ And now the fellow’s head bobbed from side to side and he straightened up and away from me. I got a better look at him then, although I did not exactly take to what I saw.

  He was small and somewhat slender, with shaven head, broken nose, monocle and duelling scar. His all-black uniform looked very expensive and made to measure. And was ornamented here and there by silver fixtures and fittings beset with eagle and death’s-head motifs. This I assumed to be a high-ranking fellow. And one with whom playing ‘silly buggers’ would not be best advised.

  Not that I was in any mood to play ‘silly buggers’. I was so scared that I almost—

  ‘I need the toilet,’ I said. ‘Sorry, sir, but I do.’

  ‘Time enough,’ said he, ‘when you have answered all of my questions.’

  ‘Anything, sir,’ I said. ‘You ask, I answer. Anything at all.’

  ‘Is good,’ he said. And now he drew a chair into my line of vision. A rather comfy-looking chair, with a nice cushion on it and everything. And he dropped into this chair, carefully pulling up the knees of his trousers and straightening the creases.

  ‘Very nice riding boots,’ I observed. As I tried, without success, to cross my legs. ‘I really do need the toilet. Oh dear.’

  From an upper pocket the fellow took a notebook and silver pen. It was a biro, and he clicked it with his thumb.

  ‘Name?’ said he. And I told him my name.

  ‘Address?’ And I told him that too.

  ‘Occupation?’ I paused.

  ‘Occupation?’

  ‘Well . . .’ And I paused once again.

  ‘Well?’ said the fellow. ‘What is “well”? Is it “well” as in “wellpoisoner”, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It is not that.’

  ‘No.’ And the fellow leaned forwards, raised his biro, examined its tip and then drove it down with a fearsome force right into my right kneecap.

  And the pain! And I howled! And I howled and I howled and I wept. And I begged too, I will tell you.

  ‘Stop,’ I begged and I wept as I begged. ‘Please stop. Oh my God, that hurts, pull it out, please pull it out.’

  But he ground it around before he slowly pulled it out.

  ‘Unemployed,’ said the fellow, as he wiped my blood from his biro onto my leg, then shook his head and tutted.

  And I shook from top to toe, and then I peed myself.

  The fellow asked me many things on that terrible afternoon and I must have told him many things, although most of them were probably gibberish, because I would have told him anything at all in order that he stop inflicting pain upon me.

  But he did not stop and the things that he did to me got worse and worse and worse.

  And then it became apparent to me that I was not going to leave this awful room alive. I was going to die there in agony. That was all that was left for me.

  And I do recall the electrical apparatus. The electrodes that he pressed to my person. And then the flash and the horrible explosion.

  And that was that for me.

  6

  ‘And now awake!’

  And I awoke, in terror and confusion.

  ‘And get stuck into your breakfast, or I will be forced to relieve you of at least one of those splendid pork sausages.’

  And I did awakenings and focusings of the eyes and then I made free with a very startled squawk and fainted dead away.

  To be awoken once more, by the application of a smelling-bottle to my nasal parts. Which caused more squawkings from my oral parts and cries to desist and leave off.

  ‘Aha, young Rizla. You are with us once more.’

  And I beheld and lo it was Hugo Rune.

  And I did great blinkings of the eyes and gaggings of the mouth as I gazed all around and about and recognised my surroundings. I was surely once more in the rooms that we had inhabited together during the year of my adventures with him. The rooms at 49 Grand Parade, Brighton.

  ‘Oh,’ I went. And, ‘Bless my soul.’ And, ‘Thank the Lord.’ And things of that nature generally.

  And then a terrible thought struck me and I ceased with such joyous ejaculations and became all downcast and glum.

  ‘What ails you, young Rizla?’ asked Mr Rune. ‘I have delivered you from your tormentor and awoken you to a hero’s breakfast. Why the long face and de
eply furrowed brow?’

  ‘Because it is all a falsehood,’ I declared and I glared as I declared this. ‘The contents of this room were destroyed in a fire last year. This is some kind of evil trick. The mind-altering chemicals, is that the game?’

  But Mr Rune munched toast. He reached forwards and dunked his toast into the fried egg on my plate and then he munched some more.

  And then he said, ‘Mind-altering chemicals, did I hear you say?’

  And I said, yes, he had. And that this was all a fake and that I was not going to fall for it, not at all, no. And to add weight to my words I shook my head. Which hurt quite a bit, because I seemed to have something of a headache.

