The Toyminator

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Jack,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jack.

  ‘Six o’clock,’ said the waitress.

  ‘Jack,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Might we have a pot of coffee, please?’ said Jack.

  The waitress departed and Jack watched her do so.

  ‘Please keep your mind on the case,’ said Eddie. ‘You’re as randy as.’

  ‘I think she fancies me,’ said Jack.

  ‘Of course she fancies you,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I have a definite way with the ladies,’ said Jack, preening at his trenchcoat lapels.

  ‘You don’t,’ said Eddie, tucking into his breakfast.

  ‘I do,’ said Jack, now tucking into his. ‘Amelie says that she loves me.’

  ‘Well, of course she would.’ Eddie thrust breakfast into his mouth, which made his words difficult to interpret.

  ‘Because I’m so handsome and nice,’ said Jack, although there was much of the, ‘Beccmmnth mmn sm hndsmn and nnnce,’ about the way he said it.

  ‘No, Jack,’ said Eddie. ‘That’s not why and you know it.’

  ‘It is why,’ said Jack. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Not,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s because you’re a meathead, Jack. Amelie could aspire to nothing better than marrying a meathead. Any meathead.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ said Jack, spitting muffin as he said it. ‘She loves me for me, not for what I am.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ said Eddie, spitting pancake back at Jack. ‘You have meathead status. Why do you think she wanted you to take her to Old King Cole’s? What was that fight you got into about?’

  ‘I never mentioned to you that I’d got into a fight.’

  ‘Evidence,’ said Eddie, making a breezy paw gesture towards his partner against crime. ‘You punched someone. And someone else – a lady, I presume – struck you several times with a sequinned handbag.’

  ‘You really are a very good detective,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’m a special detective,’ said Eddie. ‘But believe me, Jack, cruel as it sounds, she loves you for your status.’

  ‘Well, all thanks for that,’ said Jack.

  ‘All thanks? I thought you’d be devastated.’

  ‘Well, I’m not, you cruel little sod.’

  ‘Less of the little.’

  ‘I’m not ready to get involved in another relationship,’ said Jack. ‘I’m still smarting from the last one. I’ll settle for the deeply satisfying shallow sex and have done with it for now.’

  ‘You’re a very bad boy,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I’m a teenage boy,’ said Jack. ‘What do you expect from me, sincerity?’

  ‘Stop now,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s too early in the day for such honesty. Tuck into your breakfast, then we’ll get this hypnotism thing done. Then—’

  ‘Then?’ said Jack.

  ‘I really don’t have a clue,’ said Eddie.

  Their breakfasting done and their bellies distended, the two detectives dabbed at their mouths with napkins and grinned at one another.

  ‘It’s not a bad old life,’ said Jack.

  ‘It has its moments,’ said Eddie.

  Jack went up and paid the bill.

  And took the waitress’s telephone number.

  Jack wound up Bill’s car and he and Eddie entered it.

  ‘So, where to?’ Jack asked.

  ‘The circus,’ said Eddie, ‘that’s where.’

  ‘I don’t like the circus,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve never been one for clowns.’

  ‘Odd that, isn’t it?’ said Eddie. ‘Clowns are such a popular thing at the circus, but you’ll never find anyone who actually likes them. Odd that, isn’t it?’

  Jack shrugged and said, ‘I suppose so. So where is this circus?’

  ‘I’ll guide you,’ said Eddie. ‘But please drive slowly or I’ll throw up in your lap.’

  Jack drove slowly, with considerable care. He followed Eddie’s guidings and eventually drew up the car before a rather colourful funfair affair in a part of the city that he’d never been to before.

  Jack looked up at the colourful banner that hung between colourful posts. ‘Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique,’ he read. Aloud.

  ‘You’ll like the count,’ said Eddie. ‘Or at least I hope you will.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddie, ‘because then it will sort of balance things out.’

  ‘It will?’

  ‘It will,’ said Eddie, ‘because I can’t stand the sight of him.’

