The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01]

by By Kim Newman

  Wind slashed her face.

  Onions thumped onto the turf beside her, and strode off purposefully. Kydd helped the others leave the Sea King. De Maltby clambered down, snug in his flight suit and helmet.

  Yoland was on his knees, grateful for solid ground under him, grasping handfuls of Skerra.

  “I wouldn’t do that again in a hurry,” he said, smiling.

  Stacy didn’t point out that unless he wanted to become Persephone’s sole subject he’d have to take the return trip.

  “Should I get some grub up?” Kydd asked Jeperson.

  “A very civilised notion.”

  “No time for that,” said Onions, coming back. “We need to find Captain Vernon. I don’t mind saying I’m worried about the A-Boat.”

  “Lost with all hands,” said Jeperson.

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Quite right, Onions. I can’t. But I do.”

  “Vernon had a six-man team.”

  “They’re gone. Forget them.”

  Onions frowned. Jeperson lost interest and drifted away, towards Sewell Head. The little man hadn’t brought a hat, and was trying to protect his bald dome with his hands. Jeperson gave him a knit cap he had spare. Head smiled weak thanks.

  Stacy noticed Jeperson was the only one who could talk with Sewell Head. She worried that they shared more with each other than anyone else here.

  “We should get to the village,” said Onions.

  “The Blowhole, surely,” ventured Jeperson.

  Onions ignored him and strode downslope, expecting to be followed. Jeperson gave Stacy a look, then shrugged and plodded carefully after the man from I-Psi-T. Stacy let the others get moving before taking up the rear.

  De Maltby stayed with the Sea King, but Kydd came along.

  A mean-eyed goat peered through a hole in the wall, cynically examining the newcomers. If war came, it’d be a toss-up who’d get eaten and who’d get to eat.

  After only a few steps into merciless wind, down a field that inclined enough for a ski slope, Stacy couldn’t feel her face but was hobbled by pain in her ankles. She wished she had a city around her.

  Onions paused to look at his flip-book.

  A large blue bat attacked him, all spiny frame and enveloping membranes. He was wrapped in an instant, and spun off balance.

  Sewell Head threw himself facedown in the dirt. Maltesers bled from his pockets.

  Onions yelled from inside his blue cocoon.

  “Shoot it, shoot it.”

  Stacy jogged down, miraculously avoiding a twisted ankle. She joined Jeperson in hauling the “bat” off Onions. It was a tent, trailing guy-ropes and skewers, poles snapped.

  Kydd had drawn his revolver and assumed the stance. Now, with Onions free of the tent and sat on the ground, Kydd’s gun was aimed at his head. He waved it aside, red-faced, hair stuck up in an undignified crown.

  “You have been attacked by an item of rogue camping equipment,” said Jeperson.

  He helped Onions stand up.

  The wind caught the tent again. It hurtled off like a crooked kite, chasing after Persephone’s scarf.

  Onions patted his hair and twisted inside his anorak, realigning the hip pockets with his hips.

  “Vernon was supposed to set up camp,” he said.

  Jeperson laid a hand on Onions’ shoulder.

  “Vernon is gone, Adam.”

  “We have to look.”

  Jeperson nodded and let Onions continue.

  “Don’t know what they’re talking about half the time,” Persephone said to her.

  Stacy thought that was a fair average.

  Onions had been right about one thing. It was getting dark.

  * * * *

  6

  The briefing was not at the Yard, but in Whitehall. From the yellowed ceiling, Stacy guessed the panelled, windowless committee chamber had been one of the legendary “smoke-filled rooms.” New Labour had taken out the ashtrays and put up “Thank you for not smoking” signs.

  Notional chairperson was Morag Duff, Deputy Minister for Heritage and Sport, who didn’t actually appear. A sound-activated minidisc recorder lay on her blotter at the head of the table. A tartan tam-o’-shanter perched on the back of a chair, suggesting that the Deputy Minister had been here but just popped out.

  Stacy looked at the Walter Sickert on the wall—saved from Patricia Cornwell by public subscription—and wondered if Duff was behind it, peeking through hidden eyeholes. This was the apparatus of the secret state, and spooks loved these games.

  Jeperson was a study in suppressed excitement, alert to the point of hypertension, given to chewing on a knuckle. He had been in deep thought during the drive over.

  Now, he took in the room. Three men sat like wise monkeys.

  “Adam,” Jeperson acknowledged the alpha ape, hear-no-evil.

  “Richard Jeperson,” grunted the bearish man. “We are calling out the reserves.”

  Stacy pulled out a chair for Jeperson, who insisted she take it. She ended up sitting across from the big man. He looked like a rugby player five years into beery middle age, a slackening mountain in a baggy suit.

  “This is Adam Onions,” said Jeperson.

  “O-nye-ons,” he corrected. “Nothing to do with the vegetable. A whole different etymology.”

  “He is from the Institute of Something Trickology.”

  “I-Psi-T. Pronounced ‘Eyesight.’ The Institute of Psi Tech. Director of same.”

  Onions’ eyes took in her chest. She didn’t need to be psychic to know what he thought of her.

