The gates of Bel Air went by—and behind them, perfect houses nestling in perfect bouquets of shrubbery. I’ve seen exactly those houses on television and even I, sceptical and sarcastic old me, have felt that I really, really wanted one of them. Luckily, the sort of the things that people who live in such houses say to each other make me giggle until tea squirts out of my nose and so the moment passes.
The sleek, desirable blue convertible swept on. There is a set of traffic lights, I understand, on the borders of Bel Air and Brentwood, and as the car approached them, they turned red. The car drew to a halt. The woman shook her hair and adjusted her sunglasses in the mirror. As she did so, she caught sight of a brief flicker of movement in the mirror as a small, dark-haired figure emerged quietly from the shade of the roadside and snuck round the back of the car. A moment later he was leaning right over her, pointing a small handgun into her face. I know even less about handguns than I do about clothes. I’d be completely hopeless in Los Angeles. I’d be laughed at not only for my lack of dress sense but also my pitiful inability to tell a Magnum .38 from a Walther PPK or even, for heaven’s sake, a derringer. I do know, however, that the gun was also blue, or at least blue-black, and that the woman was startled out of her wits to have it pointed into her left eye from a range of just under one inch. Her assailant gave her to understand that now would be an excellent moment for her to vacate her seat and, no, not to take the key out of the car or even to attempt to pick up her bag, which was lying on the seat next to her, but just to be very cool, move very easily, very gently, and just get the fuck out of the car.
The woman tried to be very cool, to move very easily and very gently, but was hampered by the fact that she was shaking with uncontrollable fear as the gun bobbed about just an inch or so from her face like a mayfly in the summer. She did, however, get the fuck out of the car. She stood trembling in the middle of the road as the thief jumped into the car in her place, gunned the engine in a quick roar of triumph, and careered sharply off along Sunset Boulevard, around the bend, and away. She twisted around on the spot in an agony of shocked helplessness. Her world had turned abruptly upside down and tipped her out of it, and she was now, suddenly and unexpectedly, that most helpless of all people in Los Angeles, a pedestrian.
She tried to wave down one or two of the other cars on the road, but they manoeuvred politely past her. One of them was an open-topped Mustang with the radio playing loudly. I’d love to be able to say that it was tuned to an oldies station and that the words “How does it feeeeel? How does it feeeeeel?” snarled out at this moment, but there are limits even to fiction. It was an oldies station, but the old song it was playing was “Sunday Girl” by Blondie, and so wasn’t even remotely appropriate, seeing as this was a Thursday. What could she do?
Another perfect crime. Another perfect day in the City of Angels. And only one tiny little lie.
Forgive me.
Chapter 9
IF THERE IS an uglier building in England than Ranting Manor, then I haven’t seen it. It must be hiding somewhere and not, like Ranting Manor, squatting in the middle of a hundred acres of rolling parkland. The original estate consisted of many more hundreds of acres that were the pride of Oxfordshire, but generations of syphilitic idiocy and blitheringness have reduced it to its current decrepit state—an ill-kempt bunch of woods, fields, and lawns littered with the results of various failed attempts to raise money by whatever means seemed to someone like a good idea at the time: a godforsaken fun fair, a once quite well-stocked zoo, and, of more recent provenance, a small high-technology business park, current occupant one faltering computer games company, now cast adrift by its American parent and believed to be the only such company in the world making a loss. You could find a billion-barrel oilfield in the grounds of Ranting Manor and you could pretty much guarantee that within a couple of years it would be operating at a loss, and would require the selling of the family tin to keep it going. The family silver has long since gone, of course, along with most of the family. Disease, alcohol, drugs, sexual imbecility, and poorly maintained road vehicles have combined to cut vicious swathes through the ranks of the Rantings and reduced them to almost none.