  The sight of him was something to behold. At Eddie’s urging, Jack knocked upon the colourful door of a colourful gypsyesque caravan. This door opened and Jack beheld Count Otto Black.

  Count Otto Black was tall. He was beyond tall, if such a thing is possible. Beyond tall and well gaunt with it was the count. High above on his facial regions were wonderful cheekbones, just beneath deeply set eyes of the deepest of sets. And just above a great black beard that nearly fell to his waist, the count’s nose was a slender arc; the count’s hair, long and black. Count Otto Black wore wonderful robes of rich purple velvet and plush. Mystical rings adorned his long and slender fingers.

  ‘Count Otto,’ called Eddie. ‘Hello up there.’

  Count Otto Black gazed down upon his visitors.

  ‘I must be off now,’ said Jack.

  ‘No you mustn’t,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Oh yes, I really must.’

  ‘So,’ said Count Otto Black. And it was a long and deep ‘So’. ‘So, Eddie Bear, you have returned.’

  ‘Like the old bad penny,’ said Eddie. ‘You look well.’

  Jack looked down upon Eddie Bear. Eddie looked far from at ease.

  ‘Let’s go,’ whispered Jack. ‘I don’t like this fellow at all.’

  Count Otto Black took a step back and the colourful door began closing.

  ‘No, please, your countship,’ called Eddie, ‘this is very important. We’re sorry to bother you, but it is important. You are the only one who can help us.’

  The colourful door reopened a tad.

  ‘We need you to use your special powers.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the voice of the count. ‘You are hoping once more to become Toy City’s greatest hypnotist.’

  ‘No,’ said Eddie. ‘Not that.’

  ‘I still bear the scars on my ankles,’ said the voice of the count.

  Jack looked at Eddie. ‘I thought you said—’

  ‘I did apologise for that,’ said Eddie, ignoring Jack.

  ‘Only after I kicked you over the big top,’ said the voice of the count.

  ‘I think we’re on a loser here,’ said Jack. ‘And I hate to say this, Eddie, but have you ever considered anger-management counselling?’

  The colourful door of the count’s caravan slammed shut.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jack.

  ‘No,’ said Eddie. ‘We have to know what happened. The count is the only man who can help us.’

  ‘Man?’ said Jack. ‘Not meathead?’

  ‘He’s a bit special, the count.’

  Jack raised eyebrows. Two of them. Both at the same time. And both high.

  ‘Stop doing that,’ said Eddie. ‘You’re only doing it because I can’t.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Jack, ‘you showing respect for a meathead.’

  ‘I’m not prejudiced,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Well, we’re stuffed here,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s get back in the car.’

  ‘No,’ said Eddie. ‘We must do this. You must do this. Leave this to me.’

  Jack dusted imaginary dirt from his trenchcoat shoulders. ‘Go on, then,’ he said.

  Eddie called out to Count Otto Black. ‘Count Otto,’ called Eddie, ‘this is very important. You are the one man who can help us.’

  The colourful door of the colourful caravan remained colourfully shut.

  ‘The fate of Toy City depends on you,’ called Eddie.

  The door, colourful as it was, did not at all
colourfully budge.

  ‘It’s about your monkeys,’ called Eddie.

  A moment passed and then the door opened a smidgen.

  ‘Your clockwork cymbal-playing monkeys,’ called Eddie. ‘Jack and I are on the case. Jack is a special investigator. I’m …’ Eddie paused.

  The door didn’t move.

  Eddie took a deep breath. ‘I’m his comedy sidekick,’ called Eddie.

  The door opened wide.

  ‘Say that again,’ said Count Otto Black.

  ‘Jack is a special investigator,’ said Eddie, ‘investigating the monkey case. He needs your help.’

  ‘No,’ said Count Otto. ‘Say the last bit again.’

  ‘I’m …’ said Eddie.

  ‘Again,’ said the count. ‘And loudly.’

  ‘I’m his comedy sidekick,’ said Eddie.