  But Hugo Rune just smiled upon me. And then he helped himself to one of my sausages.

  ‘Leave that alone,’ I told him. And I reached out and snatched it back.

  ‘You will find it preferable to Bratwurst, I’m thinking,’ said the guru’s guru, and he winked at me.

  I took breaths of the deepest kind and tried to steady my crumpled-up mind. And I looked all around and about and all looked real to me.

  I sat at the breakfasting table at which Mr Rune and I had taken many a breakfast. Our chairs were of the Victorian persuasion, as were indeed the greater part of the furnishings within this wonderful room. Upon mahogany shelves the leather spines of Mr Rune’s vast collection of thaumaturgical books glowed with a rich patina. As indeed did everything, it seemed. The cases of stuffed creatures, many, I recalled, of an apparently mythical nature. The polished brass of the intricate machines, whose purposes I had never fathomed. The curiosities that Mr Rune had gathered during his world travellings. The magical items that were the gifts from grateful monarchs and society figures for whom Mr Rune had rendered certain discreet services.

  All was as I remembered it.

  But all, I knew, had been destroyed by fire.

  ‘It is somehow fake,’ I said and I popped the sausage into my mouth and chewed with vigour upon it. ‘I do not know how it has been done, or why it has been done. But neither at this moment do I care.’ And then I forked up bacon and conveyed it speedily into my mouth.

  ‘Would you care for coffee?’ asked Hugo Rune. ‘It is ersatz, of course, but then it would be, wouldn’t it?’

  I shrugged my shoulders and got stuck into my breakfast.

  ‘I’ll wager you’d care for an explanation,’ said Hugo Rune. But I just shrugged once more and stuck further into the sticking in.

  But I viewed him over my breakfasting fork and took in his striking presence. It was him, of this there could be no doubt. This was Hugo Rune, the real Hugo Rune. No substitute could ever there be. Tall and imposing, even when seated. The heavy brows and shaven head, with its pentagram tattoo. The quilted velvet smoking jacket, the high-collared shirt with cravat.

  And those eyes. Those mischievous twinkling eyes. That held such wisdom. Held such power.

  Then Hugo Rune poured coffee from a proper coffee pot.

  ‘It is you,’ said I, between sweet mastications. ‘It is you and this is the room that we shared. But how?’

  Smiling, Hugo Rune raised his coffee cup as if in toast to me. ‘The contents of the room you know and recognise, young Rizla. But we are not in Brighton, we are in Brentford, in my home on the famous Butts Estate.’

  I did groanings of the voice at this, and shudderings of the shoulders. ‘Then my joy at our reunion, for joy indeed it is, will be brief,’ I said, ‘for I am a wanted man.’

  ‘Wanted by the Gestapo?’ said Himself.

  And I nodded in response and said that regrettably this was so. And I took the opportunity to now do the right thing and to thank Mr Rune for saving me from the merciless hands of my tormentor. I rubbed at my wounded parts and found to my surprise that they appeared no longer wounded.

  So I thanked Mr Rune for this also. As I had no doubt in my mind that it was he who had healed me.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said, and he drained his coffee cup.

  ‘And I will tell you this,’ I said, taking up my coffee cup and tossing coffee down my throat. ‘That—Wahh!’ And I spat coffee the full length of the table.

  ‘Oh sorry, sorry,’ I went, ‘but what was that?’

  Gagging, I clutched at my throat and I pointed with my free hand to the coffee pot.

  ‘Ersatz coffee,’ said Mr Rune, dabbing flecks of same from his velvet lapels. ‘I did warn you. After all, there is a war on, you know.’

  ‘A war?’ I said. And hope, as Bing Crosby might say, sprang eternal. ‘So the plain people of Brentford are fighting back against the mind-altering neo-Nazis?’

  ‘Not as such.’ Mr Rune did shakings of his proud and noble head. ‘It will be necessary for me to explain matters to you, Rizla—’

  At this I opened my mouth to offer my real name. But then I thought much better of it and so did not. If Mr Rune chose to call me Rizla, then that was the name I would happily go by in his company. Being myself and going by my real name had not proved of late to be a particularly viable proposition.

  ‘To explain matters,’ said Mr Rune once more, ‘things have become somewhat complicated. Therefore I wish to call again upon your services to aid me in expediting matters. If not speedily, then at least with a view to ultimate success.’ Hugo Rune smiled once more upon me.