How much history would you like? Maybe just a very little. The Manor itself dates back to the thirteenth century, or at least bits of it do. The bits are all that remain of the original monastery, inhabited for a couple of centuries or so by a devout order of calligraphers and pederasts. Then Henry VIII got his mitts on it and handed it over to a courtly scumbag called John Ranting, in return for some spectacular piece of loyal villainy. He knocked it down and rebuilt it after his own pleasure, which was probably pleasing enough, seeing as the architects of the Tudor period pretty much knew what they were doing: stout beams, nice plasterwork and leaded windows, all the things we now value enormously but that John Ranting’s descendants, unfortunately, did not—especially the Victorian rubber magnate Sir Percy Ranting, who, in the 1860s, tore much of it down and rebuilt it as a hunting lodge. These Victorian “hunting lodges” were built because the immensely wealthy merchants of the age were not supposed to parade their actual penises around in public, instead of which vast tracts of pretty and innocent English countryside had their erections inflicted upon them. Big, bulbous, ruddy buildings with vast ballrooms, grand, angular staircases, and as many turrets and crenellations as a recreational condom.
The nineteenth century was, in aesthetic terms, disastrous enough for Ranting Manor, but right slap-bang after it, of course, came the twentieth, with all its architectural theories and double glazing. The main additions during this period were, in the thirties, a sort of large Nazi billiard room and in the sixties an indoor swimming pool, tiled in orange and purple, to which were now added various clumps of brightly coloured fungus.
The thing that binds all these different styles together is a general air of dampness and decay and a sense that if a public-spirited citizen tried to set the place alight, it would go out well before the fire brigade arrived. What else? Oh yes. It’s haunted.
Enough of the wretched building.
At about ten-thirty in the evening, which would make it roughly the same time that the car was being stolen on Sunset Boulevard, a small perimeter gate squeaked open. The main iron gates to the estate were kept locked at night, but the side gate was usually to be found unfastened. A reputation for being an unwholesome and troublesome place was usually enough to deter any intruders. An old sign on the main gate said BEWARE OF THE DOG, beneath which someone had scrawled, “Why single out the dog particularly?”
The figures of, respectively, a large dog and a small man slipped in through the side gate. Both walked with a pronounced limp. The dog limped on its left foreleg, the man on his right leg or, to be more accurate, not on his right leg because he didn’t have one. It was missing beneath the knee. Instead, the man limped on a wooden leg that was a full inch longer than his left leg and made walking not merely difficult, but actually rather a trial.
The night was dull. The moon was up, or at least half of it was, but for the most part it was shrouded in clouds. The two shadowy figures limped their way in unison along the driveway, resembling, from a distance, a child’s pulling toy with a couple of off-centre wheels. They were taking the long way to the house. This wound a circuitous route through the estate, passing some of its failed or failing business enterprises on the way.
The dog whined and grumbled a little until its master bent down stiffly and let it off its leash, whereupon it gave a gruff yelp of pleasure, lurched forward a couple of paces, and then resumed its hobbling plod, in unison with, but now a good two of yards ahead of, its master. From time to time it glanced back to check that its master was still there, that all was well, and that nothing was going to jump out and bite them.
Moving thus, they slowly rounded a long bend in the drive, the man hunched inside a long dark coat, despite the easy temperature of the evening. After a few minutes they passed on their left the entrance to the zoo that had been s
uch a drain on the estate’s limited resources. There were very few animals left in it now: a couple of goats, a chicken, and a capybara, the world’s largest rodent. There was also a special guest animal in the zoo at the moment, being housed temporarily while its normal quarters in Chatsfield Zoo were being rebuilt. Desmond—the animal’s name was Desmond—had only been in residence for a couple of weeks so far, but his presence had, not surprisingly, caused a bit of a stir in the village of Little Ranting.
As the man and his dog passed the entrance to the zoo, they paused for a moment, and then turned and looked at it again. The low, wooden gate, which should have been secured at this time of night, was standing open. The dog whimpered, and snuffled around on the ground, which seemed to have been scuffed and churned up a little. The man hobbled up to the open gate and peered into the darkness beyond. Among the low huddle of buildings, all was darkness, except for a single dim light that glowed from the hut where Roy Harrison, Desmond’s keeper from Chatsfield, was staying. Nothing untoward. No sign of movement. So why was the gate open? It probably meant nothing. Most things, the man would have told you if you had asked him, probably meant nothing. Nevertheless, he summoned his dog with a gruff syllable and limped crossly through the gate, closing it behind them. Slowly, grindingly, they made their way along the gravel path to the single source of light: Roy Harrison’s temporary abode.