  “I’m Stacy Cotterili.Detective Sergeant.”

  Onions did a “not a secretary then” take. She’d seen that before.

  “I don’t know these other fellows, I’m afraid,” said Jeperson.

  “Call me Rory,” said see-no-evil, a chunky cardigan chap who reminded her of an eager young vicar she’d arrested for molesting elderly parishioners. “I’m a civil servant, but don’t hold it against me. I’m really a good bloke.”

  Rory smiled, delivering what Stacy recognised from her modelling days as Benign Variant Two. She wondered if he was working from the book they’d had at her agency, 101 Expression for All Occasions.

  “And this is Franklin Yoland ...”

  Say-no-evil put up his hand. He had a tan and lush lips.

  “He’s one of those Weapons Inspectors you hear so much about. Nothing he doesn’t know about whizz-bangs, nerve gases and anthrax spores. Up on all the latest euphemisms. Made us laugh earlier... what was it, Frank? Yes, he was describing missiles as ‘delivery systems for’—how did you put it?—’geography parcels and history parcels’?”

  Yoland shook his head. ‘“Physics packages, chemistry packages or biology packages.’“

  “In the long run, you’re more right than you know,” Jeperson told Rory. “It comes down to geography and history.”

  “Very true. Take a pew.”

  Jeperson walked round the room. He picked up the tam-o’-shanter and put it down again.

  Yoland looked at the Man from the Diogenes Club as if he might detonate.

  At the opposite end of the table, a secretary sat with an open laptop, fingers poised over the keyboard. Jeperson smiled at her, acknowledging her presence with a little wave. She did not respond.

  Jeperson found an odd little old man sat in the corner, away from the table, reading a book. A strange look arced between them.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Rory. “That’s Sewell Head.”

  “Swellhead,” mumbled the little man.

  Jeperson shook his hand, warmly.

  Head was bald, with an odd, dome-shaped skull, no chin to speak of and flattish wet eyes. The sleeves of his shabby overcoat were too long for his childish hands. A knit scarf was wrapped several times around his neck, so his head nestled like an Easter egg in its presentation bow.

  “He was Brain of Britain a while back,” said Rory.

  Head gave a puzzling smile, one Stacy
had never seen demonstrated in a photograph. Almost lipless, he had a lot of extra teeth. He had eaten chocolate recently.

  “Mr. Head is Adam’s discovery,” said the civil servant.

  “What’s your IQ, Jeperson?” asked Onions. “Off the scale? Next to Sewell Head, you’re a cretin. So am I. Technically, he’s the cleverest man in England. Top five in the world.”

  “Barred from pub trivia contests throughout the home counties,” put in Rory. “You used to hustle, didn’t you, old son? Guys, he would go in alone on quiz night, nurse a gin and it, then bungle a couple of easy ones. ‘Who won the World Cup in 1966?’ ‘Was that perhaps Italy?’ Big laughs. Then he’d get a bit tipsy. Apparently, tipsy. Come over all shirty, insist on a big money bet with Local Hero. You know the type, Captain Know-It-All, memorised his Guinness Book of Uninteresting Facts. Fifty, a hundred quid on the table. Side bets with everyone in the bar to bump up the total stake. Quiz gets serious, one-on-one, ‘make your mind up’ time. Our Mr. Head suddenly switches on like a toaster, goes from wondering if ‘Lucky Lucky Lucky’ was a hit for Bananarama ...”

  Head’s lips twitched, a downturn at one side, peculiar pain in his glassy eye.

  “...to rattling off the fifth paragraph of Article Ten of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713....”

  ‘“And Her Britannic Majesty,” said Sewell Head, conquering panic and rising to the occasion, “at the request of the Catholic King, does consent and agree, that no leave shall be given under any pretence whatsoever, either to Jews or Moors, to reside or have their dwellings in the said town of Gibraltar; and that no refuge or shelter shall be allowed to any Moorish ships of war in the harbour of the said town, whereby the communication between Spain and Ceuta may be obstructed, or the coasts of Spain be infested by the excursions of the Moors.’“

  Rory laughed and pointed.

  “I love this guy. Penny in the slot. He knows the answer. Anyway, by the end of the evening, Local Hero is bleeding from the arse, fallen faces all round the room. Our Mr. Head is off with a fistful of notes. And that’s another pub off the list. They call him the Triv Terminator.”

  “It’s not a memory trick,” said Onions, warming. “He’s not some autistic savant with a set of encyclopaedias. He’s a puzzle solver. We’ve never tested anything like him. He’s a Talent. Off the scale.”

  Head shrugged modestly.

  “I like to think things through,” he said. “Make everything neat and tidy.”

  “Call him the Zen Master of Quantum Cleverness,” said Rory.

  “Duke have offered the dean’s left nut for a free run at him,” said Onions. “The Tibetans have their antennae a-twitch. He could take the field up to the next level. Scientifically verifiable. None of your ‘feelings’ and ‘intuitions,’ Jeperson. Cold, hard, steely data. And he can do it every time, under laboratory conditions.”

  Jeperson looked down at the little man.

  “He works in a sweetshop,” said Rory.