  The colourful interior of Count Otto Black’s colourful carnival caravan was very much the way that such interiors are in movies. Although not those of the Toy City P.P.P.s persuasion. Those circus movies, with handsome juvenile leads who are trapeze artistes and up-and-coming starlets who ride white horses side-saddle around the circus ring, but seem to do little else. And there are elephants, of course, and a bloke who gets shot out of a cannon. And those clowns that no one actually really likes. And a fat lady and a stilt-walker, and high-wire walkers and even fire-walkers sometimes. And a head without a body that was dug from the bowels of the Earth. But none of these are particularly relevant to the appearance of the interior of the count’s colourful carnival caravan. The relevant point about the interior that gave verisimilitude to those featured in movies was that it was so much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

  Phew.

  ‘Why are they bigger on the inside than the outside?’ Jack asked Eddie.

  ‘That’s obvious,’ said Eddie. ‘So you can get a camera crew in, of course.’

  ‘Be seated,’ said Count Otto Black, taking to a big old colourful chair of his own and indicating a lesser. Jack sat down on this lesser chair. Eddie sat down on the floor.

  ‘I feel that you could have seated yourself in a somewhat more comical manner than that,’ said Count Otto Black.

  Eddie sighed. Rose. Toppled backwards. Lay with his legs in the air.

  Jack winced and chewed upon his bottom lip.

  ‘Funny enough for you?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘I’d like to see it again,’ said the count.

  Eddie obliged. ‘Are you satisfied now?’

  ‘Very much so,’ said Count Otto Black. And he extended a long hand to Jack. ‘So you are a special investigator,’ he said.

  Jack took the count’s hand and shook it. It was a very cold hand indeed. Very cold and clammy.

  The count took back his hand and Jack said, ‘Yes, I am a special investigator and I believe that you can help me in my investigations.’

  ‘Into the death of my monkeys.’

  ‘They were all your monkeys?’

  ‘Each and every one worked for me. There are not too many openings for cymbal-playing monkeys nowadays.’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, ‘I suppose not. I never really thought about it.’

  ‘They are a great loss to my circus.’

  ‘I suppose they would be.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked the count.

  ‘Eh?’ said Jack.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be “pardon”?’ asked the count.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Jack.

  ‘In what way do you suppose they would be a great loss to my circus?’

  Jack glanced at Eddie. It was a ‘hopeless’ glance. Sometimes a single glance can say so very much. Without actually saying anything at all. So to speak.

  ‘Please don’t do it to him, Count,’ said Eddie, making a rather pathetic face towards Count Otto Black. ‘Jack, my … employer, is a very special investigator, very good at his job, but he’s not up to matching wits with you.’

  ‘I’m up to matching wits with anyone,’ said Jack. ‘Show me a wit and I’ll match it.’

  ‘Time is of the essence,’ said Eddie. ‘Please, Count.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Count Otto Black. ‘So I suppose you have come here to examine the murder scene. Five of my monkeys gone to dust in their dressing room.’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ said Jack. ‘I assume that the laughing policemen have already visited the crime scene.’

  ‘And stomped it into oblivion. What, then?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘it’s like this.’

  And Jack explained to Count Otto Black exactly what it was like. He spoke at length and in detail.

  The count listened and then the count nodded. And then the count finally said, ‘And so you wish me to hypnotise you, regress you to the point when you were engulfed by the very bright light and draw out your repressed memory of what happened next.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jack.

  Count Otto Black nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘No, I won’t do it,’ he said.

  10

  ‘No?’ said Jack. ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ said Count Otto Black. And he said it firmly. Definitely. Without reservation or regret.

  ‘No?’ said Jack once more.

  ‘Absolutely no.’ The count stretched out his great long arms, brushing his fingertips against the opposite walls of the caravan. ‘And I will tell you for why: because it would be dangerous, very dangerous, to you, to your mental health. You have to understand this. Your memory was not artificially erased by some piece of advanced space-alien technology. You did it yourself. Your own brain did it.’ And Count Otto stretched out a hand to Jack and tapped him lightly on the forehead. ‘Whatever happened to you was so appalling, so utterly terrifying, that it was too much for you to take in and retain. Your mind rejected it, spat it out, closed itself to these horrors. The door within closed. It would be folly to reopen it.’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, and he shook his head. ‘I don’t believe that. I’ve seen horrors enough. Nothing could be that bad.’