  ‘An explanation would be nice at this time,’ I told him. ‘But please let me thank you once more for saving my life. Also let me say that I should away from these premises with alacrity - I am after all a most wanted man and I would not want you to suffer on my behalf.’

  ‘Ah, the noble Rizla. It is a joy to work with you once again.’

  ‘Work?’ I said, and I made the face of one who has just popped doggy-doo into his mouth, thinking it to be a chocolate toffee. ‘As in regular employment?’

  Mr Hugo Rune laughed. In a big basso profundo with gusto and with vigour. ‘Regular employment?’ quoth he. ‘Why, Rizla, how well do you know me?’

  ‘In truth I would say hardly at all,’ I replied. ‘You are a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, sealed with gaffer tape and posted through the wrong letterbox by a postman with an eye for the ladies and a nose for a car-boot-sale bargain.’

  Hugo Rune made so-so gestures with a mighty hand. ‘That is all as may be,’ he declared, ‘but Hugo Rune does not offer regular employment.’

  I smiled and said, ‘Splendid. That is a relief.’

  ‘Hugo Rune offers irregular employment.’

  ‘What does it pay?’ I asked him.

  And Mr Rune changed the subject.

  ‘Will you be wanting all those baked beans?’ he asked me.

  And I assured him that I would.

  ‘And the black pudding?’

  ‘And the black pudding. But certainly no more coffee.’

  ‘I agree that it’s terrible stuff,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Made from acorns, I believe.’

  ‘Hardly up to your exacting standards. Have Harrods closed your account due to non-payment?’

  ‘Now now, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘You know my views regarding the matter of payments. Payments are for little people. And Hugo Rune is not one of the little people.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ I agreed. ‘Would you be so kind as to pass me that last piece of toast?’

  ‘Of course not. More coffee?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  And so we ate what was left of the breakfast. For the most part in silence, but for the necessary sounds of mastication and the occasional satisfied belch. And when we were done we repaired to fireside chairs and Mr Rune offered me a cigar.

  ‘I am having a crack at cigarettes,’ I told him. ‘The Wild Woodbine. I do not suppose that you managed to save my clothes when you saved me, as it were?’

  ‘The blue jeans and the T-shirt?’ Hugo Rune did pinchings of the nostrils. ‘Absolutely not. But surely you approve of your present duds.’ And he gestured unto myself and I became cognisant, really for the first time, as to what now clothed my body parts.

&nbs
p; For it was a suit of the finest Boleskine tweed. With a cotton shirt and a knitted tie. And smart brown brogues on my feet.

  ‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘And thank you very much indeed. But—’ And here I hesitated.

  And Mr Rune punctuated my hesitation by the application of the word, ‘What?’

  ‘These tweeds,’ I said, ‘and please do not think me ungrateful, but the flight-deck shoulders and double-breasted jacket front, not to mention the Oxford bags, which surely I will not - they do look somewhat old-fashioned.’

  ‘On the contrary.’ Mr Rune brought a lighted taper from the fire and put it to his cigar. ‘That suit is quite the latest thing.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘The nineteen-forties retro look. I see.’

  ‘You don’t,’ said Mr Rune. ‘But never mind.’

  I stared into the crackling flames and many thoughts passed through my head. At length I asked, ‘Are we going to return to Brighton?’

  Mr Rune shook his head.

  ‘Are we going somewhere, anywhere other than here?’

  Mr Rune shook his head once more and sucked daintily upon his cigar. ‘Are you sure that I can’t tempt you to one of these, Rizla? They are the genuine article, somewhat rare in this very day and age.’

  I now grew somewhat edgy. ‘I will have to leave soon,’ I told Mr Rune. ‘Someone probably saw you bring me here. Nothing much ever slips by Brentonians. I really must away.’

  ‘You really mustn’t. Calm yourself, Rizla, do.’

  ‘I am afeared,’ I said. ‘And rightly too. The Gestapo tortured me. They will be after me for sure.’

  ‘They are not after you, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘You can?’

  ‘Absolutely. You trust Hugo Rune, do you not?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘Unreservedly. Although my acquaintanceship with you has been somewhat fraught with danger.’

  ‘But you loved every minute of it.’

  ‘Well, most of them, anyway.’

  ‘And you will love them once more. We have a new quest, Rizla. A new set of challenges. A new set of Cosmic Conundra to solve. And once more we shall do this in the service of Mankind. Twelve new cases await us.’