  Onions gave a what-a-waste sigh.

  “Nothing in the constitution says everyone should be ambitious,” continued Rory. “We dug out his old report book from Coal Hill Secondary Modern. Min Inf keeps copies of those, you know. I burned mine. Forgotten what your netball teacher thought of you, Detective Sergeant? We could find out. Any guesses which phrase came up all the time in young Sewell Head’s reports? All his teachers said it. Over and over.”

  Jeperson stroked his moustaches. He nodded to Stacy.

  ‘“Could do better if he tried,’“ she said flatly.

  Rory thumped the desk in delight.

  “Spot-bloody-on. Give Juliet Bravo a cuddly panda. Cripes, the brainpower in this room! Find a way to harness it, and we could light up Blackpool’s Golden Mile.”

  Jeperson gave Rory a penetrating look, then left Head in his corner.

  He took off his coat and threw it on the table. It flopped over Morag Duff’s minidisc recorder, and lay like the king’s deer tossed dead onto Guy of Gisborne’s table by Robin Hood.

  “Adam,” said Jeperson seriously, “tell me about the apport.”

  Rory tried a “now we come to brass tacks” chuckle, but it died.

  Onions looked at the coat. Stacy unrolled the brown paper and let the other coat (the same coat?) lie next to the original (copy?).

  Onions bit his lower lip.

  “Yes,” said Jeperson insistently, “they’re the same. Not in the way two peas in a pod are the same, but in the way one unique special never-to-be-repeated, once-in-a-lifetime pea is the same as itself.”

  “What’s an apport?” Stacy asked.

  “A physical object manifested supernaturally,” said Sewell Head.

  “Rabbit out of a hat,” footnoted Jeperson.

  “At I-Psi-T, we’ve documented the phenomenon extensively,” said Onions. “Apports are often household items. Inanimate. We have a collection. Hairbrushes, fireplace pokers, a clock with mangled guts. One theory is that they slip through wormholes, travel in time. Miss 1893 loses her garter and it pops up a hundred years later, to the bewilderment of all concerned. Others don’t obviously come from the past or future but from somewhere else.”

  “Dimension Xxxx,” said Jeperson in a hollow, echoey, radio announcer voice.

  “We discourage that sort of talk, but yes ... some other continuum, where things are put together differently That clock is interesting. Turned up in a bus station in Eastbourne. We have it on the surveillance camera. Not there one instant, there the next. Its insides are the bones of small animals we can’t identify, fit together with sticky gum we can’t analyse, generating a small but quantifiable electric current. Because it didn’t keep very good time, we thought it was something disguised as a clock. Then Mr. Head worked out that it keeps perfect time, if hours were to ebb and flow like the tides, getting longer then shorter again. The cycle is beyond me but he says it makes perfect sense.”

  Head nodded.

  “So this is pretending to be your coat?” she asked Jeperson.

  “No, this isn’t like the clock. This is my coat. Messrs. Drecker and Coote, Savile Row and Carnaby Street. Made to my order in 1968. And this is my coat too. It has just come here by a different route.”

  “A rough route, by the looks of it,” said Rory. “We DNA-tested the blood.”

  “Some of it’s yours,” said Onions, enjoying the thought.

  “And the rest of it’s mine,” put in Sewell Head.

  * * * *

  7

  Skerra Landsby barely qualified as a ruin. All the buildings were roofless, and most of the walls had fallen. A war memorial (Boer, 1914-18) was a brass plaque, names unreadable, plinth aswarm with bubble-wrap seaweed. Stacy remembered mindlessly happy childhood days at Southend-on-Sea, bursting the little brown bags between thumb and forefinger, jimmying whelks off rocks with her Swiss army knife.

  More collapsed tents flapped in the wind, tethered by skewers.

  Onions’ torch was the only light.

  There was supposed to be a Royal Navy assault team here, despatched under cover of a training exercise, kitted out with arms to last through a small war. Her understanding was that the boffins’ security would be provided by Captain Vernon’s mob, who had been here before and scoped out the potential dangers. That was out the window.

  “What do you suppose happened?” Persephone asked her.

  “Nothing good.”

  The Droning of Skerra chewed that over. As the expedition’s volunteer, she must be kicking herself. Really-a-Good-Bloke Rory had decided they ought to ask Persephone before camping out on her island. She’d given in to a whim, insisting she be taken along to check out her realm. Ascot was a wash this year, evidently.

  Onions and Yoland climbed a wall that extended into the sea, and walked out across the waves. Onions shone his torch at the A-Boat, which was in a sorry state, hull shattered below the waterline.

  “We should be below,” said Jeperson.

  “Out of this bloody weather,” put in Persephone.
“Too right.”

  Head skinned the wrapper from a Twix and bit off both biscuit fingers at once.

  “My understanding,” said Jeperson, calling out to Onions, “was that all the observed manifestations were in the caverns. Up here, it’s just wind and goats.”

  Yoland and Onions stuck out their arms like tightrope walkers and came back to shore, footing wobbly on none-too-secure stones. Yoland took a run at the last few feet and jumped onto dry land.