Watching the Wheels Come Off

by Mike Hodges

  ‘They told me I was like “an oil field with vast hidden reserves of success-power lying untapped”.’ Several students recognise the pitch. They nod their heads, muttering the mantra like pilgrims: ‘Success-power!’

  ‘They said you can’t expect to just “stumble” on these hidden reserves.’ The same students collectively chime in: ‘“You need expert guidance.”’

  Silence.

  They look lost and confused.

  ‘You don’t think we’ve been indoctrinated, do you?’

  ‘You mean like suicide bombers?’

  ‘If we have, how would we know it?’

  Paranoia takes them into its sweaty hands. Suspicious eyes dart about like fireflies, never stopping anywhere long enough for fear of revealing that they were, in fact, programmed to some alien channel.

  Silence again.

  Roger, back at the buffet, calls over his shoulder: ‘What the hell got into us?’ He’s piling some cake remnants on to his plate, when Alice bangs the table.

  ‘You wanna know what got into you, Buckle, you fat lump? Herman P. Temple got into you.’ She stands up, roughly wipes the tears away and stares at Loreen and Marjorie. ‘And I want you two bitches to know Herman sure didn’t get into me!’

  Loreen and Marjorie, initially taken aback, explode with laughter. Alice ignores them as she strides towards the foyer. She’s still convinced it’s all a mistake.

  It must be.

  * * *

  Herman is briefing his men as she approaches.

  ‘Herman, we have to talk.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ snaps Herman. ‘Right now I got more important things to do, sweetheart.’

  Mark, watching every move from the Lounge, sees Herman involved with Alice and decides to make his move. He runs past them to the revolving doors, which spin him out on to the esplanade. Biff and Randy start to give chase but Temple stops them.

  ‘Forget him. Bring the cars to the back. Load our friend Snazell into the casket. We’ll dump him on the way to the airport.’

  ‘Wally’s already in the casket, boss,’ says Biff.

  ‘Then find a laundry basket.’

  Biff, Randy and Rip make off, leaving Herman and Alice alone. She’s distressed and angry as the truth bites closer to the bone. ‘Herman, I put myself on the line for you about Claudio. I lied to save you the embarrassment of having to explain his death. And you promised never to crucify another student. You promised me, Herman. You promised that, from then on, the cross was only for display purposes.’

  ‘Honey, it wasn’t me. Biff and the boys did it while I was indisposed, remember?’

  Alice stamps her foot with rage. ‘Why didn’t you tell me Wally Straw had died? And who the hell is this Snazell? My God, it’s like working in a mortuary.’

  Uncontrollable tears start to run down the courses already cut into her make-up. Herman’s torn between soothing her and escaping. ‘Not now, honey-pie. We have to move on.’ She stares at him like a little girl who’s just been touched up by Father Christmas.

  ‘Herman, I believed in you.’

  ‘Of course you did, sugar. And rightly so. Don’t you realise it’s Satan up to his old tricks again? Satan is just testing your belief in me. That’s why it’s imperative we get out of here. Other flocks are waiting for us, Alice.’

  He takes her hand, but she pulls it away. Her eyes are popping out with incredulity. ‘You don’t really think people are going to fall for your stuff again? Not when all those stiffs start to surface?’

  Temple turns on her, outraged, indignant, hurt at her lack of faith.

  ‘Are you kidding? Look at all those preachers on TV. They get caught fucking hookers, embezzling, using drugs – you name it, right? Within days they’re back on the zombie box creaming contributions from their congregations. Right? Alice, sweetheart, people like what I have to say. They believe in me. We’ll come up with a different name, and start all over. Like the Nazis did.’

  Alice’s tears have dried up along with her dreams.

  ‘Not with me, you won’t!’

  She swings away from him like a drum majorette, sexed-up and proud. Okay, so she’ll have to go back to being a dental assistant or airline cabin staff, or maybe she’ll become a lap dancer. Why not? She likes driving men crazy. Revenge is a dish to be eaten hot.

  It’s Temple’s turn to weep, as he watches her beautiful, bouncy butt retreat. And his tears are genuine, for once. He knows he’ll never find another woman with such perfect specifications as a sex object.

  Alice Honey is no airbrush job. She’s real: exactly what every red-blooded American male is conditioned to desire.

  He can’t let her go that easily. ‘Alice, they need us. Jesus Christ, we’re the leaders, remember? Alice! Alice! You’re walking out on the next President of the United States of America.’

  ‘Up yours, Herman.’

  She doesn’t even look back.

  The only thing he remembers of her departure is her index finger.

  * * *

  Mark is still running.

  The esplanade is crowded with people taking the air on this crisp, sunny Sunday evening. Dodging and weaving, he looks back several times but can’t see his pursuers among the promenaders. Scared witless and not taking any chances, he doesn’t let up until he hears the approaching police cars. A slew of them, tyres squealing and sirens screaming, speed past him towards the Grand Atlantic Hotel.

  Mark reaches the farthest point of the esplanade. There are no buildings and no people. His throat is burning, his lungs bursting, his heart pumping, his body sweating. He collapses on to a wrought-iron bench.

  Looking up, he yells at the clear blue sky. ‘Jesus, I’m not even worth following.’

  And he laughs like a madman.

  * * *

  Unaware of the drama being played out in the foyer, Celia Cox and her blind husband sit in the Lounge in their usual armchairs facing the sea. While waiting for the dinner gong she reads, as always, from his favourite book: ‘“And who are you?” asked the Caterpillar.”’ A cacophony of police sirens draw closer but Celia never falters: ‘“Alice replied: I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”’

  Even Celia has to look up when the police cars slam on their brakes at the entrance to the hotel. Smoke and the smell of burning rubber waft through the open windows.