The place seemed quiet.
The man rapped sharply on the door and listened. No answer. He knocked again. Still, nothing. He opened the door. It wasn’t locked, but then, there was probably no reason for it to be. As he pushed his way into the tiny, dark hallway, his nose twitched at an odd smell. Zookeepers’ lodgings were exactly where you would expect to find a vast and rich range of odd smells, but not necessarily this particular sweet, cloying one. Hmmph. The dog let out a very, very slight little yelp.
On the right side of the hallway was a door, the source of both the light that could be seen from outside and the fragrance that could be smelt within. Still, all was quiet. Carefully the man pushed the door open.
At first glance he thought that the figure slumped over the kitchen table might be dead, but after a long, drawn-out moment of silence it emitted a light, riffling snore.
The dog whimpered again, and sniffed around the floor nervously. The dog always seemed oddly nervous for its size, and kept on glancing round to its master for reassurance. In fact it was altogether an odd dog, of uncertain breed, or breeds. It was large and black, but its hair was tufty, its body scrawny and clumsy, and its manner edgy, anxious, verging on the completely neurotic. Whenever it came to a halt for a moment or so, the business of starting up again often seemed to cause it trouble, as if it had difficulty in remembering where it had left each of its legs. It looked as if something very nasty had happened to it, or was about to.
The sleeping keeper continued to snore. Next to him was a collection of crumpled beer cans, a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and a couple of glasses. In the ashtray lay the butts of three joints, and scattered around were bits of a ripped-up cigarette packet, a packet of cigarette papers, and a piece of silver foil twisted up in the traditional manner. The source of the smell. Roy had clearly shared a big evening with somebody, and that somebody had clearly then pushed off. The visitor tried gently to shake him by the shoulder, but to no avail. He tried again, but this time the keeper slowly slid sideways and collapsed in an untidy, slobbering heap on the floor. The dog was so startled by this that it leapt wildly for cover behind the sofa. Unfortunately the dog was larger and heavier than the sofa and knocked it backwards as he jumped over it, causing it to topple over on top of him. The dog yelped again, scrabbled briefly at the linoleum, and then leapt for cover once more behind a small coffee table, breaking it. Having run out of places to leap to, the dog cowered back in a corner, quivering with fright.
Its master satisfied himself that Roy was merely in a temporary state of chemical imbalance and not in any actual danger and, coaxing his dog with a few soothing words, left again. Together they followed the path back towards the gate and let themselves back out onto the main driveway, heading on the way they had been going, hobbling towards the main house. There were heavy scuff marks on the driveway.
Desmond suddenly felt bewildered. In an instant everything he had always smelt about the world had gone all swimmy and peculiar on him. There were some lights flashing around him, but he didn’t mind that. Lights weren’t of any real concern to him. Blink blink. So what? But this was most peculiar. He would have said that he was hallucinating, except that he didn’t know the word, or indeed any word. He didn’t even know that his name was Desmond, but, again, it wasn’t the sort of thing that bothered him. A name was just a sound you heard, and didn’t have that rich, heady reek of really being something. A sound didn’t well up inside your head and go woomph the way a smell did. Smell was real, smell was something you could trust.
At least it had been up till now. But now he felt as if the whole world were tipping backwards over his head, and this, he couldn’t help feeling, was a very worrying thing for the world to do.
He took a deep breath to try to steady his huge bulk. He drew billions of rich little molecules over the sensitive membranes of his nostrils. Not that rich, in fact. The smells here were mean little smells—flat, stale, and bitter smells with an acrid undertow of something nasty being burnt. None of the large, generous smells of hot, grassy air and day-old dung that haunted his imagination, but at least these paltry little local smells should steady him and root him on the ground.
They didn’t.
Hhrrphraaah! Now he seemed to have two different and completely contradictory worlds in his head. Graaarphhh! What was all this? Where had the horizon gone?