  ‘Really?’ said the count. ‘And yet I feel that I could whisper words into your ear that you would wish until the end of your days that you had never heard me utter.’

  ‘That I consider most unlikely,’ said Jack.

  ‘Really?’ said the count, and he leaned in Jack’s direction.

  ‘Don’t let him do it, Jack,’ cried Eddie, leaping up. ‘I saw him do it once to a clown. It wiped the smile right off his face.’

  ‘Big deal,’ said Jack.

  ‘A smile painted on a tin-plate head,’ said Eddie. ‘Wiped it right off. The smile fell to the ground and a crow swooped down and carried it off to his nest.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Jack.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Eddie. ‘Don’t let him do it.’

  ‘All right, all right, but we have to know what happened, Eddie, and if hypnosis is the only way, then hypnosis it has to be.’

  ‘I won’t be persuaded,’ said Count Otto Black.

  ‘We’ll give you money,’ said Eddie.

  ‘How much money?’ asked the count.

  And now a period of negotiation began, of bargaining and bartering and wrangling. It was a protracted period and resting times were taken at intervals, whilst negotiators sat and smoked cigarettes, or paced up and down, or worked out calculations on small bits of paper.

  It was coming on towards teatime before all was said and done.

  ‘And that’s my final offer,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said the count. Palms were spat upon, or in Eddie’s case, a paw, then spitty palm and spitty paw were clapped together.

  ‘Now just hold on,’ said Jack. ‘I want to get this straight. Count Otto will hypnotically regress me—’

  ‘Taking no responsibility for the potential damage to your mental health,’ said the count.

  ‘Yes, I understand that. But you will regress me in exchange for what, exactly?’

  Eddie read out the list of the count’s demands.

  ‘Bill�
��s car,’ he read, and Jack groaned.

  ‘And your trenchcoat.’ Further groanings.

  ‘And your hat and your watch.’ Eddie paused. Jack groaned doubly.

  ‘Fifty per cent of the reward money.’

  ‘What reward money?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Oh, there will be reward money,’ said Count Otto Black. ‘When all else fails.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ said Jack. ‘That means when Eddie and I fail.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the count. ‘I want sixty per cent.’

  Eddie sighed. ‘We agreed on fifty. And forty on the film rights.’

  ‘Film rights?’ said Jack.

  ‘There’s a movie in this.’ The count mimed camera crankings. ‘I would want to play myself, of course, although perhaps it might be better if I were to play the juvenile lead.’

  Eddie shook his head and sighed once more.

  ‘I’ll have my solicitor go into all the details of the subsidiary rights, marketing offshoots, merchandising deals and suchlike.’

  ‘How long will that take?’ asked Jack, whose patience had worn beyond thin.

  ‘No time at all,’ said Count Otto. ‘I keep him in that box over there.’

  ‘He does,’ came a muffled voice from that box.

  ‘Fine,’ said Jack. ‘Fine – take everything we’ve got. The car, my coat, my watch. Do you want my shoes, too?’

  The count made so-so noddings with his head.

  Jack threw up his hands and said, ‘Ludicrous.’

  ‘I think the count has been very reasonable,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Yes, well, you would. He doesn’t want your hat, your coat and your watch.’

  ‘I can’t wear a watch,’ said Eddie. ‘Watches fall off my paws – I don’t have wrists.’ And Eddie made a sorrowful face that almost had Jack sympathising.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not fair. It’s not.’

  ‘It is most fair,’ said Count Otto Black, ‘because I am taking nothing from you that you will want.’

  ‘Oh, I think you are,’ said Jack. ‘The car. The coat. The watch.’

  ‘No.’ Count Otto shook his head. ‘You will have no need of these things after I have put you through the period of hypnotic regression. All you will have need of is heavy sedation and the immediate use of a straitjacket.’

  ‘Hm,’ went Jack, as ‘Hm’ usually served him adequately at such times.