  * * *

  Mark walks determinedly back towards the Grand Atlantic. With the police now on the case, he feels safe, excited even. He’s anxious to retrieve those tapes from the windowsill. Like Snazell said, they could be the key to a financial killing. He idly wonders if he should edit out the sex scene with him and Jack Lovett, but decides against tampering with evidence.

  His mind is dancing again.

  It abruptly performs a perfect jeté when he spots three Cadillacs proceeding at speed along the esplanade towards him. It’s like a horrible mirage. He flings himself over the railings on to the beach, head down, scared that they’ve seen him, listening lest they stop.

  They don’t.

  He hears the three cars swish past in quick succession.

  Sitting up, he brushes sand off his hands and face. It is then he notices the waves breaking over some object a stone’s throw out at sea. He knows it isn’t a rock, having spent much of his childhood on this beach. Mark stands up to get a better view, but is again instantly distracted. The sound of police sirens starts up at the other end of the esplanade, by the Grand Atlantic, and it careers closer and closer. He watches the cars grow from small dots to large thundering projectiles, flashing blue streaks of light as they hurtle past. The sight strangely moves him. For the first time since he was a small boy, he feels proud to be British.

  When he turns back to the object disturbing the wave pattern, his heart gives a leap. It looks like the top of a trunk but he can’t be certain. A small, dark cumulus cloud briefly obscures the sun. When it clears there�
�s a sudden flash of gold. It’s a stencilled RT on the lid of a trunk.

  The trunk.

  Mark crashes into the water, ploughing his way towards it. The tide is coming in fast and he has to struggle to keep going. Reaching it, he closes his eyes and starts praying, before looking down. The lock lies open: even so he feels sick. He shivers fearfully, muttering madly to himself. ‘Dear God, may he not be inside it.’

  His hands shake as he rests them on the lid. Taking a deep breath he flings it open and peers inside. His cry rends the heavens, soars above the sound of the waves, rings across the beach, time and time again. His gales of relieved laughter break like squalls among the seagulls circling above. Inside the trunk there’s only a canvas bag, a padlock and a length of chain.

  Marks looks up at the blue sky and hears Reg’s voice carried in from the ocean by the wind. It must have circled the planet many times since he’d tempted fate with his immersion in the Atlantic Ocean: ‘Bind me in your strongest chains. Lock me in your strongest prison. Strip me naked. Search my body. I will escape. For no power on earth can hold me!’

  Reg was right.

  He had escaped.

  But so had he, Mark Miles. He knows that he’s just been blessed with the mysterious mark of celebrity. Like that famous finger on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it has come to rest on him. Within hours he’ll be on every television network, radio station, website, and in every newspaper and magazine. He can now market himself, make that elusive fortune.

  He can start again.

  With a brand new accent.

  Walking back along the beach is, for Mark, like the last scene in a movie. The hero silhouetted against the skyline, footsteps in the sand, clouds scudding overhead. He can even hear the music, mawkish and treacly – music composed to wring tears from audiences, music laced with that sentimentality peculiar to the cinema, and much treasured in box offices around the world.

  As Mark approaches the Grand Atlantic Hotel he sees Alice Honey, hidden behind massive black shades and a cloche hat, hurrying to a taxi. He waits for his heart to miss a beat, but it doesn’t. Even his cock shows no sign of interest. The taxi pulls away.

  He’s in such a daze, he hasn’t noticed how deserted the esplanade is. The crowds previously there, when he left in such a panic, are now on the beach looking out at something floating in the sea. Two people have waded out and are pulling it in, whatever it is.

  By the time he reaches the arc of onlookers and eases himself close to the front, whatever it is has been dragged on to the shore. His first glimpse of whatever it is only happens when people at the front turn away in horror and a gap between them opens.

  Mark sees a human arm, deathly white and bloated, with elaborate tattoos stretched obscenely out of shape. He thinks he recognises them. Somebody else up front moves aside and he knows that he does recognise them. This fresh gap has revealed Reg Turpin’s disintegrating face. Through the eye sockets, tiny crustaceans wave their limbs as if saying goodbye.

  Mark slams his eyes shut, reeling away in disgust, fighting his way through the crowd, running across the beach. He starts to retch, seemingly forever. When the bile runs out and the pain subsides, he collapses on to the sand, sobbing. Sobbing is not unusual for Mark. What is unusual is that he’s not sobbing for himself. For the first time in his life he’s sobbing for everybody else: Reg, Ursula, Wally, Alice, Buckle, Snipe, Ace, Avril, his mother… even for Snazell, Hare, Biff, Randy, Rip and Temple. He’s sobbing for the whole human race.

  Mark knows his maggot is already at work. He also knows that there is one inescapable fact: one reality that even his maggot cannot eliminate. He buries his head in the sand to stifle the scream that comes along with this awful realisation. The sobbing slows, then stops.

  He rolls on to his back and screams at the gods, for all to hear, ‘Once you’re born, there’s no escape!’

  The crowd on the beach watch from a distance, motionless, grim-faced. Mark’s curse hovers above them like a vulture, ugly and brutal, coming in to land. They, too, have to face this undeniable truth.

  The dead escapologist is living proof.

  Copyright

  Published by MaxCrime

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  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those may be liable in law accordingly.

  ePub ISBN 978 1 85782 930 3

  Mobi ISBN 978 1 85782 931 0

  PDF ISBN 978 1 85782 932 7

  First published in paperback in 2010

  ISBN: 978 1 84454 909 2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  © Text copyright Mike Hodges 2010

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Papers used by John Blake Publishing are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  MaxCrime commissioning editor: Maxim Jakubowski