That was it. That was why the world seemed to be tilting up above his head. Where there was usually a perfectly normal horizon, there now wasn’t one. There was more world instead. A lot more. It just went on and on and on into a strange and hazy distance. Desmond felt big weird fears welling up inside him. He had a sudden instinct to charge at something, but you couldn’t charge at a worrying uncertainty. He nearly stumbled.
He drew in another deep breath. He blinked, slowly.
Haaarh! The new bit of the world had vanished! Where was it? Where had it gone? There it was again! It unfolded itself blotchily into place and he felt as if he were tipping over again, but this time he was able to steady himself more quickly. Stupid little lights. Blink blink blink. This new bit of the world—what was it? He peered forward uncertainly into it, letting his mind’s nostril play over it. Those lights were beginning to distract him. He shut his eyes to let him concentrate on his exploration, but when he did, the new world vanished! Again! He wondered for a dizzying moment if there was any connection between these two things, but making logical connections between things was not really one of Desmond’s strengths. He let it pass. As he opened his wrinkly little eyes again, the unearthly new world slowly unfurled itself in his mind. Once more he peered into it.
It was a wilder world than the one he was used to, a world of paths and hills. The paths forked, divided, and deepened into valleys, the ridges reared into high hills. The far distance was completely broken up into massive mountain ranges and dizzying canyons shrouded in shifting mists. He was filled with apprehension. Just as making logical connections between things was not one of Desmond’s strengths, neither was mountaineering.
The flattest, broadest path lay straight ahead of him, but as he turned his attention to it, worrying things began to become apparent.
Something nasty lay down that path. Something big and nasty. Something even bigger and nastier, Desmond ventured to think, than Desmond himself. For a moment he blinked again, and annoyingly the whole thing vanished once more. When it reassembled itself in his mind’s nostril a second or two further on, the sense of impending disaster intensified.
Was that thunder?
Desmond didn’t usually mind thunder, scarcely noticed lightning, but this thunder h
e did mind. There was no uplifting swirl of heavy air dancing, just bad, cracking explosions of blackness. Desmond began to feel very fearful. His enormous bulk began to quake and shudder, and suddenly he began to run. The strange new world shattered and vanished. He ran like a truck. He hurtled through a flurry of small, feeble lights and brought a whole ton of some kind of stuff, he didn’t know what, banging down around him. It crashed noisily and flashed a bit, but Desmond ploughed straight through it. He was out of there, fleeing like a locomotive, smashing through a flimsy door, maybe even a wall, it was all the same to him. He hurtled out into the night air, pounding the ground with hammer blows from his enormous feet.
Things around him scattered from him. Things shouted. Distant, plaintive exclamations of alarm and despondency welled up in his wake, but Desmond didn’t care. He just wanted some night air in his lungs. Even this night air, stale and acrid as it was, was good. It was cool and rushed over him and into him as he charged. There was hard pavement beneath his feet, then, briefly, bits of fencing around his neck, and then rough, scrubby grass beneath his pounding, churning feet.
He was near the top of a low hill. A real, earthy hill, not some fearsome hallucination rearing up in his mind like the approach of death. Just a hill, surrounded by other low, sloping hills. The sky was clear of clouds, but hazy and murky. Desmond was not interested in stars. You couldn’t get a good whiff off a star, but here you could scarcely even see them, either. He didn’t care, he was just getting up a good heavy speed going down this hill, waking up some sleepy muscles and getting them going. Braaarrrm! Run! Hurtle! Charge! Crash! Bang! There seemed to be more bits of fencing round his neck again, and suddenly his progress was rather less free than it had been, and he was all encumbered with stuff. He ploughed on heavily. Suddenly he found himself in a sea of scattering creatures squealing as his huge bulk careered through them. The air was full of the sound of cries and bellows and little tinkly crashes. Bewildering odours danced around him—a surge of burning meat, heady wafts of some kind of woozy-making stuff, big stabs of viciously sweet musk. He was confused and tried to fix on things by sight. He didn’t trust vision very much, it didn’t tell him very much. He could just about tell when things were blinking or lurking or running around. He tried to get a fix on the hollering, scurrying shapes, and then saw a big hazy rectangle of light. That was something. He heaved himself round and charged at it.
The Salmon of Doubt Page 25